Thoughts for the Day

Luke 1:3-4 I too decided to write an orderly account for you … so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

So then, to the opening 100 verses of Luke’s gospel. And it is reasonable to start by asking whether Luke is to be believed.  There seems plenty enough evidence that it was written by Luke around 70 AD, give or take, but that doesn’t tell us whether he was telling the truth.  “Fake news” has become all too pervasive, but it is hardly new!  We find elsewhere that Luke was a steadfast travelling companion of Paul.  Might he then merely have been a propagandist, filtering, spinning and embellishing the truth to promote their agenda?  Or was he simply a collator of stories about Jesus, an archivist driven to collect every piece of folklore before the generation of eyewitnesses died out?  During the years accompanying Paul he must have heard pretty much every possible challenge to the truth of the gospel and the integrity of the evangelist.  He knows his narrative will make the most outrageous and challenging claims.  How is he to convince his readers, then or now, that he is telling the truth?

Luke, we find, sets out his stall as a historian or investigative journalist, one who has heard from eyewitnesses and, as he puts it, “carefully investigated everything from the beginning”.  “Careful investigation” implies some level of verification, not simply writing down whatever stories may had been doing the rounds.  And he punctuates his narrative with other historical figures, timestamps and personal details that add authenticity but equally invite his readers to check him out.  It is, of course, too late for us to speak to anyone outside the temple when Zechariah emerged late and dumbstruck, or anyone of the apparent many in the hill country of Judea who heard of him suddenly speaking again at John’s circumcision, or any of the many in Bethlehem to whom the shepherds spread word of their remarkable experience.  But I fancy Luke searched them out, and, by referring to them, invites questioners at the time to do the same.

So it seems he does the best he can to establish his credibility from the outset.  But is that enough for you or me?  And, if not, how will we decide?