Rejected Prophets

Although several scholars have written about how Luke portrays Jesus and the apostles as prophets, no one has yet provided a comprehensive theory as to why Luke’s protagonists resemble the prophets. McWhirter shows that Luke uses these biblical prophets as precedents, seeking to legitimate the apostles’ teachings in the face of events, such as the destruction of Jerusalem and the deaths of Peter and Paul, that seem to contradict those teachings. In order to show that all this was part of God’s plan, Luke compares Jesus and his witnesses to Israel’s prophets who were rejected by their own people.