of Conversations the West: Antiquity and the Enlightenment TA Menachem 11:00-12:15 October 5, 2005 Luke
The gospel of Luke is different than the books we have read earlier. This is the book is now of the New Testament and no longer the Old Testament. It focuses on the Messiah, the Son of God, Jesus, who hasn't been mentioned in earlier readings of the Old Testament. It was written by Luke, who wasn't a prophet, and didn't even live during the time of Jesus. All of these accounts were from other eye witnesses who lived during Jesus' lifetime. I liked the accounts that Luke wrote about because it had a health/medical theme to a lot of it (such as the first chapter where it talked about the circumcision of Jesus) since Luke was a physician and therefore the patron saint of physicians. Even though Luke's writings weren't first hand account of Jesus, I saw that they were descriptive enough to make it feel like he was actually there. It shows that Luke spent a lot of time the studying time period of Jesus' life and put into it a lot of work into writing a book about it. The book starts out with the birth of Jesus and ends with his resurrection. Luke's Gospel recounts the whole lifetime of Jesus. He must have gotten a lot of accounts to be able to talk about the whole life of a person, even if it wasn't Jesus the Messiah. But especially since it was Jesus, a man who is one of the most influential figures in the history of mankind, it shows that Luke had a lot to do if he wanted his Gospel to be useful throughout the ages. In Luke's Gospel, there was just about everything about Jesus. Luke's Gospel is one of the most important readings of the Christian religion and it wasn't even written during the lifetime of Jesus. For Luke to be able to make a book about a man who didn't
even live in his lifetime shows Luke's hard work in finding people who lived during the time of Jesus to be able to write such an important book about him.