Luke’s writings

The author of Luke had a cultivated literary background and wrote in good idiomatic Greek. If the Gospel bearing his name and the Acts of the Apostles were written by the traditionally ascribed author, they were probably composed during or shortly after the Jewish revolt (66–73 ce). Some scholars have also associated Luke with the Pastoral Letters and the Letter to the Hebrews, either as author or as amanuensis, because of linguistic and other similarities with the Gospel and the Acts.

Some scholars, on the other hand, doubt that Luke is in fact the author of the two New Testament books traditionally ascribed to him and argue for a date later in the 1st century ce. In some respects the issue is similar to that raised about the authorship of the works of Shakespeare or, in the classical field, of Plato’s letters. But it is unlike the Shakespearean controversy in that no alternative author has been suggested and is unlike the problem of Plato’s letters in that no larger Lukan corpus is available for comparison. Those questioning Luke’s authorship point to the fact that the theological emphases of his Gospel and the Acts differ considerably from those of Paul’s writings and that the description of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) is divergent from the description of the conference in the 2nd chapter of the Letter of Paul to the Galatians. Those objections are based upon the assumption that Luke was the disciple of Paul (and would, therefore, reflect his theology) and upon the traditional identification of Acts 15 with the conference in Galatians 2. Both of those premises, however, are quite probably mistaken. A more serious objection is the difference between the portrait of Paul in Acts and the impression one receives of him in his letters. But it has sometimes been exaggerated, and it does not in any case exceed the variation that might be expected between a sometime colleague’s impressions of a man and the man’s own letters. The Gospel and Acts were, in all likelihood, tagged with the name Luke when they were deposited in the library of the author’s patron, Theophilus (Luke 1:3). Within a century there was a widespread and undisputed tradition identifying that Luke with an otherwise insignificant physician and colleague of Paul.

Jesus’ parting words, “It is not for you to know times [of the consummation of this age]…but you shall receive power…and you shall be my witnesses…” (Acts 1:7ff), provide a guideline for Luke’s theology. Thus, he called the church back from overeager speculation about the precise time of the Lord’s return and the end of the age to its proper task of faithful mission in the lengthening interim. By the selection and interpretation of his sources, he charted the path by which the church would understand both its own uniqueness in the world and also its continuing relationship to Judaism and to the world. His work was no small achievement, and through the centuries it has served the church well.