I was reading to my children from the KJV, and ran across something that I hadn’t seen before in the story of Saul on the road to Damascus, in Acts chapter 9:
Acts 9:6 And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
“σκληρόν σοι πρὸς κέντρα λακτίζειν” seems to appear in some manuscripts, either here or in verse 4. A quick TLG search reveals that at some point a copyist seems to have been reminded of the advice of Dionysus by Saul’s situation, and decided to put his advice to Pentheus on Jesus’ lips.
Edit: It turns out that this also occurs in Acts 26:14, with more manuscript support, and so Luke himself appears to be the one with an appreciation for Euripides. Unless it was Paul. Or Jesus.
Yes, kicking against the pricks is an idiom that does not itself indicate acquaintance with Euripides, but very interestingly it seems Paul did have some knowledge of the Bacchae. Both Paul Derouda and I mentioned this in my 2014 Halloween treat, a thread in which Zaphod Beeblebrox had passing relevance. And I compared the Bacchae’s οὗτος θεοῖσι σπένδεται θεὸς γεγώς (Eur.Bac.284, of Dionysus) with the extraordinary εγω γαρ ηδη σπενδομαι at 2Tim.4:6 (which itself scans iambic, incidentally). We combined fun and erudition in those long-gone days.
I’d link to the thread if I hadn’t again forgotten how to link threads.
Very funny story: 2Tim.4:6 originally entered the Attic poetic tradition when Kock put that line of Paul’s in Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta after seeing it in Cramer’s Anecd. Ox. and getting confused.
I sure hope you’ve picked up some Greek since those days, though even then you liked to kick against the pricks.
I don’t know what makes you think Kock got confused. I think you’ve seriously misunderstood his note. Anyhow, the thing to look at is that article by Renehan that I mentioned then, on classical Greek quotations in the NT. I’m sure you’ll want to argue with it.
After διώκεις (and omitting ἀλλά of ver. 6) the Textus Receptus adds σκληρόν σοι πρὸς κέντρα λακτίζειν. (6) τρέμων τε καὶ θαμβῶν εἶπε, Κύριε, τί με θέλεις ποιῆσαι; καὶ ὁ κύριος πρὸς αὐτόν, which is rendered in the AV as follows: “it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. (6) And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him.” So far as is known, no Greek witness reads these words at this place; they have been taken from 26:14 and 22:10, and are found here in codices of the Vulgate, with which ith, syrh with * copG67 substantially agree (all except the Vulgate add after θαμβῶν the words ἐπὶ τῷ γεγονότι αὐτῷ, taken from 3:10). The spurious passage came into the Textus Receptus when Erasmus translated it from the Latin Vulgate into Greek and inserted it in his first edition of the Greek New Testament (Basel, 1516). See p. 8* above.
Metzger, B. M., United Bible Societies. (1994). A textual commentary on the Greek New Testament, second edition a companion volume to the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th rev. ed.) (p. 318). London; New York: United Bible Societies.
Additionally, I agree with those above noting that it’s most likely a common sort of sentiment rather than a quote from Euripides.
Well, I only know about the Kock story from a Classical Review article by Arthur Palmer (I otherwise don’t know anything about Palmer) who said that it took the cake for great blunders by great scholars. (Amazing that a generation of men once walked the earth that could resist the temptation to call it a Kock-up.) To me, from the quoted note, it doesn’t look like Kock recognized that it was ever said by Paul, but my Latin is pretty bad still.
Regarding the Acts 26:14 παροιμία, there are a few other sources besides Euripides. I assumed that other people here would bring them up so that we could have a discussion. Pindar, Aeschylus, and Euripides give it more or less as we have it. People have searched, but there doesn’t seem to have been any known Hebrew/Aramaic equivalent.
I think, that trying to trace the precise words of a speech in Acts to Paul rather than to Luke is not something that we would do if we saw the same in Thucydides. The real question is whether Luke in including this παροιμία had any clue of its source or sources or parallels. We know that Luke was familiar with Aratus, whom he explicitly puts on Paul’s lips in Acts 17:28, partly to make him appear learned and cosmopolitan. Between the possibilities, that Luke was 1) including a saying that had become general, and that he didn’t know any ultimate sources for, or 2) was including an especially apt quotation from Euripides in order to further buttress the impression of Paul as familiar with Greek learning, I slightly lean towards 2. But there are arguments for and against. If we have a discussion here, we might be able to explicate some of those arguments.
Of course, as a man of faith, I have to say that Luke reports Paul as saying that Jesus said these words. Jesus, I’m sure, is familiar with the Bacchae parallel, and I prefer to take it as a self-aware nod from the Son of Man.
I was able to track down the Renehan article (happily the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists digitalized an article referencing it, which gave the complete source). I hope to get the time to read it in detail soon. But here is the PDF for anyone (everyone) without access to libraries:
These “sublime words of St.Paul” (as Palmer would have it) are the words I described as “extraordinary,” noting their metrical character and their libational imagery, uniquely matched by the Bacchae’s σπένδεται (284). It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Palmer (so acute in other ways) that Kock may have expected everyone to be familiar with the 2Tim. passage, as surely anyone in those days would have been.
And I don’t agree with what you say “the real question” is. Nor do I take the words as “a self-aware nod” to Euripides on Jesus’ part! It’s hard to tell whether you’re jesting or fantasizing.
Dennis R. MacDonald has an article “Classical Greek Poetry and the Acts of the Apostles: Imitations of Euripides’ Bacchae” in Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture. The first two pages are freely available as a preview online (no link since apparently I’m not allowed). Actually he doesn’t discuss this particular parallel at all in his article, except for the footnote that spans the first two pages, so the preview is all you need for that at least.
Also, in searching for that article, I came across another article, “Echoes of the Bacchae in Acts of the Apostles?” by John Hackett in Irish Theological Quarterly, with a one-page preview on Sage’s website, which also mentions this parallel in the first page (I only read the preview).
I recently taught a Sunday School class in which I compared the apostle Paul to Aeneas, the theme of the hero journey, including a nice shipwreck (Acts 27) and the “triumphal” entry into Rome. I was told it was the “most fun” Sunday school class in the recent history of the church…
