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Luke
📖 Luke
Κατὰ Λουκᾶν (Kata Loukan) — 'According to Luke.' The book names no author; the ascription to LUKE — a physician and companion of Paul — is early and undisputed. It is the first of two volumes: the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, both addressed to the same Theophilus, together the longest single contribution to the New Testament by any one hand.
The longest and most literary of the Gospels — a physician's orderly account, and the Gospel of the outsider: women, the poor, the Samaritan, the tax-collector; a Saviour whose coming is sung by a teenage girl and announced first to shepherds.
Chapters
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About the book
Where it sits
The THIRD Gospel and the LONGEST book in the New Testament; paired with Acts as a single two-volume work that together makes up about a quarter of the NT — more text than Paul. One of the three Synoptics.
Genre
A GOSPEL, and volume one of a two-part history (Luke–Acts) — the most consciously literary of the four. It opens with a classical Greek preface, dates events by emperors and governors, carries the largest vocabulary in the New Testament, and preserves a wealth of material found in no other Gospel (the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Rich Man and Lazarus, the road to Emmaus).
Author
By early and near-unanimous tradition, LUKE, 'the beloved physician' (Colossians 4:14) — a Gentile companion of Paul, present in the first-person 'we' sections of Acts (16, 20, 27–28) and named in Philemon 24 and 2 Timothy 4:11. On the majority view the only GENTILE author in the Bible; the medical vocabulary and the close interest in Paul's journeys fit the tradition.
Date written
Commonly placed around AD 80–85, though some argue the 60s–70s. It turns partly on Luke's use of Mark (which he clearly draws on) and on where Acts breaks off — with Paul still alive under house arrest in Rome (c. AD 62), which some read as an early terminus for the whole two-volume work.
Place
Uncertain — proposals include Rome, Achaia, and Antioch. Written for a Greco-Roman readership: Luke smooths Semitic detail, explains Palestine to outsiders, and frames the story inside the wider empire.
Audience
GENTILE Christians and inquirers — 'most excellent Theophilus' and everyone like him. Luke universalises the good news: he traces Jesus' genealogy back not merely to Abraham but to ADAM, 'son of God' (3:38), and ends Acts with the gospel reaching Rome, the heart of the world.
How it's laid out
1:1–4The preface — a formal dedication to Theophilus; the one place a Gospel opens like a Greek history.
1:5–2:52The infancy narrative — two annunciations, the Visitation, the births of John and Jesus, the shepherds, Simeon and Anna, the boy in the temple. Luke's alone, and full of songs.
3:1–4:13John the baptiser, the baptism, the genealogy back to Adam, the temptation.
4:14–9:50The Galilean ministry — healings, parables, the calling and sending of the twelve.
9:51–19:27The long journey to Jerusalem — the heart of Luke, holding most of his unique parables (the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Rich Man and Lazarus).
19:28–24:53Jerusalem — the entry, the temple, the Last Supper, the cross, the empty tomb, and the road to Emmaus.
What it's about
- The OUTSIDER welcomed — women, the poor, tax-collectors, Samaritans, sinners. Luke's Jesus eats with the wrong people and tells stories in which they are the heroes.
- The GREAT REVERSAL — sounded first in Mary's song (the lowly lifted, the rich sent empty away) and paid out in the Beatitudes-and-woes, in Lazarus at the gate, in the last made first.
- The HOLY SPIRIT and PRAYER — the Spirit fills Elizabeth, Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon before a single miracle is done; Jesus prays at every hinge and teaches his followers to.
- JOY and SONG — Luke 1–2 is the songbook of the church (Magnificat, Benedictus, Gloria, Nunc Dimittis); the Gospel begins and ends with people praising God 'with great joy.'
- SALVATION for ALL — the genealogy to Adam, the Samaritan neighbour, the promise that 'all flesh will see the salvation of God' (3:6).
Key words & people
Words this book turns on — each links to its dictionary entry:
People & places — each links to the encyclopedia:
The source text
Translated from the Greek of the SBL GREEK NEW TESTAMENT (SBLGNT), edited by Michael W. Holmes. Luke's Greek is the most refined in the Gospels — a classical, balanced periodic preface (1:1–4), then a deliberate shift into Septuagint-flavoured Greek for the infancy story, so the reader hears the Old Testament resume. Its sharpest textual questions cluster later (the sweat 'like blood' in Gethsemane, 22:43–44; some words from the cross), noted where they fall; chapter 1 is textually calm.
Looking forward
Luke's Jesus is the Saviour of the whole world, and above all of those the world discards. He is announced not to kings but to shepherds; his mother is a nobody from Nazareth who sings a revolution; his genealogy runs past Abraham all the way to Adam, making him the second head of the entire human race, not one nation's Messiah only. He is 'Son of the Most High' and 'a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord' — and the one who says his whole mission is 'to seek and to save the lost' (19:10).
Where the debates are
AUTHORSHIP by Luke the physician is early and rarely contested even critically, helped by the first-person 'we' passages of Acts. The live questions are DATE (the 80s versus a pre-63 date tied to the abrupt ending of Acts), SOURCES (Luke names 'many' predecessors in 1:1; the majority view has him using Mark and a sayings source alongside material unique to him), and a handful of famous later VARIANTS. The two-volume unity of Luke–Acts, addressed to the same Theophilus, is broadly agreed.