Reading Luke

By Frank Dicken

The Gospel of Luke is a book about Jesus, claiming to provide assurance concerning what its reader has been taught about Jesus. But how does it do that? This book provides an answer to that question by helping readers understand Luke as a gospel story in its historical context and with appreciation for the author's literary artistry and theological perspectives.
Part one explores background information and literary features of Luke such as its author and first readers, genre, plot and character development, the role of programmatic passages, and interpreting the large number of parables included by Luke. Part two focuses on themes that run throughout the Gospel: Jesus's mission, salvation, discipleship, the kingdom of God, resurrection, and ascension. The discussion of these features and themes will provide readers of Luke's Gospel with a grasp of its overarching framework so that they are able to comprehend Luke's unique presentation of Jesus's life and read the Gospel with increased confidence for themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Aug 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781498233620

Frank Dicken

Frank Dicken (PhD, Edinburgh) is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Lincoln Christian University (Lincoln, IL). He is the author of Herod as a Composite Character in Luke-Acts (Mohr Siebeck, 2014) and Reading Luke in the Cascade Companions series (forthcoming). He is co-editor of Serving the Word (Wipf & Stock, 2015) and Characters and Characterization in Luke-Acts (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, forthcoming).

Book preview

Part One: Techniques

The first section of this book will lay some groundwork for reading the Gospel of Luke. In it we will look at relevant background information such as who wrote the book, to whom it was written, and when. We will examine Luke in narrative perspective, discussing what type of book it is, how its plot is constructed, and how its author portrays the characters who move that plot forward. Another matter concerning Luke is his use of programmatic passages. These are stories in the Gospel that encapsulate concepts and themes that the author deems significant. Finally, this section will present a method for interpreting parables in Luke. While the use of parables is not particular to Luke, the Third Gospel does include more of Jesus’s parables than either Mark or Matthew, thus showing us that parables are a major aspect of Luke’s portrayal of Jesus. The issues explored in section one are big picture issues that are intended to give readers a framework for reading and understanding passages on their own and how to make sense of the Gospel as a whole.

1

Who and What is Luke?

The Author, Recipient(s), and Genre of Luke

Some of the most treasured stories of the Christian faith are found in the Gospel of Luke: Mary’s hymn of praise to God upon learning the identity of her child, shepherds surrounding the manger in which Jesus had been laid, the raising of a widow’s son from the dead, the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus’s visit to Mary and Martha’s home, the parable of the prodigal son, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus’s resurrection appearance to the two travelers on the road to Emmaus, and the ascension of Jesus after his resurrection. We know these stories so well because, for many readers, an annual retelling of several of them forms the backdrop of the two most significant seasons of the Christian year. Luke and John are the only two Gospels that have extended narratives of resurrection appearances, so readers are naturally drawn to these Gospels during the Easter season. And what Christmas would be considered complete without reference to the angels who announce the birth of Jesus to the lowly shepherds who subsequently go to worship the infant swaddled in the manger? Other stories from Luke are familiar beyond the walls of churches, having entered the common parlance through repeated use—most have likely spoken of prodigal children or good Samaritans.

The Gospel of Luke is more than a collection of isolated stories cobbled together and inserted in our Bibles from which we can pick and choose when we need a sermon, some inspiration, or a setting for a holiday celebration. Instead, this Gospel is a story. Luke has all of the features of stories: a compelling plot, memorable characters, dialogue, settings, and purpose. In fact, the book begins with its author describing his work as a narrative account (Luke 1:1).¹ So, if we are going to read Luke properly, we ought to read it for what it is—an ancient story from the Greco-Roman world.

But this is no ordinary story. It is also gospel. Several thoughts may come to mind for many who hear the word gospel. We could say that the gospel according to the New Testament is the story of God renewing broken creation and rescuing wayward people through the work of Jesus, while reconciling humanity and readying them for life in God’s kingdom now and forever. Luke, however, is one written gospel, not the gospel. The book is the gospel according to Luke. In it we have one ancient author’s perspective on the gospel. My purpose in this little book is to help readers—students, ministers, lay people, interested readers, nonchurchgoers, really anyone—read Luke as a gospel story. Before unpacking that a little further, we need to discuss some background information pertaining to Luke’s Gospel, namely what we know about the author of the book, the original recipient(s) of the Gospel, and the type of book with which we are dealing.

How Luke became the Author of the Third Gospel

Church tradition holds that Luke, the physician and occasional traveling companion of Paul, is the author of the Gospel that now bears his name.² Based on evidence currently available to us, it appears that the book did not originally have a title or contain a claim of authorship. The tradition about Luke seems to have originated sometime in the second century. The earliest record of this tradition comes from St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (modern Lyon, France), who died around the turn of the third century CE. Irenaeus attributes the books of Luke and Acts to Luke by reading the books together and alongside several of Paul’s letters. His argument proceeds along the following lines. Irenaeus notes that in four places, the author of the book of Acts uses the first-person plural pronoun we rather than his typical third-person pronouns (Acts 16:10–17; 20:5–15; 21:1–18; 27:1—28:16). The bishop understands this change as indicative of the author’s personal presence with Paul at those times. He rightly deduces that the author would not write about himself in the third person in these sections, thus eliminating Silas, Timothy, Sopater, Aristarchus, Secundus, Gaius, Tychicus, and Trophimus as authorial candidates since those individuals are named in these sections of Acts. Because the book of Acts concludes with a we section and Paul is in prison, Irenaeus turns to those letters traditionally known as Paul’s prison epistles—Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon—each of which name several of Paul’s traveling companions. Irenaeus presumes that the author of Luke-Acts would be named in the prison epistles but not Acts. When Irenaeus removes the individuals named in Acts from his list of Paul’s companions from the prison epistles, he narrows the options to Mark, Jesus Justus, Epaphras, Demas, Epaphroditus, and Luke. Likely because others in the second century who lived before him had begun attributing the Third Gospel to Luke, so did Irenaeus.³ Writing not long after Irenaeus, the church father Tertullian also believed that Luke wrote the Third Gospel.⁴ Early papyrus manuscripts of Luke, if they contain a title (not all do), use the title that has come down to us, The Gospel According to Luke. The Muratorian Canon, a list of documents that its author believed to be authoritative for liturgical usage in churches, not only names Luke as the author of the Third Gospel, but also adds some biographical details, claiming that Luke was from Syrian Antioch, wrote his Gospel in Greece, was unmarried and childless, was filled with the Holy Spirit, and died in what is now central Greece.⁵

Irenaeus’s argumentation rests on a few assumptions. The first is that the author of Luke-Acts must be named in Paul’s prison epistles. This does not have to be the case. Second, there is some debate among scholars concerning the nature of the sections of Acts that use the term we. While it is likely that these accounts are intended to convey that the author was present with Paul, that same eyewitness (eyewitnesses?) does not have to be the author of Luke and Acts. In fact, the author of Luke-Acts tells his readers that he was not an eyewitness, but rather relied on eyewitness testimony to compose his writings (Luke 1:1–4). Also, scholars debate whether or not Paul wrote Colossians and Ephesians. If these two letters were not written by Paul (i.e., they were written after the apostle’s death by someone who knew Paul’s teachings), then Irenaeus’s theory has another problem. This is not to detract from the genius of these second- and third-century Christians. It is merely to recognize that their argumentation in this case is not water tight. Recognizing these assumptions only means that we cannot be absolutely certain that Luke did, in fact, write Luke and Acts.

One final point needs to be registered. While it is true that church tradition attributes the Third Gospel to no one other than Luke, the fact remains that the book does not name its author. Surely the writer was known to the first readers. However, given the one-hundred-year gap between the composition of Luke and the first extant attribution to Luke, that information is lost to us. It is unlikely that additional evidence concerning the author of the Third Gospel will come to light. We will, however, continue to refer to the author of Luke and Acts by the name Luke out of convenience and convention while understanding that the books are anonymous.

Just because the author is unknown does not mean that we know nothing about him. First, he was a male. In Greek, participles have gender (words in many modern languages such as German and Spanish inflect according to gender). In Luke 1:3, the author claims that his writing follows after investigating everything,⁶ a phrase which translates a masculine participle. Second, as noted above, the author was not an eyewitness of the events recorded in the book (Luke 1:2). Therefore, the author of Luke is most likely a second- or third-generation Christian who has come to the faith a while after the events recorded in his writings. Third, given the decent literary style of Luke-Acts, we may surmise that the author had some level of education and could compose Greek prose. This may also indicate that the writer was from among the higher classes of society.⁷

Who was Theophilus?

A unique feature of Luke among the four New Testament Gospels is that the author names his recipient, the most excellent Theophilus. We cannot conclusively know who Theophilus was, though there are some clues that point to a few details about the man. The Greek name Theophilus is a compound made up of two Greek words, theos (God) and philos (friend). Some believe the name Theophilus is a code name that signified a group of Christians who were all friends of God.⁸ However, Theophilus was a very common name in Greco-Roman antiquity, so there is no reason to think that Luke was being clandestine in addressing a church or group of churches with a code name. Rather, it is likely that Luke is addressing the work to his literary patron.⁹ As patron, Theophilus was the person who provided the means, primarily financial, for Luke to undertake his writing. This tells us that Theophilus was probably a relatively wealthy individual. An additional indication of such status is Luke’s reference to him as most excellent. This appellation appears later in Luke’s writings as a title for the Roman governors Felix and Festus (Acts 23:26; 24:2; 26:5). This does not mean that Theophilus was a Roman official, but does point to high social status. Finally, we can know that Theophilus was a Christian before Luke wrote the Gospel. Luke tells Theophilus that his account will provide confirmation for the things that Theophilus had already been taught (Luke 1:4).

While Theophilus is clearly the addressee of the Gospel, that does not mean he was the only person who read it. Theophilus was likely a part of an early Christian community. While churches were organized much differently in the late first century than they are today, we know that early Christians met regularly for prayer, Scripture reading and exposition, and fellowship. In the case of the Gospel of Luke, we should imagine that when Theophilus received the Gospel from Luke that it was read aloud in an early Christian gathering, perhaps all at once.

What Type of Book is Luke?

First, it is a Christian book. Both the author and the primary recipient were Christians. Second, it is a particular type of Christian book, namely one that seeks to provide assurance for its readers concerning what they had been taught about Jesus. As the author states clearly in the preface of the Gospel (Luke 1:1–4), he writes for someone who has been instructed in the Christian faith and provides further confirmation concerning what the reader already knows. Third, Luke is not the end of the story. While the other three Gospels in our New Testament do not have a follow-up story, Luke does: the book of Acts. This is apparent at Acts 1:1, where Luke reminds Theophilus of what was written in his first book. This means that as we read Luke, often we will need to look forward to the book of Acts in order to see what Luke is doing by telling the stories of Jesus and his followers in the manner that he did. We will read Luke with these things in mind.

The question remains as to how it is that Luke does all of this. That is the question of genre. When applied to literature, the term genre refers to how we classify a piece of writing according to the features it shares in common with other writings. These features also distinguish each of these types of literature from other types. Once we recognize the shared features of a type of literature, those genre conventions provide the unspoken rules for reading and understanding those types of writing correctly. We encounter various genres everyday: emails, novels, billboards, text messages, and more. As we encounter these types of writing, we easily make sense of them because we understand their forms and conventions. Other than reading from left to right and top to bottom, we do not make sense of a text message in the same way we make sense of a textbook. Rather, a text message makes sense because we share with the sender a common experience of typically brief statements, certain abbreviations, gifs, and emojis that appear on our mobile phones in alternating series of blue and gray or green and gray shaded bubbles. We instinctively know how to read these sorts of messages and do not expect that a page on the Washington Post website will communicate information in the same fashion. This is how genre works. It sets the rules (as it were) for making sense of written communication.

Because our Bibles bind all the books that certain faith traditions consider sacred Scripture together as a single book, many Bible readers miss the differences in genre contained in those books (and it does not help readers that all of the text in the Bible is typeset to look like either prose narrative or poetry). For Jewish readers, the Tanakh contains books of narrative, law, poetry, wisdom, and prophecy. These same books make up the Christian Old Testament. Catholic and Orthodox believers have other books of narrative, wisdom, and poetry that they consider deuterocanonical (i.e., second canon in the sense that they were adopted as authoritative later; Protestants call these books the Apocrypha). All Christians read the New Testament, which contains Gospels, letters, and an apocalypse. Across the canon, there are numerous other subgenres contained in those writings, including epics, parables, hymns, doxologies, and more. In other words, Bible is not a genre. The Bible is a literary anthology made up of numerous writings of various genres. The genre distinctions and conventions of those writings were readily apparent to the original hearers and readers of those books in antiquity but not always to us.

The Gospel of Luke is no different. For some time, scholars believed that the Gospels in our New Testament were a unique type of writing in the ancient world. However, in recent decades this has changed. Scholars now agree that the four canonical Gospels can be classified according to a primary ancient genre category, namely Greco-Roman biography. That is not