The Infancy of Luke’s Own Narrative

The biography of Luke developed early and stuck fast. By the early fourth century, Eusebius—the bishop of Caesarea and the father of church history—had identified most of the traditions that scholars puzzle over today. In his Ecclesiastical History (c. 312–324), Eusebius wrote:

Luke, being by birth one of the people of Antioch, by profession a physician, having been with Paul a good deal, and having associated intimately with the rest of the apostles, has left us examples of the art of curing souls that he obtained from them in two divinely inspired books—the Gospel, which he testifies that he wrote out even as they delivered to him who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, all of whom [or “all of which facts”] he says he had followed even from the beginning, and the Acts of the Apostles, which he composed, receiving his information with his own eyes, no longer by hearsay.

Ecclesiastical History 3.4

The church father Jerome (347–420) could add few details to Eusebius’s account: