master: the one put in charge of a task or a group, spoken to as the person whose word settles what happens next
Only Luke uses this word, six times, and every time it is a way of speaking directly to Jesus. In ordinary Greek it was the title for whoever had been put over something: the foreman of a work crew, the officer over a body of troops, the man responsible for a public duty. It names a post of command, not a trade and not a level of learning.
The other Gospels put different titles in the same mouths at the same moments. In the storm on the lake, Mark 4:38 has the disciples call Jesus "teacher" (διδάσκαλος); Luke 8:24 has them call him "master". Luke also never uses the borrowed Jewish title "Rabbi" (ῥαββί) that the other three Gospels keep. Writing for readers outside Judaism, he reaches for a plain Greek word that makes the same claim about Jesus' standing without needing to be explained.
What the word claims is authority over the situation, not ownership of the speaker. It is not the word for someone who owns his workers (δεσπότης), and it is not the fuller title "Lord" (κύριος), which can mean anything from a polite "sir" to a statement about who Jesus is. Look at where it turns up:
- Simon says it after a whole night of catching nothing, then lets the nets down anyway (Luke 5:5)
- the disciples shout it twice over as the boat fills with water (Luke 8:24)
- Peter says it while correcting Jesus about the crowd pressing in on him (Luke 8:45)
- Peter says it again on the mountain, and Luke adds that he did not know what he was saying (Luke 9:33)
- John says it while reporting that they tried to stop a man driving out demons in Jesus' name (Luke 9:49)
- ten men with a skin disease call it out from a distance, asking for mercy (Luke 17:13)
In every case someone is handing a situation over to the person they believe can settle it, whether they have understood that person well or not.
Disputed
Whether ἐπιστάτης in Luke retains its ordinary force as a title of command, or is simply a Hellenistic stylistic substitute for the Semitic honorifics ῥαββί and διδάσκαλε.
- majorityIt is Luke's redactional replacement for address forms opaque to a Gentile readership; its force is broadly that of the διδάσκαλε it displaces, and no distinct christological weight should be pressed from it.; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (I-IX), Anchor Bible 28; I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, New International Greek Testament Commentary
- minorityThe term keeps its standard Hellenistic sense of one set over others, so Luke's usage carries a note of superintendence and command that διδάσκαλος does not convey.; TDNT, s.v. ἐπιστάτης; LSJ, s.v. ἐπιστάτης