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CHAPTER V.

"THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE.

1. Authorship.

THE authorship of the third Gospel has scarcely ever been disputed. It has uniformly been ascribed to Luke, the friend and companion of the Apostle Paul.

A comparison of its opening verses with the preface to the Book of Acts, and an examination of the style and structure of the two books, leave no room for doubt that they were written by one and the same person. The indications of his personality afforded by certain passages in the Book of Acts, where he joins himself with Paul by the use of the first person plural as if he were in his company at the time-viewed in the light of the information afforded by the Book of Acts and the epistles of Paul, regarding the apostle's personal associates and his relations with them,-justify us in holding that the early Church was right in ascribing the authorship to Luke.1

2

With regard to Luke's personal history, nearly all that we know of him is connected with the apostolic labours of Paul. He is referred to by that apostle as "the beloved physician," and it has been suggested that it may have been owing to Paul's need of medical attendance that they were first brought into intimate relations with one another. Traces of Luke's profession have been dis

1 An examination of the relative passages, which are too numerous to mention, shows that there are only three of the apostle's friends who could have been with him on the occasions referred to, viz., Luke, Jesus Justus, and Demas. But Demas is disqualified by 2 Tim. iv. 10("for Demas forsook me, having loved this present world"); while Jesus Justus is referred to as "of the circumcision'

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(Col. iv. 11), whereas the tone, both of the third Gospel and of the Book of Acts, would lead us to suppose that the author was a Gentile. The details are given in Birks's Hora Apostolicæ, p. 351. 2 Col. iv. 14.

3 Acts xvi. 6-10: "And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia;

covered in the frequency with which he refers to Christ's work and that of His apostles as a ministry of healing, as well as in the occasional use of technical and other forms of expression which a physician was likely to employ.2

It has been supposed, not without reason, that it is Luke

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liv. 18: "And recovering of sight to the blind" (cf. Isa. lxi.). iv. 23: And he said unto them, Doubtless ye will say unto me this parable, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done at Capernaum, do also here in thine own country." ix. I: "And he called the twelve together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases." 2: And he sent them forth to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick." 6: "And they departed, and went throughout the villages, preaching the gospel, and healing everywhere.' x. 9:"And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you." Cf. xxii. 51, which tells of the healing of Malchus' ear, a fact unrecorded by any of the three other evangelists in their account of the incident. There are four other miracles of healing peculiar to Luke, viz., the raising of the widow's son (vii. 11-17), the healing of the "woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years" (xiii. 10-17), the cure of a man which had the dropsy" (xiv. 1-6), and the cleansing of the ten lepers (xvii. II-19).

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2iv. 38: "a great fever"; v. 12, a man full of leprosy"; vi. 19, power came forth from him, and healed them all"; xxii. 44, "his sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground." A token of Luke's professional feeling has been found in the more measured terms he employs in viii. 43: And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, and could not be healed of any," as compared with Mark v. 25 and 26: "And a woman, which had an issue of

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blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. But this is a very precarious inference, especially in view of the entire omission by Matthew of the allusion to the failure of the physicians (ix. 20: "And behold, a woman, who had an issue of blood twelve years"). It would be different if we could adopt the reading in MSS. A. and D., which omits the words "which had spent all her living upon physicians." Bishop Alexander points out that Luke distinguishes between cases of " "possession and diseases in the ordinary sense (vi. 17, 18: A great number

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to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; and they that were troubled with unclean spirits were healed"). The same writer has some striking observations on the psychological insight apparent in the third Gospel. "The Gospel of the physician is also the Gospel of the psychologist" (Leading Ideas of the Gospels, pp. 105-118). A book on the Medical Language of St. Luke has been written by Rev. W. K. Hobart.

With regard to the tradition that Luke was a painter, expressed in Rossetti's lines

"Give honour unto Luke, evangelist, For he it was, the ancient legends say, Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray,

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there is no authority of any value to support it, although not a few old pictures in Italy are shown to the credulous as the work of Luke. The origin of the legend seems to have been due to the discovery of an inscription in the Catacombs with reference to a rude painting of the Virgin, which stated that it was one of seven painted by Luca." But, though "not written by a painter, this is yet a painter's Gospel. From it come the favourite subjects:-the Virgin and Child, Simeon, the Scene with the Doctors in the Temple, the Ascension." -(Alexander.)

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who is referred to as "the brother whose praise in the gospel is spread through all the churches";1 but whether this be so or not, we have incontestable evidence that Luke was not only a warm friend of the apostle, but a valuable coadjutor. In the Epistle to Philemon,2 which was written during Paul's first imprisonment in Rome, Luke is one of Paul's "fellow-workers" who send greetings, and in 2 Timothy, which was written during Paul's second imprisonment, when many of his friends had forsaken him, we find the brief but weighty statement, "Only Luke is with me." 3

Of Luke's nationality and of his history previous to his association with the apostle we have but scanty information. From the distinction drawn between him and those "of the circumcision "4 it may be inferred that he was of Gentile extraction; and this inference is confirmed by his Greek name and the character of his style, which-except when he is drawing from older documents or reporting speeches conveyed to him by others—is more classical than that of the other Gospels in the structure of the sentences and the choice of words, as well as in the use of an opening dedication, which is a feature quite foreign to the Hebrew style. According to Eusebius and Jerome, who wrote in

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12 Cor. viii. 18. We have an ancient memorial of this belief in the superscription at the close of the epistle. "The gospel" is here to be taken in a general sense, not as referring to the Gospel by Luke. It is to be observed that Paul never calls Luke "my son,' and we may therefore infer that he was not one of the apostle's converts. Tradition has represented him as one of the Seventy whose mission he records (chap. x.); and it has been suggested that he may have been one of the two disciples (the name of the other he mentions, viz., Cleopas) whose journey with the Risen Lord to Emmaus he narrates so fully in chap. xxiv. Possibly he may have been one of the Greeks referred to in John xii. 20-23, who desired to see Jesus "at the feast."

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concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus; that thou mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed." The Clementine Recognitions (end of 2nd century) represent Theophilus as a wealthy citizen of Antioch, who gave up the use of his house for the preaching of Peter. It has been suggested that Luke may have been his freedman -the termination of the evangelist's name (Λούκας contracted from Λουκᾶνος) being a common one with slaves. This supposition is quite consistent with Luke's profession, as slaves and freedmen were frequently men of education and accomplishments. We have evidence of the Gentile destination of this

the fourth century, Luke was a native of Antioch in Syria. Of this we seem to have confirmation in the full account he gives of the Church at Antioch,1 and also in his description of Nicolas as "a proselyte of Antioch." 2

While tradition has always ascribed the third Gospel to Luke, it has assigned to Paul a somewhat similar part in its production to that which Peter bore in relation to the Gospel of Mark.3 Such a connection is rendered probable both by what we know of the relations between Paul and Luke, and by the character of the Gospel itself, which is so liberal and philanthropic in its tone as to form an excellent historic groundwork for the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith, that was characteristic of Paul's preaching (see § 3).

Gospel in the following explanations and allusions:-i. 26: "A city of Galilee, named Nazareth"; ii. 2: "When Quirinius was governor of Syria"; iii. I: "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar"; iv. 31: "Capernaum, a city of Galilee"; xxi. 37: "The mount that is called the mount of Olives"; xxii. 1.: "The feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover."

1 Acts xi.-xv.

2 Acts vi. 5. A parallel has been drawn between this circumstance and the mention made by two Scottish authors alone (Scott and Alison),out of eight writers who give an account of Napoleon's Russian campaign,-of the fact that General Barclay de Tolly was of Scottish extraction. There is a reading in Codex Bezae (D), accepted by Augustine, which lends still greater probability to Luke's connection with Antioch. In Acts xi., after verse 27: "Now in these days there came down prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch," there occur the words, "And there was great rejoicing; and when we

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gathered together." Ewald suggests that this reading may have given rise to the tradition, which we cannot trace to any earlier writer than Eusebius; and it is probably due to a Syriac gloss assimilating the passage to xx. 7, 8.

3 We can trace the tradition as far back as Irenæus, who tells us that "Luke the follower of Paul set down in a book the Gospel preached by

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him." At a later time Paul's allusions to "my Gospel" (Rom. ii. 16, &c.) were understood to refer to the compilation which Luke had made under the apostle's direction.

4 This is the element of truth lying at the bottom of the Tübingen theory, which represents the third Gospel as an attempt to magnify Paul at the expense of the Judaizers. If the writer had been thus swayed by party spirit, he would scarcely have brought into prominence such Jewish features and incidents in our Lord's history as we find in chapters i., ii. (scenes in the temple); i. 32, 33: "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end"; xviii. 38: "And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me"; xiii. 16: "And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years, to have been loosed from this bond on the day of the sabbath?"; xix. 9: "And Jesus said unto him, To-day is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham"; xxiv. 44: 66 And he said unto them, These are my words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, how that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms, concerning me"; xxiv.

larity between the words attributed to our Lord in the institution of the Supper and those in 1 Corinthians (Luke having doubtless often heard Paul use the words in the celebration of the Sacrament),1 as well as in the accounts which the two books give of our Lord's appearances after His Resurrection. The duty of prayer3 and the influence of the Holy Spirit, which figure so largely in this Gospel, are also characteristic of Paul's writings; and there are certain forms of expression which are common to them both, e.g. a threefold classification of ideas.5

From his preface we learn that it was Luke's object to

52, 53: "And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple, blessing God."

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1 xxii. 19, 20: 'And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and gave to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you this do in remembrance of me. And the cup in like manner after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, even that which is poured out for you.' I Cor. xi. 24, 25: "And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.'

The expres

sion, "Do this in remembrance of me," which is found in both of the foregoing, is absent from Matthew (xxvi. 26-29) and Mark (xiv. 22-25). In the two latter, also, we find, "This is my blood of the covenant," instead of "This cup is the new covenant in my blood," which is common to Paul and Luke. Again, in Matthew and Mark it is said that Jesus "took bread and blessed it" (evλoyńσas), and "took a cup and gave thanks" (exapornoas), while according to Paul and Luke, "He took bread and gave thanks” (εὐχαριστήσας).

2 xxiv.; 1 Cor. xv. 1-7. In particular, cf. xxiv. 34: "The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon and I Cor. xv. 5: "He appeared to Cephas."

3 See p. 56.

4 Mentioned four times in the first chapter-viz., at vers. 15, 35, 41, 67.

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XV. 3, 8, II-Parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, cf. Matt. xviii. 12 (the sheep gone astray); ix. 57-62 (the three would-be followers of Christ), cf. Matt. viii. 19-22, which mentions only two; xi. 11-12, loaf. fish... egg," cf. Matt. vii. bread 9, 10, fish"; 1 Cor. xiii. 13, "But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three"; Eph. iv. 4-6, "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all." (The Four Evangelists, by Rev. E. Thomson, p. 104.) Many other traces of the Pauline association and influence have been discovered in the language of the Gospel, e.g., iv. 22: "words of grace," cf. Col. iv. 6: "Let your speech be always with grace." vi. 36: "Be ye merciful, even as your Father is merciful,' cf. 2 Cor. i. 3: "The Father of mercies and God of all comfort"; vi. 39: "Can the blind guide the blind," cf. Rom. ii. 19: "A guide of the blind' x. 8: 'Eat such things as are set before you," cf. 1 Cor. x. 27: "Whatsoever is set before you, eat"; xi. 41: "And behold, all things are clean unto you," cf. Titus i. 15: "To the pure all things are pure"; xxi. 36: "But watch ye at every season, making supplication," cf. Eph. vi. 18: "With all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto." A resemblance has also been found between the language of this Gospel and that of the Epistle to the Hebrews-due doubtless to the latter having also been written by a friend and associate of Paul's.

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