|
r m p |
Theological Publications |
| Penelope and Rhoda Two More Cases of Luke's Suppression of Women By Robert M. Price In
The Widow Traditions in Luke-Acts: A
Feminist-Critical Scrutiny,1 I tried to show how the second-century
author of that double document had rewritten a number of Jesus-traditions and
apostolic stories stemming from communities of celibate, charismatic women, in
order to put women in the place assigned to them by the strictures of, e.g.,
the Pastoral Epistles. Now I propose to reinforce my characterization of Luke's
agenda by outlining two more instances, these involving the suppression of
important women characters (or their deeds) in his sources, but these two do
not involve consecrated widows. If Luke's agenda was as I described it in The Widow Traditions in Luke-Acts, there
is no obvious reason he should have restricted his efforts to the widows'
materials. Presumably he would have manifested the same biases in other cases
where women received a bit too much prominence for his tastes. The first of the
cases occurs in the Gospel of Luke, the parable of the Prodigal Son. The second
comes from the Acts of the Apostles, the story of Peter's miraculous escape
from martyrdom at the hands of Herod Agrippa I. In the course of the analysis I
hope to show that while the suppression of women is by no means the most
striking or important feature of the Lukan redaction, recognizing it will
nonetheless help us recognize other, equally suggestive features (and vice
versa). Penelope and the Prodigal Dennis
R. MacDonald has recently drawn attention to the great interest taken by early
Christians in Homer's epics.2 This may surprise those who prefer to
see the New Testament writers taking their inspiration only from the Jewish
Scriptures, but after all it is only natural in view of the status in the
Hellenistic world of both Iliad and Odyssey as canonical scriptures
themselves. The exegetical method of allegory seems to have begun as a Stoic
device for decoding the embarrassing literalism of the Homeric texts. Jewish and Christian familiarity with the
allegorical method presupposes the same familiarity with the texts thus
allegorized. Early Christians could hardly have avoided the Iliad and the Odyssey. MacDonald shows, in Christianizing
Homer, how the Acts of Andrew essentially rewrote the Odyssey along Christian lines. And in a work now delayed some time
in publication, MacDonald also argues that Mark's gospel is similarly a
Christianized Odyssey. One can only
anticipate with keen hunger the serving of this latter exegetical feast by the
master chef MacDonald. But in the meantime, I would suggest, contra MacDonald, that Mark is not the only New Testament writer to
draw upon the Odyssey. Luke, too, has
done it. This makes perfect sense, not only in view of Luke's well-known
penchant for garnishing his own writings with quoted snippets from Diodorus Siculus, Plato,
Euripides, Epimenides and Arratus,
but also from Luke-Acts' notable similarity and probable kinship (see Richard
I. Pervo, Profit
with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles3) with the ancient
novels and the Apocryphal Acts which were in some measure based upon them. Once
we see that the Acts of Andrew could use the Odyssey, it should not seem far-fetched to suggest that a kindred
writer like Luke could use it, too. If he is making the same general sort of
sandwich, he might as well use the same meat. Specifically, my suggestion is that
Luke has modeled his parable of the Prodigal Son upon the Odyssey episode of Penelope's Suitors. That the parable is Luke's
work and does not go back to the historical Jesus is evident not least from its
length, but also from its signature feature of character introspection:
"What shall I do? I shall..." Compare other Lukan creations such as
the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:4-5, "He said to himself, I will..."), the
Dishonest Steward (16:3-4, "What shall I do? I will..."), and the
Rich Fool ( The character of the Prodigal
himself has been suggested by both the long-absent Odysseus and his son Telemachus who returns from a long quest in search of his
missing father. Both the parable's elements of wandering far from home and of
the father-son reunion stem from here. The cavorting of the Prodigal with loose
women in far lands was suggested by Odysseus' dalliance with Calypso. But the
motif of the Prodigal's having "devoured [his father's] estate with loose
living" is based on the similar judgment passed more than once by Telemachus and Eumaeus on the
"gang of profligates" infesting Odysseus' estate during his absence,
the Suitors. The Prodigal taking a job as a
swineherd, a galling "transformation" for a Jew, might reflect the
transformation of Odysseus' men into swine by Circe, especially since the
hungry Prodigal would like to fill his aching stomach with the pods on which
his porcine charges feed. This is but another way of saying he envies their lot
and would like to turn into one of them. Is Luke also thinking of Augustus'
joke, "I would rather be Herod's swine, uigoV, than his son, uioV"? It is the same
implicit pun in any case. Then again, the Prodigal's job as a
swineherd might stem from Eumaeus' occupation as a
swineherd. The latter's oft characterization as a "righteous
swineherd" may be linked with the characterization of the Prodigal as a
repentant swineherd. (Eumaeus, remember, is the faithful servant of Odysseus who befriends both the
returning Odysseus, whom he does not first recognize, and the returning Telemachus, whom he does.) The return of the Prodigal is of course suggested by the late return of Odysseus, but no less of Telemachus, who together share the same actantial role anyway. The Prodigal returns hoping to enter the company of his father's household slaves, while Odysseus returns in disguise and does find shelter among Eumaeus and the household slaves. The glad reception afforded the Prodigal by his father recalls the reunion of Odysseus and Telemachus, also father and son, but even more the reunion of Telemachus and Eumaeus:
Next Luke splits Odysseus into two
characters, the two brothers. The elder son also returns from being away,
albeit only out in the field (the scene of conflict between two other famous
brothers, Cain and Abel). But he does return, and is dismayed, like Odysseus,
to discover a feast in progress. (Neither can we miss the echo of the disgust
of the returned Moses: "It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or
the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of ... singing that I hear!" Exodus 32:18). It is a feast in honor of
a profligate, as the elder brother is quick to point out, like that of the
Suitors. And just as their feast is predicated on their supposition of
Odysseus' death, the Prodigal's father explains to the elder son that they must
feast since the Prodigal was dead and has now returned alive, as Odysseus is
about to do. A puzzling feature of the Lukan
parable now approaches solution, for is it not evident that the Prodigal's
planned hand-wringing confession of unworthiness is a mere tactic aimed at
mollifying his father enough to be accepted as a slave? The Prodigal, knee-deep
in hog-slop, "comes to himself," but his realization has nothing to
do with his having sinned. It is merely the realization
that a better menu than he presently enjoys is available in the slave quarters
of his father. He seems to intend genuine remorse as little as he expects the
extravagant forgiveness of his father. Thus his forgiveness seems in the long
run to be doubly undeserved. It is not surprising that Luke might have sought
to depict God as doubly forgiving, the point of the parable on any reading, but
it may seem strange for Luke so to reward an unrepentant schemer. Or does it?
Luke is happy enough to use the obviously Machievellian
Unjust Steward as a lesson in repentance over in Luke 16, so why not here? But
that just pushes the problem back a step. Why there? Because Luke was thinking
of Odysseus as much as Jacob, both scheming rogues whose guile was considered a
singular virtue by ancient readers who envied it. Malherbe reviews the ancient debate over Odysseus.6 He was a favorite model
for resourcefulness among the Cynic and Stoic preachers, and recall how Luke
associates resourcefulness with repentance. Theognis
praised Odysseus for his chameleon-like character (cf. 1 Corinthians When the elder brother grouses about
never having been given so much as a goat to share with his poker buddies, do
we not see a reflection of Eumaeus' apology to the
disguised Odysseus that all he can scrape together as victuals are a couple of
pigs left over from the Suitors' feast? Plus the obvious parallel that the
Suitors (= the Prodigal) have been consuming the fare that rightly belongs to
Odysseus himself (= the elder brother). Finally, let me suggest that a good
deal of the reshuffling Luke has put the Homeric original through was
necessitated by one aim: eliminating Penelope. In the original, Penelope was a
loving parent welcoming home two beloved family members. She had tolerated the
presence of the Suitors but given in to none of them, demonstrating a degree of
marital faithfulness unmatched by her absent husband. And her faith was
rewarded by his return. Had Penelope retained her place in the parable of the
Prodigal Son, as she might have, in the role of a widowed mother dependent upon
the labors of her sons (cf. Luke 7:12), what would we have had? Luke would have
provided us a sterling use of a woman standing for the forgiving God, a
compassionate Heavenly Mother. But no. And it is no
accident that Luke has replaced her with a father. I
have already made glancing reference to Richard I. Pervo's
comparative study of the Apocryphal and canonical Acts, in which he shows that
the supposedly unbridgable gulf separating the two
genres is largely an illusion generated by scholars zealous to fortify the
boundaries of the canon of scripture. One striking feature of several major
Apocryphal Acts is the manner in which the martyrdoms of their eponymous heroes
precisely parallel that of Jesus in the gospels, in some cases even issuing in
empty tombs and postmortem appearances to disciples! But does
Luke's Acts feature any such parallel? Of course it does: Paul's
recapitulation of Jesus' own journey to Jerusalem, passion predictions, tumult
at the Temple, taking into Roman custody, trial before the Sanhedrin, getting
slapped for sassing the high priest, trial before both Herodian
kings and Roman procurators, and final journey to (an implicit) execution at
the hands of Rome. Luke is just a bit more subtle than the Acts of Paul in this
regard, where the beheaded Paul appears to Nero, warning him of divine
vengeance, and later ascends from an empty tomb. But there is a second passion
parallel, a second apostolic passion narrative in Acts, that
has never to my knowledge been adequately explored. Given the tendency (with
Knox, I make it anti-Marcionite8) of Acts to parallel Paul with Peter, we
ought to expect at least as detailed if not as long, passion narrative for
Peter as Luke provides for Paul. And we find it in chapter 12. It is a
commonplace to note a few basic similarities between this episode and the
passion narrative of Jesus, especially the Passover setting. But the parallels
are much more extensive. Peter languishes in a prison; Jesus didn't. Or did he?
Peter's time in the jail cell matches Jesus' three days in the tomb. As angels
greeted the women at the empty tomb of Jesus, an angel greets Peter and
"empties" his cell of him. The angel's command to "wrap your mantle around you"
(verse 8) recalls Luke's references to Joseph of Arimathea, who
"wrapped" the body of Jesus "in a linen shroud" (Luke Peter is guarded by two Roman
soldiers in the cell, with at least another pair stationed between the cell and
the outer door. He escapes despite their presence, apparently invisible to
their eyes, as the angel has, like the Shadow,
"clouded men's minds." In light of the extensive parallels to the
passion of Jesus, a striking new possibility emerges just at this point. What
if Peter's guards reflect the presence of Matthew's Roman guards at Jesus'
tomb? Luke's tendency to save this or that gospel element for later use in Acts
(e.g., the slapping of Jesus omitted from the gospel, where we find it in John
18:22, and used for Paul's trial instead (Acts 23:2-4), or the accusation that
Jesus will destroy the Temple, removed from the trial scene of Jesus and
transferred to Stephen's trial in Acts 6) is well known. What if this is
another instance of the same tendency? It would imply that the tomb guards,
though a subsequent development to Mark's account, was not quite so late an
embellishment as generally thought. Perhaps Matthew and Luke both knew it but
made different uses of it. As the jail gate opens miraculously
of itself, by angelic telekinesis, we are inevitably reminded of the stone door
of Jesus' tomb being rolled back by angelic sinews. As the Risen Christ came to
his assembled disciples on Easter, so the newly sprung Peter arrives at the
house of Mary where the church is gathered, praying for him. His appearance
calls forth the very same reaction: utter skepticism (a riotously funny piece
of Lukan irony!). Just as the eleven disciples in Luke 24 jumped to the
conclusion that they were seeing a spirit, the assembled Christians first
believe Peter must be dead, and it is merely his ghost, his guardian angel, who
has appeared to say good-bye. And as it was women who first brought the news of
Jesus' escape from the tomb, only to meet with incredulity, so does Rhoda the
maidservant (cf. Luke 1:38, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.")
encounter stubborn disbelief. As it takes the appearance of Jesus
himself to banish the doubts of the eleven, so does the entrance of Peter
himself have the same effect. Just as the Risen Christ
was caught up to heaven to be seen no more (save for occasional emergency
visions vouchsafed to Stephen and Paul), so does Peter vanish mysteriously
"to another place," effectively quitting Acts' narrative (again,
except for a strategic appearance at the Apostolic Council in chapter 15, which
is just Luke's way of reminding the reader of the events of chapter 10).
Peter's parting words, "Tell this to James and the brethren" ( Now how does any of the preceding
bear on Luke's redactional suppression of women's roles in early Christianity?
It is simple, really. Luke has transparently derived the passion of Peter
sequence from Jesus' passion in his sources. Aside from the fact that, for
obvious narrative reasons, Peter does not literally die and rise, the single
important departure from the Jesus version, as we can see by comparing Luke's
Peter passion with his Jesus passion, is that while, for Luke, Mary Magdalene
and her sisters did not see the Risen Christ at the empty tomb (and are not
said to have been present with the eleven when Jesus subsequently appeared to
them), Rhoda does see the "risen" Peter and bears not merely the
tidings of angels but of the man himself to the skeptical disciples. Of course
what this implies is that Luke knew good and well that the female disciples of
Jesus were supposed to have seen the Risen Christ himself, such an account
underlying his story of Rhoda and Peter, but when he wrote his Jesus version,
he eliminated this element, purposely excising any possible basis for women's
appeal to the empty tomb story as a precedent for their own apostolic ministry.
Rhoda (whether under this or some other name like Mary, Joanna, or Salome) did
originally (in Luke's sources) behold the Risen Christ and was commissioned to
take his message to the eleven, but Luke has changed all that. If she saw
someone, it was not Jesus, only Peter. If she bore tidings of the resurrection
to the eleven, they were secondhand, from two men at the tomb, not from the
Risen One himself. That such a distinction was no minor one can be seen in
Galatians 1:11-12, "For I would have you know, brethren,
that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man [or,
one might say, two men!], nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation
of Jesus Christ himself." In Luke's redaction, I maintain, we are witnessing
the other side of an analogous and equally urgent dispute. I
have argued that Luke's redactional agenda to suppress the role of women in his
sources was not restricted to the traditions he derived, and co-opted, from the
circle of ministering celibate widows, but extended to other stories involving
prominent women. One of these was Homer's Odyssey,
in which Penelope played an important role, the other a version of the passion
and resurrection in which a woman or women beheld the Risen Christ and reported
these tidings to the eleven. In the first case, Luke replaced the female model
of forgiving parental love with a male one, substituting the Prodigal's father
for Penelope, in the second allowing the woman to have beheld only the escaped
Peter, not the Risen Jesus. Finally, it is worth noting that
even these two passages may rest ultimately upon widow community traditions,
though the links are slender and speculative. First, I have already noted above
how a female Penelope analog in the Prodigal Son parable would have formed a
parallel with the widow of Nain; this might suggest
that it was someone in the widow community who had borrowed from the Odyssey,
already before Luke. As we would have read that version, the abandonment of the
mother by one son, taking his share of the assets with him, would have been
especially outrageous as well as poignant, and the ensuing forgiveness all the
more miraculous. Perhaps it was a widow tradition that Luke took over and
redacted. Then he would have been using Homer second-hand. Second, given the parallel between
Rhoda and the Virgin Mary as "handmaids of the Lord," we might wonder
if Rhoda was already understood as a young consecrated widow/virgin such as
sex-shunning piety soon made of Mary. The link between spiritual virginity and
susceptibility to visions, e.g., of the Risen Christ, is wide-spread in early
Christian thinking, as was the case with Philip's daughters, "prophesying
virgins," and the prophesying widow Anna, who like Mary in early Christian
apocrypha, dwelt day and night in the
1.
Robert M. Price, The Widow Traditions in Luke-Acts: A
Feminist-Critical Scrutiny. SBL Dissertation Series 155
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997).
2.
Dennis Ronald MacDonald, Christianizing
Homer: The Odyssey, Plato, and The Acts of Andrew
(NY: Oxford University Press, 1994).
3.
Richard I. Pervo, Profit
with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 122-135.
4.
Thomas L. Brodie, "Luke the Literary Interpreter: Luke-Acts as a
Systematic Rewriting and Updating of the Elijah-Elisha Narrative in 1 and 2 Kings." Ph.D. dissertation:
5.
Homer, The Odyssey. Trans. E.V. Rieu. The Penguin Classics (Baltimore: Penguin
Books, 1961), p. 245.
6.
Abraham J. Malherbe, Paul and the Popular Philosophers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1989), pp. 98-101.
7.
Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning
and Importance of Fairy Tales (NY: Random House Vintage Books, 1977), pp.
90-96.
8.
John Knox, Marcion and the New Testament:
An Essay in the Early History of the Canon (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1942), pp. 119-121. |
CopyrightŠ2004 by
Robert M Price
Spirit of
Carolina Web Design