| Ascension Musings | | Date Created: May 29, 2006, 09:18 AM |
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The Ascension Narrative gives us a rare chance to see a gospel writer deliberately tell the same story twice, but for different reasons and therefore in a different shape. Acts 1:1-12 is the detailed version, in which the disciples act like kids in the back seat of the car, asking Jesus "Are we almost there yet?" Jesus is gentle with them before lifting off, then an angel has to come and tell them to get on with the programme.
Luke 24:50-51is so abbreviated that you might be forgiven for thinking that the author has heard only the vaguest of reports. Yet Luke here, rather than in Acts, preserves the detail that Jesus was in the act of blessing the disciples as he was "taken up."
The resurrection appearances are told in full in the gospel, then recapped briefly in Acts; the ascension is told in capsule form in Luke, then told in full in Acts. These pairings at the end and the beginning of the two volumes of Luke's work are probably meant to function the same way as the flashbacks and flash-forwards we're now used to in TV shows. At the end of an episode you get snatches of footage from next week's episode and the at the start of the next week, you hear one of the cast say: "Previously on Luke-Acts..." with a lightning recap to jog your memory before launching into the scenes you saw foreshadowed last time.
What will always fry the brains of NT guys like me is the NT authors' willingness to abbreviate. If the book of Acts had been lost, Luke 24:50-51 would be our only account of the Ascension; we wouldn't know how much more Luke could write about that event. It would only be baseless speculation that he knew more and abbreviated for a purpose. Well, there are lots of other briefly-told accounts; what other details did the gospel writers know but edit out? But the gospels weren't written for us historians with a professional interest: John 20:30-31; 21:25. |
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