Wednesday this week marked the last Bible study at church for the
summer. We will reconvene in late August or early September. This
Wednesday, we studied Luke 24 and Acts 1. Here are some items:
A. Scholars debate whether Luke was a Hellenized Jew or a God-fearing
Gentile. A God-fearer was a Gentile who accepted the authority of the
Old Testament but had not been circumcised or washed away his Gentile
self through Jewish baptism. An argument in favor of Luke being a
God-fearer is that, in Colossians 4, Paul mentions names of people who
are of the circumcision (vv. 10-11), then he mentions Luke later, in v.
14. The implication is that Luke is distinct from those who are of the
circumcision, the Jewish Christians. That would make him a Gentile, and
his intimate knowledge of the Old Testament may point to him being a
God-fearer.
B. On the topic of Hellenized Jews, the pastor said that the
Sadducees (the priestly party) were Hellenized Jews, so they believed in
the immortality of the soul but not the resurrection of the dead. The
pastor seemed to be treating the Sadducees’ belief on the afterlife as
an importation from Hellenism, which held to the immortality of the soul
while dismissing bodily resurrection because it saw the body as
corrupt. I wondered about this, though, because I have read scholars who
suggest that the Sadducees were actually the conservative party on the
afterlife, for they reflected the Hebrew Bible, which largely lacks a
rigorous concept of the afterlife. Indeed, Ben Sira, a priest, talks as
if there is no afterlife at all. Josephus in Antiquities 18:16 and
Jewish Wars 2:165, it turns out, denies that the Sadducees believed in
the immortality of the soul. The pastor is not getting his depiction of
the Sadducees from nowhere, for there are secondary sources that say that they were Hellenized. The question would be how, and to what extent.
C. The pastor said that eating is prominent throughout Luke and Acts.
Meals are times of fellowship and of hearing Christian teaching, but
they are also places to meet Christ, as when the risen Christ in Luke 24
breaks bread and eats fish before disciples. Some scholars argue that
the emphasis on eating points to the Eucharist. That is not to suggest
that those meals are all communion ceremonies, but the meals are
harbingers of, or comment on, the Eucharist, where Christ meets his
people.
D. To quote from the handout: “For Luke, the out-pouring of the
Spirit at Pentecost is through the exalted/ascended Christ—-as opposed
to John, who has a version of the Spirit being given in John 20 after
His resurrection.” Christians have tried to reconcile these things. One
explanation that I have heard is that Christians in John 20 are
receiving the Holy Spirit to dwell inside of them, whereas they are
being empowered for mission in Acts 2. Does this entirely work? Well,
John 14-16 does portray the Spirit as one who continues Jesus’s presence
among the disciples and brings to their remembrance the things that
Jesus taught them; the Spirit is there for the benefit of the disciples.
The Book of Acts, however, depicts the Spirit moving the church and
empowering the apostles to preach the Gospel to outsiders. But there are
arguably similarities between John and Acts. In John 16, the Spirit
convicts the world of the sin of not believing in Christ; in Acts, as
the pastor noted, the Spirit testifies to Jesus and the truth of the
Gospel before the world. In John 20:23, Jesus, after breathing on his
disciples and instructing them to receive the Holy Spirit, tells them
that they can forgive and retain sins; this may refer to their Gospel
proclamation, which carries with it forgiveness for those who acceptance
and unforgiveness for those who reject it. The disciples in Acts,
empowered by the Holy Spirit, proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of
sins through Christ (Acts 5:31; 13:38; 26:18).
E. The pastor noted examples of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
beginning and ending with common themes. The Gospel of Matthew begins
with Jesus being called Immanuel, which means “God with us” (Matthew
1:23), and it ends with Jesus promising to be with his disciples always
(Matthew 28:20). Luke’s Gospel begins in the Temple, with Zechariah the
priest, and it ends with the disciples praising God in the Temple. In
Luke 2, angels bring tidings of peace before shepherds; in Luke 24, the
risen Christ greets his disciples with “peace.” In Luke 1:35, Gabriel
promises Mary that the Holy Spirit will come on Mary and the power of
the Most High shall overshadow her; in Luke 24, Jesus tells his
disciples that the Spirit will come upon them and they will be clothed
with power from on high. In Luke 1, Zechariah and Mary respond to God’s
promise with worship and joy and bear witness in song; in Luke 24, the
disciples also respond with worship and joy, but they will bear their
witness in the Book of Acts.
F. In Acts 1, the disciples ask the risen Jesus if he at that time
will restore the kingdom to Israel, and Jesus responds that it is not
for them to know the times or the seasons. The pastor said that this was
probably included in Acts because people in Luke’s day were discouraged
that Jesus had not yet returned, since Jesus had promised to return in
“this generation” (Luke 21:32). I asked the pastor how he interpreted
“this generation.” The pastor interprets it, not as forty years, but in
reference to the time between Jesus’s birth and second coming. When
Jesus speaks against the faithless generation, he is not just talking
about his contemporaries but is saying that many will be trapped in
unbelief until the second coming.
G. At the end of Acts, in Acts 28, Paul is preaching in Rome, the
capital of paganism, to which and from which all roads go. Paul quotes
Isaiah 6:9-10, applying it to Jews who will hear and shall not listen or
understand, and Paul proceeds to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles,
saying they will listen. The pastor seemed to be trying to interpret the
holy seed of Isaiah 6:13 as Christ: through Christ, the curse of
Isaiah, and later of Christ when he preached in Luke 8, would be lifted,
for the seed would be planted among the Gentiles; the Gospel would find
a receptive audience. I am not sure if that works, since Isaiah 6 seems
to imply that the Israelites will begin to hear after they are desolate
and there is a holy seed. It does not mention the Gentiles. Perhaps
more needs to be unpacked here. After all, Romans 11 ties the
Israelites’ receptivity to the Gospel to the inclusion of the Gentiles
into the church.