Campus Location
Abilene Campus (Residential)
Date of Award
8-2026
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2047-0535
Document Type
Thesis
Department
Graduate School of Theology
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Richard A. Wright
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
James W. Thompson
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Clifford Barbarick
Abstract
The rending of the temple curtain at Jesus’s death is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels, yet Luke relocates the event from after to before Jesus’s death, creating interpretive challenges. While Mark connects the curtain’s tearing to the rending of the heavens at Jesus’s baptism through the verb σχίζω, this study argues that Luke reframes the tearing motif by linking the curtain’s rending to the tearing of the new garment in the parables of Luke 5:36–39, likewise employing σχίζω.
On the one hand, these parables in Luke 5 represent Jesus’s reasoning with his critics that to resist him and his message is as absurd as tearing apart a new garment. Yet Jesus laments the tendency of people to do precisely that makes no sense. On the other hand, Luke complicates the question of agency by joining the curtain event with the cosmic darkness preceding Jesus’s death. Rather than divine action, this project contends that the portents—including the curtain’s rending—manifest the “hour and power of darkness” (Luke 22:53). Read together, the tearing motif functions as a warning: those who reject Jesus’s message of grace align themselves with the devil.
This reading situates Luke’s relocation within his broader theological agenda. In a context where the inclusion of Gentiles remained controversial, Luke’s narrative underscores that resistance to God’s expansive grace is not human obstinacy but participation in forces of darkness. The rending of the temple curtain, therefore, is not a symbol of new access or temple destruction, but a dramatic disclosure of the cosmic struggle between light and darkness at the heart of Luke-Acts.
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Recommended Citation
Chan, Kim Kai, "The Rending of the Temple Curtain in the Gospel of Luke: Its Relocation and Implications" (2026). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1040.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/1040