Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 76:1 (NA 2025)
Article: Luke The Physician: Some Notes On The Internal Evidence
Author: Luuk van de Weghe

TynBull 76:1 (2025) p. 31

Luke The Physician: Some Notes On The Internal Evidence

Luuk van de Weghe

[email protected]

Abstract

Is there internal evidence to support the early church tradition that Luke was a physician? Scholars throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century gravitated toward this position, but due to the refutations brought against it by Henry Cadbury, it has largely been abandoned. This paper argues that the case deserves new consideration. It delineates the three main pillars of Cadbury’s counterargument, discussing new scholarship and academic resources that undermine the strength of each of his points against the internal evidence.

1. Introduction

The case that Luke’s medical language supports the traditional attribution has a long, controversial history. Almost 150 years ago, William Hobart amassed some 400 alleged medical terms that Luke used in his writings, but Henry Cadbury noted that ninety percent of these also occurred in Josephus or in the combined writings of Lucian of Samosata and Plutarch.1 Cadbury’s first objection stems from this observation: how do we delineate medical

TynBull 76:1 (2025) p. 32

language?2 ‘Examples of medical language’, Cadbury commented, ‘should be words that are used elsewhere only or mainly in medical writings’ if they are to have significant weight.3 Second, Cadbury argued that Matthew and Mark sometimes use medical terms not found in Luke.4 Third, Cadbury showed that a non-medical writer like Lucian could use alleged medical terms as frequently as Luke does.5 Cadbury did much to turn the tide against Hobart’s argument, and most Lukan scholars today remain unpersuaded by the argument from medical language.6 But the argument deserves a second look. Cadbury’s points may not, in fact, be as grounded as they appeared 100 years ago.

2. Medical Terms

First, an extensive recent analysis of documentary papyri led Thomas Grafton to conclude ‘by comparison, Luke’s writings make more frequent use of named illnesses than what we found in the documentary papyri.’7 Additionally, the

TynBull 76:1 (2025) p. 33

Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), a searchable digital database of over 11,000 ancient Greek documents and 125 million words, no...