“About Himself or Someone Else?”: Lament and Solidarity in the Narrative of Philip and the Ethiopian

Abstract

The narrative of the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 centres on the interpretation of a lament concerning the “suffering servant” from Isaiah 53. There are striking parallels with the narrative of the Emmaus Road in Luke 24, in which two individuals are pointed to the Hebrew scriptures in order to establish suffering as a defining characteristic of the Messiah. This paper explores parallels between the two narratives, including the significance of lament and the experience of trauma in the lives of the protagonists (bereavement through crucifixion in Luke 24, castration and marginalization in Acts 8). It applies the psychological concept of post traumatic growth in both cases. It goes on to argue that in Acts 8 a foreign, damaged, sexually ambiguous, and marginalized individual is able to enter into the ancient Jewish lament, to make it in some sense his own, and to experience solidarity through both this and the close presence of the Apostle Philip, who assists in its interpretation. It suggests that the present-day reader is also invited to do this by the open form of the Ethiopian’s question and the fact that it remains unanswered in the text. This in part accounts for the longevity of texts of lament in the Hebrew Scriptures, and their ready reception in cultures far removed from their original context.