Emmaous or Oulammaous? Luke’s Use of the Jewish Scriptures in the Text of Luke 24 in Codex Bezae

Revista Catalana de Teologia 27 (2002) 23-42.

The starting point for our study of the final chapter of Luke’s Gospel is the name given to the village mentioned in Lk 24:13. In place of the familiar Emmaus, Codex Bezae has 06happao’Lig, «Oulammaous», which, in an earlier article,’ has been identified as the place where Jacob had his dream of a ladder between heaven and earth and to which he gave a new narne, «Bethel»
(Gen 28:19). There are several parallels between the Jacob story and the story of the two disciples in Luke’s Gospel. The main one, of course, is the encounter with the divine but there are others, too: notably, the setting sun, Jacob’s sleep paralleled in the darkening of the disciples’ eyes, and the awareness of the divine presence after initial unawareness. These points of similarity suggest that Luke’s story is intended to be a kind of mirroring of the Genesis narrative which serves as a hermeneutical key for interpreting the theological significance of the Gospel account….