Unfortunately, the gospel of Luke is placed among the gospels in third place, before the gospel of John – and thereby separated from the book of Acts. This is unfortunate, because it is now easy to miss not only that Luke and Acts are by the same author, but also that they are two volumes in a series, not two independent books. At least to some extent, they should be studied and interpreted together. Too often, this is not done.
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Its placement also suggests that Luke’s gospel is just that: a gospel, belonging to the same type of literature as the other three.
But is it, seeing that Acts is not? And what exactly is a ‘gospel’? And what is Acts?
‘Gospel’ as a Type of Literature
These questions continue to be hotly debated, and for good reasons. To determine the genre or type of literature of a text is an important step to understanding it properly. An obvious example: a fairy tale is different from a newspaper article (most of the time, anyway). We read them in different ways, with very different expectations.
What makes genre or type of literature? It is based on shared elements such as form, content, function, and purpose. From these derive rules or principles regarding how a text is to be received and interpreted.
Until the early 20th century, the gospels were generally understood as a kind of biography. Around the time the NT was written, biography was becoming an increasingly popular type of writing. Strictly speaking, we should refer to it as bios, the Greek word for life, since this was the term used back then. Bios dealt with the lives of special individuals. The gospels do this, too.
From the 1920s onward, however, the consensus shifted dramatically; the gospels were now understood as “a unique type of early Christian writing, not explainable by reference to any other type of literature of the ancient world. This position became the standard view among NT scholars, virtually unchallenged until recent decades” (Hurtado 1992: 277). In other words, ‘gospel’ had become its own type of literature:
Until the 1970s there was practically a consensus that the Gospels constituted a unique literary genre in the Greco-Roman world, and that any apparent analogies with other early Christian writings or from the wider Greco-Roman literary setting were irrelevant. This consensus has been challenged, however, and various scholars have argued that the Gospels are related to one or more types of Greco-Roman literature, most often biographical writings. (Ibid.: 276)
In some sense, everyone is unique, but it seems fair to say that Jesus was uniquely unique. But does this make the gospels a unique type of literature? Did the unique uniqueness of Jesus require and lead to an equally unique type of literature to capture his story?
‘Gospel’ as Ancient Biography
Probably not. In all likelihood, an ancient reader who would have picked up a copy of, say, Mark or John would have thought of it as some sort of biography.
The tide has turned in recent decades. According to the Lexham Bible Dictionary, many scholars now think of the gospels within “a framework of ancient Greek biography or bios … they generally fit into the genre of ancient Greek biography … This view of the gospel genre as a subset of ancient biography is now generally accepted” (Smith 2016).
One scholar who has contributed much to this turnaround is Richard A. Burridge. In the Dictionary of New Testament Background, he summarizes the case for the gospels as biography:
Unlike modern biographies, Greco-Roman lives do not cover a person’s whole life in chronological sequence, and they have no psychological analysis of the subject’s character. As regards content, they may begin with a brief mention of the hero’s ancestry, family or city, his birth and an occasional anecdote about his upbringing; usually the narrative moves rapidly on to his public debut later in life. Accounts of generals, politicians or statesmen are more chronologically ordered, recounting their great deeds and virtues, while lives of philosophers, writers or thinkers tend to be more anecdotal, arranged topically around collections of material to display their ideas and teachings. While the author may claim to provide information about his subject (and we note that no ancient lives are written by women), often his underlying aims may include apologetic (to defend the subject’s memory against others’ attacks), polemic (to attack his rivals) or didactic (to teach his followers about him). Many ancient biographies cover the subject’s death in great detail, since here he reveals his true character, gives his definitive teaching or does his greatest deed. (Burridge 2000: 168)
Like other ancient biographies, the Gospels are continuous prose narratives of the length of a single scroll, composed of stories, anecdotes, sayings and speeches. Their concentration on Jesus’ public ministry, from his baptism to death, and on his teaching and great deeds is not very different from the content of other ancient biographies. Similarly, the amount of space given to the last week of Jesus’ life, his death and the resurrection reflects the space given to the subject’s death and subsequent events in works by Plutarch, Tacitus, Nepos and Philostratus. (Ibid.: 169)
Hurtado’s Caution
In the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Larry Hurtado strikes a more cautious tone, and we do well to heed his caution. There are differences between the gospels and bios. The focus is not on the character of Jesus as a model to emulate, but on his unique role. He is more than a moral example or an outstanding and admirable human.
Besides, the purpose is different. The gospels were not written for a general audience, but to serve the Christian community. A gospel is meant as a basic text for when the church comes together to worship, not a text for private reading and enjoyment. Hurtado summarizes:
It is likely that both sides in the debate have a legitimate point. On the one hand, the Gospels share various characteristics of one or more types of Greco-Roman literature and in light of this can be likened to certain literary genres of that period. Moreover, we should expect that the NT authors would have been influenced by general literary conventions and practices of their day. Yet the NT Gospels also exhibit a certain uniqueness and thus form at least a partially distinctive category or subgenre. That is, the Evangelists, though influenced by their literary environment, seem to have produced works whose origin and characteristics are to be understood most directly in terms of the early Christian groups for which the Gospels were written. (Hurtado 1992: 276)
Still, as noted earlier, an ancient reader who picked up a copy of Mark or John would have looked at it as a form of biography. We also need to keep in mind that ancient biography was “a highly flexible genre” (Burridge 2000: 168). It could be adjusted to a variety of aims, yet the resulting texts continued to display “a clear family resemblance” (ibid.: 169) – something that is true for the NT gospels.
Acts as Ancient History Writing
Where the gospels would have looked to ancient readers, broadly speaking, as something akin to bios, in the book of Acts they would have recognized the writing of history, in one word, historiography. To be sure, as with the gospels and bios, the genre does not fit perfectly. Luke’s history writing is influenced by the OT and Jewish history writing, such as that by Josephus (see Green 1997: 8), and it deals with an unusual subject. But it still belongs in the category of historiography.
And this is where we are misled by the fact that Luke was split off from Acts and placed with the gospels. Luke wrote it as part of a two-volume work. Both parts serve the same aim – and would normally belong to the same type of literature. In which case Luke’s gospel would primarily be historiography, not biography.
The way Luke begins his gospel supports this. In Luke 1, he is explicit about what he is setting out to do, and it is not to write biography. Different from the other gospels, his subject is not a person but events, which suggests history and historiography:
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things [Gr. pragmata, also events or deeds] that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things [literally: words] you have been taught. (Lk. 1:1-4 ESV; emphasis added; notice that “things” occurs three times, but is linked with three entirely different Greek words)
Admittedly, Luke’s gospel is mostly about a person. But as Witherington points out, histories “could include significant amounts of biographical material, if it was thought that a particular person was largely responsible for changing the course of history (like Alexander the Great, or Jesus of Nazareth)” (Witherington 1998: 17; emphasis original). And who changed the course of history more than Jesus?
The Gospel of Luke as Ancient History Writing
By placing the gospel of Luke into a different context (that of Acts), we open a new angle on its message. It implies Luke goes a significant step beyond the other gospels. He is not merely writing about an outstanding person, a uniquely unique individual, and what his life – and his death – mean for us.
To put it in different words, Luke is not only writing theology; he is also writing history. Perhaps more than that: he is interpreting history, world history. In the events around Jesus, history has found its pivot and has its centre. Acts shows how this had begun to impact the world.
Luke offers a daring new explanation of world history, and at its centre stand the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Attribution
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References
All Bible quotations from: The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2001 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles)
Burridge, Richard A. 2000. ‘Biography, Ancient’, in Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship, ed. by Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press)
Green, Joel B. 1997. ‘Acts of the Apostles’, in Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments, ed. by Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press)
Hurtado, L. W. 1992. ‘Gospel (Genre)’, in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. by Joel B. Green and Scot McKnight (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press)
Smith, Zachary G. 2016 ‘Gospel Genre’, in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. by John D. Barry, David Bomar, Derek R. Brown, Rachel Klippenstein, Douglas Mangum, and others (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press)
Witherington, Ben. 1998. The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans)