This paper explores Luke’s allusions to Deuteronomic themes in his account of Stephen’s story (Acts 6:1-8:1a) to argue that the death and resurrection of Jesus enacted the true Exodus and produced a Spirit-empowered community, whose identity is defined by Messiah Jesus and whose mission fulfills God’s covenant purposes for Israel. Luke’s allusions to Moses’s summary … Read more
The role of women in the Gospels has become of increasing interest in both the academy and the church over the last fifty years, often guided by a key question: what is the attitude of Jesus toward women? Luke’s Gospel is central to the conversation for its inclusion of many female characters and is widely … Read more
Peter’s vision and subsequent evangelism at Cornelius’ house (10:1-48) marks a significant shift in the narrative of Acts, which prepares the church for its mission to the Gentiles. Luke prefaces this pivotal episode with two miracle accounts in 9:32-43. These two accounts, along with Peter’s ministry to Cornelius, echo three distinct episodes in Jesus’ ministry: … Read more
Peter’s confession is presented with a varying text in each of the Synoptics. Absent in Mark 8:29, sonship language is expressly used in Matthew 16:16. English versions provide a literal but awkward translation of Luke 9:20: “Christ of God” or “Messiah of God.” This paper questions whether this is an overlooked example of Luke’s use … Read more
Acts 5:15 contains one of the strangest scenes in the New Testament. Luke records the sick being carried into the streets of Jerusalem in hopes that Peter’s shadow would fall on them and heal them. In light of the sensational nature of Luke’s account, the text has received considerable attention, but no consensus exists concerning … Read more
This paper will explore the topics of how and why Jesus responds to individuals in the way that he does throughout Luke’s Gospel (which is the focus of my PhD research). This will be accomplished by examining a key passage on the topic of Jesus’ interactions with others – Jesus’ rejection and subsequent response to … Read more
This paper examines how early Christian social identity is constructed and institutionalized in Acts 1–6, focusing on the Jerusalem church. By employing Allan Bell’s sociolinguistic concept of the “Indexical Cycle,” this study investigates how repeated interactions between language and social behavior contribute to the formation and reinforcement of group identity. By tracing four discourse-action cycles … Read more
In recent years there has been increased attention on the potential benefits of applying Bayes’ Theorem to arguments in biblical studies. Scholars such as Christoph Heilig, Laura J. Hunt, and myself have, in different ways, appealed to Bayes’ Theorem—a fundamental formula used in statistics—in their research, while a small but engaged community has sprung up … Read more
The question of the genre of Luke and Acts (or Luke-Acts) is one that continues to bedevil Lukan scholarship. Proposals run the gamut, from the fairly standard (e.g., Bios and “general history”), to the esoteric (e.g., “eschatological kerygmatic biblical historical biography”). This paper will seek to cut through some of the confusion by employing a … Read more
Luke’s birth narrative bridges the Gospel’s first-century context and the Old Testament context to which the author subtly but consistently refers (Hays, 2017). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Luke’s birth narrative instructs the reader, first, to identify the birth of Jesus as YHWH’s visitation to an exiled people, and second, to … Read more