Luke 24:27

The context

Luke 24 is the Gospel's final chapter, a series of resurrection encounters: the empty tomb, Peter looking in, then two disciples walking to Emmaus, sixty stadia from Jerusalem. Jesus joins them, but their eyes are kept from recognizing him, and he rebukes their slowness to believe the prophets.

Verse 27 summarizes what follows: beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interprets to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. The walk ends in the breaking of bread and the opening of their eyes. Verses 44 to 47 repeat the claim in the upper room, naming law, prophets, and psalms.

The words

Exēgēsato, from exēgeomai, "to lead out, expound," is the ordinary verb for setting out an account and the root of the word exegesis. Luke uses it again four verses later for the disciples telling what happened on the road.

The scope is stated twice: apo Mōuseōs kai pantōn tōn prophētōn, "from Moses and all the prophets," then en pasais tais graphais, "in all the scriptures." The first names the canon's two divisions; the second makes the claim total. The object is ta peri heautou, "the things concerning himself" — not a set of predictions but a person, read out of texts not obviously about him.

What this passage establishes

The passage establishes that the risen Jesus warranted a christological reading of Israel's scriptures, and did it by expounding the whole rather than by assembling isolated predictions. Luke presents this as the origin of Christian interpretation: the disciples do not reach the reading by cleverness, they receive it.

What it does not establish

It does not say which texts he used. Luke gives the method and the conclusion but no index. Any specific list of messianic prophecies is a later reconstruction, and early Christian writers did not agree on its contents.

It does not make the reading obvious. These men had heard the prophets read all their lives and still needed the exposition. Luke describes an argument that must be made, not a meaning visible at a glance.

It does not license arbitrary allegory. "In all the scriptures" states the scope of a claim, not a technique by which any verse yields a reference to Jesus. Luke does not report the reasoning, so the passage cannot bless every proposed reading.

How the church has read it

Luke 24 became the charter for patristic and Reformation hermeneutics: scripture read as a unified witness centered on Christ. Luther's test of what "drives Christ" and Calvin's claim that the Old Testament belongs to the same covenant stand in this line. Modern study has read the verse instead as Luke's own theological composition, and the disagreement is real.

First pass, written October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• Christians make assertions; atheists just ask for evidence. What Old Testament evidence is there that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah?
• If only the words of Jesus matter, why do we need Paul and the rest of the New Testament?
• Doesn’t the very concept of faith preclude the offering of evidence and argument? Isn’t that the whole point of “becoming like a child”?

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.