Resumen de Chreia Elaboration and the Un-healing of Peter's Daughter: Rhetorical Analysis as a Clue to Understanding the Development of a Petrine Tradition
[...]Peter's response to the initial question is that his daughter remains paralyzed because it is "expedient for her and for me," a response that he repeats, expands, and explains in several ways.5 Peter defends the logic behind his enigmatic statement and actions by offering the crowd three stories: the story of his daughter's birth, Ptolemaeus's unsuccessful attempt to abduct and marry her by force, and the subsequent conversion of Ptolemaeus. [...]the "epilogue" of this chreia elaboration, which is typically read as a simple statement about divine providence, actually recapitulates the audience's response of fear, reminding readers to "be sorrowful, watch, and pray" for the goodness of God that is promised to them.69 In this final section of the text, the readers are reminded that this story of apostolic power and spiritual transformation should motivate them to exhibit watchfulness, so that they might be on the lookout for similar manifestations of divine power at work in the world.70 In Pseudo-Titus, the death of the Gardener's daughter has similar themes, emphasizing the spiritual "expediency" of placing one's virgin daughter out of "harm's way" through a divine act of "anti-healing." [...]the shared rhetorical orientation between the Coptic fragment and the other miracle stories attributed to Peter suggest that the elaborator of the chreia knew something of these other Petrine traditions and constructed his elaboration within this tradition about Peter's apostolic power to harm. Absent the "analogy" and "testimony from the ancients" sections, this elaboration best fits the pattern set out in the Rhetorica ad Herennium. [...]the shorter form of this elaboration, could suggest that the Coptic fragment was originally composed sometime before the end of the fourth century c.e., when Aphthonius's eight-section pattern of elaboration became the dominant model.
