Much of the commentary tradition on Acts 17:16-34 too quickly glosses over the inclusion of Paul's sermon in a larger narrative context, focusing instead on the religionsgeschichtliche background of the speech or its compatibility with Pauline thought as expressed in the epistles. This essay brackets many of the questions that have occupied the history of the interpretation so as to highlight questions of literary and theological function. Close attention to Luke's compositional technique reveals the ways in which the Areopoagus narrative is not aimed at a monolithic Gentile audience but rather engages multiple implied readers while recapitulating many of the leading Lukan motifs in the mission to the Jews. The portrayal of Paul and of the responses of the Athenians to his message is suggestive of how Luke answers for his readers the question posed by Tertullian a century later, 'What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?'
The apocryphal Apocalypse of Peter is the earliest Christian
description of hell. Among its Dantesque images there appears in chapter
eight a brief but gruesome depiction of those guilty of infanticide and
abortion. By virtue of the author's participation in the linguistic,
social, and ideological worlds of second-century Christianity, the
text is a complex one, just as contemporary debates about abortion are
complex. Apoc. Pet. 8 is not simply "about" abortion or hell. This
essay employs the insights of sociorhetorical criticism as a heuristic
device for sorting out the various threads of discourse about abortion
and infanticide in this early Christian text. Focus upon the scene's
inner argumentative texture, intertexture, and social-cultural texture
reveals a dynamic interplay between this text and the Greco-Roman milieu
of which it is a part.
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