Luke's audience – a Christian community

Although the aim of this book is to analyse the interrelationships between Luke's theology and the social and political pressures upon his community, certain preliminary issues must be dealt with first. These issues, three in number, are considered in this chapter. They are: first, the justification for claiming that Luke was writing for a Christian community; secondly, the approximate time and geographical setting in which he composed his two volumes; and, thirdly, the ethnic and religious background of the members of his community.

Many commentators on Luke have felt that the preface, dedicating his Gospel to one Theophilus (1.1–4), was a natural place to begin a search for the audience he hoped to reach. They have tended to presume that Theophilus was a leading figure in whichever group Luke had in mind as his first readers. But this is an erroneous presumption. As a result of a careful survey of the Hellenistic literary conventions of preface composition, H.J. Cadbury was able to demonstrate that the relation of author and addressee was usually formal and rarely affected the contents of the work. Theophilus may or may not have been typical of the reading public for whom the work was intended; its real readers may well have been different.