The Synoptic Gospels

“The theme of law in Luke’s Gospel has rarely been discussed, and then only tangentially in studies concerned with recovering Jesus’ view of the law. The evidence of Acts has received considerably more attention, but almost always in the context of a comparison with Paul’s view of the law or a reconstruction of the historical events which lie behind the narrative of Acts. A notable exception is J. Jervell’s essay on ‘The Law in Luke – Acts’ in which he argues that Luke presents a consistent and conservative view of the law, viz. that the Church, as the renewed Israel, is committed to the law, Jewish-Christians being obliged to keep the whole of it and Gentile Christians those parts relevant to them. He thus disagrees with Conzelmann, who argues that the apostolic decree freed the Church once and for all from its previous obligation to the law.” – Cambridge University Press

“Luke and the Politics of Homeric Imitation: Luke–Acts as Rival to the Aeneid argues that the author of Luke–Acts composed not a history but a foundation mythology to rival Vergil’s Aeneid by adopting and ethically emulating the cultural capital of classical Greek poetry, especially Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Euripides’s Bacchae….Luke was not a historian any more than Vergil was, and, as the Latin bard had done for the Augustine age, he wrote a fictional portrayal of the kingdom of God and its heroes, especially Jesus and Paul, who were more powerful, more ethical, and more compassionate than the gods and heroes of Homer and Euripides or those of Vergil’s Aeneid.” – Fortress Press

“MacDonald argues that the Gospel writers borrowed from established literary sources to create stories about Jesus that readers of the day would find convincing. In Luke and Vergil MacDonald proposes that the author of Luke-Acts followed Mark’s lead in imitating Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but greatly expanded his project, especially in the Acts, but adding imitations not only of the epics but also of Euripides’ Bacchae and Plato’s Socratic dialogues. The potential imitations include spectacular miracles, official resistance, epiphanies, prison breaks, and more. The book applies mimesis criticism and uses side-by-side comparisons to show how early Christian authors portrayed the origins of Christianity as more compelling than the Augustan Golden Age.” – Rowman & Littlefield

“This book focuses on the authority and status of the author of Luke-Acts. What authority did he have to write a Gospel, to interpret the Jewish Scriptures and traditions of Israel, to interpret the Jesus traditions, and to update the narrative with a second volume with its interpretation of Paul and the other apostles who appear in the Acts narrative? Rick Strelan constructs the author as a Jewish Priest, examining such issues as writing and orality, authority and tradition, and the status and role of priests. The analysis is set within the context of scholarly opinion about the author, the intended audience and other related issues.” – Routledge

“In this completely revised and updated edition, François Bovon provides a critical assessment of the last fifty-five years of scholarship on Luke-Acts. The study divides thematically, with individual chapters covering the subjects of history and eschatology, the role of the Old Testament, Christology, the Holy Spirit, conversion, and the church. Each chapter begins with a consideration of the exegetical and theological problems unique to each theme in Luke-Acts before providing a detailed survey and critique of contemporary English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian New Testament scholarship.” – Baylor University Press

“This study refutes the allegation that the author of Luke–Acts showed no systematic thought about the significance of Jesus’s death, that is, he has no theologia crucis. Peter Doble focuses sharply on the Gospel’s death scene and explores those features which appear in Luke alone, then extends the results into the longer account of Jesus’s final days in Jerusalem. In the final section Doble demonstrates how specific words and patterns from Wisdom shape and fill Luke’s retelling of the story of Jesus’s entrapment, trials and death. Luke wanted his readers to understand that what had happened to Jesus was not a humiliating rejection but in accord with scripture’s presentation of God’s plan for salvation, and he modelled traditional material about Jesus’s road to the crucifixion around an explanatory model which he drew from Wisdom.” – Cambridge University Press

“This study examines one significant theological theme in Luke-Acts, that of ‘The plan of God’. It traces the way this theme is developed throughout Luke-Acts, both through direct statements by the writer and through various associated means such as divine appearances, signs and wonders, the fulfilment of prophecy, and indications of fate as of necessity. Dr Squires locates Luke’s use of this theme in the context of the history-writing of the Hellenistic period, noting numerous passages in those works which illumine Luke’s theological purposes. His book shows how the notion of the plan of God is used by Luke as he writes to confirm his readers’ faith, encouraging them to bear witness to this faith, and equipping them for the task of defending it.” – Cambridge University Press

“Luke’s two-volume work begins with a formal preface unlike anything else in the New Testament, and it has long been academic orthodoxy that Luke’s choice of style, vocabulary, and content in this short passage reveal a desire to present his work to contemporary readers as ‘History’ in the great tradition of Thucydides and Polybius. This study challenges that assumption: far from aping the classical historians, Dr Alexander argues, Luke was simply introducing his book in a style that would have been familiar to readers of the scientific and technical manuals which proliferated in the hellenistic world. The book contains a detailed study of these Greek ‘scientific’ prefaces as well as a word-by-word commentary on the Lucan texts. In her concluding chapters, Alexander seeks to explore the consequences of this alignment both for the literary genre of Luke-Acts (is it meant to be read as ‘history’?) and for the social background of the author and the book’s first readers.” – Cambridge University Pres

“The Gospel of Luke, often mined for information about the life of Jesus, is also one of the earliest Christian examples of narrative theology. Luke goes to great lengths to ground the work of Jesus in the continuing story of God’s redemptive plan, and his emphasis on the ongoing character of that story challenges his audience to discern the purpose of God and order their lives around it. This exploration of the way in which he accomplishes his theological task in the first century is both informative and illuminating for contemporary readers.” – Cambridge University Press