JBL 130, no.

2 (2011): 351369

Divine Judgment against Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:111): A Stock Scene of Perjury and Death
j. albert harrill
jharrill@indiana.edu Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405

The story of Ananias and Sapphira begins with a utopian scene of the earliest believers sharing all goods in common. A Levite named Joseph (alias Barnabas) sells his field and lays all the proceeds at the feet of the apostles for distribution to the communitys needy (Acts 4:3237). Ananias then, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sells a piece of property and appears to follow suit. Ananias, however, lays only a part of the sales proceeds before the apostles (5:12). The apostle Peter berates Ananias for lying not to humans but to the Holy Spirit (5:3), and Sapphira for putting the Spirit of the Lord to the test (5:9). Upon hearing the apostles rebuke, Ananias and Sapphira each die in turn, suddenly and on the spot. The story ends with great fear ( ) seizing all who heard these things and especially the whole churchthe first occurrence of in the narrative (5:11). The storys apparent moral injustice has long offended biblical interpreters. In the third century, a Greek philosopher, most likely Porphyry, condemned Peters rebuke as hypocritical and irrational: the apostle, who perjured himself by denying Jesus three times (Luke 22:3134, 5462), ritually murders the couple for
Previous versions of this essay were presented at Boston University, Universitt Wien, and the Westflische Wilhelms-Universitt Mnster. Peter Arzt-Grabner, David Brakke, Martin Ebner, William Hanson, Thomas Kazan, Dietrich-Alex Koch, Jennifer Wright Knust, Hermut Lhr, Timothy Long, Martin Rese, and Zsuzsanna Vrhelyi provided helpful criticism and advice. I began the research for the essay in Mnster in 2008, supported by an Arbeitsbesuch summer grant from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. I am grateful to all these people and institutions. Unless otherwise noted, translations of classical texts are adapted from the LCL.

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doing a much lesser sin, if indeed the couples action was a sin.1 More recent commentators have shared Porphyrys shock at the story and its theological implications.2 To resolve the storys apparent moral injustice, scholars have proposed various exegetical solutions. A typological reading, the most common, argues that the sin and punishment of Ananias and Sapphira conform to an OT archetype of the bad Israelitenamely, Achan, who was executed by a protracted burning and stoning because he stole part of the Jericho battle spoils devoted to the Lord (Josh 7:126).3 An etiological approach argues that the story originates from early Christian oral traditions of untimely deaths of believers, before the parousia of the Lord (e.g., 1Thess 4:1317). A third reading considers the social situation in light of ancient Judaism. This interpretation points to prescriptions of similar disciplinary expulsions in the Dead Sea Scrolls for candidates who try to keep back some of their private possessions from the Qumran community (1QS 6:24b25; CD 14:2021). A fourth reading emphasizes the storys function, which is said to legitimate the practice of excommunication in the institutionalization of the early church (cf. Matt 18:1517; 1 Cor 5:13). A fifth reading, from a salvation-history perspective, identifies the sin of Ananias and Sapphira as blocking the free activity of the Holy Spirit in human history, announced in Acts 1:8. A sixth, original sin reading, argues that the episode recounts sins at beginnings, a narrative form familiar from the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Genesis 3; 6:14; Exodus 32; 2 Samuel 11).4 There is an over-

1 John Granger Cook, The Interpretation of the New Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism (Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity 3; Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), 155, 20910; R. Joseph Hoffmann, Porphyrys Against the Christians: The Literary Remains (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1994), 5455; Lamar Williamson Jr., The Use of the Ananias and Sapphira Story (Acts 5:111) in the Patristic Period (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1962), 2630. 2 Daniel Marguerat, The First Christian Historian: Writing the Acts of the Apostles (trans. Ken McKinney, Gregory J. Laughery, and Richard Bauckham; SNTSMS 121; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 155; Justin Taylor, The Community of Goods among the First Christians and among the Essenes, in Historical Perspectives: From the Hasmoneans to Bar Kokhba in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 2731 January, 1999 (ed. David Goodblatt, Avital Pinnick, and Daniel R. Schwartz; STDJ 37; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 156. For further examples, see Rick Strelan, Strange Acts: Studies in the Cultural World of the Acts of the Apostles (BZNW 126; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2004), 199; and Julian V. Hills, Equal Justice under the (New) Law: The Story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, Forum n.s. 3 (2000): 105. 3 Most recently argued by Hyung Dae Park, Finding Herem? A Study of Luke-Acts in the Light of Herem (Library of New Testament Studies 357; London: T&T Clark, 2007), 13145. 4 On these various interpretations, see Richard I. Pervo, Acts: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 12537; idem, Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 2006), 7073; Marguerat, First Christian Historian, 15578; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles: A New Translation with Introduction and Commen-

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arching problem with each of these proposals. The debates over the meaning of the story have become mired in the questionable assumption that antecedents determine meaning. Instead, I examine the story of Ananias and Sapphira in the broader cultural context of ancient oaths, vows, and promises. After all, breaking a promiselying to the Holy Spiritdrives the storys plot and theme. I argue that the episode depicts divine judgment for perjury, a stock scene familiar in ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures.5 This thesis offers a plausible context in which ancient readers would have made sense of the story of Ananias and Sapphira. I do not deny that ancient Christian readers could also have seen in the story an allusion to paradigmatic texts in Jewish Scripture, such as that of Achan, or biblical injunctions about oaths. Such biblical precedents do not, however, exhaust the storys resonances within Greco-Roman culture. I propose one such resonance, for example, to be the form or structure of a comedy.6

I. The Broad Practice of Oaths in Antiquity: The Formula of the Self-Curse

A verbal oath ritual confirmed virtually every agreement and business transaction in the ancient world, including the sale of property.7 The oral formula was remarkably fixed and included the imprecation for perjury in a self-curse. The oath was often sworn over the destruction of a paradigmatic object, such as melted wax effigies, a pealed vegetable, or a slaughtered animal, which accompanied the pouring out of wine. Mutilated animals (, victims simply killed and never cooked) and their severed parts () were not technically a sacrifice (), an offering to the divine, but analogies in a sympathetic ritual that modeled the penalty for violating the promise.8 A biblical example is the prophet Jeremiah, who
tary (AB 31; New York: Doubleday, 1998), 31537; C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, vol. 1, Preliminary Introduction and Commentary on Acts I XIV (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 26171; and Hills, Equal Justice, 10913. 5 On the episode as a punitive miracle, see Pervo, Acts, 5253. 6 I use comedy in the sense of a form or structure that embodies certain thematic meanings, such as the inversion of tragedy, and not in the sense of what is funny or laughable; see DanO. Via, Kerygma and Comedy in the New Testament: A Structuralist Approach to Hermeneutic (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 41. 7 On the broad ancient practice of oaths in the marketplace, see Nicholas K. Rauh, The Sacred Bonds of Commerce: Religion, Economy, and Trade Society at Hellenistic Roman Delos, 166 87 B.C. (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1993), 12988; and Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (trans. John Raffan; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 253. On the legal context of verbal formulae, see J. Albert Harrill, The Influence of Roman Contract Law on Early Baptismal Formulae (Tertullian, Ad martyras 3), StPatr 35 (2001): 27582. 8 See Burkert, Greek Religion, 25054.

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warns the Jerusalemites about the covenant ramifications of their oath ritual: And those who transgressed my [the Lords] covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I [the Lord] will make like the calf when they cut it in two and passed between its parts (Jer 34:18). Forswearers will suffer the act performed to the paradigmatic object at the oath ceremonydeath.9 Indeed, the oaths self-curse was so important and familiar that ancient audiences recognized it to be in force regardless of whether a narrative expressly mentioned or detailed it.10 Retribution, however, tells only one half of the story. The other half was a blessing for faithfulness to the oaths promise. Ancient oaths normally uttered both a blessing and its complementary curse, which coincides with the blessing (Barnabas) and curse (Ananias/Sapphira) scenes in Acts 45. An example of the pairing in Greek oaths is the Athenian decree passed after the restoration of all democracy in 410 b.c.e. It stipulates an oath to be sworn over animal slaughter, with the typical complementarities of a blessing and a curse: All the Athenians shall take this oath over victims without blemishes [ ], as the law enjoins, before the Dionysia. And they shall pray that he who observes this oath shall be blessed abundantly; but that he who does not observe it may perish from the earth, both he and his house (Andocides 1.98). Both the blessing and the curse . . . as well as animal slaughter were standard features of Athenian preliminary oaths, in which litigants and jurors called perdition upon themselves (and their families) for any perjuring of their forthcoming testimonies or decisions. This tradition continued into later periods; Roman orators quote it approvingly.11 The formula is always the same: If I swear truly, may many bless9 On the oath ritual and its destruction of a paradigmatic object, see Christopher A. Faraone, Molten Wax, Spilt Wine and Mutilated Animals: Sympathetic Magic in Near Eastern and Early Greek Ceremonies, JHS 113 (1993): 6080; Billie Jean Collins, The First Soldiers Oath (1.66) and The Second Soldiers Oath (1.67), in COS 1:16568; and Fritz Graf, Eid and Fluch und Verwnschung, in Thesaurus cultus et rituum Antiquorum (ThesCRA) (5 vols.; Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 20046), 3:23770. 10 See Jon D. Mikalson, Athenian Popular Religion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 36; Lindsay Watson, Arae: The Curse Poetry of Antiquity (ARCA Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers, and Monographs 26; Leeds: F. Cairns, 1991), 55; and Frances Hickson Hahn, Performing the Sacred: Prayers and Hymns, in A Companion to Roman Religion (ed. Jrg Rpke; Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World, Literature and Culture; Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 242. For comprehensive studies, see Horkos: The Oath in Greek Society (ed. AlanH. Sommerstein and Judith Fletcher; Exeter: Bristol Phoenix, 2007); Moshe Weinfeld, The Loyalty Oath in the Ancient Near East, UF 8 (1976): 379414; Paul Stengel, Zu den griechischen Schwuropfern, Hermes 49 (1914): 90101; Rudolf Hirzel, Der Eid: Ein Beitrag zu seiner Geschichte (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1902); and the mine of information in Kurt Latte, Meineid, in idem, Kleine Schriften zu Religion, Recht, Literatur und Sprache der Griechen und Rmer (ed. Olof Gigon, Wolfgang Buchwald, and Wolfgang Kunkel; Munich: Beck, 1968), 36779; repr. from PW 15.1 (1931). 11 Quoting the self-imprecation formula ( . . . ) of Demosthenes: Pseudo-Aelius Aristides, Ars rhetorica 1.91 (Michel Patillon, Arts rhtoriques/Pseudo-

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ings be mine, and may I never again suffer such an outrage; but if I am forsworn, may I perish utterly, I and all I possess, or ever may possess (Demosthenes, Con. 41).12 The same self-curse formula ( , ) is routine for oaths in documentary papyri.13 And epigraphic examples appear especially in political treaties and other civic alliances, which invariably provide identical conditional clauses that announce, If I keep this oath may it go well for me, but if I forswear may I perish, myself and all that is mine ( , , ).14 The various dates (700 b.c.e.200 c.e.) and the scattered provenances of these inscriptions prove the diffusion and stability of the oaths central formula throughout classical antiquity. Indeed, the complementarities of blessing and curse, sworn over animal slaughter, constitute one of the oldest and most fixed traditions of oaths and go back to treaties of the ancient Near East, including the covenants of the Hebrew Bible.15
Aelius Aristide [2 vols.; Collection des universits de France 42324; Paris: Belles lettres, 2002], 1:135). Cf. Pliny, Pan. 64.3 (Roman consul oath of office). For the Athenian self-deprecation oath and its sacrifice, see Antiphon 5.1112; Aeschines, Ctes. 233; Rosamond Kent Sprague, The Older Sophists (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), 166. 12 See also Demosthenes, Mid. 119; Aristocr. 6769; Timocr. 151; 3 Aphob. 26, 54; Eub. 22, 53; Antiphon 5.1112; Andocides 1.3133; 1.126; Lysias 32.13. 13 On the self-curse formula in documentary papyri, see BGU II.543.1314 (27 b.c.e.); BGU XVI.2589.1011 (28 b.c.e.); BGU XVI.2591.78 (2 b.c.e.); BGU XVI.2592.1112 (30 b.c.e.14 c.e.); C.Pap.Gr. II.1.12.45 (= PSI XIV.1433) (69 c.e.); Chr.Wilck. 145.2526 (= P.Flor. I.79) (60 c.e.); P.Amst. I.28.56 (3 b.c.e.); P.Bingen 46.5 (52 b.c.e.); P.Hamb. I.60.23 (90 c.e.); P.Lips. II.132.1718 (25 c.e.); P.Lond. II.181.1516 (64 c.e.); P.Mich. II.122.33 (43 c.e.); P.Oxy. II.240.8 9 (37 c.e.); P.Oxy. II.253.2223 (19 c.e.); P.Oxy. II.259.2021 (23 c.e.); P.Oxy. X.1258.1011 (ca. 45 c.e.); P.Oxy. XII.1453.2728 (= Sel.Pap. II) (3029 b.c.e.); P.Oxy. XLIX.3508.3536 (70 c.e.); P.Oxy.Hels. 10.2324 (34 c.e.); SB XX 14440.1921 (= P.Mil. I.3) (12 c.e.). 14 On the self-curse formula in inscriptions, see SIG3 1:145.910; 1:173.6970; 1:764.3133; 2:633.11415; 2:577.4748; 2:826C.II.1315; 3:913.45; OGIS 1.229.6570, 7580; 2:66.50; 2:532.1935. Hermann Bengtson, Die Vertrge der griechisch-rmischen Welt von 700 bis 338 v. Chr., vol. 2 of Die Staatsvertrge des Altertums (ed. Hermann Bengtson; Munich: Beck, 1962), 297.6890; 263.2426; 308.57; Hatto H. Schmitt, Die Vertrge der griechisch-rmischen Welt von 338 bis 200 v. Chr., vol. 3 of Bengtson, Staatsvertrge (Munich: Beck, 1969), 468.2022; 476.89 90; 463.1214; Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 18688. 15 See Gen 15:717; Num 5:1922; Deut 28:145; 1 Sam 11:7; 25:22 (scribal change because David failed to uphold his oath); 1 Kgs 8:3132 (par. 2 Chr 6:2223); Job 31; Jer 11:15; 34:18 20; Zech 5:34; Weinfeld, Loyalty Oath, 39799; Faraone, Molten Wax, 6263, 7172; Yael Ziegler, Promises to Keep: The Oath in Biblical Narrative (VTSup 120; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 3237, 5880, 9294; Paul Sanders, So May God Do to Me! Bib 85 (2004): 9198; Charles Fensham, Malediction and Benediction in Ancient Near Eastern Vassal-Treaties and the Old Testament, ZAW 74 (1963): 19; Sheldon H. Blank, The Curse, Blasphemy, the Spell, and the Oath, HUCA 23 (195051): 7395; Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the IIIV Centuries C.E. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of American, 1942), 11543.

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The formula appears in Livys story of the unification of Rome and Alba Longa under King Tullus Hostilius (ca. seventh century b.c.e.). Livy recounts the archaic Roman oath ceremony in language familiar to his first-century b.c.e. audience:
The Fetial priest was Marcus Valerius; he made Spurius Fusius pater patratus, touching his head and hair with the sacred sprig. The pater patratus is appointed to pronounce the oath, that is, to solemnize the pact; and this he accomplishes with many words, expressed in a long metrical formula, which it is not worthwhile to quote. The conditions being then recited, he shouts, Hear, O Jupiter; hear, pater patratus of the Alban People: hear ye, people of Alba: from these terms, as they have been publicly rehearsed from beginning to end, without fraud, from these tablets, or this wax, and as they have been this day clearly understood, the Roman People will not be the first to depart. If it shall first depart from them, by general consent, with malice aforethought, then on that day do you, great Father of the gods [Diespiter], so smite the Roman People as I shall here today smite this piglet: and so much the harder smite them as your power and your strength are greater. When Spurius had said these words, he struck the piglet with a flint. In like manner the Albans pronounced their own forms and their own oath, by the mouth of their own dictator and priests. (Livy 1.24.69)

The essential ritual moments of the Alban treaty invoke divine witnesses and the slaughter of an animal victim, which executes by analogy the ritual power of the gods against oath violators. The smiting of the piglet with a flint knife represents Jupiters lightning bolt, an instrument believed to punish perjurers. Livys scene is stylized. It resembles designs on Roman coins showing two figures taking an oath by touching their swords upon a piglet.16 The language and action of the oath ritual come from the world of sacrifice. In that world, the enforcement of oaths mattered. The principle of divine judgment figured prominently in the myriad of social contexts that required a personal loyalty oath. Soldiers swore to their commanders with a self-curse that invoked the divine: If I wittingly speak falsely, may Jupiter Optimus Maximus utterly destroy me, my house, my family, and my estate (Livy 22.53.1112). Initiates into a school or profession swore to keep the mysteries of the teachings, as we find in the prologue of a professional astrological handbook: To those who keep this oath may it go well and may the abovementioned gods be in accord with their wishes, but may the opposite happen to those who forswear this oath (Vettius Valens, Anthologies 7.1).17 Physicians who swore the Hippocratic oath pleged their loyalty with a self16 Jonathan Williams, Religion and Roman Coins, in Rpke, Roman Religion, 14445 (fig.

11.4). See also Hahn, Performing the Sacred, 24041; and Fritz Graf, The Power of the Word in the Graeco-Roman World, in La Potenza della parola: Destinatari, funzioni, bersagli; Atti del Convegno di studi, Siena, 7-8 maggio 2002 (ed. Simone Beta; Fiesole [Florence]: Cadmo, 2004), 97. 17 David Pingree, Vettii Valentis Antiocheni anthologiarum libri novem (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana; Leipzig: Teubner, 1986), 251; Tamsyn Barton, Ancient Astrology (Sciences of Antiquity; London: Routledge, 1994), 59.

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curse: Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses . . . If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all people for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.18 In addition, actors on the dramatic stage also swore loyalty to their patrons and the leaders. Cicero recounts one memorable episode involving the famous tragic actor Aesop:
For in the first place those actors had returned to the stage out of respect for the occasion [to honor Pompey], who had, as I thought, quitted it out of self-respect. Indeed your favorite, our friend Aesop, was such a failure that nobody in the world would have regretted his leaving off. When he began to swear the oath, his voice failed him at the crucial point, If I wittingly deceive. Why should I tell you anything more? You know what the rest of the games were like. (Fam. 8.2; emphasis added)

This passage is important because it suggests that ancient audiences recognized oaths to take a usual formula, even when not detailed in the story.19 Who will deny, writes Cicero, in another work, that such beliefs [in the gods as the lords and rulers of all things] are useful when one remembers how often oaths are used to confirm agreements, how important to our well-being is the sanctity of treaties, how many persons are deterred from crime by the fear of divine punishment, and how sacred an association of citizens becomes when the immortal gods are made members of it, either as judges or witnesses? (Leg. 2.7.16). Oaths functioned as community self-definition, to bond the social order. However, ancient society recognized that people can and do speak empty words in oaths, often with impunity.20 Uttering a self-curse did not necessarily affirm the existence and participation of the divine in human affairs. This question is important for the exegesis of Acts 5:111, because in Acts Ananias and Sapphira behave in just this way. Their willing deception about participating in Gods plan of a community of goods, before Peter, suggests their unbelief in divine judgment.

Translation adapted from Ludgwig Edelstein, Ancient Medicine: Selected Papers (ed. Owsei Temkin and C. Lilian Temkin; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 6. 19 Usual formula: Tacitus, Hist. 4.31. For additional examples of the oaths fixed formula in a broad variety of contexts, see Anne Pippin Burnett, Revenge in Attic and Later Tragedy (Sather Classical Lectures 62; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 19799; and Joseph Plescia, The Oath and Perjury in Ancient Greece (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1970). 20 Angelos Chaniotis, Under the Watchful Eyes of the Gods: Divine Justice in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor, in The Greco-Roman East: Politics, Culture, Society (ed. Stephen Colvin; Yale Classical Studies 31; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 143.

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II. Not Fearing the Divine: The Impious and Their Swearing Habits
Swearing habits revealed moral and religious character before ancient audiences and readers. Specific stereotypes and stock scenes tagged the perjurer as impious. This characterization evoked for ancient audiences debates about divine judgment. Evidence for this characterization comes especially from Greco-Roman comedy. Yet the tragedy of Euripides provides the most famous line of perjury in Greek literature. The character Hippolytus almost perjures himself by saying he is going to tell his father what had happened (a case of incest), and when the nurse protests that he swore to keep it secret, Hippolytus declares, My tongue swore, but my mind is not on oath [ , ] (Hipp. 612). This line was famous in antiquity because it was so often quoted in Greek comedy, being fodder for playwrights like Aristophanes.21 The ancient comedy of the perjurers impiety revolved around the characters lies and deceit in order to avoid paying debts. The debt-ridden father, Strepsiades, in Aristophanes Clouds (Nubes), for example, seeks out Socrates Thinking House hoping to learn the Unjust Argument for this specific reason: all the debts, which I have incurred . . . Ill never pay, no not one penny of them (11418); My debts! my debts! I want to shrink my debts (73839). Strepsiades pleads, with cash, to have Socrates teach him sophistrys hidden secrets: A galloping consumption seized my money. Come now: do let me learn the Unjust Argument that can shirk debts. Now do just let me learn it. Name your own price, by all the gods Ill pay it (24346). The first lesson that Socrates teaches is atheism (38081). When Strepsiades asks where the thunderbolt comes from, Socrates drops his bombshell: If [Zeus] really blasts perjurers, why hasnt he burned Simon or Kleonomos or Theorostheyre certainly perjurers. Instead he hits his own temple, and Sounion, the Acropolis, and great oaks. Whats he thinking of? Im sure oaks dont commit perjury (399402). Socrates pontification on the theological problem of unpunished perjury shatters Strepsiades old beliefs in the gods in favor of Socrates meteorological abstractions (the clouds). The linking of impiety (atheism) and perjury recurs as a stock theme again in New Comedy. In Rome, in Plautuss The Rope (Rud.), the plot turns on a comic stage perjurerthe slave trader (pimp)whose disregard for oaths, especially those involving cash transactions, was proverbial.22 Labrax perjures himself by trying to
21

Aristophanes, Thesm. 27576; Frogs 1012 and 1471. See Harry C. Avery, My Tongue Swore, but My Mind Is Unsworn, TAPA 99 (1968): 1935; and Charles Segal, Curse and Oath in Euripides Hippolytus, Ramus 1 (1972): 16580. 22 On the proverbial deceit of slave dealers in Greco-Roman society, see J. Albert Harrill,

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get away with abduction of merchandise (girls) on which others have entered into a contract: This pimp [leno], true to his type, cared not a straw for his promise or the oath he had given (4448); If he has cheated gods and men, its all in the days work for a pimp (345). The very introduction of the slave dealer elicits an entire vice list: A cheat and villain, a perjured, parricidal monster, lawless, impudent, impure, impious past all tellingin one word, a pimp. Why describe him further? (65153). Foreshadowing all this trouble, the plays very prologue has a prosopopoetic member of the celestial firmament, the star Arcturus, put all perjurers on notice:
In the company of Him [Jupiter], who sways all peoples and the seas and lands, a citizen I am of the celestial city. . . . All who bring to court cases supported by false witness, all who before the magistrate deny on oath their honest debts, we take note and take their names to Jove. Day by day, He knows who they be that do seek evil here on earth. When the wicked here expect to win their suits by perjury, or press false claims before the judge, the case adjudged is judged again by Him. And the fine He fines them far exceeds their gains in courts of law. (Rud. 120)

Sure enough, the slave trader faces the threat of getting what suits him (Rud. 875), a prison sentence (891). To get out of the pickle, the slave trader (Labrax) goes into a nearby temple, of Venus, where he agrees to swear yet another oath with a self-curse, but Labrax whispers to himself, My tongue may swear, but I act as I please (132956). Ironically, Labrax swears his oath on orders of a slave (Gripus), whom a previous character had already condemned as a font of perjury (1109). When Gripus comes for the promised money and reminds Labrax of his oath, Labrax replies, Swear, yes, and Ill swear now, if it gives me any pleasure. Swearing was invented to save property, not wreck it (137374). The slave trader chatters on about his impious habit: Hobby of mine, swearing. Are you high priest over my perjury? (1377). Labrax doubts the ritual power of the self-curse. Venus is irrelevant to his business; the gods demand nothing. Yet, in the end, the wrath of Jupiter against perjurers promised in the prologue never actually materializes. This stock comedy, therefore, raised the question of divine punishment for perjury but left the answer open and ambiguous for comedic effect. Another self-perjuring pimp in Roman comedy is Dorio in the Phormio of Terence. Dorio the Pimp has a contract with a youth named Phaedria not to sell Phaedrias girlfriend before a certain date, thus giving Phaedria the chance to come up with the money for her. But then a buyer with ready cash appears, and the pimp abrogates the old contract and tells Phaedria that he has only twenty-four hours to come up with the cash (Phorm. 485533). Even though Dorio breaks his oath, there

Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 11944.

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is no divine revenge upon the pimp for his perjury. In fact, he gets his money from Phaedria and the deal goes through on the new terms he demands. Terences selfperjuring pimp is thus another example of how New Comedy leaves open the question of divine punishment for perjury: characters break their oaths without consequences.23 The comedy of sellers as proverbial perjurers appears also in a poetic calendar of the Roman year, Ovids Fasti. Ovid explores religious thinking on this question in a witty tale about the cult of Mercury, the patron god of circulation (the movement of goods) and of commerce itself, who was a well-known deceiver.24 On the Ides of May, Rome celebrates an annual public festival at the state temple of Mercury that, Ovid emphasizes, faces the racetrack (circus). All who make a business of selling their wares give you incense, writes Ovid, and beg that you would grant them gain (Fast. 5.67172). The betting-like spectacle of this festival prompts Ovid to explore the additionally ridiculous show of the merchants (mercator) furtive cult to Mercury at the shop, away from customers eyes. The poet recounts the scene of a merchant, with his tunic girt up and ceremonially pure, drawing water from the so-called Spring of Mercury in a jar to carry it back to his shop:
With the water he wets a laurel bough, and with the wet bough he sprinkles all the goods that are soon to change owners. He sprinkles, too, his own hair with the dripping laurel and recites prayers in a voice accustomed to deceive. Wash away the perjuries of past time, says he, wash away my false words [perfida verba] of the past day. Whether I have called you to witness, or have falsely invoked the great divinity of Jupiter, in the expectation that he would not hear, or whether I have knowingly taken in vain the name of any other god or goddess, let the swift south winds carry away the wicked words, and may tomorrow open the door for me to fresh perjuries, and may the gods above not care if I shall utter any! Only grant me profits, grant me the joy of profit made, and see to it that I enjoy cheating the buyer! At such prayers Mercury laughs from on high, remembering that he himself rustled the Ortygian cattle. (Fast. 67592)

The merchant prays privately in a voice accustomed to deceive, admitting his bad swearing habits to himself and to the gods. His past perjuries had invoked Jupiter falsely and had knowingly taken in vain the names of enough other gods and goddesses to fill a pantheon. Yet he aims to remove his past perjuries solely in order to make a ritual opening for committing fresh ones, in the hopes that the gods above do not care that I utter any. He prays not for his own moral improvement but for
In all fairness, Phaedria has apparently failed to pay the pimp several times in previous agreements, but that does not excuse Dorio from violating his sacred oath. Indeed, the text makes explicit the pimps shameless and unscrupulous desire to break an oath if he can profit by it (Phorm. 256). 24 On the long tradition of Mercury/Hermes as a perjurer of oaths, signaling his immaturity, see Judith Fletcher, A Tricksters Oaths in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, AJP 129 (2008): 1946.
23

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Mercurys divine apathy. His goals remain fixed on profit. The single-mindedness characterizes the merchant as a serial perjurerand perpetually impiousintending forever to profane the self-curse in the oath that will complete his every marketplace sale. Ovids witty tale, like ancient comedy, explores ancient thinking about the use of religion by the impious for monetary gain. In the happy economics of a merchants business theology, the gods demand nothing. While the formula of oaths was obvious to ancient audiences, the swearers intent or sincerity was ambiguous. Swearing an oath (and its ever-present imprecation) thus illustrates a fundamental paradox in ancient culture, because it signaled either ones piety or ones impiety, depending on the context and the morality of the speaker. The author of Luke-Acts, I argue, sought to resolve this paradox both early and categorically for the history of the church, in the story of Ananias and Sapphira. The scene of Acts 5:111 functions to heighten the acceptance in the audience for the piety of the true oaths that the Lukan heroes later make in the narrative.

III. Ananias and Sapphira: God Demands Death for Forswearing

The story of Ananias and Sapphira remains a long-standing exegetical puzzle in biblical commentary. Yet scholarship has overlooked the stock theme of a perjurers impiety as a plausible context for reconstructing how an ancient audience would have made sense of their deaths.25 I argue that the Ananias and Sapphira
25 Some scholars have, however, hinted in this direction, but without developing either the perjurer theme or the oath ceremony. Helpful to my analysis is Henriette Havelaar, Hellenistic Parallels to Acts 5:111 and the Problem of Conflicting Interpretations, JSNT 67 (1997): 6873, 82; and Hans Dieter Betz, Lukian von Samosata und das Neue Testament: Religionsgeschichtliche und Parnetische Parallelen (TU 76; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1961), 17879. See also G. H. R. Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity: A Review of Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Published in 1978 (North Ryde, Australia: Macquarie University, 1983), 2728; Alfons Weiser, Das Gottesurteil ber Hananias und Saphira, TGl 69 (1979): 15051; idem, Die Apostelgeschichte: Kapitel 112 (TK 5/1; Gtersloh: Gerd Mohn; Wrzburg: Echter, 1981), 14142; S. J. Noorda, Scene and Summary: A Proposal for Reading Acts 4,325,16, in Les Actes des Aptres: Traditions, rdaction, thologie (ed. Jacob Kremer; BETL 48; Gembloux: Duculot; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1979), 482; Brian J. Capper, The Interpretation of Acts 5:4, JSNT 19 (1983): 118; Ivoni Richter Reimer, Woman in the Acts of the Apostles: A Feminist Liberation Perspective (trans. Linda M. Maloney; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 614; Barrett, Acts, 263, 266; Marguerat, First Christian Historian, 16878, 173 n. 45; Streeter, Strange Acts, 230; and Richard S. Ascough, Benefaction Gone Wrong: The Sin of Ananias and Sapphira in Context, in Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity: Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson (ed. Stephen G. Wilson and Michel Desjardins; Studies in Christianity and Judaism 9; Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000), 92.

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story participates in the cultural world of the oath ceremony and its divine ramifications for perjurers. Importantly, the self-curse is present in that cultural world even if unspoken or not detailed, which helps explain the characters deaths. In short, it supplies the missing piece of the storys puzzle. Peter, the narrative hero, exposes Ananias and Sapphira as impostors who claim an undeserved share in the honor of contributing to the community of goods, by his use of irony (Acts 5:4 and 7) and his close scrutiny of a monetary transaction. The plot thus embodies a structural theme of comedy, which achieves its effect by inverting the role of death in a tragedy.26 The subsequent narrative celebration of the deaths of the impostors functions as apologetic discourse to defend the early church against the charge of having atheists among its members.27 The commerce of buying and selling drives the plot of key episodes in LukeActs. These episodes advance Lukes apologetic theme of possessions.28 The Lukan Jesus pronounces it repeatedly: None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions (Luke 14:33); Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Luke 12:3334). To the rich ruler asking how to inherit eternal life, and listing Mosaic commandments to show his piety, the Lukan Jesus teaches: There is one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven (Luke 18:22). For Acts, this teaching forms the basis of the original, and utopian, community of believers sharing all their goods (Acts 2:4446). The community of shared goods goes hand in hand with moral virtue (generosity) and Jewish piety (praising God in the Jerusalem temple), which generates goodwill from the entire Jerusalem population, including from nonbelievers. The apologetic narrative affirms that the first believers were neither immoral nor atheist.29
26 The classical comic hero is often an ironical person () who exposes an impostor () claiming an undeserved share in the fruits of victory; see Via, Kerygma and Comedy, 45 46, who unfortunately does not discuss Acts. 27 Atheism (rejection of the gods) appears later in the text as a specific charge against Paul: (Acts 19:26). On , , , and in classical culture, see Plato, Apol. 26bc; Leg. 10.885c; 10.908c; Cicero, Nat. d. 1.23.63; Plutarch, Mor. 165c (Superst. 2); Cassius Dio 52.36.23 and 67.14.23. On the charge of atheism against Christians, see Lucian, Alex. 38; Justin, 1 Apol. 5; Minucius Felix, Oct. 8.15; Athenagoras, Leg. 4 and 13; Mart. Pol. 3.2 and 9.2. 28 See Pervo, Acts, 11; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Literary Function of Possessions in Luke Acts (SBLDS 39; Missoula, MT: Society of Biblical Literature, 1977), 20411; and Halvor Moxnes, The Economy of the Kingdom: Social Conflict and Economy Relations in Lukes Gospel (OBT; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 160 and passim. 29 On Acts as an apologetic (legitimating) narrative, see Pervo, Acts, 2122; Loveday C. A. Alexander, Acts in Its Ancient Literary Context: A Classicist Looks at the Acts of the Apostles (JSNTSup 298; London: T&T Clark, 2006), 183206; and Philip F. Esler, Community and Gospel

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Negative tales about the rooting out of the impious from among the believers reinforce this theme. The counterexamples reveal, by their contrast, the true piety of the apostles and other believers. One tale (Acts 8:425) has the apostle Peter preaching in Samaria to bestow the Holy Spirit on new converts through a ritual of laying on of hands. The antithesis of Peter appears, Simon the magician, and he wants to purchase his own franchise of the ritual power, offering silver for the ritual ability. Give me also this power, Simon says, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:19). But Peter curses Simon for his merchandising of religion: May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain Gods gift with money! You have no part or share in this, for your heart is not right before God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and the chains of wickedness (Acts 8:20 23). In this way, Lukes narrative participates in ancient Mediterranean criticism of buyers and sellers as proverbially impious. Further episodes of the merchants impiety include the story of the Philippian slave girl (Acts 16:1640). Paul exorcises a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling (Acts 16:16). The loss of the spirit renders the slave girl worthless as an oracle; her owners no longer have any fortune-telling to sell. When her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities (16:19). In the judicial hearing that ensues, the browbeating owners lie: These men are disturbing our city. They are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe (16:20). Yet the magistrates release Paul and Silas after only a night in prison and apologize () for the citys mistreatment of them as Roman citizens (16:39), which prepares Lukes apologetic point about the churchs mission not violating Roman law.30 The bully slaveholders exploit religion for commercial gain, profane legal proceedings, and lie to authorities, all of which characterize them as stock perjurers who fear no divine judgment. The story of the Ephesian silversmiths concerns a businessman worried about his bottom line (Acts 19:2341). The silversmith Demetrius spins his speech into a pious call to protect the great Ephesian cult of Artemis, but the narrative makes
in LukeActs: The Social and Political Motivations of Lucan Theology (SNTSMS 57; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 20519. The old suggestion that Acts addressed Roman officials to argue for Christianitys recognition as a religio licita is highly unlikely. The apologetics of Luke-Acts has multiple purposes but is primarily aimed at insiders in Lukes community to build up reassurance and self-definition; see Robert F. Stoops Jr., Riot and Assembly: The Social Context of Acts 19:2341, JBL 108 (1989): 90. 30 Hans Conzelmann, Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (trans. James Limburg, A. Thomas Kraabel, and Donald H. Juel; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 131, 133.

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clear that his real fear is personal financial loss. In the end, the story defends the piety of the traveling Christian heroes before Roman law and blames their accusers as illegitimate citizensthe real atheists. The episode thus stereotypes the local merchants as cultic merchandisers who lie for gain, an apologetic theme.31 Important to this theme is fidelity to oaths and vows. Affirming Gods own fidelity to oaths plays a key role in the opening birth stories. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Johns father, Zechariah, speaks a prophecy in the form of a prayer, which blesses the Lord of Israel for keeping his sacred promise sealed with an oath: Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and he has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore [ ] to our ancestor Abraham (Luke 1:7273; see also 1:55). The assurance that God keeps his sworn oaths recurs as a theme in Peters inaugural sermon in Acts. His synopsis of Israelite history reminds the Jerusalem crowd that King David knew that God had sworn with an oath to him [ ] that he would put one of his descendants on the throne (Acts 2:30). Trust in the Hebrew prophecy of oaths belongs also to Pauls speech. Paul defends himself before King Agrippa: And now I stand here on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors [ ], a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night (Acts 26:67). These passages about the Hebrew covenants show Lukes awareness of the ancient oaths solemnity and importance. The Christian heroes in Acts take vows, observe the solemnity of their oaths, and are trustworthy witnesses of their proclamations promises. These episodes describe the apostles and their followers as pious Jews, which furthers the apologetic theme defending the early church from the charge of atheism. At Cenchreae, for example, Paul cuts his hair ritually as a public expression of being under a vow ( ), most likely meaning the Nazirite vow (Acts 18:18). Later, to curb false allegations that he forsakes the Jewish law, Paul and four others go under a vow ( ) publicly, in Jerusalem, at the request of James. This second vow requires purification rites and an offering of sacrifice () at the temple, which also matches a Nazirite vow (Acts 21:2026).32 The gestures seal the completion of vows before a divine witness known for loyalty to covenant, the oath par excellence. Pauls wholehearted payment of the vows displays him as no atheist.33
On the episodes apologetic function, see Pervo, Dating of Acts, 17983; and Stoops, Riot and Assembly, 7391. 32 The Nazirite vow required a sacrifice on account of its particular ritual requirements. On the distinction between oaths and vows, see Tony W. Cartledge, Vows in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (JSOTSup 147; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 1118. 33 On the vows as Nazirite and their function as apologetic discourse, see Stuart Chepey, Nazirites in Late Second Temple Judaism: A Survey of Ancient Jewish Writings, the New Testament, Archaeological Evidence, and Other Writings from Late Antiquity (Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity 60; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 15975.
31

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This characterization extends also to Barnabas, who had previously been the positive example to the negative one of Ananias and Sapphira. Barnabas exhorts all the church members to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast devotion; for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith (Acts 11:2324). Members of the church thus swear oaths and vows faithfully, for the whole world to see. The narrative of Luke-Acts uses counterexamples of profaned and inverted oaths among Jewish nonbelievers to complement its apologetic picture of Christian origins. When neither Roman law nor Jewish law proves to be an obstacle to Pauls mission, the Jews swear an oath to lie, explicitly called a conspiracy () in the text (Acts 23:1215, 2021). The Jews behave like comic stage perjurers who use religion only as a pretext for personal gain. On the profane authority of their oath, the conspirators ask the chief priests and the elders to abandon the faithful observance of holy law and to lure Paul to his death. Their pledge is an inversion of the sacred oath and its imprecations. In sum, the Jews behave as functional atheists who impiously do not fear that the Lord will act on forswearing. Their plot of murder and lawlessness reveals their unbelief in divine judgment. The idea that the Jews so willingly invert the practice of sacred oaths adds significant detail to the overarching negative portrayal of nonbelieving Jews in Acts.34 Warning signs of divine judgment are present throughout the narrative. The Lukan Jesus exhorts the crowd, saying, Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven (Luke 12:10; cf. Acts 7:51). Protesting his violent interrogation in the Jewish council, Paul warns the high priest (another character named Ananias): God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! Are you sitting there to judge me according to the law, and yet in violation of the law you order me to be struck? (Acts 23:3). Earlier, in Acts 5, the Pharisee Gamaliel advises the council to let the Christian mission run its course; otherwise, the council risks divine judgment upon itself. He pleads, So in the present case, I will tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow themin that case you may even be found fighting against God! [ ] (Acts 5:3839).35 The warning signs of theomachos (fighting against God) become divine judgments in a number of key scenes. Blindness afflicts Bar-Jesus (alias Elymas), the magician and Jewish false prophet, for opposing the Christian mission (Acts 13:6 12). Judas dies in a gory mess that emphasizes the stain of money (Acts 1:1820). Herod Agrippa I, the Jewish tetrarch with divine pretensions, also has a sudden and horrible demise: an angel of the Lord strikes him down, and he is eaten by worms and dies (Acts 12:2123). In addition, there is the expectation of death for
34

On this negative portrayal, see Lawrence M. Wills, The Depiction of the Jews in Acts, JBL 110 (1991): 63154. 35 On the link between Acts 5:111 and the later trials before the Jewish authorities in Acts, see Boris Repschinski, Warum Mussten Hananias und Saphira Sterben? PzB 18 (2009): 4961.

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Paul when the tribal natives of Malta witness him being bitten by a viper: When the natives [ ] saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, This man must be a murderer; though he has escaped from the sea, justice [ , likely meaning the goddess Justice] has not allowed him to live (Acts 28:4). The narrative thus supports beliefs in divine judgment not only in Judaism but also in paganism. Such scenes participate in ancient Mediterranean expectations of gods demanding summary judgment, the elements of which come from the cultural world of the oath ceremony and its sacrifice. I argue that the aim of the Ananias and Sapphira scene (Acts 5:111)part of a unified story that begins in 4:3237is to encourage readers to accept the church as genuinely pious. The deadly consequences of lying to the Holy Spirit point back to the narrative summary: the believers were of one heart and soul with no one claiming private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common (4:32). The expression . . . (no one claimed . . .) is another way of explicitly telling the reader that they all swore an oath. The Greek construction functions very much like an adherescent negative, in which a negative placed before a verb gives the verb an opposite meaning: they do not say something and similar sentences really mean they are denying something.36 The expression is thus stronger than it may at first appear, and the next sentence describes the blessings for faithfulness to the oaths promise (4:33). Keeping part of the money from the property sale in light of the explicit oath in 4:32 characterizes Ananias and Sapphira in the stock of the atheistic perjurer. Such a character consistently behaves without fear of the gods, denying any divine intervention in human affairs. Only after the couples expulsion is the community called a church (, 5:11). Lukes scene thus shows the churchs belief in the power and reality of the divine, the authors apologetic response to potential or actual charges that Christians were atheists. At a crucial point in its history of the church, the narrative exposes two converts to Christianity, Ananias and Sapphira, as impostorsatheists who must suffer swift divine judgment for violating their oaths to the community of goods. Many narrative clues in the story of Ananias and Sapphira show that the couple swore a sacred oath. First, the apostle Peter clearly expects to receive all their proceeds (Acts 5:34, 89), which implies that the couple had promised to donate all the money. Second, a series of Lukan summaries emphasizes a community-wide agreement of one heart and soul [ ] to share everything ( ), which implies a mutual agreement of some sacred kind (Acts 4:32 35; see also 2:44); and the emphasis on heart [] also recalls a saying of Jesus in the Gospel: For where your treasure is, there your heart [] will be also (Luke 12:34). Third, Barnabas offers a positive example of a member acting on his
36 See Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar (rev. Gordon M. Messing; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), 610 (269192).

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promise to hand over all his cash proceeds from a property sale (Acts 4:3637). And, fourth, the text makes it explicit that Peter condemns Ananias and Sapphira for their specific offense against the divine and not against humans: You have not lied to human beings but to God [ ] (5:3); How is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? (5:9). This condemnation participates in the widespread ideology of ancient oaths, which held that perjury is a specific offense against the gods, not humans. Furthermore, ancient audiences would have expected that any property sale would have included an oath, sworn before witnesses in the marketplace, and the reaction of Peter makes it clear that Ananias and Sapphira have sworn by divine witnesses (Acts 5:3, 9). The couples behavior is atheistic in the sense that it assumes no consequences for ones actions, as if God and the Spirit of the Lord do not care about human speech and actions.37 At this point, a reader might object that the self-curse of Ananias and Sapphira is not detailed. In reply, I would point to the consensus of scholars who agree that the author of Luke-Acts suppresses many preparatory parts of narratives. These so-called Lukan summaries generalize a broad theme or set of themes; the summaries need not detail individual actions.38 For the author of Luke-Acts, the consequences of forswearing are more important to narrate than the self-curse itself, which is already implied in the explicit oath of the community (Acts 4:32). In this way, the narrative of Acts follows a convention in ancient poetic and dramatic literature that emphasizes less the curse per se than the dramatic events that it sets in motion. In his work on Greek and Roman curse poetry, Lindsay Watson explains the literary device:
One example is the of Oedipus in Aeschylus Septem. Their brooding presence dominates the second half of the play, yet the actual words used by Oedipus in cursing his sons are reproduced only briefly, and in summary, at lines 786 90. . . . Aeschylus is more interested in the dramatic and psychological possibilities of the curse, than in what was actually said at the moment of imprecation. In this connexion, it is interesting to observe a similar procedure on Euripides part in the second Hippolytus. The action of the latter half of the play is determined by Theseus cursing of his son, but the curse proper is allotted the briefest compass in the text, a mere four lines (88790). It is hard not to feel that Euripides has let slip an opportunity by not placing in Theseus mouth a truly terrific curse. Here it is noteworthy that Seneca, in his Phaedra, likewise handles Theseus curse upon Hippolytus in a low-key fashion (9427)yet permits the hero a far more lengthy and imposing (self-)imprecation, after the truth has come to light (12011243).39
37 Paul B. Brown, The Meaning and Function of Acts 5:111 in the Purpose of LukeActs

(Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1969), 20910. 38 See Pervo, Acts, 135; and Conzelmann, Acts, xliii, 2324, 36. 39 Watson, Arae, 55.

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In addition, ancient readers would not have needed an explicit reference to the self-curse to recognize the perjury of Ananias and Sapphira. Early Christian exegetes provide confirmation. Cyprian places Peters condemnation of Ananias (Acts 5:34) alongside other biblical passages that illustrate punishment for not paying quickly what one has vowed to God (Test. 30).40 Basil preaches that Ananias dedicated his property to God and consecrated his possessions to God by a vow, which provoked the Lords displeasure against him to such a degree that he was not given time for repentance.41 And John Chrystostom uses the episode to preach against oaths generally: Ananias made his money sacred by vowing it to God but afterwards took some back from Gods treasury; by lying to Peter, the couple thought that they were speaking only to a humanevidence of their impiety (Hom. Act. 12).42 Chrysostom exhorts further:
You have seen the fate of liars. Consider what is the fate of those swearing falsely [ ], consider and desist. It is impossible for one swearing not also to forswear himself, whether he wants to or not; and no perjurer can be saved [ ]. One false oath suffices to finish all, to draw upon us the whole measure of vengeance. Let us then take heed to ourselves, so that we may escape the punishment due to the offence, and be deemed worthy of the loving kindness of God. (John Chrystostom, Hom. Act. 12 [PG 60:105 6]).43

Later patristic authors continue this line of interpretation. Gregory the Great writes, Ananias had vowed money to God and was deserving of the penalty of death, because he withdrew the money that he had given to God (Ep. 34).44 Jerome, responding to Porphyry, asserts that the couple deserved death because their perjury signals impiety: for having made a vow, they offered their money to God as if it were their own and not His to whom they had vowed it; and keeping back for their own use a part of that which belongs to another, through fear of famine (cf. Acts 11:28), which true faith never fears, they drew down on themselves suddenly the avenging stroke, which was meant not in cruelty towards them but as a warning to others (Ep. 130.14).45 Jerome saw the couples attempt to save some money, presumably for getting them through the impending famine, as proof of their utter unbelief in the providence of Godsheer atheism. Jerome thus con-

CSEL 3.1:14344; trans. in ANF 5:543. Basil, An Ascetical Discourse, trans. in Monica Wagner, Ascetical Works/Saint Basil (FC 9; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1962), 208. 42 PG 60:99105; trans. in NPNF 11:7680. 43 On Chrysostoms interpretation, see Williamson, Use of the Ananias and Sapphira Story, 21112, 22627, 23742. 44 Trans. in NPNF 12:84. 45 Trans. in NPNF 6:268.
41

40

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demns Ananias and Sapphira as idolaters (Ep. 14.3).46 Moreover, when Augustine preaches on this passage, he also defends the divine judgment of death, by saying that the Holy Spirit punished not avarice but a lie. Augustine uses the Scripture to prompt his exhortation on the importance of fulfilling all vows made to God, especially monastic ones.47 The history of patristic interpretation confirms, therefore, that divine judgment for perjury is a probable context in which ancient readers would have made sense of the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira.48

IV. Conclusion
This exegetical study remaps the interpretation of Acts 5:111 beyond the search for biblical antecedents and toward stock scenes of divine judgment for the crime of perjury in Lukes Greco-Roman culture. In Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquity, the destruction of a paradigmatic object typically sealed the oaths, vows, and other pacts used in everyday life, such as business and commercial transactions. The verbal formulas in oath ceremonies included a self-curse for dishonesty and perjury (e.g., May I die . . .). Many ancient works questioned, however, the value of such self-imprecations, especially when impious characters with a habit of forswearing were proverbial. The comedy of the stage perjurer explored this question in stock scenes to great dramatic effect. From the perspective of Lukes narrative, the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira are not tragic. Rather, the scene encourages the audience to have confidence that the church ( ) is blameless of impiety () and that promises about its deity are true. The positive resolution thus matches the form or structure of a comedy. The author of Luke-Acts engages the notions of ritual and religious identity in his contemporary culture. He distinguishes the piety of his early Christian heroes by the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, who scorn the keeping of oaths that God demands.
46 Trans. Charles C. Mierow, The Letters of Jerome, vol. 1 (ACW 33; Westminster, MD: Newman, 1963), 63. 47 Augustine, Sermon 148 (98) (PL 39:799800); trans. Edmund Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, vol. 3.5: Sermons 148183 (ed. John E. Rotelle; New Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1992), 1718. Augustine mentions the destructive power of an oaths imprecation in another work: Augustine, On the Psalms 7.3, trans. Maria Boulding, in Rotelle, Works of Saint Augustine, vol. 3.15, Expositions of the Psalms, 132 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), 116. 48 More patristic interpretation in light of ancient oaths and vows is found in Williamson, Use of the Ananias and Sapphira Story, 3839, 42, 47, 5060, 135, 17579, 18788, 199200, 2025, 335; and Brown, Meaning and Function, 6264.

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