Jesus as Philosopher in the Gospel of Luke

The chapter discusses the following aspects of the question of Jesus as philosopher in the Gospel of Luke: ascetic appearance, abandoning one’s family, attitude towards material possessions and outward appearance, Jesus as a teacher of ethics, the wisdom of Jesus, Jesus and the philosophers as messengers of God, the philosopher’s emotions, and the philosopher’s suffering and death. It is concluded that, compared with the other Gospels, Luke’s Jesus is the ‘most philosophical’. There are indeed some minor differences between Luke and the Graeco-Roman descriptions, but they are precisely that: minor. Even Mark’s and (to a lesser extent) Matthew’s portrayals of the ‘unphilosophical’ emotions of Jesus are largely absent in Luke. In this respect, Luke characterizes Jesus in much the same way as a Stoic would have. On the basis of this, it is suggested that in his characterization, Luke made use of Graeco-Roman discourses portraying the philosophical sage.