76 Right after Luke finished his gospel account. As mentioned above, Luke probably did a lot of the research for his gospel and the first twelve chapters of Acts during the two years Paul was in prison in Caesarea. However, there are a lot of stylistic considerations and historical allusions (in Acts especially) which clearly point to its being written for a Gentile audience in Nero’s court at Rome (in AD 61-62). Since the date and location of writing for both Luke and Acts directly relates to the identity of Theophilus, we need to take another look at that here. We had mentioned another theory on the identity of Theophilus above under the subheading: “Who Was Most Excellent Theophilus” at the dates AD 58-60. Below is the rest of the story about him. The Identity of Theophilus:
An obvious question arises as to what kind of government official would need, request, or expect a full briefing on all the “facts in consecutive order” regarding Christianity and Paul’s involvement with it. We suggested previously that this could have been the former High Priest Theophilus who might have used the unjust treatment of Apostle Paul by the rival High Priest Ananias as a means to get Ananias deposed. However, it seems unlikely that Paul or any of the apostles would get involved in party politics like that, especially to the point of writing two whole books for their use. If Theophilus was a former High Priest of the Ananus family, he would have already known most of the facts about the gospel and the history of the church in Jerusalem after Pentecost. He would not have needed these two books written for his instruction. Nor would these two books have been written with a clearly Gentile audience in mind. If they were written to a former Jewish High Priest, it would be written in a Jewish style. A Jewish High Priest would only have wanted material which clarified Paul’s relationship to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the facts about his unlawful arrest in the temple and his unlawful treatment in the trial before Ananias. Furthermore, Luke apparently wrote both books for a Gentile audience, not a Jewish one. It therefore seems unlikely that Theophilus was a Jewish ruler, and much more likely that he was a Roman court official or defense attorney for Paul. While at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting (Nov. 2012), I had the chance to talk to Dr. Dennis Swanson, one of the professors at The Master’s Seminary in the Los Angeles area. He has done quite a bit of study on the date of Luke and Acts. He is convinced that both Luke and Acts were written in Rome while Paul was awaiting his trial there (AD 61-62). He agrees with many conservative scholars that Theophilus was probably a Roman government official, acting on behalf of the Roman court, to discover whether there was any substantial case against Paul, and to inform Nero of the results of his investigation before the case went to trial. It is also possible that Theophilus was the defense attorney for Paul, even though Paul had always served as his own attorney up to this time. If Theophilus was a defense attorney in Rome, he would have needed all this information from Luke in order to adequately defend Paul in Rome, or to adequately inform the court about the facts in the case. However, such an appointment of a defense attorney could not have happened until after Paul reached Rome in AD 61. This means that the two-volume work of Luke could not have been written (or at least not finished or put in final form) until after Paul arrived in Rome. However, Luke could have done all his research for it while he was in Judea during those two years Paul was imprisoned in Caesarea (AD 58- 60). He would have had easy and abundant access to the other apostles in Jerusalem at that time, so his research for Luke-Acts was probably done then, even though the actual writing did not take place until they reached Rome. He could have made a lot of notes then, which he used later in the actual writing of the two books. As we noted earlier, there are some Synoptic Problem scholars who have suggested this very thing, that Luke may have been drawing from an earlier version (“proto-Luke”) of his notes and research materials to compose his two books. How those were preserved through the shipwreck, however, would need some explanation. Perhaps they were copied or left in Jerusalem to be sent by land courier later. Those notes would have been crucial for writing the gospel especially, as well as the first twelve
