Luke and Scripture. The Function of Sacred Tradition in Luke-Acts

Written by C.A. Evans and J.A. Sanders Reviewed By E. Earle Ellis

These 13 collected essays include an introduction on ‘the Gospels and midrash’ and five chapters by Dr Evans that are newly published here. The others are revisions of previously published articles. Ordered sequentially from the early to later chapters of Luke, they are concerned to show various ways in which the evangelist utilized the OT. They consider such themes as Jesus’ use of Isaiah, the Adam-Christ typology as it relates to the role of the Holy Spirit, the election motif in the Elijah/Elisha narratives and in the banquet parable (Lk. 14), the hypothesis (regarded as still unestablished) that the central section of Luke (9:51–19:44) is designed to parallel the teachings of Moses in Deuteronomy. Among specific passages the articles treat Jesus’ exposition in 4:16–30, the possible relationship of the phrase ‘He set his face’ (9:51) to Ezekiel’s prophecy of judgment, and the use of Psalm 118 to interpret the triumphal entry as a theophany, that is, to ascribe to Jesus what the OT ascribes to Yahweh (p. 151).

Of interest to many will be the discussion of ‘the twelve thrones of Israel’ in Jesus’ after-supper discourse (22:24–30). Evans believes that the passage ‘strongly implies that Israel has a future’ (p. 170). But the omission of ‘twelve’ in Luke is not fully explored, nor is the identity of Israel, that is, whether the reference is to national Israel or to the church as the eschatological Israel.

One of the strongest pieces is Evans’s treatment of the ‘Jews in Luke’s scriptural apologetic’. He points out that the only opponents of Jesus and of the earliest church were Jews who rejected Jesus. Consequently, what appears to many moderns (including Dr Sanders, Evans’s teacher) as an anti-Semitic attitude is actually an exegetical polemic, a Christological versus a non-Christological interpretation of the OT. If one recognizes that Luke also was a Jew, one may add that it is an intra-Jewish polemic much like that between the OT prophets and the nation’s leaders.

It is doubtful that the novel ‘first’ and ‘second’ testaments instead of OT (cf. 2 Cor. 3:14) and NT (Lk. 22:20) is very helpful to the authors’ quite evident theological concerns. The terms obscure the force of Jesus’ and Luke’s application of OT texts and, as a favour to Jews and secularists, they will hardly be persuasive since they stand against the whole theological thrust of the volume. The book also does not consider the expository structure of a number of the Lukan episodes that are addressed. For example, the baptism (3:2–22), transfiguration (9:28–36) and triumphal entry and cleansing of the temple (19:28–40, 45–46) display a narrative-midrash structure, and a number of episodes reflect the patterns of proem and yelammedenumidrashim: 10:25–37; 20:9–18, 27–40; 21:5–33. But such recent developments in the research may have been unknown to the authors when many of the pieces were originally written.

These thoughtful, thorough and probing essays will benefit the serious reader even when he may not always agree with their conclusions.


E. Earle Ellis

Dallas