b. Exorcism of a Powerful Spirit (16:16–18)
b. Exorcism of a Powerful Spirit (16:16–18)
Paul’s ministry in Philippi offers an example of his Gentile mission and fits Acts’ theme that nothing can hinder the gospel (Acts 28:31).[1234] The passage also illustrates how Jesus’s ministry is carried into a new context. Just as Jesus silenced demons’ superhuman “testimony” to his identity (Luke 4:34–35), so here does Paul. Just as Jesus faced suffering for challenging established religious and perhaps economic interests as well as spiritual powers (cf., e.g., Luke 8:32–37), so did Paul. This passage emphasizes that the preaching of the gospel and the establishment of new churches are worth the endurance of suffering (as the response of God’s servants acknowledges in Acts 16:25).[1235] It also offers divine vindication for God’s servants, although even Luke, despite his generally upbeat narration, does not always believe that this vindication comes in the same way (cf. 7:54–60).
I. THE SLAVE AND HER EXPLOITERS (16:16)
That the missionaries continued to go to the place of prayer means, presumably, that they were welcome in this Jewish or quasi-Jewish group (in contrast to some other Jewish groups, such as in 17:5); probably these Diaspora women who attended also considered it a privilege to have authentic Judean teachers among them. Both Acts and Paul’s writings suggest that, from his perspective, Paul left local Jewish gatherings only under duress (Acts 17:3–5, 11–13; 18:4–7; 19:8–9; 2 Cor 11:25).
That the new group continued to meet at the prayer site outside the city gate (Acts 16:13) may suggest a level of restriction or potential hostility in Philippi (confirmed in 16:20–21). This location may, however, have been only one possible meeting site; groups could normally meet freely in patrons’ homes, particularly if the patron held some status.[1236] Although Lydia was not a citizen of Philippi, her resources were probably sufficient to minimize suspicions of subversion if friends met in her home (cf. 16:40), whether to practice their traditional form of Judaism or its Christian form.
That the slave girl (παιδίσκη) was young reinforces the allusion to the mantic girl at Delphi (discussed further below), with whom Luke’s further description probably makes a connection. (In the broader milieu, it might be relevant that children were also often thought more susceptible to inspiration.)[1237] In Luke’s larger narrative, the slave girl may contrast with the true prophetic women, daughters, and youth and especially with the “female servants” (δούλας) in 2:17–18. A servant girl (παιδίσκη) exposed Peter as a follower of Jesus (Luke 22:56), and he denied it (22:57). Later, positively and by contrast, another servant girl (παιδίσκη; her name naturally preserved by tradition because she was part of the Christian community) revealed Peter and was disbelieved (Acts 12:13–15); here the servant girl reveals Paul to non-Christian hearers but by negative means. In contrast to Peter’s first (and negative) encounter with a παιδίσκη, Paul does not deny that he is Jesus’s follower; he acts only as Jesus did in silencing demons (Luke 4:35, 41).[1238]
That the slave girl had multiple owners (pl. κυρίοις) could mean that they were a husband and a wife,[1239] but ancient practice also allows us to accept that it could refer to joint ownership by others, whether relatives or not.[1240] Luke himself is aware of this kind of situation (Luke 16:13;[1241] for animals, 19:33). Owners could divide shares in slaves, their children inheriting in the same proportions. Slaves could also be rented, with each owner receiving a share of the deposit.[1242] Thus, for example, a man could make money off slave children who provided entertainment for banquets (Xen. Symp. 2.1). Joint ownership of a slave woman sometimes led to conflict or even violence in antiquity (Lysias Or. 4.1, §100); one owner charges that another paid only half the money but now refuses to share the woman (4.8, §101), though both paid equal shares (4.13, §101).[1243] (On slaves, see the lengthy excursus at Acts 12:13,[1244] which is intended to supply background for the present passage as well as for Acts 12:13.)
If the slave girl belonged to several priests or a corporation, all Romans (16:21), their cumulative status and hence their influence in bringing charges (16:19–21) would be even greater than singly.[1245] Her own ancestry would not be from the Roman colonists, since she was a slave. Further, the Roman colonists pursued Roman religion, which tended to focus on other sorts of divinatory practices, whereas prophecy of the sort associated with Delphi was a more Greek phenomenon.[1246] Romans could consult her, but she was probably culturally and linguistically Greek.
She brought her owners ἐργασίαν, “business,”[1247] hence profit. Given the fees for oracular consultation at stationary shrines,[1248] their profits were no doubt handsome. Luke opposes trafficking in spiritual things for a profit (8:18, 20; cf. 3:6; 20:33–35).
Perhaps eager to avoid confusing biblical and Christian prophecy with the pagan forms of prophetism, Luke avoids his usual term προφητεύω,[1249] which appeared often in the LXX even though a cognate was often used to describe the Pythian priestess at Delphi.[1250] Instead he prefers a term (μαντεύομαι) used in the LXX exclusively for pagan or false prophecy.[1251] Μαντεύομαι appears frequently in pagan prophetic usage and nowhere else in the NT.[1252]
Although the expression πνεῦμα πύθωνα can sometimes be used more broadly for an “oracular spirit,” especially in later sources,[1253] the language’s most common and traditional use would probably recall more specific associations for much of Luke’s audience. Most commentators recognize the Delphic background of Luke’s comment here.[1254] Although a “python” itself would normally be a negative image,[1255] Greeks viewed it positively in any context related to prophecy. “Spirit of a pythoness” would entail a spirit like the one that possessed the Pythia, Apollo’s oracular priestess, with what was considered highly reliable prophetic information.[1256]
The “pythoness” title ultimately goes back to the story of Apollo’s defeat of the giant serpent Python.[1257] Apollo then allegedly established the Pythian Games to celebrate the event (Ovid Metam. 1.445–47).[1258] Literature frequently designated Apollo as “Pythian,” associating him with this victory and/or with the Pythian oracle he controlled at Delphi.[1259] Although other deities were sometimes associated with prophecy,[1260] Greeks and Romans associated especially Apollo with this “art.”[1261]
Educated Diaspora Jews would have had no trouble understanding Luke’s association;[1262] they were also aware of Apollo’s association with prophecy[1263] and his oracle at Delphi.[1264] Their basic background knowledge about surrounding Greek religion should hardly surprise us; many Jews knew of Greek mythical themes, such as the “Titans”;[1265] Josephus even occasionally demonstrates his good Greek with the phrase “by Zeus.”[1266] When Josephus reports someone’s mocking Antigonus by calling him “Antigone,” alluding to a Greek tragedy (War 1.353), he expects his audience to understand his allusion. Some Diaspora Jews even adopted Greek myths, just as they appropriated for their own use the Greek prophetic genre of Sibylline oracles. Thus Orpheus’s pupil Musaeus became instead Moses, now Orpheus’s teacher.[1267] Job supposedly named a daughter “Amaltheia’s Horn” (i.e., the cornucopia).[1268] Pagan symbols in Jewish art include cupids, fertility symbols, griffins, and Pegasus; astral symbols modeled after pagan models (including Helios); centaurs (on several later Palestinian synagogues); and Gorgons.[1269] Luke’s expectations for his audience’s familiarity with Greek religion are in fact quite modest by comparison with those of many of his contemporaries.
The specific title “Pythia” (pythoness)[1270] referred to Pythian Apollo’s priestess and mouthpiece at Delphi;[1271] this oracle appears widely in ancient literature.[1272] Only a virgin from Delphi qualified for the role, but in the oracle’s heyday the sanctuary might keep two or three ready.[1273] The Pythia’s pronouncements were widely regarded as accurate,[1274] and literature testifies to individuals[1275] and nations[1276] inquiring from and obeying the oracle.[1277] In more remote times the Pythia gave utterances only one day a year; her activity was more frequent (at least monthly) in more recent times, though most inquirers on most days depended on the casting of lots.[1278]
In most sources, the Pythian priestess would prophesy from a tripod seat.[1279] Plutarch claims that she went into mad ecstasy but returned to calm sobriety after leaving “her tripod and its exhalations” (Dial. L. 16, Mor. 759B [LCL, 9:367]). He describes (Obsol. 9, Mor. 414E) the Pythian spirits by a term that came to mean acting as a “ventriloquist,” making one’s voice seem to come from elsewhere, but probably originally meant “pregnant” with the deity, perhaps at least implying speech with a strange voice.[1280] Plutarch, however, elsewhere reports the view that the inspiration came only to her mind, so that the voice and all physical features stemmed from the woman.[1281] Valerius Maximus claims that Appius forced the Pythia to descend to the
innermost part of the sacred cave, from which, while definite answers are sought for those who consult, the breath of the divine spirit is deadly to those who give the replies. So, driven by the impulse of the power she had seized, the girl prophesied the fate of Appius in a terrifying sounding voice and obscure riddles.[1282]
Others also described this inspiration. Apollo’s power “impregnated” and then inspired the Pythia (Longin. Subl. 13.2). The priestesses prophesy when they are “ecstatic” (ἐκστῶσιν) and afterward remember nothing (Ael. Arist. Def. Or. 34–35, §11D).[1283] Seated on the tripod, the Pythia is filled with the divine breath (Dio Chrys. Or. 72.12 [LCL, 5:187]). She is possessed by a divine spirit and the divine fire from the cavern.[1284] Some claimed that there were different kinds of inspiration and that the power of the earth inspired (incitabat) the Pythian priestess at Delphi as nature’s power inspired the Sibyl.[1285] A δαίμων filled her before she prophesied; these spirits were associated with other important oracles (including Dodona, Ammon, and Claros) as well (Max. Tyre 8.1).[1286] A Jewish source speaks of the Pythia’s frenzy (Sib. Or. 11.315, 318).
Lucan paints this frenzy most graphically, although he certainly exaggerates;[1287] he depicts full possession, Apollo controlling the virgin priestess’s soul and lips (C.W. 5.97–101). Without signs of stirring and divine frenzy, she could be feigning her inspiration; when genuinely possessed, however, her voice would fill the whole cavern; her hair would bristle, and the wreath would rise from her head (5.148–57).[1288] Apollo “forced his way into her body,” banishing her thoughts as he seized possession of her; her head tossed, her hair bristled, things were overturned, and the fire of Apollo’s wrath burned inside her. This possession tortured her from within, yielding frenzy and foaming lips, inarticulate panting and groans, wailing, and finally articulate speech (5.165–93).
Possession trance often appeared to outsiders as madness when witnessed outside the cultic context.[1289] Plato envisions four kinds of ecstasy, one of the most important being prophetic, associated with Apollo (Phaedr. 265B); although also linked with the geographically unattached Sibyl and Bacis, prophetic ecstasy was primarily linked to oracle locations, especially Delphi, Didyma, and Claros.[1290] Virgil associates this prophetic ecstasy with divine possession (Aen. 6.77–80).[1291] (For fuller discussion of ecstasy in many forms of prophetic inspiration, see the excursus on prophecy at Acts 2:17–18.)[1292]
The sort of madness (μανία) that came from the gods was superior to sanity (Ael. Arist. Def. Or. 53, §17D). Being prophetically seized by the divine was periodic rather than continuous (e.g., Arrian Alex. 4.13.5–6). The δαίμονες spoke “through human bodies, just as the pipe-player Ismenias used his skill to produce notes from his pipe” (Max. Tyre 9.1 [Trapp, 77]). (Some Christian writers argued that Christian prophecy, unlike “possession,” was controllable.)[1293]
Nevertheless, the Pythia’s speech was intelligible, not gibberish (see comment on Acts 2:4).[1294] That her utterances were obscure allowed for professional interpretation, which was useful for the temple’s cultic staff, who could benefit from the fee involved.[1295]
3. Apollo’s Oracles beyond Delphi
Some later Platonist philosophers suggested that some beings were called “Apollo” merely because they were subordinates belonging to the chain of beings of which Apollo was the head.[1296] Of perhaps greater relevance for Acts 16:16 (whose portrayed events transpire far from Delphi, which was near Corinth), “Pythian” was not limited to Delphi when applied in a broad sense;[1297] as Apollo’s epithet, it could be extended to other locations where Apollo acted. Thus Josephus claims that Herod the Great built a Pythian temple for the Rhodians (Ant. 16.147). Though Pausanias reports “Pytho” as the title for Delphi (Paus. 10.6.5),[1298] he mentions an altar (5.15.4) and a ruined sanctuary (8.54.5) elsewhere dedicated to Pythian Apollo. The intelligibility of reference to Pythian Apollo outside Delphi is helpful to remember, given the prevalence of Roman civic religion in Philippi, notably for Silvanus, Diana, Jupiter, and some other Roman deities, alongside the cult of the goddess Bendis (from nearby Thrace).[1299]
Apollo himself was associated with a variety of mantic sanctuaries;[1300] these included the “politically inept” oracle at Didyma south of Miletus, which in a later era urged Diocletian “to persecute Christians and apparently was forced to recant later.”[1301] None, however, was as famous as the one at Delphi (though Delos had long been associated with Apollo).[1302] The Apollo sanctuary was the primary attraction at Delphi.[1303]
Although Sibyls were not Pythian, they apparently often arose “near oracles of Apollo, the god who was believed to inspire them.”[1304] (On Sibyls, see comment at Acts 2:17–18 on prophetesses in antiquity.)[1305] Apollo’s frenzy might completely overpower (the original) Sibyl (Virg. Aen. 6.77–102). The utterances of these women were highly regarded and might contribute to the sort of climate in which the slave girl would find a fertile hearing. Apollo was also the deity thought to have inspired Cassandra in the period of the Trojan War;[1306] she might be thought to rave ecstatically.[1307] Some scholars note that Luke includes exorcised women elsewhere,[1308] but only the mention of some women’s deliverance (Luke 8:2, not narrated) and the deliverance of the physically afflicted woman in 13:11–16 qualify. Luke includes more demon-possessed men, and so he does not connect demonization with gender (although this specific spirit, a pythoness spirit, is connected with gender through its allusion to the Pythia).
For the most part, however, although Apollo might be titled “Pythian” anywhere, “Pythia” referred to the priestess at Delphi. Apollo’s oracle at Claros did not even use female prophetesses or priestesses,[1309] though it employed a female πρόμαντις as a medium.[1310] (The Delphic sanctuary may not have used the Pythia in the earliest period, but this was many centuries before.)[1311] The Pythia might serve for life and was required to remain chaste.[1312]
Sometimes Apollo’s prophecies came to pass years later and only metaphorically (Plut. Alex. 37.1). Often the Pythia’s answer was obscure,[1313] and so the receiver did not understand it without another’s help (Apollod. Bib. 3.15.6). (Sometimes this obscurity may have been a way for the oracle to hedge its bets,[1314] but it did typify ancient oracles.)[1315] In a famous story reported by Herodotus, Croesus found the Delphic oracle the most accurate of all oracles and hence depended heavily on it (Hdt. 1.47ff.); he misunderstood the oracle, however, and the empire that he brought to an end by fighting Cyrus was his own (1.86).[1316] The more cynical critics blamed Croesus’s loss on the oracle’s deliberate ambiguity.[1317]
The philosophically inclined interpreted the Delphic oracle (which had approved Socrates’s wisdom)[1318] through this perspective: Delphic Apollo “is no less a philosopher than a prophet” (Plut. E Delph. 2, Mor. 385B [LCL, 5:203]). Dio Chrysostom claimed that the Delphic temple respected maxims of the ancient sages even more than the Pythia’s utterances (Or. 72.12 [LCL, 5:187]). On the basis of the etymology of Pythagoras’s name, some averred that his ideas came from the Pythia or that he was as infallible as the Pythia (Diog. Laert. 8.1.21); Pythagoras’s followers received his teachings like Pythian oracles (Πυθόχρηστα, Iambl. V.P. 31.213).
5. Hostility toward the Oracle
Jewish teachers and Christians viewed the Pythian oracle less favorably.[1319] The Jewish Sibyl warned that she was no “oracle-monger of false Phoebus [Apollo], whom vain men called a god.”[1320] Rabbis spoke of some occult prophets who merely spoke through their own mouths, but of others speaking for the dead, with “a Python” speaking from such a prophet’s armpits.[1321] (On “false prophets,” see discussion at Acts 13:6.) Second-century Christians were well aware of the Pythian and other oracles.[1322] Some Christians believed that pythons prophesied, but they cast them out as demons.[1323]
A pagan hearer of Luke’s narrative, for whom python spirits were positive or, at worst, neutral, would find baffling the exorcism recounted here in Acts.[1324] The slave girl’s message sounds simply like a “recognition oracle,” a kind of divine legitimation “nearly always uttered without solicitation.”[1325] But the exorcism made perfect sense on monotheistic Jewish and Christian presuppositions. It is not surprising that John Chrysostom read the narrative as a confrontation with Apollo, here recognized as a demon (Hom. Acts 35).[1326]
Even some pagans questioned fortune-telling[1327]—for example, the philosopher Favorinus (Aul. Gel. 14.1, on fortune-telling from astrology)—or mocked the value of foretelling the future if Fate made it inevitable (Lucian Z. Cat. 12–13). Some also entertained the possibility that the Delphic priestess could falsify oracles.[1328] More commonly, many pagans were aware of charlatan prophets with a profit motive;[1329] a fee was also a prerequisite for oracle consultation at the shrines.[1330] Generally, however, consultation with the gods before acting was considered pious, as in Judaism and Christianity, though the method was different (see comment on Acts 16:6–7).
Excursus: Demons and Spirit Possession[1331]
The present excursus serves not only Acts 16:16 but also 19:13 and the summaries suggesting many encounters in 5:16; 8:7; and 19:12. The Greek term δαιμόνιον had a wide range of meaning, but the negative aspects of this range made it one of the most suitable terms for hostile spirits in early Judaism. A wide range of opinions about demons existed in early Judaism, a repertoire that expanded as centuries passed (demonology came to the forefront especially in late antiquity).
Demons’ most direct attack on an individual was through possession. Various prophylactic methods were meant to ward off demonic attacks of diverse kinds, but in the case of possession, a cure took the form of exorcism. Although commands were sometimes employed in exorcisms, as with Paul, they usually belonged to larger incantations and often accompanied various rituals (such as fumigation). Anthropological studies permit us to place possession behavior in ancient texts in a wider context, since such behavior appears in a wide range of societies. Although some expressions of possession vary from one culture to another, some common features, particularly on the neurophysiological level, appear.
Greeks could picture gods[1332] or other spirits[1333] entering a person. The Greek term translated “demon” is not in itself negative,[1334] and the meaning of the term evolved over time.[1335] It could refer to the spirits of the deceased,[1336] including those of prominent heroes of the past;[1337] it could involve good or ill fortune;[1338] it could denote a particular deity[1339] or even deity more generally.[1340] One could even pun on multiple senses of the term.[1341] On a popular level, Greeks close to the early Christian period applied the term increasingly often to the many forces intermediate in character between deities and nature.[1342] (They were thus highly useful for magic,[1343] and even some Jewish texts mention protagonists exploiting the usefulness of “demons.”)[1344]
Greeks often applied the term to deities such as the Olympians,[1345] but more commonly to lower, superhuman spirits and demigods or deified mortals[1346] and sometimes even as the equivalent of the Roman genius.[1347] In time, philosophers who believed the heavenly deities to be transcendent assigned instead to daimones the actions depicted in the poets’ more immanent view of divinities.[1348] Not everyone concurred with this intermediary category between deities and mortals, but it was widely held.[1349] Probably reflecting Diaspora Judaism’s common adaptation of broader religious vocabulary, Josephus freely employs this Hellenistic language for the divine.[1350]
In Middle Platonism, humans could become heroes, daimones, and finally divine; or in some views the daimones could also regress back into mortal bodies and eventually face death.[1351] They were intermediaries connecting and communicating between the divine and human realms.[1352] As in other sources, daimones were associated with oracles, filling, for example, the Delphic priestess before she spoke.[1353] Because these intermediary spirits could be either good or bad, however, the semantic range overlaps with the negative usage. Thus at times,[1354] and increasingly in a later period,[1355] the term could refer to an evil spirit.[1356]
In the early empire, such views seem to have flourished around Palestine and among Arabs.[1357] These views may well have come from farther east. Persian demonology, which included massive numbers of evil demons, bears some resemblance to the common Jewish and Christian perspective,[1358] though none of the relevant sources come from the Parthian period (250 B.C.E.–250 C.E.).[1359] Many Jewish people believed that the gods of the pagans were demons, in any case;[1360] more generally, some Middle Eastern religions demonized the deities of those they supplanted.[1361] Such demons could prove hostile.[1362]
Demonology is rare in the OT,[1364] and a renewed focus on demons (already an interest in surrounding cultures) may have been occasioned by the experience of the exile.[1365] A variety of Jewish conceptions of demonology developed, probably most of them overlapping at the level of popular religion, although it is difficult to know at what period various strands originated. In Josephus, some deadly demons are spirits of wicked persons that enter and kill the living.[1366] In 1 Enoch, many evil spirits are spirits of the deceased giants;[1367] later rabbis thought that such spirits became more powerful after the flood generation.[1368] For some later rabbis, demons impassioned by Adam and Eve used them to reproduce more demons.[1369]
Some Jewish traditions may have adapted Greek concepts, envisioning avenging spirits resembling the Greek Furies (Sir 39:28);[1370] in some other early texts, however, less hellenized views surface—for example, angels of destruction appearing to be spirits serving the evil prince of darkness.[1371] A few texts may also reflect the later Platonic notion[1372] of demons as disembodied souls.[1373] Magical texts reflecting folk religion specify, among other types of demons, groups such as “liliths.”[1374] Some texts also call demons “unclean spirits.”[1375]
Demons were associated with various afflictions, from which deliverance could be sought.[1376] Demons also occasionally were associated with particular or specialized sins,[1377] such as demons of deceit associated with witchcraft and divination,[1378] jealousy,[1379] promiscuity,[1380] arrogance,[1381] lying,[1382] and anger.[1383] Named demons appear early;[1384] one persistent name in Jewish texts is Lilith.[1385] Demons also could cause physical afflictions, as at times in the Gospels,[1386] or even kill people.[1387] Demons could specialize in causing facial blisters (the demon of oil) or headaches, or rule those who imbibe excessive alcohol.[1388] Some sources suggest a special unleashing of demons in the eschatological time before the end.[1389]
One kind of evil spirit dwelt in reed stalks,[1390] and others might be found in palm and other trees;[1391] various trees and bushes harbored various sorts of demons,[1392] as did most vegetables.[1393] Demons might be found in ruins,[1394] in bathhouses,[1395] and in graveyards,[1396] and elsewhere. Apparently, however, they could not attack anyone in the holy city of Jerusalem.[1397] Rabbis reportedly learned some of these traditions from reports offered by demons themselves,[1398] a source, one might think, of dubitable veracity, however firsthand its information.[1399]
Later rabbis thought that some kinds of demons could look like people;[1400] demons could see people but not the reverse, and angels could see demons without the reverse being the case.[1401] Some felt that particular demons might prove helpful.[1402] But in virtually all streams of ancient Jewish tradition, of course, such spirits were subject to and recognized God’s sovereignty.[1403] Demons could also be arranged in ranks or legions.[1404]
Greeks and Romans believed that mantic ecstasy often involved possession by a deity.[1405] The presence of the numinous could generate dread and trembling.[1406] Such madness might be sent by a deity and result in the killing of loved ones;[1407] after a bout of madness, one might have no recollection of the mad behavior.[1408] Madness was routinely associated with daimones.[1409] A ghost might be thought to impart epilepsy, which was viewed as a form of divine possession.[1410]
As noted above (excursus on the pythoness), Lucan claims that Apollo forced himself on the pythoness, invading her body and replacing her thoughts; her head tossed, her hair bristled, things were overturned, and the fire of Apollo’s wrath tortured her from within, yielding frenzy, foaming lips, inarticulate panting and groans, wailing, and finally articulate speech (C.W. 5.165–93). We should not read too much into Lucan’s epic poetry. Archaeology shows that despite literary references, no “mephitic vapors” beneath the Delphic tripod inspired the Pythian priestess.[1411] Nevertheless, neither should we attribute the depiction of her possession behavior altogether to Lucan.[1412] Although lacking Lucan’s elaborate description, both earlier and later sources indicate that she is possessed by a spirit[1413] and goes into mad ecstasy.[1414] Jewish people believed that demons would enter people, forcing them to do what the demons desired.[1415] For further discussion of possession behavior, including for the pythoness, see “Non-Jewish Sources” in the excursus on prophecy at Acts 2:17–18.[1416]
In popular culture, people sought various means of protection from hostile spirits; though much of our documentation comes from one or more centuries after the first century (the heyday of emphasis on demonology is the third century and later), enough evidence attests that demons were a matter of practical concern to popular folk religion already by the first century. A foul-smelling fish product could drive off a demon in Tobit (Tob 6:17; 8:3);[1417] in Josephus, a particular root was useful for driving off deadly demons from an afflicted person (War 7.180, 185).[1418]
Amulets were widespread in the ancient world;[1419] common enough during the republic,[1420] they became even more widespread under the empire.[1421] Magical practices designed to protect against the influence of demons in Sassanian Babylonia (third to seventh centuries C.E.) crossed religious boundaries, as popular syncretism naturally does.[1422] Superstition readily crossed folk boundaries and then would eventually permeate more sophisticated systems as well; for example, Mesopotamian rabbis’ fears about even numbers rendering one susceptible to demons[1423] reflect a broader ancient superstition.[1424]
A Jewish charm might mention hostile demons from which a person needed exorcism.[1425] Later magical amulets in Israel[1426] and incantation texts guaranteeing protection from specific demons[1427] indicate how widespread such views became: beginning no later than the third century, many rabbis thought that the very air around them was crowded with demons,[1428] a view more widely shared in the culture.[1429] Demons were thought to attack people,[1430] but at least the rabbis often viewed them as mortal.[1431] Before the first century, some Jews believed that particular medicines could protect people from evil spirits,[1432] and later rabbis used various folk remedies to ward off such spirits;[1433] some might even hope for warriors to protect them.[1434]
Sages came to urge proper precautions against demonic assaults. Drinking water at night rendered one susceptible to demons;[1435] going out on particular nights of the week was dangerous;[1436] different demons exercised their dangers during different times of the year.[1437]
Rabbinic piety suggested that prayer could render many demons impotent or destroy them, though dealing with such demons was never pleasant.[1438] Other pious acts, such as the erection of the tabernacle, could destroy demons;[1439] fear of God could protect one from them.[1440] As early as Qumran, Jewish people prayed for protection against demonic activity;[1441] in later sources, the protection sought in the Aaronic benediction included protection from demons.[1442] Although Paul’s sample extant letters do not articulate a full demonology, what they do include suggests that they presuppose one, although the extent of its overlap with contemporary understandings is not specified (see, e.g., 1 Cor 10:20; Rom 8:38).[1443]
Most texts about exorcism come from after the first, and often even after the second, century C.E. Although, to some extent, this reflects the proliferation of the demonic worldview in a later period,[1444] it also likely reflects the slowness of the elite (sources of most of our literature) to address popular beliefs and experiences that were already concerning the masses more widely.[1445] In addition to being expelled from people, demons also had to be removed from haunted houses, often by appeasement of a ghost or burial of its bones there.[1446]
One of the earliest pagan reports of wonder-workers casting out demons is placed in second-century Palestine. In this satirical account, the victims “fall down and roll their eyes and fill their mouths with foam,” but then the wonder-worker heals them and takes a good bit of their money.[1447] The exorcist asks the demon through which body part it entered, and it answers either in Greek or in another language; the exorcist then adjures the spirit (cf. Mark 5:7) and threatens it, thus compelling it to leave. The unreliable narrator claims to have seen one smoke-colored daimon emerge.[1448] Origen’s Celsus attacks Jesus as nothing more than a cheap magician of the Egyptian sort in the market, who for a few obols would drive away people’s demons, cure diseases, and teach esoteric doctrines.[1449]
Beyond this, few extant stories of pagan wonder-workers feature exorcisms apart from Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius, which probably draws on Christian as well as other widespread miracle stories of the day.[1450] Apollonius, confronting a youth scoffing at his teaching, identifies the demon in him and orders it out.[1451] In a way quite different from the early Christian accounts, he identifies a blind beggar as a demon and orders it stoned, despite the beggar’s pleas; but once it is dead, it turns into a giant dog.[1452] A homosexual demon, the ghost of a man betrayed by his wife, was pursuing and possessing an attractive boy, threatening to kill him if exorcism was attempted. But Apollonius sent a threatening letter and the demon desisted.[1453] (Other texts also speak of sexually interested spirits.)[1454] Another source claims that Porphyry cast a demon from a bath.[1455] But pagan exorcism is clearly earlier than such literary sources.[1456]
Exorcism is attested more strongly and from an earlier period in Jewish sources,[1457] which came from the East,[1458] though exorcism (in contrast to the mention of demons) is still quite rare in these other sources compared with its occurrence in the Gospels.[1459] The earliest Jesus traditions also recognize other exorcists (Matt 12:27//Luke 11:19).[1460] It might include smoking out a demon with a special substance,[1461] invoking other spirits to expel it,[1462] or even laying on one’s hands in prayer.[1463] As in paganism,[1464] the visible proof of departure by some outward act often remained important.[1465] Solomon[1466] and, to a lesser extent, David[1467] were associated with exorcism or authority over demons for a long period of time. A pre-Lukan writer reports how Abraham cast out a demon that Pharaoh’s magicians could not.[1468]
Most scholars believe that Jesus, historically, gained a reputation as an exorcist,[1469] although the Gospels omit most magical exorcism techniques dominant among other exorcists, such as rings, roots, incantations, and so forth.[1470] Exorcism is connected closely with the gospel of the kingdom, as a concrete manifestation of the deliverance it brings.[1471] Some later Gentile polytheistic accounts borrow from the Gospel accounts.[1472] Christian exorcism shares some other aspects in common with some Jewish exorcisms,[1473] but it especially transformed them by using Jesus’s name.[1474] Justin complains that Jewish exorcists, like Gentiles, depend on “fumigations and incantations,” but unlike Christians, who successfully employ the name of Jesus; no other name could accomplish the same effects.[1475]
Second-century patristic sources unabashedly report Christianity’s spreading especially through exorcisms, claiming Christians’ success in exorcisms as a matter of common knowledge.[1476] Tertullian even challenges the authorities to bring in a demon-possessed person to court; any Christian will make short work of the demon, forcing it to confess its deceit.[1477] If the demons do not immediately confess their identity, he insists, then execute that impudent Christian immediately![1478] Tertullian elsewhere reports a demon being exorcised from a Christian who had gone to the theater. The exorcist demanded how the demon dared enter a Christian; the spirit replied that he “found her on my own ground.”[1479] By the time of Hippolytus (ca. 215 C.E.), many Christians practiced exorcism at baptism,[1480] and it continued to be common in the early church.[1481]
In magical papyri, those who worked with spirits questioned them and expected honest answers.[1482] Incantations were a common means for removing unwanted spirits,[1483] including in early Jewish circles.[1484] A potentially more problematic approach was to appeal to higher spirits to manipulate lower ones.[1485] Sometimes demons express willingness to leave in return for a sacrifice.[1486] Josephus reports that he personally witnessed, in the presence of Vespasian and others, a Jewish exorcist drawing out a demon through a man’s nose by the odor of a special root under his ring’s seal, using Solomon’s incantations.[1487] (Rings that control spirits appear in some Eastern sources, although not pervasively.)[1488] Abraham is said to have simply laid hands on Pharaoh and prayed, thereby curing him from his evil spirit.[1489] In some, often later, sources, Solomon[1490] or others[1491] command demons, perhaps sometimes reminiscently of the Jesus tradition. In the later (probably third-century) Testament of Solomon, the demons bargain for reduced sentences.[1492] Particular angels could thwart particular demons (and those under them), and demons might be compelled to name which angels thwarted them.[1493] Solomon was even said to keep Asmodeus’s strength down by maintaining a fire beneath him.[1494]
6. Cross-Cultural Character of Such Experiences
Although many modern Western students of early Judaism and early Christianity doubt the reality of spirit possession, they admit that ancients believed in such phenomena.[1495] Sometimes heeding concerns from other cultures, some other scholars question modern Western presuppositions about such phenomena;[1496] as one NT scholar puts it, accepting the possibility of malevolent spirits is no more a priori implausible than accepting the possibility of “a good spirit—God.”[1497]
Whether or not one accepts the explanation of invasive spirits, the transcultural phenomenon of possession behavior is impossible to evade, as at least a few NT scholars cognizant of anthropological research have recognized.[1498] Studies have certainly shown “an altered neurophysiology” during many possession states.[1499] Although neurophysiological studies cannot determine whether possession phenomena derive from an “an invading alien being” or from other psychological factors,[1500] neurophysiological changes, including hyperarousal, clearly do occur.[1501] Incidents of “possession” on a notable scale have also been documented, although Westerners may tend to attribute these to mass hysteria.[1502]
We thus need not assume that ancients invented all experiences of possession and deliverance, although writers probably schematized many and invented some of them. Whatever one makes of such experiences, anthropological literature demonstrates conclusively that many peoples do experience possession trance, although the perception, interpretation, and sometimes expression of such experiences vary culturally.[1503] Anthropologists today generally try to study the phenomenon from the perspective of societies that claim it, instead of imposing a Western interpretive grid on it.[1504] Thus one study offers as a working definition of spirit possession “any altered state of consciousness indigenously interpreted in terms of the influence of an alien spirit.”[1505] More-recent studies work harder to take into account the indigenous frame of reference;[1506] although traditional Western categories, often from a medical perspective, make cross-cultural comparison easier, approaches that are more contextualized and phenomenological prove more epistemologically open.[1507]
As Erika Bourguignon points out, belief in spirit possession is widespread in varied cultures around the world, “as any reader of ethnographies knows.”[1508] She sampled 488 diverse, ethnographically representative societies and discovered spirit possession beliefs in 360 societies—that is, in 74 percent of those studied. The beliefs are most attested in the Pacific islands (88 percent), 77 percent around the Mediterranean, and less in the Americas (64 percent in the aboriginal population of North America and 64 percent in South America).[1509] Sixteen percent of the 360 societies have possession trance only, 22 percent have other forms of possession, and 35 percent have both.[1510] One could thus provide examples from a wide variety of societies in most regions of the world,[1511] among them Africa[1512] (including northeastern,[1513] central eastern,[1514] southeastern,[1515] northwestern,[1516] and western[1517]), the Middle East,[1518] Asia,[1519] the Pacific,[1520] and the Americas.[1521]
Possession behavior does not result from all purported interaction with spirits. Shamans in many parts of the world, for example, claim to communicate with spirits but are not taken over by them; some others, however, become completely possessed, whether temporarily or long-term.[1522] Thus, in many traditional African societies, mediums are normally in their own minds except when possessed by a spirit; only during the trance state do they function as mediums.[1523] Spirit possession can be induced or solicited for such purposes by drumming and dancing.[1524]
Some practices are common in particular regions. For example, in Brazilian spiritism,[1525] more than half the cults see spirits of the dead; all but one see supernatural beings; most include possession of mediums, and most include possession of initiates; most include ecstatic trance; more often the mediums are unconscious than conscious; and in most cults, possession can be either spontaneous or induced.[1526] In rural Ghana, possession often includes an initial stupor followed by excited, ecstatic activity;[1527] an established diviner may become possessed to divine what deity is possessing another person.[1528] Among traditional Valley Korekore, spirit possession is common and “danced out” in cult groups, but mediums who speak by spirit possession are rarer.[1529]
Possession behavior varies in some respects among different cultures.[1530] Possession often follows conventions particular to the culture where it occurs,[1531] and some possessed persons seem to exhibit stereotyped responses.[1532] Thus, for example, Somali possession cults lack the emphasis on different spirits with distinct behaviors (in contrast to related Sudanese cults); the possessed dance but do not speak much (in contrast to, e.g., Comoro Islands possession).[1533] By contrast, forms of possession trance vary considerably among individual mediums in Palau.[1534] Even within a single culture, possession behavior sometimes varies widely.[1535] As Bourguignon summarizes, “Because of its psychobiological substrate, it reveals constants wherever we find it. Yet it is subject to learning and by this means, it is amenable to cultural patterning. As such, it takes on a striking variety of forms.”[1536] Moreover, travelers can take particular forms of spirit possession and mediumship with them to societies previously unfamiliar with them.[1537] The nature of cults can change over time;[1538] in some societies, a traditionally serious, therapeutic possession cult has been harnessed increasingly in the direction of entertainment.[1539]
In a wide range of societies, possession results in a major change of personality and in sudden and dramatic shifts in “behavior, timbre and pitch of voice.”[1540] Those leaving the “possession” state often have no recollection of how they acted while “possessed.”[1541] Thus Raymond Firth notes that social anthropologists, approaching spirit possession from a very different standpoint than missionaries, spiritualists, or psychics,
have been faced in the field by dramatic changes of personality in men or women they were studying—startling yet evidently accustomed alterations of behaviour, with trembling, sweating, groaning, speaking with strange voices, assumption of a different identity, purporting to be a spirit not a human being, giving commands or foretelling the future in a new authoritative way. Sometimes it has been hard for the anthropologist to persuade himself that it is really the same person as before whom he is watching or confronting, so marked is the personality change.[1542]
In a number of diverse cultures where it has been observed in the modern world, spirit possession sometimes yields superhuman strength that makes restraint difficult or impossible[1543] and often yields destructiveness,[1544] including self-laceration at times.[1545] Among traditional !Kung Bushmen, younger and less experienced trancers have to be restrained from injuring themselves or others; they are known for grabbing live coals and smearing them on their body, contact with fire from one to five seconds producing burns.[1546] One African scholar describes a case of possession trance he witnessed near Kampala, where the medium banged his head on the floor without injury and, after possession, returned to normalcy.[1547] In many African societies, spirit possession drives the person to live in the forest, to jump into fire, or to use sharp objects to hurt oneself.[1548] According to one report, a possessed child being exorcised of an ancestor spirit hurled “a huge burning log from the fireplace” at the prophets, who dodged it and expelled the spirit.[1549] At a traditional Taiwanese festival, “spirit-mediums” become possessed and flail themselves with instruments of “self-mutilation,” allowing them to show immunity to the pain of their wounds.[1550] It is reported, however, that some “have died of post-possession exhaustion” or in the height of ecstasy.[1551]
In an observation relevant to discussion of the pythoness spirit in Acts 16:16, spirits in some traditional societies today are believed to participate in prophetic activity.[1552] Even where spirits are considered generally destructive, they may be reckoned as necessary intermediaries with deities.[1553] In traditional African societies, those possessed virtually always claim to speak for lower spirits, never (in contrast to Christian and Islamic circles) for the supreme creator God.[1554] In contrast to early Christians but analogously to many Greeks, the traditional African worldview typically views some spirits as good, some others as bad, but most neutral, like most people.[1555] (Defending this worldview, some critics complain that most Christians “insensitively” classify all possessing spirits, except for God’s Spirit, as evil and demonic.[1556] But this complaint is a case of one religious worldview critiquing another’s critique; competing frameworks determine their respective classifications.) African worldviews and Western responses to them have elicited much discussion;[1557] one need not embrace uncritically all elements of any one worldview, but Westerners have traditionally and uncritically rejected all elements of African worldviews in an ethnocentric way.
The collectors and their informants in one wide-ranging study on phenomena in traditional China, from the final decade of the nineteenth century,[1558] naturally read their data through the grid of their own traditional Christian worldview. Nevertheless, much of the study’s data remains informative to a range of scholars because of major shifts in Chinese culture since that time. Some spirits reportedly spoke with the voice of a fox or a bird, others with the voice of a deceased spouse; others normally weak in singing or poetry could sing or compose rhyme under possession.[1559] The Chinese Christian observers, the study’s informants, also claimed the existence of “northerners speaking the languages of the South, which they did not know”;[1560] often they knew information that they could not have known normally, including other languages unknown to the speakers in their normal state; they also knew of Jesus as divine and feared him.[1561] Today, however, anthropological literature provides a much greater abundance of sources.
8. Interpreting Spirit Possession
The matter of interpretation of such phenomena is a separate question,[1562] but a Western reading is not the only possible interpretation. Indeed, there are multiple Western readings; the approaches of anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and indigenous interpreters often vary considerably from one another.[1563]
Various “secular” stimuli not normally connected with “possession” can induce trance states in normal people.[1564] Dissociation and altered states of consciousness are universal phenomena, but interpretations vary;[1565] the primary mystical interpretations (though not all are mystical) are soul loss and spirit possession.[1566] Further, a range of “altered states of consciousness” exists, from rapid eye movement to a trance state to “possession trance linked to impersonation behavior.”[1567] Others have pointed to neurological parallels in psychomotor epilepsy,[1568] sleepwalking,[1569] and hysterical-fugue states.[1570] Studies have shown that people (and also dogs) experiencing an overload of stresses (among humans, e.g., battle fatigue) may experience a collapse of their nervous system; an induced collapse may in fact relieve stresses and aid mental health.[1571]
Neurophysiological studies do not ultimately address the possibility of invasive spirits, but they do help explain the human neurological side of possession behavior. Societies that believe in spirit possession could naturally expect the activity of such spirits on the human nervous system to often produce results no less traumatic than other stimuli; likewise, neurophysiological stimuli that produce susceptibility to suggestion or harsher stresses might well render a person more susceptible to the activity of such invasive spirits.[1572]
Possession behavior often occurs in cultic contexts.[1573] Many cases of spirit possession are reported in connection with vodun in Haiti[1574] and various forms of spiritism in Brazil.[1575] Possession trance is also said to occur in the zar cult (which occurs in Iran, Sudan, Egypt, and some parts of Arabia),[1576] among traditional Yorubas,[1577] in some fundamentalist cults in St. Vincent and the Grenadines,[1578] and in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism,[1579] for example. In nineteenth-century Fuchow (Fuzhou), a Taoist priest would take the pose of a worshiped image, then tremble, and then begin to speak for the spirit, receiving incense and veneration.[1580] Not all cases, however, have any particular religious connection.[1581]
Some scholars have linked possession experience to social frameworks (an explanatory paradigm that need not be incongruent with some others);[1582] this approach has also been applied to Jesus’s setting.[1583] Even in the nineteenth century, observers noted that “cases of possession are less frequent in peaceful times, and more frequent in times of civil commotion; also less frequent in prosperous families” and “among educated people.”[1584] Possession without a trance is more common in hunter-gatherer societies; increasing societal stratification and complexity increase the likelihood of added trance states.[1585] Some others have also concurred that it appears more commonly in stratified slave societies.[1586] Some societies use trances under controlled, ritualized situations; when society becomes uncontrolled, the instability creates crisis for the individual and his or her surroundings.[1587]
Including ecstatic Christian experiences in her analysis, Bourguignon suggests that possession trance is most common among the more marginalized members of a society; groups that once experienced it (such as early Methodists)[1588] and that have now become respectable are far less likely to display it.[1589] It often appears among those marginalized from other means of power in their society,[1590] especially women[1591] (although this varies from one society to another).[1592] Thus possession behavior sometimes can be used to gain desires otherwise inappropriate to express.[1593] Possession trance may provide a socially sanctioned outlet for aggression where other such outlets are lacking.[1594] Claims of possession can reduce guilt by projecting it on the invasive spirit.[1595] Because spirit possession and exorcisms fulfill a sociological function, some factors supposed to abolish such practices (such as urbanization or Western education) do not always do so.[1596]
Diverse cultures offer an array of interpretive matrixes for these phenomena.[1597] Some societies employ naturalistic explanations for possession trance; others, supernaturalistic ones.[1598] Naturalistic expectations are more common in the West[1599] but occasionally appear elsewhere;[1600] supernaturalistic explanations include soul absence[1601] and the presence of a spirit.[1602] Likewise, both voluntary and involuntary possession states exist;[1603] sometimes they coexist in the same culture (e.g., voluntary for the shaman and “hysterical” for the patient).[1604] Evaluations of trance behavior can be positive or negative,[1605] and the explanatory systems attached to trance behavior inevitably affect the behavior.[1606] Some peoples, for example, regard spirit affliction as a danger caused by an ancestor spirit,[1607] but not all peoples view such spirits as malevolent or dangerous.[1608] (One might compare some ancient Roman views of ancestor spirits.)[1609]
Although anthropological literature normally adopts a neutral stance,[1610] simply describing phenomena and the views of the subjects, a minority of anthropologists specializing in such observations have dared contravene the usual assumptions of academia, publicly contending that the spirits are real.[1611] Thus, for example, noted anthropologist Edith Turner[1612] describes her gradual transformation from skeptical observer to convinced observer and even participant (now rejecting her former stance as cultural imperialism).[1613]
Turner notes that anthropologists normally regard their subjects’ beliefs as significant culturally and do not care whether they are true, but in the past they have at times assumed that needs for psychological compensation simply drove “underprivileged people” to “hallucinations.”[1614] She complains that anthropologists repeatedly “witness spirit rituals” and hear explanations from indigenous experts concerning the activity of spirits and the centrality of such rituals to their culture, yet anthropologists continue to interpret the data according to a Western framework.[1615]
Moreover, she claims, anthropologists have often responded to paranormal events by simply remaining silent about them.[1616] She, however, insists that she is unwilling to be silent. She notes that when she sought to be more sympathetic to local interpretations than in the past,[1617] she was stunned by an unexpected experience in 1985, which occurred during a Zambian spirit ritual to eject an ihamba. “I saw with my own eyes a giant thing emerging out of the flesh of her back. This thing was a large gray blob about six inches across, a deep gray opaque thing emerging as a sphere.”[1618] She says that she realized that there is genuine “spirit affliction: it isn’t a matter of metaphor and symbol, or even psychology.”[1619] She afterward entered sympathetically into the spirit experiences of traditional Eskimo hosts in 1987.[1620] She questions the ethics, in a multicultural world, of imposing a traditional positivist paradigm on local cultures (even to the extent of reforming indigenous elite perspectives) “at all costs,” despite the evidence that is there.[1621] Elsewhere she offers claims of healings involving spirits,[1622] affirming that she experienced one herself.[1623]
Some other anthropologists and NT scholars have also noted with appreciation Turner’s challenge to traditional Western reductionist approaches to such claims.[1624] (Some anthropologists teaching about spirit possession today even introduce students directly to such experiences.)[1625] Two sociologists observed what appeared to be socially patterned, apparently culturally learned expressions of possession behavior; their interviews with many educated observers who had a wider range of experience, however, brought to their attention “manifestations that simply did not fit secular categories of explanation.”[1626] Some other anthropologists have become more respectful of indigenous interpretations about spirits or spiritual power.[1627] Even some Western psychiatrists, psychologists, and those in related disciplines have recounted experiences with what they believe are spirits, although generally affirming that genuine experiences of this sort are rare.[1628] Certainly Christians not only in antiquity but in many cultures today, from Lutherans in Tanzania to Korean Presbyterians, recount experience with spirits.[1629] Regardless of interpretation, however, the phenomena are well documented, and there is no reason to doubt them in our ancient sources or to suppose them necessarily fictitious or legendary rather than potentially based on eyewitness claims.
9. Exorcism in More Recent Times
Following the practice employed in the introductory section on “signs,”[1630] I initially suspend academic judgment on the meaning of these phenomena in order to recount some common views of them today. Just as belief in malevolent-spirit possession is common, so are various attempts to cure, control, or exorcise it.[1631]
Edith Turner’s example above is not by any means unique. Thus, for example, the pre-Christian Solomon Islands used various elaborate rituals to try to exorcise spirits.[1632] In traditional African society, cultic personnel might exorcise harmful spirits, and ceremonies could be employed to drive off spirits endangering a village.[1633] For example, traditional Segeju in Tanzania cajole or force a spirit to leave its victim, most frequently by a ritual dance.[1634] Vomiting may help expel the moth that causes mental illness among traditional Navajo.[1635] In nineteenth-century China, the following means of exorcism are reported: “enticing them to leave by burning charms, and paper money; or by begging and exhorting them; or by frightening them with magic spells and incantations; or driving them away by pricking with needles, or pinching with the fingers, in which case they cry out and promise to go.”[1636] A Muslim Somali holy man exorcises demons using Quranic passages.[1637]
In many societies, spirit possession is employed to drive out a lower afflicting spirit or to appease an offended spirit.[1638] Shamans or mediums in a number of societies enter trance and/or possession states themselves to expel or control spirits.[1639] Thus a Balahi Hindu traditional healer, empowered by a spirit’s magic power, questions and rhetorically duels with a hostile possessing spirit until successfully expelling it.[1640] Shamans or mediums often have to negotiate with possessing spirits, who speak through the victim’s mouth.[1641] Thus a Muslim traditional healer, having struck a bargain with local spirits but unable to expel some visiting Fulani ones, had to leave the room and let his wife convince these spirits that it was culturally rude for them to possess a guest visiting in their home.[1642] Various forms of exorcism have continued among some traditional Jewish groups into the modern period.[1643]
Exorcism appears to be an effective therapy in Ambanja in Madagascar.[1644] An African scholar writing for an African theological journal associated with a mainline denomination can recommend exorcism, citing the case of a woman tormented for years by spirits. The article claims that at her exorcism in 1982, other voices were heard calling through her mouth, and then she was permanently free.[1645] Sociologists studying routine “deliverance” services have suggested that some cases involve more metaphoric issues,[1646] and note that even full exorcism sometimes helps those “suffering from psychologically induced traumas.”[1647] Indeed, one anthropologist specialized in the study of spirit possession points out that only exorcism works as a strategy for removing possession.[1648] Thus, for example, a girl in Nigeria, tormented day and night by spirits and unable to improve through a psychiatrist, was freed through the help of an indigenous healing movement.[1649] Witnesses attest the recovery (over the course of several days) of a boy who had been near death, after exorcism.[1650] In Cuba, Eusbarina Acosta Estévez told me that years ago she was invoking other spirits and was too sick to walk. When two pastors prayed for her in 1988, she recounts, she fell to the ground, and all the chairs around her were also thrown back by the force of the spirits coming out. She was converted, and her severe heart and kidney malfunctions ended instantly.[1651]
Indian Pentecostalism,[1652] like African Pentecostalism,[1653] clearly appeals to people in a context of belief in the pervasive experience of oppression by spirits. Some mental health professionals affirm any neutral, “client-centered” therapy that “works within the belief structure of the patient”;[1654] others question the ethics of an approach that encourages a belief, such as exorcism, that the therapist rejects.[1655] Some professionals contend that exorcism might constitute the most culturally sensitive therapy for those for whom possession is the most culturally intelligible explanation for their condition.[1656]
Exorcism often appears in contemporary healing evangelism modeled after Acts.[1657] For example, while I was briefly visiting a country in Asia before lecturing in another location, I had the opportunity to talk with some pastors there from mainland China. Although these were not “charismatics” or Pentecostals, several offered exorcism accounts when I spontaneously asked if any of them had firsthand accounts of healings.[1658]
Again, we may interpret these claims in various ways, but they do call into question the idea that exorcism reports can represent only legend and never eyewitness claims. Regardless of who stands behind Acts’ “we” source, Paul’s stay in Philippi was part of it, and this source persists at least long enough to know of the pythoness’s proclamation (Acts 16:16–17).[1659]
II. A SPIRIT EXPOSES THE MISSION (16:17)
Although the spirit speaks the truth here (ambiguously), its testimony is unwelcome. Like spirits in Jesus’s ministry, it protests the “Most High God” and reveals activities that are not its place to reveal (cf. Luke 8:28; Mark 5:7). The final “we” in this section, in this verse, appears here. That the narrator is included in the slave girl’s testimony indicates that he belongs to the group that proclaims the message.[1660] Nevertheless, it distinguishes Paul from the rest of the group, presumably because the focus will remain on Paul in the rest of the section[1661] (though Luke undoubtedly remains in Philippi throughout; cf. Acts 20:5–6).
(1) A Spirit’s Testimony
Ancients had a stereotype of bad servant girls as gossipy revealers of secrets;[1662] more relevant here, Jewish people believed that demons or fallen angels sought to reveal divine secrets.[1663] Demons also recognize the exorcist’s power in other sources (cf. Acts 19:15; Mark 1:24; 5:7; 9:20).[1664] The slave girl’s “crying out” fits the exhibitionism of reports about both possession (Sen. Y. Dial. 7.26.8) and demons (Mark 1:26; Test. Sol. 1:12; 3:4).[1665] As one would expect, the oracle fits Hellenistic oracular forms, combining characteristics of commendation and recognition oracles.[1666] What is most ironic here is that her message (that the highest God sent Paul and Silas to explain salvation) is not, in fact, believed by the slave girl’s holders (Acts 16:19–21).
Scholars have offered various proposals for why a pagan spirit would announce God’s servants (δοῦλοι; positive in Acts 2:18; 4:29; Luke 1:38, 48; 2:29);[1667] some of these proposals contain elements of truth or at least are plausible whereas others prove less convincing. For example, some propose that the spirit, recognizing the missionaries’ future success, wanted to make itself believable (so as to later lead astray the new believers)[1668] or, more plausibly, induce them to compromise their sole dependence on God’s Spirit. Others think that her proclamation at first appears positive but that Paul recognizes it as nothing but “a taunting charade.”[1669] Yet it is more likely (as argued below) that she is not taunting but relativizing their message to make it acceptable in a polytheistic framework. (One may compare Apollo’s Claros oracle declaring IAO the highest god.)[1670]
From a literary standpoint, the most important element is the connection with spirits that act in the same way during Jesus’s ministry. Spirits testified to Jesus’s secret identity in an unwelcome way in Luke 4:33–34, 41 and 8:28, inviting exorcism (4:35, 41; 8:32–33) as here (Acts 16:18);[1671] later spirits claim to know Jesus and to have heard of Paul (19:15).[1672] Whereas the messianic secret might play a role in the examples in the Gospel (cf. Luke 2:19, 51; 9:20–21; Acts 10:41),[1673] there is no messianic secret in Acts (unless perhaps the propriety of a limited audience or the limited, paradoxical ambiguity of public revelation). Demonic “testimony” is, however, ruled out, in any case. God’s witnesses must depend only on God’s Spirit to testify (Acts 5:32); to accept demonic testimony is to compromise God’s own blessing.[1674] Those converted through false motives might well not persevere (cf. Acts 8:20–23; Luke 8:13–14). God would have to open hearts (Acts 16:14), and his followers needed to wait on him for (often eschatological) vindication (cf. Mary’s silently treasuring God’s message in Luke 2:19, 51).
Various additional reasons for the spirit’s activity are possible. The spirit may have been seeking to draw attention to Paul and Silas, for whom attention could prove dangerous (Acts 16:20–21).[1675] The spirit might try to avoid direct confrontation with Paul (though he was not yet as “famous” among spirits as in 19:15) or might seek to provoke a confrontation, to cause him the sort of trouble into which he fell in 16:19.
However the informed reader may understand the purpose for the slave girl’s announcement, it certainly could be construed in pagan terms by hearers in the narrative world. For polytheists, merely adding Israel’s God to their pantheon (or identifying him with their own highest deity) was not problematic (as magical papyri attest); for them to affirm such a deity relativizes the deity’s exclusive claims (a relativization that is unacceptable for both Luke and Paul; Acts 4:12; Rom 3:29; 16:27; 1 Cor 8:5–6; Gal 3:20; Phil 2:10). Her proclamation may connect the missionaries’ ministry with her own activity as fellow spirit-moved mantics: she was a slave girl possessed by a pythoness (on the connection with Apollo, see below); she announced Paul and Silas as “slaves [δοῦλοι] of God” (Acts 16:17), a title used for servants of the Delphic Apollo.[1676] As noted at 3:13, the Hebrew Bible and later tradition regularly call the Israelite prophets “slaves of God,”[1677] also applying the title to David,[1678] Moses,[1679] and Israel as a whole;[1680] other ancient hearers would have also received the image of being God’s slave as one of great honor.[1681] Perhaps the informed reader will also think of God’s παῖς (3:13), whose corporate mission Paul (13:47) and the other witnesses (1:8) share.
Luke’s informed audience will again hear “way of salvation” as truth (Luke 1:76–77; 3:4–6; cf. “the way,” Acts 9:2; 18:25), just as demons in the Gospel testified truth about Jesus that was supposed to remain secret (Luke 4:34–35, 41). But in the story world, we should not expect the slave girl or most of her audience to construe her words in this way. The anarthrous “way of salvation” did not by itself signify an exclusive way of reaching the one and only God,[1682] and so her proclamation fits the reputation that Apollo’s oracles had for ambiguity.[1683] “Salvation” usually meant “deliverance” or health or safety, common goals of pagan religion;[1684] for her to proclaim the missionaries as divine messengers about a way of deliverance was true, but it would not in itself communicate monotheism.[1685] Nevertheless, in the context of divine intervention by an earthquake, their jailer recognizes that they can proclaim true “salvation” to him (Acts 16:30–31).
(2) A Positive Testimony?
Against the literary connection suggested above, Spencer differentiates this case of a “spirit” (16:16) testifying (16:17) from those in Luke 4:33–34, 41; 8:28. Whereas those spirits might try to evade Jesus (4:34; 8:28), the slave girl follows Paul and Silas. Spencer suggests that she might be a prophetess as in Acts 2:18 and that her message was rejected not only because of an unholy spirit but because of her gender.[1686] This seems to me a strange argument, especially given Spencer’s normally thoroughgoing (and accurate) emphasis on the narrative unity of Luke-Acts.
Several factors militate strongly against Spencer’s reading here. First, this spirit acts enough like those in Luke 4:33–35, 41 and 8:28 to be read in light of them. Unclean or unholy spirits always invite exorcism (Luke 4:36; 6:18; 9:42; Acts 5:16; 8:7; cf. Luke 10:20) and are synonymous with evil spirits, which need the same (Luke 7:21; 8:2; Acts 19:12). Second, this is one of several power confrontations with occult agents in Acts, via both Peter (Acts 8:20–23) and Paul (19:13–20). Third, if one objects that “spirit of a pythoness” associates her merely with Apollo, god of prophecy, we should note that many early Jews and Christians, including the historical Paul (1 Cor 10:20), regarded pagan deities as demons.[1687] Fourth, spirits other than God’s Spirit in Christ who testify in Acts are negative, like those in the Gospel, even if they testify about Jesus (Acts 19:15). Fifth, the slave girl’s proclamation is not evangelism, nor does it resemble samples of acceptable prophecy in 11:28 and 21:11. Indeed, in her case Luke specifically avoids προφητεύω and chooses the term μαντεύομαι (on which see comment on Acts 16:16).
Sixth, other patterns in Acts clarify that this is a hostile spirit warranting exorcism. Luke would not reject, and would not portray his reliable character Paul as rejecting, her testimony merely on account of her gender; he affirms women prophesying (2:18, as Spencer agrees). But just as Luke includes both male and female prophetic figures (Luke 2:25–38; Acts 21:9–11), he may include a female false prophet to balance the male ones (Acts 8:9–11; 13:8–11; 19:13–16).[1688] (As noted above, the majority of individuals specified as possessed by spirits in Luke-Acts are male.) This slave girl also contrasts with the women of 16:13, especially Lydia, whose heart God opened (16:14). Lydia not only was probably free (perhaps a freedperson, but Luke does not specify) but had some means. God opened Lydia’s heart to hear Paul; a python spirit forced the slave to announce Paul’s role. In the end, however, Jesus also liberates the slave girl spiritually (16:18). Finally, this is one of several power encounters with different aspects of the pagan world (8:9–24; 13:6–12; 19:11–20).[1689]
Spencer compares this girl’s silencing with the dismissal of Rhoda’s true word in 12:13–15.[1690] But whereas Luke the narrator clearly favors Rhoda against her detractors, he regards this spirit as harmful. Paul functions generally as a reliable character in Acts, and if this is true in general, it is certainly true when he is doing exorcism. Simon the sorcerer followed Peter and Philip but still needed to be confronted and to repent (8:20–23). This slave who “follows” Paul has to be liberated, in accord with Jesus’s mission (10:38; cf. Luke 4:18).
Other scholars have also protested against the claim that this passage refers to a demon. Kauppi notes that of seven characteristics of demonization identified by Bultmann, only two appear here.[1691] The characteristics Bultmann identifies, however, are optional, in that they do not occur in every description of demonization. One difference Kauppi raises is that spectators were in awe of Jesus’s exorcisms, but here spectators bring charges. Yet the response of most spectators is not mentioned here, being much less important to Luke’s narrative at this point than the hostile response of the “owners”; Gentiles had earlier reacted negatively to an exorcism that reduced the value of their property (Luke 8:34–35). Moreover, Jesus’s exorcisms were performed in a Jewish context; Gentiles could offer more varied appraisals of possession as sometimes “divine,” but from the perspective of the Pauline circle, the “divine” spirits were demons (1 Cor 10:20).
Another difference Kauppi cites is that Luke often indicates that demonization causes the demonized to suffer physical harm whereas this effect is not noted here. But while such physical harm appears sometimes (Luke 9:39; 11:14; 13:11),[1692] it is not always mentioned (4:33),[1693] and it is missing in some summaries.[1694] Another difference is that the spirit is not called an “unclean” spirit. But although “unclean” appears in Luke 4:33, 36; 6:18; 8:29; 9:42; 11:24 and Acts 5:16; 8:7, it does not appear in Luke 4:41; 7:21; 9:1; 13:21 and Acts 19:12–13 (the last incident being among Gentiles). Visible signs of expulsion are sometimes reported (Luke 4:35; 8:33) but not always, and one cannot argue from silence that Luke doubts their occurrence where he does not report them; nor would it be clear how lack of such a report would deny that the spirit was a demon. In view of the parallels that exist and the likely background of early Jewish and Christian perceptions, the “pythoness,” though probably positive to pagans, was apparently a malevolent spirit for Luke and his ideal audience.[1695]
(3) A Suppressed Female Voice?
That women predominate as major characters in this part of the story (see Acts 16:13–15) may have literary significance (Luke balances male and female characters; see comment on Acts 1:14). Conversely, their presence here may simply reflect the greater openness of women (16:13–15) or their prominence in Philippi, just as the dominance of males reflects social roles in some other scenes. Male converts (16:31–34) also appear, and so it is possible that two narratives with women as central characters appear together by coincidence (just like narratives with men as central characters).
If Luke includes an element of deliberate literary design, however (which is possible, and fits his interest in women elsewhere), he might contrast the prosperous businesswoman with the slave who brought business to her masters—one whose heart was open for God’s word to enter (16:14) and the other from whom a demon exited (16:18), one who welcomed them into the private space of her home (16:15) and the other who exposed and disturbed them in public (16:17–18).
Some scholars have complained that Luke suppresses women’s prophecy in Acts, reporting in direct speech only the words of the pagan prophetess here;[1696] as one scholar puts it, “Luke gives just one verse to the prophesying daughters of Philip and attributes the only inspired speech of a female character to the mantic slave girl.”[1697] I believe that this complaint offers an imbalanced reading of Luke-Acts. What the slave girl in 16:16–17 speaks is comparable to what male demoniacs speak elsewhere in Luke-Acts. In one of his central programmatic texts, Luke supports women prophesying by the true God (2:17–18). Luke may not report the words of his prophetesses (in Luke 2:38; Acts 21:9) in direct discourse, but neither does he report Agabus’s first prophecy in direct discourse (Acts 11:28), and Agabus’s other prophecy is short (21:11). Simeon’s predictions are not explicitly described as prophecy, nor he as a prophet, in Luke 2:29–35, in contrast to Anna (2:36). Granted, the mention of the Holy Spirit reveals that Simeon should be recognized as a prophet (2:26–27), but then the same must be granted Elizabeth, who is filled with the Spirit (just like John in 1:17) and speaks for God at some length (1:41–45), and presumably also granted Mary (1:35, 46–55). Zechariah’s prophecy is longer (1:67–79), but it is not significantly longer than the words of Mary and Elizabeth. (And again, if we emphasize that Zechariah’s discourse is called “prophecy” unlike theirs, so is Anna called a prophetic person unlike Simeon.)
That more men served in early Christian leadership than women is historically probable. This is not meant as a universal paradigm, but it fits what we know of the culture (though probably more women served in leadership than the culture would expect) and also fits all our early extant sources, unless one wants to argue the contrary from silence.[1698] That is to say, the dominance of men is not Luke’s invention or idealization (his programmatic statement in Acts 2:17–18 could in fact be used to argue for a very different ideal.)[1699] Nevertheless, Luke balances genders quite often and certainly more than most of his contemporaries. Granted, the shrine at Delphi used girls as prophetic mouthpieces, but that system was hardly egalitarian; its interpreters were male, and virgins were likely employed in memory of Apollo’s sexual predilections.[1700]
Luke’s point is not that Paul suppresses the woman’s speech but that (on the Christian view that she was being exploited both by slaveholders and by a false spirit) Paul offers the woman liberation, especially on the level where he had opportunity.
(4) “Most High God”
Luke elsewhere employs the title “Most High God” for God in its usual OT sense (Luke 6:35;[1701] Acts 7:48), especially in the poetic/prophetic language of his infancy narratives (Luke 1:32, 35, 76).[1702] But he is also familiar with the title’s use by demons (Luke 8:28, following Mark 5:7).[1703]
The phrase was “one of the commonest divine epithets in late antiquity” and sometimes appears with pagan names or in locations “where no Jewish or Christian presence is yet attested.”[1704] The vast majority of our ancient literary references to “the highest God” appear in Jewish sources.[1705] The title is frequent in Sirach;[1706] elsewhere in the Apocrypha;[1707] the Qumran scrolls;[1708] Jubilees;[1709] 1 Enoch;[1710] other pre-Christian sources;[1711] and subsequent Jewish sources,[1712] including rabbinic literature.[1713] It also may appear occasionally in Christian sources.[1714] It likely appears in a number of Jewish inscriptions, though which inscriptions are Jewish is sometimes in question.[1715] The nature of the usage in the Bosphorus inscriptions is much debated. Thus the blessing of “almighty God the highest” in CIJ 1:500, §690 (an inscription from 41 C.E.) concludes with reference to Zeus, Earth, and Sun. Some have seen them as Jewish inscriptions;[1716] perhaps more often they are attributed to Judaizing Gentiles.[1717] Levinskaya distinguishes θεὸς ὕψιστος dedications from the plainly pagan Zeus ὕψιστος inscriptions, arguing that the former lack “anthropoid images.”[1718]
The phrase was natural to employ when speaking of Israel’s one God in a polytheistic context,[1719] though it was by no means limited to such settings (in poetic depictions of God’s power, note, e.g., twenty-five times in Psalms LXX).[1720] Luke himself tends to use it in completely Jewish settings (Luke 1:32, 35, 76; 6:35; Acts 7:48); the one possible exception is the likeliest parallel to this phrase in the Gospel: a demoniac in a mixed region calls Jesus “Son of the Most High God” (Luke 8:28; cf. Mark 5:7). Thus some scholars argue that the issue is not that pagans would misunderstand the slave girl as implying pagan deities but simply that “the Christian mission did not need allies such as these.”[1721]
Given the diminutive size (Acts 16:13) and significance (16:20) of the Jewish community in Philippi, would the town’s citizens necessarily understand her words in a monotheistic sense? Granted, a brief listening to Paul and Silas themselves would have confirmed the Jewish monotheistic sense, but it was the pythoness who had a large hearing there, and the missionaries risked great opposition if they preached publicly (rather than one-on-one) here (16:19–21). By placing their preaching in a polytheistic context, the spirit could relativize the evangelistic value of any miracles they performed.
That pagans could employ the phrase in a pagan manner when not thinking of Israel’s God is clear. The phrase appears in the plural on a curse tablet.[1722] In the singular, it could apply to Osiris (Apul. Metam. 11.30), though most often to Zeus (Athen. Deipn. 6.248F).[1723] Of three images of Zeus that Pausanias reports in Corinth, one bore the surname “Most High” (Paus. 2.2.8); he reports an altar of “Zeus Most High” on the Athenian Acropolis (1.26.5). Gentile inscriptions from western Asia Minor apply the title to native gods associated with the mountains.[1724] Thus Jews sought to clarify the expression when writing for pagans who could misconstrue the term[1725] (although in some settings they did not disallow an ambiguous identification of their God with the pagans’ highest deity). Thus a number of scholars think that the slave girl’s cries could mislead pagan hearers.[1726] This certainly would explain why, or at least provide a factor for explaining why, Paul is disturbed.
III. JESUS’S NAME EXPELS THE SPIRIT (16:18)
Paul’s first mission from Antioch included a spiritual confrontation (Acts 13:8–11), but this exorcism is the first miracle Luke reports (though not necessarily the first he presumes occurring) for this second mission, with Barnabas no longer at Paul’s side. The exorcism of a spirit proclaiming a divine agent’s identity directly recalls Jesus’s ministry in Luke 4:35, 41; 8:28–32. Luke’s informed reader would view liberation from a spirit as helping the person who had been demonized (e.g., the woman bent double in Luke 13:11–13, 16). Whereas the confrontation in Acts 13 issued in immediate success, here it will lead to more direct local hostility.
Why did Paul wait many days before taking action? Perhaps he wanted to avoid the slave girl’s inevitable demotion to a degrading status without her gift, but given the usual Jewish and Christian view that spirits were oppressive, it is more likely that such a prospect would not have deterred him. Other possibilities may be considered, for example, that he was not yet as experienced with spirits as he was by Acts 19:12, 15, or (perhaps most important) that he was seeking to avoid trouble—the sort of trouble he got into once he exorcised the spirit.[1727] (Dealings with someone else’s slave generally caused problems.)[1728] Her continued repetition of the ambiguous oracle became increasingly difficult and could cause problems for converts who would have wondered why Paul (who might well teach them gospel tradition; cf. Luke 4:34–35; Mark 1:24–25) tolerated a pagan endorsement.[1729]
Paul’s use of Jesus’s name removes any ambiguity attached to “the Most High God” or “a salvific way” (Acts 16:17).[1730] For acting in Jesus’s name—that is, as Jesus’s authorized agent—see comment on Acts 3:6; for specifically casting out demons in Jesus’s name, see comment on Acts 19:13 (cf. Luke 10:17; Mark 9:38–39; 16:17). On exorcism, see comment above on Acts 16:16. That Jesus’s agents continue to act in his name indicates that Jesus, who was active in Luke’s first volume, remains active—though usually offstage—in the second (cf. 9:34).[1731]
Paul’s letters mention his signs and wonders (2 Cor 12:12; Rom 15:19) but do not specify what particular experiences these included. Given his belief in demons among pagans (1 Cor 10:20) and what we know of his context in early Judaism and Christianity, there is no reason to dispute that the signs could have included exorcisms (as they did for some other sages, such as Jesus and, in later sources, Apollonius). But Paul is writing letters to the converted, for whom exhortation is more directly relevant than exorcism. The letters emphasize the cosmic role of demonic powers more than Luke-Acts does; the narrative genre is more apt to emphasize exorcism whereas Paul’s letters appear better equipped to address a theology of cosmic evil. But in view of the coexistence of various approaches to demons elsewhere in early Judaism, this difference of emphasis would not likely constitute disagreement (cf. Luke 4:6).
Although gradual healing is possible (cf. Luke 17:14), “that hour” is probably idiomatic here for “instantly, immediately” (2:38; 12:12; 24:33; Acts 22:13) or “at that time” (Luke 10:21; 13:31; 20:19; Acts 16:33).[1732] The latter usage need not mean “at that moment,” but this is probably the sense here. If the slave girl had continued to act unchanged for a literal hour after the command, the owner’s legal case against Paul and Silas might have been weakened (cf. Exod 21:20–21).
c. Paul and Silas Beaten, Imprisoned (16:19–24)
Just as Peter and John were arraigned for performing a benefaction (Acts 4:9), here Paul and Silas are beaten and imprisoned for liberating a slave girl from the pythoness spirit and hence demonstrating “the way of deliverance” (16:17). The anti-Judaism employed against them (16:20–21) reinforces Luke’s irony in his overall narrative: the apostles are rejected by pagans for proclaiming the true Jewish monotheism, just as they are rejected by some Jews as if they were apostates (cf. 14:14–19; 19:26, 33–34)![1733]
I. AFTERMATH OF THE EXORCISM (16:19)
One reason for Paul’s prolonged hesitance in expelling the spirit may have been his recognition of the public danger this would entail—most Philippians, after all, would have viewed the spirit as benevolent[1734] and as benefiting even Paul and Silas (16:17). To show ingratitude to a benefactor was an appalling offense, and Paul and Silas could expect little sympathy from those who did not share their spiritual worldview. The slave girl was now spiritually free (cf. Luke 4:18; 13:12), but Paul and Silas would be consequently imprisoned (Acts 16:23–24).
(1) The Slave Girl’s Liberation (16:19)
In 16:16, Luke mentioned the profit the slave girl brought her owners; now he mentions that their hope of profit was “expelled,” ironically just like (and using the same term as in the case of) the spirit cast out in 16:18.[1735] In the whole context of Luke-Acts, Luke’s audience would assume that liberation from the spirit was a crucial benevolence for the slave girl (cf. 10:38) regardless of how the slaveholders would respond. It was the spiritual (the pythoness spirit) and physical (legal) slaveholders who suffered loss, but in Luke-Acts, a person’s deliverance from demonic bondage matters more than others’ economic interests (Luke 8:32–37). Luke need not view the exorcised woman negatively; certainly Mary Magdalene, freed from seven demons (8:2), was a quite positive character for Luke (8:1–3; 24:10).
What became of the slave girl otherwise is not explicitly stated. Without mantic abilities, she was less valuable “merchandise” to her owners; slaves with special abilities were usually better treated than those without them, and so she might no longer receive favored treatment.[1736] Thus she might be employed, rented, or sold for domestic purposes. Slaveholders used slave women in a variety of ways; see the excursus at Acts 12:13, also meant to serve the present passage.[1737] One common male use of women slaves was sexual;[1738] perhaps the demotion of her slave status provided one factor for Paul’s delay in casting out the spirit (though, as argued above, other factors such as legal consequences would have been less theoretical and hence of more immediate concern). Given the common nature of this abuse, we cannot be sure that she was not abused even when she profited them, but a male slaveholder might think twice about sleeping with a woman thought to be possessed by a deity.[1739]
Nevertheless, the complaint that Luke uses her only as a prop for Paul and hence shows no concern for her humanity (or even that Luke and Paul treat her “no better” than the slaveholders who exploited her)[1740] does not seem fair. Luke likewise never follows up on what becomes of free male demoniacs once exorcised; that is not part of the tightly narrated story he is recounting. This part of Luke’s story focuses on Paul, as the Gospel did on Jesus, but a focus on Paul rather than something else does not signify that Luke treats others as callously as a slaveholder would, any more than any history or biography today that maintains an exclusive or central focus treats callously those who are not its focus.[1741] Luke’s focus on the narrative’s action (and this exorcism is necessary to explain the treatment that follows) keeps his audience’s attention while leaving us curious about numerous details.
Presumably the delivered woman would believe in the highest God, whom the missionaries proclaimed, recognizing that they did in fact bring the “way of salvation” (Acts 16:17) and that this God was more powerful than her former Pythian spirit (16:18). Philippi’s inscriptions reveal that slaves and freed persons participated regularly in the colony’s religious life.[1742]
Should we assume, as some have suggested, that the Christian community bought her freedom, as synagogues sometimes purchased freedom for fellow Jews who were in slavery?[1743] Unlike Lydia, she is not named, but this need not imply that she was unknown (or insignificant) to the Philippian believers; neither is the jailer named, though his conversion is portrayed as fully genuine.[1744] If she joined in the community’s’ worship (which, after the events of 16:17–18, is readily conceivable), it would have known her whether or not she became free. In the light of Luke 8:2, the repeated reader of Luke-Acts would surely expect her to be the kind of potential church member central to the early Christian mission. Since her value to her owners was now substantially reduced, they would make more profit by selling her than by retaining her. Manumission was common (cf. 1 Cor 7:21–23),[1745] and while they would not likely free her simply because she was no longer of service in the way that she had been (manumission was more commonly for service rendered or because slaves were too old), they would not necessarily object to others purchasing her to free her.
Luke provides none of these details, and so we can only speculate by means of arguments from silence; the suggestion is plausible but remains a guess. Should we expect Luke to mention her being freed, to assume that readers would know or guess it, or to assume that readers would understand that it was not addressed simply because it was not part of his story line? He abbreviates so often that it is difficult to argue what Luke expects of his readers at this point; his focus remains on Paul’s mission (including the rather dramatic events that follow the exorcism). What is clear is that Luke’s audience should be “far enough into Luke-Acts” to recognize the exorcism as a benefaction and hence that she is freed at least from that demon and that form of exploitation.[1746] She certainly received spiritual manumission, an important step in the right direction (cf. Luke 4:18; 13:16; Acts 10:38). That she also achieved legal manumission is quite possible, though Luke does not specify this point.
(2) Dragged to the Forum (16:19)
It would not be difficult to reach the ἀγορά, often translated “marketplace.” It stood in Philippi’s center, and the city’s main road, the Via Egnatia highway (see comment on Acts 16:11), ran through it; the Commercial Road ran alongside the south of the forum, and to its southeast was a commercial agora.[1747]
This ἀγορά here was Philippi’s forum, following the Roman model as in new Corinth.[1748] Whereas a traditional Greek agora was square, a Roman forum was rectangular.[1749] Whereas Greek cities had parallel streets, the north-south (cardo) and east-west (decumanus) streets of Roman cities generally intersected at and ran through the forum.[1750] We should not imagine a small site. Philippi’s forum was 230 by 485 feet and hence could host a large number of people.[1751] Some of the later paving of Philippi’s forum, made of large quadrilateral limestones, remains today and was representative of Roman forums.[1752]
Stoas surrounded the east, west, and south sides of the forum. A temple (possibly an imperial temple) in the northwest corner probably dates from a later period, but another imperial temple probably lay in the northeast corner;[1753] such signs of imperial favor would have made anti-Roman claims (Acts 16:21) all the more devastating. Likewise, shops in the south stoa[1754] might serve as a reminder of the importance of economic interests (16:19), although these are not what Paul’s accusers stressed. It has been tentatively suggested above that some of Luke’s audience may have been familiar with Philippi’s topography; even if not, much of Luke’s ideal audience probably visualized the basic structure of a Roman forum better than do most readers today.
A normal forum would contain a temple of Jupiter modeled after Rome’s; “a curia for meetings of the town council, a basilica for conducting law and business, statues, temples, public baths, theaters and amphitheaters.”[1755] In any kind of town, an agora epitomized a public place, in contrast to the sphere of private homes (e.g., Polyb. 32.5.10; cf. Acts 16:15).[1756] Relevant here is that a forum was also an appropriate public location to execute discipline (Suet. Titus 8.5).[1757]
Aside from a less conspicuous entrance on the southeast corner, the Philippian forum’s main entrances lay on the north (where the Via Egnatia passed; this is the likeliest guess of the entrance through which Paul and Silas were dragged to court).[1758] Two fountains lay near this entrance, as did the bēma between them. This proximity of the bēma would have proved convenient, since the accusers would have brought the accused to this rostrum or bēma, the raised podium. The bēma was flanked with stairs on both sides and used for civil cases.[1759] Undoubtedly this is where the missionaries stood before the “magistrates.”[1760] Ruins of the rostrum and many buildings from a century after Paul remain.[1761]
II. XENOPHOBIC CHARGES (16:20–21)
Although the motives of the missionaries’ accusers are economic (cf. analogously Acts 19:25–26), they choose charges guaranteed to arouse patriotic pathos, by claiming that the missionaries oppose local customs (cf. analogously 19:27–28). Unaware that Paul and Silas are Romans as well as Jews (16:37), the accusers xenophobically paint them as anti-Roman Jews.
(1) The Officials (16:20)
Presumably, the ἄρχοντες of 16:19 represent the “leading men,” the principes, of 16:20.[1762] The title for the magistrates in 16:20, στρατηγοί, was the most common informal Greek usage for the duumvirs (duoviri, duumviri) or, more formally, for a praetor.[1763] A Roman colony would have two duumvirs, who often assumed the more traditional, higher-status title of praetor; part of their task was to maintain public order,[1764] a role they, in fact, fail to fulfill during these events (16:22, 37–39). Inscriptions indicate that Philippi had the following offices: decurio (CIL 3.650); aedilis (3.654 = 3.7335); duumvir (3.650); and duumvir quinquennalis (3.7342).[1765]
Most common during the republic, duumvirs in different locations filled different roles, but these roles were always filled by pairs of officials. They were most often known for running city governments in colonies, as here (and into late antiquity);[1766] their duties included convening decurions and the citizen assembly, supervising elections for other officials, and serving as the city’s representatives before Roman authorities, including the emperor.[1767] The latter responsibility may contribute to their personal anxiety in Acts 16:38 to learn that their victims are Romans. In various locations, either the citizen assembly (Cod. theod. 12.5.1) or the city’s decurions (Justin. Cod. 10.31.46) could elect the duumvirs, in the latter case “from among their own number” (Dig. 50.2.7.2).[1768]
(2) Legal Accusations (16:20–21)
The level of conflict is higher here than in Acts 13–14; whereas Paul and Barnabas were driven from towns and Paul even suffered stoning, only in chapters 16–19 do their opponents begin to explicitly accuse them officially before magistrates (it is at most hinted at in 13:50). Here the charges are quoted (16:20–21; 17:5–7; 18:12–13; 19:25–27), suggesting that they are significant enough to warrant Lukan apologetic.[1769] Accusations, followed by violent responses, appear throughout 16:13–19:27, the accusers being pagan in 16:20–21 and 19:25–27 but Jewish in 17:5–7 and 18:13.[1770]
Ironically, in the instances in which the accusers are pagans (and especially the current instance), the missionaries are persecuted partly for their Jewishness. Twice the charges are partly accepted (16:22–24; 17:8–9), and twice they are dismissed (18:14–17), at least for the moment (19:35–40).[1771] Whereas Jewish charges are at least partly motivated by religious disagreement, the pagan accusations in this section stem largely from economic motives tied to pagan religious activity (cf. 19:25–27).[1772] Such motives figure negatively elsewhere in Acts as well (1:18; 5:1–10; 8:18–23)[1773] but are especially noteworthy in 19:24–25, the only other passage in Acts to use the term ἐργασία. In both cases, Paul’s ministry challenges others’ profit margins (profits based on religious or spiritual exploitation);[1774] this incident in Philippi foreshadows the public-relations challenge that is to come on a much larger scale.
Roman courts did not hunt down people to prosecute but depended on delatores, accusers.[1775] In such courts, the status of the accuser was normally higher than that of the accused, and the greater the status difference, the greater the weight of the accusation.[1776] Accusations by Roman citizens would carry considerable weight, especially against non-Romans (which the colonists wrongly assume the Jewish preachers to be).[1777] As Romans, the slave girl’s owners probably descend from veterans settled in Philippi, and hence are probably landowners, who would hold particularly high status.[1778] Ancient courts were, however, well aware of the danger of “malicious accusers,” and those who refuted accusers often characterized their opponents in this way.[1779] Certainly the narrative so characterizes Paul’s accusers here: their motives differ from the false but rousing charges they dare bring.
(3) The Charges (16:20–21)
On a narrative level, the charge that Paul and Silas are Jews “troubling” the city is ironic; though Paul’s Jewish enemies might “trouble” people (17:8, 13), it was partly through Paul’s influence that Jewish believers had refrained from “troubling” Gentiles (cf. 15:19, 24, with a cognate in the latter instance).
From a legal perspective, Paul had interfered with these owners’ property rights and hence was liable.[1780] Although theft or illegal use of another’s property was a legal charge,[1781] theft could not be proved in this case; “property damage” would be easier to argue. Normally, Roman law addressed only bodily injuries to slaves,[1782] yet deprivation of this gift of prophecy would cause the owners economic deprivation no less than would have the slave’s bodily injury.[1783] This charge, if provable, could have resulted in a fine.[1784] But they wanted to bring a public, criminal accusation rather than merely a private, civil one, and sorcery might seem the best proposal.
A charge of exorcism, however, might have been dismissed or have strengthened Paul’s hearing; since the supposedly prophetic slave had been announcing the missionaries as divine messengers and Paul had spoken only once (εἶπεν in 16:18 is aorist) and publicly, a charge of sorcery might be difficult to sustain.[1785] (The argument that Luke, with his antimagical apologetic, toned down an original charge of magic[1786] is certainly plausible,[1787] but Luke seems to prefer to, or need to, recite and meet charges rather than suppress them; see 24:5.) Instead of risking a legal case the evidence for which could prove ambiguous, the accusers appealed to their Roman citizenship (as Philippian citizens) against the customs of foreigners. Romans and citizens naturally held higher rank than foreigners; that Paul and Silas are Roman citizens (16:37) is unknown to them and, presumably, to many first-time readers of Acts (at least in the case of Silas; readers might infer the probability for Paul from his name).
Thus, “as was often the case, the complaint offered to the officials was couched in polemical forensic rhetoric and masked the real cause of the action.”[1788] Assemblies had long decided people’s innocence or guilt partly by their character, and so opponents regularly vilified each other’s behavior toward the city.[1789] The speakers establish their personal ethos by linking themselves with the rest of the colony’s Roman citizens but attempt to destroy the ethos (character) of the missionaries by appealing to xenophobia.[1790] For Luke’s informed audience, however, the speakers are simply demagogues, ignoring a divine sign and stirring the masses on false charges; then, as today,[1791] rhetoric could prove effective regardless of ethical constraints.
Instead of focusing on property damage, the charges were twofold. First, the missionaries were disturbing the peace of the city, and disturbances were an imprisonable offense.[1792] On the historical level, Claudius’s recent (ca. 49/50 C.E.; see comment on Acts 18:2) and well-publicized expulsion of Jews from Rome would surely have been known to some in this Roman colony, encouraging such xenophobia.[1793] To a colony priding itself on Roman culture, where most of the gods worshiped were Roman (older Greek deities were not common in Roman Philippi),[1794] Eastern cults may have threatened the Roman way of life even more forcefully than they did in Rome itself. The influx of some Eastern, especially Egyptian, cults[1795] at some point would have only exacerbated the conservative reaction.
The second charge is that they preach customs unlawful for Romans (16:21)—Jewish customs that, ironically, Jewish nationalists later accuse Paul of undermining (21:21).[1796] Roman conversion to Judaism (or otherwise turning from Roman gods) was legally punishable in the late republic (Cic. Leg. 2.8.19), though the law was rarely enforced in this period except when such activity threatened public peace or welfare (cf. Dio Cass. 67.14).[1797] The mention of their Jewishness is intended more to stir xenophobic anger (an argument from pathos) than to appeal to law itself.[1798]
Ironically, the opponents charge Paul and Silas with “unlawful” (οὐκ ἔξεστιν) behavior in Acts 16:21, when in fact the abuse of Paul and Silas as Roman citizens is what is “unlawful” (22:25). This narrative irony belongs to a larger cultural paradox; although Judaism was above all a religion of law, Gentiles often denounced Jews as “lawless.”[1799] Paul and Silas possibly could have worn distinctive Jewish garb,[1800] but whether or not this was the case or was obvious, by now the Jewishness of their message would have been well known to the accusers (the accusers’ servant had, after all, been following the group for several days, 16:17–18).
Philippi was a heavily romanized city that celebrated its Roman character; that it is the only colony in Acts specifically labeled as such by Luke (16:12) seems to acknowledge this character.[1801] Whereas Acts 19 emphasizes Ephesian identity in Ephesus (19:28, 34–35), Paul’s Philippian accusers appeal to Roman identity (16:21).[1802] What they fail to recognize is that Paul, though Jewish, was also Roman (16:37–38).[1803] Against their charge, he could not have promulgated customs impossible for Romans, because he is Roman.[1804]
Excursus: Ancient Anti-Judaism
Philippi’s Jewish population was undoubtedly quite small (see comment on Acts 16:13),[1805] but it would not be surprising if Philippi reflected the widespread anti-Judaism of the era.[1806] (Racial anti-Semitism arose in the nineteenth century; ancient anti-Judaism was based on customs, not nineteenth-century racial theories.)[1807] This would be all the more true if Claudius’s expulsion of Jews from Rome had already occurred (see comment on Acts 18:2), allowing others opposed to Judaism in the empire to cite imperial precedent.
Greek and Roman authors were often both misinformed about and hostile toward Jerusalem.[1808] One Jewish source hyperbolically claims that “all” people will find Jewish customs offensive (Sib. Or. 3.271–72); a Roman rhetorician notes that people abhor founders of cities for fortifying a race harmful to other peoples, such as the one who founded the “Jewish superstition” (Quint. Inst. 3.7.21). When summarizing characteristics of different peoples, Apuleius deemed Judeans “superstitious” (Apul. Flor. 6.2).
Aristocratic Jews such as Josephus could not help but lament scandalous Jews who made matters worse for the rest of their people. When one Jew (denounced by Josephus as a transgressor of Jewish law) financially exploited the Roman proselyte Fulvia, the emperor Tiberius angrily expelled the entire Jewish community from Rome and drafted four thousand young men to serve in the military despite their religious scruples.[1809]
Many Romans looked down on other parts of the empire; the imperial city, after all, had subdued and united all others.[1810] In an early period, Romans resented the introduction of non-Roman deities, believing that the gods would judge them for this practice (Dion. Hal. Ant. rom. 3.35.2). When the people embraced foreign superstitions to deliver them from pestilence (Livy 4.30.9), the leading citizens charged the aediles to require only the worship of Roman gods and only in the Roman way (4.30.10–11). In time, Rome’s empire made such exclusiveness neither possible nor desirable, but limits to tolerance remained.[1811] Rome’s experience with the subversive Bacchanalia in the second century B.C.E. (39.8–19) became the classic case of how to deal with threats from foreign religions (Cic. Leg. 2.37) and is echoed in Pliny the Younger’s early second-century C.E. investigation of Christians (Ep. 10.96–97).[1812]
Sometimes Romans could lump various foreign cults together, mingling “Palestinian goddesses” with Phrygian Cybele (Ovid Fasti 4.236). But some groups appeared more threatening than others; Romans thought of Dacians, for example, as “noble savages,” but by contrast Jews had a Diaspora in Rome, proselytized, and threatened Roman values.[1813]
Just treatment of foreigners in a city was a cause for praise of the city (Men. Rhet. 1.3, 363.4–10; see comment on hospitality in 16:15), but it was a virtue more often suppressed by the virtue of local patriotism. If Philippi, as a Roman colony, proved inhospitable on this point, they could claim to follow the mother city’s example (albeit very selectively).[1814] Roman virtue demanded preservation of laws, customs, and gods (Rhet. Her. 3.3.4). In the late republic, Cicero protests (in ideal laws) that “the worship of private gods, whether new or alien, brings confusion into religion and introduces ceremonies unknown to our priests” (Leg. 2.10.25).[1815]
Cicero was also ready to criticize foreign cultures and religions, though mainly for utilitarian reasons. Thus he impugns the credibility of Greeks when they are witnesses for the prosecution and he is defending a client. Many others, he claims, also distrust Greeks; despite their literary brilliance, they make unreliable witnesses (Flacc. 4.9). He cites a Greek saying: “Testify for me, and I will return the favor” (4.10). Cicero claims that Greeks testify to do injustice (5.11), and he laments that he could never finish if he tried to describe fully the unreliability of Greek witnesses (5.12). They are irresponsible and laxly sit in their assemblies instead of standing like austere Romans (7.16).[1816] It is not surprising, then, that Cicero would abuse Jews when it suits his purpose. It is understandable that each people has its own religious customs, he notes, but Jews have continued to violently resist Roman rule and its customs despite being conquered (28.69).[1817]
Romans traditionally considered Jews particularly superstitious; Horace jibes, “Apella, the Jew, may believe it, not I.”[1818] Later Juvenal mocks Jewish customs of the Sabbath, circumcision, and abstention from pork (Sat. 14.96–106).[1819] These three issues surface repeatedly in Roman attacks on Judaism.[1820]
Although such insults characterized satirists or critics from competing minority cultures, they presumably stung more when offered by historians from dominant Greek or Roman cultures.[1821] Repeating a vicious series of libels against Jews (Hist. 5.1–5), Tacitus denounces Judaism as purely evil despite its antiquity (esp. 5.5). Jews “regard as profane all that we hold sacred; on the other hand, they permit all that we abhor” (5.4 [LCL, 2:179]).[1822] According to Tacitus, the worst members of other peoples betray their own heritage, joining the Jews and increasing their wealth. He maintains that whereas Jews are kind to fellow Jews, “they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies.[1823] They sit apart at meals, they sleep apart, and though, as a nation, they are singularly prone to lust, they abstain from intercourse with foreign women; among themselves nothing is unlawful.”[1824]
Others also attacked Jews for their revolts[1825] and their separatism.[1826] One reason that Apion’s anti-Jewish demagogic defamation succeeded so well is that it played on such common stereotypes as Jewish “hatred of humanity.”[1827] One temporary disciple of Apollonius in Philostratus’s novel complains that “the Jews have long been in revolt not only against the Romans, but against humanity”; he claims that they remain aloof from others, will not share at table or join public religious activity with others, and are further from mainstream Greco-Roman culture than are Indians. Why punish them for revolting, he concludes, since we were foolish to have admitted them to the empire to begin with?[1828] For polytheists who sought to respect others’ deities, the belief of this one conquered people that their own god was most powerful and indeed the only true God must have often generated offense or at least bewilderment.
Stereotypes of Jewish separatism and hatred of other peoples’ gods could have been at play here. If the slave girl’s spirit was a “pythoness,” it could be viewed by polytheists as beneficial; in their view, only Jewish intolerance of other gods rejected Apollo and the pythoness spirit, and thus it was well-known Jewish magic that had the malevolent effect (in their view) of driving out a beneficial spirit (though magic was normally associated with the private rather than the public sphere). This argument might make sense in an ancient court; Paul’s action was public, and he could not deny opposing her spirit by the name of his God. That the spirit had been endorsing Paul and Silas made the intolerance seem all the more one-sided, creating all the more trouble for Paul. In this way the accusers might even consider their trumped-up charges against the Jewish teachers justifiable.
The harshest criticisms of Jews in this period, however, seem to have stemmed from their success at proselytism.[1829] In contrast to modern Western notions of religious freedom (including freedom to choose and change religions), polytheistic ethnic religion expected tolerance or even assimilation of others’ gods, but fidelity to one’s heritage demanded retention of one’s own. So long as Jews remained one ethnic religion among many, they were not a threat, but when they achieved popularity at the expense of their conquerors,[1830] winning Roman women from ancestral customs, their despised customs became a more potent threat.[1831] Horace characterizes the Jews as eager to make converts (Sat. 1.4.141–44). Tacitus complains that when Jews circumcise converts, they compel them to reject their old gods, nations, and families (Hist. 5.5). Roman writers often despised all Eastern superstitions equally, but in their view, Judaism’s proselytizing success threatened Roman stability.[1832] That Paul and Silas are charged with introducing foreign customs (Acts 16:21) appealed to these anti-proselytism sentiments.[1833]
Although Roman anti-Judaism probably provided an excuse for anti-Jewish hostility in a city with few Jews, such sentiments were not limited to Rome. They were not universal (probably relatively rare in Asia Minor), but they were significant in some locations, most notably among the Greeks of Alexandria. Anti-Judaism existed from an early period in Egypt (see, e.g., CPJ 1:24–25), and its contours are preserved for us especially in Josephus’s responses to Apion’s anti-Jewish claims (Ag. Ap. 2).[1834] Apion charges, for example, that Jews swore never to do good to any foreigner (Ag. Ap. 2.121; Josephus refutes this in 2.121–24). An Egyptian papyrus from 41 C.E. warns, “Like everyone else you also should watch out for the Jews” (BGU 1079.23–26).
Both Sejanus and Flaccus Avillius persecuted Alexandria’s Jewish population (Philo Flacc. 1); the latter had Jews scourged, crucified, tortured, and mauled for “entertainment” (Flacc. 85).[1835] These abuses would be widely known and affect what other cities might try to get away with; Philo warned that this could create an undesirable precedent for other cities in the empire (Flacc. 47).
Jewish agitation for citizen rights in Alexandria exacerbated tensions there. Alexandrian Greeks countered that Jews wanted privileges such as Greek citizenship without the attendant civic responsibilities, from which their religion’s demands exempted them.[1836] Claudius ratified the Jewish people’s rights to worship according to their customs and demanded an end to cruelty against them (P.Lond. 1912.82–88), but he warned that if they continued to foment trouble (e.g., by agitating for citizenship), he would punish them as those spreading their plague throughout the inhabited earth (1912.98–100).[1837]
Tensions continued to mount, however, leading to massacres of Jews and Jewish reprisals in 113 and 115 C.E., for which Rome responded harshly to Alexandria’s Greeks.[1838] Egyptian priests were hostile to Judaism, and they incited slaughter of Jews in the countryside in 116–17 C.E.[1839] Alexandrian propaganda against Jews probably had effects elsewhere in the empire, inviting Jewish apologetic responses.[1840] Nevertheless, the rest of the Greek world avoided the violent anti-Judaism of Greek-speaking Egypt.[1841] Imperial anti-Jewish policy (not always friendly under Tiberius or Claudius) took an even harsher turn from 69 to 135 C.E., after the first Judean revolt.[1842]
III. ABUSE BY MOB AND MAGISTRATES (16:22)
The Jewishness of Paul and Silas counted against them (Acts 16:20), and foreigners in towns typically lacked friends or political allies. The missionaries’ artisan status, if known (later in Macedonia, cf. 1 Thess 2:9; 2 Thess 3:9), would also count against them. One qualification for magistrates in the empire was that they had never practiced a dishonorable trade.[1843] As people of presumed low status, Paul and Silas could well have been presumed guilty without the authorities’ dignifying the case (and insulting the accusers) by a more lengthy hearing.[1844] One can infer that in the end the accusers, who end up embarrassing the city magistrates (Acts 16:38–39), would take their own turn being embarrassed (cf. similarly 19:38–40).
(1) Lictors’ Rods
Ripping off clothes was standard practice before a beating (Aul. Gel. 10.3.3; see comment on Acts 7:58);[1845] it links Paul and Silas with Jesus, who suffered the same before his execution (Luke 23:34).[1846] Jails were known for their filth, and if the missionaries’ clothes were returned to them when they were cast in jail, they would be too torn to afford much protection for their wounds.[1847] If tearing one’s own garments suits mourning (Acts 14:14), Luke’s hearers will be appalled at innocent people (Roman citizens at that!) having garments “torn” from them.[1848] For the meaning of ἱμάτια, the outer coats, see comment on Acts 7:58. But given the character of beatings, they were undoubtedly completely stripped, or as completely stripped as the mob had time for. This was humiliating (cf. 1 Thess 2:2), especially for Jews (for this background also, see again comment on Acts 7:58). (Shamed believers may have spontaneously provided some untorn clothes before the team left Philippi, if they did not have an additional pair.)
Presumably the duumvirs, who are here said to have stripped off the garments of the accused,[1849] employed their lictors (see comment below) for this activity instead of doing it themselves.[1850] The beating with “rods” (Acts 16:22) implies the lictors (ῥαβδοῦχοι, 16:35, 38) who walked in front of duumvirs in Rome and Roman colonies, carrying the fasces, or rods.[1851] Their role was to ensure proper honor for the duumvirs.[1852] All Roman magistrates with imperium—that is, magistrates except tribunes—had lictors (Plut. Rom. Q. 81, Mor. 283B);[1853] whereas the emperor, a consul, and proconsul each had twelve, praetors had six.[1854]
The lictors marched in single file before the magistrates, clearing the way and, when necessary, carrying out their sentences of arrest or summons.[1855] They carried these rods before the magistrate wherever he went, even in his home or to the baths;[1856] a magistrate appeared without them only when entering a higher official’s home or a free city.[1857] Their function was “to clear the way for public officials, to summon citizens to appear in court . . . , to arrest (prensio), to chastise (verberatio), or at executions.”[1858] Here they chastise.
The lictors likely wore the traditional toga; although probably few were from the nobility, they were citizens, and their position itself gave them some status.[1859] Lictors carried the rods (αἱ ῥάβδοι) of praetors “in bundles with axes attached” (Rom. Q. 82, Mor. 283E [LCL, 4:125]).[1860] Some scholars doubt whether duumvirs were authorized to inflict corporal punishment as here, but that they had lictors, whose rods represented judicial floggings, implies that they did hold such authority (albeit not against Roman citizens).[1861] Certainly Paul testifies that he was three times beaten with rods (2 Cor 11:25), and those of the lictors would have been closest at hand (it is not to be confused with the synagogue discipline indicated in 2 Cor 11:24). The alternative remains possible, though not flattering to Philippi: we would have to think here of the officials’ involvement in a politically powerful mob action against troublemakers, one that might be overlooked by Rome—but (again) not against Roman citizens.
(2) Scourging
Romans practiced scourging for various reasons. It could be employed for torture to secure information (Acts 22:24; cf. probably Jos. War 6.304);[1862] as a means of execution, especially in military settings;[1863] as corporal discipline;[1864] and as a prelude to execution after the sentence.[1865] Corporal discipline was probably the most common use, and in moderate forms, it was considered a warning less severe than, for example, condemnation to hard labor (Dig. 47.21.2). Such floggings could serve as warnings to others and hence were intended partly as deterrents (Val. Max. 1.1.6).[1866] Imprisonment sometimes accompanied such beatings, as here (Test. Jos. 2:3; Xen. Eph. Anthia 2.6).
Romans also practiced various degrees of scourging. Roman laws forbade public beating of citizens, but a free non-Roman might receive fustigatio, beating with a staff, as opposed to a slave’s punishment by flagellatio,[1867] beating with a leather whip with pieces of iron or bone woven in, or an attached spike.[1868] The law distinguished between a light “corrective beating” (admonitio/castigatio) and the heavy, harsh verberatio.[1869] Paul and Silas must have received the harsher verberatio, since their wounds needed cleansing (Acts 16:33).[1870] Not limited by Jewish scruples about “39 stripes,” Romans could flog a person without a specific limit, a practice that, not surprisingly, sometimes led to the victim’s death.[1871] A Cynic sage might be said to ignore his flogging if he considered it unjust (Diog. Laert. 6.5.91).
Normally it was bad for a free man to be beaten, but not if it was merited and for public discipline (Polyb. 2.56.14). Philo notes that low-class, rural Egyptians were beaten in a more shameful way, but urban Alexandrian free persons and citizens were normally beaten with rods.[1872] (Whereas Romans used rods on free persons and sticks on soldiers, they used scourges on slaves or on provincials of equivalent status.)[1873] In practice, a lower-class person with an influential accuser might even be condemned to death without a proper trial (Apul. Metam. 9.42). Although the “masses” might be welcome to speak or vote, intellectuals sometimes questioned whether justice was always done, recalling the travesty of justice in Socrates’s trial (e.g., Max. Tyre 3.1, 5, 7; see comment on Acts 17:19).
(3) Lack of Protest
Why did Paul and Silas not protest on the basis of their Roman citizenship (Acts 16:37), which would have embarrassed their accusers and undercut the status basis for the accusation (16:21)? A citizen could call for his rights by crying out, Civis romanus sum, “I am a Roman citizen!”[1874] Some scholars argue that the officials probably did not give them a chance to speak in their defense[1875] or that they were drowned out because of the noise of the crowd.[1876] Certainly lawcourts were typically loud places (Marc. Aur. 7.48, for example, employs them as his prototypical example of loudness).
Yet they were not simply drowned out; if a citizen was unheard the first time, he or she could continue crying out (Cic. Verr. 2.5.62, 142, 163); nor do they avail themselves of the opportunity to declare their citizenship after the beating but before the imprisonment.[1877] Disorderly shouting was common during trials (e.g., Cicero’s defenders when he spoke against Clodius, Cic. Att. 1.16). But this was no illegal mob; it began as a public judicial scene, and Romans expected crowd participation even in the settings where others made their protests heard. The crowd’s voices might silence the accused and prejudice officials against them; their sympathies could protect citizens.[1878] But if Paul and Silas did not make themselves heard, it may have been because they saw it as impolitic, not as logistically impossible; their citizenship would stand them in better stead after the heat of the mob instead of being squandered in the midst of it.[1879]
One could argue that because Latin was the colony’s official language by this period (more than half the inscriptions are in Latin), the missionaries might have been slow to understand (cf. Acts 14:14a); but the language of the countryside and market remained Greek,[1880] and the missionaries must have understood the actions taking place even in the unlikely event that they understood insufficient Latin to grasp the meaning. (Certainly, had they cried out in Greek, most Philippians would have understood them, and since they are obviously not from Philippi, their Roman citizenship would not be disbelieved merely because they protested it in Greek. Roman citizens in the East were not all fluent in Latin, but basic recognition of key words requires far less competence than speaking does, and one need not have understood much to recognize what was happening.) One cannot suppose that they would be disbelieved for not wearing the toga; it was cumbersome, and most Romans would not wear it most of the time.[1881]
More likely, Paul and Silas recognized that a court case between Romans over the property dispute or the charge of teaching foreign superstitions “would have entangled him in a protracted trial with an uncertain outcome.”[1882] Paul might become more optimistic about favorable hearings after Acts 18:14–16, but at this point he may doubt his ability to secure justice before these magistrates.[1883] This could have been partly, but was probably not exclusively, the matter of a minority complex[1884] or as-yet-untested privileges.[1885] Yet even if it was not, they had limited reason to believe that appeal to citizenship would achieve justice. In Judea, where Paul and Silas were from, governors sometimes got away with abusing even equestrians (slightly later, see Jos. War 2.308); Philippi’s commitments to Rome made it take such illegality more seriously (Acts 16:38), but Paul and Silas would not have known this. Moreover, even as a Roman citizen, Paul remained an outsider to the colony and hence was of lesser status than the property owners who were charging him with a crime. (Indeed, some scholars suggest that preaching foreign customs might be viewed more harshly for a Roman than for a “mere” Jew.)[1886]
With politicians under pressure from a shouting mob, the preachers’ citizenship could at best secure a hearing where the magistrates would be heavily prejudiced against them. After the beating, by contrast, announcing their citizenship put the magistrates, rather than the preachers, in an embarrassing situation (though this approach would not generate friendly feelings from the magistrates, it would shift the status issues). By strategically waiting until the magistrates themselves had broken the law by punishing him, Paul had them in the position where they might need to negotiate. A Roman citizen beaten with rods without trial held the moral and legal high ground against those who ordered him beaten (Dion. Hal. Ant. rom. 9.39.1–2, 5).
Moreover, citizenship was difficult to prove quickly. If Paul was born after 4 or 9 C.E., he would have been registered within thirty days after birth, and both public records and witnesses should have made this easy to prove close to home.[1887] But Philippi was some seven hundred miles by land from Tarsus. By what means could Paul (and presumably Silas) prove Roman citizenship at this distance from home? Some used a testatio, “a certified private copy of the record of the professio” (a father’s declaration of an infant’s citizenship); it was “inscribed on the waxed surfaces of a small wooden diptych” that included the names of about seven witnesses. Retired soldiers could use a diploma militaris or civilian diploma; those who needed diplomata as travel documents could easily obtain them (Cic. Att. 10.17).[1888]
Paul would probably not have had a diploma but may have had a testatio[1889] (though one wonders if he would have replaced it regularly after shipwrecks, 2 Cor 11:25). But even with all this, given his obvious Jewish allegiance, his citizenship could be contested in an anti-Jewish environment, raising delays and requiring the “arrival of distant witnesses.”[1890] Magistrates might accept testationes and diplomata, but this was not guaranteed; if they doubted such documents, they might demand witnesses instead.[1891] Even if the claim was uncontested, it would probably need to be decided by the province’s governor. Waiting for the governor’s next scheduled visit to the city might be lengthy, and if Paul were detained in jail, he would be unable to work or secure resources while waiting for the trial.[1892]
(4) Historical Likelihood?
How historically probable is the scene of their beating? A response has been given above to the objection that Paul would have surely protested his citizenship if he was beaten, although a citizen. (For discussion of the missionaries’ citizenship, see comment on Acts 16:37.)
Paul is explicit in his own letters that he was beaten with rods and, indeed, claims that this happened to him three times (2 Cor 11:25; cf. 6:5) in as many as three locations. If Paul was beaten with rods, this beating presumably happened in a Roman colony, narrowing the choices mainly to Philippi, Lystra, Pisidian Antioch, and Troas (since it is unlikely to have happened in Corinth).[1893] It is therefore difficult to doubt this central dramatic element of Luke’s story.[1894]
Paul’s own writings attest specifically that he and at least one companion suffered and were publicly “shamed” (ὑβρισθέντες) in Philippi (1 Thess 2:2; cf. Phil 1:29–30).[1895] Putting a free person in chains could “humiliate” the person (e.g., Polyb. 1.69.5). What would this shaming entail?
(5) Public Humiliation
Public beatings entailed shaming;[1896] indeed, one of the primary purposes of public punishments was to shame the guilty party (Dio Chrys. Or. 76.4). Quintilian (referring to disciplining children) thought beatings disgraceful and fit only for slaves (Inst. 1.3.13–14). Officials often paraded those who were beaten through the city, exposing their wounds to public view.[1897] That Luke often reports high-status features of Paul’s ministry makes any invention of such reports of shame all the more unlikely. Certainly the stripping (Acts 16:22) would be shameful for Jews (see comment on Acts 7:58). Public opinion (honor and shame) was used to regulate people’s public behavior.[1898]
The shame would be partly reversed, however, if Paul’s Roman citizenship became known (the situation that obtains in 16:37–39). A lictor’s thrusting one aside rather than letting one speak was a grievous insult that provoked widespread anger (Livy 3.45.5–6). Cicero protests Verres’s outrageous behavior in having an innocent man beaten with rods, who soon afterward died as a result of the beating (Verr. 2.5.54.142).[1899] Another Roman was acting shamefully, beating allies with rods (Cic. Fam. 10.32.2). Romans hearing of such outrageous behavior would be stirred to anger (Quint. Inst. 4.2.113). By contrast, a gentle governor such as Cicero reportedly never had anyone’s garments torn off or had anyone beaten with rods or publicly humiliated (Plut. Cic. 36.3).
Further, for the members of Luke’s audience, the shame might be minimized by the philosophic heroic tradition, since they would view Paul as a sage. Stoics believed that a true philosopher would not resent being beaten,[1900] like other forms of suffering or shame. Suffering, insults, and humiliations are not true suffering to a philosophically minded person (Mus. Ruf. 10, pp. 76.18–78.7; several times repeating ὑβρι- roots).[1901] By portraying Paul and Silas as Roman citizens suffering at the hands of the Roman mob, Luke also honors them by means of the principle that they have discreditable opponents.[1902]
IV. IMPRISONED (16:23)
Public beatings were often deemed sufficient punishment for an offense,[1903] but Paul and Silas were imprisoned in addition to this beating. Perhaps (if the earthquake did not influence decisions) the authorities planned to release them from jail and expel them from the city the next day (Acts 16:35–36), but in any case this would be an unpleasant addition to the beating.
(1) Imprisonment
Ancients normally employed custody to detain prisoners for trial, to protect them, or to hold them until the execution of a sentence.[1904] Increasingly, however, prisons were employed as a punitive measure in themselves; despite judicial attempts to restrict this practice, it sometimes occurred through the contrivance of delays in trial and other means.[1905] The officials might intend this detention as a further punishment before expulsion from the city.
Paul’s writings testify that he was “often” imprisoned (2 Cor 11:23); since Paul writes 2 Corinthians well before his detention that begins in Acts 22:24–29, Luke underreports, not overreports, Paul’s imprisonments. (This may lend some credibility to the sometimes proposed Ephesian imprisonment, though it cannot be certain; see comment on Acts 19:23–40.) On a narrative level, however, the imprisonments that Luke does report fulfill Jesus’s warning that his followers would be delivered up to prisons (Luke 21:12).
Where was this prison? Most cities (e.g., Rome, Athens) had a prison “near the court, perhaps even adjoining the forum.”[1906] Second-century remains reveal public buildings near Philippi’s forum.[1907] The exact site remains unknown. The traditional site, just north (across the Via Egnatia) of the northwest corner of the forum,[1908] and hence near the site of the mob scene, is too small.[1909] Perhaps more problematic, it was an area of buildings devoted to religion and so was not a good site for a prison; this site was instead probably a double cistern in this period.[1910]
(2) A Veteran?
A number of commentators suggest that the jailer was probably one of the Roman veterans settled in the colony.[1911] The supposition that the jailer was a veteran, however, is very likely wrong. Philippi was settled with veterans in an earlier generation (the largest influx being some eighty years before), not this generation (see comment on Acts 16:12).[1912] Many native Macedonians who had served “the Praetorian Guard or Rome’s urban cohorts” naturally chose to settle in this colony,[1913] but this does not make the jailer’s being a veteran more likely than it would in another Roman colony. (That he was descended from veterans is plausible but irrelevant to his occupation.)
Veterans were (by the definition assumed here) retired;[1914] why would a veteran be supervising a jail, even with a significant staff under him (Acts 16:29)? Retired soldiers received a land grant (more often in an earlier period) or, more frequently, a monetary bonus.[1915] Many who received land grants in Egypt settled in the larger villages, where they were de facto wealthy and influential by local standards and often grew more prosperous through agriculture.[1916] Veterans were normally of higher status than to need such jobs, even if their pensions were (as often) not large;[1917] still, this is no mere guard if he has numerous subordinates (16:27, 29). (The exception might be if his is a civic office [cf. Gen 40:3 LXX], but his role appears more mundane and directly tied to the prison here, especially in view of his near suicide in Acts 16:27.)
Even if the jailer was not a veteran, it is possible that he represents the Roman establishment from a narrative perspective.[1918] Historically, however, such a jailer may perhaps have been a public slave[1919] (although this is not a necessary inference). Public slaves guarded many jails for a small salary, and though Pliny the Younger in the early second century wanted to supplement their reliability with soldiers (Ep. 10.19.1–2), the emperor apparently thought that this practice would set a bad precedent (10.20.1) and insisted on not taking soldiers for guard duty (10.20.2). Many civilian prison workers were state-owned slaves, and we know that Philippi owned many public slaves. Although the jailer runs the prison and has slaves under him, he is under the authority of the lictors.[1920] Public slaves could be of relatively high status and even wealthy;[1921] prison directors were paid better than legionaries and often gained further wealth through bribery and extortion.[1922] That the jailer has a home, apparently nearby (Acts 16:27, 32–34), suggests some means, in any case; he also has a family (16:31–33).
(3) The Jailer’s Anonymity
The jailer remains anonymous,[1923] but this observation may be insignificant. Perhaps this is protective anonymity,[1924] especially if members of his family remain citizens in Philippi, but most of Luke’s ideal audience (assuming that it includes Christians in Philippi) would know his identity anyway. Most converts (including the strategic African official of 8:27, where protective anonymity would be pointless) in Acts remain anonymous.
It was probably safer for Lydia, a foreign business agent worshiping (and possibly living) outside the city walls, than for the jailer to worship Israel’s God. Just as Paul the persecutor knew what he would endure for preaching (9:16), the jailer knows what he risks to follow Christ (cf. 16:21–23). But Luke also takes the opportunity to show that just as the non-Roman charge about Paul (16:21) is false (16:37), it has now become false that it is a foreign custom not accepted by Philippian Romans (16:20, 34).
V. SECURING THE PRISONERS (16:24)
Although guards were sometimes civil toward prisoners,[1925] ancient reports confirm the suspicion that they were more often harsh.[1926] Sometimes, indeed, guards were selected for harshness (Jos. Ant. 18.203), and guarding prisoners made them worse (Philo Jos. 81–84).[1927] It was said that the jailer would not have concerned himself had the philosopher Musonius died in jail; only the philosopher’s strength helped him to endure (Philost. Vit. Apoll. 4.35). Those who carried out brutal acts under orders might later deny responsibility, blaming their superiors.[1928] Caution in trusting could stand jailers in good stead; one prison keeper opened the door to those supposedly bringing a new detainee, but they killed him and freed his prisoners (Xen. Hell. 5.4.8). Offending one’s guards sometimes could guarantee one’s death (Diod. Sic. 31.9.5).[1929] Guards also profited from bribes and other means of gain.[1930]
The order for the missionaries to be kept “securely” (ἀσφαλῶς, Acts 16:23) leads to excessive precautions for two men weakened by public beatings: assigning them to the innermost cell and having their feet secured (ἠσφαλίσατο) in stocks. A serious crime—whether by virtue of its content or of the status of the one offended—tended to warrant stricter custody, with a less serious crime inviting less secure custody.[1931] Paul and Silas are treated, in this respect at least, as if they have committed a serious crime. Such security highlights the irony of their later refusal to escape after divine deliverance; in Luke’s apologetic, Paul and Silas, far from being subversive rabble-rousers, are law-abiding Roman citizens (16:37). (The stocks and the inner prison also highlight the miraculous nature of their release.)[1932] The security also creates suspense and dramatically underlines God’s power, which broke all physical restraints,[1933] making their continuing presence voluntary.
Literally, their feet were fixed securely to “the wood,” a term understood as applying to stocks.[1934] Those detained with devices such as stocks or chains experienced more severe imprisonment than those who were not, but chains were normally used in public city prisons.[1935] Stocks were used in a range of cultures, including ancient Israel.[1936] They were permitted only for prisoners of the lowest social status.[1937] Rapske summarizes their sadistic use:
They often consisted of a long piece of wood pierced at regular intervals with notches or holes and split along the length so that the feet of the prisoner could be set in and secured. In 1766 a metal “rod through comb” type of these stocks was found in a guard house/prison in the Gladiators Barracks at Pompeii. . . . Prisoners’ legs were set in the spaces between the teeth and a moveable iron rod was run through the holes in the top of each tooth. The whole contraption was anchored to the floor.[1938]
The jailer’s aides could increase pain by expanding the distance between the feet, placing them in holes farther apart.[1939] This torture could be employed for days at a time; the old laws of Solon in Athens allowed for feet in the stocks up to five days (Lysias Or. 10.16, §117). Here it could be a normal overnight “security precaution” (cf. Lucian Tox. 150–51); since it was done immediately upon receipt of the command, however, it may have included an element of torment. Barely able to change position, a person would have to sit up or lie on the floor during the night.[1940] (Crucifixion also meant being affixed to “wood,”[1941] and it is possible that Luke may intend a parallel.)[1942]
Clearly, the jailer holds them under conditions meant to be unpleasant as well as secure. By way of analogy, Rome’s city prison was the city’s severest form of custody, even worse than work in the stone quarries;[1943] one might have to beg food from parricides there![1944] Areas within a prison also varied in their severity. Within Rome’s city prison, the harshest cell was “the Tullianum or death cell,”[1945] an inner cell reserved for the most serious criminals of the lowest status.[1946] Philippi, presumably, likewise had some cells that were used for harsher treatment than others. An inner prison was normally the harshest part, with the least ventilation, at least sometimes used to humiliate criminals as well as detain them securely.[1947] Maximus of Tyre portrays unenlightened persons as if imprisoned “in a dark recess, laden with heavy fetters on their feet and heavy rings round their necks and their hands tied in rough bonds.”[1948]