Salvation, revelation, and rejection : foundations for a hermeneutic of certainty in Luke 1-7

Abstract

This study answers recent calls to explore the narratives of the gospels as “proper conclusion[s to] an already existing and presupposed narrative” (Wright, 2013:194). Such an approach necessitates going beyond narrative pattern and theme to discover how the gospel’s underlying hermeneutic aimed to challenge and respond to reader presupposition. This dissertation investigates the way human reaction to God’s revealed plan and commissioned agents fuels the progression of the narrative and serves to indicate key features of Luke’s interpretive framework, especially in light of Old Testament expectation. Luke’s hermeneutic legitimates John, Jesus and the apostles as divinely appointed signs that will result in both salvation and rejection, as well as revealers of God’s plan to bring about the expected fulfillment in unorthodox fashion and with unforeseen timing. These hermeneutical features provide the reader with an interpretive framework that supplies certainty in the face of a gospel narrative that was likely to defy first century presupposition.