Sight and Blindness in Luke-Acts

Description

The ancient world often thought in terms of physiognomicsa „the idea that character can be discerned by studying outward, physical features. That physical s carry moral freight in characterization has been largely missed in modern biblical scholarship, and this study brings that to the forefront. Specifically, this is a study of one particular physical markera „blindness. When we look at Greco-Roman literature, a kind of literary topos begins to emerge, a set of assumptions that ancient audiences would typically make when encountering blind characters. Luke-Acts makes use of such a topos in a way that becomes programmatic, serving as a kind of interpretive key to Luke-Acts that is generally unnoticed in modern scholarship.