Prof: Turn to the
beginning of the Gospel of Luke. We're going to go through a lot
of Luke and Acts today. Today I'll--I sort of lied on
the syllabus. You know how untrustworthy I am
by now. I said on the syllabus that
we're going to talk about Luke today and have a lecture on Acts
on Wednesday. That's not quite true because
you can't really talk about Luke without also talking about Acts
and you can't much talk about Acts without talking about Luke
because they're written by the same person.
Almost no scholar doubts that
they're written by the same person.
There are some scholars who
actually argue that you shouldn't read them as two
volumes of the same work. Some people even say they think
Acts was written a good bit after the Gospel of Luke,
but I'm going to treat them as basically two volumes of the
same work. Part of the lecture today will
focus on Acts, but a whole lot of the lecture
will also focus on-- I mean part of Luke but also on
Acts, and then next time,
also, though talking about Acts I'll go back and talk about
Luke. Did everyone get a handout of
the outline of Luke and Acts? If anybody doesn't--didn't get
a handout hold up your hands and we'll get the teaching fellows
to hand them around. Look at the beginning of Luke.
"Since many have
undertaken to set down an orderly account--
" now what will "orderly account"
mean? "--of the events that have
been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed onto
us by those who were from the beginning eyewitnesses and
servants of the word." When he tells you that he's
gotten some things from-- handed down,
traditions, accounts from eyewitnesses what's the first
thing that that tells you about this author?
He's not an eyewitness,
precisely. I, too, decided,
after investigating everything carefully from the very first,
to write an orderly account [there again]
for you, most excellent Theopholis,
so that you may know the truth concerning the things about
which you have been instructed. There are several things that
this prologue to the Gospel of Luke tells us.
One of the things of course,
as you just noticed, it's not written by someone who
was there. Some people will say that when
we get to Acts, at least part of Acts seems to
have been written by a person who was actually there,
because about halfway through the book of Acts he starts about
"we." We did this,
and we did this, rather than just Paul or other
people in the third person. I don't believe that's the case.
I believe he may have used some
kind of written document that was--
that used the term "we"
or sometimes an ancient text, I think sometimes a person
would just insert themselves into the narrative to give it a
more directness. So I'm not going to teach that
this author was an eyewitness of any of the stuff that he writes
about, but certainly he's not an
eyewitness of the stuff that happens in the Gospels,
as he also says. That's one thing that it tells
us. This also tells us that this is
a compilation of sources. Now already,
when you've been working on the synoptic problem and how to
write an exegesis paper, you have figured out that the
Gospel writers used other sources.
Some of them are written
sources, some of them are oral sources.
This guy actually admits it up
front, so it sounds like he's using both written sources and
oral sources. What's one of the written
sources we know he used? Mark, exactly,
and we think that there's another written source that we
call Q that he may have used. What does he mean by
"orderly account"? Does it mean that Mark kind of
wrote things in one order and this guy knows a better
chronological order, a historical order?
Is he talking about,
I'm writing to you an account that's more like what actually
happened when it happened? That's the way this has
sometimes been interpreted by people.
As we'll see today that's not
likely right because we can even tell when this author is
creatively shifting events around for his own purposes.
He's claiming to write an
orderly account, but if he is claiming that he's
giving us a more chronologically accurate account then he's
wrong, as we'll see.
Probably he doesn't even mean
that, probably this is no claim to historicity.
He's probably just saying that,
the way I tell this is better than the way that Mark or Q or
some other sources tell it. He's thought about the order in
which he puts it and he's thought about how he wants to
write his Gospel. This also tells you what
literary form this is. He knows he's writing something
that's like other literature in the ancient world.
The Gospel of Luke is not a
biography but it could have been thought of as a life.
In fact, the Greek word for
life is bios, where we get biology.
Bios could be the name
of genre of literature that told about some great man.
We separate it from biography
because it doesn't have the same kind of concerns that a modern
biography does. It seems like he knows that for
the Gospel of Luke anyway he's writing a bios of Jesus,
a life of Jesus. How do we know that?
Because he starts off later in
the Gospel with the same kind of stuff that you would see if you
read a book about Augustus the Emperor,
or Plato the great philosopher. That is, he starts off with
narratives about a miraculous birth.
Telling stories about a great
man and his miraculous birth was a not uncommon way to start a
life of someone. Then in Acts it also looks like
he knows he's writing something that would look something like a
history, and we have histories also from
the ancient world. This guy is--much more then
Mark, this author is much more self conscious in setting
himself forward and setting his work up as a literary work,
it has literary form. Who is Theophilus though?
Some people would think,
well maybe this is the guy's patron,
because often in the ancient world when you wrote a book you
started off with the dedication. The dedication,
you didn't say, dedicated to so and so,
what you said was Dear Theophilus, I am writing this
because you've asked me to set down my thoughts.
In other words you give a
fiction, it's a fiction that your
patron, maybe the person who supports you financially or
socially, or whatever that person has
asked you to set down an account of something.
You would start off,
Dear Mr. Smith you've asked me repeatedly when we had lunch
at Mori's, to describe my recent trip to
Africa, so I'm writing this down at
your request. That's a dedication to your
patron. Who is Theophilus, though?
Some people say maybe he's an
actual historic person, he calls him "most
excellent," the Greek word would seem to
imply that this guy is of fairly high class or that our author
wants us to believe that he's high class.
It's also, though,
possible, some people have said,
maybe he's a fiction because Theophilus comes from two Greek
words meaning theos which is God,
and philos beloved or friend.
Some people have said he's
making up a name that's sort of a fictive name for any God
loving or beloved by God reader. We really don't know,
so scholars are completely at sea as far is if Theophilus a
real person or is he not. Those are several things about
that we need to notice. He sets himself up as writing a
history by the ancient standards of history, but is it history by
our standards of history? The only way to figure that out
is to analyze the text itself, so that's what we're going to
do. On your outline you have--on
your handout you have an outline of Luke and an outline of Acts.
I think I didn't get one,
I gave mine away, can I have one?
Thank you, Michael.
Notice how it's divided up.
First you get the beginning of
the Gospel which actually starts off with the birth and childhood
narratives, and Jesus and John the Baptist,
in chapter 1, and then in chapter 3 you get
Jesus meeting-- Jesus relationship to John the
Baptist. All of this starts off partly
in Galilee but also partly in Judea.
The birth of John happens in
Judea, the birth of Jesus, according to Luke,
happens in Galilee [correction: Judea].
Luke also, though,
has Jesus family go from Judea to Galilee [correction:
from Galilee to Judea] for the birth.
Now that's different from
Matthew, Matthew just started off with the holy family living
in Bethlehem. Luke has the idea that this
family is living in Galilee and, because of a census,
the family is required to go to Bethlehem, which is in Judea.
The family is from Galilee,
but Luke really starts the action of his Gospel,
both for John the Baptist birth and for the birth of Jesus in
Judea. That's going to be important.
Then you have,
starting in 3:23, the beginning of Jesus'
Galilean ministry and that goes all the way to 9:50.
You have the beginning of the
ministry, there's an announcement in
3:23, this is Jesus began to-- in the fifteenth year of reign
of Tiberius, then you have a genealogy,
then you have the temptation story in chapter 4,
and then you have Jesus' inaugural address,
which we'll talk about both this time and next time.
In 4:14-30 is Jesus' first
sermon, it's very clear Luke wants to set this up as Jesus'
first sermon and we'll talk about why later.
Then you have 4:31 to 8:56,
the Galilean ministry proper. That is, this is Jesus going
around Galilee, healing people,
preaching, teaching. Now look in chapter 9,
though, then you get a transition period.
Most of chapter 9 is a
transition from the Galilee ministry to the other main part
of Jesus'-- of Luke's passage in the Gospel
which is Jesus' trip to Jerusalem.
9:1, "Then Jesus called
the twelve together and gave them power and authority over
demons and cured diseases." Notice now, he's not really
doing the Galilean ministry anymore, he's setting up other
things to happen. Look at--now look all the way
at the end of that chapter at 9:51.
This is a very big verse in
Luke although--but you'd never know it unless you had a scholar
kind of point it out to you; 9:51: "When the days drew
near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to
Jerusalem." Now what is that?
"Taken up,"
--does that refer to Jesus ascension into heaven?
Is it for his crucifixion
because you put somebody up on a cross?
Whatever it is,
but notice, we're not even toward the end of the Gospel
here, we're only about halfway
through--we're not even halfway through the Gospel.
We're at still very early in
the Gospel compared to what the rest of it is,
and yet, what Luke is doing is turning your attention as a
reader now to Jerusalem. "When the days drew near
for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to
Jerusalem, he sent messengers ahead of
him," and they go through the villages.
So all the rest of the next ten
chapters Jesus is on the road. "On the road again."
It's on the road to Jerusalem.
Now this big ten chapter on the
road trip, Jesus' road trip to Jerusalem, is not found in the
other Gospels, it's only in Luke.
What does--what is it there for?
Then in 19:45,
Jesus finally gets to Jerusalem, and from 19:45 until
the end of Luke you have Jesus in Jerusalem.
Then Acts starts out,
and as I've said before, the next volume Acts starts by
retelling a bit of what happened at the end of Luke.
You know you're in the second
volume of a two volume work here because he rehashes at the
beginning of Acts. First you get the time--from
one, Acts 1:1 to 9:43, I've designated as the time
before the Gentiles. The church is all a Jewish
community, they all live mainly in Judea
and Jerusalem, they worship together,
they even spend a lot of time in the temple,
in the Jewish temple. This is very much a Jewish
organization, the Gentiles haven't been
brought in, and then you have another
transition period just like when we had a transition period in
Chapter 9 of Luke, in Chapter 10 of Acts you have
a transition period from 10:1 to 12:25.
First you have the conversion
of the first Gentile convert, he's a Roman Centurion,
Cornelius, and you have Peter defending his conversion of
Cornelius, because this is controversial
to bring someone into the church without them being circumcised
at this point, according to Luke's narrative.
Then you have 11:19-30,
look at that, Acts 11:19-30:
Now those who were scattered, because of the persecution that
took place over Stephen, traveled as far as Phoenicia,
Cyprus, and Antioch. And they spoke the word to no
one but Jews. But among them were some men
from Cyprus and Cyrene who on coming to Antioch spoke to the
Hellenists also, proclaiming the Lord Jesus.
Now you may have a footnote
after the word "Hellenists,"
does anybody have a food note after the word Hellenist there
in your-- what does your footnote say?
Student:
> Prof: Greeks,
so some texts have "Hellenists"
which would be sort of Greek speaking Jews and other
manuscripts have just the word "Greeks."
In fact, you can even take this
term "Hellenist" to be just Greeks themselves.
At least there's some idea that
these people were speaking not just too Greek--speaking to
Greek Jews but also to Greeks. That introduces,
then, this period of the Gentiles.
You have the introduction to a
predominantly Gentile church in Antioch,
and that's what you get from 11:19-30,
and then you get some persecution in Jerusalem in
Chapter 12, and then you get a shift of
attention from Jerusalem to the Gentiles in 12:25:
But the word of God continued to advance and gain adherence.
Then after completing their
mission, Barnabus and Saul returned to Jerusalem and
brought with them John, whose other name was Mark.
I actually think that's
supposed to be "returned from Jerusalem to Antioch."
There's again some manuscript
problems because in 13:1 you have,
"Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and
teachers." From chapter 13 to the rest of
Acts, the attention is not in Jerusalem.
They go back to Jerusalem,
Paul goes back to Jerusalem a few times,
and Paul is eventually arrested in Jerusalem and there is a
trial, and there's all kinds of
interesting, exciting riots and things that
happen in Jerusalem. But the rest of Acts the
attention is away from Jerusalem and to the rest of the world,
the rest of--all the way there. Then you have from 13:1 you
have the period called "after the Gentiles,"
this is after Gentiles have been brought into the church and
then the focus is going to be on the Gentile church for the rest
of Acts. You get, for example,
the first missionary journey of Paul, then you have the
Jerusalem conference in chapter 15, which we've talked about
already. Then you have the second
missionary journey of Paul, and then the third missionary
journey of Paul, and then you have Paul in
Jerusalem and then arrested and taken to Rome,
and then you have Paul in Rome and ending the whole book,
chapter 28:17-31. Notice what's going on here.
Luke constructs his two-volume
work like this. It starts off in Judea,
it keeps coming to Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
it focuses you on Jerusalem, through all the Gospel of Luke,
and then the last week of Jesus' life in Jerusalem where
he's crucified, he's resurrected.
Where did Jesus appear to his
disciples after his resurrection according to Matthew?
Galilee, exactly.
Did Jesus appear to any of his
disciples in Jerusalem according to Matthew?
No.
All the appearances of
Jesus--the resurrected Jesus in Matthew take place in Galilee
not Jerusalem. Just the opposite of that,
at the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts,
Jesus tells his disciples after he's risen,
several of them see him, and he says,
"Stay in Jerusalem, don't go out of Jerusalem or
Judea until the Holy Spirit comes."
And it says,
they stayed in Jerusalem the whole--he--Jesus appeared to his
disciples for a stated period of time, according to Acts;
I think its forty days. Is that right?
Something like that.
After that period of time Jesus
no longer appeared to his disciples,
according to Acts, he ascended into heaven,
but that whole time they stayed in Judea,
so all the appearances of the resurrected Jesus,
according to Luke, take place in Jerusalem.
That's interesting see that he
starts off in Galilee, he ends up in Jerusalem,
and then Acts starts off again in Jerusalem and then it goes
out and-- to part of the world--it
expands its vision to Antioch, to Asia Minor,
to Greece, to Europe, and finally Paul ends up in
Rome at the end. There's a very schematic
geographical system to the way Luke has organized this two
volume work, and that's even reflected in
the layout of the outline of the book,
which is why I wanted to give you that very simple outline.
Now let's go back and see how
this is reflected in other parts.
Look at Jesus' inaugural speech
as put forward by Luke in chapter 4 of Luke.
Now we're going to spend a lot
of time talking about this because you're going to imitate
me when you write your exegesis papers.
You're going to pay really good
attention to all the details of the pericope.
You've learned now that
pericope is just a fancy Greek word for section,
it's the Greek form of section, both of them mean something cut
out, and so pericope is what we
biblical scholars often call a little piece of text that you do
an exegesis of. You want to concentrate on the
details of your pericope to try to find out what the message is.
So that's what we're going to
do with this passage 4:16-30. Now it would help if you also
compared this-- we're not going to do that so
much right now-- with Mark 6:1-6 because Luke is
getting this scene from Mark. What's going to be interesting
to us is, what does Luke change about the scene he gets from
Mark? What does he add to the scene
he gets from Mark? You could also compare it with
Matthew 13:53-58 because that's where Matthew has it.
If you were to compare Mark and
Matthew, what you would see is Matthew pretty much just follows
Mark here. He takes this story about where
he finds it in the story of Mark, and he puts it in his
story at chronologically about the same place.
And he doesn't have Jesus give
a long speech, he just has him appear there
and that sort of thing. Now notice what Luke does.
Luke takes this text and he
does a lot more with it, so we're going to read it and
talk about that. "When he came to Nazareth,
where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the
Sabbath day, as was his custom."
Now if you were a good exegete
you would notice, "as was his custom"--
you might need to look up in a concordance to see if Luke likes
that phrase, because he does.
He stood up and read,
and the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah was given to him.
He unrolled the scroll and
found the place where it is written,
"The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed
me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the
Lord's favor." And he rolled up the scroll,
gave it back to the attendant and sat down.
The eyes of all in the
synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them,
"Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your
hearing." All spoke well of him and were
amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
They said, "Is not this
Joseph's son?" He said to them,
"Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb,
'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say,
'Do here also in your hometown the things we have heard you did
in Capernaum.'" That's interesting,
because he hasn't really got to Capernaum yet in Luke's Gospel.
And he said,
"Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the
prophet's hometown. But the truth is,
there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah,
when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months,
and there was a severe famine over all the land.
Yet Elijah was sent to none of
them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.
There were also many lepers in
Israel in the time of prophet Elisha, and none of them was
cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."
When they heard this--
Now notice they started out the scene, they're all happy,
he's the hometown boy, he's come home,
they are amazed at his teaching, the mood changes.
Why does the mood change right
there? When they heard this,
all in the synagogue were filled with rage.
They got up,
drove him out of town, and led him to the brow of the
hill on which their town was built so that they might hurl
him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst
of them and went on his way. He went down to Capernaum,
a city of Galilee, and was teaching them on the
Sabbath. Notice, this is when he moves
to Capernaum from Nazareth in Luke's Gospel.
In all the synoptic Gospels,
Jesus makes Capernaum his home base in Galilee,
not his hometown of Nazareth. According to Mark and Matthew
it's later in their Gospels that Jesus is rejected in Nazareth
and makes his-- then moves and makes his home
in Capernaum. Notice that Luke knows this,
Luke is giving us a clue that he knows he's taking this
passage out of its context from where he found it because the
people say, "Do for us what you did in
Capernaum." Implying that they think of
Capernaum as his home base, well that's because by that
time in Mark and Matthew, it was his home base,
by the time he gives this speech in Nazareth.
Luke takes this passage that he
finds later in Mark and he moves it and plops it down at the
beginning of Jesus' Galilean ministry.
He wants this speech to be
Jesus' first speech, this sermon,
Jesus' first sermon. Maybe that means that if we
analyze the content of the sermon we can try to figure out,
why did Luke change the setting of the story to be at the
beginning of the ministry and then also why did he make it so
much bigger? It occupies only a few little
verses in Mark, and Luke expands it into this
whole speech and makes it this big conflict,
so let's look at several different things.
First, I said--he says,
"as was his custom." As we'll talk about next week,
one of the main themes of the Gospel of Luke and Acts is that
good Jewish boys do good Jewish things.
They go to synagogue,
they know their scripture, they're circumcised,
they keep kosher, they worship in the temple.
So Jesus also is depicted by
Luke as a good Jewish boy. We'll see next time,
and I'm going to talk about some of these themes a bit more
fully in both Luke and Acts. And I'll talk about,
for example, why is it only in Luke that he
tells us that Jesus' parents, after he was born,
circumcised him on the eighth day like they were supposed to,
after a month they take him to the temple for the presentation.
All of this,
and Luke even tells us, this is to fulfill the
scripture and to fulfill the law, and he's referring back to
Leviticus. So Jesus' mother and father are
good Jewish parents, they do exactly what the law
tells them to do, and Jesus is a good Jewish boy,
so another clue here, "as was his custom,"
this is like Jesus goes to temple every Saturday.
Look also, "the spirit of
the Lord," he says in verse 18,
he cites the text, "The spirit of the Lord is
upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the
poor." Again, if you took a
concordance and searched all the times in Luke and Acts,
when the spirit either called the Holy Spirit or sometimes
just the spirit or the spirit of God occurs,
you'll find this is one of Luke's favorite themes.
The Holy Spirit,
in fact, is the main actor in the book of Acts.
Jesus is the main actor in the
Gospel of Luke, Jesus leaves the scene,
he kind of talks from offstage every once in a while--
talk to Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?
But Jesus is kind of saying
that from offstage. The real actor in the book of
Luke is the Holy Spirit. --So, again,
at the beginning of this lecture, this sermon,
Jesus talks about the spirit. Notice also the--"sent me
to bring good news to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free."
Any of you know the Magnificat?
The song that's sung by Mary
when she's told by the angel that she is pregnant?
It's a very important
liturgical piece; I'll talk about it again next
time in a little bit more depth. If you go to a Catholic church
or an Episcopalian church, chances are you'll say the
Magnificat, "My soul blesses the
Lord." It's called the Magnificat
because "my soul magnifies the Lord."
In the Latin the first word of
the song that Mary says is magnificat,
that is "magnifies," "my soul magnifies the
Lord." That song that Mary says has
all this stuff about God will--that her son will lift up
the poor and oppressed, God will help the poor;
he will send the rich away empty.
Over and over again that song
by Mary, this idea that God's going to
perform this great reversal of rich and poor,
the poor will be helped and made rich,
the rich will be made poor, the high will be sent down low,
the low will be raised up high, so we've already seen this
theme already in the Gospel of Luke,
and now it's right here in Jesus' first sermon.
That's another theme.
Look at verse 19,
"To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
If you use an older
translation, like the King James Version,
anybody else have--what do you have for 19,
"To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,"
anybody have a different translation?
Nope--yes sir?
Student:
> Prof: "The year
acceptable to the Lord." A lot of translations--the
older translations will say, "To proclaim the
acceptable year of the Lord."
That's--as we'll see--that's
another theme of Luke. He's quoting it from scripture
but then he incorporates it. For example,
there will be a time later where we'll see that at one
point Jesus condemns Jerusalem because "they did not
recognize the time of their visitation."
Jesus' being there on earth
represents this special time. It's a focus of history on one
point of time. Again, Jesus in his first
sermon quotes this "acceptable year of the
Lord" as being his year; it's the Jesus year in Judea.
Then another theme that you see
here is what happens to Jesus. First Jesus sets himself up as
a prophet, right, by quoting--by citing
stories about Elijah, who helped the woman--the
widow's son, and Elisha, so Elijah and
Elisha are important prophets for Luke and Jesus portrays as
being like that, so that's why he says:
No prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown.
But the truth is there were
many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah when the heaven
was shut up for three years and six months,
there was severe famine, yet Elijah was not sent to
them. Elijah wasn't sent to the Jews,
to any Jewish widows didn't--weren't there Jewish
widows who needed a little help too, God?
Well yeah, but he wasn't sent
to the Jewish widows he was sent to a non-Jewish widow,
a woman who lived in Sidon. "There were many lepers in
Israel in the time of prophet Elisha."
Elisha was the junior prophet
to Elijah, Elijah anointed Elisha--not
anoint him, he gave him his mantel and so
Elisha, after Elijah went up in the
fiery chariot, the flying fiery chariot you've
heard the story, "swing low swing chariot,
coming for to take me home."
Elijah doesn't die at the end
of his life he's swooped up in a fiery chariot into heaven and,
right before that, he gives his mantel to his
disciple Elisha and then Elisha is the prophet from there.
Elisha also,
weren't there many Jewish lepers Elisha?
Couldn't you take a nice Jewish
leper to heal Elisha? No Jesus says,
he wasn't sent to them he was sent to Naaman the Syrian.
So I said, when they heard
this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage,
and I said, why this? What were they so upset with?
Now you tell me,
why does he say they were filled with rage right then?
What, just say it, shout it out.
You know.
Are there are no Jewish lepers,
Elisha? Are there no Jewish widows,
Elijah? Why are they mad?
Student: He's saying
he's not there for them. Prof: Yeah,
Jesus is saying, I'm not here for you,
or at least he's saying Elijah and Elisha were sent to
Gentiles, not to Jews.
Notice what Luke has done here.
He's set up Jesus as a prophet
like Elijah and Elisha, and he had Jesus himself
predict that the message will go out to the Gentiles.
It hasn't gone out yet to
Gentiles, in the Gospel of Luke Jesus pretty much sticks with
the Jews. In fact, Peter has to have a
revelation in Acts before he will go preach to a Gentile,
as we'll see next time. The Gentiles are not receiving
the Gospel yet but Jesus is predicting that they will,
so that's another theme here that Luke is playing on.
Notice the other thing,
what happens when Jesus does this?
He's rejected by his own people.
So another theme of Luke and
Acts is true prophets get rejected by their own people.
A prophet in his own country is
not accepted. Jesus is a great Prophet like
Elijah and Elisha, he's not accepted in his own
country, he's rejected,
and the Gentile mission happens after the rejection by the Jews.
That's going to be a theme that
we'll see over and over in Acts; not so much in the Gospel of
Luke. Luke is foreshadowing the book
of Acts in this chapter with Jesus' sermon because Jesus
himself doesn't go preach to Gentiles.
You have to wait until Acts to
get that. But Luke is foreshadowing the
rejection of the Gospel by Jews and the taking of the Gospel to
the Gentiles that you'll then see in Acts,
and he foreshadows it all right here in this first sermon by
Jesus. Then the last theme that you
have here is them trying to kill Jesus for what he says,
which that's going to foreshadow the theme all the way
through that the Gospel-- wherever the Gospel goes you
get persecution. When we get to Acts you'll see
this in a way that just drums it into your head:
Paul goes to a town, he goes first to the synagogue
in the town, he preaches to the Jews in the
synagogue, they get all mad,
some of them usually accept, a few of them will accept,
we'll see that as a theme in Acts also,
but the majority of them don't. They reject Paul,
they throw him out, they try to stone him,
or they try to persecute him, or they try to throw him out
town and then Paul turns and preaches the same message to the
Gentiles, and they accept,
and they form a church. He goes to the next town,
he does this in Thessalonica, he does it in Philippi,
he does it in Corinth, he tries it in Athens but he's
not successful because nobody pays any attention to him in
Athens. That's a university town after
all, they know better, right?
This theme of the prophets
being rejected and it's the rejection of the message by the
Jews that causes the message then to be taken to the
Gentiles. That will play out over and
over again, and here again you get it here.
So Luke has transposed the
story about Jesus preaching in Nazareth from where he finds it
in Mark, which is later in Jesus'
ministry, and he puts it at the beginning of Jesus' ministry,
and he packs it up with all this other stuff.
That should be a very good clue
to you if you're comparing Luke with Mark;
you just know this must be important;
this must be a way where we really see what this author is
about. Notice: is Luke concerned about
when the event in Nazareth actually historically happened?
No, he's even--you can tell
he's even getting it out of his source from one spot and
consciously transferring it to another spot,
which tells us one thing, is that to him it's not that
important chronologically when this story actually happened.
What's important to him is
using the story to emphasize the theological message that he
wants to emphasize. Now let's look at another place
where Luke does this. You have to turn to Acts for
this though, look at Acts 11. Any questions about that before
I go on? No questions?
I love good docile students,
always happy with everything I say.
Look at Chapter 11:19.
Now I already read this earlier
and then I read it actually in another lecture,
but it's very important to see what Luke is doing.
Now those who were scattered,
because of the persecution that took place over Stephen,
traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus,
and Antioch, and they spoke the word to no
one except Jews. But among them were some men of
Cyrus and Cyrene who, on coming to Antioch spoke to
the Hellenists also, proclaiming the Lord Jesus.
The hand of the Lord was with
them, and a great number became believers and turned to the
Lord. News of this came to the ears
of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to
Antioch. When he came and saw the grace
of God, he rejoiced,
and he exhorted them all to remain faithful in the Lord with
steadfast devotion for he was a good man,
full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.
And a great many ...
Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to
look for Saul, and when he found,
him he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for an entire
year they met with the church and taught a great many people,
and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called
Christians. Isn't that a nice little
encapsulation? In that little paragraph Luke,
the author, who we still tend to call these
Gospel writers by these names even though we don't believe
historically that this was the historical Luke,
but I'll still keep calling him Luke because it's easier then
saying "the author" each time.
Luke takes a little paragraph
in which he shifts your focus here from the whole Jerusalem,
Judea, Jewish oriented form of the movement,
and now he goes to Antioch and now you get this Greek kind of
movement, it's predominantly in a Greek
speaking city, Antioch.
This is one of the reasons that
I think that that word that my translation translates,
"Hellenist," they spoke to Hellenists in
verse 20; I think that's not correct.
I think that either in the
original Greek, and some manuscripts have this,
or you just would translate this word,
it must be that they--it's saying that they spoke to
Greeks, that is ethnic Greeks.
Why do I think this is a
reference to ethnic Greeks and not just Greek speaking Jews?
Anybody have an idea?
Because this isn't the first
time that people--that followers of Jesus have spoken to Greek
speaking Jews. We already have in
Jerusalem--he has already told us in the earlier part of Acts
that in Jerusalem there were already Greek speaking Jews part
of the community. In fact it says that,
Stephen himself would have talked with these Greek speaking
Jews. So we already have before we
get to chapter 11, the idea that the Gospel of
Jesus has been taken both to Aramaic speaking Jews and Greek
speaking Jews because it's already there in Jerusalem.
He's talking about something
new happening here, this is people not just
speaking to Aramaic speaking Jews or to Greek speaking Jews,
they're actually speaking to non-Jews.
This is the first time you get
this indication in the book of Acts,
that the movement has now spread out from Jerusalem,
and it's also being spread to Greeks,
ethnic Greeks. And I think by
"Greeks" he just means Gentiles,
not just Greeks ethnically but anybody who wasn't a Jew is what
he mainly means here. What's interesting is that this
is kind of out of place. One of the things I'm arguing
is that unlike this translation I just read,
which might lead you to believe that the author is telling us
this is the first time they spoke to Greek speaking Jews,
I think that the original text must have meant that,
this is the first time that these people are speaking to
actual non-Jews. Now it's not the first time,
though, that people in Acts have spoken to non-Jews,
right? When's the first time,
according to Acts, that people actually speak to
non-Jews and preach the Gospel to non-Jews,
and non-Jews become members of the church?
When?
Have you read Acts yet?
Cornelius, the centurion,
the Roman centurion. Remember I said,
Peter has to have a whole series of revelations on top of
the roof before he's convinced to finally go preach to a
Gentile and convert him and that takes place in Acts 10.
Now keep your finger on Acts
11:19 and flip over to Acts 8:1-4.
I think I may have mentioned
this already but let's look at it a bit closer now.
Acts 8:1-4, this takes place
right after the stoning of Stephen.
Hmmm.
Stephen, is that a good Hebrew
or Aramaic name? No, does anybody know where the
word--where the name Stephen comes from?
Raise your hand, yes sir?
Student: Crown.
Prof: Crown,
are you a Stephen? No, you just know.
Yes, it comes from the word
stephanos in Greek, which means "crown."
Notice already there are Greek
speaking Jews who have Greeks names in the church,
and Stephen's one of them. In fact, the seven deacons who
are appointed that we could have read about just right before
this in Acts, those are appointed precisely
in order, according to Acts,
to be able to minister to the Greek speakers,
because some Greek speaking widows were being neglected in
the distribution of food and funds,
according to the text. The seven deacons are appointed.
Those seven deacons some of
them have--they have Greek names, so there are Greek
speaking Jews in Jerusalem already.
So right after the stoning of
Stephen you have this, chapter 8:
And Saul approved of their killing him.
That day a severe persecution
began against the church in Jerusalem,
and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the
countryside of Judea and Samaria.
Devout men buried Stephen and
made loud lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the
church by entering house after house, dragging off both men and
women, he committed them to prison.
Now those who were scattered,
after the stoning of Stephen, went from place to place
proclaiming the word. Phillip, who was one of those
deacons along with Stephen, Phillip, that's a good Greek
name right? At least it's a Macedonian
name, named after the king of Macedon.
"Phillip went down to the
city of Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them."
Then you get Phillip going to
Samaria and so forth and you'll have other things happening.
Now keep your finger--you had
your finger there, notice that he's saying,
"Now those who were scattered went from place to
place proclaiming the word."
Flip over without thinking
anything, don't think anything,
Acts 11:19, "Now those who were scattered because of the
persecutions that took place over Stephen traveled as far
as." You see Luke seems to have had
a source, maybe a written source,
that had this message about the stoning of Stephen,
the persecution that arose in Jerusalem,
and then the dispersal of Greek speaking followers of Jesus,
and they don't just go to Samaria as Phillip did,
it actually says, "Then, they went to Phoenicia,
Cyprus, Antioch ... speaking to no one but
Jews," but then it has this message to the Greeks and the
Gentiles. In other word,
from 8:4 it must have originally joined on to what
goes with 11:19 because you can just see this narrative stops,
and then it picks up again in 11:19.
Luke took what was a text or a
source for him that had this story that this kind of thing in
order. Stephen preaches the Gospel to
the Jews, they get mad at him, they persecute him and stone
him. The persecution of Stephen
leads to more persecution of the church in Jerusalem,
the rejection of the Gospel by the Jews,
the disciples are scattered and they go and who do they preach
too? The Gentiles.
Haven't we seen this pattern
before? We all saw it in the very first
sermon of Jesus, right?
What Luke has done is he's
split this thing which showed that pattern,
and in it he put all the stuff that's in chapters 8,
9, and 10 and the first part of 11 in between there.
Now you tell me,
why did Luke split a narrative and put this material in between
those two sentences? What's in that material between
8,9, 10, and 11 that was--that Luke wanted to insert there?
What?
Pardon?
Student:
> Prof: Peter preaching to
Cornelius, the Gentile. What Luke is doing is he has a
source that basically--who were the first people to preach to
Gentiles? They're anonymous,
according to his source; we don't know who they are.
Just some people,
some followers of Jesus, Greek speaking followers of
Jesus who were-- left Jerusalem and Judea,
they traveled around different parts,
they went to the Eastern Mediterranean,
and as they went they took the Gospel with them,
and along the way they even spoke not only to Greek speaking
Jews but they even spoke to Gentiles,
that's what his source says. Luke splits that and--he
doesn't want to do that. First he wants to say,
well Phillip went to Samaria and he preached to Samaria,
so you have Samaria there. Then you have this whole thing
with Peter. And you know the story about
Peter, he's up on the rooftop praying
and this sheet with all these unclean animals,
with alligators and snakes, and stuff that was somehow some
Sunday school material I had, had a sheet with alligators and
snakes and stuff coming down for Peter.
It doesn't tell us in the text
that there were alligators and snakes, it just part of my
Sunday school memory. There are unclean animals,
and he's commanded to kill them and eat them,
and he says, I'm a good Jew,
I don't eat that, that's not kosher,
and a voice from heaven says, what God has cleansed don't you
declare unclean. The vision happens three times.
Why?
Because Peter does not want to
take the message to Gentiles. Is your hand up?
Nope okay.
So finally Peter is forced to
take the message to Gentiles, by God, by revelation,
and then you have the story of the baptism of Cornelius and his
house, the first Gentile converts.
And then Peter goes back to
Jerusalem and all the people-- the Jews in Jerusalem say,
why did you do that, you're not supposed to bring in
uncircumcised people in the church.
And Peter has to defend the
whole thing and then finally Peter wins the argument,
and even James, the conservative head of the
church, turns to them and says,
okay well God must have been including the Gentiles also.
Luke wants Peter to be the
first person to take the message to Gentiles, and he wants Peter
to do so only after being compelled by God to do so.
Luke knows that the first
people who took the message to Gentiles were probably just
anonymous followers of Jesus, because in the source it's
there. He splits that source and he
puts all this stuff about Peter there because he wants Peter to
be the first and only then the others.
In other words,
what you get there is a key to what is the entire outline of
Acts. Look back at Acts 1:8.
Acts 1:8 gives you,
in a sense, the outline of Acts.
This is Jesus about to ascend
into heaven, talking to his disciples, right outside
Jerusalem in the suburbs of Jerusalem.
"But you will receive
power when the Holy Spirit,"
again there's that Holy Spirit important for Luke,
"has come upon you. You will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem and all Judea, and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth."
That's exactly the way he will
construct the book of Acts. Jerusalem--Judea is the country
of Jerusalem; Samaria is actually another
part here, but you have this idea that the message is going
out in concentric circles. That's why Phillip went--he has
Phillip going to Samaria right before Peter goes to the
Gentiles with--Cornelius in chapter 10.
In chapter 8,
Phillip goes to Samaria and then chapter 10 Peter goes--
and then so Gentiles--then you have the Gentiles,
and you have Rome as where the book ends up.
Rome sort of representing
symbolically the very ultimate ends of the earth.
This is the whole world so
why--by looking at the details we can tell that the Luke is not
telling us what happened by chronological or historical
accuracy. He puts it in an order--even in
the order he puts it, even the outline on his books
because he wants to have this message of the Gospel centering
on Jerusalem, that's why the whole first part
of Luke centers in-- that's why he has ten full
chapters on the journey to Jerusalem.
He wants to focus your
attention on Jerusalem--through the book, the Gospel.
But then what he does is once
you're in Jerusalem he focuses your attention on the fact that
the Gospel goes beyond Jerusalem.
One last thing,
look at Luke 21:20-27. We'll unpack a lot of this much
more--next time when we talk about both Luke and Acts as far
as what are the major thematic issues in these two.
I'll start in again next time
with this, or I'll reiterate this, but just to get you
thinking look at Luke 21. Luke gets this from Mark 13.
Do you remember when we talked
about how could we tell when Mark was written because it has
this abomination of desolation being set up in the temple,
which probably refers to--recalls this idea of the
profanation of the temple by Antiochus IV Epiphanes,
but Mark believed it was going to happen in the future,
probably by the Romans. Right after that happens then
the Messiah comes, you have all these terrible
things happen and the Messiah comes.
Luke is using Mark as his
source, Mark 13, but notice how Luke changes it.
Verse 20, "When you see
Jerusalem surrounded by armies,"
that's not in Mark. When you see Jerusalem
surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation
has come near. Then those in Judea must flee
to the mountains, those inside the city must
flee, for these are the days of vengeance--
I'm going quickly through this, you'll have to read over it
yourself. Look at verse 24,
"They will fall by the edge of the sword,"
so the Jews will be defeated, he says.
Not only do you have Jerusalem
surrounded by the Roman army, but you have them defeated,
fall by the sword. "They will be taken away
as captives among all nations."
Yes, the Jews were taken as
slaves to Rome, and then they were sold off and
dispersed throughout the nations as slaves.
"And Jerusalem will be
trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles
are fulfilled." None of that was in Luke's
source of Mark. This tells us that Luke is
writing after the destruction of Jerusalem because he tells you
it happens. It even says that there's going
to be a time of the Gentile domination of Jerusalem.
If you read on it's only after
that that you have the Messiah coming on the clouds then as--he
picks up again the story. Notice all over Luke and Acts,
we can tell by looking at his sources, his editing procedure.
Luke was written sometime after
the destruction of Jerusalem, and the time he's telling this
story is here. What's that time?
"the time of the
Gentiles." Any questions?
See you next time.
