The Unity of Luke—Acts: A Four-Bolted Hermeneutical Hinge

Nearly every scholarly investigation of Luke—Acts today must address the question of unity. It is a hermeneutical hinge and the answer to the question has wide-ranging interpretive implications. The call to dissolve the unity of Luke and Acts—and the `hyphen' Cadbury inserted—focuses on four `bolts': (1) genre, (2) narrative, (3) theology, and (4) reception history. Despite far-reaching argument over the past twenty years favoring removal of the four `bolts', the hinge remains securely fastened. In addition, there is significant coalescence around certain issues such as the presence of an intermixing of genre types in Acts and an intertwining of the narrative and theological themes in Luke and Acts. And questions about unity have led to new avenues of exploration and the identification of trajectories that crisscross both volumes and tie them together.

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