Even as they delivered them unto us
By whom the evangelist means, as appears from the after
description of them, the twelve apostles, and seventy disciples;
who handed down to others the accounts of the birth, life, and
death of Christ; and according to which the above Christians
proposed to write:
which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of
the
word;
either of the Gospel, or rather of Christ himself, the eternal
Word of God; for from the beginning of Christ's preaching the
Gospel, or as soon as he entered upon his public ministry, he
called his apostles, as Simon, Andrew, James, John and afterwards
seventy disciples; who were eyewitnesses of him, of the truth of
his incarnation, and of his ministry and miracles; saw, and
conversed with him after his resurrection from the dead and
beheld his ascension to heaven; and were ministers that were
called, qualified, and sent out by him and waited on him, and
served him. This shows, as is by some rightly observed, that Luke
was not one of the seventy disciples, as some F9 have
thought, and as the title of this Gospel, to the Arabic version
of it, expresses; for then he would have been an eyewitness
himself: nor did he take his account from the Apostle Paul; for
he was not a minister of the word from the beginning, but was as
one born out of due time.