Separate chapters deal with narrative techniques in gnostic literature, the reception of Luke's Gospel throughout the ages, and the author's own highly sensitive reading of Luke's Gospel. He shows how gnostic enlightenment functions in the development of Jesus as a character as well as in his own teaching technique toward his disciples. Wojcik demonstrates how the implied author of Luke's Gospel uses these same techniques to withhold information and foster insight in the reader. The final chapter isolates the essential differences between canonical and non-canonical biblical scholarship and contains an impassioned argument for the value of scholarly analysis of the Bible from a literary standpoint.