Luke's Christology of Divine Identity

by Nina Henrichs-Tarasenkova

Overview

Henrichs-Tarasenkova argues against a long tradition of scholars about how best to represent Luke's Christology. When read against the backdrop of ancient ways of constructing personal identity, key texts in the Lukan narrative demonstrate that Luke indirectly characterizes Jesus as the one God of Israel together with YHWH. Henrichs-Tarasenkova employs a narrative approach that takes into consideration recent studies of narrative and history and enables her to construct characters of YHWH and Jesus within the Lukan narrative. She employs Richard Bauckham's concept of divine identity that she evaluates against her study of how one might speak of personal identity in the Greco-Roman world. She engages in close reading of key texts to demonstrate how Luke speaks of YHWH as God in order to demonstrate that Luke-Acts upholds a traditional Jewish view that only the God of Israel is the one living God and to eliminate false expectations for how Luke should speak of Jesus as God.

This analysis establishes how Luke binds Jesus' identity to the divine identity of YHWH and concludes that the Lukan narrative, in fact, does portray Jesus as God when it shows that Jesus shares YHWH's divine identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780567662910
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/19/2015
Series:	The Library of New Testament Studies , #542
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Nina Henrichs-Tarasenkova (Ph.D., Brunel University, UK) is affiliated with the Church of God movement, Anderson, Indiana, and works as an adjunct instructor at University of Portland, USA.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Luke's Divine Christology in Scholarly Studies
2. Constructing Characters' Identities in the Lukan Narrative
3. Exploring the Categories of Personal and Divine Identity
4. YHWH's Divine Identity in Luke-Acts
5. Jesus' Divine Identity in Luke-Acts
6. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"By thoroughly examining what seems at first like a simple question, this book provides a needed reassessment of Lukan Christology. It will be of interest to scholars wishing to better understand early Christian theological thought." - Religious Studies Review

“…provide[s] a fruitful departure for discussion of the way Jesus and Yhwh are characterized in Luke and Acts.” – The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

From the Publisher