The Preface to Luke's Gospel

Completely re-evaluates the backgound to and provenance of the preface to Luke's Gospel.

Luke''s two-volume work begins with a formal preface unlike anything else in the New Testament, and it has long been academic orthodoxy that Luke''s choice of style, vocabulary, and content in this short passage reveal a desire to present his work to contemporary readers as ''History'' in the great tradition of Thucydides and Polybius. This study challenges that assumption: far from aping the classical historians, Dr Alexander argues, Luke was simply introducing his book in a style that would have been familiar to readers of the scientific and technical manuals which proliferated in the hellenistic world. The book contains a detailed study of these Greek ''scientific'' prefaces as well as a word-by-word commentary on the Lucan texts. In her concluding chapters, Alexander seeks to explore the consequences of this alignment both for the literary genre of Luke-Acts (is it meant to be read as ''history''?) and for the social background of the author and the book''s first readers.