AUTHOR

Luke is unique among the canonical Gospels for having features indicating that it, along with Acts, was written as a self-consciously literary work (see the note on 1:1-4). The author apparently intended the Gospel not merely for private or church use but to set before a broad literary public the facts of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of the fledgling “Jewish sect” called Christianity. The prologue shows an awareness of other sources, both written and oral, that provided accounts of Jesus’s life and ministry based on the testimony of eyewitnesses. The author had carefully investigated these; his aim was to compile his own orderly account in order that his reader may “know the certainty” (1:4) of those things he had been taught.

There is no reason to dispute the traditional belief that Paul’s traveling companion Luke (Ac 16:10-16; 20:6–28:22; Col 4:14; Phm 24; 2Tm 4:11) was the author of this Gospel. It is unlikely that a Greco-Roman literary work would have been published anonymously. Usually the name of the author, if not indicated directly in the text, was attached as a tag to the scroll. Though the earliest manuscript we have that bears the title “The Gospel According to Luke” (as a postscript) is from the end of the second century, the heretic Marcion acknowledged Luke as the author as early as AD 135. This tradition is strongly attested in writings by Christian leaders from 160 on. The Muratorian canon (a fragmentary list of biblical Christian books from about AD 180) names the author of the third Gospel as “Luke, that physician, who after the ascension of Christ, when Paul had taken him with him as companion of his journey, composed in his own name, on the basis of report.” There is no competing tradition of authorship in the early church, as one might expect if Luke’s name were attached to the Gospel on conjecture. Luke is a minor character in the New Testament. Had there been any doubt that he was author of this Gospel and the Acts, it would likely have shown up in other traditions regarding authorship of these two key documents. Some have denied Luke’s authorship of the third Gospel, raising three possible objections. (1) The portrait of Paul in Acts seems dissimilar to that in Paul’s letters. (2) The “we” sections of Acts (indicating that the author was traveling with Paul) could be a literary device or a subterfuge. (3) The author of Acts does not seem to know about Paul’s letters.

Each of these points is easier to understand as supporting the traditional authorship. We would expect one trying to pass himself off as a companion of Paul to cite or mention Paul’s letters, and to correlate his account with the biographical and theological details garnered from those letters, since that was the primary means by which Paul was known to the generation that came after him. A writing failing to do so, as suggested by some critical scholars, would at least have met with suspicion in the early church, but such was never the case with Luke or Acts. Similarly, with the “we” sections, if one were trying to pass oneself off as Paul’s companion, why include oneself in only part of the narrative rather than the entirety of it? On the other hand, the sporadic “we” sections and the portrait of Paul we encounter in Acts, which is certainly compatible with the Paul of the letters, though not derived from them, comport well with authorship by someone who knew Paul and traveled some with him but who wrote before Paul’s letters were collected and recognized as having canonical status.

Since the early church conceived of no other candidate for this person than Luke, the tradition must be considered trustworthy.

DATE

The date of Luke is debated among scholars, and the issue is clearly tied up with the book’s authorship. The latest possible date for Luke is about AD 80, since there is evidence of its use from AD 95 on and since Acts makes no use of Paul’s letters. On the other hand, the book probably was not written earlier than, say, the late AD 50s, since Luke was apparently written not long before Acts (Ac 1:1), and AD 62 is the date of the last event recorded in Acts (Paul’s house arrest in Rome). Most critical scholars argue that Luke could not have been written before AD 70 since it records as a prophecy of Jesus the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in that year (Lk 13:35; 19:43-44; 21:20,24). However, aside from the question of the ability of Jesus to prophesy or even merely to predict the destruction of Jerusalem, the language describing the destruction is general rather than detailed. Those recording Jesus’s prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem would likely have included more detail had they experienced this series of devastating events or had talked with witnesses of these events. It has in fact been argued that Jesus could have couched his prediction in such terms solely from Old Testament precedents. Furthermore, it is astonishing that Luke, who recorded so much in Acts about the Jerusalem church and the expansion from there of the gospel to the Gentiles, should fail anywhere in that book to mention such a historically and theologically momentous event as the destruction of the temple, or of Emperor Nero’s persecution that preceded it, or yet of Peter’s and Paul’s deaths in the same general time period. It is much more likely that Luke made no mention of these events because they had not yet happened. Acts ends with Paul in prison because that was the state of affairs when Luke concluded his writing. Thus a date prior to AD 62 for the third Gospel is best.

THEMES

Luke wrote as a historian and noted that he was aware of both written sources (the Gospel of Mark appears to have been one of them) and oral testimony from eyewitnesses. His Gospel and Acts are thus noteworthy for the number of named characters (e.g., Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Cleopas). Presumably these names attest to his careful research, including the interviewing of primary witnesses. He could have conducted this research in Palestine while he awaited the outcome of Paul’s case in Caesarea (Ac 23:23–27:1).

Each of the four Gospels emphasizes something different about the significance of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah of Israel. Luke especially emphasizes Jesus as Savior and his work as one of salvation (2:11; 19:10). And though the author stressed Jesus’s life and work as fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel, a primary point of his Gospel (and Acts) is that Jesus brought salvation not just to Jews but also to Gentiles. In turn, love of neighbor, expressed in concern for the poor and marginalized, becomes a major demand of discipleship in Luke and Acts. Other major emphases include the Holy Spirit and prayer.

For more on the similarities and differences among the Gospels, see the Introduction to Mark.