He then says, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." This is when the people say, "Is not this Joseph's son?" The rejection narrative of Luke 4:16-29 is very different than Matthew (and Mark's as well). The people begin by being amazed by the gracious words that Jesus is speaking because it seems that they are not used to this Jesus they knew as a carpenter being a teacher. However, the congregation turns very quickly on him and attempt to drive him out of town with the goal of hurling him down the edge of a cliff. This quick change of feeling in the congregation leads us once again to believe that the people could not stop thinking about Jesus as a carpenter. He was one of the Nazarene family and nothing more.

The words, "Physician, heal yourself," are words that are not included in any other rejection narrative. The people are telling Jesus to heal the people of Nazareth like he did elsewhere; come and heal your people. The people expect for Jesus to outdo himself and do them great favors because they are from the same land. They believe that they are entitled to special treatment, however, God owes no special treatment to his people. The point of all this is that people must bind themselves freely to Jesus, not because they have a particular connection to him. If Jesus would have done special favors for the people of Nazarene, then the people would learn to take him for granted. If Jesus decides to bind himself to people and offer them healing, then it must be because he does it freely -- as grace, as a gift that is pure in heart.

Luke is addressed to someone named "Theophilus" (Luke 1:3). Stein (1993) posits that "theo-philus" means "friend of God." This does not refer to any particular person but rather to a metaphorical or a fictional one (1993), yet Stein (1993) contends that it is much more likely that this was a real person. Luke uses "most excellent" to describe him and this is found three other times in the New Testament and is using to address...

Some have suggested that Theophilus may have been a provincial governor or Roman official (1993).
Luke stated that he was not an eyewitness to the Gospel materials but that the information came from "eyewitnesses and servants of the word" (1:2) (Stein 1993). Stein (1993) notes that the attempt to explain the sources used by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, causing them to "look alike" is called the Synoptic Problem. According to Stein's (1993) explanation, Mark was the first Gospel written and was used by both Matthew and Luke in writing of their Gospels. As well as Mark, Matthew and Luke also used at least one other source, which has been called "Q" (Q is a symbol for the German word Quelle, which means source) (1993). Along with these two sources, Matthew and Luke also had other sources available to them that are represented by the symbols "M" -- Matthew's unique source or sources -- and "L" -- Luke's unique source or sources (1993).

Luke tends to follow the Markan outline more closely except for one section of Mark (6:45-8:26) that is not a part of Luke. Stein (1993) notes that there may be a good explanation for this -- Luke may have used a defective copy of Mark or an earlier version of Mark that lacked the verses. Stein furthermore states that there is a difficulty with this explanation and that is that the Gospel of Matthew contains this material and elsewhere the copy of Mark that Matthew used appears to be very much like the copy that Luke used. So, according to Stein (1993), the best explanation for the omission is that Luke did this on purpose. Perhaps he did this to take emphasis off of Jesus' Gentile mission during his early ministry.