Just basically that background, I kind of brought up a few other things that we'll deal with in more detail as we go through, but we're going to look today at the audience, the audience turn in your Bible to Luke chapter one. Luke chapter one. And. We'll just read the first. Four verses here. All right. For as much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us even as they delivered them on to us which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word of of the word. Verse three it seemed good to me also having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first to write unto thee in order most excellent theophilus that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed all right turn over to acts chapter one right quickly. Acts chapter number one. The lesson today, if you're taking notes, you could you can maybe title it Most Excellent Theophilus. So. Look at. The first verse, Acts chapter one, verse one. Acts one one, we're just going to read the first verse, the former treatise. Have I made... what's the former treatise? The book of Luke, yes. The former treatise, have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach. And then he goes on to talk about... The rest, yeah. So Theophilus, who is Theophilus? We're going to look at what we can on the subject and go from there. All right, so we talked about Luke, the beloved physician, now most excellent Theophilus. I'm gonna read here the introduction points about this that I put together. I've got roughly a page in, well, two pages on this. and we've got some theories and such. So, Theophilus, to whom both the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles are addressed, is a somewhat elusive or enigmatic figure. In other words, there's actually not a ton about him that you can find. But his name means lover of God or friend of God, in Greek, which has led various interpretations about his identity. Below, we're going to discuss drawing biblical and extra-biblical considerations, because when you're looking at a person, sometimes you can find them in history. So, as we already read in Luke chapter 1 and verse number 3, he is referred to, and in Acts chapter 1 and verse number 1. He is mentioned explicitly in the prologues of both of these books, Luke and Acts. Some key observations that you might consider is that he is given a title, it seems, as most excellent. Most excellent. And no, Luke was not from the 80s with an old movie. Yeah, there you go. So I didn't want to exactly go there. But anyhow, I know some of you are going to be thinking as I said that. But this suggests the office may have been a person of high social standing. Possibly a Roman official. This title is also used for Roman governors like Felix and Festus. Let's look at those examples real quick here. Turn over to Acts 23. Acts 23. I'm turning like one page at a time. Here we go. Verse number 26. It says, Claudius Lysias unto the most excellent governor, Felix, sendeth greeting. Then if you look down at chapter 24 and verse 3, It says we accept it always and in all places most noble Felix with all thankfulness. Now it doesn't say excellent there, but you find that this same person who was called excellent is also called noble. He was a noble Roman and then in Chapter 26. What's that? Yes. In chapter 26, the Bible says so. Okay. Well, it doesn't say he's Roman, but he's a governor and he is operating on behalf of Rome. So we would make the assumption that he was a Roman of noble position. I'm sorry. I know it's too young in the day for dad jokes, isn't it? You'll catch up. Alright, verse number 25 of chapter 26. It says, but he said, this is Paul speaking now, I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak forth the words of truth and soberness. So you have Felix and Festus both here referred to in terms of nobility, and this nobility has to do with their position with Rome. That's why it is assumed or theorized that Theophilus may have been a Roman official. Make sense? Another thing to observe is Luke's detailed and organized writing style indicates that Theophilus was likely educated and, well, literate, we would assume. Either that or he had someone that he could read to him, but it seems that Luke did not try to dumb down the language. for someone, for the reader to understand like more simply. If you consider the literary style, and I'm speaking kind of more from like a literature perspective, not necessarily like a preacher perspective, okay? Now understand, you guys know, I believe God wrote the Bible. I believe God wrote every word in the Bible, and he used human instruments to do so. but we cannot ignore that it is a literary work, right? And so there are aspects of it that are literary that we need to take literally. So when we consider, you know, Luke's writing versus Mark's writing, Mark is written more from the perspective of the. Servant right even portrays Jesus as a servant mostly Luke is written more for the perspective or for the perspective of the educated however. It's written to the educated. I'm getting into purpose again, but it's written to the educated and it emphasizes the importance of the poor and the ostracized, right? So we'll get into that as we go further in our study on the introduction. But we recognize that Theophilus must have been capable of understanding the historical and theological arguments presented in the Book of Acts and in the Gospel of Luke. Make sense? All right, I know it's early in the morning and we're using a lot, we're talking about things more from a higher educational level. And I know for me sometimes I have to get up very early in the morning so that I can have my mind in this mode to be able to talk about these things and kind of understand what I'm saying. All right, so number two, so that number one there was biblical references. Number two, possible identities of Theophilus. There's like four debated possible identities. So various theories have been proposed regarding Theophilus' identity. The first one here, letter A, is a real historical figure. That's the primary thought. Many scholars, people who have studied the Bible and studied history, believe that Theophilus was a real individual, possibly a wealthy patron or official who sponsored Luke's writing. Some even go as far as to say that he was some sort of benefactor for Luke and Paul. And so Luke is giving him a written declaration of what Jesus has done and what Jesus was doing through Paul as part of a somewhat of like what we would consider like a prayer letter kind of thing. And so some would theorize that Theophilus might have been a benefactor, a financial benefactor of the ministry. In the Greco-Roman world, authors often dedicated their works to patrons who provided financial and or social support. So that would be the first theory. Now I would I would probably lean more toward that, that theory. I've got a little book that a friend of mine wrote for a Sunday school series on the Book of Acts, and he deals with this concept as well, and he talks about Theophilus and stuff, and I actually talked to him about this last month. And he said, yeah, I know in my book, he and his book, he spent a lot of time focusing on that theory alone and did not offer the other options and, you know, or the other thoughts or theories or whatever. And he said that if he had it to do over again, he would probably mention these things. And I had already had this kind of in rough format. So I said, well, that's a good, good point. The second theory here, or letter B, is a symbolic or generic name. Some suggest that Theophilus is not a specific individual, but a symbolic name representing all believers or lovers of God. This interpretation would potentially align with some of the themes in the Gospel of Luke, but it lacks direct contextual support. So obviously he seems to talk at the very beginning to Theophilus as though it's an individual person, so it doesn't seem to fit. But there are people who would say, well, you know, Theophilus is kind of a generic name. It could mean any lover of God. I get it. We could apply it that way, like it's written to us, because in a sense, some aspect of it is, but it's not directly, but in an indirect sense, it could be. I wouldn't really side with that theory, but bring it up so that you see what people say about it. What were you going to say, brother? Love or a friend of God, yeah. Now, Theopolis would be city of God. It's Theophilus. The phi instead of the pi makes it lover or friend of God as opposed to city of God. It could be, It also capitalizes the name, to make it a proper noun. Yep. It's also, if you have a King James Bible, which we all do, it is also specified with the pronoun the. Is that pronoun? Like you? No. What part of speech is you? I, you, So it doesn't say ye, it doesn't say you, it says thee. In verse number three where it says, you know, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first to right unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus. So I mean, again, these are theories. We can't nail down who Theophilus was because there's no historical account of a Theophilus. But we also can't absolutely say that it's not a person just because we don't have a historical account of him. We have other people mentioned in the Bible that are like that, that we have a name. We don't have any record. Yes, sir. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, happens a lot. It happens a lot. There's a lot of stuff that's written, like Philemon, the whole book, the whole letter to Philemon. Where else is Philemon mentioned? Onesimus is mentioned in various places throughout the, you know, not a lot of places, but more often than Philemon is the subject of the letter. But Philemon has a rich scriptural like. A rich scriptural and spiritual application. But it's a. primarily social cultural economic message with spiritual overtones. I would say in terms of its written like content. It's he's writing to the author of the office. He's writing to Philemon about this situation with Onesimus who was Philemon servant. He ran away Illegally he ran away then he got saved Philemon got saved and he is and now Paul is sending Onesimus back to Philemon to say look, you know, he's coming back forgive him and and then there's spiritual applications that are added and put into place there, but And even the very statement that Paul said, you know, if he owes you anything, put it on my account, which is a Christ like thing. And so there's all these different applications, even songs written on that subject. But again, Philemon, who's he? You know, maybe we can find some historic data on him. But I don't think that just because we can't find out who Theophilus is, it doesn't mean that he's not a person, not an individual. Then again, we can't prove it, but we also can't prove it either direction. So, yes, sir. Oftentimes, benefactors were behind the scenes. Yeah. Yeah, so if you if you just look at the very end of the letter or the the gospel it says in verse 51 it came to pass while he blessed them he was parted from them and carried up into heaven and they worshipped him and returned to jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple praising and blessing god amen there's like no Like now you take this and do it's just the historical content in that sense. So there's not like an application at the end. There's not even like a closing just amen. And then in the book of Acts, you have at the very end. You know, verse 30, Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house and received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus with all confidence, no man forbidding him. Not even an amen at the end of that one. That's that now there is a when we go through the book of Acts eventually there is like a There there's a kind of a meaning behind it, you know, we don't know at the end of the book of Acts as as reader that without looking at history we don't know whether you know they all lived happily ever after or what happened with Paul now looking at history we know that after this period of time Paul is released then he ends up doing other ministry he gets up getting arrested again and taken back to Rome and he's beheaded we know from history that that's what happens now The letter to Theophilus may have just ended. He may have just been writing it at that time. It may have just ended there and he, you know, finished it out and just sent it to him as opposed to going on to finish out Paul's story. He just stopped it there because the story wasn't over. It was just written at that time. or if it was written after Paul was gone, then it would be maybe just a kind way to not go into all the details of the rest, you know. So we don't really know exactly, but when we get into that, we'll dig a little deeper on it to see if we can find out some things on history and how it fits together. Yeah. Declarations. Yep. And that's why I would side more with the guys of real person because it's not necessarily, it's not to say that it's not open for other people. Just like Romans, Paul specifically says he's writing to the Romans. to the Corinthians, he specifically says he's writing to the Corinthians, the Galatians, to those in Galatia, the Ephesians, those in Ephesus, Philippians, those at Philippi, Colossians, those in Colossae. I mean, he specifically addresses the letter to whom it goes. But then he also says for the Colossians, he says, make sure your letter gets read in Laodicea and make sure that their letter gets read in your church. So there is a letter to the Laodiceans from Paul. It wasn't scripture, but it, according to Paul, it was going to be helpful to the Colossians for them to read it. Right. And then for the Thessalonians, he wrote to those at Thessalonica all through, you know, Timothy, he wrote to Timothy, but we apply that to every preacher. and every Christian. But just the same, just because there's an audience, a direct audience, does not mean that we are just like eavesdropping. It's for us as well, because it's the Word of God. But from that perspective, now there's two other theories. And by the way, of these theories, these other theories do not necessarily exclude the first two. They would be added to the first two, if that makes sense. So these two other things about him, about his identity, letter C would be a Roman official, given the use of most excellent Theophilus might have been a Roman official, possibly a convert or someone interested in Christianity. Luke's emphasis on legal and political themes, including the trials and such of Paul in the book of Acts, Legitimacy could also have been. Without asking if he had some sort of legal like maybe a lawyer or something like that without asking he could have just been giving the legal facts. To later receive a response from Theophilus potentially. But not that he was looking for advice it just he dealt with those legal details including the trial of Jesus and all of those things you say. Yeah. Well, the fourth theory is that he was a high priest. And I'll go into detail. No, Theophilus. And I'll go into detail on that as well. But what were you gonna say? Only Luke, Luke was the first one. First one written. So it's not like Luke's like piggybacking on anybody else. He references that others have, have, have, set forth a declaration like he has but are like he is seeking to do. But as far as I understand his is the first written that's that's in the Bible. So. And what's interesting, so you have Luke writing who wasn't actually there. He wasn't physically there for the things that he details in the Gospel of Luke. John Mark, or Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark, wasn't he was a young young fella during the time that the events took place and so it is it is. said that Peter strongly influenced John Mark when in making sure that the details were available there for the writing that Mark made. Of course obviously we all know the disclaimer God wrote it all. We're just looking at like the human aspect of it. So and then John obviously was there also wrote the gospel John is like Way later, way later, like it's like in the 90s, like 60 years after it all took place. It is scripture, though, so we we don't think that there's any inaccuracy, you know, but John more details some of the the. the miracles and things and deals with Jesus as God. And some of that has to do with who his audience was going to be during that time. And so by the, you know, 90s. And so, Matthew, I can't remember. Can't remember when that's. Yes, sir. I still have a whole page, too, so. Theophilus. Yeah. That is one theory. That was part of the theory of like he could have been like a financial benefactor. So, you know, helping to provide the information. Now, he wasn't helping to actually write it. He was receiving it. So, if he was an actual direct person. Sir? Yeah, yeah, Matthew's focus is Jews. I just I couldn't remember when it was written in terms of the timeline. What's that? 50 to 70, OK. OK, so yeah, if it was 50 to 70, it would have been around the time of the Gospel of Luke. So. Anyhow, so let's go on here. So some theorize that it was a high priest. They suggest that Theophilus was a Jewish high priest. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, a high priest named Theophilus served from 37 to 41 A.D. This identification, though, is speculative and it's not widely accepted. But that being said, Theophilus was a name that was used at that time. So an actual proper name. So there was an actual person named Theophilus who was an actual who was historically documented to be a high priest during that time. But it is commonly rejected that he was the subject of the, or that he was the audience of the book. Now, we could argue why, why would people reject that idea? I don't know. because the title seems to be more in line with Roman as opposed to Jewish titles in terms of most excellent. It seems to be more of a political as opposed to a religious title, right? Somebody have their hand up back here. Okay. So number three here, some extra biblical references. So while there are no direct extra biblical references that conclusively identify Luke's Theophilus, some sources and interpretations could give some context. So, of course, we talked about Josephus and his mention of Theophilus in his Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 5. Josephus refers to a high priest named Theophilus, son of Annas. This Theophilus served during the reign of Caligula from 37 to 41 AD. The book was Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus. It was Book 18, Chapter 5. He had a bunch of books that went into that series called the Antiquities of the Jews. While intriguing, there's no evidence linking this Theophilus to the recipient of Luke's writings. So letter B here early Christian writings. No early Christian writers explicitly and by the way no early Christian writers do we like necessarily endorse. OK. So some people call them the quote unquote church fathers. I don't I mean they're they're they're writers they're they're people who believed in Christ. Some of them they had Decent doctrine at some places and some of them strayed and so I haven't done a deep deep study on these writers So please understand don't go like reading up on these writers with the assumption that they're all correct Okay But though they do not explicitly identify Theophilus, they often comment on Luke and Acts. For example, Irenaeus and Eusebius affirm Luke's authorship but do not elaborate on Theophilus' identity. Some early commentators like Origen viewed Theophilus symbolically as a representative of all believers, and that's where that concept came from. But Origen also was the origin of Hyper-Calvinism. That's where Calvin got it, was him. Of course, he didn't know him directly, but he was able to access his writings later. So Greco-Roman patronage practices. Theophilus's mention aligns with the practice of dedicating works to a patron. Again, as I mentioned before, Authors like Cicero and Pliny, the younger, often address their works to influential individuals, which supports the idea that Theophilus was a real wealthy or politically connected individual. So that's just kind of given that thought process here. Number four, the role of Theophilus in Luke and Acts. So his inclusion as the addressee serves several purposes. So the first purpose of including him as an addressee is authentication. authentication. So Luke's prologue in verses 1 through 4, as we already read, emphasizes careful investigation and orderly presentation addressing Theophilus underscores the historical credibility of the gospel and Acts. Does that make sense? Letter B. And by the way, this is important because though we can't prove it directly here, there are lots of what would be called the Gnostic Gospels. Anybody ever heard of those? Right. These are written by Gnostics like two, three, four hundred years after Christ. But they're addressed as though some of them are addressed as though they were written by the disciples of Jesus, like the Gospel of Thomas. And the Gospel of Barnabas. These were both written. Way long after both of those men died. And without reference, direct reference to. You know. Someone around there's there there's. There are a lot of people who erroneously believe that. Those are valid. Missing books of the Bible, they're not. What's that? Yeah. That's a whole other well. That's another discussion. it's it's in a different class it's it's not scripture but it but there there there is a historical book that's a valid book but it's not scripture just like the the letters the the the maccabean books you know those are they're valid books they're just not scripture never have never have been yeah they never have been recognized as scripture so So then encouragement if the office was a recent convent convert rather or someone seeking the gospel or understanding Luke's writings would provide assurance about the truth of Christianity and its fulfillment of God's promises right of the prophecies and such. and then let her see a broader audience. While addressed to Theophilus, Luke and Acts was likely intended for a broader audience, including Gentiles. Theophilus again may have been a representative figure of this group, so. So. The four. Identifier theories that I gave there are for theories on identification that I gave They don't all have to be mutually exclusive could very well be that Theophilus was an actual person that Luke was writing to but that Theophilus Also was a representative of the Gentiles and in the sense that it has a broader application to the Gentiles. So it could be both in that sense. It could also, and then it could also be, well, I think there would be one excluding factor, and that would be that it's not likely that he would be a high priest and then also some sort of political figure of Rome. It's possible, but not likely, right? Like there were a lot of strange. There were a lot of strange political things going on during that time, and so it would not be. Way out of the realm of possibility, but it would not be a huge likelihood that that he would be a high priest and then later a Roman official or a Roman official and then later a high priest. It's. Not likely, it's not likely that that either way would happen, but I suppose that it could be possible. They would have what? Yes. And there is documentation that a man named Theophilus was a high priest. But it is commonly rejected that he is this Theophilus. But we mention it. Yes, yes. And he was the son of Annas, which was one of the high priests mentioned in the Bible. So, yes, sir. What's that? Canada, is that what you said? Where was he from? It does not suggest where he would have been from. Antioch? Antiochan? So what I studied said that Luke was most likely Antiochan or from Antioch. But it doesn't say anything about where Theophilus might have been from. Could be, but Luke traveled with Paul to a lot of places. So it could have come across a Theophilus. Well, or two or five or seventeen, you know, I mean, they reused a lot of names. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, I mean, oh man, yeah. Yeah. Would be very difficult. So I want to man we're over time. I want to cover really quickly and we'll deal maybe a little more detail later on this but from the literary background perspective because I want to finish the literary background and start talking about historical context next week. So the purpose from kind of like a literary perspective so Paul or Paul Luke explicitly states his intention. And I don't have a separate set of notes for this. It's just right here in the main. Luke explicitly states his intention in the prologue, as we read at the beginning today, from verses 1-4, to provide an orderly and accurate account of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. ensuring his readers have certainty about the gospel message. This is the purpose, just the general purpose of the book of Luke. Now, are there themes that maybe go into like a sub-theme or sub-purpose? Yes, lots of them, and we'll maybe cover some of that as we go. But I wanted to make sure that everybody kind of just had from kind of like a literary perspective direct from the text like that Purpose that makes sense. So we looked at the author. We looked at the audience. We looked at the purpose And that's all under the literary background of the book I have I seven points on this introduction. We covered the first one over the last two weeks. I don't know if it's going to take six more weeks to go through the introduction or if it's going to take nine more weeks. We will see because I do have some some other things, but. For for you all. How do you? How do you like the? the depth of introduction here. Is it, is it helpful? Okay. So we have historical context next week and that I don't have extra. I just have basically the date, the setting, or rather the, the source, the, or rather, yeah, date and setting, basically, we just, the date and setting, and then, And then we'll probably get into social and economic environment after that. During next week's lesson, if we can get into that, because the date and setting, I just it's real simple. Info, but then the the social and economic environment, that's kind of where we get into like class divisions and the economy and all of that, I have a whole separate like four page. Yeah, or 3.75 page supplement to that. So that one might be two weeks long. We'll see. But we'll get introduced to it next week. Make sense? Any quick, quick questions? We're over on time. So needs to be directly related. I know we did a lot of discussion today. So hope that our recording picked up some of it or maybe I repeated some of some of the stuff enough to where people can gather the context. Yes, sir. Yeah. Yep, that's why we're doing it. That's why we're doing it. I really was tempted to do the same thing with the Book of Romans, but I didn't want to do that on a Sunday morning, like, you know, the main service on Sunday mornings. So, maybe some other time we'll go through the Book of Romans like that. What's that? Yeah, we got to be easy with those folks. Some of them are watching right now, like, would he shut up so we can come in? All right. Amen. All right. Well, let's pray and we'll jump into the rest of it next week. Lord, we thank you so much for your goodness. We thank you, Lord, for your your grace and your mercy and and Lord, we thank you for salvation. Lord, we thank you for the privilege of being able to serve you after we're saved and to be here among your saints and to learn together and discuss these things. We pray father that you'd meet with us receive our worship in the morning service and speak to our hearts Lord We just pray father that you'd be glorified and all that we do help us to apply what we learn in Jesus name. Amen All right, you're dismissed for a few minutes here