This text reflects a different scenario from exorcisms in the gospels. Paul isn’t seeking an opportunity to work a miraculous sign of exorcism announcing the presence of the kingdom. Paul becomes agitated after having this noisy woman badgering him day after day and he turns on her[1] in heat of his anger and commands the πνεῦμα πύθωνα to begone.
This amounts to damaging someone elses property since she belonged to τοῖς κυρίοις αὐτῆς. There is nothing here that would suggest that either Paul or her owners were concerned about her welfare. To Paul she was a nuisance. To her owners she was a source of profit.
In the gospels exorcisms are performed as a sign announcing the presence of the kingdom and also for the benefit of the people involved.
a couple of greek issues:
διαπονηθεὶς means to lose ones temper?
παραγγέλλω an aorist present? BDF §320, Moult. Proleg, 119, ATR 864.
[1] actually the text says he turned on the spirit ἐπιστρέψας τῷ πνεύματι.
Python as a pneuma. Now there’s an interesting development. Python was the snake monster killed by Apollo. I guess it’s the Apolline/Delphic connexion that’s generated his mantic powers as a demon.
There is an alternate reading found in D(1) … MT πνευμα πυθωνος.
RE: Python in Acts
J. W. van Henten[1] disagrees with Forester (TDNT) who understands πνευμα πυθωνος as “ventriloquist.” He suggests that πνευμα πυθωνος refers “in more general sense to a predicting demon.”
The Apollo Python combat myth is somewhat similar to the cosmic combat myths of the ANE.
Creation & Chaos, H. Gunkel, 1895.
God’s battle with the monster: A study in biblical imagery, Mary K. Wakeman, 1973.
John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, 2000.
A. Y. Collins, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation , 1975.
God is a warrior / by Tremper Longman III and Daniel G. Reid.
Grand Rapids c1995.
Anderson, Bernhard W., Creation Versus Chaos, Fortress 1987.
Cross, Frank Moore. Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, Harvard 1973
Kloos, Carola. Yhwh’s Combat with the Sea, E.J. Brill, 1986
However, I do not think the ANE background has much to do with πνεῦμα πύθωνα Acts 16:16-18. I suspect that some association with an oracular spirit/demon is what should look for here. The fact that the woman lost her powers as an oracle when the exorcism was accomplished points in that direction.
[1] Dict. Deities and Demons 2nd Ed. Python 669-671.
What we have here is a ?unique reference to a πνευμα πυθων, a spirit Python.
(πνευμα πυθωνος is surely to be dismissed as a secondary reading, due to discomfort with neuter and masculine juxtaposed.)
I haven’t read any of the secondary literature on the Acts passage, but looking at the sparse primary evidence (LSJ refs.), the key to the meaning of πυθων appears to be in Plutarch (roughly contemporary), in his minitreatise de defectu oraculorum (chap.9; 2.414.e), which has much to say about demons:
εὔηθες γάρ ἐστι καὶ παιδικὸν κομιδῇ τὸ οἴεσθαι τὸν θεὸν αὐτὸν ὥσπερ τοὺς ἐγγαστριμύθους Εὐρυκλέας πάλαι νυνὶ δὲ Πύθωνας προσαγορευομένους ἐνδυόμενον εἰς τὰ σώματα τῶν προφητῶν ὑποφθέγγεσθαι τοῖς ἐκείνων στόμασι καὶ φωναῖς χρώμενον ὀργάνοις.
(‘For it’s silly, simply childish, to think that the god himself, like those ventriloquists [“in-belly-speakers,” εγγαστριμυθοι] who used to be called Eurycleis but are nowadays called Pythons, enters into prophets’ bodies and “utters-beneath” [υποφθεγγεσθαι], using their mouths and voices as instruments.’)
This is augmented by a couple of Πυθων/πυθων entries in Hesychius, one offering ὁ εγγαστριμυθος ἢ εγγαστριμαντις, the other δαιμονιον μαντικον. Both seem pertinent to the Acts passage.
A Python, then, was a kind of nickname for an εγγαστριμυθος (i.e. a “ventriloquist,” a belly-speaker) aka an εγγαστριμαντις (a belly-prophet). These are quite well attested in the Greco-Roman world. The mantic powers will be owed to Pythian Apollo god of prophecy (cf. e.g. Cassandra), and the ventriloquism to the Pythia, the priestess through whom he spoke. The Apollon-Python combat myth has only very distant aetiological relevance (see Homeric Hymn to Apollo.)
By familiar kind of dissociation this particular Python is not a person but a πνευμα (~ δαιμόνιον?) that the girl “has” (or had until it “came out”). πυθων indicates it has mantic powers, and probably also implies a “ventriloquistic” mode of utterance (though all the Greek gives is εκραζεν).
PS. LSJ defines εγγαστριμυθος as “ventriloquist, mostly of women who delivered oracles by such means” but amends this in the Supplement to “one who speaks from the belly.” Perhaps this is because the meaning of “ventriloquist” (lit. “belly-speaker”) has changed in modern English. The term is variously attested, including LXX (incl. one for a person’s “familiar spirit”).
TDNT Forester VI 917-920 covers similar ground, after the fashion of TDNT articles.
What we need to know about this woman can be extracted from her speech. The reported content of the woman’s speech is factually correct. We see this several times in the gospels where the unclean spirits give theologically correct pronouncements about Jesus identity. The difference here is that Paul puts up with it for quite a while[1].
On the other hand I wonder if there is any compelling reason to suspect that the woman’s speech was evidence of “occult knowledge” since Paul and his compatriots were preaching and what she said about them could have been inferred from the content of their message. In the case of Legion and the Gerasene demoniac and others the knowledge was occult.
[1] There is a potential literary allusion to this in “Wise Blood” Flannery O’Conner. Hazel Motes attracts a parasite in the form of a false prophet who tags along loudly proclaiming the merits of Hazel Motes preaching “ministry.” Motes becomes increasingly enraged and ends up killing the false prophet by driving his car over him multiple times.