The Genre of the Third Gospel and Authoritative Citation

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to explore how Luke's socio-literary context may have impacted his use of authoritative citation. However, we must first seek to discern what that context is and specifically what genre Luke followed in composing the Third Gospel. Most biblical scholars place Luke, along with the other canonical Gospels, among the Greco-Roman ~iot of the ancient world. While biographical and historical literature have many overlapping formal features as instances of historically oriented Greek narrative discourse (isolated esp. through Burridge's detection criteria), chapters 2-3 ofthis dissertation argue that Luke's Gospel aligns more closely with ancient history than with βioς on the basis of seven disambiguation criteria: (1) preface length ratio, (2) βioς language in the preface, (3) attestation to event-participant orientation, (4) transition into the narrative body, (5) the placement of family tradition, (6) citation density, and (7) citation strategy. Having argued that Luke resembles ancient history more closely than βioς, chapter 4 then seeks to develop a method for interpreting authoritative citation in Greek history. Chapters 5-6 apply this method to the Greek historians both co-textually and contextually. Chapters 7-9 apply the same method to Luke's Gospel and conclude that Luke exhibits remarkable similarities with the Greek historians in his authoritative citation strategies.