Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible: Luke

David L. Balch, James D. G. Dunn, John W. Rogerson

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781467454292
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

This extract from the Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible provides Balch's introduction to and concise commentary on Luke. The  Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible presents, in nontechnical language, the best of modern scholarship on each book of the Bible, including the Apocrypha. Reader-friendly commentary complements succinct summaries of each section of the text and will be valuable to scholars, students, and general readers.
 
Rather than attempt a verse-by-verse analysis, these volumes work from larger sense units, highlighting the place of each passage within the overarching biblical story. Commentators focus on the genre of each text—parable, prophetic oracle, legal code, and so on—interpreting within the historical and literary context.
 
The volumes also address major issues within each biblical book—including the range of possible interpretations—and refer readers to the best resources for further discussions.

Luke

David L. Balch

INTRODUCTION

The prologue does not name the author, although Luke 1:1, 2, and 3 use the first person pronoun. Luke 1:2 distinguishes the author from “eyewitnesses,” but tradition identified the writer as Luke, Paul’s companion (Phlm 24). Mark is probably one Lukan source, so that the date is post-70, indicated also by 19:43 and 21:20. Other sources include sayings common with Matthew (Q) and sayings found only in this Gospel (L). The irenic view of the Roman government and the author’s failure to cite Paul’s epistles, which had been collected by the early second century, indicate a first-century date, probably in the 80s. Most students consider the Alexandrian text (p ⁷⁵ B) closer to the original than the “Western” text (D). Our author imitated the LXX in chs. 1–2, as contemporaries (Arrian, Lucian) imitated Attic.

Luke-Acts have been understood as biography, novel, or ancient history, literary genres that overlap. As a genre “history” narrates corporate religious and political events, whereas biographies and novels concern individuals. This commentary assumes that the two volumes are both biography and ancient history (Balch 2003b). Roman cultural ideology outlined by the historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (see Gabba) influenced both Josephus and Luke. Dionysius arrived in Rome in 30 BC and was writing his history in 7 BC, one literary model a century later for Josephus Antiquities of the Jews, both written in twenty books. Both multivolume histories tell of the ancestors of Romans and/or Jews, the founder of the people (“biographies” of either Romulus or Moses), and the founder’s successors (consuls and/or kings). Luke in a multivolume history also narrates three epochs, the ancestors (Acts 7 and 13), Jesus, the central epoch of history (the Gospel), and successors (Acts). In contrast to Mark’s focus on Christology, Luke also emphasized ecclesiology, the epoch of the church.

These ancient historians carefully date the three Founders and narrate stories of their birth from God, so that they are the sons of God. Each taught authoritatively, appeared to witness(es) after their death, and ascended to heaven. Crucial aspects of their religious and political teaching concern the relationship between rich and poor persons and whether to “receive” “foreigners” into the people, both ecclesiological concerns in Luke.

The Gospel is structured as follows: prologue (1:1–4), infancy narrative (1:5–2:52), John the Baptist’s ministry and Jesus’ preparation (3:1–4:13), Jesus’ Galilean ministry (4:14–9:50), the journey to Jerusalem (9:51–19:27), Jesus’ teaching in the Jerusalem temple (19:28–21:38), the passion (22:1–23:56), and the resurrection (24:1–53). For outlining the structure and plot development in the following commentary, I owe much to Alan Culpepper; for critique I am indebted to Andy Mangum.

The Gospel was first read in a Mediterranean city to followers of Jesus gathered in a house church to share the Lord’s Supper. This commentary makes a special effort to understand how the Lukan Christian communities gathered for worship in Greco-Roman houses would hear the Gospel as they reclined in the dining room (triclinium) and sat together in the courtyard (peristylos; see Osiek and Balch: chs. 1 and 8).

COMMENTARY

Prologue (1:1–4)

The author does not categorize this book as a “Gospel” but as a “narrative” (diēgēsis), which others have already attempted. Other ancient historians also used the term “narrative” of their works (Cancik: 682 n. 5). It concerns deeds that God has fulfilled “among us”—therefore, not only salvation history that happened centuries or decades earlier in the time of Moses or Jesus but also now in the time of the author and other believers.

Luke claims to write more “fully” (akribōs) than his predecessors (Balch: “The Full History”). 2 Maccabees uses similar language: the summary shortens the story told earlier by the historian Jason, who had gone through each matter “fully” (di-akriboun; 2 Macc 2:28). The historian Dionysius criticizes Thucydides for being “lazy” in his history and not “fully” reporting major characters’ speeches (Dionysius Thucydides 14.3; 15.1). He objects that historians narrate military actions “fully”; but they do not do the same for civic seditions (Dionysius Rom. Ant. 7.66.3–5). Luke is observing that the predecessors (including Mark) have not given their readers Jesus’ or the apostles’ speeches. Since ancient historians conveyed the meaning of their narratives by inserting speeches, we must pay particular attention to them in this Gospel. Luke-Acts is a religio-political history of the Founder, that is, of the predecessors, Founder, and successors, including both their deeds and words (Acts 1:1).

Infancy Narrative (1:5–2:52)

Mark begins his “Gospel” with John the Baptist’s proclamation and Jesus’ baptism by him, and Luke, too, may originally have begun with John. Luke summarizes the Gospel in Acts 10:34–43 (Wilckens), a summary that also begins with John’s preaching (Acts 10:37b; cf. 1:22). As ancient historians commonly did, the author may have finished writing the rest of the Gospel before adding the introduction, the infancy narratives (chs. 1–2) (Gabba: 85). This would explain similarities between the canticles of the infancy narratives and the speeches that Luke composed later for the book of Acts (Brown: 243).

The contrast in style between the elegant, balanced, periodic sentence in 1:1–4 and the following narrative is intentional: the Greek reader is immediately submerged into Semitic religious culture. Students in Greco-Roman gymnasia learned to imitate the styles of diverse writers. Arrian, best known for editing Epictetus’s Discourses in the Koine Greek dialect, also wrote the story of Alexander the Great in Attic and told of India in a third dialect, Ionic. Lucian typically wrote Attic Greek, but imitated Herodotus’s Ionic dialect so successfully in his work “The Syrian Goddess” that some scholars refuse to recognize him as the author! Modern authors speculate about Luke’s sources for the Semiticized Greek of Luke 1–2, but Luke imitates the Greek translation of the OT. Our author wants the reader to hear Jesus’ authentic Jewish origins in continuity with Scripture.

The infancy narrative serves as a transition from later priestly elements of the Hebrew Bible to the contemporary story of God’s people refounded by Jesus. Quoting from the Mosaic Torah, Psalms, wisdom literature, and prophets, the author presents Jesus in continuity with the earlier (now pre-) history of God’s contemporary people. Luke is abbreviating a pattern employed by Josephus, who also told the prehistory of Israel before narrating Moses’ founding words and deeds, followed by the subsequent history of Israel. Josephus took the pattern from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who a century earlier had written the prehistory of peoples emigrating to Rome, then narrated the founder Romulus’s words and deeds, followed by the subsequent history of the Roman Empire.

This pattern dramatically affects the Christology. Unlike Mark and Paul, who focus exclusively on the Jesus event, Luke is narrating salvation history through the ages. Mark names Jesus Christ in 1:1. Luke first writes a preface not mentioning Jesus, tells of Zechariah’s priestly service in the temple, the angel Gabriel’s annunciation of John’s birth, Elizabeth’s conception, Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary, then finally names Jesus (v. 31). Luke-Acts does not focus exclusively on Jesus the way Mark does, but is more theocentric and ecclesiastical. History does have a center in the founding words and deeds of Moses, or Romulus, or Jesus, but crucial events also occur before and after the central figure’s life.

The infancy narrative has seven episodes: the two annunciations of John’s and Jesus’ births, Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, the two stories of John’s and Jesus’ birth/circumcision/naming, Jesus’ presentation in the temple, and his boyhood teaching in the temple. The two annunciation stories are closely parallel, and the two birth/circumcision/naming stories are also parallel, although less closely. However, the well-known canticles fit only awkwardly into various outlines, probably because they were added after the more balanced narrative text was written, a typical technique in ancient historiography of adding speeches to a narrative outline written earlier.

Speeches, here canticles, were a means used by ancient historians to clarify the meaning of the narrative for their readers. Orators’ speeches were thought of as causing events. This overlaps with the Jewish expectation that prophecies would be fulfilled: God’s revelatory speech to prophets causes events (Isa 55:10–11). When the Spirit moves Simeon to come to the temple, he takes the baby Jesus in his arms, quoting Isaiah (42:6; 49:6, 9) concerning this [baby] being a “light for the Gentiles,” a prophecy that is fulfilled, that is causal, both in relation to the Gentile Cornelius hearing the gospel proclaimed by Peter (Acts 10) and the pagans of Antioch accepting Paul’s proclamation (Acts 13).

Annunciation of the Birth of John the Baptist (1:5–25)

Luke composes freely. As a Gentile convert, the author avidly read the ancient scriptures, including the annunciation stories of Ishmael (Gen 16:7–12), Isaac (Gen 17:1–21), and Samson (Judg 13:3–22; compare the story of Samuel in 1 Samuel 1–2), all of which exhibit a similar pattern: an angel appears, the visionary responds with fear or prostration, and the message notes that the woman is or is about to become pregnant and should give the child a certain name. In response, the visionary objects or requests a sign, which is given (Brown: 156). Luke employs the biblical pattern in both annunciation stories; the material that does not belong to the pattern needs explaining (Brown: 296).

A key theme in the Lukan infancy narratives concerns whether characters “believe” the proclaimed “good news” or not. In the first annunciation, Gabriel observes that “I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you [Zechariah] this good news (euangelisasthai), but now because you did not believe (ouk episteusas) my words, which will be fulfilled (plerōthēsontai) in their time, you will become mute …” (1:19–20). But after the annunciation to Mary, Elizabeth proclaims: “blessed is she who believed (pisteusasa) that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord” (v. 45). Mary is a paradigmatic disciple. This pattern of males disbelieving and females believing is also central to the resurrection narratives. The women “remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest” (24:9). “But these words seemed to them [the male apostles] an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (24:11). In Luke, whether individuals or groups hear and believe the promises declared by God’s messengers is finally even more pivotal than seeing the resurrected Christ! Seim writes in this sense of Luke’s Double Message: the author does not portray women seeing the resurrected Christ, preaching, or holding office in the church, but they are often the ones who hear, remember, and believe, a theme that Luke employs to form an inclusion between the infancy and resurrection narratives. Luke develops the theme throughout the Gospel narrative (e.g., 8:12; 22:67; 24:25, all unique to Luke) and Acts (38 references—e.g., 4:4; 8:12 [Samaritans]; 10:43; 13:41 quoting Habakkuk, 48; 15:7; 17:11–12; 18:27–28; 24:14; 26:27). Luke has employed the old annunciation pattern with a twist: whether one believes God’s oral or written word is decisive, not religious status, gender, race, or economic/political class.

Both Matthew (2:1–12) and Luke narrate Jesus’ birth in the time of Herod the Great, probably a historical fact. Whether the same is true of John’s parents’ priestly descent has been debated (Brown: 265–68) because it corresponds so closely to Luke’s attempt to establish continuity between Jesus and Judaism in Jerusalem. Elizabeth’s barrenness also corresponds to the stories of Hannah, Samuel’s mother (1 Sam 1:2), and Sarah, Isaac’s mother (Gen 18:11), and thus probably belongs to Luke’s ability to tell a good scriptural tale.

The inaugural vision of the book occurs in the Jerusalem temple (naos), the central holy place for Luke. At Jesus’ death, however, there is an eclipse of the sun, “and the curtain of the temple was torn in two” (23:45); later, to Stoic philosophers, Paul declares that the Creator, “the Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands” (Acts 17:24–25). This plot develops in relation to the temple!

Both kinship and gender were defined by sacrifice in the temple (see Stowers: 293–333). Who was and who was not allowed to sacrifice in the temple or how closely they might approach the holy place generated and maintained cultural/social relationships between ethnic groups and between the sexes. Antiochus III decreed: “it is unlawful for any foreigner (allophylos) to enter the enclosure of the temple which is forbidden to the Jews, except to those of them who are accustomed to enter after purifying themselves in accordance with the law of the country” (Josephus Ant. 12.145, trans. Marcus in LCL). The women’s court was more distant from the sanctuary than the men’s. The temple was an identity symbol for the ethnic group and for gender differentiation, but our author is writing a story the plot of which progresses toward the fulfillment of Joel 2: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.… Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:17, 21). A high point of the second volume is reached when Cornelius, a foreigner (allophylos; Acts 10:28), is received into the people of God. This subversion of the temple’s functions, this change in the identity of God’s people, must be legitimated within the temple itself, which is where Luke begins and ends the Gospel (1:8; 24:53). Conflicts about ethnicity and gender are not conflicts between Judaism and Christianity, but within Judaism and within Christianity (Balch 1998).

Luke sets the story within Zechariah’s service at the temple, with the multitude praying outside (1:8–10). The scene itself has all the elements of annunciations to Sarah (Genesis 16), Abraham (Genesis 17), and Manoah’s wife (Judges 13). Gabriel addresses Zechariah by name, telling him that he is not to be afraid and that his prayer has been heard. Elizabeth will have a son, whose name is to be John. He will be filled with holy spirit even before birth, and his task in the spirit of Elijah will be to turn Israel to God, which the angel calls “good news.” Our author often prefers “holy spirit” without the definite article. Christian readers accustomed to confessing “the Holy Spirit” as one of the Trinity should be careful not to read later theology into the early Gospels. Luke writes of the spirit that enabled Elijah to speak “the word of the Lord” (1 Kgs 17:8; 18:1; 21:17), just as “the word of the Lord came to John” (3:2). The Spirit’s role is prophetic, to turn Israel to God. Zechariah goes home (1:23). Six of the seven scenes in the Lucan infancy narrative conclude, as does this first one, with a departure (Brown: 263).

Annunciation of the Birth of Jesus (1:26–38)

Luke again follows the biblical annunciation pattern, receiving a message about bearing a son to be called Jesus. These verses claim that Mary conceived as a virgin, a common means in the Hellenistic world of claiming divine origins for the founder of a philosophical school or a state. Some deny this contemporary origin for the idea because it appears to be immoral sexual activity on the part of the male deity (Brown: 523). But when one social or religious group takes over ideas or practices from another, the ideas/practices are always changed. When Christians borrowed logos theology from the Stoics or more probably from Hellenistic Jews, they changed it: the logos took on flesh (John 1:14), an absurd idea for the Stoics or the Hellenistic Jew Philo. Greeks and Romans told stories of divine fathers for Plato (Diogenes Laertius 3.1–2, 45), Alexander the Great (Plutarch Alexander 2.1–3.2), Romulus the founder of Rome (Dionysius Rom. Ant. 1.77.2–3; 2.56.6; cf. 4.2; Plutarch Romulus 2–4), and Augustus who (re) founded the empire (Suetonius Lives of the Caesars 2.94.1–7). Luke wanted to claim that Jesus, founder of the network of house churches that was growing throughout the world, was more than Plato, Alexander, Romulus, or Augustus, as well as more than John the Baptist. Were his teachings only those of a wise human being? No, for Luke Jesus and his teachings were of divine origin, so he must have had a divine conception/birth. When Luke completed the two-volume history by prefacing the infancy narrative, Luke adds Mary’s virginal conception of this Son of God, just as a century earlier in his history Dionysius had narrated the divine origins of Romulus (and of Rome’s fifth king, Tarquinius). “On the mother’s side they [Romulus and his twin Remus] were descended from Aeneas …; it is hard to say with certainty who their father was, but the Romans believe them to have been the sons of Mars” (pepisteuntai … Areos huioi; Dionysius Rom. Ant. 2.2.3). Luke disputes this theology: Jesus is the “Son of God,” not Romulus, the founder of the state persecuting Christians, and Jesus’ teachings are of divine origin, not Romulus’s military policies. When Romulus appeared after his death and before his ascension to heaven, Livy (1.16.7) summarizes his key policy statement: “Declare to the Romans the will of Heaven that my Rome shall be the capital of the world; so let them cherish the art of war.…” But the teaching that has legitimate divine origin and authority is “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you …” (Lu...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface (James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson)
• Abbreviations
• Luke
• Get the complete commentary!