THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE

This unpretentious but solid work is a study of and commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke. The format of the book is the classic one: an introductory section dealing with the authorship, literary construction, language and style, doctrine, and text of the third gospel; then, a sequential treatment of the entire text, with explanations of passages, historical background, and brief comparative references to the other evangelists. Father Harrington incorporates the latest opinions of biblical scholars into his work, as well as the most recent discoveries of the auxiliary sciences. On the whole, he has produced a moderately readable work that will be of considerable value to serious students of the Bible, clerical or lay. The reader's only quarrel with the book may be because of the author's decision to restrict his commentary almost entirely to those parts of Luke's gospel that are exclusively Lucan. Such a methodology assumes that the reader has access to complementary studies of the other evangelists--which most often is not the case--and, consequently, limits the appeal, if not necessarily the value, of the work.