18th October: Feast Day of St Luke the Evangelist

Today is the feast Day of St Luke the Evangelist. Here are 10 things you may not know about him.

1. Saint Luke is probably best known for writing the third (and longest) of the New Testament gospels. Scholars sometimes group Luke with Matthew and Mark as they tell about the same events and use similar language, and call them the Synoptic Gospels.
2. He wrote a sequel. The book of Acts, the fifth book of the New Testament, which relates the history of the early church, was also written by him.
3. Luke was a doctor who lived in the city of Antioch in Ancient Syria. Scholars are divided about whether he was a Jew or a Gentile.
4. Unlike Matthew, Mark and John, Luke was never a disciple of Jesus Himself. He was in fact a disciple of Saint Paul, and doesn't claim in his gospel to have witnessed any of it first hand - but in Acts, he often uses the word "we" when describing events, suggesting that he was actually present at that time.
5. Luke is viewed as a first class historian by many, because his descriptions of places are accurate and use of his official titles is correct. Sir William Ramsay wrote that "Luke is a historian of the first rank," and Professor of Classics at Auckland University, E.M. Blaiklock, wrote "The Acts of the Apostles is not shoddy product of pious imagining, but a trustworthy record." Others, however, the atheists, presumably, question whether someone who wrote about supernatural events could be deemed reliable.
6. Traditionally, Luke is also said to have been a painter, and that he was the first painter of icons, particularly of the Virgin Mary and child.
7. His symbol is a bull or an ox, often with wings.
8. Luke is the patron saint of artists, physicians, surgeons, students and butchers.
9. He died unmarried at the age of 84.
10. The relics of St. Luke can be found in the following places: his body is in the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua; his head in the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, and one of his ribs is at his tomb in Thebes.