Papyrus Page from Gospel of Luke c. 220
The Gospel According to LukeDrawing Up an Account
"This phrase ['servants of the word'] is striking. In numerous passages in Acts, Luke sums up the content of the Christian proclamation as 'the word', 'the word of God' or 'the word of the Lord', and in one verse (15:7) as 'the word of the gospel'. Luke has not merely received records of past events, but the 'word of God', the Christian Gospel, and it is this which he intends to transmit to Theophilus."
"The term
diehghsiV, a narrative account, was often used in classical and Hellenistic Greek literature of historical writing, even though it was not so confined. Plato (Republic) used it of an account of things past, present and future. Aristotle (Retorica) of the past. The orator Isocrates used the related verb
diegeisqai in the sense of narrating past achievements. The letter of Aristeas used it three times, of the narrative of the author's visit to Eleazar the high priest. Josephus also uses it in the sense of an account about the Jews who returned from the Babylonian captivity and he often describes his own writing precisely with this term. In his Life he relates the word specifically to the writing of history. The same relationship is known to Plutarch [
istoria kai diehghsiV] and to Lucian. Compare the use of it in 2 Macc 2:32, at the end of the epiotemists prologue, also 6:17. Etymologically, it would denote a composition that 'leads through to an end', a comprehensive story which aims at being something more than a mere collection of notes or a compilation of anecdotes."
Defining
diehghsiV as a "narrative account" eliminates sayings lists like Q or Thomas as sources for Luke and restricts the possibilities to narrative gospels like Mark and Matthew. Mahlon Smith disagrees and argues that this defintion is too narrow. "From what Luke says in his his prologue, I conclude that he did not leave Theophilos to 'reconcile' the works of any predecessor (Mark, Matthew, Signs Gospel, Q, Thomas or whoever) with his own. Luke's claims that he personally had followed everything precisely (
akribwV) and was writing about things in sequence (
kaqexhV) so that Theophilos would recognize the certainty (
asfaleia) of what he'd learned clearly indicates that he intended his work to replace all previous sources."
"Oral traditions of Jesus' sayings did not die out as soon as Matthew (or Mark) committed them to papyrus. Luke will have creatively interacted with such oral traditions in the composition of his Gospel and this may have meant, on occasion, that he bears witness to a different, or more original form of a Jesus saying."
Borrowing from Mark
"...When comparing Luke with Matthew, every time Matthew changed Mark to make it more traditionally orthodox, and thus more pleasing to his more conservative Jewish audiences, Luke left the text the way Mark originally had written it."
The author of Luke "took Mark as his guide to the basic framework of the gospel, following the order and main substance of Mark's pericopes in the first third and final third of his book, though seldom following his actual wording." There are fourteen passages showing no prima facie evidence of common origin with Mark. These include:
Matthew or Q?
". . Instead of inserting great blocks of discourse into the narrative [like Matthew], Luke more subtly interweaves deeds and sayings'."
"It has been my opinion, based on the readings of Luke against Matthew, that Luke was Aramaic competent and used Aramaic sources which he translated to Greek, often clarifying Aramaic idioms not expressed normally in Greek. I do not think the Syrian Matthean scribe was Aramaic competent and hence used the LXX [Septuagint] for his OT references and a Greek translation of the Aramaic 'source' which may have been Kloppenberg's 'Q1' [the hypothetical first layer of Q]." A number of New Testament scholars question Q's existence. Several argue that, instead, Luke used Matthew as a source (in addition to Mark). The author of Luke used did not half-way disguised "his copying from Matthew. In his parable of the pounds, for instance, he changed talents to pounds and put the parable in a different context. Within our context of Lucan dependence upon Matthew, the instructions to the seventy comes from Matthew's instructions to the twelve; Luke's parable of the Great Supper is in quite a different context from Matthew's parable of the Rejected Invitation and with different punch lines, though exhibiting unmistakable dependence; Luke's Woes against the Lawyers bears an unmistakable connection to Matthew's Woes against the scribes and Pharisees, but takes only some of them and in different order. Luke's parable of the fig tree is in totally different context than Matthew's.
"Matthew he [the author of Luke] seems to have used in a minor way to provide some supplementary information in the early part of the book. (That he used so little of Matthew would not be surprising a) if Luke intended his gospel to supplement rather than to replace the earlier work, and b) if he was hard pressed for space.) In addition he had a great quantity of new material, not only the commonly recognized L-material, but a different account of the Great Sermon and of the healing of the centurion's boy, the whole Central Section and the parable of the pounds; and he probably had his own version of the eschatological discourse and the passion narrative prior to his final composition of the gospel."
"When one writer is copying the work of another, changes are sometimes made at the beginning of an account which are not sustained throughout - the writer lapses into docile reproduction of his / her source. This phenomenon of 'fatigue' is a tell-tale sign of a writer's dependence on a source. Matthew, for example, correctly calls Herod
tetrarchV ('tetrarch') in 14.1, only to lapse into calling him the less correct
basileuV ('king') in 14.9, apparently reproducing Mark (6.26) who has called him
basileuV ('king') throughout. Likewise, Luke re-sets the scene for the Feeding of the Five Thousand in 'a city called Bethsaida' (
polewV kaloumenhV Bhqsaida, Luke 9.10) only to lapse into the Markan wording later, 'We are here in a deserted place' (
wde en eremw topw esmen, Luke 9.12, cf. Mark 6.35). Mahlon H. Smith disagrees that Luke used Matthew as a source (or vice-versa). "The latter conclusion is confirmed by both "The theory of Austin Farrer, now championed by Michael Goulder --- that Luke also knew and valued the text of Mark ---, would account for Luke's general pattern of abandoning Matthean constructions in most of the triple tradition. But it does not provide a cogent explanation of Luke's retention of an occasional inconsequential Matthean word or phrase in a passage that otherwise is closer to Mark. It may explain the handful of pericopes where the substance of Luke's text is closer to Matthew than to Mark. But the Farrer-Goulder thesis does not provide a convincing explanation of why
"(i) If Luke has used Matthew, what has happened to Matthew's' five impressive discourses? On this view, a small part of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount in Chapters 5-7 reappears in Luke 6:20-49, but the rest of the material is either scattered (apparently haphazardly) right through Luke's gospel and set in very different contexts or it is omitted completely. Matthew's second discourse in chapter 10 reappears in no fewer than seven different chapters in Luke!" "(ii) If Luke has used Matthew, we would expect him to have adopted some to the expansions and modifications Matthew makes to Mark. But hardly a trace of them can be found in Luke. On this alternative to the Q hypothesis, where Matthew and Mark have the same tradition, Luke opts for Mark's version and ignores Matthew's, and at the same time he rearranges Matthew very considerably. Why did Luke find Matthew so unattractive, when in almost all other parts of early Christianity it became the favorite gospel?" "(iii) Luke has abbreviated Matthew's version both of the Lord's Prayer and of the Beatitudes. Why should Luke wish to do this?" "(iv) After the temptations of Jesus (Matthew 4:1-11 - Luke 4:1-13), Luke and Matthew never use the non-Marcan sayings they share (i.e. 'Q') in the same Marcan context. If Luke has used Matthew, then he has carefully removed every non-Marcan (Q) saying from the Marcan context it has in Matthew and placed it in a different context!" "(v) On the whole he [Luke] has retained Mark's order and has considerable respect for the content, especially of the teaching of Jesus. If Luke has also used Matthew, we would expect him to have modified his second source in broadly similar ways. But this is by no means the case." However Bishop John Shelby Spong, building on the scholarship of Michael Goulder, provides a reason why the author of Luke would do a major re-write of Matthew.
"He rewrote Matthew 1.1 through 4:11 to create his Genesis (Luke 1:5 - 4:13). He leaned on Mark 1:21 through 3:19 to create his Exodus (Luke 4:14 - 6:19). He quarried Matthew in rather unique ways to develop his readings for Leviticus (Luke 6:20 - 8:25). He transcribed Mark 4 through 9 with some rather gaping omissions to provide appropriate readings to correspond with the material found in Numbers (Luke 8:26 - 9:50). Finally, in his most imaginative piece of writing, Luke created the expanded journey section of his gospel (Luke 9:51 - 18:14) to correspond to the readings from Deuteronomy."
"The most immediate difficulty with this is of course the question of proportion -- Luke 9.51 - Chapter 18 is more than a third of the Gospel. Goulder attempted to deal with this by claiming that Luke 9.51 - Chapter 18 divides up nicely into triads, and suggests that each triad was taken one a week in the training of catechumens before Easter baptism. The weaknesses in this are:
One such example of Lukan redaction is "who witnessed the crucifixion? In Mark (14:50) and Matthew (26:56), the disciples desert him at his arrest. Luke (22:53-54) has dropped this bit. Further, he specifically states that Jesus' 'acquaintances' (23:49) witnessed the entire crucifixion." John Kloppenbor, a Q supporter, raises additional questions.
"You have to account for the shape of 'Q material' in Luke, given the presupposition that he uses Matthew. Matthew's a systematizer. Look at his three-chapter Sermon on the Mount. It's well organized rhetorically and literarily. The same elements are in Luke, but they're scattered all over the place. Why would Luke do that? And why is Matthew's infancy story ignored by Luke? The Magi from the East -- why does he leave them out? The answer is that they've never seen each other." Luke, however, also omitted whole portions of Mark which are included in Matthew, such as 6:45-8:26 called the "great exclusion" by scholars. Along with a couple of miracles and teaching that defilement comes from within, this portion also tells about Jesus walking on the water. (Luke did include the story of the loaves and fishes from this section.) Spong explains that in order to show Jesus as the fulfillment of the Torah, Luke wrote his infancy story against the background of the Book of Genesis.
"Over and over again, Luke wrote the Genesis stories of the founding fathers and mothers of Israel into his stories of the origins of the one who was to inaugurate the New Israel."
 (2) Luke, the Author
Who was Luke?
"Luke was also a doctor, and some traces of his knowledge can be found in the text: it is interesting to see the large space he devotes to Jesus' childhood, a subject ignored by the others."
"The tradition that Luke the physician and companion of Paul was the author of Luke-Acts goes back to the second century C.E. The Luke in question is referred to in Col 4:14; Phlm 24; 2 Tim 4:11, where he is identified as a physician. It is improbable that the author of Luke-Acts was a physician; it is doubtful that he was a companion of Paul."
"...Luke himself was, in all probability, one of these gentile members who had first embraced a liberalized Judaism and then had moved into the Christianity that grew from the liberal Judaism."
Dating Luke Like Matthew, Luke mirrors much of Mark's "Little Apocalypse" with some additional text. Like Mark and Matthew, the dating of Luke largely rests on the assumption that he described the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. The relevant passages, however, appear to have been based on Old Testament prophesies, not the events of 70 C.E.. (See Mark's Little Apocalypse for more details.)
"Even when Jesus's deeds and sayings began to be written down, they were not at once idealized as holy books of scripture; oral traditions of Jesus's words were still valued highly, often more highly than texts. We can infer one result from the preface of our third Gospel [Luke]. The author used our Gospel of Mark but also referred to 'many' previous attempts at writing a narrative of Jesus: in my view, he wrote c. 65-9, although others put him after 70."
"We should not forget that Luke was also the author of another important work on Christian origins, the Acts of the Apostles, which he wrote directly after his Gospel and then broke off for reasons unknown to us." Acts ends abruptly with Paul's first imprisonment and release.
"The composition of Luke and Acts in their final form may naturally be placed in the captivity period 60-62 [others give 61-63], and Acts would thus have been completed and presumably issued in the immediate aftermath of Paul's release, specifically in 62. The ending of Acts, that is to say, provides prima facie evidence of a particular early date confirmed by its relation to the reconstruction of the sequel."
"The only reasonable explanation for the abrupt ending of Acts is the assumption that Luke did not know anything of the events later than 62 when he wrote his two books."
The fact that Luke did not write of events following Paul's imprisonment "can only be satisfactorily explained by saying that the author died before the work was completed."
In support of an early 60's timeframe, there is no mention of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. nor any mention of the deaths of Paul and Peter in 66-68 C.E. The Gospel of Luke was almost certainly written earlier than Acts.
The literal translation of the original Greek phrase o epainoV en tw euaggeliw is "whose praise/fame in the gospel". Gospel here may mean word of Luke's good work, not necessarily a written account.
"The 'brother' whose fame in the gospel is throughout the churches' is evidently Luke, and his fame derives from his gospel-book." Such an early date is unfeasible if the Gospel of Mark, which Luke is dependent upon, was written around 60 C.E. (See "Dating the Gospel of Mark".) This is particularly true if Luke also used Matthew as a source, a gospel also dependent upon Mark. An early date for all three synoptics is only possible if Matthew was written only a year or so after Mark and Luke acquired these materials a short time later. If all three synoptics were written in such a compressed period of time, what might have been the cause of this sudden impetus to preserve accounts of Jesus life in writing?
(3) Creativity and Distinctive Style
"Luke's literary abilities can be discerned throughout the two volumes, even where he is closely dependent on written sources or oral traditions. His range of vocabulary, polished style, and literary artistry differ as much from Mark as today's quality newspaper differs from its mass-circulation counterpart.quot; Much of the special Lukan material (L) unique to this gospel is, according to biblical scholar Michael Goulder (University of Birmingham), "the substantial handiwork of the evangelist" (Luke: A New Paradigm, p. 122). Below are some of the more distinctive features of Luke's handiwork that Dr. Mark S. Goodacre has identified:
Introductions and Conclusions "Not only are these features found largely only in Luke as a writer, occurring on QD [words, expressions or features occurring in Q contexts which are different in Matthew and Luke (and are not in Mark)] or R [a redactional insertion by Luke into 'Markan' material] or both as well as in L [special Lukan material]." - Dr. Mark S. Goodacre, Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm (1996), p. 158
Human Characters
"People are either good or bad, wise or foolish, obedient or disobedient, merciful or merciless...In Luke on the other hand all is alive. His characters are many-sided: prudent despite being crooked, penitent although a publican, thoughtful for their brothers even in Hades." Dr. Mark Goodacre has also identified the following features of Goulder's thesis as likely being characteristic of Luke: "Soliloquy [i.e., 12:17-18 (Rich Fool), 15:17-19 (Prodigal Son), 16:3-4 (Unjust Steward), 18:4b-5 (Unjust Judge) and 18:9-14 (Pharisee and Publican)] is characteristic of Luke in general and is distinctive of his parables. Luke has soliloquy nine times, six of these in parables. On one of these occasions the reference is shared with Matthew and Mark (Wicked Tenants) and here Luke enhances the soliloquy. On two occasions the references are shared with Matthew (Wise and Faithful Servant; House Swept Clean). Lukan soliloquy has a distinctive form: five times the reflection on circumstances plus the contemplation of future action, three times with ti poihsw." "Interest in Work [i.e., 6:48 QD (builder's building), 14:15-24 (testing new oxen), 5:1-11 R, 10:34 (oil and wine on wound), 13:8 (manure on fig tree), 15:15-16 working with swine), 17:7-10 (servant ploughing, keeping sheep and serving at table)]may be distinctive of Luke. Useful references are found in L, QD and possibly R. Matthew does have references to work but shows no particular interest in the details of the work people do. The only text difficulty here is Mk 12.1 [Parable of the Tenants of the Vineyard], omitted in the Lukan parallel." "Fondness for Parties [i.e., 1.58 (rejoicing with Elizabeth); 5:29 R (Levi's conversion); 7:36, 11:37 and 14:1 (Jesus eating with Pharisees); 15:6, 9 (shepherd and woman celebrating what they find)]is distinctive of Luke. Luke has Jesus at parties; characters in his parables have parties and examples occur in R, QD and L material. By contrast, Mark at best only implies one party and Matthew has royal feasts." "Excuses [i.e. 11:17 (the door is now shut) , 14:18-20 (Parable of the Great Dinner, 16:27-28 (Dives' speech to Abraham)]could be seen as being distinctive of Luke since there are no obvious examples in Mark or Matthew whereas in Luke there are several examples, from QD and L but not R."
"Since so many of the features which Goulder isolates are distinctive, with many of the remaining ones characteristic, it is clear that Luke has left his stamp on the L material. Much of L is, as Goulder says, 'the substantial handiwork of the evangelist' [Luke: A New Paradigm, p. 122]."
"A lower-class hero is hero of the whole parable, and a succession of human, non-allegorical features, with soliloquies, etc., can only be removed from the canvas at the cost of leaving not much paint on the picture. So the practical result of isolating the Lukan features is constantly to increase the element of Lukan creativity, and to make more difficult the hypothesis of the Lost Source."
"Goulder has successfully isolated several Lukan features, the pervasiveness of which suggests that in L material Luke is particularly creative. This is Lukan creativity on the kind of scale which would necessitate the abandonment of any theory on which the evangelist draws conservatively on a written L text. Goulder has not, however, given adequate attention to the possibility that Luke has creatively written up stories which he received from oral traditions; much of the data he presents makes best sense on such a view."
Fulfilling the Law
"One of Luke's primary concerns in the gospel as well as in Acts is to show that God has worked out his purposes in and through secular history.quot; Luke consciously imitated the style of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Torah) and his gospel (in Greek) is the only one of the synoptics that can be readily and idiomatically translated back into Hebrew.
"The Gospel of Luke was written to illumine the Torah with occasional references to the prophets and the psalms, with a bow to the liturgical year of the Jews and with an attempt to harmonize the texts of Mark and Matthew. But above all, it was to illumine the Torah, to show Jesus as the fulfillment of all that Moses wrote."
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