If this is his dominant, defining characteristic, then two questions emerge: What was the status of eunuchs in the Mediterranean world of late antiquity? How would Luke’s audience have understood this text in light of the larger cultural script for eunuchs? Eunuchs in antiquity “belonged to the most despised and derided group of men” (Spencer 1992a, 156). This claim would certainly find support in the writings of Polemo, who notes that “eunuchs are an evil people, and in them is greed and an assembly
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