He is not mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament;(1) and his name is
not again met with till Irenaeus ascribes to him the authorship of the
Gospel and Acts. There is nothing in these Pauline Epistles confirming
the statement of the Fathers, but it is highly probable that these
references to him largely contributed to suggest his name as the
author of the Acts, the very omission of his name from the work itself
protecting him from objections connected with the passages in the
first person to which other followers of Paul were exposed, upon the
traditional view of the composition. Irenaeus evidently knew nothing
about him, except what he learnt from these Epistles, and derives from
his theory that Luke wrote the Acts, and speaks as an eye-witness in the
passages where the first person is used. From these he argues that Luke
was inseparable from Paul, and was his fellow-worker in the Gospel, and
he refers, in proof of this, to Acts xvi. 8 ff.,(2) 13 ff., xx. 5 ff.,
and the later chapters, all the details of which he supposes Luke to
have carefully written down. He then continues: "But that he was not
only a follower, but likewise a fellow-worker of the Apostles, but
particularly of Paul, Paul himself has also clearly shown in the
Epistles, saying:..." and he quotes 2 Tim. iv. 10, 11, ending: "Only
Luke is with me," and then adds, "whence he shows that he was
{35}
always with him and inseparable from him, &c, Ac."(1) The reasoning of
the zealous Father deduces a great deal from very little, it will be
observed, and in this elastic way tradition "enlarged its borders" and
assumed unsubstantial dimensions. Later writers have no more intimate
knowledge of Luke, although Eusebius states that he was born at
Antioch,(2) a tradition likewise reproduced by Jerome.(3) Jerome
further identifies Luke with "the brother, whose praise in the Gospel
is throughout all the churches" mentioned in 2 Cor. viii. 18, as
accompanying Titus to Corinth.(4) At a later period, when the Church
required an early artist for its service, Luke the physician was
honoured with the additional title of painter.(5) Epiphanius,(6)
followed later by some other
{36}
writers, represented him to have been one of the seventy-two disciples,
whose mission he alone of all New Testament writers mentions. The view
of the Fathers, arising out of the application of their tradition to the
features presented by the Gospel and Acts, was that Luke composed
his Gospel, of the events of which he was not an eye-witness, from
information derived from others, and his Acts of the Apostles from what
he himself, at least in the parts in which the first person is employed,
had witnessed.1 It is generally supposed that Luke was not born a Jew,
but was a Gentile Christian.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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