Rumors of Resistance

James C. Scott’s discussion of “hidden transcripts” of defiance or resistance among subordinate groups has been taken up in suggestive ways by scholars who claim to detect elements of defiant transcripts in or behind Paul’s letters. Now, in Rumors of Resistance, Amanda C. Miller uses Scott’s theory to explain tensions within the narrative of the Gospel of Luke, between more accommodationist narratives and poetic or parabolic passages that announce a dramatic eschatological reversal (the Magnificat in 1:46-55, the Sermon at Nazareth in 4:16-30, and the Parable of Lazarus and the rich man in 16:19-30). Miller’s use of sociorhetorical analysis leads her to conclude that Luke’s audience would have been challenged to resist the dominant values of Roman imperial culture even as the narrative framework of Luke partially obscures that “transcript.”