Searching for the Self: Classic Stories, Christian Scripture, and the Quest for Personal Identity

by Adrian T. Smith

New Beginnings Voluntary, self-generated change. Think back to your last major new beginning. What scripts from the past guided you into the uncharted waters? As you embarked upon personal change, what did you cling to from your past to conserve your identity? In the first century, Christianity faced a “PR” problem—it looked like a new religion. Why was that bad? Doesn’t latest = best? Isn’t the iPhone 7 automatically better than the iPhone 6? Well, the cultural values of antiquity totally inverted the modern dogma of progress. In antiquity, religions required pedigree. The older the better. First-century Christians faced an identity crisis, as they embarked on living out a religion markedly different in many ways from its Jewish parent. Luke’s response (in two volumes, Luke and Acts): Root Christianity as deeply as possible in the venerable religion of Judaism. Here are just a few of the storytelling devices whereby Luke-Acts constructs a robust, deep-rooted narrative identity for the early church: • Take Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam (cf. Chronicles, discussed above). • Articulate the story of Jesus as the fulfillment of the entire Hebrew Bible (Luke 24:27, 44). Christianity may be a new story, but it climaxes an old story. • Pattern characters on Old Testament figures. In Luke 1, Zechariah and Elizabeth walk onstage in the literary garments of Abraham and Sarah. Jesus reprises the miracles of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. And so on. • Pattern the history o...