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Interpreting Pedagogical Acts: Acts 8.26–40 and Narrative Reflexivity as Pedagogy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2017

Michal Beth Dinkler
Michal Beth Dinkler*
Affiliation:
409 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511, USA. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article foregrounds a fact so basic that it often goes unnoticed: stories frequently depict the acts of reading and/or interpreting stories; many narratives are themselves concerned with proper modes of narrative interpretation. I contend that such scenes work rhetorically to inculcate particular kinds of hermeneutical skills in their audiences, and thus can be read as pedagogical scenarios vis-à-vis implied readers. I begin the article by introducing the contemporary notion of narrative reflexivity and situating that concept within the broader literary sub-field of rhetorical narratology. Then, I turn to Acts 8.26–40 as a brief case study in order to demonstrate how narrative reflexivity can help us to think in fresh ways about the pedagogical force of ancient narratives. Specifically, I argue that this story in Acts reflexively commends the following hermeneutical principle for its readers: because reading is not synonymous with understanding, one ought to have an authoritative interpretive guide, and embrace a hermeneutic of hospitality towards the received narrative. Finally, I highlight several examples from ancient literature that demonstrate why my proposed reading coheres with ancient views about pedagogy and textual interpretation more broadly.

Keywords

rhetorical narratologyancient pedagogyActs of the ApostlesEthiopian eunuchreflexivityinterpretation
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 411 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank the anonymous NTS reviewer, Jerry Camery-Hoggatt, Benjamin Lappenga, and Scott Elliott for helpful feedback on this article.

References

1 Foundational works on rhetoric and education in antiquity are Marrou's, H.-I. Histoire de l'education dans l'Antiquité (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1948)Google Scholar and Clark's, D. L. Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957)Google Scholar. More recently, L. Van Hoof has traced the influence of paideia into late antiquity in ‘Performing Paideia: Greek Culture as an Instrument for Social Promotion in the Fourth Century ad ’, The Classical Quarterly 63 (2013) 387–406Google Scholar. The classic work on these intersections with respect to ancient Christian texts remains Jaeger, W., Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1965)Google Scholar, though Jaeger overstates his case in several places (e.g. his discussion on p. 12 of Christianity as the ‘paideia of Christ’ in the apocryphal Acts of Philip). The phrase ἡ παιδαγωγία Χριστοῦ appears in patristic writings (e.g. Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 98.2–3).

2 On διδάσκω, see Rengstorf, TDNT ii.135; L&N 33; on παιδεύω, γράμμα, and related terms in the NT, see L&N 27 and 36. On Jesus’ pedagogy, see e.g. Normann, F., Christos Didaskalos: Die Vorstellung von Christus als Lehrer in der christlichen Literatur des ersten und zweiten Jahrhunderts (Münster: Aschendorff, 1966)Google Scholar; Robbins, V. K., Jesus the Teacher: A Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation of Mark (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984)Google Scholar; Reisner, R., Jesus als Lehrer: Eine Untersuchung zum Ursprung der Evangelien-Überlieferung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988 3)Google Scholar; Yieh, J. Y.-H., One Teacher: Jesus’ Teaching Role in Matthew's Gospel Report (BZNW 124; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 In antiquity, forms and functions of reading were more differentiated than they are today. Lucretia Yaghjian helpfully distinguishes between oculiterate reading (linguistic decoding by eye from a written text), auraliterate reading (hearing something read or receiving reading aurally), oraliterate reading (recitation or recall of a memorised text), scribaliterate reading (reading for technical, professional or religious purposes) and illiterate/illiteracy (a technical, socially descriptive term not associated with a stigma). Yaghjian recognises varying gradations of ability under each of those respective categories, and identifies literate/literacy as terms modern scholars use to refer to oculiterate and scribaliterate readers of antiquity. Yaghjian, L., ‘Ancient Reading’, The Social Sciences and New Testament Interpretation (ed. Rohrbaugh, R.; (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996) 208–9Google Scholar.

4 See e.g. Bowie, E., ‘The Readership of Greek Novels in the Ancient World’, The Search for the Ancient Novel (ed. Tatum, J.; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994) 435–59Google Scholar; Dillon, M. P. J., ‘Engendering the Scroll: Girls’ and Women's Literacy in Classical Greece’, The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (ed. Grubbs, J. Evans, Parkin, T. and Bell, R. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 396–417 Google Scholar.

5 Recognising that recipients often heard texts read aloud (and thus, strictly speaking, were hearers), I use the term ‘reader’ throughout as a matter of convenience. By this, I mean the ‘implied reader’ in the technical Iserian sense. See e.g. Iser, W., The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

6 Too, Y. L., The Pedagogical Contract: The Economies of Teaching and Learning in the Ancient World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000) 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Cribiore, R., Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Too, Y. L., ed., Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2001)Google Scholar; Walker, J., The Genuine Teachers of This Art: Rhetorical Education in Antiquity (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

7 Craffert, P. F. and Botha, P. J., ‘Why Jesus Could Walk on the Sea but He Could Not Read and Write: Reflections on Historicity and Interpretation in Historical Jesus Research’, Neotestamentica 39 (2005) 5–35 Google Scholar, at 25 (emphasis original).

8 Craffert and Botha, ‘Why Jesus Could Walk on the Sea’, 24 (emphasis original).

9 On the history and role(s) of the ancient pedagogue, see Young, N. H., ‘Paidagogos: The Social Setting of a Pauline Metaphor’, NovT 29 (1987) 150–76Google Scholar; Morgan, T., Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

10 For example, though Craffert and Botha do not specifically stipulate that they will focus on childhood education, they repeatedly use the term ‘elementary’ (‘Why Jesus Could Walk on the Sea’, 20–1). (See also Meier, J., who views synagogues as ‘elementary school’ for Jewish boys. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. i: The Roots of the Problem and the Person (New York: Doubleday, 1991) 275–7)Google Scholar. Or take their contrast between today's ‘optimizing profit-maker’ and the ancient ‘rational-actor peasant’ regarding ‘the hiring of teachers, or the building of a school’, or the ‘defin[ing] of what is useful’ (p. 26). One need only look to the many itinerant philosopher-teachers of antiquity to see the problems with such depictions.

11 Kearns, M., Rhetorical Narratology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999) 2Google Scholar. For more on the applicability of rhetorical narratology for NT narratives, see Dinkler, M. B., ‘New Testament Rhetorical Narratology: An Invitation Toward Integration’, Biblical Interpretation 24 (2016) 203–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Phelan, J., ‘Rhetoric/Ethics’, The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (ed. Herman, D.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 209Google Scholar.

13 So, similarly, Culpepper, R. A.: ‘By the time readers reach the last chapter of the gospel [of John] they have been educated in how to read this gospel.’ ‘Designs for the Church in the Gospel Accounts of Jesus’ Death’, NTS 51 (2005) 376–92Google Scholar, at 379 n. 118 (emphasis added).

14 Phelan, J., Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996) 19Google Scholar.

15 Other terms often used to refer to this phenomenon include self-reference, self-figuration, textual narcissism, self-consciousness, ‘breaking the frame’, obtrusiveness of the narrator, metafiction and metanarrative. On the latter two, however, note: ‘Although they are related and often used interchangeably, the terms should be distinguished: metanarration refers to the narrator's reflections on the act or process of narration; metafiction concerns comments on the fictionality and/or constructedness of the narrative.’ B. Neumann and A. Nünning, ‘Metanarration and Metafiction’, The Living Handbook of Narratology, Paragraph 2 (ed. P. Hühn et al.; Hamburg: Hamburg University Press); online at: http://wikis.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php/Metanarration_and_Metafiction, accessed 1.3.2017.

16 For foundational work on reflexivity in the field of linguistics, see Ducrot, O., Dire et ne pas dire (Paris: Hermann, 1972)Google Scholar.

17 Williams, J., Theory and the Novel: Narrative Reflexivity in the British Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 1–2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Prince, G., Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative (Berlin: Mouton, 1982) 126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 For more on texts from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries that exhibit ‘metafictional awareness of [their] own constructedness and textuality’, see Huber, W., Middeke, M. and Zapf, H., eds., Self-Reflexivity in Literature (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann GmbH, 2005) 8Google Scholar; Hutcheon, L., Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox (New York: Methuen, 1984)Google Scholar and further references below.

20 Alter, R., Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1975) xGoogle Scholar. Alter recognises brief moments of self-consciousness in ancient works like the Odyssey and Euripides’ parodies of Greek tragedy.

21 Tellingly, though, Ewen Bowie uses the very same verb that Alter does, asserting that Antonius Diogenes’ The Incredible Things Beyond Thule and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe are interested in ‘flaunting their textuality’. Bowie, E., ‘The Uses of Bookishness’, Readers and Writers in the Ancient Novel (ed. Paschalis, M., Panayotakis, S. and Schmeling, G. (Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 2009) 115Google Scholar.

22 Siegle, R., The Politics of Reflexivity: Narrative and the Constitutive Poetics of Culture (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) 3Google Scholar. So, similarly, Halevi-Wise, Y.: ‘Interpolated self-reflexive structures exist in all ages and literary forms.’ Interactive Fictions: Scenes of Storytelling in the Novel (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003) 4Google Scholar. Cf. also Neumann and Nünning: ‘While metafiction has often been perceived as a primary quality of postmodern literature, Wolf stresses that (Western) narrative fiction has contained metafictional elements ever since its beginnings.’ ‘Metanarration and Metafiction’, Paragraph 2. For the reference to Wolf, see Wolf, W., ‘Metafiktion’, Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie (ed. Nünning, A.; Stuttgart: Metzler, 2004) 447–8Google Scholar.

23 Sandywell, B. identifies the beginning of reflexivity in the Odyssey in The Beginnings of European Theorizing: Reflexivity in the Archaic Age (London: Routledge, 1996) 98Google Scholar.

24 Stein, D., Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Whitmarsh, T., The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 7–8 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 J. Morgan, ‘Readers Writing Readers, and Writers reading Writers: Reflections of Antonius Diogenes’, Readers and Writers, 131.

27 R. Hunter, ‘Ancient Readers’, Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, 268.

28 Culler, J., Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) 34Google Scholar.

29 Martin, W., Recent Theories of Narrative (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986) 181Google Scholar.

30 Matthew begins with a genealogy, Mark begins in medias res (with John and Jesus already as adults), and John begins with an abstract theological preface. The very fact that each of the Gospels begins differently is a reminder that the gospel writers had their own unique agendas and rhetorical reasons for writing the gospel story in the particular ways that they did.

31 Cf. implicit references to the ‘reader’ in Mark 13.14; Matt 24.15. See Fowler, R., Let the Reader Understand: Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991)Google Scholar.

32 Luke 4.16–30. Cf. Mark 6.1–6, where Jesus simply ‘teaches in the synagogue’, without reading, and Matt 13.53–8, where he does not read or teach in the synagogue at all.

33 On the translation of εὐγενής as ‘open-minded’ or ‘willing to learn’, see L&N 27.48 and BDAG 404. Cf. 1 Cor 1.26, where εὐγενής is also used in connection with understanding.

34 Many of these scenes are unique to the Lukan corpus. Uses of ἀναγινώσκω include Luke 4.16; 6.3; 10.26; Acts 8.28, 30, 32; 13.27; 15.21, 31; 23.34. Acts 13.15 uses the noun form: ‘After reading the law and the prophets …’ (μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν). As noted above, Acts 17.11 uses ἀνακρίνω. On the Greek verbs associated with reading generally, see the now-classic Chantraine, P., ‘Les verbes grecs significant “lire”’, Mélanges Henri Grégoire (Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales et Slaves 10; Brussels: Secretariat des Éditions de l'Institut, 1950) 115–26Google Scholar.

35 Thus, from the start of the pericope, Philip exemplifies the kind of careful, obedient listening Luke has previously commended to his audience (in places like Luke 8.18, for example, where Jesus instructs his disciples: ‘Watch how you listen’).

36 Yaghjian labels this an instance of oculiterate reading (see n. 3 above). On the custom of reading aloud in antiquity, see the foundational article by Balogh, J., ‘Voces Paginarum: Beiträge zur Geschichte des lauten Lesens und Schreibens’, Philologus (1927) 84–109, 202–40Google Scholar; more recently, Achtemeier, P., ‘ Omne Verbum Sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity’, JBL 109 (1990) 3–27 Google Scholar; Slusser, M., ‘Reading Silently in Antiquity’, JBL 111 (1992) 499Google Scholar; and Gilliard's, F. D. response to Achtemeier and Slusser, ‘More Silent Reading in Antiquity: Non Omne Verbum Sonabat ’, JBL 112 (1993) 689–94Google Scholar; more recently still, see Johnson, W. A., Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Commentators nearly all label him an outsider, though for various reasons; the debates are ongoing. Many claim that as a castrated male, he could not be a Jew (Lev 21.20; Deut. 23.1; Josephus, A.J. 4.290–1). On the other hand, the term ‘eunuch’ could simply point to his official title (cf. LXX Gen 39.1), as finance minister for the Candace (the title for queens of Ethiopian Meroë). In the ancient geographical imagination, Ethiopia was the end of the world – as opposed to Rome, which was the centre, or navel (omphalos), of the earth. In the Lukan world-view, the Ethiopian eunuch's conversion fulfils Acts 1.8 and evokes Peter's declaration that the Spirit is for all who are ‘far away’ (μακράν, 2.39); in Greek literature, μακράν often refers to Ethiopians. Physically, the Ethiopian eunuch is ‘other’, as well; writers like Herodotus, Strabo and Homer commonly describe Ethiopians as a handsome and dark people, while some considered them the original human race. C. R. Carson declares that the Ethiopian eunuch ‘defies categorization’. ‘“Do You Understand What You Are Reading?”: A Reading of the Ethiopian Eunuch Story (Acts 8.26–40) from a Site of Cultural Marronage’ (PhD diss., Union Theological Seminary, 1999) 145. See, recently, Burke, S., Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch: Strategies of Ambiguity in Acts (Minneapolis: Fortress , 2013)Google Scholar; Kartzow, M. B. and Moxnes, H., ‘Complex Identities: Ethnicity, Gender and Religion in the Story of the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26–40)’, Religion & Theology 17 (2010) 184–204;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Shauf, S., ‘Locating the Eunuch: Characterization and Narrative Context in Acts 8:26–40’, CBQ (2009) 762–75Google Scholar.

38 Using a complex of both ὁράω- and ἀκούω-related words, Luke consistently underscores the importance of paying attention. See further n. 52 below.

39 Coleridge, M., The Birth of the Lukan Narrative: Narrative as Christology in Luke 1–2 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993) 222–3Google Scholar. See also Moore, S., Mark and Luke in Poststructuralist Perspective: Jesus Begins to Write (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) esp. 124Google Scholar.

40 Smith, A. calls this an ‘anti-recognition scene’. ‘“Do You Understand What You are Reading?”: A Literary Critical Reading of the Ethiopian (Kushite) Episode (Acts 8:26–40)’, Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 22 (1994) 48–70, at 62 n. 59Google Scholar.

41 On a similar pun in 2 Cor 1.13, Mitchell, M. writes: ‘What lies in the balance in translating [epiginoskein] is the very nature of hermeneutics itself – does reading lead to comprehension through acquisition of new knowledge, cognitive recognition of what was previously known and now remembered, or a kind of active acknowledgment of what was already there and now deserves a nod?’ Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 98Google Scholar (emphasis original).

42 In this, Philip also closely resembles the risen Jesus’ ‘opening’ (διήνοιγεν, from διανοίγω) of the Scriptures on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24.32). Several scholars have explored this scene's allusions to the final scenes in Luke: O'Toole, R., ‘Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:25–40)’, JSNT 17 (1983) 25–34, at 25Google Scholar; Lindijer, C., ‘Two Creative Encounters in the Work of Luke’, Miscellanea Neotestamentica (ed. Beards, T.; Lkijn, A. and Unnik, W. van; Leiden: Brill, 1978) 77–85 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grassi, J., ‘Emmaus Revisited (Luke 24:13–35 and Acts 8:26–40)’, CBQ 26 (1964) 463–7Google Scholar.

43 While Rudolf Bultmann's category of Schulgespräche (‘scholastic dialogues’) has been studied extensively by form critics, few have explored the ways in which these pericopes place readers into the position of the disciples. If readers sympathise with the questioner, the aphorism that closes scholastic dialogues will be directed not only at the hearers in the story, but also to the readers. In a sense, the characters ask the question on the reader's behalf. Bultmann, R., History of the Synoptic Tradition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963) esp. 54Google Scholar.

44 Booth, W., The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

45 Weaver, J., ‘Narratives of Reading in Luke-Acts’, Theological Librarianship 1.1 (2008) 22–37, at 29Google Scholar. Cf. F. S. Spencer, who restricts ‘hospitality’ to providing lodging, and thus concludes: ‘While hospitality is an important Lukan theme and contributes to the portrayal of Philip in Acts 21.8–9 … it simply is not a factor in the eunuch episode (Philip does not linger long enough to require lodging!).’ The Portrait of Philip in Acts: A Study of Roles and Relations (JSNTSup 67; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992) 142Google Scholar.

46 TDNT s.v. δέχομαι, pp. 146–8.

47 See, similarly, Luke 8.13.

48 Although Weaver recognises that stories can be apologetic, he does not go far enough with this insight. ‘Narratives of Reading in Luke-Acts’, 35.

49 This is, of course, debated. Henry Cadbury appears to be the first to hyphenate the two books to indicate their unity in The Making of Luke-Acts (London: Macmillan, 1927)Google Scholar. Other major contributions to this discussion include the papers presented at the 47th Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense (Leuven, 1998), compiled in Verheyden, J., ed., The Unity of Luke-Acts (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; O'Toole, R., The Unity of Luke's Theology: An Analysis of Luke-Acts (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1984)Google Scholar; Tannehill, R., The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts: A Literary Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986)Google Scholar; Parsons, M. and Pervo, R. I., Rethinking the Unity of Luke and Acts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992)Google Scholar. Recent contributions include: Walters, P., The Assumed Authorial Unity of Luke and Acts: A Reassessment of the Evidence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wolter, M., Das Lukasevangelium (HNT 5; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008)Google Scholar.

50 Green, J., ‘Internal Repetition in Luke-Acts: Contemporary Narratology and Lukan Historiography’, History, Literature, and Society in the Book of Acts (ed. Witherington, B.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 283–99, esp. 288CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Moore, Mark and Luke in Poststructuralist Perspectives, 125–6.

52 Indeed, the rhetoric of (mis)perception is prominent throughout the Lukan narrative. In the Gospel, those who misunderstand are typically closest to Jesus (e.g. Jesus’ parents in 2.43, 50; the disciples in 9.10–17, 28–36 (esp. 32–3), 37–42, 44–5, 49–50, 54–5, 57–62; cf. the demons in 4.34, 41), whereas in Acts the misunderstanding motif involves outsiders, and often concerns mistaken identity (e.g. 2.13; 3.17; 7.25; 8.18–24; 13.27; 14.11–13; 19.14–16; 22.9; cf. the oracular spirit who identifies Paul correctly in 16.17; 21.17–26). For more on this, see Darr, J., ‘“Watch How You Listen” (Lk. 8.18): Jesus and the Rhetoric of Perception in Luke-Acts’, The New Literary Criticism and the New Testament (ed. Malbon, E. S. and McKnight, E. V.; JSNTSup 109; Valley Forge, PA: Trinity International, 1994)Google Scholar. William Kurz reads examples of misunderstanding and ignorance as implicit commentary in Reading Luke-Acts: Dynamics of Biblical Narrative (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1993) 149–55Google Scholar.

53 C. Clivaz argues that in Luke's narrative, the ambiguity of terms like ὁδηγέω and ὁδός contributes to an ‘open and risky’ (‘ouverte et risquée’) Lukan anthropology. ‘Douze noms pour une main. Nouveaux regards sur Judas à partir de Lc 22,21–22’, NTS 48 (2002) 400–16, at 409Google Scholar.

54 Acts 9.2; 19.9, 23; 22.4; 24.14, 22. On this, see Baban, O., On the Road Encounters in Luke-Acts: Hellenistic Mimesis and Luke's Theology of the Way (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster , 2006)Google Scholar. Although J. Hur correctly notes that of the forty times the word ὁδός appears in Luke-Acts, only eleven refer to a metaphorical ‘way’, I believe the polyvalence of the term is part of its power. A Dynamic Reading of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts (JSNTSup 211; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001) 185 n. 14Google Scholar.

55 As in Acts 11.26; 26.28; 1 Pet 4.16.

56 ἐκκλησία is used over a hundred times in the New Testament; over twenty of those appear in Acts.

57 The figure of hodos is relevant to reflexivity in other ways, though we do not have space to explore them here: without using the term ‘reflexivity’, Christopher Morris nevertheless traces how ‘the figure of the road has from antiquity been associated with writing dilemmas’, and how ancient literary works allegorise ‘the futile pilgrimage of a constructed persona in a world of unreliable guides and inscrutable others’. ‘Deconstruction and Theology: Hodos in the Acts of the Apostles’, The Figure of the Road: Deconstructive Studies in Humanities Disciplines (New York: Peter Lang, 2007) 6, 10Google Scholar.

58 The same Greek phrase is used in Acts 14.3 and 20.32.

59 See, among many examples, discussions in Epictetus, Discourse 3.21.18–24; Philodemus, De libertate dicendi; Philo, De congressu eruditionis gratia; De Iosepho; Plutarch, Mor. 14e–74e; Dio Chrysostom 77–8; the Cynic Epistles; Cicero, Tusc. 4; Seneca, Ep. 6, 16, 32, 34, 52, 64, 112, 120; later, Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 43.2. Secondary works on ancient psychagogy include Rabbow, P., Seelenführung; Methodik der Exerzitien in der Antike (München: Kösel Verlag, 1954)Google Scholar; Hadot, I., Seneca und die Griechisch-Römische Tradition der Seelenleitung, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969)Google Scholar; Nussbaum, M., ‘Therapeutic Arguments: Epicurus and Aristotle’, The Norms of Nature: Studies in Hellenistic Ethics (ed. Schofield, M. and Striker, G.; (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; eadem, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Dillon, J., ‘The Pleasures and Perils of Soul-Gardening’, Studia Philonica Annual, vol. ix: Wisdom and Logos: Studies in Jewish Thought in Honor of David Winston (ed. Runia, D. T. and Sterling, G. E.; Brown Judaic Studies 312; Atlanta, GA: Scholars , 1997) 190–7Google Scholar. T. Engberg-Pedersen classifies psychagogy as a category of paraenesis. ‘The Concept of Paraenesis’, Early Christian Paraenesis in Context (ed. Starr, J. M. and Engberg-Pedersen, T.; BZNW 125; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004) 47–72 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 59–60. See also recent works on psychagogy in late antiquity: Kolbet, P. R., Augustine and the Cure of Souls: Revising a Classical Ideal (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Rylaardsam, D., Imitating Divine Pedagogy: The Coherence of John Chrysostom's Theology and Preaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Mayer, W., ‘Shaping the Sick Soul: Reshaping the Identity of John Chrysostom’, Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium: Studies inspired by Pauline Allen (ed. Dunn, G. D. and Mayer, W.; Leiden: Brill, 2014) 140–66Google Scholar; eadem, ‘The Persistence in Late Antiquity of Medico-Philosophical Psychic Therapy’, Journal of Late Antiquity 8 (forthcoming 2015) 337–51Google ScholarPubMed.

60 Phaed. 261a. On psychagogy, see Phaed. 260e–272b; E. Asmis traces the development of the term in ‘ Psychagogia in Plato's Phaedrus ’, Illinois Classical Studies 11 (1986) 153–72Google Scholar.

61 Phaed. 271d. On the ancient view that texts/words function psychagogically, see Entralgo, P. Laín, The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity (ed. and trans. Rather, L. J. and Sharp, J. M.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970)Google Scholar. Cf. Michel Foucault's distinction between ancient pedagogy/psychagogy/paideia, in which ‘the obligations of truth are essentially borne by the master, counselor, or guide’, and Christian psychagogy, in which ‘the truth does not come from the person who guides the soul but is given in another mode (Revelation, Text, Book, etcetera)’. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981—1982 (ed. Gros, F.; trans. Burchell;, G. New York: Picador, 2005) 408Google Scholar.

62 See J. Darr's discussion of the applicability of psychagogical notions for NT narratives, despite previous scholars’ propensity for reading only epistolary literature through a psychagogical lens. ‘Narrative Therapy: Treating Audience Anxiety through Psychagogy in Luke’, PRSt 39 (2012) 335–47, esp. 339–42Google Scholar. Key works on psychagogy and NT epistles include Malherbe, A. J., Paul and the Thessalonians: The Philosophic Tradition of Pastoral Care (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987)Google Scholar; idem, Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Hellenistic Moralists and the New Testament’, ANRW ii.26.1 267–333; Glad, C. E., Paul and Philodemus: Adaptability in Epicurean and Early Christian Psychagogy (NovTSup 81; Leiden: Brill, 1995)Google Scholar; Vegge, I., 2 Corinthians — A Letter about Reconciliation: A Psychagogical, Epistographical, and Rhetorical Analysis (WUNT ii/239; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008)Google Scholar; Kloppenborg, J. S., ‘James 1:2–15 and Hellenistic Psychagogy’, NovT 52 (2010) 37–71 Google Scholar.

63 Ant. Rom. 1.5.3.

64 Appian, Bell. civ. 1.6.

65 Ars 334, 343–4.

66 Pervo, E.g. R., Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987)Google Scholar; Wesseling, B., ‘The Audience of the Ancient Novels’, Groningen Colloquia on the Novel (ed. Hofman, H.; Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1988) 67–79 Google Scholar; Müller-Reineke, H., ‘Facts or Fiction? The Fruitful Relationship between Ancient Novel and Literary Miscellany’, The Ancient Novel and the Frontiers of Genre (ed. Pinheiro, M. P. Futre, Perkins, J. and Pervo, R.; Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2014) 69–82 Google Scholar.

67 Hunter, R., ‘“Philip the Philosopher” on the Aithiopika of Heliodorus’, Metaphor and the Ancient Novel (ed. Harrison, S., Paschalis, M. and Frangoulidis, S.; Groningen: Barkhuis and Groningen University Library, 2005) 133Google Scholar.

68 Ver. hist. 1.4.

69 Ver. hist. 1.2.

70 Ver. hist. 1.2.

71 Cf. Epictetus’ claim that philosophical principles alone can lead the soul without a pedagogical guide. Discourse 3.21.23.

72 Mor. 15C.

73 Mor. 16A.

74 Mor. 15F.

75 See note above. Cf. the scholarly reconstruction proposed by Craffert and Botha above, in which education is restricted to childhood.

76 Craffert and Botha, ‘Why Jesus Could Walk on the Sea’, 28.

77 Man, P. de, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979) 77Google Scholar. See the perceptive note on de Man and reader-response criticism in Mailloux, S., Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982) 60–1 n. 39Google Scholar.