ABSTRACT
The greatest amount of attention will be devoted to the Lukan material, in view of the emphasis, in both the Gospel and the Acts, on prayer. There is a large variety of teaching on the subject of prayer in both Old and New Testaments, but it is difficult to derive a single, unified theology of prayer from it. We may remind ourselves here that Luke, in particular, conceives of the Spirit in mainly Jewish terms. In the Acts of the Apostles prayer appears as part of the life of the early Christians even before Pentecost, and after Pentecost Peter and John still go up to the Temple to pray, thus continuing to associate themselves with the prayer life of Israel. Joseph A. Fitzmyer notes: The only distinctive Lucan element in the baptismal narrative is the notice that the heavenly identification of Jesus took place while he was at prayer.
