IV.  LUKE.

26.  The unanimous voice of antiquity ascribes the third gospel with the Acts of the Apostles to Luke.  He first appears as the travelling companion of Paul when he leaves Troas for Macedonia (Acts 16:10); for the use of the first person plural—­“we endeavored,” “the Lord had called us,” “we came,” etc.—­which occurs from that point of Paul’s history and onward, with certain interruptions, through the remainder of the Acts of the Apostles, admits of no other natural and reasonable explanation.  There is good reason to believe that he is identical with “Luke, the beloved physician,” who was with Paul when a prisoner at Rome.  Col. 4:14; Philemon 24; 2 Tim. 4:11.  From the first of these passages it has been inferred that he was not a Jew by birth, since he is apparently distinguished from those “who are of the circumcision,” v. 11.

Tradition represents him to have been by birth a Syrian of Antioch (Eusebius, Hist.  Eccl., 3. 4; Jerome, Preface to Matt., and elsewhere), and a Jewish proselyte (Jerome, Quest. on Gen., chap. 46); and it adds various other legends which are not worth repeating.

27.  The evangelist himself, in his dedicatory address to Theophilus (chap. 1:1-4), gives us clear and definite information respecting the sources of his gospel.  He does not profess to have been himself an eye-witness, but has drawn his information from those “who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word.”  His investigations have been accurate and thorough:  “having accurately traced out all things from the beginning” (as the original words mean), he writes to Theophilus “in order;” that is, in an orderly and connected way.  He proposes to give not some loose fragments, but a connected narrative; although, as we have seen above (No. 10), his order is not always that of strict chronological sequence.  From the long and intimate connection of Luke with Paul it is reasonable to suppose that the latter must have exerted an influence on the composition of this gospel.  Luke, however, did not draw the materials of his narrative from Paul (at least not principally), but, as he expressly states, from those “who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word.”  He did not write from Paul’s dictation, but in a free and independent way; though there is no reasonable ground for doubting that it was with Paul’s knowledge and approbation.

The “eye-witnesses and ministers of the word” are those who (1) were from the beginning eye-witnesses of our Lord’s public ministry; (2) were intrusted with the work of preaching the word; that is, the apostles and such of their associates as had companied with them all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among them.  Acts 1:21.  The words of Luke must not be strained; for he records some incidents of our Lord’s history before his public