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This article proposes that scholarship on Luke’s Gospel and the pursuits of textual criticism are mutually beneficial to one another, and thus each would benefit from greater attention to the other. We demonstrate this proposal through three areas of inquiry: (1) the disconnection of recent developments and discussions in textual criticism on the text of Luke from many interpreters and exegetes of Luke; (2) the way in which select commentators of Luke have handled text-critical issues and their relationship to the standard critical edition of their era of scholarship; and (3) the promise of attention to individual early manuscripts and witnesses to the early text of Luke for addressing exegetical and theological issues. With few exceptions, commentaries on Luke since the late nineteenth century have been influenced primarily by the critical text available, but not as often by the most recently scholarly developments in textual criticism. This article suggests that greater attention to “narrative textual criticism” on the part of Lukan exegetes, specifically considering early manuscripts and witnesses to the text of Luke as early “reception history” and interpretations of Luke, could enrich the task of the history of interpretation of the Third Gospel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing rhetorical criticism, this study explores the manner in which Revelation describes two visions of Christ (Rev. 1.12-18; 19.11-16) in order to understand how such descriptions are used in the service of the author’s rhetoric. As a rhetorical technique, ekphrasis mediates what a speaker sees to an audience through descriptive words. A successful ekphrasis bridges the distance between the verbal and the visual, causing hearers to see for themselves, and evokes an emotional response (pathos) in the audience. The visions of Rev. 1 and 19 are thus understood as poetic-rhetorical acts, or mimesis: representations of life that point toward reality beyond the particulars, intended to evoke an emotional response. Such characterization of Christ through ekphrasis moves the audience to embrace the text’s worldview of a critical distance from Roman imperial ideology and a commitment to Jesus as Lord over against the deceitful powers of empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]