From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 08 1998 - 08:06:42 EST
At 6:18 AM -0600 1/8/98, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>At 08:41 PM 1/7/98 +0000, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>
>>What does OUN add to this passage?
>
>In Acts 8:4 hOI MEN OUN DIASPARENTES, I think that OUN has a conventional
>meaning, indicating either that this is what happened *after* Saul
>scattered them, or that this is what they did in *response* to having been
>scattered. I might translate "then those who had been scattered" or perhaps
>"so those who had been scattered".
>
>Incidentally, the reason the MEN...DE is helpful in this passage is to
>point out that Philip was not among those who had been scattered. Verse 8:1
>tells us that all were scattered *except* the apostles. Acts 4 talks about
>those who have been dispersed (hOI MEN OUN DIASPARENTES) then tells us what
>Philip (FILIPPOS DE) did, indicating clearly that he did not belong to the
>former group.
Just to keep the record straight, I'm rather assuming that this Philip is
one of the seven "Hellenists" elected for the purpose succinctly phrased by
Peter in Acts 6:3 as "to wait on tables"--although, theoretically at least,
it could be the apostle Philip whom Luke lists (as do the other Synoptics)
as the brother of Bartholomew. I don't think there's any clear indicator of
WHICH Philip (if indeed they were two different persons) this may have
been. But it has always seemed to me one of the greatest inconsequences in
the narrative of Acts that the only members of the Jerusalem community NOT
scattered should be the Twelve, if indeed they were doing the real
evangelistic work in the city. I think the sources employed by Luke must
rather have viewed the function of the six "Hellenists" as evangelistic
mission to Greek-speaking Jews and Gentile proselytes, since his narrative
shows Stephen and then Philip doing precisely this. If indeed the Twelve
alone of the community were not forced to quit Jerusalem, I would suppose
the reason to be that the gospel which they were proclaiming was not so
antagonistic to Jewish tradition as the more radical gospel proclaimed by
the "Hellenists." I've offered this argument not in order to disparage the
accuracy of Lucan ecclesiastical historiography but rather to suggest that
the situation surrounding the martyrdom of Stephen and the persecution and
dispersal reported in Acts 8:1-3 may well have been more complicated than
the narrator makes clear, and more basically, to support my earlier
suggestion that the MEN ... DE of 8:3-4 really does envision Philip as one
of the DIASPARENTES and separates his story from the general evangelistic
work carried out in unnamed places by the others. This seems to me to make
more sense of the grammatical and logical sequence of verses 3 and 4.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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