Some sentences are distorted and exaggerated.[1] Writing outside of Palestine, and certainly after the siege of Jerusalem,[2] the author indicates the places with less exactitude than the other two synoptics; he has an erroneous idea of the temple, which he represents as an oratory where people went to pay their devotions.[3] He subdues some details in order to make the different narratives agree;[4] he softens the passages which had become embarrassing on account of a more exalted idea of the divinity of Christ;[5] he exaggerates the marvellous;[6] commits errors in chronology;[7] omits Hebraistic comments;[8] quotes no word of Jesus in this language, and gives to all the localities their Greek names.

We feel we have to do with a compiler--with a man who has not himself seen the witnesses, but who labors at the texts and wrests their sense to make them agree.
Luke had probably under his eyes the biographical collection of Mark, and the _Logia_ of Matthew.

But he treats them with much freedom; sometimes he fuses two anecdotes or two parables in one;[9] sometimes he divides one in order to make two.[10] He interprets the documents according to his own idea; he has not the absolute impassibility of Matthew and Mark.

We might affirm certain things of his individual tastes and tendencies; he is a very exact devotee;[11] he insists that Jesus had performed all the Jewish rites,[12] he is a warm Ebionite and democrat, that is to say, much opposed to property, and persuaded that the triumph of the poor is approaching;[13] he likes especially all the anecdotes showing prominently the conversion of sinners--the exaltation of the humble;[14] he often modifies the ancient traditions in order to give them this meaning;[15] he admits into his first pages the legends about the infancy of Jesus, related with the long amplifications, the spiritual songs, and the conventional proceedings which form the essential features of the Apocryphal Gospels.

Finally, he has in the narrative of the last hours of Jesus some circumstances full of tender feeling, and certain words of Jesus of delightful beauty,[16] which are not found in more authentic accounts, and in which we detect the presence of legend.