"Only Luke is with me." So wrote Paul late in life from a Roman prison, just one evidence of their close relationship.

Early tradition suggests that Luke was born a Greek in Antioch and became a physician before being converted and joining Paul, Silas, and Timothy in Troas on Paul's second missionary journey (early 50s). Luke was later shipwrecked with Paul on Malta and jailed with Paul in Rome.

He went to Greece around the time of Paul's death and from there wrote his two-volume history of Jesus and the early church. The second volume, The Acts of the Apostles, is mostly about Paul's missionary journeys, and in four passages, Luke includes himself in the story, using the pronoun "we" to narrate various events.

One second-century prologue to the Gospel of Luke claims:

"Having neither wife nor child, [Luke] served the Lord without distraction. He fell asleep in Boeotia, at the age of 84, full of the Holy Spirit."

Constantine the Great transported Luke's remains to Constantinople in 356, where they are said to be preserved in the Church of the Apostles.