We do not know enough about Luke, the writer of the third Gospel and the Acts of
the Apostles, to provide even a basic biography. His name was probably derived from
the Latin Lucius or Lucanus. According to a fairly early and widespread tradition
he was unmarried, wrote his Gospel in Greece, and died at the age of eighty-
There is a Luke mentioned by St Paul in his Epistles, and there is some debate about whether this is the evangelist or another person of the same name. When writing to the Colossians (4:14), Paul talks of 2my dear friend Luke, the doctor”, in his second letter to Timothy (4:10) he says, “only Luke is with me”, and in his letter to Philemon (24) he calls Luke one of his “colleagues.” It has usually been assumed that the Luke referred to in these passages is the same Luke who wrote the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. This, however, may not be so – the name was a common one, and it is interesting that Paul nowhere refers to his Luke as a writer. On the other hand, if we take the obvious meaning of “we” in Acts 16:10, for example, to mean Luke and Paul together, then Luke accompanied Paul on some of his journeys and shared in the troubles and persecution he suffered, and so could be the Luke mentioned by Paul. All that we have for certain are the Gospel and the Acts, and from these we can draw out some of the qualities and theological ideas of their author. The two books were written as two volumes of a single work, and it is important to see them together to understand their author more fully.
Luke opens his Gospel with a Prologue to tell us why he wrote it. Many other people,
he says, have drawn up accounts of what had happened “among us,” according to what
they had heard from eyewitness and “ministers of the word,” and so he had decided
to write an “ordered account” himself, after carefully going over the whole story
from beginning. This would help Theophilus, the important person fro whom he was
writing, to see how authentic the teaching he had received was. With this Prologue
we seem to be straightaway in the presence of a writer who was concerned about his
sources and about producing a carefully planned account. Presumably he was not himself
an eyewitness of everything “from the outset.” The Prologue, and that to Acts, indicate
Luke’s cultural background and read like contemporary Greek prefaces written in a
classical Greek style. He changes this style when he goes on to write about the
birth of John the Baptist and uses the popular form of spoken Greek that was in use
by educated people of the time. In other places he uses the Greek of the Old Testament
Septuagint, the version of the Old Testament current among Jews who lived in the
Diaspora outside Palestine, and he had a detailed knowledge of synagogue life. But
he was writing for a non-
Luke tells us of events and saying not found elsewhere in the Gospels. He is an
accomplished storyteller, knowing how much detail to include and able to give us
revealing character-
Other parts of his gospel are also peculiar to him: he relates six miracles and eighteen parables not mentioned by the other evangelists, and he has a long section (9:51 – 18:14), which is built around the theme of Jesus;’ journey to Jerusalem. This last is important and illustrates one of Luke’s key theological ideas: the Holy City that the apostles receive the Spirit and go out to preach to the world at the beginning of Acts.
All the time Luke presents events and teaching in a way that is his own. He is concerned,
for example, to remove any blame for the crucifixion from the Roman authorities,
perhaps because one of his aims in writing was to persuade them to recognize Christianity
as a lawful religion throughout the empire. In other passages he brings out the
kindness and sensitivity of Our Lord – the parable of the prodigal son (15:11-
Another marked feature of Luke’s writings is the role he gives the Holy Spirit. The
Spirit is the instrumental in the Incarnation (1:35, and see also 2:25-
As well as stressing the role of the Spirit, Luke places considerable importance
on prayer, again both in the life of Jesus (see 3:21,5:15, 6:12, 9:18, 22:39-
At the end of his Gospel Luke tells us how Jesus, immediately before his Ascension,
explained to the apostles how his message of repentance would be preached to all
nations(24:47). This theme is taken up in Acts, where Luke stresses again and again
that salvation could be gained only through Jesus, “for of all the names in the world
given to human beings, this is the only one by which we can be saved” (4:12). This
fundamental fact demands a response from those who hear it: once Jesus has been preached
as the crucified, risen, and glorified Lord, the would-
In Acts Luke also sets out to show the divine origin of Christianity by stressing
the miracles worked as the result of the Spirit’s outpouring at Pentecost (2:1-
Part of Acts reads like a diary kept by Luke of his journeys with St Paul (see the
start of the “we” passages in 16:10). In these chapters Luke shows himself to have
been a keen observer and recorder of places and events. His account ends rather
abruptly, however, with Paul under house arrest in Rome for two years; we can only
surmise why Luke did not complete his story with the obvious ending, the death of
Paul. Was this because he wrote his pro-
Luke is the patron saint of the medical profession. He is also the patron saint
of painters, especially of portrait painters, because of an ancient tradition, which
dates from the sixth century, that he painted a portrait or icon of Our Lady. Later
on other pictures were attributed to him as well. An extension of this patronage
has led him to be regarded as the protector of craft workers in general, and of lace-
Luke was usually depicted in art writing his sacred books, accompanied by his symbol
of an ox. A later Flemish custom was to show him paining Our Lady, and there is
a well-
St. Luke
