I wrote this essay, “Can We Trust Luke?” for the July 28, 2023, CGG Weekly.
“. . . it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus . . .”
—Luke 1:3
Christians must deal with a persistent problem in their study of Scripture: Many Bible helps they read derive from secular, critical scholarship that frequently casts doubt on the veracity and historicity of God’s Word. Critical scholars are trained to question everything, and if they cannot find supporting evidence outside Scripture for even the most minor details, they conclude that the unverified details make the entire work suspect.
For instance, for decades, critical scholars questioned the authenticity of the Old Testament because it mentioned a people whom the Israelites called “Hittites.” These scholars suspected the ancient Hebrew authors had invented them when creating their “history” to make themselves into God’s special people. Those scholars ended up with egg on their faces when archeological finds revealed that the Hittites not only existed but ruled over a far-flung empire that rivaled Egypt! Many such finds over the last few centuries have validated biblical history and embarrassed the doubters.
The New Testament history provided by Luke in his gospel and the book of Acts has faced similar scrutiny and has been found wanting by critical scholarship. Early German critical scholars—the same cadre of Bible-questioning scholars who devised the over-thought Documentary Hypothesis—claimed Luke and Act’s author lived in the late-second century and wrote a gospel and early Christian history to promote his own religious aims. Because he lived nearly two centuries later and had no personal experiences in the areas Jesus and the apostles did their work, they claimed Luke contrived the historical details. So, they stamped Luke and Acts as “inaccurate” and “spurious.”
Archeologist and historian Sir William M. Ramsay (1851-1939) authored a book in 1915 titled The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament, in which he chronicled the evolution of his approach to the Bible’s historical details. He writes about Acts:
. . . about 1880 to 1890 the book of Acts was regarded as the weakest part of the New Testament. No one that had any regard for his reputation as a scholar cared to say a word in its defense. The most conservative of theological scholars, as a rule, thought the wisest plan of defense for the New Testament as a whole was to say as little as possible about Acts.
Ramsay, however, was not one to take other scholars’ word that an issue was settled. With his sharp historian’s eye, he began his own study of Acts and soon discovered that Luke stood alone among ancient writers in his accuracy—even among renowned writers like Cicero!
The biblical detail that began to change his mind about Luke’s accuracy appears in Acts 14:5-6:
And [in Iconium (verse 1)] when a violent attempt was made by both the Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to abuse and stone them [Paul and Barnabas], they became aware of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding region. (p. 39)
Most readers would simply pass this by, but Ramsay, with his detailed knowledge of the classics and Roman history, did not. He judged the passage as being entirely a matter of geography and political boundaries, not a religious text, making it an excellent point on which to test Luke’s accuracy. Having religious aims, the writer would have no reason to report the precise details of the apostles’ flight. As he put it in his book, “It is technical, narrow, and in a sense external to the narrative, which as one might think would run equally well although this detail were absent” (p. 39).
He knew Cicero (106-43 BC) had visited Iconium about a century before the apostles did, and the Roman statesman’s writings say that the city was in Lycaonia. But Luke says that the apostles fled Iconium into Lycaonia. If we follow Cicero’s report, Luke is writing nonsense; it is, as Ramsay writes, “as if one were to speak of going from Richmond into Virginia, or from London to England” (p. 40). With Cicero’s statement testifying against him, Luke appeared to be writing his account to sound plausible without care for facts. The whole passage—even the whole missionary journey or Paul’s entire ministry!—seemed to have been invented.
However, in the story of Justin Martyr (ad 100-165), he found his first clue that Luke had written the truth. A slave named Hierax, tried alongside Justin in AD 163, was asked about his parents. He replied, “My earthly parents are dead; and I have been brought here (a slave) torn away from Iconium of Phrygia.” This evidence—and a slew of other proofs Ramsay later found—supports the accuracy of Luke 14:5-6.
Ramsay summarized his investigation: “It remains, therefore, plain and certain that the writers of the Imperial time do not as a rule assign Iconium to Lycaonia, and that the most authoritative of them call it a city of Phrygia” (pp. 55-56). Luke was historically accurate in even this tiny, unimportant detail!
Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense. Share on XThe modern historian later evaluated the implications of his findings:
The inference from these facts, as just stated, was plain. This passage is correct: the boundaries mentioned are true to the period in which the action lies: they are not placed through the mistaken application by a later author of ancient statements to a time when they had ceased to be pertinent: they are based on information given by an eyewitness, a person who had been engaged in the action described. The reader, if he reads the narrative rightly, can see with the eyes and hear with the ears of a man who was there and witnessed all that happened. (p. 79)
Throughout his book, Ramsay declares his admiration of Luke as a historian:
How far can we believe his narrative? The present writer takes the view that Luke’s history is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness. (p. 81)
Further study of Acts 13-21 showed that the book could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Ægean world, and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art, and perception of truth as to be a model of historical statement. It is marvelously concise and yet marvelously lucid. (p. 85)
Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense. . . . He seizes the important and critical events and shows their true nature at greater length, while he touches lightly or omits entirely much that was valueless for his purpose. In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians. (p. 222)
If we can trust the scholarship of Sir William Ramsay—not to mention God Himself as the true Author of His Word (II Timothy 3:16)—we can trust Luke’s historical accuracy and all the theological truth we find within its pages.
