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

in the travel narrative Luke’s purpose was to outline a Christian Deuteronomy, 46
scholars
expand and develop his hypothesis, or proffer other suggestions from other angles.
At the outset, Evans begins with 9:51-53 and 10:1, showing that they are in a situation
analogous to that of Moses who on his way to the Promised Land sends out one emissary
from each tribe to spy the country. Furthermore, Jesus’ sending out seventy (two)
missionaries in 10:1 is also juxtaposed with the seventy elders who were appointed by Moses
to share his work. He, above all, wants to explain the reason why Luke puts Jesus’ passion,
resurrection and ascension in Jerusalem just after a solemn biblical introduction with
, and also inserts the collection of instructions into Jesus’ journeying to Jerusalem.
In his view, this is largely because Luke had recourse to the Jewish apocalyptic work,
that is probably a fragment of an original “Testament of Moses”
written between 7 and 29 AD. Therefore, Luke with some ingenuity must have compiled the
heterogeneous blocks out of the originally independent pericopae. Evans shows the
possibility of Christian Deuteronomy through the following assumption: If a Pharisaic
Quietist of the first century A.D. could take up his hopes and teaching in a book as a
supplement to Deuteronomy, then it is possible that a Christian evangelist has also ordered
his material with his own view as a Christian Deuteronomy: A view that it is self-evident for
him to identify Jesus with a prophet like Moses in situations that form both correspondences
and contrasts between the Gospel and the Law. Taking all that into consideration, Evans
contends that the sequence of passages in the central section is intimately parallel to a
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selection of texts from the book of Deuteronomy as follows:
1. Dt 1:1-46 Lk 10:1-3, 17-20 Sending forerunners
2. Dt 2-3:22 Lk 10:4-16 Inhospitable kings and cities
3. Dt 3:23-4:10 Lk 10:21-24 Special revelation
4. Dt 5:1-6:25 Lk 10:25-27 The summary of the Law
5. Dt 7:1-26 Lk 10:29-37 Relations with foreigners
6. Dt 8:1-3 Lk 10:38-42 Spiritual food
7. Dt 8:4-20 Lk 11:1-13 No privation
8. Dt 9:1-10, 11 Lk 11:14-26 Casting out wicked people and demons
9. Dt 10:12-11:32 Lk 11:27-36 Keeping God’s word, light, and frontlets
10. Dt 12:1-16 Lk 11:37-12:12 Clean and unclean
11. Dt 12:17-32 Lk 12:13-34 Richness toward God
12. Dt 13:1-11 Lk 12:35-53 Reward/punishment for faithfulness/unfaithfulness
46. C.F. Evans, “The Central Section of St. Luke’s Gospel,” 37-53.
47. This parallel table is what Denaux simply summarizes. See Denaux, “Old Testament Models for the Lukan
Travel Narrative,” 300.
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