Journal for the Study of the New Testament

To argue that Jesus of Nazareth was put to death by the Roman authorities because they believed him to be a royal pretender of some kind, fails to explain satisfactorily why he was killed but his followers were not. A possible solution to this conundrum, which is supported by neglected contextual data, is that the Romans thought Jesus of Nazareth to be a deranged and deluded lunatic.

This article surveys the debate about the unity of Luke—Acts in recent scholarship. The study concentrates on monographs and articles written after Mikael C. Parsons and Richard I. Pervo's volume Rethinking the Unity of Luke and Acts, and identifies the recent contribution that reception-history studies have brought to the debate. This is followed with a brief analysis of the flashpoints in the debate, and a discussion of what is at stake for Lukan studies.

In the effort both to clarify and advance the present scholarly discussion, this article continues a conversation about (a) the reception history of Luke and Acts and (b) the hermeneutical implications that derive from such history . After a brief recapitulation of the status quaestionis, the article presses for a clear distinction between literary unity and reception history. It then moves to examine the cogency of the suppositions about the history of the Lukan writings prior to their reception in the second century (and beyond) and suggests a scenario that renders intelligible the later developments. Finally, the article concludes with some reflections about the pertinence of reception history to New Testament studies.

This article argues that Irenaeus and the author of the Muratorian Fragment each read Luke and Acts as two elements of one literary whole, but that Irenaeus's understanding of what this literary unity entails appears to have been different from that of many modern scholarly readings of Luke—Acts. It also argues that there is reason to believe that Luke intended his two volumes to circulate together, and offers hermeneutical reflections on the fact that they have not always been read in this way. Two different approaches to the reception of Luke and Acts are identified and the merits of each are discussed.

Despite their many differences, John the Seer of Patmos and Dio the rhetorphilosopher of Prusa share a basic critique of the Roman Empire. Limiting the comparison to Rev. 18 and Dio's twelfth Olympic Oration (with an important reference to Dio's thirteenth Oration), this essay concludes that John and Dio critique the violence, exploitation and luxury of Rome, grounding their analysis in divine sovereignty over earthly rulers. This common critique suggests that John's message may have been sympathetically heard by a wider audience than simply a few Christian communities, and that Revelation should be reevaluated in this light.