In this original and thought-provoking study, Willi Braun draws both on social and literary evidence regarding the Greco-Roman elite banquet scene and on ancient prescribed methods of rhetorical composition to argue that the Pharisaic dinner episode in Luke 14 is a skillfully crafted rhetorical unit in which Jesus presents an argument for Luke's vision of a Christian society. His analysis underscores the way in which gospel writers manipulated the inherited Jesus traditions for the purposes of ideological and social formation of Christian communities.