In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’ (Luke 1:39-45)

Other than Paul, the author of Luke was probably the most effective writer of early Christianity. He is not the earliest, others have preceded him in gospel-writing. He was almost certainly a younger contemporary of Paul.

At the opening of the gospel he states, "I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you... so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed."

Luke is considerably longer than the other gospels, much more historical in its approach, and includes several unique elements, including John's nativity story - with the Annunciation and the Magnificat - the prodigal son, and the good Samaritan.

Authorship, especially of narrative history, is very much a matter of choosing what to put in and leave out. Too much detail undermines the narrative. There is a tendency to address - and put in place - the most commonly told and the most interesting bits of oral tradition.

I speculate the author's attention to the in utero relationship of John and Jesus was both popular and politically important. There is biblical and secular evidence that John's movement was initially much stronger than the Jesus movement. There is also the suggestion of competition.

The Jesus movement has demonstrated a remarkable ability to incorporate the competition into the Christian story. I hypothesize that well before Luke began to write, this had been accomplished by bringing John and Jesus into a complementary relationship which Luke documented for the ages.