Luke/Acts: The Gospel and the Church

This course covers the entirety of Luke and Acts as a narrative about the announcement of the
victory of God in Jesus the Messiah and the church as the body of Christ that continues “to do
and to teach” (Acts 1:1). It is also a practicum for the interpretation of the gospel and Acts as
both theological and historical narratives, not one to the exclusion of the other. To that end, we
will pursue methods of interpretation that bear exegetical and theological fruit for preachers and
teachers:

 typological reading.
 investigating echoes of the LXX.
 close readings appealing to the details of the narrative and Greek grammar and
lexicography.
 interpreting Jesus’ ministry within the semiotic and narrative context of Second Temple
Judaism.
 interpreting Acts within the legal, political, and social history of the Greco-Roman world.

Special attention will be given to the form and meaning of Jesus’ parables and prayers; to Jesus’
relation to the Jewish and Roman political and religious authorities of his day; to the significance
of Jesus’ and the apostles’ miracles against the background of the OT and intertestamental
literature; to the rhetoric and logic of the speeches in Acts; to the apostolate as an institution; and
to the depiction of the organization of the early church in Acts.

Students will gain an appreciation of Luke’s theology and his narrative art, and the ability to
make connections between the details of Luke’s text and other parts of Scripture and history.

Readings will be provided in PDF format via Google Classroom. They will include portions of
the following:

Darrell Bock, Luke - ECNT, 2 vols (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994)

Joel Green, The Gospel of Luke –  NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997)
Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012)
David Daube, “Shame Culture in Luke” in Collected Works of David Daube vol. 2
(Berkeley, CA: The Robbins Collection, 2001)
David Daube, “On Acts 23: Sadduccees and Angels” CWDD vol. 2.
James D.G. Dunn, Christianity in the Making volume 2: Beginning from Jerusalem
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009)
Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco, TX: Baylor, 2016)
Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians (Yale, 2003)
C. Kavin Rowe, World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Greco-Roman Age (Oxford,
2009)
Ben Witherington III, New Testament History: A Narrative Account (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker, 2001)
N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Fortress, 1996)