I think it was Leolaia that remarked about the use of the word gate. A while bac I posted a essay by Peter Kirby of these prison escapes and how the typify those of the Greek and Roman world of myth.
This is it again abbreviated. Greek text appears as (????).
Euripides and Luke
by Peter Kirby (August 30, 2003)
The observation that Luke draws on the play Bacchae by Euripides, posthumously published in 405 BCE, is spotted on the internet here by Steven Carr, as well as here and here. The most commonly cited source is Randel Helms, but the idea was discussed among scholars in the 1950s and before. This essay is written to give a fair shake of the evidence pointing particularly to Euripides as Luke's source for two items in Acts: (1) the prison escape scenes found in Acts 5:17-20, 12:6-11, and 16:23-30 and (2) the statement of the risen Christ in Paul's speech found in Acts 26:14.
(1) Prison Escape
First, the texts of Euripides and Acts themselves.
For background, the Columbia Encyclopedia says, "Pentheus: in Greek mythology, king of Thebes, son of Cadmus' daughter Agave. When Dionysus came to Thebes, Pentheus denied his divinity and tried to prevent his ecstatic rites. The women of Thebes, led by Agave, were driven mad by the offended god and tore Pentheus to pieces. The story is the subject of Euripides' Bacchae."
Bacchae 434-451 Buckley. [Servant speaks:] Pentheus, we are here, having caught this prey for which you sent us, nor have we set out in vain. This beast was docile in our hands and did not withdraw in flight, but yielded not unwillingly. He did not turn pale or change the wine-dark complexion of his cheek, but laughed and allowed us to bind him and lead him away. He remained still, making my work easy, and I in shame said: "Stranger, I do not lead you away willingly, but by order of Pentheus, who sent me." And the Bacchae whom you shut up, whom you carried off and bound in the chains of the public prison, are set loose and gone, and are gamboling in the meadows, invoking Bromius as their god. Of their own accord, the chains were loosed from their feet and keys opened the doors without human hand. (???????? ?' ?????? ????? ??????? ????? ?????? ?' ?????? ??????' ???? ?????? ?????.) This man [Dionysus] has come to Thebes full of many wonders. You must take care of the rest.
Acts 5:17-20 Darby. And the high priest rising up, and all they that were with him, which is the sect of the Sadducees, were filled with wrath, and laid hands on the apostles and put them in the public prison. But an angel of [the] Lord during the night opened the doors of the prison, and leading them out, said, (??????? ?? ?????? ??? ?????? ?????? ??? ????? ??? ??????? ???????? ?? ?????? ?????) Go ye and stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.
Acts 12:6-11 Darby. And when Herod was going to bring him forth, that night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and guards before the door kept the prison. And lo, an angel of [the] Lord came there, and a light shone in the prison: and having smitten the side of Peter, he roused him up, saying, Rise up quickly. And his chains fell off his hands. (??? ???????? ????? ?? ??????? ?? ??? ??????) And the angel said to him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals. And he did so. And he says to him, Cast thine upper garment about thee and follow me. And going forth he followed [him] and did not know that what was happening by means of the angel was real, but supposed he saw a vision. And having passed through a first and second guard, they came to the iron gate which leads into the city, which opened to them of itself; (????? ??? ??? ????? ??? ??????? ??? ???????? ??? ??? ?????, ???? ???????? ?????? ??????) and going forth they went down one street, and immediately the angel left him. And Peter, being come to himself, said, Now I know certainly that [the] Lord has sent forth his angel and has taken me out of the hand of Herod and all the expectation of the people of the Jews.
Acts 16:23-26 Darby. And having laid many stripes upon them they cast [them] into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely; who, having received such a charge, cast them into the inner prison, and secured their feet to the stocks. And at midnight Paul and Silas, in praying, were praising God with singing, and the prisoners listened to them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison shook, and all the doors were immediately opened, and the bonds of all loosed. (?????????? ?? ????????? ?? ????? ?????, ??? ?????? ?? ????? ?????.)
Several scholars have noted the parallels of prison escape, as narrated in Acts, in other Greek literature, including but not limited to Bacchae.
Luke Timothy Johnson writes: "Accounts of prison-escapes are found everywhere in Hellenistic fiction, whether their wonderful character is owed to some human virtue or relationship (see Lucian of Samosata, Toxaris 28-33; Achilles Tatius, Clitophon and Leucippe 3:9-11), or due to some divine intervention (Ovid, Metamorphoses 3:690-700; Artapanus, On the Jews, frag. three; The Acts of Paul 7; The Acts of Thomas 162-163). One of the most interesting examples of the type-scene is also one of the earliest, the escape of the devotees of Bacchus from prison by divine intervention after a tyrant had jailed them in an attempt to halt the growth of the cult (see Euripides, Bacchae 346-357; 434-450; 510-643)." (The Acts of the Apostles, p. 217)
Ovid's account says (Metamorphoses 699-700):
"Of their own accord the doors fly open wide; of their own accord, with no one loosing them, the chains fell from the prisoner's arms."
sponte sua patuisse fores lapsasque lacertis
sponte sua fama est nullo solvente catenas.
Here is what we find in Artapanus, On the Jews, fragment three (as translated by J. J. Collins in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, p. 901):
"The king of the Egyptians learned of Moses' presence, summoned him and asked for what purpose he had come. He responded that the master of the universe had orderd him to release the Jews. When the king learned of this, he confined him in prison. But when night came, all the doors of the prison opened of themselves (?????????), and some of the guards died, while others were relaxed by sleep and their weapons were broken."
Indeed, the opening of a door by itself was a way of expressing the guiding hand of a god, for weal or woe (often for one side over another in a conflict), a kind of portent as seen from several Greco-Roman writers.
Xenophon, Hellenica 6.4.7. Besides this, they were also somewhat encouraged by the oracle which was reported -- that the Lacedaemonians were destined to be defeated at the spot where stood the monument of the virgins, who are said to have killed themselves because they had been violated by certain Lacedaemonians. The Thebans accordingly decorated this monument before the battle. Furthermore, reports were brought to them from the city that all the temples were opening of themselves, (????????? ?????????) and that the priestesses said that the gods revealed victory. And the messengers reported that from the Heracleium the arms also had disappeared, indicating that Heracles had gone forth to the battle. Some, to be sure, say that all these things were but devices of the leaders.
Suetonius is speaking of the portents that foretold the murder of Caesar on the Ides of March (De Vita Caesarum, Divus Iulius 81.3): "In fact the very night before his murder he dreamt now that he was flying above the clouds, and now that he was clasping the hand of Jupiter; and his wife Calpurnia thought that the pediment of their house fell, and that her husband was stabbed in her arms; and on a sudden the door of the room flew open of its own accord." (ac subito cubiculi fores sponte patuerunt)
Josephus, Wars 6.293. Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner 6 [court of the] temple, which was of brass, and vastly heavy, and had been with difficulty shut by twenty men, and rested upon a basis armed with iron, and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, which was there made of one entire stone, was seen to be opened of its own accord (????????? ?????????) about the sixth hour of the night. Now those that kept watch in the temple came hereupon running to the captain of the temple, and told him of it; who then came up thither, and not without great difficulty was able to shut the gate again. This also appeared to the vulgar to be a very happy prodigy, as if God did thereby open them the gate of happiness. But the men of learning understood it, that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord, and that the gate was opened for the advantage of their enemies. So these publicly declared that the signal foreshowed the desolation that was coming upon them.
Dio Cassius, Roman History 42.26.3-4. The following year a violent earthquake occurred, an owl was seen, thunderbolts descended upon the Capitol and upon the temple of the Public Fortune, as it was called, and into the gardens of Caesar, where a horse of no small value was destroyed by them, and the temple of Fortune opened of its own accord. (????????? ???????) In addition to this, blood issued from a bake-shop and flowed to another temple of Fortune ...
Dio Cassius, Roman History 66.17.2. Portents had occurred indicating his approaching end, such as the comet which was visible for a long time and the opening of the mausoleum of Augustus of its own accord. (??? ?? ???????? ?? ??? ????????? ????????? ????????)
While the parallels are closer in Ovid and Artapanus and Euripides, these additional references illuminate the background of such a statement as we find in Acts 12:10.
Commenting on Acts 12:7, Conzelmann writes, "There is, however, no literary dependence of Luke upon Euripides here, but rather the appropriation of a widespread motif," (Acts, p. 94), referencing Alfred Vogeli's article "Lukas and Euripides" in ThZ 9 (1953) 415-38. (No, I haven't read it.)
Comparison between the New Testament and Euripides goes back to the second century. Origen writes in Contra Celsum 2.34:
This Jew of Celsus, ridiculing Jesus, as he imagines, is described as being acquainted with the Bacchae of Euripides, in which Dionysus says:- "The divinity himself will liberate me whenever I wish." Now the Jews are not much acquainted with Greek literature; but suppose that there was a Jew so well versed in it (as to make such a quotation on his part appropriate), how (does it follow) that Jesus could not liberate Himself, because He did not do so? For let him believe from our own Scriptures that Peter obtained his freedom after having been bound in prison, an angel having loosed his chains; and that Paul, having been bound in the stocks along with Silas in Philippi of Macedonia, was liberated by divine power, when the gates of the prison were opened. But it is probable that Celsus treats these accounts with ridicule, or that he never read them; for he would probably say in reply, that there are certain sorcerers who are able by incantations to unloose chains and to open doors, so that he would liken the events related in our histories to the doings of sorcerers. "But," he continues, "no calamity happened even to him who condemned him, as there did to Pentheus, viz., madness or discerption." And yet he does not know that it was not so much Pilate that condemned Him (who knew that "for envy the Jews had delivered Him"), as the Jewish nation, which has been condemned by God, and rent in pieces, and dispersed over the whole earth, in a degree far beyond what happened to Pentheus. Moreover, why did he intentionally omit what is related of Pilate's wife, who beheld a vision, and who was so moved by it as to send a message to her husband, saying: "Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of Him? " And again, passing by in silence the proofs of the divinity of Jesus, Celsus endeavours to cast reproach upon Him from the narratives in the Gospel, referring to those who mocked Jesus, ...
It seems that Celsus is not comparing the stories in Acts (Origen says he may never have read them) but saying that Jesus should have been able to let himself down off the cross. Origen replies that the disciples of Jesus could escape their bonds, so how much more could the master? Origen antipates the objection of a neo-Celsus, that a magician could release himself from imprisonment. This once again shows the proliferation of stories about prison escape in the Greco-Roman world. In the Life of Apollonius by Philostratus, the divine man can easily loosen his chains (7.34, 8.30), while Luke would consider the "magic" in his story to be the miracle of God's doing (but, nevertheless, is probably influenced by these magical ideas).
My bet is that this kind of prison escape scene was stock in trade for fiction in the first century. Which definitely casts doubt on historicity, but doesn't necessarily indicate Euripides as the sole source (or in the mind of Luke while writing at all).
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Conclusion
Although I doubt that Luke had Euripides in particular in mind when composing any certain passage of Acts, my study has made clear the substance of the argument made by critics, which is, that the stories were inspired and shaped within the context of Greco-Roman civilization, where the expression of an animal kicking at its spurs would signify resistance to the will of a god, and where a story about an escape through a door that opens by itself was a portent of divine approval, and when historiography did not have the same meaning that it has today. Such is all the weight that the argument based on Euripides was meant to bear, and the argument is made stronger from the parallels not only to Bacchae but also to the wider literary tradition.
Christian Origins is copyright © 2003 Peter Kirby <[email protected]> and others.
