Luke is the name of one of the canonic books of the New Testament that contains the story of the life and miracles of Jesus Christ, written by St. Luke, who was of the Syrian nation, a native of Antioch, doctor by profession, and was the companion on the trips and of the preaching of St. Paul.

Some, like Tertullian ( Against Marcion 4:5) and St. Athanasius or the author of the synopsis attributed to him, each that the Gospel of St Luke was actually the Gospel of Saint Paul; that this apostle had dictated it to St. Luke, and that when he speaks of his gospel, as in Romans 11:16 and 16:25 and Thessalonians 11:12, he means the Gospel of Luke. But St. Ireneas (3:1) simply says that St. Luke redacted in writing what St. Paul preached to the nations, and St. Gregory of Nazianza, [says] that this evangelist wrote relying on the help of St. Paul. It is certain that St. Paul ordinarily cites the St Luke’s Gospel, as one can see in I Corin 11:23-25 and I Corin. 15:5. But St. Luke nowhere says he was helped by St. Paul; he addresses his gospel, as well as the Acts of the Apostles, to someone named Theophilus, an unknown personage and several ancients have taken this name as an appellation for a man who loves God. The Marcionites accept only St. Luke’s Gospel, and they truncate it in several places, as Tertullian noticed ( Against Marcion book 5) and St. Epiphanus hoeres . 42.

The style of St. Luke is more pure than that of the other evangelists but one notices several expressions specific to Hellenite Jews, several traits that relate to the genius of the Syriac language and even the Greek language, in the judgment of Grotius. See the preface of Dom Calmet on this Gospel: Calmet; Dictionnaire de la Bible.