Luke, Saint

flourished 1st century AD; feast day October 18

In Christian tradition, the author of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.

He wrote in Greek and is considered the most literary of the New Testament writers. By his own account, he was not an eyewitness to the ministry of Jesus. He was a companion to St. Paul, who called him the "beloved physician," and he is believed to have accompanied Paul on missionary journeys to Macedonia and Rome. Though little is known of his life, tradition holds that he was a Gentile and a native of Antioch in Syria and that he died a martyr.

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▪ biblical author

Introduction

flourished 1st century AD

 

  in Christian tradition, the author of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, a companion of the Apostle Paul, and the most literary of the New Testament writers. Information about his life is scanty. His writing style indicates a cultivated literary background. Tradition based on Gospel references has regarded him as a physician and a Gentile. He was a coworker of Paul and probably accompanied him on several missionary journeys.

Life and times.

      Luke is first mentioned in the letters of the Apostle Paul as the latter's “coworker” and as the “beloved physician.” The former designation is the more significant one, for it identifies him as one of a professional cadre of itinerant Christian “workers,” many of whom were teachers and preachers. His medical skills, like Paul's tentmaking, may have contributed to his livelihood; but his principal occupation was the advancement of the Christian mission.

      If Luke was the author of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles (Acts of the Apostles, The), as is very probable, the course and nature of his ministry may be sketched in more detail. He excludes himself from those who were eyewitnesses of Christ's ministry. His participation in the Pauline mission, however, is indicated by the use of the first person in the “we” sections of Acts. They reveal that Luke shared in instructing persons in the Christian message and possibly in performing miraculous healings.

      The “we” sections are analogous in style to travel reports found elsewhere in writings of the Greco-Roman period. They place the author with Paul during his initial mission into Greece—i.e., as far as Philippi, in Macedonia (c. AD 51). It is there that Luke later rejoins Paul and accompanies him on his final journey to Jerusalem (c. AD 58). After Paul's arrest in that city and during his extended detention in nearby Caesarea, Luke may have spent considerable time in Palestine working with the apostle as the occasion allowed and gathering materials for his future two-volume literary work, the Gospel and the Acts. In any case, two years later he appears with Paul on his prison voyage from Caesarea to Rome and again, according to the Second Letter of Paul to Timothy 4:11, at the time of the apostle's martyrdom in the imperial city (c. AD 66).

      Further direct information about Luke is scanty in the New Testament, but certain inferences may be drawn. The literary style of his writings and the range of his vocabulary mark him as an educated man. The distinction drawn between Luke and other colleagues “of the circumcision” (Letter of Paul to the Colossians 4:11) has caused many scholars to conclude that he was a Gentile. If so, he would be the only New Testament writer clearly identifiable as a non-Jew. This conclusion, however, rests upon a doubtful equation of those “of the circumcision” with Jewish Christians. Actually, the phrase probably refers to a particular type of Jewish Christian, those who strictly observed the rituals of Judaism. It offers no support, therefore, to the view that Luke was a Gentile. His intimate knowledge of the Old Testament and the focus of interest in his writings favour, on balance, the view that he was a Jewish Christian who followed a Greek life-style and was comparatively lax in ritual observances.

      Writings from the latter half of the second century provide further information. A number of them—St. Irenaeus' Against Heresies, the Anti-Marcionite Prologue to the Gospel, and the Muratorian Canon listing the books received as sacred by the Christians—identify Luke as the author of the third Gospel and Acts. The Prologue begins:

Luke is a man from Antioch, Syria, a physician by profession. He was a disciple of the apostles, and later he accompanied Paul until his martyrdom. Having neither wife nor child, he served the Lord without distraction. He fell asleep in Boeotia at the age of 84, full of the Holy Spirit. Moved by the Holy Spirit, Luke composed all of this Gospel in the districts around Achaia . . .

      The assertion that St. Luke was “a man from Antioch, Syria” who wrote “moved by the Holy Spirit”—that is, as a prophet—receives a measure of support from the Lukan writings: the city of Antioch figures prominently in Acts, and there is a special interest in contemporary (Christian) prophets and prophecy. Whether Luke is to be identified, as some scholars believe, with the prophet Lucius mentioned in Acts 13:1 and with St. Paul's “fellow worker” (and kinsman) in the Letter of Paul to the Romans 16:21 is more questionable, although not impossible. Less than certain also is the comment of the prologue placing the writing of the Gospel and Luke's death in Greece; but, on the whole, it is more probable than the later traditions locating his literary work in Alexandria (or Rome) and his death in Bithynia. The identification of St. Luke as “a disciple of the Apostles,” although true in a general sense, probably reflects the concern of the 2nd-century church to place all canonical Christian writings under an apostolic umbrella. Later notions that Luke was one of the 70 disciples appointed by the Lord, that he was the companion of Cleopas, and that he was an artist appear to be legendary. In liturgical tradition Luke's feast day is October 18.

Luke's writings

      Luke had a cultivated literary background and wrote in good idiomatic Greek. The Gospel bearing his name and the Acts of the Apostles were probably written during or shortly after the Jewish revolt (AD 66–73), although a somewhat later date is not inconceivable. Together they make up more than a fourth of the New Testament, and in them Luke is revealed to be not only Christianity's first historian but also a theologian of unusual perception. Some scholars have also associated Luke with the Pastoral Letters and the Letter to the Hebrews (Hebrews, Letter to the), either as author or as amanuensis, because of linguistic and other similarities with the Gospel and the Acts.

      Some scholars, on the other hand, doubt that Luke is in fact the author of the two New Testament books traditionally ascribed to him. In some respects the issue is similar to that raised about the authorship of the works of Shakespeare or, in the classical field, of Plato's letters. But it is unlike the Shakespearean controversy in that no alternative author has been suggested and is unlike the problem of Plato's letters in that no larger Lukan corpus is available for comparison. Those questioning Luke's authorship point to the fact that the theological emphases of his Gospel and the Acts differ considerably from those of Paul's writings and that the description of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) is divergent from the description of the conference in the Letter of Paul to the Galatians 2. These objections are based upon the assumption that Luke was the disciple of Paul (and would, therefore, reflect his theology) and upon the traditional identification of Acts 15 with the conference in Galatians 2. Both of these premises, however, are quite probably mistaken. A more serious objection is the difference between the portrait of Paul in Acts and the impression one receives of him in his letters. But it has sometimes been exaggerated, and it does not in any case exceed the variation that might be expected between a sometime colleague's impressions of a man and the man's own letters. The Gospel and Acts were, in all likelihood, tagged with the name Luke when they were deposited in the library of the author's patron, Theophilus (Luke 1:3). Within a century there was a widespread and undisputed tradition identifying that Luke with an otherwise insignificant physician and colleague of Paul. The tradition is on the whole consistent with the literary and historical character of the documents, and one may be reasonably certain that it is correct.

      Jesus' parting words, “It is not for you to know times [of the consummation of this age] . . . but you shall receive power . . . and you shall be my witnesses . . .” (Acts 1:7ff), provide a guideline for Luke's theology. Thus, he called the church back from overeager speculation about the precise time of the Lord's return and the end of the age to its proper task of faithful mission in the lengthening interim. By the selection and interpretation of his sources, he charted the path by which the church would understand both its own uniqueness in the world and also its continuing relationship to Judaism and to the world. His work was no small achievement, and through the centuries it has served the church well.

E. Earle Ellis

Additional Reading

C.K. Barrett, Luke the Historian in Recent Study (1961), a brief and readable survey of a number of contemporary writers; “The Identity of the Editor of Luke and Acts,” pp. 205–359, in F.J.F. Jackson and K. Lake (eds.), The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. 2, pt. 1, The Acts of the Apostles (1922), an extensive presentation and analysis of biblical and post-biblical traditions about St. Luke; E.E. Ellis (ed.), The Gospel of Luke (1967), a short summary of the background, life, and theology of the evangelist in the light of recent research; also useful, I.H. Marshall, Luke: Historian and Theologian (1970), and L.E. Keck and J.L. Martyn (eds.), Studies in Luke-Acts (1966).

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