“Born Again” in Luke

it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus,  Luke 1:3  NASB

From the beginning – When we investigated the translation of John 3:3, we discovered that the usual rendition, “born again,” is a mistranslation of the Greek word anothen, a word that actually means “from above.”  By correcting the evangelical bent of this translation, we realized that Yeshua was not talking about a second birth but rather about a similarity in character between Father and sons.  Now we come to Luke’s rendition of the account of the life of Yeshua and we are immediately struck by the fact that Luke uses precisely the same word, anothen, not for “born again” but for the idea of big-picture oversight.  The phrase, “from the beginning,” in the NASB is simply the word anothen.  Luke is saying that he has investigated from the start, from the origin, demonstrating that Luke’s use of anothen is similar to John’s use as a description of origin, not re-origination.  Since we have no problem translating anothen in this verse from the perspective of origin, we should translate from the same perspective in John.

Now let’s see what Luke actually claims about his investigation.  In the NASB translation, we are given the impression that Luke has written a chronology.  That is the straightforward meaning of “in consecutive order.”  The Greek is kathexes, a word that means a sequence according to some prior standard such as space, time or logic.  In Acts 18:23 the same word is used to describe the movement from one place to the next, in other words, a sequence determined by spatial relations.  But does this mean that Luke was a reporter for CNN?  Not at all!  It means that Luke reported his account according to some order, but not necessarily a temporal order.  The implication of consecutive temporal order is not necessarily true.  The word only assumes an order.  The author determines what kind of order will be followed.

Why is this so important?  Far too often we assume that the gospel accounts are chronologically ordered when most of the time they are theologically ordered.  Gospel authors report the order according to what they view as important, not according to what happened next.  Their accounts do not have to match each other because they are not history, that is, they are not a chronology of the life of Yeshua.  These accounts are apologetics.  They are designed to defend claims of the authors. They are the collection of material and the ordering of material that justifies the claim.  Matthew, for example, claims that Yeshua is the Jewish Messiah.  His account focuses on those elements that warrant this claim.  He simply ignores whatever doesn’t matter and he rearranges the chronology so that it supports his claim.  The others do the same thing.  When Luke says that he has carefully examined everything and written it in order, he means that he has given Theophilus what he thinks Theophilus needs to know in order to make a decision.

Now go read the gospels again, according to the order of the author.

Topical Index:  anothen, kathexes, order, chronology, gospels, Luke 1:3