Like all the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of Luke is anonymous, i.e., it is not explicitly stated in the book who wrote it.
Luke is the only one among the Evangelists who leaves us an introductory prologue to his gospel explaining why he wrote the gospel, 1:1-4. We shall have reasons to take up the matter again when we deal with these verses in the commentary. Essentially, Luke seemed to have written the gospel as a gift to Theophilus, "so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught" (v4). While addressed and dedicated to Theophilus, it is hardly likely that Luke had Theophilus alone in mind in the publication of the Gospel. But this has always been the way of good literature; written with one person in mind in the writting but meaningful and significant to all in general.
Most evangelical scholars place the composition of Luke round about 64 AD.
The question of when Luke wrote the gospel cannot be ascertained absolutely since it did not appear to be a habit or convention of dating documents the way we do nowadays. Determining the date of Luke's Gospel depends, therefore, on an act of balancing what Luke says in the Gospel and trying to see how they are best understood against external historical events as we know it. On this basis commentators have debated over three possible dates: c.63, c.75-85, and early 2nd Cent.
The first thing to note about the date of Luke's Gospel is that it has to be earlier than the book of Acts, which is its sequel (Acts 1:1). The Gospel cannot, therefore, be latter than the latest event noted in Acts. Of these in Acts, one of the most significant is Agabus's prediction "that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world" (11:28). Since Luke then goes on to confirm in the same verse that "this happened during the reign of Claudius," the Gospel could not have been written later than Agabu's prediction. Since Claudius reigned from
The argument in favour of an early 2nd Cent date is the weakest,
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 20