Need some help with Luke

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Hey. I’m doing some Catholic apologetics work on rational response squad. I’m doing well, in my humble opinion:), but I could use some help with the Gospel of Luke. I know from archeological findings, and extra-biblical sources that the Gospel of Luke, Acts, and Luke himself were all historically accurate.

Anyways…

I got this response to my statement about Luke being a reliable historian.

"1-One wonders where Luke came up with his first chapter. Interviews? John the baptist left a journal? Mary & Elizabeth talked to him? But wait, Luke wrote this in about 70 CE and these events were 9 months before the birth of Jesus. Being about 70 to 75 years earlier. Luke indicates Elizabeth was very old as was Zechariah so they were most likely dead by the time Luke wrote this as was John the baptist who was executed about 40 years before Luke wrote his story. So we immediately see that Luke did not have any 1st hand facts from the principals.

Next, what about Mary and Joe. Joe was supposedly not as young as Mary and he’s not discussed after Jesus is about 12, so we can pretty much conclude he was dead as well, though Joe didn’t 1st hand witness any of this any way. So that’s leaves Mary, who was supposedly fairly young, so how about she was 14 when she got pregnant. The date of birth was from about 4 BCE to 0 depending. We’ll use 0 CE. In 70 CE, she’s be about 84 then. Though we have nothing after the death of Jesus to substantiate she lived that long. She may have had other children, though that goes against Catholic understanding. Though Jesus has brothers, so perhaps they were Joe’s kids. Once Jesus left the center stage, there was nothing left for her, so she’s out of the story. Funny that.

**Luke 2 then proceeds to claim that Caesar sent out a decree that all should go to their home cities of their ancestors to be taxed. Though since Herod administered the province this did not happen while he was alive. The first mention of anything approaching a census and tax is in 6 CE by Cyrenius or Quirinius. Under Herod, Judea was a client kingdom and was not required to perform a census to determine taxes under Roman Law. During the census performed in 6 CE, Josephus discusses a revolt. SO Luke is wrong one way on the other. Either Herod was already dead and Jesus was born in 6 CE or Jesus was born prior to 4 BCE when Herod was alive and there was no census.

In Luke 2:39, we have a contradiction to Matthew 2:13 where they flee to Egypt. In Luke they go home to Nazareth.
Speaking of Nazareth, when did Jews start to build villages over their cemeteries?

Luke has other inconsistent rendering throughout his account all the way through, such as Pilate sends Jesus to Herod for entertainment. There are multiple angels in the tomb on Resurrection day, the women that go to the tomb are different then other accounts, Peter runs to the tomb, and even the appearance to the 11 disciples at the end.

In Acts, Luke has consistency problem with Paul, especially in regards to when and why the Romans take Paul into protective custody or not in Jerusalem. Then there is the inconsistent story of how he converted or rather, saw the true way and what occurs then and after even with the writing of Paul.
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So all in all, I’d not give Luke a lot of credit for accuracy. He did seem to know where Jerusalem and Judea were though. Far from being a great historian he errors and is inconsistent with the other Gospel stories as well. You wonder if he just took a fast trip through the area one time."

I know Luke interviewed, for lack of a better term, Mary the Holy Mother of God, and that’s how he learned about Jesus in the temple.

I could really use some help with each of the bolded areas. I know I’ve read about historical accounts of the census, but I cannot remember where I read about it. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.
 
Hey. I’m doing some Catholic apologetics work on rational response squad. I’m doing well, in my humble opinion:), but I could use some help with the Gospel of Luke.
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Regardless of your opinion of Luke’s status as a historian, the church does not teach that his gospel (or any of the bible) have as a primary purpose the teaching of history. You need to read the Instruction on the Historical Truth of the Gospels by the Pontifical Biblical Commission and Pope Paul VI (available online). Also read the commentary by Joseph A. Fitzmyer.
I know from archeological findings, and extra-biblical sources that the Gospel of Luke, Acts, and Luke himself were all historically accurate.
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It would be nice to know this but it is not church teaching, it is not generally supported by catholic scripture scholars, and I am not aware of any independent evidence for it. You can, however, believe it as a matter of faith.
 
If you can get your hands on a copy of the new Ignatius Study Bible NT there is an excellent article about the whole census/rulers/dating thing.
 
Any idea what is meant about the consistency problem with Paul? I’m not getting that in my readings, but maybe I’m just automatically understanding it. Thank you for the help. I’ll probably need more.
 
Cliff_Jumper said:
Any idea what is meant about the consistency problem with Paul? I’m not getting that in my readings, but maybe I’m just automatically understanding it. Thank you for the help. I’ll probably need more.
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Just the way he may have told his story…

just like when we tell our story…some things are condensed …other details added etc…

Read Jimmy’s article
 
Another thought - your correspondant seems to think that because Luke was written around 70 (which is probably accurate) that all of his sources have to have been living at that time - which is just silly. Obviously Luke would have drawn on a lifetime’s worth of experiences - and possibly, although not necessarily, notes. So the fact that Our Lady had been gone for twenty years or so does not mean that Luke never had a chance to talk with her EVER. In point of fact he (and Paul) were probably guests in John’s house in Ephesus several times.

The “inconsistent timeline” arguments are old hat and prove nothing. The fact that Matthew and Luke preserve different infancy narratives mean just that - they preserved different infancy narratives. The fact that some people are mentioned in one account and not in another doesn’t mean one is “wrong” (or that both are).

Hasn’t this person ever been to a family gathering and listened to an assortment of older relatives argue about the order of events in their shared childhoods? It doesn’t mean the events didn’t happen, just that different people experienced and remember them differently. And the more exciting or intense the experience was, the more likely there are to be variant descriptions of it. In fact a professional investigator gets very suspicious when everyone’s story matches precisely.

The gospel writers (like the OT writers) weren’t attempting to write a chronology. They were preserving people’s recollections, and presenting them in a particular way to persuade/direct a particular group of listeners. And the bishops who considered the books later in determining the canon were similarly not concerned with what we in our modern arrogance think is important. They were looking for what was Apostolic.
 
NHInsider may I use some of this in my argument? Very good.
 
I cannot attack the main questions in this thread head on.

A modern, contemporary scripture scholar, Mary Healy, points out that most of the best scripture studies are in Latin at the Vatican. It would have been great motivation for me to know that, in the 1960’s, when I was struggling with Catholic high school Latin. I would have at least known that there were a lot of good reasons for studying it.

For almost two years, I have been studying Jewish commentaries on the Torah. These are based on multidisciplinary studies of the ancient texts. My point is that they find a lot of difficulties in the Hebrew scriptures.

If you just attentively read the book of Numbers, you would find two conflicting accounts of when the Levites were supposed to begin their service to the wilderness “temple.” In one place, it says that the service should begin when they reach the age of thirty, and in another place, twenty-five.

These are whimsically referred to as Gordian knots, so tight that they are almost impossible to unravel. What they try to do is to rationalize what they have to deal with. In this case, some ancient scholars came up with a plausible explanation that they began what you might call an apprenticeship when they were twenty-five, and assumed full resonsibility when they turned thirty. So, in other words, that is an explanation which is outside of scripture.

The difficulties of the synoptic gospels have been well documented.

The most scholarly views in the Jewish community is that many inconsistencies in the Old Testament were smoothed over by later “redactors” – editors. And, that is done by comparing all the existing versions of the ancient documents. In the Qumran Dead Sea scrolls, the problem was resolved by eliminating the reference to “thirty” and substituting “twenty-five” in its place.

The absence of this “redaction” in New Testament writings certainly proves one thing – that the gospels were not manicured to make them consistent according to our modern sensibility. To me, this makes them more credible, inconsistencies or not.

It NOT like the case of the book of Mormon or the Qu’ran, which, as I understand it, have been changed by later redactors to suit their respective purposes.
 
First of all, there is no proof whatsoever that Luke was written after 70 AD. That is a theory of liberal bible “scholars”, based on assuming Luke copied from Mark - and that Luke falsified the prophecy of the destruction of the temple.by writing it after the event.

In fact the internal evidence shows Luke was probably written in he early 60s AD. How? Luke was written before Acts, and Acts finishes abruptly in the mid 60s, without chronicling Paul’s martyrdom. Since if Luke knew of Paul’s martyrdom, he would have certainly included it, or reference to it in Acts, then it is clear that Acts was written BEFORE 66 AD and Luke before that.

This makes 1st person interviews far more likely.

On such things as censuses. remember, we DO NOT have all the information, now, 2,000 years later. Some people pretend they know of every census that occurred in Roman times. Actually they do not. We don’t possess more than a tiny fraction of the records and paperwork that existed. But some people declare - “There is no paperwork surviving of Census X, therefore census X didn’t happen.” Poor scholarship.

With omitted events - that’s what always happens in historical accounts. One account might say “Winston Churchill went to Public school, entered politics, and became Home Secretary, and 1st Lord of the Admiralty.” This would totally miss out his time as a soldier in the Boer War in South Africa. This doesn’t mean thatt account (or other accounts mentioning the war) are false. It just means that the Boer War wasn’t important to that particular writer.
 
Cliff_Jumper said:
Any idea what is meant about the consistency problem with Paul? I’m not getting that in my readings, but maybe I’m just automatically understanding it. Thank you for the help. I’ll probably need more.
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Paul was writing letters “on the spot” – in the time, a response to a particular situation, etc.

Luke wrote decades later, after consulting many sources etc. (as he notes) and wove his sources into the history/narrative he wanted to present.
 
Thank you NHInsider.

Vince1022 thank you too. That’s the best that I can think of when he is referring to consistency problems.
 
Axion- you are correct sir.

And there is more to it than that. Luke used many sources, and some were better than others- obviously. It is understandable that inconsistencies can develop. For instance, the story about Jesus in the Temple as a Child teaching the elders is an obvious “borrow” from Josephus. No dispute there. Because of this, many “scholars” put Luke’s writing his gospel after Josephus’ autobiography was published around A.D 100.

But if you look at history close enough, there is a dimension that is missed. In fact, Luke of Macedon, Paul the Apostle, the Apostle Peter, and the historian Flavius Josephus himself were in Rome at the same time in A.D. 63. Josephus probably related that story about his prodigious childhood to several people during the course of his stay in Rome to impress them. Somehow, the story got garbled and Luke took it to be about Jesus, and incorporated it in his Gospel. Both Luke and Paul (and Peter) died in the persecutions in late A.D. 64. , which is a year after the narrative in Acts ends.

But it amazes me that Christians are so defensive about Luke. He certainly didn’t intend to write down inaccuracies, but, hey, his heart was in the right place, and this was the mid-first century A.D. after all.

Hagan has a couple of superb books out on the subject. “Year of the Passover” and “Fires of Rome”. These are the clearest and most comprehensive works I have read on the subject of the ancient world as it directly relates to Christianity and the early Christian writings. These are secular works, but IMO they are pro-Christian, and not anti-Christian.
 
I don’t think that the story of Jesus in the temple was a mix up.
 
👋 from left field.

What happened to ‘St. Luke wrote his gospel based on the preaching of St. Paul’?
 
steve53 said:
But if you look at history close enough, there is a dimension that is missed.
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Missed by whom?
In fact, Luke of Macedon, Paul the Apostle, the Apostle Peter, and the historian Flavius Josephus himself were in Rome at the same time in A.D. 63. Josephus probably related that story about his prodigious childhood to several people during the course of his stay in Rome to impress them. Somehow, the story got garbled and Luke took it to be about Jesus, and incorporated it in his Gospel. Both Luke and Paul (and Peter) died in the persecutions in late A.D. 64. , which is a year after the narrative in Acts ends.
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I don’t know what your “facts” are based upon, but I know of no credible source that suggests Luke died in the same era as Paul and Peter. (In fact, I know of no source, credible or otherwise, that suggests Luke died in 64 - but I cannot claim to have read everything. . . )
Hagan has a couple of superb books out on the subject. “Year of the Passover” and “Fires of Rome”. These are the clearest and most comprehensive works I have read on the subject of the ancient world as it directly relates to Christianity and the early Christian writings. These are secular works, but IMO they are pro-Christian, and not anti-Christian.
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As near as I can tell (and I’ve been hunting), John Hagan is a self-published novelist, not a historian.
 
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