A wide selection of critical commentaries on the Gospel of Luke has been available for several decades; and although the Lucan Gospel's companion volume, the Acts of the Apostles, is not covered by a comparable range and depth of exegetical comment, it cannot seriously claim to be a victim of neglect. As the attention these commentaries give in particular to the Lucan exorcism stories differs in no obvious way from the care they bestow on other kinds of materials in Luke's writings, potential readers of the present study may wonder what could possibly be provided here that is not already available in the best commentaries. This question deserves a considered reply. It also leads very naturally into other matters – the precise topic and aims of the present study, for instance, and how it is similar to and different from other works of scholarship on related subjects – which likewise ought to be addressed in an introduction to this sort of work.

Like modern critical commentaries on other writings of the New Testament, those devoted to the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles prove on close inspection to be richly interdiscursive events; for they not only tend to fulfil their obligation to engage with the ancient text in its original language but also either assume or explicitly interact with an impressive range of other discourses, for the most part modern scholarly ones, including but not limited to other commentaries on the same text.