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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: mb.dinkler@yale.edu
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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

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Type
Articles
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New Testament Studies , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 411 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

1. Introduction

What were the relationships between the processes of narration, education, and interpretation, in the ancient world? In order to begin to formulate an answer to this question, I wish to foreground 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.

Since the mid-twentieth century, scholars have shown a great deal of interest in ancient pedagogical perspectives and practices. While some scholars identify intersections between ancient narratives and formal Greek rhetorical training,Footnote 1 others address the many canonical references to Jesus as a teacher (διδάσκαλος),Footnote 2 and still others ask what references to reading in ancient texts might tell us about literacyFootnote 3 and/or readership(s)Footnote 4 in the ancient world. Few scholars, however, have considered how ancient narratives often draw attention to their own narrativity and interpretability, and thereby prove pedagogically powerful for their implied readers.Footnote 5 I suggest that we shift our attention from extratextual reconstruction of ancient pedagogical practices, and from intratextual explorations of teaching-related dynamics within specific narratives, to the performative space between text and reader in which pedagogy is enacted and practised. My premise is that scenes of narrative interpretation within narratives function rhetorically to promote a particular vision of narratives; that is, narrated scenes of characters interpreting narratives function not only as objects of hermeneutical inquiry, but as participants in ongoing discussions about textual representation and interpretation, and as active agents of readerly transformation.

Recently, classicists have been working to ‘render the constituent elements of the [ancient] pedagogical scenario open to negotiation’.Footnote 6 This is a useful corrective to a problematic tendency in New Testament scholarship: although most New Testament scholars recognise that we should not assume a homogeneous continuity between modern views on education and the ways that education functioned in the first century ce, many still reinscribe modern conceptions even as they try to challenge others’ anachronistic assumptions. Pieter Craffert and Pieter Botha are a case in point: they argue that the view that Jesus was literate is ‘bad history’Footnote 7 because ‘the evidence for “elementary” schooling in first-century Palestine is extremely thin’.Footnote 8 Certainly, they are right that Jesus was not an elite child, tutored and trained by a paidagogos.Footnote 9 Nevertheless, in their reconstruction of what they dub ‘peasant pedagogy’ Craffert and Botha conflate ‘literacy’ with ‘schooling/education’ and imply that learning takes place only formally, in a school building, with an adult who teaches children (so-called ‘elementary’ school).Footnote 10 Considering ancient narratives themselves as pedagogical scenarios helps to destabilise the valorisation of modern education-related binaries (e.g. teacher/student, knowledge/ignorance, adult/child, body/mind) that persists in certain strands of New Testament scholarship.

In the following pages, I begin 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 – in which an Ethiopian eunuch reads Scripture and ultimately becomes a Christ-follower – 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 will 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.

2. Narrative Rhetoricity, Narrative Reflexivity and Ancient Narratives

The literary sub-field of rhetorical narratology melds ‘narratology's tools for analyzing texts and rhetoric's tools for analyzing the interplay between texts and contexts in order better to understand how audiences experience narratives’.Footnote 11 The fundamental premise of a rhetorical approach to narrative is that, as James Phelan puts it, ‘[n]arrative is a rhetorical action in which somebody tries to accomplish some purpose(s) by telling somebody else that something happened’.Footnote 12 At least one function of the rhetorical act of telling a story is to shape the ‘somebody else’ to whom one tells the tale into a particular kind of storyhearer.Footnote 13 Relatedly, rhetorical narratologists recognise that the ‘somebody else’ to whom a narrative is told can be variously defined: different ‘audiences’ are constituted by and/or responsive to different textual cues. Therefore, rhetorical narratology ‘shifts emphasis from the author as controller to the recursive relationships among authorial agency, textual phenomena, and reader response’.Footnote 14

One textual phenomenon that has been explored in great detail with respect to post-modern narratives, but hardly at all regarding ancient narratives, is narrative reflexivity.Footnote 15 As the etymology of the word suggests, reflexivity (from the Latin reflexivus, re (‘again’) + flectere (‘to bend’)) is a turning or bending back on oneself.Footnote 16 Jeffrey Williams defines narrative reflexivity as those moments ‘when narrative refers to itself, to its own medium, mode, and process, rather than simply to other (nonlinguistic) “events”, that we normally assume constitute a narrative’.Footnote 17 Such meta-level references to the very narrativity of narrative, or to the textuality of texts, proffer models of both narration and interpretation; they ‘constitute the answer of a text to the question “How should we interpret you?”’Footnote 18 In so doing, moments of reflexivity promote a particular vision of what narratives can or should accomplish. Narratives thereby self-theorise and valorise their own mode of existence.

The fact that narrative reflexivity has been explored in great detail with respect to post-modern narratives, but less frequently regarding ancient narratives, raises an important methodological question: can we justify using a contemporary concept like narrative reflexivity as an analytic lens through which to read ancient narratives? For many theorists, reflexivity refers specifically to post-modern or modern ‘metafictional’ literature, which is regularly dated to the eighteenth century,Footnote 19 and, in Robert Alter's words, ‘systematically flaunts its own condition of artifice’.Footnote 20 If this is the sense in which one conceives of literary reflexivity, then it is indeed inapplicable for ancient narratives, which do not typically ‘systematically flaunt’ their artificial condition in the same overt, thoroughgoing way that a Tristram Shandy does.Footnote 21

However, I argue that the concept is useful for reading ancient narratives because, based on its core definition described above, ‘reflexivity is a basic capability of narrative exercised in every period, historical schematizations notwithstanding’.Footnote 22 Narratives from various ages and places, across diverse corpora, draw attention to their own textuality, even if they do so to differing degrees.Footnote 23 Scholars outside New Testament studies have already recognised this. Dina Stein, for example, has traced the ways that ‘self-reflexivity … operates in, and is central to, rabbinic texts’.Footnote 24 Tim Whitmarsh and other classicists have explored the various ways that the extant ancient Greek and Roman novels are both literarily ‘located squarely within this [Hellenistic] culture of … paideia’, and thematically concerned with paideia ‘within the very narrative of the novels’.Footnote 25 John Morgan traces concerns in Antoninus Diogenes’ The Incredible Things beyond Thule that he calls ‘emblematic of a profound and intellectual self-referentiality’,Footnote 26 while Richard Hunter identifies ‘the obvious self-referentiality’ of the Metamorphoses.Footnote 27

As Jonathan Culler insists, ‘[t]he self-reflexivity of literature is not, finally, a defining feature but a foregrounding of aspects of language use and questions about representation …’Footnote 28 To relegate all considerations of narrative reflexivity to overt examples of post-modern or modern ‘metafiction’ is a categorical mistake. It perpetuates a false dichotomy between ‘the referential’ and ‘the reflexive’, as though mimetic and aesthetic dimensions of narrative are mutually exclusive. This is a particularly prevalent tendency in New Testament studies, where many scholars continue to labour under the problematic impression that ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ are stable, clearly delineated literary classifications. In short, reflexivity is ‘as old as narrative itself’.Footnote 29

The two New Testament narratives written by the author we call ‘Luke’ – the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles – both appear to be quite aware of their textuality. Both Luke and Acts begin as no other New Testament narrative does, with formal Hellenistic prologues.Footnote 30 The Gospel famously begins with a reference to the author's own writing process:

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account/narrative (διήγησιν) of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write (γράψαι) an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed (Luke 1.1–4).

At the beginning of the book of Acts, the text again refers to its own textuality: ‘I wrote (ἐποιησάμην) the first book (λόγον), Theophilus, about all that Jesus began both to do and to teach …’ (1.1).Footnote 31 The opening frames of the narratives explicitly refer to their own literary constructedness.

Once the third-person narration gets underway, instances of reflexivity are more implicit, but nevertheless are present (e.g. scenes in which characters read, and/or discuss reading and interpretation). In the Gospel, for example, Jesus inaugurates his public ministry by reading and interpreting the Hebrew Bible.Footnote 32 Later, Jesus asks others how they read and understand the Scriptures (e.g. 10.25–37), and he interprets his own spoken stories, the parables, for his disciples (e.g. 8.11–15). At the end of Luke's Gospel, the risen Jesus ‘interpret[s] all the Scriptures’ (διερμήνευσεν … ἐν πάσαις ταῖς γραφαῖς) for two disciples on the road to Emmaus (24.27). In Acts, the ‘open-minded’ (εὐγενής)Footnote 33 Bereans are praised for ‘daily examining/investigating’ (καθ᾿ ἡμέραν ἀνακρίνοντες) the Scriptures to test the veracity of Paul's teachings (17.11). This latter example is one of six Lukan scenes that depict a character reading a written text, either through mention of the text itself, or through employment of the usual Greek word for reading, ἀναγι(γ)νώσκω.Footnote 34

To focus our consideration of these dynamics further, let us turn now to another of those six scenes, the story in Acts 8.26–40.

3. Acts of Interpretation: Acts 8.26–40 as Pedagogical Primer

My argument is that this scene, read as a moment of narrative reflexivity, commends the following hermeneutical directive: because reading does not always lead to the right understanding, readers need an authoritative interpretive guide, and ought to adopt a posture of humble hospitality towards the received narrative. This comprises a kind of ‘reading theory’, constructed by the Lukan narrator, that applies not only to the Hebrew Scriptures as evidenced in the pericope, but also to the Lukan account itself.

The precipitating event of Acts 8.26–40 is that an angel appears to the evangelist Philip and instructs him to go south on the road towards Gaza (8.26). Obeying (8.27),Footnote 35 Philip happens upon an Ethiopian eunuch in a chariot, reading aloud (following the ancient custom) from the Isaianic scroll.Footnote 36 In first-century Palestine, a label of ‘Ethiopian eunuch’ would have been a clear indication that this character is not a Jew, but an outsider.Footnote 37 The fact that he is returning from having gone to Jerusalem ‘to worship’ (8.27), and the detail that he is already reading Scripture before he meets Philip (8.28), together indicate that the eunuch is interested in Israel's religion and its sacred story. Nevertheless, according to the narrative rhetoric, interest alone is insufficient. Luke is concerned with right reception of the narrative.

This concern becomes clear from even a cursory look at a scene from the Gospel that scholars routinely compare to the Ethiopian eunuch passage: Jesus’ first public sermon in Nazareth, found in Luke 4.16–30. There, while ‘the eyes of all’ (πάντων οἱ ὀφθαλμοί) in the synagogue are fixed on him (4.20), Jesus reads aloud from the scroll of Isaiah and declares, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ (lit. ‘in your ears’, ἐν τοῖς ὠσὶν ὑμῶν, 4.21).Footnote 38 As Mark Coleridge writes, Luke's Jesus is the ‘prime interpreter’: throughout the Gospel, he will ‘not only embody God's salvation but interpret its surprising ways; that is, interpret himself’.Footnote 39 At first, the people receive Jesus’ teaching as ‘words of grace’ (τοῖς λόγοις τῆς χάριτος, 4.22), but when Jesus then interprets the Elijah–Elisha narrative in such a way as to indict his hearers (4.23–7),Footnote 40 they reject his interpretation, ultimately rejecting Jesus himself. Filled with rage, they attempt to drive him off a cliff (4.28–9).

It is unsurprising that this Nazareth episode from Luke 4 has so often been compared to the Ethiopian episode of Acts 8: both cases explicitly mention reading and the literal presence of the scroll of Isaiah, both episodes draw attention to reception of the message, and both emphasise the presence of the Holy Spirit. However, there is a crucial difference between Luke 4 and Acts 8 that scholars generally overlook: though the eunuch and Jesus are both described as readers (Luke 4.16–17; Acts 8.28, 30, 32), and though both read passages from the scroll of Isaiah, the eunuch is unlike Jesus insofar as he cannot understand the reading without proper assistance. Philip inquires: ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ (8.30; NB: the wordplay in Greek: γινώσκεις ἀναγινώσκεις),Footnote 41 and the eunuch responds with a question of his own: ‘How can I, unless someone guides (ὁδηγήσει) me?’ (8.31).

Philip, not the eunuch, is the proper foil to Luke's Jesus. Philip, not the eunuch, follows the Spirit's guidance into the wilderness (ἔρημος) in Acts 8.26 and 29, just as Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness (ἔρημος) in Luke 4.1. Philip interprets Isaiah's account christologically in Acts 8.35, just as Jesus refers to himself as the embodiment of Isaianic prophecy in Luke 4.21. Philip miraculously disappears from the scene (8.39), much like Jesus mysteriously escapes the murderous crowd in Luke 4.30. Philip, not the eunuch, is the authoritative interpreter of the scriptural tradition.Footnote 42 Just as the scholastic dialogues in the Gospels feature Jesus as pedagogue and the questioner as learner,Footnote 43 by portraying Philip in the role of teacher, Luke effectively moves forward the teaching ministry of Jesus. The eunuch is only a model reader insofar as he seeks and rightly receives the interpretive guidance proffered by the representative of the Gospel: Philip.

And accept it he does. In contrast to the people in Nazareth, who ultimately respond with rage to Jesus’ interpretation of Hebrew Bible narratives, the eunuch invites Philip to get in and sit beside him (8.30). Wayne Booth might say that the eunuch asks Philip to ‘keep company’ with him and with the text.Footnote 44 As John Weaver highlights, this reflects an important virtue:

The eunuch exhibits the ancient virtue of hospitality, which results in Philip accompanying and guiding him to a Christological reading of Isaiah 53 … Hospitality was often associated with the reception of new knowledge and insight in the ancient world, and, elsewhere in Luke-Acts, the disposition for hospitality is determinative of insight into the wisdom and plan of God.Footnote 45

Indeed, after asking for and accepting Philip's interpretive guidance (8.34), the eunuch asks for and accepts baptism (8.36), and finally ‘goes on his way rejoicing’ (8.39) at the reception of his new knowledge and insight into God's plan.

The scene depicts two stages of hospitality: first, the eunuch's invitation to Philip to join him in the chariot and, second, his joyful reception of Philip's authoritative interpretation of the Isaianic text. This pattern is reflected more broadly over the course of the narrative of Luke-Acts in Luke's shifting uses of the term usually translated as ‘receive’ or ‘welcome’: δέχομαι.Footnote 46 A verb of hospitality, δέχομαι typically refers in the Gospel to welcoming a person (2.28; 9.5, 48, 53; 10.8–10; 16.4, 9), as the eunuch does when he welcomes Philip into his chariot. In Acts, the uses of δέχομαι shift from references to welcoming other people to references to welcoming ‘living messages’ (7.38), the ‘word of God’ (8.14; 11.1), the ‘message’ (17.11) and ‘letters’ (22.5; 28.21).Footnote 47 For Luke, receiving God's people and receiving God's word are both matters of hospitality.

Weaver rightly emphasises the characterisation of the eunuch as hospitable; in so doing, he identifies an important feature of the Lukan narrative: in Luke-Acts, ‘reading functions to demonstrate the character of the reader’.Footnote 48 However, Weaver neglects the role of narrative in shaping Luke's readers. Narratives are not merely demonstrative; they are also formative. The story of the eunuch does not simply demonstrate hospitality. As a depiction of reading that is itself being read, the scene subtly places Luke's readers into the same learning framework as the reading eunuch, functioning as an invitation towards the emulation of his virtue.

Reading the Ethiopian eunuch scene as reflexively inculcating certain hermeneutical principles in Luke's readers coheres with the narrative rhetoric of the Lukan account more broadly. Several factors converge to support this contention.

First, if one takes Luke and Acts together as a unified whole,Footnote 49 then the Lukan narrative is book-ended by references to the importance of right readerly reception. As noted above, the Gospel begins by recognising that the writer aims, in Phelan's terms, ‘to accomplish some purpose(s) by telling somebody else that something happened’: the author writes his story ‘so that (ἵνα) you [reader(s)] might know the truth (ἐπιγνῷς … τὴν ἀσφάλειαν) concerning the things about which you have been instructed’ (1.4). As Joel Green observes, ‘Luke's concern with truth … resides above all in his interpretation of the past and the desired effect of his narration is that others will find this narration “convincing”. In other words, Luke's purpose is hermeneutical.’Footnote 50 Acts ends with a definitive indictment of the failure to understand (Acts 28.26–7, citing Isa 6.9–10):

Go to this people and say,
You will indeed listen, but never understand,
and you will indeed look, but never perceive.
For this people's heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes;
so that they might not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and understand with their heart and turn –
and I would heal them.

Repeatedly, reading and (mis)recognition are associated in the Lukan narrative. We have already considered Luke 4, where Jesus ‘inaugurates his ministry with a self-reading’ – an act that is, as Stephen Moore puts it, ‘small wonder’, since throughout Luke, Jesus ‘is the object of blindness or insight, reading or misreading’.Footnote 51 Reading and recognition are also related in Acts; for example, in Acts 13.26–9, Paul indicts the Jerusalem Jews who ‘do not recognise’ (ἀγνοέω, lit.: ‘to not know’) the words of the prophets ‘that are read every Sabbath’ (τὰς κατὰ πᾶν σάββατον ἀναγινωσκομένας).Footnote 52

Second, it is significant that the Greek word typically translated as ‘guide’ in the eunuch's question of Acts 8.31 – ὁδηγέω – derives from the combination of two words: ὁδός (‘the road/way’) and ἄγω (‘to lead’); the eunuch asks Philip to lead him along the way.Footnote 53 The fact that Luke prefers the term ὁδός (‘the Way’) for the Christian movement,Footnote 54 rather than some form of Xριστιανός (‘Christian’),Footnote 55 or the more common New Testament term ἐκκλησία (‘church’/‘assembly’),Footnote 56 suggests a deeper dimension to the eunuch's request.Footnote 57 The eunuch is not merely asking for help with deciphering what he reads, as though he cannot understand an encyclical or a Roman decree. Luke's narration casts the eunuch's request for assistance interpreting the Scriptures as a request for Philip to guide him along the right path – what Luke elsewhere calls τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ κυρίου, ‘the Way of the Lord’ (Acts 18.25).

My reading of Acts 8.26–40 can be summarised as follows: the story of the Ethiopian eunuch provides a narrative articulation of what the proper response should be (according to the Lukan narrator) when one receives authoritative interpretive guidance from a representative of the Gospel – a hermeneutic of hospitality. Read as a moment of narrative reflexivity, the scene calls upon readers to respond similarly to the authoritative interpretation of prior Jesus traditions that Luke himself offers in the λόγος to which he refers in Luke 1.4 and Acts 1.1. Just as Philip must guide the Ethiopian eunuch (i.e. lead him along the Way), so too does Luke try to guide Theophilus (and, by extension, other readers). The eunuch responds in the same way as those in the synagogue initially did, like ones hearing ‘words of grace’ (τοῖς λόγοις τῆς χάριτος, Luke 4.22),Footnote 58 and he goes on his way rejoicing (8.39); by extension, the Lukan narrator subtly appeals to his readers to accept his authoritative interpretation of events as τοῖς λόγοις τῆς χάριτος, and to respond like the eunuch, going on the Way with faith and rejoicing.

4. Ancient Pedagogy, Psychagogy and Textual Interpretation

These contentions would find an easy home in ancient philosophical theorising about both education and textual interpretation. It is well known that many ancient theorists believed words have the power to shape the soul of the reading self – that is, words function psychagogically. Roman Stoic and Epicurean philosophers in particular were concerned with psychagōgein, or the leading of the soul, and this became an important trope in Hellenistic Judaism as well.Footnote 59 Plato, for example, has Socrates define rhetoric as the art of ‘leading the soul through words’ (ψυχαγωγία τις διὰ λόγων),Footnote 60 and again later: ‘the function of speech is to lead souls’ (λόγου δύναμις τυγχάνει ψυχαγωγία οὖσα).Footnote 61

This concern for the soul-forming power of words is not limited to a specific genre like poetry, oratory or epistolary literature.Footnote 62 Dionysius of Halicarnassus emphasises that when he writes history, he is sure to include

infinite examples of virtue (ἀρετάς) in men whose superiors, whether for piety or for justice or for life-long self-control or for warlike valour, no city, either Greek or barbarian, has ever produced.Footnote 63

Conversely, Appian insists that his historical narrative is ‘well worth the study (ἀξιοθαύμαστα) of those who wish to know the measureless ambition of men, their dreadful lust of power, their unwearying perseverance, and the countless forms of evil’.Footnote 64 In addition to the stated goals of historians such as Dionysius and Appian, poets such as Horace aimed to

speak words at once both pleasing and helpful to life (aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere vitae) … at once delighting and instructing the reader (lectorem delectando pariterque monendo).Footnote 65

Though many scholars have discussed the ‘entertainment value’ of ancient novelistic texts,Footnote 66 these stories, too, could function as ‘an educational introduction to ethical philosophy and a protreptic to virtue’.Footnote 67 Even Lucian, who asserts in the preface to his satirical A True Story that he tells nothing but lies,Footnote 68 insists that his text is not a trivial ‘psychagogy’ (τὴν ψυχαγωγίαν) based only on ‘wit and cleverness’ (τοῦ ἀστείου τε καὶ χαρίεντος),Footnote 69 but a prompt for substantive speculation (θεωρίαν).Footnote 70 The view that texts could function pedagogically, as a call to imitate the virtues and eschew the vices demonstrated therein, appears across generic lines in ancient literature.

In addition, many ancient writers insisted that authoritative guidance is necessary when interpreting texts.Footnote 71 Plutarch advises that while poetry can nourish the soul, it can also be ‘perturbing and misleading, unless listening finds proper instruction (παιδαγωγίας ὀρθῆς)’.Footnote 72 The ‘beginning of education’ (ἀρχὴ … παιδεύσεως)Footnote 73 is therefore to ‘train oneself to seek and welcome what is useful within the pleasurable’ when approaching texts.Footnote 74 Plutarch is concerned about the education of youths, but the Greek concept of παιδεία clearly attests to a broader conception of education as enculturation that continued into adulthood.Footnote 75 More specifically, the convictions cited above that texts have the power to inculcate virtue or vice attest that for at least some ancient theorists, reading alone cannot always suffice as a positive pedagogue, even for adults. As Craffert and Botha rightly insist, ‘[l]earning to read is not the same as learning from reading’.Footnote 76

My point here can be simply put: reading the Ethiopian eunuch story as a moment of narrative reflexivity that implicitly calls upon Lukan readers to emulate the eunuch's need for guidance and his hermeneutical hospitality is consistent with long-standing traditions of pedagogical and hermeneutical theorising in antiquity.

5. Conclusion

Recognising with Paul de Man that every narrative can be read as ‘the allegory of its own reading’ can sensitise us to a story's salient yet subtle features of self-consciousness.Footnote 77 The foregoing discussion has drawn insights regarding reflexivity from contemporary literary theory into dialogue with recent work on education and textual interpretation in the ancient world. Reading Acts 8.26–40 as a self-reflexive pedagogical scene illuminates the manifold ways in which not only the Lukan narrative, but ancient narratives more broadly, rhetorically shape their readers qua readers.

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.