This monograph explores the joy theme in Luke- Acts as it relates to the dynamics of rhetoric, narrative and emotion.

The Gospel of Luke has been called the "gospel of joy", and the joy theme has also been recognised in Acts. This theme, though, has received relatively little attention in NT scholarship. Joy in Luke-Acts examines the joy theme from a socio-rhetorical vantage point, showing that the joy theme empowers the Lukan rhetoric of reversal. The theme is a primary method in which the narrator seeks to persuade the reader to enter into the values and beliefs that characterise the 'upside-down' world in which YHWH has visited his people in Jesus.