The present study aims to understand the role of John the Baptist as he is portrayed in Luke-Acts through a reading that combines social description and narrative-theological analysis to gain hermeneutic access to the topic of our investigation. In the second degree, this study also aims to show how Luke-Acts preserves a unique dynamic of John the Baptist, which is rather buried in other gospel traditions. Nicholas Taylor was also very helpful during the early development of this study with information and bibliographic material, particularly on John the Baptist's social depiction of the world.
JOHN THE BAPTIZER 261 1 Introduction
ABRAHAM'S EXTENDED FAMILY 299 1 Introduction
CONCLUSION 379 GENERAL CONCLUSION 380
There are several ways in which Luke-Acts calls for the participation of the modern reader. Brown (The Birth of the Messiah, London, Geoffrey Chapman, although he suggests that it is specifically with regard to Luke 1-2 (the infancy narrative) that knowledge of the author's identity is not decisive. In the second section of Part Three we undertake a careful examination of the role of John the Baptist in Luke-Acts.
Another scholar convinced of the historical reliability of the Acts of Luke was the Danish scholar J. Finally (which by no means means that we have exhausted the study on the historical value of the Acts), we come to the most recent proponents of the opinion that Luke-Acts is historically reliable.
LUKE THE THEOLOGIAN 1 Luke as a Theologian
185 Although critical of details, for example in Acts (Leicester, Inter-Varsity Press, 1998), Marshall accepts Conzelmann's main theses (:22-24). The first two chapters of Acts offer a transition from the story of Jesus to the story of the Church. Similarly, in the first two chapters of the Gospel, there is a transition from the story of Israel to the story of Jesus.
LUKE-ACTS AS LITERATURE 1 Introduction
The narrative thus closes in the middle of an action that continues beyond the end of the story.238. Clearly, the application of the reader-response method is not always appropriate when applied to the Bible as scripture. Tannehill presents in two volumes a study of Luke-Acts that uses modern literary theory to interpret each pericope within the context of the narrative as one.
This is an area that remains unsatisfactorily addressed by the various proponents of the literary approach to Luke-Acts. Miller sought to establish that the author of Luke-Acts, in his presentation of John the Baptist and Jesus, followed a long-standing model of the representation of literary characters in comparative and contrastive doubles. Miller concludes his study of the syncritical presentation of John and Jesus in Luke-Acts by stating this.
In Miller, Luke-Acts is primarily a biography, a double biography of the lives of John and Jesus. Literary-critical studies of John the Baptist are largely related to his function in the context of the Gospel narratives. This is what Tannell concludes from his literary-critical study of the story of John the Baptist in Luke-Acts.
What was started by God's word to John continues in the rest of the story.
SOCIAL-CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LUKE-ACTS 1 Introduction
These aspects of the social description approach provide an important rationale for the methodology adopted in this study project. When it comes to scholars of the social science 'school', we think of such pioneering scholars as P.L. In the context of the New Testament in general, Rohrbaugh succinctly expresses this 'new discovery' when he says,.
For Gadamer, this is the end result of the new hermeneutic path that he outlines. The social description, reconstruction, analysis and interpretation of the New Testament world in general, and of Luke-Acts in particular, has already been underway for several decades. Esler's work offers a new paradigm for generating a theology of Luke that is attuned to the social and political realities of the time that impact contemporary Christian communities.
They offer the first comprehensive analysis of a single New Testament text from the perspective of the social sciences. Hanson303 has e.g. noted a number of limitations inherent in social scientific method in the study of the ancient world in general. Gager's observations are justified, certainly from the theory on which they are based.
Scobie, for example, believes that the connection of the Mandaeans with John the Baptist is “most misleading.
CONCLUSION 1 An Ongoing Dialogue
However, they have not completely closed the door to the possibility that the Mandaean movement (perhaps in Palestine) was in some way informed and perhaps influenced by the teaching of John the Baptist362 - a teaching which they integrated into their theology. . Many scholars are dissatisfied with the failure of traditional critical methods to reach a consensus on at least key points in the Acts of Luke, so the clamor for a methodological shift has been loud and clear, especially in the last two decades. It was this new research that led to the adoption of the social scientific approach to Lucan studies (Neyrey, Malina, Gager, Cassidy, Esler and Moxnes among others).
While the literary approach broadened the Lucan writings from the purely historical or theological sphere to the much wider context of secular literature and media, the social scientific approach helps to bring the reader into contact with the social and everyday milieux of the ancient Mediterranean peoples. to whom and for whom the New Testament texts were originally written. For him, the social sciences in dealing with the past must necessarily cooperate with history ever since. Michael Lafargue argues that theology cannot be separated from the social sciences because theology is a part of culture and, as an aspect of culture, . the meaning of theological ideas is contextually determined.
In the ongoing debate about the interaction between critical biblical studies that make use of history, theology, the literary sciences and the social sciences, Vernon Robbins has outlined a useful way forward for a continued fruitful collaboration of these methodologies in biblical interpretation. Esler summarizes the issues involved in the interaction between history, theology and the social scientific approach by noting that. The question is not 'Do we need the social sciences?' but rather 'How can we do without them?'369.
Our overall analysis and assessment of the foregoing literary overview of the status quaestionis in Lucan studies indicates that a reading of Luke-Acts that combines social description and narrative-theological analysis to understand the role of protagonists in Luke-Acts in general, or of John the Baptist in particular, has never been attempted, hence the importance and relevance of yet another study.
THEBACKGROUND OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 Introduction
Theissen's description of the turbulent history of social scientific biblical criticism in The Social Reality and the Early Christians, 3-21. Fairweather, The Background of the Gospels: Judaism in the Period Between the Old and New Testaments, Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1920;. John the Baptist] will convert many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.
In Luke 1:17 it is said of the yet unborn John the Baptist that he would come in. It is beyond the scope of this study to undertake a detailed analysis of the available data. In the community's writings there is evidence of the expectation of at least three messiahs: a Davidic messiah, the messiah of Aaron and the messiah of.
The imminent visit of the prophet (Elijah?) as the forerunner of the messiah(s) is expected in the Messianic Apocalypse (4Q521). The Dead Sea Scrolls community based its expectation of a Davidic messianic figure on its interpretation of texts from the prophet Isaiah. Their lifestyle was one that, already in the present, offered a glimpse into the expected and pure life of the future.
Jesus' response to the apostles ("It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has established by his own authority" - Acts 1:7) recalls the deferred messianic era of the community of Qumran.
THE MOVEMENT OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 John the Baptist's Movement
This perspective already existed in the time of the prophets, as the quote from Isaiah 40:3 shows. In the following section we will attempt a narrative-theological analysis of the main texts of Luke-Acts that deal with John the Baptist. The Web's detailed list of traditions about John the Baptist in the early Christian Gospels: John the Baptist and the Prophet, 41-11.
Mark tells us that, in fulfillment of the prophets,518 'Iwavvric [6] pairri(G)v ("John the Baptizer"519) appeared in the wilderness and proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Attention is mainly drawn to the symbolic meaning of 'wilderness' and to the associations that the wilderness had in the minds of the people of John's time. In Joshua 3-4 an event takes place at the Jordan, which is a 'passage' in the literal sense of the word.
Lupieri, "John the Baptist: The First Monk: A Contribution to the History of the Figure of John the Baptist in the Early Monastic World" in Monasticism: A Historical Overview. Other scholars believe that the 'mightier' was a later addition to the earliest tradition; an addition that was made as a result of the later controversy between the followers of Jesus and the followers of John the Baptist. Just as the ax had already been laid to the roots of the trees (against the Pharisees and Sadducees) to cut down the unfruitful; the "coming one" will have a fork in his hand to separate the good wheat from the chaff (Matthew 3:12).
Elsewhere, and still in connection with the question of the presentation of John the Baptist in 'Q', Draper maintains that. The strong verbal agreement in the accounts of the Baptist's preaching may be the result of a well-established, oft-repeated tradition. The following is a synopsis of the pericopae on John the Baptist in the 'Q' tradition and - for comparison - in the triple tradition (Luke and Matthew, including Mark):.
