the role of the lukan parables in terms of the purpose of luke's gospel

and behaviour required of people to obtain forgiveness and be saved from sin. That is to say,
they are largely used for a change of life or religious reorientation. Bailey contends that by
using to denote the term, , early Jewish authors, as opposed to later Jewish
authors, put more emphasis on the aspects of remorse, regret and compassion, so as to stress
what repentance entails or how it is manifested. 15 His sharp delineation between an
intellectual change of mind and an emotional sense of remorse, however, raises a nagging
problem regarding the cognitive science of conversion. Taken together, it seems right to say
that the New Testament idea of conversion relies on Jewish background for the basic idea of
conversion. In Hellenistic Philosophy in the Greco-Roman Milieu, 16 such as the Stoics and
the Cynics, the terms express the notion of a change in thinking with a sense of regret and
remorse. A change in thinking, and , is also appropriate for “sins”
committed intentionally and out of ignorance. It is also the expected response to sins
committed against human beings and divine beings. To put it another way, it denotes both
moral and religious transformation. Genuine repentance has to be manifested by a
demonstrable change of behaviour. In the light of this evidence, it is not convincing that there
is little or no affinity between the usage of and in Greek thought and its
usage in Christian thought. 17
It seems safe to say, therefore, that the New Testament concept
of conversion has much in common with the idea of conversion as it occurs in Hellenistic
Philosophy in the Greco-Roman Milieu.
In what follows, the texts about conversion in Luke-Acts will be examined to elicit the
characteristics of Luke’s idea of conversion. An exploration of the understanding of Luke
regarding conversion must involve not only the texts including words of conversion, but also
18
the texts with imagery of conversion. Luke begins with his conversion in the infancy
narrative. “For he will be great before the Lord, and he shall drink no wine, nor strong drink,
and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn
many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and
power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the
15. Bailey, ‘Repentance in Luke-Acts,’ 48-60, 117-118, argues that Greek literature use the terms, and
, to represent both an intellectual change of mind as well as an emotional change of regret.
16. See also Bailey, ‘Repentance in Luke-Acts,’ 76-121; Nave, The Role and Function of Repentance in Luke-
Acts, 40-70: Méndez-Moratalla, The Paradigm of Conversion in Luke, 56-70; Lieber, I set a Table before You:
The Jewish Eschatological Character of Aseneth’s Conversion Meal,” JSP 14.1 (2004), 63-77; Crossley, “The
Semitic Background to Repentance in the Teaching of John the Baptist and Jesus,” 145-154; Sterling, “Turning
to God: Conversion in Greek-Speaking Judaism and Early Christianity,” 71-74.
17. Nave, The Role and Function of Repentance in Luke-Acts, 69-70.
18. Beverly Roberts Gaventa, From Darkness to Light (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 96.
186