One of the climactic passages of the third Gospel is that in which Jesus probes by his resurrection and bodily presence that his message has been confirmed. Consequently, Luke 24 has been of interest to many researchers, but it seems there remain still some exegetical puzzles such as the literary model of the pericope 24:36-49. This article will deal with some questions regarding the meaning of this issue and will try to formulate a response to some open questions by considering the passage in the context of the stories of apparitions of the Imperial Greek and Roman literatures.
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W.C. van Unnik, “Luke-Acts: A Storm Centre in Contemporary Scholarship,” in Studies in Luke-Acts: Essays Presented in Honour of Paul Schubert (ed. L.E. Keck et al.; London: Abingdon, 1968) 29. Actually, regarding the figure of Jesus, after a long period in which academics considered the account of Acts as the most reliable witness of Jesus’s life, it was concluded that Luke must represent a work dating from an earlier period than the former. See E.G. Tsalampouni, “Jesus in the View of Luke,” in Gospel Images of Jesus Christ in Church Tradition and in Biblical Scholarship (ed. Ch. Karakolis, K.W. Niebuhr and S. Rogalsky; Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen 2012) 156.
For a selected bibliography, see Bovon, L’Evangile selon Saint Luc, 454-457. Regarding how new themes, as resurrection, take place in these studies, Tsalampouni, “Jesus in the View of Luke,” 158.
See I. Gómez Acebedo, Lucas (Estella: Verbo Divino, 2008) 661; P. Schubert, “The Structure and Significance of Luke 24,” in Neutestamentliche Studien für Rudolf Bultmann (ed. W. Eltester; Berlin: Töpelmann 1954) 165-186.
See Schlier, Sobre la resurrección de Jesucristo, 17. R.D. Aus, The Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus, and the Death, Burial, and Translation of Moses in Judaic Tradition (Lanham: University Press of America, 2008) 297, does not pay really attention to this issue, but he points to an “imaginative dramatization” for explaining the composition of 24:13-35 and 24:36-49.
See D. Thompson Prince, “The ‘Ghost’ of Jesus: Luke 24 in Light of Ancient Narratives of Post-Mortem Apparitions,” JStNT 29.3 (2007) 287-301.
See S. Garret, The Demise of the Devil: Magic and the Demonic in Luke’s Writings (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989) 101-109.
See Thompson Prince, “The ‘Ghost’ of Jesus,” 296; also, in 289: “the picture of Jesus that emerges in Luke 24 surpasses all expected modes of post-mortem apparitions by virtue of the fact that it draws upon them all and distinguishes itself from them all.”
See I. Muñoz Gallarte, “Ciencia y Religión en conflicto: Fantasmas y sucesos paranormales en Plutarco,” in Gods, Daimones, Rituals, Myths and History of Religions in Plutarch’s Works: Studies Devoted to Professor Frederick E. Brenk by the International Plutarch Society (ed. L. Van der Stockt, F. Titchener, H.G. Ingenkamp and A. Pérez Jiménez; Logan: Universidad de Málaga; Utah State University, 2010) 295-314.
See Muñoz Gallarte, “Ciencia y Religión en conflicto,” 311-312.
See Muñoz Gallarte, “Ciencia y Religión en conflicto,” 304-305; Felton, Haunted Greece and Rome, 33; A. Stramaglia, Res inauditae, incredulae: Storie di fantasmi nel mondo Greco-latino (Bari: Levante, 1999) 47. Regarding the premonitory dreams, see F.E. Brenk, “The Dreams of Plutarch’s Lives,” in Relighting the Souls: Studies in Plutarch, in Greek Literature, Religion, and Philosophy, and in the New Testament Background (ed. F.E. Brenk; Stuttgart: Steiner; 1998) 347. About the diurnal ghosts, see J. Winkler, “Lillioanos and the Desperadoes,” jhs 100 (1980) 159 n. 11.
See Muñoz, “Ciencia y Religión en conflicto,” 312. See also Stramaglia, Res inauditae, incredulae, 29-30.
See M. Mosse, The Three Gospels (Exeter: Wipf and Stock, 2007) 202-203.
See F. Bovon, L’Evangile selon Saint Luc, 460-461. However, Schubert, “The Structure and Significance of Luke 24,” 172, uses the similarities between Luke 24 and John 20-21, in order to point out to a “fairly popular and fairly late tradition.”
See Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, 903-904; J. Mateos and L. Alonso Schökel, Nuevo Testamento, 431, n. ad loc., where the authors assume that the text “pretende mostrar que la vida después de la muerte no significa el abandono de la condición humana, sino que es la máxima expresión de ésta.” See also Roland Meynet, Luke, 834-835, where the author highlights the anamnesis of the witnesses as the main point of the passage.
See Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, 901, 904; R.D. Aus, The Death, Burial, and Resurrection, 296. See also B.P. Robinson, “The Place of the Emmaus Story in Luke-Acts,” nts 30.4 (1984) 481-497.
See W. Speyer, Frühes Christentum im antiken Strahlungsfeld: Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989) 341. See also Stramaglia, Res inauditae, incredulae, 48.
See Bovon, L’Evangile selon Saint Luc, 463; Roland Meynet, Luke, 819.
See Homer, Il. 23.99-101; Phlegon, fgh 2 [ed. Jacoby]; Lucian, Philop. 27; Philostratus, Her. 11.2; 21.6. See also Felton, Haunted Greece and Rome, 79; Prince, “The ‘Ghost’ of Jesus,” 290-291, and n. 6; Stramaglia, Res inauditae, incredulae, 317 n. 5.
See Psesudo-Quintilianus, Decl. mai. 10.6-8, where we can find a good example of corporal ghost: sed audacius et propius et ad matris manus tamquam corpus accedens; satiabar osculis, satiabar amplexibus et colloquebar et audiebam; Stramaglia, Res inauditae, incredulae, 55, 308-323.
See Muñoz, “Ciencia y Religión en conflicto,” 303-304; Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore, 416-417. See also Bremmer, The Early Concept, 93-94 and 105-108; Stramaglia, Res inauditae, incredulae, 345 and n. 345. Regarding Plutarch’s belief and its implications, see Plutarch, De def. 415b-c; F.E. Brenk, “‘A most strange doctrine’: Daimon in Plutarch,” cj 69.1 (1973) 1-11. The cases of Theseus, the Aeacids, and especially Romulus, must be understood as entities in the second stage of their perfection. See also Stramaglia, Res inauditae, incredulae, 19.
See M.E. Hoskins Walbank, “Unquiet Graves: Burial Practices of the Roman Corinthians,” in Urban Religion in Roman Corinth: Interdisciplinary Approaches (ed. D.N. Schowalter and S.J. Friesen; Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2005) 249-280; W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1985) 194; R. Garland, The Greek Way of Death (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press, 22001) 112-115.
See Phlegon, De mir. 2; Proclus, In Pl.ii, 115, 7-15 [ed. Kroll]. See also Stramaglia, Res inauditae, incredulae, 24.
See Schlier, Sobre la resurrección de Jesucristo, 19. Bovon, L’Evangile selon Saint Luc, 459, proposes at this respect: “Si les littératures grecque et romaine n’offrent que peu de véritables ressemblances, certaine théophanies et angélophanies de la Bible hébraïque et des pseudépigraphes juifs attestent l’existance d’un genre littéraire auquel la periscope Luke 24,36-49 appartient.”
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One of the climactic passages of the third Gospel is that in which Jesus probes by his resurrection and bodily presence that his message has been confirmed. Consequently, Luke 24 has been of interest to many researchers, but it seems there remain still some exegetical puzzles such as the literary model of the pericope 24:36-49. This article will deal with some questions regarding the meaning of this issue and will try to formulate a response to some open questions by considering the passage in the context of the stories of apparitions of the Imperial Greek and Roman literatures.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 357 | 78 | 17 |
Full Text Views | 315 | 5 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 166 | 15 | 0 |