E Bruce Brooks
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Sermon on the Way: The Meaning of the Lukan Travel Narrative
Special Session
SBL National Meeting, 21-25 November 2008, Boston

Abstract
This paper will be discussed by interested persons at a Special Session at SBL.

The meaning of Luke's central section (Lk 9:51-19:27) is still problematic for some recent commentators (eg Nolland 1993, Culpepper 1995). Luke's inherited material often retains the meaning which that material had in its original context, thus confusing the picture as far as Luke himself is concerned. I here focus on passages where Luke seems to have operated on his sources, or brought in new material, and where his own hand and mind should thus be clearest. I find that his changes and additions have in view partly the Historical Jesus, but chiefly Church in Luke's own time. His sources themselves are diverse:

(1) Mark. I have argued in a 2007 SBL paper, with examples drawn chiefly from the first or Galilee section of Luke, that Luke's Gospel was composed in two stages: an A which followed the original order of the Markan material, and a later B, influenced by Matthew. In the course of the B rewrite, some previously used Markan material was relocated and in recast with new symbolic intent. In Luke's second or Travel section, we have the Parable of the Mustard Seed (Lk 13:18-21), whose new context suggests a new meaning: not the Kingdom (as in Mk 4:30-32, Mt 13:31-33), but the growth of faith within the individual. Luke is here internalizing the Kingdom.

(2) Exotica. Close together in Lk 15-16 are three unique Lukan parables, which seem to have their ultimate origins in India (the Prodigal Son), China (the Canny Steward), and Egypt (Lazarus). No proximate sources survive, but the Canny Steward in particular (Lk 16:1-8a), is clarified by our awareness of its remote Chinese source (JGT #154). Its message is the sacrificing of worldly advantage for Heavenly advantage.

(3) Matthew. (a) In the Unforgivable Sin (LK 12:10), Luke departs from both Mark's and Matthew's order. In its new context, which is unique to Luke, that sin (denying the divine nature of Jesus) applies not to Jesus's enemies (as in Mk and Mt, where it is part of the Beelzebub controversy with the Pharisees) but to Christians renouncing their faith under Roman persecution. (b) Compare Lk 12:56, where Luke's words "hypocrites" no longer refers to Jesus's Jewish enemies (as it did in Mk and Mt), but to imprudent Christian believers, who cannot read aright the signs of the times. (c) The new and structurally disruptive element of the Throne Claimant in Matthew's Parable of the Pounds (Lk 19:11-27) emphasizes the harsh Kingship of the returning Jesus, who will slay his enemies (a threat which occupies the last words of the entire Travel Narrative).

Among the more suggestive of previous interpretations of the Travel Narrative are Robinson's "hodos" or Way of Discipleship model (1960) and Moessner's Exodus model (1989). In somewhat that direction, I would suggest the following model for that and the rest of Luke:

In the first or Galilean third of Luke, as he finally left it, we have what Luke considered to be acts and sayings relevant to Jesus's time. Not all of those issues continued to be pressing in Luke's time. In the middle or Travel third, "Jesus's" words, as sharpened or created by Luke, are addressed more consistently to the oppressed and sometimes faithless early Church (as in the unique Lukan saying 18:8b, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"). In the final or Jerusalem third, we have not only a Passion narrative, as required by the now established conventions of the Gospel form, but a prefiguring of the Final Coming of the Lord. Only by the thinnest of inherited conventions is the journey to Jerusalem that of Jesus. At bottom, it is the long hard journey of the early Church toward the Last Days and the fulfillment of Jesus's earlier promise. Luke in effect assures the Church that it has Jesus's company along that sometimes difficult Way, chiding as well as encouraging.

There will be a special session at SBL/Boston this November, where this and the 2007 Luke paper, and the Lukan composition model which they together suggest, will be discussed and criticized in real time by a few interested persons. If you would care to be part of that discussion, or of its preceding E-mail counterpart (which does not require physical presence at SBL), please indicate your interest via the mail link at the bottom of this page.

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