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The Narrative Rhetoric of Speech and Silence in the Acts of the Apostles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2020

Michal Beth Dinkler Open the ORCID record for Michal Beth Dinkler [Opens in a new window]
Michal Beth Dinkler*
Affiliation:
Yale Divinity School, 409 Prospect St., New Haven, CT06511USA. Email: mb.dinkler@yale.edu
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Abstract

Approaches to ancient texts that focus exclusively on speech are inherently imbalanced. Far from simply an innocuous absence of language, silence can carry thundering significances. Yet, these meanings are not always obvious, and they can be especially difficult to interpret in texts, without attendant non-verbal cues such as facial expressions or gestures. How can New Testament interpreters best discern and describe the interwoven words, whispers, silences and subtexts of ancient narratives? In this article, I seek to build on my earlier narratological study of speech and silence, Silent Statements: Narrative Representations of Speech and Silence in the Gospel of Luke. There, I demonstrate how focusing on silences as well as speech enriches our understanding of the narratological dimensions of Luke's Gospel, including Lukan plot, characterisation, theme(s) and readerly experience(s). The obvious next step is to extend this work to the Lukan sequel. The guiding question of this article is therefore: how do speech and silence contribute to the narrative rhetoric of the Acts of the Apostles?

Keywords

Acts of the ApostlesLuke-Actsspeechsilencerhetoricnarratologynarrative criticism
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 1 - 21
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Hereafter, I honour tradition and employ the name ‘Luke’ for the narrator who is telling the story, without implying anything about the actual historical composer(s) of the text.

2 Cheung, K.-K., Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa (New York: Cornell University Press, 1993) 126–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Recognising that a lector reading the narrative aloud would add his own non-verbal layer of communication, the fact remains that explicit mentions of such communication are rare in the Lukan narrative; cf. Acts 19.33.

4 Dinkler, M. B., Silent Statements: Narrative Representations of Speech and Silence in the Gospel of Luke (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Recognising that the original ‘readers’ of Acts were more likely ‘hearers’, I use the terms ‘reader’, ‘hearer’ and ‘audience’ interchangeably in this article to refer to the implied recipients of the narrative.

6 Mikeal Parsons and Richard Pervo declared near the end of the twentieth century that ‘the presumed unity of Luke and Acts is axiomatic in current New Testament scholarship’ (Rethinking the Unity of Luke and Acts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 2). Henry Cadbury appears to have been the first to hyphenate the titles of the two books to indicate their unity in The Making of Luke-Acts (London: Macmillan, 1927). Other major contributions to this discussion include 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 (2 vols.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986–90)Google Scholar; Verheyden, J., ed., The Unity of Luke-Acts (Leuven: Leuven University Press/Peeters, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, more recently, Wolter, M., Das Lukasevangelium (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008)Google Scholar; Walters, P., The Assumed Authorial Unity of Luke and Acts: A Reassessment of the Evidence (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8 Spencer, F. S., ‘Acts and Modern Literary Approaches’, The Book of Acts in its Ancient Literary Setting (ed. Winter, B. and Clarke, A. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993)) 381–414, at 411Google Scholar.

9 Philo, Creation 4. See also Philo's discussion of silence in Who is the Heir of Divine Things? 3.10–14.

10 On these specific examples, see e.g. Scarpi, P., ‘The Eloquence of Silence: Aspects of a Power without Words’, Regions of Silence: Studies on the Difficulty of Communicating (ed. Ciani, M. G.; Amsterdam: Gieben, 1987) 19–40Google Scholar; K. King, ‘Mystery and Secrecy in The Apocryphon of John’, Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and Practices (ed. J. Turner, I. Dunderberg, C. H. Bull and L. I. Lied; Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies; Leiden: Brill, 2011) 61–85.

11 See e.g. A.-J. Levine, ed., with Blickenstaff, M., A Feminist Companion to the Acts of the Apostles (London: T&T Clark, 2004)Google Scholar and Muñoz-Larrondo, R., A Postcolonial Reading of the Acts of the Apostles (New York: Peter Lang, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 In these scenes, Luke may be mimicking ancient comedies such as the Aesopic tradition, in which enslaved people speak out against their masters. On the latter, see Forsdyke, S., Slaves Tell Tales. And Other Episodes in the Politics of Popular Culture in Ancient Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Spencer, F. S., ‘Out of Mind, Out of Voice: Slave-Girls and Prophetic Daughters in Luke-Acts’, BibInt 7 (1999) 135–55, at 136–7Google Scholar (emphasis original).

14 Seim, T. K., The Double Message: Patterns of Gender in Luke-Acts (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994)Google Scholar.

15 E.g. Johnson, L. T., The Acts of the Apostles (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992) 81Google Scholar. See also Carl Holladay's recent discussion of kerygmatic language in Acts, ‘Acts as Kerygma: λαλεῖν τὸν λόγον’, NTS 63 (2017) 153–82.

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17 On which, see Dinkler, M. B., ‘New Testament Rhetorical Narratology: An Invitation Toward Integration’, BibInt 24 (2016) 203–28Google Scholar.

18 See, inter alia, A. Gawrilow, ‘Lautes und stilles Lesen im Altertum’, Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 33 (1990–2) 111–15; F. D. Gilliard, ‘More Silent Reading in Antiquity: non omne verbum sonabat’, JBL 112 (1993) 689–94, responding to P. J. Achtemeier, ‘Omne verbum sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity’, JBL 109 (1990) 3–27.

19 Glenn, C. and Ratcliffe, K., Silence and Listening as Rhetorical Arts (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011) 1Google Scholar.

20 Brummett, B., ‘Rhetoric of Silence’, Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996) 627–8, at 628Google Scholar (emphasis original).

21 Brummett, ‘Rhetoric of Silence’, 628 (emphasis added).

22 See the discussion in Zumbrunnen, J., Silence and Democracy: Athenian Politics in Thucydides’ History (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2008), esp. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 S. Butler and S. Nooter, eds., Sound and the Ancient Senses (New York: Routledge, 2018).

24 The paradigmatic works on speech-act theory are J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 19752); Searle, J. R., Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). The literature relating speech-act theory to biblical interpretation is substantial. See e.g. White, H., ed., Speech-Act Theory and Biblical Criticism (Decatur: Scholars, 1988)Google Scholar; Briggs, R., ‘The Uses of Speech-Act Theory in Biblical Interpretation’, CRBS 9 (2001) 229–76Google Scholar; Briggs, Words in Action.

25 Glenn, C., Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004) 9Google Scholar. See also A.-N. Perret-Clermont, M.-L. Schubauer-Leoni and A. Trognon, ‘L'extorsion des réponses en situation asymetrique’, Verbum: Conversations Adulte/Enfants (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1992) 3–32.

26 Glenn, Unspoken, 2, 4.

27 Demetrius, On Style 4.222.

28 K. Maxwell, Hearing between the Lines: The Audience as Fellow-Worker in Luke-Acts and its Literary Milieu (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2010) 49–78.

29 E. Dutoit, ‘Silences, dans l'oeuvre de Tite-Live’, Mélanges de philologie, de littérature et d'histoire anciennes offerts à J. Marouzeau (ed. R. G. Austin; Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1948) 141–51.

30 Seymour Chatman's explanation of this standard narratological distinction has become commonplace: ‘Story is the content of the narrative expression, while discourse is the form of that expression’ (Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Discourse and Film (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978) 23).

31 Alter, R., The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981) 154Google Scholar.

32 This is not to imply that speech and silence are the only important aspects of Luke's rhetorical project; they simply form a (typically underacknowledged) part of the manifold ways that Luke's narrative might shape sympathetic readers.

33 Unless otherwise stated, all citations in this paragraph are from J. Phelan, ‘Rhetoric/Ethics’, The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (ed. David Herman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)) 203–16, at 209–13.

34 Major works include: H. J. Cadbury, ‘The Speeches in Acts’, The Beginnings of Christianity: The Acts of the Apostles (ed. F. J. Foakes Jackson and K. Lake; 5 vols.; London: Macmillan, 1920–33) v.402–27; M. Dibelius, ‘Die Reden der Apostelgeschichte und die antike Geschichtsschreibung’, Aufsätze zur Apostelgeschichte (ed. H. Greeven; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 19614) 120–62; U. Wilckens, Die Missionsreden der Apostelgeschichte: Form- und traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1961); E. Schweizer, ‘Concerning the Speeches in Acts’, Studies in Luke-Acts (ed. L. Keck and J. Martyn; Nashville/New York: SPCK, 1966) 208–16; W. Kurz, ‘Hellenistic Rhetoric in the Christological Proof of Luke-Acts’, CBQ 42 (1980) 171–95; G. Schneider, ‘Die Reden der Apostelgeschichte’, Die Apostelgeschichte, vol. i (Freiburg: Herder, 1980–2) 95–103; G. Kennedy, ‘The Speeches in Acts’, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1984) 114–40; Satterthwaite, ‘Acts against the Background of Classical Rhetoric’, The Book of Acts in its Ancient Literary Setting, 337–79.

35 By Ernst Haenchen's count, speeches take up about one third of Acts (The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary (trans. B. Noble, G. Shinn, H. Anderson and R. McL. Wilson; Oxford: Blackwell, 1971) 104 n. 1).

36 Bovon, F., ‘Canonical and Apocryphal Acts of Apostles’, JECS 11 (2003) 165–94, at 172Google Scholar.

37 C. Holladay, ‘Acts as Kerygma’, 172.

38 S. E. Porter, ‘Hellenistic Oratory and Paul of Tarsus’, Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity and Change (ed. C. Kremmydas and K. Tempest; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 319–60. See also, J. H. Neyrey, ‘The Forensic Defense Speech and Paul's Trial Speeches in Act 22–26: Form and Function’, Luke-Acts: New Perspectives from the Society of Biblical Literature Seminar (ed. C. H. Talbert; New York: Crossroads, 1984) 210–24.

39 Todd Penner makes this point in ‘Civilizing Discourse: Acts, Declamation, and the Rhetoric of the Polis’, Contextualizing Acts: Lukan Narrative and Greco-Roman Discourse (ed. T. Penner and C. V. Stichele; Leiden: Brill, 2004) 65–104, at 80. See also Penner, ‘Narrative as Persuasion: Epideictic Rhetoric and Scribal Amplification in the Stephen Episode in Acts’, SBL Seminar Papers, 1996 (Chico, CA: Scholars, 1996) 352–67.

40 Marguerat, D., ‘The End of Acts (28,16–31) and the Rhetoric of Silence’, Rhetoric and the New Testament: Essays from the 1992 Heidelberg Conference (ed. Porter, S. E. and Olbricht, T. H.; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993) 74–89Google Scholar; Hupe, H., Lukas’ Schweigen: Dekonstruktive Relektüren der ‘Wir-Stücke’ in Acta (Vienna: Passagen, 2008)Google Scholar; Maxwell, Hearing Between the Lines; Smith, D. L., The Rhetoric of Interruption: Speech-Making, Turn-Taking, and Rule-Breaking in Luke-Acts and Ancient Greek Narrative (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 See G. Freytag, Freytag's Technique of the Drama: An Exposition of Dramatic Composition and Art (trans. E. J. MacEwan; Chicago: Griggs, 1894).

42 B. Richardson, ‘Beyond the Poetics of Plot: Alternative Forms of Narrative Progression and the Multiple Trajectories of Ulysses’, A Companion to Narrative Theory (ed. J. Phelan and P. Rabinowitz; London: Blackwell, 2005) 167–80, at 167.

43 M. Dibelius, ‘The Speeches in Acts and Ancient Historiography’, Studies in the Acts of the Apostles (ed. H. Greeven; London: SCM, 1956) 138–85.

44 Tannehill, R., The Shape of Luke's Story: Essays on Luke-Acts (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2005) 170Google Scholar.

45 Brooks, P., Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992) 12Google Scholar.

46 Kermode, F., The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

47 K. P. De Long (Surprised by God: Praise Responses in the Narrative of Luke-Acts (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009)) explores praise for God as a pervasive theme in the Lukan narrative.

48 For an article focused on the narrative effects of Luke's loose ends, see M. Parsons, ‘Narrative Closure and Openness in the Plot of the Third Gospel’, SBL Seminar Papers, 1986 (Missoula: Scholars, 1986) 201–23. Parsons’ piece is predicated upon M. Torgovnick, Closure in the Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

49 On this, see Marguerat, ‘The End of Acts (28,16–31)’; T. M. Troftgruben, A Conclusion Unhindered: A Study of the Ending of Acts within its Literary Environment (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010).

50 Miller, J., Convinced that God had Called Us: Dreams, Visions and the Perception of God's Will in Luke-Acts (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 123Google Scholar.

51 ‘Disnarrated’ is narratologist Gerald Prince's word for the events that are referenced in a narrative, but do not occur (G. Price, ‘The Disnarrated’, Style 22 (1988) 1–8).

52 Marguerat, ‘The End of Acts (28,16–31)’, 89 (emphasis added).

53 Perrine, L., Story and Structure (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovonovich, 1959) 66Google Scholar. See J. Camery-Hoggatt's application of this insight to the ending of the Gospel of Mark (Irony in Mark's Gospel: Text and Subtext (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 11).

54 Plato, Phaedrus 271c–271d. See also Dinkler, M. B., ‘Building Character on the Road to Emmaus: Lukan Characterization in Contemporary Literary Perspective’, JBL 136 (2017) 687–706Google Scholar.

55 R. Thompson, ‘Reading beyond the Text, Part ii: Literary Creativity and Characterization in Narrative Religious Texts of the Greco-Roman World’, ARC 29 (2001) 81–122, at 93–4.

56 Dinkler, Silent Statements, 207.

57 Smith, M. J., The Literary Construction of the Other in the Acts of the Apostles: Charismatics, the Jews, and Women (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011) 154Google Scholar.

58 Dinkler, ‘New Testament Rhetorical Narratology’, 203–28.

59 Using a complex of both ὁράω and ἀκούω-related words, Luke consistently underscores the importance of attentive listening. John Darr, ‘“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. E. S. Malbon and E.V. McKnight (Sheffield: JSOT Press/Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994)) 87–107.

60 Smith, The Rhetoric of Interruption, 243.

61 One of the most contentious debates in Lukan scholarship concerns Luke's depiction(s) of the Jews. For overviews, see Tyson, J., Luke, Judaism, and the Scholars: Critical Approaches to Luke-Acts (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999)Google Scholar; D. Marguerat, ‘Jews and Christians in Conflict’, The First Christian Historian: Writing the Acts of the Apostles (SNTSMS 121; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 129–54; F. Bovon, ‘Israel, the Church and the Gentiles in the Twofold Work of Luke’, New Testament Traditions and Apocryphal Narratives (trans. J. Happiseva-Hunter; Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1995) 81–95. This debate is irrelevant for my purposes for two reasons. First, the Lukan narrator does not appear to be overly concerned with distinctions between these groups. Second, my focus on the uses of speech and silence in the narrative's rhetoric of characterisation means that in this case, it is enough to note that all Jewish groups are shown at various points using speech and silence in negative ways.

62 Cicero and other ancient rhetoricians note that at times, an unexpressed suspicion can be more impactful than a detailed explanation (e.g. Rhet. Her. 4.41). R. C. H. Lenski reads Acts 23.9 as aposiopesis in The Interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles 15–28 (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1944) 938.

63 L. Wills, ‘The Depiction of the Jews in Acts’, JBL 110 (1991) 631–54, at 653–4.

64 Satterthwaite, ‘Acts against the Background of Classical Rhetoric’, 356.

65 Bovon, F., Luke the Theologian: Fifty-Five Years of Research (1950–2005) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006) 12–13Google Scholar.

66 E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles (trans. B. Noble et al.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971) 362.

67 Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts, 303–5. See also C. Cosgrove, ‘The Divine Dei in Luke-Acts’, NovT 26 (1984) 168–90.

68 On divine causation as a programmatic theme throughout Luke's two-volume work, see J. Squires, The Plan of God in Luke-Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and the extensive discussion and bibliography in Bovon, Luke the Theologian, 1–90.

69 Campbell, W., The ‘We’ Passages in the Acts of the Apostles: The Narrator as Narrative Character (Atlanta: SBL, 2007) 97Google Scholar.

70 See the discussion in Dinkler, Silent Statements, 67–83.

71 Squires, The Plan of God in Luke-Acts, 185. For an in-depth treatment of the philosophic views of Fate and free will in the first few centuries ce, see esp. 155–85.

72 Among others, Plato, Apology 29d; Deut 4.30; 8.20; 9.23; 30.2.

73 Kurz, W., Reading Luke-Acts: Dynamics of Biblical Narrative (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) 138Google Scholar.

74 Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, i.3.

75 Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, i.2.

76 For other instances connecting the metaphor of ‘bearing fruit’ to one's true nature, see Luke 3.8–9; 6.43–4; 8.14–15; 13.6–9.

77 Bovon, F., ‘The Reception of the Book of Acts in Late Antiquity’, Contemporary Studies in Acts (ed. Phillips, T.; Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009) 66–92, at 66Google Scholar.