October 18, 2006
Luke
My exegetical skills are so dated, that it’s hard to find any resemblance with that of, say, the Whiz Kid Jesus Scholars. Nevertheless, I just bam right along, anyhow, trusting them and a good friend who’s one of their acolytes to keep me straight, especially when it’s more convenient.
When it comes to Evangelist Luke, however, who gets his moment of fame on the red-letter calendar today, I take note that tradition says that his being a medic maybe had not only a little bit to do with his journalistic accuracy. It comes from the little story about the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’s garment and got herself well from a twelve-year malady. Mark tells it that she’d “suffered… many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse” [Mk 5.25-34]. On the other hand, Cool Hand Luke, perhaps in the interest of brevity, but maybe also doing the AMA two-step, recounts the same story simply by saying that she “could not be healed by anyone,” thus letting off not only his colleagues, but throwing in the alchemists, as well. He for sure skips all the bit about the big doctor bills [Lk 8.43-48].
We Anglicans are rather like that, though there’re some among us who seem to wish it otherwise. The Greatest Story Ever Told gets retold time and again and unavoidably through biased-colored glasses. If Mark and Luke couldn’t stay all that consistent in just a few years, how do you expect the rest of us to keep it even in the same ballpark after two-thousand or so?
Footnote: I really don’t want to know what the Jesus people would say about my exegesis.