6. It was written in Greek. It is uncertain in what year of Luke’s age. It contains a history of twenty-eight years, from the outgoing of the seventeenth year of Tiberius, unto the fourth of Nero.
The book was undoubtedly written in the Greek tongue, in which it is found at this day. Which the Greek name of Theophilus, to whom it was written, argues. But, in what year of his age Luke wrote is uncertain. But the history itself is of as many years as the book’s chapters, twenty-eight, in such a way that it extends from the ascension of Christ, which happened in the thirty-fourth year of His nativity, unto the sixtieth year after the birth of Christ. Which we thus briefly demonstrate. That Christ suffered in the eighteenth year of Tiberius,[1] in the third year of the one hundred and second Olympiad, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome, and others have asserted, followed also by Baronius, and by Lightfoot among our men. Nevertheless, Petavius, in his de Doctrina Temporum, book XII, section 19, demonstrated that it is to be referred to the outgoing seventeenth year of Tiberius. Now, Tiberius reigned twenty-three years, and so six years after the ascension of Christ: Caligula reigned four: Claudius fourteen. In the second year of Nero, Paul is sent bound to Rome by Festus, and there he stays διετίαν ὅλην, two whole years, Acts 28:30 (in which the history of Acts ends). Therefore, from the six years of Tiberius, the four of Caligula, the fourteen of Claudius, and the four of Nero, a sum of twenty-eight years is clearly composed.
[1] Tiberius reigned from 14 to 37 AD.