Jerusalem and the Restoration of Israel in the Gospel of Luke

Jerusalem occupies a central place throughout the Gospel of Luke. This chapter accordingly examines how Jerusalem fits into Luke’s wider eschatological program. In Luke, Jerusalem is the center of Jesus’s eschatological activity. This theme emerges especially in the so-called travel narrative, which presents Jerusalem as the site where Jesus must fulfill his task of liberation—through his death, resurrection, ascension, and return—thereby tying the destiny of the messiah of Israel with his people. The major eschatological speech of the Third Gospel also deals with the fate of Jerusalem, including its destruction in 70, which is a source of grief for Luke’s Jesus. Tragedy, however, is not the end of Luke’s story of salvation on behalf of Israel. The Jewish people will be restored at Jesus’s return to Jerusalem.