Saint Luke G. B. Caird The Pelican New Testament Commentaries PELICAN BOOKS THE PELICAN NEW TESTAMENT COMMENTARIES EDITED BY D. B. NINEHAM THE GOSPEL OF ST LUKE George Bradford Caird was born in London in 1917 and was educated at King Edward's School, Binning h3m, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he took a 'Double First' in classics. After obtaining a D.Phil. at Mansfield College, Oxford, he became Minister of Highgate Congregational Church, London, from 1943 to 1946, when he went to Edmonton, Alberta, as Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature. From 1950 to 1959 he held the chair of New Testa ment at McGill University, Montreal, where during the last four years of his stay he was also Principal of the United Theological College. He was appointed Senior Tutor at Mansfield College, Oxford, in 1959, and Principal in 1970. From 1961 to 1965 he was Grinfield Lecturer in the Septuagint, and since 1969 has been Reader in Biblical Studies at Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the Br;itish Academy in 1973. George Caird, who is a D.D. of Oxford and an Hon. D.D. of Aberdeen University and of two Canadian colleges, was a member of the Apocrypha Translation Panel of the New English Bible and an official Ob server at the Second Vatican Council. His publications include: The Truth of the Gospel, The Apostolic Age. of Principalities and Powers, The Revelation St John the. Divine and Our Dialogue with Rome (1967). Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, U.S.A. Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria. Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R IB4 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand First published 1963 Reprinted 1965, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1985 Copyright © G. B. Caird, 1963 All rights reserved Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading Set in Monotype Bembo The Bible text in this publication is from the RI'I'isl'd Star,dard Versi"" of the Bible, copyright 1946 and 1952 by the Division of Christian Education, National Council of Churches, and used by permission. Except in the Umted States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser CONIUGI DILECTISSIMAE ET AMANTISSIMAB Contents EDITORIAL FOREWORD 9 MAP II INTRODUCTION I3 COMMENTARY 41 INDEX OF REFERENCES 263 INDEX OF AUTHORS 269 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 271 Editorial Foreword Biblical commentaries are of various kinds. Some are intended $ole1y for the specialistj others are devotional commentaries meant simply to help the Christian believer in his prayer and meditation. The commentaries in this series belong to neither class. Though they are based on full scholarly study and deal with technical points wherever necessary, the aim throughout has been to bring out the meaning the Evangelists intended to convey to their original readers. Since that meaning was religious, it is hoped that the commentaries, while being ofi nterest to readers ofa ny religious persuasion or none, and giving a fair indication of the current position in Gospel study, will help Christian readers to a deeper of and more informed appreciation the Gospels. Technical terms have been avoided wherever possible; where used they have been fully explained in the Introductions, and readers are advised to read the Introduction to each volume before beginning on the commentary proper. The extended introduction to the volume on Mark is in some degree intended as an introduc tion to the series as a whole. p..g Tetra rchy of . EB3 HerodAntipas Terrirory directly under ~ ~ Pontius Pilate ~ TerrarchyofPhilip Caesarea. Introduction THE PURPOSE OF THE GOSPEL On the night of 18 July A.D. 64, a fire broke out in Rome which burnt for a week and destroyed half the city. Rumour, spreading like the fire itself, laid the blame at the door of the Emperor Nero; and he, to divert suspicion from himself, looked for a scapegoat. His choice fell on the Christians, because, as Tacitus tells us in his account of the fire (Annals, xv, 44), they were already' detested for their outrageous practices'. During the legal inquiries which followed, the Roman government learnt for the first time to distinguish Christianity from Judaism. Hitherto Christians had been officially regarded as a Jewish sect and therefore had benefited from the exceptional tolerance with which Rome had treated the Jews since the time of Julius Caesar. Christians had been harried by the Jews; they had incurred the resentment of their pagan neighbours on the grounds that their religion made them antisocial and different; like many another un popular minority they had been suspected of nameless atrocities: but they had not been outlawed. The fire of Rome led not merely to a grim persecution of the Church in that city, but to a permanent change of legal status for all Christians throughout the empire. Roman law recognized only national religion. Religion, to a Roman, was largely a matter of public ceremony, and it was part of a man's loyalty to his country that he should join in the worship of his coun try's gods. Officially non-conforn1ity was treason or 'atheism', and the penalty was death. In practice this law could not be rigorously enforced. Every city of the empire had a cosmopolitan population, and where there were foreigners there would be foreign religions. The policy adopted by Rome was that foreign religions, though illegal, might be tolerated, provided that they did not cause a breach of the peace or interfere with the official cult. Any violations "f this privilege were dealt with, not in the regular .criminal courts, but by 13 INTRODUCTION police procedure, in the administration of which the authorities had wide discretionary powers. As a general rule, however, a magistrate would take no action on a religious charge unless he felt that either public opinion or national safety compelled him to do so. Once the initial persecution of the Church by Nero had come to an end, Christians fOWld themselves in a precarious, though by no means a hopeless, situation. Their legal security had gone, for their faith was now regarded as a new, and therefore illegal, religion. Their one chance of survival lay in avoiding the unfavourable notice of the civil authorities, and this in turn depended on their ability to retain the goodwill of their neighbours, most of whom considered the Christian religion to be a barbarous superstition and associated it with all manner of depravities. While the Church was adapting its life to this abiding menace, the first great apologia for the Christian faith was written - a two-volume work which we know as the Gospel according to St Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. That these two books belong together is proved by their common dedication to Theophilus and by a remarkable homogeneity of vocabulary and style. All the other books of the New Testament were written for use within the Christian community. The formal dedication of this work to Theophilus, whose title ('Your Excellency') shows that he held high office in the Roman govern ment, strongly suggests that it was intended for publication and was therefore directed primarily to the outside world. The author's pur pose was to supply Theophilus and others like him with the solid truth about this caluqmiated movement. Have Christians been con demned as the felonious followers of an executed felon? He will show that Christ and his disciples have justly been pronoWlced innocent by the representatives of Roman law. Is Christianity despised as an eccentric, foreign superstition? He will prove that it is the true fulfil ment of the religious aspirations of the Old Testament, deserving all the tolerance that Rome has shown to the Jews, and that, unlike the nationalistic creed of the Jews, it is a world religion, adequate to meet the spiritual needs ofa world empire. Have Christians been denoWlced as revolutionaries who are turning the Roman world upside down? His story will tell how Christ turned his back on political revolution in order to accomplish a profoWlder revolution in the realm of ideas and values. Are Christians suspected of antisocial behaviour? He will 14