Simpatico connection

Paul writes the Galatians that he “profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.”

“He’s saying in essence, ‘All my classmates were in my rear-view mirror,’ ” explains Jordan. “Sometime we think of Paul as kind of a ruffian; just some roughneck guy out there that never amounted to anything. Paul wasn’t that way. He was a man who, as he would say, ‘didn’t use eloquence of speech.’ He didn’t say he COULDN’T.

“He purposely and intentionally didn’t use the skills that he had acquired but he had them. And I can see him and a guy like Luke having some simpatico between themselves about some of these things.

"So when I look at it and I see Luke there at the very end with Paul, the last companion that sticks with him, more than just because he’s a medical doctor, but because they were companions. They were confidants.

“The Book of Luke is obviously the one of the four gospel accounts that Paul knew about. He quotes it on two occasions. There’s no other New Testament book anybody quotes like Paul does Luke.

“Why would he do that? Well, for one reason he would know about it. He’d be familiar with it. And you know when they spent hours and hours, and weeks and months, together to discuss those things—in fact they literally spent years together traveling the Mediterranean world together.

“And for Luke to have done that research, compiling that information, you know Paul would have certainly gleaned that from him.

“’You know Luke wrote the Book of Acts because Acts begins with, ‘The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach.’ That’s talking about Theophilus.

"If you go back to Luke 1 and the first four verses, you see this is the treatise that he did. The former treatise and now he’s going to finish the story. So what you see here is the Book of Luke is volume one and the Book of Acts is volume two.

“When you come over to Luke 16 you figure out who these people are. It’s fascinating that of the four gospels the only one that you possible can identify by name as being the author is Luke. You don’t know who wrote Matthew because he doesn’t tell you. Tradition says Matthew and we accept Matthew and I don’t have any problem saying Matthew did it, but I can’t prove to you Matthew did it.

“The same thing with Mark. In fact, there’s a controversy where some people say Peter wrote Mark. Well, I’m assuming Mark wrote Mark because that’s his name on the book but no matter who wrote it, Mark is what we call it.

“The book of John was written in John 21 by ‘that disciple in whom Jesus loved.’ Most people call that John the apostle but some people say, ‘No, it’s Lazarus!’ and they get in a big fight about that. You know it was ‘the disciple Jesus loved,’ but you’re not really sure who that guy is, conclusive one way or another.

“So the tradition that says it’s John is not a very reliable tradition. The tradition that says Matthew wrote Matthew and Mark wrote Mark, those traditions are not necessarily unreliable. The one that says John wrote John is demonstrably unreliable and so I don’t trust it very much.

“There’s the tradition that says John wrote John at a certain time period, and not so much that John wrote it, but the timing involved. Well, if he’s wrong in the timing you can’t necessarily be sure he’s right in the other things too.

“But when you come to Luke and Acts it’s a little bit easier to identify specifically because of this connection with Paul.”

(Editor’s note: To be continued . . . )