The writings of Luke and the Jewish roots of the Christian way : an examination of the aims of the first Christian historian in the light of ancient politics, ethnography, and historiography
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the motivations behind the theme of
Christianity’s Jewish roots in the writings of Luke. In particular, this study is a critical
examination of a set of increasingly influential proposals that all maintain that Luke’s
goal in highlighting the Jewish roots of the Christian movement is to gain cultural or
political capital in Graeco-Roman society. According to these proposals, the Jewish
people had an ancient and therefore respected heritage, and Luke attempts to leverage
this situation to the church’s advantage.
In order to evaluate these proposals, this thesis compares Luke’s writings to
historical works written by two of Luke’s near-contemporaries: Dionysius of
Halicarnassus and T. Flavius Josephus. The works of both Dionysius and Josephus
have been set forth as parallels to aspects of the recent proposals about Luke’s writings,
especially Luke’s purported interest in the respect that comes from antiquity, and thus
their writings make an excellent control group against which to test these proposals.
The central argument of this thesis is that a careful examination of these
authors’ writings reveals that Luke’s aims are very different from those of Dionysius
and Josephus. The latter two clearly and explicitly pursue cultural and political agendas
by emphasizing the respectable ancient heritages of the Romans and the Jewish people,
but Luke appears to be unembarrassed by the newness of the Christian movement, and
he often depicts the history of the Jewish people in remarkably unflattering terms. The
particular ways in which Luke highlights the Christian movement’s Jewish roots
suggest that, like other early Christian literature, his primary aim in emphasizing this
theme is to reassure adherents of the faith that the foundational events of the life of
Jesus and the early church legitimately constitute the fulfilment of God’s salvific plan.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Collections
Except where otherwise noted within the work, this item's licence for re-use is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.