The “We-Passages” in Acts and Sea
Voyage Narratives
Posted: December 22, 2005
Last Updated: January 15, 2007
An individual known as Vernon Robbins argues that the “we-passages” in Acts are not the result of an eyewitness recording experiences, but are merely the product of a literary genre used in stories about sea voyages. However, Robbins relies on faulty data and interpretations in order to make his case.
Biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown writes the following in response to this proposal made by Vernon Robbins:
“In an oft-cited article V.K. Robbins offered examples of ‘we’ used in such sea travels in contemporary Greco-Roman literature. However, Fitzmyer has examined the examples and found them wanting; and it is far from clear that they explain satisfactorily the usage of Acts. If ‘we’ is purely conventional, why does this pronominal usage not appear throughout all the sea-journeying in Acts instead of in only a few sections separated by years in the narrative? Moreover, in the first ‘we’ passage (Acts 16:10-17), Paul is on land at Philippi in all but two verses. (See also 20:7-12; 21:15-18 within the second and third ‘we’ passages.) Finally, one could argue that ‘we’ in Acts should be related to the ‘us’ in Luke 1:1-2, which has nothing to do with a sea voyage” (AITTNT:322-323).
Raymond E. Brown continues: “A simpler explanation regards the ‘we’ as autobiographical, so that the ‘we’ passages constitute a type of diary describing moments when the writer was with Paul. Normally, then, it would follow that the writer of the diary was the author of the whole Book of Acts, especially since the general style and interests of the ‘we’ passages are those found elsewhere in the book” (AITTNT:323).
Colin J. Hemer also writes the following in Response to Vernon Robbins:
“The most elaborately expounded and defended view of a literary explanation of the ‘we-passages’ is contained in the recent articles of V.K. Robbins. Robbins seeks to isolate a narrative genre for sea-voyages, as being conventionally rendered in the first person plural, and cites extensive examples from ancient literature alleged to be in support of his contention…His examples are not necessarily representative, nor are they always taken correctly in context, nor are they subject to control, nor do they prove the conclusions he draws from them. These criticisms are especially applicable to the instances he offers as the most precise parallels with Acts.
(i) In the Voyage of Hanno 1-3 the two opening sentences are in the third person and the remainder of the document in the first plural. But the opening is a formal heading which gives the explorer’s commissioning, and it should be printed as a prefatory paragraph, as it is by its editor, and not as part of a continuous undifferentiated narrative, as it is in Robbins’ rendering. In any case the narrative is presented as the report on an actual voyage under the command of the author.
(ii) In the case of the fragmentary papyrus narration of some incidents in the Third Syrian War, Robbins takes his citation out of its (mutilated) context. Enough is preserved to show that the text contains a narrative of conflict between ‘us’ and ‘them’, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, narrated by a participant on the Ptolemaic side. Robbins contrasts what ‘they’ do on land and ‘we’ by sea, but, in fact, the sentence preceding tells what ‘they’ (the enemy) did by sea. Clearly, the use of ‘we’ has to do with the identity of the actors and not with the nautical setting.
(iii) The Antiochene Acts of Ignatius is the most difficult case, and does certainly contain an abrupt and unmarked shift to the first person plural in mid-course (as it were). J.B. Lightfoot is severe on this document, which seems to be both composite and late. The ‘we-passages’ come in during a sea-voyage, and extend beyond it. Awkward as it is, it seems to mark out Ignatius from companions who include the narrator. And it is precisely the ‘we-section’, allied to an eyewitness profession and to its intrinsic plausibility and lack of the demonstrable blunders apparent elsewhere, which leads Lightfoot to entertain the possibility that this part contains authentic tradition. In any case the document as a whole does not further Robbins’ thesis. As it is probably both late and composite, it is at best uncertain material for arguing literary intention. And, as it stands, the preceding part of the voyage is rendered in the third person, and the change of pronoun comes in the wrong place. Robbins’ many other examples are open to criticism on various similar grounds, and it is unnecessary to repeat the discussion of them.
Nothing said here disposes of the fact that voyage-narratives are often couched in the ‘we-form’, but this is a natural tendency dictated by the situation. Such accounts are indeed often in the first person, because they recall personal experience and plural because they recall communal experience. That tendency is as true of colloquial English as of literary Greek (or Latin), but it is no proof of the existence of a literary style appropriate to what was not personal experience. If the narrative is fiction anyhow (as in Lucian, Achilles, Tacitus, or Heliodorus) the ‘we’ still functions naturally within the dramatic dimension of the fiction. Indeed, the examples discussed by Robbins are drawn from widely differing genres (in a more usual sense of that word), and the notion that an exclusively defined Gattung can be isolated by simple or composite verbal or syntactical criteria across a wide variety of prose and poetry of different types and languages is inherently suspect. Robbins’ paradigm does not work, and cannot be used to draw larger conclusions about the narrative of Acts 27-28” (BOAHS:317-319).
Resource: The "We Passages" of Acts as a Literary Device for Sea Travel? A Critique of Vernon Robbins