Text to Text Pours Forth Speech: Voices of Scripture in Luke-Acts

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Mar 1999 by Strauss, Mark L

Text to Text Pours Forth Speech: Voices of Scripture in Luke-Acts. By Robert Brawley. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1995, 178 pp., $27.95.

In this fascinating study of intertextuality in Luke-Acts, Robert Brawley, Professor of NT at McCormick Theological Seminary, draws on a variety of methodologies to examine the interplay of text and scripture in Luke-Acts. In Brawley's own words, the book is about "ways Luke-Acts hears voices of scripture and folds them into its own voice." His goal is "to assist readers in arriving at new levels of meaning as they overhear such voices of scripture in Luke-Acts" (p. 1). The book not only breaks new ground in the utilization of literary theory, but it also builds on theological themes developed by Brawley in his earlier works on Luke-Acts.

"Intertextuality" is distinct from the traditional study of the use of the OT in the NT in that it takes a synchronic rather than a diachronic approach. The question is not merely how a successor text picks up and utilizes a precursor text, but how the two texts interact as their two horizons fuse. The successor text not only revises or alters the meaning of the precursor, but as their horizons meet the new text is transformed by the original. Intertextuality goes beyond the study of citations and allusions to draw upon the "unbounded bank of textual patterns, anonymous and general, from which an author construes a text" (p. 5). An example of this is Luke's use of Ps 2:1 in Acts 4:27, where the "peoples" (originally Gentiles) are identified as the people of Israel. While a conventional interpretation might see this as a citation made without respect for its original context, an intertextual approach recognizes that Acts 4:27 plays off the parallelism of "the nations" and "the peoples" in Ps 2:1 with the sharp irony that some Jewish people have taken on the function of Gentiles. The two texts "stand in tension with and extend each other simultaneously" (p. 8).

Brawley draws on an array of methodologies for his study, including Harold Bloom's "revisionary ratios," Richard Hays' criteria for discerning allusions and Michael Riffaterre's concept of "ungrammaticalities." Bloom's ratios, which carry enigmatic names like "clinamen," "tessera," "kenosis" and "daemonization," are intended to clarify intertextual relationships between precursor and successor texts. "Clinamen," for example, is the appropriation and revision of a precursor text, as in the identification of the "peoples" of Ps 2:1 as the people of Israel in Acts 4:27. "Tessera" is completion of a precursor text by the successor, as in Acts 2:16, where the Pentecost event completes the meaning of the Joel prophecy. For Brawley, Bloom's ratios are general qualities of intertextuality rather than distinct categories. As texts interact with their precursors in a variety of ways, so a variety of ratios can be applied to any single allusion. Rather than decisively defining or categorizing the intertextual relationship, they provide the reader with a feel for the multiple and overlapping interactions between the texts.

Brawley's method is to move through select passages of Luke-Acts, identify the intertextual relationships, and link these relationships to key Lukan themes. Themes which repeatedly recur include Luke's theocentric use of Scripture, the unity of the covenants (especially the Davidic and Abrahamic), and the importance of the broader OT context for the meaning of the citation or allusion.

Chapter 2 employs theories of intertextuality to examine Jesus' temptation in Luke 4:1-13. Chapter 3 examines the parable of the tenants as a particular example of intertextuality in the context of a specialized genre, mise en abyme, an explanatory variant on the text that contains it. Chapters 4 and 5, perhaps the most original (and least convincing to me) in Brawley's work, draw on the cultural and literary category of the "carnivalesque" to examine the crucifixion of Jesus and the death of Judas. "Carnival" is an absurd presentation of established values that serves to undermine those values. According to Brawley, attempts to portray Jesus as a carnival king at his crucifixion are resisted by Luke through the intertextual use of OT Scripture, especially Isaiah 53 and Psalm 21 (LXX). In Acts 1 Judas' grotesque death reduces Jesus' opponents to absurdity in a carnivalesque manner, while the texts used for Judas' replacement, Psalms 68 (LXX) and 108 (LXX), present Jesus as the righteous sufferer.

Chapter 6, a study of the Joel 3 quotation in Acts 2, is helpful in illustrating an intertextual approach. As Joel explains the significance of the Pentecost event, so Acts expands and elucidates the meaning of Joel. In chaps. 7 (Acts 3-4) and 8 (Acts 13) Brawley draws on labeling and deviance theory to show how the voices of Scripture reverse the social evaluation of Jesus and the apostles from "deviants" to "prominents." Though rejected by the civil and religious authorities and so labeled as deviant, their vindication by God as confirmed by Scripture reverses this socio-cultural evaluation.