Author
Luke was a physician and an artist from Syria. He was highly educated, well-versed in Greco-Roman style. He has the finest Greek writing in the New Testament. He was not an eyewitness to the events but he interviewed eyewitnesses and drew from the oral collections. He was also not very familiar with Palestinian geography and often made geographical errors.
Date
Around 80-90 AD.
Audience
Luke writes to a group of educated Greeks as well as Jews who were products of Paul’s missionary journeys. We know they were mostly Gentile because Luke will quite frequently explain Jewish customs and words. He also adapts some things in the story to appeal to his audience. For instance, Jesus in Luke’s gospel will “recline at table” – a Roman custom not likely observed in first-century Palestine. But Luke’s audience would have identified with the custom and so Luke adapts the stories to incorporate this. Luke also gives us insight into the origins and early life of Jesus, something important to his audience.
Genre
Historiography – does not mean he is obsessed with precise details or chronological order. Rather his interest is in showing the historical veracity and worldwide significance of these events. He does this through short, sharply defined vignettes, forging them into a single narrative – a historical movement.
Apology – to an outsider, the movement is presented as philosophically enlightened, politically harmless, and socially benevolent. But to the insider, the more immediate purpose is to interpret the gospel within the context of an environment composed of both Jews and Gentiles.
Historical Setting
Luke frequently portrays Roman officials responding positively to the apostles. It is often proposed that Luke intended to quell suspicions about the Christian movement. For example, Pilate three times declares Jesus not guilty. We could also understand this as needing to assure the readers in their own self-understanding – that there was nothing subversive in their origins, nothing that should cause them to be in conflict with Roman governance.
Purpose
Here’s the problem as seen by Luke’s audience: how to explain that God’s promises were made to Abraham about Jewish people, but now the Gentiles were being brought in. Was that a failure of God’s promises? If God had failed the Jews, could he not easily fail the Gentiles? Or did God just change his mind about the whole thing? And if that’s the case, what’s to stop him changing his mind again? How far can we trust this seemingly capricious God?!
Luke sets out to show God has not changed the divine plan at all but rather fulfilled it! It is only by divine providence a gospel that had its beginning in Jerusalem, the capital of Judaism, ultimately comes to Rome, the capital of the Gentile world. The readers could thus be assured that their acceptance of Jesus was no aberration but part of God’s plan, a plan ultimately includes the conversion of the whole (Roman) world.
So Luke is out to show everything about Jesus and the church was part of the plan from the start.
Structure
We could more aptly call this book The Acts of Peter, Paul, and the earliest Christians.
Acts 1:8 lays out the program for this book:
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
- 2:14-8:3 mission in Jerusalem
- 8:4-9:45 Judea and Samaria
- 10:1ff Gentile mission