II. Scripture History. — All that can be with certainty known of Luke must be gathered from the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul. The result is but scanty. He was not born a Jew, for he is not reckoned among them " of the circumcision" by Paul (comp. Col. iv, 11 with ver. 14). If this be not thought conclusive, nothing can be argued from the Greek idioms in his style, for he might be a Hellenistic Jew, nor from the Gentile tendency of his Gospel, for this it would share with the inspired writings of Paul, a Pharisee brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. The date of his conversion is uncertain. He was not, indeed, " an eyewitness and minister of the Word from the beginning" (Luke i, 2), or he would have rested his claim as an evangelist upon that ground. His name does not once occur in the Acts, and we can only infer his presence or absence from the sudden changes from the third to the first person, and vice versa, of which phenomenon, notwithstanding all that has of late been lU'ged against it, this, which has been accepted since the time of Iren.ijus (Contr. Har. iii, 14), is the only satisfactory explanation. Rejecting the reading avvtaTpaupkviov ot i'iixCjv, Acts xi, 28 (which only rests on 1). and Augustine, De Serm. Dom. ii, 17), which would bring Luke into connection with Paul at a much earlier period, as well as the identification of the evangelist with Lucius of Cyrene (Acts xiii, 1 ; Rom. xvi, 21), which was current in Origen's time {ad Rom. x\'i, 39 ; see Lardner, Credibility, vi, 124 ; Marsh, Micha- elis, iv, 234), and would make him a kinsman of Paul, we first find Luke in Paul's company at Troas, and sail- ing with him to IMacedonia (Acts xvi, 10, 11). A.D. 48. Of his previous history, and the time and manner of his conversion, we. know nothing, but Ewald's su])|)Osition (Gesch. d. V. Isr. vi, 35, 448) is not at all improbable, that he was a physician residing in Troas, converted by Paul, and attaching himself to the apostle with aU the ardor of a young convert. He may also, as Ewald thinks, have been one of the first uncircumcised Christians. His conversion had taken place before, since he silently assumes his jilace among the great apostle's followers without any hint that this was his first admission to the knowledge and ministry of Christ. He may have found his way to Troas to jireach the Gospel, sent possibly by Paul himself. There are some who maintain that Luke had already joined Paul at Antioch (Acts xi, 27-30 ; see .Tournal of Sacred Literatiire, October, 1861, p. 170, and Conybeare and Howson's Life of Paul, chap, v, new ed. Lond. 1861). He accompanied Paul as far as Philippi, but did not share in the imprisonment of his master and his companion Silas, nor, as the third jierson is resumed (Acts xvii, 1), did he, it would seem, take any further part in the acrostic's missionary journey. The first person appears again on Paul's third visit to Philippi, A.D. 54 (Acts XX, 5, 6\ from which it has been gathered that Luke had s]icnt the whole intervening time — a pe- riod of seven or eight years — in Philippi or its neighbor- hood. If any credit is to be given to the ancient opin-
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ion that Luke is referred to in 2 Cor. viii, 18 as "the brother whose praise is in the Gospel throughout all the churches" (a view adopted by the Church of England in the collect for Luke's day), as well as the early tradition embodied in the subscription to that epistle, that it was sent from Philippi " by Titus and Lucas" we shall have evidence of the evangelist's missionary zeal during this long space of time. If this be so, we are to suppose that during the " three months" of Paul's sojourn at Philippi (Acts XX, 3) Luke was sent from that place to Corinth on this errand, the word " gospel" being, of course, to be understood, not, as Jerome and others erroneously inter- pret it, of Luke's written gospel, but of his publication of the glad tidings of Jesus Christ. The mistaken in- terpretation of the word "gospel" in this place has thus led some to assign the composition of the Gospel of Luke to this period, a view which derives some support from the Arabic version published by Erpenius, in whicla its writing is placed " in a city of Macedonia twenty-two years after the Ascension," A.D. 51. From their reunion at Philippi, Luke remained in constant attendance on Paul dimng his journey to Jerusalem (Acts xx, 6-xxi, 18), and, disappearing from the narrative during the apostle's imprisonment at Jerusalem and Ciesarea, reap- pears again when he sets out for Kome (Acts xxvii, 1). A.D. 56. He was shipwrecked with Paul (xxviii, 2), and travelled with him by Syracuse and Puteoli to Rome (vers. 12-16), where he appears to have continued as his fellow-laborer {(jvvipyoc, Philem. 24 ; Col. iv, 4) tiU the close of his first imprisonment, A.D. 58. The Second Epistle to Timothy (iv, 11) gives us the latest glimpse of the " beloved ph3'sician," and our authentic informa- tion regarding him beautifully closes with a testimony from the apostle's pen to his faithfidness amidst general defection, A.D. 64.