Perhaps
originally one book, The Gospel According to Luke is a companion to
The Acts of the Apostles. The traditional author Luke was a
Gentile, a physician (not one of the Twelve Apostles), and one of Paul's fellow
missionaries. He had apparently not known Jesus, but was clearly much inspired
by hearing about him from those who had known him. What happened to Luke after
Paul's death is unknown. Whether Luke was the actual author, and where he
wrote, is unknown, but the writing took place about 85 A.D. "Basic to the
design of his work is the place that Luke assigns the career of Jesus in a more
comprehensive view of God's dealings with the human family. Jesus' ministry is
the period in terms of which the previous and subsequent history of salvation
is given meaning; it is the culmination of ancient Israel's promise and the
ground of the church's hope and life." [from the introduction to Luke in The
Oxford Study Bible: Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha (1992), p.
1327]