Luke, Gospel of St. Quick reference
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3 ed.)
..., Gospel of St. The third of the Synoptic Gospels . Its attribution to St Luke is widely accepted. It forms a single work with the Acts of the Apostles . The prediction of the fall of Jerusalem in more precise terms than in Mt. and Mk. has suggested a date of composition after 70 ad , but this inference has been contested. Most modern scholars hold that the author drew on Mk. and the so-called ‘ Q ’; some think that his second source was Mt. He was perhaps writing for readers outside the Christian circle; he certainly presents his material in the most...
Gospel of St Luke
The Four Gospels in Synopsis Reference library
Henry Wansbrough
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...for Luke. This is not unexpected, in view of the importance of journeying in the Acts, the whole of the second half of which is devoted to Paul's missionary journeys. If the author was indeed a travelling-companion of Paul, journeying was a normal part of his way of life. Many of Luke's greatest stories occur in the framework of a journey (the journey to Emmaus, the conversion of the Ethiopian and of Saul himself). A major section of the gospel consists of the journey to Jerusalem ( 9:51–19:27 ). In the gospels it is chiefly from Luke that we can...
Luke Reference library
Eric Franklin and Eric Franklin
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...(1960), The Theology of St Luke (London: Faber & Faber). Crossan, J. D. (1991), The Historical Jesus (San Francisco: Harper). Doble, P. (1996), The Paradox of Salvation, SNTSMS 87 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Esler, P. F. (1987), Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts SNTSMS 57 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Evans, C. F. (1955), ‘The Central Section of St Luke's Gospel’, in D. Nineham (ed.), Studies in the Gospels (Oxford: Blackwell). ———(1970), Resurrection and the New Testament (London: SCM). ——— Saint Luke (1990), TPI NT...
Acts Reference library
Loveday Alexander and Loveday Alexander
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...of events). 4. Biography. Greek and Roman biography (an increasingly popular genre in the late 1st cent.) in many ways provides a better parallel to the scope and scale of Luke's work, especially the biography of philosophers: Luke's description of the gospel in Acts 1:1 would most readily suggest a philosophical biography to ancient readers. Philosophical biography is so far the most convincing genre that has been suggested for Luke's two-volume work, following the pattern found in Diogenes Laertius of the life of the founder of a philosophical...
The New Testament Reference library
Margaret Davies
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...century: P52, which may even go back to the first half of the second century, contains fragments of the Gospel according to John, as do the slightly later P66 and P90; P4, P64, and P67 seem to have formed parts of a single codex containing the gospels according to Matthew and Luke; P77 is part of another text of Matthew; and P32 is part of a text of the Paulines. That these papyri fragments have survived is due to the dry climate of Egypt, but they indicate that three of our four gospels and some of our Pauline epistles existed there during the second...
Images from The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible Reference library
Philip Davies
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
... The illuminated initial letter ‘B’ of ‘Beatus’ (Blessed), the first word of the Psalter in Latin, from a late-11 th- century manuscript of the commentary by Augustine, portrays David playing the harp and being inspired by the dove-like Holy Spirit. The Master & Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge. St. John the Evangelist St John the Evangelist, from an illuminated page of the 10 th– 11 th- century Gospels of Henry the Lion. The dove-like Holy Spirit is speaking into the evangelist's ear. ...
The New Testament Reference library
David Parker
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...a British and American venture founded in 1948. A detailed collection of variant readings from Luke's Gospel was published in 1984–7, and since then work on the Gospel of John has progressed steadily. It thus becomes clear, not only that the earliest forms of the text of the gospels was very different to that known to later generations, but that in large parts of early Christianity, the gospels were less influential than the single harmonized version. The contrast with P75, the precursor of the Alexandrian Text produced only a generation after Tatian, is...
Introduction to the New Testament Reference library
Leslie Houlden
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...the gospel's own words, it really was a case of new wine even when there might be old bottles to contain it. 7. Let us look a little more closely at some of the varieties of Hellenized Jewishness, now Christianized, that are visible to us in the NT. With the possible exception of the author of Luke-Acts (and even he was imbued with Jewish lore and culture), every one of the main NT writers was almost certainly Jewish in birth and upbringing. But they exhibit a variety of styles of Jewishness as currently found in various parts of the Jewish world. None of them...
Extra-canonical early Christian literature Reference library
J. K. Elliott and J. K. Elliott
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...the two seems to show the secondary nature of the account in Infancy Thomas (e.g. in the elaboration of the references to Mary), but we need not see this as the result of direct copying by the author of Infancy Thomas . That author was a creative writer and not a scribe of Luke's gospel. Thus the version here is not a MS witness to the Gospel of Luke at this point. Possibly the author of Infancy Thomas knew Luke's story from the oral retelling of it in his own Christian community. Possibly he had read Luke. Either way his own retelling is a fresh,...
The Bible in the Eastern Churches Reference library
George Bebawi
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
... Luke 24 , which is given in a summary, betrays the liturgical origin of the whole passage. Those who have faith and can discern the new reality in the shadows of the old Oracles can see Jesus in Moses and the prophetic books. The new reality is the person of Jesus himself. Thus we can see in baptism in the early practice and in the Lord's supper the centrality of the person over the words and oracles. The meanings of any text can be determined by the events. The best example of this is in the writings of Origen of Alexandria. In his commentary on the Gospel of...
1700 to the Present Reference library
Ronald Clements
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...the oral traditions of preaching, echoes of which are still recognizable in the form of the gospel narratives. The second path followed up suggestions set out a century earlier, arguing that many of the sayings of Jesus, especially in the presumed ‘teaching source’ that lies behind the gospels of St Matthew and St Luke, showed evidence of their translation from an Aramaic, or Hebrew, original. The third path was directed towards a revised study of the overlaps and interrelationships of the narrative contents of the first three gospels, thereby carrying into...
The Bible in Literature Reference library
David Jasper
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...have inspired in their turn some of the greatest works in Western literature, notably in modern times Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling (1843), from Genesis 22 , and Thomas Mann's tetralogy Joseph and his Brothers (1933–43). Job ranks with the works of Aeschylus and Shakespeare as a foundational example of tragic literature; the Song of Songs has had some influence on almost all of the great love poetry of the West after the classical period. In the four gospels, the great parables of St Luke and the accounts of the Passion alone are literary...
2 The Sacred Book Reference library
Carl Olson
The Oxford Companion to the Book
...the good news of salvation, rather than its prior meaning associated with the welfare of the emperor. The authority of these texts was grounded in the words and deeds of Jesus, which were preserved by memory and transmitted orally. The Gospels were composed by anonymous authors, who named their works after a disciple of Jesus, and they consisted of Mark (composed c .65–70 ), Matthew and Luke ( c .80–90 ), and John ( c .90–100 ). In an effort to collect and codify various traditions about Jesus and sayings attributed to him, each Gospel writer sought to...
Israel and the Nations Reference library
Oxford Bible Atlas (4 ed.)
...of the birth, ministry, and death of Jesus set the events clearly in the context of Roman occupation. The Gospel of Luke associates the birth with a registration of the population in the time of the Emperor Augustus ( Luke 2: 1 ), and all the canonical Gospels refer to the involvement of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, in the events leading up to the crucifixion (for example, Matt. 27: 2; Mark 15: 1; Luke 23: 3; John 18: 28 ). The story of the early spread of Christianity is set in the context of the Roman Empire. Therefore an awareness of some of the...
Introduction to the Pauline Corpus Reference library
Terence L. Donaldson
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...writer Tertullian: ‘[The Gospel] which was published by Mark may be maintained to be Peter's, whose interpreter Mark was, just as the narrative of Luke is generally ascribed to Paul. For it is allowable that that which disciples publish should be regarded as their master's work’ ( Adv. Marc. 6.5). Certainly cases of deception were known in antiquity, no less than in our own day. But there is a much broader range of options to be put into play in the discussion. One of the factors in the discussion of authenticity, however, and one of the keys to Paul's...
John Reference library
René Kieffer and René Kieffer
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...effect of the narrative. Luke is less dependent on Mark than Matthew because he has his own information. He underlines more than Matthew and Mark that Pilate considered Jesus to be innocent. The author of the Fourth Gospel probably knows Mark's account ( contra Brown 1994 ), but he has much material of his own which he applies in a very free way. He has already used certain aspects of Mark's passion narrative earlier in his gospel; others do not fit his own main theological purpose. He tries to show that Jesus was sentenced to death as the king of the Jews...
The Reformation to 1700 Reference library
David Wright
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...Reformation movement was almost an orgy of preaching, from the masterly gospel expositions Luther delivered on returning to Wittenberg in May 1522 to retrieve the cause of moderate reform after Carlstadt's disruptive radicalism in his absence, to the remarkable sermon ‘on the plough’ (and ploughers) preached by Hugh Latimer, bishop of Worcester, at St Paul's Cross, London, early in January 1548, and John Knox's first public preachment, on Daniel 7 and the coming of Antichrist, at St Andrews in 1547. Portrait of Martin Luther by an unknown artist. ...
5 The European Medieval Book Reference library
Christopher de Hamel
The Oxford Companion to the Book
...of early Christianity in a Roman context was the invention and adoption of the *codex format. Books in the ancient world had mostly been produced on continuous *scrolls , but the codex was ideal for texts that needed constant consultation at different places, especially law and the Bible. Biblical texts, such as *gospel books , *psalters , and the letters of St Paul, are among the most fundamental of early medieval MSS, for they were used in the liturgy as well as in private study. With these came the biblical commentaries, homilies, and explanations of...
Colossians Reference library
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, OP and Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, OP
The Oxford Bible Commentary
...the gospel they initially accepted ( 1:5–6 ). The alternative against which they are warned is the theme of 2:6–23 . The hyperbole of ‘preached to every creature under heaven’ ( v. 23 b ) echoes that of 1 Thess 1:8 , and the lack of the definite article before ‘servant’ underlines that Paul is not the sole apostle. 1:24–2:5 develops Paul's own understanding of his service of the mystery. ( 1:24–2:5 ) Servant of the Mystery The NRSV offers a widespread mistranslation of 1:24 b , which has given rise to a series of false problems to which a variety of...
