On The Reli­a­bil­i­ty Of Luke As A Historian

Chris­t­ian apol­o­gists and mis­sion­ar­ies believe that Luke was ​“inspired” and ​“inerrant,” even though Luke him­self does not make such a claim in his books (Gospel accord­ing to Luke and Acts). One of the most pop­u­lar argu­ments often pro­posed by the mis­sion­ar­ies as ​“evi­dence” that Luke was ​“inspired”, or at least some­one who we can blind­ly trust with­out sec­ond thoughts, is as fol­lows : he was an excel­lent his­to­ri­an who con­duct­ed a care­ful inves­ti­ga­tion dur­ing the course of com­pos­ing his books. 

It is claimed that Luke accu­rate­ly named many coun­tries, cities, that he accu­rate­ly described cer­tain events of his time, cor­rect­ly named var­i­ous offi­cials with their prop­er titles and referred to places which have only recent­ly been dis­cov­ered. There­fore, this some­how ​“proves”, accord­ing to the apol­o­gists, that Luke’s sto­ry can be trust­ed in its entire­ty and that there is no room for doubts regard­ing his claims whatsoever.

We refer to the author as ​“Luke” sim­ply for the sake of con­ve­nience and not because we believe that Luke authored the third Gospel and the Book of Acts. We might as well call the author ​“Max”, but because the third gospel is com­mon­ly known as the ​“Gospel accord­ing to Luke,” the name ​“Luke” is retained. 

Did Luke Author The Third Gospel and Acts ?

Accord­ing to crit­i­cal schol­ars, the third gospel, like all the gospels, is anony­mous­ly authored. That is to say, we real­ly do not know who authored it. Nonethe­less, even if we accept the tra­di­tion­al author­ship claim, it remains that Luke was a non-eye­wit­ness — he did not wit­ness any of the alleged events from the life of Jesus first hand. Luke was a fol­low­er of Paul. 

Accord­ing to the late Ray­mond Brown, it is pos­si­ble that Luke, a minor fig­ure who trav­elled with Paul for some time, wrote the third gospel and the book of Acts decades after Paul’s death. 

Brown writes :

We have no way of being cer­tain that he was Luke, as affirmed by 2nd-cen­tu­ry tra­di­tion ; but there is no seri­ous rea­son to pro­pose a dif­fer­ent can­di­date.¹

Sim­i­lar­ly, Lee Mar­tin McDon­ald and Stan­ley Porter accept tra­di­tion­al Lucan author­ship but not whole­heart­ed­ly. They write (p. 295): ​“We are inclined to accept Lucan author­ship, but not with­out some reser­va­tion …“²

Bart D. Ehrman, sum­ming up the stance of crit­i­cal schol­ars, writes :

Pro­to-ortho­dox Chris­tians of the sec­ond cen­tu­ry, some decades after most of the New Tes­ta­ment books had been writ­ten, claimed that their favourite Gospels had been penned by two of Jesus’ dis­ci­ples — Matthew, the tax col­lec­tor, and John, the beloved dis­ci­ple — and by two friends of the apos­tles — Mark, the sec­re­tary of Peter, and Luke, the trav­el­ling com­pan­ion of Paul. Schol­ars today, how­ev­er, find it dif­fi­cult to accept this tra­di­tion for sev­er­al reasons.

…none of these Gospels makes any such claim about itself. All four authors chose to keep their iden­ti­ties anony­mous.³

As for the dat­ing of Luke and Acts, most schol­ars place it in the 80 – 100 AD peri­od. For instance, Paula Fredrik­sen places Luke between c. 90 – 100.⁴ E. P. Sanders dates the final form of the gospels between the years 70 and 90.⁵ Theis­sen and Merz place Luke any­where between 70 C.E to ¹⁴⁰⁄₁₅₀ C.E — more in the first half of this peri­od⁶ The late Catholic schol­ar and priest, Ray­mond Brown, placed Luke in the year 85 — give or take five to ten years⁷

Luke Nev­er Claimed To Be ​“Inspired”

It should be not­ed that the author of the third gospel and Acts nowhere claims to have been ​“inspired” by a high­er source to write his accounts. Such argu­ments are list­ed by one mis­sion­ary as follows :

Inde­pen­dent archae­o­log­i­cal research has solid­i­fied the authen­tic­i­ty and the his­tor­i­cal reli­a­bil­i­ty of the New Tes­ta­ment. Some of the dis­cov­er­ies include :
• Luke refers to Lysa­nias as being the tetrar­ch of Abi­lene at the begin­ning of John the Bap­tist’s min­istry, cir­ca 27 A. D. (Luke 3:1) His­to­ri­ans accused Luke of being in error, not­ing that the only Lysa­nias known was the one killed in 36 B. C. Now, how­ev­er, an inscrip­tion found near Dam­as­cus refers to ​“Freed­man of Lysa­nias the tetrar­ch” and is dat­ed from 14 and 29 A. D.
• Paul, writ­ing to the Romans, speaks of the city trea­sur­er Eras­tus (Romans 16:23). A 1929 exca­va­tion in Corinth unearthed a pave­ment inscribed with these words : ERASTVS PRO:AED:P:STRAVIT : (“Eras­tus cura­tor of pub­lic build­ings, laid this pave­ment at his own expense.”)
• Luke men­tions a riot in the city of Eph­esus which took place in a the­atre (Acts 19:23 – 41). The the­atre has now been exca­vat­ed and has a seat­ing capac­i­ty of 25,000.
• Acts 21 records an inci­dent which broke out between Paul and cer­tain Jews from Asia. These Jews accused Paul of defil­ing the Tem­ple by allow­ing Trophimus, a Gen­tile, to enter it. In 1871, Greek inscrip­tions were found, now housed in Istan­bul which read :

  NO FOREIGNER MAY ENTER WITHIN THE BARRICADE WHICH SURROUNDS THE TEMPLE AND ENCLOSURE. ANYONE WHO IS CAUGHT DOING SO WILL HAVE HIMSELF TO THANK FOR HIS ENSUING DEATH.

• Luke address­es Gal­lio with the title Pro­con­sul (Acts 18:12). A Del­phi inscrip­tion ver­i­fies this when it states, ​“As Lucius Junius Gal­lio, my friend, and the Pro­con­sul of Achaia …”
• Luke calls Pub­li­cus, the chief man of Mal­ta, ​“First man of the Island.” (Acts 28:7) Inscrip­tions now found do con­firm Pub­li­cus as the ​“First man”. (Josh McDow­ell, The Best of Josh Mcdow­ell : A Ready Defense, pp. 110 – 111)

He goes on to present more sim­i­lar cita­tions and arguments :

First of all, we should note that there is noth­ing in the above which would indi­cate that Luke was ​“inspired” or ​“inerrant”, and that every­thing with­in his books can be trust­ed blind­ly. There is noth­ing here which would show that Luke was some­how ​“spe­cial”. Far from being remark­able, the above are very ordi­nary exam­ples of Luke’s alleged accu­ra­cies. There is no rea­son to sup­pose that unless a per­son is inerrant or inspired, he or she can­not get such basic ele­men­tary facts straight. Such type of ordi­nary accu­ra­cies relat­ing to cer­tain fac­tu­al mat­ters is also to be observed in fic­tion­al books, which name, for instance, cities cor­rect­ly, etc.

So what if Luke was able to name the var­i­ous cities in exis­tence in his time, accu­rate­ly name offi­cials of his time with their cor­rect titles, name cer­tain coun­tries of his time, men­tion a the­atre he knew about which has recent­ly been dis­cov­ered and accu­rate­ly men­tion cer­tain reli­gious rites and prac­tices of the time ? There is noth­ing ​“extra­or­di­nary“about this. This only shows that Luke was a per­son who had a basic edu­ca­tion and was famil­iar with his surroundings. 

If I am not con­sid­ered inspired and inerrant — despite accu­rate­ly nam­ing fifty coun­tries in exis­tence today, accu­rate­ly nam­ing var­i­ous world cities, accu­rate­ly nam­ing heads of state and var­i­ous oth­er offi­cials togeth­er with their cor­rect titles and ranks, accu­rate­ly nam­ing a few the­atres around Lon­don togeth­er with a few addi­tion­al tourist attrac­tion sites and accu­rate­ly describ­ing the work­ings and prac­tices of the local mosques and church­es — then why must Luke be con­sid­ered inerrant and inspired ? These are utter­ly ordi­nary mat­ters and such type of accu­ra­cies do not in any­way sug­gest that the per­son or book is ​“extra­or­di­nary”, ​“spe­cial”, or in any way heav­en­ly ​“inspired”.

Sec­ond­ly, besides the above list­ed so-called won­der­ful ​“accu­ra­cies”, there are also grave inac­cu­ra­cies with­in Luke’s gospel. The fol­low­ing are some inac­cu­ra­cies and dis­crep­an­cies with­in Luke’s Gospel and Acts over which there is wide­spread agree­ment among schol­ars, includ­ing devout Chris­t­ian scholars :

• Luke forged a geneal­o­gy for Jesus^(P) even though he^(P) had no father. The geneal­o­gy has no his­tor­i­cal stand­ing. Worse, his geneal­o­gy con­tra­dicts the one forged by Matthew.
• Luke pro­vides an infan­cy nar­ra­tive which is irrec­on­cil­able with the infan­cy nar­ra­tive pro­vid­ed by Matthew.
• Luke men­tions a cen­sus under Quirnius dur­ing the birth of Jesus^(P) which is almost uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized as a major his­tor­i­cal blun­der on Luke’s part.

In addi­tion to the dif­fi­cul­ties raised by a detailed com­par­i­son of the two birth nar­ra­tives found in the New Tes­ta­ment, seri­ous his­tor­i­cal prob­lems are raised by the famil­iar sto­ries found in Luke alone.⁸ In Acts, Luke has Gamaliel refer­ring to a revolt by Theudas which in fact took place years lat­er after his speech. Again, there is wide­spread agree­ment among Chris­t­ian schol­ars that Luke was in error on this occasion.

There is also gen­er­al agree­ment among New Tes­ta­ment schol­ars that the speech­es found in Acts are either the cre­ations or adap­tions of Luke.⁹

Fur­ther­more, Luke’s sto­ry in Acts con­tra­dicts at a num­ber of points with the infor­ma­tion with­in the authen­tic Pauline epis­tles, some­thing also gen­er­al­ly acknowl­edged by schol­ars. Luke was thus an errant writer who made mis­takes and inac­cu­ra­cies in his writ­ings.¹⁰

How Luke Copied From Mark

Mov­ing on, ​“inspired“Luke lift­ed 50% of his gospel from Mark — a sec­ondary source authored by a non-eye­wit­ness. Why would Luke do this if we are to sup­pose that he was accu­rate­ly research­ing the issues and shift­ing through reli­able first-hand sources ? We know from Luke’s open­ing words that he did not have high regard for the pre­vi­ous nar­ra­tives. Evan­gel­i­cal schol­ar Don­ald Guthrie writes :

Luke’s pref­ace is illu­mi­nat­ing in regard to his own approach to his task. He claims to have made a com­pre­hen­sive and accu­rate sur­vey over a con­sid­er­able peri­od, which throws a good deal of light on his seri­ous­ness of pur­pose. More­over, Luke admits that oth­ers had pre­vi­ous­ly attempt­ed the same task, but his words imply that he found them unsat­is­fac­to­ry…¹¹

W.G. Küm­mel, in his clas­si­cal intro­duc­tion to the New Tes­ta­ment writes :

With his his­tor­i­cal work Lk joins their ranks [ranks of his pre­de­ces­sors who com­posed gospel nar­ra­tives], though he was not him­self a wit­ness from the begin­ning, because he feels the works of his pre­de­ces­sors to be in some way inad­e­quate.¹²

Ray­mond Brown, on the oth­er hand, says :

…nei­ther evan­ge­list [Matthew and Luke] liked Mark­s’s redun­dan­cies, awk­ward Greek expres­sions, uncom­pli­men­ta­ry pre­sen­ta­tion of the dis­ci­ples and Mary, and embar­rass­ing state­ments about Jesus. When using Mark, both expand­ed the Markan accounts in the light of post-res­ur­rec­tion­al faith.¹³

Yet Luke, our so-called ​“reli­able” his­to­ri­an, copies no less than 50% of his book from Mark, regard­ed as an unsat­is­fac­to­ry source ! 

Ray­mond Brown men­tions some of the ways on how Luke had used Mark :

• Luke improves on Mark’s Greek, bet­ter­ing the gram­mar, syn­tax, and vocab­u­lary, e.g., in 4:1, 31, 38 and pas­sim by omit­ting Mark’s overused ​“imme­di­ate­ly”; in 20:22 by chang­ing a Latin­ism like ken­sos (=cen­sus) from Mark 12:14 ; in 20:23 by sub­sti­tut­ing the more exact ​“crafti­ness, treach­ery” for the ​“hypocrisy” of Mark 12:15.
• Luke states at the begin­ning his inten­tion to write care­ful­ly and in an order­ly man­ner (1:3); accord­ing­ly he rearranges Mar­can sequence to accom­plish that goal, e.g., Jesus’ rejec­tion at Nazareth is put at the open­ing of the Galilean min­istry rather than after some time had elapsed (Luke 4:16 – 30 vs. Mark 6:1 – 6) in order to explain why his Galilean min­istry was cen­tred at Caper­naum ; the heal­ing of Simon’s moth­er-in-law is placed before the call of Simon and com­pan­ions (4:38 – 5:11 vs. Mark 1:16 – 31) in order to make more log­i­cal Simon’s will­ing­ness to fol­low Jesus ; Peter’s denials of Jesus are put before the San­hedrin tri­al in pref­er­ence to Mark’s com­pli­cat­ed inter­weav­ing of the two. At times Luke’s order­li­ness is reflect­ed in avoid­ing Mar­can dou­blets (Luke does not report the sec­ond mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of loaves) where­as Matt likes to dou­ble fea­tures and per­sons. Yet Luke has a dou­ble send­ing out of the apostles/​disciples (9:1 – 2 ; 10:1).
• Because of changes made in mate­r­i­al received from Mark, Luke occa­sion­al­ly cre­ates incon­sis­ten­cies, e.g., although in Luke 5:30 the part­ners in the con­ver­sa­tion are ​“the Phar­isees and their scribes,” 5:33 speaks of ​“the dis­ci­ples of the Phar­isees,” as if the Phar­isees were not present ; although in 18:32 – 33 Luke takes over from Mark the pre­dic­tion that Jesus will be mocked, scourged, and spit on by the Gen­tiles, Luke (unlike Mark 15:16 – 20) nev­er ful­fills that pre­dic­tion ; Luke has changed the Mar­can order of the denials of Peter and the Jew­ish mock­ery of Jesus but for­got­ten to insert the prop­er name of Jesus in the new sequence, so that at first blush Luke 22:63, in hav­ing ​“him” mocked and beat­en, seems to refer to Peter, not Jesus. See also n. 67 above.
• Luke, even more than Matt, elim­i­nates or changes pas­sages in Mark unfa­vor­able to those whose sub­se­quent career makes them wor­thy of respect, e.g., Luke omits Mark 3:21,33,34 and (in 4:24) changes Mark 6:4 in order to avoid ref­er­ences detri­men­tal to Jesus’ fam­i­ly ; Luke omits Mark 8:22 – 26 which dra­ma­tizes the slow­ness of the dis­ci­ples to see, and Mark 8:33 where Jesus calls Peter ​“Satan”; in the pas­sion Luke omits the pre­dict­ed fail­ure of the dis­ci­ples, Jesus’ find­ing them asleep three times, and their flight as report­ed in Mark 14:27,40 – 41,51 – 52.
• Reflect­ing Chris­to­log­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ties, Luke is more rev­er­en­tial about Jesus and avoids pas­sages that might make him seem emo­tion­al, harsh, or weak, e.g., Luke elim­i­nates : Mark 1:41,43 where Jesus is moved with pity or is stern ; Mark 4:39 where Jesus speaks direct­ly to the sea ; Mark 10:14a where Jesus is indig­nant ; Mark 11:15b where Jesus over­turns the tables of the mon­ey chang­ers ; Mark 11:20 – 25 where Jesus curs­es a fig tree ; Mark 13:32 where Jesus says that the Son does not know the day or the hour ; Mark 14:33 – 34 where Jesus is trou­bled and his soul is sor­row­ful unto death ; Mark 15:34 where Jesus speaks of God for­sak­ing him.
• Luke stress­es detach­ment from pos­ses­sions, not only in his spe­cial mate­r­i­al (L), as we shall see below, but also in changes he makes in Mark, e.g., fol­low­ers of the Lucan Jesus leave every­thing (5:11,28), and the Twelve are for­bid­den to take even a staff (9:3).
• Luke elim­i­nates Mark’s tran­scribed Ara­ma­ic names and words (even some that Matt includes) pre­sum­ably because they were not mean­ing­ful to the intend­ed audi­ence, e.g., an omis­sion of Boan­erges, Geth­se­mane, Gol­go­tha, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.
• Luke may make Mar­can infor­ma­tion more pre­cise, pre­sum­ably for bet­ter sto­ry flow, greater effect, or clar­i­ty, e.g., Luke 6:6 spec­i­fies that the next scene (Mark 3:1 : ​“again”) took place ​“on anoth­er Sab­bath”; Luke 6:6 spec­i­fies ​“the right hand” and 22:50 ​“the right ear”; Luke 21:20 clar­i­fies or sub­sti­tutes for Mark’s ​“abom­i­na­tion of des­o­la­tion”.¹⁴

The impor­tant point to note here is that Luke has used Mark and made a num­ber of changes to its con­tents. New Tes­ta­ment schol­ars com­pare Luke and Mark to see how Luke is using his source (Mark) and adapt­ing it. Mark is obvi­ous­ly not the only source employed by Luke, but since we know that he has altered the Markan sto­ries in a vari­ety of ways, it is only log­i­cal and rea­son­able to con­clude that Luke must have done the same with the oth­er sources at his dis­pos­al — he must have altered them as well to suit his agen­da and pre­sup­po­si­tions. The fact that Luke accu­rate­ly men­tions cer­tain ordi­nary details, such as nam­ing cities cor­rect­ly etc., does not fol­low that his sto­ry in its entire­ty can be trust­ed blindly. 

Thus, the state­ment that ​“hon­est scep­tics are now forced to agree that the Bible is his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate and reli­able” is noth­ing more than non­sense. Crit­i­cal schol­ars cer­tain­ly do not regard Luke, or any book of the Bible, in its entire­ty to be ​“his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate and reli­able” just because cer­tain ordi­nary details are record­ed accu­rate­ly with­in them.

Luke As A His­to­ri­an : Final Observations

Although we have not gone into detail regard­ing the above-men­tioned issues, the aim was to sim­ply high­light here some of the major prob­lems with­in Luke’s writ­ings over which we have a schol­ar­ly con­sen­sus. Con­trary to Ram­sey’s con­clu­sion (and bear in mind that he was an apol­o­gist and not a bal­anced his­to­ri­an) is the fact is that there is noth­ing ​“super”, ​“extra­or­di­nary” or ​“spe­cial” about Luke’s writ­ings, even if we buy all of Ram­sey’s claims regard­ing Luke’s alleged accu­ra­cy on cer­tain issues. 

More­over, Luke also makes mis­takes, some exam­ples pro­vid­ed above. Of course, apol­o­gists will chal­lenge all of them but note that these are accept­ed as such and acknowl­edged by main­stream scholarship.

Instead, we come across a fair­ly ordi­nary writer who utilis­es sources at his dis­pos­al, mak­ing a vari­ety of changes to them to suit his the­o­log­i­cal agen­da and one who makes errors at times and also gets cer­tain facts right. None of the exam­ples pre­sent­ed by these apol­o­gists sug­gests that the ​“Bible” (which is a col­lec­tion of many indi­vid­ual books and let­ters by authors of vary­ing degrees of edu­ca­tion and lit­er­a­cy) is ​“his­tor­i­cal­ly reli­able” as a whole.

Mod­ern New Tes­ta­ment schol­ars do not entire­ly endorse Ram­sey’s claims per­tain­ing to Luke’ abil­i­ties as a his­to­ri­an and con­sid­er him to have exag­ger­at­ed his case. To be more pre­cise, the stud­ies by Ram­sey and oth­ers did at least estab­lish that Acts was not a com­plete fic­tion authored in the mid-late sec­ond cen­tu­ry peri­od. The author is like­ly to be one writ­ing some­time in the late first cen­tu­ry, some­one who was edu­cat­ed and well-trav­elled, and was using some tra­di­tions and sources at his dis­pos­al. There is no doubt that he does present accu­rate details, yet it is also a fact that his account is selec­tive, roman­ti­cised at times and the­o­log­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. We know that the author was not just relat­ing bare inci­dents and events with­out changes but was adapt­ing them to suit his purposes. 

Hence his work (the gospel and Acts) needs to be used care­ful­ly and crit­i­cal­ly by the historians.

The late Ray­mond Brown made a remark that Luke would have been a fit­ting can­di­date for mem­ber­ship in the broth­er­hood of Hel­lenis­tic his­to­ri­ans, but he would nev­er be made the pres­i­dent of the soci­ety.¹⁵ Howard Mar­shall, on the oth­er hand, a major con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal schol­ar of our times who is quite char­i­ta­ble towards Acts, admits that :

“…he [Ram­sey] was capa­ble of mak­ing asser­tions about Luke’s his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy which went beyond what could be shown by the avail­able evi­dence.“¹⁶

Mar­shall talks about the ​“essen­tial” reli­a­bil­i­ty of Acts regard­ing his­tor­i­cal mat­ters and not its com­plete reli­a­bil­i­ty. Sher­win-White, for instance, believes that ​“Luke makes mis­takes, but the main thrust of his book is to demon­strate that for the most part, Luke por­trays the first-cen­tu­ry Roman scene accu­rate­ly.“¹⁷

Do note that this does not mean that we can accept all of Luke’ sto­ries blind­ly. So, while many mod­ern schol­ars do not out­right dis­miss Acts and con­sid­er it to be more accu­rate than was pre­vi­ous­ly thought, it is nonethe­less rec­og­nized that its author is not with­out mis­takes and does colour sources at his dis­pos­al for the­o­log­i­cal and apolo­getic rea­sons. This means that not every­thing with­in his books is his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate, as alleged by Chris­t­ian missionaries.

1. Ray­mond E. Brown, S.S, An Intro­duc­tion To The New Tes­ta­ment (The Anchor Bible Ref­er­ence Library), 1997, Dou­ble­day, p. 326[↩]
2. See Lee Mar­tin McDon­ald, Stan­ley E. Porter, Ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty And Its Sacred Lit­er­a­ture, 2000, Hen­drick­son Pub­lish­ers. For a more crit­i­cal assess­ment, see Gerd Theis­sen and Annette Merz, who dis­miss the tra­di­tion­al author­ship claims about the gospels in their The His­tor­i­cal Jesus : A Com­pre­hen­sive Guide, 1998, SCM Press Ltd. See also W. G. Küm­mel, Intro­duc­tion To The New Tes­ta­ment, 1975, Revised Edi­tion, SCM Press Ltd. Hel­mut Koester also dis­cuss­es gospel author­ships in his Ancient Chris­t­ian Gospels : Their His­to­ry and Devel­op­ment, 1990, Trin­i­ty Press Inter­na­tion­al. Also Vin­cent P. Bran­ick, Under­stand­ing the New Tes­ta­ment and its Mes­sage : An Intro­duc­tion, 1998, Paulist Press[↩]
3. Bart D. Ehrman, The New Tes­ta­ment : A His­tor­i­cal Intro­duc­tion to the Ear­ly Chris­t­ian Writ­ings, 2000, Sec­ond Edi­tion, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, p. 52. For a defense of tra­di­tion­al author­ship claims, see the fol­low­ing books by evan­gel­i­cal schol­ars : Don­ald Guthrie, New Tes­ta­ment Intro­duc­tion (Mas­ter Ref­er­ence Col­lec­tion), Revised Edi­tion, 1990, Inter­Var­si­ty Press ; D. A. Car­son, Dou­glas J. Moo, Dr. Leon Mor­ris, An Intro­duc­tion to the New Tes­ta­ment, 1992, Zon­der­van Pub­lish­ing House.[↩]
4. See Paula Fredrik­sen, From Jesus To Christ : The Ori­gins of the New Tes­ta­ment Images of Christ, Sec­ond Edi­tion, 2000, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press, New Haven and Lon­don, pp. 3 – 4, 19.[↩]
5. See E. P. Sanders, The His­tor­i­cal Fig­ure Of Jesus, 1993, Pen­guin Books, p. 60.[↩]
6. Gerd Theis­sen, Annette Merz, The His­tor­i­cal Jesus : A Com­pre­hen­sive Guide , 1998, SCM Press Ltd. p. 32[↩]
7. Ray­mond E. Brown, S.S, An Intro­duc­tion To The New Tes­ta­ment (The Anchor Bible Ref­er­ence Library), 1997, Dou­ble­day, p. 247. Sim­i­lar dates are also pro­posed in the fol­low­ing sources : Gerd Lude­mann, Jesus After Two Thou­sand Years : What He Real­ly Said and Did, 2001, Prometheus Books ; Gra­ham N. Stan­ton, The Gospels and Jesus, Sec­ond Edi­tion, 2002, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press ; James L. Mays (Gen­er­al Edi­tor), The Harper­Collins Bible Com­men­tary, 2000, Harper­San­Fran­cis­co ; Don­ald Senior, Jesus : A Gospel Por­trait, New and Revised Edi­tion, 1992, Paulist Press ; W. G. Küm­mel, Intro­duc­tion To The New Tes­ta­ment, 17th Revised edi­tion, 1975, SCM Press Ltd ; Vin­cent P. Bran­ick, Under­stand­ing the New Tes­ta­ment and Its Mes­sage : An Intro­duc­tion, 1998, Paulist Press ; John P. Meier, A Mar­gin­al Jew : Rethink­ing the His­tor­i­cal Jesus : The Roots of the Prob­lem and the Per­son, Vol. 1, 1991, 1st edi­tion, The Anchor Bible Ref­er­ence Library, Dou­ble­day ; Also Geza Ver­mes, The Authen­tic Gospel Of Jesus, 2004, Pen­guin Books. These types of dates are accept­ed by the vast major­i­ty of New Tes­ta­ment schol­ars and the ref­er­ences pro­vid­ed above are only a few exam­ples. For much ear­li­er dates, see the afore­men­tioned intro­duc­tions by Don­ald Guthrie and Car­son. See also John A. T. Robin­son, Redat­ing the New Tes­ta­ment, 2000, Wipf & Stock Pub­lish­ers.[↩]
8. Bart D. Ehrman, The New Tes­ta­ment : A His­tor­i­cal Intro­duc­tion to the Ear­ly Chris­t­ian Writ­ings, 2000, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, p. 109[↩]
9. Mar­shall believes that most of the speech­es in Acts are based on tra­di­tion­al mate­r­i­al, but he adds that they were nev­er meant to be ver­ba­tim reports and that Luke has pro­vid­ed us with noth­ing more than brief sum­maries. Hence he leaves room for at least some Lucan cre­ativ­i­ty [I. Howard Mar­shall, Acts (The Tyn­dale New Tes­ta­ment Com­men­taries), 1980, Inter-Var­si­ty Press, WM. B. Eerd­mans Pub­lish­ing Co, p. 41]. More­over, he acknowl­edges that Luke could not have known what Fes­tus and Agrip­pa said to each oth­er in their pri­vate apart­ments (25:13 – 22 ; 26:30 – 32) nor could the Chris­tians have learnt what exact­ly was said by the mem­bers of the San­hedrin in closed ses­sions (4:15 – 17 ; 5:34 – 40). Nonethe­less, he spec­u­lates that per­haps Luke could have expressed the things that the pub­lic behav­iour of rulers indi­cat­ed that they had prob­a­bly said in pri­vate (so some inven­tion of speech by Luke did take place?) and that it is pos­si­ble that some sym­pa­thiz­er from the San­hedrin may have giv­en Chris­tians the gist of the con­ver­sa­tion (ibid.).[↩]
10. Mar­shall admits that there are points of ten­sion between Luke’s por­trait of Paul and his own writ­ing, but insists that they are not so sub­stan­tial so as to make Acts entire­ly unhis­tor­i­cal (ibid.)[↩]
11. Don­ald Guthrie, B.D., M. Th., New Tes­ta­ment Intro­duc­tion. The Gospels and Acts, 1966, Inter-Var­si­ty Press, p. 87[↩]
12. W. G. Küm­mel, Intro­duc­tion To The New Tes­ta­ment, 17^th Revised edi­tion, 1975, SCM Press Ltd, p. 129[↩]
13. Ray­mond E. Brown, S.S, An Intro­duc­tion To The New Tes­ta­ment, 1997, (The Anchor Bible Ref­er­ence Library, Dou­ble­day, p. 115[↩]
14. Ray­mond E. Brown, S.S, An Intro­duc­tion To The New Tes­ta­ment, 1997, The Anchor Bible Ref­er­ence Library, Dou­ble­day, pp. 263 – 265[↩]
15. Ray­mond E. Brown, S.S, An Intro­duc­tion To The New Tes­ta­ment, 1997, The Anchor Bible Ref­er­ence Library, Dou­ble­day, p. 322.[↩]
16. I. Howard Mar­shall, Acts (The Tyn­dale New Tes­ta­ment Com­men­taries), 1980, Inter-Var­si­ty Press, WM. B. Eerd­mans Pub­lish­ing Co, p. 34[↩]
17. I. Howard Mar­shall, Acts (The Tyn­dale New Tes­ta­ment Com­men­taries), 1980, Inter-Var­si­ty Press, WM. B. Eerd­mans Pub­lish­ing Co, pp. 36 – 37[↩]