deemed purposefully to have opposed the Christian saviour to Augustus, the
more directly such a description would serve, under other circumstances,
to portray Jesus as the quintessential Roman ruler. In other words, by
depicting the birth of Jesus, in Luke 1–2, as the advent of the universal
sovereign, soon enough there would be no reason not to understand this
text as, in fact, the beginning of the res gestaeof the Christian emperor par
excellence. Note that the final scene from Jesus’ childhood, in Luke 2:41–52,
which has the twelve-year-old boy-man teaching prodigiously in the tem-
ple, reflects a standard feature of many imperial biographies (Wiedemann
1989, 54ff.).
The Ascension Narratives in Luke 24:50–53; Acts 1:1–11
The same holds true, mutatis mutandis,for Luke’s account of Jesus’ ascen-
sion (not to mention his death: see Kloppenborg 1992, esp. 111–13, 115–16).
The account of Jesus’ departure into heaven in Luke 24:50–53; Acts 1:1–11
obviously removes Jesus from the plane of earthly history. At the same
time, the narrative asserts his enthronement at the right hand of univer-
sal majesty (cf. Acts 7:55). Incidentally, this assertion that Jesus’ post-
mortem destiny entailed prompt promotion ad dexteramappears to be the
only item of early Christian conviction on which all confessions agree (see
Barn.15:9; Gos. Pet.55–56; the Christian interpolation in T. Benj.9:5; Tertul-
lian,Adv. Jud.13.23; Eusebius, De eccl. theol.3.5; Fitzmyer 1985, 1589). In the
ascension, through which Jesus now becomes installed as viceroy of the
heavenly monarch, Jesus is established as supremely kyrios.However Chris-
tologically “stunted” Jesus might remain here in the eyes of later orthodox
theology, not being yet “of one substance with the Father,” no doubt exists
regarding his new role in world governance. Must one therefore not
acknowledge a decidedly anti-imperial posture, at least in this instance, for
the author of Luke-Acts?
It is Jesus’ ascension that editorially defines the evangelist’s own view
of Jesus (see Luke 9:51; 24:31, 51; Acts 1:2, 9, 11, 22). Certainly not the res-
urrection! A.W. Zwiep (1996) claims that, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’
post-mortem exaltation already occurs as part of the resurrection. This
strikes me as tacit recognition of the fact that, in Luke, Jesus’ resurrection
does not actually mean much as such: it requires the inclusion of a post-
mortem exaltation in order to make any difference. Nonetheless, by explain-
ing the significance of Jesus’ ascension in Luke-Acts through the concept
of the resurrection, i.e., as an extension or elaboration of it, Zwiep keeps
intact the traditional Christian theological conviction of the resurrection as
the critical novum(for an even more harmonizing interpretation of the
ascension narrative in Luke 24:50–53, see Fitzmyer 1985, 1588–89: “Hence