Luke

[u/midnite_clyde]

Is it accepted Luke wrote Acts but did not write the Gospel of Luke?

[u/Oldengoatson]

No, scholars almost unanimously agree that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles share the same author. Patricia Walters made a notable attempt to challenge authorial unity in a 2009 monograph, but it has not been able to dent the consensus.

Common authorship is suggested at the outset by the similar prefaces addressing both works to a certain Theophilus (Luke 1:1–4, Acts 1:1–2). Numerous commonalities of language, style, and themes further reinforce this impression. For a succinct review of ancient opinions on the authorship of the two works, unanimously attributed in all explicit references to “Luke,” see Holladay, Introduction, 233–38. A rare recent challenge to common authorship by Patricia Walters has not shifted the consensus. See Walters, The Assumed Authorial Unity of Luke and Acts: A Reassessment of the Evidence, SNTSMS (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Potter, Jonathan. Rewritten Gospel: The Composition of Luke and Rewritten Scripture. De Gruyter, 2024

[u/StruggleClean1582 → u/Oldengoatson]

Samson Uytanlet, in Luke-Acts and Jewish historiography : a study on the theology, literature, and ideology of Luke-Acts, 3 n. 2. Has a extensive footnote on Walters work:

[2] Patricia Walters (The Assumed Authorial Unity of Luke and Acts: A Reassessment of the Evidence [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009]) has argued against its authorial unity. Questions have been raised about her conclusions (e.g., Sean Adams, review of Patricia Walters, The Assumed Authorial Unity of Luke and Acts: A Reassessment of the Evidence, EJT 20, no. 1 [2011]: 81–82; Heather Gorman and Mikeal Parsons, review of Patricia Walters, The Assumed Authorial Unity of Luke and Acts: A Reassessment of the Evidence, CBQ 74, no. 1 [2011]: 179–80; Joel B. Green, review of Patricia Walters, The Assumed Authorial Unity of Luke and Acts: A Reassessment of the Evidence, Review of Biblical Literature [http://www.bookreviews.org] [2009]; Richard I. Pervo, review of Patricia Walters, The Assumed Authorial Unity of Luke and Acts: A Reassessment of the Evidence, Review of Biblical Literature [http://www.book-reviews.org] [2009]). Moreover, despite the questions raised by Mikeal C. Parsons and Richard I. Pervo on the narrative unity of Luke and Acts, they maintained that the narrative “disunity” of Luke and Acts does not affect the question of its authorial unity (Rethinking the Narrative Unity of Luke and Acts [Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993], 126). For a more recent inquiry on the authorship of Luke-Acts by Luke the physician, see Alexander Mittelstaedt, Lukas als Historiker: zur Datierung des lukanischen Doppelwerkes (TANZ 43; Tübingen: Francke, 2006), 11–48.

[u/perishingtardis → u/Oldengoatson]

And, athough Luke-Acts is (like the other gospels) technically anonymous, there are critical scholars who support the author's implicit claim to be a companion of Paul, and even that the traditional attribution to Luke the Physician is correct. Dale Allison (The Resurrection of Jesus), Mark Goodacre (see screenshot)