THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having informed myself about all things from their beginnings, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning things of which you have been informed.”

From the very first line one can see all that separates Luke from the ‘scribbler’ Mark to whose work we have just referred. Luke’s Gospel is incontestably a literary work written in classical Greek free from any barbarisms.

Luke was a cultivated Gentile convert to Christianity. His attitude towards the Jews is immediately apparent. As O. Culmann points out, Luke leaves out Mark’s most Judaic verses and highlights the Jews’ incredulity at Jesus’s words, throwing into relief his good relations with the Samaritans, whom the Jews detested. Matthew, on the other hand, has Jesus ask the apostles to flee from them. This is just one of many striking examples of the fact that the evangelists make Jesus say whatever suits their own personal outlook. They probably do so with sincere conviction. They give us the version of Jesus’s words that is adapted to the point of view of their own community. How can one deny in the face of such evidence that the Gospels are ‘combat writings’ or ‘writings suited to an occasion’, as has been mentioned already? The comparison between the general tone of Luke’s Gospel and Matthew’s is in this respect a good demonstration.

Who was Luke? An attempt has been made to identify him with the physician of the same name referred to by Paul in several of his letters. The Ecumenical Translation notes that “several commentators have found the medical occupation of the author of this Gospel confirmed by the precision with which he describes the sick”. This assessment is in fact exaggerated out of all proportion. Luke does not properly speaking ‘describe’ things of this kind; “the vocabulary he uses is that of a cultivated man of his time”. There was a Luke who was Paul’s travelling companion, but was he the same person? O. Culmann thinks he was.

The date of Luke’s Gospel can be estimated according to several factors: Luke used Mark’s and Matthew’s Gospels. From what we read in the Ecumenical Translation, it seems that he witnessed the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus’s armies in 70 A.D. The Gospel probably dates from after this time. Present-day critics situate the time it was written at .circa 80-90 A.D., but several place it at an even earlier date.

The various narrations in Luke show important differences when compared to his predecessors. An outline of this has already been given. The Ecumenical Translation indicates them on pages 181 et sec. O. Culmann, in his book, The New Testament page 18, cites descriptions in Luke’s Gospel that are not to be found anywhere else. And they are not about minor points of detail.

The descriptions of Jesus’s childhood are unique to Luke’s Gospel. Matthew describes Jesus’s childhood differently from Luke, and Mark does not mention it at all.

Matthew and Luke both provide different genealogies of Jesus: the contradictions are so large and the improbabilities so great, from a scientific point of view, that a special chapter of this book has been devoted to the subject. It is possible to explain why Matthew, who was addressing himself to Jews, should begin the genealogy at Abraham, and include David in it, and that Luke, as a converted Gentile, should want to go back even farther. We shall see however that the two genealogies contradict each other from David onwards.

Jesus’s mission is described differently on many points by Luke, Matthew and Mark. An event of such great importance to Christians as the institution of the Eucharist gives rise to variations between Luke and the other two evangelists.[31] Father Roguet notes in his book Initiation to the Gospel (Initiation à l’Evangile) page 75, that the words used to institute the Eucharist are reported by Luke (22,19-24) in a form very different from the wording in Matthew (26,26-29) and in Mark (14,22-24) which is almost identical.
“On the contrary” he writes, “the wording transmitted by Luke is very similar to that evoked by Saint Paul” (First Letter to the Corinthians, 11,23-25) .

As we have seen, in his Gospel, Luke expresses ideas on the subject of Jesus’s Ascension which contradict what he says in the Acts of the Apostles. He is recognized as their author and they form an integral part of the New Testament. In his Gospel he situates the Ascension on Easter Day, and in the Acts forty days later. We already know to what strange commentaries this contradiction has led Christian experts in exegesis.

Commentators wishing to be objective, such as those of the Ecumenical Translation of the Bible, have been obliged to recognise as a general rule the fact that for Luke “the main preoccupation was not to write facts corresponding to material accuracy”. When Father Kannengiesser compares the descriptions in the Acts of the Apostles written by Luke himself with the description of similar facts on Jesus raised from the dead by Paul, he pronounces the following opinion on Luke: “Luke is the most sensitive and literary of the four evangelists, he has all the qualities of a true novelist”.