Category: New Testament

We-passages testify against, not for, genuine eyewitness account

It is commonly asserted (rarely actually argued) that the most natural way of understanding the we-passages is to read them as eyewitness reports, and that as such they testify to the historicity of the events they describe. While the author’s use of “we” inevitably leads a reader to imagine an eyewitness account, at the same time it simply breaks all rules of literary rhetoric and common reading experience to say that it logically follows that the “we” indicates a genuine historical record. Everyone knows that fiction written in the first person “I” or “we” is still fiction. (And this applies to ancient classical literature as much as to modern novels.) No-one believes that a first-person narrative is a criterion for genuine historicity in any other field of literature, so when an exception to this common knowledge is made in the case of Acts one may fairly conclude we are confronting a case of theological apologetics.

Ancient historians were conscious of their need to establish credibility and to this end they identified both themselves and their sources. As Robbins notes of the historian Thucydides, he was strongly conscious of presenting himself as a trustworthy and accurate historian, even using the third person to tell of events in which he was personally involved. The historian Xenophon did the same. To impress readers with his accuracy and objectivity he speaks of himself always in the third person “he”, never as “I” or “we”. The historian Arrian likewise described a sea-voyage, for which he had a personal account, in the third person. The author of Acts avoids both citing any sources and allowing the reader to know his or her identity. Even the we-passages are anonymous. Even by the standards of ancient historians that simply does not rate as history. It is, rather, the rhetoric of fiction. Acts makes no pretence to match the historical tone of the more reputable ancient historians. Its third person narrative lacks any reference to the author’s identity, sources used and alternative accounts of events – characteristics common to Hellenistic histories. Its tone and rhetoric are those of a Hellenistic adventure novel. [Pervo]

Before continuing with the next section of this I will add to the above some extracts from the authors referenced and add full citations to demonstrate the argument.

We-passages and the sense of community

One reason for sometimes narrating sea voyages with an authorial “we” has been the sense that once on board a ship a tight interdependent community is naturally formed. It is natural and common in ancient literature for an authorial voice to slip from an “I” to a “we” when imagining this change of setting. Both Robbins and his critics have acknowledged this. This essay goes one step further by suggesting that the “we” community includes not only the narrator and his characters but vicariously the audience also as an integral part of the “we” community. The story outline of Acts strongly suggests that it was written for a Roman audience who had a strong interest in Rome’s role as a Christian centre, and I believe that the we-passages are best understood by including that Roman audience vicariously in the sea-voyaging community. For reasons I give below I wonder if the audience originally read the literary “we” as their founding community in Rome. Why such an audience community should be related only to certain, but not all, sea-travel sections of Acts will become quickly apparent in the discussion.

The “we-passages” in Acts have been understood either as being taken from an eye-witness record or as a non-historical literary device. The former view is generally embraced by default on the grounds that the literary device arguments appear to be burdened with too many qualifications and exceptions to make them compelling. Yet the arguments for reading the we-passages as an historical eye-witness record raise more questions than they answer and I will discuss some of those. I want to suggest another way of reading the we-passages which involves a new way of reading much of Acts itself and that I believe answers many of the questions that have been raised against both the literary device and eye-witness interpretations.

I intend to attempt to argue the possibility of reading the “we” in the we-passages as the author’s way of drawing a Roman audience into a vicarious identification with a new Christianized founding myth of Rome, or more specifically the church at Rome, that drew on both the founding epic of Rome (the Aeneid) and the Primary History of Israel (Genesis – 2 Kings). I believe this interpretation offers coherent answers to such questions as why Paul is always clearly distinguished from the “we”; why the “we” remain anonymous; why the “we” appear and disappear with the odd suddenness they do; why the we-passages portray Paul and his miracles with a low-key modesty and “naturalness” that contrasts with the exaggerated and the dramatically miraculous features found in other Pauline stories; why Paul decides to walk to Assos while “we” sail there to pick him up; and also make more sense of some features of Paul’s approach to Rome and the abrupt ending. While I cannot “prove” that the author intended the we-passages to be read this way I can point to possible clues throughout the text that may make this reading plausible.

VKR on the relationship between the we-passages and Rome

Vernon K. Robbins pictured the author of Acts penning his narrative in Rome and addressing the question of how “we” got “here” in Rome when “we” started out “there” in Jerusalem. In support of this claim he continues:

[The author] says that all of the things about which he writes have been accomplished “among us” (Luke 1:1) . . . As he sits in Rome, he participates in the events of the Christian church, and explains to “Theophilus” how his community of believers got to be where they are (Luke 1:3-4) . . . Thus he can say . . . as Paul voyaged across the sea, “we” got here. (p.241)

Two facts can be presented as undermining this assertion: (1) the we-passages are not used consistently for all of Paul’s overseas voyages, and (2) most we-passages address journeys to places other than Rome. In my argument below I will show that a fresh look at the narrative structure and multiple literary allusions in Acts may well remove these weaknesses from Robbins’ essential idea.

Tannehill on the literary function of the we-passages

Robert Tannehill takes up the psychological import of the narrative first person plural approach as it invites readers to enter in the inclusive “we” with Paul as he journeys to farewell his churches and face his final (Christ-like) passion as it is to be determined in Jerusalem.

By using the first-person plural during the journey to Jerusalem, events are experienced through a focalizing character who accompanies Paul but is distinct both from the seven named companions . . . and from Paul himself . . .. This focalizing character is both anonymous and plural (“we,” not “I”). The anonymity of the group decreases its value as eyewitness guarantor of the report, but an anonymous and plural first-person narrator is well suited to increase imaginative participation in the narrative by readers or hearers of it. The anonymous “we” – a participant narrator – is a special opportunity for us and others to enter the narrative as participants and to see ourselves as companions of Paul as he prepares the churches for his absence and resolutely approaches the danger in Jerusalem. A first-person narrator is a focalizing channel through whom the story is experienced. Our experience of events is limited to the experience of the first-person narrator, and this common perspective creates a bond of identification. The anonymous “we” is a focalizing channel without clear definition, except as companions of Paul, making it easy for many individuals, and even a community, to identify with the narrator. “We” as fellow travellers both share Paul’s experience and receive his legacy as he travels toward his passion. The narrative also heightens our experience of the journey as such, for the “we” narration includes passages that simply present the journey with sufficient detail to make us aware of it as experience of a special type, with its own stages, decisions to be made, and goal . . . (pp.246-247)

The main weakness of this argument is that it is inconsistent with the role of the first we-passage that is not describing a farewell journey to Jerusalem at all but involves the “we” in a narrative where Paul is expanding churches, not farewelling them.

But I will argue below that Tannehill’s main point works much better if one reads Paul’s journey to his passion against the background, in part, of the Roman founding epic, which is, I suggest, exactly the way the author of Acts frequently invites his readers to read it.

 

I have had an unfinished draft of an essay on the we-passages in Acts sitting in my computer now for more than a year surely. Several attempts to return to it have led me to baulk at the size of the task I had taken on, with biblical studies not really being easy to justify as my number one priority in life. But now with this new blog thingy I think I have a way to re-work that essay begging for completion, this time in nice easy bite-size installments. I’ll start copying and reworking it bit by bit in a series of posts to this blog. Eventually I trust this nifty piece of technology will enable me to see a series of posts in a folder which can finally come together then as a whole. And who knows, I may even have the added luck of criticism along the way from the odd passer-by to help me identify and remove a few of its warts.

Neil Godfrey
Australia

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