LUKE, the traditional author of the third Gospel and the Book of Acts, and the most literary among the writers of the New Testament. He was of non-Jewish origin (Col. iv. II, 14), a fact of great interest in relation to his writings. His name, a pet form of Lucanus (cf. Silas for Silvanus, Acts xv. 4o, I Thess. i. i)—or, as some think, of Lucius—taken together with his profession of physician (Col. iv. 14), suggests that he was the son of a Greek freedman of some Roman family; and as Julius Caesar gave Roman citizenship to all physicians in Rome (Sueton. Jul. Luke may have inherited this status. Such a man would have the attitude to things Roman which appears in the works attributed to Luke. He seems to have remained in constant attendance on Paul, as physician as well as friend (Col. iv. 14; 2 Tim. iv. I I). That Luke was once an adherent of the synagogue—one of those "worshippers" of God to whom Acts often alludes—is probable also from its warm reference to Barnabas (xi. 23 seq.) and its feeling for the Jewish Christian or Hellenistic type of piety, as distinct from specific Paulinism.
The statement of the Muratorian Canon (c. 190) that Paul took Luke for his companion quasi ut juris studiosum—whether we take ut juris as = itineris and render "as devoted to travel" or not—is inference from biblical data. Origen expresses the belief that Luke was the "brother" of 2 Cor. viii. 18, "whose praise in the Gospel" ( =his Gospel) was "throughout all the churches." Though the basis of this identification be a mistake, yet it is quite likely in fact : Luke seems almost the only non Macedonian (as demanded by 2 Cor. ix. 2-4) of Paul's circle available at the time (see Acts xx. 4). If an ancient prologue to the Lucan writings (extant only in Latin) really goes back in part to Marcion or his circle, it may preserve a genuine tradition in stating that Luke died in Bithynia at the age of seventy-four. Fiction usually took the form of martyrdom, is in a later tradition touching his end. The same prologue, and indeed all early tradi tion, connects him originally with Antioch (see Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 4, 6, possibly after Julius Africanus in the first half of the 3rd century).
That he was actually a native of Antioch is doubtful: but inter nal evidence suits the view that he practised his profession in Antioch, where (or in Tarsus) he probably first met Paul. The detailed information in Acts as to the Gospel in Antioch (xi. 19 ff., xiii. I ff., xiv. 26–xv. 35) suggests Luke's connection with that church. The Bezan reading in Acts xi. 27, "when we were assem bled," may imply local memory of this.
But while Luke probably met Paul in Antioch, and thence started with him on his wider missionary enterprise, partly as his medical attendant (cf. Gal. iv. 13), Acts shows also some special feeling for the north-eastern part of the Aegean. Ramsay and
others fancy that Luke's home was Philippi, and that in fact he may have been the "certain Macedonian" seen in vision by Paul at Troas, inviting help for his countrymen (xvi. 9 f.). But this is as precarious as the view that, because "we" ceases at Philippi in xvi. 17, and then re-emerges in xx. 6, Luke must have resided there during all the interval. The use and disuse of the first per son plural, identifying Paul and his party, has probably a more psychological meaning (see ACTS). The local connection in ques tion may have been subsequent to that with Antioch, dating from Luke's work with Paul in the eastern provinces of Asia Minor, and being resumed after Paul's martyrdom. This accords at once with Harnack's argument that Luke wrote Acts in Asia (see ACTS), and with the early tradition, above cited, that he died in Bithynia. The later traditions about Luke's life are based on fanciful in ference or misunderstanding, e.g., that he was one of the Seventy (4th century).
A good deal can still be gathered by study of his writings as to the manner of man he was. He was the one man of letters among the N.T. writers (see Cadbury, The Making of Luke—Acts). But further, it was a beautiful soul from which came "the most beau tiful book" ever written, as Renan styled his Gospel. The selec tion of stories which he gives us—especially in the section peculiar to himself (ix. 51–xviii. 14)—reflects his own character as well as that of the source he mainly follows. His was indeed a religio medici in its pity for frail and suffering humanity, and in its sympathy with the triumph of the Divine "healing art" upon the bodies and souls of men (cf. Harnack, The Acts, Excursus, iii.). His was also a humane spirit, so tender that it saw further than almost any save the Master himself into the soul of womanhood. In this, as in his joyousness, united with a feeling for the poor and suffering, he was an early Francis of Assisi. How great his contribution to Christianity has been, in virtue of what he alone preserved of the historical Jesus and of the embodiment of his Gospel in his earliest followers, who can measure? Certainly his conception of the Gospel. viz., Christ's pure religious universalism (together with some slight infusion of Pauline thought), passed through a Graeco-Roman mind, proved more easy of assimila tion for the ancient Church than did that of Paul's own distinctive teaching.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Introductions to commentaries like A. Plummer's on Luke's Gospel in the "Intern. Crit." series; R. B. Rackham's Acts of the Apostles; the article "Luke" in Bible Dictionaries ; Ramsay's Paul the Traveller and Pauline and other Studies; A. Harnack, Luke the Physician; and H. J. Cadbury, The Making of Luke—Acts (1927). For the Luke of legend, see authorities quoted under MARK.
(J. V. B.)