Where Do We Go From Here

22 Interestingly, this strange intermingling of disruption and order is mirrored in the literary form. On the “disruption” side, we observe that Peter improvises quite a bit on the Scripture he cites from Joel: • He changes “After these things…” (Joel 2:28) to “In the last days….” (v 17) • He inserts “my” before “slaves”, making them God’s slaves (v 18), itself a disruptive and provocative claim! • He adds a whole sentence “and they shall prophesy” to the end of verse 18. And on the “order” side, a close study of the text shows that Luke structures it using a well-known pattern called a chiasm. Chiasms are literary patterns of A B C... C’ B’ A’, used often in the ancient world to assist with memorisation. And they also allowed one to highlight the centre of a story, which is precisely what Luke does vividly: A. “Listen to these words” (v 22a) B. God raised Jesus to new life (vv 22b-24) C. Scripture reference (vv 25-28) D. Resurrection (vv 29-34a) C’. Scripture (vv 34b-35) B’. God raised Jesus as Lord and Messiah (v 36) A’. “They were pierced to the heart” (v 37).