On the Invention of the Name Luke

As far as I can make out, no Gospel is attributed to anyone called Luke before Irenaeus. I take this to mean the name was first used as a heading to the present Gospel of Luke when the four were published or promulgated as a four-part single book. The next question is whether the name Theophilus was used before the name Luke, or whether the names Theophilus and Luke appeared at the same time. If they both appeared at once, they are the two parts of a literary device. If the name Theophilus appeared first, then the name Luke is a guess on the part of someone that had read Josephus. The name Theophilus could be made up as a conventional name for the reader, any reader.

The suggestion that the significance of the two names might have been a private understanding with the Emperor Commodus had been in the back of my mind. I asked myself why there is no tradition --- even if fictitious --- of the identification of Luke. The identification with someone connected with Paul is old, but it is only a guess and the earliest suggestions that this is the identification are never pronounced to be traditional. There is only a citing of tradition when the guess has been repeated for a few generations. This absence of a tradition --- even a fictitious tradition --- has always seemed inexplicable to me. If, however, the identification was done to keep the Emperor on side, then it would not necessarily have been publicised. Also, it would not have suited the Church to use it later on if it cast doubts on a point of doctrine. All this is only guessing at the moment, but I intend to look out for hints or reminiscences of it.