Now that I’ve devoted two posts to the major sine qua non of Luke’s Gospel – one that lays out its major themes and emphases, the other that deals with who wrote it, when, and why, I can provide some suggestions for further reading, important works written by scholars for non-scholars.   I have given brief annotations for each book a mention, to give you a sense of what it’s about and so help you decide which, if any, might be worth your while.

I have divided the list into three sections:

  • Books that provide important discussion of Luke in general or with respect to a particularly key topic
  • Commentaries that give lengthy introductions to all matters of importance about the Gospel and then go passage by passage to provide more detailed interpretation (that’s where you can dig more deeply into “what does this particular word actually mean?”; “what is the real point of this passage”; how does this passage relate to what Luke says elsewhere in his Gospel or to what we can find in other parts of the New Testament?”; “where do we find similar ideas expressed in other writings in the Greek and Roman worlds, whether pagan or Jewish?” and so on.
  • Online resources. A good reliable one!  If you turn to other materials online, caveat emptor.  And since online there is no emptoring, you need to caveat with particular diligence.

I have taken the first two categories from my chapter on Luke in Bart Ehrman and Hugo Mendez, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024), p. 175.

That chapter might be a good place for you to start if you want an overview much more extensive than what I’ve provided in these couple of posts.  If you have an older edition of my book, it will work just about as well, since we have not changed it much for this edition.

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