Free Study Guide IncludedLuke: A Friends Illuminated Commentary
The Gospel of the outcast, the poor, and the Spirit's anointing. Luke's emphasis on social justice and the work of the Holy Spirit resonated deeply with Quaker testimony and their sense of participating in Pentecost renewed.
- 24 chapters · ~75,000 words
- EPUB + Study Guide
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read3.9 hours
- Length55,639 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 3.9 hours
This figure is here so you can compare one book against another. Every title on the site is timed from its own word count at the same reading speed — nothing is adjusted book by book — so if this edition says 3.9 hours and another says half that, the second one really is about half the reading. It is a measure of size, in the way a page count is. Your own pace is your own: at the speeds typical adult readers actually manage, this edition runs anywhere from 3.1 hours to 5.3 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 55,639 words |
|---|---|
| Total | 55,639 words |
Counted from the text of the EPUB you receive. Navigation, the title page, the table of contents and the licence page are excluded — they are packaging, not reading.
The reading rate
238 words per minute, for adult silent reading of non-fiction, applied unchanged to every title on the site. We did not pick the number; it is the pooled result of a published meta-analysis. Nothing is adjusted book by book — that consistency is what makes two of these figures worth comparing.
Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047
190 studies, 18,573 participants.
The same paper puts most adult readers between 175 and
300 words per minute, and those two speeds give the
3.1 hours and 5.3 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 3.9 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 159–223 pages.
Words per printed page is a typesetting convention, not a measurement — it moves with trim size, type size and leading. The range above assumes 250–350 words a page. Friends Illuminated publishes no print edition of this book; the figure is here only because pages are a more familiar size than words.
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About This Edition
Luke’s Gospel opens with the Spirit’s work: Mary’s Magnificat proclaiming the scattering of the proud and the lifting of the lowly, Jesus reading in Nazareth that the Spirit has anointed him to bring good news to the poor. This emphasis on the Spirit’s social and economic dimensions connected directly with Quaker experience and conviction. Early Friends understood their movement as a renewal of Pentecost — the Spirit poured out on all flesh, daughters prophesying alongside sons, servants and handmaids receiving the gift of ministry. Luke provided the biblical narrative for that understanding.
The commentary explores Luke’s distinctive portraits: the Good Samaritan as a challenge to the boundaries of community, the Prodigal Son as the story of divine welcome that cannot be contained by religious respectability, Zacchaeus as evidence that transformation produces restitution. It draws on early Quaker writers who saw in these stories both description and demand — descriptions of how God acts, demands on how the community of Friends must live. The free Group Study Guide accompanying this volume is designed for congregational study and individual devotion alike.
