See Part 1 General Comments
I’ll
make my points on Luke in the following order
I.
Lee Strobel’s Confusion over the Church Tradition He is Trying to Defend.
II.
The Debate over Whether or Not the Apostle Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke and
Acts
III.
Luke’s Record for Accuracy
IV.
Luke’s Record as a Historian
V.
How Careful is Luke with his Sources?
First:
I.
Lee Strobel’s Confusion over the Church Tradition He is Trying to Defend.
As
already noted in part 4, even according to the Church tradition he
is trying to defend, Lee Strobel shouldn’t be claiming that all of the Gospels
are based on eyewitness material. Luke
is, according to its own introduction, at best a 3rd hand source.
Lee
Strobel will remember this occasionally, and forget this occasionally. Occasionally he will make reference to Luke’s
work as a “historian” or “journalist”, but far too often he and his apologist
buddies will just slip into claiming that all the Gospels are eyewitness
materials.
Even
when Lee Strobel remembers that Luke is not an eyewitness, he still manages to
get his facts muddled. Take for example
his quote from page 20, which he uses to set up his chapter “proving” the
eyewitness evidence:
But what eyewitness accounts do we
possess? Do we have the testimony of
anyone who personally interacted with Jesus, who listened to his teachings, who
saw his miracles, who witnessed his death, and who perhaps even encountered him
after his alleged resurrection? Do we
have any records from first century “journalists” who interviewed eyewitnesses,
asked tough questions, and faithfully recorded what they scrupulously
determined to be true? Equally
important, how well would these accounts withstand the scrutiny of skeptics? (p.20)
Okay,
now look again at that sentence: Do we
have any records from first century “journalists” who interviewed eyewitnesses,
asked tough questions, and faithfully recorded what they scrupulously
determined to be true?
Presumably
the first-century “journalist” he’s talking about is Luke—Luke wasn’t actually
a journalist by trade (even by Church tradition) but of the four Gospellers, he’s
the only one who remotely fits this description, and it’s something Lee Strobel
confirms later on page 25 by calling Luke “sort
of a first century journalist.”
But look at all the things he implies in this
question which are either flat out wrong, or blatantly unprovable: Luke didn’t
interview eyewitnesses. In his own
preface, Luke states he was looking at written material that other people had
collected from eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1-3).
And did Luke ask tough questions, and scrupulously record what he
determined to be true? Well, it’s
impossible to say, because Luke didn’t leave us any insight into his methodology. He could have been asking really tough
questions, or he could have been asking soft questions. We don’t know. He could have been examining everything
carefully, or he could have just believed any old rumor he heard. We have no idea.
(Sometimes,
you have to wonder if Lee Strobel is just incredibly stupid and doesn’t
understand what he’s writing about, or if he’s too clever by half and knows
exactly what he’s doing. I mean, look at
how he phrased that whole section as a series of questions instead of as
statements. Is this because he knew he
couldn’t prove any of this, so he deliberately used questions so he could get
away with implying what he couldn’t prove?)
Throughout
this whole section on the Gospels, Lee Strobel is just way too eager to assume
the best case scenario for all 4 of the Gospels, but we really have no idea if
the methodology was scrupulous or fallacious.
The Gospellers don’t quote their sources, and they don’t explain their
methodology. Your only reason for
assuming that they “asked tough
questions, and faithfully recorded what they scrupulously determined to be true”
would be if you were already a believer, but based on the evidence of the
documents alone you certainly couldn’t prove any of this to a skeptic.
II.
The Debate over Whether or Not the Apostle Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke and
Acts
Since
Lee Strobel is basing his case for Christ on the evidence of eyewitness
testimony, for our purposes here it doesn’t matter so much if the Gospel of
Luke was written by the apostle Luke using 3rd hand sources, or by an
anonymous writer using 3rd hand sources.
Either way, Lee Strobel shouldn’t be claiming him as an eyewitness.
….But,
just by the bye, we might mention in passing that there is some debate about
whether the apostle Luke really wrote the Gospel attributed to him, before
moving onto the more pressing subject of Luke’s accuracy
The
reasons for thinking Luke wrote the Gospel are because of church tradition
(although we’ve already seen in part 7 all the problems with the
church tradition), and because when describing some of the voyages of Paul in
Acts, the author slips into using “we” when describing Paul’s voyages. (Luke and Acts are by the same author)
The
reasons against thinking Luke is the author of the Gospel of Luke and Acts are
that:
1)
The apostle Luke was a follower of Paul, but the Gospel of Luke
contradicts Paul’s theology. (See Jesus, Interrupted by Bart Ehrman for more on this.)
2). Paul’s own accounts of his travels in
Galatians 1&2 contradict the account of his travels given in Acts.
3). There are lots of mistakes and problems
with geographical references in Luke and Acts, which indicate that the author
wasn’t actually personally on these voyages.
So,
if Luke didn’t write the Gospel of Luke and Acts, then how to explain the “we”
passages in Acts.
Scholars
have several theories. Some people say
that this was a common literary style in the first century, especially when
describing travel by sea. Other people
say it was a literary device to add immediacy to the text. Other people say the author could have been
inserting material from a different source into the text at this point. (One of the oddities of the book of Acts is that the "we" passages jump in quite abruptly, with no explanation of who "we" is, or how "we" joined up with Paul, so it's been hypothesized that the author of Acts might have been borrowing from someone else's travel diary.)
In
Forged, Bart Ehrman argues that the “we”
passages are a deliberate forgery designed to give the appearance that the
author was close to Paul, and thus give more authority to the author’s text. [I’ve included the full quotation in my review here].
Was
Acts a deliberate forgery? Well…maybe. It’s hard to say for certain, of course, but
it has to be at least entertained as a possibility that the “we” passages are a
deliberate falsehood. It’s not inconceivable,
of course. Human beings have made
falsehoods before. (However, this is
something that never crosses the minds of Lee Strobel and his apologists. They continue to believe that everything
written in the Bible must be true
because it is written down.)
On
the other hand, Robin Lane Fox is an atheist, but believes that Luke and Acts
were probably written by Luke. Or at least,
by a travelling companion of Paul. Luke
is never explicitly identified as the author of Acts, so those “we” passages
could have been written by any travelling companion of Paul. Assigning the authorship to Luke specifically
appears to have been the result of a certain amount of guesswork by the early
church.
Indeed,
if Christians cling too much to the “we” passages in Acts as proof of the
apostle Luke’s authorship, it causes certain paradoxes. If the presence of the first person narrative
in Acts means proof of an eyewitness account, then what to make of the absence
of any first person narratives in all four of the Gospels? And what to make of the fact that in the book
of Acts, the apostle Luke himself is mentioned only in the third person. (The author slips into a “we” narrative, but
never does he use “I” to identify the apostle Luke when Luke is mentioned in
Acts.)
III.
Luke’s Record for Accuracy
In
his book The Unauthorized Version, Robin Lane Fox defends the possibility that a travelling companion
of Paul might have written Acts even though he got so many geographical
references wrong because humans, after all, get things wrong some times. Journalists and travelers, even eyewitnesses,
often get the details muddled when they later write up their adventures.
This
may or may not be convincing, but it’s a fair enough argument.
It
is quite another matter, however, for Lee Strobel and his friends to argue that
the author of Luke and Acts never make a single mistake ever.
“It’s extremely significant that Luke has
been established to be a scrupulously accurate historian, even in the smallest details. One prominent archaeologist carefully
examined Luke’s references to thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities, and nine
islands, finding not a single mistake.
Here’s the bottom line: “If Luke was so painstakingly accurate in his
historical reporting,” said one book on the topic, “on what logical basis may
we assume he was credulous or inaccurate in his reporting of matters that were
far more important, not only to him but to others as well?” (p. 98-99)
Okay,
I know what jumps out in that above quote is that fact that Lee Strobel is
shamelessly trying to use Luke’s supposed accuracy on geographic references as
a way to prove that his claims about the supernatural are also correct. But put that aside for now.
What’s
important here is that Lee Strobel making all sorts of claims about Luke’s
accuracy that he has no business making.
These type of statements are true only in fundamentalist Christian
circles—this is NOT the scholarly consensus on Luke’s accuracy.
Lee
Strobel and his apologist buddies are full of praise for the author of
Luke. Lee Strobel calls him “a scrupulously accurate historian, even in
the smallest details” (p.98) And “an
especially careful historian” (p.209).
And indeed, in Church circles Luke enjoys a reputation for precision and
accuracy. I heard this several times in
Sunday School growing up, and like anything you hear many times, you begin to
accept it as truth without really bothering to investigate it for
yourself. Lee Strobel and his buddies
know they are talking to a Christian audience, and so just repeat the myth
about Luke’s accuracy, and feel confident that they don’t have to explain
anything.
In
reality, however, there are several reasons to doubt Luke’s accuracy. The accounts in the Gospel of Luke and Acts
contradict not only secular history at several points, but they also contradict
the other accounts in the Bible.
There
are several points where Luke appears to contradict established history. For example, Luke records that at the time of
the birth of Christ there was a census that took place across the whole Roman Empire. We
have no records of this census, and secular historians are convinced that if
such a census had taken place, we would at least have some kind of record. Also according to Luke, everyone had to
return to their ancestral town to register for the census, but this was not the
way censuses usually worked in the Roman Empire
(then, as now, the governments were interested in where people were living now,
not where their ancestors had come from.)
Plus Judea was at the time a client kingdom
of Rome, so wouldn’t have been
directly taxed by Rome
anyway, so they wouldn’t have been included in the census.
Luke also places Jesus as being born when
Quirinius was governor of Syria,
and when Herod was King of Judea, despite the fact that according to secular
history Herod was long dead by the time Quirinius was appointed.
The
portrait of the bleeding-heart liberal Pontius Pilate produced in Luke and the other
Gospels seems inconsistent with the harsh Pontius Pilate we know from
history. The death of Herod Antipas in
Acts 12 contradicts the account we have in other historical sources. And many more examples.
Of
course, Lee Strobel and his Christian buddies live in the Christian
fundamentalist bubble, where every time there is a problem between secular
history and the Bible, they assume the problem must be with secular
history. (Some of these problems are
dealt with briefly in Lee Strobel’s book.
On the problem of the Census, he and his friends just assume the
historical records must have gotten lost somewhere.) So in their own little world, they can get
away with making these type of statements, and it’s true for them.
Okay,
fair enough, I guess. It’s a free
country, and everyone can believe what they want to believe. But once you step outside of the Christian
bubble, looking at the whole thing from a secular perspective you can’t “prove”
Luke’s accuracy by looking at how well he holds up against the historical
record. Instead you would have to prove
Luke’s accuracy in spite of how well
he holds up against the historical record.
And
then there are all the places even inside the Bible where Luke-Acts is
contradicted. Luke’s account of the
birth of Christ contradicts the Gospel of Matthew. Luke’s account of the appearance of the
resurrected Christ contradicts Matthew’s account. Luke’s accounts of Paul’s missions
contradicts Paul himself.
Christian
fundamentalists have spent great energy into coming up with lengthy
explanations to explain away all the apparent contradictions in the Bible, so
although secular scholars count these as contradictions, Lee Strobel and his
buddies can wriggle out of these as well if they want to. (They don’t go into any details in the
book. Never once inside the book does
Lee Strobel ever mention the contradictions between Luke and Matthew’s birth
narratives, or between Galatians and Acts.
All of these are cans of worms best not opened for them. But I have to assume that they relying on
these convoluted explanations in order to get away with the kind of statements
they are making about Luke’s accuracy.)
Okay,
once again, fair enough. I can’t get
them to admit that there are problems with Luke’s historical accuracy if they’re
committed to finding convoluted ways to explain away all the contradictions
they find.
But
there are two points to make.
The
first is that, once again, this type of logic doesn’t “prove”
Christianity. This type of logic is
already starting from the assumption that Christianity is true, and then
working backwards to try to explain away the difficulties.
The
second is that, even assuming you use this logic to keep from admitting there
are errors in Luke-Acts, you would still have to admit that there are sins of
omission. And this brings us to our next
point. If Luke was such a great
historian, how did he miss all this information that is in other parts of the
Bible?
IV. Luke’s
Record as a Historian
On
page 120 of this book, Lee Strobel and apologist Gregory Boyd are discussing
the differences between Christianity and several other mystery cults that arose
in the Roman Empire around the same time. Their contention is (of course) that
Christianity is qualitatively different from the mystery cults like that of
Apollonius. To prove it Gregory Boyd
cites the difference in writing style between the biography of Apollonius,
written by his follower Philostratus, and the Gospels.
“Also the way Philostratus writes is very
different than the gospels. The gospels
have a very confident eyewitness perspective, as if they had a camera
there. But Philostratus includes a lot
of tentative statements like, ‘It is reported that…’ or ‘Some say this young girl
had died; others say she was just ill’.
To his credit, he backs off and treats stories like stories.”
Okay,
Gregory Boyd and Lee Strobel are too dense to realize it, but this is precisely the problem with Luke. He wasn’t present at any of the events he
reported in his Gospel, and yet he speaks with the exact same style as the
Gospels which Church tradition claims are eyewitnesses.
The
problem is that Luke, as a historian using 3rd hand sources, really should be
making statements like, “It is reported
that…” or “Some say this, other
people say this.”
Robin
Lane Fox points out that ancient historians, even though they did
freely mix truth and legend together in a way that would appall modern
historians, would sometimes give two alternative accounts when they weren’t
sure which one was true, and then perhaps say which one they thought was the
more reliable and why. (And by the way,
having read some ancient history in my youth, I can attest to this as well.) This is how historians write.
Notice
the complete absence of any of this in Luke.
He is not writing as a historian, he’s writing as a religious propagandist. There is one account of what happened, and
one account only.
And
what makes this all the more striking is that we know from the other Gospels that there were multiple accounts of
what happened. If Luke was such a
thorough historian, how come he completely missed everything that Matthew had
to say about the birth of Christ? Either
Luke didn’t do his research thoroughly, or Luke heard it but didn’t believe it,
or the stories didn’t exist prior to Matthew’s Gospel because Matthew just made
them up by himself.
The
same question could be asked of the conflicting accounts in Matthew and Luke of
Jesus appearing to his disciples after the resurrection. Even if you accepted the convoluted logic
that fundamentalists have come up with to explain away all the contradictions,
then you still have to ask the question: if Luke was such a thorough historian,
how come he never came across any of the stories in Matthew? (How did Luke ever miss, for example, the
story reported in Matthew that all the saints rose out of their graves after
the crucifixion of Christ?)
And
then, as we have already noted in part 10, all the problems between
John and the Synoptic Gospels would also seem to cast further doubt on Luke’s
accuracy as a historian.
V.
How Careful is Luke With His Sources?
As already
mentioned in part 9, scholars have identified two of Luke’s sources:
The Gospel of Mark, and the Q source. So
we know where at least some of his information is coming from. As for information not found in the Mark and
Q, we have no idea where Luke got it from.
Lee Strobel assumes it is all coming from reliable impeccable sources,
but we really have no idea. We also have
no idea how careful Luke was with his other sources. Again, Lee Strobel assumes that Luke was
always carefully faithful to the records of eyewitnesses left behind, but we
really have no idea how careful or faithful he was to any of his sources,
except for the ones we can identify: Mark and Q. And it’s worth noting, Luke takes quite a few
liberties with his source material in the Gospel of Mark.
Both
Matthew and Luke are copying out of Mark, but it’s important to remember that
they are not always slavishly copying
from Mark. They are taking material from
Mark and altering it to suit their narrative purposes and they’re theological
points of view.
Both
Matthew and Luke “soften” material in Mark that seems to portray Jesus and the
disciples in an unsympathetic way, or leave out these passages completely. Luke omits several passages from Mark which
show Jesus exhibiting human emotions, acting in a violent way, or that might
seem to portray Jesus as a magician. For
example, in the original Mark, the disciples don’t understand Jesus because
they are stupid, but Luke alters this so that the reason the disciples don’t
understand everything is because of divine concealment.
In Jesus, Interrupted, Bart Ehrman notes that Mark and Luke seem to have conflicting theological interpretations of the meaning of the death of Christ. Mark thinks Christ died as a payment for our sins, Luke thinks that Christ died as a symbol for us to repent. Whenever Luke comes across any passages in Mark referring to Jesus's death as a payment for sins, he just deletes those passages.
In Jesus, Interrupted, Bart Ehrman notes that Mark and Luke seem to have conflicting theological interpretations of the meaning of the death of Christ. Mark thinks Christ died as a payment for our sins, Luke thinks that Christ died as a symbol for us to repent. Whenever Luke comes across any passages in Mark referring to Jesus's death as a payment for sins, he just deletes those passages.
[I’m
just skimming the surface here. Whole
books are written on all the changes that Luke makes to the original material
in Mark’s gospel. Jesus, Interrupted by Bart Ehrman is a good source on
this, but also see HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.]
If
these are the liberties Luke took with the material we know about, we have to
wonder how faithfully he transcribed the sources we don’t know about.
…That
is, of course, assuming there was a source at all. For all the material that is collaborated
nowhere else in the Bible, or in secular history, we have to at least maintain
the possibility that he might have invented some of the details himself. I know this would never cross the mind of Lee
Strobel and his friends, but it’s something a skeptic can’t help but think.
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