The Gospel According to Luke 1:1 Through 9:50: A Bible Study

By William Flewelling

The Bible Studies I chose to do came about in answer to the request from my first congregation out of seminary. I consistently sought to present a serious, somewhat scholarly approach to the interested among my parishioners. I would taka book in the Bible to study, assume it was written or edited to be read from the beginning, and make sense to the reader in that way. I attempted to discover for myself and my group what the book sought to convey. In this volume, the study of Luke 1:19:50 followed that pattern exactly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546246909

William Flewelling

I am a retired minister from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) living in central Illinois. Led by a request from Mildred Corwin of Manua OH when I arrived there in 1976, I long developed and led a series of bible studies there and in LaPorte IN and New Martinsville WV. These studies proved to be very feeding to me in my pastoral work and won a certain degree of following in my congregations. My first study was on 1 Peter, chosen because I knew almost nothing about the book. I now live quietly in retirement with my wife of 54 years, a pair of dogs and several cats.

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© 2018 William Flewelling. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 06/13/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-4691-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-4690-9 (e)

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Contents

Foreword

Notes On The Gospel According To Luke

1.     Notes on Luke 1:1-4

2.     Notes on Luke 1:5-25

3.     Notes on Luke 1:26-38

4.     Notes on Luke 1:39-56

5.     Notes on Luke 1:57-80

6.     Notes on Luke 2:1-20

7.     Notes on Luke 2:21-40

8.     Notes on Luke 2:41-52

9.     Notes on Luke 3:1-20

10.   Notes on Luke 3:21-22

11.   Notes on Luke 3:23-38

12.   Notes on Luke 4:1-13

13.   Notes on Luke 4:14-30

14.   Notes on Luke 4:31-44

15.   Notes on Luke 5:1-11

16.   Notes on Luke 5:12-16

17.   Notes on Luke 5:17-26

18.   Notes on Luke 5:27-32

19.   Notes on Luke 5:33-39

20.   Notes on Luke 6:1-11

21.   Notes on Luke 6:12-19

22.   Notes on Luke 6:20-49

23.   Notes on Luke 7:1-10

24.   Notes on Luke 7:11-17

25.   Notes on Luke 7:18-30

26.   Notes on Luke 7:31 – 8:3

27.   Notes on Luke 8:4-10

28.   Notes on Luke 8:11-21

29.   Notes on Luke 8:22-39

30.   Notes on Luke 8:40-56

31.   Notes on Luke 9:1-9

32.   Notes on Luke 9:10-17

33.   Notes on Luke 9:18-27

34.   Notes on Luke 9:28-36

35.   Notes on Luke 9:37-45

36.   Notes on Luke 9:46-50

About the Author

Foreword

The longest book I ever undertook as a topic for Bible Study was this one, the Gospel According to St. Luke. I set it out and figured it into the sequence of three years of study. Luke divides neatly into three segments, the opening [running through the transfiguration and until he sets his face toward Jerusalem], the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem as a literary device, it seems, and the passion-resurrection narrative, beginning when Jesus arrives at Jerusalem. These took up the seasons of Bible Study planned for 1983-84, 1984-85 and 1985-86 and were prepared during the years I spent as pastor at First Christian Church in LaPorte, IN.

The Gospel story – I had taken exegetical courses on John and Mark while at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis between the Spring Semester 1973 and my completion in June of 19786. Turning to study a Gospel, I chose Luke over Matthew for convenience and intrigue. I had thoughts that never materialized of following up this study with one on Acts. The other two were passed over as they had been studied before by me, in the classroom context. I did like to pick on those books that I have not visited in detail before. And, looking at the text, the pattern flowed so neatly to the needs of summer breaks on the Bible Studies, that the choice of Luke came to seem natural.

I began revisiting these notes, typing them from the hard copy into an electronic format and editing them slightly in the process, during the latter months of the lectionary year using Matthew. The combination intrigued me to think of doing a similar work on Matthew, for my own benefit. But I have no setting for dealing with presentation of the study, and I am ever more deeply into retirement anyway, and past 72 in age. I suspect that my delight in these Bible Studies will remain in the revisitation of the texts long done. There remain several taken from the Minor Prophets that I would like to combine into a collection once Luke is done.

The text picks up the notion that Luke gave an ordered account – that ordering not necessarily, nor likely, being in any sense chronological, save that the passion-resurrection section did come at the last, and the early parts of the beginning [through the Temptation] were historically prior to the rest. The story is raised for a certain Theophilus for whom Luke wishes to introduce Jesus in a deep-knowing sense. It is my hope in this review of the Study of those min-1980s years to lure myself and my readers into a deep-knowing of Jesus, as I think Luke would like to have happen from his text.

I hope you, my reader, will find satisfaction in the questions and probings that this study provides. For practical purposes, the entire Gospel Study will appear in three volumes, corresponding to the three years of its initial production.

William Flewelling

Notes On The Gospel According To Luke

***

Bibliographic References:

Brown, Raymond E., The Birth of the Messiah, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1977. [Second Edition, 1993]

Fitzmyer, Joseph A., The Gospel According to Luke I – IX, The Anchor Bible, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1981.

The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV, The Anchor Bible, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1985.

Schutz, John Howard, Paul and the Anatomy of Apostolic Authority, Cambridge University Press, NY, 1975.

TDNT = Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. by Gerhard Kittle and Gerhard Friedrich, nine volumes, plus an index volume, of various dates, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Grand Rapids.

Notes on Luke 1:1-4

First, the text:

1. Since many undertook to compile an account

concerning the matters having been fulfilled

among us,

2.        just as they handed down to us –

those eye witnesses from [the] beginning

and ones become servants

of the word,

3.        it seems good to me also

to write to you,

having followed closely

from the beginning

everything

accurately [and] in an orderly

fashion,

most noble

Theophilus,

4.            in order that you might be informed

the certainty

concerning words being taught

[i.e., orally].

We begin the Gospel according to Luke, a book which never refers to Luke except in the later superscription. Luke alone among the Evangelists, gives a letter of dedication at the beginning of his work. The value of this tidbit of information lies in the fact that it gives ready evidence to the intention of Luke in writing his Gospel account. It does, that is, if we are to assume that the evangelist is accurate and honest in his little note to noble Theophilus. Fitzmyer notes that this literary prologue is a formal trait, borrowed from the styles of then-contemporary literature. This implies that Luke is viewing his chore from within the life of Graeco-Roman culture, that of the world of his day. Fitzmyer points out the formality of the style, including the fact that it is all one sentence in the Greek text, that there are all kinds of stylistic niceties and careful balances in the text [over which we will not pause]. Luke begins to set forth for us the reasons for writing this Gospel. Herein, we should find some clues for what lies ahead for us.

Others, it seems, had undertaken the chore of putting together an account of the events of Jesus. The account is an ordered arrangement of events. The ordering can be done along any principle, even nonsense. History, as we think of it, is only one possible ordering. For example, one wishing to show events in a bad light can arrange the data so as to suggest and ill effect, as anyone who has ever read any biography knows – or a gossip sheet for that matter. Apparently, there are effects left over from those other accounts which Luke finds it important to meet; since those other accounts have been done, raising an image with which Luke is not happy, Luke now does an account, too. Accounts or stories must be ordered, of course. Luke sets out to do that in response to the others.

The pre-existing [from Luke’s perspective] accounts came from eye witnesses [the first generation of Christians] and from those who are become ‘servants of the word’ [quite likely what we might call the second generation of Christians, the spiritual children not of Jesus but of the disciples who were molded into the Church]. These have been built up as a varied assembly of data. Some of it came in written form: Mark, various collections of the sayings of Jesus, collections of stories about Jesus. And some of it remained in well-known pubic oral form. [This is quite different than the passing of a story by whispering ear to ear around a circle in order to see how different it was at the last telling, in the style of backyard gossip. The oral stories were told by story tellers who knew the story and were true to the story – even when inevitable variations in the wording occurred.] Some of the story carried reasonable weight as the remembrance of many followers. Others of the stories were wild products of pious fantasy. That discernment is still necessary today.

From Luke’s perspective, it was known that there were some facts at hand. Things had happened with JESUS. He had come onto the public scene at about thirty years of age. He had had a dramatic public ministry, ending in Jerusalem where he was crucified. The Church had come into being out of his followers on the strength of his being raised from the dead and the Holy Spirit being given to them. The stories and bits of stories and the assemblies of stories about Jesus were common, concerned with the events which had become full in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. These, Luke says, are there. Since they are there, he is offering an efficient ordering of them here, in the Gospel which now bears his name.

It appears that Luke is of the third generation of Christians. While this does create a distance from first hand data and experience, it does, on the contrary, offer him the advantage of some perspective. He is an historian of sorts, and has troubled himself to gather the stories and to arrange them into a coherent presentation of Jesus, illuminating [he hopes] the meaningfulness which the composite stories and life of Jesus offer. he has about him the sources and resources which time has permitted to be accumulated. The chores is that of a faithful craftsman.

Since all this prior material is available, it seemed good to Luke to go and prepare his own ordering of the data. He writes it to the noble Theophilus, whoever and wherever he might have been. There is no need to imagine him fictitious, nor a s a kindly patron [although both were very common options in the day]. The name [‘lover of God’ is its meaning] was a common one. He may well have been some sort of local dignitary, worthy of the address. But we really know nothing about him, save what Luke says – that he is ‘most excellent’ or ‘most noble’. It seems that Luke is addressing a figure of some importance and desires to set the story of Jesus [and the Church in Acts] straight for the record. He has followed the record of Jesus from the beginning, paying due attention to detail and all. He has made every effort to assure accuracy, so that what he says happened is what actually did happen. He has labored to present the data in an orderly fashion. He wants, in brief, to make certain that Theophilus is informed correctly concerning the certainty of Jesus and the things being taught about Jesus in various circles.

We should make note of a few items. Luke says he has followed closely all that happened – ‘from the beginning’. One prospect on that is to say that he was himself an eye witness; to the best of my knowledge, no one claims that, most assuming Luke to be the gentile companion of Paul [see Colossians 4:14; 2 Timothy 4:11; Philemon 24] – which, indeed. was the assumption made when the Gospel of Luke was included in the canon of the New Testament. Rather, Luke claims to have learned, studied, assimilated the entire story of Jesus – from the beginning. As we will see, this begins with the two annunciations, to Zechariah and to Mary and even to a genealogy of Jesus, linking to Adam and to God by natural descent! We might also note, as an aside, that the adverb behind ‘from the beginning’ is anwqen, meaning, in general, ‘from above’ or ‘again’ [this is the pun behind the story of Nicodemus in John 3]. Is it possible that Luke also puns a bit, taking his story from the beginning, and also ‘from above’?

The story is presented in an orderly fashion, as we have noted already. There is a great deal of discussion among scholars [known for their ability to disagree] about what is meant by this. Fitzmyer lists these ideas, ending with his own, that it means a systematic presentation of the data, determined on literary grounds, as one might expect of a skilled writer – which Luke was. In brief, this suggests that Luke was presenting Jesus, not a chronology of Jesus; there is a difference. It has not always been the case that people have always been attuned to cause-effect relationships as we moderns have become. [Other ideas were: completeness, chronology, continuity, serial form, without a gap, ‘as follows’, and the like.]

Finally, we ought to note that Luke chose a compound verb for ‘might be informed’. The compound chosen, says Fitzmyer, may imply the acquiring of a profound knowledge. That would indicate that Luke is concerned that noble Theophilus have more than an accurate knowledge of the facts. Once accurately present, the facts just sit there, and must await illuminations from within. He assures Theophilus of his accuracy that the facts reported are dependable [according to the witness of the Church, his teacher as well as his student]. He tells him that it is the word/matter being taught that is clarified here. But clarification, in any subject, cannot occur on the level of mere facts. Facts, once determined, must be assimilated in meaning. A jury determines the facts in a court of law; the judge draws the facts into the framework of the law – i.e;, determines the meaningfulness of the facts in a legal sense. Luke claims to have assembled the facts dependably [though not necessarily chronologically]. Now, he desires to open a deep/profound knowledge so that the facts will bear [bare?] their truth for noble Theophilus – and for us.

Now, we are left to begin the study to see if, indeed, we agree that Luke succeeded in his hope.

Some thoughts:

(1) Luke is concerned with order, or so it seems. What sort of notion of order do you think might have been involved in his thinking here? Would you have chosen a different one than the one Luke chose? Why? Or why not?

(2) It is sometimes said that this prologue to Luke sets the Gospel in a framework of being addressed to polite society in the milieu of Greek culture. Does that suggest the sort of agenda which Luke had in mind? to place the gospel of Jesus Christ into the mainstream of life? Is such an idea good? or is Luke dong the opposite bringing the mainstream of cultured life into the gospel? These questions might well hang around the fringes of our consciousness as we work through the Gospel.

(3) What value is there in being at some distance from an event in order to see it whole, as opposed to being very close? Can one be too close to see? Can one who is not involved see at all?

Notes on Luke 1:5-25

First, the text:

5. here came to be, in the days of Herod, king of the Jews,

a certain priest, by name Zechariah,

from [the] division Abia,

and his wife, from the daughters of Aaron,

and her name [was]Elizabeth.

6.        Both were righteous before God,

walking in all the commandments

and ordinances of the Lord, blameless.

7.            And there was not to them children

for Elizabeth was barren

and both were ones advanced

in years.

8.    There came to be in his time of priestly service

in the appointed order of his division

before God,

9.        according to the custom of the priestly office,

received by lot,

of bringing incense,

entering into the Temple of the Lord,

10.            and all the multitudes of the people were

ones praying outside,

at the hour of the incense.

11.        An angel of the Lord appeared to him,

standing at the right hand of the altar

of incense.

12.        And Zechariah was troubled, beholding,

and fear fell upon him.

13.            The angel said to him:

Fear not, Zechariah,

because your supplication was heard

and your wife Elizabeth will conceive

a son to you

and you will call his name John.

14.                And he will be joy to you,

and exaltation,

and many upon his birth will rejoice.

15.                For he will be great before the Lord,

and wine and strong drink

he will not drink,

and he will be filled of Holy Spirit

even from his mother’s

belly/womb.

16.                And many of the sons of Israel

will return upon the Lord

our God.

17.                And he will go before him

in the spirit and power of Elijah,

turning hearts of fathers

upon children

and disobedient in understanding

of righteousness,

to make ready for the Lord

a people

having been prepared.

18.        And Zechariah said toward the angel:

According to what shall I know this?

For I am an old man

and my wife is advanced in her years.

19.        And the angel answering said to him:

I am Gabriel, the one standing before God;

and I was sent out to speak toward you

and announce this good news to you;

20.            and behold, you will be silent,

not having power to speak

until the day when these

things happen,

because you have not believed

my words

which will be fulfilled

into their time.

21.    And the people were expecting/waiting for Zechariah

and they wondered in his delay in the Temple.

22.        Coming out, he was not able to speak to them

and they knew/realized he had seen a vision

in the Temple;

and he was one nodding to them

and remaining throughout dumb.

23.        And there came to be, as the days of his service

were fulfilled,

he departed into his house.

24.    After these days, Elizabeth his wife conceived

and she hid herself away five months, saying:

Thus the Lord has done for me

in the days he looked

to take away my shame among men.

We have begun Luke’s Gospel. He has stated a concern for making Theophilus – and us – acquainted with what happened in Jesus of Nazareth. That acquaintance is concerned with a deep and complete knowledge, a profound coming-to-know Jesus. Once that is said, Luke begins us with Zechariah, a priest of whom we learn nothing after this beginning in the nativity narrative. Luke is aware of John the Baptizer; he knows Jesus came from Nazareth and was to be born [as Messiah = Christ = the Anointed] in Bethlehem, David’s city. The specialness of Jesus, together with his relationships to the messianic expectations [and they were varied] in Tradition became the subject matter as Luke tries to reveal them toward a ‘profound knowledge’ in his reader. Facts must have the dressing of true meaningfulness.

Our time is set: it is the reign of Herod [37 BCE – 4 BCE]. Our initial cast is set [for scene one]: Zechariah, a priest serving in the division Abia, and his wife, Elizabeth, one of the daughters of Aaron – i.e., also from the priestly line in Israel. [For the priests and the Temple workers, genealogy was most important. Any son born of such a marriage as this would have a doubly proven blood line for priestly service in Israel. It would be the expectation of the Jew that the son of Zechariah by Elizabeth would become a priest, quite naturally.] The priests, after the reforms of Josiah [c. 620 BCE], when the worship sites other than Jerusalem were torn down, were divided into divisions for periodic service in Jerusalem, at the Temple. It was an answer to priestly unemployment and the disaffection of an educated and powerful class.

Not only were Zechariah and Elizabeth of a good bloodline, they were also righteous and pure, followers of all the commandments and ordinances of God. They were, in all contemporary senses, blameless. Their personal tragedy what that