On Character Building: The Reader and the Rhetoric of Characterization in Luke-Acts

This guide to interpreting the characters in Luke-Acts the longest and most complex of New Testament narratives uses the latest literary-critical theory and biblical scholarship to construct an understanding of how the characters are formed and how they function in the Lukan writings. It is the authors contention that the reader plays an important role in character building. The author illustrates this process using three representative characters or character groups: John the Baptist the Pharisees and Herod the Tetrarch.