the year 63, we do not know. The last allusion to him is the word of Paul when on the point of
martyrdom: "Only Luke is with me" (2 Tim. 4:11).
The Bible leaves Luke at the height of his usefulness in the best company, with Paul
preaching the gospel in the metropolis of the world.
Post-apostolic tradition, always far below the healthy and certain tone of the New Testament,
mostly vague and often contradictory, never reliable, adds that he lived to the age of eighty-four,
labored in several countries, was a painter of portraits of Jesus, of the Virgin, and the apostles, and
that he was crucified on an olive-tree at Elaea in Greece. His real or supposed remains, together
with those of Andrew the apostle, were transferred from Patrae in Achaia to the Church of the
Apostles in Constantinople.^994
The symbolic poetry of the Church assigns to him the sacrificial ox; but the symbol of man
is more appropriate; for his Gospel is par excellence the Gospel of the Son of Man.
Sources of Information.
According to his own confession in the preface, Luke was no eye-witness of the gospel
history,^995 but derived his information from oral reports of primitive disciples, and from numerous
fragmentary documents then already in circulation. He wrote the Gospel from what he had heard
and read, the Acts from, what he had seen and heard. He traced the origin of Christianity "accurately
from the beginning."
His opportunities were the very best. He visited the principal apostolic churches between
Jerusalem and Rome, and came in personal contact with the founders and leaders. He met Peter,
Mark, and Barnabas at Antioch, James and his elders at Jerusalem (on Paul’s last visit) Philip and
his daughters at Caesarea, the early converts in Greece and Rome; and he enjoyed, besides, the
benefit of all the information which Paul himself had received by revelation or collected from
personal intercourse with his fellow-apostles and other primitive disciples. The sources for the
history of the infancy were Jewish-Christian and Aramaean (hence the strongly Hebraizing coloring
of Luke 1–2); his information of the activity of Christ in Samaria was probably derived from Philip,
who labored there as an evangelist and afterwards in Caesarea. But a man of Luke’s historic instinct
and conscientiousness would be led to visit also in person the localities in Galilee which are
immortalized by the ministry of Christ. From Jerusalem or Caesarea he could reach them all in
three or four days.
The question whether Luke also used one or both of the other Synoptic Gospels has already
been discussed in a previous section. It is improbable that he included them among his evidently
fragmentary sources alluded to in the preface. It is certain that he had no knowledge of our Greek
Matthew; on the use of a lost Hebrew Matthew and of Mark the opinion of good scholars is divided,
but the resemblance with Mark, though very striking in some sections,^996 is not of such a character
that it cannot as well, and even better, be explained from prior oral tradition or autoptical memoirs,
especially if we consider that the resemblances are neutralized by unaccountable differences and(^994) Jerome, De vir. ill., 7: "Sepultus est Constantinopoli, ad quam urbem vicesimo Constantii anno ossa eius cum reliquiis
Andreae apostoli translata sunt."
(^995) Hence the ancient tradition that he was one of the Seventy Disciples, or one of the two disciples of Emmaus, cannot be
true.
(^996) As the account of the stilling of the tempest, Luke 8:22-25, compared with Mark 4:35-41; and the parable of the wicked
husbandman, Luke 20:9-19, compared with Mark 12:1-12.
A.D. 1-100.