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7 Ways Luke’s Introduction Shows the Truthfulness of His Gospel

Luke begins his Gospel with an introduction that gives us multiple reasons to trust his Gospel as a whole. Here’s Luke’s introduction in the first four verses:

“Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” (Luke 1:1-4, NIV)

I would like to point out seven observations from Luke’s introduction that point to how Luke’s Gospel blossoms with ample, precise, decisive evidence of authenticity.

1. “Many have undertaken.”

Though he’s likely referring to extra-canonical records and traditions, not to Matthew, Mark, and John, Luke admitted the existence of other extant oral and written accounts of Christ’s life. Since he had no “sole rights” to protect, his impeccable research included those widely scattered, well-known accounts.

First, the Gospels derive from a remarkably literate and literary first century. Will Durant detailed how literature flourished under Augustus.[1] And the church obviously had authors to spare since an unknown, obviously brilliant mind wrote Hebrews. The eventual disappearance of non-canonical works shouldn’t surprise us. Most of the scrolls from ancient libraries are gone.[2] We logically expect inadequate works profiling Christ to fade as obviously superior works circulated.

Second, given the literary nature of that century, Christ’s persuasive life would necessarily be documented by interested followers, enemies, and casual onlookers.

Third, if orally-based cultures carefully relayed traditions that created them, we can understand literate people preserving accounts of those who dramatically influenced them. Genesis records in written accounts the initial history of humanity (Genesis 1:1, 2:4, 5:1, 6:9, etc.). Christ’s generation of believers, many of them Jews, inherited a 1,500-year-old written record of the Jewish faith that demanded truth in its correspondents. Since Jesus fulfilled that tradition, his life would necessarily be the object of a true biography.


“The Gospels derive from a remarkably literate and literary first century.”


Fourth, Christ’s enduring historical impact demands both his historical appearance and public profile. When interrogated about his doctrine, he offered his audience as evidence (John 18:19–21). Then, crucified publicly and buried publicly in a private tomb (Luke 23:55), he rose bodily after three days with Roman soldiers the first witnesses, followed by many people in public places (1 Corinthians 15:6). Paul later reminded Agrippa that the whole Christian movement flourished in the Roman world under open scrutiny (Acts 26:26).

Secular historians would be incensed if we imputed Benjamin Franklin’s reputation to revisionists. Higher critics nonetheless assert that Jesus, a man of seismic importance in all generations, created only a flutter in his own. The first-century writers did not imagine Jesus, as Edgar Alan Poe his characters, and then, obsessed with the disappointment, misery, and disillusionment he left them, communicated hope, confidence, and meaning he could give others. That’s the irreconcilable inconsistency dogging the skeptics. They want us to believe the utterly unbelievable myth that early Christians unconscionably fashioned an invincible Christ from the failed Jesus of Nazareth.

Nor do the oral nature of many of the Jesus accounts automatically diminish their usefulness. When young George Washington served as a colonial British officer against the French, Iroquois Indians at Venango called him the “town taker.” The title, however, had been earned by Washington’s great-grandfather nearly a century before. Their oral tradition remembered both the person originally receiving the name and the proper descendant inheriting it.[3] Like many tribes, the Iroquois maintained an exact account of their history through colorful, practiced figures of speech repeatedly recited in private lessons and public assemblies.


“Paul later reminded Agrippa that the whole Christian movement flourished in the Roman world under open scrutiny.”


Since oral traditions were so reliable, why was it essential for religious thought to be written? The problem with oral religious accounts is that they were flawed at their sources. They represented their culture’s view of God, not God’s expression of himself, and the initial ignorance in it naturally recurred in each retelling.

When God did reveal himself, and wanted every generation to possess the message, he had it written—because the written word could go where people wouldn’t, or where they desired to go but couldn’t.

2. “Handed down to us.”

A remarkable admission. If Luke wanted to deceive Theophilus, he would have claimed greater, not lesser, authority as the reason he should be heard.

Some writers, given the companionship of exalted persons, trade on the friendship to gain acceptance. Luke’s staunch credibility wouldn’t allow him to create a relationship with Jesus’ original apostles to establish authenticity when writing the life of Jesus. Even though he hadn’t personally heard everything he wrote, he had everything substantiated through careful research. That difference between Luke and Paul argues for legitimacy. Luke admitted that some of his information came from others, while Paul adamantly claimed eyewitness knowledge of Jesus, from Jesus (Acts 9:3–9; 22:3–21; 26:12–23; 1 Corinthians 9:1; 2 Corinthians 12:1–10; Galatians 1:15–19).

The essential factor wasn’t that the apostle Paul needed first-hand experiences—true as that was (Acts 1:21–22)—or that Luke as an author didn’t, but that both needed personal honesty as Christ’s servants. Paul as an eyewitness can be a true apostle; Luke as a second-generation Christian, qualified as a careful investigator, historian, and companion of Paul, could be a true profiler of Jesus.


“Luke as a second-generation Christian, qualified as a careful investigator, historian, and companion of Paul, could be a true profiler of Jesus.”


3. “By those who from the first were eyewitnesses.”

They “from the first were eyewitnesses.” That’s nearly the exact language Peter used in Acts 1:21–22 when choosing a successor for Judas. Luke knew and accompanied those first-generation men whose personal experiences with Jesus transformed their lives and futures.

The apostles learned in order to witness. As the apostles’ personal relationships with Jesus ignited Christianity in their generation, repetition fueled its extension to every generation. Whether they gained it by seeing Jesus in person or by accepting the testimony of those who had, all Christian generations share a common legacy and common charge: what Jesus did for one he does for all in an experience that perpetually recurs until he returns.

Jesus didn’t just live here, fulfilling his purpose by merely existing, as Psyche fulfilled hers merely by being beautiful. He confronts each person in each generation with the same claims of deity he made in his, eliciting our personal worship and obedience. That’s the reason Paul wrote his epistles (1 Corinthians 15:5–11), and that’s why Christ’s deity remains the tremendously authentic concept underlying New Testament teachings.


“Luke knew and accompanied those first-generation men whose personal experiences with Jesus transformed their lives and futures.”


4. “I myself have carefully investigated.”

Luke’s careful, investigative method exposed the non-canonical accounts’ lack of orderliness, credibility, and objectivity. He carefully investigated, two words with power behind them. Carefully denotes the manner, and investigated shows the goal of his project, and both demanded critical, impeccable research. Luke sifted and sorted and analyzed; he compared and contrasted and distinguished; he discerned between the heavy and the weighty, the interesting and the essential, including and excluding as the accounts affirmed or impugned apostolic testimony.

Author Edwin Fishel understood Luke’s goal. In 1959, Fishel discovered a trove of documents in the National Archives. His thirty years in the field of intelligence gathering and analysis prepared him to know that the documents opened a new field of research into Union Civil War espionage.[4]

He naturally had to distinguish between true evidence and self-boasting egotism. He checked claims that sought compensation from the War Department against the Department’s response. He compared stories from spies against information from other sources about the same event and determined how the information affected battle action and results.


“He carefully investigated, two words with power behind them.”


As a first-rate historian, Luke followed the same procedures. One distinguishing difference existed, however: Fishel’s work demanded interpretation—how each intelligence source affected particular battles, say Second Bull Run or Gettysburg. Luke’s attention to order and detail required only the accurate record of Jesus Christ that the Holy Spirit responsibly interpreted to readers and listeners in each generation. Thus, we can safely dismiss the opinion that distance from the events rendered precise biblical meanings impossible.[5] The Holy Spirit knew what happened, where it happened, how it related to the whole story, and how to communicate it to every age.

5. “That you may know the certainty.”

The discovery of eighteenth-century artifacts at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in 2003 extended a summer repair project into significant archaeological research.[6] That’s the nature of archaeological sites. Diggers never know when the serendipity of new revelations will occur.

Uncovering new revelations clearly isn’t the intention of Bible texts, and certainly not of the Gospels. The four evangelists wrote Christ’s fulfillment of the past as a completed record for that and every generation. It wouldn’t and couldn’t be altered by additions or subtractions through the centuries, whatever fantasies self-appointed prophets conjured.

The finality of his life as definitively recorded in the Gospels means that the researcher can search with the expectation of finding and arriving at absolute conclusions. That finality guarantees succeeding generations immovable, unchanging authority in matters of faith and behavior.


“The finality of his life as definitively recorded in the Gospels means that the researcher can search with the expectation of finding and arriving at absolute conclusions.”


That’s why Christians conscientiously call the religious world back to Christianity’s sources—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. When God withdrew Moses and Elijah from Christ’s presence at the transfiguration, and left him standing there alone (Matthew 17:8), he meant what he said: “Listen to him” (Matthew 17:5b). Jesus came as God’s final revelation and wouldn’t be succeeded because his is the glory and greatness fulfilled that all his forerunners merely symbolized.

6. “Most excellent Theophilus.”

It was customary in that time to dedicate a writing to a person of high standing who perhaps would sponsor its publication. The practice also characterized literature of the sixteenth century. Machiavelli dedicated The Prince to Lorenzo De’Medici, and Luther dedicated one of his major works in 1520 to the German nobility.[7]

Theophilus could have been contemplating a decision for Christ and wanted a detailed accounting of what Luke asked him to believe. He could have needed assurance that the Gentiles had equal rights to the gospel. Or if, like many Gentiles, he searched for truth, he may have needed assurance that, in a Roman world glutted with gods and saviors, Christianity’s certainty offered absolute truth, not more confusing mystery-religion nonsense.

He may have already converted to Judaism and wanted evidence why Luke claimed Jesus as the heir, not only of Moses and the prophets, but also of the Almighty himself. Or if already a Christian, Theophilus may have wanted a detailed history of what he embraced. Or perhaps he had heard contradictory or confusing teachings about Jesus.


“It was customary in that time to dedicate a writing to a person of high standing who perhaps would sponsor its publication.”


Since Luke dedicated two books to him, it’s possible that Luke had been his teacher. Knowing Luke’s scholarship from their acquaintance, the God-loving man commissioned him to research the origin of and evidence undergirding Christianity.

7. Luke’s silence about himself and Theophilus

As expected, we have little information about Luke and nothing about Theophilus, but plenty about Jesus of Nazareth. Luke wrote to account for Jesus, not to describe his own conversion or life.

True to its dedicated purpose, the entire New Testament reveals little about its human instruments. Since it’s all about Jesus Christ, and about others only as they relate to him, we expect a thimble-full of knowledge about them compared to the long tons of information about him. That perfectly contented every New Testament writer. With the apostle Paul, they all stressed the unimportance of the messenger compared to his proclamation (1 Corinthians 1:13-17, 2 Corinthians 4:7).

Luke’s Gospel provides the only information we need about its author. He expressly intended to establish the historic truth of Christianity, and he did! If he had failed in that purpose, through intentional error or ignorance, his Gospel could be disregarded. Since he succeeded, he must be honored as a historian worthy of portraying Jesus of Nazareth as universal Lord and Savior.


“Luke wrote to account for Jesus, not to describe his own conversion or life.”


The motivating factor in skeptical attacks on the Christ of the Gospels is an adamant prejudice against his miraculous birth and nature: skeptics say neither can exist because they consider miracles and his nature impossible. Their prejudice, not evidence, decides that the evangelists can’t be trusted. As products of a culture that repudiates the existence of absolute truth, critics can’t believe that the Gospels tell only the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. New Testament writers, therefore, are victims of our culture, not their inadequacy.

***

The late Joseph Nathan Kane packed so much research into his 103 years that he is considered the greatest factualist that America, perhaps the world, ever produced.[8] He lived close to his birthplace on Manhattan’s West Side, but spent apostolic amounts of time in libraries, mentally traversing the world and surfacing odd, trivial, and essential truths. Index cards in his apartment organized and catalogued them for the books he wrote about facts.

Kane’s prodigious efforts remain important because of his unswerving conviction that history has value only when built on absolute truth, however comforting, iconoclastic, or brutal. That’s why libraries stock his books and librarians seek his research as they’re asked to verify the minutiae of journalism.

Luke, the historian of sacred purposes, and the chronicler of Jesus Christ’s sacred person, had the same unyielding commitment to truth. And for much the same reason: only when what is sacred is also true does it relate to each generation. Each generation has proved Luke to be both master of his craft and match for his task.


[1] Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part III (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944), 223-258.

[2] John Lord, Beacon Lights of History (New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1902), 7.

[3] James Thomas Flexner, George Washington I. The Forge of Experience (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1965), 72.

[4] Edwin C. Fishel, The Secret War for the Union (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996), Foreword, xiii.

[5] William W. Klein, Craig L. Blomberg, Robert L. Hubbard, Jr., Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Dallas, TX: Word Publishing, 1991), 145.

[6] “Artifacts Uncovered Along Monticello Wall,” Washington Times, January 25, 2004, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/jan/25/20040125-111458-7954r/.

[7] Virgil Hurley, Martin Luther’s Three Great Reformation Treatises (Master of Arts Thesis: Lincoln Christian Seminary, 1964).

[8] “Joseph Kane Memoriam,” Legacy, originally published in the San Diego Union, (San Diego, CA), October 1, 2002, https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/sandiegouniontribune/name/joseph-kane-obituary?id=38166930.

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