The Gospel of

LUKE

Joel B. Green

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

© 1997 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 /

P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

www.eerdmans.com

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-0-8028-2315-1

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Figure 1 on p. 60 is from Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification by Gerhard E. Lenski. Copyright 1966, 1984 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher.

CONTENTS

Editor’s Preface

Author’s Preface

List of Interpretive Asides and Figures

Abbreviations

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

1. Reading the Gospel of Luke

1.1. The Gospel of Luke as “Narrative” (διήγησις)

The Genre of the Gospel of Luke

1.2. The Unity of Luke-Acts

1.3. Method in Reading the Gospel of Luke

Some Key Terms

Narrative, History, and Historicity

1.4. What of the Question of Authorship?

2. The Purpose and Theology of the Gospel of Luke

OUTLINE OF THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

TEXT, EXPOSITION, AND NOTES

1. The Prologue

2. The Birth and Childhood of Jesus (1:5–2:52)

3. The Preparation for the Ministry of Jesus (3:1–4:13)

4. The Ministry of Jesus in Galilee (4:14–9:50)

5. On the Way to Jerusalem (9:51–19:48)

6. Teaching in the Jerusalem Temple (20:1–21:38)

7. The Suffering and Death of Jesus (22:1–23:56)

8. The Exaltation of Jesus (24:1–53)

INDEXES

Subjects

Modern Authors

Scripture References

Early Extrabiblical Literature

EDITOR’S PREFACE

This replacement commentary (the eighth) represents another milestone for the New International Commentary on the New Testament, in that it replaces the first commentary to appear in the original series, that by Norval Geldenhuys in 1951. For that volume, the first editor, Ned Stonehouse, wrote a general foreword introducing the series, while F. F. Bruce, who would eventually succeed Stonehouse as its second editor, wrote a foreword to Geldenhuys’s commentary in particular. Reading these two forewords can be instructive with regard to the evolution of the series.

That the proposed seventeen- (now nineteen-)volume series would “appear with some regularity” is our yet-to-be-realized hope, which now looks to the turn of the century for final realization (Matthew, the Pastoral Letters, and 2 Peter/Jude are outstanding but in process). Whereas the international scope of the series has been maintained, its original Dutch and South African flavor has, with the present volume, now been lost. So also under Bruce’s editorship the intentionally Reformed perspective of the series envisioned by Stonehouse began to wane. The present volume, the second in the series by a Methodist ...