Confusingly Ugly: The Apostle Paul within the Literary Tradition of Aesop and Plato's Socrates

The Apostle Paul is ugly, at least according to his physical description in the Acts of Paul and Thecla (APTh).
He is described as small in stature, bald headed, bow-legged, with a unibrow and a longish nose.
Late 19th and early 20th century scholars read the APTh as preserving an early tradition that
conveyed an unflattering but historically accurate description of the apostle (e.g., Ramsay 1897;
Goodspeed 1901; Zahn 1904; and most recently Soon 2023). More contemporary scholarship, by
contrast, has rejected the description as historical but has sought to redeem the apostle’s ugly
countenance, arguing that the physical characteristics attributed to Paul in the text conform with
ancient physiognomic conventions that positively illumine Paul’s inner apostolic character (e.g.,
Grant 1982; Malherbe 1986; Malina and Neyrey 1996; Hartsock 2008; Omerzu 2008), reflect the
physiognomic insults levied against Paul by his apostolic rivals in 2 Corinthians (Bollók 1996),
or position him within the aesthetic of high-minded intellectuals and philosophers (H.D. Betz
1972; Callon 2014). This paper, rather than attempting to explain away, diagnose, or positively
valorize Paul’s ugliness, sits with it. What would it mean for the Paul of the APTh to actually be
ugly? Building on the work of Monika Betz (2007), who observes a paradox between
Paul’s ugly body and the erotic pull he has on Thecla, this paper moves beyond the well-worn
binaries of physiognomic analysis to explore the affective underpinnings of the description of
Paul and its function in the text. I argue that the description of Paul’s body in the APTh draws on
a literary tradition of ugliness modeled on Aesop that extends to Plato’s Socrates and ultimately
to Paul. Within this literary tradition, Aesop, Socrates, and Paul, are not just ugly, but ugly in
distinctively confusing ways and their confused bodies precipitate social confusion. In the APTh,
Paul’s confused body functions as a discursive tool for rerouting religious authority and
reconfiguring Greco-Roman social norms.
Reception to follow.