Conceiving Acts 6.1 – 8.40 as Diaspora By Arthur Francis Carter, J

646 Pages·2016·3.8 MB·English

by  Arthur Carter

Diaspora Poetics & (re)Constructions of Differentness:
Conceiving Acts 6.1 – 8.40 as Diaspora

By

Arthur Francis Carter, Jr.

Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School of Vanderbilt University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in

Religion

May, 2016

Nashville, Tennessee

Approved:
Daniel Patte, Ph.D.
Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, Ph.D.
Joseph Rife, Ph.D.
Houston A. Baker, Jr., Ph.D.
Gary S. Phillips, Ph.D.
Susan Hylen Ph.D.
Annalisa Azzoni, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2016 by Arthur Francis Carter, Jr.
All Rights Reserved
DEDICATION

To Nikki, my wife, along with my mother, father and Andrew for all your
love, patience and support, Thank you. For petit un...
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
DEDICATION .............................................................................................................................. iii
Introductions .................................................................................................................................. 1
INTRODUCTION: AN ENTRÉE TO CONTEXTUAL SIGHT(S) ............................................................... 2
Proposing ........................................................................................................................................ 2
Bounded by Intellect: It’s So Dark Outside (of history) ................................................................. 4
Archiving Power: Perceiving History as Discourse ................................................................................... 8
History, the Grand Metanarrative ............................................................................................................ 24
Program ........................................................................................................................................ 33
Part I Methodological Overture: A Social and Cultural Texture for Reading Acts as a
Black American Scholar .............................................................................................................. 42
CHAPTER 1 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES: SHADOWS AND ACTS ......................................................... 43
Scholarly Readings of Acts with Hegelian Eyes .......................................................................... 43
What is Acts? ................................................................................................................................ 87
CHAPTER 2 TAXONOMY AND LANGUAGE: CONTEXTUALIZING CONTEXT(S) FOR (RE)READINGS
OF ACTS AND SELF ........................................................................................................................... 92
Epistemologies with le Même and le Divers ................................................................................. 97
Perspective: Exegesis and Socio-Rhetorical Language ............................................................. 102
Context(s) ................................................................................................................................... 107
Analytical Foreground: Black American as Interpretive Context............................................... 111
Poetics not Poetry ....................................................................................................................... 115
CHAPTER 3 COMMON SITES AS UNIVOCAL SIGHT: THE MANY TRAJECTORIES OF DIASPORA IN
DIASPORA STUDIES ........................................................................................................................ 134
Beginnings .................................................................................................................................. 134
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 134
Overview of Diaspora (re)Conceived .................................................................................................... 135
Diaspora Studies and its Constructs ............................................................................................ 142
Outlook .................................................................................................................................................. 142
Framing Diaspora Studies as Economy ................................................................................................. 146
Categorizing Discussion of Diaspora: Define, Approach and Use ........................................................ 152
Defining the Word Diaspora ...................................................................................................................... 152
Approaching Diaspora as Heuristic Concept ............................................................................................. 154
Using Diaspora, Doing Research ............................................................................................................... 159
The Diaspora of Diaspora Studies and Its Unilinear Metanarrative ........................................... 161
The Presentation of a Fixed Point of Origin for Diaspora (b)................................................................ 162
Conceptual Overview ................................................................................................................................ 162
Presentations of a Fixed Point of Origin for Diaspora in Practice ............................................................. 165
Petrified Root: Diaspora Origin(s), a Disciplined Consensus ................................................................... 178
Fossilized Construction(s): Diaspora Semantics, a Disciplined Consensus .............................................. 183
Extending Diaspora as Paradigmatic Root and Beyond: Trajectory and Scholarly Application (mx).. 187
Conceptual Overview ................................................................................................................................ 187
Application by Analogy (x) ....................................................................................................................... 190
Unilinear Metanarratives (m) ..................................................................................................................... 192
Origin as Paradigm: Figures, Analogy and the Poetic Game of Diaspora Studies ..................................... 198
Diaspora (x) = mx+ a Jewish Origin ..................................................................................................... 209
Part II A Poetics of Diaspora Discourse: (re)Conceiving Difference, (re)Reading Contexts
as Ideological Texture ................................................................................................................ 211
CHAPTER 4 PATHWAYS: RECONSTRUCTING THE FUNCTION OF DIASPORA ............................... 212
iv
Objective, Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 212
(Re)Reading the Archive: Assessing Amnesia and Memory ...................................................... 217
Overview ............................................................................................................................................... 217
Recovering Sources: Non-Theoretical Diaspora as Metonym and Non-Location ................................. 222
Contextualizing Reference Works before 1960 ......................................................................................... 226
Recalling Contexts and Foundations: Theorizing Diaspora as Biblical Construct ................................ 253
Founding Deviations and Biblical Studies: Jonathan and Daniel Boyarin, Barclay and Segovia ......... 270
Diaspora and Ancient Usage: (re)Assessing Etymology and Historical Meaning ...................... 275
Introduction: Diaspora not Sowing ........................................................................................................ 275
Diaspora from Διασπείρω (Diaspeirō) ................................................................................................... 281
Diaspora as Διασπορά (Diaspora) ......................................................................................................... 285
Διασπορά (diaspora) in Plutarch (or the Classics?) ................................................................................... 286
Διασπορά (diaspora) and the LXX ............................................................................................................ 295
The Beginnings of an Ancient Concept ...................................................................................... 308
A Diaspora of Differentness .................................................................................................................. 309
CHAPTER 5 DIASPORA POETICS VIA BLACK AMERICAN DISCOURSE AND CRITICISM .............. 313
Introduction: Poetics as Ideological Texture .............................................................................. 313
Ideological Texture as Purview: Reading Black American Discourse as Occasion .................. 319
Selma as Setting, Setting Selma in Diaspora ......................................................................................... 319
The Politics of Black American Identity in Discourse ............................................................................... 321
Identity Politics and Racialized Blackness ................................................................................................ 328
Discourse as Negotiation: Polyvocality and the Generation of Conflict ................................................... 333
Considering Black American Discourse: (Re)Viewing Selma, (Re)Viewing Obama: .......................... 343
The Speech as Diaspora Discourse ............................................................................................................ 343
Ideology and the Myopic Evaluation of Black American Discourse ......................................................... 348
Formalizing/Recognizing Poetics in my Gaze ....................................................................................... 367
CHAPTER 6 IMPLEMENTATIONS: MODELING POETICS IN TRADITION FOR THE READING OF
ACTS ............................................................................................................................................... 372
Overview: Confession as Context for a Diaspora Poetics of Black America ........................................ 372
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 372
A Confession of Indebtedness ................................................................................................................... 373
Critical Spaces: Diaspora Poetics in Tradition ........................................................................... 378
Criticism as Context and Ideology ........................................................................................................ 378
A Diaspora Tradition of Scholarship and Criticism ................................................................................... 381
Critical Approaches: Diversity .................................................................................................................. 392
Character, Figure and Poetics in Black American Discourse ..................................................................... 405
Two Readings of Empire: Can a Poetics of Diaspora “Work” in Alternative Contexts? .......... 412
Overview ................................................................................................................................................... 412
With Malice towards None: Desdunes and Particularity in Black America .......................................... 414
Imperial Existence 1: The Nadir of American Race Relations .................................................................. 414
Local Context 1 ......................................................................................................................................... 415
Textual Content, a Description 1 ............................................................................................................... 417
Poetics at Work 1 ....................................................................................................................................... 421
Cowley-30 (B19): Jedaniah and the Antiquity of Jewish Particularity and Diaspora in Persian Egypt. 436
Local Context 2 ......................................................................................................................................... 436
Imperial Existence 2: A Nadir in Elephantine Relations ........................................................................... 437
Textual Content, a Description: 2 .............................................................................................................. 443
Poetics at Work 2 ....................................................................................................................................... 445
Concluding a Construction .................................................................................................................... 456
Part III Acts 6.1 – 8.40 as Diaspora Discourse: A Socio-Rhetorical and Contextual Reading
..................................................................................................................................................... 458
v
CHAPTER 7 READING CONTEXTS OF DIASPORA: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL TEXTURES FOR ACTS
IN EARLY IMPERIAL ROME ........................................................................................................... 459
Overview ................................................................................................................................................... 459
Broad Influences of Empire on Diaspora .................................................................................... 461
Polytheism, the Imperial Cult and Le Même ......................................................................................... 461
Hellenization and Hellenism ................................................................................................................. 470
Origins and Overview ................................................................................................................................ 470
Hellenism as Hybrid Model and not Dichotomy ....................................................................................... 473
Excursus: Knowing as Cultural Facility in Hellenistic Culture ................................................................. 478
The Second Sophistic as Cultural Phenomenon, Strategy and Worldview ................................................ 482
Conflict, Exile, Geography and the Geopolitics of Migration ............................................................... 497
Local Conflict and War ............................................................................................................................. 498
Exile and Cosmopolitanism ....................................................................................................................... 499
Individual Articulations of Diaspora via Diaspora Discourse .................................................... 503
Overview ................................................................................................................................................... 503
Philo and Josephus, 4 Maccabees and Jewish Literary Negotiation of Diaspora .................................. 504
Philo and Josephus ..................................................................................................................................... 504
Four Maccabees as Second Sophistic Strategy .......................................................................................... 514
Summation ................................................................................................................................................. 518
Lucian and non-Jewish Diaspora in Rome ............................................................................................ 519
Complex Identity in the Roman East ......................................................................................................... 519
Lucian and Invocations of the Patris ......................................................................................................... 524
Reading the Social and Cultural Texture: Diaspora and Geopolitical Particularity as Emphasized
Context in Acts ........................................................................................................................... 532
CHAPTER 8 A CONCLUDING OVERTURE: ACTS 6.1 – 8.40 AS SITE OF DIASPORA ...................... 535
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 535
An Inner Texture Description of Diaspora Acts ......................................................................... 539
Overview ................................................................................................................................................... 539
Plot Progression, Geographic Movement and Travel: Acts as Non-linear Narrative ........................... 540
Changing Faces: Luke’s Use of Multiple Subjects .................................................................................... 543
Inconsistent Outcomes and Unexpected Audiences ................................................................................... 544
Geopolitical and Ethno-Cultural Diversity among Luke’s Jewish Actors ............................................. 547
The Identity Politics of “We” Passages ..................................................................................................... 554
Summary Finding .................................................................................................................................. 558
Prolegomena to Diaspora Acts: Acts 6.1 – 8.40 ......................................................................... 558
A Prolegomenon to Reading Acts 6.1 -7: From Diaspora Discord to Representation Outline ............ 561
Differentness .............................................................................................................................................. 561
Narrative Description................................................................................................................................. 563
A Prolegomenon to Reading Acts 6.8 – 8.3: Minority Mess and the Politics of Authenticity ............ 567
Outline ....................................................................................................................................................... 567
Differentness .............................................................................................................................................. 569
Narrative Description................................................................................................................................. 571
A Prolegomenon to Reading Acts 8.4 – 25: Bridging Boundaries and Inclusion of the Other-Us ...... 577
Outline ....................................................................................................................................................... 577
Differentness .............................................................................................................................................. 578
Narrative Description................................................................................................................................. 581
A Prolegomenon to Reading Acts 8.26 – 40: Diaspora Sites as Imperial Discourse ........................... 585
Outline ....................................................................................................................................................... 585
Differentness .............................................................................................................................................. 585
Narrative Description................................................................................................................................. 591
Open Proposal: Reading Acts 6.1 – 8.40 as Diaspora ............................................................... 594
vi
Appendix ..................................................................................................................................... 597
APPENDIX A EQUATIONS, FUNCTIONS AND MATHEMATICS AS ANALOGY ................................. 598
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 598
The Constituent Parts of Equations and Functions ..................................................................... 598
Operators ............................................................................................................................................... 598
Constants ............................................................................................................................................... 600
Variables ................................................................................................................................................ 600
Equations and Functions: Statements, Analogies, and World-Systems ...................................... 601
Equations: an Overview ........................................................................................................................ 601
Reading Acts 27 with Math: Pauline Destiny as a Linear Function .......................................... 604
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 609
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 611

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Introductions

1
Introduction: An Entrée to Contextual Sight(s)
Proposing
Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that
of the word. And by this I mean the word in all its complex formulations,
from the proverb to the novel and stage play, the word with all its subtle
power to suggest and foreshadow overt action while magically disguising
the moral consequences of that action and providing it with symbolic and
psychological justification. For if the word has the potency to revive and
make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison and destroy.
Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Acts1

A work of advice has two natures; on one hand, it teaches what things are
to be engaged; on the other, what things to avoid at all cost [τὰ δὲ
φεύγειν].
Lucian of Samosata, How to Write History2

I can remember being nervous. Having gone back and forth for months, waiting
for the perfect time. I tried to imagine every possible response or follow-up question.
Yet, I could not know with certainty what was to come. Honestly, I was still uncertain of
the appropriateness. My significant other did not belong to her father, and in fact, will
never be anyone’s property. The intention was not to ask for his permission but to inform
him of my desire to propose, in a way that was responsive and respectful to any of his
possible feelings, doubts, concerns or queries. I wanted: to be humble and considerate; to
show respect for all parties involved; to respect the communal aspect with which both our
families view the institution. I had the makings of a proposal, and I wanted its expression
to be an accurate representation of the dreams in my head.

1 Ralph Ellison, “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity,” in The Collected
Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. John F. Callahan, Modern Library Edition. (New York: Random House LLC,
2003), 81.
2 Lucian of Samosata, “Quomodo historia conscribenda sit (Greek),” in Luciani Samosatensis
Opera, ed. Karl Jacobitz, vol. II, Logos Edition. (Medford, MA: in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1913), 6.1.
2
This time was a period of significant reflection, personal inventory, preparation
and imagination. I was continuously remembering my past, our past and envisioning the
various trajectories that the future could hold. Knowledge, in this circumstance, was little
more than hopeful conjecture modeled upon the admixtures that were my mind’s
narratives: amalgamated perceptions of past experiences and possible, analogous
tomorrows. Within those contemplative moments, I crafted narratives of tomorrow:
some with joy; some with pain. It was in that process of critical reflection and narrative-
making that I could prepare to engage in the uncertain processes that lay ahead.
Regardless of the decisions to come, my future would be the fecund, generative synthesis
of the narratives of my imagination and daily responses through my actions. Before the
proposal, my mind envisioned future histories, and these narratives emboldened and
cautioned me toward that preparatory moment.
Albert Einstein once opined to a reporter that, “[i]magination is more important
than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”3 It is with this
notion of the imagination’s narrative-making power that I initiate the following study on
the poetics of diaspora discourse and its exegetical usefulness for cultural critical
readings of Acts 6 – 8. In much the same way, the work below is a proposal that mirrors
the contemplative moments described above. It is equal parts personal inventory, self-
reflection, critical analysis, narrative construction and reconstruction within a matrix of
overlapping spheres and contexts that I encounter and negotiate with consideration,
humility and respect. My knowledge of diaspora and the ancient world—where one
understands knowledge as a discursive model built from assertions, generalities and logic

3George Sylvester Viereck, “What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview,” Saturday Evening Post,
October 26, 1929.
3