Luke’s Gospel and Redaction Criticism

Below is a link to a paper about the distinctive characteristics of Luke’s Gospel as revealed by redaction criticism.

Redaction criticism is a method of approaching the Biblical text which gained significant popularity in the last century, from the end of the Second World War onwards. It grew out of a context of source criticism and form criticism which both sought to separate different parts of the text (according to their different sources in the first case and their forms in the latter) but in contrast to its predecessors tried to understand the texts as literary wholes.

The basic idea behind redaction criticism is that by asking how a writer has edited (or ‘redacted’, hence the name) their sources we can begin to see their own theological viewpoint. If author X uses author Y as a source but makes a significant change to the material they take from Y (e.g. reordering, adding or omitting material, changing words or phrases etc.) we can gain an insight into what they thought by seeing how they developed their source material. Importantly, and often overlooked, redaction criticism must also ask what an author has taken from their sources without editing, as their acceptance of this material is just as important in showing what they believe. A failure to consider what hasn’t been edited will give a skewed picture of the writer’s theology as we will only see what they thought differently from their source material. If this point is taken into consideration redaction criticism has a lot of scope for providing profitable insights. One of the great fruits of the development of redaction criticism is that the writers of the Synoptic Gospels are now recognised as sophisticated theologians in their own right. An understanding of the overall theology of a gospel writer can then greatly aid exegesis of individual sections of the gospel.

Though redaction criticism has been applied to several types of Biblical material, it is most useful in the study of the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Matthew, Mark and Luke). This is for the simple fact that we have three writings which clearly have literary links. Use of redaction criticism relies on an answer to the Synoptic Problem (i.e. what is the literary relationship between the Synoptics? Who has used whom as a source?). The most common answer to this question (commonly known as the Two-Source Hypothesis) is that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke used Mark and another common source (often called ‘Q’, from the German for ‘sayings’ as the source contains mainly the sayings of Jesus) and that both Matthew and Luke had their own unique source(s) (‘M’ for Matthew and ‘L’ for Luke, this is known as their ‘special material’). If this solution to the Synoptic Problem is accepted (as it is by the majority of scholars) redaction criticism can be very profitable applied to Matthew and Luke in particular, by comparing their editing of Mark when they have used him as a source.

The paper below is an attempt to apply redaction criticism to the Gospel of Luke in order to find its most significant theological messages. As noted above, an appreciation of this ‘bigger picture’ can help a more close reading of the Gospel.

Redaction Criticism and Luke’s Gospel – A. Bunt

 

For an good introduction to redaction criticism with an account of its development and an extended worked example see:

• Perrin, N., What is Redaction Criticism (London: SPCK, 1970).

A Gospel Synopsis (which places the text of all the gospels in parallel) is a very helpful tool for redaction criticism, allowing one to more easily observe examples of redaction. A good English language version is:

• Throckmorton, B.H., Gospel Parallels: A Comparison of the Synoptic Gospels (NRSV) 5th edn (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1992)
  

For an excellent overview of redaction criticism along with the other forms of Biblical criticism mentioned above (form and source) see:

• Bock, D.L., Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods (Leicester: Apollos, 2002).

Further introduction to the overall theological message of Luke can be found in:

• Green, J.B.,  The Theology of the Gospel of Luke, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
• Marshall, I.H., Luke: Historian and Theologian (Exeter: Paternoster, 1970)