I OWN HUNDREDS upon hundreds of books. Have I read them all? I’m tempted to answer evasively, the way a friend of mine did when he was asked the same question: “Some of them twice.” But no, I haven’t read them all, and most of the ones I have read I didn’t finish. That’s because much of my reading is for the sake of getting the information I need for my own writing; once I have it, I’m easily distracted by the next read, and the next, and the next.

In part, it’s because I live in a world in which I take books for granted; they’re readily available and reasonably easy to own. My shelves are lined with hardbacks and paperbacks of every kind. And that’s not counting the hundreds of e-books and audiobooks I also own.

Indeed, the digital age has put even more information and resources at our fingertips. If I want to find something out quickly, I either Google it or ask my phone to find the information for me. It’s become habitual: anytime a random question on the most trivial of matters pops into my head, I reach for my phone.

You probably do the same. And I suspect that most of us hardly feel the need to commit anything to memory anymore. Why should we? Our devices remember for us.

This is light-years away from the oral culture of the New Testament writers. Mass-produced books had to wait for the printing press, which wouldn’t be invented for another 1,400 years. In Luke’s day, a “book” was a papyrus scroll, which were laborious to produce and therefore expensive to own. Instead, the teaching of and about Jesus was passed on through the preaching of the apostles and their associates. Believers would gather to remind each other of these teachings, and encourage one another with stories of what God was doing in their midst.

It was inevitable, though, that sooner or later some people would commit to writing down what had been taught. In the introduction to his gospel, Luke shows that he’s aware of what others have done, and writes against that background. Here again are his opening words, this time as translated in the Common English Bible:

Many people have already applied themselves to the task of compiling an account of the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used what the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word handed down to us. Now, after having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, I have also decided to write a carefully ordered account for you, most honorable Theophilus. I want you to have confidence in the soundness of the instruction you have received. (Luke 1:1-4, CEB)

Some take Luke to be saying that he intends to improve on what others have done, as if previous works were inadequate in some way. But his words don’t have to be read that way. He has his own motivations and purposes, and will add to what exists. He doesn’t name the “many” who have already tried their hand at the story of Jesus; at the very least, this surely includes Mark and possibly Matthew.

They, in turn, depended on the testimony of “the original eyewitnesses.” Luke doesn’t name them either. But many of the people in Luke’s story would still have been alive and no doubt happy to be interviewed; one thinks easily of apostles like Peter and John, or James the brother of Jesus. These and many others would have been direct eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life and ministry.

Luke may also be thinking of those to whom the resurrected Jesus appeared personally, such as the disciples on the Emmaus road—a story which, again, appears only in the third gospel. Here, we might think of Paul’s words at the end of 1 Corinthians:

I passed on to you as most important what I also received: Christ died for our sins in line with the scriptures, he was buried, and he rose on the third day in line with the scriptures. He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve, and then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at once—most of them are still alive to this day, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me, as if I were born at the wrong time. (1 Cor 15:3-8)

Jesus appeared not only to Paul and all the apostles, but also to more than 500 believers at one time. Paul’s point is to tell the Corinthians to stop their nonsense about the resurrection being a myth, an unnecessary belief; there were still plenty of people who had seen the risen Jesus, and all they had to do was ask. Fewer of them would have been around by the time Luke did his research, but I imagine he included as many as he could in his careful investigation of the facts.

Importantly, Luke calls these eyewitnesses “servants of the word” who handed down what they had seen and heard. The verb translated as “handed down” here in Luke is the same as the one translated as “passed on” in the passage we read from 1 Corinthians 15. The word has many shades of meaning, but in these passages, it suggests the handing on of an authoritative tradition, whether by the written or the spoken word.

These eyewitnesses, in other words, were servants of the word because they felt compelled to tell others what they had seen Jesus do and heard Jesus say. This wasn’t some self-serving kind of name-dropping: “You know, that reminds of a conversation I once had with Jesus himself…”

Nor would they necessarily have seen themselves as servants of the word with any sense of spiritual pride. This is Luke’s description, one that fits his overall program of describing God’s plan, the plan which these eyewitnesses were serving whether they knew it or not.

As God’s people, we believe the word. Will we also serve it?