Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Luke and Acts - Tyndale House ...

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The Gospel of Luke ALLISON A. TRITES
INTRODUCTION TO Luke THE GOSPEL OF LUKE, which has been described as “the most beautiful book in the world,” 1 is the first part of a two-volume work devoted to the life of Jesus and the opening years of the Christian church. In Luke’s Gospel, we are introduced to “everything Jesus began to do and teach” prior to his ascension (described in 24: 50-51; Acts 1:6-11). In the second volume, the book of Acts, Luke picks up the story of the years following the Ascension, showing the growth of the Christian movement and noting the stages of its expansion from Jerusalem to Rome. 2 These two books, when taken together, constitute about 27% of the New Testament. Thus, Luke’s perspective on the life of Jesus and the early Christian movement is vitally important if one is to gain a good grasp of the overall message of the New Testament. Our attention will be devoted primarily to Luke’s Gospel, although similarities and points of contact with the book of Acts will be noted where appropriate. AUTHOR Though Luke’s Gospel doesn’t name its author, most scholars today acknowledge Luke as the author of both the third Gospel and the book of Acts. Luke was certainly not the most prominent person in the early church, so it is difficult to believe that his name would be attached to the Gospel unless he were actually the author. There is a strong and persistent tradition in the early church that Luke wrote the third Gospel and the book of Acts. This view receives support from the Muratorian Fragment (which reflects the view of the church in Rome c. AD 170–190); from Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (c. 185); and later, from the influential church leaders Eusebius (d. 339) and Jerome (d. 420). This traditional view was the general consensus until the rise of modern critical biblical scholarship in the last two hundred years and indeed has continued to be widely held to the present day. Most scholars still attribute both the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts to Luke, the beloved physician and traveling companion of the apostle Paul (Harrington 1968:13). The “Gospel according to Luke” is the title given at the close of this Gospel in P75, the oldest surviving Greek manuscript that contains nearly all of Luke (dated about AD 175–225), but this tradition is not certain and has been attacked in modern times. However, two features from the internal evidence of Luke–Acts must be carefully noted. First, the author does not present himself as an eyewitness of most of the events in the two-volume work, particularly those related to the life and ministry of Jesus (1:1-2), relying instead on his own study of the traditions
Page 1 and 2: CORNERSTONE BIBLICAL COMMENTARY The
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS Contributors to Volume 12
Page 5 and 6: GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE The Corn
Page 7 and 8: ABBREVIATIONS x BHS Biblia Hebraica
Page 9 and 10: ABBREVIATIONS xii P49+P65 Eph 4-5;
Page 11: NUMBERING SYSTEM xiv k kappa = k l
Page 15 and 16: 5 LUKE Acts that support Luke’s a
Page 17 and 18: 7 LUKE However, a strong case can b
Page 19 and 20: 9 LUKE tion of the facts of the cas
Page 21 and 22: LUKE 1:1-4 32 Ommwern 1991. On the
Page 23 and 24: LUKE 1:5-7 34 COMMENTARY This is th
Page 25 and 26: LUKE 1:11-17 36 was a remarkable st

Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Luke and Acts - Tyndale House ...

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