Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Luke 1:2

καθὼς παρέδοσαν ἡμῖν. i.e. ‘of the things believed among us, as the original eye-witnesses delivered them to us.’ There is no necessity to render καθώς ‘even as.’ The even was introduced by Tyndale. By the word ἡμῖν St Luke ingenuously classes himself with the secondary witnesses, not with the immediate disciples. The English version is here ambiguous; and the way in which it is often read shews how completely it is misunderstood. It does not mean ‘that the writers of unaccredited narratives delivered them to St Luke and others who were eye-witnesses,’ &c.,—but that ‘since many undertook to rearrange the facts, which have been delivered (1 Corinthians 11:23; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 2 Thessalonians 2:15) as a sacred treasure or tradition (1 Timothy 6:20; 2 Timothy 1:14) to us Christians by those who became eye-witnesses’ (which St Luke does not claim to be) ‘and ministers of the word, I too determined,’ &c. The words imply that the attempted Gospels to which St Luke alludes were secondhand—that they were rearrangements of a tradition received from apostles and original disciples. Clearly therefore there can be no allusion to the Gospel of St Matthew, who wrote his own narrative and would have had no need to use one which had been ‘delivered’ and ‘handed down’ to him.

αὐτόπται καὶ ὑπηρέται. Those who delivered authoritatively to the Church the facts of the Saviour’s life had ‘personal knowledge and practical experience,’ which these narrators had not. (See Acts 1:21-22.) Of the Evangelists, only St Matthew and St John were eyewitnesses from the first; but St Mark may have been a partial witness and minister. Whether the form in which the Gospel had thus been originally ‘delivered’ was oral or written St Luke does not tell us. Ὑπηρέται originally meant ‘rowers,’—“remiges in navi sc. Ecclesiâ.” Valcken.

τοῦ λόγου. Of the doctrine, i.e. of the Gospel. Acts 6:4; Colossians 1:23.

2. That to any one who believes in God there can therefore be no stumblingblock in the Angelic appearances and other marvellous incidents. They are thrown into the shade by the awfulness of the central fact that “The WORD became Flesh.”

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Luke 1:2

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