Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles – “The New Testament In It’s World” – Wright and Bird

The gospel of Luke, and the Acts of the Apostles, are regularly seen as a double work from a single author. For that reason people today regularly refer to them together, as ‘Luke-Acts’. This two-volume work has enormous significance in the New Testament and within early Christianity as a whole. First, it is the largest sub-corpus of the New Testament. Luke-Acts makes up a massive 28 per cent of the New Testament. Paul’s letters comprise only 24 per cent; the Johannine corpus covers a mere 20 per cent—and that’s assuming the authenticity of the authorship of all the writings attributed to Paul and John, which is disputed. Second, Luke is both an evangelist (in the sense of ‘a gospel-writer’) and the first church historian. He has his own unique depiction of Jesus as the ‘Lord’s Messiah’ and he narrates the beginnings of the church with emphasis on the ministries of Peter and Paul. In fact, Luke’s two-volume work is something of a New Testament in miniature, telling the story of Jesus and the apostles in one continuous narrative.

If Luke-Acts has one central theme, it might be ‘salvation’—though that word has become such a Christian cliché that saying this may carry less weight than it ought. Luke-Acts is the story of the ‘Saviour’, the story of ‘those who are being saved’,6 and traces how salvation extends from Israel to the ends of the earth.

I (MFB) have often imagined Luke as a cross between the Anglo-Irish literary critic and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis and the Scottish archaeologist and biblical scholar William M. Ramsay. Luke writes in stylish prose, contends for faith in Jesus, defends Paul, and interprets Israel’s scriptures through a messianic grid, all while being immersed in the history and culture of the Roman empire. There are many questions we might wish to ask him. Exactly which sources did he use in his composition? (He tells us up front that he has compared things that other people have written.) How might he explain some of the apparent discrepancies between the Paul he describes in Acts and the Paul of the actual letters? What would he say about the continuing Jewish people who have not recognized Jesus as Messiah? Is he biased—either against them or for them? Or is that the wrong question? Are the sermons by the apostles in Acts a reliable account of their preaching, or did he just make them up? What might he say to those who have called him an ‘early Catholic’? Is there more to be said about women in the church? Was the early church really a proto-socialist movement? What was an average worship service actually like? And so on.

Tradition has identified the author of the third gospel and the Acts of the Apostles as Paul’s travelling companion Luke, a physician, who was with Paul on many of his missionary journeys and also during Paul’s imprisonments in Ephesus and Rome. Sources in the late second century (including Irenaeus, the Muratorian canon, and the anti-Marcionite prologues) ascribe authorship to this Luke.

A more promising line of enquiry can be found in Acts. During Paul’s second missionary journey, the author abruptly starts using the first-person plural, ‘us’ and ‘we’, starting when Paul and his friends are in Troas. This feature is then repeated, ending with Paul’s dramatic voyage and shipwreck. These sections are usually referred to as the ‘we’-passages. At first glance they appear to indicate that the author of Acts accompanied Paul during this phase of his missionary travels.19 This would correspond to Paul’s noting of Luke’s presence in some of his letters.

Most scholars today would insist that Luke-Acts is to be dated after AD 70. First, Luke is dependent upon Mark’s gospel, and Mark is normally dated sometime around AD 70. Second, a post-70 dating corresponds with the view that Luke 19 and 21 seem to regard the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple as a past event that has now ushered in the ‘times of the Gentiles’. Some suppose that a pre-70 date is possible, because Luke would have recorded the deaths of Paul and perhaps Peter if he knew about them. Without the result of Paul’s forthcoming trial before the emperor, Acts has appeared to many as truncated—though there could be many reasons for the author stopping where he does. The omission of the apostles’ martyrdoms is normally seen as meaning either that Luke’s audience already knew what fate had befallen Paul and Peter, or else—and more likely—that his purpose was not to write Paul’s biography but to show the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome, which by Acts 28 he had already done.

Lukan authorship of both works has largely been affirmed across church history and in modern scholarship, but treating these two books as a literary unity with a coherent theology is a relatively recent phenomenon, starting with Henry Cadbury’s monograph of 1927 which first introduced the phrase ‘Luke-Acts’ into scholarly parlance.

First, the evidence garnered from the prologues in Luke 1.1–4 and Acts 1.1–2 signifies that we have two parts of the one work. Second, the gospel of Luke is constructed specifically to prepare the way for Acts by omitting materials from Mark (like those about gentile inclusion) which are set out in Acts, while also foreshadowing several themes that will be developed later, such as the holy spirit, discipleship, the scope of salvation, and Jewish hostility to the gospel. Third, it is hard to go past the observation that there are deliberate parallels developed between Jesus, Peter, and Paul in terms of proclamation and miracles performed. Fourth, at the macro-level, Luke-Acts is united in its depiction of the single purpose of God. As Joel Green puts it:

Luke’s agenda is not to write the story of Jesus, followed by the story of the early church . . . Rather, his design is to write the story of the continuation and fulfillment of God’s project—a story that embraces both the work of Jesus and of the followers of Jesus after his ascension. From start to finish, Luke–Acts brings to the fore one narrative aim, the one aim of God.

Luke’s motives for writing his two-volume work were clearly complex. Among the many scholarly proposals are: to catechize gentile converts; to chronicle the church’s mission; to defend Paul at his trial; to attempt a synthesis of Jewish and Pauline Christianities, resulting in an ‘early Catholicism’; to account for the delay of Jesus’ return by periodizing history into ‘salvation history’; to commend Christians to pagan onlookers as a strange but peaceful sect while indicting the Jews as incendiary rabble-rousers; to legitimate Christians as God’s people; to respond to criticism of Paul from the Jewish Diaspora and from Jewish-Christian groups; to justify the division between Christianity and Judaism; to refute, albeit indirectly, the heresies of Docetism and Gnosticism; to exonerate Jesus while giving an account of the church as the ideal collegium; or, more simply and perhaps naively, to explain how Christianity spread from Jerusalem to Rome.

Luke’s motives for writing his two-volume work were clearly complex. Among the many scholarly proposals are: to catechize gentile converts; to chronicle the church’s mission; to defend Paul at his trial; to attempt a synthesis of Jewish and Pauline Christianities, resulting in an ‘early Catholicism’; to account for the delay of Jesus’ return by periodizing history into ‘salvation history’; to commend Christians to pagan onlookers as a strange but peaceful sect while indicting the Jews as incendiary rabble-rousers; to legitimate Christians as God’s people; to respond to criticism of Paul from the Jewish Diaspora and from Jewish-Christian groups; to justify the division between Christianity and Judaism; to refute, albeit indirectly, the heresies of Docetism and Gnosticism; to exonerate Jesus while giving an account of the church as the ideal collegium; or, more simply and perhaps naively, to explain how Christianity spread from Jerusalem to Rome.

It is worth remembering that Luke was writing in a context where the Jewish people had for a long time been put in a special category by the Romans. As far as the Romans were concerned, the Jews were anti-social atheists. But they were not persecuted by Rome simply for being Jews; they had been granted the status of a permitted religion. Luke’s massive two-volume work can be read as claiming, among many other things, that this status ought now to belong to the Christians. They are the ones who have inherited the Jewish promises of salvation; they are the ones to whom accrues the status proper to a religion of great antiquity. They, time and again, are shown to be in the right, to be innocent, even when magistrates have pronounced them guilty: from Jesus on the cross, to the apostles before the Sanhedrin, to Paul (in Philippi, then before Agrippa and Festus, or, later, on the voyage to Rome), the Christians are declared to be innocent of the charges of sedition or subversion that are laid against them.

Thus, while Luke-Acts has several utilities, didactic, polemical, and evangelistic, it is principally an apologetic work. Luke’s gospel extols and exonerates Jesus, while Acts presents Paul as a divinely chosen agent, a faithful herald of Jesus Christ, warmly received by Jewish Christian leaders like James, slandered and menaced by Jews, and treated unfairly by Roman officials. In Luke’s narration, the church is radical but harmless, the proper heirs of Judaism’s religious heritage. Luke engages in a form of ethnic reasoning that legitimates the multi-ethnic churches as God’s new-covenant people. In the end, Christians retain what pagans respected about Judaism (antiquity, homogeneity, monotheism, and ethics), while jettisoning what pagans found unattractive about Judaism (ethnically based social separation and strange customs). There is more to Acts than this, but not less.

1. Prologue of the Gospel According to Luke (1.1–4)
   Luke’s prologue stresses both the historical accuracy of his investigation and the theological content of his book, focused as it is on the ‘word’ that has been ‘fulfilled’ in the community to which both Luke (the author) and Theophilus (the dedicatee) belong (see ‘Portals and parallels: ancient prefaces’).
2. Precursor and the saviour (1.5—2.52)
   Luke’s infancy narrative concentrates on the intertwining destinies of John the Baptist and Jesus. He crafts his story around the hope for Israel’s restoration, the outpouring of eschatological joy that accompanies the appearance of both figures, and the identification of Jesus as the promised Davidic saviour. The stories of their births are joined to three hymns of praise in the form of Mary’s Magnificat, Zechariah’s Benedic tus, and Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis. The journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem comes about because of a census during the reign of Augustus, with Joseph probably returning to register his claim on ancestral lands. The holy family is presented as faithful and devout, illustrated by Jesus’ parents in their undertaking of the rites of purification after childbirth and presenting Jesus in the Temple. After returning to Nazareth, the family makes a regular pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover where Jesus’ greatness is foreshadowed by his teaching in the Temple as a child and astounding the audience. Luke rounds off Jesus’ infancy with the report that Jesus grew in wisdom and divine favour.

3. Preparation for Jesus’ ministry (3.1—4.13)
   Luke introduces John the Baptist as the prophetic forerunner to Jesus. He fulfils the words of Isaiah 40.3–5 by warning that ethnic heritage (descent from Abraham) will not save people from the coming judgment. Rather—in line with the warnings and promises in Deuteronomy and elsewhere—the people must repent, bear fruit, and ready themselves for the coming deliverer who will baptize with the holy spirit and fire (Lk. 3.1–20).

Jesus is then baptized by John; Luke adds the detail that the holy spirit descended on Jesus in ‘bodily form like a dove’ (3.21–22). Luke then offers a genealogy of Jesus which traces his ancestry back to Adam—and thence to God!—rather than simply to Abraham as Matthew does (3.21–38). There follows Luke’s version of the temptation story (4.1–13).

4. Jesus’ Galilean ministry (4.14—9.50)
   Luke recounts the Galilean phase of Jesus’ ministry with a general snapshot of Jesus as empowered by the spirit and teaching in various synagogues to wide acclaim (4.14–15).

Jesus enters his home village of Nazareth and delivers a sermon in the synagogue, quoting Isaiah 61.1–2 and declaring its immediate fulfilment. The passage from Isaiah 61 is unambiguously Davidic, and explicitly messianic: YHWH’s spirit has anointed the messenger to bring good tidings to the poor. Despite their initial enthusiasm, Jesus’ hearers become alarmed and then angry, probably because Jesus is speaking, not about Israel’s vengeance on its enemies as they might have expected, but about God’s welcome to outsiders. He comments on their smug indignation by quoting the proverb about a prophet being rejected in his own home town, and backs up his main point by citing the biblical stories of two foreigners, the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian.48 Luke 4.16–30 offers a programmatic description of Jesus’ ministry, introducing the various motifs of Luke-Acts: spirit, mission, christology, Israel’s rejection of Jesus, and God’s acceptance of outcasts.

Jesus’ ministry continues in Capernaum where he performs exorcisms and healings that demonstrate his power and authority (4.31–44). Thereafter Jesus gathers disciples, performs healings, arouses opposition over sabbath observance, and generally displays his remarkable authority (4.31—6.16).

This opens up the way for Luke’s second major presentation of Jesus’ teaching: a ‘sermon’ on a ‘level place’, corresponding in some ways to Matthew’s ‘sermon on the mount’ (6.17–49). This address, opening with balanced ‘blessings’ and ‘woes’ (again, like Deuteronomy), urges the way of love, of non-retaliation, of the transformed heart, and of taking Jesus’ words as the foundation for a new way of life. Jesus then returns to Capernaum where, impressed by the faith of a Roman centurion, he heals the man’s slave (7.1–10). This is followed by the raising of a dead man, a widow’s son in Nain (7.11–17), at which the crowds declare that God has ‘visited’ his people—an echo of Zechariah’s song in 1.68 and 1.78, and an anticipation of the fateful moment when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem (19.44), all of them echoing what the Israelites had said on hearing the news of the forthcoming exodus (Ex. 4.31). To the consternation of onlookers Jesus then praises a sinful woman who sneaks in to a dinner-party in a Pharisee’s house in order to anoint him (7.36–50). In between these stories is Luke’s account of John the Baptist’s delegation, questioning whether Jesus really is ‘the one who was to come’; Jesus describes his own activity in terms which echo Isaiah, then stressing that John really was the advance messenger for the ‘coming one’—in other words, that Jesus himself is indeed the one who was to come, which in Malachi 3.1 was of course Israel’s God himself (7.18–35). Finally, Jesus continues his itinerant travels, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom of God, accompanied by the Twelve and by female followers who financially supported him (8.1–3).

This brings us to Luke’s presentation of some of the parables found in Mark 4 and Matthew 13, starting with ‘the sower and the seed’. The kingdom of God is indeed arriving, but it is mysterious as well as powerful. It will encounter opposition, but will take root in receptive hearts (8.4–15). The kingdom is like light: it radiates, and does not retreat (8.16–18), even from opposition by family members (8.19–21).

Further indications of Jesus’ identity and power are seen in the stilling of the storm, echoing God’s power over the sea (8.22–25). He is confessed as the ‘son of the Most High God’ by a demoniac in the Decapolis (8.26–39); he raises a girl from the dead and heals a woman with constant bleeding (8.40–56). He grants his disciples the power and authority to duplicate his miraculous deeds (9.1–9), and feeds the five thousand (9.10–17). All this leads up to Peter’s confession that Jesus is ‘God’s Messiah’ (9.18–20), at which Jesus at once speaks of his forthcoming death and resurrection (9.21–27). This double message—Jesus’ secret messianic identity and his coming death—is dramatically emphasized in the transfiguration (9.28–36), pointing to Jesus’ coming ‘glory’ (9.32) but stressing that Jesus’ vocation was to ‘his departure’ (the Greek word is exodos) ‘which he would accomplish in Jerusalem’ (9.31): in other words, Jesus’ death will be the new, true, ‘exodus’, consequent upon Israel’s God ‘visiting’ his people at last. Immediately afterwards comes another challenge in the form of a demon-possessed boy whom the disciples couldn’t cure. Jesus, however, succeeds, and the crowds are ‘amazed at the greatness of God’ (9.37–45). Luke’s account of Jesus’ public work in Galilee then closes with a second prediction of Jesus’ death, followed absurdly by the disciples arguing about who would be the greatest in the kingdom. Jesus corrects them by stating that kingdom-greatness is defined by humility (9.46–50).

‘Jesus is making a bold claim that the salvation hoped for by generations of Israelites has arrived and he is the Spirit-anointed agent through whom all forms of oppression will be lifted.’

Diane Chen, Luke, 62.

5. Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem (9.51—19.48)
   Once Jesus’ intention to go to Jerusalem is disclosed, opposition to him increases and is intertwined with instruction to the disciples. The Samaritan rejection of him (9.52–56) is juxtaposed with a passage on the cost of discipleship (9.57–62). Jesus then sends out seventy-two disciples, warning them to expect a mixture of triumph and rejection (10.1–24). Faced with a challenge from a lawyer (‘Who is my neighbour?’) Jesus undermines the normal ethnic divisions by telling a parable with a Samaritan as the hero (10.25–37). In a similar reversal, he commends Mary of Bethany for choosing ‘what is better’ by listening to his teaching along with his other disciples rather than doing domestic work (10.38–42), and he instructs his followers that they should pray shamelessly and expect to receive good things from their father in heaven (11.1–13).

Jesus’ kingdom-work once again arouses controversy. Pharisees attribute his powerful deeds to the prince of demons, and demand more ‘proof ’ of his authority; Jesus responds by denouncing them and warning against hypocrisy and its consequences (11.14—12.12). He adds a further warning against storing up riches instead of being rich towards God (12.13–21), and extends that by urging his followers to trust in God’s provision, freeing them up for generosity (12.22–34). God’s future is coming, heavy with warning and promise, and it is vital to be ready, to interpret the present time and take appropriate action (12.35–59). The warnings are highlighted by current events, Pilate’s massacre of Galilean pilgrims and the collapse of the tower of Siloam, from which Jesus draws the conclusion that unless the people repent there will be far more yet who are cut down by Roman swords or crushed by falling stonework. God’s people are like a fig tree which, after several years of patient gardening, remains fruitless and can only be cut down (13.1–9). God’s kingdom, though, is making its way, with further healings to celebrate God’s new day (13.10–17), coming like a small seed producing a great plant or the yeast that transformed a whole loaf (13.18–21). The door to the kingdom, however, remains narrow, and it is the outsiders, those despised, who will have entry (13.22–30).

The Pharisees warn Jesus of Herod Antipas’s intention to seize him, but Jesus replies that nothing will deter him from his destiny in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is where all prophets die, and while Jesus longs to gather the city under his wings like a hen gathering her chicks to protect them, he knows that rejection awaits him when he gets there (13.31–35). This saying is remarkable both for Jesus’ obvious self-identification as a prophet (as more than a prophet, to be sure, but not less) and for the implicit understanding of Jesus’ forthcoming death. Judgment is coming upon Israel, and Jesus, like the hen protecting the chicks, is determined to take its full weight upon himself.

The confrontation with the Pharisees is amplified in the following chapters. Jesus challenges their sabbath-interpretation and their pride; he warns that the way to the kingdom is costly; and, in perhaps the best known of all parable-chapters, he speaks of a lost sheep, a lost coin, and the ‘prodigal son’ in order to explain that his own regular kingdom-celebrations with all the ‘wrong’ people are a clear reflection of the celebration which the angels are having when people repent (14.1—15.32).

The critique of the Pharisees continues with the parable of the shrewd manager, which challenges the disciples on how to prioritize their use of wealth for the sake of the kingdom. Instead of hoarding money and land, Jesus’ advice was to use it, as far as one could, to make friends. A crisis was coming, in which alternative homes would be needed. The Pharisees were attempting to divide their loyalties between God and money, but this cannot be done (16.1–15). The law and the prophets remain as pointers to God’s eventual purpose, with the prohibition on divorce as an example of their continuing validity (16.16–18). But those who will not hear the law and the prophets will not be convinced, according to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, even if someone were to rise from the dead (16.19–31). As with the ‘prodigal son’ (15.24, 32), ‘resurrection’ is happening already through Jesus’ work in welcoming penitent sinners, but the Pharisees are determined not to see it.

As Jesus journeys towards Jerusalem, the next two chapters collect together various scenarios and sayings which highlight the importance of faith, obedience, and trustful hope (17.1—18.30). Jesus adds a further warning of his coming death and resurrection, which once again the disciples fail to grasp (18.31–34). This brings us to Jericho, where a blind man, hailing him as ‘son of David’, is healed and commended for his faith (18.35–43). In Jericho itself Jesus invites himself to dinner with a chief tax-collector named Zacchaeus, who then epitomizes the repentant rich man, the exact opposite of the rich young ruler in 18.18–25: he gives half of his possessions to the poor, and promises to repay fourfold anyone he has wronged. His story summarizes the fact that ‘the son of man came to seek and to save the lost’ (19.1–10 NTE/KNT [adapted]).

As Jesus and his entourage approach Jerusalem itself, some of the party clearly think that God’s kingdom is about to appear—meaning, it seems, that Jesus will sweep all before him as the new Davidic king, free Israel from the Roman oppression, and set up a new regime of justice and peace—which might well involve, as the Maccabean revolt had involved, a cleansing of the Temple so that Israel’s God could return to dwell there in glory. In response to this expectation, Jesus tells the parable of the ten pounds, given by a nobleman to three servants to trade with until his return (19.11–27). Some have seen this as a way of saying that the kingdom was not going to appear immediately, since Jesus himself was going to go away like the nobleman, leaving his followers with tasks to do until his return. This is not how Luke understands it.50 The idea of a king going away and returning, with servants either obedient or disobedient in his absence, would be heard in Jesus’ day as a story about Israel’s God himself, leaving the Temple at the time of the exile but promising to return at last (as in Isaiah, Zechariah, and Malachi), with Israel represented by the servants who might, or might not, be trustworthy in his absence. This is Luke’s point: Jesus is embodying the return of YHWH to Zion. The disobedient servant in the parable corresponds directly to the impenitent Jerusalem which must now hear the word of judgment ‘because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God’ (19.44), another echo of 1.68; 7.16; and similar passages.51 The point is rammed home both by Jesus’ royal entry into the city (19.29–40), his stark warnings in 19.41–44, and his symbolic ‘cleansing’ of the Temple (19.45–48), clearly to be seen as an acted parable of the destruction he had just foretold. His action is a solemn prophetic warning, echoing those of Jeremiah and others, that if the Temple becomes a hide-out for brigands, literally or metaphorically, it will come under God’s judgment. The chief priests and scribes are instantly incensed and plan to kill him. Such a plot proves what Luke has been saying: this is how it ‘must’ be. This is how God’s plan of salvation must be accomplished.

‘For every Zacchaeus who is found, there are many scribes and Pharisees who do not even acknowledge their lostness. No rupture of the divine-human relationship is so irreparable that the call to repentance and offer of forgiveness are withdrawn, yet it takes both gracious divine initiative and humble human response for reconciliation to occur.’

Diane Chen, Luke, 252.

All the material above is quoted directly from “The New Testament In Its World,” by NT Wright and Mike Bird, SPCK publishing, 2019