Luke On Jesus Paul And Christianity

The present volume contains the proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium of the Leuven Centre for the Study of the Gospels which was dedicated to various aspects of Luke's writings that all have to do with his knowledge of the world he is describing in his work. The symposium studied a number of topics relating to the social world of earliest Christianity. Contributors had been asked to address, if relevant, (1) the history of research for the theme that had been assigned to them, (2) recent developments in assessing the relationship between Gospel and Acts and the dating of both works, and (3) the implications that can be drawn from studying the evidence of Luke-Acts for reconstructing the life-world of the first Christian communities. Contributors include Giovanni Bazzana, Mark Bilby, Michelle Christian, Jens Herzer, John Kloppenborg, Manfred Lang, Markus Oehler, Thomas Phillips, Dieter Roth, Dan Smith, and Arjan Zuiderhoek.

Acts is the sequel to Luke's gospel and tells the story of Jesus's followers during the 30 years after his death. It describes how the 12 apostles, formerly Jesus's disciples, spread the message of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean against a background of persecution. With an introduction by P.D. James

Pauline Christianity examines the reception of Acts and the ‘Pauline’ Luke by Irenaeus, the compositional intentions behind the construction of ‘Pauline’ Christianity in Acts, and the relation of the literary Paulinism of the author to the Paulinism of his sources.

In this study of Luke's Gospel, chapters 9 to 19, Australian Bible scholar Paul Barnett traces the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem in the last stage of his earthly ministry, and challenges readers to live in the light of Jesus' self-sacrificial humility. This is a stirring call to authentic Christian discipleship.

Draws on St. Paul's letters and other early sources to reveal the apostles' sharply competing ideas about the significance of Jesus and his teachings while demonstrating how St. Paul independently shaped Christianity as it is known today.

This re-appraisal of Luke's theological significance starts from a fresh evaluation of his picture of Paul. A companion of Paul, who understood and accepted the apostle's fundamental insight that the Law no longer had a part in bounding the people of God, he nevertheless entered upon a radical interpretation of Paul's stance, and so of the story of Paul, in the light of his belief that the Christian despensation was at one with God's convenantal dealings with Israel of which it was the fulfilment. In the light of these convictions, he writes a gospel the theological outlook of which is very different from Matthew's in its eschatological beliefs and in its attitude both to the Law and to Israel. These are such as to suggest that Luke's gospel could actually be a reaction against Matthew's. The third part of the work considers this possibility to make it likely that Luke did in fact know Matthew's gospel, that his was a deliberate recasting of much of its thought in terms of his Pauline outlook and of his approval of Mark. An epilogue suggests that Matthew and Luke could have been contemporaries and related to the same church.

This book raises questions about Luke's apology, and refutes the traditional view that he was writing an apologia pro ecclesia.