Luke the Outsider: a Social Identity Reading of Luke/Acts

While the identity of the historical Luke is ignored in narrative criticism, I argue that it is his social identity as an outsider to the origin community that holds hermeneutical value for determining the purpose of Luke/Acts. In the prologue, Luke depicts a bifurcated Jesus-community of unequal status, and in the narrative, Luke offers his audience of outsiders a means to overcome the social barrier that separates them from the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word. He features himself and others like Paul as models of social relocation, and deconstructs the exclusivity of the origin community through carefully constructed narrative arcs.