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Col_4:14. Luke the physician, the (by me) beloved, is the Evangelist—a point which, in presence of the tradition current from Iren. iii. 14. 1 onward, is as little to be doubted as that the Mark of Col_4:10 is the Evangelist. Luke was with Paul at Caesarea (Phm_1:24), and travelled with him to Rome (Act_27:1), accompanying him, however, not as physician (as if μου or ἡμῶν had been appended), but as an associate in teaching, as συνεργός , Phm_1:24. Hofmann calls this in question, in order to avoid the inference from Col_4:11, that Luke was a non-Israelite. The addition, moreover, of ὁ ἰατρός is simply to be explained after the analogy of all the previous salutations sent, by assuming that Paul has appended to each of the persons named a special characteristic description by way of recommendation.[177] The case of ΔΗΜᾶς is the only exception; on which account it is the more probable that the latter had even at this time (at the date of 2Ti_4:10 he has abandoned him) seemed to the apostle not quite surely entitled to a commendatory description, although he still, at Phm_1:24, adduces him among his συνεργοί , to whose number he still belonged. Hence the assumption of such a probability is not strange, but is to be preferred to the altogether precarious opinion of Hofmann, that Demas was the amanuensis of the letter, and had, with the permission of the apostle, inserted his name (comp. Bengel’s suggestion). Whence was the reader to know that? How very different is it at Rom_16:22! The name itself is not Hebrew (in opposition to Schoettgen), but Greek; see Boeckh, Corp. inscrip. 1085; Becker, Anecd. 714.
[177] In the case of Luke, the attachment of the honourable professional designation ὁ ἰατρός to the name suggested itself so naturally and spontaneously—considering the peculiarity of his professional position, to which there was probably nothing similar in the case of any other συνεργός —that there is no reason to assume any special purpose in the selection (Chrysostom, Erasmus, and many, suggest that the object was to distinguish Luke from others of the same name).