2. Reading Luke's Preface in Light of Scientific and Historiographical Preface Writing

Alexander has traced the task of situating Luke's preface within its Greek literary environment to P. Corssen's review of Friedrich Blass’ Philology of the Gospels published over a century ago, a review that, according to Alexander, contributed to shifting the focus from the exegesis of the ‘plain meaning of the text’ to the ‘meaning behind the words’.Footnote ⁷ Henry J. Cadbury later used this approach to provide what would become the standard view that Luke was following in the tradition of Greek historiography.Footnote ⁸ This view has continued to endure in Lukan studies, though there persists debate over what kind of historical genre Luke employed.Footnote ⁹ However, Alexander challenges this view, claiming that Luke's preface does not conform to the typical Greek patterns of historiographical writing but instead displays the characteristics of scientific prefaces. As a result of this conclusion, Alexander claims that the whole work of Luke-Acts should be read as a technical or scientific work, which bears implications for the social location of Luke's audience.Footnote ¹⁰ These conclusions are the major points of contention that have elicited a largely negative response to her work, which has unfortunately overshadowed its merits, some of which apply to the purpose of this article. Before explaining the usefulness of Alexander's research, however, I will first briefly discuss the critiques that limit the extent to which her work can be used.

One of the main principles on which Alexander bases her argument is that ‘[s]ince a preface is a formal literary convention, formal and syntactical characteristics should take precedence over content’.Footnote ¹¹ It is not an overstatement to say that Alexander's conclusion stands or falls on the validity of this principle, and with a brief critical evaluation I will show that she has depended too much on it. To begin, one of the topics that Alexander addresses under formal features is the length of the preface, where she finds that historical prefaces were usually much longer than scientific prefaces.Footnote ¹² According to her, scientific prefaces are typically much shorter than historical prefaces, usually consisting of a single, though lexically cumbersome and compressed, sentence.Footnote ¹³ She uses Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, which has a preface that is twenty-three chapters long, as a case in point that historical prefaces extend to much greater lengths than scientific prefaces.Footnote ¹⁴ This would seem to support her argument that Luke's preface, being only one sentence in length, resembles the scientific preface more than the historical. However, Sean Adams demonstrates that Alexander overstates and even misrepresents the data on this point because Thucydides’ writing is not a fair representation of the typical length of Greek historical prefaces; his preface is very long even by the standards of Greek historiography.Footnote ¹⁵ In fact, Adams shows that the percentage of Luke's Gospel with regard to total word count actually falls within the usual range of other Greek historians. Luke's preface totals 0.215% of his gospel, which is comparable to Polybius’ Histories at 0.126%, Josephus’ cumulative works at 0.264%, Plutarch's Rise and Fall of Athens at 0.235%, while Thucydides’ preface to his History of the Peloponnesian War amounts to 2.168% of the whole work, making it a clear outlier.Footnote ¹⁶ Therefore, Luke's preface is not disqualified from introducing a historical work based on its length; it falls within the expected range. Adams goes on to show several other features of Luke's preface that Alexander misconstrues to support her thesis: (1) she believes that Luke's decision not to introduce himself personally suggests that he did not consider his writing historical, which does not fairly consider that omitting a first-person reference was a perfectly acceptable option in historical prefaces;Footnote ¹⁷ (2) she claims that dedications in historical works are not normal, but such a normative statement, as David Aune has pointed out, is not statistically supportable because only a fraction of ancient histories remain;Footnote ¹⁸ and (3) she downplays the significance of αὐτόπτης, which seems to be a case of special pleading because eyewitness accounts had great importance in the writing of history and its reference in Luke 1.2 must be accounted for in some way.Footnote ¹⁹

A crucial point to be made concerning prefaces is that even though the historical prologueFootnote ²⁰ could go on for great lengths, even almost acquiring for itself the status of an independent literary form,Footnote ²¹ it was still important to indicate what type of writing was being undertaken in the first sentence of the work. Referring to ancient historiography, Donald Earl explains that ‘the function of the first sentence is to establish, if not the specific topic to be treated, at least the literary genre to which the work belongs, history, dialogue, oratory and so on’.Footnote ²² Thus, content does matter and should not be immediately subordinated to formal features as Alexander argues. It is important, then, to consider the significance of Luke's prologue as a single sentence where both form and content contribute to something of importance for the whole work.

Being only one sentence in length, Luke's preface does not continue on in the way that might be expected of a historiographical preface, and Alexander's argument is in part based on making this expectation a norm. She believes that the writing of history and the writing of technical treatises were two distinct enterprises, and that there are distinct preface forms that belong to each discipline, each with their own social expectations. In response to this it is necessary to concede that certain conventions in preface writing needed to be followed, but Adams is probably correct in stating that preface criteria were more fluid than Alexander wants to allow; a historical work could be introduced in a number of ways.Footnote ²³ Also, if the formal elements of ancient preface writing indeed have some flexibility, then it is not surprising that Alexander was able to find consistency between the structures of Luke's preface and scientific prefaces given their similar length. In fact, shorter historiographical and scientific prefaces share enough structural similarities that to bifurcate them would seem to overcategorise a more general preface genre.Footnote ²⁴ Put another way, it is probably more accurate to talk about a preface as a simple genre,Footnote ²⁵ or a constituent literary form, which becomes specified when used to introduce a certain type of writing rather than to begin by identifying different types of writing and then try to construct multiple preface structures that are type-specific.Footnote ²⁶ However, there are certain rules that were used more rigidly in preface writing, and these served specific practical purposes; ancient works of historiography and other genres that were published not in codices, but rather in bookroll form, could not be leafed through to ascertain what type of literature they were; as Earl states, ‘the technique of ancient book production, the physical nature of the volumen did not allow the reader easily to scan the body of the work to ascertain its subject’.Footnote ²⁷ Therefore, ‘the first sentence and first paragraph [of the prologue] performed much of the function of the title page and list of contents in a modern codex’.Footnote ²⁸ There was therefore an expectation placed on the writer to make clear in the first sentence or first paragraph what type of literature was being written – ‘History, epideictic oratory, philosophical dialogue, political treatise or whatever, your first sentence had to announce what you were writing’.Footnote ²⁹ Earl even notes that Herodotus and Thucydides serve as model examples of historiographers who masterfully compressed their first sentence to present their subject.Footnote ³⁰ If we understand that Luke was writing in the literary mode of Greco-Roman historiography, then this same expectation applied to him.

While it is necessary to retain Earl's emphasis that the content of the opening sentence should introduce the kind of genre to which a work belongs, and also to acknowledge that it does not make sense to read Luke's historical narrative as anything other than a form of historical writing, Alexander's work can still be used for its structural description. In other words, her work bears value for this paper in particular because the brevity of scientific prefaces corresponds to the length of the enactment formulae of Greek decrees (as will be shown below). Also, because Luke's preface shares structural resemblances to the shorter prefaces of ancient works, and many of these were scientific, the structures of shorter prefaces and the Greek decrees can be easily compared. This comparison can then serve either to support or to refute the conclusion that Luke's preface bears more resemblance to a Greek decree than to any other type of writing. Therefore, assuming that generalisations can be drawn from Alexander's specific description of ancient scientific prefaces, her outline of structural elements will be used to compare the structural elements of Greek decrees. These elements contain the following content:

1. (1) the author's decision to write;

2. (2) the subject and contents of the book;

3. (3) dedication: the second-person address, and topics related to the dedicatee;

4. (4) the nature of the subject matter;

5. (5) others who have written on the subject or who have opinions on it, whether predecessors or rivals;

6. (6) the author's qualifications;

7. (7) general remarks on methodologyFootnote ³¹

As a representative preface I will use one of the prefaces of Galen of Pergamon, the second-century physician and philosopher who wrote over 600 treatises, which makes him one of the most prolific writers of antiquity. His preface to De typis has been shown to resemble Luke's preface, and therefore can help in the comparative procedure. However, the lexis of this preface does not match Luke's as closely as some of Galen's other prefaces; it is for similar functional elements that this preface is selected for comparison. I provide his preface and the elements of the preface as Alexander has categorised them in Table 1.Footnote ³² Before comparisons can be made, an overview of the structural elements of Greek decrees needs to be given, and Moles’ argument clearly presented, in order to be fair to the argument that he makes. It is to these matters that this article now turns.

Table 1.

Galen of Pergamon, De typis (ii century ce)

¹The Greek text is taken from K. G. Kühn, ed., Claudii Galeni opera omnia, vol. viii (Medicorum Graecorum Opera Quae Extant; Hildesheim: Olms, 1965) 463.

3. Reading Luke's Preface in Light of Greek Decrees

In antiquity decrees were published in two primary ways: (1) they were inscribed on stone, bronze or other forms of durable material and placed in public, visible locations; and (2) writers of literary texts would quote the content of decrees and even provide narrative accounts that worked in the enactment formula of decrees.Footnote ³³ Rhodes explains what the process of publishing decrees in antiquity probably would have entailed: ‘When a state publishes, or allows an interested individual to publish, a decree, we may assume that the published text is based on (but is not necessarily a complete and verbatim copy of) an original text written on papyrus or comparable material; commonly that original will have been deposited in the archives.’Footnote ³⁴ Luke in his second volume provides an example of the second way of publishing a decree, which – provided the content is not the author's creation – is really a republication of an already-existing document, and Rhodes’ general description holds true for what Luke does because Acts 15.24–9 only provides the enactment formula of the decree specifically, whereas the rest of the council is narrated, which is in keeping with normal practice.

The grammatical similarities between Luke's preface and the Apostolic Decree have been observed for well over a century. Alfred Plummer in his 1896 commentary comments that the similarities should be noted, though he does not venture to propose their significance.Footnote ³⁵ They were also deemed significant enough for Friedrich Blass to note in his Greek grammar.Footnote ³⁶ Recently, scholars have attempted to make more out of the structural similarities, and one of these scholars, Moles, has gone further than others in making the following assertion: ‘My basic thesis is that, granted that Luke 1.1–4 is a formal preface of a common general type and that it announces a work of Greek historiography, the single type of writing that it resembles most is the Greek decree.’Footnote ³⁷ The initial features prompting Moles’ thesis are the grammatical similarity to the Apostolic Decree in Acts 15.24–5 and that certain lexical items such as ἐπειδή and ἔδοξε κἀμοί appear in the preface, which are ‘inter alia decree language’, as is their collocation.Footnote ³⁸ The significance of these observations in Moles’ estimation is rarely accounted for and remains underdeveloped.

Scholars generally affirm that to understand Luke's preface would be to understand the purpose of Luke-Acts, which entails confirming at least some information about the social location of the target audience.Footnote ³⁹ For Moles, Luke's preface displays a show of the writer's literary skill, and this includes his rhetorical act of structuring the preface so that it strikes the audience as a decree while losing nothing of its features as a formal preface.Footnote ⁴⁰ Meaning is therefore multiplied in Luke's preface, which Moles explains as follows: ‘The language of great writers can be very polysemous. The fact that a word, phrase or image can be explained on one level does not exclude its operating on other levels; and in some contexts, the more levels the better, provided that each separate level retains sufficient definition, and the whole does not collapse into mess.’Footnote ⁴¹ Such a claim necessarily assumes a substantial classical literary competence on part of the audience, given that Moles sees densely associative language and allusions to classical writers within the first sentence of Luke's Gospel.Footnote ⁴² This leads him to the conclusion that Luke wrote his gospel for a Christian community that was highly educated and constituted its own Christian philosophical community that resembled the Greek philosophical politeia.Footnote ⁴³ Thus, in a similar move as Alexander, Moles attempts to reconstruct the social location of Luke and his audience from his structural conclusions about Luke's preface. To evaluate Moles’ argument it is necessary to consider which structural features of the Greek decree he isolates, and this requires an overview of the main parts that made up the standard structure of Greek decrees.

The Greek decree had more or less become standardised by the fourth century bce in Athens,Footnote ⁴⁴ but there were some elements that continued to evolve into the Hellenistic period.Footnote ⁴⁵ The main elements are as follows: first, decrees often begin with an invocation of the gods (θεοί) and/or good fortune (ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ).Footnote ⁴⁶ Second, there may be a heading indicating the decree's subject matter. This is followed by a prescript, the third element, which provides information such as names of officials, the date, the nature of the meeting that resulted in the decree and the name of the proposer.Footnote ⁴⁷ The fourth element is the enactment formula, ‘the formal indication that what follows has been enacted as a decree’, where the following formulae are commonly used:

In each of these formulations there occur several consistent features. First, the verb ἔδοξε initiates the enactment. Second, the initial ἔδοξε is followed by a dative complement, which is always specified by an article. Third, the grammatical complement always refers to a collective body or multiple collective bodies. While these formulations represent the primary variations attested in inscriptions, there are numerous instances where deviations or embellishments occur, some of which are found in papyri. For example, assuming the reconstruction is true, P.Stras. v/i–ii.616 reads, [ἐπειδὴ ἔδοξεν ἐν τῇ κρα]τίστῃ βουλῇ (‘since it seemed good to the greatest council’), where the motivation clause and enactment clauses are seemingly conflated in the reconstructed text in addition to βουλῇ being modified with the superlative κρατίστῃ.Footnote ⁴⁹

The fifth element, the motivation clause, in its fully developed form is actually made up of two clauses: (1) an initial ἐπει(δή), ‘since’, clause with accompanying content, followed by (2) another clause beginning with ἵνα or ὅπως, ‘so that’, with content that explains the purpose of the decree.Footnote ⁵⁰ Given my own survey of the data, this description of the motivation clause seems only partially accurate. First, while the initial ἐπει(δή) is replete throughout the extant decrees, subsequent purpose clauses with either ἵνα or ὅπως are far less common.Footnote ⁵¹ In fact, the structure from the enactment formula to the motivation clause follows a pattern more consistent with Michel 542, which reads ἔδοξε τῆι βουλῆι … ἐπειδὴ … δεδόχθαι … (‘It seemed good to the council … since … it appeared best’), where a perfect passive infinitive form of δοκέω follows the motivation clause to introduce the substance of the decision instead of the purpose clause.Footnote ⁵² Second, ὅπως is almost always the conjunction employed in decrees to express purpose; ἵνα, while a functional equivalent, hardly deserves mention in Rhodes’ description. This second feature bears relevance because Luke uses ἵνα instead of ὅπως, which would have been the better option if he were trying to invoke a Greek decree.

The infinitive δεδόχθαι begins the sixth element, which is the motion formula. This term, often followed by ἐψηφίσθαι τῆι βουλῆι, ‘calls on the enacting body to approve the motion put to it’, echoing the enactment formula.Footnote ⁵³ As indicated above, this element often stands in place of the purpose clause, and so these decrees move more directly into what Rhodes calls the substance, the seventh element, which is ‘normally expressed in accusatives and infinitives, dependent on the motion formula’.Footnote ⁵⁴ Finally, there is supplementary material at the end of the decree, including names of men elected under the decrees provision, amendments to the original decree and other information.Footnote ⁵⁵

4. Comparison of Findings

4.1 Matters of Form

In his article Moles appeals to what he calls the ‘three key elements’ of the Greek decree to support his claim that Luke's preface is structured like a decree, and these elements are: ‘a preambular “since” (ἐπεί/ἐπειδή) … a main clause … and a purpose (ἴνα) clause’.Footnote ⁵⁶ While he cites Rhodes’ work here, Moles’ explanation is slightly misleading. As shown above, Moles is only describing the general structure for the enactment and motivation formulae of the larger structure of a Greek decree; these formulae do not contain the only key elements of a decree. They are only two parts of a decree. Such a description risks leading readers to understand decrees as being very simple and rigid in structure, which is certainly not the case. In Rhodes’ work there are many clarifications about the variations that decrees could take on. For instance, there were two enactment formulae that emerged by the fourth century bce along with two forms of the motion formula, and these were interchangeable with one another.Footnote ⁵⁷ Moles thus conditions his criteria to yield findings that favour his thesis.

The history of research dating as far back as Friedrich Blass’ mention of similarities between Luke's preface and the Apostolic Decree in his Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch continues to invite scholars to investigate these parallels. However, while there are objective parallels, this does not mean that they are intentional. The rejection of intentional parallels can be supported by tabulating how Luke 1.1–4 displays all of the structural elements of prefaces that Alexander mapped, by comparing them with Galen's preface to De typis and also by identifying the elements of Luke's preface that supposedly contain ‘decree-like’ language (see Table 2).

Table 2.

A Comparison between the Preface of Luke's Gospel and Galen's De typis

That Galen's preface is lacking in both a dedicatee and a display of credentials should not come as a surprise; if the treatise was written for students (i.e. τοῖς νεωστὶ προσιοῦσι τῇ τέχνῇ), then it would be odd to have a dedicatee, and since Galen published more works than anyone else in his time, it may not have been necessary to provide credentials. Apart from these two omissions, all of the other elements of the basic structure are accounted for, and they display a structural parallelism with Luke's preface. Admittedly, these two prefaces share hardly any lexical similarity (only πολλοί/πολλῶν; γράψαι/περιγραφήν), including the supposed decree-like language in Luke's Gospel. However, one should not interpret this as supporting evidence for Moles’ thesis here because several of Galen's other treatises (e.g. De anatomicis administrationibus; De Hippocratis et Platonis decretis; De ptisana), along with works by other authors (e.g. Diocles’ Letter to Antigonus),Footnote ⁵⁸ use the same language Luke uses in elements 1, 4 and 5, though the rest of the elements may not be present. If Luke, then, follows the structure of a preface, and the supposed decree-like language is not unique to his preface, or even uncommon in other prefaces, what should be made of this?

Consideration should be given to the possibility that Luke's preface shares structural similarities with a decree as a matter of coincidence rather than rhetorical intention. In fact, there is notable dissimilarity between Luke's preface and the Greek decrees. First, the most obvious difference is that in Luke the motivational clause with ἐπειδήπερ precedes what would need to be considered the enactment formula, if Luke's preface is to be read as a decree. This order is reversed from the standard Greek decree formula where the enactment formula comes first. Only on occasion does ἐπει(δή) precede ἔδοξε(ν) in the Greek decrees (e.g. IGRR iii.582; SEG xi.1054). However, prefaces only evidence the ἐπει(δή) … ἔδοξε(ν) structure, which suggests that Luke 1.1–4 follows a true preface structure as opposed to a decree-like structure. The argument that an ancient audience, however well educated they might have been, would have detected the structure of a Greek decree here thus becomes untenable.

Another notable observation concerning the way Moles sets up his argument is that Luke's preface actually ends up resembling a Greek decree more so than the Apostolic Decree. That Luke 1.1–4 shares significant grammatical similarity with Acts 15.24–9 is unmistakable, but the argument that Luke rhetorically structured the preface of his gospel to resemble a decree is diminished by the ‘key elements’ of a decree not actually appearing in Acts 15.24–9, the text which unquestionably contains a decree. If the structural elements are in fact key to the structure of Greek decrees, then why does the Apostolic Decree in Acts 15.28–9 not contain the ἵνα clause (or equivalent) that expresses the purpose of the decree? More importantly, if there is an intentional grammatical parallel between Luke's preface and the Apostolic Decree, then the argument that Luke's preface is made to resemble a decree is diminished because one of the few instances where these passages differ is exactly where one of the formal elements of the decree would be expected to be in Acts; while they share structural similarity, their dissimilarity involves an important element of the decree structure. This observation challenges the attempts to interpret meaningful significance from the close grammatical structure between Luke's preface and the Apostolic Decree based on decree formulae, and even more so because a purpose (ἵνα) clause is also evidenced in ancient prefaces to address the dedicatee, such as that of Apollonius of Citium which provides the example: ἵνα ἕχῃς … τὴν … περὶ τῶν ἄρθρων ἐπίγνωσιν.Footnote ⁵⁹ Vettius Valens uses ὅπως … ἐπιγνόντες to the same effect.Footnote ⁶⁰ In the contexts of both of these examples, the purpose clause ‘so that you may know’ is related to the dedicatee, and this same feature holds true in Luke's preface, where ἵνα ἐπιγνῷς, ‘so that you may know’, refers to Theophilus. Thus, the structural elements that Moles isolates actually support the argument that Luke's preface is a well-crafted preface following the appropriate conventions of the day.

4.2 Matters of Content

With regard to content, an extensive work was conducted early in the twentieth century by Wilhelm Larfeld, the German scholar on whom Rhodes heavily relies, to catalogue the major content words commonly recurring in Greek decrees which identify the motive that prompted their issuing. While Larfeld's explanation of the structure of Greek decrees differs slightly from Rhodes’, they both describe the important element involving the ἐπει(δή) clause as ‘die Motive’, or the motivational clause.Footnote ⁶¹ Table 3 identifies each of these major words accompanied by one example each; the single instance I provide of each word is representative of literally hundreds of other occurrences. The following examples only account for motivational clauses that use ἐπει(δή). Larfeld accounts for other motivational topics, but the extant decrees that were known at the time of his work's publication did not begin with an initial ἐπει(δή), which is the structural element necessary for analysing Luke's preface.

Table 3.

Motivational Clause Content Lexis

The published decrees that would have been ubiquitously scattered across the Roman Empire in the first century, having been produced for four and a half centuries by the time Luke's works would have been written, were mainly positive and honorific in orientation, as the content words in the chart above demonstrate. It was because people were evaluated as worthy (Michel 309), good (Michel 203), pious (OGIS 345) and the like that decrees were issued for them. This is not surprising, for, as Rhodes states, ‘[a] high proportion of the decrees which were … published are decrees which confer honours, since publicity is an important part of the honour’.Footnote ⁶² Since these decrees would have been familiar to everyone who walked the streets of the city, a preface unconditioned by context that appeared to emulate a Greek decree would have invoked this most common social function. However, not only does Luke not instantiate any of the stock vocabulary of the motivational clauses of Greek decrees, but his preface is arguably negative or at least neutral in orientation, not positive, due to how he acknowledges that others have previously attempted (ἐπεχείρησαν) to compile an account. The acknowledgement of predecessors in prefaces, which was a common convention in both scientific and historiographical writing, went in one of two directions: either the previous writers were criticised for having unsatisfactorily completed their task in some way, or the present writer depicted his or her work as a text complementary to similar available works.Footnote ⁶³ On the one hand, we can take Galen's preface from his second-century scientific treatise De typis that is provided in Table 1. The preface is complementary in orientation and explains that the treatise was meant for use in conjunction with the other works available on the same topic. On the other hand, Josephus’ preface in his Jewish War takes on a negative, critical tone of his predecessors:

Of these, however, some, having taken no part in the action, have collected from hearsay casual and contradictory stories which they have then edited in a rhetorical style; while others, who witnessed the events, have, either from flattery of the Romans or from hatred of the Jews, misrepresented the facts, their writings exhibiting alternatively invective and encomium, but nowhere historical accuracy. In these circumstances, I … propose to provide the subjects of the Roman Empire with a narrative of the facts …Footnote ⁶⁴

Several scholars have noted that Luke's use of the verb ἐπιχειρέω may signal that he considered his work to be superior to those who had previously written gospel accounts, perhaps even having Mark's Gospel in mind.Footnote ⁶⁵ Still others interpret the same verb as reasonably appropriate within the embedded values shown in Galen's scientific prefaces; Alexander for one states: ‘It is important to note this pattern, since it is too readily assumed that Luke's “Since many have undertaken …” (v. 3) necessarily implies criticism of his predecessors. In fact, his “it seemed good to me also” (κἀμοί, v. 3) suggests rather the complementary relationship found in Hero [of Alexandria] and others.’Footnote ⁶⁶ Regardless of which of these positions one affirms, neither corresponds to the social function of the Greek decrees, which were mainly used to confer honour to individuals. The disparity between the social functions of prefaces and decrees would then seemingly create confusion for an audience who read a text that incorporated these two genres into a single sentence.

If the content of the preface is afforded the importance it needs to be given in making the claim that Moles argues for, then for it to be decree-like it also ought to contain language that invokes some sort of legal register, and such language could be polysemous if Luke is being as rhetorically minded as Moles makes him out to be. However, the only lexical item in Luke's preface that can take on a distinct legal meaning is πεπληροφορημένων in 1.3. The papyrological evidence attests to this word being used frequently for settling legal matters and for paying off debts.Footnote ⁶⁷ One example is found in P.Oxy. iii.0509, which reads: τυγ[χά]νω δὲ πεπληροφορημένος τοῖς ὀφειλομένοις μοι (‘I am completely satisfied with regard to what was owed to me’). However, this word was also well attested as having a more general meaning of ‘being complete’, and so cannot be assumed to appear only in legal discourse.Footnote ⁶⁸ Moles makes no mention of this term, but an argument for its legal sense would be difficult to make given the rest of the content of Luke's preface.

Forms of the word κράτιστος as found in Luke 1.3 occur in several of the papyri that contain information about councils and their decrees (P.Stras. v/i–ii.616; BGU iv.1073; P.Oxy. vi.891; cf. SEG xxxiv.678), but they always refer to the body issuing the decree, not the person or group that the decree would be delivered or applied to as is the case with Luke's preface. In fact, this honorific superlative is well attested in prefaces when the work is dedicated to someone, and it is generally accepted that Luke's vocative address to Theophilus conforms to a typical dedication.Footnote ⁶⁹

A final observation concerns again the disparity between the functions of prologues and decrees. As Earl states, ‘[y]our first sentence had to announce what you were writing’.Footnote ⁷⁰ A principal function of the initial sentence or paragraph of a prologue was to clarify what the writing was about. It seems counter-intuitive, then, to use the initial sentence of a work as a double entendre. A rhetorical flourish completely unconditioned by context runs the risk of confusing an audience. How would an audience, regardless of their assumed education, be able to recognise what Luke was doing by announcing his orderly narrative account in the content of the prologue while overlaying it with the structure of a decree? It seems that the ‘rules’ of prologue writing would discourage polysemous meaning when the goal is to articulate clearly the type of writing of the work. This point is supported even more if one agrees with Harry Gamble's view that ‘the careful literary crafting of each [Gospel] … and the small size of individual Christian congregations in the first century make it unlikely that any of the Gospels was composed for the strictly local and intramural use of a single community’.Footnote ⁷¹ If the gospels were meant to be distributed more widely, then this ultimately counters Moles’ view that Luke's books were written for a particular, highly literate community, which is a requirement for his argument that cannot be forfeited without disproving his thesis.