Do the writing methodologies of Greco-Roman historians have an impact on Luke’s writing order?

Abstract

IntroductionMany believe that Luke writes as a historian (e.g. see Fitzmyer 2008:92; Green 1997:2-3). As there is no indexing system used in ancient writing, it is quite common for Greco-Roman historians to communicate the order of their writings to their readers through the preface so that their readers will know at the outset how the contents will be organised. Therefore, a comparison of Luke's prefaces with those written by other Greco-Roman historians may give insights into Luke's order. This article will be divided into two sections. First, it will compare the preface of Luke's gospel (the first book of Luke-Acts) with the prefaces of the first books of the writings of Greco-Roman historians; second, this article will compare the preface of the Book of Acts (a sequel to the Gospel) with the prefaces written in the sequels of the writings of Greco-Roman historians to see whether there is (are) hint(s) for Luke's writing order. An overall conclusion will follow. This article complements the author's article What does kαθεξῆς in Luke 1:3 mean? Discovering the writing order of the Gospel of Luke,1 which proposes that if kαθεξῆς indicates Luke's writing order, the writing order is most likely chronological. This article will demonstrate an independent consideration: if the Greco-Roman historians do not state the order they are going to use in their writings, they will write in chronological order. If this observation is correct, and if Luke does not mention in the prefaces what kind of writing order he uses, we can still reasonably believe that he is writing his two books in chronological order. Therefore, no matter whether Luke has clearly indicated his writing order in his prefaces, as shown by kαθεξῆς, or not, the author will still show that he likely writes in chronological order. A study of the preface of Luke's gospelA study of the writings of the Greco-Roman historians (see Appendix 1) finds that the prefaces of their first books usually include the following four elements: what the historian will write (the content), why the historian writes this narrative (the reason [s]), how the narrative will be written (the methodology -it usually tells what source materials will be used and in what order the narrative will be written) and sometimes what the historian expects from the readers (the expected result [s]). Each historian will sequence these four elements differently (see Table 1). Writing as a historian, Luke also includes all four elements above in his preface.There appears to exist a general understanding between the historians and their readers that if they do not state clearly in what order they will write their histories, they are going to write in a certain order. If this is the case, the historians do not need to state their writing order explicitly if they do not deviate from that custom. They will have to mention their writing order only when 1.The article is part of the thesis, The meaning of 'orderly' (καθεξῆς) account in Luke 1:3, and was published in In die Skriflig 51(1), a2218(http://doi...