Where and what was the community for which St Luke wrote?

Answer 1

AnswerIt can be shown that the author of Luke's Gospel was aware of Mark's Gospel, since he drew much of his material from it. However, it is also clear that 'Luke' was actually quite unfamiliar with the material in Mark's Gospel. He not only omitted the "Missing Block", but concatenated the verse that preceded it in Mark with the verse that followed it, without seeming to notice that this did not make much sense. If the author himself knew little or nothing about Jesus of Nazareth, it is likely that he was writing for a community that, while essentially Christian, also knew nothing about the gospel story portrayed in Mark's Gospel.

This raises the question of how an entire community could be Christian yet know little or nothing about the life and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. If we could answer that question, it may tell us something about the community and where it was located. It could be that the community had held proto-Christian beliefs that arose before Mark introduced Jesus of Nazareth as the nominal founder of the religion, and that Luke was guiding the community towards the Markan concept of Christianity. At this stage we do not know.

It is generally agreed that Luke-Acts was not written in Palestine, with various suggestions including Achaia, Decapolis, Asia Minor and Rome.