The work is presented as a contribution to the case for understanding Luke/Acts as addressed not primarily to Gentiles but to people who will assess Christianity with norms provided by first-century Judaism.
Part 1 sets out to show that there is in Luke/Acts no turning of God's interest away from the Jews and to the Gentiles. A detailed exegesis of Lk 4.33-8 reveals that vv 25-7 are not concerned to make this point (chapter 1). Luke works with a pattern of God's twin concern that both Jews and Gentiles should be reached with the gospel. Acts 13.46; 18.6 and 28.28 do not overturn this pattern: Acts 28.28 exhibits the pattern; Acts 13.46 is based on a commitment to the priority of the Jews which for Luke remains in force; all three verses take their place as part of complex apologetic designed to keep the widespread Jewish unbelief from being used as a means of discrediting Christianity (chapter 2). Part 2 offers a case for understanding Lk 21 as Luke's refutation of a Jewish use of the saying about the destruction and renewal of the Temple as a polemic castigating Christianity as insurrectionist and violently opposed to main-stream Judaism. In significant contrast to Mk 13, the content of Lk 21, and its context, make for a Lukan Jesus who, though he had to announce the destruction of the Temple (as did Jeremiah held it in highest honour. Editorial deletions and the form of Acts 6.14 encourage the reader to connect the accusation there with Lk 21 (chapter 3). There is evidence for a Jewish polemical use of the Temple saying in the form which mentions bother destructions an renewal. The sense of the polemic is best understood against the background of Qumran thought: Christians are fomenting a violent take-over in Jerusalem. Acts 6.14 exhibits a somewhat developed form of polemic (chapter 4). A perspective for discovering the unity of Lk 21 and the development of its thought is provided by the realization that Luke is concerned there with a distancing of Christians from any interest in insurrection and in particular form any interest in seeking to realize their eschatology by means of an armed attack on Jerusalem (chapter 5).