聖經註釋書

這位福音書作者（更準確地說，是神藉着他）為我們所記述的基督生平，開始得比馬太或馬可都更早。我們當為他們每一位感謝神，正如我們為基督眾僕人的一切恩賜與恩典感謝神一樣——他們彼此補足各人所缺，而全部合起來便構成一幅和諧的圖畫。在本章中我們看到：一、路加為他的福音書所寫的序言，或說寫給他的朋友提阿非羅的獻書函（路一1-4）。二、關於施洗約翰成孕的預言與歷史——約翰是基督的先鋒（路一5-25）。三、向童女馬利亞報信，即通知她將作彌賽亞之母（路一26-38）。四、耶穌的母親馬利亞與約翰的母親以利沙伯，當二人各自懷着那些奇妙的胎時彼此的會面，以及她們在那場合所發的預言（路一39-56）。五、施洗約翰的誕生與割禮，比基督的誕生早了六個月（路一57-66）。六、撒迦利亞為約翰誕生而感恩、並期待耶穌降生所唱的讚美之歌（路一67-79）。七、關於施洗約翰幼年的簡短記述（路一80）。這些記述不僅給我們一段引人入勝的敘事，更引導我們進入對敬虔奧秘——神在肉身顯現——的認識。

引言

本福音書的作者，雖在福音書和使徒行傳中都未被明確提及，但學者普遍公認為路加（Lucas，即 Lucanus 的縮寫形式，正如 Silas 之於 Silvanus）。從

西 4:14 我們得知他是個「醫生」；將該節與

西 4:10, 11 ——使徒在其中列舉了當時與他同在的一切受割禮之人，卻未提及路加，而在其後不久又代他問安——兩相比對，我們便可推知路加並非生來的猶太人。有人認為他是自由人（libertinus），因為羅馬人將醫術交給這一階層的人和他們的奴隸從事，視之為有失身分的職業。然而他對猶太習慣的深入認識，以及他運用希伯來化希臘文的熟練程度，似乎表明他是早期皈依猶太教的人；這一點也由

徒 21:27-29 奇特地加以印證：在那裏我們看見猶太人因以為保羅將希臘人帶進聖殿而大為震怒，因為他們曾看見「以弗所人特羅非摩」與他在一起；而我們知道路加那次也與保羅同在一起，他們似乎把他當作猶太人，因為並沒有提到他。另一方面，他流暢的古典希臘文也印證了他的外邦出身。他加入保羅行列的時間，在使徒行傳中有清楚的標示——作者在

徒 16:10 處從第三人稱單數（「他」）改為第一人稱複數（「我們」）。自此之後，他幾乎未曾離開使徒，直到他殉道前不久

（提後 4:11）。

優西比烏說他是安提阿人。若然，他便有充分的條件接受希臘文化的薰陶，並習得當時所有的醫學知識。古代教父普遍同意他是善終的；惟有拿先斯的貴格利聲稱他是殉道而死。

本福音書出版的時間與地點同樣無法確定。但我們可以大致推算。它無論如何必須在使徒行傳之前問世，因為在使徒行傳中，「福音書」被明確稱為同一作者的「前書」

（徒 1:1）。 而使徒行傳直到保羅以囚犯身分抵達羅馬之後整整兩年才出版，因為該書的結尾正是提到這一段時期；但它大概在此之後不久便問世，時間看來約在主後六十三年初。因此在那之前，我們有理由相信路加福音已在流通，雖然大多數批評家認為其成書更晚。若將其定在主後五十年至六十年之間，大概便接近事實；但更精確則無從確定。至於出版地點的種種推測，過於渺茫，此處從略。

本書首要的對象是外邦讀者，這是毫無疑問的。正如 DAVIDSON 所言〔《新約導論》，第 186 頁〕，這不過是「外邦人的使徒」的同伴所應有的——他親眼見證了許多外邦人因接受福音而發生的奇妙改變。而他福音書中對每一個猶太人都熟知之事的解釋——這顯然是為外邦讀者而設的——更使此點昭然若揭：見

路 1:26； 4:31； 8:26； 21:37； 22:1； 24:13。 此外還有許多細微的特徵——無論是加添的還是省略的——都印證了這位福音書作者首要的對象確實是外邦人這一結論。

上文已經提到這位作者所寫的古典希臘文風格——正符合一位受過教育的希臘人、見聞廣博的醫生的身分。但我們也注意到，與此並存的，是他風格上的驚人適應性：當他敘述完全屬猶太背景的事件——其中的人物與情節全是猶太的——他便改用一種猶太化的希臘文來寫，如同一個從未離開過巴勒斯坦、也從未與猶太人以外之人交往的人所寫的一樣。在 DA COSTA 的*《四個見證人》一書中，可以找到這位「親愛的醫生*」在本福音書中所留下的一些痕跡。但更為顯著而重要的，是他與外邦人的使徒之間密切關係的痕跡。一位如此長久、如此經常與那偉大心靈為伴的人，在這樣一部著作中竟毫無這層關係的痕跡、毫無那個心靈的印記，實在難以令人置信。導論的作者們似乎並未看出這一點，也未加以論述。但凡深入探究其內裏的人，很快便能發現其中充足的保羅思想模式的證據。讀者欲知更多細節請參 DA COSTA，此處只提出兩個例子：在

林前 11:23，

保羅將他所記載設立主餐的敘述歸於基督親自的啟示。如今我們若發現這段記載在一些細小卻引人注目的地方與馬太和馬可的記載不同，卻與路加的記載逐字相符，便幾乎不容置疑：其中一位是從另一位得來的；在這種情況下，當然是路加從保羅得來的。馬太和馬可都論到杯說：「這是我立約的血」；而保羅和路加則用完全相同的話說：「這杯是用我血所立的新約」

（林前 11:25； 路 22:20）。 進一步，路加說：「飯後也照樣拿起杯來」等語；而保羅說：「飯後，也照樣拿起杯來」等語；馬太和馬可則都沒有提到這是在飯後。但更引人注目的是此案中的另一個吻合之處。馬太和馬可論到餅時只說：「你們拿著吃，這是我的身體」

（太 26:26； 可 14:22）； 而保羅說：「你們拿著吃，這是我的身體，為你們捨的」

（林前 11:24）， 路加則說：「這是我的身體，為你們捨的」

（路 22:19）。 而當保羅加上那寶貴的一句「你們應當如此行，為的是記念我」時，路加也以完全相同的話作了同樣的補充。凡細思此事的人，怎能不深信本福音書帶有保羅的印記呢？我們請讀者留意的另一個證據是：保羅在列舉基督復活後向其顯現的人時，竟然首先提到彼得——「而且埋葬了；又照聖經所說，第三天復活了；並且顯給磯法看」

（林前 15:4, 5）—— 與此密切相關的一個顯著事實是：在福音書作者中，惟有路加提到基督曾向彼得顯現。當門徒從以馬忤斯回來，要告訴弟兄們主怎樣在路上向他們顯現、怎樣在擘餅時被他們認出來之時，他們還來不及開口說一個字，便迎面聽到這個驚人的消息：「主果然復活，已經現給西門看了」

（路 24:34）。 與本福音書相關的其他要點，將在註釋中論及。

路加福音序言

關於本福音書寫作的時間與地點，以及其作者，確切可知的甚少。作者首次被提及，是在他自己所寫的史書中，即 Acts 16:10-11。那時他是保羅旅途中的同伴，而且顯然他屢次在旅行中伴隨保羅，參看 Acts 16:11-17；Acts 21:1-6。在上述各處，《使徒行傳》的作者都提到「他自己」與保羅同在。同一人也是這福音書的作者，這一點從 Acts 1:1 亦可清楚看出。

由於這一情況，古代的人認為這福音書實際上就是保羅所傳的福音。他們肯定地說，路加記錄了這位使徒所傳講的內容。因此，愛任紐（Irenaeus）說：「保羅的同伴路加，將他所傳的福音記錄成書。」他又說：「路加不僅是使徒們的同伴，更是他們的同工，尤其是保羅的同工。」俄利根（Origen）論到各福音書時說：「第三卷是路加福音，即保羅所稱許的福音，是為外邦歸信者的緣故而發表的。」教父們的見證是一致的：這書為保羅的同伴路加所寫，因此被他們視為實在是保羅所傳的福音。

本書寫於何處，不得而知。耶柔米（Jerome）說它是在亞該亞寫成的。這書很可能是寫給熟知猶太風俗之人的，因為作者並不像其他幾位福音書作者那樣停下來解釋猶太人特有的習俗。至於寫作時間，同樣沒有十分確定的資料。所能確實查知的只是：它寫於保羅去世之前（主後65年），因為它寫於《使徒行傳》之前（Act 1:1），而該書只將保羅的生平記載到他在羅馬被囚，以及他前往西班牙之前。

路加是外邦人還是猶太人，一向是探討的問題。關於這一點，沒有明確的見證。耶柔米及另一些教父說他是敘利亞人，生於安提阿。最有可能的見解似乎是：他雖出身外邦家庭，卻是皈依猶太教的人。支持這見解的理由有二，均有一定分量。第一，正如這福音書和《使徒行傳》所顯示的，他熟悉猶太人的禮儀、習俗、觀念和成見；並且他用他們的「方言」寫作，即帶有大量希伯來語式的措辭，風格與其他福音書作者相似；由此可見他慣於猶太教，因此很可能是個皈依者。然而，正如批評家們所指出的，他福音書的「序言」是純正的古典希臘文，不同於生來是猶太之人所用的希臘文；由此看來，他按血統和所受教育而言是外邦人，也並非不可能。第二，Acts 21:27 說，亞細亞的猶太人煽動眾人反對保羅，因他將「外邦人」帶進聖殿，污穢了聖殿。Acts 21:28 說，他們所指的外邦人是「特羅非摩」（Trophimus），一個以弗所人。然而那時「路加」也與保羅同在。他若被視為「外邦人」，他們大概也會像論到「特羅非摩」一樣論到「他」而提出控告；據此推想，他是一個皈依猶太教的人。

但另一方面，在《歌羅西書》中（Colossians 4:9-11），我們看到保羅說亞里達古、馬可、巴拿巴、猶士都都問他們的安，他又補充說，這些人「是受割禮的」，即生來的猶太人。在 Colossians 4:14，他說「路加」——所親愛的醫生——和底馬也問他們的安；由此推斷，他們「不是受割禮的」，而是生來的外邦人。

大多數作者認為，《歌羅西書》上述經文中所指的，正是本福音書的作者路加。若是這樣，他的職業乃是「醫生」；而且有人指出，他對疾病的描述比其他福音書作者更準確、更詳細，更具「專業」上的正確性。

路加並未自稱是其所記載之事的目擊證人。見 Luke 1:2-3。因此，他很明顯不是七十門徒之一，也不是往以馬忤斯去的那兩個人之一——儘管有時有人如此猜測。他也不是使徒。教父們一律稱他為使徒們、特別是保羅的「同伴」。

他若不是使徒之一，若也不是蒙我們的主明確差遣、並得著聖靈無誤教導之應許的人，那麼問題就來了：他的福音書和《使徒行傳》憑著什麼權柄被列入神聖正典？又有什麼證據證明他是受神默示的呢？

關於這個問題，以下幾點考量或可令人滿意：

1. 這兩卷書與前三卷福音書立於同等地位，被眾教會接受。關於它們的真實性和權柄，沒有一點異議之聲。這論證的價值在於：這些書若是偽造的、或沒有權柄的，教父們正是最有資格辨別此事的人。

2. 這兩卷書是在使徒彼得、保羅和約翰在世時發表的，並在他們在世時就被當作具有神聖權柄的書卷接受。路加的著作若非出於默示、沒有權柄，那些使徒本可輕易毀壞其信用，而且我們有理由相信他們必定會這樣做。

3. 教父們一致的見證是：這福音書曾呈交保羅，並得到他明確的認可。它被視為保羅講道的要義；它既得了他的認可，便是憑著他的名臨到「我們」的。誠然，若果真如此，它所依據的權柄就與保羅本人的書信相同。

4. 它與其他書卷一樣帶有默示的印記。它簡樸、純淨，卻又崇高；其中沒有任何配不上神的東西；它遠超任何未受默示之人的著作。

5. 他若未受默示——若如我們所推想，他生來是外邦人——又若如極其明顯的，他不是其所記載之事的目擊證人，那麼他竟沒有與其他福音書作者相矛盾，這是難以想像的。他並未「借用」他們的材料，這是清楚的。同樣難以想像的是：他竟能寫出一卷在「編排」次序上如此不同、增添如此多新事實、又重複如此多他人也記載過之事的書，卻不常常與他們所寫的相矛盾。任何人只要將這福音書與其後幾個世紀的偽福音書比較，就必深感這話的力量。

6. 若有人反對說，他既不是使徒，就不在賜給使徒的默示「應許」之內（John 14:26；John 16:13-14），可以回答說：保羅的情形也是如此；然而新約聖經有相當部分正是由他的著作構成。路加與保羅著作之默示的證據，不僅要憑那「應許」來判斷，還要憑教會早期的接受、教父們對在世之「受默示的人」所下判斷的見證，以及這些著作的內在性質來判斷。在這一切上，路加與其他福音書作者同等無異。

Preface to the Gospel According to St. Luke, With a Short Account of His Life

There is little certain known of this evangelist: from what is spoken in the Scriptures, and by the best informed of the primitive fathers, the following probable account is collected: -

Luke was, according to Dr. Lardner, a Jew by birth, and an early convert to Christianity; but Michaelis thinks he was a Gentile, and brings Colossians 4:10, Colossians 4:11, Colossians 4:14, in proof, where St. Paul distinguished Aristarchus, Marcus, and Jesus, who was called Justus, from Epaphras, Lucas, and Demas, who were of the circumcision, i.e. Jews. Some think he was one of our Lord's seventy disciples. It is worthy of remark that he is the only evangelist who mentions the commission given by Christ to the seventy, Luke 10:1-20. It is likely he is the Lucius mentioned Romans 16:21, and if so he was related to the Apostle Paul, and that it is the same Lucius of Cyrene who is mentioned Acts 13:1, and in general with others, Acts 11:20. Some of the ancients, and some of the most learned and judicious among the moderns, think he was one of the two whom our Lord met on the way to Emmaus on the day of his resurrection, as related Luke 24:13-35; one of these was called Cleopas, Luke 24:18, the other is not mentioned, the evangelist, himself, being the person and the relator.

St. Paul styles him his fellow-laborer, Plm 1:24. It is barely probable that he is the person mentioned, Colossians 4:14, Luke, the beloved physician. All the ancients of repute, such as Eusebius, Gregory Nyssen, Jerome, Paulinus, Euthalius, Euthymius, and others, agree that he was a physician, but where he was born, and where he exercised the duties of his profession, are not known. Many moderns have attributed to him the most profound skill in the science of painting, and that he made some pictures of the Virgin Mary. This is justly esteemed fabulous; nor is this science attributed to him by any writer previously to Nicephorus Callisti, in the fourteenth century, an author who scarcely deserves any credit, especially in relations not confirmed by others.

He accompanied St. Paul when he first went into Macedonia, Acts 16:8-40; Acts 20:1; Acts 27:1; Acts 28:1. Whether he went with him constantly afterwards is not certain; but it is evident he accompanied him from Greece through Macedonia and Asia to Jerusalem, where he is supposed to have collected many particulars of the evangelic history: from Jerusalem he went with Paul to Rome, where he stayed with him the two years of his imprisonment in that city. This alone makes out the space of five years, and upwards. It is probable that he left St. Paul when he was set at liberty, and that he then went into Greece, where he finished and published this Gospel, and the book of the Acts, which he dedicated to Theophilus, an honorable Christian friend of his in that country. It is supposed that he died in peace about the eightieth or eighty-fourth year of his age. Some suppose he published this Gospel fifteen, others twenty-two years after the ascension of Christ.

See much on this subject in Lardner, Works, vol. vi. p. 104, etc., and in Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament.

Some learned men think that Luke has borrowed considerably from St. Matthew: collate Luke 3:7-9, Luke 3:16, Luke 3:17, with Matthew 3:7-12; also Luke 5:20-38, with Matthew 9:2-17; also Luke 6:1-5, with Matthew 12:1-5; Luke 7:22-28, with Matthew 11:4-11; also Luke 12:22-31, with Matthew 6:25-33. It is allowed that there is considerable diversity in the order of time between St Matthew and St. Luke, which is accounted for thus: Matthew deduces the facts related in his history in chronological order. Luke, on the contrary, appears to have paid little attention to this order, because he proposed to make a classification of events, referring each to its proper class, without paying any attention to chronological arrangement. Some critics divide this history into five distinct classes or sections, in the following manner: -

CLASS I. Comprehends all the details relative to the birth of Christ; with the preceding, concomitant, and immediately succeeding circumstances. Luke 1:1, and 2:1-40.

CLASS II. Contains a description of our Lord's infancy and bringing up; his visit to the temple when twelve years of age; and his going down to Nazareth and continuing under the government of his parents; Luke 2:41-52.

CLASS III. Contains the account of the preaching of John Baptist, and his success; the baptism of Christ, and his genealogy. Luke 3:1.

CLASS IV. Comprehends the account of all our Lord's transactions in Galilee, for the whole three years of his ministry, from Luke 4:1 to Luke 9:1-50. This seems evident: for as soon as Luke had given the account of our Lord's temptation in the deserts Luke 4:1-13, he represents him as immediately returning in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, Luke 4:14; mentions Nazareth, Luke 4:16; Capernaum, Luke 4:31; and the lake of Galilee, Luke 5:1; and thus, to Luke 9:50, goes on to describe the preaching, miracles, etc.; of our Lord in Galilee.

CLASS V. and last, commences at Luke 9:51, where the evangelist gives an account of our Lord's last journey to Jerusalem: therefore this class contains, not only all the transactions of our Lord from that time to his crucifixion, but also, the account of his resurrection, his commission to his apostles, and his ascension to heaven. Luke 9:51, to Luke 24:53, inclusive.

A plan similar to this has been followed by Suetonius, in his life of Augustus: he does not produce his facts in chronological order, but classifies them, as he himself professes, cap. 12, giving an account of all his wars, honors, legislative acts, discipline, domestic life, etc., etc. Matthew therefore, is to be consulted for the correct arrangement of facts in chronological order: Luke, for a classification of facts and events, without any attention to the order of time in which they occurred. Many eminent historians have conducted their narratives in the same way. See Rosenmuller. It must not, however, be forgotten, that this evangelist gives us some very valuable chronological data in several parts of the three first chapters. These shall be noticed in their proper places.

The preface, or St. Luke's private epistle to Theophilus, Luke 1:1-4. The conception and birth of John Baptist foretold by the angel Gabriel, Luke 1:5-17. Zacharias doubts, Luke 1:18. And the angel declares he shall be dumb, till the accomplishment of the prediction, Luke 1:19-25. Six months after the angel Gabriel appears to the virgin Mary, and predicts the miraculous conception and birth of Christ, Luke 1:26-38. Mary visits her cousin Elisabeth, Luke 1:39-45. Mary's song of exultation and praise, Luke 1:46-56. John the Baptist is born, Luke 1:57-66. The prophetic song of his father Zacharias, Luke 1:67-79. John is educated in the desert, Luke 1:80.

INTRODUCTION TO LUKE

The writer of this Gospel, Luke, has been, by some, thought, as Origen (a) relates, to be the same with Lucius, mentioned in Romans 16:21, but he seems rather to be, and without doubt is, Luke the beloved physician, who was a companion of the Apostle Paul in great part of his travels in the Gentile world: he came with him to Jerusalem, and from thence accompanied him to Rome, and continued with him when in prison, and was with him to the last; see Acts 16:10, &c. Colossians 4:14. Jerom (b), and others, say, he was a physician of Antioch in Syria; where it may be the Apostle Paul met with him, and might be the happy instrument of his conversion; so that he seems to be, by nation, a Syrian, as Jerom (c) calls him. Grotius thinks his name is Roman, and that it is the contraction of Lucilius. It is not an Hebrew name, but might be in common use in Syria; for though the Jews reckon owqwl, "Lukus", among foreign names, yet say (d) a it was a very illustrious one, and well known to them, as it may well be thought to be if Syriac, the language being spoke by them: and many Jews lived in Syria, and particularly in Antioch. Some say that this Gospel was written by the advice, and assistance, and under the direction of the Apostle Paul, as the Gospel according to Mark was by that of Peter; though the following preface does not seem so well to accord with this. Eusebius says (e) that it was the sense of the ancients, that whenever the Apostle Paul makes mention of his Gospel, he intends this according to Luke. The time of the writing of it is not certain; some say it was written in the fifteenth year after the ascension of our Lord; others in the twenty second; and others in the twenty seventh. It is commonly thought to have been written after the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, according to the order in which it stands; but this is rejected by some learned men, who rather think that Luke wrote first of all: and indeed, there are some things in his preface which look as if there had not, as yet, been any authentic account published, at least which was come to the knowledge of this evangelist. The place where he wrote it is also uncertain. Jerom says (f), he wrote it in the parts of Achaia, perhaps at Corinth: according to the titles prefixed to the Syriac and Persic versions, he wrote it in Alexandria: the former of these runs thus;

"the Gospel of Luke, the Evangelist, which he spake and published in Greek in Alexandria the great.''

And the latter thus;

"the Gospel of Luke, which he wrote in the Greek tongue in Alexandria of Egypt.''

However, it is agreed on all hands, that it is genuine, and of divine inspiration. Eusebius (g) relates, that it was affirmed by some, that this Gospel, together with those of Matthew and Mark, were brought to the Apostle John, who approved of them, and bore witness to the truth in them.

(a) In Romans 16.21. (b) Catalog. Script. Eccles. sect. 17. fol. 91. Euseb. Eccl. Hist. l. 3. c. 4. (c) Praefat in Luc. (d) T. Bab. Gittin, fol. 11. 2. & Gloss. in ib. (e) Ubi supra. (Hist. Eccl. l. 3. c. 39.) (f) Praefat in Luc. (g) Eccl. Hist. l. 3. c. 24.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE.

Luke.

BY

THE VERY REV. E. H. PLUMPTRE, D.D.,

Late Dean of Wells.

INTRODUCTION

TO

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE.

I. The writer.—But one person bearing the name of Luke, or, in its Greek form, Lucas, appears in the New Testament; and of him the direct notices are few and meagre. He is named as being with St. Paul during his first imprisonment at Rome, and is described as “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14). He is still with him, stress being laid on his being the only friend who remained, when the Apostle’s work was drawing to its close (2Timothy 4:11). Beyond these facts all is inference or conjecture. Both conjecture and inference are, however, in this case, full of interest, present many unexpected coincidences, and, by the convergence of many different lines of circumstantial evidence, raise the probabilities which attach to each taken separately into something not far from certainty as to their collective result.

The name itself is suggestive. It does not appear as such in any classical writer, or on any Greek or Latin inscription. Its form, however, shows that it is a contraction from Lucanus, as Apollos is from Apollonius, or Silas from Silvanus, and not, as some have thought, another form of Lucius.[10] This name, again in its turn, was not a common one, and we naturally ask what associations were connected with it. Its most probable etymology points to its being derived from the region of southern Italy known as Lucania. Lucas, or Lucanus, would be a natural name for a slave or freedman, having no family name as his own, who had come, or whose father had come, from that region. Assuming, for the present. St. Luke’s authorship of the Acts, we find in the supposition that this was the origin of his name an explanation of the obvious familiarity with Italian topography shown in his mention of Puteoli, Appii Forum, and the Three Taverns, in Acts 28:13-15. The name Lucanus, was, however, borne at this time by a writer, M. Annæus Lucanus, who stands high in the list of Latin poets, as the author of the Pharsalia, an epic which takes as its subject the great struggle for power between Julius Cæsar and Pompeius. As he was born, not in Italy, but in Spain (at Corduba, the modern Cordova), the name with him must have had another than a local significance. Was there any link of association connecting the two men who bore a name which was, as we have seen, far from a common one? We are here in a region of conjecture; but on the assumption that there was some such link, we have a probable explanation (1) of the favour shown to St. Luke’s friend and companion, the great Apostle of the Gentiles. by the uncle of the poet, J. Annæus Gallio, the Proconsul of Achaia (Acts 18:14-17), and (2) of the early tradition of a friendship between St. Paul and another uncle, the Stoic philosopher, Seneca, issuing in the correspondence of fourteen letters, which, in the time of Jerome (de Vir. Illust. c. 12) and Augustine (Epist. cliii. 14), was read with interest, and often quoted as a fragment of Apostolic literature. The letters that are now extant under that name are, in the judgment of well nigh all critics, spurious; but the fact that a writer in the third or fourth century thought it worth while to compose such a correspondence, implies that he was able to take for granted a general belief in the friendship which it pre-supposes; and the many coincidences of thought and language between the Apostle and the Philosopher (as seen, e.g., in the “Essay on St. Paul and Seneca,” in Dr. Lightfoot’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians) are at least striking enough to suggest, if not intercourse, at least some derivation from a common source. Seneca was, it must be remembered, officially connected with the Court of Nero during St. Paul’s imprisonment; and when the fame of the prisoner and of his doctrine was spread through the whole Prætorium (Philippians 1:13), and congregations of disciples were to be found even among the slaves of the Imperial household (Philippians 4:22), it was not likely that a man in his position should remain ignorant of the teacher whose influence was spreading so widely. If the friend and companion of the prisoner bore the same name as the nephew of the philosopher, that coincidence would help to attract attention. If, as the coincidence itself suggests, there had been any previous connection between the two, we have an hypothesis into which all the facts of the case fit in with an almost surprising symmetry. The poet Lucan, we may note, was born A.D. 39. The date of St. Luke’s birth we have no materials for fixing, but the impression left by the facts of the case is that he was about the same age as St. Paul,[11] and therefore older than the poet by thirty or forty years. Was the one named after the other? And does this imply a connection of the whole family with the beloved physician? This, it is obvious, would give an additional support to the superstructure of inferences already raised.[12]

[10] It follows from this that the Evangelist cannot be identified, as some have thought, with Lucius of Cyrene, who is mentioned as prominent among the prophets and teachers at Antioch (Acts 13:1), or the Lucius who is named as a kinsman of St. Paul’s (Romans 16:21). If that identification had been possible, the traditional fame of Cyrene for its School of Medicine (Herod. iii. 131), would have had a special interest in connection with St. Luke’s calling.

[11] St. Paul, e.g., never speaks of him as he does of younger disciples, like Timothy or Titus, as his “child,” or “son, in the faith.”

[12] ‘Lucan, as has been said above, was born at Cordova. Now, it is remarkable that when St. Paul was planning an extended journey with St. Luke as his companion, Spain, and not Rome, was to be its ultimate goal (Romans 15:28). That country had a large element of Jews in its population in the third and fourth centuries, and it is probable that they had settled there, as in Cyrene and Carthage, from an early period of the Dispersion. Cordova, as one of the chief seats of Roman culture, was certain to attract them, and we find it at a later period one of the chief seats of mediæval Rabbinism, with a fame already traditional. Another point of some interest still remains to be noticed. The poet was a fellow-pupil with Persius, under one of the great Stoic teachers of the time, L. Annæus Cornutus (the name is that of the gens of Seneca and Gallio), and Persius, as we have seen (Note on Mark 6), had at least some points of contact with the Herods.

The incidental mention of St. Luke’s name in Colossians 4:14, places us on more solid ground. He is emphatically distinguished from “those of the circumcision”—Mark and others who are named in Colossians 4:10-11. He was, i.e., a Gentile by birth, and this fact, it is obvious, is important on all the questions affecting his relations with the Apostle of the Gentiles, and the aim and characteristic features of his writings.

The fact that he was “a physician” suggests other inferences. That profession in the early days of the Empire was filled almost exclusively by freedmen, or the sons of freedmen (the Libertini of Acts 6:9), who, shut out more or less completely from military or official life, were led to devote themselves to science, or art, or literature. The well-known list of the members of the household of the Empress Livia, the wife of Augustus, compiled from the Columbarium,[13] a sepulchre which was opened at Rome in A.D. 1726, presents many examples of names with the word medicus attached to them; among them may be noted that of Tyrannus, the name which appears in Acts 19:9 as the owner of the “school” or lecture-room at Ephesus, in which St. Paul received his disciples. Where, we ask, was one who made choice of that profession likely to seek for his education? The answer to that question leads us into yet a new region of coincidences. On the one hand, the town of Crotona, in Southern Italy, had a reputation of some centuries standing for its School of Medicine (Herod. iii. 131), and this would fall in with the hypothesis of the Evangelist’s Lucanian origin. On the other, of all the medical schools of the time, there were none that stood higher in reputation than that of Tarsus, and few that stood so high. The leading physicians of the time, Aretæus the Cappadocian, Dioscorides of Anazarba in Cilicia, Athenæus of the Cilician Attaleia, could hardly have received their training elsewhere. Within a few miles of Tarsus, at Ægæ, on the coast of Cilicia, was a great Temple of Æsculapius, which, as resorted to by sick persons from all countries who came to consult the priests of the Temple (the Asclepiadæ, i.e., the guild or brotherhood of Æsculapius), offered the nearest analogue to a modern hospital, as a place for observation and practice. If Tarsus were thus the place, or one of the places, to which Luke went to gain his professional knowledge and experience, we have again what explains many of the facts, more or less perplexing, in the Apostolic history. There is no record of St. Paul’s first meeting with him, or of his conversion to the faith. If, with almost all interpreters of repute, we see in the sudden use of the first person plural in Acts 16:10 a proof of companionship then beginning between the writer of the book and the Apostle whose labours he narrates, the naturalness with which it comes in must be admitted as primâ facie evidence of previous acquaintance. But there were other names at that time connected with Tarsus which have an interest for the Christian student. All that we read in the Acts suggests the thought that the Cypriot Jew, the Levite, Joses Barnabas, the Son of Consolation, received his education at Tarsus, and there learnt to love and honour the tent-maker Rabbi, for the reality of whose conversion he was the first to vouch (Acts 9:27), to whom he turned when his work pressed hard on him, as the fellow-labourer most like-minded with himself (Acts 11:25), the separation from whom, when they parted, brought with it a bitterness which is hardly intelligible, except on the assumption of a previous affection that was now wounded to the quick (Acts 15:39). Not altogether, again, without some points of contact with St. Luke, is the fact that the great geographer Strabo, a native of Cappadocia, whose full description of Tarsus (Geogr. xiii. p. 627) is obviously based upon personal observation, may have visited that city about A.D. 17, and on the supposition, either of actual contact, or of the attention called to his writings among the students of what we may well call the University of Tarsus, we may legitimately trace his influence as working indirectly in the uniform accuracy of all the incidental geographical notices that occur in St. Luke’s Gospel and in the Acts. (See the Notes on those books.) At Tarsus also, at or about the same period, was to be seen another conspicuous character of the time, the great wonder-working impostor, Apollonius of Tyana, whose life was afterwards published as a counterfeit and rival parallel to that of Christ, and in whom St. Luke might have seen the great prototype of all the “workers with curious arts,” with their books of charms and incantations, whom he describes as yielding to the mightier power of St. Paul (Acts 19:11-12).

[13] The word means literally a “dove-cote,” and was applied to the sepulchre as consisting mainly of what we should call “pigeon-holes,” in each of which stood a small bin containing the ashes of the dead.

St. Luke’s character as a physician may be considered from three distinct points of view, each of which has a special interest of its own. (1) As influencing his style and language; (2) as affecting his personal relations with St. Paul; and (3) as giving him opportunities for acquiring the knowledge which we find in the books commonly ascribed to him. Each of these call for a special, though brief, notice.

(1) The differences of style in St. Luke’s Gospel as compared with the two that precede it, the proofs of a higher culture, the more rhythmical structure of his sentences, which are traceable even by the merely English reader, in such passages, e.g., as Luke 1:1-4, are in the Greek original conspicuous throughout, the only exceptions being the portions of his Gospel which, like Luke 1, from Luke 1:5, and Luke 2, are apparently translations from a lost Hebrew or Aramaic document. The use of technical phraseology is, in like manner, traceable in his mention of the “fevers (the word is plural in the Greek), and dysentery,” of which Publius was healed at Melita (Acts 28:8); in the “feet” (not the common πόδες, podes, but the more precise βάσεις, baseis) “and ankle bones” of Acts 3:7; in the “scales” that fell from St. Paul’s eyes (Acts 9:18); in the “trance,” or, more literally, ecstasy, connected with St. Peter’s vision (Acts 10:9-10), as brought on by the Apostle’s exposure to the noontide sun after long-continued fasting; in the special adjective used for “eaten of worms,” in Acts 12:23; in his notice of the “virtue,” or healing power, that flowed forth from our Lord’s body (Luke 8:46); and of the sweat in “clots,” or drops like as of blood, that issued from it in the Agony of Gethsemane (Luke 22:44).

(2) It is noticeable in tracing the connection of St. Paul and St. Luke, that on each occasion when the one joins the other for a time, it is after the Apostle had suffered in a more than common degree from the bodily infirmities that oppressed him. When they met at Troas, it was after he had been detained in Galatia by “the infirmity of his flesh” (Galatians 4:13). When the one joins the other in the voyage to Jerusalem, it is after St. Paul had had “the sentence of death” in himself, had been “dying daily,” had been “delivered from so great a death,” had been carrying about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus (2Corinthians 1:9; 2Corinthians 4:10-12; 2Corinthians 4:16). From that time St. Luke seems scarcely to have left his friend, except, perhaps, for short intervals; and the way in which St. Paul speaks of him as “the beloved physician,” makes it almost a matter of certainty that it was by his ministrations as a physician that he had made himself “beloved.” The constant companionship of one with St. Luke’s knowledge and special culture was sure, sooner or later, to affect St. Paul’s thoughts and language, and traces of this influence are to be found in many of the Epistles. Most of these are naturally more manifest in the Greek than in the English words; but we may note as examples the frequent use of the ideal of “health “as the standard of life and teaching, as seen in the phrases “sound,” or better, healthy, “doctrine” (ὑγιαινούσῃ) of 1Timothy 1:10; 1Timothy 6:3, 2Timothy 1:13; and in the “doting,” or better, diseased of 1Timothy 6:4; in the spread of error being like that of a gangrene or cancer (2Timothy 2:17); in the word for “puffed up,” which implies the delirium of a fever of the typhus type (τυφωθεὶς, typhôtheis) in 1Timothy 3:6; 1Timothy 6:4, 2Timothy 3:4; in the conscience seared, or better, cauterised, till it has become callous (1Timothy 4:2); in the malady of “itching ears” (2Timothy 4:3); in the “bodily exercise” or training (literally, the training of the gymnasium) that profiteth little (1Timothy 4:8); in the precept which enjoined on Timothy, as a means of keeping his mind in a state of equilibrium and purity, uncontaminated by the evil with which his office brought him into contact, to “drink no longer water” only, but “to use a little wine, for his stomach’s sake and his often infirmities” (1Timothy 5:23); in the judgment that a reckless disregard of the body is of no value as a remedy against what is technically called fulness (not “satisfying”) of the flesh (Colossians 2:23). These words are, in almost all cases, characteristic of the Greek of Hippocrates and other medical writers, and the same may be said of the Greek words used by St. Paul for “dung” (σκύβαλα—skyhala, Philippians 3:8), for “occasion” (ἀφορμὴν—aphormè, 1Timothy 5:14), for “gazing” or “looking earnestly” (ἀτενιζων, 2Corinthians 3:7-13 : the word is used twelve times by St. Luke, and by him only), for “charge” (1Timothy 1:3; 1Timothy 1:18), for “contention” (i.e., paroxysm) in Acts 15:39.

(3) It is obvious that in the East, then as now, the calling of a physician was a passport to many social regions into which it was otherwise difficult to find access. A physician of experience arriving in this or that city, would be likely to become acquainted, not with the poor only, but with men of official rank and women of the higher class. How far, and in what special way this helped St. Luke to obtain the information which he wanted for his Gospel, will call for inquiry further on. Here it will be enough to note that such channels of information were sure to be opened to him.

If, on the data that have been given, it is reasonable to suppose that St. Paul and St. Luke had met at Tarsus, it is almost a matter of certainty that their friendship was continued at Antioch. Here the tradition, given by Eusebius (Hist. iii. 4), that St. Luke was a resident in the latter city, agrees with the natural inference from the prominence which he gives to the Christian society there as the mother of all the Gentile churches (Acts 11:19-30), from his knowledge of the names of its pastors and teachers (Acts 13:1-3), from the fulness with which he relates the early stages of the great controversy with the Judaisers (Acts 15:1-3; Acts 15:22-35). From Antioch. however, accepting as before the natural conclusion from the change of pronouns, he must have gone to Troas (Acts 16:10), and probably begun or continued there his labours in the gospel, which in a later time won St. Paul’s glowing praise (2Corinthians 8:18).[14] Thence he went with St. Paul to Philippi, and, as far as we can judge, remained there during the whole period of the Apostle’s work at Corinth and Ephesus, the friend and guide of Lydia and Euodias, and Syntyche and other women who laboured with him in the gospel (Philippians 4:2-3), until after a visit to Corinth (2Corinthians 8:18), he joined him again, and the Apostle returned from his winter sojourn in that city at Philippi, was with him once more at Troas, sailed with him to Miletus, and so to Tyre and Ptolemais and Cæsarea, went up with him to Jerusalem, and remained with him or near him during his two years’ imprisonment under Felix or Festus (Acts 20-26). Then came the voyage to Italy, narrated with the graphic precision of an eye-witness, and throughout in the first person plural (Acts 27:1-44); then the shipwreck at Melita, and the arrival in Italy, and the two years (broken, perhaps, if we assume Luke, as seems probable, to be the “true yoke-fellow” of Philippians 4:3, by a short visit to Philippi) of the first imprisonment at Rome (Colossians 4:14; Philemon 1:24). Then came the last unrecorded missionary journey of St. Paul in Spain, Asia, Macedonia, Achaia,[15] during which St. Luke probably continued with him; and then we find him, the last clear glimpse we get, still at the side of his friend and master, when all others were proving time-serving and faithless (2Timothy 4:10). Beyond this we have nothing definite. Tradition, not earlier than the fourth century (Epiphanius, Hœr, 51), says that he preached in Italy, Gaul, Dalmatia, and Macedonia; that he was a painter as well as physician, and was specially famous for seven portraits of the Virgin; that he lived to the age of eighty-four; that he was crucified at Elæa on an olive tree, in the Peloponnesus; or, according to another story, died a natural death in Bithynia. His bones are related to have been brought to Constantinople from Patras in Achaia by order of the Emperor Constantine, and to have been deposited in the Church of the Apostles.

[14] There are, it is believed, no sufficient reasons for rejecting the reference of this passage to St. Luke. It is not meant that St. Paul speaks of his gospel as a book, but the physician was an Evangelist in the primitive as well as the later sense of the word, and no one was so likely to have been chosen by St. Paul to be one of the representatives of the Macedonian churches.

[15] The route of the Apostle may be inferred partly from his plans (Philippians 2:24; Philemon 1:22), partly from the reference to Asia in 2Timothy 1:15, Macedonia (1Timothy 1:3), Corinth (2Timothy 4:20). I have ventured to suggest Spain as also probable. It is hardly likely that St. Paul would have abandoned the strong desire which he expresses in Romans 15:24. And if there was, as has been shown to be probable, a personal connection between Luke and the family of Cordova, there would be fresh motives for his going there. Clement of Rome, it may be mentioned, speaks of him as having travelled to the furthest boundary of the West (Epist. ad Cor. C. 5), a phrase which would hardly have been used by a Roman writer of Rome itself. The tradition as to an evangelising journey into Spain became, as the years passed on, more and more definite, and was accepted by Epiphanius, Chrysostom. Jerome, and Theodoret.

II. The Authorship of the Gospel.—The two earliest witnesses to the existence of a Gospel recognised as written by St. Luke, are (1) Irenæus, and (2) the Muratorian Fragment. (See General Introduction on the Canon of the New Testament.) The former, dwelling on the necessity of there being neither more nor less than four Gospels, as there are four elements, four cardinal points, and the like, acknowledges St. Luke’s as one of the four. Pressing the analogy of the four symbolic figures of the Cherubim, he compares the Gospel which he names as Luke’s to the calf, as representing the priestly, sacrificial side of our Lord’s work. “As such,” he says, “it began with Zacharias burning incense in the Temple” (Adv. Hœr. ii.). In another passage he speaks of “Luke, the companion of Paul,” as having “written in a book the gospel which the latter preached” (Adv. Hœr. iii. 1). The Muratorian Fragment, which has suffered the loss of its first sentences, and so fails to give direct evidence as to St. Matthew and St. Mark, begins accordingly with St. Luke, mentioning, however, his Gospel as the third. What follows is interesting, though being, like the whole fragment, in the language of an obviously illiterate scribe, and presumably a translation from a Greek original, it is at once corrupt and obscure. The nearest approach to an intelligible rendering would be as follows:—“Luke the physician, after the ascension of Christ, when St. Paul had chosen him, as being zealous of what was just and right (juris studiosus), wrote in his own name, and as it seemed good to him (ex opinione, apparently with an implied reference to Luke 1:2). Yet he himself did not see the Lord in the flesh, and did what he did as he could best attain to it, and so he began his narrative from the birth of John.” The passage is every way important, as showing (1) the early identification of the writer of the third Gospel with Luke the physician; (2) the absence of any early tradition that he was one of the Seventy; (3) the fact that the first two chapters were part of the Gospel as known to the writer of the Fragment, or of the still older document which he translated. Papias, as far as the fragments of his writings that remain show, who names St. Matthew and St. Mark, is silent as to St. Luke. Justin, who does not name the writer of any Gospel, speaks of the “records of the Apostles, which are called Gospels,” as having been written either by Apostles themselves, or by those who followed them closely (using the same Greek word here as St. Luke uses in Luke 1:2), and cites in immediate connection with this the fact of the sweat that was as great drops of blood (Dial. 100 Tryph. c. 22). It seems all but certain from this that he had read the narrative of Luke 22:44 as we have it, and that he ascribed the authorship of it to a companion of the Apostles. So Tertullian, who recognises four Gospels, and four only, speaks of “John and Matthew as Apostles, of Luke and Mark as helpers of the Apostles (Cont. Marc. iv. 2); and Origen (in Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vi. 25) speaks of the Gospel according to St. Luke as being “cited and approved by Paul,” referring apparently to the expression “according to my Gospel” (Romans 2:16; Romans 16:25; 2Timothy 1:8), and to “the brother whose praise is in the Gospel,” in 2Corinthians 8:18-19.

III. The sources of the Gospel.—The question, Where did the writer of this Gospel collect his information, is obviously one of special interest. In St. Matthew we have, accepting the traditional authorship, personal recollection as a groundwork, helped by the oral or written teaching previously current in the Church. In St. Mark (see Introduction to that Gospel), We have substantially the same oral or written teaching, modified by the personal recollections of St. Peter. St. Luke, on the other hand, disclaims the character of an eye-witness (Luke 1:2), and confesses that he is only a compiler, claiming simply the credit of having done his best to verify the facts which he narrates. St. Paul, to whom he specially devoted himself, was, as far as personal knowledge went, in the same position as himself. Where, then, taking the facts of St. Luke’s life, as given above, was it probable that he found his materials?

(1) At Antioch, if not before, the Evangelist would be likely to come in contact with not a few who had been “eye-witnesses and ministers of the word.” Those who were scattered after the persecution that began with the death of Stephen (Acts 11:19), and the prophets who came from Jerusalem with Agabus (Acts 11:28), the latter probably forming part of the company of the Seventy (see Note on Luke 10:1), must have included some, at least, of persons so qualified. There, too, he must have met with Manaen, the foster-brother of the Tetrarch, and may have derived from him much that he narrates as to the ministry of the Baptist (Luke 3:1-20), our Lord’s testimony to him (Luke 7:18-34), the relation between Herod and Pilate, and the part which the former took in the history of the Crucifixion (Luke 23:5-12), the estimate which our Lord had passed upon his character (Luke 13:32). That acquaintance served probably, in the nature of things, to introduce him to a knowledge of the other members of the Herodian family, of whom we learn so much from him, and, of the Evangelists, from him only (Luke 3:1; Acts 12:1-25; Acts 25:13; Acts 26:32).

(2) During the years of St. Luke’s work at Troas and Philippi, there were, we may presume, but few such opportunities; but when he accompanied St. Paul on his last journey to Jerusalem, they must have been multiplied indefinitely. Mnason of Cyprus, the old disciple (a disciple from the beginning, as the word signifies, Acts 21:16), must have had much to tell him. During St. Paul’s stay at Cæsarea there was ample time for him to become acquainted with the current oral, or, as his own words imply, written teaching of the churches of Palestine, which formed the groundwork of what is common to him and the first two Gospels, as well as with the many facts that connect themselves with that city in the narrative of the Acts. We cannot, however, think of a man of St. Luke’s culture bent upon writing a history, because he was not satisfied with the “many” fragmentary records that he found already in circulation, resting at Cæsarea during the two years of St. Paul’s imprisonment without pushing his inquiries further. We may think of him accordingly as journeying in regions where he knew our Lord had worked, most of which lay within two or three days’ easy journey, while yet there was little record of His ministry there, and so collecting such facts as the raising of the widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7:11-17), the appearance of the risen Lord to the disciples at Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), the full record, peculiar to this Gospel, of His ministry and teaching in Peræa.

(3) The profession of St. Luke as a physician, probably also the character that he had acquired as the guide and adviser of the sisterhood at Philippi (see Notes on that Epistle), would naturally give him access to a whole circle of eye-witnesses who were not so likely to come within the range of St. Matthew and St. Mark. He alone mentions the company of devout women who followed Jesus during part, at least, of His ministry (Luke 8:2-3), and as he gives the names of the chief members of the company, it is natural to infer that he was personally acquainted with them. So far as they were sharers in the feelings of other women, we may believe, with hardly the shadow of a doubt, that they would dwell especially on all that connected itself with the childhood and youth of the Lord whom they had loved with such devout tenderness, that the bereaved mother whom St. John had taken to his own home (John 19:27)—sometimes, perhaps, in Galilee, sometimes in Jerusalem—would be the centre of their reverential love. From them, therefore, as those who would be sure to treasure up such a record, St. Luke may well have derived the narrative—obviously a translation from the Hebrew or Aramaic of Palestine—which forms the introduction to his Gospel (Luke 1, 2), and which is distinct in character and style from the rest of his Gospel. But informants such as these would be sure to treasure up also the special instances of our Lord’s tenderness and sympathy for women like themselves, and it is accordingly not more than a legitimate inference from the facts of human nature to trace to them such narratives as that of the woman that was a sinner (Luke 7:36-50), of the contrasted characters of the two sisters at Bethany (Luke 10:38-42), of the woman who cried out, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee . . .” (Luke 11:27),[16] of the daughters of Jerusalem who met their Lord on His way to Calvary (Luke 23:27-29), of those, again, who had come up from Galilee and who stood afar off beholding His death upon the cross (Luke 23:49), and of their buying spices and ointment for His entombment (Luke 23:56).

[16] It will be noted that our Lord’s words (Luke 23:29), “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps that never gave suck,” seem intended to remind those who heard them of the far-different benediction which one of them had once uttered.

On the whole, then, everything tends to the belief that St. Luke’s statement that he had carefully traced to their sources, as far as he could, the facts which he narrates, was no idle boast; that he had many and ample opportunities for doing so; and that he did this, as we have seen above, with the culture and discernment which his previous training was likely to have imparted. It is obvious, however, that coming, as he did, into the field of inquiry some thirty, or at least twenty, years or so after the events, many of the facts and sayings would reach him in a comparatively isolated form; and though there is an obvious and earnest endeavour to relate them, as he says, “in order,” it might not always be easy to ascertain what that order had actually been. And this is, in part at least, the probable explanation of the seeming dislocation of facts which we find on comparing his Gospel with those of St. Matthew and St. Mark. (See Notes on Matthew 8:1; Matthew 9:1.)

IV. The first readers of the Gospel.—St. Luke’s record differs in a very marked way from the other three in being addressed, or, as we should say, dedicated, to an individual. Who and what Theophilus was, we have but few data for conjecturing. The epithet “most excellent”—the same word as that used by Tertullus in addressing Felix (Acts 24:3)—implies social or official position of some dignity. The absence of that epithet in the dedication of the Acts indicates, perhaps, that the Evangelist had then come to be on terms of greater familiarity with him. The reference to Italian localities of minor importance, as places familiar to the reader as well as writer, in Acts 28:12-14, suggests the conclusion that he was of Latin, probably of Roman, origin; the fact that the Gospel was written for him in Greek, that he shared the culture which was then common to well nigh all educated Romans. He was a convert, accordingly, from the religion of Rome to that of Christ, though he may, of course, have passed through Judaism, as a schoolmaster leading him to Christ. The teaching which he had already received as a catechumen had embraced an outline of the facts recorded in the Gospel (Luke 1:3), and St. Luke wrote to raise the knowledge so gained to a standard of greater completeness. The name, it may be noted, was, like Timotheus, not an uncommon one. Among St. Luke’s contemporaries, it was borne by one of the Jewish high priests, the brother-in-law of Caiaphas (Jos. Ant. xviii. 4, § 3), who probably was responsible for St. Paul’s mission of persecution to Damascus, and by some official at Athens who was condemned for perjury by the Areopagus (Tacit. Ann. ii. 55). Beyond this all is conjecture, or tradition which dissolves into conjecture. He is said to have been, by this or that ecclesiastical writer, an Achæan, or an Alexandrian, or an Antiochian; he has been wildly identified by some modern critics, with one or other of the two persons thus named; it has been held by others that the name (= “one who loves God”) simply designated the ideal Christian reader whom St. Luke had in view.

It is, however, reasonable to infer that the Gospel, though dedicated to him, was meant for the wider circle of the class of which he was the representative, i.e., in other words, that it was meant to be especially a Gospel for the educated heathen. It will be seen in what follows, that this view is confirmed by its more prominent characteristics.

V. The characteristics of the Gospel.—(1) It has been said, not without some measure of truth, that one main purpose of the Acts of the Apostles was to reconcile the two parties in the Apostolic Church which tended to arrange themselves, with more or less of open antagonism, under the names of St. Peter and St. Paul, by showing that the two Apostles were substantially of one mind; that the former had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles (Acts 10:48), and had consented to the great charter of their freedom (Acts 15:7); that the latter had shown his reverence for the ceremonial law by twice taking on himself, wholly or in part, the vow of a Nazarite (Acts 18:18; Acts 21:26). Something of the same catholicity of purpose is to be found in the Gospel which bears St. Luke’s name. It was obviously natural that it should be so in the work of the friend of one who became as a Jew to Jews, and as a Greek to Greeks (1Corinthians 9:20). Thus we have the whole history of the first two chapters, and the genealogy in Luke 3, obviously meeting the tastes, in the first instance, of Jewish readers on the one side, and on the other the choice of narratives or teachings that specially bring out the width and universality of the love of God, the breaking down of the barriers of Jewish exclusiveness, the reference to the widow of Sarepta and Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4:26-27), the mission of the Seventy as indicating the universality of the kingdom (Luke 10:1), the pardon of the penitent robber (Luke 23:43), the parables of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37), of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Piece of Money, and the Prodigal Son (Luke 15); midway between the two, the story of Zacchæus, the publican, treated as a heathen, and yet recognised as a son of Abraham (Luke 19:9).

(2) In the Acts, again, especially in the earlier chapters, we note a manifest tendency in the writer to dwell on all acts of self-denial, and on the lavish generosity which made the life of the Apostolic Church the realisation, in part at least, of an ideal communism (Acts 2:44-45; Acts 4:32; Acts 4:37; Acts 6:1; Acts 9:36). So in the Gospel we recognise, over and above what he has in common with others, a principle of selection, leading him to dwell on all parts of our Lord’s teaching that pointed in the same direction. The parables of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:16-21), of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), of the Unjust Steward, with its direct and immediate application (Luke 16:1-14); the counsel to the Pharisees to “give alms,” and so to find a more than ceremonial purity (Luke 11:41); to His disciples to sell what they have and to seek for treasures in heaven (Luke 12:33); the beatitudes that fall on the poor and the hungry (Luke 6:20-21), are all instances of his desire to impress this ideal of an unselfish life upon the minds of his readers. Even in his account of the Baptist’s teaching, we find him supplying what neither St. Matthew nor St. Mark had given—the counsel which John gave to the people—“He that hath two coats let him impart to him that hath none” (Luke 3:11). In this also we may recognise the work of one who was like-minded with St. Paul. He, too, laboured with his own hands that he might minister to the necessities of others (Acts 20:34), and loved to dwell on the pattern which Christ had set when, “being rich, He for our sakes became poor” (2Corinthians 8:9), and praised those whose deep poverty had abounded to the riches of their liberality (2Corinthians 8:2). He, too, had learnt the lesson that a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth (Luke 12:15), and had been initiated into the mystery of knowing how, with an equal mind, to be full and to be hungry, to abound and to suffer need. (See Note on Philippians 4:12.) He, too, warns men against the deceitfulness of riches, and the hurtful lusts springing from them that plunge men in the abyss of destruction (1Timothy 6:9; 1Timothy 6:17).

Lastly, we cannot fail to note, as we read his Gospel, the special stress which he, far more than St. Matthew or St. Mark, lays upon the prayers of the Christ. It is from him we learn that it was as Jesus was “praying” at His baptism that the heavens were opened (Luke 3:21); that it was while He was praying that the fashion of His countenance was altered, and there came on Him the glory of the Transfiguration (Luke 9:29); that He was “raying” when the disciples came and asked Him to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1); that He had prayed for Peter that his faith might not fail (Luke 22:32). In the life of prayer, no less than in that of a self-chosen poverty, His was the pattern-life which His disciples were—each in his measure and according to his power—to endeavour to reproduce.

VI. Relations to St. Matthew and St. Mark.—It would be a fair summary of the account of the Gospel of St. Luke thus given, to say that it is in its universality, its tenderness, its spirit of self-sacrifice, pre-eminently the GOSPEL OF THE SAINTLY LIFE, presenting to us that aspect of our Lord’s ministry in which He appears as the great Example, no less than the great Teacher. In other words, since He is represented as at once holy, undefiled, and separate from sinners (Hebrews 7:26), and as able to have compassion on their infirmities (Hebrews 4:15), it is the Gospel of the Son of Man as the great High Priest of humanity in the human phase of that priesthood. It follows with a marvellous fitness upon the Gospel of St. Matthew, that had brought before us the portraiture of the true King and the true Scribe—upon that of St. Mark, in which we have seen the lineaments of the true Servant of the Lord. It prepares the way for that of St. John, which presents the Incarnate Word as manifesting His Eternal Priesthood in its sacrificial and mediatorial aspects. In its pervading tone and spirit, it is, as we have seen, essentially Pauline. In its language and style, however, it presents not a few affinities with an Epistle, the Pauline authorship of which is at least questionable, and which not a few have seen reason to look upon as the work of Apollos—the Epistle to the Hebrews. On this ground chiefly many critics, beginning with Clement of Alexandria (about A.D. 200), a man of wide and varied culture, have held that Epistle to have been the work of St. Luke, elaborating and polishing the thoughts of St. Paul (Euseb. Hist. vi. 14). It has, he says, speaking as a critic of style, “the same complexion “as the Acts. Other considerations, it is believed, outweigh the arguments based on that fact; but the resemblance is sufficient to indicate that there were some affinities connecting the two writers, and the most natural is that which supposes them both to have had an Alexandrian training, and to have formed their style upon the more rhetorical books of the later Hellenistic additions to the canon of the Old Testament, such as the Books of Maccabees as the model of history, and the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus for that of the more systematic treatment of doctrine. The points of resemblance between the Book of Wisdom and the Epistle to the Hebrews are indeed so numerous as to have suggested to the present writer the thought of identity of authorship.[17]

[17] The facts that bear upon St. Luke’s work, as the writer of the Acts of the Apostles, are naturally reserved for the Introduction to that Book.

It is, of course, obvious to remark that many of the facts referred to are found also in the other Gospels, and formed part of the current oral teaching out of which the first three Gospels grew. Admitting this, however, it is clear that the history of Apollos brought him specially within the range of those who were likely to be conversant with St. Luke’s teaching; and if we suppose him to have any written record before him, it is far more likely to have been the third Gospel than either the first or second. The two men, who were friends and companions of the same Apostle, were, at any rate, likely to have met and known each other, and if so it would not be strange that, with like character and like culture, there should be a reciprocal influence between them. Traces of that influence are to be found, it is believed, in the references in the Epistle to some of the passages which, though common to the other Gospels, are yet specially characteristic of this Gospel; to the temptations of the Son of Man as giving Him power to sympathise with sinners, though Himself without sin (Hebrews 4:15); to His prayers and supplications and strong crying (Hebrews 5:7-8); to His endurance of the cross, despising the shame (Hebrews 12:2); His endurance also of the contradiction of sinners (Hebrews 12:3); to His being the Mediator of a new covenant (Hebrews 12:24), the great Shepherd of the sheep (Hebrews 13:20).

The Gospel According to Luke

Introduction to the Writings of Luke

Legend has been busy with the name of Luke. The Greek Church, in which painting is regarded as a religious art, readily accepted the tradition which represented him as a painter, and the Greek painters carried it into Western Europe. A rude drawing of the Virgin, discovered in the Catacombs, with an inscription to the effect that it was one of seven painted by Luca, confirmed the popular belief that Luke the Evangelist was meant. According to the legend, he carried with him two portraits painted by himself - the one of the Saviour and the other of the Virgin - and by means of these he converted many of the heathen.

When we apply to historical sources, however, we find very little about this evangelist. He never mentions himself by name in the Gospel or in the Acts, and his name occurs in only three passages of the New Testament: Colossians 4:14; 2 Timothy 4:11, Plm 1:24.

That he was an Asiatic-Greek convert of Antioch, though resting upon no conclusive evidence, is supported by the fact that he gives much information about the church there (Acts 11:19, Acts 11:30; Acts 13:1-3; Acts 15:1-3, Acts 15:22, Acts 15:35); that he traces the origin of the name "Christian" to that city, and that, in enumerating the seven deacons of Jerusalem, he informs us of the Antiochian origin of Nicholas (Acts 6:5) without reference to the nationality of any of the others. That he was a physician and the companion of Paul are facts attested by Scripture, though his connection with Paul does not definitely appear before Acts 16:10, where he uses the first person plural. He accompanied Paul from Caesarea, through the shipwreck at Malta, to Rome, and remained there until his liberation. Tradition makes him to have died in Greece, and it was believed that his remains were transferred to Constantinople.

It has been assumed that he was a freedman, from the large number of physicians who belonged to that class, the Greeks and Romans being accustomed to educate some of their domestics in the science of medicine, and to grant them freedom in requital of services. Physicians often held no higher rank than slaves, and it has been noticed that contractions in as, like Lucas for Lucanus, were peculiarly common in the names of slaves.

His connection with Paul gave rise in the church, at a very early period, to the opinion that he wrote his Gospel under the superintendence of that apostle. While his preface says nothing about the Pauline sanction of his Gospel, the work, nevertheless, presents remarkable coincidences with Paul's epistles, both in language, ideas, and spirit. The Gospel itself sets forth that conception of Christ's life and work which was the basis of Paul's teaching. He represents the views of Paul, as Mark does of Peter. "There is a striking resemblance between the style of Luke and of Paul, which corresponds to their spiritual sympathy and long intimacy." Some two hundred expressions or phrases may be found which are common to Luke and Paul, and more or less foreign to other New Testament writers. Such, for instance, are:

Luke Paul ἀθετεῖν, reject, Luke 7:30; Luke 10:16. Galatians 2:21; Galatians 3:15; 1 Thessalonians 4:8 αἰχμαλωτίζειν, lead captive, Luke 21:24. Romans 7:23; 2 Corinthians 10:5 ἀνάγκη, Luke 14:18; in the phrase ἔχω ἀνάγκην, I must needs. 1 Corinthians 7:37 In the sense of distress, Luke 21:23. 1 Corinthians 7:26; 2 Corinthians 6:4 :; 2 Corinthians 12:10; 1 Thessalonians 3:7, and not elsewhere. ἀνακρίνειν, to examine judicially, Luke 23:14; Acts 12:19; Acts 28:18. 1 Corinthians 2:15; 1 Corinthians 4:3; 1 Corinthians 9:3; ten times in all in that epistle. ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν, from henceforth, Luke 1:48; Luke 5:10; Luke 12:52; Luke 22:69. 2 Corinthians 5:16. ἀπ' αἰῶνος, since the world began, Luke 1:70; Acts 3:21; Acts 15:18. Colossians 1:26; Ephesians 3:9. ἐγκακεῖν, to faint, Luke 18:1. 2 Corinthians 4:1, 2 Corinthians 4:16; Galatians 6:9; Ephesians 3:13; 2 Thessalonians 3:13. διερμηνεύειν, expound or interpret, Luke 24:27; Acts 9:36. 1 Corinthians 12:30; 1 Corinthians 14:5, 1 Corinthians 14:13, 1 Corinthians 14:27. ἐνδύσασθαι, endue, clothe, Luke 24:49, in the moral sense. Romans 13:12, Romans 13:14 :; 1 Corinthians 15:53; 2 Corinthians 5:3, etc. εἰ μήτι, except, Luke 9:13. 1 Corinthians 7:5; 2 Corinthians 13:5. ἐπιφαίνειν, to give light, shine, Luke 1:79; Acts 27:20. Titus 2:11; Titus 3:4. καταργεῖν, cumber, Luke 13:7. Romans 3:3, make without effect; make void; destroy; do away; bring to naught; twenty-six times in Paul. μεγαλύνειν, exalt, magnify, Luke 1:46, Luke 1:58; Acts 5:13; Acts 10:46; Acts 19:17. 2 Corinthians 10:15; Philippians 1:20. Both are fond of words characterizing the freedom and universality of gospel salvation. For example, χάρις, grace, favor, occurs eight times in the Gospel, sixteen in the Acts, and ninety-five in Paul. Ἔλεος mercy, six times in the Gospel and ten in Paul. Πίστις faith, twenty-seven times in the Gospel and Acts, and everywhere in Paul. Compare, also, δικαιοσύνἠ, righteousness ; δίκαιος, righteous; πνεῦμα ἅγιον, Holy Spirit; γνῶσις, knowledge.

They agree in their report of the institution of the Lord's Supper, both giving "This cup is the new covenant in my blood," for "This is my blood of the new covenant," and both adding, "in remembrance of me."

A few of the numerous instances of parallelism of thought and expression may also be cited:

Luke Paul Luke 4:22 Colossians 4:6; Ephesians 4:29 Luke 4:32 1 Corinthians 2:4 Luke 6:36 2 Corinthians 1:3; Romans 12:1 Luke 6:39 Romans 2:19 Luke 6:48 1 Corinthians 3:10 Luke 8:15 Colossians 1:10, Colossians 1:11 Luke 9:56 2 Corinthians 10:8 Luke 10:8 1 Corinthians 10:27 Luke 10:20 Philippians 4:3 Luke 10:21 1 Corinthians 1:19, 1 Corinthians 1:27 Luke 11:41 Titus 1:15 Luke 12:35 Ephesians 6:14 Luke 20:17, Luke 20:18 Romans 9:33 Luke's long residence in Greece makes it probable that he had Greek readers especially in mind. The same humanitarian and Gentile character of his writings, as distinguished from Jewish writings, appears in the Acts as in the Gospel. Of the Acts, although attempts have been made to assign its composition to Timothy and to Silas, and to identify Silas with Luke, the universal testimony of the ancient church, no less than the identity of style, declare Luke to be the author. About fifty words not found elsewhere in the New Testament are common to both books.

From a purely literary point of view Luke's Gospel has been pronounced, even by Renan, to be the most beautiful book ever written. He says: "The Gospel of Luke is the most literary of the gospels. Everywhere there is revealed a spirit large and sweet; wise, temperate, sober, and reasonable in the irrational. Its exaggerations, its inconsistencies, its improbabilities, are true to the very nature of parable, and constitute its charm. Matthew rounds a little the rough outlines of Mark. Luke does better: he writes. He displays a genuine skill in composition. His book is a beautiful narrative, well contrived, at once Hebraic and Hellenic, uniting the emotion of the drama with the serenity of the idyl....A spirit of holy infancy, of joy, of fervor, the gospel feeling in its primitive freshness, diffuse all over the legend an incomparably sweet coloring."

Luke is the best writer of Greek among the evangelists. His construction is rhythmical, his vocabulary rich and well selected, considerably exceeding that of the other evangelists. He uses over seven hundred words which occur nowhere else in the New Testament. He substitutes classical words for many which are used by Matthew and Mark, as λίμνη, lake, for θάλασσα, sea, when describing the lake of Galilee. He uses three distinct words for bed in the description of the healing of the paralytic (Luke 5:18), avoiding the vulgar κράββατος of Mark. The latter word, it is true, occurs in two passages in the Acts (Acts 5:15; Acts 9:33), but both these passages are Petrine. So, too, we find ἐπιστάτης master, instead of Rabbi; νομικοί, lawyers, for γραμματεῖς, scribes; ναὶ ἀληθῶς, ἐπ' ἀληθείας yea, truly, of a truth, for ἀμήν, verily; φόρος, tribute, for the Latin form, κῆνσος census. He uses several Latin words, as δηνάριον, denarius λεγεών, legion; σουδάριον, napkin; ἀσσάριον, farthing, though he avoids κοδράντης, farthing, in Luke 21:2 (compare Mark 12:42); μόδιος, bushel. He is less Hebraic than the other evangelists, except in the first two chapters - the history of the infancy - which he derived probably from Aramaic traditions or documents, and where his language has a stronger Hebrew coloring than any other portion of the New Testament. "The songs of Zacharias, Elizabeth, Mary, and Simeon, and the anthem of the angelic host, are the last of Hebrew psalms, as well as the first of Christian hymns. They can be literally translated back into the Hebrew without losing their beauty" (Schaff).

His style is clear, animated, picturesque, and unpretentious. Where he describes events on the authority of others, his manner is purely historical; events which have come under his own observation he treats in the minute and circumstantial style of an eye-witness. Compare, for instance, the detailed narrative of the events at Philippi with that of the occurrences at Thessalonica. The change of style at Acts 16:10, from the historical to the personal narrative, coincides with the time of his joining Paul at the first visit to Macedonia, and a similar change may be noted at Acts 20:4-6.

But the style of Luke also acquires a peculiar flavor from his profession. His language, both in the Gospel and in the Acts, indicates a familiarity with the terms used by the Greek medical schools, and furnishes an incidental confirmation of the common authorship of the two books. As we have seen, Luke was probably a Greek of Asia Minor; and, with the exception of Hippocrates, all the extant Greek medical writers were Asiatic Greeks. Hippocrates, indeed, can hardly be called an exception, as he was born and lived in the island of Cos, off the coast of Caria. Galen was of Pergamus in Mysia; Dioscorides, of Anazarba in Cilicia; and Aretaeus, of Cappadocia.

The medical peculiarities of Luke's style appear, first, in words and phrases used in descriptions of diseases or of miracles of healing. His terms are of the technical character peculiar to a medical man. Thus, in the account of the healing of Simon's wife's mother (Luke 4:38, Luke 4:39), we read that she was taken (συνεχομένη) with a great fever (πυρετῷ μεγάλῳ). The word taken is used nine times by Luke, and only three times in the rest of the New Testament. It occurs frequently in this sense in the medical writers, as does also the simple verb ἔχω, to have or hold. Moreover, according to Galen, the ancient physicians were accustomed to distinguish between great and little fevers. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-26), we find εἱλκωμένος, full of sores, the regular medical term for to be ulcerated: ὀδυνῶμαι, to be in pain, occurs four times in Luke's writings, and nowhere else in the New Testament, but frequently in Galen, Aretaeus, and Hippocrates. Ἐξέψυξε, gave up the ghost (Acts 5:5, Acts 5:10), is a rare word, used by Luke only, and occurring only three times in the New Testament. It seems to be almost confined to medical writers, and to be used rarely even by them. In the proverb of "the camel and the needle's eye," Matthew and Mark use for needle the vulgar word ῥαφίς, while Luke alone uses βελόνη, the surgical needle.

These terms will be pointed out in the notes as they occur. Second, the ordinary diction of the evangelist, when dealing with unprofessional subjects, has often a medical flavor, which asserts itself in words peculiar to him, or more common in his writings than elsewhere in the New Testament, and all of which were in common use among the Greek physicians. Thus Matthew (Matthew 23:4) says that the scribes and Pharisees will not move (κινῆσαι) the burdens they impose, with one of their fingers. Luke, recording a similar saying (Luke 11:46), says, "ye yourselves touch (προσψαύετε) not the burdens," using a technical term for gently feeling the pulse, or a sore or tender part of the body. The word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. "No mean city" (ἄσημος, Acts 21:39). The word mean, peculiar to this passage, is the professional term for a disease without distinctive symptoms, and is applied by Hippocrates to a city. "Delivered the letter" (ἀναδόντες, Acts 23:33). The verb occurs only here in the New Testament, and is a medical term for the distribution of blood through the veins, or of nourishment through the body. Hippocrates uses it of a messenger delivering a letter. In the parable of the sower, Matthew and Mark have ῥίζαν, "they have no root." Luke (Luke 8:6) has ίκμάδα, moisture, the medical term for the juices of the body, of plants, and of the earth. In the same parable, for sprung up Matthew and Mark have ἐξανέτειλε, while Luke has φυὲν - συμφυεῖσαι (Luke 8:6, Luke 8:7), it grew - grew with it (Rev.). These latter words are used by medical writers to describe the growth of parts of the body, of diseases, of vegetation, etc. Hippocrates uses together ἱκμάς, moisture, and φύεσθαι, to grow, comparing the juices of the body with those of the earth. Συμφύεσθαι, to grow together, was the professional word for the closing of wounds and ulcers, the uniting of nerves and of bones, and is used by Dioscorides precisely as here, of plants growing together in the same place.

Such peculiarities, so far from being strange or anomalous, are only what might naturally be expected. It is an every-day fact that the talk of specialists, whether in the professions or in mechanics, when it turns upon ordinary topics, unconsciously takes form and color from their familiar calling.

The attempt has been made to show that Paul's style was influenced by Luke in this same direction; so that his intercourse with his companion and physician showed itself in his use of certain words having a medical flavor. Dean Plumptre cites as illustrations of this, ὑγιαίνειν, to be healthy, in its figurative application to doctrine as wholesome or sound (1 Timothy 1:10; 1 Timothy 6:3; 2 Timothy 1:13): γάγγραινα, canker (2 Timothy 2:17): τυφωθεὶς, lifted up with pride; Rev., puffed up (1 Timothy 3:6; 1 Timothy 6:4): κεκαυτηριασμένων, seared; Rev., branded (1 Timothy 4:2): κνηθόμενοι, itching (2 Timothy 4:3): ἀποκόψονται, cut themselves off (Galatians 5:12).

Luke is also circumstantial, as well as technical, in his descriptions of diseases; noting their duration and symptoms, and the stages of the patient's recovery, etc. See Acts 3:1-8; Acts 9:40, Acts 9:41. The successive stages of Elymas' blindness are noted at Acts 13:11; and the process of Saul's restoration to sight at Acts 9:18. He also exhibits traces of professional sensitiveness, as in his omission of Mark's implied reflection upon the physicians who had treated the woman with the issue of blood (Luke 8:43; Mark 5:26).

Luke's accurate observation and memory appear especially in the Acts, in his allusions, and in his descriptions of nautical and political matters. With nautical details, he exhibits the acquaintance often displayed by a landsman who has been much at sea and in frequent intercourse with seamen. It has been conjectured that at some period of his professional life he may have served as a surgeon on shipboard. In his political allusions he is precise in the use of terms. Thus, in Acts 13:7, his accuracy in naming the civil magistrates is noteworthy. He speaks of Sergius Paulus as the proconsul of Cyprus. Consuls were called by the Greeks ὕπατοι; and hence a proconsul was ἀνθύπατος, one who acts instead of (ἀντὶ) a consul. Roman provinces were of two classes, senatorial and imperial; and the proper title of the governor of a senatorial province was ἀνθύπατος. The governor of an imperial province was called ἀντιστράτηγος, propraetor. Evidently, therefore, Luke regarded Cyprus as a senatorial province, governed by a proconsul; and we find that Augustus, though at first he reserved Cyprus for himself, and consequently governed it by a propraetor, afterward restored it to the senate and governed it by a proconsul - a fact confirmed by coins of the very time of Paul's visit to Cyprus, bearing the name of the emperor Claudius, and of the provincial governor, with the title ἀνθύπατος. So Luke speaks of Gallio (Acts 18:12)as proconsul (A. V., deputy) of Achaia, which was a senatorial province. When he comes to Felix or Festus, who were only deputy-governors of the propraetor of Syria, he calls them by the general term ἡγεμών, governor (Acts 23:24; Acts 26:30). Similarly accurate is his designation of Philippi as a colonia (Acts 16:12), and his calling its magistrates στρατηγοί or praetors, a title which they were fond of giving themselves. So the city authorities of Thessalonica are styled πολιτάρχαι, rulers of the city (Acts 17:8); for Thessalonica was a free city, having the right of self-government, and where the local magistrates had the power of life and death over the citizens. Luke's accuracy on this point is borne out by an inscription on an archway in Thessalonica, which gives this title to the magistrates of the place, together with their number - seven - and the very names of some who held the office not long before Paul's time. This short inscription contains six names which are mentioned in the New Testament. We may also note the Asiarchs, chiefs of, Asia, at Ephesus (Acts 19:31), who, like the aediles at Rome, defrayed the charge of public amusements, and were, as presidents of the games, invested with the character of priests.

A similar accuracy appears in the Gospel in the dates of more important events, and in local descriptions, as of the Lord's coming to Jerusalem across the Mount of Olives (Luke 19:37-41). Here he brings out the two distinct views of Jerusalem on this route, an irregularity in the ground hiding it for a time after one has just caught sight of it. Verse Luke 19:37 marks the first sight, and Luke 19:41 the second.

In the narrative of the voyage and shipwreck, the precision of detail is remarkable. Thus there are fourteen verbs denoting the progression of a ship, with a distinction indicating the peculiar circumstances of the ship at the time. Seven of these are compounds of πλέω, to sail. Thus we have ἀπέπλευσαν, sailed away (Acts 13:4); βραδυπλοοῦντες, sailing slowly (Acts 27:7); ὑπεπλεύσαμεν, sailed under (the lee). So, also, παραλεγόμενοι, hardly passing (Acts 27:8); εὐθυδρομήσαμεν, ran with a straight course (Acts 16:11), etc. Note also the technical terms for lightening the ship by throwing overboard the cargo: ἐκβολὴν ἐποιοῦντὄ; literally, made a casting out (Acts 27:19); ἐκούφιζον, lightened (Acts 27:38); and the names of various parts of the vessel.

Luke's Gospel is the gospel of contrasts. Thus Satan is constantly emphasized over against Jesus, as binding a daughter of Abraham; as cast down from heaven in Jesus' vision; as entering into Judas; as sifting Peter. The evangelist portrays the doubting Zacharias and the trusting Mary; the churlish Simon and the loving sinner; the bustling Martha and the quiet, adoring Mary; the thankful and the thankless lepers; the woes added to the blessings in the Sermon on the Mount; the rich man and Lazarus; the Pharisee and the Publican; the good Samaritan and the priest and Levite; the prodigal and his elder brother; the penitent and impenitent thieves.

Luke's is the universal gospel. His frequent use of words expressing the freedom and universality of the Gospel has already been noted. His Gospel is for the Gentiles. The genealogy of Christ is traced back to the common father of the race, Adam, instead of to Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, as by Matthew. He records the enrolment of Christ as a citizen of the Roman empire. Simeon greets him as a light for revelation to the Gentiles. The Baptist cites concerning him Isaiah's prophecy that all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Luke alone records the mission of the seventy, who represent the seventy Gentile nations, as the twelve represent the twelve tribes of Israel. He alone mentions the mission of Elijah to the heathen widow, and Naaman's cleansing by Elisha. He contrasts the gratitude of the one Samaritan leper with the thanklessness of the nine Jewish lepers. He alone records the refusal to call down fire on the inhospitable Samaritans, and the parable of the Good Samaritan is peculiar to him. He notes the commendation of the humble Publican in contrast with the self- righteous Pharisee, and relates how Jesus abode with Zacchaeus. He omits all reference to the law in the Sermon on the Mount. Luke's is the gospel of the poor and outcast. As a phase of its universality, the humblest and most sinful are shown as not excluded from Jesus. The highest heavenly honor is conferred on the humble Mary of Nazareth. Only in Luke's story do we hear the angels' song of "Peace and good-will," and see the simple shepherds repairing to the manger at Bethlehem. It is Luke who gives the keynote of Keble's lovely strain:

"The pastoral spirits first

Approach thee, Babe divine,

For they in lowly thoughts are nurs'd,

Meet for thy lowly shrine:

Sooner than they should miss where thou dost dwell,

Angels from heaven will stoop to guide them to thy cell."

He pictures poor Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, and the calling of the poor and maimed and halt and blind to the great supper. It is the gospel of the publican, the harlot, the prodigal, the penitent thief.

Luke's is the gospel of womanhood. Woman comes prominently into view as discerning God's promises. The songs of Mary and Elizabeth, and the testimony of Anna, are full of a clear spiritual perception, no less than of a living and simple faith. She appears as ministering to the Lord and as the subject of his ministries. Mary of Magdala, Joanna, Susanna, Mary and Martha, with others, lavish upon him their tender care; while the daughter of Abraham whom Satan had bound, the sorrowful mother at Nain, she who touched the heat of his garment, and the weeping daughters of Jerusalem on the road to Calvary knew the comfort of his words and the healing and life-giving virtue of his touch. The word γυνὴ, woman, occurs in Matthew and Mark together forty-nine times, and in Luke alone forty-three. "He alone," says Canon Farrar, "preserves the narratives, treasured with delicate reserve and holy reticence in the hearts of the blessed Virgin and of the saintly Elizabeth - narratives which show in every line the pure and tender coloring of a woman's thoughts."

Luke's is the prayer-gospel. To him we are indebted for the record of our Lord's prayers at his baptism; after the cleansing of the leper; before the call of the twelve; at his transfiguration; and on the cross for his enemies. To him alone belong the prayer-parables of the Friend at Midnight, and the Unjust Judge.

Luke's is the gospel of song. He has been justly styled "the first Christian hymnologist." To him we owe the Benedictus, the song of Zacharias; the Magnificat, the song of Mary; the Nunc Dimittis, the song of Simeon; the Ave Maria, or the angel's salutation; and the Gloria in Excelsis, the song of the angels.

And, finally, Luke's is the gospel of infancy. He alone tells the story of the birth of John the Baptist; he gives the minuter details of the birth of Christ, and the accounts of his circumcision and presentation in the temple, his subjection to his parents and the questioning with the doctors. His Gospel "sheds a sacred halo and celestial charm over infancy, as perpetuating the paradise of innocence in a sinful world. The first two chapters will always be the favorite chapters for children, and all who delight to gather around the manger of Bethlehem, and to rejoice with shepherds in the field and angels in heaven" (Schaff).

List of Greek Words Used by Luke Only

ἀγκάλη arm Luke 2:28 ἁγνισμός purification Acts 21:26 &#

CHAPTER 1.

THE EARLY HISTORY.