Luke the Historian of Israel’s Legacy, Theologian of Israel’s ‘Christ’

A New Reading of the ‘Gospel Acts’ of Luke

David Paul Moessner

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9783110610437
• eBook ISBN: 9783110391961
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

David Moessner proposes a new understanding of the relation of Luke's second volume to his Gospel to open up a whole new reading of Luke's foundational contribution to the New Testament. For postmodern readers who find Acts a 'generic outlier,' dangling tenuously somewhere between the 'mainland' of the evangelists and the 'Peloponnese' of Paul—diffused and confused and shunted to the backwaters of the New Testament by these signature corpora—Moessner plunges his readers into the hermeneutical atmosphere of Greek narrative poetics and elaboration of multi-volume works to inhale the rhetorical swells that animate Luke's first readers in their engagement of his narrative. In this collection of twelve of his essays, re-contextualized and re-organized into five major topical movements, Moessner showcases multiple Hellenistic texts and rhetorical tropes to spotlight the various signals Luke provides his readers of the multiple ways his Acts will follow "all that Jesus began to do and to teach" (Acts 1:1) and, consequently, bring coherence to this dominant block of the New Testament that has long been split apart. By collapsing the world of Jesus into the words and deeds of his followers, Luke re-configures the significance of Israel's "Christ" and the "Reign" of Israel's God for all peoples and places to create a new account of 'Gospel Acts,' discrete and distinctively different than the "narrative" of the "many" (Luke 1:1). Luke the Historian of Israel's Legacy combines what no analysis of the Lukan writings has previously accomplished, integrating seamlessly two 'generically-estranged' volumes into one new whole from the intent of the one composer. For Luke is the Hellenistic historian and simultaneously 'biblical' theologian who arranges the one "plan of God" read from the script of the Jewish scriptures—parts and whole, severally and together—as the saving 'script' for the whole world through Israel's suffering and raised up "Christ," Jesus of Nazareth. In the introductions to each major theme of the essays, this noted scholar of the Lukan writings offers an epitome of the main features of Luke's theological 'thought,' and, in a final Conclusions chapter, weaves together a comprehensive synthesis of this new reading of the whole.

Part I:
Luke’s ‘Gospel Acts’ and the Genre of the Gospels

Only Luke among the authors of the New Testament has composed two long narrative ‘books’ to claim pride of place as the most prolific of New Testament contributors (ca. 28 %), even more than the indefatigable Paul and the corpus of letters attached to his name (ca. 23 %). Whether referred to by the traditional names of “the Gospel of Luke” and “the Acts of the Apostles,” or by the more urbane “Luke-Acts”–first coined in the post-War period of the previous century by historical critics–Luke’s two volumes remain both puzzling and intriguing, controversial yet compelling for a wide spectrum of readers. Why did the church never align Acts as a second volume to Luke in their emerging canon, even though Luke would seem to invite his readers to read the two together as one narrative work in two parts (see Luke 1:1–4 and Acts 1:1–5)? Are both “Luke” and “Acts” of the same genre or type of writing such that they ‘fit’ together in relating one larger story? What is missed if Luke and Acts are not read in light of one another?

These enduring questions in the interpretation of two beloved books form the heart of Luke the Historian of Israel’s Legacy, Theologian of Israel’s Christ. As the title suggests, Luke is both historian and a committed reader of the Jewish scriptures, combining his skill in configuring a coherent historical narrative with his considerable knowledge and reverence for the God of Israel’s scriptures. As the thesis unfolds, we shall argue that the central thrust of our author’s comprehension of a ‘whole’–what Luke will refer to more than once as “the plan–or counsel of God”–is that Jesus of Nazareth is both the “Christ” of the Jewish scriptures and the one who inhabits his two-volume portrayal as the raison d’être of those scriptures.

The two chapters of Part I introduce a reading that takes both volumes together, arguing that Luke writes a short, monograph-length history in two books. This history concerns a movement within Judaism that claimed to incarnate the principle figure of its scriptures and presented itself as the continuing embodiment of the “goal” (τέλος) of those scriptures, manifest especially in the church’s rapid spread into the very centers of Mediterranean culture and of Roman empire.

Chapter One, “How Luke Writes,” highlights characteristic themes and contours of Luke and Acts when read in the shadow of the canonical ‘four’ Gospels as well as in the light of each other. Both Luke and Acts retain their individual contributions to the whole of the New Testament as distinct books, even as both take on an unmistakable set of authorially-crafted ‘family’ resemblances and intra-textual dependencies when read in tandem. The second chapter, “Re-reading Talbert’s Luke: The Bios of ‘Balance’ or the ‘Bias’ of History?,” sets out the case why the Gospel of Luke, taken by itself, does not exhibit the distinctive marks of the Hellenistic βίος or ‘biography’ but rather those of ἱστορία or ‘historiography.’ Of course the focus of the Gospel plot is upon its central character, Jesus of Nazareth. Yet, there is no presentation of the “life,” or the “character” Jesus, apart from his role in Israel’s life and character. The very fact that “Messiah” is a central moniker for Jesus shows how critical the calling and legacy of Israel through its “Christ” is for the author who will continue to speak of Israel and “Israel’s hope” to the very end of his second volume (for example, Acts 28:20). But even more than that, all the attention upon Jesus as the Christ of Israel and upon Israel’s legacy is placed at the service of the all-encompassing embrace and dynamic of the kingly Reign of God that extends back before “the foundation of the earth” and forward to the “consummation of all things.” Truly Luke and Acts, read as one sweeping story, parades the emerging Christian “movement” as a world-wide enterprise beheld as the phe-nomenal consequence of a comprehensive “plan of God.”

Chapter One: How Luke Writes16

“This Gospel is represented fittingly by the calf, because it begins with priests and ends with the Calf who, having taken upon himself the sins of all, was sacrificed for the life of the whole world.”17 Thus Ambrose (333–397 CE), bishop of Milan, describes the “Gospel according to Luke” which, in the subsequent years, has become perhaps the most beloved of the church’s four Gospels. “The most beautiful book in the world” was Renan’s estimate.18 Indeed, the Third Gospel portrays uniquely some of the most loved of Jesus’s miniatures of the Kingdom of God in “The Good Samaritan,” “The Prodigal (Lost) Son,” “The Friend at Midnight,” “The Persistent Widow,”19 and others, not to mention one of the most dramatically and beautifully narrated ‘short stories’ in all the Bible, the walk to Emmaus, where the suspense breaks only as Jesus “is recognized”–finally–“in the breaking of the bread.”20

Yet Luke’s Gospel was not apparently the first to be recognized by the church in the century when written “gospels according to” an apostle or follower of an apostle first emerged. As far as Eusebius reports, Papias (in his interviews of the followers of the apostles toward the beginning of the 2nd century) does not refer to Luke’s Gospel as he compares Matthew’s with Mark’s,21 though Luke’s more felicitous narrative arrangement may be implicit in that comparison.22 When the Third Gospel emerges clearly in the 3rd-century commentary of Origen,23 it has already established itself as foundational in the celebration of the church year. In subsequent patristic exegesis and lectionary readings, Luke becomes the favorite during the Christmas season because of its infancy narratives (Luke 1–2) and at Easter through its vivid resurrection accounts (Luke 24).24 Though not cited as frequently as Matthew or John in the subsequent writings of the fathers, Luke seems to be preferred for much of the church’s admonitions for alms for the poor,25 especially as Luke’s special material26 matches catechetical emphases of the Lenten season.27

Our emphases upon “How Luke Writes” will be illumined through: 1. “The Character of the ‘Third Gospel’ among ‘Four’ in the Light of the ‘Acts’ that Follow,” and 2. “The Distinctive Contour and Content of Luke and Acts among ‘the Four.’”

1The Character of the “Third Gospel” among “Four” in the Light of the “Acts” that Follow

In the section that follows, we will consider various ways in which the Third Gospel distinguishes itself among the canonical four. The present section considers first the most obvious of these distinctions–its place (according to its inscribed author28) as the first volume29 of a two-volume work, Luke-Acts.30 But, to our knowledge, the church never paired the Gospel according to Luke with the Acts of the Apostles as one narrative movement in two parts.31 Instead, Luke’s Gospel was aligned alongside the other three, and among the varying sequences of canonical lists–even in the few instances when Luke is listed last among the four–Acts never follows the Third Gospel!32 Beyond the obvious physical separation of two “books” necessitated by the maximum length of a single papyrus scroll, the emerging church was also apparently forced to sift through a variety of “Gospel” portrayals of the ministry of Jesus to authenticate those accounts that squared with apostolic oral traditions, a process that Luke himself may be hinting at in his Gospel prologue (Luke 1:1–4): [the] “many [who] have undertaken to compose a narrative account of events come to fruition in our midst […] concerning those traditions of which you have been instructed” (περὶ ὧν κατηχήθης λόγων). It is clear that what Luke had joined together formally and materially through the two coupling prologues (Luke 1:1–4→Acts 1:1–2),33 the church has rent asunder.

Nevertheless, it has become equally clear, given the passel of historical-critical and poststructuralist tools available to the (post)modern exegete, that the significance of events in Luke’s Gospel is greatly enhanced when viewed through their construal in Acts and that, conversely, our understanding of Acts is significantly impoverished without a fundamental grasp of its prequel (“all that Jesus began to do and to teach,” Acts 1:1). Each volume completes and comments directly upon the other.34

1.1Luke’s Gospel: Beginnings and Endings

The very different beginning and ending of Luke’s Gospel vis-à-vis the other three set this volume apart in both scope and impact. Following his formal prooemium,35 Luke places the action of John the Baptist’s and Jesus’s callings squarely within the history of Israel (“in the days of Herod, King of Judea,” Luke 1:5) and its priestly orders at the center of Israel’s worship in the Jerusalem Temple (“a certain priest named Zechariah”).36 The choices of images and cadences of these first two chapters, in fact, echo Septuagintal (LXX) synchronisms37 as well as the call stories of famous patriarchs and matriarchs, judges and prophets of Israel. The callings of Abraham and Sarah (Gen 16:7–16; 17:1–22; 18:1–15), Menoah, his wife, and Sampson (Judg 13:2–25), Hannah and Samuel (1Kgdms 2:1–10), and even Daniel (Dan 8:15–26; 9:20–2738) continue to shimmer in the radiant appearance of the archangel Gabriel to Zechariah and Mariam (Luke 1:8–20, 26–38) who announces God’s raising up of a prophet and a savior to “come to the aid of Israel, his [God’s] servant” (Mariam, 1:54) and “to visit and make ransom for the redemption39 of his people Israel” (Zechariah, 1:68b). This unexpected angelophany of Gabriel would appear to herald a most sensational prophecy. It was in fact Gabriel long before who had appeared to Daniel to interpret his dream of “the ram and goat” (Dan 8:1–27) as “a vision for the time of the end” (8:17b) and to “give understanding” of his dream of the “seventy weeks of years” (9:1–27) as the “final days” that “bring in everlasting righteousness” (9:24), climaxing in an “anointed one” (χριστός) who “is cut off” (9:26). Now Gabriel announces that this “coming of God” is about to enact something final and definitive “forever” (cf. Luke 1:33, 55): John will be “a prophet of the Most High” (1:76a) who will prepare a repenting people (1:16–17) and go before the Lord (1:76b), while Jesus will be “Son of the Most High,” “the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord” (“angel/messenger of the Lord,” 2:11) “who will reign over the house of Jacob,” “on David’s throne” “forever” (1:32–33).40

With these rich resonances of Israel’s Scriptures, it would appear that the promises to the ancestors of the “Lord’s Christ” like those to Hannah of old are now on the verge of fulfillment to the Hannah and Simeon who eagerly anticipate Israel’s “consolation,”41 Jerusalem’s “redemption” (Luke 2:22–38). The birth of Jesus as the “Christ of the Lord” (ὁ χριστὸς κυρίου, L...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• Abbreviations
• Bible translations
• Introduction: Enigma in Two volumes
• Part I: Luke’s ‘Gospel Acts’ and the Genre of the Gospels
• Part II: Luke’s Prologues and Hellenistic Narrative Hermeneutics
• Part III: Luke among Hellenistic Historians
• Part IV: Luke’s Theologia Crucis. The Suffering Servant(s) of the Lord: Moses, David, the Suffering Righteous, and Jesus and “All The Prophets”
• Part V: Luke, the Church, and Israel’s Legacy
• Conclusion Luke the Hellenistic Historian of Israel’s Legacy, Theologian of Israel’s ‘Christ’
• Finale:Luke the Historian, Biblical Theologian of Israel’s “Christ”
• Bibliography
• Index
• Endnotes