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BOOK REVIEWS
L. ALEXANDER,The Prefaceto Luke's Gospel: Literaryconventionand social context

in Luke1.1-4 andActs 1.1 (Society for N.T. Studies Monograph Series, 78),
Cambridge, C.U.P., 1993. ISBN 0 521 4 3444 0.

In this book, which is based in her doctoral thesis, Dr. Alexander makes a major
contribution to the debate about Gospel genre, although her aim is more narrowly
focussed namely to explore the literary conventions used in the Lucan preface and
to establish their social context. It has long been widely accepted that the structure,
content and style of the prefaces of Luke-Acts, which are unique in the New Testament, demonstrate that the two volume work belongs to the literary category of
Greek historiography. This study challenges that assumption, first of all by
establishing the weakness of its evidential base and secondly by presenting a
cogently argued and well supported alternative thesis in which the author's wide
knowledge of classical literature is evident.
After establishing that the Lucan preface, an "explanatory preface", is not
derived solely and directly from biblical and otherJewish literature, the suggestion
is made that it derives from "the long and multi-form tradition of technical professional prose"-the Fachprosa. Dr. Alexander examines the prefaces of works of
this genre in detail, analysing their structure, content and style. It is at this point,
when a table is given, that the reader begins to see the close parallels between these
prefaces and the Lucan preface and these become even clearer as the chapter
(Chapter 5) proceeds.
A word-by-wordcommentary on the text of Luke's preface, in the light of what
has been delineated, is then provided. Dr. Alexander concludes that structurally
the Lucan preface is remarkable close to these "scientific prefaces", that their
linguistic usages are broadly similar, and, furthermore, many of the concepts and
key terms used by Luke can be elucidated from the conventions of "scientific
prefaces", especially the later ones. However, she indicates that there are points
where Luke's preface does not fit the pattern because its tone is emphatically
biblical and its message is irrevocably Christian. The Lucan preface is therefore
shown to be a stylistic hybrid, a combination of secular Greek preface convention
and biblical narrative and perspective. It is thus like the literature of hellenistic
Judaism which includes a number of works with a formal preface also shaped by
Greek preface conventions. After carefully studying these, Dr. Alexander rules out
the possibility that Luke's preface was dependent on these and concludes that
Luke and the hellenistic Jewish writers were directly dependent on Greek
literature.
Dr. Alexander maintains, in her last two chapters, that this literary alignment
of Luke's preface, if combined with observations made by other scholars about the
early church, enables us to express new insights about the social background of
the author and his readers. A number of these insights are then set out. Finally
she indicates that her thesis raises a number of further questions which need to
be answered. On the basis of what I have read in this book I look forward with
keen anticipation to the time when Dr. Alexander addresses at least some of these
questions herself.
The University of Leeds

? E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1995

Dr. BARBARAE. SPENSLEY

Novum Testamentum XXXVII, 4