That luke wrote his own gospel is easily defended. Do some research on early writers such as Payus, Origen, Eusebius, Clement…the evidence is pretty conclusive that Luke, the medical doctor, is the author of the last gospel and the book of Acts.
No one is claiming luke was a disciple…he may have been a gentile who came from Syria. What we do know is that he wrote for the gentile audience (further evidence to support his exposure to the apostle Paul)
The stupid thing about the naysayers is, they claim both books are written by the same author in the late first century, near the influence of the apostle Paul.
The argument against Luke being the author is basically “because of the useage of third person literary style”. What a ridiculous argument!
To address the pontius pilot statement you made…
Please provide any actual evidence proving his existence outside of the bible prior to 1961. If you can do that, then i must be wrong in my claim no one outside of belief in the bible writings really believed he existed for sure. Its the absence of proof that supports the conspiracy and thats the same argument against the Exodus.
If you mean extra biblical sources, then Tacitus talks about Pontius Pilate. I don’t know how valid you would consider Flavius and Philo of Alexandra, but they are considered sources as well if I’m not mistaken. I don’t know much about the historical and archaeological evidence for the exodus. Could you give me a run down on the consensus by historians and/or sources dealing with the historicity of the exodus?
I don’t know what happened. Somehow I edited an old post instead of responding to this one.
You may have missed much of what I wrote since I addressed this. First we don’t need extra-biblical evidence. All four gospels have him as a Roman authority that crucified Jesus. These were four distinct works at one point though literary dependence means their content is not necessarily independent. So we can’t say they represent 4 independent witnesses to Pilate. Still, that is probably enough itself. A crucified Jewish messiah in Roman occupied Palestine in the first century is unlikely to be created. Little reason to doubt this Pilate was involved. But as I noted we have Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, Celsus etc… You are just regurgitating misinformation that you never bothered to investigate because you liked what it was telling you. And these sources are in extremely close geographical and chronological proximity to the events. Philo was contemporaneous with Pilates rule. Josephus was born 1 year after it ended and was actually a general in The Jewish-Roman war before defecting. Tacitus was. Roman historian. Then there is the Acts of Pilate document that circulated and was probably mentioned by Justin ca 160ce.
You are quoting people like Eusebius on gospel authorship. I mean he wrote ~260 years after Jesus died and well over 200 years after any gospel was written. In a time when people were arguing over which books were legitimate. No one was arguing over whether Pilate was real. Irenaeus probably wrote a hundred years later than any gospel and 150 years after Jesus died.
Papias connects Mark to Mark and Peter and mentions Matthew but it’s not certain he has our Matthew in mind since his comments make that unclear. He is very early. Papias comes ca 105 but note that we have Eusebius quoting Irenaeus who is quoting Papias. We don’t actually have Papias’s work. Just what Eusebius says Irenaeus said about him 120 years earlier.
The early church also thought Matthew was the first gospel written and that it was translated into Greek. Neither is true. Orthodox tradition has shown itself to be wrong about testable information pertaining to the authorship and composition of the gospels. There were a lot of works incorrectly attributed to apostles. One would think a little bit more than just appealing to late tradition would be needed to convince us. There are better arguments.
Not to mention all the references to these events may depend on a single source: Papias. The consensus of church authorship may not be that strong after all at far as Mt and Mk go.
I’m sure the apologetical circles you received the misinformation on David, Pilate and the Hittites also are responsible for this fake news. Of course that’s a ridiculous argument because it’s uninformed caricature.
I dont think you get the point…im asking for evidence prior to 1960’s. what actual historical Roman evidence do we have for Pontius Pilot from other sources that are dated to his actual time? Answer = none!!!
This is not a fake news story, you just dont understand the secular issue with Christianity. Secularists do not accept distant writings to the person who was the eyewitness and that is the point.
So until the Pilot Stone was found, secularists denied Pilot existed and it was because they denied from silence of the historical record from Rome. They are not arguing about biblical evidences…they dont believe the biblical evidences (or later Christian writers who claimed to have known someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew of Pilot.)
Anyway, the very line of reasoning being put forward defeats the argument that Luke isnt historically accurate and that Luke didnt write it. The writers i already mentioned all support that Luke wrote his gospel and you are affirming that!
The fact remains, Bart Erhman claims that Luke didnt write his gospel, acts is a fabrication…the reason why is quite obvious…Bart isnt Christian anymore and his entire scholarly work centres around the idea that there is no God because of apparent biblical errors. Again, the original autographs would not be any different to what we have today, and the reason why is the same reason why Bart is wrong…more copies means a less corrupted and more reliable autograph. You focus on producing evidence from single bible translation…who does that? I do not take any of my doctrine from the reading of a single source…even more so when it comes to bible translations. That is a crazy line of rationale. Different translators have different biases and influences behind their version…we must always use an ecclectic method here and that means multiple sources…always. Im surprised that modern individuals focus in so much on narrowing the path in this regard…its lunacy.
Ultimately this is still highly problematic for the argument from these forums that continues to search for ways to refute the literal biblical reading of historical timelines falls on its head again.
What kind of drugs are you taking that are so good they render you unable to read? Not judging. I want to join the party.
Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, Justin, Acts or Pilate, Celsus… …
Also, why is Roman evidence better than Jewish evidence? Pilate was prefect of Judaea from 26-36 CE. They are in a position to know just as well about Pilate. Also, why is Christian evidence bad? They are in position to know who crucified their leader. All three source types have adequate lines of transmission. Inside the Bible /outside the Bible is meaningless. A source is a source and it can be evaluated just the same as any other.
Philo lived 20 BCE to 40 ce
Josephus lived: 37-100CE
Both Josephus and Philip mentioned Pilate as insensitive to Jewish customs and causing issues. Philo was contemporaneous with the man!
Tacitus 56-120 Roman historian
You can dig up the other sources. I’m sure you have an access to Google. Not to mention canonical Christian works which count as ancient sources/documents whether you accept the Bible as a collection or not.
Maybe you think you are arguing with a Jesus mythicist? I asked you to substantiate your (clearly ad hominem) attack that claimed credentialed historians thought Pilate was not a real figure until recent times. You have done no such thing. You are quickly going from being misinformed, which is okay, to just being a liar, which is not.
One thing to remember about Luke is that he had a ‘Methods’ section in his writing (Luke 1:1-4). Luke ‘investigated’, which can be interpreted as interviewing witnesses and reading whatever was considered reliable testimony. Perhaps also listening to less trusted sources that had needed pieces of information. From this starting point, it is no wonder if we find similar texts in Mark and Luke. I would even expect it.
One thing about interpretations that has made me wonder is that superficially similar events in the gospels are automatically assumed to tell about the same moments. If there are differences in these texts, it is seen as evidence of the unreliability of the stories.
It is possible, even likely, that some of the partly dissimilar stories report the events from the viewpoints of different witnesses - if several eyewitnesses tell about an event with exactly same words, there are reasons to suspect some form of copying or conspiracy.
What is often a neglected possibility is that the partly dissimilar stories do not tell about the same event. If Jesus spent much time as a roaming teacher, he probably told the teachings in several places, using slightly different wordings. He also healed and set people free in many places. Superficial similarities in the gospels are not a guarantee that these texts tell about the same events.
As Marcion is syncretizing Christianity with a Greek philosophical view, claiming that his version has priority seems highly implausible.
Luke and Acts derive from the same source. Acts has a broader scope, often in major centers, and thus has more points where we have data to compare. The varied titles of officials in different places, the character of each city, and the prominent individuals all match up well. A pattern of reliability suggests that he’s likely to be accurate where we can’t double-check, just as consistently inaccurate claims lead to distrust.
On Quirinius, there are several complications. Textual uncertainties raise the possibility of a different name or multiple censuses. We also don’t have exhaustive Roman records to know if Quirinius served twice in Syria.
It’s important also to not impose modern standards on ancient writing. Following the example of Greek and Roman historians, simplifying, summarizing, and inference may be included, rather than necessarily being an exact transcript of every event. For example, although the popularity of Christianity among slaves means that Luke may have had eyewitness accounts of private conversations, it’s possible that the dialogue in Acts 26:31-2 is an inference based on the public actions.
We can put both of these ideas together. The first time Judas betrayed Jesus was after the first temple cleansing which John puts early, the first anointing in the gospels, the first last supper which was explicitly on preparation day, and after the first set of denials of Peter which started when he walked in the door and that is when Judas bought the field and killed himself by jumping off a tall object head first. The second time Judas betrayed Jesus was after the 2nd temple cleansing, after the second anointing, after the second last supper which was explicitly on the first day of unleavened bread, after Peter was involved in a whole new set of cock-crowing denials —the first of which was by the fire now—and that is when Judas threw the money backth, the chief priests bought the second field and Judas hung himself.
So Judas betrayed Jesus twice, Peter denied him 6 or more times (that rooster wouldn’t shut up), there were multiple temple cleansing, a curious rash of fig trees dying, multiple anointings, a first last supper and second last supper (what about elevensies? were the disciples hobbits?), multiple betrayals of Jesus, two fields similarly named bought by different individuals (and everyone knew about this as Acts says) and Judas killed himself in two different ways. Jesus probably died twice to and this allows us to explain all the resurrection appearance contradictions away nice and neatly.
At the end of the day we find a lot of diversity if we actually sit down and read the gospels in a synopsis that puts all four accounts side by side. We can try to harmonize them all. It looks like special pleading and a failure to admit the obvious to the outside world but we can maintain that posture if we like. Or we can simply say, the Bible is not a history book. We are fond here on this forum of pointing out how the Bible is not a science book. Taking our own medicine would mean admitting the Bible is not a history book either. It is narrative and assigning appropriate endings to infamous individuals was normal in antiquity whether you knew what actually happened or not. So was writing appropriate speeches whether you knew them via testimony or not.
If we read Josephus’s account of King Herod’s death I think this is obvious about the death but:
Jospehus on Herod the Great: A When Herod’s illness “increased greatly,” a fever fell upon him: “The fever he had was a mild one, which did not so much indicate the inflammation to those touching as contribute to the malignancy of the innards. Because of this he also had a terrible desire to scratch, for it was impossible not to seek relief” (Antiquities 17.168–169).
There was also an ulceration of the intestines with particularly terrible pains in the colon, and a transparent swelling of fluid around the feet. And similarly there was a malignancy in the abdominal area, as well as a putrefaction in the private member which was creating worms. His breathing had a high pitch [literally “upright tension”], and it was extremely loathsome because of the disagreeable exhalation and the frequency of gasping [literally “density of asthma”]. He also had spasms in every limb that took on unendurable force. (Antiquities 17.169)
Historians don’t accept the highly educated Josephus at his word here because he seems to just be giving Herod a really nasty and fitting death:
[quote]Classicists have argued that we cannot take Josephus’ description of Herod’s final illness at face value since the historian may have been biased against the king. Infection by “worms” is suspicious, for example, because it sounds like poetic justice: Worm-infestation was seen as a fitting end for detested rulers—a monstrous life calling for a miserable death. In hostile descriptions, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (d. 163 B.C.), Sulla (d. 78 B.C.), Agrippa I (d. 44 A.D.) and Galerius (d. 311 A.D.) were all described as dying “worm-eaten.”6Could Herod’s ignominious condition have been wishful thinking and not historical reality?
[\quote]
I contend that the accounts of Judas’s demise in GMatthew and Peter in Acts speech are hopelessly contradictory but that does’t matter. Their common points does bring up some interesting questions—especially about synoptic relations—but few people know we also have other early accounts of Judas’s death. Papias who writes circa 105 CE (not too far removed from Matthew and Luke) says Judas swelled up and burst or a wagon ran him over. I think he says he got so big his eyes shut (play on greed maybe).
These are all just conventional and appropriate ends for the most infamous figure in history.
It’s a bit confusing because both Malta and Melite get called “Melite” right up to the tenth century. Another spelling for Malta would be “Melita”, but that’s not what the text has.
True the “cat snake” ( Telescopus fallax) has habits and behavior which fit the description in Acts quite well, such as hiding in debris high on a beach and including the fact that when acting in defense – which it would be if it had been hiding in a pile of sticks that Paul picked up – it bites only with the front teeth and not the venomous back ones.
But on the other hand, the viper that lives on Melite – modern Melida – has a venom that produces exactly the symptoms the natives expected, which the venom of the cat snake does not. Some have proposed that Malta did have vipers back then, but there is no record that so much as mentions any.
Interestingly both islands champion their claim to be the real Melite, both having harbors named after Paul.
I really enjoyed reading this haha! I myself think that there were some basic facts known:
Judas died very soon after his betrayal of Jesus.
The money Judas had received was used to buy a field.
This field was known as the field of blood.
Matthew and Luke made a story out of these facts that served their theological purposes. At the end of the video Mr. Bejon clearly shows the theological meaning of both stories. And that meaning is what’s important to us readers.
“Everyone knows Judas died after betraying Jesus, but how? And what does that mean?”
So I don’t agree with Mr. Bejon’s conclusion that the stories don’t contradict, but I think he gives the best defence I have heard. And his explanation of the theological meaning is very good.
Arguable; the relationship isn’t that clear. I still think that Mark got his material from Peter, and that when Matthew wrote a Greek version of his Gospel he lifted a lot of Mark’s wording.
No Christian in any part of the second century could have written Luke. The biggest reason is that Peter and Paul were both martyrs yet there is no mention of this made in Acts, which was written after Luke; given how the church of the second century regarded martyrs, this would not have been excluded. The Gospel also is heavy with Semiticisms that a Greek Christian of the second century would not have been capable of including, but someone who had actually gotten material from actual witnesses would have easily just written as he heard; this is true to a lesser extent of Acts.
Then there’s the interesting point where Paul apparently is quoting Luke’s Gospel as “scripture” in I Timothy 5:18; even if Pauline authorship of Timothy is denied that puts the writing of Luke before the writing of Timothy.
Just one item: in that period of time when writing a bios (a type of biography) of someone important it was customary to include a tale of some miraculous event associated with the person – something no one in the last several centuries would have done!
Heck, Matthew doesn’t bother with how they got there or why, he just says that’s where Jesus was born!
Actually not. The confusion is due to poorly translating the word ἡγεμονεύοντος (hay-geh-moh-ne-OO-on-tohs), which does not mean “governor” or “was governor”; the word is a participle and in Roman usage meant “governing as hegemon”. A hegemon indicated a procurator, not a governor, and was the official charged with running a census or “registration” – and in some cases those meant everyone with property in a town their family was from had to return to that town. It turns out that Quirinius was in charge of a census at the right time. Of course this also means that Luke simplified the matter when he wrote “And all went to be registered, each to his own town”, leaving us a bit adrift, but back then he would not have had to explain the matter in detail since anyone who was familiar with how Rome might do a census would have understood.
I came across a debate a couple years back between two scholars over whether Q was even a document. It was amazingly intense for something that I can’t see matters much – what difference does it make if there was an oral source passed around with careful attention to detail or if it was written?
It was transparent aluminum, obviously, since the “waters above” could be seen through it.
Bart just followed the YEC logic he was raised with. Having reviewed some of his books recently, my conclusion is that he is motivated by desperation to justify his abandoning the faith, frantically churning out material with obvious and substantial scholarly flaws no actual historian or exegete would make in order to convince himself he did the right thing.
Reading everything in the Bible as literal history comes from a lazy arrogance that demands the God had to force the ancient writers to write not for the original audiences but for them. It refuses to ask what the scriptures actually are and actually say, instead insisting that uninformed human reason can understand ancient writings without bothering to look into the ancient context.
That throws out the “historical” half of “historical-grammatical” and replaces it with what feels good.
The first error I see is the assumption that if there is an extra-biblical account that contradicts the Bible, the extra-biblical account is true, and the Bible is mistaken.
The second error–Jerry Brown was the governor of California from 1975 to 1983, but there are many accounts of events from 2011 to 2019 that people assert took place while Jerry Brown (same person) was the governor of California. Well, they are right, as Brown was the governor twice. He was the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019.
Now Luke gives us a clue as well–Luke 2:2–“the first census when Quirinius was governor.” Of course, Herod was dead when the second census was taken when Quirinius was again governor many years later. And there is also “extrabiblical evidence” that Quirinius was governor twice, and that a census took place during the second time.
Here is a further quote about Luke as an historian:
“It is almost universally acknowledged that the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts were written by the beloved physician Luke. The question must be asked how accurate a historian was Luke? One of the greatest archaeologists of all time, Sir William Ramsay, didn’t think Luke was very accurate. In fact, he traveled throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and other places during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in an attempt to refute Luke’s historical records in the Book of Acts.”
"Before his travels he believed that Luke couldn’t have been very accurate because of a lack of archaeological evidence to support Luke’s claims. Ramsey, after years of study, found the exact opposite to be true, and he completely reversed his position. In fact, Ramsey went on to comment: “Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy, he is possessed of the true historic sense … in short, this author should be placed along with the greatest of historians.”1
I think it’s quite possible Luke/Acts were written in the early to mid 60’s, before the deaths of both Peter and Paul who Luke strangely does not refer to in Acts, even though he refers to other martyrdoms. There may be other explanations to that, but I find it curious. So I wouldnt automatically accept your dating range.
As for memories, the problem with comparing our memories to those in 1st century Judaism is that that was very much an oral culture, where students of Rabbis were expected to memorise their Rabbi’s teaching. And it may also be that shorts notes, as aide-memories, were taken - some scholars have argued for that as they seemed to have been used then. If Luke/Acts were completed by say AD65, that’s just about 35 years after the events. That’s similar to holocaust survivors writing about their experiences during the war in the late 70s. Few would cast doubt on such memoires.
Although the time and leaders at the time of the census he referenced would still be 60-70 years after the events, and the only eye witness at that time may have been Mary, who would have been 75-80 years old. It would be sort of asking Joe Biden and Donald Trump what they remember about the mayor of New York City in 1965.
I dont think explaining apparent differences is ‘special pleading’ because for the most part they are indeed ‘apparent’ but not actual.
If you take Judas’ death for example, I think he hanged himself, but after hanging on a tree for some time (we’re not told how long before he was discovered), his body either fell down from a height and with the force his bloated body partially split open on impact. Or the same thing happened after his body was cut down by whoever discovered him.
According to Robert Cargill, the scholar and archaeologist, the census in St. Luke’s gospel was pretty much a literary device and not really historical:
To be picky, Quirinius was never technically “governor” of Syria. He was a hegemon, which is an officer under a governor, in that province around 12 to 2 B.C., apparently as a military officer, and he was Caesar’s Legate there after Herod Archileus died, sent to tidy things up, primarily in financial terms (Herod was more than a bit wealthy). In the first capacity, he could well have been ordered to manage a census; in the second, he was actually superior to any governor.
As an extremely wealthy man and a successful general, he was well-known in both Rome and the eastern end of the empire, and apparently was visible enough at his tasks that people remembered him almost a century later.
I’d make that “probable” – there is just no way that those two martyrdoms would have been left out if it had been written later. There’s a conjecture that there were originally more chapters, but that’s a real stretch; given who Luke was, he almost certainly did what authors back then tended to do when they wrote for someone else – made an original, then made a good copy to send to that someone, plus made a good copy to keep, so I don’t see any chance for chapters to go missing.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, that’s the problem with the game of “telephone” that oral history is so ridiculously compared to! To make the game fit reality, the second person in line wouldn’t get to pass on the message until after reciting it word-for-word from start to finish and being able to take a prompt at any point in the message and finish from there – and that would continue down the line. To be even more realistic, the person who gave the message would walk along while the first three or four people passed the message on, and each person in line would do the same as they had passed it on, in order to verify that what they had received was what was being delivered.
I deliberately used the same words that Paul does on occasion, “received” and “delivered”, because those were technical terms regarding the passing on of teachings or stories accurately. Yes, telling what had been passed on could be done with varying vocabulary and even order to suit occasions, but the teaching or story itself was transmitted word for word.
This is where the admonition to “Read like an Israelite” helps: if we ask how a first-century Jew would have reacted, we get a clearer picture. This article covers it well:
