Luke's Gospel and The Early Fathers

Early Church Father on Who Wrote Luke

Irenaeus of Lyons

Luke also, who was a follower of Paul, put down in a book the gospel which was preached by him.¹

Muratorian Fragment, Rome

The third book of the Gospel is that according to Luke. Luke, the well-known physician, after the ascension of Christ, when Paul had taken him with him as one zealous for the law, composed it in his own name, according to [the general] belief. Yet he himself had not seen the Lord in the flesh; and therefore, as he was able to ascertain events, so indeed he begins to tell the story from the birth of John.²

Tertullian of Carthage

Luke, however, was not an apostle, but only an apostolic man…not a master, but a disciple, and so inferior to a master—at least as far subsequent to him as the apostle [Paul] whom he followed…was subsequent to the others…. Even Luke’s form of the Gospel men usually ascribe to Paul.³

Origen of Alexandria

And thirdly, that according to Luke, who wrote, for those who from the Gentiles [came to believe] the Gospel that was praised by Paul.⁴

Early Church Father on When Luke Was Written

According to Origen of Alexandria, Luke’s Gospel was written “third”—that is, after the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. Even more intriguing, Origen asserts that the Gospel of Luke was written while Paul was still alive . When Origen says that “Luke wrote…the Gospel (Greek euangelion ) that was praised by Paul,”⁵ he is referring to a line from 2 Corinthians, in which Paul speaks about a companion of his who is famous in all the churches:

2 Corinthians 8:18-19 - LSB

¹⁸ And we have sent along with him [Titus] the brother whose praise in the things of the gospel is throughout all the churches. ¹⁹ And not only this, but he has also been appointed by the churches to travel with us in this gracious work that is being ministered by us for the glory of the Lord Himself, and to show our readiness,

Although many English Bibles translate this line as “famous among all the churches for his preaching of the gospel,” the original Greek is actually a noun: “famous in the gospel” (Greek en tō euangeliō ) (2 Corinthians 8:16). Origen, a native Greek speaker, interpreted these words of Paul as a reference to the written Gospel that made Luke famous in all the churches in which his book had circulated.⁶ For what it’s worth, in the late fourth century AD, Saint Jerome interpreted Paul’s words in the same way:

Jerome, Lives of Illustrious Men , 7

Luke, a physician from Antioch, indicated in his writings that he knew Greek and that he was a follower of the apostle Paul and the companion of all his journeying; he wrote a gospel about which the same Paul says , “We have sent with him a brother whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches” (2 Corinthians 8:18).

Footnotes

1. Cited in Eusebius, Church History , 5.8.3; compare Irenaeus, Against Heresies , 3.1.1. ↩︎

2. Lines 2–8 translated by Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 305–6. ↩︎

3. Tertullian of Carthage, Against Marcion 4.2.5. Translation in Ante-Nicene Fathers , ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 12 vols. (repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 3.347; hereafter abbreviated as ANF. ↩︎

4. Cited in Eusebius, Church History , 6.25.4. ↩︎

5. See Eusebius, Church History , 6.25.4. ↩︎

6. Eusebius, Church History 6.25.3, 6 ↩︎