Jesus' Exposition of Scripture in Luke 20:9–19: An Inquiry in Light of Jewish Hermeneutics

Abstract

Luke's Gospel preserves several unique traditions (i.e., L material) of Jesus' use of the OT at key times during his life and ministry. For example, it alone provides the accounts of Jesus' first sermon (4:16-30) and his last words on the cross (23:46), both of which are based on OT quotations. And only Luke has the narratives of the twelve-year-old Jesus discussing the OT with the Jewish leaders in the temple (2:41-48) and of the resurrected Jesus explaining the OT to his disciples on the road to Emmaus (24:13-49). One of these unique Lukan traditions, the Nazareth sermon (4:16-30), in which the exposition of the OT is the focal point of the passage, will be considered in this essay. The Nazareth sermon pericope 2 is one of eight pericopes in Luke in which Jesus expounds explicit OT quotations. 3 It preserves the NT's sole l This essay is a revision of a paper presented to the 1990 southwest regional meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Dallas Texas (9 March 1990). 2