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

conceptions, and customs which only a Jew could understand appear in Luke 1 through to
Acts 28, and only a few cases are explained by Luke. It is not reasonable to believe that the
Gospel was written for Gentiles not familiar with Judaism on the grounds that some cases,
about 5%, are explained by Luke in the Gospel. (6) In the Acts of the Apostles, Paul is
presented to us as the apostle to the Jews who speaks to the Diaspora, not to the Gentiles. (7)
With regards to language, Luke is written mostly in Hellenistic Greek influenced by the
Septuagint which is written for Jews, not for Gentiles. 117
According to D.L. Tiede, Luke’s audience is the Jewish Christian in the setting of the
Greco-Roman world. Luke reveals an interpretation of Christian origins “that will continue to
118
have paradigmatic value for succeeding generations.” He also finds that the interpretative
activity in Luke and Acts denotes a Jewish-Christian situation which justifies table-fellowship
with Gentiles as Christians, and to defend Paul from the charge of apostasy. In his view,
Luke-Acts was written in response to the aftermath of the Jewish war with Rome in A.D. 66-
73, with serious questions about God’s faithfulness, justice, and His plan of salvation history.
Tiede demonstrates that Luke-Acts is one of several competing interpretations of the
scriptural promises in the face of God’s apparent withdrawal from Jerusalem. In other words,
Luke-Acts is a prophetic indictment from within, not an anti-Jewish use of OT traditions to
argue for a new people of God replacing Israel. 119
His argument challenges head-on the
predominant view that Luke-Acts has given up on conversion of the Jews, and is justifying
the mainly Gentile church of his day.
R.L. Brawley also agrees with the view of a Jewish Christian audience, seeking to pull
down “the conventional theory that Luke gives up on the Jews as hopelessly hardened against
the gospel, and that he views them as providing antecedents for Christianity only as a part of
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a remote past.” He proposes, instead of the conventional theory that Luke-Acts is a
product of a struggle for the legacy of Israel as the people of God, that it is written as an
apology to the Jews, and as conciliation between Christianity and Judaism. In his view, Luke
strives to present how Jesus qualifies as Messiah despite of his rejection by Judaism.
Furthermore, for Luke, Paul’s behaviour and the mission including the Gentiles as a model
are clearly the fulfillment of Israel’s destiny. “Therefore, the standard paradigm for
117. Ibid., 384-86; idem, “God’s Faithfulness to the Faithless People: Trends in Interpretation of Luke-Acts,”
29-30.
118. Tiede, Prophecy and History in Luke-Acts, 14.
119. Ibid., 50, 107-108, 120-32.
120. Brawley, Luke-Acts and the Jews: Conflict, Apology, and Conciliation, 155.
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