The Acts of Peter, Gospel Literature, and the Ancient Novel: Rewriting the Past PDF
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The Acts of Peter, Gospel Literature, and the Ancient Novel This page intentionally left blank The Act s o f Peter, Gospel Literature , and the Ancient Novel Rewriting the Past CHRISTINE M. THOMAS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2003 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford Ne w York Auckland Bangko k Bueno s Aires Cap e Town Chenna i Dar es Salaam Delh i Hon g Kong Istanbu l Karach i Kolkat a Kuala Lumpur Madri d Melbourn e Mexic o City Mumba i Nairob i Sao Paulo Shangha i Taipe i Toky o Toront o Copyright © 2003 by Christine M. Thomas Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 1001 6 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomas, Christine M. The Acts of Peter, Gospel literature, and the ancient novel : rewriting the past / Christine M. Thomas. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-512507-X I. Acts of Peter—Language, style. 2 . Classical fiction—History and criticism. I . Title. BS2880.P472T48 2003 229'.925-dc21 2002025821 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 42 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To my parents, in gratitude This page intentionally left blank Preface When I first began working with the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, the second-century narratives of the exploits of the first followers of Jesus, I was stymied to see them fre- quently compared to the ancient novel in the secondary literature on this topic. For I had read Chariton, Achilles Tatius, and parts of Heliodoros, and these elegant products seemed worlds apart from the unsophisticated and clumsy Greek prose of the Apocryphal Acts. It was John Strugnell, one of my professors at Harvard, who said to me, "Perhaps you are comparing them to the wrong sort of novel." He suggested to me the Alexander romance as a better model, which became the point of departure for the present study. Already the investigations of Virginia Burrus and Dennis MacDonald had demon- strated the utility of employing models from oral tradition to explain the odd composi- tional history of the Apocryphal Acts. My texts of the Acts of Peter did not fit neatly into this model, however: they were not the simple textual fixation of oral tradition. When one took into account the later editions of the Acts of Peter as a group, it became abundantly clear that the texts themselves were behaving in a fashion strikingly similar to oral tradi- tion. The structure of the narrative from one edition to the next was fluid. The characters and motivations had been updated in each text to correspond to the present reality at the time of telling, a feature that is called "homeostatic organization" in the study of oral tra- dition. This surprised me greatly, since the later Roman Empire was not a "primary oral culture," but one infused with literature and literacy, as had been the Mediterranean world for centuries. In the course of further study, I became convinced that the key to under- standing this phenomenon was the significance of the Apocryphal Acts as historical records. The successive "homeostatic" updating of the narrative tradition is a chosen strategy to maintain the relevance of a narrative tradition that is fundamentally historical. Correspond- ingly, as I continued my studies, the Apocryphal Acts began to look less and less fictional, although I would contend that they are still novelistic. These features of fluidity and homeostasis are characteristic of many types of early Christian narrative, the other Apocryphal Acts and the gospels being the closest ana- logs to the Acts of Peter. Although th e constraints of space have prevented me from drawing out the full implications of my findings for these related texts, this examination of the Acts of Peter should provide an illuminating case study for them. Moreover, stu- dents of the novel will find extended discussions on the relationship of the novel to history, and on the genre of the novel as such, which are important considerations for generic classification of early Christian literary works. viii Preface My list of debts is long. Most of the chapters were presented in one form or another in a series of conference papers from 1992 to 1994 held at the Society of Biblical Litera- ture, for the Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative Group, and for the Intertextuality in Christian Apocrypha Seminar. It was my happiness to find that profes- sional meetings do sometimes achieve their goal, for the discussion and individual com- ments after these presentations materially improved my work. In particular, I would like to thank Judith Perkins and Richard Pervo, both of whom have been generous and un- stinting in their support and have given me the impetus of their own erudite interest in related questions; Dennis MacDonald, whose immense and learned creativity and spirit of respectful and productive controversy has been a gift to me and many others; and Robert Stoops, who has kindly allowed me to see his work in progress, who has never failed to offer me useful criticism, and from whose work on the Acts of Peter I have learned much. This book is a substantial revision of my dissertation at Harvard University for the Committee on the Study of Religion. The writing of the initial draft was carried out in a sunlit office overlooking Mt. Auburn Street, a stone's throw from the hidden trea- sures of Widener Library, in the congenial atmosphere of the Society of Fellows. The support of this fellowship improved the quality of this work by offering the time for concentrated creative pursuits. My conversation partners at Harvard were many. It is my hope that the publication of this manuscript will not constitute the final chapter of these discussions with learned friends, whose faces I see before me as I write, but will instead constitute the renewed beginning of an ongoing conversation. At the risk of leaving others unnamed, I would like to thank in particular Christo- pher Matthews, Bernadette Brooten, Allen Callahan, Georgia Frank, and Ellen Aitken for offering particularly illuminating comments on one or another chapter of this manu- script. Rebecca Lesses allowed me to see her work in progress and granted me hours of enlightening discussion on the topics of oraliry and performance. Helmut Koester and Francois Bovon together offered an expertise in early Christian literature that can hardly be rivaled and saved me from many an error, always with grace and kindness. Few experiences can match the probing intensity of the conversations I enjoyed with Albert Henrichs, many of which I still remember extensively. His native intellectual curiosity has afforded me constant encouragement in my work and has suggested productive lines of investigation. I was fortunate to have run alongside Larry Wills while he was en- gaged in a project on another type of novelistic literature, the Jewish novellas. He was not only generous, but completely unselfish in sharing with me his work in progress and in granting me long discussions of theoretical issues we were both pursuing at the time. A series of conversations in May and June 1992 were particularly crucial in deter- mining the shape of this work. In the years after Harvard, I would also thank Thomas Drew-Bear, who faithfully read and commented on the articles that appeared as prelimi- nary studies for this book and also gave the manuscript itself a careful reading late in its gestation. My husband Jorge Castillo helped me navigate the turbid waters of modern literary criticism, and my inability to master it completely results from my own obsti- nacy rather than any fault of instruction on his part. 'November 2001 C.M.T . Santa Barbara, California Contents Abbreviations x i Note on the Text and Symbols xii i 1. Th e Apocryphal Acts in a Literary World 3 2. Tim e and Revision: Literary Processes at Work in the Acts of Peter 1 4 3. Fixit y and Fluidity in the Narrative Trajectory of the Acts of Peter 4 0 4- Narrativ e Fluidity as a Generic Characteristic 7 2 5. Th e Acts of Peter among the Novels and Histories 8 7 Appendix One: Overview of the Ancient Editions of the Acts of Peter 10 6 Appendix Two: Intertextual Relationships between the Actus Vercellenses and Other Early Christian Literature 10 8 Appendix Three: Comparison of the Actus Vercellenses, the Greek Martyrdom Account, and the Linus Text 11 5 Notes 11 7 Bibliography 15 5 Index of Ancient Texts 17 1 Subject Index 17 7
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