9 In this article I will follow the more anthropologically informed definition of a curse employed by David Frankfurter in his analysis of blessings and curses in Roman Imperial and Late Antique Egypt ( 2005: 158). 8 In fact, curses play an important role in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The hesitancy of scholars to categorize the apostles’ judgments as curses may be linked to the continued association of the label ‘curse’ with uncritical conceptions of ‘magic’ that define magic as some impure or primitive form of religion.

This approach aims to demonstrate how an ancient audience of Luke–Acts would have heard the apostles engaging with curse traditions typical of ancient Mediterranean culture while also viewing them as divinely authorized acts of power superior to acts of ‘magic’. Secondly, in each case I will employ a comparative perspective to evaluate the curses of Acts in relation to a selection of Greek and Coptic ‘magical’ texts. 7 An analysis of each episode will, in the first place, attend to the thematic, grammatical and phonaesthetic properties of the apostle’s speech to highlight its dramatic power in a performance setting, both within the narrative and in the narrative’s recitation amongst Christian communities. This article, in contrast, will employ literary analysis to demonstrate key links between these three episodes in Acts, arguing that these conflict narratives should be read in continuity with each other. 4 Others portray his speeches to Ananias and Sapphira as prophecies rather than curses, 5 or else relocate responsibility for the two deaths elsewhere. 3 Some explicitly deny the curse-like invectives in Peter’s speech to Simon magus.

They have generally regarded Paul’s words to Bar-Jesus as a form of a curse, 2 but few scholars have identified the speeches against Simon magus and Ananias and Sapphira in the same terms, despite their similarities with the Bar-Jesus episode. Scholars of Luke–Acts have reached little consensus over how to define the apostles’ proclamations of judgment against those who threatened the early Christian community.

Once Upon a Curse by E.D. Baker