Luke/Acts & Homer (Acts 20:7-12)

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JASON FILLEY

Interesting snip I found at http://daniel.drew.edu/~ddoughty/djdacts.html.


"In such cases the use of an earlier source may or may not have historical 
or hermeneutical implications. An example would be Luke's use of Homer in 
creating the story of Paul and Eutychus in Acts 20:7-12: see Dennis 
MacDonald, "Luke's Eutychus and Homer's Elpenor: Acts 20:7-12 and Odyssey 
10-12," JHC 1 (Fall, 1994), 5-24. Apart from its entertainment value, it is 
difficult to perceive any Lukan agenda here. But we will see that this is 
not always the case."



***************
Acts 20:7-12 (RSV) from http://bible.gospelcom.net


7 On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break 
bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and he 
prolonged his speech until midnight.
8 There were many lights in the upper chamber where we were gathered.
9 And a young man named Eu'tychus was sitting in the window. He sank into a 
deep sleep as Paul talked still longer; and being overcome by sleep, he 
fell down from the third story and was taken up dead.
10 But Paul went down and bent over him, and embracing him said, "Do not be 
alarmed, for his life is in him."
11 And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed 
with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed.
12 And they took the lad away alive, and were not a little comforted.
*************
Homer, The Odyssey, text as found at 
http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html:

Chapter 10--
"Even so, however, I did not get them away without misadventure. We had 
with us a certain youth named Elpenor, not very remarkable for sense or 
courage, who had got drunk and was lying on the house-top away from the 
rest of the men, to sleep off his liquor in the cool. When he heard the 
noise of the men bustling about, he jumped up on a sudden and forgot all 
about coming down by the main staircase, so he tumbled right off the roof 
and broke his neck, and his soul went down to the house of Hades."
**
Chapter 11--
"The first ghost 'that came was that of my comrade Elpenor, for he had not 
yet been laid beneath the earth. We had left his body unwaked and unburied 
in Circe's house, for we had had too much else to do. I was very sorry for 
him, and cried when I saw him: 'Elpenor,' said I, 'how did you come down 
here into this gloom and darkness? You have here on foot quicker than I 
have with my ship.'"

"'Sir,' he answered with a groan, 'it was all bad luck, and my own 
unspeakable drunkenness. I was lying asleep on the top of Circe's house, 
and never thought of coming down again by the great staircase but fell 
right off the roof and broke my neck, so my soul down to the house of 
Hades. And now I beseech you by all those whom you have left behind you, 
though they are not here, by your wife, by the father who brought you up 
when you were a child, and by Telemachus who is the one hope of your house, 
do what I shall now ask you. I know that when you leave this limbo you will 
again hold your ship for the Aeaean island. Do not go thence leaving me 
unwaked and unburied behind you, or I may bring heaven's anger upon you; 
but burn me with whatever armour I have, build a barrow for me on the sea 
shore, that may tell people in days to come what a poor unlucky fellow I 
was, and plant over my grave the oar I used to row with when I was yet 
alive and with my messmates.' And I said, 'My poor fellow, I will do all 
that you have asked of me.'
**
Chapter 12--
"Then, when the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, I sent some 
men to Circe's house to fetch the body of Elpenor. We cut firewood from a 
wood where the headland jutted out into the sea, and after we had wept over 
him and lamented him we performed his funeral rites. When his body and 
armour had been burned to ashes, we raised a cairn, set a stone over it, 
and at the top of the cairn we fixed the oar that he had been used to row 
with."
*********
Regards,
Jason

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