The Reception Of Luke And Acts In The Period Before Irenaeus -- By: Andrew Gregory

Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 53:1 (NA 2002)
Article: The Reception Of Luke And Acts In The Period Before Irenaeus
Author: Andrew Gregory


The Reception Of Luke And Acts In The Period Before Irenaeus1

Andrew Gregory

This thesis sets out to ask the question of what evidence is available for the reception of Luke and of Acts in the second century. Each text is treated separately, for there is no evidence that they circulated together. Each discussion follows a similar structure, which is to examine first the earliest manuscript evidence, and to turn next to the earliest explicit external testimony to either text. The majority of the discussion then addresses the evidence of potential allusions to and citations from each of Luke and Acts in Christian writings that survive from the period before Irenaeus.

Part One, The Introduction, surveys previous scholarship and establishes the parameters of the thesis. Literary dependence (following Koester) is considered to be established wherever a second century text includes material that may be identified as the redactional work of Luke. This is a methodologically rigorous criterion which guards against the possibility that two authors have made use independently of common sources and traditions, so that any results obtained from its implementation may be considered secure, but it is not without its limitations. Thus, as the thesis notes, this criterion may be applied to only a selection of the evidence that may be relevant to the question of the reception of Luke and Acts in the second century.

Part Two of the thesis addresses the evidence for the reception of Luke. It argues that the surviving manuscript tradition may cast very little light on the reception of Luke in the second century, and that it is impossible to get behind the traditional account of Luke and Acts that is first witnessed to by Irenaeus and the Muratorian Fragment. Therefore any earlier information concerning the knowledge and use of Luke in the second century must be obtained from possible quotations from and allusions to Luke in extant texts. Texts are

considered according to the heuristic criterion of whether they consist mainly of sayings or narrative material.

The first narrative considered is Ignatius’ account of a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus which shows striking affinities with Luke 24. Neither the possibility that this citation suggests an early textual form of Luke 24:39 nor the possibility that Ignatius paraphrased this account may be firmly excluded, but the evidence suggests that Ignatius is more likely to present an account similar to bu...

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