Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T09:44:09.169Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Emmaus Story: Necessity and Freedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Timothy Radcliffe O P
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The Emmaus story, Luke 24:13-35, is a bifocal narrative. It pivots on two moments of disclosure and the puzzle is how they relate. The first is on the road, when Jesus interprets the Scriptures: ‘“Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and so enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (v 26). The second is in Emmaus, when they recognise him in the breaking of bread, but Luke cleverly links it with the first by having the disciples immediately remember what happened on the road: “And their eyes were opened and they recognised him; and he vanished out of their sight. And they said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts bum within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures’” (v 3 If). Finally, the two climaxes of the story are brought together in the last line of the pericope, when they report back to the disciples in Jerusalem: “Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread” (v 35). The first moment of insight is in the perception of the necessity of Christ’s death; the second is in the repetition of the gesture of the Last Supper, Jesus’ free appropriation of that death in the breaking of bread.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 64 , Issue 761 , November 1983 , pp. 483 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 “Un grand jeu d'inclusions dans ‘les pèlerins d'Emmaüs’,”Nouvelle Revue Théologique, Vol 99/1, pp 62 ‐ 76Google Scholar.

2 For a discussion of the textual evidence, see Marshall, I. H., The Gospel of Luke, Exeter, 1978, p 888Google Scholar.

3 Eugene A. LaVerdiere, S.S.S., Thompson, William G., “New Testament Communities in Transition: a Study of Matthew and Luke”, Theological Studies, Vol 37/4, 1977, p 583.Google Scholar

4 Fitzmyer, Joseph A, The Gospel according to Luke I‐IX, New York, 1982, p 292Google Scholar.

5 cf. Grassi, J. A., “Emmaus Revisited”, in Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vol 26/4, 1964, pp 463–467.Google Scholar

6 Holtzmann, H. J., Die Apostelgeschichte. Hand‐Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, Vol 1, part 2, 3rd edition, Tübingen/Leipzig 1901, p 35Google Scholar, quoted by E. Haenchen, in The Acts of the Apostles, Oxford, 1971, p 180.

7 For a discussion of this proverb, cf Marshall, I. H., Acts, Leicester, 1981, p 395Google Scholar.

8 Ernst, Cornelius O.P. The Theology of Grace, Dublin and Cork, 1974, p 81Google Scholar.