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Jipp, Joshua W. Divine Visitation and Hospitality to Strangers in Luke-Acts: An Interpretation of the Malta Episode in Acts 28:1–10. NovTSup 153. Leiden: Brill, 2013.¹⁸⁷⁷
Joshua Jipp’s careful work first surveys the history of interpretation of Acts 28:1–10, which he concludes with his own plan to advance a new approach. He then examines component elements of the account in their social-historical context to see how they cohere together around a particular framework. He argues that ancient hearers would have approached Acts 28:1–10 in light of the ancient motif of theoxeny, unknowing hospitality (or inhospitality) to a deity. Jipp lavishly sets theoxenies in the broader context of ancient hospitality conventions.
Theoxeny narratives include mortals’ response toward a deity, an epiphany revealing the deity, and finally reward or punishment for the mortals. Paul, of course, turns out to be a divine agent rather than a god (as Luke’s ideal hearers would recognize from previous occasions when divinity was attributed to mortals), but Jipp underlines how the barbarians’ perception of him as divine contains significant truth.
Luke’s narrative subverts the ancient stereotype of “barbarians’” inhospitality: they proved hospitable before God attested Paul’s status as a divine agent, and a leading representative of Malta afterward carried this hospitality even further with shared table fellowship. Reading Acts’ closing scenes in light of those of Luke’s Gospel, Jipp compares the scene in Luke 24 where Jesus’s initially disguised identity is recognized in a hospitality setting. Jipp also contrasts Paul’s welcome as God’s agent in Malta with the Roman Jewish community’s failure to do so in Acts 28:17–28, fitting a larger and climactic theme in Acts (see 1:8; 28:28).
Those developing a thesis sometimes see it too pervasively, and Jipp might do this at least once. Viewing God’s message as a “divine visitor” receiving hospitality (237) may press the motif too far, although reception of the message certainly does include hospitality toward its agents (Luke 10:10–16). Nevertheless, Jipp’s narrative observations are generally helpful and unobjectionable.
Jipp cites nearly five hundred references from extrabiblical Greek and Roman sources. Other references to the theoxeny motif could be marshalled besides those he included; for example, Demeter was pleased with an old woman who gave her water but punished a boy who mocked her (Ovid Metam. 5.449–61; cf. possible examples in other genres in e.g., Eunapius Lives 468; Valerius Maximus 1.8. ext. 7). Although Jipp includes Heb 13:2 as an example of hospitality (56), it would also fit his treatment of Jewish theoxenies (probably recalling especially Gen 18 and possibly Tobit). Adding such further instances, however, would simply reinforce the motif that Jipp has already correctly identified.
Jipp draws on a wide range of secondary literature (with close to five hundred sources in his bibliography) from about three hundred authors who reflect a range of perspectives. In contrast to writers who routinely denigrate the work of predecessors to underline their own works’ uniqueness, Jipp rightly credits the recent insights of other scholars, such as the work of Andrew Arterbury (including his brief mention of theoxeny), before developing his own distinctive focus in greater detail. Not every element, therefore, is new. Scholars have long viewed the understanding of Barnabas and Paul as Zeus and Hermes, narrated in Acts 14, against the backdrop of Ovid’s account of Baucis and Philemon (one of many passages addressed by Jipp, 124–25), or occasionally a different theoxeny.
Nevertheless, Jipp develops the motif of theoxeny to an unparalleled degree, and demonstrates its central relevance to Acts 28:1–10. There is a coherent connection between the local recognition of Paul’s divine agency and the hospitality that precedes and follows in the narrative. I believe that Jipp has accomplished here a rare feat: offering an insight that is new yet also probably correct.
The broader connection that he offers between the hospitality motif in Luke-Acts and gentile reception also seems persuasive, as does his contrast between gentile receptivity and Jewish rejection (or at best limited Jewish receptivity) in Acts 28. (Jipp’s wording could suggest more finality with regard to Jewish rejection of the message than Luke intended; cf. Kenneth D. Litwak, “One or Two Views of Judaism: Paul in Acts 28 and Romans 11 on Jewish Unbelief,” Tyndale Bulletin 57 [2, 2006]: 229–49. But I may be reading a question into Jipp’s treatment that it was not designed to address.)
Provided that no one develops it in a gnostic direction, the motif of the disguised divine agent might also yield theologically fruitful implications beyond the possible parameters of this work. Thus, for example, Paul rejected explicit testimony from a pythoness spirit (Acts 16:16–18) just as Jesus rejected spirits’ testimony in Luke 4:34–35, 41. God’s revelation often comes through frail human vessels, so that only hearers with faith will perceive the truth.
Divine Visitations is well-structured and argued. Ultimately, I find Jipp’s thesis persuasive. It both sets Acts 28:1–10 firmly in the context of larger narrative patterns in Acts and reinforces the clarity of those patterns.
. My reviews of both the first and second volumes in this series appeared in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (December
1996
).
. My review of Pervo’s Acts commentary appeared in JETS
52
(
2,
June
2009
):
386–89
.
. Reviewed in Bulletin for Biblical Research (
2010
):
126–28
.
. Reviewed in Bulletin for Biblical Research
24
(
3
,
2014
):
443–44
.