LUKE.

Very little direct mention is made of this valuable contributor to the sacred canon, in any part of the New Testament; and those notices which seem to refer to him, are so vague, that they have been denied to have any connection with the evangelist. The name which is given in the title of his gospel is, in the original form, Lucas, a name undoubtedly of Latin origin, but shown by its final syllable to be a Hebrew-Greek corruption and abridgment of some pure Roman word; for it was customary for the New Testament writers to make these changes, to accord with their own forms of utterance. Lucas, therefore, is an abridgment of some one of two or three Roman words, either Lucius, Lucilius or Lucanus; and as the writers of that age were accustomed to write either the full or abridged form of any such name, indifferently, it seems allowable to recognize the Lucius mentioned in Acts and in the Epistle to the Romans, as the same person with the evangelist. From the manner in which this Lucius is mentioned in the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, it would seem that he was related to Paul by blood or marriage, since the apostle mentions him along with Jason and Sosipater, as his “kinsman.” In the beginning of the thirteenth chapter of Acts, Lucius is called “the Cyrenian,” whence his country may be inferred to have been the province of northern Africa, called Cyrene, long and early the seat of Grecian refinement, art, eloquence and philosophy, and immortalized by having given name to one of the sects of Grecian philosophers,——the Cyrenaic school, founded by Aristippus. Whether he was a Jew by birth, or a heathen, is not known, and has been much disputed. His birth and education in that seat of Grecian literature, may be reasonably considered as having contributed to that peculiar elegance of his language and style, which distinguishes him as the most correct of all the writers of the New Testament.

His relationship to Paul, (if it may be believed on so slight grounds,) was probably a reason for his accompanying him as he did through so large a portion of his travels and labors. He first speaks of himself as a companion of Paul, at the beginning of his first voyage to Europe, at Troas; and accompanies him to Philippi, where he seems to have parted from him, since, in describing the movements of the apostolic company, he no longer uses the pronoun “we.” He probably staid in or near Philippi several years, for he resumes the word, in describing Paul’s voyage from Philippi to Jerusalem. He was his companion as far as Caesarea, where he probably staid during Paul’s visit to Jerusalem; remained with him perhaps during his two years’ imprisonment in Caesarea, and was certainly his companion on his voyage to Rome. He remained with him there till a short time before his release; and is mentioned no more till Paul, in his last writing, the second epistle to Timothy, says, “Luke alone is with me.” Beyond this, not the slightest trace remains of his history. Nothing additional is known of him, except that he was a physician; for he is mentioned by Paul, in his Epistle to the Colossians, as “Luke, the beloved physician.” The miserable fiction of some of the papistical romances, that Luke was also a painter, and took portraits of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, &c. is almost too shamelessly impudent to be ever mentioned; yet the venerable Cave, the only writer who has heretofore given in full the Lives of the Apostles, refers to it, without daring to deny its truth!

(That Luke was also regarded by the Fathers as an apostle, is shown by the fact that, in the Synopsis ascribed to Athanasius, it is said, ‘that the gospel of Luke was dictated by the apostle Paul, and written and published by the blessed apostle and physician, Luke.’)

HIS WRITINGS.

But a far more valuable testimony of the character of Luke is found in those noble works which bear his name in the inspired canon. His gospel is characterized by remarkable distinctness of expression and clearness of conception, which, with that correctness of language by which it is distinguished above all the other books of the New Testament, conspire to make it the most easy to be understood of all the writings of the New Testament; and it has been the subject of less comment and criticism than any other of the sacred books. From the language which he uses in his preface, about those who had undertaken similar works before him, it would seem that though several unauthorized accounts of the life and discourses of Jesus were published before him, yet neither of the other gospels were known by him to have been written. He promises, by means of a thorough investigation of all facts to the sources, to give a more complete statement than had ever before been given to those for whom he wrote. Of the time when he wrote it, therefore, it seems fair to conclude, that it was before the other two; but a vast number of writers have thought differently, and many other explanations of his words have been offered. Of his immediate sources of information,——the place where he wrote, and the particular person to whom he addresses it, nothing is known with sufficient certainty to be worth recording.

Of the Acts of the Apostles, nothing need be said in respect to the contents and object, so clear and distinct is this beautiful piece of biography, in all particulars. Its date may be fixed with exactness at the end of the second year of Paul’s first imprisonment, which, according to common calculations, is A. D. 63. It may well become the modern apostolic historian, in closing with the mention of this writing his own prolonged yet hurried work, to acknowledge the excellence, the purity, and the richness of the source from which he has thus drawn so large a portion of the materials of the greatest of these Lives. Yet what can he add to the bright testimonies accumulated through long ages, to the honor and praise of this most noble of historic records? The learned of eighteen centuries have spent the best energies of noble minds, and long studious lives, in comment and in illustration of its clear, honest truth, and its graphic beauty; the humble, inquiring Christian reader, in every age too, has found, and in every age will find, in this, the only safe and faithful outline of the great events of the apostolic history. The most perfect and permanent impression, which a long course of laborious investigation and composition has left on the author’s mind, of the task which he now lays down, exhausted yet not disgusted, is, that beyond the apostolic history of Luke, nothing can be known with certainty of the great persons of whose acts he treats, except the disconnected and floating circumstances which may be gleaned by implication from the epistles; and so marked is the transition from the pure honesty of the sacred record, to the grossness of patristic fiction, that the truth is, even to a common eye, abundantly well characterized by its own excellence. On the passages of such a narrative, the lights of [♦]criticism, of Biblical learning, and of contemporary history, may often be needed, to make the sometimes unconnected parts appear in their true historic relations. The writer who draws therefrom, too, the facts for a connected biography, may, in the amplifications of a modern style, perhaps more to the surprise than the admiration of his readers, quite protract the bare simplicity of the original record, “in many a winding bout of linked” wordiness, “long drawn out,”——but the modernizing extension and illustration, though it may bring small matters more prominently to the notice and perception of the reader, can never supply the place of the original,——to improve which, comment and illustration are alike vain. When will human learning and labor perfect the exposition and the illustration of the apostolic history? Its comments are written in the eternal hope of uncounted millions;——its illustrations can be fully read only in the destiny of ages. This record was the noble task of “the beloved physician;” in his own melodious language——“To give knowledge to the people, of salvation by remission of sins through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us,——to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,——to guide OUR feet in the way of peace!”

[♦] “critiicism” replaced with “criticism”

[♦]ERRATA.

[♦] All errata noted in this list has been corrected in the foregoing text.

The statement on page 339, respecting the exposition of the Apocalypse by Clarke, appears, on a more careful investigation, to represent his views rather too decidedly as favoring the ancient interpretation. His own notes are such as unquestionably support that interpretation; but he has so far conformed to popular prejudice, as to admit on his pages some very elaborate anti-papal explanations from an anonymous writer, (J. E. C.) which, however, he is very far from adopting as his own. The uniform expression made by his own clear and learned notes, must be decidedly favorable to the ancient interpretation, and the value of his noble work is vastly enhanced by this circumstance.

The view on pages 355 and 361, of the locality of Philip’s and Nathanael’s conversion, is undoubtedly erroneous. I overlooked the form of the expression——“The next day, Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip,” &c. This shows that he was still at Bethabara when he called both Philip and Nathanael.

MATERIALS.

In the narrative of the lives of the twelve, the author has been driven entirely to the labor of new research and composition, because the task of composing complete biographies of these personages had never before been undertaken on so large a scale. Cave’s Lives of the Apostles, the only work that has ever gone over that ground, is much more limited in object and extent than the task here undertaken, and afforded no aid whatever to the author of this work, in those biographies. Both the text and the notes of that part of the work are entirely new; nothing whatever, except a few acknowledged quotations, of those biographies, having ever appeared before on this subject. A list of the works which were resorted to in the prosecution of this new work, would fill many pages, and would answer no useful purpose, after the numerous references made to each source in connection with the passage which was thence derived. It is sufficient in justice to himself to say that all those references were made by the author himself; nor in one instance that can now be recollected, did he quote second-hand without acknowledging the intermediate source. In the second part of the work, the labor was in a field less completely occupied by previous labor. But throughout that part of the work also, the whole text of the narrative is original; and all the fruits of others’ research are, with hardly one exception, credited in the notes, both to the original, and to the medium through which they were derived. In this portion of the work, much labor has been saved, by making use of the very full illustrations given in the works of those who had preceded the author on the life of Paul, whose biography has frequently received the attention and labor of the learned.

The following have been most useful in this part of the work. “Hermanni Witsii Meletemata Leidensia, Part 1. Vita Pauli Apostoli.” 4to. Leidiae, 1703.——“Der Apostel Paulus. Von J. T. Hemsen.” 8vo. Goettingen, 1830.——“Pearson’s Annals of Paul, translated, with notes, by Jackson Muspratt Williams.” 12mo. Cambridge, 1827.——Much valuable matter contained in the two first, however, was excluded by want of room.