Rumors of Resistance: Status Reversals and Hidden Transcripts in the Gospel of Luke

The Context of Luke and His Reading Communities

2 The Context of Luke and His Reading Communities The author and setting of the Gospel of Luke have been, over the years, notoriously difficult to place. There is general agreement that the author was Hellenistic and urban, but beyond that most discussions of Lukan context tend to conclude with statements such as the following: “As for the place of the composition of the Lucan Gospel, it is really anyone’s guess. . . . In the long run, it is a matter of little concern, because the interpretation of the Lucan Gospel and Acts does not depend on it.”1 While I acknowledge the imprecise nature of this search and lack of clear evidence for a specific locale, I cannot agree with Joseph Fitzmyer that it is immaterial to our study of Luke-Acts. On the contrary, for this project the early settings in which the Third Gospel was written, and even more importantly, heard and read, will be central to our understanding of what the status reversals might have meant to those first audiences. Luke, like all biblical narratives, is a “cultural product . . . a representation of the values and contexts within which it was generated,” which both reflects and challenges the world of its composition.2 The hierarchy and system of domination that characterized Roman rule colored every part of daily life, including the writing and reception of New Testament literature, and the placement of its readers and writers within the imperial provinces and their status groups will deepen our understanding of the text by clarifying something of its import in such a context. Certainly there are limits to the search for a Gospel community.3 But even small insights into the character and context of author or audience, when 1. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I–IX, AB 28 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981), 57. 2. Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT, ed. Gordon D. Fee (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 11–12. 65 coupled with historical inquiry, have great potential for illuminating the text. We will begin with a few significant textual clues that point to Luke’s own contextual assumptions. In several passages, rural Palestinian situations are adapted for urban Hellenistic ears: for example, the turf roof of Mark 2:4 becomes a tile one in Luke 5:19, and house foundations replace rock and sand in the parable of the wise and foolish builders (Luke 6:48-49; cf. Matt. 7:24-27). Additionally, a change of Semitic titles to their Greco-Roman counterparts (e.g., ῥαββουνί in Mark 10:51 to κύριος in Luke 18:41; and γραμματεύς in Mark 12:28 to νομικός in Luke 10:25) is another indication of Luke’s Hellenistic setting, although it need not indicate a solely Gentile audience, as Fitzmyer argues.4 These characteristics strongly imply a context in non-Palestinian, Greekspeaking cities, but that does not negate the possibility of a significant Jewish presence. Archaeological evidence from synagogues in Asia Minor shows a high degree of assimilation among Hellenistic Jews, from a predominance of the Greek language in their names and everyday dealings to Greek-style education, awards, and official titles.5 Luke’s affinity for and familiarity with city settings is confirmed by the centrality of Jerusalem in both the Gospel and Acts, and the urban focus of the Acts mission narrative. Luke-Acts contains by far the most uses of the word πόλις (city) in the New Testament, as much as the rest of the books combined.6 But no single city can really be identified as a likely setting for Luke-Acts’s origination on the basis of the biblical text alone. Later extracanonical sources attempted to fill this gap and offer some answers. The earliest copy of the full Gospel (late second or early third century) attributes it to Luke, usually thought to be the physician mentioned as Paul’s companion in Col. 4:14 (cf. Philem. 24 and 2 Tim. 4:11). An ancient prologue, dated to either the third or the second century ce,7 further identifies Luke as a native of Syrian Antioch who wrote the Gospel “in the regions of Achaea.” 3. See, e.g., the arguments in Luke Timothy Johnson, “On Finding the Lukan Community: A Cautious Cautionary Essay,” in SBLSP 1979, vol. 1, ed. Paul J. Achtemeier (Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1979), 87–100. 4. Fitzmyer, Luke I–IX, 58–59. A similar conclusion is drawn, without specific support, by Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, SP 3, ed...