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What information does Luke give us? How can we know Luke’s accounts are historically accurate?
Luke as a historian is able to provide valuable insights into the life of Jesus. Many scholars also agree that Luke as a historian provided mostly accurate accounts.
Keep reading to find out more about Luke as a historian, and what the gospel according to Luke can tell us about Jesus.
Luke as a Historian
Luke’s contributions to the New Testament, the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, comprise almost one quarter of the entire text of the Bible. If we can be sure that Luke is a conscientious and trustworthy historian, we can be confident in his depiction of Jesus as well. This is the basis of the idea of Luke as a historian.
The consensus among contemporary scholars is that Luke, historian and theologian. is indeed a careful, reliable recorder of history. In fact, over the years, scholars have asserted that Luke was mistaken about certain historical facts only to be proven wrong by archaeological findings. For example, many scholars saw Luke’s reference to Lysanias as the tetrarch (governor) of Abilene in 27 AD as a disqualifying error—Lysanias ruled Chalcis 50 years before; he was no tetrarch. An inscription found on a dig, however, later proved Luke right. One study from the early ’90s reviewed each of Luke’s references to physical places and found not a single mistake. It stands to reason that if Luke was assiduous enough to get the ancillary details correct, it’s likely he got the really big stuff—like Jesus’s resurrection—right as well.
Multiple Attestation
Under this criterion, a saying of Jesus can only be considered authentic if it’s found in more than one source. This again is the important of Luke as a historian.
One problem with this rubric is that many of our most trusted sources of ancient history are singular—that is, for many events of antiquity that we assume actually happened, we only have a single source. In other words, the Jesus Seminar holds the events of the bible to a stricter standard than other ancient events.
Another problem is that, according to the Jesus Seminar’s precepts, the mention of a saying in more than one gospel doesn’t count as multiple attestation. For this rule, they’re relying on the argument that Matthew and Luke, historian and theologian, are based on Mark, thus any saying that’s mentioned in all three really amounts to just one mention. What this position fails to take into account is recent scholarship that disputes Matthew’s and Luke’s reliance on Mark (see the discussion of “Q” in Chapter 1).
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How would you respond to this statement: Never believe an extra-ordinary claim (such as a dead person sighting) when the eyewitness status of the person making the claim is in dispute.
https://lutherwasnotbornagaincom.wordpress.com/2023/01/30/never-believe-an-extra-ordinary-claim-when-the-eyewitness-status-of-the-person-making-the-claim-is-in-dispute/
Thanks,
Gary