The external evidence * is to be found in the references which mention St. Luke by name as the writer of one of the four Gospels. It is well known that the earliest allusions to the Gospels do not give the names of the writers, but so soon as this mode of reference begins we find St. Luke’s name connected with one of the Gospels. The earliest of these is in the Muratorian Fragment, which opens with the words tertio evangelii librum secun- dum Lucan Lucas .. . conscripsit. Ireneus re- peatedly refers to St. Luke by name, the strongest passage being perhaps Her. 111. xiv. 8, where he mentions multa que inveniri possunt a solo Luca dicta esse, quibus et Marcion et Valentinus utuntur, and earlier in the same section a rejection of St. Luke is spoken of as tantamount to a rejection of ‘the Gospel of which he claims to be a disciple.’ In very many other passages Irenzus definitely quotes St. Luke (e.g. 3! 322 etc.), and nowhere is his authorship called in question. Another passage which gives unquestionable support to St. Luke’s authorship is to be found in Tert. c. Mare. iv. 2—cf. ib. iv. 5, id evangelium quod Luce refertur penes nos. So Clem. Alex. (Strom. i. 21) quotes the Gospel often as by St. Luke.
It is unnecessary to multiply the evidence of
* The title κατὰ Aovxav cannot be taken to prove much, though the forms cata Lucam, ete., in MSS of the old Latin, in Cyprian, and elsewhere, show that the Greek MSS on which they were based had the titles in 2nd or 8rd cent. (Zahn, Find. ii. 178).
LUKE, GOSPEL OF
later authorities, for the passages quoted show that writers of a comparatively early date and coming from all parts of the Christian Church unhesitatingly ascribe the authorship of one of the Gospels to St. Luke. ‘It is manifest that in all parts of the Christian world the third Gospel . . . was universally believed to be the work of St. Luke. No one speaks doubtfully on this point’ ‘Plummer, St. Luke, p. 16).
(b) Canonicity.k—Though the references which connect Luke by name with the Gospel are, from the nature of the case, comparatively late, those which prove its use as an authoritative writing carry us back very much further. We find, it is true, no certain trace of its use in the Apostolic Fathers, ‘We must be content to leave it doubtful whether Clement of Rome knew our Gospel according to Luke, and the same must be said of Polycarp and of Ignatius’ (Plummer, 1.6. Ὁ. xxv); but when we come on to Justin Martyr and to Tatian, the evidence of a use of this Gospel is abundant and unquestionable. Justin refers to a number of details which are found only in this Gospel: thus he mentions particulars given only in Lk 1. 2, such as the message of Gabriel (138) and the journey to Bethlehem in consequence of the enrolment; he also alludes to other incidents from later chapters, such as our Lord’s being sent to Herod (237), or the last word from the Cross (234), or the explanation of the Scriptures to the disciples on the way to Emmaus (24%). The use of St. Luke’s Gospel by Tatian, who was a scholar of Justin, is equally clear from the Diatessaron, the second section of which (as given by Hemphill) contains Lk 156-80
These writers sufticiently prove the use of the Gospel within the Church, but perhaps more striking testimony is to be found in the fact of its use by those outside the Church. Thus it formed the basis of the narrative which Marcion drew up (see below), it was used by the Valentinians in their system of chronology (Lightfoot, Biblicai Essays, p. 57), and was the subject of a commentary by Heracleon (Clem. Alex. Strom. iv. 9).
It was then, from the first, fully recognized and used in the Church, and is omitted in no lists of the canonical books.
Its position in the New Testament Canon among the Gospels varies. It must be remembered that the order in which the books succeed each other would not tend to be fixed until the Codex began to take the place of the Roll, that is, in the begin- ning of the 3rd century. Origen (ap. Eus. HE vi. 25) mentions as traditional that order with which we are familiar, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Jobn, and this order is found in most of our authorities, beginning with the Muratori Canon. After this the order most frequently found is the so-called Western order, Matthew, John, Luke, Mark. The object of this—which is met with in D, many MSS of the Old Latin, the Gothic version, and elsewhere—was, no doubt, to bring together the two apostles and place them first, and afterwards the ‘apostolic men.’ The Curetonian Syriac puts St. Luke’s Gospel last, ἃ and X (a Munich MS of the 9th cent.) have the order John, Luke, Mark, Matthew, while in two cursives the order is John, Luke, Matthew. The order in which the Gospels come in the MSS may have been affected, moreover, by their supposed chrono- logical order, or by the symbols assigned to them. We may perhaps notice here Blass’s view (Philol. of the Gosp. p. 77) that there is evidence in the spelling adopted by D of ‘a time when there was a closer connexion between Luke’s first and second parts than between Luke’s Gospel and the other Gospels.’