I am glad that InterVarsity Press in the U.S. has become more tolerant of puns in their titles since 2009.  That was the year that the British Inter-Varsity released A Bird’s Eye View of Paul, while their American counterpart insisted on the more boring Introducing Paul.  When you have a scholar who himself includes an amazing array of humor in his writings, this current title is so much better!  Bird, deputy principal and lecturer in New Testament at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, is a prolific writer in both New Testament studies and Systematic Theology.  He can make just about any subject interesting and, while Luke-Acts is fascinating in its own right, Bird does not let us down as his prose fairly sings throughout this book.  Helpful charts and attractively printed sidebars dot each chapter, while questions for review and select bibliographies conclude each.

Bird thinks that Luke planned his two volumes from the outset.  Traditional ascription of authorship seems most likely, though Bird lands on a later date in the 80s.  He views the Gospel as kerygmatic biography, with Acts “written up according to Greco-Roman literary conventions, as a conscious extension of Israel’s sacred history, with a key focus on the lives of Jesus’ followers, especially the apostles Peter and Paul” (p. 25). Luke’s fourfold purpose in his two-part work is to present the story of salvation, with an apologetic edge, a polemical thrust, and a defense of its legitimacy.

When I. H. Marshall penned his classic Luke: Historian and Theologian in 1970, joining those two concepts together was highly controversial.  It is to Marshall’s credit that Bird can present that topic in one chapter as widely accepted today.  But Bird is no inerrantist.  He is willing to accept the occasional mistake, like Luke’s reference to when Quirinius governed Syria or the invention of some material in Acts’ speeches.  By the standards of his day, however, Luke comes off quite well.

A chapter on Christological titles focuses particularly on Savior, Messiah (of Israel), prophet (of Galilee), divine Son, Son of man and divine Lord (of the church).  From here on, Bird perches on Luke’s theology, more as a narrative than a redaction critic.  In other words, one doesn’t come away necessarily appreciating what is most distinctive about Luke, but one does recognize what is most dominant.

“Luke and the Way of Salvation” highlights Luke’s soteriology, which is followed by a chapter on the use of the Old Testament in Luke-Acts.  Here we learn especially about the use of the Psalms and Isaiah.  A look at Deuteronomy would have been nice, too, both to have a representative from all three portions of the Tanakh and also because this is Luke’s third most widely cited book of Hebrew Scripture.  “On the Road with Jesus” stresses discipleship as a journey, as the outgrowth of conversion, which itself is a process for many people rather than the dramatic turn-around moment it was for Saul of Tarsus.  In asking if Jesus was a feminist, Bird watches the conflicting scholarly approaches.  Early on, most feminists favored Luke the most, among the Gospel writers, because of the positive and prominent roles women play throughout.  More recently, that enthusiasm has receded because one cannot derive modern egalitarianism in all its dimensions from Luke and Acts.  But this is to denigrate via anachronism; if Luke is understood as a person of his day, he should be highly appreciated. This is the nest in which Bird ultimately lands.

Was Jesus a socialist?  Bird has flown to the US often enough to know many American knee-jerk reactions to the term and stresses that the social concern, especially in Acts, is entirely voluntarily and possible only in Christ.  Still, the church today can learn from its ancestor’s model of generosity, fellowship and interdependence that the opening chapters of Acts depict.  While Bird may not speak in tongues, he does chirp clearly in favor of Luke as one kind of Pentecostal theologian, with his strong emphasis on the Holy Spirit.  We must, however, distinguish the permanent indwelling of the Spirit and the repeated fillings of the Spirit for acts of service and bold proclamation of the Gospel.

Especially insightful and balanced is Bird’s flyover of the topic of Israel and the Gentiles.  After years of scholarly overemphasis Luke’s Gentile background and his emphasis on Christian mission to the Gentiles, today the slightest hint of anything that can be dismissed with the label of supersessionist is anathema.  Once again the concept of fulfillment of the hopes of Israel enables a more balanced via media.  Instead of the church as a new, true or even freed Israel, Bird hatches the concept of an ideal Israel to help preserve this balance.

Next Bird wings his way to deal with the Romans and the challenge of postcolonialism, which critical scholarship has probably exaggerated, and to treat Luke’s emphasis on financial matters, which most evangelicals have underestimated.   Finally, Bird soars to eschatological heights.  Just as Conzelmann more than eighty years ago laid the groundwork for all subsequent study of Luke’s view of the end, it is now widely recognized that he overemphasized the so-called delay of the Parousia and that he preserves the old age-new age scheme of the rest of the New Testament, instead of making the time of Jesus a third, separate period in between the two.

To keep the size and scope of A Bird’s-Eye View manageable, some topics have had to be skipped or treated only in passing.  One might have wished for a discrete treatment of Luke’s distinctive demonology (esp. in the Gospel) or ecclesiology (esp. in Acts).  A short chapter could easily have been devoted to Luke’s rhetorical and literary style and method of storytelling, in light of the raft of studies in those areas in recent decades.  Bird is well abreast of the bibliography of the topics he does treat, though it might have been nice to refer the reader to Bovon’s monumental summary of 55 years of scholarship in his Luke the Theologian (2006).  Also missing is Marshall and Peterson’s edited volume, Witness to the Gospel, the most thorough, state-of-the art treatment of the theology of Acts when it appeared in 1998, and a number of its chapters have not been eclipsed.  Hengel’s very helpful Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity from 1979 does appear butis missing all but the last two words of its title in both of its appearances in Bird’s study.

Bird has nevertheless provided a rich feast in this volume, not merely worms, for the reader wanting a solid introduction to many key aspects of Lukan study today.  If any of my remarks seem critical, they should be seen as a veryminor flap.  Bird offers so much more than the droppings one gets from many writers.  One hopes that we can look forward to many more Bird’s-Eye volumes on New Testament books or authors.  The two available already go way beyond offering merely frozen food.

Craig Blomberg, PhD
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of New Testament
Denver Seminary
April 2024