The Gospel of Luke

The Gospel of Luke: Explorations in Christian Scripture

Copyright © 2022 by Ed Gallagher

Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gallagher, Ed (Edmon Louis), 1979-

The Gospel of Luke: explorations in Christian Scripture / Ed Gallagher

Cypress Bible Study series

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-956811-08-7 pbk 978-1-956811-09-4 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021923358

1. Bible. Luke-Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Author. II. Title. III. Series.

226.406-dc20

Cover design by Brad McKinnon and Brittany Vander Maas.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For more information:

Heritage Christian University Press

PO Box HCU

3625 Helton Drive

Florence, AL 35630

www.hcu.edu/publications

FOR MIRIAM,

WITH MUCH LOVE AND ADMIRATION

CONTENTS

Preface

Bible Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Good News of Great Joy

2. John the Baptist

3. The Genealogy of Jesus

4. Launching a Ministry

5. In the Home of a Pharisee

6. The Good Samaritan

7. The Prodigal Son

8. Two Parables about Money

9. Two Tax Collectors

10. The Future According to Jesus

11. The Final Hours of Jesus

12. The Death of Jesus

13. All Things New

Appendix A: Discussion Questions

Appendix B: Discussion Guide

Appendix C: Color-Coded Synposis

Glossary

Bibliography

Subject Index

Ancient Literature Index

Scripture Index

Credits

Also by Ed Gallagher

HCU Press/Cypress Publications

PREFACE

The Third Gospel has never been the most popular. In the early church and probably still today, that award goes to Matthew and John, with Luke coming in at number three. (Sorry, Mark!) Luke was probably also the third Gospel written. But it does earn the top prize in the category of number of words: the Third Gospel is the longest, containing the most material about Jesus. Moreover, Luke’s Gospel contains some of the favorite passages for many Christians, including probably the two most popular parables: the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. It’s also from Luke’s Gospel that we have our only canonical story about Jesus as an adolescent, and Luke’s is the only Gospel that narrates the Ascension. If you want to find what Jesus said about prayer, your best bet is to turn to Luke. If you want to get people to donate to a cause, turn to Luke, which has more teaching about money than any other Gospel. If you want to think about how Jesus reached out to sinners, you need to study Luke. I don’t know whether the book you are holding will make Luke’s Gospel your favorite biography of Jesus, but I hope this book will help you appreciate the Third Gospel’s place in our Bibles more than you have before.

This series of studies on Luke was written for Bible class teachers. As with my previous volumes in the Cypress Bible Study Series, I wrote the following chapters for a specific set of Bible class teachers: the ones covering the adult classes at Sherrod Avenue Church of Christ (Florence, AL). These lessons were written during the winter of 2019/20. I want to thank Greg Sharp, Paul Newton, Rick Hamm, and Dusty Wear for teaching this material in its first incarnation.

When I quote the Bible in this book, I usually use the NRSV, sometimes the KJV or other translations. But whenever I include a quotation of the Old Testament (in whatever translation), you’ll see the word YHWH instead of the LORD (which is used in every major English translation). I’ve made this substitution mostly to remind you that when you see the LORD in your Bibles, that phrase corresponds to a name in the Hebrew Bible, and that name is spelled with the consonants YHWH, probably to be pronounced Yahweh. Translating God’s name with the Lord instead of using the actual name is a practice that goes back a long way, all the way back to the first translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Greek Septuagint, which was translated before the birth of Jesus. The use of Lord in Greek (the Greek word is κύριος, kurios) for the name of God probably has implications for the identity of Jesus, who is called kurios in the New Testament. I have explored these issues elsewhere.¹ But this topic also relates to Luke’s Gospel in a special way, since this Third Gospel—more than the other three—refers to Jesus as Lord (kurios). Nevertheless, as I said, you’ll see YHWH in the Old Testament quotations in this book.

One difference between this book and previous volumes in this series is the inclusion of a discussion guide. I’ve always included discussion questions, but here I have also provided a guide for thinking about those questions. This guide is not supposed to provide the right answers, but is simply supposed to help you see how I think about these questions. You will often probably come up with better ways of thinking about them.

I offer my appreciation to Jamie Cox, Brad McKinnon, and Brittany Vander Maas for their help bringing this book to print. Once again, they have done excellent work in a remarkably brief time. It is my pleasure to work with them.

My wonderful wife, Jodi, has put up with me now for nearly 22 years, and she manages to make life incredibly enjoyable. If for no other reason, having her in my life assures me that God will require much from me (Luke 12:48). My children—Miriam, Evelyn, Josiah, Jasmine, Marvin, and Elizabeth—add great happiness and fun to our lives. As she nears high school graduation and contemplates her college choice, my oldest child, Miriam, is especially in my thoughts. She will soon leave our home. It has been a unique blessing to be her father and admire up close her growth as a human being, as a young woman, as an imitator of Jesus. I have no doubt that she will live a life in service to God, though I don’t yet know what form that will take. It is my pleasure to dedicate this book to her.

¹ Ed Gallagher, The Book of Exodus: Explorations in Christian Theology, Cypress Bible Study Series (Florence, AL: HCU Press, 2019), ch. 2.

Bible Abbreviations

Old Testament

New Testament

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

INTRODUCTION TO LUKE

None of the Gospels name their authors in the text. The traditional titles (Gospel according to Matthew; Gospel according to Mark; etc.) are known from the Greek manuscripts of the Gospels and from our earliest sources that mention them, going back to the second century. The Gospels never circulated under any other names (as far as we know); in other words, the Gospel we know as according to Matthew was never attributed to Thomas, or Peter, or Paul, but always Matthew. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the attribution to Matthew is correct, but it is consistent. The same holds true for Mark and Luke and John. It is still possible that these attributions are simply guesses by early readers, but they are odd guesses (why would someone guess at Mark, or Luke?), and if they were simply guesses one would think that different people would propose different authors. The consistency (and oddness) of the attribution is a point in favor of the authenticity of the tradition. ¹

About Luke and John, there is a little more to say. The Fourth Gospel never names its author, but it does name the Beloved Disciple as the source of its material (John 21:24). Presumably the original audience would have known the identity of this disciple. As for the Third Gospel, the author names an addressee, Theophilus (Luke 1:3). Not only would the author have been known to Theophilus but most likely his name would have been attached to the book originally.

If the author is Luke, we still know very little about him. The name Luke appears in only three passages in the New Testament.

Colossians 4:14, Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you.

2 Timothy 4:11, Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful in my ministry.

Philemon 23–24, Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers.

It is the passage in Colossians that suggests that Luke may be a Gentile, since he seems to be separated from those of the circumcision (Col 4:11). These passages also show that Luke was a companion to Paul, which is consistent with the author of the Third Gospel, who was also apparently a companion of Paul. That last suggestion is based on two propositions: (1) the Third Gospel and Acts were written by the same person—as almost all scholars acknowledge, and as a comparison of Luke 1:1–4 and Acts 1:1–2 validates; and (2) the author of Acts traveled with Paul, as attested by the We Passages in Acts, that is, the passages in which the author narrates as if he himself were a part of the action. When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia (Acts 16:10).²

At any rate, whoever the author was, I will use the traditional name and refer to him as Luke.³

Counting the Gospel and Acts together, Luke was responsible for more of the New Testament than any other author. Luke and Acts together make up about 28% of the New Testament by word count.⁴

THE STRUCTURE OF THE GOSPEL

As we will see in the next section, the Gospel of Luke—or, more properly, the Gospel (of Jesus) according to Luke—has the same basic structure as the other Gospels: from the baptism of Jesus to his death and resurrection, with teaching and miracles in between. It is now widely recognized that the way this story is told is similar to the way ancient people wrote biographies.⁵ So while the Gospels may not conform to our expectations for biographies—since they concentrate on only a small slice of Jesus’s life—ancient readers would have classified them as biographies.

Within that basic structure shared by all the Gospels, each Gospel has some unique elements. One obvious difference is where they all choose to begin telling their story. Mark begins with the ministry of John the Baptist, leading immediately to the baptism of Jesus, which is the start of Jesus’s ministry. Matthew, instead, begins with the birth of Jesus. Luke begins with the birth of John the Baptist. And John begins before creation, identifying Jesus with the eternal Word of God.

For Luke, the big question is whether the author intended from the first to write a two-volume work (Luke and Acts) or whether the idea to write the history of the church after Jesus’s resurrection came to Luke only after completing his Gospel. Most scholars these days think that Luke had the full work in mind from the beginning, so much so that scholars are in the habit of referring to the complete work as Luke-Acts to indicate its unity. An influential early scholar who argued for this position more than eighty years ago was Henry Cadbury, who wrote that Luke and Acts are not merely two independent writings from the same pen; they are a single continuous work. Acts is neither an appendix nor an afterthought. It is probably an integral part of the author’s original plan and purpose.⁶ He suggested that (on analogy with other similar multi-volume ancient works) we should perhaps call the two volumes To Theophilus I and To Theophilus II, but Cadbury eventually settles on a minor tweaking of the traditional titles by just adding the hyphen, Luke-Acts.⁷ If Cadbury is right and Luke did plan out his work as including Acts from the beginning, it may be that in writing his Gospel he highlighted certain themes that would come up again in Acts, or perhaps he omitted certain themes because he knew he would address them in Acts. For instance, Luke generally (not completely) portrays the apostles more positively than does Mark or Matthew, and maybe that’s because they would play such a big (and positive) role in Acts. Also, the Third Gospel contains fewer interactions between Jesus and Gentiles, and more between Jesus and Samaritans, perhaps because of the way these themes would feature in Acts.

But now limiting ourselves to Luke’s Gospel, we notice a unique structure. Not quite halfway through the Gospel, there is a major transition at Luke 9:51: When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. Jesus actually arrives in Jerusalem (the Triumphal Entry) at the end of ch. 19, so he is on his way to Jerusalem for about ten chapters. This is Luke’s Travel Narrative. A few times during the Travel Narrative, Luke reminds his readers that Jesus is still heading toward Jerusalem (13:22; 17:11). It is in this section that there appears much of the material that is unique to Luke.

So the Gospel has this basic structure.

Preface (1:1–4)

Preparation (1:5–4:13)

Ministry in Galilee (4:14–9:50), with much material paralleling Mark

Travel Narrative (9:51–19:28), with much unique material

Passion/Resurrection Narrative (19:29–24:53)

THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM⁸

The first three Gospels are called Synoptic Gospels because their many parallel passages can easily be arranged in a synopsis to show the similarities and differences among their narrations of the same stories. The Gospel of John, on the other hand, is wholly different, not only in the stories it tells but in its structure (with frequent festivals providing much of the setting) and geographical emphasis (Jesus is in Judea most of the time, not Galilee). The Synoptic Gospels all have their differences, of course, but they are all structured more-or-less the same: narrating the baptism of Jesus near the beginning of the Gospel, telling about the ministry of Jesus in Galilee—including his teaching in parables, his casting out demons (neither demons nor parables appear in John), his appointment of twelve disciples as his special envoys, his preaching the immanence of the kingdom of God (another theme largely absent from John)—and then describing his journey to Jerusalem for Passover, where he would be crucified and then resurrected from the dead.

The three Synoptic Gospels tell this story so similarly that scholars have assumed that there must be some literary relationship among the three, that is, one must have used the other(s) as a source. The passage about John the Baptist provides a good illustration of the issues.⁹

Here we have some material that is shared among all three Gospels, some material that is shared by Matthew and Luke but not Mark, and some material that is unique to Luke. The only major category of material in these three Gospels that is not represented by this passage is material unique to Matthew, but if we kept reading in the immediately following verses, we would find some such material, since Matthew narrates the baptism of Jesus in a distinctive way. On the other hand, there is hardly any material unique to Mark—not just in this passage but for the entire Gospel; almost the entirety of Mark is paralleled in Matthew and/or Luke.

As I mentioned earlier, the nature of the similarities among the Synoptic Gospels suggests to most (all?) people that the later Gospel writers must have used the earlier Gospels as a source. For the past couple centuries, most (not all)¹⁰ scholars who have studied the issue have determined that Mark was the first Gospel written, and that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source.¹¹ The reason for thinking that Mark must have come first and not the other way around is that Mark is shorter, and Mark’s language is less sophisticated. It would have been odd for someone to take a longer and more polished Gospel and to cut material out and make its language less polished.

But what about the material shared by Matthew and Luke but not Mark? Did Matthew use Luke alongside Mark, or did Luke use Matthew alongside Mark? I’m not sure that anyone has ever thought that Matthew used Luke, but the idea that Luke used Matthew (and Mark) does have some adherents and seems to be gaining in popularity over the past several decades.¹² It could be relevant that Luke mentions that many had already undertaken to write accounts of Jesus’s life before he did (Luke 1:1).

If it is not the case that Luke used Matthew, then where did they both get the same non-Marcan material? It could be that there was some other written source available to Matthew and Luke that has subsequently been lost. This is the Q-hypothesis.¹³ The letter Q stands for the German word Quelle, meaning source. It is hypothetical, based on guesswork, but educated guesswork. Most of the material that Matthew and Luke share that is not in Mark—that is, most of the Q material—is sayings material, especially sayings from Jesus. So the idea is that maybe there was an early collection of the sayings of Jesus, and maybe Matthew and Luke both had access to this collection.¹⁴

So just to summarize: almost everybody would say that Mark was the first Gospel, but there are some who wouldn’t. Among those who do hold to Marcan Priority, there are two main ways of explaining how Matthew and Luke have so much common material that is not in Mark: most believe that Matthew and Luke used some other document consisting mostly of the sayings of Jesus (Q), but others think that Luke used Matthew (the Farrer Hypothesis). I myself do accept Marcan Priority, but I am not sure whether Q or the Farrer Hypothesis makes most sense.

Luke does not include all of Mark’s material, but he does use Mark’s Gospel for the basic storyline.¹⁵ Here is a list of material in Mark omitted by Luke.

Sections of Mark omitted in Luke

(sections marked * also omitted in Matthew)

*3:20–21, family thinks he’s crazy

4:26–29, seed sprouting at night

4:33–34, summary about parables

6:45–52, walking on water

6:53–56, healing at Gennesaret

7:1–23, eating with unwashed hands (cf. Luke 11:37–40)

7:24–30, Syrophoenician woman

*7:31–37, deaf man healed

8:1–10, feeding 4000

*8:22–26, man healed twice

9:9–13, Resurrection and Elijah discussion following

Transfiguration

9:41, cup of water

10:1–12, divorce

10:35–45, request from James and John

11:12–14, 20–21, cursing fig tree

11:22–24, on faith

11:25, on forgiveness

14:27–28, prediction of scattered sheep

*14:51–52, naked young man

15:16–20, soldiers mocking

15:34–35, cry of dereliction

15:36, sponge with wine

LUKE’S UNIQUE MATERIAL

Aside from the material that Luke shares with Mark and/or Matthew, there is also the material unique to Luke. About half of the Gospel finds no parallel in Matthew or Mark (or John, of course), whereas about a quarter of the Gospel corresponds to material in Mark (and perhaps Matthew) and another quarter is Q material (i.e., parallel to Matthew but not Mark). The unique material includes the very beginning (Infancy Narrative) and the very end (Resurrection Narrative) of the Gospel, as well as much of the middle section (the Travel Narrative, 9:51–19:28).

Luke has many parables that have no parallel in the other Gospels.

• Good Samaritan (10:25–37)

• Friend at Midnight (11:5–8)

• Rich Fool (12:16–21)

• Unfruitful Fig Tree (13:6–9)

• Seats at the Banquet (14:7–11)

• Lost coin (15:8–10)

• Prodigal Son (15:11–32)

• Dishonest Manager (16:1–13)

• Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19–31)

• Widow and the Dishonest Judge (18:1–8)

• Pharisee and Tax Collector (18:10–14)

Luke emphasizes several themes more prominently than do other Gospels, including prayer, repentance, sinners in Jesus’s ministry, wealth and poverty, and Samaritans. He talks about John the Baptist more than any other Gospel. Luke contains a genealogy very different from the one we find at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel. Luke refers to Jesus as Lord more than the other Gospels.¹⁶

It is this unique material that will serve as the basis for our study.

RECEPTION OF LUKE¹⁷

The earliest manuscripts we have for Luke (as for all the New Testament writings) are often quite small. A good example is the manuscript known as P¹¹¹ (= Papyrus # 111), from the third century. It was originally a codex (= book, not scroll) of the Gospel of Luke (and maybe more?), but now it survives only as a tiny fragment containing merely Luke 17:11–13 (on the front) and 17:22–23 (on the back).¹⁸

Figure 1. P¹¹¹ (Luke 17:11–13).

Courtesy Bodleian Library. University of Oxford.

There are some more substantial manuscripts, though, from the early centuries. The earliest copy of all four Gospels in one manuscript (along with Acts) is P⁴⁵ from the third century.

We have no manuscripts of Luke from as early as the second century. Actually, a few manuscripts might possibly be that early, but the dating is debated, and it is probably safer to conclude that they are from the third century.

P⁷⁵ in its present form contains Luke 3:18–24:53 followed by John. It has been proposed that this papyrus codex may have contained all four Gospels. This manuscript preserves the ending of the Third Gospel and the beginning of the Fourth Gospel.

Figure 2. P⁷⁵. Courtesy Vatican Library.

The ending of the Third Gospel here says εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Λουκᾶν (euangelion kata Lukan, gospel according to Luke) and the beginning of the Fourth Gospel says εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάνην (euangelion kata Iōanēn, gospel according to John).

P⁴, now considered part of the same manuscript known as P64 and P67, containing Matthew. The combination papyrus codex now contains material from Matthew chapters 3, 5, 26, and Luke chapters 1–6. It is also possible that this codex originally contained all four Gospels.

There is no known manuscript in which Luke circulated either alone or with only Acts. It is always known as a companion to at least one of the other Gospels.

As for what early Christians said about Luke, there are several writers in the late second century that talk about Luke as the author of the Third Gospel.¹⁹ Writers in the earlier part of the second century (e.g., Papias, Justin Martyr) do not mention Luke, though they may have made use of his Gospel. The earliest person to mention Luke was apparently Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, who wrote in about AD 180. After quoting the We Passages of Acts, Irenaeus says, Since Luke had been present at all these events, he carefully wrote them down.²⁰ Irenaeus goes on to explain at some