Blog 4 Sable LeFrere

What I found most interesting about the Gospel of Luke is his perspective of Jesus. As we all know, each gospel portrays Jesus in a different light. For Matthew, Jesus was seen as a Messianic leader. Mark portrayed Jesus more humanly and Luke sees him as a martyr, a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle.

According to Ehrman, "By the time Luke wrote his Gospel, there was already a long-standing tradition of Jewish martyrs who willingly, indeed sometimes eagerly, faced suffering and death for the sake of the law of God.1 From the beginning, Luke made a distinct emphasis about Jesus' character in his gospel. Jesus was to be a prophet and spokesperson for God that eventually would be rejected by his own people. With that said, L. Michael White brought "Jesus the martyr" into perspective for me when he compared Jesus' image to that of Socrates. "He's much more like a philosophic teacher... he's reasoned, he's dispassionate, he's a critic sometimes of society but he's certainly concerned about the way his teachings bear on society. And in the end he dies very much like Socrates."2 Jesus' death in Luke is just like a martyr's death. He went inexorably to the cross without any doubts or fears unlike Mark's Passion narrative. He knew his role and where it was going to lead him. At Jesus' crucifixion, Mark shows a very silent Jesus. His only words came at the very end when he yells out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"3 On the way to his crucifixion for Luke, Jesus speaks to a group of women he sees weeping for him, he asks God to forgive those who are wrongfully treating him, and speaks to one of the criminals being crucified beside him. Also to show that he was a martyr for the cause, instead of asking God why had he been forsaken before he died as he did in Mark, in Luke, he offers a prayer saying, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."4, dying like a true martyr would.

1 White, Michael L. The Gospel of Luke: a novel for gentiles, (FRONTLINE, 1998)

3 Ehrman, B.D. The New Testament, (New York. Oxford Press, 2004), 134

3 Ehrman, B.D. The New Testament, (New York. Oxford Press, 2004), 104

4 Ehrman, B.D. The New Testament, (New York. Oxford Press, 2004), 135

Bibliography

Ehrman, B.D. The New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 121-139.

White, Michael L. "The Gospel of Luke: a novel for gentiles ." FRONTLINE. April 1998. Accessed 21 March 2012 <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/luke.html>.