GOD'S GENTILE. Pts. 1-2

I recently paraphrased (drum roll) the entire New Testament.

All told, it was a six week day and night endeavor to complete the paraphrase; including two complete edits of the manuscript.

I can tell you that things fell together quite well, and I finished the Gospel of Matthew, and the Gospel of Mark in fairly short order. However, the longer I spent paraphrasing the Gospel of Luke,… the longer I spent paraphrasing the Gospel of Luke. The completion of the third book of the New Testament seemed to be interminable.

Having finally concluded transcribing the Gospel of Luke, I knocked out the Gospel of John, and began the fifth book of the New Testament; The Book of Acts. Did I mention one and the same man named Luke also wrote Acts? (Well, he did). And not unlike the first of Luke’s books, the consummation of his second book proved to be a protracted undertaking.

According to Eusebius, St. Luke was a native of Antioch. This is ‘seconded’ by the special care Luke appears to afford the Church in Antioch, as revealed by the Acts of the Apostles.

We know that St. Luke was not a Jew, and that he was the only Gentile who contributed his words to the New Testament. He was a physician, and an extraordinary communicator. We know that he never met Jesus in the flesh, but was, apparently, led to a saving knowledge of the Lord by the Apostle Paul.

It seems likely that Luke studied at the renown medical school in Tarsus, and that he met St. Paul in this city.

Pt. 2

We know that Luke possessed a profound knowledge of the Old Testament. It is obvious that he knew, not only Paul, but many of the other Apostles. He testified that he had spoken with numerous eyewitnesses who accompanied Jesus, and witnessed His miracles.

Did I mention that I got a “bit bogged down” in my paraphrase of the third and fifth books of the New Testament? (Yeah, I thought I did). It is all too obvious to me, now, why my paraphrase of these two volumes seemed, at the time, so interminable.

For you see, the research I devoted to the writing of this particular blog proved what I had previously discovered the hard way.

The Gospel of Luke is significantly longer than the other Gospels. Though Matthew’s Gospel contains more chapters, Luke’s contains many more verses and words. The third Gospel is the longest book in the New Testament, with 19,482 words, and the Book of Acts is the second longest, with 18,451 words.

Together, the books of Luke and Acts exceed the length of the thirteen books which bear the name of St. Paul. In fact, Luke’s two books contain about 5,000 more words.

As a result, St. Luke is responsible for about a third of the New Testament, whereas, Paul comes in second with an impressive thirty percent of the total. Two men, two compatriots, account for a whooping two thirds of the scripture passages among the twenty-seven books of the New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As a Gentile believer, I have always taken Paul’s authorship of half of the books of the New Testament for granted. It simply went without saying that this former Pharisee, and persecutor of the Church was responsible for a greater percentage of the Gospel message than any other man born of woman.

Afterward

I think God must have a sense of humor.

For even now, if you were to ask a random layman or pastor, he or she would, no doubt, assure you that the Apostle Paul wrote more of the New Testament than any other individual. But, they would simply be wrong.

It occurs to me that among the peoples of the earth, the Jewish race, whom God chose to reveal His authority and glory in the Old Testament, is almost infinitesimal in numbers when compared to the overwhelming population of non-Jewish Caucasians, peoples of color, and Orientals; all of which are referred to as, Gentiles.

As a result, it seems fitting that God chose an humble, non-descript, unassuming compatriot of the Apostle Paul, a Gentile, to pen the largest body of work among the compilation of sacred volumes we refer to as the New Testament; in which, the God of the ages enlarged His boundaries, and made Himself known to those whom He chose to graft into His Church, and whom He foreknew before the worlds were breathed into place, and cast into space.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

By William McDonald, PhD. From (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 80. Copyright pending


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