Biblical Theology Bulletin | 2019
Book Review: Mimesis in the Johannine Literature
Abstract
175 broadly. These essays include John Darr’s “Levi’s Banquet (Luke 5:29–39) and Lukan Discipleship: Group Characters and Christian Identity Formation”; F. Scott Spencer’s “A Woman’s Touch: Manual and Emotional Dynamics of Female Characters in Luke’s Gospel”; Cornelis Bennema’s “The Rich are the Bad Guys: Lukan Characters and Wealth Ethics”; Sean Adams’s “The Characterization of Disciples in Acts: Genre, Method, and Quality”; and Julia Snyder’s “Sociolinguistic Dynamics and Characterization in the Acts of the Apostles.” Providing an adequate summary of each of these essays would be impossible here. Instead, a few points of connection among the essays may provide a better picture of the collection as a whole. First, one might note a connection between Resseguie’s and Green’s essays insofar as both draw upon Wolfgang Iser in order to comment on the role of the reader in constructing the meaning of a text. Though Resseguie’s project relies in a more explicit and more sustained way on Iser’s work as he takes a reader-response approach, Green’s interest in readers’ cognitive engagement is not unrelated. While the Resseguie and Green essays provide helpful bookends to the section on Luke, the essays by Darr and Adams offer a helpful link between the Luke and the Acts sections of the book by exploring disciples and discipleship. Darr examines Luke 5:29–39 as a programmatic text on discipleship for the Gospel where Adams takes a comparative approach that places the characterization of two particular disciples in Acts, namely, Peter and Paul, within a larger context of ancient literature that depicts disciples. Together, these essays help to establish a link between Luke’s two works. Additionally, the essays by Spencer and Wilson provide a bridge between Luke and Acts by both exploring ways in which characters’ physical bodies figure into their characterization. Spencer explores this question in relation to women and touch where Wilson examines a connection between Paul and sight. Nonetheless, both authors draw attention to the ways in which characters’ bodies, including what those bodies do, contribute to the development of those characters. Although space prohibits a further investigation of individual essays in this volume, there is much to commend this book. In general, the essays demonstrate focused views on particular characters or issues of characterization with a wide variety of methodological approaches. This is to their credit insofar as this tendency suggests appropriate caution on the part of the authors not to attempt too much. On the whole, the authors’ arguments are reasoned and circumspect, if widely disparate among themselves. The editors do provide a brief introduction to this diverse collection of essays, situating it within the larger scope of related literature and offering an overview of the book’s contents. However, one might have wished for this editorial introduction to do more in its attempt to hold the collection together. The introduction’s overview of the collection provides some concise remarks about the contents of each essay, but it does little in tracing some of the connecting threads among these essays. Thus, beyond a common text (Luke-Acts) and a common topic (characters/characterization), the collection as a whole might benefit from greater coherence. This small critique aside, the contents of each essay in this volume are of a high caliber and worthy of consideration. While some of the essays may be accessible for a lay audience, generally, the book is aimed at a more specialist audience with some formal training in literary criticism, and for that reason, Lukan scholars, advanced graduate students, and others with an interest in exploring the characters of LukeActs will find this a useful volume. The diversity of methodological approaches, perspectives, and literary insights make this volume a helpful and valuable contribution to scholarship on Luke-Acts. Melanie A. Howard Fresno Pacific University Fresno, CA 93702