St. Luke, like the other Synoptists, seems to have thought that our Lord's ministry lasted one year only — ' the acceptable year of the Lord ' (NT Problems, 182-194). He appears to have placed our Lord's Birth after Herod's death, though St. Matthew distinctly places it before that event. For a discussion of this difficult question the present writer may be allowed to refer the reader to his edition of St. Luke's Gospel. Suffice it here to record the conviction that, though St. Luke has done much for us in connecting our Lord's life upon earth with secular history, his Gospel is very far from being arranged with the chronological accuracy at which he aimed. He was working in a place and amid surroundings which precluded historical research, and, when he visited Palestine, it was too late to recast the whole work of his life.
Philosophy was sedulously cultivated among the Gentiles for whom St. Luke wrote. All the more earnest thinkers, who were attracted by Christi- anity, had been brought up as neo-Platonists or Stoics. They would, of course, bring their philo-
sophy with them into their new religion. Christi- anity became to a considerable extent leavened by Hellenistic thought. This is what our Lord fore- told in the parable of the Leaven, rightly inter- preted. Now Plato taught the indestructibility of the soul. But in Mt \0'^^ God is declared to be ' able to destroy both soul and body in hell,' which is the usual Biblical doctrine. St. Luke (12*) has altered this into ' him who has power to cast into hell.' It would seem that he, or his informant, did this to avoid giving offence to the Platonists. In the Markan account of the Agony in Geth- semane (Mk 1432-42^ there is much to perplex a Stoic, who believed that a good man is never perturbed. All trace of agony is absent from St. Luke's ac- count (cf. 11 Vm at 22'*3t-) ; perhaps because the proto-Mark did not contain it ; more probably because St. Luke has deliberately struck it out.
St. Luke has long been accused of Ebionism, because the rich are severely handled in his pages, and because he expressly commands us to part with all our property (12^2-34) ; whereas St. Matthew (according to the Greek) bids us only think more highly of the heavenly than of the earthly treasure (6''-'-2i). St. Luke was certainly not -an Ebionite, or he would not have defended the Virgin Birth or praised Joseph of Arimathsea. In speaking words of severity against the rich he is probably faith- fully reproducing our Lord's words, which were wont to be incisive. The strongest of all these sayings against the wealthy is preserved in the proto-Mark (Mk lO^S), and it is followed by a declaration in which our Lord Himself cautions us against interpreting His utterances with prosaic literality. Nor have Christians generally supposed that He intended us to pluck out our right eye or cut off our right hand and foot.
The most striking example of editorial addition in St. Luke is that in wiiich he attributes the three houns' darkness to a solar eclipse (23**). In saying so he cannot be right for many reasons (Comp. of the Gospels, 119).
iii. Points of contact with St. John. — If St. John's teaching was esoteric, intended for ad- vanced disciples only, we shall better understand the rarity of the occasions on which allusions to it are found in the sub-Apostolic age. But that it existed orally for many years before it was com- mitted to writing, is indicated not only by its own characteristics, but by several cases in which it is simpler to assume that one of the Synoptists learned a fact from St. John than that St. John learned it from him. Many passages are pointed out in the index to the Synopsis in which the trito- Mark is held to have drawn from St. John's oral teaching. There is one case where St. Matthew does so. And we have now to consider cases where St. Luke appears to have followed their example. We have already seen that St. Luke agrees with St. John that our Lord's feet were anointed and not His head. But in that matter we held that St. Luke is reproducing the original deutero- Markan statement which lias been corrupted in St. Matthew and in the trito-Mark. The trito-Mark tells us that the day of the Crucifixion was Friday (Mk 15*"2). This statement St. Luke repeats (235*), but in a different context and in different language. The simplest explanation of these peculiarities and of the absence of the words from St. Matthew is that both Evangelists, directly or indirectly, derived their information from St. John. Finally, St. Luke and S". John tell us that the sepulchre in which our Lord's body lay was a new one, ' where no one had yet lain ' (Lk 23*3).
iv. St. Luke's characteiiistics. — St. Luke the Gentile was cosmopolitan in his sentiments. St. Luke the beloved physician had sympathy for the sorrows of mankind. The woris of pity which he
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records were drawn from the all-compassionate heart of the Saviour, but to St. Luke is due the credit of preserving them from oblivion. To his literary skill we are probably right in attributing some of the beauty of their form. St. Luke the disciple of St. Paul tells of the publican, who durst not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven, but kept smiting his breast and saying, ' God be mercitul to me the sinner" (18i-^). Ke tells of the traveller by the wayside, stripped, wounded, and half-dead, and how the good Samaritan had pity upon him (lO**-'^''). He tells of the Prodigal, wandering in thoughtless levity from home, spend- . ing his substance in riot and revelry, and then eating the husks which were thrown to the swine ; and how the father had compassion upon him and welcomed him home (15''-3-). He tells of the poor woman who had been a sinner in the city, coming behind and washing the Saviour's feet with her tears (T""--^') ; of the robber's appeal on the cross, ' Lord, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom' ('iS'"-*''). These and other passages which set forth the freeness and fulness of pardon- ing love have been preserved to us only in the writings of St. Luke, who had more pity for the weak and for the suffering, for widows and for the poor, than any other NT writer.