ADDRESSEE(S)
ADDRESSEE(S)
As it stands, this gospel is addressed to "most excellent Theophilus” (1:3). The most natural way of understanding this is that Theophilus was a real person and that he was Luke’s patron, probably paying the costs of the publication of the book thus addressed to him. The adjective probably means that Theophilus was a person of rank. It is sometimes used as a courtesy title, but in the New Testament it is applied to two governors, Felix (Acts 24:3) and Festus (Acts 26:25). However, the name itself means "lover of God,” and some have thought that Luke is using it in a symbolic way, thereby addressing his book to godly people everywhere. This cannot be disproved, but it seems unlikely.
If we take Theophilus as a real person and the first recipient of the book, this does not mean that Luke meant it for his eyes only. The literary preface means that from the first the book was meant to be read, and presumably by a wide audience, not a small group of believers. 19 The care with which Luke has set out such a large amount of information seems to indicate that he had a wider public in view. His two volumes were written to
give valuable information to the Christian public (and any others who might be interested) about the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus and about the history of parts of the Christian church up until Paul’s imprisonment in Rome. He had in mind predominantly Gentile Christians, as we see from (1) the dedication to someone with a Greek name, (2) his clear showing of the relevance of salvation to people outside the commonwealth of Israel, and (3) the Greco-Roman style of his preface. He mostly avoids Aramaic words such as "Rabbi” (Mark 9:5) and "Abba” (Mark 14:36); 20 what he says is of interest to Jewish Christians but apparently was not intended for them in the first instance.