The Gospel of Luke has long been known for its variation between good, educated Greek and Semitic influences. In the last century, five theories have attempted to explain the Semitic influence: Semitic sources; imitation of the Greek Bible; the Greek of the ancient synagogue; literary code-switching between standard Greek and semitized Greek; and the social background of bilingualism. Albert Hogeterp and Adelbert Denaux revisit Luke's Greek and evaluate which alleged Semitisms of vocabulary and syntax are tenable in light of comparative investigation across corpora of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, literary as well as documentary, texts. They contend that Semitisms in Luke's Greek are only fully understood in light of a complementarity of linguistic backgrounds, and evaluate them in diachronic respect of Synoptic comparison and in synchronic respect of their place in Luke's narrative style and communicative strategy.

This book proposes a fresh understanding of the literary composition of Luke-Acts. Picking up on the ancient practice of literary mimesis, the author argues that Luke’s two-part narrative is subtly but significantly modeled on the two-part narrative found in the books of Samuel-Kings and Chronicles. Specifically, Luke’s gospel presents Jesus as the promised, ultimate Davidide, while the Book of Acts presents the disciples of Jesus as the heirs of the kingdom of David. In addition to the proposal concerning the composition of Luke-Acts, the book offers compelling insights on the genre of Luke-Acts and the purpose of Acts.

Did Jesus speak Greek? An affirmative answer to the question will no doubt challenge traditional presuppositions. The question relates directly to the historical preservation of Jesus's words and theology. Traditionally, the authenticity of Jesus's teaching has been linked to the recovery of the original Aramaic that presumably underlies the Gospels. The Aramaic Hypothesis infers that the Gospels represent theological expansions, religious propaganda, or blatant distortions of Jesus's teachings. Consequently, uncovering the original Aramaic of Jesus's teachings will separate the historical Jesus from the mythical personality. G. Scott Gleaves, in Did Jesus Speak Greek?, contends that the Aramaic Hypothesis is inadequate as an exclusive criterion of historical Jesus studies and does not aptly take into consideration the multilingual culture of first-century Palestine. Evidence from archaeological, literary, and biblical data demonstrates Greek linguistic dominance in Roman Palestine during the first century CE. Such preponderance of evidence leads not only to the conclusion that Jesus and his disciples spoke Greek but also to the recognition that the Greek New Testament generally and the Gospel of Matthew in particular were original compositions and not translations of underlying Aramaic sources.

Did Luke interview eyewitnesses to write his Gospel? Living Footnotes in the Gospel of Luke provides a careful, thorough examination of Luke’s claims (Luke 1:1–4), demonstrating that he not only claims to use living sources but also did so. It builds a corroborative evidence case towards this end, not merely by accumulating unrelated strands of evidence, but by showing the interconnectedness of independent lines of subtle clues in Luke’s text. These historically rich, unintentional features weave together to generate a robust impression upon the reader: Luke not only relied on living informants but in fact sifted his sources in preference of eyewitness testimony.

Contemporary reconstructions of Luke's theology of the Way should include in a more conscientious manner the contribution of Luke's post-Easter on the road encounters (the Emmaus, Gaza, and Damascus road narratives). This book argues that Luke follows here the rules of Hellenistic mimesis (imitation), many of which are illustrated in the novels, dramas, and history treatises of his time. Filtering these rules through his own theology and literary taste, he represents, in the end, the history and the proclamation of the early church, in an attractive and challenging manner, inviting his readers to good literature and to captivating spiritual experiences.

It has long been recognized that the Greek of the Lukan infancy narrative (chapters 1-2) displays numerous Semitic features. Although the majority of recent scholarship assumes that such features stem from an imitation of the Septuagint (imitation theory), the issue has not been settled satisfactorily. Others argue that Luke probably relied on a written source for the infancy narrative-or at least for some parts of it-and that this source material was composed in imitation of the Septuagint. Luke was not, however, merely the reviser or compiler of his source; rather, he rewrote the source employing his own style and language for his own purpose. Here, Chang-Wook Jung examines the arguments most commonly put forward by both sides and considers their merits.

Steve Reece proposes that the author of Luke-Acts was trained as a youth in the primary and secondary Greek educational curriculum typical of the Eastern Mediterranean during the Roman Imperial period, where he gained familiarity with the Classical and Hellenistic authors whose works were the focus of study. He makes a case for Luke's knowledge of these authors internally by spotlighting the density of allusions to them in the narrative of Luke-Acts, and externally by illustrating from contemporary literary, papyrological, and artistic evidence that the works of these authors were indeed widely known in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time of the composition of Luke-Acts, not only in the schools but also among the general public. Reece begins with a thorough examination of the Greek educational system during the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods, emphasizing that the educational curriculum was very homogeneous, at least at the primary and secondary levels, and that children growing up anywhere in the Eastern Mediterranean could expect to receive quite similar educations. His close examination of the Greek text of Luke-Acts has turned up echoes, allusions, and quotations of several of the very authors that were most prominently featured in the school curriculum: Homer, Aesop, Euripides, Plato, and Aratus. This reinforces the view that Luke, along with other writers of the New Testament, lived in a cultural milieu that was influenced by Classical and Hellenistic Greek literature and that he was not averse to invoking that literature when it served his theological and literary purposes.

In this work, Arie W. Zwiep examines the gospel stories of the raising of Jairus's daughter and the healing of the haemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:21-43; Matt 9:18-26; Luke 8:40-56) from a plurality of (sometimes conflicting) interpretive strategies to demonstrate the need and fruitfulness of a multi-perspectival exegetical approach. Among the various (diachronic and synchronic) methods that are being applied in this study are philological criticism, form criticism and structural analysis, tradition- and redaction criticism, orality studies and performance criticism, narrative analysis, textual criticism and the study of intertextuality. Such a comprehensive approach, it is argued, leads to an increased knowledge and a deepened understanding of the ancient texts in question and to a sharpened awareness of the applicability of current scholarly research instruments to unlock documents from the past.

In this volume Joshua Paul Smith challenges the long-held assumption that Luke and Acts were written by a gentile, arguing instead that the author of these texts was educated and enculturated within a Second-Temple Jewish context. Advancing from a consciously interdisciplinary perspective, Smith considers the question of Lukan authorship from multiple fronts, including reception history and social memory theory, literary criticism, and the emerging discipline of cognitive sociolinguistics. The result is an alternative portrait of Luke the Evangelist, one who sees the mission to the gentiles not as a supersession of Jewish law and tradition, but rather as a fulfillment and expansion of Israel’s own salvation history.

This book offers a new explanation of the development of the first three Gospels based on a careful examination of both patristic testimony to the "Hebrew Gospel" and internal evidence in the canonical Gospels themselves. James Edward breaks new ground and challenges assumptions that have long been held in the New Testament guild but actually lack solid evidence.