The scholarly work of Blass can be characterized by precision, rigorous analysis, and an incredible knowledge of both primary and secondary sources. When many grammarians were merely working from critical texts, Blass determined to go back to the manuscripts themselves. In this way, he is not only able to refer to New Testament texts for evidence for grammatical phenomena, but also the differences in the manuscript tradition. This painstaking focus on the smallest details has given Blass’ grammatical, philological, and textual efforts an enduring quality that has lasted to this day and set him apart from the other grammarians of his day.
Building on his critical editions of the Gospels and Acts, Blass presents his theory of the history background and text of Luke’s two volume Gospel and Acts in Philology of the Gospels. He deals with issues of the Gospel’s literary character, the location and date of writing and the condition of its text. The variety of issues examined and the quality of the discussion caused Alfred Plummer to write, “The interesting work on the Philology of the Gospels, by F. Blass, is chiefly occupied with the Gospel of S. Luke, and should be read side by side with the sections of the Introduction to this volume which treat of the same topics” in the preface to his International Critical Commentary on Luke.
