Rhetography of Luke 1

Biblical Interpretation, 2013

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 2018

Religious Studies Review, 2013

most important and unifying poetic image. Chapter 2 argues that fama is the glue holding together Lucan's disjointed text, and that the fame of the poet, in particular, is the epic's overriding concern. Chapter 3 proposes that Lucan's sententiae can be excerpted and read in isolation as a guide to the epic's central themes and paradoxes. Dinter is at his best when invoking folklore theory to explain the mechanics of Lucan's "antiproverbs." Chapter 4 argues that verbal and thematic repetition help convey the broader leitmotif of civil war's limitlessness and perpetuity. Arguments are well signposted, but often dense, and many seem to beg for more in-depth analysis than they receive. Typographical errors are few. Although some will question Dinter's decision to analyze sententiae out of context, his book remains an impressive and learned study that largely succeeds in its attempt to explore and explain the most striking features of Lucan's poetic artistry.

The T&T Clark Handbook to Social Identity in the New Testament, 2014

Generously borrowed from Erving Goffman's approach to social situations as well as 'texts' , questions about framing direct our attention to the powers inherent in public articulation of collective memory to influence the private makings of sense. Questions about framing are essentially about the limits to the scope of possible interpretations. Their aim is not to freeze one particular 'reading' as the correct one, rather, it is to establish the likely range of meanings. 1 1 Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1994), 4. 2 For an explicit recognition and exploration of the connections between identity and memory (and social theories thereof), see Coleman A. Baker, Identity, Memory, and Narrative in Early Christianity: Peter, Paul, and Recategorization in the Book of Acts (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011).

The objective of the book is to reconstruct the new social identity implied in the Markan story about Jesus. The Markan proposal of a new way of being, thinking and feeling within the purview of a community is not merely a matter of understanding the material facts of a group, or the history and origin of a group, or the organization of a group, but rather deciphering the social meaning and cognitive significance of ones belonging to the Jesus-group. To achieve this purpose, this investigation has given equal importance to both the content and form of the text. It takes into account not only the textual data but also the rhetorical force behind the Markan composition by which the text message is communicated by the author to the reader. This book considers the scholarship of the Markan community to which the gospel was addressed as its point of departure. The vast and diverse studies on the Markan community have not yet reached a consensus on the location and vital context, situation of the real audience, authorship or date of composition of the text. The diverse hypotheses and subsequent uncertainty on the definition of the Markan community in the context of the studies of primitive Christianity serve this thesis as a stepping stone to deviate from the past route of investigation into the historical community of Mark to the audience within the Markan story. This route of investigation marks mainly three differences from those of the current studies on the historical Markan community: first, a shift of interest from searching and enumerating mere sociological factors of the real community to the searching for a socio-cognitive description of the Jesus–group in the literary world of Mark; second, an exegetical shift from the rigid use of method to an integral use of interpretive analytical strategies with the support of social scientific models; third, in spite of the entire Markan story with its literary coherence, a special interest in the theme of discipleship and disciples as 'a social form', identifies the focal area of this investigation as textual data. In the task of reconstructing the Markan proposal of the new social identity of the Jesus-group, this thesis explores two basic kinds of data: Emic and Etic. The exegetical method used in this investigation, namely socio-rhetorical analysis, provides perceptions and understanding from the Emic

Evangelical Quarterly 89.3, 2018

In dialogue with the progymnasmatic works of Theon and others, as well as modern studies on Luke, this chapter seeks to revisit the enigma of Luke's education and the effect of that education on the Lukan writings. Identifying Luke's educational influences is an important endeavour in its own right, as it provides a conceptual background when approaching Luke and Acts. The goal of this article is much more modest in that it seeks to examine the placement of the progymnasmata in literary education and its corresponding influence on assertions regarding the genre of Luke and Acts and Luke's rhetorical sophistication. Towards this end, this article will respond to two recent publications in NTS that discuss Luke's rhetorical training and competency with a particular eye towards identifying genre. Overall, this article posits that the progymnastic handbooks in the first century were not rigidly assigned to one particular educational tier, but rather were part of both the secondary and tertiary levels. is placement is vital for understanding the possible limits of Luke's rhetorical training, his level of education and his corresponding selection of genre. Second, this article will discuss briefly Luke's use of initial rhetorical features with a particular focus on διήγησις and how it is employed in the handbooks. Finally, this article provides an extended challenge to M. W. Martin's claim of Luke's rhetorical sophistication and argues that Luke's use of synkrisis is not as advanced as Martin posits nor was it Luke's model for the third Gospel.

Book Review, 2022

The ancients have different approaches to life, culture, society, and family than we moderns do. While one lives, when one dies, or in one's posthumous posterity-whether with repute or of shame, whether with longevity or of untimeliness-every aspect of one's holistic existence resonates the qualities of upbringing that the person of origin has received. During the first third of the first century of the Common Era, Jesus, who is generally recounted as commencing his public ministry from Nazareth in Israel-Palestine, can be rightly considered the person of origin. For example, Luke, commonly known as the author of the Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, portrays this Jesus from Nazareth as the adopted son of Joseph, who was himself a descendant of a long Jewish ancestry, and the only son of a woman who was called Mary. According to Luke, this Jesus was never married, lived only to his early thirties, and died childless. At first glance, the reader of Luke has the impression that this Jesus began and ended his own origin and family lineage. Jesus's existence was short. However, the way in which the storyteller depicts the person of origin matters. The holistic approach to this Jesus from Nazareth was radically different from that of other known figures in his time. No one before and no one after this Jesus was narrated in such respect to the influence that he had made on the lives of countless people. After he was wrongly arrested and unjustly put to death by the Romans, this Jesus is said to be raised from the dead (Luke 22:47-23:56). Then the risen Jesus is reported to appear to a number of his disciples (Luke 24:1-49). From word of mouth based on scores of stories about this Jesus's resurrection, a new religious experience began among some followers (Luke 24:50-53). Those who took the events to heart and pondered. . .

Contemporary scholarship recognises Luke " s Gospel and Acts of the Apostles as two volumes of Luke " s one book. This has greatly improved understanding of Luke " s literary contribution to Jesus " story. One gulf yet impedes better knowledge of Luke " s contribution. For some two centuries now, majority of scholars adopt either the Two-Document Hypothesis or the Two-Gospel Hypothesis in explaining the composition of Luke " s Gospel. Observably, the Two-Document Hypothesis ignores, and to some degree, the Two-Gospel Hypothesis glosses over Luke " s rhetorical concerns and narrative goal in writing, which is central to any utterance. This paper examines the usefulness of these approaches and then presents an alternative one. It argues that a more informed understanding of Luke-Acts, while valuing the author " s sources, should focus on Luke " s narrative techniques in his two-volume book. The paper employs a language-in-life-situation hermeneutic (name of the theorist), focusing on Luke " s use of the oral Gospel he internalised during his kerygma performance, to demonstrate how an author " s use of his sources in a literature is dialogically governed by his rhetorical goal and his ability to manage his sources. The study centres on Luke " s first volume as a paradigm.