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MANY EARLY critics of the Christian movement attempted to discredit the success of its missionary efforts by claiming that most of the converts were no more than uneducated and largely uncivilized "rustics," upon whose uncritical credulity the practiced skills of fame-seeking preachers and sham miracle-workers so often prevailed. One of the earliest references to the rustic gullibility of Christians may be found in Lucian's The Passing of Peregrinus.1 In this amusing satire of the mid-second century, Christians appear as a further example of the sort of naive unsophisticates Peregrinus is able to deceive in order to gain undeserved wealth and fame.2 Easily and quickly beguiled by his personal charms and rhetorical skills, the Christians in the story soon revere Peregrinus as a god, a second "law-giver," a trusted protector, whom they lavishly support with money and gifts even when he is justly imprisoned.3 These hapless Christians are so easily bamboozled, Lucian asserts, because the members of this sect are like untaught children, "receiving doctrines traditionally without any definite evidence."4 From this observed vulnerability Lucian draws the necessary conclusion: "If any charlatan (...) or trickster (...), able to profit by occasions, comes among them, he quickly acquires sudden wealth by imposing upon such simple folk (...)."5 Other second-century authors likewise give witness to this general perception of Christians as witless victims of fraudulent proselytizers.6
Later Christian apologists, themselves equipped in varying degrees with a philosophical education, felt obliged to offer a discursive response to these charges7 This paper will argue that an earlier apologetic response to this sort of "social criticism" of Christian missionaries and their converts may be found in the Lystran episode of Acts 14:8-20, in which Luke offers a stylized account of Paul's first encounter with a strictly Gentile audience in the remote hinterlands of southern Lycaonia.8 In my examination of this episode I will advance the following thesis: In order to defend Paul against the charge of manipulating the uncritical naivete of rural folk, Luke has elaborated the missionary episode at Lystra by casting Paul in the recognizable role of the genuine, self-disclosing sage engaged with a rustic audience. My defense of this thesis will follow three steps. First, I will adduce evidence to support...