--- title: "The Martyrdom of Luke the Evangelist — Lollar 2026" description: "The paper traces the textual history of Mart. Luke, an apocryphal narrative of the evangelist Luke's death that tells of his arrest under Nero, his…" authors: ["Jacob A. Lollar", "Samuel P. Cook"] year: 2026 venue: "Communio Viatorum 68" source: "http://www.karolinum.cz/doi/10.14712/30296374.2026.10" doi: "10.14712/30296374.2026.10" licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Communio Viatorum)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lollar-2026-martyrdom-luke-evangelist-syriac-translation/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/lollar-2026-martyrdom-luke-evangelist-syriac-translation/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/9/) / The Martyrdom of Luke the Evangelist: A Syriac Translation of a Coptic Apocryphon? # The Martyrdom of Luke the Evangelist: A Syriac Translation of a Coptic Apocryphon? **Authors:** Jacob A. Lollar, Samuel P. Cook · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** Communio Viatorum 68 · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Communio Viatorum)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.14712/30296374.2026.10) · [PDF](https://karolinum.cz/data/clanek/17819/CV_68_1_0099.pdf) · [DOI 10.14712/30296374.2026.10](https://doi.org/10.14712/30296374.2026.10) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7204889809) **Citations:** 0 citations (openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14) ## Summary The paper traces the textual history of Mart. Luke, an apocryphal narrative of the evangelist Luke's death that tells of his arrest under Nero, his beheading at sea, and the miracles worked by his body after it washed ashore. No Greek or Latin version is known. The story survives only in Coptic, Syriac, Arabic and Gəʿəz, which marks it as a tradition of the Christian East and North Africa. The Coptic and Syriac witnesses had never been compared, although both are linked to monasteries of the Wādī al-Naṭrūn in Egypt. Lollar and Cook describe the codicology of the manuscripts in both languages and compare the texts closely. They then print a parallel edition, divided into numbered sections, with the first English translation of both versions. François Nau had suggested a lost Greek source behind the Syriac. The authors reject this and argue that the Coptic text is the original, with the Syriac and all later versions derived from it. The result reopens the question of where this Luke tradition came from and makes the two earliest witnesses available for direct comparison. ## Key points - **Syriac witnesses:** - BL Add. ms 12172 is dated by Wright to the 10th century. It was donated to Dayr al-Suryān by Zechariah bar Yuḥannon. - BL Add. 14732 dates to roughly the 13th century. It contains the text only in fragments, starting at fol. 225v, within a later added section. - **Coptic witnesses:** two manuscripts, both from the library of Dayr al-Anba Maqār. The only complete Coptic copy is MACA.DM/CLM 148, now Vat. Copt. 68 ff. 16–21. - **Earlier hypotheses:** Lipsius had already guessed a Coptic origin. Nau instead proposed a lost Greek archetype that passed into Syriac and Coptic, and from there into Arabic and Gəʿəz. - **Variants between versions:** - Luke's helper is called Silas in Coptic and Syriac but Theophilus in Arabic. - The town Prokonnesus does not appear in the Arabic and Gəʿəz versions. - The Syriac makes Luke a follower of Peter rather than Paul. - The Syriac adds episodes absent from the Coptic, such as a one-eyed soldier who is healed and a fisherman who finds the body at night. - **Dating of the death:** the Coptic gives 22 Bābah. The Syriac gives the same day in three calendars: Roman (14 days before the December calends), Egyptian, and Syrian (19th of the first Tishrin). ## Interesting ideas - Lineage between versions can be inferred from close comparison of parallel texts, with no external metadata needed, by asking which version's details best explain the others. — For Mova (back): Mova's translation through the meta-world could be checked by comparing source and output graphs and asking which details were added or lost, giving an explainable direction-of-transfer test. - The edition aligns the two languages section by section rather than sentence by sentence, which tolerates expansions and omissions while keeping comparison possible. — For Mova (answer): QA on retold fables and tales could use coarse section-level alignment between two retellings to locate where answers diverge. - Names that differ or vanish across versions (Silas vs Theophilus, the missing Prokonnesus) act as markers of descent and are evidence, not noise. — For Mova (world): entity alignment across retellings should allow the same role to carry different names, and should record such mismatches explicitly instead of merging or discarding them. - The Syriac expresses one date in three calendar systems, which shows how a single event can carry several equivalent time expressions. — For Mova (world): the measures and values layer could map Roman, Egyptian and Syrian-style dates onto one timeline node, so ordering of events stays consistent. - The debate turns on whether surviving witnesses are independent or copies of one source, since dependent copies add no independent support. — For Mova (learn): when silver data is agreed by several witness parsers, parsers sharing training data or architecture should be weighted as partly dependent, so agreement is not overcounted. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) ## Cite The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{lollar2026martyrdom, title = {{The Martyrdom of Luke the Evangelist: A Syriac Translation of a Coptic Apocryphon?}}, author = {Lollar, Jacob A. and Cook, Samuel P.}, booktitle = {Communio Viatorum 68}, year = {2026}, doi = {10.14712/30296374.2026.10}, url = {https://doi.org/10.14712/30296374.2026.10} } ``` - [← previous The Mark Fades: Adaptive Evolutionary Paraphrase-based Attack against LLM Watermarks](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/zhao-2026-mark-fades-adaptive-evolutionary-paraphrase/) - [next → The MaTOS Pipeline for the Translation of Scientific Abstracts on the HAL Platform](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/tsolakis-2026-matos-pipeline-translation-scientific-abstracts/) - [↑ back to papers of 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/9/)