by
Damien F. Mackey
Ananias and Luke share these commonalities: healing; holiness; disciple;
follower of the risen Jesus Christ; friend of Paul; (likely) from Syria.
Michael M. Canaris writes this of the poorly known “Ananias of Damascus, a saintly, unsung hero” (2019):
https://catholicstarherald.org/ananias-of-damascus-a-saintly-unsung-hero
.... On the day the church celebrates the Conversion of Saint Paul (Jan. 25) — this year the 60th anniversary of the calling of Vatican II — in contemplating the daily readings in such a way, it struck me for the first time that Ananias is at least as much a profile in courage in that narrative as is Saul, “who is also called Paul” (Acts 13:9).
But this latter poor servant of the church has received infinitely less praise than his more famous counterpart. Let’s begin with the narrative in Acts of the Apostles 9, where Saul is on his way to Damascus to continue wreaking havoc upon the Christian community he loathes, and is knocked to the ground by a blinding light (the biblical narrative doesn’t tell us whether he was on foot or on a horse, though we often see him flung from the latter in artworks, like those by Caravaggio and Veronese). Saul encounters Christ, is struck blind, and needs to be led to the city by hand. All this is quite familiar to the majority of us.
But most of us pay little attention to the parallel scene. Separately, Jesus also appears to Ananias in a vision. He is already in Damascus and already a “disciple.” The Lord calls him and he responds immediately, “Yes, Lord.” Jesus directs him to go to the Street called Straight (in Latin, the Via Recta), which still exists amidst the bombs raining down on modern-day Syria, and to restore sight to Saul.
Ananias’ response is understandably hesitant: “Lord, I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.” (“…um, of which I am one, Your Divine Majesty,” we could creatively add!). But Christ emphatically says “Go!” — making clear that it is through this unworthy instrument that he plans to offer the message of redemption to the nations outside of Israel.
And so Ananias confidently approaches his sworn enemy, to whom incredible power has been given to decimate those with whom he disagrees, and the first words out of his mouth are ones not too often repeated today in our discourse with those who hate or vilify us: “Brother Saul.” He goes on to say “the Lord — Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here — has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
It is he who likely baptizes the greatest missionary in the history of the church, and causes the scales to fall from his eyes. It’s not necessarily Paul’s faith, but Ananias’ that brings about the transformation.
And while Ananias is mostly lost to the sands of history after this encounter, his co-believers with all the litanies praising them and basilicas named for them initially do not help or welcome Paul, “for they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was really a disciple.” It’s only Ananias, and eventually Barnabas, who are moved with compassion at the Pharisaical former tentmaker, and offer an olive branch of trust, at great personal peril.
Beyond this snippet, we know very little about Ananias. His name, which was not a terribly uncommon one in the ancient world, literally means “Favored by God”. ….
[End of quotes]
Who was Ananias?
I would like to venture the suggestion here that Ananias of Damascus may be a potential candidate for the famous St. Luke himself.
If so, then Ananias will no longer have to suffer being, as in the words (above) of Michael Canaris, “lost to the sands of history”.
In various articles now I have attempted to fill out other New Testament [NT] characters using alter egos, in most cases allowing for a character to have two names - both a Hebrew and a Greek name - which, however, can also be a cause of duplication.
For instance:
• John the Baptist as Gamaliel’s Theudas:
Gamaliel's ‘Theudas’ as John the Baptist
https://www.academia.edu/36424851/Gamaliels_Theudas_as_John_the_Baptist
• Nathanael of Cana as Stephen Protomartyr:
St. Stephen a true Israelite
https://www.academia.edu/30843387/St_Stephen_a_true_Israelite
{Also Gamaliel, again, his “Judas the Galilean” as Judas Maccabeus - same name, “Judas”, in this case}
• And then there is the un-named:
Was Apostle Barnabas the Gospels’ “rich young man”?
https://www.academia.edu/36824565/Was_Apostle_Barnabas_the_Gospels_rich_young_man
Paul (Greco-Roman name) is otherwise called Saul (Hebrew name) in the Book of Acts (cf. 9:1 and 23:1).
Connecting Ananias and Luke
My main point of connection between Ananias and Luke would be the healing of Paul’s blindness, due to the intervention of Ananias, with the fact that the converted Paul will refer to his friend Luke as a “healer” (various “physician”).
Thus Colossians 4:14: “Luke the beloved physician greets you, as does Demas”.
The Greek word used here to describe Luke is ἰατρὸς, which can mean - apart from “physician” or “doctor” – “healer” (the sense in which I am taking it).
“[Greek] ἰατρός (iatros), [Latin] medicus: physician, healer, one who provides healing services; Mt.9:12, Mk.2:17, Mk.5:26, Lk.4:23, Lk.5:31, Lk.8:43, Col.4:14”:
https://resoundingthefaith.com/2018/04/%E2%80%8Egreek-%E1%BC%B0%CE%B1%CF%84%CF%81%CF%8C%CF%82-iatros-latin-medicus/
As Ananias (if that is who Luke was), the Evangelist was also a healer, thaumaturgist, even a mystic-visionary (cf. Acts 9:12).
Note, too, the close bond between Paul and Luke, as we would expect if Luke were Paul’s healer, Ananias.
Paul calls Luke “beloved”, ἀγαπητὸς.
In 2 Timothy 4:11, Luke is found to have remained steadfastly loyal to Paul (not always easy): “Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry”.
That closeness is reinforced in Philemon 1:24: “... Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers”.
I have previously quoted Fr. Jean Carmignac (who has persuasively argued for an early dating of the NT books), in my article:
Fr Jean Carmignac dates Gospels early
https://www.academia.edu/30807628/Fr_Jean_Carmignac_dates_Gospels_early
as stating that: “... It is sufficiently probable that our second Gospel [that is, Mark], was composed in a Semitic language by St. Peter the Apostle” (with Mark being his secretary perhaps).
And Fr. Carmignac has this to say about what he considers to be Paul’s praise of Luke (p. 52):
St. Paul speaks in [2 Corinthians] 8:18 of a person whom he describes thus: That brother whom all the Churches praise for his preaching of the gospel. …. If it is a question of the preaching of the Gospels, this would not be a distinctive designation, for it would apply to all the collaborators of St. Paul. In order that the Gospel be a motive for special recognition throughout all the Churches and characterize one brother from all the others, isn’t it because this brother, alone of all the others, is the author of a Gospel? Thus it would be a question of Luke, whose Gospel would then have been spread throughout all the Churches. Many commentators have understood this allusion of St. Paul, in this way, beginning with Origen (cited by Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, bk. 6, chap. 25, no. 6).
[End of quote]
Ananias is referred to as a “disciple” (Acts 9:10), a word that is frequently used by commentators to describe Luke as well.
Finally, Luke is considered likely to have been a native of Syrian Antioch - though that is not definite.
Ananias himself resided in Syrian Damascus.
Ananias and Luke share these commonalities: healing; holiness; disciple; follower of the risen Jesus Christ; friend of Paul; (likely) from Syria.
* * *
A reader, commenting on my recent article:
A more appropriate location for the Temple in Jerusalem
(5) A more appropriate location for the Temple in Jerusalem | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
has written:
Thank you, Mr. Mackey. I have long thought the traditional temple mount was the wrong location and was curious about the city of David's location. I look forward to reading your paper.
then adding to this:
I have a question about whether Luke, the writer of the Gospel is Lucius of Cyrene, and also whether Theophilus to whom he wrote was the same Theophilus that was High Priest? ….
While the reader may, perhaps, be right on both counts, I personally would favour Ananias, first, for Luke. {I have wondered might the historian, Nicolaus of Damascus, be a garbled version of Luke}
On Theophilus, my own preference would be for he as Luke’s disciple, Paul:
Luke’s Theophilos
(3) Luke's Theophilos | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Paul (Saul) may just possibly have been a descendant of King Saul, Israel’s first king:
history - Is there any evidence that Paul was a descendant of Jonathan? - Christianity Stack Exchange
Is there any evidence that Paul was a descendant of Jonathan?
….
Paul being a descendant of Jonathan would have some appeal from a devotional perspective since Jesus' more direct saving of Paul could be viewed as fulfilling the covenant of friendship between David and Jonathan and their descendants (1 Samuel 20:42).
From Philippians 3:5 we know that he was from the tribe of Benjamin (like Jonathan) and Paul's other name, Saul, might be more common among descendants of King Saul than among Benjaminites generally. On the other hand, with the purging of the house of Saul (2 Samuel 9:3 indicates that Mephibosheth might be the bottleneck as a sole survivor) there might have been few if any descendants of Jonathan in the first century A.D.
Is there any other evidence supporting or falsifying this possibility or is this merely a wild speculation where even tradition is silent?
Optional bonus question: Has this speculation been written about earlier in Church history? (Allegory and other somewhat fanciful conceits seem to have been more popular earlier in Church history, so I would not be surprised if someone had considered this possibility given its devotional attractiveness.) ….
Saint Luke kept returning to Damascus incident
“St. Luke considered this [Damascus] event so pivotal that he
recounted it three times, at critical moments in his book [Acts]”.
Carsten Peter Thiede
A possible further indication that I may be on the right track in identifying the evangelist Luke with Ananias, the healer of St. Paul at Damascus, is the fact that Luke when writing the book of Acts recalls the incident on several occasions.
We read about this in Carsten Peter Thiede’s highly significant book, The Jesus Papyrus: The Most Sensational Evidence on the Origins of the Gospels Since the Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2000, pp. 118-119):
St. Luke considered this event so pivotal that he recounted it three times, at critical moments in his book. The first version is his own (Acts 9:1-9) a straightforward narrative account told at the chronologically appropriate moment. The second version is St Paul’s; in Acts 22:5-21, he addresses the Jews in Jerusalem ….
St. Paul’s version of the Damascus experience is geared towards a Jewish audience, its idiom and the explanation he employs founded on ‘the Law of our ancestors’ (22:3).
In Acts 26:12-23 St. Paul tells the story a second time. The setting is a court appearance before the authorities at Caesarea Maritima … King Herod Agrippa II [sic] and … procurator Festus …. St. Paul … addresses them in Greek. He also tailors his story to his audience, making no allusion on this occasion to ‘the Law of our ancestors’. ….
Benedictus “… redacted in a Semitic language”
‘… to show mercy to our ancestors
and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath he swore to our father Abraham …’.
Luke 1:72-73
“The Benedictus, reproduced in Luke 1:68-79, is composed of three strophes each having seven stichs”, wrote Fr Jean Carmignac (The Birth of the Synoptics, Franciscan Herald Press, 1984, p. 27).
Strophe, in poetry, a group of verses that form a distinct unit within a poem. The term is sometimes used as a synonym for stanza …. https://www.britannica.com/art/strophe
stich (Noun). A verse, of whatever measure or number of feet, especially a verse of the Scriptures. https://www.definitions.net/definition/stich
Fr. Carmignac continues (pp. 27-28):
The first begins with the biblical and Qumranic formula: Blessed (be) the Lord the God of Israel; the third begins, as frequently is the case at Qumran, with the personal pronoun: And you, child. The second strophe has in its first stich: to show mercy to our fathers, in which the expression to show mercy translates the verb hânan, which is the root of Yôhânân (= John); then follows the second stich: and he remembers his holy covenant, in which he remembers translates the verb zâkar, which is the root of Zâkâryâh (= Zachary); then the third stich: the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, uses, in two different forms, the root shâba‘ (to swear, or to take an oath), which is the root of Elîshâba’ at (= Elizabeth).
Is it by chance that the second strophe of this poem begins by a triple allusion to the names of the three protagonists: John, Zachary, Elizabeth? But this allusion only exists in Hebrew: the Greek or English translation does not preserve it ….
This piece falls under Fr. Carmignac’s section: “The Semitisms of Composition”.
Let us examine … cases in which the composition itself is based on Semitic … that is, cases in which the text itself would not exist in its present form if it had not been composed in a Semitic language ….
.… redacted in a Semitic language. ….
Luke’s Theophilos
“Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have
been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who
from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind,
since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning,
I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus,
so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught”.
Luke 1:1-4
Who was Luke 1:3’s “Most Excellent Theophilos”?
In Greek, kratiste Theophile (Κράτιστε Θεόφιλε).
Now if Luke the Evangelist, whom Paul calls “beloved healer [physician]” (Colossians 4:14), ὁ ἰατρὸς ὁ ἀγαπητὸς, was Ananias of Damascus, who healed Paul of his blindness, then he might have returned Paul’s generous description of him with the phrase he uses in Luke 1:3, Excellent, or noble, Friend of God.
In other words, Luke was addressing Paul himself, a new convert to Christianity, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
There must have been a strong bond between the pair, Luke (Ananias) being Paul’s catechist.
Later, in Acts 1:1, Luke the Evangelist will superscript the book more simply: “In my former book [Gospel], Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach”.
Various famous and important people have been suggested as candidates for Luke’s enigmatic Theophilos.
One of these is the philosopher, Philo Judaeus. And I think that, in his name, there is a meeting with Luke’s Theo-Philos.
Thus it may be time to connect, all as one, Paul, Theophilos, and the Philo who was apparently both known to, and contemporaneous with, Saint Peter.
Further on Philo, though, see my article:
Apollonius of Tyana, like Philo, a fiction
(5) Apollonius of Tyana, like Philo, a fiction
Dugan King, contributing to the Bible Hermeneutics site, has written the following intriguing piece, hopefully arguing for Philo Judaeus as the biblical “Theophilus” (no doubt needing modifications):
https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/4058/is-lukes-theophilus-an-actual-person-or-an-allegorical-person
I have been doing research in theological history and philosophy of the first century and stumbled across another strong theory as to whom Luke may have been addressing as Theophilus. I believe it could have been the full name of Philo Judaeus of Alexandria also known as Jedidiah HaCohen. Jedidiah was Philo's Hebrew name ... meaning friend or beloved of God ... and this hints at the possibility that Philo was a shortened version of Theophilus ... having the same meaning. Combine this with the fact that Philo was the greatest religious philosopher of the first century ... perhaps the Great Teacher mentioned in the writings of the Essenes ... for it was clearly the eclectic teaching and exegesis of Philo and his "Logos" that laid the spiritual foundation upon which Christianity, Gnosticism, Rabbinical Judaism, Islam, Theosophy and Hermeticism are outgrowths. Philo's teachings created the various streams of religious philosophy that have rained down upon civilization with such force as to replace pagan polytheism with Abraham's monotheism all across the world. Jesus taught the Logos ... the Word of God ... and declared it to be "The First Begotten Son of God" ... an idea originating with Philo [sic] and stated with such eloquent force that the Roman Emperors had to quit fighting it and embrace it in order to get their grip on it and change it from within ... so as to make it more conducive to Roman Imperial designs.
I have also discovered hundreds of allegorical clues hidden in the works of Philo that suggest he had a very close relationship with Jesus or Yeshua of the Nazarenes ... who very likely grew up in Alexandria during his flight from Herod.
Because Philo was a Roman magistrate ... he was not able to come forward with what he knew about the early life of the historical Jesus without drawing Imperial attention to himself ... but the Life of Jesus is mirrored and traced throughout Philo's writings ... especially in his theology and focus on the Essenes.
It appears to me very likely that … Philo [was] descended from the last Hasmonean Princess of Judea ... King Herod's captive bride ... Queen Mary or Mariamne I.
It appears that Philo and his brother Alexander the Alabarch were not only high ranking Princes of the Hasmonean/Herodian dynasty ... but Roman magistrates working as Alexandrian customs agents and ambassadors to the Judeo/Claudian Imperial Family of Rome ... and intermarried with the family of King Herod Agrippa ... also a descendent of Queen Mary/Mariamne I ... the captive bride murdered by Herod.
We can see Philo's teachings in the Book of Hebrews ... in the writings of Luke, in the first paragraph of John's Gospel and in Macabbees IV.
If Luke was addressing Philo Judaeus as Theophilus ... or perhaps Jedidiah ... then it means that Luke was writing prior to the time of Philo's death ... possibly around 50 A.D.
The works of Philo Judaeus and Flavius Josephus are important supplements to the New Testament ....
….
Combine this knowledge with the archeological discoveries of the past 300 years ... and artifacts such as the shroud of Turin ... it leaves no doubt that Jesus ... Yeshua the Nazarene ... was and is a historical figure who impacted the world in many ways ... a spiritual/intellectual/philosophical tour de force with the One God of Abraham at the summit. Exactly what Philo intended. ….
