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10 [223–246] Luke as Historiographer The Lukan Doppelwerk and the Discovery of Christian Salvation History 1. The Lukan Doppelwerk and Luke as historian On the relation between the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles The following two chapters are devoted to the Acts of the Apostles. With this a third focal point within the writings of the New Testament is brought into view. In part III we will then come back once more to this writing from another perspective, namely the role of Acts in the formation of the New Testament canon.1 The special character of Acts within the early Christian literature lies first in the fact that in it we encounter for the first time a presentation of history from a Christian perspective. With this Acts (or the Lukan work as a whole) contributes, over against the approaches discussed thus far—the Gospels and the Letters of Paul—in its own way to the formation of a Christian understanding of history and reality. Here and in the next chapter we will be concerned with this contribution. In this chapter the character of Acts as a historical work stands at the center; in the next the focus is on the specific connection between Christology and people of God. In order to deal with Luke as a historiographer one must consider the works associated with his name, namely the identically named Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.2 On the basis of size alone, Luke belongs to the most important New Testament authors, for [224] his writings make up 1 Cf. chap. 13. 2 Today the titles are mostly regarded as added secondarily. In the case of Acts the tension with the content, which is scarcely described adequately with pra,xeij (tw/n) avposto,lwn or acta (omnium) apostolorum, especially speaks for this view (contrast, however , Jervell 1998, 56–58, and already Wikenhauser 1921, 105–6). It is, however, probable that the titles were added with the circulation of the writings, thus for the Gospels up to the middle of the second century and for the book of Acts presumably somewhat later. For the Gospels, cf. Hengel 1984. 206 From Jesus to the New Testament about a fourth of the New Testament and with this more than the Letters of Paul or the Corpus Johanneum. As is well known, the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles do not directly follow each other in the ordering of the New Testament writings ;3 moreover, the Acts of the Apostles does not possess an author name.4 The origin of both works from the same author was, however, already accepted in the early church and has only seldom been called into question .5 It is first made conspicuous by the fact that a proem stands at the head of both books, in which the author addresses himself to a certain Theophilus6 and explicitly refers back to the first book at the beginning of the second. In addition, linguistic and conceptual observations show that we are dealing with two works that build on each other and are characterized by a unified view of the narrated events.7 Both works were first traced back to an author with the name of Luke in Irenaeus and at approximately the same time in the Canon Muratori, thus toward the end of the second century.8 Irenaeus evidently appeals to a tradition that is already older and possibly stems from the Roman church about the four gospels and their authors.9 If Marcion and Justin should already know of the attributions of the Gospels to the apostles Matthew and John and to the apostle-students Mark and Luke10 and if the supposition [225] of T. C. Skeats should also prove correct, 3 There is not a single canon list in which the Gospel of Luke and Acts stand directly next to each other. The idea of a “Lukan Doppelwerk” can thus be shown nowhere in the ancient church. Rather, the Gospel of Luke belongs from the beginning to the four-gospel collection, which is already presupposed by Irenaeus; Acts enters somewhat later into the circle of generally accepted writings and functions then as an introduction to the writings of the apostles, thus the so-called Catholic Letters, with which it builds together the third part of the canon alongside the Gospels and the Letters of Paul. On this point, cf. also chap. 13 below. 4 The common titles are (ai...

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