Today is the feast
Day of St Luke the Evangelist. Here are 10 things you may not know about him.
- He wrote a sequel. The book of Acts, the fifth book of the New Testament, which relates the history of the early church, was also written by him.
- Luke was a doctor who lived in the city of Antioch in Ancient Syria. Scholars are divided about whether he was a Jew or a Gentile.
- Unlike Matthew, Mark and John, Luke was never a disciple of Jesus Himself. He was in fact a disciple of Saint Paul, and doesn't claim in his gospel to have witnessed any of it first hand - but in Acts, he often uses the word "we" when describing events, suggesting that he was actually present at that time.
- Luke is viewed as a first class historian by many, because his descriptions of places are accurate and use of his official titles is correct. Sir William Ramsay wrote that "Luke is a historian of the first rank," and Professor of Classics at Auckland University, E.M. Blaiklock, wrote "The Acts of the Apostles is not shoddy product of pious imagining, but a trustworthy record." Others, however, the atheists, presumably, question whether someone who wrote about supernatural events could be deemed reliable.
- Traditionally, Luke is also said to have been a painter, and that he was the first painter of icons, particularly of the Virgin Mary and child.
- His symbol is a bull or an ox, often with wings.
- Luke is the patron saint of artists, physicians, surgeons, students and butchers.
- He died unmarried at the age of 84.
- The relics of St. Luke can be found in the following places: his body is in the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua; his head in the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, and one of his ribs is at his tomb in Thebes.
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