2. Traditions of His Authorship
with the last is put forth as a mere
hypothesis and requires no considers,
tion. The tradition of his relation to
the third Gospel goes back to a time
earlier than
Origen, and Paul's expression "my
gospel" has been construed as a reference to that
book. Ireneeua, the Muratorian Canon, Clement of
Alexandria, and Tertullian express what was evidently the opinion of their day, that Luke was the
author of the third Gospel. And practically the
same testimony assigns a Lucan origin to the Acts
of
the Apostles, while earlier hints to the same purport are discovered in the works of Marcion and
Justin Martyr. It is now generally held that soeentially the present Gospel of Luke lay before
Marcion when the latter compiled his Gospel, while
the reverse proposition, that Marcion's composition
underlay Luke's, is universally given up. Until
recent times there was no trace of a tradition adverse to Lucan authorship, while the title to the
Gospel as given in the manuscripts testifies to the
antiquity of the belief that Luke wrote this Gospel.
Of course, modern criticism as well as Marraonitic
rejected Lucsn authorship, as did the encratitic
Severians, the Ebionites, and the Manicheane, not
on literary but on doctrinal grounds.
Acceptance of this tradition immediately results
in a large increase of knowledge concerning the
person and the fortunes of Luke.
It must be recognized that he had more to do with the work of
Paul than appears from the latter's
3. Charac- epistles. Part of the narrative of the
teristics Acts of the Apostles is in the first pnr-
as a son. If Luke is the author of
the narHistorian. rative of Paul's journeys in that book,
the
"we" passages testify that he was
an eye-witness of the events, and this fits in well
with the references in the epistles. And the oceurrence of " we " in codes D of the clause noted
above (ยง 1)
in a
passage earlier than is found in
the common text
(Acts xi. 28)
has caused Blare to suspect a double recension of the Acts by Luke's
own hand. Neither Weirs' explanation (T U, avii.
111, 1899) nor that of Ramsay (St. Paul the Tmveller, New York, 1896, pp. 27, 210), which assume a
correction of the original text arising in different
ways, seems to have much probability in its favor.
If Blass' supposition of a double text, both from
the hand of Luke, be not accepted, the "we" must
be original to the text. In that case the tradition
of the Antiochian origin of Luke receives confirmation, and Luke must have been an associate of
Paul in his early activities before either Timothy or
Titus were connected with him. Moreover, Luke
appears not only as a friend and close companion
of Paul, as his personal medical attendant, but as a
man well and broadly educated and with wide interests, possessing powers of keen observation and
the ability to describe simply but vividly what he
saw. If in spite of the modern adverse criticism
tradition be accepted, Luke becomes a source of
the first importance for the origins of Christianity
and of the Christian Church.
