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

1-7. An apologia for Christianity
In addition to Luke’s first intention in Acts, 42 F.F. Bruce later expands the purpose of Luke
into three types of defense: (1) Defense against pagan religion, showing that Christianity is
true and paganism is false, particularly in conjunction with the two familiar Pauline incidents
in Lystra and Athens. (2) Defense against Judaism, showing that Christianity is the fulfillment
of true Judaism, especially within Stephen’s speech and Paul’s defense addresses and loyalty
to Judaism. (3) Defense against political accusations, showing that Christianity is innocent of
any offence against Roman law. Luke portrays Christianity as Israel’s fulfillment and that it is
politically innocent. 43
Moreover, he is aware of the fact that Luke’s three types of defense
still appear in Christian apologists in the second century. Without doing it at the expense of
each of the views, he shows the diversity of Lukan apologetics.
G. Sterling argues that Luke wrote his work for a self-definition of Christianity, bringing
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the model of apologetic historiography into play. First of all, the consciousness of the
group’s place, that they belonged to subgroups within the large Greco-Roman world, led
them to write the story of their group (Content). At the same time, the author who wants to
obtain respectability for his group chose to hellenize those varied traditions, that is, the
tradito apostolica (Luke 1:4), with the basic means of Hellenistic historiography (Form). The
writer wishes to relate the story of their own group in an effort to provide a self-definition of
that group (Function). 45 To put it another way, Luke defines Christianity in terms of Rome,
against which it is politically innocent, in terms of Judaism with which it has a continuation,
and in terms of itself which preserves the traditio apostolica. 46
As a result, it is imperative,
42. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles: The Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary, 29-34, especially 30,
holds that the writer’s intention in Acts was primarily to defend Christianity and Paul against the accusations of
various opponents.
43. Bruce, The Apostolic Defence of the Gospel: Christian Apologetics in the New Testament (Lodon: Inter-
Varsity Fellowship, 1959), provides four types of defense as the early Christian defense of the gospel, namely,
against Judaism, paganism, the Roman empire, and pseudo-Christianity; idem, The Acts of the Apostles: The
Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary, 22-25.
44. G.E. Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition: Josephus, Luke-Acts and Apologetic Historiography
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), defines apologetic historiography: “Apologetic historiography is the story of a
subgroup of people in an extended prose narrative written by a member of the group who follows the group’s
own traditions but Hellenizes them in an effort to establish the identity of the group within the setting of the
larger world.” All the results stem from his observation and analysis of the works of twelve authors through
three major phases of ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern history: the Persian empire, the Hellenistic world,
and the Rome empire: the story of a particular group of people (content), the Greco-Roman world (form), and a
self-definition of that group (function).
45. Ibid., 386-87, 16-19.
46. Ibid., 379-83.
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