Ongoing Broadcast Studies of the Gospel of Luke
Beginning in July 2021, two excellent, online studies of the Gospel of Luke began. One is a podcast of a teaching series on Luke by the late Dr. RC Spoul given at Saint Andrews Chapel in Sanford FL. The other current Luke study is by Steve Krelofff, pastor-teacher at Lakeside Community Chapel in Clearwater FL.
A link to the first week’s study in Luke by Dr. Sproul is given below at this link. Note he used the NKJV version. The entire series can be downloaded for a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. (I have no association with Ligonier–so no money comes to me, ever).
A link to the Livestream of each week’s message is available each Sunday morning at 10:40 a.m. EASTERN is here. After each respective Sunday Livestream, a recording of the video is posted in YouTube “Playlist” of the Clearwater Community Chapel at this link. There is usually a week’s delay between the Livestream event and the appearance on YouTube.
Purpose, Scope of the Web Pages Given Here
The purpose of the pages here is simply to supplement the above-cited excellent studies in Luke by providing additional resources to assist anyone seeking to do a deeper ‘dive’ in the respective passages. Nothing here will expand upon, or be a commentary on, the cited studies. Further, nothing that will be written here is under any authorization or oversight of the respective organizations–Ligonier and Lakeside–nor is intended in any way to detract from such studies. Whatever comments I may permit to be posted will be confined only to useful insights with respect to what I’ve posted; any comments as to the broadcast speakers or their organizations will be deleted without posting.
The the scope of existing commentaries on the Gospel of Luke are so vast, there is nothing likely to be insightful or useful that I can add. Though, because even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then, I may offer upon an occasional thought. Mostly, however, it will be about textual resources, primarily looking more closely at the words given in our English translations, to see what further insights might be available to us by our pausing to given more careful attention to God’s Word.
Bible Translations–NKJV, NASB–and Interlinears
As it turns out, the Sproul and Kreloff expositions are using different English translations, the New King James Version (NKJV) and the New American Standard Version (NASB), respectively. This actually is helpful to have a paired view of the text.
I will be referring to the Greek Koine (Koine) language of the original text of Luke. Koine is the form of Greek that was prevalent for the period encompassing the New Testament, from ca. 300 B.C. to ca. 300 A.D.; it is related to, but distinct from, of the various forms of “classical” Greek of Homer to Socrates / Plato / Aristotle and the famous Greek playwrights of that era, and is also distinguished from “modern” Greek.
Such reference to accessing Koine by means of interlinear Bible texts, to supplement such KJV and NASB translation, as an aiding to hearing our Father’s Voice is given here:
None of the resources presented there, or here, will presume any knowledge of Koine. However, let me here make a case for examine such Koine text for additional insights. Just briefly here, I make note of the following (the below are the headings for the expanded discussion linked just above).
- It was the language chosen by God to record the New Testament.
- Those seriously interested in God’s Word as given in the New Testament, and in the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, abbreviated LXX, dating to about 200 B.C.) have reached for the Koine manuscripts (mss).
- The rediscovery of the Koine mss early in the 16th Century with the publication by Erasmus and then subsequently by Geneva scholars (Beze, et. al), and used to create the very first English translations from the Koine (Tyndale, et. al) were powerful forces inaugurating The Reformation.
- The many Koine language helps available today make it possible, with some effort, for those of us who are not educated in the original language of the New Testament (NT) to gain useful insight, as these pages have attempted to show in many contexts and will again with respect to Luke in the current series of pages.
- “Literal,” “word for word” English translations are neither. Yes, we do have God’s Word available to us in English. But no translation is truly “literal” in the sense of a one-to-one mapping of a Koine mss word for an English word.
- One factor affecting such translations is the designed educational level of the English reader. For instance, the King James Version (KJV, aka Authorized Version) is considered to require a 12th Grade (17+ years old), namely a high school graduate level education (assuming such a thing exists anymore). For the NASB and NKJV the corresponding numbers are 11th Grade (16+ age) and 7th Grade (12+), respectively.
- The value placed on smooth reading. The Koine mss was written for a sophisticated reader using sophisticated expression, word morphology, and sentence syntax. It has a coherent, memorable external and intrinsic beauty, much like poetry.
- The beauty of the mot juste, the exactly right word. Because we take the Bible as literally the expiration (from the literal meaning of the root “expire,” to breathe forth) of God Himself, we can take that each word in the Koine mss was, and is, mot juste in the Voice of God.
- Vocabulary and expression. The vocabulary of any language is like the tool box (or, kit) of a factory that puts together machines and engines.