The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha 5th edition

 

The previous Bible texts I read highlights the importance of escaping the temptation of demons and abiding God. For instance, Job suffered a great deal undergoing the demon’s mental intrusion and starts to doubt God. So although he encounters God in the end and is deemed blameless, the text elaborates in detail how humans are greatly tormented by the evil and overcoming it eventually bestows true salvation. However, I was surprised how Luke diverges from this tradition; the presence of demons here is very trivial. They only serve as a minor tool to demonstrate the superiority of Jesus as he casts them out so easily. Luke himself uses phrases such as “easily” and “as soon as” to imply how much the casting was effortless. Instead, Luke emphasizes on how the humanity is already rotten from its core, requiring massive salvation. The intercourse between Jesus and Pharisees arises as the central clash within the text and uses the Pharisees as the reflection of sinful humanity. As a result, by highlighting such sins rather than traditional outside, devilish temptations, Luke effectively strengthens the role of Jesus as a savior and culminates dramatic tension.

The biggest difference in the narrative between Luke and John results from the amount of dialogue Jesus presents. In Luke, the words of Jesus tend to be delivered by the narrator who wrote the text(possibly Luke), while Jesus only shortly speaks when performing miracles. However, in John the presence of Jesus is drastically significant. For example, the dialogue of Jesus that started from chapter 15 continues until chapter 18 when he gets arrested by the Jews. This extensive, long address towards the disciples reinforces how the ownership of this gospel is entitled to Jesus. Also the phrase “I am ~” repeats throughout the whole gospel, giving Jesus a more assertive character. Sentences like “I am the light of the world  (8.12)” and “I am the gate of the sheep (10.7)” contrast to the somewhat passive stance of Jesus in the gospel of Luke while naturally elevating him to a higher ground compared to other characters.

One question, however, is the role of the word “we” in the ending. The gospel concludes by saying “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true (21.24). I assume that it would refer to the contemporary Christians that were religious academicians, but perhaps it could also address potential readers of the Bible and draw them in.