Implied Audiences in the Areopagus Narrative -- By: Patrick Gray

Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 55:2 (NA 2004)
Article: Implied Audiences in the Areopagus Narrative
Author: Patrick Gray


Implied Audiences in the Areopagus Narrative

Patrick Gray

Summary

Much of the commentary tradition on Acts 17:16–34 too quickly glosses over the inclusion of Paul’s sermon in a larger narrative context, focusing instead on the religionsgeschichtliche background of the speech or its compatibility with Pauline thought as expressed in the epistles. This essay brackets many of the questions that have occupied the history of the interpretation so as to highlight questions of literary and theological function. Close attention to Luke’s compositional technique reveals the ways in which the Areopoagus narrative is not aimed at a monolithic Gentile audience but rather engages multiple implied readers while recapitulating many of the leading Lukan motifs in the mission to the Jews. The portrayal of Paul and of the responses of the Athenians to his message is suggestive of how Luke answers for his readers the question posed by Tertullian a century later, ‘What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?’

1. Introduction

Paul’s address before the Areopagus in Acts 17 counts as one of the most celebrated passages in the NT. It has been read variously as an expression of natural theology rooted in Stoic thought,1 as a Christian sermon aimed at Gentiles yet steeped in biblical language and thought

patterns,2 as a gauge of Luke’s reliability as a historian,3 as a source for reconstructing Paul’s missionary modus operandi,4 and as evidence for or against its Pauline authorship vis-à-vis the epistles5 – and this sampling is by no means exhaustive.6 From the earliest Christian references to this text it is apparent that it functioned as an archetypal representation of the perennial conflict between between faith and philosophy (Tertullian, Praesc. 7:9; Jerome, Eph. 22:29). Irenaeus quotes the passage at length (Adv. haer. 3:12:9) and twice points out that no Jews were present to hear Paul speak. Commentators concur on this point; Luke, through Paul, ‘is addressing himself to the popular philosophies, the Volksglaube of the average Greek’.7 Closer scrutiny of Luke’s narrative technique, however, reveals a more complicated picture. Rather than a...

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