Gentile authors of the New Testament

If we were to accept the traditional authorship of every book that is now included in the Bible, then the answer to this question would be Luke, the man traditionally said to have been the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. In actuality, however, it is likely that an extremely large portion of the books included in the New Testament were, in fact, written by Gentiles.​First of all, although it is almost certain that the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts was a Gentile, that author—whoever he was—was probably not Luke, the travelling companion of the apostle Paul. Like all the canonical gospels, the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts were, in fact, originally completely anonymous. The earliest sources to mention these works refer to them as anonymous works. It was only in the late second century AD—long after they were originally written—that these works finally became attributed to Luke, the travelling companion of Paul.​We know that the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts were written by the same person because they are addressed to the same person (someone named “Theophilos”), they are written in the same style, the Book of Acts picks up immediately where the Gospel of Luke leaves off, and the author of the Book of Acts refers to the Gospel of Luke in the introduction as his own previous work.​The Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts are both written in a very literary, almost classical style of Greek compared to the other gospels. They also overtly imitate the style of the Athenian historian Thoukydides (lived c. 460 – c.  400 BC). This seems to strongly indicate that the author of these works was a well-educated individual who was a native speaker of Greek and who was familiar with the works of classical Greek historians, or at least Thoukydides.The Book of Acts contains several passages that, at first glance, seem to vaguely suggest that the author was a travelling companion of the apostle Paul. These passages are extremely vague and there are certainly other ways to interpret them that do not require us to accept that the author was a travelling companion of Paul. In any case, though, the interpretation that the author was a travelling companion of Paul is the one that was popular among early Christians.Early Christians in the late second century AD assumed that the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts must have been a highly educated Gentile travelling companion of the apostle Paul. It so happens that a fairly obscure man named “Luke” is mentioned in several Pauline and Pseudo-Pauline Epistles as one of Paul’s travelling companions. Although none of the undisputedly authentic epistles describe Luke as a doctor or a Gentile, the Epistle to the Colossians, which is traditionally attributed to Paul (although it may or may not have actually been written by him), explicitly describes Luke as a physician in verse 4:14 and strongly implies that he was a Gentile. If Luke was a doctor, that would mean he would have been highly educated.​On account of these things, early Christians in the late second century AD jumped to the spurious conclusion that Luke must have been the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, even though there is no solid evidence for this. Thus, Luke’s name came to be attached to the gospel. In other words, no one actually knows who wrote the Gospel of Luke—or any of the canonical gospels for that matter.​It is highly probable that the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts was a Gentile, but we have no good reason to think that author was Luke. In any case, the Gentile author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts wouldn’t be the only Gentile author whose works have been included in the New Testament, since it is now widely thought by scholars that many of the books of the New Testament were probably, in fact, written by Gentiles. Here are a few authors of books in the New Testament that were almost certainly Gentiles:​the anonymous author of the Gospel of Johnthe unknown forger who wrote the Pastoral Epistles under Paul’s namethe unknown forger who wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians under Paul’s namethe unknown forger who wrote the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians under Paul’s namethe unknown forger who wrote the First Epistle of Peter under Peter’s namethe unknown forger who wrote the Second Epistle of Peter under Peter’s nameIf the Epistle to the Colossians is a forgery, then the forger who wrote it was probably also a Gentile. The anonymous author of the Gospel of Mark may or may not have been a Gentile. The authors of the Gospel of Matthew, the Book of Revelation, the Epistle of James, and the Epistle of Jude were most likely Jewish Christians.