Something Wild: The Wilderness Aesthetic in Luke-Acts Público
Arnold, Elizabeth (Fall 2021)
Abstract
My dissertation, “Something Wild: The Wilderness Aesthetic in Luke-Acts,” is a literary study using both reader-response and narrative criticism, and it spans the entire narrative of Luke-Acts. In this study, I examine how Luke’s way of reading scripture (particularly LXX Isaiah) enables him to understand the wilderness symbolically, and this method of reading informs and shapes how he writes the wilderness in his own composition. I argue that Luke’s wilderness displays an aesthetic of unhindered possibility—a result from reading the wilderness of scripture as the symbol of both Israel’s past and eschatological future. The result of such an aesthetic is that the reader is conditioned to associate the wilderness with certain types of actions and attitudes, such as egalitarian community, release from bondage, and the ability to see God’s salvation. I argue that Luke’s story sustains this wilderness aesthetic throughout the two volumes of the Gospel and Acts.
The aesthetic of the wilderness—that of openness, possibility, and freedom—functions in contrast to the repressive aesthetic of the οἰκουμένη: understood here as not only the Roman Empire, but the entire framework of human political, economic, and religious systems. This argument works on a broadly thematic level, not unlike Susan Garrett’s does in
The Demise of the Devil (although Garrett works specifically on the notion of divine versus demonic kingdom and does not take up the human systems emphasis). Not only is this wilderness as theme sustained, but as it gains momentum throughout the story, the wilderness aesthetic increasingly confounds the boundary between wilderness and οἰκουμένη. The wilderness therefore continually undermines and progressively dismantles the οἰκουμένη and its aesthetic façade of power and control.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Approaching Luke-Acts through the Wilderness 1
1.1 The Aesthetic Reading of Wilderness
1.1.1 Aesthetic Reading
1.1.2 The Wilderness Theme
1.1.3 Luke’s Wilderness Aesthetic
1.2 History of Interpretation
1.2.1 Biblical and Jewish Literature
1.2.2 New Testament Scholarship
1.3 Thesis and Method
1.3.1 Thesis Statement
1.3.2 My Approach
1.3.3 Premises of Study
1.4 Outline of Dissertation
1.4.1 Identifying the Aesthetic (Chapter 2)
1.4.2 The Wilderness in Luke’s Gospel (Chapter 3)
1.4.2 The Wilderness Motif in Acts (Chapter 4)
1.4.2.1 Narrative Account of Ethiopian Eunuch
1.4.2.2 Excursus: Stephen’s Speech in Acts 7
1.4.4 The Wilderness and Baptism (Chapter 5)
1.4.5 As in the Beginning, So in the End: The Wilderness Continues (Chapter 6)
1.4.6 Epilogue: Conclusions and Implications
Chapter 2: Identifying the Aesthetic—Luke 3:1-20 25
2.1 How Luke Reads
2.1.1 How Luke Reads Mark
2.1.2 How Luke Reads Isaiah
2.1.2.1 As a Book
2.1.2.2 Symbolically/Aesthetically
2.2 How Luke Writes the Wilderness
2.2.1 Synchronic Marker (3:1-2)
2.2.2 John and the Isaiah Quotation (3:3-6)
2.2.2.1 Wilderness and Oἰκουμένη Opposed
2.2.2.2 The Salvation of God
2.2.3 John and Repentant People (3:7-18)
2.2.4 John’s Arrest and Imprisonment (3:19-20)
2.3 Summary
Chapter 3: The Wilderness Aesthetic in Luke’s Gospel 56
3.1 Baptism, Genealogy, and Temptations of Jesus (Luke 3:21-4:13)
3.1.1. The Wilderness
3.1.1.1 Evoking Scripture/Israel’s Past
3.1.1.2 Universal Salvation
3.1.2 The Oἰκουμένη
3.1.2.1 First Temptation
3.1.2.2 Second Temptation
3.1.2.3 Third Temptation
3.2 The Kingdom of God is Announced (Luke 4:42-44)
3.2.1 The Wilderness
3.2.2 The Oἰκουμένη
3.3 The Salvation of the Gerasenes Demoniac (Luke 8:26-39)
3.3.1 The Oἰκουμένη: While in the City
3.3.2 The Wilderness: Into the Wilds
3.3.3 The Oἰκουμένη: “And they were afraid”
3.4 The Embattled Kingdom: Herod, the 5000, and the Disciples (Luke 9:7-22)
3.4.1 A Wilderness Story?
3.4.2 The Oἰκουμένη—Brutal and Blind (9:7-9)
3.4.3 The Wilderness—Bread for “All the People” (9:10-17)
3.4.3.1 Evoking Israel’s Past
3.4.3.2 Universal Salvation
3.4.4 The Oἰκουμένη—The Killing of the Prophets (9:18-22)
3.4.4.1 Jesus’s Identity
3.4.4.2 Jerusalem Identity
3.5. Summary
Chapter 4: The Wilderness in Acts 88
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26-39)
4.2.1 Wilderness
4.2.1.1 Universal Salvation
4.2.1.2 Evoking Isaiah
4.2.2 Oἰκουμένη
4.2.2.1 Persecution Before Story
4.2.2.2 Persecution After Story
4.3 Excursus: Stephen’s Speech in Acts 7
Chapter 5: Extending the Wilderness through Baptism 114
5.1 Introduction
5.2 What Prevents Saul, the Persecutor of the Church?
5.3 What Prevents Cornelius, a Gentile Centurion?
5.4 What Prevents Lydia, a Woman of Thyatira?
5.5 What Prevents a Philippian Jailor?
5.6 What Prevents Crispus, a Synagogue Official?
5.7 Conclusions
Chapter 6: As in the Beginning, So in the End—The Wilderness Continues 142
6.1 The End of Acts as (the First) Wilderness Scene
6.1.1 Evoking Israel’s Past
6.1.1.1 The Hope of Israel
6.1.1.2 Moses and the Prophets
6.1.1.3 Isaiah 6:9-10
6.1.2 Universal Salvation
6.1.2.1 Gentiles and Salvation
6.1.2.2 Sight and Hearing
6.1.2.3 Every and All
6.1.2.4 Unhindered
6.1.3 Contrast with Oἰκουμένη
6.1.3.1 Prison and Chains
6.1.3.2 Unhindered and Free
6.1.3.3 Blindness and Hearing
6.1.4 The Apostle and the Baptist
6.2 Luke’s Way of Reading Isaiah and the Wilderness
Epilogue: Summary and Conclusions 174
Bibliography 179
About this Dissertation
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