The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke.
The holy Apostle Luke was an Antiochean, a physician by trade, and a disciple and companion of Paul. He wrote his Gospel in Greek after Matthew and Mark, after which he wrote the Acts of the Apostles, and dedicated both works to Theophilus, who, according to some, was Governor of Achaia. He lived some eighty-six years and died in Achaia, perhaps in Patras, the capital of this district. His emblem is the calf, the third symbolical beast mentioned by Ezekiel (1:10), which is a symbol of Christ’s sacrificial and priestly office, as Saint Irenaeus says.
Of all the Evangelists, Saint Luke refers most frequently to historical events that allow us to moor the occurrences of the Gospel and the Acts firmly in recorded history.
To introduce the conception of Saint John the Baptist, he says, “There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias . . . .” (Luke 1:5).
To introduce the birth of our Lord in the flesh, the entrance of God into human history as a man, he says, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)” (Luke 2:1–2)
To introduce the public ministry of Saint John the Baptist to prepare the way for the appearing of Christ, he says, “Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.” (Luke 3:1–2)
Likewise in the Acts of the Apostles he mentions events recorded also by secular pagan historians. He mentions the Emperor Claudius, who reigned A.D. 41–54, in Acts 11:28: “And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar.” and in Acts 18:2: “And [Paul] found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome:) and came unto them.” – this expulsion of the Jews by Claudius is also mentioned by Suetonius in section 25 of his chapter on Claudius in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars; the “Felix the governor” of chapters 23 and 24 of Acts is also mentioned in section 28 of Suetonius’s work on Claudius, and Felix is also mentioned by Tacitus and Josephus.
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