Under the Influence

This article presents evidence to support an entirely new approach to uncovering the literary structure of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, a subject which continues to attract attention and divide opinion. It draws on a field of Classical Studies that, although abundant in terms of written sources, remains understudied: ancient pharmacology. At its heart is the established four-part definition of the structural features of medical recipes for composite drugs, and an attempt to demonstrate their influence on the compositional model employed by the author of Luke–Acts. The model is first defined with reference to medical writing in antiquity, before its practical outworking is explored in the Gospel proem (i.e. the formal presentation of the work to its audience). The application of the model in individual pericopes, as well as its extension across two series of pericopes, is then examined within the narrative of the work itself.