Home | Contents | Luke - Prologue: Luke i.1-4.
[We must refer the reader to the introductions of our Commentaries on the Gospels for the proofs of our statements here and elsewhere in this book.']
BOTH the gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark open without any prologue;
and
the prologue which we find at the beginning of St. John's gospel is not
an author's preface.
It is a theological statement which presents to us the
doctrine concerning the Son of God from a special point of view:
we shall not deal with it, therefore, until we reach the end of this book.
There remains the short preface of St. Luke's gospel;
it is very enlightening, but we cannot help wishing that it were more
explicit.
A custom had grown up among the Greeks of dedicating literary works
to some distinguished personage,
a custom followed by Jewish writers.
Luke addresses
his little book to
Theophilus,
a certain Christian distinguished by the title of 'Excellent,'
but otherwise unknown to us.
A few years later Josephus, as a Jew writing
on things Jewish for Roman readers, thought it advisable to insist
at some length on his impartiality.
But Luke, following the example
of Polybius, thought that his impartiality might be taken granted,
and considered it enough to point out that his aim was to show for his noble
friend's benefit the solid truthl of what he had been taught.
He thus confesses
that purpose is (to use the current term) apologetic, just as St. John states
quite frankly in his own case:
'But these (miracles) are written
that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God.'
[John xx.31.]
Now only too often apologists have a bad name.
They are accused of being like certain lawyers,
not over-nice in their choice
of an argument so long as it gets home:
of being ready, for instance, to
use even bad arguments on people of little discernment likely to be convinced
by them.
But Luke aspires to be an historian worthy of the name
and to convince
men who are well able to judge.
And, moreover, the very nobility of the cause
which it is a writer's ambition to serve
puts upon him the obligation of
making use only of such facts as are beyond dispute.
This means that he must
have recourse to none but unimpeachable witnesses.
And this, indeed, is what
Luke professes to do.
Ever since he was first associated with the preaching
of the gospel,
he had made it his business to get at the facts.
This was
all the more easy for him,
inasmuch as he was, owing to his apostolic work,
in constant touch with the very people who had been eyewitnesses from the
beginning -
with the Apostles, that is,
and the first disciples.
Now these
Apostles and disciples preached first of all among the Jews who had just
condemned Jesus on false testimony;
their own witness, they claimed, was true.
Could they, then, have put forward
anything untrue without being at once contradicted by fiercely hostile opponents?
People sitting round the fireside at night are content to listen even to the
most fanciful of stories if only they are interesting;
such things blend with their mood and while away a pleasant hour.
But the disciples
of Jesus were hardy enough to carry on a work which the leaders of the nation
had condemned as subversive of the religion of their fathers.
There was one
temptation to which the disciples might have seemed in danger of succumbing,
from a desire to make their message more acceptable:
the temptation, namely,
to modify certain features,
to portray Jesus as submissive to the Law,
deferential
to the rabbis,
respectful towards the priests.
But, far from yielding to it,
they gave a faithful account of the very words and deeds for which He had been
condemned, and thereby showed themselves absolutely trustworthy.
It was precisely
this fidelity to the facts which caused, their testimony to be instantly punished
with imprisonment.
Luke had been present more than once when this same testimony
had been received with furious outbursts of hatred, though the facts no one
had dared to deny.
So he was sure of the truth of the story he was about to
tell once more.
For he was not the first to tell it:
those facts, which had proved for so many men the source of a new life, had
been related by many before him.
He mentions no names, however.
Tradition gives
those of St. Matthew and St. Mark;
scholars conjecture others.
How do
these writers stand to one another?
How are we to make up for St. Luke's silence
about them?
The fact is that, however soon writing may have been used in the service
of the Christian Faith,
it must have been preceded by the oral teaching which
it recorded and preserved at least in part:
for in a new doctrine there are
often a certain number of points which it may seem advisable to transmit
only by word of mouth, at any rate in the beginning.
Moreover, if a doctrine
is to win men, they must be told something of the personality and doings of
the one who gave it to the world.
Now it was a first principle with the Jews
that any doctrine, if it was to be accepted, must be put forward as from
God and be confirmed by miracles:
unless it were merely an exhortation
to keep the Law.
The oral teaching, or catechesis as we call it, comprised
therefore a general view of Jesus' preaching and an account of
the deeds which proved its authority.
The first teacher of this catechesis was
naturally the man who had been most closely associated with the Master's
work,
His companion on His journeys,
the undisputed head of
His disciples,
Simon Peter.
It was he who delivered the first nirse upon
these lines -
the first gospel, so to say.
He had already decided that the two
extreme points of the catechesis should be the baptism of John and
the ascension of Jesus into heaven, and between these two points he would
pick out the most significant incidents and the most characteristic utterances,
relating them with all the authority of an eyewitness.
With the subject-matter
thus defined, the main lines of the gospel had now been fixed.
Among the disciples there was one accustomed to the art of writing,
Levi,
once a publican or tax-gatherer,
now an Apostle under the name of Matthew.
He had learned how to pack his thoughts into clear and striking phrases,
presenting his arguments with the same decision that he had formerly shown
when he presented his claims for custom-dues.
He took the facts that Peter
had related in so spontaneous a way about Jesus of Nazareth and, in the light
of proofs drawn from the Old Testament, showed that Jesus was the expected
Messiah,
the promulgator of a moral law which was the
Old Law perfected through charity.
Something of the charm and vividness found
in the original narrative of the various episodes of Jesus' life was thus
sacrificed to their value as proofs, but on the other hand one advantage
was gained.
Matthew wrote in Aramaic, Jesus' mother tongue;
hence in his gospel the words of our Saviour,
which the Apostle for the most
part gathered into five long composite discourses,
not only keep their primitive
meaning but also remain in their original language.
It is likely enough that other disciples too had set down in writing various
incidents,
the memory of which they particularly cherished.
Jesus' Passion
was a sacred memory common to them all,
and it was probably the first event
to be narrated and the first to be put in writing.
Meanwhile Peter had gone to Rome, where he set up his see as head of the
Church.
There he went on with his catecheses,
speaking, as always, ardently
and naturally,
lingering lovingly over the details still fresh in his memory,
reproducing vividly the impression these had made on him when first they moved
his soul.
Was this freshness of impression, was this faithful reflection of
the reality to pass away with him?
His hearers begged his disciple, St. Mark,
to put into writing these various episodes as related by St. Peter.
This he
did, but without giving much place to Jesus' sayings,
either because St. Peter
did not insist so much on this point,
or because Matthew's admirable composite
discourses had already given what was necessary.
St. Matthew, being specially intent on furnishing the proof of Jesus' messiahship,
had paid little heed to the order of the events.
St. Mark's order was more
probable,
and to St. Luke it appeared almost completely satisfactory.
He himself
had not followed Jesus
but was only a disciple of the Apostles,
and he could
not have found a surer guide than the man entrusted with the catecheses of
St. Peter.
He therefore took over into his own work nearly all that was contained
in the second gospel,
generally keeping as well the same sequence of events.
Nevertheless he was conscious that,
in the matter of order,
he had improved
on that of his predecessor,
having made this more definitely his aim and having
gone about to seek information on the point;
does he not undertake 'to write
in order'?
It is to be remembered, however, that with the ancient historians,
for whom history was an art, order did not necessarily mean purely chronological
order such as is led by primitive annalists.
Along with the events Luke chose to give some discourses, and -
since
he attached great importance to putting everything in its place-
he distributed
them here and there in their proper setting,
thereby running the risk of
losing the harmonious unity which St. Matthew gives to the long discources
in his gospel.
It is probable that Greek-speaking disciples had, quite early, translated
the Aramaic gospel of St. Matthew,
or at least some of the discourses in
it,
being more affected by the eternal principles contained in the utterances
of Jesus than by his controversy with the Pharisees.
St. Luke may thus have read
these discourses, and yet not have known the rest of the gospel;
in any
case, Matthew's facts and order and his grouping of the sayings had
little influence on him.
In Mark - and in Matthew, if he knew the whole of it - Luke would find
proof of a considerable gap.
Mark is not unaware of the fact that Jesus had
preached in Judaea,
but he chooses to restrict himself to Galilee;
according to
his narrative, Jesus leaves the lake-side en route for Jericho only
just before the last week of his life:
Luke got to know,
perhaps from
disciples he met at Caesarea,
perhaps from Joanna, the wife of Chusa, mentioned
by him alone and on two different occasions,
what had happened
during a mission of Jesus in Judaea covering several months.
And he has
given an account of it,
but place, occasion, characters, no longer stand out as
they would in an account by St. Peter:
though the latter, of course, being Galilean born and bred, was not altogether
at home in Judaea,
and he may not have been present during the whole of the journey.
Hence in this whole section, peculiar to St. Luke and of priceless worth,
we
do not get the details that characterize the story of the lake-side.
Luke's prologue contains no reference to the fourth gospel,
written later
by John, the son of Zebedee,
the disciple whom Jesus loved.
He too chose to tell
once more more the story of the gospel,
and sure in his knowledge of the inmost
thought of One whose heart had been opened to him,
he composed what the ancient
Fathers called 'the spiritual gospel.'
He was certainly acquainted with the
three gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
but his work is not a series of notes
upon these,
nor is it meant simply to supplement them.
He followed his own course, but
at the same time avoided repeating what everyone knew, except where the repetition
was necessary to tlie plan of his own work ;
and then he gives it in his own way and according to his own reminiscences.
He made a point of being more precise about times and places;
thus it is to
him that we owe our knowledge of a number of places existing in Palestine in
the time of Jesus;
our knowledge, too, that the ministry of Jesus lasted two
years and a few months,
and that He preached at Jerusalem at each of the great
feasts,
the Pasch, Pentecost, Tabernacles, and the Dedication.
We have already spoken of the translation of the Aramaic gospel of St. Matthew
into Greek.
The translator did not keep slavishly to the original, but gave
the substance of it;
as regards some details, at least, he was probably influenced by the gospel
of St. Mark.
The exact date of the gospels is uncertain.
St. Mark and the Greek St. Matthew
were certainly written before AD. 70, the date of the destruction of Jerusalem:
St. Mark, and the Aramaic St. Matthew at least, probably much before.
St.
Luke, who made use of St. Mark, wrote his gospel before the Acts of the Apostles,
which he had finished by AD. 67, the year of St. Paul's martyrdom, or perhaps
a little earlier.
It is with the aid of these four gospels that we shall follow the course
of the life of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and we shall strive to show the harmony
that exists between them, without in any way toning down their individual characteristics.
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