Rhetorical Mimesis and the Mitigation of Early Christian Conflicts

Examining the Influence that Greco-Roman Mimesis May Have in the Composition of Matthew, Luke, and Acts

McAdon

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781532637742
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This interdisciplinary study focuses upon two conflicts within early Christianity and demonstrates how these conflicts were radically transformed by the Greco-Roman rhetorical and compositional practice of mimesis--the primary means by which Greco-Roman students were taught to read, write, speak, and analyze literary works. The first conflict is the controversy surrounding Jesus's relationship with his family (his mother and brothers) and the closely related issue concerning his (alleged) illegitimate birth that is (arguably) evident in the gospel of Mark, and then the author of Matthew's and the author of Luke's recasting of this controversy via mimetic rhetorical and compositional strategies. I demonstrate that the author of our canonical Luke knew, vehemently disagreed with, used, and mimetically transformed Matthew's infancy narrative (Matt 1-2) in crafting his own. The second controversy is the author of Acts' imitative transformation of the Petrine/Pauline controversy--that, in Acts 7:58--15:30, the author knew, disagreed with, used, and mimetically transformed Gal 1-2 via compositional strategies similar to how he transformed Matthew's birth narrative, and recast the intense controversy between the two pillars of earliest Christianity, Peter and Paul, into a unity and harmony that, historically, never existed.

Chapter 1

Introduction

This interdisciplinary study situates itself within recent discussions of understanding the composition of New Testament texts within known Greco-Roman rhetorical and compositional practices. More specifically, I examine the role that the Greco-Roman rhetorical practice of μίμησις (mimesis, imitatio, imitation) may play in the composition of the canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke and the canonical book of Acts. The broader context of this study is that many, if not most, of the canonical New Testament texts emerged as a result of polemical disputes—that an author would take stylus in hand and craft a document that reflects that author’s position within the ideological conflict and that a chronologically later author would then use that earlier document as a source (often his primary source), engage it, and revise or transform it (sometimes radically) in order to reflect his own position in the conflict or to paper over, suppress, or supersede in some way the earlier position(s). This practice of engaging, revising, rivaling, or transforming an earlier text (mimesis/imitation) was the primary means by which students were taught writing and literature (and oratory) in Greco-Roman schools and was a widespread and acknowledged practice among the literati. Yet, even though μίμησις/imitatio was the primary means by which students were taught composition and literary analysis and was prevalent among the literati, as will be demonstrated in the next chapter, its role in understanding the composition of New Testament texts has not received as much consideration as it warrants by those scholars who approach New Testament texts from rhetorical perspectives.

The apparent dearth of serious interest in mimesis within New Testament rhetorical studies is evident in explicit “rhetoric of New Testament” texts. In Duane Watson’s The Rhetoric of the New Testament: A Bibliographic Survey—which Ben Witherington notes, “lays before us almost every useful article, monograph, or book on the subject published during the first twenty or so years of the discussion”1—there are headings under the “Contents” for “New Testament Rhetoric in General” that include invention (ethos, pathos, logos, topoi), arrangement, style, chiasm, chreia, and social-rhetorical analysis, but nothing for mimesis or imitation. Moreover, under “Matthew,” Watson lists 40 references but not one of these includes either mimesis or imitation in the title. For “Luke-Acts,” he lists 29, two of which (written by Thomas Brodie) include imitation in the title; for “Luke,” he cites 67, three of which include imitation (all written by Brodie), and, for “Acts,” he lists 72, three of which include imitation in the titles (two written by Brodie and the other by Dennis MacDonald).2 George Kennedy’s influential New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism, likewise, allots only a few sentences to imitation, situating it only within the Asianism/Atticism controversy within his discussion of “Style,” but does not say anything about one author’s mimetic use and revision of an earlier text that was such an important component of the practice of imitation.3 Similarly, C. Clifton Black’s few sentences on imitation in his The Rhetoric of the Gospel speak only to its stylistic aspects within his discussion of 1 John.4 Ben Witherington, in his New Testament Rhetoric, does not mention it at all, and, perhaps more surprisingly, neither The New Testament in Its Literary Environment (David E. Aune), the Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period 330 B.C.–A.D. 400 (Stanley E. Porter, ed.), nor The Westminister Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric (David E. Aune, ed.) includes an entry, reference, or discussion for mimesis, imitatio, or imitation.

The situation is the same with recent discussions that more narrowly attempt to identify the compositional practices of the authors of the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) and Acts. In his oft-cited “Compositional Conventions and the Synoptic Problem,” F. Gerald Downing examined how Livy, Plutarch, and Diodorus Siculus incorporated their sources into their works in light of what he (Downing) understood to be contemporary composition practices. Yet, even though it is widely recognized that μίμησις/imitatio was the primary means by which students were taught composition when these historians were writing, Downing never mentions either. Similarly, because of the “well known fact” of the synoptic gospels’ literary relationships, Richard Burridge surmises, “Indeed, it is possible that evidence of rhetorical influence might help with the problem of their literary relationships with each other.”5 However, because he also thinks that “it is unlikely that the [G]ospel writers and their audiences would have had higher rhetorical training” and because of our deficient understanding of “any firm external evidence about the date, provenance or authorship” of the gospels and Acts, “we cannot form any immediate conclusions about their relationship to rhetoric.”6 These obstacles aside, Burridge considers the possible rhetorical influences of the classical rhetorical canon of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery within the gospels and Acts, without any reference to, or discussion of, μίμησις/imitation. R. A. Derrenbacker recognizes the “general inattention or lack of recognition on the part of Synoptic scholars in dealing seriously with the compositional conventions and specific literary methods of antiquity and their bearing on the literary relationships among the synoptics.”7 To address this deficiency, Derrenbacker discusses “a range of compositional practices attested in antiquity” and then relates “those compositional practices to concrete descriptions and problems associated with the composition of the Synoptic Gospels.”8 Surprisingly, for such a study, he does not discuss, or even mention, the Greco-Roman rhetorical and compositional practices of μίμησις or imitation. A final study to be briefly mentioned here is Alex Damm’s Ancient Rhetoric and the Synoptic Problem, in which he begins by citing Richard Burridge’s sentence cited above, “It is possible that . . . evidence of rhetorical influence might help with the problem of . . . [the gospels’] literary relationship.”9 His “goal is to address this need: to apply rhetorical conventions to the investigation of the synoptic problem” by arguing that “an awareness of rhetorical conventions can help us determine more or less plausible scenarios of adaptation among the synoptic version of a rhetorical form called the chreia.”10 Even though Damm restricts his study to the chreia (one of the rhetorical tools in the progymnasmata tool bag), he, unlike the others, does briefly discuss μίμησις/imitation. After allotting one paragraph of consideration each to the work of Dennis MacDonald and Thomas Brodie, and while acknowledging that “the evangelists likely employed imitation,” Damm then dismisses μίμησις/imitatio as an appropriate term denoting “composition” because he does “not find the term adequate to describe [the synoptic gospels’] close, sustained use of sources—the use we see for instance through a gospel synopsis.”11

There are, however, a few scholars who approach the canonical New Testament texts from rhetorical perspectives who have considered mimesis’ role therein. The two most prolific of these representatives are Dennis R. MacDonald and Thomas L. Brodie. MacDonald has argued that the authors of, primarily, Mark and Luke-Acts relied upon and imitated classical Greek and Roman texts, especially the Homeric epics and, most recently, Virgil’s Aeneid.12 Brodie, in numerous publications over the past thirty-five years, has argued that an early form of Luke-Acts (his “Proto-Luke”) was crafted as an imitation of much of the Elijah-Elisha narrative from the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) and that the author of Mark used this “Proto-Luke” in addition to other material from the Elijah-Elisha narratives to craft his gospel.13 Marianne Palmer Bonz has argued for Virgil’s influence on Luke-Acts, contending that the author of Luke-Acts imitated the Aeneid’s epic structure and themes in crafting his own (Christian) epic.14 While I engage MacDonald’s, Brodie’s, and Bonz’s respective methods in chapter 2, my approach is different from theirs in one important respect. Whereas MacDonald argues that the authors of Mark and Luke-Acts imitated themes and (some language) from classical Greek and Latin literature, and whereas Brodie emphasizes, primarily, Luke’s imitation of the Elijah-Elisha narratives from the Septuagint, and whereas Bonz contends that Luke imitated the structure and themes of Virgil’s Aeneid, I propose that while the authors of Matthew and Luke imitated the Septuagint, Matthew also imitated Mark and Luke also imitated Mark, Matthew, and Paul in the Greco-Roman sense of μίμησις/imitatio. That is, while there is broad scholarly agreement that there are literary relationships between (especially) the synoptic gospels (i.e., the synoptic problem) and a growing recognition of the relationship between Acts and Galatians, I argue that understanding the Greco-Roman compositional practice of mimesis and the authors of these texts’ mimetic compositional practices can help us to understand better than we do now the composition of, and rivalry between, these authors and their texts.

That is, while it is widely recognized that there are literary relationships between Mark, Matthew, an...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Part 1: Greco-Roman Mίμησις/Imitatio
• Part 2: The Controversy Concerning Jesus’s Birth and His Relationship with His Family
• Part 3: The Petrine-Pauline Controversy and Luke’s Mimetic Transformation
• Chapter 8: Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Ancient Greco-Roman Authors on Mίμησις/Imitatio
• Appendix 2: Galatians 2:7–9 as a Later, Post-Pauline Interpolation
• Bibliography