Lukan Christianity as a Spirit-Possession Cult
The exemplary ritual process
Paul’s letters give us information about his churches in the 50s, but can we know anything about the churches that comprised the Lukan audience sometime around the turn of the century? Yes, we can. Not because of any claim that Luke is pristinely historical in the modern sense of history writing, but because his teaching forms an artefact that can be studied. He could have used Aesop’s fables to make his points. The historicity of Luke is a secondary issue to his teaching. It is the didactic aspect of Luke that has relevance for anthropology of religion and our argument that Lukan Christianity was a spirit-possession cult.
We know that Luke was teaching, and not just writing an entertaining story, because we know the role that exemplaric stories played in the Graeco-Roman cultural discourse. Stories inculcated youth into the way of the ancestors, into the normative traditions of Rome. Stories communicated the values of society. Stories established social identity. Stories taught one how to make ethical decisions as a good and decent member of society. For further reading on this topic, see Matthew B. Roller, Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Rebecca Langlands, Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Sinclair Bell and Inge Lyse Hansen, Role Models in the Roman World: Identity and Assimilation (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008).
Since we are well aware of the exemplaric nature of the Lukan stories, our task is then to precisely analyze those stories. We have good tools for that. By “tool” I do not mean a reading strategy, such as setting out to examine a text from a certain ideological perspective (e.g., a feminist reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans; or a Marxist reading of poverty and wealth in Luke-Acts). By “tool” I mean a scientific instrument similar to a microscope or a telescope. We can examine the plot, or characters, or setting, or the literary devices, or the narrative focus of an ancient story in the same way as a telescope can help us examine the light coming from a distant galaxy. Interpretation of the data is still necessary, and that interpretation, no matter how objective the interpreting scientist seeks to be, is still fraught with the dangers of subjectivity. Nevertheless, scientists collaborate and test each other’s results to minimize both the technical problem of inaccurate data collection and the more subjective problem of erroneous interpretation. So too, analysis of texts can proceed along similar lines.
Narratology, discourse analysis and literary analysis provide numerous methods by which we can identify precisely what is being communicated through Luke’s exemplaric tales. Starting with the field of narratology, one useful tool is focalization. This is the idea that there is a story “camera” which directs your attention to objects and ideas within the storyworld (naturally, the concept is much more complex than that, see Focalization | the living handbook of narratology (uni-hamburg.de)). Discourse analysis would advise us to read a text sequentially, observing how images, concepts, or themes introduced earlier in the narrative are elaborated upon later in the narrative, that is, how the “big picture” is built up one scene after another, with each scene contributing some new element to the overall story until we have the final Gesamtbild. Literary analysis teaches us to mind the gaps in the story and look for how they are filled in later. Literary analysis also tells us about type scenes, which are typical, standard scenarios drawn from broader culture, or established within the narrative itself (cognitive studies would discuss type scenes in terms of frames, schemas, or scripts), and about narrative asides, when the narrator turns directly to the narratee (with the implied reader identifying with the narratee) and says, “My dear reader, you should know that…”.
So then, how can these tools establish the assertion that Luke was teaching his readers to be spirit possessed? In particular, how does it establish the assertion that they were to be spirit possessed at their cultic initiation? We will examine the scenes leading up to the main Lukan scene of initiatory spirit experience, as well as that principle scene, noting what is focalized, noting any narrative asides about the focalized. Examination of all the other initiatory Spirit-reception scenes is, naturally, very beneficial and something I have done in my two books (Ritual Water, Ritual Spirit as well as Ritual and Religious Experience in Early Christianities). Here it will be sufficient to examine the primary scene in which Luke defines the nature of Spirit reception. It is not necessary for Luke to repeat his definition of Spirit reception in later scenes because the reader, having read Acts chapter 2, knows from that point in the storyline onwards what it means to receive the Holy Spirit. Other scenes address other, different issues, such as the mechanism by which the Spirit is imparted or whether money can by the power of impartation.
We start with the nativity scenes which are full of spirit experience with conception, loud prophecy, and guidance all related to the presence of the Spirit. But the first initiation scene is that of Jesus’ baptism (3:21-22). There, Holy Spirit experience is linked, not to the waters of Jesus’ Jordan immersion, but to the prayer which accompanies his baptism. Much later in the narrative Jesus exults in the Holy Spirit at his disciples’ victory over evil spirits (10:21) and then in the next chapter launches into a teaching on persistently praying for the Holy Spirit, a practice which is suggested as a helpful protection against repossession by previously exorcised spirits. In other words, at initiation, when exorcism takes place, initiates are to pray persistently for the apotropaic Holy Spirit possession.
Then we come to the Book of Acts, with its Pentecost narrative. Here the reader encounters the sound of rushing wind and then fire upon the heads of the fervently praying disciples and then the sound of other languages being spoken as the possessing Holy Spirit gives to them to speak. Then Luke tells us how the crowd was drawn to the sound of people speaking in languages, and then how the crowd repeatedly asks about the languages and then how some in the crowd mock the languages speakers for their apparently drunken demeanor. Not once does the crowd ask about wind or fire. Luke’s characters ask only about the language speaking. This is redundant focalization. The language speaking is the focalized object. Luke’s characters direct the attention of the reader towards the language speaking.
Then Luke’s Peter character stands up to answer, on behalf of the other apostles, the questions and mockery of the crowd. This language speaking that you are asking about is the experience of the Spirit promised by the prophet Joel. Then, a little latter, Peter states that Jesus is exalted to the right hand of Father God and has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and that what they see and hear, namely the inebriated language speaking, is the outpouring of that Holy Spirit. Peter then tells the crowd, in response to their cry for help and instructions, that they are to be baptized in Jesus’ name for the forgiveness of their sins and they will receive the Holy Spirit. Not only will they receive the Holy Spirit, but this gift is for their children and all everywhere whom God calls.
Luke’s narrative logic is tight. The inebriated language speaking which the crowd mocked and asked about is the experience of the prophesied Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit which Jesus gives is the experience of the language speaking which they saw and heard. The Holy Spirit gift is for all in perpetuity. Luke teaches that all new converts are to experience the inebriation of the Spirit after their baptisms and speak in languages. In social anthropological terms, all initiates are expected to become possessed, dissociate, and utter glossolalia.
The ritual process, looking at how Luke builds it, scene after scene over the course of his narrative, is to experience exorcism if necessary, then get into the line to be baptized, wait your turn to be immersed, then, having been baptized, to pray persistently and receive the dissociative experience of possession by the Holy Spirit indexed by glossolalia. Luke’s group was a spirit-possession cult.