Blog (4) Blake Bernier

I found it very interesting when reading about the Gospel of Luke how historical his preface was. Luke took time to explain his stories and his preface was compared to that of prefaces written by Greek historians. Unlike the other Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Luke begins with a formal preface. It is also recognized that there is a wide range of Greco-Roman literature being used. Another word that was used to describe Luke's preface was that it was "historiographic," meaning that it indicated that there was a lot of research that was done about these historical topics that were being discussed. I found it fascinating that  unlike the chapter on the Gospel of Matthew where it jumps right into how Jesus was perceived, the chapter on Luke was more focussed on letting the audience recognize how historical his Gospel is and the amount of work he did. "He shows a special concern, for example, to relate the history of Jesus to the broader historical events transpiring within the empire." [1]

It is known that each Gospel has depicted Jesus in a different way. In Mark he was seen as an authoritative leader, teacher, and healer and in Matthew he was depicted as the new Messiah who brought interpretation of God's law. Different then both of these, Luke's depiction of Jesus was that he was the rejected prophet. Luke explains this with his opening of the ministry. "As a visitor of the synagogue, in Luke, Jesus is given the opportunity to read and comment on the Scripture. He reads from the book if Isaiah, in which the prophet claims to be anointed with the spirit of God in order to "bring good news to the poor. . . to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind" (4:18-19)" [2] Now that Jesus has done this, he is seen to now be able to perform great miracles. A prophet was not seen to people back then as a mind-reader, they were seen as someone who was sent by God to his people; a messenger for God. In Matthew and Mark, there was recognition that Jesus was a prophet and relayed messages from God, yes. But the emphasis of Jesus being a prophet was much greater in Luke. He is born as a prophet, raised as a prophet, and dies as a prophet.

Lastly, Luke's Gospel is 50% more descriptive than the other Gospels. I find this interesting and wonder if it is because Luke is talking to many different types of audiences. We know this because of the use of references to different types of nationalities. However, many of these stories are only found in Luke and none of the other Gospels. I wonder if he felt the need to add in many things to make his stories apprehensive to his audience.


[1] Ehrman, B.D. The New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 125
[2]  Ehrman, B.D. The New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 131