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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: LOB-LUP |
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LUKE , the traditional author of the third Gospel and of the Book of Acts, and the most literary among the writers of the New Testament. He alone, too, was of non-Jewish origin (Col. iv. 11, 14), a fact of great interest
inscriptions ), taken together with his profession of physician (Col. iv. 14), suggests that he was son of a Greek freedman possibly connected with Lucania in south Italy; and as Julius Caesar gave Roman citizenship to all physicians in Rome (Sueton. Jul. 42), Luke may even have inherited this status from his father. But in any case such a man would have the attitude to things Roman which appears in the works attributed to Luke. He was a fellow-worker of Paul's when in Rome (Philemon 24), where he seems to have remained in constant attendance on his leader, as physician as well as attached friend (Col. iv. 14; 2 Tim. iv. II). That Luke, before he became a Christian, was an adherent of the synagoguenot a full proselyte, but one of those " worshippers " of God to whom Acts makes frequent referenceis fairly certain from the familiarity with the Septuagint indicated in Acts, as well as from its sympathy with the Hellenistic type of piety as distinct from specific Paulinism, of which there is but little trace.The earliest extra-biblical reference to him is perhaps in the Muratonian Canon, which implies that his name already stood in MSS. of both Gospel (probably so even in Marcion's day) and Acts, and says that Paul took him for his companion quasi ut juris studiosum (" as being a student of law "). Here juris is almost certainly corrupt; and whether we take the sense to have been " as being devoted to travel " (ut juris = itineris) or " as skilled in disease " (vbaou passing into vbou in the Greek original
That he was actually a native of Antioch is as doubtful as the statement that he was a Syrian by race (Prologue). But internal evidence bears out the view that he practised his profession in Antioch, where (or in Tarsus) he probably first met Paul. Whether any of his information in Acts as to the Gospel in Antioch (xi. 19 if., xii1. I if., )(iv. 26-xv. 35) was due to an Antiochene document used by him (cf. A. Harnack, The Acts of the Apostles, 245 ff.) or not, this knowledge in any case suggests Luke's connexion with that church. He shows, too, local knowledge on points unlikely to have stood in any such source (e.g. it was in Antioch that the name " Christians " was first coined, xi. 26), which points to his share in early Church life there. The Bezan reading in Acts xi. 27, " when we.were assembled," may imply memory of this. But while Luke probably met Paul in Antioch, and thence started with him on his second great missionary enterprise (xv. 36 ff.), partly at least as his medical attendant (cf. Gal. iv. 13), it is possible that he had also some special
original
Philippi
precarious
Philippi
touch may be due to an ascetic feeling current already in the 2nd century).The later traditions about Luke's life are based on fanciful inference or misunderstanding, e.g. that he was one of the Seventy (Adamantius Dial. de recta fide, 4th century), or the story (in Theodorus Lector, 6th century) that he painted a portrait of the Virgin Mother. But a good deal can still be gathered by sympathetic study of his writings as to the manner of man he was. It was a beautiful soul from which came " the most beautiful book " ever written, as Renan styled his Gospel. The selection of stories which he gives usespecially in the section mainly peculiar to himself (ix. 51-xviii. 14)reflects his own character as well as that of the source he mainly follows. His was indeed a religio medici in its pity for frail and suffering 'humanity, and in its sympathy with the triumph
' Tychicus may be the other " brother," in viii. 22. z So also A. Hilgenfeld, Zeit. f. theol. Wissenschaft (1907), p. 214, argues that " we " marks the author's wish to give his narrative more vividness at great turning-points of the storythe passage from Asia to Europe, and again the real beginning of the solemn progress of Paul towards the crisis in Jerusalem, as yet later towards Rome, xxvii. i if. ' Note that Luke is at pains t'o explain why Paul passed by Asia and Bithynia in the first instance (xvi. 6 f.). 'Compare what A. W. Verrall has said of the poet Statius and " the gentle doctrine of humanity " on Hellenic soil, as embodied in his description of The Altar of Mercy at Athens (Oxford and Cambridge Review, i. lot ff.).tender that it saw further than almost any save the Master himself into the soul of womanhood. In this, as in his joyousness, united with a feeling for the poor and suffering, he was an early Francis of Assisi. Luke, " the physician, the beloved physician," that was Paul's characterization of him; and it is the impression which his writings have left on humanity. How great his contribution to Christianity has been, in virtue of what he alone preserved of the historical Jesus and of the embodiment of his Gospel in his earliest followers, who can measure? Harnack even maintains (The Acts, p. 301) that his story of the Apostolic age was the indispensable condition for the incorporation of the Pauline epistles in the Church's canon of New Testament scriptures. Certainly his conception of the Gospel, viz. a Christian Hellenistic universalism (with some slight infusion of Pauline thought) passed through a Graeco-Roman mind, proved more easy of assimilation, and so more directly influential for the ancient Church, than Paul's own distinctive teaching (ib. 281 ff. ; cf. Luke the Physician, pp. 139-145).End of Article: LUKE If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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