Death and Resurrection

The Shape and Function of a Literary Motif in the Book of Acts

Horton

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781630876272
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Dennis Horton highlights the shape and function of the death-and-resurrection motif by applying William Freedman's criteria of a literary motif to the Acts narrative. By analyzing the statements about death and resurrection together with the examples of this messianic pattern among the experiences of major and minor characters, the motif becomes clear. This central theme then becomes intensified through contrast with a secondary motif, that of death and decay. Death and Resurrection provides a clear example of a biblical motif and how it develops and functions within the narrative, serving as a valuable guide for future studies of biblical motifs. The work also supplies a needed balance between the extremes of past and present Lukan scholarship by considering the combined effect of suffering and renewed life within a single motif. Both the statements and actions of the characters reveal the importance of the two elements for Lukan theology and soteriology. The function of the motif derives from its usage within the narrative and proves insightful for gaining a better understanding of the aesthetic quality of the story while simultaneously showing how the narrator skillfully wields the motif to provide encouragement to the followers of The Way, to issue a warning to would-be persecutors, and to deliver an evangelistic message to potential converts such as the God-fearers. The messianic pattern of death and resurrection becomes a heuristic tool that the narrator carefully applies to create a potent motif with a multifaceted message for a growing and often suffering Christian community.

1

Diegesis and the Messianic Model: “Telling” the Motif

Though the Book of Acts develops multiple themes,1 this chapter highlights the death-resurrection message presented through the diegetic remarks about Jesus. Narrator and character comments “tell” the story of Jesus, not in the focalized mimetic mode but rather in summary fashion. Not every reference to Jesus contains both elements of death and resurrection, yet numerous diegetic statements about him do consistently combine both concepts. Because some scholars have favored one perspective (either suffering or glory) over the other, this chapter engages both viewpoints.

The diegetic passages of Acts form the structure with frequent digressions to answer challenges emerging from the different interpretations. Beginning with the narrator comments on the hyperdiegetic level, the focus then shifts to the intradiegetic narrator comments, which are spoken within a deeper narrative layer by the characters themselves. In both sections, discussion begins with passages clearly including the combined death-resurrection message, followed by divergent passages with depict Jesus with only dark shades of suffering or resplendent hues of renewed life.

Hyperdiegetic Comments about Jesus

As mentioned previously, hyperdiegetic statements refer to those made by the narrator and that, in accordance with Robert Funk’s understanding, take place on the level above the primary narrative.2 These comments include summaries and descriptions given in “unfocused” segments where “the narrator ‘reports’ what has transpired without permitting the reader to witness events directly or immediately.”3 In iterative mode as used for summaries, “time, participants, actions, and even space are heaped up, pluralized, conflated.”4

By investigating these hyperdiegetic comments, the narrator’s viewpoint of Jesus takes shape. William S. Kurz gives an apt description of this perspective as “the filter through which the narrator presents his narration; it is like the place of the camera which determines the angle from which a viewer sees an object.”5 The narrator and each character or character group in a narrative express individual perspectives that may or may not be in agreement with the others. James Dawsey, for example, argues that the narrator in the Gospel of Luke has a different perspective or “voice” than the Lukan Jesus.6 Though the academic guild has not embraced Dawsey’s conclusions,7 his work does clarify the possible distinctions between a narrator and characters within the narrative. For this reason, focusing attention on the hyperdiegetic comments contributes to a greater understanding of the narrator’s view of Jesus.

This study assumes that the narrator in Acts is both reliable and authoritative; that is, the narrator merits readers’ trust and guides them in a desired interpretation of the characters, their direct speech, and their actions.8 Not only does the prologue itself engender readers’ trust through a reassurance of the book’s comprehensiveness, the easing of any doubts occurs, according to Robert Tannehill, because the “values and beliefs affirmed by the narrator are also those of the implied author.”9 In short, the narrator does not function as a foil for the implied author to convey a contradictory message.

Moreover the use of narrative asides and first-person narration legitimize and enhance the narrator’s authority. Steven M. Sheeley argues convincingly that the narrative asides play a critical role by establishing a relationship in which readers learn to depend on the narrator for “much of the information necessary to read and understand the story correctly.”10 The shift from third- to first-person narration, according to Allen Walworth, augments the narrator’s diegetic authority by adding the credibility of an eyewitness account.11 The combination of techniques enables the narrator to exert influence over readers’ interpretation of the story.

References to Jesus’s Death and Resurrection

Two of the clearest passages in which the narrator connects death and resurrection to Jesus surface in the opening scene of the book (1:1–3) and a nutshell summary of Paul’s missionary preaching (17:2–4). Besides these, the narrator alludes to Jesus as the crucified-risen Messiah in numerous abbreviated comments scattered throughout the narrative. The final part of this section investigates the possible exceptions to this dual emphasis of the narrator’s understanding of Jesus.

Acts 1:3

The opening words of the narrator set forth the integral components of the double-sided motif by stating that Jesus, “after his suffering . . . presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs” (1:3). Verse three is characterized by diegesis rather than mimesis because of the iterative mode in recounting the event.12 The narrator describes an action that occurs repeatedly over a forty day period. The mention of Jesus’s “suffering” (παθεῖν) here includes his death. As Hans Conzelmann notes, the infinitive of πάσχω regularly refers to “the whole of the passion” in both Luke and Acts.13 Now, subsequent to his death, Jesus is alive and demonstrates this with “convincing proofs.” Such appearances to the apostles obviously presuppose the resurrection event. The narrator thus opens the story with a powerful image of Jesus, painting him as the one who experienced both suffering/death and resurrection.

The positioning of this portrait at the beginning of the story has a profound impact on the reader. Meir Sternberg calls such a strategy the “primacy effect,” suggesting that a characterization given early in the narrative significantly influences readers’ continuing perception of that character.14 Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan concurs with Sternberg’s judgment:

The text can direct and control the reader’s comprehension and attitudes by positioning certain items before others . . . . Thus, information and attitudes presented at an early stage of the text tend to encourage the reader to interpret everything in their light. The reader is prone to preserve such meanings and attitudes for as long as possible.15

The narrator’s description of Jesus at this crucial point in the narrative therefore shapes all subsequent interpretations of Jesus. The narrator encourages readers to rely on this first impression of Jesus as the crucified-and-risen one whenever they encounter and judge the later images.

The words spoken to the apostles about the “reign of God” (βασιλείαϚ τοῦ θεοῦ) likely encompass both events as well. F. F. Bruce reflects this viewpoint in his commentary when he describes the reign of God in Luke as “the same good news as Jesus himself had announced earlier, but now given effective fulfillment by the saving events of his passion and triumph.”16 Jesus’s words to the disciples in the Third Gospel after his resurrection further substantiate the point.17 In contrast to the general resurrection appearances described in the opening verses of Acts, Luke 24:36–49 offers a focalized example. The narrator in Acts mentions that Jesus speaks to the apostles about the reign of God, but the closing scene of the Gospel records the actual words spoken. Here the resurrected Jesus specifically explains to them that the Messiah, as prophesied, had “to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day” (Luke 24:46). If the correlation between the two scenes is justified, the unavoidable conclusion makes a strong connection between the reign of God and the Messiah who experiences death and resurrection. Not surprisingly, Tannehill compares these two passages and arrives at this very point: “The things concerning the reign of God” of which Jesus speaks in Acts 1:3 include this revelation about his won role as the rejected and exalted Messiah, the ki...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Diegesis and the Messianic Model: “Telling” the Motif
• Chapter 2: Mimesis and the Major Characters: “Showing” the Motif (Part I)
• Chapter 3: Mimesis and the Minor Characters: “Showing” the Motif (Part II)
• Chapter 4: Intensification through Contrast: The Secondary Motif of Death and Decay
• Conclusion
• Bibliography