Luke is one of the most important figures in the early church whose own voice is almost entirely hidden. Paul calls him "the beloved physician" (Colossians 4:14), a "fellow laborer" (Philemon 24), and at the end, when everyone else had abandoned Paul, "Only Luke is with me" (2 Timothy 4:11). He was a Gentile — Paul explicitly distinguishes him from those "of the circumcision" (Colossians 4:11) — making him the only known non-Jewish author of a New Testament book. Luke joined Paul on the second missionary journey at Troas (notice the sudden shift to "we" in Acts 16:10) and traveled with him through Macedonia, to Jerusalem, and eventually to Rome. His two volumes are a historian's masterpiece. He opens his Gospel with a formal Greek prologue: "Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us... it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed" (Luke 1:1-4). Luke the physician notices bodies: he records more healings than any other Gospel, uses medical terminology precisely, and gives the longest attention to Jesus' compassion for the sick, the poor, women, and outsiders. His Gospel begins with priestly incense at the temple and ends with disciples worshiping in that same temple; Acts continues the story from Jerusalem to Rome. Between them, Luke wrote nearly a quarter of the New Testament. His total silence about himself — never named in his own writings — is one of the most beautiful examples of servant scholarship in the church. The doctor gave his life to carefully documenting the Great Physician.