Additional evidence of the early acceptance of Luke's Gospel may be derived from the qucestio vexata of its relation to the Gospel of iMarcion. This is not the place to discuss this subject, which has led critics to the most opposite conclusions, for a full account of which the read- er may be referred to De '\^'ette, Einleit. in N. T. y. 119- 137, as well as to the treatises of Eitschl, Baur, Hilgen- feld, Hahn, and Volckmar. It will be enough for our purpose to mention that the Gnostic teacher Marcion, in pursuit of his professed ol)ject of restoring the i)urity of the Gospel, which had been corrupted by Judaizing
LUKE
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teachers, rejected all the books of the canon with the exception of ten epistles of Paul and a gospel, which he called simply a gospel of Christ. We have the express testimony of Irenasus {Contr. IIm\ i, 27, 2 ; iii, 12, 12, etc.), TertiiUian {Cont. Marc, iv, 1, 2, G), Origcn {Cont. Cels. ii, 27), and Epiphanius (Ilcer. xlii, 11) that the basis of Marcion's Gospel was that of Luke, abridged and altered by him to sidt his peculiar tenets (for the alterations and omissions, the chief being its curtaUment by the first two chapters, see De Wette, p. 123-132), though we cannot assert, as was done by his enemies among the orthodox, that all the variations are due to Marcion himself, many of them having no connection with his heretical views, and being, rather, various readings of great antiquity and high importance. Of late years, however, the op- posite view, which was first broached by Semler, Gries- bach, and Eichhorn, has been vigorously maintained, among others, by Kitschl and Baur, who have endeav- ored to prove that the Gospel of Luke, as we have it, is interpolated, and that the portions Marcion is charged with having omitted were really unauthorized additions to the original document. See Bleek, Einl. in da^ \. T. § 52. Volckmar. in his exhaustive treatise Das Evang. Marcio/is (Lips. 1852), has satisfactorily disposed of this theory, and has demonstrated that the Gospel of Luke, as we now have it, was the material on which Marcion worked, and, therefore, that before he began to teach, the date of which may be fixed about A.U. 139, it was already known to and accepted by the Church. ZeUer and Ptitschl have since abandoned their position (Theol. Jahrb. 1851, p. 337, 528), and Baur has greatly modified his (^Marlcusevangel. 1851. p. 191). See also Hahn, Das Ecangdhtm Marcions (Kijnigsb. 1823) ; Olshausen, Echt- heit dtr vur Kanon. Eranjelie/i (Konigsb. 1823) ; Pdtschl, Das Ecangelium Marcions (Tubing. 18-16) ; I3aur, Krit. Untersuchung iiber d. Kan. Evangdien (Tubing. 184:7) ; Hilgenfeld, Krit. Untersuchungen (Halle, 1850) ; bishop Thirlwall's Introduction to Schleierinacher on St. Luke ; De Wette, Lehrhuch d. N. T. (Berl. 18-48) ; Norton, Genu- ineness of the Gospels (Bost. 1844), iii, add. note C, p. xlix. II. Sources. — The authorities from which Luke de- rived his Gospel are clearly indicated by liim in the in- troduction (i, 1-4). He does not claim to have been an eye-witness of out Lord's ministry, or to have any per- sonal knowledge of the facts he records, but, as an honest compiler, to have gone to the best sources of information then accessible, and, having accurately traced the whole course of the apostolic tradition from the verj' first, in its every detail (TrapijKoXovBijKuTi dvojOev Traaiv dKptjSuic), to have written an orderly narrative of tlie facts (npay- fiuToJi') already fully believed {7rf!T\i]po<popi]i.dvLov) in the Christian Church, and which Theophilus had already learned, not from books, but from oral teaching (icar/;- X'/^'K" ; comp. Acts xviii, 25 ; Gal. vi, 5). These sources were partly the '• oral tradition" (Traps coaav) of those " who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and min- isters of the Word," and partly the written records (to which Ewald, vi, 40, on unexplained grounds, dogmat- ically assigns a non-Juda?an origin) which even then " many" {iroWo'i) had attempted to draw up, of which, though the evangelist's words do not necessarily bear that meaning, we may well suppose that he would avail liimself. Though we thankfully believe that, as well in the selection of his materials as in the employment of them, Luke was acting under the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit, it will be remarked that he lays claim to no such supernatural guidance, but simply to the care and accuracy of an honest, painstaking, and well-in- formed editor, not so consciously under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as to supersede the use of his own mental powers. His use of Ids authorities is not me- chanical ; though often incorporating, apparently with little alteration, large portions of the oral tradition, es- pecially in the case of the words of our Lord, or those with whom he conversed, and adopting narratives al- ready current (of which the first two chapters, with their harsh Hebraistic phraseology, immediately succeeding
the comparatively pure Greek of the dedication, are an example), the free handling of his pen is everywhere to be recognised. The connecting links and tlie passages of transition evidence the hand of the author, which may again be recognised in the greater variety of his style, the more complex cliaracter of his sentences, and the care he bestows in smoothing away harshnesses, and imparting a more classical air to the synoptical portions.