Divine Dissimulation and the Apostolic Visions of Acts

TY - CHAP

T1 - Divine Dissimulation and the Apostolic Visions of Acts

AU - Moxon, John R. L.

PY - 2022/6/16

Y1 - 2022/6/16

N2 - This paper is an exercise in audience characterisation by means of dialogue patterns. It focuses on didactic dissimulation, a neglected but striking ploy used for the divine voice in the visions of Paul and Peter in Acts 9:1-9 and 10:9-16. As a characteristic device of the Socratic tradition and used more disconcertingly within Cynic pedagogy, its appearance here represents a telling marker of cultural interplay, particularly as some Jewish commentators were not comfortable with it. Classically involving not just individual statements, but the sustained cloaking of rhetorical intent, these dialogues in Acts see an anonymous interlocutor using enigmatic challenges, feigned ignorance and misdirection to trap the subjects into confessing ignorance, prejudice or wrongdoing. Apparently visible in the Jesus tradition, other NT texts seem to discourage this approach to teaching. Why it appears in these dream and vision accounts, therefore, becomes doubly intriguing. After investigating Graeco-Roman, Jewish and early Christian responses to the question, I ask what these accounts might tell us about Luke’s audience.

AB - This paper is an exercise in audience characterisation by means of dialogue patterns. It focuses on didactic dissimulation, a neglected but striking ploy used for the divine voice in the visions of Paul and Peter in Acts 9:1-9 and 10:9-16. As a characteristic device of the Socratic tradition and used more disconcertingly within Cynic pedagogy, its appearance here represents a telling marker of cultural interplay, particularly as some Jewish commentators were not comfortable with it. Classically involving not just individual statements, but the sustained cloaking of rhetorical intent, these dialogues in Acts see an anonymous interlocutor using enigmatic challenges, feigned ignorance and misdirection to trap the subjects into confessing ignorance, prejudice or wrongdoing. Apparently visible in the Jesus tradition, other NT texts seem to discourage this approach to teaching. Why it appears in these dream and vision accounts, therefore, becomes doubly intriguing. After investigating Graeco-Roman, Jewish and early Christian responses to the question, I ask what these accounts might tell us about Luke’s audience.

KW - Dreams

KW - Visions

KW - Graeco-Roman World

KW - Cynicism

KW - Ancient History

KW - Audience Studies

KW - New Testament

M3 - Chapter

SN - 1350265020

SN - 978-1350265028

SP - 192

EP - 214

BT - Reading, Writing and Bookish Circles in the Ancient Mediterranean

A2 - Norton, Jonathan

A2 - Allen, Garrick

A2 - Askin, Lindsey

PB - Bloomsbury

ER -