Jesus, with Style

The essays of this book show that we do not have to choose between Luke as a theologian and Luke as a writer, between a Greek and a Jewish Luke, between a conservative Luke and an innovative and creative one, between the Luke of the Gospel and the Luke of Acts. Luke's literary qualities are universally recognized, from the sophistication of his composition and writing, to the way he combines allusions to the Scriptures of Israel and to Hellenistic culture. In both his works, Marc Rastoin argues, Luke shows his knowledge of the historiography of his time, all the while never ceasing to be a theologian. Acts, often considered to be simply an interesting account of the early church, has just as much theological value as the Gospel. It was a key ecclesiological, and thus pneumatological, decision for Luke to have written such a narrative in two parts of equal weight.