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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
The Emmaus story, Luke 24:13-35, is a bifocal narrative. It pivots on two moments of disclosure and the puzzle is how they relate. The first is on the road, when Jesus interprets the Scriptures: ‘“Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and so enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (v 26). The second is in Emmaus, when they recognise him in the breaking of bread, but Luke cleverly links it with the first by having the disciples immediately remember what happened on the road: “And their eyes were opened and they recognised him; and he vanished out of their sight. And they said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts bum within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures’” (v 3 If). Finally, the two climaxes of the story are brought together in the last line of the pericope, when they report back to the disciples in Jerusalem: “Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread” (v 35). The first moment of insight is in the perception of the necessity of Christ’s death; the second is in the repetition of the gesture of the Last Supper, Jesus’ free appropriation of that death in the breaking of bread.
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