A review of the book “Luke and the
people of God: A new look at Luke-Acts” by Jacob Jervell. This is a 207 page
book containing 7 chapters discussing the theology of Luke. The book mainly
focuses on the book of Acts but does reference the Gospel of Luke at times.
The author is convinced that the
real audience that Luke is writing to are Jewish-Christians and at least one of
the questions that Luke is trying to deal with has to do with Paul and his view
of the law. Is Paul an apostate to the law and Judaism? He tries to show that
Luke was writing to prove that “Jesus’ followers were strict adherents to the
law of Moses…” (Page 16). He goes on to say that “Luke wrote Acts because he
was forced to do so by a crisis in the church, precipitated by rumors and
controversies focusing on Paul. The problem was Paul’s attitude towards the
Mosaic Torah, the Jewish way of life, and Israel.” (Page 17). The author also believes that Luke taught
that Paul was just another “…Pharisee, faithful to the law…” (Page 169).
One of
the major problems with the book is that it’s liberal theology which means that
the author separates Luke from the other New Testament writers and places them
at odds with each other. For example he places Luke and Matthew at odds with
each other when he mentions “Luke’s reworking of the account…” found in Matthew’s
gospel. Jervell doesn’t hold to the inerrancy and cohesive nature of the
scriptures.
I did like the discussion about “true
Israel” being those who are Israelites that accept Jesus as the Messiah and the
apostate Israelites as those who reject the Messiah. There are nuggets of
insight and lots of things to contemplate but unless one is firmly grounded in
the inerrancy of scripture and knows something about German liberal theology as
well as concepts such as “redaction criticism”, and “source criticism” it would
be better to stay away from this book. I think it would only confuse someone
rather than help. Those that have at least a basic understanding of these kinds
of liberal views may find some interesting things to ponder.
In the end I believe this book is
fairly technical and is only worth reading if you want to have a few interesting
things to chew on. It would be much better to stick with solid conservative
material in my opinion.
You can
buy it here
