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This is where I go first. Condensing Luke into a single volume while still being comprehensive is an unenviable task. Green has capably achieved just that. I finely written, but never lacking in detail commentary, which balances scholarly rigour with pastoral relevance. If you can only choose one commentary on Luke, this really should be it.
My hero! This was brilliant. Besides the difficulty in getting used to his technical style of writing, I learnt so much from it and how to study scripture.
It combines wide-ranging reading, a narrative approach, and readable prose. [Full Review]
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. Pp. xcii + 928, Cloth, No Price Available, ISBN 0802823157. Robert C. Tannehill Methodist Theological School in Ohio Delaware, OH 43015 Joel Green's commentary focuses on the Gospel of Luke in its final form, viewed as a literary work. It is a strict and complete example of a recent trend to abandon the methods of tradition history, form criticism, and redaction criticism. Green does not even make comparisons of Lukan material with other Gospels. He does not assume, however, that a literary work can be understood apart from a cultural context. "All language is embedded in culture," Green writes. Hence we must be concerned with Luke's "social setting," and by this we mean more than "narrative world" as this phrase is used in narrative criticism. We mean more than the world available to us only through the narrative viewed as a closed system, but less than the world often represented to us by historical-critical inquiry. The former strips the Gospel of Luke of its cultural embeddedness, while the latter assumes too easily that the (real) social world wherein Luke's story is set can and should simply be read into Luke's narrative. As we will see, Luke does not represent the "real world" so straightforwardly, but both seeks to provide an alternative view of that world and chooses aspects of that world to emphasize while downplaying others (p. 12). Green's point is important. No literary work can be divorced from its cultural context, yet that context can be interpreted in various ways. A significant literary work is engaged in presenting its own interpretation of social life. [Full Review]
