When I saw the name Aeneas I started to cast about for potential symbolic resonances. I mean this may very well be just a story of Peter healing some dude in the town of Lydda. It likely happened often enough.
But Aeneas is the hero of Vergil's Aeneid. Vergil wrote this epic poem between 29 and 19 BCE. The poem extolled the glory of Rome and gave Julius and Augustus Caesars divine ancestry. Aeneas and his band of stalwart's who escaped the sack of Troy eventually settled in Latium and became the ancestor of Romulus and Remus who in turn founded Rome.
So in some sense it is Aeneas and Rome itself that lay paralyzed for eight years in Lydda. Lydda itself seems to be one of those places Jewish zealots and Roman centurions battled over -- one decade revolutionaries hold it -- the next Rome beats it into the sand and enslaves its peoples. Lydda was founded as a town by the tribe of Benjamin.
As for Tabitha, the gazelle, it hearkens back to Jesus raising of the daughter of Jairius. If I'm wrong about Aeneas -- and I probably am -- we can at least see this story affirming that Peter acted with Jesus authority -- raising the daughter of a local official.
3 comments:
David, when I saw the name Aeneas, I thought of the Aeneid too :-).
Raising people from the dead is a curiouse thing. Where were they between the time they died and the time they were brought back?
Good post, David, but as usual it's Crystal who provokes me to words.
"Where were they....": they were beyond time; in eternity there is no time; eternity is timeless.
Of course being raised put them back in time. One theory has it that Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb because he knew he was not doing Lazarus any favor.
That's interesting Larry - there was an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where she was brought back from the dead by magic, and was very upset because she had been in such a better place when dead ;-)
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