123 School Work

Outline the evidence concerning the date and authorship of Luke s Gospel

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  Luke's Gospel is anonymous and never states explicitly who the author is or when it was written, therefore any conclusions about date and authorship of Luke are merely hypotheses. However these hypotheses are based upon both internal, indirect evidence and external, direct evidence. There are opposing theories about the date and authorship of Luke and it is therefore the task of the reader to determine what they believe to be the truth.
  It is important to know the date of Luke's Gospel so that scholars can understand the current context, in order to estimate the bias of the Gospel. The view currently most commonly held by scholars is that Luke's Gospel was written around 75-85 CE/AD. This is the view of Conzelman, Caird and Kummel. There are several reasons for this, the first of which being the dating of the other three Gospels: Matthew, Mark and John. Scholars believe that Matthew and Luke were written at approximately the same time and Matthew is dated as the early eighties AD, therefore it is thought that Luke was also written around this period. It is thought that Luke used Mark as a source and that Mark was written in 64-5AD. To allow time for Mark's Gospel to circulate and the author of Luke's Gospel to receive a copy, the theory is that Luke cannot have been written much before the mid-seventies AD...