Introduction to Luke

Title and authorship

The book does not name its author. It opens instead with something no other Gospel has: a formal preface, four verses of polished Greek in the manner of the histories of that world, addressed to a named reader Luke 1:1–4.

What the preface claims is modest and exact. The writer is not an eyewitness — he distinguishes himself from those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses Luke 1:2 and describes his own work as following all things closely and setting them in order. He has predecessors, many of them, who had already drawn up accounts Luke 1:1. He is a researcher working with testimony, and he says so before he says anything else.

A second volume is addressed to the same Theophilus and refers back to the first book about all that Jesus began to do and teach Acts 1:1, so the two are one work in two parts by one hand. In that second volume the narrative shifts without warning into the first person plural — we sought to go out to Macedonia Acts 16:10 — and stays there through several stretches to the voyage to Rome. Whoever wrote both books was, for part of the story, in the company he is describing.

Beyond that the text is silent, and the silence is left. The letters name a companion of Paul, the beloved physician Colossians 4:14, who is with him to the end 2 Timothy 4:11, and the early church attached his name to this Gospel with a uniformity it did not show on every question. That is what there is; the book itself is content to be an ordered account by someone who checked.

Date

The preface places the work after many earlier accounts were already circulating Luke 1:1, which puts it some distance into the period when the eyewitnesses were still available to be consulted but no longer the only source.

The firmest internal marker is in the second volume rather than this one. Acts ends with Paul in Rome, two years into a rented house, awaiting a hearing that is never reported Acts 28:30–31. A writer who followed that story to its last recorded day and stopped there had, on the plain reading, no outcome to record yet. Neither volume mentions the fall of Jerusalem, the death of Paul, or the death of James — events a historian tracing the gospel's road from Galilee to Rome would have found hard to leave out had they already happened.

That argument points to the early sixties for the second volume, and therefore earlier for this one. It is an argument from silence and is held as such. What can be said without qualification is that this Gospel was written while its sources could still be questioned, which is precisely the ground the preface stands on.

Backgrounds

The reader is a Gentile, and so is the horizon. Theophilus is given a Greek name and a title of rank, most excellent Luke 1:3, the same address used to two Roman governors later Acts 24:3 Acts 26:25. Hebrew terms are explained or replaced, Judean geography is located for outsiders, and the genealogy runs back past Abraham to Adam and to God Luke 3:38 — a line that includes everybody rather than one that establishes a claim.

The story is dated into world history. No other Gospel does what chapter three does: six rulers named at once, from Tiberius Caesar down to the high priests, with the fifteenth year of a reign as the anchor Luke 3:1–2. The birth is placed by a census and an emperor Luke 2:1–2. This is a writer insisting that what he describes happened in a datable place under identifiable officials.

The Greek changes register on purpose. The preface is classical and periodic; from Luke 1:5 the language turns and reads like the Greek Old Testament, full of the rhythms of Samuel and Kings. A reader coming from the Septuagint into chapters one and two hears the older Scriptures resuming.

The people the other accounts pass over are here in force. Women are named and given speech throughout — Elizabeth, Mary, Anna, the widow of Nain, the women who financed the work out of their own means Luke 8:1–3, Martha and Mary. So are Samaritans, tax collectors, shepherds, lepers and the poor. This is the Gospel with the rich fool, the rich man at his gate, and a Magnificat that empties thrones.

The geography is a spine. Nearly ten chapters are held inside a journey that begins when he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem Luke 9:51 and ends as he goes up to the city Luke 19:28. Much of the material found nowhere else sits inside that stretch. And the whole book begins and ends in the temple.

The first two chapters are built as a diptych. John and Jesus are announced, born, named and sung over in matching parts, and the panels are interleaved rather than told one after the other — Mary hears Gabriel before Elizabeth gives birth, so the two children are held in view together throughout. The same angel brings both announcements in the same form, and the two questions put to him are answered oppositely: one with silence imposed Luke 1:20, one with a sign given and a servant's consent Luke 1:38. The pattern is the argument. John is given every honor the older order can carry, and each panel about him is capped by its counterpart, so that the greater of the two is established by comparison rather than by assertion.

Theology and purpose

The stated aim is certainty about what was already believed. That you might know the certainty concerning the things in which you were instructed Luke 1:4. Theophilus has been taught; what this book adds is solid ground under the teaching. Everything else in it serves that.

Salvation reaches all flesh. Where the other accounts quote Isaiah's voice in the wilderness and stop, this one runs the quotation on to its last line — all flesh will see God's salvation Luke 3:6 Isaiah 40:5. Simeon holds an infant and calls him a light for revelation to the nations Luke 2:32. A Samaritan is the hero of the best-known parable in Scripture, and a Samaritan is the one leper of ten who comes back.

The order of the world is inverted, and it is not a metaphor. The Magnificat brings down princes and exalts the lowly, fills the hungry and sends the rich away empty Luke 1:52–53. The blessings have matching woes Luke 6:24–26. A rich man dies and a beggar is carried to Abraham. The theme is announced by a village girl in chapter one and worked out for twenty-three chapters.

Prayer, the Spirit, and joy run through it. He prays at his baptism, before choosing the twelve, before Peter's confession, on the mountain, in the garden, and from the cross — most of these recorded here alone. The Spirit fills Elizabeth, Zechariah, Simeon and John before the ministry begins. And the book sings: four canticles in the first two chapters, and it ends with the disciples continually in the temple, praising God Luke 24:53.

What happened was necessary, and it was written. The risen Christ on the Emmaus road says the Messiah had to suffer these things and opens the Scriptures from Moses and all the prophets Luke 24:26–27. The word for that necessity recurs through the book. Nothing in the story is an accident that God then repaired.

Additional notes

Note — Luke and the other accounts. Much of what this Gospel narrates is also told in Mark and in Matthew, often more briefly and in the same order; where that is so, what repays attention is what Luke's telling carries that the others do not, and Luke's fullest work is in the material they do not contain at all — the first two chapters, most of the long journey to Jerusalem, and the road to Emmaus. Scripture nowhere states which Gospel was written first, and the early church's ordering testimony is not uniform.

Note — the two genealogies. This one runs from Jesus backward to Adam through Nathan; the other runs from Abraham forward through Solomon Luke 3:23–38 Matthew 1:1–17, and the lists differ between David and Joseph. The honest accounts are ordinary: one may follow legal succession to the throne and the other physical descent, or one may trace Mary's line. Scripture does not say which, and nothing is gained by insisting.

Note — the census. Luke 2:1–2 dates the birth by a registration under Quirinius, and the dating has long been questioned because a well-known census under that governor falls later. Several readings are available — an earlier registration, a second term of office, or the sense before Quirinius was governor, which the Greek will carry. The evidence does not settle it, and a writer this careful about six rulers in Luke 3:1–2 is not likely to have been careless in Luke 2:2.

Note — where the English translations divide. Three passages in this Gospel are printed differently in different English Bibles: the sweat like blood in the garden Luke 22:43–44, the prayer from the cross Luke 23:34, and the closing words about the ascension Luke 24:51–52. Each is treated where it stands, on what the text before us says.

Outline

How the book is built

Beginning and ending in the temple inclusio 1:8-24:53

• A 1:8-10 A priest burns incense in the sanctuary while the whole multitude prays outside.
• A′ 24:53 The disciples are continually in the temple, blessing and praising God.

Derived from the book's own opening and closing scenes. The narrative proper begins with a priest inside the sanctuary at the hour of incense while the people pray outside Luke 1:8–10, and it ends with the disciples continually in the temple praising God Luke 24:53 — the same building, the same act, and the people now inside it. Between the two the temple recurs at every hinge: the child presented there Luke 2:22, the boy left behind in it Luke 2:46, the last temptation set on its pinnacle Luke 4:9, the tax collector praying in it Luke 18:13, the journey ending when he enters and clears it Luke 19:45, and the final week taught in it daily Luke 21:37–38. No other Gospel frames itself this way, and the frame is what turns the last verse from a postscript into an answer: the prayer offered outside in chapter one is being made inside at the end.

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