Rejected Prophets: Jesus and His Witnesses in Luke-Acts

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.