100 J. Duncan M. Derrett themselves. Catching people by their words was well known32. Jesus had to endure attempts at this33. The ability to do this is unpleasant (Lk 19:22; Job 9:20, 15:6; 2 Sam 1:16). It was attributed to Esau34, the hunter (Gen 25:27; cf. Gen 10:9 Tg.), who “entrapped people with their (own) words”. Even ἐγκάθετοι at Lk 20:20 (cf. Is 29:20!) may belong to this realm of thought. Jesus identified Peter as qualified to confute and convict fellow Jews and possibly pagans also. The technique is illustrated at Mk 10:21; Lk 14:5-6; 18:22, 20:40; Acts 5:33 [cf. Is 66:4c-d]35, so that it can hardly be claimed, with Smith, that they had no training. In Plato’s Gorgias we find Callicles saying, “At your age, Socrates, are you not ashamed to be catching at words (ὀνόματα θηρεύων) and chuckling over some verbal slip (ῥήματι ἁμάρτῃ)?”36. In a logical argument one may be deceived by an accumulation of propositions, seemingly linked but actually inde- pendent. One must proceed step by step. When captious questions are put one may decline to reply. But it can happen that silence will not save one. “If you do so merely in order to be silent, you don’t score anything, for what does it matter to the adversary who wants to trap you (qui te captare vult) whether you are silent or speaking when he catches you in his net (utrum tacentem inretiat te an loquentem?). But if on the contrary you keep on answering . . . up to . . . you are withholding assent even from propositions that are certain, nay clear as daylight ...”37 One exposes (after all) not verbal, but mental ineptitude. The usual understanding of the fisherfolk as simple, lower-class, un- educated people (a self-serving definition), which has been sufficiently refuted and ridiculed by Wuellner38, must be confined to the circum- stances of Acts 4:13. There the two apostles are recognized by the court as lacking the idiom, the higher education which would have fitted them Midr. R. Gen 63.10. Wuellner, Meaning, 117. 32 Mk 12:13 (note D); Mt 22:15; Lk 20:20, and especially Lk 11:54 (cf. LXX Ps. 58:4-5). 33 Midr. R. Gen 37.2; also 63.10 (trans. Sonc. II. 565-566). Esau enticed people: ibid. 34 66.6 (Sonc. II. 604). He pursued men, seeking to capture them with cunning and deceit: L. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews I (Philadelphia, 1968), 326. Esau was hunted (deceived) himself: Midr. R. Gen. 67.2 (Sonc. trans. II.607). Esau set traps: Tg. Onq, Pal. on Gen 25:27. He specialized in questions like, “When did you stop beating your wife?”. Midr. R. Gen. 37.2 ( Sonc. trans. I. 296) (Nimrod: Gen 10:9). See Is 29:21. Wuellner, Meaning, 118. Smith, “Fishers”, 188 dismisses all this as unedifying. It is important not to inject sanctimony into exegesis. For verbal confutations see Plato, Euthyd. 277D; Phaedo 88c; Phileb. 15E; Crito 272B; 35 cf. Rep. VII. 538D-E. Gorg., cited at n. 31 above. 36 Cicero, Academica 11.29,94. See also his de Oratore 1.10. 37 Wuellner, Meaning, 58-60, 245. TWNT I (1933), 762 (5). 38