Article

Interpretation: A Journal of
Bible and Theology
Fewer Answers and Further 66(3) 294-305
© T h e Author(s) 2012

Questions: Jews and Gentiles Reprints and permission:

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in Acts DOI: 10 .1177/0020964312443185

int.sagepub.com

Pamela Hedrick
Associate Professor of Religion, High Point University, High Point, North Carolina

Abstract
The author of the Acts of the Apostles uses criteria commonly employed in his cultural context to legitimate
the Jesus movement and the extension of the mission to the Gentiles as the divine plan. W hile these literary
strategies result in material that can be employed uncritically and tragically to serve a bias against the Jewish
people, a far more fruitful transposition of the Lukan strategies would raise intelligent questions about the
ways of God in the world and the cooperation of humans with those ways.

Keywords
Acts, Luke, Jews, Gentiles, Paul, Peter, Providence, Divine W ill

Introduction
The attempted extermination of European Jews before and during World War II has provided the
greatest challenge to Christian theology since the failure of Jesus to return shortly after his aseen-
sion. After too many centuries, Christianity is forced into facing the elephant in the living room, an
evil that could be seen as giving the lie to its most foundational claims: how could this religion that
trumpets a God of love produce people in its own ranks throughout its history who are responsible
for the murders of millions of innocent Jews? To add insult to injury, to persecute members of the
religion that gave birth to that very Christianity and to its purported savior? Appropriately, biblical
scholars have taken up a role in that challenge, examining the books of the New Testament with an
eye toward the group and individual biases that may have colored the portrayal of Jews as both his-
torical and literary figures. There is, of course, negative language regarding some Jews in Acts. One
question, however, that must be carefully articulated is how language is given meaning by context,
and heard in context. I will suggest here that an examination of Luke’s use of some Jews as a nega-
tive example of failure to recognize the plan of God has more to do with Luke’s goal to legitimate
the Jesus movement and Gentile mission through cultural strategies of his time than it does with any
expression of modem anti-Semitism. An unstudied, unconscious, untransposed use of such material

Corresponding author:
Pamela Hedrick, Associate Professor of Religion, High Point University, High Point, North Carolina
Email: phedrick@highpoint.edu
Hedrick 295

in Acts in the 21st century, however, could lead to an anti-Jewish attitude that fails in the moral
responsibility to take advantage of recent advances in Christian theology and biblical studies, and
thus results in a biblical literalism that is untenable in this modem context.1

How Legitimation W orked, or, W hat Served as Evidence for

Jews and Gentiles?
Early Christianity was one of a complex of religions situated in the Roman Empire; more basically,
however, those religions are the religions of human beings, and human religious behavior has certain
elements in common. Human beings hold beliefs based on what they consider reasonable evidence.
They do not, of course, accept the same evidence as legitimate in every context, because human beings
are socialized at specific times and places, in addition to being individuals in whom socialization may
or may not succeed. In our case, of course, they are socialized into ancient Mediterranean cultures, and
that will account for certain similarities in their views of what serves as evidence for belief. Differences
exist as well; although they are in the same geographical region and share a great many cultural pre-
suppositions, people are not simply the automatic products of socialization, and in order to maintain
the belief system that one is socialized into, one has to find it legitimate; that is, one must have in some
broad sense evidence that the belief is true. It also happens that some legitimations fail for groups or
individuals, and people look to other systems of thought for answers to religious questions.2

Broadly speaking, legitimation of faith in the Greco-Roman cultures in our time period involves:

1. the belief that divine providence (gods, goddesses, God, Fortune, etc.) has plans for humans
and human society, that divine will can be discerned by various means, and that it can be
cooperated with or resisted;
2. the belief that this discernment and cooperation can especially be successfully undertaken
by someone who has had the training and/or virtues necessary to understand the omens and
seize the opportunities presented by the gods/God; and
3. the belief that history moves forward not only by those who successfully cooperate with the
divine plan but also by means of those who fail to understand and cooperate with it.

If each of these three legitimating realities/aspects can be demonstrated in a particular cult or

movement, it would indicate a correct alignment with the divine plan and, hence, should provide

1 The debate regarding ancient anti-Semitism, especially in the NT, is copious. Representative examples
are Shaye J. D. Cohen, “‘Anti-Semitism’ in Antiquity: The Problem of Definition,” in History and Hate
(ed. David Berger; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997), 43-48; Adele Reinhartz, “Judaism
in the Gospel of John,” Int 63.4 (2009): 382-93; Joseph B. Tyson, Images o f Judaism in Luke-Acts
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992) and idem, Luke, Judaism, and the Scholars:
Critical Approaches to Luke-Acts (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), and Jack T.
Sanders, The Jews in Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987).
2 See, e.g., Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction o f Reality: A Treatise in the
Sociology o f Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 92-128.
296 Interpretatíon: A Journal o f Bible and Theology 66(3)

persuasive evidence that its claims are true. Our procedure will be to take up each aspect in turn in
the general culture, both pagan and Jewish, and then to describe its importance in Acts. Through
that process, we will see that the negative characterization, an “othering,” of groups of Jews serves
Luke in a particular strategic manner. Finally, we will ask what, if anything, is left to transpose
positively in Luke’s approach toward Jews and Gentiles in Acts.

The Plan of Divine Providence and the Means of Its

Discernment
First, the importance of discerning the divine will was a concern that crossed any boundaries
between Judaism and paganism, and some means of this discernment were shared by both groups.
A few examples can clarify the point. The Stoic Polybius describes Fortune as guiding most of
human and natural events toward “one and the same end,”3 while the historian Dionysius of
Halicarnassus makes clear that both the positive and negative events regarding Rome have been
directed by Fortune.4 Philosophical and historical teachings generally agreed that the divine was
benevolent, as seen especially in Stoic and Middle Platonic philosophy; in their discussions, the
assumption was that the genuinely religious concurred regarding the benevolent nature of the
divine, while those who believed in malevolent divine powers were unacceptably superstitious.5

Multiple genres of signs enabled humans to interpret the will of the gods, including earthquakes,
astrological phenomena, the entrails of sacrificed animals, bird flights, prophecy, dreams; in other
words, “the membrane separating the realms of the human and the divine was a permeable one,
with traffic possible in both directions,”6 so a variety o f events could serve as signs of divine pleas-
ure, displeasure, and guidance. The stumble of Republican consul Camillus is illustrative. Livy
describes Camillus as raising his hands to the skies and praying that he might allay any resentment
against the beneficent fortune of the Roman people and himself. After prayer, he turned, stumbled
and fell, and various interpretations are recorded of that stumble. Livy records that the stumble was
an omen that presaged Camillus’ later conviction and the devastation of Rome; Dionysius records
it as an omen for Camillus’ conviction only, while Valerius Maximus says it means that the gods
agreed that only he would suffer rather than Rome itself.7 Signs, then, were not always interpreted
the same way, or taken with an identical level of seriousness.8

3 Polybius, Hist. 1.4.1.

4 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. rom. 3.19.6; 10.28.3.
5 Zsuzsanna Varhelyi, The Religion o f Senators in the Roman Empire: Power and the Beyond (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 164.
6 Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts o f the Apostles (Sacra Pagina; ed. Daniel J. Harrington, S. J.;
Collegeville: Liturgical, 1992), 248.
7 Livy, Hist. 5.21.15-16; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. rom. 12.16.4-5; Valerius Maximus, Memorable
Deeds and Sayings 1.5.2.
8 As John B. F. Miller has convincingly shown regarding dream visions in the ancient Mediterranean, in
Convinced that God had Called Us: Dreams, Visions, and the Perception o f God s, Will in Luke-Acts
(Leiden: Brill, 2007).
Hedrick 297

In Judaism as well, God was providential, and multiple means existed to discern the divine will.
Josephus supported that contemporary people (including himself 9) had the power of divination10
and advocated the importance of reading the divine will in miraculous occurrences such as untimely
natural phenomena11 and prophecy being fulfilled.12 Joseph and Daniel, of course, were remem-
bered as dream interpreters par excellence, and Judas inspires his troops in 2 Maccabees 15:11-16
by recounting a vision o f Jeremiah handing him a sword. The Qumran community especially read
the scriptural prophecies as indicative of its own history, as in the Commentary on Habakkuk, read-
ing “the nations” who oppose Israel in the biblical texts as, in their own time, those who oppose
their own Teacher of Righteousness.13

The importance of the plan of God in Acts has been well-demonstrated.14 Like the other
religions in its milieu, early Christians attempted to discern God’s providential will through the
various means considered valid in their culture, and the Acts of the Apostles conforms to that cul-
ture in expecting that God’s plan is discernible through various means. Acts, rather than providing
historically unique examples of God’s providence and its fulfillment, demonstrates means very
similar in paganism and Judaism. The casting of lots indicates God’s will for Judas’ replacement
(1:26), prophecy both ancient and contemporary is fulfilled (13:23, 32-33, 37; 15:15; 21:10-11;
28:25-27), and visions and dreams to guide humans are rather a matter of course for characters
such as Stephen (7:55-56), Peter and Cornelius (Acts 10), and Paul (9, 28:23-24, etc.).

The most common strategy by far, however, was to excavate the Jewish sacred story for signs
that, according to Luke, have been fulfilled in the story of Jesus and his early followers; the Gentile
mission receives particular attention in this light. Peter finally recognizes that the vision of the four-
cornered sheet filled with unclean animals (10:10-16) indicates the expansion of God’s people to
include Gentiles, and he plays his role in convincing James of that expansion (15:7-11). In his own
declaration of the divine plan of inclusion, James cites a series o f scriptural texts that are being
fulfilled (15:12-21). Paul quotes Isa 49:6 to justify his own mission’s turn to the Gentiles (13:46),
which serves in the text to legitimate the words of the risen Jesus to Ananias (9:15). The conclusion
of the book is based on another text from Isaiah that is treated as prophecy of the mission to the
Gentiles (28:26-28).

Understanding the divine plan, however, does not mean merely knowing when an action has
been accomplished as according to the plan or not. As Charles Cosgrove points out,

9 Josephus, B.J. 4.625.

10 Josephus, A.J. 15.5.373-379.
11 Ibid., 5.6.91-92.
12 Ibid., 8.4-6.
13 lQpHab II.
14 Especially by John T. Squires, The Plan o f God in Luke-Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993).
298 Interpretation: A Journal o f Bible and Theology 66(3)

Whereas in Matthew or Paul, for example, an Old Testament text is construed as prophetic ex postfacto
as a stamp of divine endorsement, Luke introduces Scripture prophecy not only after its fulfillment (as
a proof) but also narratively before. In the latter case it functions both as a proof of divine endorsement
and as an imperative to be obeyed.15

The qualities that enabled that obedience to the imperative were a topic of keen interest.

W ho Can Seize the Moment?

Not everyone was considered equally capable of comprehending and acting upon these signs;
hence the importance of recognizing leaders who were capable of interpreting the signs, under-
standing the plan, and seizing the opportunities presented to cooperate with it. Certain virtues were
considered critical in that discernment, and those were revealed, or not, in the moment of challenge,
and while those virtues were considered divinely imparted, their impartation indicated enablement
rather than determinism. Descriptions of exempla (examples), people who displayed those virtues,
provided the most common means of instruction for character in the Greco-Roman world.

In the pagan world, the importance of character, the enabled understanding of the importance of
a moment of opportunity to cooperate with the divine plan, can be shown by the disagreement
regarding significant heroes of the republic and empire. Douglas Stewart points out that for the
historian Sallust, Fortune (Fortuna) provides not a deterministic fate but an opportunity for intel-
lectual powers (animus', ingenium) to lead to full excellence of character (virtus), “an opportunity
to take hold of events and direct them along new paths.”16 Caesar, for one, understood the impor-
tance o f the appropriate time (tempus), the right occasion (dies), and the chance afforded by for-
tuna, as is clear when he encourages the Senate not to execute a group of conspirators, arguing that
time, occasion, and fortune must be carefully considered.17

But in the sense of which he does approve—as opportunity, the crucial juncture, the challenge to be
overcome—this section would seem to mean that the moment of crisis for the state also may find a man
ready with sufficient ingenium and virtus animi to reach gloria (glory) through strictly intellectual
tasks, to comprehend the meaning of events he witnesses, and to treat them in language adequate to the
deeds themselves.18

Livy also reveals the interpretation of Fortune that interacts with the abilities of people to result in
successful cooperation with that divine plan. The Carthaginian general Hannibal is initially confi-
dent of his own abilities and the cooperation o f Fortune. When the Roman general Scipio arrives in
Spain to initiate the first major Roman offensive, however, Hannibal recognizes that moment, and

15 Charles H. Cosgrove, “The Divine Dei in Luke-Acts: Investigations into the Lukan Understanding of
God’s Providence,” NovT 26.2 (1984): 174.
16 Douglas J. Stewart, “Sallust and Fortuna,” History and Theory 7.3 (1968): 314.
17 Sallust, Rep. 51.25 in Stewart, “Sallust and Fortuna,” 310.
18 Stewart, “Sallust and Fortuna,” 311-12.
Hedrick 299

Scipio’s brilliance, and hence the beginning of the downfall of Carthage, expressed in terms of
Fortune’s desertion.19

While exempla traditionally were drawn from the political elite of the culture, we gradually see
a widening of the conception. Cato, for example, shows “the broadening of the boundaries of
.exemplary citation, so that men began looking beyond their ancestors and their class for examples
he] saw the great men of old as the common ancestors o f the whole Roman state, not just of [ . . .
individual families. . . .‫ ״‬In Memorable Deeds and Sayings, Valerius Maximus includes entire 2°
,sections of non-Romans as exempla of the various virtues

a technique whereby the audience is persuaded by reference to an example of a person of lower social
status (Quin, Edu, V.ll). The most elevated of these ‘unlike examples’ is a centurion . . . and therefore
Valerius‫ י‬expected audience must have been of somewhat higher status.21

-Seneca extends the traditional virtue of virtus from military courage to philosophical ability, rational
ity. “Since perfect proper functions require virtue, they can be done only by the wise man, who alone
has full and comprehensive knowledge of what must be done in every circumstance and why.”22

Noting the source of these virtues also highlights the cooperative relationship between the
divine and the human. Cicero through Quintus cites the Stoic position that “the human soul has an
inherent power of presaging or foreknowing infused into it from without, and made a part o f it by
:the will of God.”23 Varhelyi cites Seneca to the same effect

,As Seneca succinctly put it: “Therefore Ju st as religion worships the gods, superstition dishonors them
thus all good men display clemency and mercy, but avoid pity” [Clem. 2.5.1]. At its furthest extent, the
benevolent characteristics of the divine also parallel proper human behavior, leading to the idea of deus
intus (“the divine within”), the concept that the wise man of Stoic philosophy ought to follow the
guidances of the benign divine element within himself.24

Jewish examples of exempla also abound. Philo in particular excelled in creating exempla from
biblical stories. The patriarchs, for example, are each models of excellence of character: Abraham
through instruction, Isaac through self-teaching, and Jacob through practice.25 Philo’s On the Life

19 Livy, Hist. 21, 30 in Francis M. Lazarus, “Fortune and Rhetorical Structure in Livy,” CJ 74.2 (1978-
1979): 130.
20 Clive Skidmore, Practical Ethics fo r Roman Gentlemen: The Work o f Valerius Maximus (Exeter:
University of Exeter Press, 1996), 19.
21 Ibid., 103.
22 Matthew B. Roller, Constructing Autocracy: Aristocrats and Emperors in Julio-Claudian Rome
(Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), 91.
23 Cicero, Div. 1.31.66; Squires, The Plan o f God in Luke-Acts, 108.
24 Vàrhelyi,165. Cf. Plutarch, Mor. 550d and Seneca Ep. 16.2.
25 Philo, On Joseph 1.
300 Interpretation: A Journal o f Bible and Theology 66(3)

o f Moses extols at length the virtues o f Moses: his physical beauty, noble comportment, genius, etc.
One brief selection gives the tone:

Very naturally, therefore, those who associated with him and every one who was acquainted with him
marveled at him, being astonished as at a novel spectacle, and inquiring what kind of mind it was that
had its abode in his body, and that was set up in it like an image in a shrine; whether it was a human
mind or a divine intellect, or something combined of the two; because he had nothing in him resembling
the many, but had gone beyond them all and was elevated to a more sublime height. (28) For he never
provided his stomach with any luxuries beyond those necessary tributes which nature has appointed to
be paid to it, and as to the pleasures of the organs below the stomach he paid no attention to them at all,
except as far as the object of having legitimate children was concerned. (29) And being in a most
eminent degree a practiser of abstinence and self-denial, and being above all men inclined to ridicule a
life of effeminacy and luxury (for he desired to live for his soul alone, and not for his body), he
exhibited the doctrines of philosophy in all his daily actions... .26

In Acts, the divine will connects the Jewish history of salvation, Jesus, and the time o f the
church and its extension of salvation to the Gentiles; in other words, Acts brings forward the heroic
deeds of exemplary figures in the appropriate time (tempus), the right occasion (dies), and the
opportunity granted by the divine. The primary plan-of‫־‬God heroes in Acts, moreover, are Jews. In
Acts as well, the divine will “evokes active response to something that needs doing: for example,
Acts 15:13-21; 22:14-16. This latter fact shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Lukan
understanding of the divine plan does not carry with it ideas of inexorability but rather those of
contingency. There is here no determinism that undermines human freedom.”27

As Charles Cosgrove has demonstrated, Jesus in Luke “virtually engineers” his own passion,
especially since he himself provokes the change in attitude toward him (Luke 4:22-29), consciously
“sets his face” to a certain death in Jerusalem against which he does not retaliate (Luke 9:51 ; 22:35-
38,49-50; etc.), and even chooses the dies of his death (23:46).28 Likewise in Acts, Paul first states
his destiny in Rome (19:21) and then makes it happen by appealing to Caesar (26:32).29 The latter
point is perhaps Luke’s clearest portrayal of Paul’s ingenium: he mentions only being a Jew from
Tarsus to gain permission to address the Jewish crowd, baits them with his mission to the Gentiles,
and at the point of being beaten by the authorities, dramatically “discloses his Roman citizenship
and reverses the whole situation.” Even the situations and places of custody provide opportunity for
the one who can recognize it.30 Both Jesus and Paul are portrayed as knowing how to seize the

26 Philo, On the Life o f Moses, 1.6.27-29. Translation from C. D. Yonge, The Works o f Philo (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 1993). Josephus similarly notes that the law was established by God himself “by means of
Moses, and of his virtue” (Ant. 3.322).
27 Charles H. Talbert, Reading Luke-Acts in Its Mediterranean Milieu (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 164-65.
28 Cosgrove, “The Divine Dei in Luke-Acts,” 179; cf. Jeffrey S. Siker, “‘First to the Gentiles’: A Literary
Analysis of Luke 4:16-30,” JBL 111.1 ( 1992): 73-90.
29 Cosgrove, “The Divine Dei in Luke-Acts,” 178-82.
30 See especially Matthew L. Skinner, The Trial Narratives: Conflict, Power, and Identity in the New
Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010).
Hedrick 301

appropriate moment of opportunity to cooperate with the divine will and to bring others along with
them, or to highlight the refusal of others, even though that refusal will not thwart the divine plan.

A focus on the role of Peter in Acts also shows the point. Peter figures out that the puzzling events
of Pentecost are a sign of God’s providence, and on that he bases a narrative of Jesus’ life (2:14-36).
When the council ordered them to speak no more in Jesus’ name, Peter and John respond, “Whether
it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from
speaking about what we have seen and heard” (4:19-20). The text does not imply a kind of posses-
sion they cannot control; rather, they are compelled by the very reasonableness of their position.

While Peter summarizes the point that God chose him to bring the message to the Gentiles first
(15:7), and the council in the person o f James decides that this extension of the mission was indeed
God’s long-standing plan,31 the narrative o f the events in Acts 10 is not quite so simple. Peter’s
vision of the four-cornered sheet filled with unclean animals caused him “puzzlement” (10:17).
When Cornelius’ messengers arrive, Peter does not have the luxury of a clearly-defined mission
from God; the vision has so called on him to extend his boundaries of understanding that he must
decide at the given moment to act with only an interior prompting, which he interprets as the Spirit
(10:20). He risks the trip and begins preaching the good news to the household (10:23, 34-43).
Even when Peter is convinced of the rightness of baptizing Cornelius and company due to the sign
of the Gentiles “speaking in tongues and extolling God” (10:46), the vision in and of itself is not
completely clear or compelling; it is the combination of events pointing in the same direction that
is persuasive, and Peter must show the ingenium to put the pieces together, however gradually, even
as he has the virtus and fides (faith) to act on events in cooperation with his moment-to-moment
interpretation of the signs from God. Only when he reiterates the entire incident as a narrative
(11:4-17) is it clear that Peter has understood, long after he showed the virtues to act, how the
divine plan is moving forward.

The ancient Jewish roots provide the clues to the divine plan and so provide the proof, the legiti-
mation, the reasons to believe that it is the Jesus movement, represented by Luke, that is the best
understanding of the plan o f God and of the need to follow the primary heroes, Jesus, Peter, and
Paul (all Jewish), in cooperating with it and taking it as their “marching orders.” And yet, the pri-
mary “anti-heroes” to the divine plan in Acts are also Jews, more often as a group than as individu-
als. Before interpreting Luke’s strategy here, we need to set it in the Greco-Roman context.

The Foils: Misunderstanding as Anti-Exempla

Negative exempla also served to instruct in the ancient Mediterranean. As Norman Pratt observes
generally regarding the culture and specifically of Seneca’s dramatic works, “Positive exempla,
whether in poetry or elsewhere, instruct the rational capacity. Negative exempla purify the nonra-
tional capacities most effectively when they use the power of poetry homeopathically.

31 At the council in Jerusalem (Acts 15), the primary players still must argue their positions, and James must
ultimately use his intellectual ability to decide the issue.
302 Interpretation: A Journal o f Bible and Theology 66(3)

They confront the ‘patient’ with the experience of his own symptoms, which is conveyed in the
exemplum.”32 In his play Agammemnon, for example, Seneca portrays the gifts of Fortune used
well by the Trojans and poorly by the Greeks, and both examples are instructive.33 When these
virtues are not sufficiently present, as Sallust argues was the case with the conspirator Catiline, a
“neurotic” dependence on fate can result with disastrous consequences.34 Even then, the judgment
o f character remains; Diodorus, for example, maintains that to attempt to flee from Fortune is
shameful,35 and Herodotus condemns Croesus, who tragically misunderstood the oracle’s prophecy
and led his empire into destruction, for not making more inquiries to understand the oracles prop-
erly.36 The fault is that of Croesus, not of the divine plan. Though people praise leaders such as
Alexander and Julius Caesar as “great” and “happy,” Seneca claims that only through their ambi-
tion, greed, and bloodthirstiness did they succeed, and that the primary value of virtus, previously
understood as military strength, should now refer to mental potency.37

Ancient Jewish literature also includes stories o f those who poorly interpreted the plan of God.
The so-called “prophets of hope” in Jeremiah are prototypical anti-exemplar they are condemned
as “prophesying lies in [God’s] name . . . prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination,
and the deceit of their own minds” (Jer 14:14). Josephus describes Pharaoh as “led not so much by
his folly as by his wickedness, even when he saw the cause of his miseries, he still contested with
God, and willfully deserted the cause of virtue;” he is of course compared unfavorably to Moses,
who “came to the age of maturity, [and] made his virtue manifest to the Egyptians; and showed that
he was bom for the bringing them down, and raising the Israelites.”38

The legitimation of the Gentile mission is a dominant motif in Acts, so while Jewish scriptures
provide the signs, and Jews provide the primary heroes, “the Jews” as a group are now available for
construction as the primary stumbling block, or perhaps a conquered hurdle, for Luke. The picture
must not be oversimplified: positive and negative images of Jews are both present;39 Gentiles,
moreover, also misunderstand the signs. In Lystra, Paul’s healing of the crippled man is greeted
with the attempt of Gentiles to offer sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas, assuming them to be epipha-
nies of Zeus and Hermes (14:8-18). Yet even then, despite the overwrought response of Paul and
Barnabas ripping their clothes over the feared idolatry, it is a crowd of Jews from Antioch and
Iconium who are depicted as doing far worse damage— stoning Paul, they suppose to death, and
dragging his body from the city (14:19-20). Since both Gentiles and Jews understand, and both
misunderstand, why is the attention in Acts unbalanced in its attention to Jewish disbelief and

32 Normal T. Pratt, Seneca s Drama (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 76.
33 Ibid., 130-31.
34 Stewart, “Sallust and Fortuna,” 306.
35 Diodorus, BH 19.42.5; Squires, The Plan o f God in Luke-Acts, 44.
36 Herodotus, Hist. 1.91.
37 Seneca, Ep. 94.
38 Josephus, A.J. 14.5.307; 10.1.238. Translation from William Whiston, The Works o f Josephus (Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson, 1987).
39 See especially Tyson, Images o f Judaism in Luke-Acts, 182.
Hedrick 303

opposition to the Jesus movement? I suggest two primary reasons: 1) Judaism as the primary
source of the signs of God’s will; and 2) the Lukan pattern of status reversal.

First, any Jewish lack of understanding is particularly condemned because they should under-
stand their own oracles, according to Luke, and thereby understand the divine plan. In Paul’s words,
“My brothers, you descendants of Abraham’s family, and others who fear God, to us the message
of this salvation has been sent. Because the residents o f Jerusalem and their leaders did not recog-
nize him or understand the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath, they fulfilled those
words by condemning him” (13:26-28). The primary responsibility to understand and respond was
given to them as a group.

Second, the motif fits into a Lukan pattern of status reversal.40 According to several sources,
God first offered the Torah to the Gentiles, who rejected it; hence, it was offered to and accepted by
the Jews.41 Luke-Acts, however, emphasizes the rejection of the divine plan by so many Jews that
the focus of that plan has turned primarily to the Gentiles, even though the intention was always to
include the Gentiles with the Jews (8:1-40, etc.). In other words, the current “time of opportunity”
has been missed (as it was by the “prophets of hope” in Jeremiah), and that neglect triggers status
reversal. That reversal, caused by lack of understanding and failure to cooperate, can then in and of
itself become a sign of God’s plan.

The ancient rhetorical device of synkresis (comparison) highlights the importance of the nega-
tive exempla for instruction. According to the early rhetorical theorists, the comparison may be
made between two like elements, between two similar elements but with one preferred, or between
one worthy of blame and the other worthy of praise.42 Luke uses this rhetorical strategy to portray
individual Jews as heroes of God’s plan, to depict some Jews as understanding and following those
leaders, but also to depict some Jews as anti-heroes.43 The anti-heroes are not able, in his narrative,
to thwart the divine will; in fact, their very failure to seize the opportunity is used to indicate God’s
immediate plan for the church 44 This periodic reversal helps to explain the rhetorical end of “the
Jews” in Acts. Paul, preaching from his place o f captivity in Rome and frustrated with the unwill-
ingness of some Jews in Rome to accept the legitimations he provides for the gospel, quotes Isa
6:9-10 to ambiguous effect:

40 Siker, “‘First to the Gentiles,’” and Talbert, “Once Again.”

41 Talbert, Reading Luke-Acts, 171-73.
42 George A. Kennedy, Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks o f Prose Composition and Rhetoric (Atlanta:
Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 84.
43 See, e.g., Mikeal C. Parsons, Acts (Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Baker,
2008), especially 107-108, and Daniel Marguerat et al., The First Christian Historian: Writing the Acts o f
the Apostles (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series; Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), especially 56-59.
44 Talbert, Reading Luke-Acts, 169-70.
304 Interpretation: A Journal o f Bible and Theology 66(3)

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 hurt—and I would heal them.

Paul himself continues, .. let it be known to you then that this salvation of God has been sent to
the Gentiles; they will listen” (Acts 28:26-29). As Robert Tannehill points out, Luke has made it a
tragic story for the Jews as a group; even the hope of future inclusion seems based on converting to
the Jesus movement.45

Understanding this pattern also helps to explain the significance of the “God-fearers” as a cat-
egory that, while certainly attested in ancient inscriptions and literary writings,46 takes on special
significance in Acts. Cornelius serves this pattern in multiple ways. First, he enters the text as a
virtuous person (10:2, 22, 25); the reader is prepared to see him as a character well-suited to deci-
pher signs from Judaism and to be open enough to cooperate with the plan, so that he serves as a
bridge between the Judaism o f old and what Luke sees as the legitimate form of contemporary
Judaism, including the Gentiles. Second, as a mere centurion (10:1), he provides a case of the
expansion of exempla, important for a movement that is not significantly upper-class. Third, as a
Gentile and not one of the great Jewish founding heroes o f the movement, such as Jesus, Peter, and
Paul, whose abilities and experiences could be seen as unreachable, Cornelius is an average virtu-
ous person who can yet recognize and seize the opportunity to play a role in the divine plan, provid-
ing an accessible model for the audience (10:4-8).

To summarize, the context determines how the rhetorical and theological roles of Jews, Gentiles,
and God-fearers are understood in Acts. Some Jews are criticized for not recognizing the plan o f
God of which they are a crucial part. Some Gentiles are criticized for the same. The ancient Jewish
roots, however, provide the clues to the plan and for Luke provide the reasons to believe that it is
the Jesus movement that is the best understanding o f and cooperation with the divine plan at this
moment of opportunity. To highlight these legitimations, those who are not in line with the divine
plan are condemned as a group.

Conclusion: The Im portance of Transposition

Luke is “aligning himself with the best of Jewish history”47 and offering his ancient audience that
same opportunity. In communicating this opportunity in ways familiar to his audience, however, he
stereotypes the Jews who do not agree that the Jesus movement is the divine plan or that there is
any status reversal occurring. But where does that leave us in the 21st century, when Christians
would no longer maintain that Jews need to become Christians to remain in God’s favor, and when

45 Robert C. Tannehill, “Israel in Luke-Acts: A Tragic Story,” JBL 104.1 (1985): 69-85.
46 John G. Gager, “Jews, Gentiles, and Synagogues in the Book of Acts,” Harvard Theological Review
79.1/3 (1986): 91-99.
47 Parsons, Acts, 108, regarding Luke’s use of synkrisis in the Stephen speech (Acts 7).
Hedrick 305

we no longer want to explain the ways of the God of love by pointing to an “Other” that is con-
structed from our own fears and immature need for constant assurance that we are “in” and not
“out,” assurance that comes even at the expense of others? The ancient legitimations are not neces-
sarily our modem anti-Semitism, but they can devolve in that direction if we adopt them uncriti-
cally. Our moral responsibility is to examine the ancient pattern and to accept, reject, or reshape it
in light of our growing understanding of the risen Christ in reason, in contemporary legitimations,
and in ongoing communal interpretation.48 But unfortunately, in the words of Mitzi J. Smith, the

constructions of difference are too often internalized and accepted as natural. This phenomenon of
othering based on evaluating one group’s behavior as inferior, or even demonic, to another group occurs
often between proximate others inside the same collective. . .When this othering is etched in texts we
regard as sacred, we tend to overlook and/or discursively reinscribe it in our teaching, preaching,
writing, and other public discourse and interactions. We uncritically appropriate and impose the
inscribed image of the other on ourselves and on others.49

Did the author of Acts ever think that a future set of Christian Scriptures could be mined for
excuses to persecute Jews? No. Does that mean we accept all of his first century judgments and
strategies uncritically? Again, no.

What positives are left for us in the Lukan principles, some of which unfortunately contributed
to the negative stereotyping of Jews? Even though we will not always come to the same answers as
the ancient writer, the questions implied in Acts are, quite often, the correct ones. For example, how
do we actively discern the will o f God in our time rather than relying on fixed and inadequate ideas
about how God acts? How do we understand God’s will, including the “divine surprise and cun-
ning,” as encouragement for cooperation rather than as a rigid predestination?50 What is our bal-
anee between respecting the tradition and yet being intelligent about the present and remaining
open to divine surprise? How do we develop both a relationship with God and also develop those
virtues that God enables rather than narrowly conceiving membership by political, economic, or
ethnic categories? In other words, any contemporary attempt to legitimate God’s plan by construct-
ing “the Other” will fail the test of moral adequacy. All of Luke’s questions, if not all of his answers,
point in the direction of observing, in the words of Bernard Lonergan, the transcendental pre-
cepts—“be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible”51—not only in ourselves but in
helping each other to do so in community with each other and with the risen Christ.

48 See, e.g., Scott Spencer, “Perspectives from the Gospel of Matthew,” Int 64.4 (2010): 377-78.
49 Mitzi J. Smith, The Literary Construction o f the Other in the Acts o f the Apostles: Charismatics, the
Jews, and Women (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), 57.
50 Cosgrove, “The Divine Dei in Luke-Acts,” 177, 184.
51 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), 20.
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