Beckoning of the hand

1.	A typical gesture of the hand, by which Paul begins a public speech. “Then Paul stood up, beckoned with his hand and said: Men of Israel and you Gentiles who worship God, listen to me!” (Acts 13: 16) “Having received the Roman commander's permission, Paul stood on the steps and made a sign with the hand to the crowd. When they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic.” (Acts 21:40) “Then Agrippa said to Paul, ‘You have permission to speak for yourself.’ So Paul stretched out his hand and began his defense.” (Acts 26:1)
2.	This gesture by the hand was not Paul’s invention. It was a traditional bodily gesture that every trained orator had to learn. A famous Roman teacher and trainer of orators, Quintilian (who died in the year 95 AD), collected in a book all the material that previous Roman orators had written on Rhetoric. It is fascinating how Quintilian introduces this material: “All emotional appeals necessarily lose their force if they are not kindled by the voice, facial expression, and demeanor of practically the entire body”. His book’s purpose was to teach Roman orators how to forcefully manipulate the body in the act of persuading an audience. We are told, that some great Latin orators very much impaired their health by the vehemence of action, with which they used to deliver their speeches. Translated in today’s language, this is “body language”. When we express our inner thoughts and feelings, our words together with our body become the vehicle of communication. What was exactly Paul’s “beckoning with the hand”? Some scholars suggest that probably Paul used the gesture that many Roman orators had at the beginning of their speech: right hand extended, little finger and annular finger bent and the other three fingers raised. It was a gesture by which the orator drew the crowds’ attention.
3.	Was Paul a great orator? It is interesting in this regard to read a small detail that Paul offers us in his second letter to the Corinthians. Someone in Corinth was criticizing Paul, and Paul writes: “I do not want you to think of me as someone who only frightens you by letter. Someone among you has said of me: ‘he writes powerful and strongly-worded letters, but when he is with us in person, we see half a man and no preacher at all.’ The man who said that can remember this: whatever we are in the words of our letters when we are absent, that is what we shall be like in our actions when we are present.” (2 Corinthians 10: 9-11) Maybe Paul was not a tall man with a powerful voice (as many famous orators were), but his faith in the Risen Lord, the power he had received from the Holy Spirit, his burning fire to proclaim Jesus’ Gospel, his deep conviction and parresia, his sincerity, his living witness in suffering and persecution, made of Paul one of the greatest “orators of Christ”. His “beckoning of the hand” signifies that his entire self, body, soul and spirit were directly engaged in his mission of evangelization.