Here is a Bible study that takes Luke’s gospel seriously as literature. The Lukan Voice focuses on how Luke employed the ancient storyteller’s devise of giving characters identifiable patterns of speech. Is this merely an expression of literary style? No, for what is said in the gospel is intertwined with how it is said. The different voices not only embellish the story. The confusion of Luke is purposeful; the purpose is pungently ironic; the irony is exquisite.
From the Dustjacket
Careful students of the Gospel of Luke have long been aware of the different “voices” woven into the narrative by its author. “There is a sense,” James M. Dawsey writes, in which the author of the Gospel “backed off from what he told and allowed his characters to speak, to agree and disagree, to use their own language and so to come alive in the story.” Ever sensitive to characterization, the author took care “to dress the people of his story with a proper language.” Yet is a mistake to think of the “confusion” of differing voices in Luke merely as expressions of literary style. “What is said in Luke,” Professor Dawsey reminds his readers, “is irrevocably intertwined with how it is said. The different voices not only embellish the story; they are the stuff of the story.” The confusion of Luke is purposeful; the purpose is pungently ironic; the irony exquisite.
Professor Dawsey has sought the meaning of the text of Luke “behind the individual reader and behind church tradition, homiletics, theology, ethics, and meditation” in an attempt to understand the Gospel “in its own categories.” Literary criticism, he writes, can make us aware of things we already “know” and invest them with new clarity and meanings we had not suspected. Such analysis can also “unlock long-shut secrets and surprise us with an old understanding that is new to us.” But Luke, composed in Hellenistic Greek 1900 years ago, does not yield up its secrets easily. Idioms and verbal nuances that were once clear expressions immediately understood are now buried beneath centuries of cultural debris. Even the seemingly simple act of reading Luke “as a narrative whole” becomes difficult for modern readers, “so accustomed are we to its interrupted presentation in chapter and verse.”
Clearing away the debris and unlocking the secrets of an ancient Greek narrative demand the use of tools and skills not easily acquired or quickly applied. But Professor Dawsey presents his methods and conclusions in a readable exposition readily comprehended by students and other nonspecialists. Scholars will find detailed technical information in three appendixes that buttress the arguments of the early chapters.
Professor Dawsey’s painstaking analysis separates the language of Jesus and his view of events from that of the chief priests, Pharisees, disciples, and other characters in the narrative–and especially from the language and viewpoint of the narrator. “The characters and the narrator of Luke,” Professor Dawsey finds, “are in dialogue with each other and with us. Meaning arises out of that conversation.”
Eminent Bible scholar Fred B. Craddock on The Lukan Voice
“Here we have a fresh reading of the text of Luke by one who is familiar with literary criticism and the devices of storytellers, ancient and modern. Even though Professor Dawsey does join the ‘how’ of Luke’s Gospel with the ‘what’ of Luke’s Gospel, it is quite evident that he does not make literary criticism the handmaiden either of history or of theology.
“Professor Dawsey argues persuasively that Luke has used the ancient storyteller’s device of giving characters in a story identifiable patterns of speech as distinct from the narrator. These different voices expressing different views of Jesus and of Jesus’ work address each other and the reader. By means of two literary devices, confusion and irony, these different voices function to confront the reader with the message of the book. Because more than one view of Jesus is presented by these voices, the reader is forced not only to discern the message, but also to make some decision about it. Because of his very careful and close reading of the text of Luke, Professor Dawsey invites but also demands that those who join him in this study do the same.
“This small book will spawn many new studies of Luke. Some of them may seek to counter Professor Dawsey’s position; others may wish to modify it. But it is my guess that many will seek to reevaluate previously held theological perspectives on Luke in the light of Dawsey’s careful study.”
Henry Joel Cadbury
My favorite Lukan scholar is Henry Joel Cadbury (1883-1974). Let This Life Speak: The Legacy of Henry Joel Cadbury by Margaret Hope Bacon is excellent (pictured). Cadbury’s The Style and Literary Method of Luke continues in print. A list of Cadbury’s publications is available from the Harvard Divinity School.