Preface. The writer, influenced by the attempts of others to record the primitive tradition of Christianity as it was handed down by the first generation of disciples, essays the same task, and having taken pains to collect, examine, sift, and arrange the contents of the written and oral tradition, presents the result to Theophilus, a Roman official of some standing, who needed fuller acquaintance with the historic basis of the oral teaching about Christianity which he had received. The preface is written in rather elaborate Greek, is modelled on the conventional lines of ancient literature, and displays some acquaintance with medical phraseology, especially that of Galen.
Luke 1:2. from the beginning, i.e. of the public ministry of Jesus, the Baptism. ministers of the Word: servants of the spoken gospel.
Luke 1:3. all things: his work is to be complete in scope. from the very first, from the Birth. If, however, we regard Luke 1:5 to Luke 2:52 as a later addition, it may mean from the Baptism. in order, not necessarily chronological but at least logical, an order in which the events and sayings are given an appropriate setting. Theophilus, possibly here a generic name, but more probably to be taken as that of an individual, a literary patron of the Evangelist's. The apocryphal Acts make him a Roman administrator of high rank at Caesarea, and the father of the centurion Cornelius. Luke may have been his freedman.