Chunks: The Gospel of Luke

In the cultural world of the Bible, infertility was a cause for mourning and shame. We can see this in the stories of Hannah (the mother of the prophet Samuel) and of Abraham and Sarah. Here in Luke, that stigma is the background to the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Gabriel brings Zechariah the miraculous good news that he and Elizabeth will have a son, even in their old age. It’s a promise th...

In Scripture, angels are the messengers and agents of God—and when they show up, people are usually terrified, even when the message is good news. Luke’s already introduced Zechariah and Elizabeth, and the story now turns to the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Zechariah as he performs his priestly duties (1:8-17). Gabriel brings an unexpected answer to prayer; but will Zechariah believe?

Many years ago, a rabbi named Harold Kushner wrote a bestseller entitled, When Bad Things Happen to Good People . The title is based on the common expectation that bad things shouldn’t happen to good people, an expectation that can even be found in the psalms. Luke’s way of introducing Zechariah and Elizabeth (1:5-7) seems to tap the same expectation, which may have made Theophilus curious: If the...

If we’ve ever read fairy tales to our children, we know the stereotypical opening line: “Once upon a time…” Those words invite us into the story. Luke begins his narrative with the words, “In the time of Herod king of Judea” (1:5). To anyone who knew the history (as Theophilus probably did), those words would have ushered the reader’s imagination into a world of political turmoil and intrigue. Thi...

Each of the gospels tells the story of Jesus from a particular perspective, and each begins in a different place. Where you begin a story is not a random choice, but a deliberate decision of how to set the stage for the story that follows. After a brief introduction in which he addresses Theophilus directly, Luke begins by introducing the parents of John the Baptist: the priest Zechariah and his w...

To write a history of something or someone, you need the facts: the who , what , when , and where . But to write a compelling history, you need to address the why —and that means telling a good story. The gospels are not records of events listed in chronological order; that’s not what Luke means by “an orderly account” (1:3). He has a story to tell, which he tells in his own way, with his own emph...

We live in a world in which books and other media are taken for granted. The same could not be said of Luke and his readers; the stories they knew about Jesus were told to them, not read in a book. Luke, therefore, is one of the writers who decided to “draw up an account of the events that have been fulfilled among us” (1:1). He probably interviewed eyewitnesses to the life and ministry of Jesus,...

One of the reasons that the books of Luke and Acts are considered two parts of a single work (known as Luke-Acts) is that both begin with introductory words (e.g., Luke 1:1-4) addressed to a man named Theophilus. Nothing for certain is known about him, but comparing Luke’s words to other writings of the time can help us make some intelligent guesses about his role. 

Psalm 140:12 reads: “I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.” These words express a theme that shows up repeatedly in the Psalms and other Old Testament texts. It also seems to be a major theme of Luke’s. He wasn’t just concerned to show that God always had a plan, and that Christianity was its fulfillment; he also wanted to emphasize that the plan inc...

Why do we have four gospels instead of just one, especially since there’s so much overlap between Matthew, Mark, and Luke (which are known collectively as the Synoptic gospels)? In the previous episode, I suggested that the gospel of Luke needs to be read in light of the book of Acts; here, I will suggest that we also need to consider how Luke’s gospel differs from those of Matthew and Mark. And w...

Bible scholars agree that the gospel of Luke functions like the first volume in a two-volume set; we know volume 2 as the book of Acts. In our Bibles, the two books are separated by the gospel of John, so we rarely read them together. But if the two were written together, and Luke is the author of both, then our understanding of the gospel should be shaped by the way it anticipates the story of th...

Let’s start with what might sound like a trick question: who wrote “The Gospel of Luke”? The tradition has been to assign the third gospel to Luke, the beloved physician, and I will assume the same here. But it’s instructive to consider why that assignment isn’t as obvious as it might seem at first. We’ll explore such issues in this opening episode, along with the question of why it was important...