Gospel of Luke

According to early church traditions, Luke was a Jewish, Greek-speaking physician who accompanied Paul on his three journeys, and was chosen to write the third Gospel because his knowledge of Greek was better than most of the other writers in the church at that time. Even his use of language gives a hint about his social and cultural origins since it was composed in the same style as technical books and the type of Greek used by artisans and urban officialdom in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Luke was not from the elite or aristocracy, unlike the many Roman critics of Christianity, but probably from the artisan or techne caste to which even physicians belonged in the ancient world. Both Paul and Jesus were also from the same stratum of society, and the early Christian message seemed to resonate particularly well with the freed slaves,...
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