Octavian Baban
ISBN 9781842272534 (1842272535)
Paternoster, 2006 (332pp)
£24.99

Category: Biblical Studies
Subcategory: New Testament

On the Road Encounters in Luke-Acts focuses on three Lukan passages, all post-Easter encounters unified by their location 'on the road' as well as by certain literary and theological features they share with Luke's wider theme of journeying. Baban offers a fresh approach that examines these encounters as examples of Hellenistic mimesis or imitation.

One of the strengths of this study is its carefully argued challenge to the notion that Luke's literary style is based mainly on the LXX (Septuagint). Baban provides substantial evidence that Luke's style and plot arrangement, at least in the three passages studied, is reminiscent of Hellenistic historiography, drama and novels and includes many features from Aristotle's Poetics. The study also sheds new light on Luke's motif of the Way as involving more than the New Exodus of God's people or as the way of discipleship.

Baban shows that Luke's 'on the way' encounters also illustrate how an individual may be met and confronted by Jesus in the course of their everyday life.

Overall, the book is a timely reminder that Luke was a literary artist of considerable skill who drew on the forms and literary style of Hellenistic culture just as much as he was indebted to the story and interpretive framework of the LXX Scriptures.

Peter Mallen, March 2007

Peter Mallen is a research student at London School of Theology.

Previously published by London School of Theology. Reused here by kind permission.

Paternoster

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