Luke

• Jesus’ avoidance of writing delayed

121:0.1Act­ing un­der the super­vi­sion of a com­mis­sion of twelve mem­bers of the United Broth­er­hood of Uran­tia Mid­way­ers, con­jointly spon­sored by the pre­sid­ing head of our or­der and the Mel­chiz­e­dek of rec­ord, I am the sec­ondary mid­wayer of one­time at­tach­ment to the Apos­tle An­drew, and I am au­tho­rized to place on rec­ord the nar­ra­tive of the life trans­ac­tions of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth as they were ob­served by my or­der of earth crea­tures, and as they were sub­se­quently par­tially re­corded by the hu­man sub­ject of my tem­po­ral guardian­ship. Know­ing how his Mas­ter so scrupu­lously avoided leav­ing writ­ten rec­ords be­hind him, An­drew stead­fastly re­fused to mul­ti­ply copies of his writ­ten nar­ra­tive. A sim­i­lar at­ti­tude on the part of the other apos­tles of Je­sus greatly de­layed the writ­ing of the Gospels.

• Jesus’ avoidance of writing delayed

121:8.31. The Gospel by Mark. John Mark wrote the ear­li­est (ex­cept­ing the notes of An­drew), briefest, and most sim­ple rec­ord of Je­sus’ life. He pre­sented the Mas­ter as a min­is­ter, as man among men. Al­though Mark was a lad lin­ger­ing about many of the scenes which he de­picts, his rec­ord is in re­al­ity the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Si­mon Pe­ter. He was early as­so­ci­ated with Pe­ter; later with Paul. Mark wrote this rec­ord at the in­sti­ga­tion of Pe­ter and on the earnest pe­ti­tion of the church at Rome. Know­ing how con­sis­tently the Mas­ter re­fused to write out his teach­ings when on earth and in the flesh, Mark, like the apos­tles and other lead­ing dis­ci­ples, was hes­i­tant to put them in writ­ing. But Pe­ter felt the church at Rome re­quired the as­sis­tance of such a writ­ten nar­ra­tive, and Mark con­sented to un­der­take its prepa­ra­tion. He made many notes be­fore Pe­ter died in A.D. 67, and in ac­cor­dance with the out­line ap­proved by Pe­ter and for the church at Rome, he be­gan his writ­ing soon af­ter Pe­ter’s death. The Gospel was com­pleted near the end of A.D. 68. Mark wrote en­tirely from his own mem­ory and Pe­ter’s mem­ory. The rec­ord has since been con­sid­er­ably changed, nu­mer­ous pas­sages hav­ing been taken out and some later mat­ter added at the end to re­place the lat­ter one fifth of the orig­i­nal Gospel, which was lost from the first man­u­script be­fore it was ever copied. This rec­ord by Mark, in con­junc­tion with An­drew’s and Mat­thew’s notes, was the writ­ten ba­sis of all sub­se­quent Gospel nar­ra­tives which sought to por­tray the life and teach­ings of Je­sus.

• presents Jesus as friend of publicans and sinners

121:8.83. The Gospel by Luke. Luke, the physi­cian of An­ti­och in Pi­sidia, was a gen­tile con­vert of Paul, and he wrote quite a dif­fer­ent story of the Mas­ter’s life. He be­gan to fol­low Paul and learn of the life and teach­ings of Je­sus in A.D. 47. Luke pre­serves much of the “grace of the Lord Je­sus Christ” in his rec­ord as he gath­ered up these facts from Paul and oth­ers. Luke pre­sents the Mas­ter as “the friend of pub­li­cans and sin­ners.” He did not for­mu­late his many notes into the Gospel un­til af­ter Paul’s death. Luke wrote in the year 82 in Achaia. He planned three books deal­ing with the his­tory of Christ and Chris­tian­ity but died in A.D. 90 just be­fore he fin­ished the sec­ond of these works, the “Acts of the Apos­tles.”

• based on Gospel by Mark; Isador; eyewitnesses; records of Cedes and Andrew
• is somewhat the Gospel by Paul

121:8.9As ma­te­rial for the com­pi­la­tion of his Gospel, Luke first de­pended upon the story of Je­sus’ life as Paul had re­lated it to him. Luke’s Gospel is, there­fore, in some ways the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Paul. But Luke had other sources of in­for­ma­tion. He not only in­ter­viewed scores of eye­wit­nesses to the nu­mer­ous episodes of Je­sus’ life which he re­cords, but he also had with him a copy of Mark’s Gospel, that is, the first four fifths, Isador’s nar­ra­tive, and a brief rec­ord made in the year A.D. 78 at An­ti­och by a be­liever named Cedes. Luke also had a mu­ti­lated and much-edited copy of some notes pur­ported to have been made by the Apos­tle An­drew.

• reconciliation of dates of Jesus’ baptism

136:2.8(Je­sus was al­most thirty-one and one-half years old when he was bap­tized. While Luke says that Je­sus was bap­tized in the fif­teenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cae­sar, which would be A.D. 29 since Au­gus­tus died in A.D. 14, it should be re­called that Tiberius was co­em­peror with Au­gus­tus for two and one-half years be­fore the death of Au­gus­tus, hav­ing had coins struck in his honor in Oc­to­ber, A.D. 11. The fif­teenth year of his ac­tual rule was, there­fore, this very year of A.D. 26, that of Je­sus’ bap­tism. And this was also the year that Pon­tius Pi­late be­gan his rule as gov­er­nor of Judea.)

• Peter’s style shown in

139:2.12Some­thing of Pe­ter’s style and teach­ing is shown in the ser­mons par­tially re­corded by Luke and in the Gospel of Mark. His vig­or­ous style was bet­ter shown in his let­ter known as the First Epis­tle of Pe­ter; at least this was true be­fore it was sub­se­quently al­tered by a dis­ci­ple of Paul.

• episode of widow’s son at Nain

146:6.4So the word went abroad through­out Gal­i­lee and into Judea that Je­sus had raised the widow’s son from the dead, and many who heard this re­port be­lieved it. Never was Je­sus able to make even all his apos­tles fully un­der­stand that the widow’s son was not re­ally dead when he bade him awake and arise. But he did im­press them suf­fi­ciently to keep it out of all sub­se­quent rec­ords ex­cept that of Luke, who re­corded it as the episode had been re­lated to him. And again was Je­sus so be­sieged as a physi­cian that he de­parted early the next day for En­dor.

• left out Peter’s night vision

152:4.4To Pe­ter this ex­pe­ri­ence was al­ways real. He sin­cerely be­lieved that Je­sus came to them that night. He only par­tially con­vinced John Mark, which ex­plains why Mark left a por­tion of the story out of his nar­ra­tive. Luke, the physi­cian, who made care­ful search into these mat­ters, con­cluded that the episode was a vi­sion of Pe­ter’s and there­fore re­fused to give place to this story in the prepa­ra­tion of his nar­ra­tive.

• included Selta apocrypha

176:2.8Of all the dis­courses which the Mas­ter gave his apos­tles, none ever be­came so con­fused in their minds as this one, given this Tues­day evening on the Mount of Olives, re­gard­ing the two­fold sub­ject of the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem and his own sec­ond com­ing. There was, there­fore, lit­tle agree­ment be­tween the sub­se­quent writ­ten ac­counts based on the mem­o­ries of what the Mas­ter said on this ex­traor­di­nary oc­ca­sion. Con­se­quently, when the rec­ords were left blank con­cern­ing much that was said that Tues­day evening, there grew up many tra­di­tions; and very early in the sec­ond cen­tury a Jew­ish apoc­a­lyp­tic about the Mes­siah writ­ten by one Selta, who was at­tached to the court of the Em­peror Caligula, was bod­ily copied into the Mat­thew Gospel and sub­se­quently added (in part) to the Mark and Luke rec­ords. It was in these writ­ings of Selta that the para­ble of the ten vir­gins ap­peared. No part of the gospel rec­ord ever suf­fered such con­fus­ing mis­con­struc­tion as this evening’s teach­ing. But the Apos­tle John never be­came thus con­fused.

• story of thief on cross

187:4.3Dur­ing this episode of the con­ver­sion and re­cep­tion of the thief into the king­dom by Je­sus, the Apos­tle John was ab­sent, hav­ing gone into the city to bring his mother and her friends to the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion. Luke sub­se­quently heard this story from the con­verted Ro­man cap­tain of the guard.

• retains something of human Jesus

196:2.3Mark, Mat­thew, and Luke re­tain some­thing of the pic­ture of the hu­man Je­sus as he en­gaged in the su­perb strug­gle to as­cer­tain the di­vine will and to do that will. John pre­sents a pic­ture of the tri­umphant Je­sus as he walked on earth in the full con­scious­ness of di­vin­ity. The great mis­take that has been made by those who have stud­ied the Mas­ter’s life is that some have con­ceived of him as en­tirely hu­man, while oth­ers have thought of him as only di­vine. Through­out his en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence he was truly both hu­man and di­vine, even as he yet is.

140:8.16He never taught his fol­low­ers to avoid earthly pos­ses­sions, only his twelve apos­tles. Luke, the physi­cian, was a strong be­liever in so­cial equal­ity, and he did much to in­ter­pret Je­sus’ say­ings in har­mony with his per­sonal be­liefs. Je­sus never per­son­ally di­rected his fol­low­ers to adopt a com­mu­nal mode of life; he made no pro­nounce­ment of any sort re­gard­ing such mat­ters.