A FINAL FAREWELL: THE LAST SUPPER

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 t

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Many look to the syntactical and organizational similarities in Luke and Mark to suggest that Luke was written after Mark, which would make the date of publication dependent upon another highly debated date. With these in mind, and generally accepted dates of c 60 CE for Mark and c 63-64 CE for Acts, Liefeld assumes that Luke was most likely written around c 61-62 CE, right between the two (807). The date of Luke would also be dependent upon the date of Acts, as Acts would assumedly be written after Luke, though even this is debated. Liefeld sums up this argument saying that the most generally accepted view on this date is c 60-70 CE (809), giving a very liberal range of dates. 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. With their close friendship, it seems that they borrowed material from each other, as their accounts of the Last Supper (Luke 22 and 1 Corinthians 11) bear striking similarities to each other (Liefeld 807).

With this in mind, the identity of Luke is somewhat of a mystery. This seems to be the only acceptable answer to who the author of this gospel was.

In such a light, it would be easy to assume that this gospel account was mainly concerned with evangelism and personal assurance of the rationality of faith for Luke’s friend, Theophilus. Not only that, but many of the early church fathers, including those involved in the Muratorian canonization and Irenaeus, support Luke as the author of both books (Liefeld 799). With a great emphasis on salvation, Luke brings out strong hints at Christology (the identity of Christ), doxology (the theology of glory), one of his favored topics, as seen in his accounts of the ascension, and soteriology (the theology of the cross), one of the themes most overlooked in this gospel (Liefeld 810-811). Liefeld sums up this argument saying that the most generally accepted view on this date is c 60-70 CE (809), giving a very liberal range of dates. The only finite evidence of his identity is the affirmation of his friendship with the apostle Paul (Liefeld 798).

As Christianity grew in popularity, many Orthodox Pharisaical Jews revolted against the uprising of this new religion. This seems to have taken place in a Palestinian location, as the Semitic constructions in both of these texts suggest a Semitic source, which could be most easily accessed in Palestine (Liefeld 807).

Common topics in this essay:
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Approximate Word count = 1780
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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