This study of Luke's Gospel sets out to discover, as far as may be possible, the point and purpose of each section of the narrative. So let us begin by explaining what we mean in this context by 'point and purpose'.
At one level there is no need to look far to discover Luke's purpose in writing: he has stated it himself in his prologue (see Luke 1:1–4). He writes so that Theophilus may know the certainty of the things which he has been taught. This stated purpose implicitly claims that his record is reliable and authoritative; and naturally the claim has been endlessly debated. We do not intend to continue that discussion. This study accepts as a matter of faith the traditional view that Luke wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and that his account is reliable. This is not to say that scholarly investigation of the historicity of Luke's record is either improper or unprofitable: it is to say that the reader who wishes to follow the ongoing debate on this aspect of Luke's work is referred to the learned commentaries. Luke obviously expects us to believe him when he says that he has carefully consulted the contemporary sources, and he expects us to grant his claim to reliability. We grant it, and look to see what then he will tell us, and what he thinks its significance is, and why he thinks we ought to know about it, and what we are expected to make of it. His declared purpose is to convince us of the certainty of the Christian story: has he no intention of helping us to see its point?
Meanwhile, mention of learned commentaries makes it appropriate to remark that this present work is not written for professional [p 2] New Testament scholars. It is written, with a great deal of fellow-feeling, for non-expert but serious readers of Luke's Gospel whose main difficulty lies not in understanding exactly what Luke is saying,1 but in understanding why he says it. These readers, we imagine, may well find it comparatively easy to believe that any incident which Luke records did actually take place exactly as he says it did; but they will find it well-nigh impossible to believe that Luke saw no other reason for recording it beyond the sheer fact that it took place. They instinctively feel that Luke must have seen significance in the events which he selected for his record, and that he (or the Holy Spirit who inspired him) must have intended to convey that significance to his readers. And so when they have consulted the textual critics and translators, historians and exegetes, and have come to a clear and accurate understanding of what Luke says took place in some incident or other, they cannot always rest content. They feel that something still eludes them; and that something, of course, is what the significance of the incident is meant to be. They could write, if required, an exact précis of Luke's account; they could even, if driven to it, make up a sermon on the basis of Luke's record, for they are intelligent and creative thinkers. But they remain uncertain that the meaning their sermon gave to the incident would necessarily be the meaning which Luke intended it to have. How then are we to decide what Luke intended?
It is at this level that the present work offers its modest help by suggesting some ways and means by which we might come closer to perceiving the point and purpose of each section of Luke's narrative. In many places, of course, it will be obvious. When, for instance, Luke records long passages of our Lord's moral teaching, his primary purpose is doubtless, as the prologue says, to assure us that here is a reliable record of what Christ taught. But Christian instinct [p 3] will tell us, even if strict exegesis cannot, that this will not have been his sole purpose: his object also will have been to lead us to accept this moral teaching and to put it into practice.
With other kinds of narrative, however, it is not always so immediately obvious what the point and purpose is. Take, for example, an incident from the birth narratives. Zechariah, we are told at some length (see Luke 1:57–66), named his son John at the insistence of the angel and in the face of stormy protests from his friends and relatives. Thereupon he was released from the dumbness imposed on him for his initial disbelief of the angel. 'What', we ask, 'are we supposed to make of that?' Doubtless it did Zechariah good to be made to do what the angel told him to do. But why do we have to be told about it? What, moreover, would it matter to us whether Zechariah called his son John, Timothy, Haggai, or Solomon?
Or take the incident which Luke chooses to record from Christ's boyhood days (see Luke 2:41–51). It is the only story from the boyhood, and we are grateful for it and for Luke's assurance that it actually happened and is not a mere legend. But why tell us only this story from the whole of the boyhood and early manhood? It will obviously not do to say that Luke recorded this incident simply because it happened. Of course it happened. But so did many other things during that long period. And it is difficult to think that after all his research (see Luke 1:1–3) this was the only story from the childhood days which Luke had heard. Why only one story, then? And why this one? Is it told us because it is typical of situations that constantly arose during those childhood days? Or for the very opposite reason that it was an untypical and special event? For whose benefit was the incident allowed to happen in the first place? The rabbis'? Or Mary's and Joseph's? Mary and Joseph hardly appear at their best in this story: they seem not a little flustered and anxious. Were we meant to conclude therefore that in spite of all that Mary had been told at the annunciation about the uniqueness of her child, she was not in fact expecting him to act in any unusual fashion? And if so, were we meant to find this astonishing, or understandable? Or is the story there so that preachers may use it as a warning to us not to do [p 4] as Mary and Joseph did, and travel along carelessly imagining that Christ is with us when he isn't? Or is all this about Mary and Joseph and their anxiety merely circumstantial detail, the main purpose of the record being to supply the theologians with evidence for the self-consciousness of the child Jesus, which they can then use in the construction of their christologies?
Perhaps the proper response to all these questions is to observe that the story is not a myth, composed by its author to convey one particular message. It is a piece of history that like any other piece of history (only more so!) possesses multisignificance; and, therefore, we may—perhaps we are even expected to—deduce from it any and everything that may legitimately be deduced.2 Even so, we might have expected Luke to give us some guidance as to how to interpret the stories he has recorded, and when he appears not to give us any, we can feel frustrated.
Our disappointment springs perhaps in part from the fact that as modern people we are used to the ways of modern historians. The modern historian is expected not merely to collect and record the facts of a case, but to point out the significance of the facts, to offer interpretations and to pass judgments. If he failed to do these things he would scarcely be regarded as an historian at all. Luke does not do these things. Indeed, like the other synoptic evangelists, he is notorious for the sparsity of his own interpretative comments.3 But then he is not a modem, but an ancient historian. He writes in the tradition of the great biblical historians who also are renowned for relating the facts with a minimum of explicit comment.
Before, however, we hastily conclude that this means that Luke has done virtually nothing to guide our understanding and interpretation of the events he has recorded, we should observe that, thoroughly biblical historian though he is, Luke also has features in common with some of the classical historians and notably with that great [p 5] pioneer of scientific history, Thucydides. Luke's use of speeches in his Acts of the Apostles has often been compared with Thucydides' use of speeches in his History.4 Thucydides assures us that he has carefully investigated his sources, but he rarely cites them.5 Luke likewise. And what is even more interesting, Thucydides has a way of juxtaposing two incidents or two speeches containing such clear similarities and/or contrasts that the reader is led to reflect on these similarities and contrasts. From there, without Thucydides having to intrude any comment of his own, the reader is led to see for himself the irony, the tragedy, or whatever it is in human affairs that becomes apparent when one holds the two stories or the two speeches together in one's mind and thoughtfully compares and contrasts them.6 Luke may have different lessons to teach, but he uses a similar method.
At Luke 7:36–50, for example, he relates a story which no other evangelist records. A woman of the streets enters the house of Simon the Pharisee, where Christ is being entertained to dinner, and begins to pay Christ very close personal attention. 'And Simon said to himself, "This man, if he were a prophet, would have perceived who and what kind of a woman this is who touches him". . .' But Christ did not appear to perceive who touched him—or at least, so it seemed to Simon. And with that the story goes on to its conclusion.
In the next chapter he relates another story (Luke 8:43–48): 'A woman . . . came behind him and touched the border of his garment . . . and Jesus said, "Who touched me?" And when all denied, Peter said . . . "Master, the multitudes press you . . ." But Jesus said, "Someone did touch me, for I perceived that power had gone out from me." And when the woman saw that she was not hidden . . .' Had Luke been a modern historian he might well have introduced the second story with the remark: 'A moment ago we saw how Christ's prophetic ability to perceive the character of the woman who touched him was [p 6] seriously called into question. Now we are to consider another incident which in part at least answers the doubts raised in the earlier story'. And then at the end of the second story he might well have added an interpretative comment as follows: 'These two incidents then have taken us to the heart of one aspect of Christ's ministry. Both incidents have concerned women, both have concerned sexual matters, both have concerned disorders: the first dealt with moral disorder, the second with physical. Both women would have known the hurt of being avoided by orthodox society, the first for fear of moral contamination, the second for fear of ceremonial defilement. Christ put an end to their isolation and proclaimed them fit to make contact again with decent and clean society, but in doing so he found his powers of moral and physical perception criticized as being superficial in the one case and exaggerated in the other. Notice, however, how precisely Christ's defence met the criticism on each occasion . . .' and so forth.
Luke has none of these preparatory observations or concluding interpretative comments; but we might be rash to deduce from their absence that when Luke, the only evangelist to use the story of the woman in Simon's house, selected it from the sources and placed it close to the story of the woman with bleeding, he did not himself notice the similarities and contrasts, or noticing them did not see any significance in them. Of course it is not possible to prove conclusively that Luke saw significance in these features of the two stories; but when we find this same phenomenon occurring in many pairs of stories throughout the Gospel, we may incline to think that the better explanation for Luke's lack of explicit comment is that he was an ancient historian in the tradition of the Old Testament historians and in the tradition of Thucydides. Like them he will have taken great pains in investigating his sources, in selecting his material, and in disposing that material so that its continuity of theme, its significant similarities and contrasts should be obvious to the thoughtful reader. But after that he will have been content to let the material speak for itself and to invite the reader's active cooperation in perceiving its significance without constantly intervening to explain and interpret. [p 7] It is not, of course, a modern way of writing history; it is what H. D. F. Kitto has labelled the 'dramatic' method.8 The history it produces is none the worse for that. Thucydides combined this method with a passion for historical accuracy: there is no reason for thinking that Luke did less.
But this reference to Thucydidean studies may alert the reader that the present writer's approach will be that of a scholar who comes to Luke from the study of classical and Hellenistic authors. Luke was doubtless as familiar with their methods as he was with those of Aramaic oral literature. Brought up on Aristotle the present writer supposes9 that in whatever other directions one may look in order to detect the 'message' an author like Luke intended to convey, one must look first and foremost at three features of his work. Firstly, at his selection of material and the relative proportions he assigns to the various parts of that material. Secondly, at any themes or ideas that reoccur in the various and separate items which he has selected. It is in these repeated ideas, themes and emphases that the author's thought and his insights into the significance of his material are most likely to be detected. And thirdly one must look carefully at the author's disposition of his material, the systasis tōn pragmatōn as Aristotle would call it, the way he orders the individual parts of his material in relation to each other and to the whole, and the effect this has on the thought-flow of his narrative. What is the logic of his arrangement? Does he organize his material solely and strictly on chronological grounds, or does he group incidents together on grounds of similarity of topic? Does any one story continue the thought-flow of the previous story or break it? In any story or group of stories are there runs of thought with minor and major climaxes, suspensions, complications and dénouements? [p 8] Has the author placed the climax in any given story where our understanding of the story would have placed it, or in some, at first sight, unexpected place?
First of all let us examine Luke's selection and proportioning of his material. He has obviously not told us everything Christ did and said. Consideration of what Luke has done, in cases where he and Mark seem to be dependent on the same source, shows that he has not even told us everything which he found in his sources. He has obviously selected what seemed to him important and given what space he pleased to the topics he selected. Take then the topic of Christ's conception, birth, infancy and boyhood. Mark tells us nothing. Matthew devotes four (or five or six, depending on how they are counted) stories to the topic: the genealogy, Joseph's reaction to the conception and birth, the visit of the wise men, the flight into Egypt to avoid Herod's massacre, and the return. And in all this, we should notice, there is not one word about the forerunner, John the Baptist, or his parents. Luke, by contrast, has selected no less than ten stories for his birth and infancy narrative, five of them dealing with events before the birth, and five with the birth and the events that followed. Luke, then, has more stories than Matthew. But not only more: his selection produces an altogether different emphasis. In every one of the first five stories, for instance, reference is made to John the Baptist (at Luke 1:13–17; 1:36; 1:41–44; 1:57–63; 1:76–79). Almost as much space, if not more, is given to him as to the coming Christ. Obviously Luke was very interested in John the Baptist, and thought we ought to be too. Why?
To answer this question we could look in two directions. We could, if we wanted to, look outside Luke's Gospel; and we could conjecture that Luke must have had some external reason for putting all this emphasis on John the Baptist. Perhaps he had contact with, and was influenced by, groups of the Baptist's disciples who had maintained an independent existence even after Pentecost, like those he mentions in Acts 18:24–19:7. Perhaps he thought that John's ministry had not received the prominence it deserved, and he may have been wanting to restore the balance. The possibilities are many [p 9] and some of our conjectures (who knows?) might even be right.
We should do better, however, in the first place at any rate, to look in another direction, namely to the internal evidence within the stories themselves to see what it was about John the Baptist that so interested Luke. And if we do that, we shall find our focus changing. Although, as we have said, John the Baptist is referred to in every one of the first five stories, the internal proportions of the stories10 suggest that Luke is more interested in John's parents than in John.
And then if we look to see whether any notable theme or themes run through all of these five stories we shall find as follows:
In the first story (see Luke 1:5–25) the angel comes and announces to Zechariah that he and his wife, though both elderly, are going to have a son; and the angel describes the exalted ministry that this son will eventually exercise. And there (see Luke 1:17) Luke could have ended the story, had he chosen to; for at this point the story has told us all it is going to tell us about John the Baptist and his coming ministry as the forerunner. But Luke is not interested simply in John and his coming ministry: something else is pressing on his mind and he spends the next six verses telling us about it. Zechariah found the angel's announcement incredible, told him so and was struck dumb for his disbelief. 'You shall be silent and unable to speak until these things happen, because you did not believe my words, which shall in fact be fulfilled in due time' (Luke 1:20). And this, Luke explains, was all the more embarrassing because Zechariah was in the middle of morning prayers in the temple at the time, and when he emerged to bless the people waiting outside he could not pronounce the blessing. After his tour of duty he went home and presently his wife conceived. At that the story breaks off and Luke turns to a different one. But notice what Luke has done: he has raised our interest in the question of the credibility of the angel's words, told us the penalty of unbelief, and then directed our minds forward: Zechariah will be dumb until . . . We shall not be satisfied now until we hear the end of this story. Luke has taken the first steps in building up a climax. [p 10]
Story 2 (see Luke 1:26–38) tells of the annunciation to Mary. Mary like Zechariah questioned the angel, but not like Zechariah out of unbelief. Her difficulty was a moral one: she could not see how an unmarried girl was going to become a mother. She was told how. And there again (see Luke 1:35) the story might have ended, for at this point all that it has to tell us about the greatness of Mary's Son and the miraculous conception has now been told. But the story has something more to tell us, and when we hear it the theme will sound familiar. The angel evidently knew that Mary's faith would need to be supported and encouraged. So he assured her 'nothing shall prove impossible with God' (see Luke 1:37) and for evidence to confirm her faith in that assurance he informed her of Elizabeth's miraculous conception (see Luke 1:36).
Story 3 (see Luke 1:39–56) tells us that Mary, naturally enough after what the angel had told her, went to see Elizabeth and while in her home gave voice to the Magnificat. The sentiments expressed in Mary's great outburst of praise are so sublime that one could not have been surprised if Luke had let it stand in solitary prominence introduced by the briefest of circumstantial detail. But not Luke. He first tells us what Elizabeth said to and about Mary: '. . . and blessed is she who believed, for the things which have been spoken to her from the Lord shall have fulfilment' (Luke 1:45). Stupendous things have been promised, and Luke is busy recording them; but at every turn he points out that believing such stupendous announcements was no automatic thing. Zechariah had found it impossible; if Mary believed, it was not to be passed by as a matter of course: it was a matter for holy congratulations.
After Mary went home Elizabeth gave birth to her son, who on the eighth day was duly circumcised and named John. Now when Luke comes to the naming of Mary's child, all he will say is: 'And when the eighth day came and it was time for him to be circumcised, his name was called Jesus, which was the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb' (Luke 2:21). Had Luke wished, Story 4 (see Luke 1:57–66) could have given us an equally brief record of John the Baptist's birth, circumcision and naming, and he could have passed on without delay to Story 5 (see Luke 1:67–79) the prophecy which [p 11] Zechariah pronounced over his infant son. Glorious as that prophecy is in itself as an expression of faith in the promises of the ancient prophets (see Luke 1:70), in God's covenant (see Luke 1:72) and in God's oath (see Luke 1:73), we might well miss some of the significance Luke saw in it, if we lightly pass over the detail which Luke has deliberately put into Story 4. Eight verses of vivid domestic detail (see Luke 1:57–64) bring us to the climax: Zechariah recovers his speech. At which we remember, of course, that he had been struck dumb for his disbelief in the angel's words. Since then, we now perceive, he has recovered faith; he acts in obedience to the angel's command and against all protest names his son John. Luke devotes two further verses (see Luke 1:65–66) to describing the impact made on all the people around by Zechariah's transition from the dumbness of unbelief to the eloquence of faith. We are at the climax Luke had in mind when he wrote Story 1.
We pause to take our bearings. In our next chapter we shall have to look more closely at the significance of these first five stories. At the moment they are serving us as an example of how attention to Luke's selection of material, to his proportioning of it, and to the ideas which he repeats throughout a succession of stories can help us to perceive the way he is looking at the facts he records. In these five stories he relates the miraculous birth of John and the virginal conception of Christ. In one sense the importance of these two momentous events, taken by themselves, towers above all their circumstantial detail. But Luke has not chosen to record these two events simply as objective facts, leaving us to make of them what we will. He has invited us to look at them through the subjective experience of those to whom it was first announced that these events were about to happen, and he has repeatedly emphasized the demands it made upon their faith. In particular he has traced in detail one man's struggle with incredulity, from his initial defeat to his eventual triumph. This should not surprise us when we remember that Luke was writing so that Theophilus 'might know the certainty of the things in which he had been instructed' (Luke 1:4). Perhaps Theophilus, called upon to believe such stupendous things as Luke is here recording, might at times have had a certain sympathy with Zechariah. [p 12]
There remains the question of Luke's disposition of his material. In general he follows the chronological order, but not invariably or in every detail. To take one small example: in his account of John the Baptist's ministry (see Luke 3:1–20) Luke follows the story right to its end when John is put in prison. Then after the imprisonment (see Luke 3:20) he proceeds to tell of Christ's baptism (see Luke 3:21–22) which, of course, happened before John's imprisonment, and was in fact performed by John though Luke does not say so. There is nothing strange in this. Luke is not falsifying history by departing from strict chronological order: he is simply finishing off one movement in his history before he begins another, regardless of the fact that chronologically the beginning of the second movement preceded the end of the first movement.
This is a perfectly valid thing to do and many historians and biographers do it. But even when Luke records two things in strict chronological order—and that is most of the time—it often becomes clear that the chronological sequence between the two things is not the most significant feature in their relationship. At Luke 18:1, for instance, Luke tells us that our Lord spoke a parable. At Luke 18:9 he tells us that he spoke another parable. Presumably the latter was spoken after the former, though how much later, and whether or not on the same occasion, we are not told. Perhaps there is significance in the chronological order in which they were spoken; but much more obviously significant is the fact that both parables deal with prayer and that (as we shall later see in detail, p. 307) the first reminds us that our praying or our non-praying reveals what we think about the character of God, while the second reminds us that our prayers can show, at times all too revealingly, what we think of ourselves.
Or again, take the story of the blind beggar (see Luke 18:35–43) and the story of Zacchaeus the tax-collector (see Luke 19:1–10). Here for good measure Luke gives us both the chronological and the geographical relationship between the two incidents: the first happened 'as he drew near to Jericho', the second, 'as he entered and was passing through Jericho'. Is this then the only connection between the two stories? Hardly! The first incident is a salvation story: 'your faith [p 13] has saved you' (Luke 18:42). So is the second: 'today salvation has come to this house' (Luke 19:9). The first man was poor, the second rich. The first man made his living by begging; from which degrading occupation salvation delivered him. The second made his living by tax-gathering and in part, apparently (see Luke 19:8), by extortion; from which despicable practice salvation delivered him also.
But that is not all. Eleven verses before the blind beggar story Luke has placed the following sequence of thought:
Christ: 'With what difficulty those who have riches enter the kingdom of God; for it is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God'.
Audience: 'Who then can be saved?'
Christ: 'Things that are impossible with men are possible with God' (Luke 18:24–27).
We cannot tell how long the interval of time was between this conversation and the incident of the blind beggar. From Luke's own narrative (see Luke 18:21–34) we might deduce that a certain amount of time elapsed, and from Mark 10:23–45 we know that during the interval the incident of the request of the two sons of Zebedee took place. As far as chronology is concerned, therefore, the disciples may have had plenty of time to forget the conversation, by the time they witnessed the salvation first of the beggar and then of Zacchaeus. But—and here we come to the point—Luke has so arranged his material that in the narrative only seven verses (see Luke 18:28–34) intervene between the end of the conversation and the beginning of the two salvation stories. Can we his readers possibly forget what he has told us about the well-nigh impossibility of a rich man being saved when seven verses later he tells us how a poor beggar was saved and then—wonder of wonders—how a filthily rich tax-collector was also saved? At least, if we have forgotten, it is scarcely Luke's fault.
Even so Luke has still not finished. Mark puts nothing between the story of the blind beggar (see Mark 10:46–52) and the ascent to [p 14] Jerusalem (see Mark 11:1). Luke interposes between these two points (see Luke 18:43 and Luke 19:29) not only the story of Zacchaeus (see Luke 19:1–10) but also the parable of the Pounds (see Luke 19:11–28), which thus serves as the climax to his carefully arranged thought-flow: the difficulty of those who have possessions or riches in finding salvation; yet this is possible with God: witness the fact that Christ saved both poor and rich, and turned the crooked tax-collector into a philanthropist; and then taught his disciples to regard what resources they have as a sacred trust given them by Christ, for which they will be accountable when he returns.
If we are right, then, Luke has here taken items of conversation and teaching together with various incidents, which were all originally more or less independent in the sense that they took place at different times and in different places, and by careful selection and composition he has made them serve as a series of progressive lessons on a common theme. To do this he has not had to alter the meaning or significance of the original items: each still means, as it stands within the progression, what it first meant when it originally took place as an independent incident or conversation. Twenty separate and independent pearls, valuable and beautiful in their own right, do not lose any of their beauty or value if someone puts them on a common thread and turns them into a necklace. On the other hand a necklace is something more than a number of individual pearls. And so with this progression of items in Luke: each item by making its own contribution balances, complements and completes what the other items teach. If, therefore, one were looking in this part of Luke's Gospel for our Lord's teaching on riches it would be perfectly right to take his remarks on the almost impossibility of rich men being saved and to preach from them a warning to all rich people that their possession of riches is a very dangerous thing. Better be poor than miss salvation. Such a sermon would be perfectly true: but it would not be the whole truth. To present a balanced view of these matters the preacher ought perhaps to preach another sermon soon, this time on Zacchaeus. Despised and socially rejected by his fellow-townspeople because [p 15] of his unacceptable ways of making money, he was nonetheless accepted and saved by Christ, much to the annoyance of the virtuous local people, many of whom unfortunately were never saved at all! Of course this second sermon would be careful to point out from Luke's story of Zacchaeus that Christ did not condone Zacchaeus' extortion but genuinely converted him to a better attitude towards possessions. To enforce this lesson and take it a stage further the next sermon would do well to use the parable of the Pounds to point out that to avoid the danger of riches it is not enough simply to abstain from extortion, nor enough simply to be penniless and scrounge a living out of others as the blind man did before he was saved; nothing but a responsible use of our pounds, as stewards accountable to Christ, will be regarded as satisfactory when Christ comes again and calls us to account.
Now it does not follow that because Luke, by his selection and composition, has turned these items into a progressive series of complementary lessons on a common theme, that he has done this kind of thing everywhere else in his Gospel. It might well be that the meaning of some items in the Gospel is so to speak self-contained. Important in its own right, it has no direct bearing on its context within the Gospel. If on further study we find it so, we shall have no reason to complain. But the present work will start out with the assumption that it is worthwhile looking to see if there is a connection of thought between one part of the narrative and the next. Admittedly there is a danger that if one goes looking for connections of thought one will eventually see them where they do not exist; and it is not to be expected that the present work will everywhere succeed in avoiding this danger. In the borderlands between exposition and homiletics imaginative fairy-castles of subjective interpretation are liable to be constructed more frequently than in the sterner regions of exegesis which are unvisited by imagination. But the writer takes comfort from the critical good sense of his readers. He does not suppose that he will convince them that Luke intended all the meanings and all the connections of thought that the present writer will suggest. It will be enough if here and [p 16] there the reader is helped by this book to see more clearly the significance of what Luke has written.
One more explanation and we shall be ready to begin our main work. At some levels of study it would be important to distinguish between the meaning which Luke saw in the words and deeds of Christ, and the additional meaning which we can see in them when we look back on them in the light of the Holy Spirit's further revelations in the Epistles. Since ultimately both the Epistles and the Gospel come from the same Holy Spirit, we have not thought it necessary in this work constantly to make this distinction.11
Notes
1 There is a wealth of learned exegetical commentaries available to help the non-expert discover exactly what Luke is saying in any given passage. Where Luke's meaning is obscure or disputed, the present work will refer the reader chiefly to Marshall's The Gospel of Luke. Not only are its own judgments balanced and fair-minded, but it carries an exhaustive range of references to other scholarly works of every shade of opinion.
2 Notice the amount this leaves to the reader's own subjective interpretation—a point which it will be helpful to remember if later on anyone is inclined to complain that the present writer's methods of interpretation are inherently subjective.
3 Of course he has some, like Luke 18:1 and Luke 19:11, for example.
4 See, e.g. Marshall, Acts, 42.
5 See Kitto, Poiesis, 289, 349.
6 The most famous example of this in Thucydides is the juxtaposition of the Melian Dialogue and the account of the Sicilian Expedition (end of Book V, beginning of Book VI). But there are others. See Kitto, Poiesis, 333–8 and the whole section, pp. 279–354.
7 Kitto, Poiesis, 282 ff., 349–50.
8 Not in the popular sense of vivid writing, but in the technical sense of allowing the narrative to speak for itself without explanatory and interpretative comments by the author.
9 For discussion of the objection that it is false methodology to use Aristotle's canons of literary criticism, formulated in the fourth century BC on the basis of imaginative works like Greek tragedies, in order to interpret an altogether different kind of work, a factual history written in the first century AD, see Appendix 1.
10 For example, in the first story John gets five verses (Luke 1:13–17), his father and mother more than sixteen (Luke 1:5–13a, 18–25).
11 Since this is a study book, it will yield its maximum profit to the reader who first reads what Luke says and then constantly refers to the biblical text in the course of following the commentary. [p 17]
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