Age to Age: The Intergenerational Vision of Luke’s Gospel and Acts

Abstract

While the New Testament contains a relative paucity of references to age and aging, Luke’s Gospel and Acts stand out as a striking exception. Luke’s infancy narrative includes young characters (John, Jesus, and likely Mary) alongside older characters (Zechariah, Elizabeth, Anna, and by implication, Simeon). The juxtaposition of young and old appears again at Pentecost, where Peter, quoting Joel, declares, “Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams” (Acts 2:17). While the focus on young and old is rather concentrated in these opening chapters of Luke and Acts, Luke’s narrative includes characters of various ages throughout. Still, scholarship has given little focus to the broader narrative implications of Luke’s depiction of age broadly conceived. This dissertation offers a historically situated, literary examination of Luke’s narratives to analyze Luke’s depiction of age. By incorporating literary, material, and demographic evidence, both Greco-Roman and Jewish, this dissertation situates Luke’s narratives within their broader cultural milieu. This dissertation argues that Luke’s account of age furthers a particular theme in Luke’s narratives: that of God’s inclusive—and specifically, intergenerational—kingdom. As scholars often discuss, the vision of the kingdom of God in Luke’s Gospel and Acts is inclusive in a variety of ways: namely, it includes rich and poor, Jew and gentile, male and female. In addition to these categories, I suggest that Luke’s vision of the kingdom of God includes young and old—a merism that has received far less attention than the other merisms that also make up God’s kingdom in Luke’s narratives. References to characters’ ages in Luke’s narratives are not merely incidental but rather essential elements of Luke’s narrative and wider theological program. Further, I argue that Luke’s portrayal of God’s kingdom values characters of different ages qua their different ages; that is, children are valued as children and older adults as older adults, and the narratives recognize the nuances of these different life stages.