>>>>> VKR: I want to thank Jeffrey Gibson for inviting me to
respond to the message sent by Chris Price, Esq. of Los Angeles. I
have not responded systematically to the studies to which Chris Price
refers, since I have wanted to see if the field of early Christian
studies has substantive resources in its modes of interpretation to
bring into prominence the remarkable socio-rhetorical dynamics of
early Christian sea voyages (and other accounts) that make them
powerful Christian texts. It has been informative to see the
sustained exclusionary strategies that have been used to defend the
perspective of the sea voyages in Acts as authentic eye-witness
accounts. The result of these strategies has been to turn readers'
attention away from the truly remarkable qualities of this early
Christian discourse in the cause of what claims to be "the truth"
about Luke and the "historical accuracy" of the Acts of the
Apostles. This means, above all, that this early Christian discourse
is doing its work in the manner of a most powerful ideology, namely
the discourse hides its power from the people whom it entices into
its
worldview. This means that the Acts of the Apostles is good
literature. I am pleased that it is good literature, and I would
like all kinds of people to understand what good literature it really
is.<<<<<

Thank you for your response to my comments. I did not intend for
them to be a comprehensive statement on your views on the
"We-Passages," but I hoped they could start an informed discussion.
I am pleased that they have.

I think the points I made in the initial post fall into two
criticisms of your conclusion about the "we-passages" in Acts.
First, that no such convention existed to describe sea-voyages in
ancient Greek literature. Second, that even if such a convention
existed, there is insufficient indication in Acts that it is used
therein.

In this post, I will focus on the first point. And will follow up
with a second post regarding the second point. I hope this is
satisfactory. Also, I have not quoted all of your comments here. I
wanted to move to your response to my initial points. Please
redirect my attention to previous points made if they are relevant to
the ongoing discussion.

I'm afraid, however, that I do not understand what you mean by
"exclusionary" strategies. Certainly a review of your theory and
examination of its validity is not, by definition, exclusionary, is
it?

>>>> RVK: Chris Price, and the people whom he cites, have used
historical, literary, and theological strategies of interpretation in
"exclusionary" ways. Exclusionary tactics are based on a
philosophical presupposition that truth lies in discrete phenomena
when they are separated from other things. My philosophical
approach is "relational." I presuppose that a person draws nearest to
"truths" when one sees phenomena "in relation to multiple other
things." In other words, a person begins to see the "truest" nature
of something when one sees how that phenomenon looks in the context
of many other kinds of things. Concerning the issue here, one
begins to understand the nature of sea voyage discourse in Acts when
one sees it in the context of many other kinds of discourse in the
Mediterranean world. It was for this reason that I began my journey
through ancient Mediterranean literature about sea voyages. I was
surprised to discover a significant number of sea voyages presented
in first person plural discourse. Then, to my greater surprise, I
found (as some other people had found) that a number of narratives
shifted either from third person narration or first person singular
narration into first person plural narration when a sea voyage began.

This suggested to me that the experience of becoming part of "a
community of voyagers" while one was on the sea was "related to" the
presentation of certain (but not all) sea voyage accounts in first
person plural.<<<<

I'm afraid I'm still unclear on what "exclusionary" tactics are. The
scholars I cited all examined your work substantively and reviewed
the materials you relied on to come to your conclusions. Other than
the fact that they came to a different conclusion as you, how are
their studies exclusionary? Is this simply an accusation of bias?

>>>VKR: Now to specific statements by Chris Price:

Price: "First, some of the works pointed to as "examples" of this
convention -- such as A. Tacitus' Clitophon and Leucippe -- fail
because they are written from the first person perspective
throughout."

VKR: Please notice that this should be Achilles Tatius, not A.
Tacitus. Also, the title is Leucippe and Clitophon (Leucippe first).
To say my argument "fails" is an exaggeration motivated by something
other than careful observation. The point is that first person
plural narration is "often a preferred style of discourse" for
recounting a sea voyage, because the social experience of
participating in a small community during the voyage is so close to
hand. I wonder, in this regard, if Price wants to argue that the
first person narrational style of Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and
Clitophon proves that Achilles Tatius actually was an eye witness
participant in all the events in the story! This is the point he
seems to want to argue. He is intentionally misreading my
identification of sea voyage narrated in first person plural toward
his own exclusionary goals (i.e., every possibility is to be excluded
except the conclusion that Luke had these experiences as an
eye-witness participant).<<<<

Perhaps now I have a better understanding of what you mean by
exclusionary. It appears that you are accusing me and all of the
scholars I refer to as ruling out every possibility but one? Other
than the fact that I and these scholars disagree with you, how did
you arrive at that conclusion? And surely it does not apply to
Stanley Porter, who does not come to the conclusion that Luke had
these experiences as an eye-witness participant, but still evaluates
your theory and disagrees with it: "[Robbins] does not seem to have
established the existence of an ancient literary form used to relate
sea voyages, and certainly has not yet demonstrated that it is
relevant for discussion of Acts." S. Porter, Paul in Acts, 24.

As for my initial First point, I am grateful for the correction as to
the Tatius. My apologies.

However, my point was not that Tatius' work was real history, but
that it did not support your contention that there existed a literary
convention to portray sea-voyages in the first-person plural. As you
noted, unlike Acts, Clitophon and Leucippe does not switch back and
forth between the first and third person perspectives, it is in the
first-person throughout the entire work.

And no, I do not imply that is because it is a true account. Not at
all. As I understand it, Tatius' work is an ancient greek Romance
Novel. The author uses the first person not because of any
sea-voyages therein, but because most of the story is written from
the perspective of one of the main characters, Clitophon; "whose
autobiographical account of his amorous misfortunes constitutes the
rest of the narrative." Steve Nimis, Memory and Description in the
Ancient Novel, at 6. montgomery.cas.muohio.edu/nimissa/MemoDescr.pdf

>>>> VKR: Price: "Second, there are more examples of third-person
sea voyage accounts -- such as Seneca's Agamemnon -- from that
period than there are first-person accounts. And this includes those
writings, discussed above, that are completely written in the first
person or are of actual sea voyages. This indicates that no
convention for the use of the first-person for sea voyages
existed."

VKR: What kind of exclusionary concept is "convention" in this last
sentence? Does convention mean that "everyone has to do it this
way"? Some people will write according to a "convention," while
others will not. Again Price has used exaggeration motivated by
something other than careful reading of my essays and the data to
which they point.<<<<<<

At the very least, this indicates that any such "convention" was a
minority approach to sea-voyages. I take the term "convention" to
mean a prevailing practice. Perhaps I have taken the term too
broadly. If so I apologize. But because that is how I viewed the
term, I thought the fact that the majority of ancient sea-voyages
accounts were not written according to the proposed "convention"
indicated that if such a practice even existed, it was a minority
practice. As such, it should not merely be assumed that references
to "we" that coincide with sea-voyages in ancient literature are the
product of this convention--as opposed to personal accounts.

>>>>> VKR: Price: "Third, Robbins simply misreads, misunderstands,
or mischaracterizes those texts were there appears to be a shift form
the third-person on land to the first-person at sea. See Praeder,
"The Problem," at 211-12; Hemer, Acts of the Apostles, at 317-318."

VKR: There is a lot of negative energy latent in these words. In
the essays, my primary activity is a description of the data, style,
and remarkable description of adventure in the sea voyages. A person
who uses the words "misreads, misunderstands, or mischaracterizes
those texts" has either not read the essays I have written or is
trying to argue "one point at the
exclusion of all others."<<<<<<

I apologize for the negative energy. I do not question your motives
or your abilities, only your conclusions.

But it appears that your response is merely to cast doubt on my
motives (and that of not a few other respected scholars). You do not
address my discussion, for example, of the Voyage of Hanno. Either
the literature you cite supports your conclusion or it does not.
Surely there must be some level of supporting examples of the
"convention" if one existed?

That is why I brought up one of your most important examples--The
Voyage of Hanno.

I will recap from my initial post and then expound: "Most notably,
one of his prime examples, The Voyage of Hanno, shifts from the
third person to the first person at the very beginning of the story
because it was shifting from the introduction to the actual story of
the voyage. But even more important is the fact that the Voyage of
Hanno IS an eyewitness account of an actual, historical voyage."

How can Hanno be an example of a literary convention depicting
sea-voyages in the first-person plural when it is in the first-person
plural because it is written from the vantage point of an actual
participant (or participants) of the voyage?

To rely on what I hope can be accepted as a "non-exclusionary"
source, Stanley Porter makes the same point: "Hanno ... is more
straightforward than their presentation of it might lead one to
believe. The use of third person at the beginning of the document
... is reflective of the conventions of the scientific preface that
Alexander has studied in detail (Cite: L. Alexander, Preface to
Luke's Gospel, esp. 101).... The preface, which consists of the
declaration by the Carthaginians regarding the sailing task of Hanno,
is followed by a description of the voyage that the author undertook,
conveyed throughout the rest of the work, as one might expect, in the
first person plural." Id. at 21. As Porter asks, "If this were a
valid parallel, just as this account in Hanno purports to be the
record of an actual voyage by the narrator, are we to take the 'we'
passages in Acts as the same kind of record?" Id. at 22.

I could have raised similar objections to the other examples cited to
support your conclusions and would be happy to do so. Here, I will
add two others:

The Third Syrian War. Although you rely on this fragmentary report
about the Third Syrian War as an example of a shift between the first
and third persons, it appears that the shift here is an actual one
not dictated by literary conventions. The "we" passages refer to the
Ptolemies, who were attacking by sea, as opposed to "they" who were
their enemies, the Seleucids. As Ben Witherington states in The Acts
of the Apostles, "In the Syrian War text the shift from third to
first person is a sign of authorial participation after the recording
of events in which the author didn't participate." Witherington, at
483.


Porter agrees, while also noting that the account is mutilated: "the
four column text is so fragmentary that one must work from at text
missing the first half of every line of the first and third columns
(the third is worse than the first), and thus without a continuous
sense. It appears that 'we' is used for the Ptolemies, whose
spokesman is narrating the account, and 'they' is used for the
Seleucids." Porter, at 23.

The use of "we" has to do with the identity of the actors, not their
location. Therefore, it does not appear offer support for the
existence of a literary convention that sea-voyages be portrayed in
the third-person.

Dio Chrysostom. As with the Voyage of Hanno, it appears that what we
have here is the recounting of a personal account. The author does
not shift from the third-person to the first person because the story
focuses on a sea-voyage, but because the author is recounting
accounts he claimed to have participated in. The very beginning of
the discourse begins, "I Shall now relate a personal experience of
mine, not merely something I have heard from others (7.1)." Indeed,
it appears that the passage referred to by Robbins as being in the
first-person plural is in fact referring to a land journey.

It appears to me that these examples to ot support the existence of a
literary convention for depicting sea-voyages in the third-person.
This does not mean that they are true, historical accounts, just that
there are other explanations for the first-person plural, such as
they
are works of fiction written from the perspective of a main character
or discreditable claims to have been a participant.

I apologize again for separating the two points, but I hope to
address
whether, supposing the existence of such a convention, there is
sufficient reason to conclude that it was used in Acts.

Chris Price, Esq.
Los Angeles, CA