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Gospel of Luke

Book of the New Testament

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  • 5 chapters

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The Gospel of Luke shares the same author as the Acts of the Apostles. Tradition identifies the writer as Luke the Evangelist, a doctor who travelled with Paul the Apostle, though the text does not name its author. The author is presented as a participant in the events narrated in the first-person we passages of Acts. Most critical scholars maintain that the author was a traveling companion of Paul, though some cite differences with the Pauline epistles. Luke used the Gospel of Mark, and the two-source hypothesis also posits usage of Q, though a growing number of scholars contend Luke used Matthew instead. Most scholars now agree the Gospel of John knew and used Luke and the other Synoptics. Luke follows Mark closely compared to other ancient historians' usage of sources, though the parallels and variations of the Synoptic gospels are typical of ancient historical biographies. The most common dating for its composition is around AD 80–90. The earliest witnesses for Luke are the Alexandrian and the revised western text-type.

Following the preface and the birth narratives of John and Jesus, the gospel begins in Galilee and moves gradually to its climax in Jerusalem. Luke espouses a three-stage "salvation history" starting with the Law and the prophets, the epoch of Jesus, and the period of the church. The gospel's high Christology portrays Jesus as divine in various ways, identifying him with the God of Israel and as a preexistent messiah within its Jewish and Greco-Roman context. The Holy Spirit also plays a more prominent role compared to other Christian works, forming the basis of the early Christian community.

Composition

Textual history

Autographs (original copies) of Luke and the other Gospels have not been preserved; the texts that survive are third-generation copies, with no two completely identical. The earliest surviving manuscript of the Gospel of Luke fall into two "families" with considerable differences between them, the Western and the Alexandrian text-type, and the dominant view is that the Western text represents a process of deliberate revision in the second century, as the variations seem to form specific patterns.

The fragment 𝔓4 is often cited as the oldest surviving manuscript. It has been dated from the late 2nd century, although this dating is disputed. Papyrus 75 (= Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV) is another very early manuscript (late 2nd/early 3rd century), and it includes an attribution of the Gospel to Luke. The oldest complete texts are the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, both from the Alexandrian family; Codex Bezae, a 5th- or 6th-century Western text-type manuscript that contains Luke in Greek and Latin versions on facing pages, appears to have descended from an offshoot of the main manuscript tradition, departing from more familiar readings at many points. Codex Bezae shows comprehensively the differences between the versions which show no core theological significance.

Luke–Acts: unity, authorship and date

The gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles make up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts. Scholars largely agree with the tradition attributing the Gospel to the same author as the Acts of the Apostles. Together they account for 27.5% of the New Testament, the largest contribution by a single author, providing the framework for both the Church's liturgical calendar and the historical outline into which later generations have fitted their idea of the story of Jesus.

The author of the Gospel of Luke was educated, a man of means, probably urban, and someone who respected manual work, although not a worker himself; more highbrow writers of the time looked down on the artisans and small business-people who made up the early church of Paul and who were presumably Luke's audience. According to a Church tradition first recorded by Irenaeus (c. AD 130 – c. AD 202) he was the Luke named as a companion of Paul in three of the Pauline letters. Critical opinion on the tradition was assessed to be roughly evenly divided near the end of the 20th century. The author is not named in-text, as was common for ancient biographies and histories, such as Tacitus's Germania and Diogenes Laertius. Most scholars maintain that the author of Luke-Acts, whether named Luke or not, met Paul as a traveling companion. The interpretation of the "we" passages in Acts as indicative that the writer relied on a historical eyewitness (whether Luke the evangelist or not), remains the most influential in current biblical studies. Objections to this viewpoint, among others, include the consensus that Luke-Acts contains differences in theology and historical narrative which are irreconcilable with the authentic letters of Paul the Apostle, though this has been challenged in recent years.

The earliest possible date for Luke–Acts is around 62 AD, the time of Paul's imprisonment in Rome, but most scholars date the work to 80–90 AD given its knowledge of Mark and the destruction of Jerusalem, but not the Pauline epistles. The latest tenable dates are around the early 2nd century, as a minority posit dependence of Luke-Acts with the works of Josephus or see them as a response to Marcion. Many arguments mediate against this dating, such as the Gospel of John's awareness of the gospel, its independence from the Gospel of Matthew in the two-source hypothesis, and 1 Clement.

The historical Paul never mentions any "Luke the doctor", according to Bart Ehrman (since Colossians is not authentic). Scholars use the word "Luke" wantonly.

Genre, models and sources

Luke–Acts is a religio-political history of the founder of the church and his successors in deeds and words. The author describes his book as a "narrative" (diegesis) rather than as a gospel, and implicitly criticises his predecessors for not giving their readers the speeches of Jesus and the Apostles, as such speeches were the mark of a "full" report, the vehicle through which ancient historians conveyed the meaning of their narratives. Balch compares Luke with the works of the Classical authors Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote a history of Rome (Roman Antiquities), and the Jewish historian Josephus, author of a history of the Jews (Antiquities of the Jews). Most scholars do not see a literary relationship with the latter. All three authors anchor the histories of their peoples by dating and narrating the stories of the births of the founders (Romulus, Moses, and Jesus). Each founder taught authoritatively, appeared after death, and ascended to heaven. Crucial aspects of the teaching of all three concerned the relationship between rich and poor and the question of whether "foreigners" were to be received into the people.

The gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptics, as they frequently cover the same events in similar and sometimes identical language. Mark was the earliest of the three (c. AD 70) and was used by the others, while the Two-source hypothesis posits Matthew and Luke also used the Q source, though a growing number support alternative hypotheses, such as the Farrer Hypothesis and the Matthean Posteriority Hypothesis, which argue for Luke's direct usage of Matthew and Matthew's dependence on Luke, respectively, and dispense with Q. Mark provided the narrative outline for Luke but comparatively little of Jesus' teachings. Most non-Markan content is grouped in two clusters and the first two sections of the gospel. Luke tends to follow his sources closely when checked. Luke's ways of adapting Mark are comparable to that the methods used by Plutarch, including abridgements, chronological changes, and reordering events.

Holly Hearon has pointed out that the Gospel of Luke draws on both written sources and oral reports from "eyewitnesses and servants of the word," showing that the New Testament writings grew out of a living spoken environment where scripture and teaching were experienced aloud. The preface of the Gospel of Luke refers to material gathered from eyewitnesses who knew the facts at first hand, indicating that the author combined written and oral sources in an environment where both teaching and proclamation happened through spoken word.

Audience and authorial intent

The Gospel of Luke is unique among the canonical gospels for declaring the purpose and method of his work in a prologue, trying to render the Christian message in a higher literary plane. The author both classifies himself as among the many who previously attempted to write narratives of Christ while claiming his work is better and more reliable. Luke's claims of careful investigation, orderly writing, and access to accounts handed down to his community by eyewitnesses is intended to demonstrate his gospel's superiority to its predecessors. Luke was written to be read aloud to a group of Jesus-followers gathered in a house to share the Lord's Supper. The author assumes an educated Greek-speaking audience, but directs his attention to specifically Christian concerns rather than to the Greco-Roman world at large. He begins his gospel with a preface addressed to "Theophilus": the name means "Lover of God", and could refer to any Christian, though most interpreters consider it a reference to a Christian convert and Luke's literary patron. Here he informs Theophilus of his intention, which is to lead his reader to certainty through an orderly account "of the events that have been fulfilled among us". He did not, however, intend to provide Theophilus with a historical justification of the Christian faith – "did it happen?" – but to encourage faith – "what happened, and what does it all mean?"

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