Visit BetMDM Casino and check out the newest exclusive, The Price Is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and Game Stents remind you to play responsibly, 19 plus the wager, Ontario only, please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact the next Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge.
BetMDM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's springtime, which means that Princeton University Press is having its annual 50% off spring sale. From May 4th through June 9th, you can get 50% off nearly every single print, ebook and audiobook from Princeton University Press. Just go to press.prinston.edu to get 50% off incredible books like Disneyland and the Rise of Automation and Beyond Belief.
Evidence shows what really works. There's so many fantastic books you can get an incredible deal on. Go to press.prinston.edu and use the code spring50. That's sp-r-i-n-g-50 at press.prinston.edu.
This sale only lasts for a month, so go and get some books. Welcome to the new books network. Did the author of the two-part narrative of Lucas acts have a literary and historical paradigm in mind? Mark Jacobi says yes, but in certain key respects, Luke acts was modeled on the two-part narrative of Samuel Kings and Chronicles, with part one concerning the Vedic King and part two, the acts of those who inherit the Kingdom.
Join us as we speak with Mark Jacobi about his recent book, Luke the Chronicler. You're listening to new books and biblical studies a channel of the new books network, not me or most, Michael Morales. Mark Jacobi earned his PhD at Westminster Theological Seminary and is teaching pastor at City Light Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He also serves as adjunct faculty at Dallas International University in the Applied Linguistics Department.
He's got books and biblical studies. It's great to be here with you. Mark, let's begin by having you tell us a bit more about yourself. Sure, yeah.
I'm from New York City originally. I grew up in Staten Island. I grew up in a Catholic home, but I would say that I became a follower of Christ as a college student that was actually here where I am now in Philadelphia at University of Pennsylvania. Yeah, I've heard about or wanted to read more about Jesus and just really, as they say, I fell in love with him and just wanted to follow him with my life.
That led me in some interesting directions. I ended up doing quite a bit of music in my 20s, singer-song writer, Worship Lee, and a leader focusing more on that. I kind of had a radical shift in the 2000s. Like literally after 9-11, living and working in New York and that whole thing affecting me rather, up close and personal way.
But I actually ended up spending about four years in Afghanistan, kind of serving in relief and development capacity and just more like sort of a missions kind of a thing. And those were amazing, more than a minute of years. I had some tough times as you can imagine as well, but really just gave me sort of a hard for what God is doing in the global stage. At the end of the 2000s, I was feeling a lack in my theological education and my toolkit there.
And so I left, I came back from Central Asia and ended up, I originally signed up for an MDiv at Gordon Conwell, but I just, once I started that, I couldn't seem to start myself. So I ended up doing MDiv and THM at Gordon Conwell, great school. Really appreciate my time there. And then in 2012, moved down here to Philadelphia to Westminster, to do a doctoral program on hermeneutics and biblical interpretation.
So that's what brought me sort of back to Philadelphia. I've been here again for about 11 years and gotten involved with the church. I'm still involved with as a pastor called City Light Church here. So my current sort of main full time role is my title is Teaching Pastor at City Light, which means that I end up overseeing a lot of adult educational initiatives, something we call like City Light Institute.
And I also end up working quite a bit with music and even with missions as well. So kind of touching on a lot of my interest and passions here. So, but yeah, Westminster was great, great experience there. And Brandon Crow was my PhD supervisor and that sort of led me ultimately to focus on who gags from my dissertation leading to this book.
So the subtitle of your book is the narrative arc of Samuel Keene's and Chronicles in Luke Axe. Would you describe for us your mapping out of the narrative arc in Samuel and Kings? Yes, and perhaps it would be helpful to explain sort of the genesis of this project. I was in a seminar on the book of Axe, I believe this was spring of 2013, so 10 years ago.
And you know, early on, of course, like that, we were talking about the purpose of Axe. Why did Luke write Axe? And it's a bit of a, you know, it's a mystery and it's an open sort of question. And at that time, I've been reading quite a bit of biblical theology in the Reformed tradition, people like Graham Goldsworthy and even Ed Clowney.
So something kind of clicked for me when I thought about how those two people I just mentioned described the Old Testament period of Samuel and Kings, where they sort of described it as everything leading up to a high point, you know, with David and usually Solomon gets lumped in there. But then of course, it all falls apart, right? And then, you know, the, you know, the, the descendants of David and Solomon sort of drive the kingdom into the ground and it all leads to exile. And you know, so it was a bit of inspiration and insight, well, you know, could it be, since we're dealing essentially with a two part, you know, Old Testament story, whether you think of that as Samuel and Kings or first and second Chronicles, is there a chance, even that Lucas thinking in those terms and, you know, where, you know, where Luke is corresponding to something like Samuel and first Chronicles and then acts as corresponding to something, something like Kings and Saint Chronicles.
So it, you know, it was a hunch I did an initial paper and it, you know, the more, it was one of these things, the more I dug into it, it seemed like there was more there and it, and I'm still to this day very grateful to Ren and Proges for giving me the freedom to pursue such an ambitious project. You know, people will ask me what is your dissertation. I'll say, you know, Luke and Acts, that's it really is, you know, so it was, it was big and bold and ambitious, but it was, it was also really enjoyable as well. So when we say the narrative arc, if you, you know, think of, kind of think of a rainbow, imagine you could walk up a rainbow, you know, from the left side to the right, you know, you start at a low point, okay, and in the Old Testament context, that's, you know, it's the period of judges.
It's all everyone does is they saw it at the terrible time. And then you sort of work your way up to the apex of the rainbow, which would be, say, gave it and solve things are looking good there for a while. This is going great. We have this kingdom that maybe it'll keep going and expand, but then now we're going down the other side and slowly one, you know, one king is worse than the next with a few, you know, exceptions as a kind of a side, but essentially, you know, it's going down and down and down.
So you're going to see the character of the king by narrative arc, sort of an overall plot line starts low, goes high, ends up low again. It's a two part story, right? Part one in the Old Testament is largely the story of a singular individual, a David, and it's his right hour and holdist. And part two is about the, the heirs of the kingdom, the heirs of the dead, of course, it's physical heirs in the Old Testament.
And so the idea is with Luke and Acts is that Luke corresponds to, let's say Samuel works for Chronicles where it's about a singular figure, not just any singular figure, but a Davidic king, the Messiah, you know, Luke and is richly or Christological presentation, does emphasize Davidic Christology. So that's a significant point. And there are even certain parallels, and T. Wright, you know, is a good name to have on your side, throughout this extensive list of plot parallels between Samuel and the gospel of Luke.
So there was some ground that others had walked on where Luke and Samuel and David are concerned, but the new thing was Acts. What do we do with Acts, you know? And I knew we couldn't, of course, the apostles and disciples in this construal must correspond to the heirs of the Davidic kingdom. They're not, you know, Jesus' physical heirs, but they are heirs of the kingdom.
That's fair enough. So I think in the institution, Luke says, I confer or I covenant a kingdom to you. Scott Han was helpful in bringing out that point. And so what I'm saying is acts is like an eschatological reversal of what we see in kings.
Instead of these like, you know, lousy kings who drive the kingdom into the ground, we have more or less successful eschatological royal figures who actually successfully advanced the kingdom even to the ends of the earth. And so you have Acts 1, H. Jerusalem, Judea, and Zemaria, ends of the earth. And where some of that point, I think Scott Han again is pointed out that that's like a map of the old Davidic kingdom.
And so this here is just one point of evidence that acts as sort of the eschatological reversal of what we saw happening in the Old Testament. So that's a lot, but I hope that gives a big picture of what I'm going for anyway. Tell us about the narrative arch and chronicles. Yeah.
So this was very interesting to me. You know, I noticed when I was doing even the initial research, Chris, we all know you read Samuel Kings and Chronicles. They're obviously working with each other. And Samuel Kings likely was the actual source, the main written source boiler before chronicles, which then you have other material.
It looked, it would have been very congenial for me if Luke was using both, if he wasn't just using Samuel Kings, it would have made kind of the two part thing, a little bit neater and Greek, you know, there's issues with the numbers of books, but anyway, at least in Greek you have four for Samuel Kings and then two and chronicles. So that would have helped. There are certain features of chronicles like the Ephesus on speeches and prayers and Psalms, which are just quite a lot of that going on in Chronicles. And even an eschatological patina, all of this would help.
So, but you know, you need to obviously have integrity as a scholar. And you know, is it plausible to basically try to weave together chronicles and Samuel Kings sort of the way we might encounter in a modern chronological Bible. We know we might do that. It's great for your quiet time, maybe, but does that help?
You know, is that a responsible reading strategy? So this was, you know, I had to be honest with it and say, okay, if I can't prove that ancients were considering both works in concert, then I have to deal with that and be honest about that. But much to my surprise, not only is there some evidence for people thinking of both works in concert, it turned out as I surveyed the second-tuple literature, it appeared, I would also far as to argue that it is actually the default reading strategy where, you know, based on the extant evidence that we have, it's rare that a second-tuple Jewish author will do something in Samuel Kings where they're also not thinking of chronicles, you know. And just one example out of, I think, 11 or more, I guess, I just Josephus's antiquities, right?
So it's a retelling with Jewish history, but he's like seamlessly interweaving Samuel Kings and chronicles. And so that's why I feel like, I can rightly call it the, you know, yes, the Samuel Kings now to bark is, it gets unwieldy, but chronicles is a big part of that and that it helps with the acts, Luke and X thesis, but I think it's right. So all that sort of put it this way to sum up, I think if Luke is interacting with these texts at all, it is highly, highly likely that he's not just looking at Samuel Kings, but he's also looking at chronicles and essentially doing what we might do with our modern chronological vibe. I think, okay, what's going to fill this out and out of these two work together?
So that's, that was my assumption. Mark, would you know, walk us through Luke and X and give us some of the highlights of how Luke employed a narrative art similar to Samuel Kings and chronicles? Yes, absolutely. And Luke, as I hinted at before, was a little easier.
And in one sense, a lot of that was, hopefully, a lot of that work is hopefully done for me already by NT, right? And you see, you're a, is another scholar who worked on that. But you know, you see things, well, let's look at the infancy narrative, right? I mean, it's clear there's OT influence there, but not just Old Testament influence in the abstracted.
It appears as if Luke, this is fairly easy to see, is interacting with the early chapter of first Samuel. You have an infertile woman in the form of a, a Hadda in Samuel, then you have, you know, Elizabeth and Zachariah in the New Testament. So we have these kind of things. We have a temple context there and things like that.
So we even have a forerunner, right? So you have Samuel and then David comes along, but now we have John the Baptist and Jesus, but things like this in the early part of the infancy narrative. As it goes on through Luke, again, I'm not doing nothing but tapping into right and mirror here, but you even have like an anointing of David and then an anointing of Jesus at the baptism. You have David's legal authority demonstrated enough for Samuel and Jesus is legal authority demonstrated.
You know, you have the suffering of King David, right? With the Absalom and all that. And of course, we have the suffering of Jesus. One interesting point toward the end of Luke's gospel, and here's where chronicles becomes important.
And at the end of say, first chronicles and at the end of second samples, there is a note of preparation for the temple, right? The temple is coming and David's passing out and passing away from the scene and he's getting solid and ready. And especially in first chronicles, we see all this business of preparing for the temple. And in Luke, we also see this extended time where Jesus is with his followers and preparing them for what comes next.
Well, where's the temple? Okay. Now we go into Acts. In the beginning of the main event at the beginning of first Kings and 10 Chronicles is the temple, of course, the building of the temple.
Well, where's the temple and Acts? Well, here's where Greg Beow is a huge healthier because he's argued extensively that Pentecost is in fact the eruption of the end time temple and the fire and the tons of fire and the sound and all this, he's a deuce, numerous, numerous verbal parallels and echoes there. So I was like, okay, we've got the beginning of Acts. We see a parallel here.
Let's skip to the end of Acts and then I'll fill in the bit. If you go to the end of Acts, here again is another open enigmatic question. Why does Acts end the way it does? There's no clear resolution.
You have a solitary figure, you know, Paul is alone. Why don't we find out what happens? This is a mystery. There's various proposals there.
But we actually have a parallel if you look at the end of Second Kings and 10 Chronicles with Joikim there in Babylon. It seems like there's a similarity here. You have a solitary like royal figure. He's alone.
He's free. He's at the ends of the Earth Babylon. And so interesting that we have these bookends. And again, this bit about seeing Paul as a parallel with Joikim, that was not original to me.
I've gotten that from other folks, but I'm putting the pieces together. In terms of the middle of Acts, I didn't attempt to draw numerous points for point parallels. I felt that that wouldn't be. I just didn't really see it to be honest, but what I did see was similarities in terms of how the works are structured.
For example, both Acts and Second Kings have geography as a main component of their structure. There's a moving away from Jerusalem, multiple leads to Babylon. You also have segmentation, segmented narratives. In Kings and Chronicles, you have kings, of course, their descendants.
So one must come after the other in the timeline. In Acts, even though Peter and Paul, they're alive at the same time, they're narratives are largely segmented. And Sean Adams was helpful here with his work on selected biography. But putting these pieces together, you have a structure that's based on geography.
It's based on largely segmented narratives of major figures and then a few other things. Even something is innocuous or a minor point, like the summary narratives that you have in the book of Acts. Oh, and the church expanded on this and that. There are parallels between those and some of the summaries that you find especially in Chronicles.
So for Luke, I felt I could do this point for point thing. In Acts, I did more of a soft focus, emphasizing the beginning and end of the work and showing some structural features. If you put it out there, you always wonder if you're the... I'm not the first to propose this, but I'm the second as far as I know.
But I really present this for others to take a look at the help me out, poke the holes in that and we don't want to be saying things that aren't really there and intended by someone, machine, whatever the divide. I think it's there. What are you working on now? Any new projects or books?
These are new book-glained projects. I'm overseeing this kind of educational arm and church. And so we put together a nice coursework here. We call it the City Light Institute.
It just, you know, core classes for our members and for others hopefully. We have visions for that. We'll see where that develops. So thinking more in terms of curriculum.
Other than that, yeah, no books. I'm doing a paper at ETS on theological anthropology. So if anyone will be at ETS in November, I think I'll be there Tuesday on the BTS. So that's it.
I have a long list of book projects. We'll see what time and providence will allow in this next season. Mark, thank you for being with us and for sharing your good work at New Gax. Absolutely, yes.
It's been my pleasure. Friends, you've been listening to New Books and Biblical Studies, a channel of the New Books Network. Until next time. Goodbye.