Confirmation of the belief and practice of the church—it is for this that Mark reports all he can learn of the years of obscurity in Galilee followed by the tragedy in Jerusalem. Not only belief in Jesus as the Son of God will be justified by the story, but the founding, institutions, and ritual of the existing church. He manifestly adapts it to show not only the superhuman powers and attributes of the chosen Son of God, but the germ and type of all the church's institutions. Its baptism of repentance and accompanying gift of the Spirit of Adoption only repeats the experience of Jesus at the baptism of John. Endowment with the word of wisdom and the word of power is but the counterpart of Jesus' divine equipment with "the power of the Spirit" when he taught and healed in Galilee. The Sending of the Twelve sets the standard for the church's evangelists and missionaries, just as the Breaking of the Bread in Galilee gives the model for its fraternal banquet. So for the Judæan ministry as well. The path of martyrdom is that which all must follow, its Passover Supper of the Lord and Vigil in Gethsemane are models for the church's annual observance, its Passover of the Lord, its Vigil, its Resurrection feast. The grouping of the anecdotes is not all of Mark's doing, for we can still see in many cases how they have grown up around the church observances, to explain and justify the rites, rather than to form part of an outlined career. But taking the work as a whole, and considering how far beyond that of any other church was the opportunity at Rome, where Paul had transmitted the lofty conception of the Son of God, and Peter the concrete tradition of his earthly life, we cannot wonder that Mark's outline so soon became the standard account of Jesus' earthly ministry, and ultimately the only one.
But little space remains in which to trace the developments of gospel story in other fields. Southern Syria and Egypt soon found it needful, as we have seen, to adopt the work of Mark, but independently and as a framework for the Matthæan Precepts. It cannot have been long after that Antioch and Northern Syria followed suit. For Luke, though acquainted with the work of 'many' predecessors gives no sure evidence of acquaintance with Matthew. When we find such unsoftened contradictions as those displayed between these two Greek gospels in their opening and closing chapters, and observe, moreover, that while both indulge in hundreds of corrections and improvements upon Mark, these are rarely coincident and never make the assumption of interdependence necessary, it is hard to resist the conclusion that neither evangelist was directly acquainted with the other's work. Now no other gospel compares with Matthew in the rapidity and extent of its circulation, while Luke declares himself a diligent inquirer. He could not ignore the claims of apostolic authority to which this early and wide acceptance of Matthew were mainly due. The inference is reasonable that Luke's date was but little later than that of Matthew. If the probability of his employment of the Antiquities of Josephus could be raised to a certainty this would suffice to date the Gospel and Book of Acts not earlier than 96. Internal and external evidence, as judged by most scholars, converge on a date approximating 100.
The North-Syrian derivation of Luke-Acts is less firmly established in tradition than the Roman origin of Mark and the South-Syrian of Matthew. Ancient tradition can point to nothing weightier than the statement of Eusebius, drawn we know not whence, but independently made in the argumenta (prefixed descriptions) of several Vulgate manuscripts that Luke was of Antiochian birth. However, internal evidence supplies corroboration in rather unusual degree. If the reading of some texts in Acts xi. 28, "And as we were assembled," could be accepted, this alone would be almost conclusive corroboration. But dubious as it is, it furnishes support. For if an alteration of the original, it is at any rate extremely early (c. 150?) and aimed to support the belief in question.[23] Moreover the whole attitude of Luke-Acts in respect to apostolic authority, settlement of the great question of the terms of fellowship between Jew and Gentile, and description of the founding of the Pauline churches, is such as to make its origin anywhere between the Taurus range and the Adriatic most improbable; while if we place it in Rome we shall have an insoluble problem in the relation of its extreme emphasis on apostolic authority, and quasi-deification of Peter, to the stalwart independence of Mark. Conversely there are many individual traits which suggest Antioch as the place of origin. Next to Jerusalem, the never-to-be-forgotten church of "the apostles and elders," Antioch is the mother church of Christendom. There the name "Christian" had its origin. There the work of converting the Gentiles was begun. The Greek churches of Cyprus and Asia Minor are regarded as dependencies of Antioch. Even those of the Greek peninsula are linked as well as may be to Antioch and Jerusalem, with suppression of the story of the schism. Antioch, not the Pauline Greek churches, is the benefactress of "the poor saints in Jerusalem," and at the instance of Antioch, by appeal to "the apostles and elders," the "decrees" are obtained which permanently settle the troublesome question of the obligation of maintaining ceremonial cleanness which still rests upon "the Jews which are among the Gentiles." As we have seen, the settlement is as far from that of Mark and the Pauline churches on the one side, as from the thoroughgoing legalism of Jerusalem on the other. As late as the Pastoral Epistles abstinence from "meats which God created to be received with thanksgiving by them that believe and know the truth" is to the Pauline churches a "doctrine of devils and seducing spirits" taught "through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies." Distinctions of meats belong to Jewish superstition, because "every creature of God is good and nothing is to be rejected, if it be received with thanksgiving" (1st Tim. iv. 1-5). Mark, as we have seen, takes precisely this standpoint. He is equally radical in condemning distinctions of meats as essentially "vain worship," and a "commandment of men" (Mark vii. 1-23). In truth if we distinguish one of Luke's sources from Luke himself we shall find exactly this doctrine taught to Peter himself by special divine revelation in Acts x. 10-16; xi. 3-10. Only, as we have already seen ([p. 59, note]), this is not the application made by the Book of Acts, as it now stands, of the material. To 'Luke' nothing could be more repugnant than the idea of an apostle forsaking the religion of his fathers, of which circumcision and "the customs" are an essential part. His cancellation, in the story of Peter's revelation and the Apostle's subsequent defence of it before the church in Jerusalem, of one of its essential factors, viz. the right to eat with Gentiles, regardless of man-made distinctions of meats ("what God hath cleansed make not thou common") is quite as significant as his restriction of even Paul's activity to Greek-speaking Jews, until "the Spirit" has expressly directed the church in Antioch, immediately after the persecution of Agrippa I, to proceed with the propaganda. Both alterations of the earlier form of the story are in line with a multitude of minor indications, and furnish us, in combination with them, the real keynote of the narrative. In Luke-Acts more clearly than in any of the gospels the writer assumes the distinctive function of the historian. He, too, would relate, like Mark, the origin of the Christian faith, and that "from the very first." He even deduces the pedigree of Jesus from "Adam, which was the son of God." But the object is far more to prove the pedigree of the faith than the pedigree of Jesus. Christianity is to be defended against the charge of being a nova superstitio, a religio illicita. On the contrary it is the one true and revealed religion, the perfect flower and consummation of Judaism. Yet it is not, like Judaism, particularistic and national, but universal; for while God at first made that nation the special repository of his truth, it was his "determinate foreknowledge and counsel" that they should reject and crucify their Messiah, making it possible to "proclaim this salvation unto the Gentiles." The one thing Luke is so anxiously concerned to prove that he wearies the reader with constant reiteration of it, proclaims it, argues it, in season and out of season, with his sources, against his sources, with the facts, against the facts, is that this faith was never, never, offered to the Gentiles except by express direction of God and after the Jews had demonstrated to the last extremity of stiff-necked opposition that they would have none of it. Christianity, then, and not Judaism, is the true primitive and revealed religion, the heir of all the divine promises.
We can see now why Luke finds it impossible to adopt Mark's story of a missionary journey of Jesus in "the coasts of Tyre and Sidon" and will not even mention the name of Cæsarea Philippi. His method in omitting Mark vi. 45—viii. 26 is more radical than Matthew's, but his motive is similar. The central theme of this portion of Mark appears in the chapter (ch. vii.) recording Jesus' repudiation of the Jewish distinctions of clean and unclean as "precepts of men," and departing to heal and preach in Phœoenicia and Decapolis. This is the theme of Luke's second treatise; and, as we have seen, his solution of the problem is radically different. If he cannot admit that even Paul disregarded "the customs" or Peter preached to Gentiles until after express and reiterated direction of "the Spirit," we surely ought not to expect him to admit the statement that Jesus repudiated the distinctions of Mosaism, declared "all meats clean," and departing into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon first healed the daughter of "a Gentile" and afterward continued his journey "through Sidon" and "the regions of Decapolis," repeating the symbolic miracles of opening deaf ears and blind eyes, and feeding with loaves and fishes. Even if this supposed ministry of Jesus among the Gentiles stood on a much stronger foundation of historical probability than is unfortunately the case (cf. Rom. xv. 8), it could not logically be admitted to the work of Luke without an abandonment of one of his firmest convictions and a rewriting of both his treatises.
Luke was probably not the first to divide his work into a "former treatise" covering "both" the sayings and doings of Jesus "until the time that he was taken up," and a second devoted to the work of the apostles after they had received the charge to proclaim the gospel "to the uttermost parts of the earth." "Many," as he tells us, had already undertaken to "draw up narratives" (diegeses) of this kind, of which the one Luke himself has chiefly employed, had originally, as we concluded, a sequel like his own Book of Acts. There are even features of the Petrine source of Acts which particularly connect it with Roman doctrine (e. g. Acts x. 10-15; cf. Rom. xiv. 14 and Mark vii. 18 f.) and even with the person of Mark (Acts xii. 12). Its balance between Peter and Paul and its close with the establishment of Christianity at Rome, are also suggestive that the greater part of Luke's second treatise came ultimately from the same source as his first. But the division of the work into two parts: (1) the gospel among the Jews; (2) the gospel among the Gentiles, would have followed, independently of any such precedent, from the whole purpose and structure of the work. Christianity is to be proved in the light of its origin, and in spite of the hostility of the Jews among whom it arose, and whose sacred writings it adopts, to be the original, true, revealed religion. To prove this it must be shown that the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus by his own people as a result of his earthly ministry was due not to his own failure to meet the ideal of the Scriptures in question, but to their perversity and wilful blindness. If it is important to prove in the former treatise that the opposition of the controlling authorities among the Jews was due to this perversity and jealousy, it is at least equally so to show that the lowly and devout received him gladly. Hence the peculiar hospitality of Luke toward material showing Jesus' acceptance of and by the humbler and the outcast classes, the poor and lowly, women, Samaritans, publicans and sinners. The idyllic scenes of his birth and childhood are cast among men and women of this type of Old Testament piety, quietly "waiting for the kingdom of God." During his career it is these who receive and hang upon him. Even on Calvary one of the thieves must join with this throng of devout and penitent believers. Jesus' preaching begins with his rejection by his own fellow-townsmen only because "no prophet is accepted in his own country"; though before their attempt to slay him he proves from Scripture how Elijah and Elisha had been sent unto the Gentiles. His ministry ends with his demonstration to the disciples after his resurrection from "Moses and all the prophets" how that "it was needful that the Christ should suffer before entering his glory," and that after his rejection by Israel "repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem."
The second treatise shows how this purpose of God to secure the dissemination of the true faith by the disobedience and hardening of its first custodians was accomplished, chief stress being always laid upon the fact that it was only when the Jews "contradicted and blasphemed" that the apostles said, "It was necessary that the word of God should first be spoken to you, but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." There is no interest taken in the subsequent fortunes of Jerusalem and Jewish Christianity, nor even in the fate of Peter and James, after this transition has been effected to Gentile soil. There is no interest taken in the spread of Christianity as such, in Egypt, Ethiopia, Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Mesopotamia; but only where the conflict rages over the respective claim of Jew and Gentile to be the true heir of the promises, i. e. the mission-field of Paul. At the individual centres the story goes just far enough to relate how the gospel was offered to the Jews and rejected, compelling withdrawal from the synagogue, and thereafter it is told over again with slight variations at the next centre. The book concludes with a repetition of the stereotyped scene at Rome itself, in spite of the representation of the very source employed, that an important church had long existed there before Paul's coming, ending with a quotation of the classic passage from Isa. vi. 9 f. to prove God's original purpose to harden the heart of Israel, so that his "salvation might be sent unto the Gentiles." The very fate of Paul himself has so little interest for Luke in comparison with this demonstration of Christianity as the one original, revealed religion, enclosed in Judaism as seeds are confined in the hardening seed-pod until disseminated by its bursting, that he leaves it unmentioned, like that of all other leaders of the church whose death was not directly contributory to the process.
Many, and vitally important to the development of Gospel Story as we know it, as were the sources of Luke, both by his own statement (Luke i. 1) and the internal evidences of his work, he has made analysis extremely difficult by the skilful and elaborate stylistic embroidery with which he has overlaid the gaps and seams. Nor is this a proper occasion for entering the field of the higher critic. Luke-Acts represents the completed development, not the naïve beginnings of this type of the Literature of the Church Teacher. We have seen reason to think we may have traces of the earlier "narratives" (diegeses) to which Luke refers, not only in the great Roman work of Mark, but in a part of the Q material itself. If Antioch were the place of origin of this early source, if here too were found those archives of missionary activity whence came the famous Diary employed in Acts xvi.-xxviii., the contribution of this church to Gospel Story was such as to make Antioch the appropriate centre for the great "historical" school of interpretation of the fourth and fifth centuries. When we consider the dominant motive of Luke and his extraordinary exaltation of 'apostolic' authority we seem to be breathing the very atmosphere of Ignatius the great apostle of ecclesiasticism and apostolic order, discipline and succession. Ignatius' hatred of Doketism, too, is not without a certain anticipation in the opening and closing chapters of Luke's Gospel, and perhaps in the fact that the great exsection from Mark begins with the story of the Walking on the Sea (Mark vi. 45-52).