Blogging My Thesis

If you have been wondering about my extended absence from blogging, head over to Near Emmaus to check out my latest post. I have been working on developing my master's thesis for the last couple months, and I've just finished the first draft of my research proposal. For those interested in that kind of thing, I encourage you to read my post and provide any constructive feedback that you are willing to offer.

Near Emmaus: "Blogging My Thesis: The Questions of Jesus in Luke"

Questions in the Gospel of Luke?

Just out of curiosity, and partly inspired by Douglas Estes' new book, The Questions of Jesus in John: Logic, Rhetoric, and Persuasive Discourse, I've been snooping around the Gospel of Luke and taking note of all the questions/nondeclarative sentences. After counting them all up, I color-coded and categorized each question according to who spoke it.

• Angels/heavenly messengers ask only one question in the entire Gospel—Luke 24:5. Interestingly though, this question is somewhat mirrored in Acts 1:11, which raises the question of what the author was trying to communicate by using these angelic rhetorical questions.

• Demons and the demonically possessed ask three questions of Jesus (two in 4:34 and one in 8:28).

• Disciples (including those who are not part of the Twelve, like Mary/Martha) ask a total of ten questions variously among themselves and directly to Jesus.

• I lumped several characters into a single category of miscellaneous, generally "good" characters (including Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, John the Baptizer, and Jesus-sympathetic crowds). This category comprised eighteen interrogatives.

• Those who challenge Jesus and are otherwise adversarial in their question-asking (including the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Romans) account for nineteen total questions.

• Finally, Jesus takes the cake with a whopping one-hundred and six questions.

All in all, the Gospel of Luke features a grand total of 157 questions/nondeclarative sentences—an impressive number for such a relatively short piece of literature, to be sure. 

Curiously enough (and unlike his character in the Gospel of John), many of the questions asked by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke are spoken as the words of someone else—i.e., characters in parables (including "bad/evil" characters!) and, in at least one case, God.

I have also tallied the number of questions in The Acts of the Apostles, and will post the results as soon as I've finished categorizing them.

Greek Luke Highlights in a Semester

Greek classes in Kansas City are fairly hard to come by; I took my first course online through a seminary in New Orleans (which is a mistake—never, ever, ever, ever, EVER take an online Koine class, especially if it's your first time), then had to take a specially designed intermediate course put together by my friend and New Testament professor at CBTS, David May. This spring (2013), there are no local NT Greek courses being offered in Kansas City, to my knowledge. However, I am eagerly looking forward to a class on the Greek text of Romans being offered by Nazarene Theological Seminary in the fall. In the meantime, I've decided to keep my Koine fresh by designing my own little study program on the Gospel of Luke.

For the first 17 weeks of 2013, I'll be working through selected passages of Luke using Martin Culy, Mikeal Parsons, and Joshua Stigall's Luke: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Baylor, 2010). I had originally planned to work through the entire text, until I realized that the Gospel of Luke contains 1,151 verses—which would mean I would be translating roughly 68 verses of text each week for a 17-week semester. At my friend Patrick's suggestion, however, I decided to select important English passages and translate the Greek text of those selections, instead. Below is my reading plan, in case you're interested in following along with me (or if you want to send me a better suggestion for one or more weeks). It's admittedly a rough overview of one of the most theologically intense narratives in the New Testament, but one that I feel will keep my Greek skills from getting too rusty before my Romans course next fall.

Week 1—January 1-6

Luke 1:1-4, 46-55, 67-80

Week 2—January 7-13
Luke 2:8-20

Week 3—January 14-20
Luke 3:1-23

Week 4—January 21-27
Luke 4:16-21, 5:33-39

Week 5—January 28 – February 3

Luke 6:17-38

Week 6—February 4-10

Luke 6:38-49

Week 7—February 11-17

Luke 7:11-17, 8:4-8

Week 8—February 18-24
Luke 8:26-39

Week 9—February 25 – March 3
Luke 9:12-17, 23-36

Week 10—March 4-10
Luke 10:30-37, 11:1-4

Week 11—March 11-17
Luke 12:22-34

Week 12—March 18-24 

Luke 15:11-32

Week 13—March 25-31
Luke 17:20-21, 18:31-34, 19:29-40

Week 14—April 1-7

Luke 20:45-21:6

Week 15—April 8-14

Luke 22:14-23

Week 16—April 15-21
Luke 23:32-56

Week 17—April 22-28
Luke 24:1-7, 28-32, 50-53