Luke's two-volume work begins with a formal preface unlike anything else
in the New Testament, and it has long been academic orthodoxy that
Luke's choice of style, vocabulary, and content in this short passage
reveal a desire to present his work to contemporary readers as 'History'
in the great tradition of Thucydides and Polybius. This study challenges
that assumption: far from aping the classical historians, Dr Alexander
argues, Luke was simply introducing his book in a style that would have
been familiar to readers of the scientific and technical manuals which
proliferated in the hellenistic world. The book contains a detailed
study of these Greek 'scientific' prefaces as well as a word-by-word
commentary on the Lucan texts. In her concluding chapters, Alexander
seeks to explore the consequences of this alignment both for the
literary genre of Luke-Acts (is it meant to be read as 'history'?) and
for the social background of the author and the book's first readers.