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The Historical Reliability of the Writings of Luke the Historian


 

Recently someone told me, "History is history". I think he probably meant that history is just facts, not conjecture. It struck me because there are skeptics of history who think we can know almost nothing about the past. Apparently this person was not one of those. Since it was not the main thread of our discussion I took it at face value. But if this is even a partly true statement, it is as true of Christianity as much as any other subject of history. 

by Scott Cherry


This is an article I wrote originally as the introduction for a series of posts for a Facebook group called "The Bridge". The series is called "The History of Christianity".  Its focus is exclusively on the formative years of Christianity and its small number of primary founders in the 1st century only.  Every history relies on sources, and Christianity is no exception.  My source is the historian Luke. First I will introduce Luke, and next I will introduce a modern historian, Sir William Ramsay, to tell us more about Luke and the credibility of Luke's writings.         

  • 3 June 2016
  • Author: Scott Cherry
  • Number of views: 11432
  • Comments: 1

What Every Muslim Needs to Know About How We Got the New Testament (Injeel), part 4

External and Internal Evidence for the Preservation of the New Testament
The internal evidence of the NT shows an immediate expectation and acceptance of the writings of the apostles. From the Church Fathers, we can see that the sub-corpus of the 4 gospels and the book of Acts were accepted extremely early and exclusively. The letters of Paul were copied, transmitted, and read across the entire population of Christians including his personal letters and the sub-corpus of Paul’s 13 letters were assembled together. Even heretical and gnostic writings confirm the early existence of the gospels in that it is the gospels that they mimic and never the other way around.

What Every Muslim Needs to Know About How We Got the New Testament (Injeel), part 3

The New Testament did not drop out of heaven. It was authored and published in the same manner as any other book. 2 Pet 1:21 describes how men were carried along by the Holy Spirit like a boat is carried along by the wind. They were not replaced by God but he managed the process. There is no angel whispering in a cave to one person in the Christian view of inspiration. We have multiple attestations with historical veracity of the public deeds and words of Jesus, his apostles, and their followers. We have overwhelming evidence that the 4 gospels, Acts, and 13 epistles of Paul were immediately received, copied and disseminated. This includes Greek copies as well as near immediate translations into other languages.

From the 4th Century to the King James Version to Modern English Translations

What Every Muslim Needs to Know About How We Got the New Testament (Injeel), part 2

Muslims are taught that the Bible has been corrupted. The King James Bible is often marched out as the origin of the corruption of the English Bibles that we have today. This article explains how the English Bibles we have today are not dependent on the King James Bible. In fact, they are translated from a very ancient source.

Has the Bible Been Corrupted Over Time?

What Every Muslim Needs to Know About How We Got the New Testament (Injeel), part 1

Muslims believe that the Bible has been corrupted and redacted by later editors. This claim is an old one and many scholars who have held this view have had to fall on their swords in the past. The fact is that modern scholarship can objectively demonstrate that:

  • We can be confident that the Greek New Testament has not changed from what was penned by the original authors.
  • We can be assured that the contemporaries of the original authors received the plurality of the New Testament as the inspired word of God.
  • History demonstrates that the earliest Christians held to exactly 4 gospels that we can identify as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
  • The process of canonization and the recognition of which books were inspired occurred extremely early.
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