Why did Luke write his gospel?

Answer 1

Other answers from our community:

He wanted to show his point of view of Jesus' life and so did Mark,Luke and John.

Matthew (also called Levi) was a Jew writing to fellow Jews to demonstrate that Christ is the King and long-awaited Messiah of Israel.

(1). He only traces the genealogy back to Abraham (the father of the Jewish nation).

(2). He quotes more than 60 times from the Old Testament prophetic passages , stressing how Christ is the fulfillment of all those promises.

(3). His audience must have been Jewish because he usually cites Jewish custom without explaining it (unlike the other Gospels).

(4). He constantly calls calls Christ the 'Son of David', and guards Jewish sensibilities by referring to the 'kingdom of heaven' rather than the 'kingdom of God' .

Answer 2

Gospel means good news.. Jesus was the good news...Mark's mission was to spread the good news, so he wrote everything down on paper...which became known as the Gospel.

Mark's purpose Mark wrote to record the extraordinary events that had occurred during Christ's life. Some believe he wrote to bring the message of Christ to a Roman audience, using the action-focused and fast moving style favored by that audience. Hence, Mark does not focus as much as some other Gospel authors on information that relates to Judaism.

Mark's inclusion of the prophecy of the destruction of the Temple serves partly to communicate the warnings given by Christ to avoid religious deceptions, false prophets, discouragement, and those who set dates for Christ's return. Mark, writing well before 70AD, also included it as a prophecy of Christ which needed to be recorded in order to verify the authenticity of Christ's power once it was fulfilled in a future event.

Mark wrote in order to communicate the power and authority of Jesus as the son of God and as master over Satan, results of the Fall, and over legalistic tradition. By focussing on the Resurrection and events leading up to it, Mark conveys the importance of this event as central to Christ's whole life and communicates the authenticity of His mission and claims. Mark's purpose The books of Matthew Mark Luke and John all have a different perspective on Jesus' life. Hope this somewhat helps

Mark wrote his Gospel to record the ministry of Jesus Christ, and in particular the death and Resurrection of the man who was God in human form.

Answer 3

A:The Gospel of Matthew was written anonymously around the eighties of the first century, so we have no signature to tell us who actually wrote this gospel. The only reason to believe that Matthew was the author is that the second-century Church Fathers decided to attribute this book to Matthew. However, modern scholars say that Matthew's Gospel could not have been written by an eyewitness to the events portrayed, so eliminating Matthew as a possible author.

Another Answer:

The Gospel of Matthew is silent on who the author is, but the many scholars who contributed to the New King James Bible have looked to some clues in the writing to help in determining the authorship.

The writer knew the area of Palestine and was very familiar with Jewish history, customs, classes and ideas of the people. The writer also was well acquainted with the Old Testament. The verbage used suggests the author was a Palestinian Jew.

More importantly, the writer was a tax collector and this Gospel has numerous mentions to money - more than the other three. Matthew's home town of Capernaum is given special mention in this work.

Given the above, these scholars have agreed with the prior crediting of authorship to the Apostle Matthew. With Jesus' prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem in Matthew 24:2 as still in the future, it is reasonable to conclude that this work was written between AD 50-60.

Answer 4

As with Luke's Gospel, the author of Matthew's Gospel used two main source documents for his knowledge of the life, mission and sayings of Jesus. The first of these was Mark's Gospel, written approximately 70 CE. Matthew contains most of the verses in Mark, and whenever it does so, the sequence is the same and the actual words in the original Greek are almost identical. The 'Q' document was a Greek-language book of sayings attributed to Jesus, that the authors of Matthew and Luke both drew from. However, Q is only a list of sayings and does not provide the time or context for those sayings. Whenever Matthew and Luke provide a saying believed to come from Q, they use the same words in Greek, but usually report Jesus as saying them in different times and places.

Matthew was written during the 80s of the first century, at a time when the antiquity and authenticity of the new religion appear to have been coming under scrutiny. The author resolved this by making frequent references to the Old Testament, in order to show, if possible, that the New Testament stories were prophesied or prefigured in the Old Testament. Since he was writing in Greek, he used the Septuagint, a flawed early Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, rather than the Hebrew scriptures themselves. In some cases this can be detected, because Matthew relied on errors that existed only in the Septuagint.

Answer 5

Matthew wrote simply to record the history of the birth of a Jewish man whose life had a profound effect on the nation. Further, he wrote to demonstrate that this was no ordinary baby, but the longed-for Messiah.

Answer 6

A:All the New Testament gospels were originally anonymous, and were attributed to the apostles whose names they now bear later in the second century. By a parallel reading in the original Greek language, the Church Fathers soon realised that there was a literary dependency among the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). They decided that Matthew was written first and that Mark and Luke were copied from it. It was therefore natural that the gospels would be listed in the same order: Matthew, Mark and Luke, with John last because it was assumed to have been written last.

Modern biblical scholars agree that there is a literary dependency, but say that Mark was the first gospel and that Matthew and Luke were actually copied from it, with John loosely based on Luke, however tradition has established the order in which the gospels are presented in The Bible.

Answer 7

By opening the gospel with a genealogy showing Jesus as the "son of David," then proceeding to the manner of His birth (of a virgin, as prophesied), Matthew immediately shows his intent to present Jesus to the Jews as their long-awaited and promised Messiah.

Answer 8

The Gospel of Matthew was written to the Jews and shows that Christ is the rightful heir of the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants. Throughout the book Matthew shows that Jesus is the Christ,the Messiah.

Answer 9

Most biblical scholars believe that the author now called Matthew used the Gospel According to Mark as his primary source for information about the life of Jesus. Whatever his reasons were, he chose to write an new gospel, expanding on the work of Mark.

Whereas Mark's Gospel, in the oldest form known to us, contained nothing of the appearances of the risen Jesus, Matthew's Gospel has an account of Jesus appearing to the women and then to the disciples in Galilee. It also contains a version of the story of the birth of Jesus, and his genealogy back through Joseph and King David. Matthew's Gospel, more so than any other gospel, refers to the Old Testament for apparent proof of the role of Jesus.

So, Matthew introduced a miraculous birth, but also descent through Joseph from David, proof that he rose from the dead, and many more wise sayings and miracles. From the above, it may be that Matthew was responding to pagan or Jewish criticism that Mark had not proven that Jesus was really the Messiah nor that Jesus was more than a wandering preacher.

Answer 10

Date written

There is considerable evidence that the author we know as Mark wrote the first of the Gospels approximately 70 CE.

One of the internal clues to the date of Mark's Gospel is at Mark 13:2, where Jesus was said to prophesy the destruction of the Temple, an event that occurred in 70 CE. According to Mark, Jesus went on to predict the end of the world within the lifetime of his followers. If Jesus had really prophesied the destruction of the Temple, he would have been correct, but he would have been in error about the imminent end of times. Since it can not be accepted that Jesus made predictions that were capable of being in error, these prophecies must have originated with Mark, writing at a time when he would have known of the destruction or imminent destruction of the temple.

Reason written

The strong coincidence that the Gospel was written just at the time of the destruction of the Temple can not be ignored. No one had written a Gospel during the forty years since the time attributed to the crucifixion, yet Mark set out to do so at just this historic moment. Whatever his reason, it must be tied up in events of the time.

The Romans were looking for everyone remotely responsible for the uprising that began in 66 CE. The Saddducees were possibly their first target; certainly they lost their power base and disappeared from history at this time. The small Christian community may also have been vulnerable and it would have been important for the Church to be seen as an innocent, if eccentric, sect of Judaism. In the past, Christians had relied on oral teachings, but now they needed a text that showed that they held no views or beliefs injurious to Roman rule. Plausibly, Mark produced his Gospel, showing Jesus to be a righteous and pacifist Jew who upheld Roman rule.