The emotionally wounded Dido is compared to a wounded deer. Kochenash discusses at some length the deer similes in these episodes and their resonances in the Acts passage that I had completely overlooked. After Aeneas finally breaks free and leaves for Italy, the distraught Dido kills herself with the sword Aeneas had gifted her. A crisis in the epic occurs when Aeneas is in danger of being diverted from his divine mission by falling in love with Dido, the queen of Carthage. Virgil’s epic poem about the odyssey of Aeneas from Troy to Italy where he founded the settlement that would become Rome sustains the image of deer throughout books 1, 4, 7, 10 and 12. Dido with Aeneas on the hunt for deer Dido will become the victim deer (image from .uk) 42 This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord. Then he called for the believers, especially the widows, and presented her to them alive. 41 He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, “Tabitha, get up.” She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.Ĥ0 Peter sent them all out of the room then he got down on his knees and prayed. 38 Lydda was near Joppa so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, “Please come at once!”ģ9 Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. 37 About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. 35 All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord.ģ6 In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (in Greek her name is Dorcas) she was always doing good and helping the poor. Get up and roll up your mat.” Immediately Aeneas got up. 34 “Aeneas,” Peter said to him, “Jesus Christ heals you. 33 There he found a man named Aeneas, who was paralyzed and had been bedridden for eight years. Like Dorcas, the deer was well-loved by all around her and associated with woven decoration.ģ2 As Peter traveled about the country, he went to visit the Lord’s people who lived in Lydda. It was that war that marked the beginning of a place for the ancestors of Rome in Italy. Since that miracle took place just after the healing of Aeneas, the namesake of the famed mythical founder of the Romans, I was reminded of the dramatic scene in Virgil’s Aeneid where a slain deer is the cause of war between Aeneas’s company and the Latins. This scene takes place on the cusp of expanding the Christian mission from the Jews to the gentiles. In Acts, Peter raises from the dead a well-loved disciple named Tabitha, “Greek name Dorcas”, who had won renown for her caring work of making woven clothes. Michael Kochenash has written a chapter on the same intertextual link in Roman Self-Representation and the Lukan Kingdom of God. Her name is given as Dorcas, meaning a “deer”, and her healing follows immediately after Peter’s healing of Aeneas. So I have not been the only one to pick up on the meaning of the name of a woman Peter raised from the dead and associate it with Virgil’s Aeneid.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |