To Hear and Perceive: Scriptural Interpretation and Community Self-Definition in Luke-Acts and the Writings of Justin Martyr

Abstract

Throughout the Second Temple period (516 BCE-70 CE), the reading and interpretation of the Jewish scriptures shaped the national consciousness of the Jewish people. Within this setting, the Jesus movement emerged as a Jewish group which also laid claim to the Jewish scriptures as a means of articulating its identity even though, over time, the group came to be comprised primarily of non-Jews. How was it possible for a group of non-Jews to lay claim to the sacred texts of Jews and use these scriptures to define their own community? With the aim of exploring the answer to this question, my study compares and contrasts the way that the writings of the New Testament attributed to Luke, hereafter Luke-Acts, and the writings of the early Christian apologist Justin Martyr define the Christ-believing community by describing its privileged status in relation to the Jewish scriptures. This entails an examination of their respective representations of the Jewish scriptures and the exegesis of Christ-believers from two main vantage points: their portrayal of Christ-believers as authoritative interpreters of the Jewish scriptures (Part One) and their depiction of Christ-believers as heirs to the promises of scripture (Part Two). Although both authors similarly divide between insiders and outsiders to the Christ-believing community by arguing that Christ-believers alone possess an inspired capacity to interpret the Jewish scriptures, they do not describe insiders to their community in precisely the same way. Whereas Justin argues that Christ-believers have become the rightful recipients of the scriptural promises that God originally made to Jews, Luke envisages an ongoing role for the Jewish people as the recipients of the promises that God pledged to Israel.