Abstract 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.
Parsons et al. (Tue,) studied this question.