Textual history Autographs (original copies) of Luke and the other Gospels have not been preserved; the texts that survive are third-generation copies, with no two completely identical. The earliest witnesses (the technical term for written manuscripts) for the Gospel of Luke fall into two "families" with considerable differences between them, the
Western and the
Alexandrian text-type, and the dominant view is that the Western text represents a process of deliberate revision in the second century, as the variations seem to form specific patterns. The
fragment is often cited as the oldest witness. It has been dated from the late 2nd century, although this dating is disputed.
Papyrus 75 (= Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV) is another very early manuscript (late 2nd/early 3rd century), and it includes an attribution of the Gospel to Luke. The oldest complete texts are the 4th-century
Codex Sinaiticus and
Vaticanus, both from the Alexandrian family;
Codex Bezae, a 5th- or 6th-century Western text-type manuscript that contains Luke in
Greek and
Latin versions on facing pages, appears to have descended from an offshoot of the main manuscript tradition, departing from more familiar readings at many points. Codex Bezae shows comprehensively the differences between the versions which show no core theological significance.
Luke–Acts: unity, authorship and date The gospel of Luke and the
Acts of the Apostles make up a two-volume work which scholars call
Luke–Acts. Scholars largely agree with the tradition attributing the Gospel to the same author as the
Acts of the Apostles. Together they account for 27.5% of the
New Testament, the largest contribution by a single author, providing the framework for both the Church's liturgical calendar and the historical outline into which later generations have fitted their idea of the story of
Jesus. The author is not named in either volume, as was common for ancient biographies and histories, such as
Tacitus’s Germania and
Diogenes Laertius. He was educated, a man of means, probably urban, and someone who respected manual work, although not a worker himself; this is significant, because more
highbrow writers of the time looked down on the artisans and small business-people who made up the early church of Paul and who were presumably Luke's audience. According to a Church tradition first recorded by
Irenaeus () he was the
Luke named as a companion of
Paul in three of the Pauline letters, but a scholarly consensus emphasizes differences between the portrayal in Acts and Paul’s theological points, though this has been challenged in recent years. Many thusly doubt that the author of Luke-Acts was the physician Luke, and critical opinion on the subject was assessed to be roughly evenly divided near the end of the 20th century. Most scholars maintain that the author of
Luke-Acts, whether named Luke or not, met Paul at some point. The interpretation of the "we" passages in Acts as indicative that the writer relied on a historical eyewitness (whether Luke the evangelist or not), remains the most influential in current biblical studies. Objections to this viewpoint, among others, include the claim that Luke-Acts contains differences in theology and historical narrative which are irreconcilable with the authentic letters of
Paul the Apostle. The earliest possible date for Luke–Acts is around 62 AD, the time of Paul's imprisonment in Rome, but most scholars date the work to 80–90 AD given its knowledge of Mark and the
destruction of Jerusalem, but not the Pauline epistles. The latest tenable dates are around the early 2nd century, as a minority posit dependence of Luke-Acts with the works of Josephus or see them as a response to Marcion. Many arguments mediate against this dating, such as the Gospel of John's awareness of the gospel, its independence from the Gospel of Matthew in the two-source hypothesis, and 1 Clement.
Genre, models and sources Luke–Acts is a religio-political history of the founder of the church and his successors in deeds and words. The author describes his book as a "narrative" () rather than as a gospel, and implicitly criticises his predecessors for not giving their readers the speeches of Jesus and the
Apostles, as such speeches were the mark of a "full" report, the vehicle through which ancient historians conveyed the meaning of their narratives. Balch compares Luke with the works of the Classical authors
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote a history of Rome (
Roman Antiquities), and the Jewish historian
Josephus, author of a history of the Jews (
Antiquities of the Jews). Most scholars do not see a literary relationship with the latter. All three authors anchor the histories of their peoples by dating and narrating the stories of the births of the founders (Romulus, Moses, and Jesus). Each founder taught authoritatively, appeared after death, and ascended to heaven. Crucial aspects of the teaching of all three concerned the relationship between rich and poor and the question of whether "foreigners" were to be received into the people. The gospels of
Matthew,
Mark and Luke share so much in common that they are called the
Synoptics, as they frequently cover the same events in similar and sometimes identical language. Mark was the earliest of the three ( AD 70) and was used by the others, while the
Two-source hypothesis posits Matthew and Luke also used the
Q source, though a growing number support alternative hypotheses, such as the
Farrer Hypothesis and the
Matthean Posteriority Hypothesis, which argue for Luke's direct usage of Matthew and Matthew's dependence on Luke, respectively, and dispense with Q. Mark provided the narrative outline for Luke but comparatively little of Jesus' teachings. Most non-Markan content is grouped in two clusters and the first two sections of the gospel. Luke tends to follow his sources closely when checked. Luke’s ways of adapting Mark are comparable to that the methods used by
Plutarch, including abridgements, chronological changes, and reordering events. Holly Hearon has pointed out that the Gospel of Luke draws on both written sources and oral reports from "eyewitnesses and servants of the word," showing that the
New Testament writings grew out of a living spoken environment where scripture and teaching were experienced aloud. The preface of the Gospel of Luke refers to material gathered from eyewitnesses who knew the facts at first hand, indicating that the author combined written and
oral sources in an environment where both teaching and proclamation happened through spoken word. Luke was written to be read aloud to a group of Jesus-followers gathered in a house to share the
Lord's Supper. The author assumes an educated Greek-speaking audience, but directs his attention to specifically Christian concerns rather than to the Greco-Roman world at large. He begins his gospel with a preface addressed to "
Theophilus": the name means "Lover of God", and could refer to any Christian, though most interpreters consider it a reference to a Christian convert and Luke's literary patron. Here he informs Theophilus of his intention, which is to lead his reader to certainty through an orderly account "of the events that have been fulfilled among us". He did not, however, intend to provide Theophilus with a historical justification of the Christian faith – "did it happen?" – but to encourage faith – "what happened, and what does it all mean?" ==Structure and content==