Horæ Lucanæ; a biography of Saint Luke, descriptive and literary

Front matter

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Preface

In tlie books of Holy Scripture are treasures inexhaustible by the most diligent research. Already are treatises on biblical topics so numerous, that no catalogues do or can comprise all their titles. And when as many more shall have been published, there will still remain incitements for the exercise of every mind disposed towards the study of such topics, capable of prosecuting reflection intent and persevering; and also room for every intelligent exposition of the student's gains. In the province of Revelation, as of nature, the works of the Lord are great, and invite the study of all them that take pleasure therein.

The subject chosen for investigation in the following pages is one of profound interest. Next to the life and epistles of St Paul, the life and literature of St Luke afford the most ample scope for the historian's pen of any New Testament subject, excepting the supreme subject of all. A writer of the fourth portion vi PREFACE.

of the New Testament ; the chief of the companions of St Paul, and the most fruitful of all his fellow-labourers in planting Christianity in Asia Minor and Europe , the first historian of the Churches of Christ, who himself occupied a large share in their history ; and whose writings seem to us, on reading them, like listening to the voice of a familiar friend ; that of this benefactor there exists no separately-issued biography appears remarkable ; all that is to be found concerning him being notices contained in the notes of expositors, in the several lives of the Apostles and Evangelists, in dictionaries of the Bible, and in occasional articles published in periodicals. And how vague and contradictory are these in their statements, is too well known to the student.

A resolve to examine carefully the question of Luke's identity was undertaken by the writer as a biblical exercise, and from the conclusion acquired by that argument, it was resolved to pursue it in its biographical sequences. Henceforward, therefore, various intervals of his leisure, extending over twelve years, were devoted to an investigation of particulars calculated to accomplish his object.

It was a lament of a celebrated author, that there was " a deficiency of demonstrative writing." And it is still a grief that many are the essays and exposi-

PRE FA CE. vii

tions issued, which, through defect or design, serve more for guides to doubt than aids to persuasion.

The only attempt that has been made (known to the present writer) to treat Luke's biography by deductions and arguments of a uniformly definite character consists of a series of five papers comprised in a volume entitled " Fragments" forming a supplement to an edition of Calmet's " Dictionary of the Bible," edited and published by Charles Taylor in the year 1800. In that volume those papers seem to have lain as buried until recognised by Dr Edward Robinson, the explorer of Palestine, who incorporated the essence of them into an edition of Calmet's Dictionary edited by him, and published at Boston in America in 1838. Charles Taylor was a pioneer of the host of biblical critics of the present century in this country. He died in 1821. He was elder brother of the Rev. Isaac Taylor of Ongar, and therefore uncle of Jane and Anne, and of the late Isaac Taylor, author of several important works.

In the following chapters consistency of design and execution is maintained at least. Proceeding in an unfrequented path, and often upon disputed grounds, controversies intercept the progress, and several are the encounters that are required to be made with parties holding adverse positions. At the first few viii PREFACE.

steps, it was thought that the contests would have been with few others, save some of the ghosts of tradition. But the case proved otherwise, and there has been found more to oppose in the opinions of recent and contemporary than in older authors, some of the latter proving the writer's potent allies. These contests have been unavoidable. If the writer had succumbed before adverse parties, his conduct had appeared courteous to them ; but by evading the dispute he would have failed in loyalty to truth. Concerning this peril of authorship Bengel has said, " If the student's attention respect the things to be advanced, so that he will not suffer himself to be influenced by respect of persons, it will be impossible for him to avoid giving offence in one way or another " (" Life of Bengel," p. 260).

And here all kindred is disowned with that purely speculative ingenuity which, exercised upon sacred subjects, is technically called ' advanced criticism ; ' and which seems to signify with those who use the term an advance into the region of graduated unbelief concerning the authenticity of the books of Holy Scripture, and the integrity of the several penmen thereof, and concerning the essential divinity of Jesus Christ.

Christians were first called disciples and believers,

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persons, as the terras declare, widely distinct from sceptics, by whom Christian believers are taunted with being " Religious Conservatives , who in all ages cling to the letter without comprehending the spirit of the Bible" {Westminster Review, July 1866, p. 85). Than the conservation of the literal Bible there cannot be a more sacred trust ; and for understanding it there is no more undeniable canon than that u the Bible is its own best interpreter." Much has been clone to illustrate the letter of the Bible by the collation of early copies, by philology, by history, by chronology, by geography, by a study of the Eastern manners and mind, and by biography. By the added light of these, the student possesses in the Bible a perennial fountain of divine intelligence. But to comprehend the spirit of the Bible belongs to simplicity, and to share its benefits belongs to faith.

In sympathy with the principles revived by the reverend confessors and martyrs in the sixteenth century, and maintained by the cloud of witnesses who, in the seventeenth century, were despoiled of their estates, irnmured in dungeons, or doomed to the galleys, or murdered, or driven from their homes into exile, the writer makes no other allusion than this to his ecclesiastical fellowship. Occupied with the history of the Primitive Churches, he here shuts himself x PREFACE.

up to those with which their first historian was interested by personal or other relations.

Repudiating the dark dogma that refuses to whomsoever the right of private judgment upon divinelyrevealed topics, and as being adapted to the aim of his present undertaking, he may say, in the words of an Evangelist whose Life he wrote several years ago, " I think I have a right to labour as my conscience dictates, and according to the measure of faith granted to me. I acknowledge that my natural infirmities cannot fail to appear ; nevertheless, it is my constant aim that all that I can do, and all that I can write, may be conformable to the Word of Grod — my only rule" (" Claude Brousson," p. 91).

Speaking of sustained endeavours, Baron Denon has said, " He who is in constant pursuit of any object, acquires from thence an ability to attain his aim." Whatever may be the judgment that shall be passed respecting the execution of the present work, the writer is persuaded that he has so far accomplished his purpose, that his pages present for the first time a reasonable arrangement of the facts of Luke's history, and afford for the first time, a correction of several venerable inaccuracies concerning it.

For the literary illustration of this Biography the writer has possessed a peculiar advantage. Pursuing

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the vocation of a librarian, besides the works to which his bibliographical knowledge directed him, numerous were those works, both English and foreign, which, passing through his hands, would not otherwise have been consulted, but which sometimes supplied important materials or suggestions.

But research and observation must have an end. And now arrived at a time of life in which what remains to be done should be done promptly, he commits his studies to the press, entertaining the wish that the reader may derive as much pleasure in a contemplation of the portraiture set before him, as hath been enjoyed gratification by the writer in the process of its development.

London, April 30, 1870.

ERRATUM.

At page 72, last line, read a.d. 48.

A BIOGEAPHY OF SAINT LUKE.

Chapter I. The Question Of Identity

The greatest biographical enigma in the New Testament has been the personality of the writer of the third Gospel. Sharing about an equal part with St Paul in the extent of his contributions to that divine volume, it is wonderful that no adequate attempt has hitherto been made to bring the question of his identity into a course of critical inquisition.

In the authorised version of the New Testament there are the names — Luke, Col. iv. 1 4, and 2 Tim. iv. 1 1 ; Lucas, Phil em. 24; and Lucius, Acts xiii. 1, and Rom. xvi. 21. The object of this argument is to prove that these names, which apparently bespeak three persons, belong to a single individual. The first of these names, Luke, is made one with Lucas, presently ; for the original word in the first two texts is the same with the third, the three alike being Loukas. The variation in the third text may be accounted for by the circumstance that the epistles, from Romans to Jude, were entrusted to seven translators. In two instances the name obtained the English rendering of Luke ; but the

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Epistle to Philemon having perhaps been in the hands of another translator, the name was left Lucas, as it stood in the previous versions, which herein followed the Latin Vulgate. There remains, therefore, but two names to be dealt with, Lucas and Lucius.

Scarcely anything transpires in the early Christian writers concerning Luke besides what is read in, or inferred from, his own writings and those of St Paul ; and even some of the notices so derived soon came to be misunderstood. In the second century, Irenseus, attributing the third Gospel (as it is called) to Lucas, wrote, "The Evangelist is indebted for what he relates in his Gospel to those who were witnesses of the life of Christ ; " adding, " he was a companion of Paul." Later in the same century, Tertullian tells the same, with this addition, " The Gospel of Lucas is often attributed to Paul." In the third century, Origen more intelligently said, "Lucas wrote the Gospel commended by Paul in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, and published it for the use of Gentile converts;" adding this other important note, " There are persons who regard the name of Lucas and Lucius as both alike signifying the Evangelist."

In the fourth century, Eusebius wrote, " Lucas, by birth an Antiochian, by profession a physician, for the most part accompanied Paul; and being diligently conversant with the rest of the apostles, has left us two books, written by divine inspiration, lessons that are medicinal unto souls which he procured from them. The one is the Gospel, which he professes to have written as they communicated it to him ; the other, the Acts, not of such things as he had received by report, but of what he had seen with his own eyes " (Eccles. Hist., iii. ch. 4).

Fifty years later, in the same century, Gregory Nazianzen says, " Lucas wrote for the Greeks."

What was known concerning Luke in the regions of the

THE QUESTION OF IDENTITY. 3

West, was but an echo of the small intelligence of the East ; the sum whereof was told by Jerome at the close of the fourth century. Jerome studied for some time in Rome, and afterwards repaired to Palestine, where, in a monastery at Bethlehem, he prepared, by request of Pope Damasus L, a new version of the Bible for the Latin Churches. He also compiled a " Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers," which supplies prefaces to several books in some editions of the Latin Bible. His account of Luke relates, "Lucas, a physician of Antioch, as his writings indicate, a follower of the apostle Paul, and his companion in all his travels, wrote a Gospel, of which Paul spake saving, ' We have sent with him the brother whose praise is in all the churches ; ' and to the Colossians, ' Lucas, the beloved physician, saluteth you;' and to Timothy, ' Only Lucas is with me.' When Paul says my Gospel, he signifies the volume of Lucas. And not only from Paul did he derive his Gospel, who was not with Christ in the flesh, but from the other apostles, as he declares in the beginning of his Gospel ; and the Acts of the Apostles he composed as he saw them. He lived eighty-four years. He had no wife. He was buried at Constantinople, to which city his bones, with those of Andrew the apostle, were transferred."

Upon consulting antiquity for evidence, it is discouraging, in all historical researches, to find how fallible and contradictory is human testimony, and how perplexing are the aberrations of tradition. If, as Eusebius and Jerome have said, Luke was a native of Antioch, the present argument fails at the threshold. But is their assertion unimpeachable 1 Quite otherwise. Dr Lardner, who edited and expounded the largest collection of testimonies for the "Credibility of the Gospel History" ever published, has observed, " The accounts given of Luke by Eusebius, and Jerome after him, that he was a native of Antioch, may justly be suspected. We do not find it in any other writer before Eusebius. Probably it was the invention of some conjectural critic. But all this was taken up without any ground or authority. Jerome only follows Eusebius. He does not seem to have any information about it from others."

It is likewise said by Dr Enfield, in his " History of Philosophy," " Had Eusebius been more free from prejudice, had he taken more care not to be imposed upon by spurious authorities, his works would have been more valuable." And by Leclerc, in his " Life of Eusebius " it is observed, " One may complain of Eusebius because he has inserted several fables in his ' Ecclesiastical History.' " It may be added, Eusebius lived at a period when the allocation of saints' names, and the distribution of their mortal relics, formed a large part of ecclesiastical business, and in which business he himself took no small part.

Antioch was the Metropolitan Church of Syria. Luke had resided there for several years. And if it had been customary to say concerning him, that he was of Antioch, in the same sense that it was said of Jesus that Capernaum was His own city, it required only the stroke of a pen to impart to Antioch the higher credit of having been Luke's birthplace.

And then, with respect to Jerome's testimony, in following Eusebius in one error, he himself stumbles upon another, asserting that Luke in his writings indicates that he was of Antioch ; whereas, in no place in his writings is such an indication to be found. But this is found, that he has written, " Now there was in the Church at Antioch Lucius of Gyrene " (Acts xiii. 1).

In these early notices of the Evangelist, the name of Lucius has occurred only once. That it is there is an important circumstance for this argument. It transpires about midway between the time of the Evangelist and the

THE QUESTION OF IDENTITY. 5

commencing ages of ecclesiastical fables. In the passage wherein Origen reports that "Lucas and Lucius were said to signify the same individual," is found just the evidence required: and it is all the more important that it is reported by the father of biblical learning. Of course, as a Greek writer, the Orientals were always accustomed to call the Evangelist Loukas, even as an Englishman calls him Luke ; and therefore that those to whom Origen refers were among the more learned of his contemporaries may reasonably be concluded. With others, the identity would soon pass out of recognition. Aovmog b Kvpyvalos would soon come to be regarded as another person than A&uxa? b iaTPog, Luke the physician.

Moreover, the error being embodied in standard sources of information, the continual assertion by doctors of the Church that Lucas was of Antioch, finally excluded all consideration concerning Lucius the C} T renian. Hence, finding no account of this Lucius, true to her apocryphal character, the medieval Roman Church invested the name with a fictitious individuality and history, and thereby claimed another saint for its calendar. In that prodigious repertory, the Acta Sanctorum, consisting of fifty-six folio volumes, Lucius is conducted from Antioch, and consecrated Bishop of Laodicea ; and his anniversary is fixed for April 22. From that great authority for the legend, of course, no Romanist will ever dissent. By others, misunderstanding the case, no attempt is made to provide Lucius with a distinct biographical status. As specimens of the manner in which this question of the identity of Lucas and Lucius is treated by certain Protestant writers, it is found represented in Dr Smith's large " Dictionary of the Bible," under Lucius, " It must be observed that the names are clearly distinct. The missionary companion of St Paul was not Lucius, but Lucas, or Lucanus." And by Dr Alford, under Acts xiii. 1, it is said, " There is no reason to suppose him

(Lucius of Cyrene) the same with Lucas ; but on the contrary ■ for why should Paul in this case use two different names 1 " By the positiveness of this style, the student is deterred from an inquiry. But, is there, then, no significance in Origen's report ? and is an affirmative of the case so utterly beyond the sphere of proof? Perhaps it is not. Peradventure, the case can be so viewed, and such reasons produced as will establish the position that the names Lucas and Lucius mentioned in the New Testament do in fact designate one and the same individual.

The first observation submitted for this argument is, that these names are only different in the respect that one is Greek and the other Latin. During the Roman dominion of Greece, Greek names received a Latin form, and Latin names a Greek form, as circumstances might warrant. Examples of this transformation may be seen by consulting any work on Roman colonial medals and coins. When it is said, with reference to this case, that the Latin form of Loukas (Lucas) was Lucanus, it may be answered, the individual was competent to prefer Lucius. Even at present, Lucas is translated variably in different places in Europe ; a person of this name being called in Rome Luca, in Paris, Luc, and in London, Luke. Another observation is, that the occasions upon which the name is found written in its Latin form are both such as warranted its adoption. When it was written by himself, Lucius the Cyrenian, Luke was in the city of Rome, where he had been accustomed to that name for more than two years. Moreover, as his treatise was addressed to a friend who is supposed to have held a post under the Roman Government, it would seem decorous for Luke, in writing from the capital of the empire, to recognise his own political status as a Roman citizen.

The other occasion upon which the name is written Lucius had a similar warrant. Occurring in the epistle addressed by St Paul to the Romans, it was so written to suit that cir-

THE QUESTION OF IDENTITY. 7

cumstance (xvi. 21). At the mention of the name, as it occurs in this place, several critics protest, " This cannot be the Evangelist, because Lucius is here called by St Paul his kinsman." If, by these critics, the Cyrenian Lucius is not admitted to have been his kinsman, here is the case of another supposed person to be examined. Some writers, to escape the dilemma, propose that the verse should be read, " Timotheus, my work-fellow, and Lucius \ also, Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen, salute you." But the case needs no attempt at evasion. It should be observed that the word siyyysvrjg, translated kinsman, is not always confined to the signification of natural affinity; but is also used figuratively. In this same epistle it is used in two senses. It is used in its primary sense, where the apostle writes, "my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites "(ix. 3). Whilst in the present instance it manifestly refers to a kindred not " according to the flesh," to a spiritual relationship. The whole epistle is one urging conciliation, grounded on the great argument of the admission of Gentiles equally with Jews to the privileges involved in the covenant of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. As a Jew, the writer mourns the exclusion of his brethren, the Jews, because of their unbelief ; but, as an apostle to the Gentiles, he not only welcomes these, but concludes his argument by affording to both an exemplification of the spirit with which they should "receive each other." This he does by occupying the last chapter of the epistle with a larger list of names of persons, Jews and Gentiles, whom he salutes, than is to be found in all his other epistles combined, and by affixing to each name some expression of commendation and endearment. Thus, of the persons greeted, and of those whose greetings are reported, six are styled " my kinsmen ; " the bearer of the epistle is called " our sister; " and the mother of Kufus is saluted as " his mother and mine." So that, according to those protesting critics, here is presented a family-party, and an incongruous one too ; the kinsfolk of the apostle being Jews and Gentiles, Oriental and Western, indiscriminately. But that the expression " kinsmen" is here used with a different signification, and conformably with the lesson of love urged upon the apostle's correspondents in the context, is further manifested by the request with which the salutations are concluded : " Greet one another with a holy kiss ;" that is, the Jew is to kiss the Greek, and the Greek is to kiss the Jew. In short, the word, " kinsman " is applied to Lucius in the same spirit that Titus is styled, "my brother" (2 Cor. ii. 13), and that Timothy is called my own son in the faith (Tim. i. 2) ; and also after the example of the Lord when He said, " The same is my brother and sister and mother" (Matt. xii. 50).

If, then, Lucius was not a natural kinsman of St Paul, there remains no obstacle to the identity of the Lucius here in company with the apostle with Lucius the Cyrenian.

And, again, the correlative character of these names appears in the circumstance that, in those instances in which Lucius is mentioned, Lucas is found to have been in the identical situation. Thus, Lucius was a Greek " of Cyrene ; but Lucas was a Greek, as by all acknowledged. Lucius was at Antioch (Acts xiii. 1) ; but Lucas is declared by Eusebius, Jerome, and others, to have been of Antioch. Lucius is associated with prophets and teachers ; but Lucas was a prophet and teacher, being an Evangelist. Lucius was at Corinth upon Paul's second visit to that city, and whereby it happened that his name is mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans, written upon that occasion ; but Lucas was a bearer of the letter that preceded and announced the apostle's visit (2 Cor. viii. 18). That among the Christians at Antioch and at Corinth there were two persons, one LouJcas, and another with that name Latinised, and at the same time, is not likely. Is it probable that

THE QUESTION OF IDENTITY. 9

Paul had two companions having a parallel history such as this ? Or was the one the shadow of the other ?

Finally this argument is not new. There is a reserve of authors, of permanent reputation, by whom it has been perceived and acknowledged that these two names apply to one individual only. That profound interpreter of biblical difficulties, Dr John Lightfoot, nearly two hundred years ago, wrote, under Acts xiii. 1, "Why antiquity has so generally held Luke to be an Antiochian is true in regard to his first appearing there under the name of Lucius, though originally a Cyrenian ; " and he remarks, in general, " In both Testaments, the Hebrew of the one and the Greek of the other is, upon occasion, flourished with other languages." Hugo Grotius, a prince in literature, in his Commentary, writes, " I think Lucius mentioned Romans xvi. 21, to be no other than Lucius of Cyrene, and I see no reason to suppose that he was another person than Lucas the physician. " The very learned Professor Wetstein, who, in his biblical researches, came twice to England respecting collations for his magnificent edition of the Greek Testament, and maintained a correspondence with the great critic DrBentley, explains, under Acts xiii. 1, "Lucius, also called Lucas in Col. iv. 14."

Archdeacon Paley, in his " Hora3 Paulinas," says, " A very slight alteration would convert Aovxiog into Aovxac, Lucius into Luke." Bishop Blomfield, a consummate Greek scholar, in his " Lectures on the Acts," unhesitatingly says, " Luke was the same person as Lucius of Cyrene, and of whom St Paul speaks in the 16th chapter of the Romans ; " and he explains, that " in addressing these, St Paul would naturally use the Roman form of Lucius in preference to that of Lucas." Granville Penn, in his unbiassed "Annotations," has this emphatic note, "The name was written differently, according to the Greek or Latin inflection ; but in the darkening ages which followed, they became distributed to different imaginary persons" (Supplement).

And with reference to the practical bearing of the argument, Dr Major, in the Introduction to his " Exposition of Luke's Gospel," alluding to " these testimonies of many learned men," remarks " If these views are admitted, we have some knowledge of Luke's character and history." It may be added, on the other hand, if these views are rejected, there is known only half of Luke's history.

Chapter II. Luke A Cyrenian

By the evidence that Lucas is also Lucius, the biography of the Evangelist obtains a beginning. That he was a Cyrenian appears from his own pen. In the books ascribed to him, his name could only be looked for in the Acts of the Apostles ; and only there as, in some manner, an agent in spreading the Gospel. And it is just thus that his name is found in Acts xiii. 1. It occurs in a kind of document, the importance of which has never been sufficiently recognised. This is a list of the persons commanded by the Holy Ghost to separate Barnabas and Saul to their apostolate to the Gentiles. If this list was to be given to the Church, there was left for the writer no alternative than to include his own name therein. Accordingly, and with the precision which such a case required, some distinguishing characteristic is added to the name of each of the individuals comprised in the list : his own being set down as Lucius the Cyrenian (not of Cyrene, as in the common version). In this epithet, the specialty consists in the fact that a person from a country so remote from Syria should be seen to occupy the station in the Church at Antioch that is ascribed to him. By the preservation of this list, a link is afforded to the biography of the Evangelist, without which the clue had otherwise been missed to some of the most interesting points of his history and character.

So inherent in noble minds is the love of country, that, in a narrative describing actions and events, near and remote, and extending over thirty years, and in some of which the writer was himself engaged, it would be expected that some intimations would be found of his fatherland. The manner in which his name is enrolled in the list alluded to is itself one such intimation ; and another intimation is found in his enumeration of the places whence came the multitude of Jews and proselytes that heard, each in their own tongue, the wonderful works of God on the day of Pentecost (Acts ii. 10). In this instance, there is a signification in Cyrenians being mentioned which at first sight does not appear. Cyrene was the most distant place beyond the scenes of Luke's narratives that is mentioned. Nevertheless, the notices given of it discover, above all that is said of the others, the writer's acquaintance with the country. The strangers gathered in Jerusalem are distinguished by the places whence they came, as Parthians, &c, and dwellers in Mesopotamia. But in speaking of those from Africa, it is said, " in the parts of Libya, about Cyrene." Those parts comprised four out of the five cities called the Libyan Pentopolis, namely, Apollonia, Ptolemais, Arsinoe, Teuchira, and Berenice (Hesperis). These cities lay around the coast of the great semicircular promontory of North Africa; whilst Cyrene, the first of the five, stands on a height gradually receding from the shore, surrounded, in a manner, by them all. No stranger to the country, at that period, it may be supposed, would have given a description of it so geographically correct.

Another instance of his allusion to the country is found in the words " Then arose certain of the synagogue of the Libyans and Cyrenians," &c. (Acts vi. 9). " The learned Havercamp," says Granville Penn, " was the first who pointed out the error of the present text in its substitution of the word Libertines." And if a criticism is ever to be governed by analogy and correspondence with parallel scripture, this reading of Havercamp must be accepted.