Genre and point of view in Luke's Gospel

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Spring, 2008 by Brigid Curtin Frein

Abstract

This study examines how the relationships between Luke's Gospel and other extant literary works shape the Gospel's narrative point of view. It discusses and evaluates the major proposals for identifying the genre of Luke-Acts and shows that none of the proposed genres alone can account for the all the major literary characteristics of the Gospel. The second section considers how the genre characteristics of Gospel, Hellenistic historical/biographical narrative, and biblical narrative each convey elements of the ideological, spatial/temporal and psychological aspects of point of view of Luke's Gospel.

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Ongoing discussions of how Luke's Gospel in particular and the canonical Gospels in general fit into the literary genres of the first century Mediterranean world have focused primarily on the their relationships with Hellenistic biographical traditions (Burridge: 52; Talbert 1977: 134-135; Talbert 1988: 60-61) and with both Hellenistic and Jewish historiographic writings (Aune 1987: 77-141). Most such discussions shed light on the various ways in which the authors have situated their narratives in relation to available literary models. Yet the question of genre is not simply a matter of identification and classification. Rather, the literary genre of a work is an important element in its comprehension; it conveys the author's view of the relationship between the story and other available narratives. From a communication perspective, the series of family resemblances among texts known as "genre" function as a set of shared expectations to guide interpretation and convey meaning (Burridge: 42, 53; Tolbert: 49). This view of literary genre raises the question that this study will seek to answer: how does the relationship between Luke's Gospel and other extant literary works convey the implied author's anticipated reception of and interpretation of the work--in other words, its narrative point of view (Burridge: 1, 31; Dubrow: 1, 31; Jauss: 2, 18).

I will approach the question of genre as an indication of narrative point of view by first examining the recent discussions of the genre of the Gospels with particular attention to the question of Luke's Gospel as the first part of a two-volume work. This discussion will attempt to show how the various genre theories shed light on the relationships between Luke's Gospel and other extant writings. From that review, I will outline the ways in which the genre-characteristics of the third Gospel convey elements of its point of view.

The Genres of the Gospel of Luke

Attempts to identify the genre of Luke's Gospel generally follow one of three directions. The first sees the Gospels as a distinctive literary genre--a class onto themselves--and Mark's Gospel is the earliest occurrence of this genre on which the author of Luke's Gospel (hereafter Luke) based his work. The second approach places Luke's Gospel within one of several genres of Hellenistic literature. The third locates the genre of Luke within Jewish sacred writings. While all of the approaches to the genre of Luke's Gospel shed light on its literary provenance, none of them completely accounts for the all the aspects of its genre.

The first position, often identified with form-criticism, contends that since the form, structure and content of the Gospels originated in and were defined by cultic and communal traditions of the earliest followers of Jesus, no direct influence of other literary works is likely (Bultmann: 373-74; Smith: 1790-91). A recent reiteration of this approach by R. Guelich (202-13) posits that the writer of the Gospel of Mark used the apostolic tradition (a form of which is found in Acts 10:34-43) as the outline for his writing, and that he created a new narrative genre out of the formal and material components he found in the tradition. Guelich contends that the canonical Gospels constitute a new literary genre because they share more formal and content characteristics with each other than any or all of them share with any other literary genre, and because as a group they possess a distinctive form and content (Guelich: 216-217).

With regard to the Gospel of Luke, the unique genre approach emphasizes that the closest literary predecessor to Luke's Gospel is certainly the Gospel of Mark. Luke's Gospel intends to retell the story of Jesus in a convincing and accurate way (Luke 1:1-4) (Evans & Sanders: 2-3). If the question of genre is a matter of identifying the literary antecedents of Luke, the closest model for Luke's Gospel is indeed Mark.

Yet to say that Luke's Gospel can be classified as the same genre as Mark leaves open the question of how the author expected his readers to interpret his work in light of other kinds of writings with which they would be familiar. Identifying the genre of the Luke as simply "gospel"--a class unto itself--neglects any significant impact of the larger Mediterranean culture on the emergence of Christianity, and suggests that the Gospels can be understood apart from their cultural context (Tolbert: 55-56).