SECTION IV

the authenticity of the third gospel

St Luke, the companion of St Paul on several of his missionary journeys, and the author of the Acts of the Apostles, is also known to us as the writer of the third Gospel. He himself, in the opening of the Acts of the Apostles, refers to a Gospel of which he was the writer.

It must be inferred that Tatian was acquainted with the Gospel of St Luke, since he would hardly have sought to base his Diatessaron, or Gospel-harmony depending upon four Gospels, in the very face of the Church, upon an apocryphal production. We know, from the work of Tertullian against Marcion, that the latter was acquainted with this Gospel, which Tertullian reproaches him with having corrupted, because he found its more universal character, and its adaptation to Gentile Christians, make it more suitable to his system than those of the other Evangelists.¹ Irenæus reckons St Luke among the four Evangelists; remarking, that as the companion of St Paul, he committed to writing the Gospel preached by that apostle.² Origen and Eusebius also designate him as the author of the Gospel which tradition ascribes to him. According to Eusebius, it was a current opinion, that St Paul, when using the expression, according to my Gospel, intended thereby the Gospel according to St Luke. Jerome (Comment. in Isaiam, 6, 9) remarks, that the Greek education which Luke had received as a physician is apparent in his Gospel. The genuineness of this Gospel has been least opposed by critics, a circumstance owing, perhaps, to the fact, that the authority of this Evangelist is more easily attacked from a different quarter. St Luke, as a Hellenist and a disciple of St Paul, had not access to the chief mass of evangelical tradition as the other Evangelists. It was therefore more difficult for him, than for them, to obtain the Gospel treasure in its purity. But, on the other hand, he had, in the direction given to his mind by the teaching of St Paul, a more developed feeling for certain aspects and incidents of the Gospel history. In any case, he was so grafted into the genuine stock of primitive tradition by St Paul, who lived in frequent intercourse with the Church at Jerusalem, that the genuineness and purity of his narration cannot be disputed.

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Notes

The question why St Luke is not named by Papias, might perhaps find an answer in our previous remarks on his testimony. In favour of the supposition, that by Aristion, the Lord’s disciple, spoken of by Papias, we are to understand the Evangelist Luke, it may be remarked: (1.) That he connects Aristion with John the presbyter, whom he calls, as well as the former, the Lord’s disciple; (2.) that he considers both as representatives of the oral tradition which he received from the immediate witnesses of the life of Jesus; (3.) that they appear, as such, to stand in a kind of contrast to St Matthew and St Mark, to whose written Gospels Papias appeals. According to the information of Isidore of Hispalis (de ortu, &c., c. 82), St Luke died in his seventy-fourth year; according to a notice in the work of Jerome (Catal. de vir. ill. c. 7), supposed to be an interpolation (see Credner, Einleit. &c., 129), he lived till the age of eighty-four. If it were in his youth that he accompanied the Apostle Paul, he might, if he attained an advanced age, as well as the Apostle John, have been known in his old age by Papias, who, in that case, would, in conformity with his maxim, have concerned himself with his oral communications, and not with his writings. This view, too, refers to the information of Epiphanius, that Luke was one of the seventy, and to the remark of Theophylact (Proœm. in Lucam), that he was, according to the assertion of some, the unnamed disciple of the journey to Emmaus.

1) Tertull. adv. Marcionem, iv. 5.

2) Adv, Hares. iii. 4, is