St. Luke with St. Bartholomew
St. Luke
18th October
St. Luke
St. Bartholomew
Almost
all that we know about Luke comes from the New Testament. He was a
physician (Col 4:14), a companion of Paul on some of his
missionary journeys (Acts 16:10ff; 20:5ff; 27-28). Material found
in his Gospel and not elsewhere includes much of the account of
Our Lord's birth and infancy and boyhood, some of the most moving
parables, such as that of the Good Samaritan and that of the
Prodigal Son, and three of the sayings of Christ on the Cross:
"Father, forgive them," "Thou shalt be with me in
Paradise," and "Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit."
Luke makes many casual references throughout his writings (especially in Acts) to local customs and practices, often with demonstrable and noteworthy precision. To mention just one example, he refers to two centurions by name, Cornelius in Acts 10 and Julius in Acts 27, and he calls them both by nomen only, rather than by nomen and cognomen (Sergius Paulus in Acts 13;7) or cognomen only (Gallio in Acts 18:12), as he does when speaking of civilian officials. It is a distinction that would have been routine at the time that Luke is writing about, but one that had largely died out by, say, 70 AD. His preserving it shows either that:
he wrote fairly close to the events he described, or
he was describing persons and events on which he had good information, or
he was an expert historical novelist, with an ear for the authentic-sounding detail.
Luke is commonly thought to be the only non-Jewish New Testament writer. His writings place the life of Christ and the development of the early Church in the larger context of the Roman Empire and society. On the other hand, his writings are focused on Jerusalem and on the Temple. His Gospel begins and ends in the Temple, and chapters nine through nineteen portray Jesus as journeying from Galilee to Jerusalem. Similarly, the Book of Acts describes the Church in Jerusalem (and worshipping in the Temple) and then describes the missionary journeys of Paul as excursions from and returns to Jerusalem.