- Chapters
- 24
- Verses
- 0
- Where it sits
- The Gospels
What it is
The Gospel that opens by telling you how it was made: many have undertaken to draw up an account, the writer says, and having investigated everything carefully from the first, it seemed good to write an orderly account for you.
Nearly everything the world pictures at Christmas is here and nowhere else — Gabriel and Zechariah, the Annunciation, the Magnificat, the census, the manger, the shepherds, Simeon in the temple. So are the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the rich man and Lazarus, the thief on the cross, and the two on the road to Emmaus. Luke’s genealogy runs back past Abraham to Adam, which tells you who he thinks this is for.
He is the evangelist most interested in the poor, in women, in outsiders, and in prayer.
Where it came from
The tradition names Luke the physician, Paul’s companion — the man greeted in Colossians, Philemon, and 2 Timothy. Irenaeus says it around 180. The Muratorian Fragment calls him Luke, the well-known physician, and notes he had not seen the Lord in the flesh. An old Latin prologue adds that he was a Syrian of Antioch who never married and died at eighty-four.
Scholars divide. Many still accept Lukan authorship, largely on the strength of the “we” passages in Acts; others think the theology of Luke–Acts sits awkwardly beside the Paul of the undisputed letters. Dates proposed run from the early 60s to the 80s or later.
When the Church reads it
Luke begins on the Monday after the Elevation of the Cross in September — the “Lukan jump” — and runs about nineteen weeks, moving to Saturdays and Sundays partway through while Mark takes the weekdays.
Before you start
- It is half a work. Acts is the other half, addressed to the same man, picking up at the same event. Read them back to back at least once.
- Luke’s infancy narrative and Matthew’s share very little. They are two independent accounts, not one story told twice.
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