Very little is known about Luke, the writer of the Bible.
- He wrote The Gospel According to Luke and The Acts of the Apostles in the form of letters.
- He was a physician. Paul calls him “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14).
- He joined Paul on his second missionary journey at Troas in Asia Minor and stayed with him until Paul’s martyrdom (Acts 16:10).
Although it has not been proven, there is a view that Luke was not Jewish. This idea comes from Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, where Paul lists the names of those who were Jewish and says, “These are the men of the circumcision,” and then mentions Luke separately.
Now, this is where my imagination begins to run free. What if Luke, like Timothy, had a Greek father and a Jewish mother? Perhaps he looked Greek, and although he had been circumcised, Paul unconsciously wrote about him in that way. If so, how did Luke—after receiving an education as a physician—come to be a Christian? When you read The Gospel According to Luke, you can tell that Luke knew Mary, the mother of Jesus, personally and listened carefully to her story. That must mean he visited the land of Israel at some point.
As these imaginings piled up, the story of “Luke’s Youth” gradually began to take shape.
In the famous port city of Troas, facing the Aegean Sea, a boy named Luke was born to a Greek father, Alex, and a Jewish mother, Dinah. The family had been physicians for generations. But when Luke was ten years old, Alex died of a widespread epidemic. Heartbroken, Dinah decided to return to Nazareth in Israel, where her parents lives, who had once disowned her,. After receiving forgiveness from their parents-in-law, she set out on the journey with Luke, under the promise that Luke would stay for only three years…
After traveling by ship and on foot, Luke finally arrives in the rural village of Nazareth. There, he is thrown into a world of nature and customs completely different from his hometown. It is in this place that Luke meets a boy about his own age named Jesus. Nicknamed “the Singer,” Jesus has a mysterious personality—sometimes suddenly stopping whatever he is doing to pray to God. Through his friendship with this unusual boy, Luke too begins to grow in faith and love for the God of Israel…
What was everyday life like in Israel around the first century? Imagination alone is not enough, so I began writing about “the world of children” while consulting various historical sources. In truth, I would love to visit the land of Israel and experience its atmosphere for myself, but that has not yet been possible. For now, I have finished writing roughly the first year of the story. It has already grown into a long work of about 250 manuscript pages. Of course, it is an amateur’s “story”—a world of self-satisfaction and play, just like this blog.
For the past two years or so, my pen has been at a standstill. I have wanted to start writing again, but these days I can barely manage to keep this blog updated. Then a clever idea came to me. Why not write the story little by little here on the blog, like a serialized newspaper novel? That would be killing two birds with one stone!
So from time to time, I would like to write stories under the title “First Luke.” Why that title? For example, in English, The First Epistle of Peter is often called First Peter. Luke wrote letters addressed to a man named Theophilus—these became The Gospel According to Luke and The Acts of the Apostles. If Luke had written something before those, then that would be his “first letter,” with the Gospel as the “second” and Acts as the “third.” That is my own convenient bit of reasoning behind the name.
If you have any thoughts, please leave a comment.
Thanks in advance—and here we go!
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