The fascinating pairing of men and women in the Gospel of Luke

I’ve been reading a fascinating book by Kenneth E. Bailey recently. The title, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels is an accurate description of the contents. Bailey has spent decades in the Middle East and he brings a very different perspective on many stories and ideas—such as the parables of Jesus, the Beatitudes, etc. It’s a book well worth reading.

I came across this throwaway comment in the book:

In Luke’s Gospel, I have identified twenty-seven cases in the text of the pairing of men and women.

This was an intriguing idea I had never heard before. In a quick skip through the Gospel of Luke over a period of about an hour, I found fifteen of them. Here are some examples:

Chapter 1:
An angel appears to Zechariah before the conception of John the Baptist
An angel appears to Mary before the conception of Jesus

Zechariah’s prophecy
The Magnificat

Chapter 2:

Simeon and Anna in the Temple.

Chapter 4:

Jesus gives the example of Elijah and the widow, and Elisha and Namaan—both Gentiles–one a man and the other a woman.

The healing of a demon-possessed man and the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law.

Chapter 5:

The parables of a patch on a garment and wine in new wineskins

Chapter 7:

The healing of the centurion’s servant and the raising from the dead of the widow’s son

Chapter 8:

The deliverance of the Gerasene demoniac and the raising from the dead of Jairus’ daughter

Chapter 15:

The parable of the lost coin and the parable of the lost sheep

There are so many of these examples that I wonder if it has to have been a deliberate policy on the part of Luke. Fascinating, huh? What do you think?