Does Luke's Gospel quote Paul's writings?

[Jim_Baur]

Does Luke’s Gospel quote Paul’s writings?

Is it possible from reading Luke and Paul to discern which one wrote earlier?

THANKS!

 

[StephieNorthCo]

Does Luke’s Gospel quote Paul’s writings?

Is it possible from reading Luke and Paul to discern which one wrote earlier?

THANKS!

Since Paul’s earliest writings are generally dated earlier than Luke’s, and Luke was often a companion of Paul, that wouldn’t be a big stretch. Some of the stories in Acts can likewise be mapped onto when Paul likely wrote others of his letters, e.g., during Paul’s various imprisonments.

There are several Biblical scholars who could give much more detail.

Blessings,
Stephie

 

[Joe_5859]

If there is a common verse between the two, couldn’t you just as easily say that Paul is quoting Luke? It seems like you’d have to already know who wrote first to determine who is quoting whom.

 

[TimothyH]

Luke was Paul’s travel companion.

They were very close friends on the missionary journeys. Luke wrote Acts of the Apostles and refers to Paul and himself as “we” many times. We went here, we did this and that, and so forth.

There are many similarities in their writings, if not outright quotes.

-Tim-

 

[alwayswill]

Does Luke’s Gospel quote Paul’s writings?

Is it possible from reading Luke and Paul to discern which one wrote earlier?

THANKS!

CAF’s own Senior Apologist, Jimmy Akin
says yes

“The Worker Is Worth His Wages”

Less ambiguous is 1 Timothy 5:17-19, where we read:

[17] Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching;

[18] for** the scripture says,** “You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”

The command about not muzzling an ox comes from Deuteronomy 25:4, but the statement that the worker deserves his wages is Luke 10:7–the only other place in the Bible this statement appears.
**
So here we have a direct New Testament reference to Luke as Scripture."**

ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-the-authors-of-the-new-testament-know-they-were-writing-scripture

 

[TimothyH]

There may not have been the exact statement “A worker/laborer deserves his wages” but the same idea is expressed multiple times throughout Scripture.

***"The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning. *(Leviticus 19:13)

Paying your hired servants in a timely manner was one of the 613 commandments of the Law of Moses.

Luke and Paul may or may not have been quoting each other but they both would have been familiar with this rule from the Law of Moses.

-Tim-

 

[alwayswill]

There may not have been the exact statement “A worker/laborer deserves his wages” but the same idea is expressed multiple times throughout Scripture.

***"The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning. ***(Leviticus 19:13)

Paying your hired servants in a timely manner was one of the 613 commandments of the Law of Moses.

Luke and Paul may or may not have been quoting each other but they both would have been familiar with this rule from the Law of Moses.

-Tim-

re:the statement that the worker deserves his wages

"So here we have a direct New Testament reference to Luke as Scripture."
Jimmy Akin

ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-the-authors-of-the-new-testament-know-they-were-writing-scripture/#ixzz49BurPEk4

 

[TimothyH]

re:the statement that the worker deserves his wages

"So here we have a direct New Testament reference to Luke as Scripture."
Jimmy Akin

ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-the-authors-of-the-new-testament-know-they-were-writing-scripture/#ixzz49BurPEk4

Mr. Aiken tends to condescend to most of the rest of us, to oversimplify things.

Paul was a master of the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures. Luke was his constant companion. They both were likely using the common language of the time to cite some of the many Old Testament verses which command that a laborer deserves to be paid in a timely manner.

-Tim-

 

[Randy_Carson]

Does Luke’s Gospel quote Paul’s writings?

Is it possible from reading Luke and Paul to discern which one wrote earlier?

THANKS!

In his first letter to Timothy (written in AD 63), Paul quotes a phrase from Luke’s gospel:

Luke 10:6-7
6 If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. 7 Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages.

1 Timothy 5:17-18
17 The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. 18 For Scripture says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”

Paul not only quotes the gospel written by his friend, Luke, but he refers to it as scripture! Not all scholars accept the Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy, but there’s more to be found. Paul’s authorship of the First Letter to the Corinthians (dated from AD 56) is undisputed, and in it, Paul appears to be quoting another passage written by his friend, Luke.

Luke 22:19-20
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

1 Corinthians 11:23-25
23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

Although all four gospels contain accounts of the Last Supper, only Luke’s gospel contains the words, “Do this in remembrance of me.” From these examples, we can conclude that Paul was quoting from Luke’s gospel repeatedly.

The dating of Paul’s epistles is generally accepted by even skeptical scholars, and the fact that Paul states what he is writing is a reminder of that which he had taught them in person previously suggesting that Luke was written prior to AD 56!

 

[patrick457]

The dating of Paul’s epistles is generally accepted by even skeptical scholars, and the fact that Paul states what he is writing is a reminder of that which he had taught them in person previously suggesting that Luke was written prior to AD 56!

With all due respect, I beg to differ. I personally don’t see this passage as sure-fire proof of St. Paul quoting from St. Luke’s gospel (or maybe even Luke quoting from Paul’s letters), but Luke and Paul drawing from the same stream of tradition. Since Luke was supposedly a companion of Paul, you might say that it wouldn’t be surprising. Maybe Luke did learn it from Paul at some point when they were together, but that does not mean that Luke was reading from a copy of 1 Corinthians when he was dictating the gospel to his scribe!

Heck, if you read the passage again, Paul did not even say it came from Luke’s gospel or from some written source. He said that what he was passing on to the Corinthians he “received from the Lord.”

IMHO it pretty much is similar to the approach a few scholars have of claiming that Luke actually used Josephus as his source (based of what is seen as similar elements in the two works), which would mean that Luke wrote well after the 90s, which was when Josephus published his histories: it makes too much of something.

I don’t know of anyone who’ll put Luke that early. Maybe Mark or Matthew (I’ve seen people try to give them a 40s date), but not him. Given the synoptic problem, pinning such an early date for Luke will also have to necessitate putting Mark and Matthew earlier. Unless of course, you believe Luke is the first gospel to be written of the three.

Which in turn would put you in a dilemma since Luke in his prologue clearly hints to earlier gospels already existing before his (“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us …”) Well, one might propose those documents some folks like to bandy about like the elusive Q Source or the supposed ‘Cross Gospel’ (a purported account of Jesus’ death written just years after Jesus’ crucifixion, or so John Dominic Crossan claims) or whatever, but we don’t even have proof of their existence outside scholars’ heads. (There’s also the silence of Paul; wouldn’t he have mentioned or at least hinted to a written gospel in one of his letters should one have already existed within his lifetime?)

Another thing is that the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles comprise a two-volume set. At best, the earliest date you could pin on Luke-Acts is the late 50s-early 60s, if you take Luke’s silence about Paul’s eventual fate as an indicator that Paul wasn’t dead yet when he wrote his works. (Also you have factors like Luke travelling around to interview people and gather material for his gospel, and ample time for the published gospel to spread around to take into account.)

 

[Jim_Baur]

I am the OP.

From what I have read on this tread, we just don’t know.

Is that correct?

THANKS!

 

[patrick457]

Just to expand (?) on what I said last.

In the case of 1 Corinthians, maybe we shouldn’t speak of ‘quoting’ here - which implies written texts. The similarity between Paul and Luke’s respective accounts of the Last Supper may simply imply that both people used the same version of (oral) tradition, a different stream from that represented in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. (Note even that Paul speaks of him receiving this account “from the Lord” - probably meaning not from any written text, but more likely via human transmission or even a direct revelation from the Lord Himself.) Given that Luke was a sometime companion of Paul, this isn’t totally unlikely. Maybe Luke may have even learned the Last Supper story from Paul, which explains the similarities between the two accounts.

It is only in 1 Timothy that we have what looks like a knowledge of Luke’s gospel on the author’s part (because 1 Timothy 5:18 and Luke 10:7 are nearly identical word-for-word in the Greek; there is a parallel saying in Matthew 10:10, but his version says “food” rather than “wages”), and even then, many scholars dispute the letter is authentically Pauline. (In fact, they dispute the authenticity of this letter because of these allusions, among other reasons.)

But then again, even if we assume that 1 Timothy really was Paul’s, then there would be no problem here IMHO, since 1-2 Timothy would have been written very late in Paul’s life (AD 64-67, if we believe the stories of his martyrdom under Nero), while the earliest reliable date you could pin on Luke-Acts would be just a few years before (AD 60-62). In fact, you don’t even need to assume that Paul literally had a copy of Luke’s gospel before him; some have suggested that Luke himself served as Paul’s scribe (amanuensis) for these letters. (A few scholars have even gone so far as to suggest that Luke - writing in Paul’s name - may have been the real author of the pastoral epistles.)

 

[Jim_Baur]

thank you!!!