Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 The socio-redaction criticism of Luke–Acts
- 2 The community
- 3 Sectarian strategies
- 4 Table-fellowship
- 5 The law
- 6 The Temple
- 7 The poor and the rich
- 8 Rome and the ancestral theme
- Epilogue: community and Gospel
- Notes
- Index of biblical references
- Index of secondary authors
7 - The poor and the rich
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 The socio-redaction criticism of Luke–Acts
- 2 The community
- 3 Sectarian strategies
- 4 Table-fellowship
- 5 The law
- 6 The Temple
- 7 The poor and the rich
- 8 Rome and the ancestral theme
- Epilogue: community and Gospel
- Notes
- Index of biblical references
- Index of secondary authors
Summary
A theology of the destitute in Luke–Acts
In Luke's Gospel Jesus begins his public ministry in the synagogue at Nazareth (4.16–30). His first words are a quotation from Isaiah:
The spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to beggars … (4.18a).
Among Lucan commentators there is a fairly general agreement, in which we concur, that the Nazareth episode serves a programmatic function within Luke–Acts as a whole. If so, what significance attaches to the fact that pride of place in the inaugural preaching of Jesus is given to ‘beggars’, which, as we shall see, is the correct rendering of πτωχοί in the Greek, a word whose force is eviscerated by the translation ‘the poor’, which appears in nearly all English versions? And when Jesus continues the Isaian quotation by saying that he has been sent ‘to announce freedom for captives, sight for the blind and liberation for those suffering oppression’ (4.18b), we are led to ask what role these deprived groups have within the Lucan programme. If, moreover, scholars are correct in seeing in the references to the widow of Zarephath and to Naaman the Syrian in Lk 4.25–7 a prediction and authorization by Jesus of a future Gentile mission, what are we to make of the widow's being numbered among the poor who were on the brink of death by starvation (1 Kgs 17.12)?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Community and Gospel in Luke-ActsThe Social and Political Motivations of Lucan Theology, pp. 164 - 200Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987
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