In this refreshingly unique book, Bruce Longenecker demonstrates that reading Luke's narrative is richly enhanced through attentiveness to what is tantalizingly left out of the Lukan narrative. In Hearing the Silence, the reader is invited to delve deeply into literary and theological dimensions of the Lukan narrative through an exploration of Jesus' strangely under-narrated "escape" in Luke 4:30. The options for interpreting the mechanics of that curious event are brought into dramatic relief by Longenecker's survey of the scene's reconstruction in Jesus-novels and Jesus-films, in which a variety of strategies have been employed to iron out the scene's narrative oddity. Against their backdrop, Longenecker's own constructive proposals bring the reader into direct contact with some of the most significant features of the Lukan Gospel and worldview.

Bruce W. Longenecker is Professor of New Testament and holds the W. W. Melton Chair of Religion at Baylor University. His most recent books include Remember the Poor: Paul, Poverty, and the Greco-Roman World (2010) and Hearing the Silence: Jesus on the Edge and God in the Gap--Luke 4 in Narrative Perspective (2012).