Ben Witherington III, “Luke’s Journey to Jerusalem Motif” (8.11.23), biblicalarchaeology.org.
Both of Luke’s volumes have a journeying motif: The Gospel of Luke has an orientation of journeying up to Jerusalem, and the Book of Acts has one of journeying from Jerusalem through the empire to Rome. As has often been pointed out by scholars, about 40 percent of Luke’s Gospel focuses on Jesus’s journey up to Jerusalem and what happened along the way (Luke 9:51–19:44). Already in Luke 9, Luke tells us that Jesus is determined, in fact has set his face like a flint (9:51), to go up to Jerusalem. For the next ten chapters we are reminded again and again that Jesus is on this journey to Jerusalem. Acts devotes an amazing third of its content to Paul’s final journey from Jerusalem to Rome (Acts 19:21–28:31). Obviously, the journeying motif is major in both volumes and for both of the major protagonists—Jesus and Paul. And, in both cases, the end result is judicial murder.
The Amateur Exegete 