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World English Bible: Luke

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This is the opening of the Gospel of Luke (chapters 1–2), a first-century narrative gospel from the Christian New Testament tradition. The text presents the birth narratives of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth, tracing events from the angel Gabriel's announcements to the elderly priest Zacharias and the young virgin Mary, through the births of both children and their early temple presentations. A distinctive feature of Luke's account is its detailed attention to the role of women — Elizabeth and Mary are foregrounded as prophetic voices, and Mary's song (the Magnificat) frames the coming of Jesus in terms of social reversal: the humble exalted, the powerful cast down, the hungry fed and the rich sent away empty. Luke explicitly frames his work as an ordered, historically grounded account addressed to "most excellent Theophilus," positioning it as reliable testimony drawn from eyewitnesses rather than pure theological proclamation. The text would reward reading by anyone interested in early Christian literature, the Jewish prophetic tradition it draws on, or the theological portrait of Jesus as simultaneously a fulfillment of Israelite covenant history and a figure of universal significance ("a light to the nations").

World English Bible: Luke

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