RE: The Historical Reliability of the New Testament
May 17, 2015 at 11:08 am
(This post was last modified: May 17, 2015 at 11:12 am by Angrboda.)
If I'm reading you correctly, you infer an early date for Luke from two facts, the Pauline references to Luke and Pauline quotation's of Luke.
The first is a non sequitur as Luke-Acts is an anonymous work, the only thing connecting the early references to Luke with the document/s Luke-Acts is the speculations of the early church fathers. There is no direct evidence that the author of Luke-Acts and the early Luke are one and the same. That's pure assertion on the part of the church fathers, and as Hitchens' razor states, that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
The second is the assertion that Paul quotes Luke. However, we have no reason other than your assertion to believe that Luke influenced the writing of Paul, rather than that Paul influenced the writing of Luke. It is upon this speculation that you rest the entire case for the accuracy of the gospels, namely an early date for their composition. Regardless of what order you put the composition of the Gospels, it's clear that their influence upon one another is incestuous. The complexity of the inter-relationships cannot be straightened out by a mere assertion. If Christians are to be believed, the Pauline documents were influential in the early church. If that is true, it's not unreasonable to conclude that it influenced the writing of Luke after it. Indeed, Luke states that he had collected what had been written and said, indicating the material wasn't original to him. Since the conclusion that the influence ran one direction and not the other (or that both depended on an independent, unnamed source) is nothing more than pure assertion, it is likewise dismissed.
The final point is the appearance to the 500. I'm not going to say much on this count other than that there is legitimate controversy over whether the passage itself is original to Paul.
If I have missed an argument for the early composition of the Gospels that you feel needs addressing, let me know. I'm not a bible scholar, but I'm sure someone will rise to the challenge.
The first is a non sequitur as Luke-Acts is an anonymous work, the only thing connecting the early references to Luke with the document/s Luke-Acts is the speculations of the early church fathers. There is no direct evidence that the author of Luke-Acts and the early Luke are one and the same. That's pure assertion on the part of the church fathers, and as Hitchens' razor states, that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
The second is the assertion that Paul quotes Luke. However, we have no reason other than your assertion to believe that Luke influenced the writing of Paul, rather than that Paul influenced the writing of Luke. It is upon this speculation that you rest the entire case for the accuracy of the gospels, namely an early date for their composition. Regardless of what order you put the composition of the Gospels, it's clear that their influence upon one another is incestuous. The complexity of the inter-relationships cannot be straightened out by a mere assertion. If Christians are to be believed, the Pauline documents were influential in the early church. If that is true, it's not unreasonable to conclude that it influenced the writing of Luke after it. Indeed, Luke states that he had collected what had been written and said, indicating the material wasn't original to him. Since the conclusion that the influence ran one direction and not the other (or that both depended on an independent, unnamed source) is nothing more than pure assertion, it is likewise dismissed.
The final point is the appearance to the 500. I'm not going to say much on this count other than that there is legitimate controversy over whether the passage itself is original to Paul.
If I have missed an argument for the early composition of the Gospels that you feel needs addressing, let me know. I'm not a bible scholar, but I'm sure someone will rise to the challenge.
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