Gospel of Luke

Luke's Gospel
RELATED TOPICS	Gospel
SERMONS, ESSAYS AND OPINIONS	* Easton's Bible Dictionary entry on the Gospel of Luke
CONTENTS

Chapters

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Commentary

The gospel according Luke is the third book of the New Testament. It tells the story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. The story told in Luke is continued by the same author in the sequel the Acts of the Apostles.

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Read Matthew Henry's Concise Bible Commentary on the Gospel of Luke

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Author

The author's name is not recorded anywhere in the gospel. Early Christian writings such as the Muratorian Canon and the works of Orenaeus name Luke as the author. Further evidence can be taken from the Book of Acts, which is the continuation or companion book of the gospel of Luke, written by the same author. In Acts, the writer uses the pronoun "we" suggesting that the author was a companion of Paul.

Recipient

The gospel is addressed to Theophilus (Luke 1:3). Theophilus may have been a Roman official.

Date and place of writing

Two possible suggestions for the date of writing are between 59 and 63 AD, or around 80 AD.

Quirinius or Cyrenius?

At Luke 2:2 the governor is named as Cyrenius in the Authorised Version (KJV) and as Quirinius in many modern translations.

There is no contradiction in the Bible text in ancient Greek. That certainly reads Κυρηνιου. That word has Strong's number 2958, which Strong transliterates as Kurenios.

The German Luther Bible and, later, the KJV change Kurenios into letters which existed in the Latin alphabet. Although that alphabet is similar to ours, it does not, for example, contain the letter K, so that was replaced by C. The ending -os is replaced by -us, which would be appropriate for a Roman man. Hence Cyrenius. In the German language, an obvious pronunciation of the word Cyrenius is Ku-rain-ius, which sounds similar to Kurenios.

Modern versions use information from elsewhere that there was a Roman called P Sulpicius Quirinius. The translators or paraphrasers replace the word used by Luke by the word Quirinius. There is no Q in Greek, so the name Quirinius, written in Greek, would have to start with the Greek letter K.

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Links

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