The Past as Legacy: Luke-Acts and Ancient Epic

This study addresses the genre and interpretation of Luke through Acts in the light of its contemporary social, literary, and ideological milieu, particularly as these elements are reflected in the Latin epics contemporary with Luke-Acts and in their famous Augustan prototype, Virgil’s Aeneid. Literary evidence indicating that Virgil’s works had been translated into Greek prose by the middle of the first century makes this line of inquiry especially promising. Interpreting Luke-Acts as a prose adaptation of heroic or historical epic provides a hermeneutical model that is both universal in its theological message and essentially popular in its narrative presentation.

Beginning with the question of literary occasion, Bonz introduces the particular configuration of historical circumstances that produced the great foundational epics of Gilgamesh, the Iliad and Odyssey, as well as the Aeneid, and suggests that the historical situation for the composition of Luke-Acts was closely analogous in key respects, for example: literary structure, epic journey, divine mission, prophecy, and reversal of destiny.