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The Ambiguous Oracle: Narrative Configuration in Acts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2011
Abstract
This paper outlines the way in which a plot-device, which for the sake of convenience we shall call the ‘ambiguous oracle’ in Acts 1.6–8, controls and influences the narrative, creating coherence and enabling interpretation. The paper begins by looking at the current interpretation of the verses, and argues that it is not sufficient to explain the narrative configuration at various points, before going on to suggest an alternative interpretation, in which the misinterpretation of the oracle by the Apostles leads to the fulfillment of the Divine will. This interpretation finds strong support in literature contemporary to Acts.
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References
1 See, for example, Parsons, Mikeal Carl, Acts (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008) 20Google Scholar.
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5 1.6. This translation: Longus and Xenophon of Ephesus, Daphnis and Chloe, Anthia and Habrocomes (ed. and trans. Henderson, Jeffrey; LCL 69; London: Harvard University, 2009) 227Google Scholar.
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8 The issue is vastly complicated, and has vexed literary theorists for some time. Walsh, Richard, The Rhetoric of Fictionality: Narrative Theory and the Idea of Fiction (Columbus: Ohio State University, 2007)Google Scholar, represents a recent and very solid approach to the problem; Sternberg, Meir, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1985) 23–35Google Scholar, provides a very fruitful discussion focusing on the specifically biblical elements; Pihlainen, Kalle, ‘The Moral of the Historical Story: Textual Differences in Fact and Fiction’, New Literary History 33.1 (2002) 39–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, makes some important general observations but admits they would not suffice for a strict distinction; Bonz, Marianne Palmer, The Past as Legacy: Luke–Acts and Ancient Epic (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000) 15–25Google Scholar, underlines the importance of truth claims made by the Epic genre; Rothschild, Clare K., Luke–Acts and the Rhetoric of History: An Investigation of Early Christian Historiography (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004) 1–23Google Scholar, argues for an understanding that allows Acts to be classified among the Greek historians.
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11 Over 130 uses in the LXX and BGT, of which about 17 are imperfect, 60 aorist, and the rest are participles or simple future.
12 13 uses: Matt 15.23; 16.13; Mark 4.10; 7.26; 8.5; Luke 7.3; John 4.31, 40, 47; 9.15; 12.21; Acts 1.6; 3.3; 16.39. Of which only two are arguably better translated in the simple sense—Matt 16.13 and Mark 8.5. Of these two, only the latter seems to have an insuperable case for being translated in a manner that does not imply the iterative sense.
13 Luke: 4.38; 5.3; 7.3; 8.37; 9.45; 11.37; 14.18, 19, 32; 16.27; 19.31; 20.3; 22.68; 23.3; Acts 1.6; 3.3; 10.48; 16.39; 18.20; 23.18, 20.
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17 Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle, 437–8, lists more than 60 out of about 425. There are no ambiguous responses in historical oracles (75 according to his criteria, which we will discuss later).
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31 Tannehill, Narrative Unity, 2.350.
32 1.53.
33 Laius is punished for the rape of Chrysippus, while Croesus is being punished on behalf of Gyges, his ancestor, for stealing the Lydian throne.
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39 1.3. This translation: Tatius, Achilles, Leucippe and Clitophon (trans. Whitmarsh, Tim.; Oxford: Oxford University, 2003) 6Google Scholar.
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