Luke the Historian of Israel’s Legacy, Theologian of Israel’s ‘Christ’: A New Reading of the ‘Gospel Acts’ of Luke

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David Moessner proposes a new understanding of the relation of Luke’s second volume to his Gospel to open up a whole new reading of Luke’s foundational contribution to the New Testament. For postmodern readers who find Acts a ‘generic outlier,’ dangling tenuously somewhere between the ‘mainland’ of the evangelists and the ‘Peloponnese’ of Paul—diffused and confused and shunted to the backwaters of the New Testament by these signature corpora—Moessner plunges his readers into the hermeneutical atmosphere of Greek narrative poetics and elaboration of multi-volume works to inhale the rhetorical swells that animate Luke’s first readers in their engagement of his narrative. In this collection of twelve of his essays, re-contextualized and re-organized into five major topical movements, Moessner showcases multiple Hellenistic texts and rhetorical tropes to spotlight the various signals Luke provides his readers of the multiple ways his Acts will follow "all that Jesus began to do and to teach" (Acts 1:1) and, consequently, bring coherence to this dominant block of the New Testament that has long been split apart. By collapsing the world of Jesus into the words and deeds of his followers, Luke re-configures the significance of Israel’s "Christ" and the "Reign" of Israel’s God for all peoples and places to create a new account of ‘Gospel Acts,’ discrete and distinctively different than the "narrative" of the "many" (Luke 1:1). Luke the Historian of Israel’s Legacy combines what no analysis of the Lukan writings has previously accomplished, integrating seamlessly two ‘generically-estranged’ volumes into one new whole from the intent of the one composer. For Luke is the Hellenistic historian and simultaneously ‘biblical’ theologian who arranges the one "plan of God" read from the script of the Jewish scriptures—parts and whole, severally and together—as the saving ‘script’ for the whole world through Israel’s suffering and raised up "Christ," Jesus of Nazareth. In the introductions to each major theme of the essays, this noted scholar of the Lukan writings offers an epitome of the main features of Luke’s theological ‘thought,’ and, in a final Conclusions chapter, weaves together a comprehensive synthesis of this new reading of the whole. Table of contents Abbreviations Bible translations Introduction: Enigma in Two volumes The ‘Gospel Acts’ of Luke: Hellenistic History as ‘Biblical’ Theology The Luke-Acts Conundrum Events, Fiction, and the Hermeneutics of Luke’s Narrative Persuasion Biblical Texts and Intertexts as Narrative ‘Arranging’ and Intratextual ‘Sequencing’ for Luke the Hellenistic Historian and ‘Biblical’ Theologian Part I: Luke’s ‘Gospel Acts’ and the Genre of the Gospels Chapter One: How Luke Writes Chapter Two: Re-Reading Talbert’s Luke: The Bios of “Balance” or the “Bias” of History? [Short Excursus: Richard Burridge’s What are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, Cambridge University Press, 1992] Part II: Luke’s Prologues and Hellenistic Narrative Hermeneutics Chapter Three: The Author ‘Luke’: “As One Who Has a Thoroughly Informed Familiarity with All the Events from the Top” (παρηκολουθηκότι ἄνωθεν πᾶσιν ἀκριβῶς, Luke 1:3a) Chapter Four: The Meaning of ΚΑΘΕΞΗΣ in Luke’s Two-Volume Narrative Part III: Luke among Hellenistic Historians Chapter Five: ‘Listening Posts’ Along the Way: ‘Synchronisms’ as Metaleptic Prompts to the ‘Continuity of the Narrative’ in Polybius’s Histories and in Luke’s ‘Gospel Acts’ Chapter Six: ‘Managing’ the Audience: Diodorus Siculus and Luke the Evangelist on Designing Authorial Intent Chapter Seven: A New Reading of Luke’s ‘Gospel Acts’: Acts as the ‘Metaleptic’ Collapse of Luke and Dionysius of Halicarnassus’s Narrative ‘Arrangement’ (οἰκονομíα) as the Hermeneutical Keys to Luke’s Re-Visioning of the “Many” Part IV: Luke’s Theologia Crucis. The Suffering Servant(s) of the Lord: Moses, David, the Suffering Righteous, and Jesus and “All The Prophets” Chapter Eight: Luke 9:1–50: Luke’s Preview of the Journey of the Prophet like Moses of Deuteronomy Chapter Nine: “The Christ Must Suffer”: New Light On The Jesus – Peter, Stephen, Paul Parallels in Luke’s ‘Gospel Acts’ Chapter Ten: Luke’s “Plan of God” from the Greek Psalter: The Rhetorical Thrust of ‘The Prophets and the Psalms’ in Peter’s Speech at Pentecost Part V: Luke, the Church, and Israel’s Legacy Chapter Eleven: Paul in Acts: Preacher of Eschatological Repentance to Israel Chapter Twelve: Das Doppelwerk des Lukas und Heil als Geschichte. Oscar Cullmanns auffälliges Schweigen bezüglich des stärksten Befürworters seiner Konzeption der Heilsgeschichte im Neuen Testament Conclusion: Luke the Hellenistic Historian of Israel’s Legacy, Theologian of Israel’s ‘Christ’ I. Luke is a Configurer (ποιητής) of oral and written traditions concerning events and matters purporting to have taken place in the real world of the author. By ‘arranging’ a new narrative sequence different from a number of predecessors, Luke imparts a new cognitive and affective understanding of these happenings. 1. Patterns of Recurrence from Authoritative Written and Oral Traditions 2. Patterns of Recurrence of ‘First Person’ Participation within the Described Events 3. Patterns of Recurrence Attributed to an Overarching Divine Will, Fate, or Necessity II. Luke is a Manager (οἰκονόμος) of the Narrative ‘Economy’ (οἰκονομία). As rhetorical elaborator, Luke turns to various tropes of conventional poetics to effect the understanding of the events that he wishes his audience to attain. 1. Luke’s ‘beginning’ (ἡ ἀρχή) for his two-volume work forecasts the plot and sets the tone for the whole: Israel’s “Christ” of the scriptures “must suffer and rise up” and Jesus of Nazareth is that “Christ.” 2. The metaleptic collapse within Luke’s secondary prooimion pulls Paul into the ‘continuity of the narrative’ as central to the two-volume narrative ‘arrangement’ so that Paul emerges as chief “witness” of the Christ’s “anointed” sending to Israel and the nations–“to the end of the earth.” Finale: Luke the Historian, Biblical Theologian of Israel’s “Christ” Bibliography Index