Everyone says that the Gospel of Luke was written by … Luke!  Do we know if that’s true?  Whether Luke or not, do we know when he wrote it?  And why did he want/need to do so?  Now that I’ve summarized the major themes and emphases of the Gospel we can delve into these equally interesting and important historical questions.

For as long as anyone has named an author of this Gospel, it has been Luke, a gentile traveling companion of Paul thought to be a medical doctor.  I’ll continue calling him “Luke” for the sake of convenience, even though I don’t think we can know who he was.

Years ago on the blog (in January 2020) I devoted a series of posts to the question:  Was Luke Luke (so to say)?  There are a lot of issues to consider, including seemingly unrelated things, such as whether Paul actually wrote Colossians (!).  The series ended with my wrap-up overview posted on January 19: So: Was Luke Luke?, in case you’re interested in digging deeper. I obviously can’t cover the entire waterfront here in this one post, but I can hit the key points.

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