The Exorcism Stories in Luke-Acts
The Exorcism Stories in Luke-Acts
This 2004 book in English integrates detailed literary criticism of the exorcism stories in Luke-Acts with wide-ranging comparative study of ancient sources on demonology, spirit affliction and exorcistic healing. Methods from systemic functional linguistics and critical theory are explained and then applied to each story. Careful focus is placed on each narrative's linguistic functions and also on relevant aspects of its literary co-text and the wider context of culture. Implications of the analysis for the new perspective on Luke-Acts, especially the implied author's relationship with Judaism, are explored in relation to the Lukan stories' original context of reception. Largely neglected interfaces between Luke's narrative representation of exorcism and emerging academic discourse about religious experience, shamanism, health care in antiquity, ritual performance and ancient Jewish systems of impurity are probed in ways that shed fresh light on this supremely alien part of the Lukan writings.
- The first account of the Lukan exorcism stories to give proper weight to unofficial religious traditions of the ancient near East, as well as to orthodox practices
- Sheds new light on the Jewishness of the text, and to the hellenized Jewish religious world in which it was produced
- Uses sociolinguistic analysis to arrive at new interpretations of the accounts in Luke-Acts and how they might have been understood by their original audience
Reviews & endorsements
Review of the hardback: 'Klutz displays an extensive in contextual issues relating to exorcism, magic and shamanism … As well as becoming a standard scholarly text on the analysis of biblical exorcism narratives, this book should become an important input to debate about Luke-Acts in general.' Peter Oakes, JSNT Booklist
Review of the hardback: 'Recently I heard a student describing a Scripture course as reversing the domestication of Scripture that has for so long been our practice. Reading Klutz is a welcome step in the same direction.' Sean Kealy, Review of Biblical Literature
Review of the hardback: 'Many scholars have attempted to make linguistic theory the basis for fruitful exegesis of important biblical texts but, often, the results have been rather thin. Not so with Todd Klutz. In a very disciplined and contextually aware study, he puts sociostylistics effectively to work, with results that move the Lukan exorcism narratives to a vital position for understanding both Lukan Christology and the setting and purpose of Luke-Acts. … As well as becoming a standard scholarly text on the analysis of biblical exorcism narratives, this book should become an important input to debate about Luke-Acts in general.' Journal for the Study of the New Testament
Review of the hardback: 'This monograph is highly recommended to those who are interested in the field of Sociostylistics, exorcistic healing in the New Testament and the narrative of Luke-Acts.' Neotestamentica
Product details
August 2008Paperback
9780521076050
312 pages
216 × 140 × 18 mm
0.4kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Sociostylistics and the exorcism in Luke 4:33–37
- 2. Purity and the exorcism in Luke 8:26–39
- 3. Discipleship and the exorcism in Luke 9:37–43a
- 4. Paul, Jewish identity, and the exorcism in Acts 16:16–18
- Conclusion.
