Lukan Aversion to Humps and Hollows: The Case of Acts 11.27-12.25

Rhetoricians of the ancient world make reference to a technique useful for signalling that a transition is being made from one text unit to another. Ancient texts spanning centuries and provenance testify to the utility of this technique, not least texts of the NT. In this essay, four Lukan examples of this technique are cited, focusing particularly on what is perhaps the most intriguing of them: Acts 11.27-12.25. After demonstrating the way in which this passage is animated by the transition technique under consideration, the structural implications of these Lukan transitions are discussed in relation to the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles.