The only Gospel writer likely influenced overtly by rhetorical conventions was Luke. (Later Christian writers who had every reason to find significant rhetorical expertise in the Gospels failed to discover it there.)73 Was Luke heavily or only mildly influenced by models of dramatic rhetorical historians? Luke’s preface indicates some concerns shared with rhetorical historiography: his emphasis on an “orderly” account suggests that he valued persuasive arrangement.74
Yet Luke was certainly no rhetorical historian like Theopompus; he was likewise certainly not as rhetorically trained as most extant historians and biographers, often members of the elite trained first of all in rhetoric. Modern scholars evaluating Luke-Acts in terms of Greco-Roman rhetoric thus sometimes come to strikingly different conclusions. On the one hand, some argue that classical rhetorical conventions deeply influenced Luke’s literary techniques. 75 On the other hand, others argue that Luke’s literary level would be considered low to educated Greeks, in contrast to refined hellenistic history.76
Both perspectives have some value, depending on which part of Luke-Acts we are reading and the foil with which we are contrasting Luke’s work. Luke employs classical rhetoric where needed (e.g., Lk 1:1-4; Acts 17:22-31), including even some complex periodic sentences (Lk 1:1-4; Acts 15:24-26; cf. Lk 3:1-2).77 He employs the same rhetorical authentication techniques we find in many of the more elite historians.78 Luke fairly often employs the rhetorically clear technique of “inflection,” though this was apparently one of the more basic exercises.79 More significantly, Luke makes significant use of prose rhythm (based on vowel rhythm), which is otherwise rare in our earliest Christian documents.80 The cumulative effect of rhetorical comparisons with speeches in Acts suggests that Luke was familiar with various rhetorical strategies and devices.81
Yet Luke writes for a more popular audience than most elite historians did.82 Luke surely did not belong to the elite in the way that extant historians of the Roman senatorial class or equites did. Most Hellenistic historians had formal rhetorical training;83 it is not clear that Luke did. From his preface in Lk 1:1-4, Loveday Alexander suggests that if Luke writes history, he writes it from the more scientific, less rhetorical side of historiography.84 Though educated, Luke does not necessarily display advanced training in rhetoric. The ability to vary style, even in a single speech, was rhetorically important;85 yet Luke does not even seek to vary style in speeches as much as one would expect of some rhetoricians.
The more detailed rhetorical exercise of elaborately describing scenes is missing in Luke-Acts; it uses rhetoric, as all literary works did, but is not intended as anything like an epideictic showpiece.86 Even the shortest sort of example of the elaborative rhetorical device ekphrasis87 is missing in Luke’s work. Luke depicts action and itineraries, but hardly graphically; he offers physical descriptions of neither places88 nor people, as all those who have wished they knew what Jesus or Paul looked like are well aware.
Second Sophistic orators appreciated earlier rhetorical historians like Sallust painting a vivid picture of details and feelings,89 and thought that historians ought to describe the countryside,90 lengths to which Luke never comes close. (This is true even in the “we” material, where Luke is most vivid and detailed. There is nothing, for example, about the famous 100-petaled roses around Philippi.)91 Rhetors demanded graphic scenes providing visual horror fitting for the events;92 that Luke, though reporting Jesus’ and Stephen’s executions, avoids depicting gore, places him toward the more restrained end of this continuum. Later elite writers shaped by the Second Sophistic93 averred that historians should write in the “grand” style,94 which is not Luke’s preferred style.95
I thus differ from the scholars who see Luke’s work as “dramatic” history in terms of such elaborations.96 Still, Luke is “dramatic” in other ways, e.g., by including numerous “signs” reports.97 Eckhard Plümacher sees miraculous elements as more dominant in “tragic-pathetic” history;98 yet Luke is readier to report signs than to develop specifically tragic-pathetic elements at any length.99 Popular literature often developed tales of exotic distant lands, unusual “natural phenomena,” divine interventions, and wonders;100 Luke’s lands belong to the real world,101 and he focuses on only those unusual phenomena (miracle reports) genuinely relevant to his story. Such features simply suggest that he wrote in a manner more consistent with an audience immersed in Scripture (which reported many such signs) than in elite Greco-Roman rhetorical conventions (and that he wrote more about miracle-workers, whose role he hardly invented; cf. 2 Cor 12:12).
John, Matthew, and especially Mark appear less conversant in Greco-Roman rhetoric than Luke is. We should not therefore expect significant distortion of information in the interest of rhetorical presentation (although Jewish storytelling conventions may have influenced John and Matthew).102 Yet even if we did find significant rhetorical influence, we would not for this reason expect the Gospels to be less reliable sources than Suetonius or Plutarch.
