Expecting the Unexpected in Luke 7:1–10

Abstract

Luke’s account of Jesus’s healing of the man enslaved to the centurion exhibits a number of unusual and unexpected features: a gentile centurion in a small Jewish village, an odd mixture of miracle and pronouncement stories, striking variations from the precedent story of Elisha, surprising twists in the plot, and others. Rhetoricians of Luke’s day discussed various effects that unexpected elements could have on an audience, and some of these are reflected in this account. Luke has used the multiple unexpected elements of this story to make it interesting to his audience, to intensify it alongside the raising of the dead, to re-engage his audience after the Sermon on the Plain, and to cement this episode in his audience’s memory as a precursor to Cornelius and the larger gentile mission in Acts.