Luke's gospel is the most insightful and richly literary of the synoptic gospels. With his interesting outlook and purposeful style of writing, he included the account of the last supper and all of its preparation with the intent of foreshadowing the death and resurrection of the Lord. With a final farewell to his disciples, Jesus was setting up what would become one of the most beloved of all of the sacraments of the body of believers.
             Luke, like Mark, most likely wrote his gospel in a time of great pending turmoil and persecution for first century Christians. With the actions of the gospels already completed, and Paul on his way to, if not already in, his final prison sentence in Rome before his execution under Nero, many Christians were in hiding and even forsaking their faith to save their bodies from certain destruction under this great tyranny.
             As Christianity grew in popularity, many Orthodox Pharisaical Jews revolted against the uprising of this new religion. Trying to supplant the leaders of this "iconoclastic cult," the Jews incarcerated many of the original twelve, often taking them before the Roman governors and even the emperor at times to have them sentenced to beatings and even to death (Liefeld 808). At the assumed time of the writings of Mark and Luke, Paul and Peter, the two greatest threats to the Jewish religion, are on their way to their final trials and executions. John is most likely being hunted down by the authorities and it would not have been much longer until he would be exiled to the island of Patmos. The Christian church is in great danger of destruction.
             Luke's gospel contains a four verse introduction to it, similar to an epistle, without the naming of the author, that makes the claim that it is written exclusively for Theophilus, an unknown man, who assumedly would have been a young Christian, or at least a hopeful agnostic (Liefeld 823). Though this interior eviden...