261 - Luke. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

Luke. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching
By Fred B. Craddock
Louisville, John Knox, 1990. 298 pp. $21.95

Those who expect the Bandy Professor of Preaching and New Testament at Candler School of Theology to be provocative and practical will scarcely be disappointed with this commentary. Although Craddock does not stand on the vanguard of Lucan studies, he is close, not in exhaustive scholarship, but in deftly catching interrelationships among details, units, and the literary whole. His perception of the whole is that the story focuses on God. Further, he argues that Luke's use of Scripture and sense of continuity with Judaism make it likely that the author was a Hellenistic Jew who criticizes Judaism from within.

Striking figures and provocative juxtapositions endow the commentary with punch. Craddock apprehends Luke in personal, domestic, ecclesiastical, social, universal, and cosmic dimensions. Though the commentary is usually sensitive to motivations in the text, there is a touch of psychologizing the historical Jesus. A

262 - Luke. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

time or two, Craddock infringes on his theocentricity when he looks for principles by which to live. Basically, however, in his reading Christian living derives not from principles but from relationships with God.

Robert L. Brawley,
Memphis Theological Seminary,
Memphis, Tenn.