physician writes a historical work it does not necessarily
follow that his profession shows itself in his writing; yet it
is only natural for one to look for traces of the author's
medical profession in such a work. These traces may be of
different kinds: 1, The whole character of the narrative may
be determined by points of view, aims, and ideals which are
more or less medical (disease and its treatment); 2, marked
preference may be shown for stories concerning the healing of
diseases, which stories may be given in great number and
detail; 3, the language may be colored by the language of
physicians (medical technical terms, metaphors of medical
character, etc.). All these three groups of characteristic
signs are found, as we shall see, in the historical work which
bears the name of St. Luke. Here, however, it may be objected
that the subject matter itself is responsible for these
traits, so that their evidence is not decisive for the medical
calling of the author. Jesus appeared as a great physician and
healer. All the evangelists say this of Him; hence it is not
surprising that one of them has set this phase of His ministry
in the foreground, and has regarded it as the most important.
Our evangelist need not therefore have been a physician,
especially if he were a Greek, seeing that in those days
Greeks with religious interests were disposed to regard
religion mainly under the category of healing and salvation.
This is true, yet such a combination of characteristic signs
will compel us to believe that the author was a physician if,
4, the description of the particular cases of disease shows
distinct traces of medical diagnosis and scientific knowledge;
5, if the language, even where questions of medicine or of
healing are not touched upon, is colored by medical
phraseology; and, 6, if in those passages where the author
speaks as an eye-witness medical traits are especially and
prominently apparent. These three kinds of tokens are also
found in the historical work of our author. It is accordingly
proved that it proceeds from the pen of a physician.
The importance of the concession that Luke was a physician should be
properly appreciated. His whole gospel is written from that standpoint.
For him the Saviour was the healer, the good physician who went about
curing the ills of the body, while ministering to people's souls. He has
more accounts of miracles of healing than any of the other Evangelists.
He has taken certain of the stories of the other Evangelists who were
eye-witnesses, and when they were told in naive and popular language
that obscured the real condition that was present, he has retold the
story from the physician's standpoint, and thus the miracle becomes
clearer than ever. In one case, where Mark has a slur on physicians,
Luke eliminates it. In a number of cases the correction of Mark's
popular language in the description of ailments is made in terms that
could not have been used except by one thoroughly versed in the Greek
medical terminology of the times. As a matter of fact, there seems to be
no doubt now that Luke had been, before he became an Evangelist, a
practising physician in Malta of considerable experience. His testimony,
then, to the miracles is particularly valuable as almost a medical
eye-witness.
In medical science, St. Luke's time was by no means barren of knowledge.
The Alexandrian school of medicine had done some fine work in its time.
It was the first university medical school in the world's history, and
there dissection was first practised regularly and publicly for the sake
of anatomy, and even the vivisection of criminals who were supplied by
the Ptolemei for human physiology, was a part of the school curriculum.
A number of important discoveries in brain anatomy are attributed to
Herophilus, after whom the torcular herophili within the skull is named,
and who invented the term calamus scriptorius for certain appearances
in the fourth ventricle. His colleague, Erasistratus, the co-founder of
this school at Alexandria, did work in pathological anatomy, and laid
the foundation for serious study there. For three centuries there is
some good worker, at or in connection with Alexandria, whose name is
preserved for us in the history of medicine. Other Greek schools of
medicine in the East, as, for instance, that of Pergamos, also did
excellent work. Galen is the great representative of this school, and he
came in the century after St. Luke. A physician educated in Greek
medicine at that time, then, would be in an excellent position to judge
critically of the miracles of healing of the Christ, and it would seem
to have been providential that Luke was called for this purpose.
The evidence for his membership of our profession will doubtless be
interesting to all physicians. Some of the distinctive passages in which
Luke's familiarity with medical terms to such an extent that to express
his meaning he found himself compelled to use them, will appeal at once
to these, for whom such terms are part of everyday speech. The use of
the word _hydropikos_, which is not to be met with anywhere else in the
New Testament, nor in the non-medical Greek literature of that time,
though the word is of frequent occurrence as a designation for a person
suffering from dropsy (and always, as in Luke, the adjective for the
substantive), in Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and Galen is a typical
example.
Where such vague terms as paralyzed occur Luke does not use the familiar
word, but the medical term that meant stricken with paralysis,
indicating not any inability to use the limbs, but such a one as was due
to a stroke of apoplexy. We who, as physicians, have heard of so many
cures of paralysis from our friends, the Eddyites, are prone to ask, as
the first question, what sort of a paralysis it was. Luke made inquiries
from men who were eye-witnesses, and then has described the scene with
such details as convinced him as a physician of the reality of the
miracle, and his description was meant to carry conviction to the minds
of others.
Occasionally St. Luke uses words which only a physician would be likely
to know at all. That is to say, even a man reasonably familiar with
medical terminology and medical literature would not be likely to know
them unless he had been technically trained. One of these is the word
_sphudron_, a word which is only medical, and is not to be found even in
such large Greek lexicons of ordinary words as that of Passow. Sphudron
is the anatomical term of the Graeco-Alexandrian school for the condyles
of the femur. Galen and other medical authors use it, and Luke, in
giving the details of the story of the lame man cured, in the third
chapter of the Acts, seventh verse, selects it because it exactly
expresses the meaning he wished to convey. In this story there are a
number of added medical details. These are all evidently arranged so as
to give the full medical significance to the miracle. For instance, the
man had been _lame from birth_, literally _from the womb of his mother_.
At this time he was forty years of age, an age at which the spontaneous
cure of such an ailment or, indeed, any cure of it, could scarcely be
expected, if, during the preceding time, there had been no improvement.
In the story of the cure of Saul's blindness Luke says in the Acts that
his blindness fell from him like scales. The figure is a typically
medical one. The word for fall that is used is, as was pointed out by
Hobart ("Medical Language of St. Luke," Dublin, 1882), exactly the term
that is used for the falling of scales from the body. The term for
scales is the specific designation of the particles that fall from the
body during certain skin diseases or after certain of the infectious
fevers, as in scarlet fever. Hippocrates and Galen have used it in many
places. It is distinctively a medical word. In the story of the vision
of St. Peter, told also in the Acts, the word _ecstasis_, from which we
derive our word ecstasy, is used. This is the only word St. Luke uses
for vision and he alone uses it. This term is of constant employment in
a technical sense in the medical writers of St. Luke's time and before
it. When the other evangelists talk of lame people they use the popular
term. This might mean anything or nothing for a physician. Luke uses one
of the terms that is employed by physicians when they wish to indicate
that for some definite reason there is inability to walk.
In the story of the Good Samaritan there are some interesting details
that indicate medical interest on the part of the writer. It is Luke's
characteristic story and a typical medical instance. He employs certain
words in it that are used only by medical writers. The use of oil and
wine in the treatment of the wounds of the stranger traveller was at one
time said to indicate that it could not have been a physician who wrote
the story, since the ancients used oil for external applications in such
cases but not wine. More careful search of the old masters of medicine,
however, has shown that they used oil and wine not only internally but
externally. Hippocrates, for instance, has a number of recommendations
of this combination for wounds. It is rather interesting to realize
this, and especially the wine in addition to the oil, because wine
contains enough alcohol to be rather satisfactorily antiseptic. There
seems no doubt that wounds that had been bathed in wine and then had oil
poured over them would be likely to do better than those which were
treated in other ways. The wine would cleanse and at least inhibit
bacterial growth. The subsequent covering with oil would serve to
protect the wound to some degree from external contamination.
Sometimes there is an application of medical terms to something
extraneous from medicine that makes the phrase employed quite amusing.
For instance, when Luke wants to explain how they strengthened the
vessel in which they were to sail he describes the process by the term
which was used in medical Greek to mean the splinting of a part or at
least the binding of it up in such a way as to enable it to be used. The
word was quite a puzzle to the commentators until it was pointed out
that it was the familiar medical term, and then it was easy to
understand. Occasionally this use of a medical term gives a strikingly
accurate significance to Luke's diction. For instance, where other
evangelists talk of the Lord looking at a patient or turning to them,
Luke uses the expression that was technically employed for a physician's
examination of his patient, as if the Lord carefully looked over the
ailing people to see their physical needs, and then proceeded to cure
them. Manifestly in Luke's mind the most interesting phase of the Lord's
life was His exhibition of curative powers, and the Saviour was for him
the divine healer, the God physician of bodies as well as of souls.
There are many little incidents which he relates that emphasize this.
For instance, where St. Mark talks about the healing of the man with a
withered hand, St. Luke adds the characteristic medical note that it was
the right hand. When he tells of the cutting off of the ear of the
servant of the high priest in the Garden of Olives St. Luke takes the
story from St. Mark, but adds the information that would appeal to a
physician that it was the right ear. Moreover, though all four
evangelists record the cutting off of the ear, only St. Luke adds the
information that the Lord healed it again. It is as if he were defending
the kindly feelings of the Divine Physician and as if it would have been
inexcusable had He not exerted His miraculous powers of healing on this
occasion. It is St. Luke, too, who has constantly distinguished between
natural illnesses and cases of possession. This careful distinction
alone would point to the author of the third gospel and the Acts as
surely a physician. As it is it confirms beyond all doubt the claim that
the writer of these portions of the New Testament was a physician
thoroughly familiar with all the medical writings of the time and
probably a physician who had practised for a long time.
Certain miracles of healing are related only by St. Luke as if he
realized better than any of the other evangelists the evidential value
that such instances would have for future generations as to the divinity
of the personage who worked them. The beautiful story of the raising
from death of the son of the widow of Nain is probably one of the
oftenest quoted passages from St. Luke. It is a charming bit of
literature. While it suggests the writer physician it makes one almost
sure that the other tradition according to which St. Luke was also a
painter must be true. The scene is as picturesque as it can be. The Lord
and His Apostles and the multitudes coming to the gate of the little
city just as in the evening sun the funeral cortege with the widow
burying her only son came out of it. The approach of the Lord to the
weeping mother, His command to the dead son to arise, and the simple
words, "and he gave him back to his mother," constitute as charming a
scene as a painter ever tried to visualize. Besides this, Luke alone has
the story of the man suffering with dropsy and the woman suffering from
weakness. The intensely picturesque quality of many of these scenes that
he describes so vividly would indeed seem to place beyond all doubt the
old tradition that he was an artist as well as a physician.
It is interesting to realize that it is to Luke alone that we owe the
account of the well-known message sent by Christ Himself to John the
Baptist when John sent his disciples to inquire as to His mission. After
describing His ministry He said: "Go and relate to John what you have
heard and seen: the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the lepers
are made clean, the dead rise again, to the poor the Gospel is
preached." To no one more than to a physician would that description of
His mission appeal as surely divine.
To those who care to follow the subject still further, and above all, to
read opinions given before the reversal of the verdict of the higher
criticism on the Lucan writings, indeed before ever that trial was
brought, there is much in "Horae Lucanae--A Biography of St. Luke," by
Henry Samuel Baynes (Longmans, 1870), that will surely be of interest.
He has some interesting quotations which show how thoroughly previous
centuries realized all the force of modern arguments. For instance, the
following paragraph from Dr. Nathaniel Robinson, a Scotch physician of
the eighteenth century, will illustrate this. Dr. Robinson said:
It is manifest from his Gospel, that Luke was both an acute
observer, and had even given professional attention to all our
Saviour's miracles of healing. Originally, among the
Egyptians, divinity and physic were united in the same order
of men, so that the priest had the care of souls, and was also
the physician. It was much the same under the Jewish economy.
But after physic came to be studied by the Greeks, they
separated the two professions. That a physician should write
the history of our Saviour's life was appropriate, as there
were divers mysterious things to be noticed, concerning which
his education enabled him to form a becoming judgment.
It is even interesting to realize that St. Luke's tendency to use
medical terms has been of definite value in determining the question
whether both the third gospel and the Acts of the Apostles are by the
same man. They have been attributed to St. Luke traditionally, but in
the higher criticism some doubt has been thrown on this and an elaborate
hypothesis of dual authorship set up. It has been asserted that it is
very improbable on extrinsic grounds that they were both written by one
hand and certain intrinsic evidence, changes in the mode of narration,
especially the use of the first personal pronoun in the plural in
certain passages, has been pointed to as making against single
authorship. This tendency to deny old-time traditions of authorship with
regard to many classical writings was a marked characteristic of the
early part of the nineteenth century, but the close of the century saw
practically all of these denials discredited. The nineteenth century
ushered in studies of Homer, with the separatist school perfectly
confident in their assertion that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not by
the same person, and even that the Iliad itself was the work of several
hands.
At the beginning of the twentieth century we are quite as sure that both
the Iliad and Odyssey were written by the same person and that the
separatists were hurried into a contrary decision not a little by the
feeling of the sensation that such a contradiction of previously
accepted ideas would create. This is a determining factor in many a
supposed novel discovery, that it is hard always to discount
sufficiently. A thing may be right even though it is old, and most new
discoveries, it must not be forgotten, that is, most of those announced
with a great blare of trumpets, do not maintain themselves. The simple
argument that the separatists would have to find another poet equal to
Homer to write the other poem has done more than anything else to bring
their opinion into disrepute. It is much easier to explain certain
discrepancies, differences of style, and of treatment of subjects, as
well as other minor variants, than to supply another great poet. Most of
the works of our older literatures have gone through a similar trial
during the over-hasty superficially critical nineteenth century. The
Nibelungenlied has been attributed to two or three writers instead of
one. The Cid, the national epic of Spain, and the Arthur Legends, the
first British epic, have been at least supposed to be amenable to the
same sort of criticism. In every case, scholars have gone back to the
older traditional view of a single author. The phases of literary and
historic criticism with regard to Luke's writings are, then, only a
repetition of what all our great national classics have gone through
from supercilious scholarship during the past hundred years.
It is not surprising, then, that there should be dual or even triple
ascriptions of authorship for various portions of the Scriptures, and
Luke's writings have on this score suffered as much or more even than
others, with the possible exception of Moses. It is now definitely
settled, however, that the similarities of style between the Acts and
the third gospel are too great for them to have come from two different
minds. This is especially true, as pointed out by Harnack, in all that
regards the use of medical terms. The writer of the Acts and the writer
of the third gospel knew Greek from the standpoint of the physician of
that time. Each used terms that we find nowhere else in Greek literature
except among medical writers. What is thus true for one critical attack
on Luke's reputation is also true in another phase of recent higher
criticism. It has been said that certain portions of the Acts which are
called the "we" portions because the narration changes in them from the
third to the first person were to be attributed to another writer than
the one who wrote the narrative portions. Here, once more, the test of
the medical words employed has decided the case for Luke's sole
authorship. It is evidently an excellent thing to be able to use medical
terms properly if one wants to be recognized with certainty later on in
history for just what one's business was. It has certainly saved the
situation for St. Luke, though there may be some doubt as to the real
force of objections thus easily overthrown.
It is rather interesting to realize that many scholars of the present
generation had allowed themselves to be led away by the German higher
criticism from the old tradition with regard to Luke as a physician and
now will doubtless be led back to former views by the leader of German
biblical critics. It shows how much more distant things may influence
certain people than those nearer home--how the hills are green far away.
Harnack confesses that the best book ever written on the subject of Luke
as a physician, the one that has proved of most value to him, and that
he still recommends everyone to read, was originally written in English.
It is Hobart's "Medical Language of St. Luke,"[34] written more than a
quarter of a century before Harnack. The Germans generally had rather
despised what the English were doing in the matter of biblical
criticism, and above all in philology. Yet now the acknowledged
coryphaeus of them all, Harnack, not only admits the superiority of an
old-time English book, but confesses that it is the best statement of
the subject up to the present time, including his own. He constantly
quotes from it, and it is evident that it has been the foundation of all
of his arguments. It is not the first time that men have fetched from
afar what they might have got just as well or better at home.
Harnack has made complete the demonstration, then, that the third
gospel and the Acts were written by St. Luke, who had been a practising
physician. In spite of this, however, he finds many objections to the
Luke narratives and considers that they add very little that is valuable
to the contemporary evidence that we have with regard to Christ. He
impairs with one hand the value of what he has so lavishly yielded with
the other. He finds inconsistencies and discrepancies in the narrative
that for him destroy their value as testimony. A lawyer would probably
say that this is that very human element in the writings which
demonstrates their authenticity and adds to their value as evidence,
because it shows clearly the lack of any attempt to do anything more
than tell a direct story as it had come to the narrator. No special
effort was made to avoid critical objections founded on details. It was
the general impression that was looked for.
Sir William Ramsay, in his "Luke the Physician and Other Studies in the
History of Religion" (New York: Armstrong and Sons, 1908), has answered
Harnack from the side of the professional critic with much force. He
appreciates thoroughly the value of Professor Harnack's book, and above
all the reactionary tendency away from nihilistic so-called higher
criticism which characterized so much of German writing on biblical
themes in the nineteenth century. He says (p. 7): "This [book of
Harnack's] alone carries Lukan criticism a long step forwards, and sets
it on a new and higher plane. Never has the unity and character of the
book been demonstrated so convincingly and conclusively. The step is
made and the plane is reached by the method which is practised in other
departments of literary criticism, viz., by dispassionate investigation
of the work and by discarding fashionable _a priori_ theories."
The distinguished English traveller and writer on biblical subjects
points out, however, that in detail many of Harnack's objections to the
Lukan narratives are due to insufficient consideration of the
circumstances in which they were written and the comparative
significance of the details criticised. He says, "Harnack lays much
stress on the fact that inconsistencies and inexactnesses occur all
through Acts. Some of these are undeniable; and I have argued that they
are to be regarded in the same light as similar phenomena in the poem of
Lucretius and in other ancient classical writers, viz., as proofs that
the work never received the final form which Luke intended to give it,
but was still incomplete when he died. The evident need for a third book
to complete the work, together with those blemishes in expression, form
the proof."
Ramsay's placing of Harnack's writing in general is interesting in this
connection. (P. 8) "Professor Harnack stands on the border between the
nineteenth and twentieth century. His book shows that he is to a certain
degree sensitive of and obedient to the new spirit; but he is only
partially so. The nineteenth century critical method was false, and is
already antiquated....