LUKE, THE GOSPEL OF. Like the Gospel of Mat thew, the Gospel of Luke seems to have been based in the main on two documents, a document corresponding very closely to the Gospel of Mark (q.v.) and a document containing a collection of discourses and sayings of the Lord (the Logia, or Q). But the compiler used also other sources, written or oral, or both, for the Gospel of Luke contains a large amount of matter peculiar to itself. This matter comprises eighteen out of its twenty-three parables, including those of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and Dives and Lazarus; the stories of the draught of fish (v. 1-12), the raising of the widow's son (vIi. 11-19), the cure of a woman with a spirit of infirmity 11-18), the cure of a man with dropsy (xiv. 1-7), the cure of ten lepers (xvii. 11-20), the healing of Malthus' ear (xxii. 47-54). It includes a number of short sayings : Satan's fall from heaven (x. 13-2I); fire on earth (xii. 49); reply to a brother (xii. 14); reply to the greeting of a woman (xi. 27); the message to Herod Autipas (xiii. 32): and others. It includes a number of short narratives : the names of the ministering women (viii. 2, :',): Samaritans refusing hospitality to Jesus (ix. 51-57); a would-be disciple (ix. (a, 112); the seventy disciples (x. 1 ff.); Mary and Martha (x. 33 ff.); the story of Zac chaens (xix. 2-11). P. Wernle thinks that some of these may have been derived from a lost gospel. The matter peculiar to Luke includes also certain sayings and In cidents in the story of the Passion and the Resurrection : details of the agony in Gethsemane (xxii. 43, 44); the sending of Jesus to Herod (xxiii. 6-13); the daughters of Jerusalem (xxiii. 27-32); the first word from the cross (xxiii. 34); the two thieves (xxiii. 39-44); St. Peter at the tomb (xxiv. 12); the walk to Emmaus (xxlv. 13-33): the appearance of Jesus to the eleven (xxiv. 36 ff.); the ascension (xxiv. 50 ff.). These additions also, it has been thought, may have been taken from an older source. But this is quite uncertain. As Wernle says, " if Luke really made use of traditions. they were not necessarily written ones." Plummer, Harnack, and others have called attention to the fact that a very considerable portion of the matter peculiar to Luke is feminine in interest. Women figure prominently. Harnack sug gests that these special traditions came from Philip and his four prophesying daughters. As regards Philip's daughters, " it is known that St. Luke made their acquaintance in Ciesarea, and it is very probable that on a later occasion he encountered them yet again in Asia.
Papias, who himself saw the daughters, expressly states that they transmitted stories of the old days." Harnack further points out that another collection of stories in Luke is distinguished by the interest shown in the Samaritans, and that, according to the Acts of the Apostles (viii. 14), the great achievement of Philip wee the evangelisation of Samaria. In his view, " this coincidence of interest in the feminine element, in prophecy (the Holy Spirit), and in the Samaritans, taken together with the general standpoint—that of Jerusalem --of this source peculiar to St. Luke, makes it probable that we have here a body of tradition which rests upon the authority of St. Philip and his daughters." Harnack thinks that the first two chapters of the Gospel of Luke are based upon a special tradition which Luke treated very freely. Sanday (The Life of Christ in Recent Research) thinks that " these two chapters—whatever the date at which they were first committed to writing —are essentially the most archaic thing in the whole New Testament, older really in substance—whatever may be the date of their actual committal to writing—than I. and II. Thessalonians." The Apostle Luke was a physician. It seems probable that it was actually his medical profession that led him to Christianity.
" for he embraced that religion in the conviction that by its means and by quite new methods he would be enabled to heal diseases and to drive out evil spirits. and above all to become an effectual physician of the soul " (Harnack). Following Hobart (The Medical Language of St. Luke), Harnack maintains that " very nearly all of the alterations and additions which the third evangelist has made in the Markan text are most simply and surely explained from the professional interest of a physician." In the Third Gospel the repre sentation of Jesus " is dominated by the conception of Him as the wondrous Healer and Saviour of the sick, as, indeed, the Healer above all healers." Harnack finds the same interest in medicine and healing in the Acts of the Apostles, and argues powerfully in support of the view that the Third Gospel and the Acts were composed by one and the same author. Luke the Physician. This was also the belief of the ancient Church. See Adolf Harnack, Luke the Physician, 1907; W. Sanday, The Life of Christ in Recent Research, 1907; C. F. Nol]otb, Thu Person of Our Lord and Recent Thought, 1903; G. Currie Martin, The Books of the N.T., 1909; Arthur S. Peake. Intr.; F. C. Conybeare, New Test. Crit.