Named twice, addressed the way Luke addresses Roman governors, and the reason a quarter of the New Testament exists at all.
Theophilus is the man Luke addresses at the start of his gospel and again at the start of Acts. Those two verses are the only times he appears in the Bible, and nothing else about him is recorded.
Most likely he was a real person of some rank who sponsored or received the work. Luke calls him most excellent, a formal address used elsewhere in Acts for Roman governors.
His name means lover of God, or loved by God, which has led some to read him as a symbol for any reader. That is a nice idea and we think it costs you something real. We will get to why.
“Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus.”
Luke 1:3“In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach.”
Acts 1:1The Greek kratistos. Luke uses it three more times in Acts, for the governors Felix and Festus. It is how you address a man with an official rank.
The title is gone in the second volume, just Theophilus. A small detail, and some read it as the warmth of a relationship that has developed.
Theos and philos. Lover of God, or friend of God. A genuine Greek name in use at the time, not an invented one.
Luke 1:4 says so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. He has heard it already. He wants to know it holds.
The strongest reading. Ancient books were dedicated to a sponsor who funded copying and circulation. The formal address fits, the two-volume dedication fits, and it explains why a name appears at all.
Also possible, and compatible with the first. Luke 1:4 has him already instructed, so he may be a new believer of rank wanting solid ground, or an official weighing the movement.
Devotionally attractive because the name means friend of God. But it asks a formal dedication with an honorific to be a literary device, which no ancient reader would have taken it as.
You will also see specific identifications proposed. A Roman official, a member of Herod's household, the high priest Theophilus son of Annas who served in the AD 30s. None of them has evidence behind it. They are guesses with names attached, and it is worth knowing that is all they are.
We do not know who he was. We do know Luke wrote two long books for him by name, which is itself a piece of information.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
The opening four verses of Luke are one long sentence, and it is the most formal Greek in the New Testament. That is deliberate. Luke is signalling the kind of book this is before he tells you anything about Jesus.
He acknowledges existing accounts rather than claiming to be first. That is a historian's move, not a visionary's.
He names his sources as a category. People who were there, and people who had been handing the material on.
He claims a method. Whether you accept the claim is a separate question, but the claim is being made openly and in public.
He states a purpose: arrangement, so that a person already taught can check what he was taught against something set out properly.
Nathan Steinmeyer, writing on Luke's genre for Biblical Archaeology Society, notes the pattern that runs through the whole work: “Luke appears to actively adhere to the standards of the genre” he is writing in. He knew what kind of book he was making.
The first is dissolving him. Turning Theophilus into a symbol for the reader preaches well and it quietly removes the most interesting thing about the prologue. Luke did not write a general meditation. He wrote a researched two-volume work for a named man who had heard the claims and wanted to know whether they stood up.
That matters because of what it says about the faith being described. It was the kind of thing a person could investigate. Luke does not tell Theophilus to stop asking. He hands him a document and effectively invites him to check.
There is a genre of apologetics that takes Luke's prologue and runs, producing confident counts of how many officials, cities and provinces he named without a single error, usually attributed to one archaeologist and repeated without checking. Some of Luke's details have been confirmed impressively. Others are genuinely disputed by careful scholars, including the census in chapter 2.
We would rather make the smaller claim that survives contact. Luke states his method in the open, names the kind of sources he used, writes in a recognised historical form, and addresses a man who could have gone and asked people. That is a real claim about the sort of book this is, and it does not need inflating to be worth something.
What does the title most excellent tell us about Theophilus?
The Greek kratistos appears three more times in Acts, addressed to the governors Felix and Festus. It is a formal address for a man of standing, which is hard to square with a purely symbolic reading.
Here is the part that stays with you once the identification question is closed and left unanswered.
Two of the longest books in the New Testament exist because one man wanted to be sure. Luke did not write for a crowd, a movement or posterity. He wrote for Theophilus, by name, so that he would know the certainty of what he had been taught. Roughly a quarter of the New Testament is the answer to one person's honest question.
Which says something about how questions are treated here. Theophilus was not told that asking showed weak faith. He was handed research.
And the thing we are left with is his mail. Every copy of Luke and Acts in existence is a copy of a letter written to somebody we cannot identify, who wanted the same thing most people want when they start reading: to find out whether it is true.
For related ground, see who Luke was, the book of Acts, when Acts was written, the authors of the Bible and how the Bible was put together.
Named twice, addressed like an official, almost certainly a real patron, and the reason two of the longest books in the New Testament were written at all.
That is exactly what Luke was written for and it is a good place to be standing. Send us your question and somebody at Sound of Heaven will get back to you. You do not have to be a member.
Theophilus is the man Luke addresses at the start of his gospel and again at the start of Acts, and those two verses are the only places he appears in Scripture. Nothing else about him is recorded. The most likely reading is that he was a real person of some rank who sponsored or received the work, since Luke calls him most excellent, an address used elsewhere in Acts for Roman governors.
The Greek is kratistos, and Luke uses it three more times in Acts, addressed to the governors Felix and Festus. It is a formal address for a man holding official standing. Notably the title disappears in Acts, where Luke simply writes Theophilus, which some readers take as a sign of a relationship that had warmed between the two volumes.
Almost certainly real. His name means lover of God, which has led some to read him as a stand-in for any reader, and that is devotionally attractive. But it asks a formal dedication with an honorific to function as a literary device, which no ancient reader would have taken it as. Books in that world were dedicated to sponsors who funded copying and circulation, and the two-volume dedication fits that convention exactly.
No. Proposals include a Roman official, a member of Herod's household, and the high priest Theophilus son of Annas who served in the AD 30s. None of them has evidence behind it. They are guesses with names attached, and it is worth knowing that is all they are.
Luke 1:4 gives the reason: so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. Theophilus has already heard the material and wants to know whether it holds. Luke opens by acknowledging other accounts, naming eyewitnesses and servants of the word as his sources, claiming to have carefully investigated, and promising an orderly account. He is telling you what kind of book this is before he says anything about Jesus.