The Gospel of Luke
We noted that Matthew is above all the Ecclesiastical Gospel, the favorite of the clergy. Luke by contrast is the Beloved Gospel, the favorite of the rank and file of believers. Musicians, artists, and the general public have been inspired by it more consistently than by anything else in the New Testament. It is the Gospel of the Kindly Jesus, the Gospel most congenial to the modern civilized sensibility.
It is also, on the philological side, the latest of the three Synoptic Gospels. This fact puts in question the authority of Luke within Christianity. Efforts have been made to salvage Luke as a witness to an early (rather than an evolved) form of Christian belief. Among efforts these is the Q Hypothesis, which in effect privileges everything in Luke that is also in the relatively late Matthew, but is absent from the more primitive Mark. That hypothesis will be taken up later. Here, we consider some theories that have been advanced for the material that is unique to Luke (leading to the proto-Luke hypothesis of Streeter and Taylor), and the relocation hypothesis that is not fully developed by Fitzmyer. We also consider the question of the birth narratives in Luke as compared to those in Matthew.
After some consideration of what Luke is and what Luke says it is, including some features of Luke that are sometimes thought to provide evidence for its author or for its place of composition, we make our own suggestion about the earliest form of Luke which is available to philological investigation.
- Preliminary
- The Overridden Beginning
- Interpolations
- Relocated Material
- Two Stages of Luke
- Proto-Luke
- Survey of Reconstructions
- Taylor
- Boismard
- Brodie
- The Present Proposal
- Luke and Matthew
- Unique Material
- Matthean Counterparts
- Luke-Acts
- Overall Design
- Authorial Questions
- The Two Prologues
- The "We" Document
- Medical Interest
- Geographical Indicators
- Reference
- A Translation of Luke
25 Sept 2005 / Contact The Project / Exit to Synoptica Page
