The author of Luke-Acts was the better educated of all the NT writers, with a big vocabulary but also dedicated to the priestly traditions (and hymns) in his community.
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Luke is often considered the most humane of the evangelists, since he alone tells such moving stories as that of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Good Thief, and he shows special sensitivity to women, not only to the mother of Jesus but to the widow of Nain, to the woman who washes Jesus' feet, to the longtime cripple, the woman with a menstrual disorder, the woman with the lost coin, the woman with the small donation, the women who follow Jesus on his travels in Galilee, as well as those he addresses on his way to Golgotha.
He is also called irenic, or ecumenicala reconciler of Jews with Romans, and even of Peter with Paul. This has made him popular with those who want a less thunderous Jesus. Dante called Luke "a describer of Christ's kindness," and Ernst Renan called his Gospel "the most beautiful book that ever was."7 Luke also has special liturgical interests. It has already been mentioned that his account of the walk toward Emmaus re-creates a Christian ceremony around the Sacred Writings, the Eucharist, and a profession of faith. The hymns ("canticles") of the opening of the Gospel seem to be drawn from the singing of the early gatherings. This goes with the logistics of Christian meetings in the Acts of Apostles, where the reading of the "humane" parables would emphasize consolation of the gathered Brothers and Sisters.
The poetic prose/phrases are lost on most modern English readers, as is the real context of his opening history. He gets some of the 'history' wrong, particularly jewish law, such as where he says both Joseph and Mary had to go to the temple to be purified after Jesus' birth; only she would have been thought unclean, not both.Quote:
ALTHOUGH LUKE'S first sentence promises to put in order traditions going back to "eyewitnesses" (autoptai), his birth narrative can have no firsthand testimony, any more than Matthew's did. Matthew, as we have seen, drew on popular narratives dramatizing the Sacred Writings. Luke is even more liturgicalhe relies on songs created by the early communities. The change from his polished first sentence to the Semitic patterns of the "canticles" raised questions in the past about Luke's ethnic and linguistic backgrounddid he know Hebrew, to create such striking poems? The answer is probably that Luke, as he assures us, is drawing on the traditions of the communities he writes for, where the Christian poems he puts in the mouth of Mary and Simeon were performed.
Annunciation of the Baptist's Birth
AS WAS MENTIONED earlier, Luke is more interested in the priestly traditions of the Sacred Writings than in kingly ones. The first annunciation in his narrative is not to Joseph, a Davidid, as in Matthew, but to a priest as he officiates in the Temple, Zechariah, who is told that his barren wife will have a child, who will be called John. The providence of the Lord in keeping the Jews' line intact is often symbolized in the birth of children from apparently barren womenRebekah (Genesis 25.21), Rachel (Genesis 29.31), Hannah (1 Samuel 1.2). But only one couple resembles Zechariah and Elizabeth, in that both husband and wife are beyond the child-begetting age. That other couple is Abraham and Sarah, who beget Isaac (Genesis 18.11). Luke's use of poetic speech is already present in the repetitive patterns of the angel's annunciation to Zechariah. This may be the best place to point out that the principal metrical unit for Hebrew poetry is the paired clause, a second (or third) line echoing, supplementing, or defining the first (sometimes by contrast). This kind of poetry fills the early passages of Luke.