“Some describe the Gospels as accounts of Jesus’s death with really long introductions. Statements like this can downplay the bulk of the Gospels’ narratives, as though Jesus’s death were the only point of importance and everything else is just preliminary bonus material.

From another vantage point, however, this statement rightly communicates that nothing within the Gospels can be disconnected or properly understood apart from their climactic event: the death and resurrection of Christ. Everything that precedes leads up to the cross and occurs in its shadow.

But is this the case for the Gospel of Luke?”