Christians always tell me about how Luke is such an…

12 comments

1. Jelaya Stewart says:

   May 19, 2020 at 8:32 am

   Actually the city did have walls and gates to protect them from enemies. Can you provide the archeological source that’s says there were no walls or gates?

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2. Jelaya Stewart says:

   May 19, 2020 at 8:35 am

   Commentary, for Verse 36. – Giving himself out for boasting himself, A.V.; dispersed for scattered, A.V.; came for brought, A.V. Rose up Theudas. A very serious chronological difficulty arises hero. The only Theudas known to history is the one about whom Josephus writes (‘Ant. Jud.,’ 20:5), quoted in full by Eusebius (‘Ecclesiastes Hist.,’2:11) as having pretended to be a prophet, having lured a number of people to follow him to the banks of the Jordan, by the assurance that he would part the waters of the river, and as having been pursued by order of Cuspius Fadus, the Procurator of Judaea, when numbers of his followers were slain and taken prisoners, and Theudas himself had his head cut off. But Fadus was procurator in the reign of Claudius Caesar, immediately after the death of King Agrippa, ten or twelve years after the time when Gamaliel was speaking, and about thirty years after the time at which Gamaliel places Theudas. Assuming St. Luke to be as accurate and correct here as he has been proved to be in other instances where his historical accuracy has been impugned, three ways present themselves of explaining the discrepancy. 1. Josephus may have misplaced the adventure of Theudas by some accidental error. Considering the vast number of Jewish insurrections from the death of Herod the Great to the destruction of Jerusalem, such a mistake is not very improbable. 2. There may have been two adventurers of the name of Theudas, one in the reign of Augustus Caesar, and the other in the reign of Claudius; and so both the historians may be right, and the apparent discrepancy may have no real existence (see Wordsworth, in loc.). 3. The person named Theudas by Gamaliel may be the same whom Josephus speaks of (‘Bell. Jud.,’ it. 4:2) by the common name of Simon, as gathering a band of robbers around him, and making himself king at Herod’s death (‘Sonntag,’ cited by Meyer, etc.). But he was killed by Gratus, and the insurrection suppressed. A variety in this last mode has also been suggested (Kitto’s ‘Cyclopaedia’), viz. to understand Theudas to be an Aramaic form of Theodotus, and the equivalent Hebrew form of Theodotus to be מַתִתְיָה, Matthias, and so the person meant by Theudas to be a certain Matthias who with one Judas made an insurrection, when Herod the Great was dying, by tearing down the golden eagle which Herod had put over the great gate of the temple, and who was burnt alive with his companions, after defending his deed in a speech of great boldness and constancy (‘Ant. Jud’ 17:6). A consideration of these methods of explaining the apparent contradiction between the two historians shows that no certainty can without further light be arrived at. But it may be observed that it is quite impossible to suppose that any one so well informed and so accurate as St. Luke is could imagine that an event that he must have remembered perfectly, if it happened under the procuratorship of Fadus, had happened before the disturbances caused by Judas of Galilee, at least thirty years before. But it is most certain that Josephus’s account of Theudas agrees better with Gamaliel’s notice than that of either of the other persons suggested, irrespective of the identity of name. The first way of explaining the difficulty above proposed has, therefore, most probability in it. But some further corroboration of this explanation may be found in some of the details of Theudas’s proceedings given by Josephus. He tells us that Theudes persuaded a great number of people to “collect all their possessions” and follow him to the banks of the Jordan, where he promised, like a second Elijah, to part the waters for them to pass over; that they did so, but that Fadus sent a troop of horse after them, who slew numbers of them, and amongst them their leader. Now, if this happened when the business of the census was beginning to be agitated, after the deposition of Archelaus (A.D. 6 or 7), all is plain. Theudas declaimed as a prophet against submitting to the census of their goods ordered by Augustus. The people were of the same mind. Theudas persuaded them that, if they brought all their goods to the banks of the Jordan, he would divide the stream and enable them to carry them over to the other side out of reach of the tax-gatherer. And so they made the attempt. But this was an act of rebellion against the Roman power, and a method of defeating the purpose of the census, which must be crushed at once. And so the people were pursued and slaughtered. But apart from the census of their goods, one sees no motive either for the attempt to carry away their property, or for the slaughter of an unarmed multitude by the Roman cavalry. So that the internal evidence is in favor of St. Luke’s collocation of the incident, at the same time that his authority as a contemporary historian is much higher than that of Josephus. Still, one desiderates some more satisfactory proof of the error of Josephus, and some account of how he fell into it.

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3. Mark Jones says:

   May 19, 2020 at 8:47 am

   What you’re offering here is claims. What people should do at this stage is ask for your evidence for these claims.

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4. Steve Taylor says:

   May 19, 2020 at 8:59 am

   Not having a wall is different from not having a gate – it could have been a wooden gate, or could even be figurative, as the ‘gate’ to any city or village was the common entry way where the most significant road went in and where trading and legal decisions were often made.

   However, I agree that we as Christians are overly hasty to explain away inconsistencies in texts – there’s a modern day term called “inerrancy” that basically means Christians are supposed to think every word in the original biblical texts was absolutely accurate. Then when many are presented with concrete problems (such as Matthew quoting Zechariah but calling it Jeremiah, or adding an extra donkey for Jesus to ride on because he had a faulty translation of Isaiah which said there should have been two), it sinks people’s faith.

   I understand your frustration with Christians here, because it smacks of intellectual dishonesty from the outside. However, this is more of a modern day attitude to the Bible, and not something truly representative of biblical Christianity. The Gospels are only historic records after all, collected by the early church to preserve the original accounts and traditions. It’s a Holy Book, not a Magic Book.

   To me, as a Christian who sees and knows God living and working in the world today, I approach the Bible differently – it’s not inerrant, it’s *inspired*. It was crafted to preserve the best available account, and to explain it precisely as the Holy Spirit meant it to be explained.

   There are a few details out here and there, but the textual accuracy is still outstanding, and the historic evidence shows the church has always striven for accuracy and were never in a practice of intentionally modifying or correcting their texts, unlike the early Muslims or Mormons. Indeed, this is why there are *four* Gospels – the church was preserving divergences in the earliest texts, not hiding them!

   There are accidental mistakes here and there – indeed, as you say yourself many of these accounts were collected many years after they happened – but every word of it was intended to be accurate and honest. And so that makes it entirely trustworthy as a collection of accounts, despite the odd rare error in the texts.

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5. Kenny Wong says:

   May 19, 2020 at 9:09 am

   You overrated human capability to get to a long past fact. You can try to build a gate for your own house then remove it the next day. Guess what humans would say about your house some 1000 years later. They know nothing about if there is a gate there ever!
   The Jews as common people seldom know who is formally assigned by Rome. They only know that who is in charge. Quirinius is a millitary head, he can be the one in charge without formally assigned. Luke gathered his info from the old Jews including Jesus‘ mother Mary.

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6. Christopher Brynestad says:

   May 19, 2020 at 9:18 am

   1) When do you think Herod died? Isn’t the given date around 6 AD (CE)? That falls within the window of Jesus’ birth.

   2) Jesus uses “gate” in the figurative sense when He talks about going through wide and narrow gates for salvation and life (Matt 7). So there is biblical use of the word to describe something that isn’t literal outside of Luke. One of the given definition of the word also gives room for a symbolic meaning. Which means that gate really could simply mean the beginning of the town.

   3) Because Saul’s mentor, Gamaliel, says, “Some time ago…” when comparing Jesus’ ministry to events before His ministry we’re meant to understand that the guy he’s referring to was before the time of Jesus’ ministry and the rise of Christianity. There were insurrections the last year of Herod’s reign, so it’s safe to figure the Theudas mentioned in Acts 5 is a different person than the one who led the revolt later. It’s not correct for us to compare a guy from before Jesus’ to a guy who lived much later.

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7. Jack Johnston says:

   May 19, 2020 at 9:23 am

   Well, whenever things don’t jive, you’ve got to do some jive talking to smooth over the problems.

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8. Arthur Adam Haglund says:

   May 19, 2020 at 11:25 am

   There are two herods

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9. Cloud Roger says:

   May 19, 2020 at 12:00 pm

   Nice job. Very goof argument for Luke. I know Luke is right on, based on scripture alone, no second guessing history for me. (Y)

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10. Adam Daniel Broughton says:

    May 19, 2020 at 1:13 pm

    Are there any scientific or logical errors regarding the Big Bang that you won’t dismiss or try to explain away/await further evidence/take on faith? I admit my bias in favor of Christianity’s truth claims. It’s harder for an atheist to acknowledge their bias against them. Both parties ought to strive to be objective in the face of these biases, but it’s hard to be objective when bias goes undetected.

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11. Jason Blackshear says:

    May 19, 2020 at 5:26 pm

    Sounds to me like your historic calendar is about a decade fast, considering both of your examples of timeline inaccuracies suggest the biblical account is a decade slow.

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12. Christians always tell me about how Luke is such an… #ourCOG – ourcog says:

    January 20, 2021 at 9:40 am

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