who had spent time exploring Judaism and its Scriptures before becoming a Christian (cf. Acts 10:35; 13:16, 26). A well-educated man in any of these categories could fit the profile. Even the universal outlook in Luke-Acts does not necessitate that the author be gentile.
In spite of the widely-accepted opinion that Luke the physician authored this Gospel, our inability to draw a definitive conclusion about the author begs the question of the importance of an irrefutable answer for understanding the book’s message. Put differently, does not knowing more about Luke beyond some general tidbits change our reading of the narrative as a credible presentation and sound interpretation of Jesus? The answer is, “No, not as far as the key theological message about God’s plan of salvation is concerned.” We believe that the transmitters of the Jesus traditions, from whom Luke gathered his materials, as well as Luke himself, remained faithful in passing on the teachings and actions of Jesus as truthfully and accurately as they knew how. Some uncertainty on the issue of authorship notwithstanding, the text of the Gospel of Luke, as we now have it, is trustworthy for faith and discipleship.
Reading the Gospel as Scripture is at its core a matter of trust. The reader has to trust Luke the historian, biographer, theologian, and Christ-follower. More importantly, the reader has to trust God’s intervention in the writing, transmission, and reading of this Gospel. The process by which the Holy Spirit connects the author, the text, and the reader for the latter’s formation and edification remains a mystery of faith. In this commentary, I will refer to the author as Luke, with the understanding that this identification, albeit an educated guess, comes with a considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence.
Recipients, Dating, and Place of Writing
Ideally, information on Luke’s original readers and their situation would shed light on the impetus behind Luke’s writing and the interpretation of his message. Among the four evangelists, Luke was already the most specific in naming the person for whom he crafted his narrative—one “most excellent Theophilus” (1:3), a man of considerable standing in his community. Beyond the fact that Theophilus is a Greek name, hardly anything else is known of this person; his location, profession, and the reason for his elevated status remain opaque to us. Also, we cannot assume that Luke was located where Theophilus and his community of faith were at the time of writing. Guesses among scholars on the location of the author and his original audience cover a wide geographical area, from Syrian Antioch, Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, to Rome.5 From the letters of Paul, we note that these are all cities where Christian communities were operational in the first century CE.
Even though there is only one specifically named dedicatee, Luke’s narrative would have been read by more than Theophilus alone. A wider circle of followers of Jesus, perhaps the faith community of which Theophilus was part, would have listened to a public reading of Jesus’ story. Given the content of Luke-Acts, the sophisticated Greek prose, and the direction in which the gospel was spread from Palestine to the larger Greco-Roman world in the first few decades of the early church, one may surmise that Luke’s audience consisted mainly of urban gentile Christians, though Christian communities across the Roman Empire would have had a mix of Jewish and gentile believers in differing proportions.
The challenge of dating the Gospel of Luke is bound up with at least three considerations: the dating of the Gospel of Mark, the dating of the Acts of the Apostles, and the interpretation of the description of the fall of Jerusalem within the narrative. First, since Mark is widely accepted to be one of Luke’s sources, Luke must post-date Mark. Second, since the opening line in Acts refers to the Gospel of Luke as “the first book” (Acts 1:1), Luke must predate Acts, whether by a little or a lot. Third, the description of Jesus’ judgment on Jerusalem (19:43–44; 21:20–24; cf. 13:34–35) seems very similar to how Jerusalem was conquered by the Romans in the First Jewish Revolt. One wonders if what actually happened was written back into the predictions of Jesus. If so, the Gospel of Luke would have had to be composed after 70 CE. Given that there is no mention of the fall of Jerusalem in Acts, and that Acts concludes not with the death of Paul but with his house arrest in Rome, some scholars place the dating of Luke to the early 60s. Most are content with situating the Gospel of Luke within the two decades after the fall of Jerusalem, somewhere between 70 and 90 CE.6 The outer edges of scholarly guesses put the Gospel as early as the 60s and as late as the first part of the second century.7 It is difficult to be precise with the when and where of writing because so little information is available on either Luke or Theophilus.
Genre
Understanding the genre of a piece of writing allows us to read it cooperatively and intelligently. How we read a letter is different from a newspaper editorial or, for that matter, a tabloid we pick up while waiting in a supermarket check-out line. At first glance, the Gospel of Luke is a narrative, within which specific portions are given to other genres such as prologue, poetry, genealogy, and parable, just to name a few. Narrative, however, is still too broad a genre. Fable and fiction are narrative in form, but neither fits what we read in Luke. “Gospel” is not in and of itself a genre, at least not among secular Greco-Roman writings of the time. The word “gospel,” which means “good news” in the Greek (euangelion), describes the content of the narrative rather than its literary form. The good news is about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.8 Subsequently, this particular message of salvation comes to be known as “the gospel,” lending a more technical meaning to the word euangelion in Christian parlance.9
How, then, do we classify the genre of the third Gospel? Comparing Luke to other ancient writings in form and content, the most relevant correspondence is that of ancient historiography.10 Since the focus of the narrative is on the life of Jesus, it may be more fitting to call it biography than historiography.
Some characteristics of ancient biographies, such as Plutarch’s Lives or Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars, may be found in the Gospel of Luke. For example, ancient biographies tend to be less concerned about chronological exactitude, something to which modern biographies are held accountable. In Luke’s Gospel, the general chronology of Jesus’ life is rather non-negotiable: for example, the infancy narrative must come before Jesus’ adult baptism and temptations, followed by his Galilean ministry. At some point Jesus heads for Jerusalem where he is crucified, buried, raised, and then he ascends into heaven. This overall framework of Jesus’ chronology, including major milestones of Jesus’ life, is fixed. But in between key events, the author has some freedom in the detailed ordering of the accounts of Jesus’ teachings and healings. Given how the traditions of Jesus were passed down in bits and pieces in oral and written forms through multiple channels over a span of decades, it would be unrealistic to expect Luke to present the sequence of events in exact chronological order. Using the order of Mark’s story as a point of departure,11 Luke sometimes steps out of Mark’s ordering, rearranges it for a better narrative flow and inserts materials from other sources. This redactional freedom does not make Luke a more credible or less credible historian than Mark. Furthermore, this editorial necessity was not unique to Luke, as Matthew, Mark, and John faced similar challenges.
Another similarity between ancient biography and the Gospel of Luke is a heavy focus on the subject’s ideas, words, deeds, and the way in which the person dies, especially in the case of a heroic death. Much of Luke’s story contains Jesus’ teachings, miracles, healings, and exorcisms. Through Jesus’ encounters with the crowd, his disciples, his family, and his enemies, the storytelling discloses the identity and mission of Jesus. In particular, the death of Jesus and its significance receive much emphasis. The passion narrative, from Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem to his resurrection and ascension, covers twenty percent of the entire book.
Aside
