Social Science and the Christian Scriptures, Volume 2

Sociological Introductions and New Translation

Blasi

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781532615108
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Sociologist Anthony Blasi analyzes early Christianity using multiple social scientific theories, including those of Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Max Scheler, Alfred Schutz, and contemporary theorists. He investigates the canonical New Testament books as representative of early Christianity, a sample based on usage, and he takes the books in the chronological order in which they were written. The result is a series of "stills" that depict the movement at different stages in its development. His approaches, often neglected in New Testament studies, include such sociological subfields as sect theory, the routinization of charisma, conflict, stratification theory, stigma, the sociology of knowledge, new religions, the sociology of secrecy, marginality, liminality, syncretism, the social role of intellectuals, the poor person as a type, the sick role, degradation ceremonies, populism, the sociology of migration, the sociology of time, mergers, the sociology of law, and the sociology of written communication. Needing to treat the New Testament text as social data, Blasi uses his background in biblical studies and a review of a vast literature to establish the chronology of the compositions of the New Testament books and to present the "data" in a new translation that is accessible to non-specialists.

Chapter 12

Luke’s History of Christianity

Part I. The Gospel

Introduction

The author known traditionally as Luke wrote two books that he intended to go together. In modern bibles, these bear the titles The Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles. He evidently wrote most of the Gospel first, beginning with Jesus’ ministry at Luke 3:23, and then he began Acts, which appears to have never been completed. The Prologue to Acts describes the Gospel this way: “In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had charged the apostles whom he had chosen through the Holy Spirit.”386 We can surmise that he added most of the material that comes before Luke 3:23 after he had begun Acts.387 In the Prologue to his Gospel, Luke implies that he had reason to be dissatisfied with earlier gospels that had been written. He found that they were not “in an order” and that they did not convey “the sayings by which you were catechized.”388

In studying the “synoptic problem,” i.e. the relationship among the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the scholarly consensus is that Luke and Matthew relied on the Gospel of Mark, on a sayings source termed “Q,”389 and on their own respective sources. And Luke does indeed follow the general outline of the Gospel of Mark and to be verbally dependent on it, making editorial improvements and theological changes in it. It is also the scholarly consensus that the text of Luke’s gospel is generally not verbally dependent on the Gospel of Matthew, though a case can be made for some minor verbal dependencies.390 That is, there are some non-Q “verbal agreements” of Luke and Matthew over against Mark, but they are not enough to suggest that Luke actively incorporated Matthew’s gospel into his own, in the manner that he incorporated Mark’s gospel. Joseph Fitzmyer points out that Luke does not adopt Mathew’s expansions of the Markan text, does not adopt Matthew’s fuller and remarkable “Beatitudes,” and the rest of Matthew’s impressive “Sermon on the Mount,” that Luke places “Q” material in different narrative contexts from those provided by Matthew, sometimes uses more primitive versions of “Q” sayings than Matthew’s gospel has, and did not adopt any of the Matthean non-Markan material such as Matthew’s infancy narratives and genealogy of Jesus.391 This does not mean that Luke was never aware of Matthew’s gospel, for after he wrote the Prologue to the Acts of the Apostles it seems that he added infancy narratives to his own gospel, different from Matthew’s but nevertheless corresponding to them, and a genealogy of Jesus, again different from Matthew’s but corresponding to the latter.392 It appears that Luke avoided discussions of the Jewish Law, something with which Matthew was greatly concerned. Indeed, a case can be made that Luke found the Gospel of Mark wanting and actually disapproved of much to be found in the Gospel of Matthew. Thus we can understand why he would write:

Whereas many attempted to reorder the narration of the doings that have been confirmed among us, as eye-witnessed from the outset and those who became ministers of the word handed them down to us, I too, having traced everything accurately from the beginning, thought to write it in an order for you, O excellent Theophilus, so that you may learn to have confidence in the sayings by which you were catechized.393

So Luke’s is a different gospel, just as Matthew’s was different from Mark’s, and we should resist blending them together into a common presentation.

Luke has his own sources for a genealogy of Jesus, the Lucan infancy narratives for Jesus and John the Baptist, some parables, and much of the Passion Narrative. A possible poetic source is indicated by the four canticles in the first two chapters of Luke’s gospel: the Magnificat (1:46–55), the Benedictus (1:67–79), the Gloria in Excelsis (2:13–14), and the Nunc Dimitis (2:29–32). These poetic passages differ in style from the rest of the gospel and feature many Semitisms. W...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Chapter 11: The Gospel of Matthew
• Chapter 12: uke’s History of Christianity: Part I. The Gospel
• Chapter 13: Luke’s History of Christianity: Part II. The Acts of the Apostles
• Chapter 14: Interpolations in the Paulines
• Chapter 15: Pseudepigraphic Letter to the Colossians
• Chapter 16: Pseudepigraphic Letter to the Ephesians
• References