I'm trying to round out my series on Acts going back to last year. Next up: Did Luke use Paul's letters? After that, I'll be tackling the claim that Luke used Josephus.
@@TestifyApologetics That would be a good series! But the series should probably be "in X minutes" rather than "in 3 minutes" due to some topics needing more explanation time. What I mean is, the number of minutes should change from title-to-title rather than each one specifically being 3 minutes. Unless you think you can do each one in three minutes!
Another reason why Luke/Acts being “anonymous” makes no sense , is because they were letters specifically addressed to Theothilous . Who writes a letter to someone without attaching their name to it in some form ?
correct…its is unlikely Theophilus would just accept an anonymous work not knowing who wrote it….would he still believe it? wouldn t he search for who send it to him?…
I don't know why they would attribute Luke as the author if they didn't think he wrote it. After all, he was not an apostle, so the early church could have used Phillip or even Thaddeus.
Don't forget, in addition to what you said in this video, no other author (for Luke/Acts) has ever been suggested in history. Luke is the only author ever attributed to his works. Thanks for a great video!
Obviously no other names have been suggested because the intellectually honest alternative to "Luke wrote it" is "We don't know who wrote it", not some other name selected without nothing more than a pile of post and ad hoc rationalisation.
@@downenout8705 I think what the OP is saying is that with truly anonymous documents, you would expect to see multiple names being attributed to it, like with Hebrews. But the testimony in the days of the early church is so far unanimous that it was Luke who wrote it. OP is not talking about modern scholarship.
@@nullarcstudios8910 It's very simple an early Church Father appended Luke to Luke, presumably because of the vague medical references. Nobody had a better suggestion so it stuck. As to Acts given that it is written in the same style as Luke it is reasonable to assume that it was written by the same author as Luke. Again no one has a better suggestion so it stuck.
@@downenout8705 If that were the case, then again, we would expect to see a myriad of proposed authors, like with the book of Hebrews. However, virtually unconnected Christian groups all unanimously attest Luke to Luke. One guy in what is modern day France saying that Luke wrote it does not explain why some dude on the completely opposite side of the Roman empire would say the same thing. In order for that theory to make sense it would've had to have happened in the early 2nd century, which would still be within living memory of the author, which makes it even more unlikely that the name was chosen at random. If there's people around who remember who wrote it, then suggesting a random name makes no sense. News and information took a very long to travel back then. You can spout the theory all you want, but the evidence is stacked against it. So, it's actually not that simple. All of what you said is literally just conjecture about the intentions of people who died ~1800 years ago. Not to mention, this wasn't even my point. I was just pointing out that what you said was not what the OP was talking about.
@@nullarcstudios8910 Nothing you wrote alters the fact that the gospels and acts are anonymous. They are written in the third person; contain no clue as to authorship within the text and there are no writings from any of the supposed authors claiming authorship. No amount of ad and post hoc rationalisation on your part will alter these facts. For f's sake this is supposed to be the inspired word of an all powerful god, yet it couldn't even inspire the authors to make authorship unambiguous. God, apparently, couldn't even inspire Matthew to record his first meeting with Jesus in the first person.
Good one! I would also add the "we-passages". They add epistemic credence to the fact that the author was an eye-witness/follower of Paul. (which in turn adds credence to the traditional authorship of Luke) But the attribution of the gospel to Theophilus is probably the strongest piece of evidence in the cumulative case you mention (although the other points are also important)
This whole idea that the Gospels were originally annonymos seems frankly popostros to me. If the Gospel's author was initially unknown, than why attribute it to such a seemingly random character as Luke? Wouldn't it be more convenient to atribuite it to one of the 12 apostles (like many of the later Gnostic gospels actually do, for that matter?) The fact that only two of the four canon Gospels are named after apostles I think should say something.
Well, one reason the early church would not have attributed it to an eyewitness is that the author explicitly _says_ he's not an eyewitness (but that it was handed down from eyewitnesses: Luke 1:1-4). It may have been attributed to "Luke" because the author speaks as though he's a companion of Paul (e.g. Acts 16:10-17) and Paul apparently had a companion named "Luke" (Philemon 23; Colossians 4:14).
A guy named Jason Sumner has a small RUclips channel. He has good vids with internal evidence that Silas could have wrote Luke and acts. You can't always trust the early "church fathers" Irenaeus said Jesus was in His 50s when He died
I wonder how Ehrman responds to this argument. I've noticed he is much more careful about what he says when talking to the likes of Mike Licona than when talking to less informed people.
That's why I can't stand it when believing scholars say they respect his work against mythicists. I can't respect him even for that because I've seen the difference between how he talks to young students and seasoned Christian scholars.
@@Jim-Mc In your opinion, does he provide conflicting answers to different groups, or does he simply state his opinion (the summary of his studies) to one group, while providing nuance, sources and arguments to an academic audience?
You have to speak to the education level of the audience. Especially in social sciences, it is very easy to speak at a level above what the layman is going to be able to understand. A simple misunderstanding of vocabulary can cause great offense and stop a conversation altogether.
I would also add when we do have an anonymous author like we do for the book of Hebrews, there's much speculation about who wrote it among the early church fathers. We do not for any of the Gospels at minimum the early church fathers believed who the authors were exactly who they claim to be. You don't have to accept the metaphysical presuppositions of Christianity to acknowledge the historical facts. Just like how we do not have to accept "Works and Days" claims about morality, but it would be silly to suggest that Hesiod wasn't real. That's a criticism of my discipline of History where it forces history writers and historians to come up with novel theories in order to stay relevant and so they put out stuff like that.
Great stuff ! It would be absurd to attribute authorship to Luke who was neither an eyewitness nor an Apostle! If the the early Christians wanted to promote Christianity and avoid criticism they would have chosen Bartholomew , Andrew or Philip !!
Traditional authorship seems to me to require much less mental gymnastics to conclude given the historical and manuscript record than the autonomous theory.
Isnt this "we dont know who wrote *x*" argument also used for shakespeare? It seems ridiculous that people would nitpick traditional authorship-- aren't there better subjects for scholarly work?
i believe that john and revelation were written as two volumes and the reason revelation was written was because the gospel of john was being finished after the fire of rome and the neronian persecution happened and the first jewish war just erupted. notice that only john doesn't have the olivet discourse but you can say that the entire book of revelation is an expanded volume about the olivet discourse
Ehrman's whole deal boils down to taking Paul out of the picture because he thinks all orthodox doctrines started with him. Please no one tell him about the Old Testament.
A lot of good information here but you should've also included the dates for the quotes of these church fathers to see how separated they were from the original events in terms of time as well as the manuscripts
Bart Eherman, acknowledges that early Christian tradition says that the Book of Matthew was written by Matthew, The Book of Luke was written by Luke, Mark was written by Mark and John was written by John. For him this is invalid. Only because he's a scholar it doesn't mean he's the ultimate Authority.
Yes, but his reasoning for why they are invalid boils down to personal feelings of doubt, not on evidence. The only evidence we have on who wrote the gospels are early church fathers and church tradition, which are unanimous in their assent that they were written by these authors. I think it's a very stupid decision of a hill to die on, personally. Because even if the gospels weren't written by eyewitnesses directly, they were written early enough where the author would have known the apostles personally and would have heard about Jesus and started following Christianity because of their testimony. If you want to cast doubt on the validity of the testimony of scripture there are far better ways to do it.
It doesn’t mater who wrote Luke/Acts. They are filled with supernatural miracle stories so this means they are not historical by any means Please don’t treat them as historical. A good historian will dismiss you right off the bat.
I love how easily a 3 minute video overpowers Ehrman and others “anonymous” nonsense. What’s funny is even if they were “anonymous” it still could have been the authors as titled Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John 😂
Given that you think a person with a Ph.D. who states a position shared by a large number of other people with a Ph.D. is easily shown to be nonsense compared to youtuber @Testify's argument, would you be willing to steelman their position and then state why it is so nonsensical?
@@truncated7644 Can you find another argument for their position that isn’t an argument from authority? Like one that actually refutes this video? FYI, there are many PHDs who agree with this video as well.
@@truthovertea Perhaps, but I didn't call @Testify's opinion nonsense. You're the one calling opposing views nonsense. Which is why I asked if you were able to steelman their position rather than dismissing it as nonsense..
@@truncated7644 Ehrman’s view is supported by two points(along with most scholars who agree with him): 1. The earliest document we have that directly claims the authorship of the gospels is from Irenaeus around 180 AD. Although this is disputed by many scholars, Bart sticks with this argument. 2. They gospel writers don’t directly mention their own authorship within their writings, including Acts. For the first reason this is ridiculous, many of the church fathers have writings and quotes from the gospels that speak authoritatively to their audience. This reasonably assumes the audience knew what source they were referring to. Otherwise there would have been no value. Luke-Acts are quoted by most of the early church fathers pre Irenaeus, not to mention the video evidence in this 3 min video. The second is also absurd because many other writers at the time did not credit their authorship in their writings or mention themselves only in the third person. Why is it that only the Bible’s authorship called into question? This is a double standard. So the second reason is entirely based on special pleading.
@TruthOverTea Let's also not forget the fact that anonymity was not uncommon in that time period and was actually pretty normal. Even paintings weren't signed until the Renaissance. Tons valid historical documents did not cite authorship, including works from some of the most trustworthy and reliable sources, such as Plutarch. Are we supposed to discredit his work as well? It's strange that many scholars and historians have no issues crediting his work. Authors were able to be identified based on their writing style, as well their associates, which, in this case, was the early Christian church. Anyone who tries to make this argument of the anonymous gospels must argue it as an exception rather than the status quo, which, as we know, is completely wrong.
Iraneious and other people you mentioned wrote that in second century and all other people you mention writing in 2 all the way 3 and theses people said that 4 gospel ( not sure if Luke as well) but they said that all the gospel were written by the dicipale according to the view of church moreover you have Papius which writing is more old compare to iraneous but papius hasnot meet any of the dicipale but rather he knew the early Christian but we canot be sure because there is no chain of narration from dicipale writing to all the way to iraneous, and the authors of gospel are anonymous. Hope that’s help I might me abit wrong about the papius but other then that I am not. Moreover when it comes to the author of gospel we don’t know who wrote them. Most evidence that says gospels were written by the disipale is from second century all the 3 century( people like iraneous said ) I am referring to.
Why do you narrow it to, "Active, modern scholars?" LOL. UNLESS you or they have come up with new evidence (They haven't), why reject what scholars from the past like AT Robertson, Harnack, Streeter and Ellis said about Luke's authorship? Eh?
1:45 "Every existing ancient manuscript attributes the authorship to Luke" But the earliest extant manuscript is commonly thought to date to the early 3rd century, which is long after scholars think "according to Luke" would have been added. So, how is this evidence against anonymity?
@@DuzzinsSama Sure, but I was objecting to his use of the *manuscript evidence* to support his view (that the Gospels were never anonymous). The title was added before any of the Church Fathers claimed Luke was the author, so I don't see how they constitute independent evidence.
The argument he's making is that there are exactly 0 manuscripts that don't attribute the authorship to Luke. Every single one of them credits him as the author. If you're a scholar trying to prove the Gospel's anonymity, your best bet, out of hundreds, if not, thousands of manuscripts is to find ONE that at the very least, contests the authorship. Because , then they can suggest that Gospel authorship was uncertain at the time. But we don't see that. On the contrary we have loads of external evidence and references that suggest otherwise. The majority scholarly opinion is based on speculation. It's nothing more than a hypothesis. Its scholars trying fill in a gap in history with very little information. For instance, scholars like to theorize that the tradition of attributing authors to the Gospels may have begun at around the mid-2nd century. But there's no way of definitively knowing that because we don't have any predating texts to either support or dismiss that hypothesis. So scholars get to take advantage of the ignorance of that period. It's having your cake and eating it too.
@@Cklert Well, one line of evidence for the majority view is the simple fact that "according to X" would be a very unusual way for author to sign their works. It is obviously very unlikely that _four_ authors would identify themselves in this exact same, unusual way. Moreover, ‘according to X’ is a distinguishing title. The author of the earliest Gospel would have no reason to use such a title, since there were no other ‘Gospels’ to distinguish it from (that’s what ‘earliest’ means). Moreover, the author of Mark already gave his book a title: "the gospel of Jesus Christ" (see Mark 1:1). If ‘the gospel according to Mark’ was original, this would give the book a rather stilted opening. All of this constitutes strong evidence ‘according to Mark’ is an addition, and likewise ‘according to Luke’.
Bart Ehrman doesn’t argue that they were written anonymously. No one argues that. This because the gospels were written anonymously. Not sure why you referenced Bart for that or why you presented that the way you did. Kind of dishonest. If you flip to Luke in your Bible, it does not anywhere in his gospel say “This is Luke” or “My Name is Luke.” Scholarship heavily disputes that Paul’s companion Luke wrote Luke-Acts. Acts contradicts Paul’s own epistles in almost every instance where Acts and the Epistles share historical details. Also, the author of Luke, whoever it is, says they’re surveying the land for eyewitnesses to use as sources for the gospel, yet almost the entire gospel sources Mark and Matthew in actuality. The idea Luke is a physician comes from one verse in Philemon, which scholarship disputes as being an authentic Pauline letter. The author of Luke-Acts uses the same level of medical terminology as other well-known non-physicians like Plutarch, who while very educated, was not at all a physician.
Give praises to the Most High YAH amen Luke 19:23 Why then gave not you my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required my own with usury?
Slightly off topic. But I have a question. There are people who think that there is a q-document. And both the Q-document and the Mark-Gospel are the sole sources for the other gospels. Also there are people who think that the Gospel should be primarily taken as fiction (literary device) and only things which have some other way of confirmation can be taken seriously. But if both Matthew and Luke copied from Mark and Q then wouldn't that entire theory fall apart? After all it just pushes everything back a layer and then the entire doubting game can be started anew. And in that other layer we only have 2 independent sources instead of four.
@@gmac6503 I just used "certain liberal scholars" as a stand in for anyone with that opinion. If I chose the wrong label then sorry, not sorry. I don't care about labels. I am more curious about the question I asked, not the people who believe in it.
@@philippbrogli779 lol ok so anyone with an opinion different than yours is the same as certain liberal scholars - just worded differently Yeah that clears it up. NOT! I know how the game is played man.
@@philippbrogli779 for someone that doesn't care about labels you sure know how to use them a lot. Twice in one paragraph just to poison the well a tiny bit
@@vinnyrac "string theory" haha notice in the first instance, he said, certain liberal 'Bible' scholars, and then the second time he left out the word Bible in 'certain liberal scholars.' he tripped over his own feet, and accidentally called some certain the rule scholars actual Bible scholars, but he had to change that because they're apostates in his eyes.
Saying that Ignatius quoted Luke is a conjecture, wording is quite different, it could come from an pral tradition from which Luke also borrowed. As for Polycarp most of his alleged quotes of NT are different in wording from actual quotes, he and Clement of Rome quoted same words of Jesus that we can't find anywhere in canonical gospels so there probably circulated some written or oral traditions about Christs sayings. So it's not 100% sure if he quotes Luke or that tradition. He is at least proof of an early tradition of things we have in Luke, and a potential proof of Luke at best. Ignatius too.
I don't know what saying of Jesus in Clement you're referring to. For these authors to make use of the Gospels as authoritative sources means that they expected their audience to recognize their quotations and allusions and to accept them as authentic. Polycarp does in fact quote OT passages loosely, it's the longer passages that are more word for word, indicating he looked them up. The fact Justin quotes them, calls them memoirs who are written by apostles or companions of apostles. No it's not a knock-down proof that Luke wrote them, but it's in harmony with the testimony of the early fathers and because these gospels did probably exist and were circulating by the end of the 1st century/early 2nd century there's no good reason to just shrug and say "meh it must all be oral tradition"
The gospel of Luke was written in the first century. Thus the author of Luke could not have borrowed from a common oral tradition in the second century.
@@davidstrelec2000 I never said Luke borrowed from oral tradition in 2nd century. Tradition that Luke and Polycarp and Ignatius refer to are clearly from the 1st century, Im just saying that we cannot know if those writers explicitly had Luke in mind or just a well known saying of Jesus that became well known independantly of Luke.
Almost certainly the author of Mark wrote a large part of Luke. Probably the author(s) of Q wrote most of the rest of Luke. It seems that a sometime travelling companion of Paul wrote a significant part of Acts. The church fathers didn't know that Luke and Matthew are copied from Mark so I really can't see how anyone can in good faith give their opinions much weight.
Luke and Matthew only share about 1/3 of their text in common with Mark. And also they are written in a different literary style and by writers with very different levels of scholarly skill due to the grammar and syntax used. So no, they weren't written by the same person. It's possible that the authors of Luke and Matthew used Mark as a source. It's equally possible that they just knew Mark (or the author of the gospel of Mark) and talked to him. It was a small world without many Christians around at the time when the gospels were written and many of them knew each other, after all.
I'm trying to round out my series on Acts going back to last year. Next up: Did Luke use Paul's letters? After that, I'll be tackling the claim that Luke used Josephus.
People really claim luke used Josephus? Didn't his antiquities come out a few decades after Luke?
Oooo i like this style of video, you should make an "explained in under 3 minutes" series specifically.
I have definitely thought of doing a series like that.
@@TestifyApologetics All social media is trending in the direction of short-form videos as peoples' attention span decrease
@@TestifyApologetics That would be a good series! But the series should probably be "in X minutes" rather than "in 3 minutes" due to some topics needing more explanation time. What I mean is, the number of minutes should change from title-to-title rather than each one specifically being 3 minutes.
Unless you think you can do each one in three minutes!
Short Answer: Luke.
Ok, we can all go home now.
long answer: Luke the physician
@@briandiehl9257 Correct answer: We don't know for certainty; it boils down to what one believes.
Another reason why Luke/Acts being “anonymous” makes no sense , is because they were letters specifically addressed to Theothilous . Who writes a letter to someone without attaching their name to it in some form ?
correct…its is unlikely Theophilus would just accept an anonymous work not knowing who wrote it….would he still believe it? wouldn t he search for who send it to him?…
I don't know why they would attribute Luke as the author if they didn't think he wrote it. After all, he was not an apostle, so the early church could have used Phillip or even Thaddeus.
Love the great use of the church fathers in this one. Great work!
I like this format. Reserving longer discussions for the blog and keeping the videos short is the formula I prefer
Don't forget, in addition to what you said in this video, no other author (for Luke/Acts) has ever been suggested in history. Luke is the only author ever attributed to his works. Thanks for a great video!
Obviously no other names have been suggested because the intellectually honest alternative to "Luke wrote it" is "We don't know who wrote it", not some other name selected without nothing more than a pile of post and ad hoc rationalisation.
@@downenout8705 I think what the OP is saying is that with truly anonymous documents, you would expect to see multiple names being attributed to it, like with Hebrews. But the testimony in the days of the early church is so far unanimous that it was Luke who wrote it. OP is not talking about modern scholarship.
@@nullarcstudios8910 It's very simple an early Church Father appended Luke to Luke, presumably because of the vague medical references. Nobody had a better suggestion so it stuck. As to Acts given that it is written in the same style as Luke it is reasonable to assume that it was written by the same author as Luke. Again no one has a better suggestion so it stuck.
@@downenout8705 If that were the case, then again, we would expect to see a myriad of proposed authors, like with the book of Hebrews. However, virtually unconnected Christian groups all unanimously attest Luke to Luke. One guy in what is modern day France saying that Luke wrote it does not explain why some dude on the completely opposite side of the Roman empire would say the same thing. In order for that theory to make sense it would've had to have happened in the early 2nd century, which would still be within living memory of the author, which makes it even more unlikely that the name was chosen at random. If there's people around who remember who wrote it, then suggesting a random name makes no sense. News and information took a very long to travel back then. You can spout the theory all you want, but the evidence is stacked against it. So, it's actually not that simple. All of what you said is literally just conjecture about the intentions of people who died ~1800 years ago.
Not to mention, this wasn't even my point. I was just pointing out that what you said was not what the OP was talking about.
@@nullarcstudios8910 Nothing you wrote alters the fact that the gospels and acts are anonymous. They are written in the third person; contain no clue as to authorship within the text and there are no writings from any of the supposed authors claiming authorship.
No amount of ad and post hoc rationalisation on your part will alter these facts.
For f's sake this is supposed to be the inspired word of an all powerful god, yet it couldn't even inspire the authors to make authorship unambiguous. God, apparently, couldn't even inspire Matthew to record his first meeting with Jesus in the first person.
Good one!
I would also add the "we-passages". They add epistemic credence to the fact that the author was an eye-witness/follower of Paul. (which in turn adds credence to the traditional authorship of Luke)
But the attribution of the gospel to Theophilus is probably the strongest piece of evidence in the cumulative case you mention (although the other points are also important)
This whole idea that the Gospels were originally annonymos seems frankly popostros to me. If the Gospel's author was initially unknown, than why attribute it to such a seemingly random character as Luke? Wouldn't it be more convenient to atribuite it to one of the 12 apostles (like many of the later Gnostic gospels actually do, for that matter?)
The fact that only two of the four canon Gospels are named after apostles I think should say something.
Well, one reason the early church would not have attributed it to an eyewitness is that the author explicitly _says_ he's not an eyewitness (but that it was handed down from eyewitnesses: Luke 1:1-4).
It may have been attributed to "Luke" because the author speaks as though he's a companion of Paul (e.g. Acts 16:10-17) and Paul apparently had a companion named "Luke" (Philemon 23; Colossians 4:14).
Gospels are only internally anonymous which happens quite a bit with Ancient writing. That doesn't mean that they were circulated anonymously.
Great video! I like the dedication argument
A guy named Jason Sumner has a small RUclips channel. He has good vids with internal evidence that Silas could have wrote Luke and acts.
You can't always trust the early "church fathers"
Irenaeus said Jesus was in His 50s when He died
I wonder how Ehrman responds to this argument.
I've noticed he is much more careful about what he says when talking to the likes of Mike Licona than when talking to less informed people.
That's why I can't stand it when believing scholars say they respect his work against mythicists. I can't respect him even for that because I've seen the difference between how he talks to young students and seasoned Christian scholars.
@@Jim-Mc In your opinion, does he provide conflicting answers to different groups, or does he simply state his opinion (the summary of his studies) to one group, while providing nuance, sources and arguments to an academic audience?
You have to speak to the education level of the audience. Especially in social sciences, it is very easy to speak at a level above what the layman is going to be able to understand. A simple misunderstanding of vocabulary can cause great offense and stop a conversation altogether.
I would also add when we do have an anonymous author like we do for the book of Hebrews, there's much speculation about who wrote it among the early church fathers. We do not for any of the Gospels at minimum the early church fathers believed who the authors were exactly who they claim to be. You don't have to accept the metaphysical presuppositions of Christianity to acknowledge the historical facts. Just like how we do not have to accept "Works and Days" claims about morality, but it would be silly to suggest that Hesiod wasn't real. That's a criticism of my discipline of History where it forces history writers and historians to come up with novel theories in order to stay relevant and so they put out stuff like that.
Great stuff !
It would be absurd to attribute authorship to Luke who was neither an eyewitness nor an Apostle!
If the the early Christians wanted to promote Christianity and avoid criticism they would have chosen
Bartholomew , Andrew or Philip !!
Great video format
Traditional authorship seems to me to require much less mental gymnastics to conclude given the historical and manuscript record than the autonomous theory.
Isnt this "we dont know who wrote *x*" argument also used for shakespeare?
It seems ridiculous that people would nitpick traditional authorship-- aren't there better subjects for scholarly work?
*looks at the name Luke.... Then points to it... Then taps it a could of times, turns, and walks away*
i believe that john and revelation were written as two volumes and the reason revelation was written was because the gospel of john was being finished after the fire of rome and the neronian persecution happened and the first jewish war just erupted. notice that only john doesn't have the olivet discourse but you can say that the entire book of revelation is an expanded volume about the olivet discourse
Ehrman's whole deal boils down to taking Paul out of the picture because he thinks all orthodox doctrines started with him. Please no one tell him about the Old Testament.
Welcome back
A lot of good information here but you should've also included the dates for the quotes of these church fathers to see how separated they were from the original events in terms of time as well as the manuscripts
The time interval in antiquity is not long. You doth protest too much.
Bart Eherman, acknowledges that early Christian tradition says that the Book of Matthew was written by Matthew, The Book of Luke was written by Luke, Mark was written by Mark and John was written by John. For him this is invalid. Only because he's a scholar it doesn't mean he's the ultimate Authority.
Yes, but his reasoning for why they are invalid boils down to personal feelings of doubt, not on evidence. The only evidence we have on who wrote the gospels are early church fathers and church tradition, which are unanimous in their assent that they were written by these authors. I think it's a very stupid decision of a hill to die on, personally. Because even if the gospels weren't written by eyewitnesses directly, they were written early enough where the author would have known the apostles personally and would have heard about Jesus and started following Christianity because of their testimony. If you want to cast doubt on the validity of the testimony of scripture there are far better ways to do it.
👍
Luke, the Physician, did NOT have the skill set to write Luke-Acts and no apostle penned anything in the NT.
You appear to know a lot about Luke the Physician. What are your sources of information?
It doesn’t mater who wrote Luke/Acts. They are filled with supernatural miracle stories so this means they are not historical by any means Please don’t treat them as historical. A good historian will dismiss you right off the bat.
Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio all report that the emperor Vespasian performed miracles. Should we dismiss them?
Did Ignatius or one church father also quote the entire book?
Thank you
The Bible is the only infallible Holy Spirit inspired. living written Word of God.
I love how easily a 3 minute video overpowers Ehrman and others “anonymous” nonsense. What’s funny is even if they were “anonymous” it still could have been the authors as titled Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John 😂
Given that you think a person with a Ph.D. who states a position shared by a large number of other people with a Ph.D. is easily shown to be nonsense compared to youtuber @Testify's argument, would you be willing to steelman their position and then state why it is so nonsensical?
@@truncated7644 Can you find another argument for their position that isn’t an argument from authority? Like one that actually refutes this video? FYI, there are many PHDs who agree with this video as well.
@@truthovertea Perhaps, but I didn't call @Testify's opinion nonsense. You're the one calling opposing views nonsense. Which is why I asked if you were able to steelman their position rather than dismissing it as nonsense..
@@truncated7644 Ehrman’s view is supported by two points(along with most scholars who agree with him):
1. The earliest document we have that directly claims the authorship of the gospels is from Irenaeus around 180 AD. Although this is disputed by many scholars, Bart sticks with this argument.
2. They gospel writers don’t directly mention their own authorship within their writings, including Acts.
For the first reason this is ridiculous, many of the church fathers have writings and quotes from the gospels that speak authoritatively to their audience. This reasonably assumes the audience knew what source they were referring to. Otherwise there would have been no value. Luke-Acts are quoted by most of the early church fathers pre Irenaeus, not to mention the video evidence in this 3 min video.
The second is also absurd because many other writers at the time did not credit their authorship in their writings or mention themselves only in the third person. Why is it that only the Bible’s authorship called into question? This is a double standard. So the second reason is entirely based on special pleading.
@TruthOverTea Let's also not forget the fact that anonymity was not uncommon in that time period and was actually pretty normal. Even paintings weren't signed until the Renaissance.
Tons valid historical documents did not cite authorship, including works from some of the most trustworthy and reliable sources, such as Plutarch. Are we supposed to discredit his work as well? It's strange that many scholars and historians have no issues crediting his work.
Authors were able to be identified based on their writing style, as well their associates, which, in this case, was the early Christian church.
Anyone who tries to make this argument of the anonymous gospels must argue it as an exception rather than the status quo, which, as we know, is completely wrong.
Iraneious and other people you mentioned wrote that in second century and all other people you mention writing in 2 all the way 3 and theses people said that 4 gospel ( not sure if Luke as well) but they said that all the gospel were written by the dicipale according to the view of church moreover you have Papius which writing is more old compare to iraneous but papius hasnot meet any of the dicipale but rather he knew the early Christian but we canot be sure because there is no chain of narration from dicipale writing to all the way to iraneous, and the authors of gospel are anonymous. Hope that’s help I might me abit wrong about the papius but other then that I am not. Moreover when it comes to the author of gospel we don’t know who wrote them. Most evidence that says gospels were written by the disipale is from second century all the 3 century( people like iraneous said ) I am referring to.
Do the majority of active, modern scholars agree with your conclusion?
The majority of active modern scholars do not agree with each other on a whole host of issues.
Why do you narrow it to, "Active, modern scholars?" LOL. UNLESS you or they have come up with new evidence (They haven't), why reject what scholars from the past like AT Robertson, Harnack, Streeter and Ellis said about Luke's authorship? Eh?
1:45 "Every existing ancient manuscript attributes the authorship to Luke"
But the earliest extant manuscript is commonly thought to date to the early 3rd century, which is long after scholars think "according to Luke" would have been added. So, how is this evidence against anonymity?
The church fathers he is quoting are earlier than the earliest manuscript
@@DuzzinsSama
Sure, but I was objecting to his use of the *manuscript evidence* to support his view (that the Gospels were never anonymous). The title was added before any of the Church Fathers claimed Luke was the author, so I don't see how they constitute independent evidence.
The argument he's making is that there are exactly 0 manuscripts that don't attribute the authorship to Luke. Every single one of them credits him as the author. If you're a scholar trying to prove the Gospel's anonymity, your best bet, out of hundreds, if not, thousands of manuscripts is to find ONE that at the very least, contests the authorship. Because , then they can suggest that Gospel authorship was uncertain at the time. But we don't see that. On the contrary we have loads of external evidence and references that suggest otherwise.
The majority scholarly opinion is based on speculation. It's nothing more than a hypothesis. Its scholars trying fill in a gap in history with very little information.
For instance, scholars like to theorize that the tradition of attributing authors to the Gospels may have begun at around the mid-2nd century. But there's no way of definitively knowing that because we don't have any predating texts to either support or dismiss that hypothesis. So scholars get to take advantage of the ignorance of that period. It's having your cake and eating it too.
@@Cklert
Well, one line of evidence for the majority view is the simple fact that "according to X" would be a very unusual way for author to sign their works. It is obviously very unlikely that _four_ authors would identify themselves in this exact same, unusual way. Moreover, ‘according to X’ is a distinguishing title. The author of the earliest Gospel would have no reason to use such a title, since there were no other ‘Gospels’ to distinguish it from (that’s what ‘earliest’ means). Moreover, the author of Mark already gave his book a title: "the gospel of Jesus Christ" (see Mark 1:1). If ‘the gospel according to Mark’ was original, this would give the book a rather stilted opening. All of this constitutes strong evidence ‘according to Mark’ is an addition, and likewise ‘according to Luke’.
Luke, companion of the apostle Paul. See only takes 3 seconds.
Bart Ehrman doesn’t argue that they were written anonymously. No one argues that. This because the gospels were written anonymously. Not sure why you referenced Bart for that or why you presented that the way you did. Kind of dishonest. If you flip to Luke in your Bible, it does not anywhere in his gospel say “This is Luke” or “My Name is Luke.” Scholarship heavily disputes that Paul’s companion Luke wrote Luke-Acts. Acts contradicts Paul’s own epistles in almost every instance where Acts and the Epistles share historical details. Also, the author of Luke, whoever it is, says they’re surveying the land for eyewitnesses to use as sources for the gospel, yet almost the entire gospel sources Mark and Matthew in actuality. The idea Luke is a physician comes from one verse in Philemon, which scholarship disputes as being an authentic Pauline letter. The author of Luke-Acts uses the same level of medical terminology as other well-known non-physicians like Plutarch, who while very educated, was not at all a physician.
Bank
Give praises to the Most High YAH amen
Luke 19:23 Why then gave not you my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required my own with usury?
Isn't Papias a great evidence?
Papias makes no mention of Luke.
@@TestifyApologetics sorry, I may have mistaken Ireneaus' as a quote from him.
It's the inspired Word of God. Does anything else really matter?
Slightly off topic. But I have a question.
There are people who think that there is a q-document. And both the Q-document and the Mark-Gospel are the sole sources for the other gospels. Also there are people who think that the Gospel should be primarily taken as fiction (literary device) and only things which have some other way of confirmation can be taken seriously. But if both Matthew and Luke copied from Mark and Q then wouldn't that entire theory fall apart? After all it just pushes everything back a layer and then the entire doubting game can be started anew. And in that other layer we only have 2 independent sources instead of four.
"liberal scholars" lol. Define the term - anyone who disagrees with us true christians - "certain 'liberal scholars'"
@@gmac6503 I just used "certain liberal scholars" as a stand in for anyone with that opinion. If I chose the wrong label then sorry, not sorry. I don't care about labels. I am more curious about the question I asked, not the people who believe in it.
@@philippbrogli779 lol ok so anyone with an opinion different than yours is the same as certain liberal scholars - just worded differently Yeah that clears it up. NOT! I know how the game is played man.
@@philippbrogli779 for someone that doesn't care about labels you sure know how to use them a lot. Twice in one paragraph just to poison the well a tiny bit
@@vinnyrac "string theory" haha notice in the first instance, he said, certain liberal 'Bible' scholars, and then the second time he left out the word Bible in 'certain liberal scholars.' he tripped over his own feet, and accidentally called some certain the rule scholars actual Bible scholars, but he had to change that because they're apostates in his eyes.
Saying that Ignatius quoted Luke is a conjecture, wording is quite different, it could come from an pral tradition from which Luke also borrowed. As for Polycarp most of his alleged quotes of NT are different in wording from actual quotes, he and Clement of Rome quoted same words of Jesus that we can't find anywhere in canonical gospels so there probably circulated some written or oral traditions about Christs sayings. So it's not 100% sure if he quotes Luke or that tradition. He is at least proof of an early tradition of things we have in Luke, and a potential proof of Luke at best. Ignatius too.
I don't know what saying of Jesus in Clement you're referring to. For these authors to make use of the Gospels as authoritative sources means that they expected their audience to recognize their quotations and allusions and to accept them as authentic. Polycarp does in fact quote OT passages loosely, it's the longer passages that are more word for word, indicating he looked them up. The fact Justin quotes them, calls them memoirs who are written by apostles or companions of apostles. No it's not a knock-down proof that Luke wrote them, but it's in harmony with the testimony of the early fathers and because these gospels did probably exist and were circulating by the end of the 1st century/early 2nd century there's no good reason to just shrug and say "meh it must all be oral tradition"
The gospel of Luke was written in the first century. Thus the author of Luke could not have borrowed from a common oral tradition in the second century.
@@davidstrelec2000 I never said Luke borrowed from oral tradition in 2nd century. Tradition that Luke and Polycarp and Ignatius refer to are clearly from the 1st century, Im just saying that we cannot know if those writers explicitly had Luke in mind or just a well known saying of Jesus that became well known independantly of Luke.
Almost certainly the author of Mark wrote a large part of Luke.
Probably the author(s) of Q wrote most of the rest of Luke.
It seems that a sometime travelling companion of Paul wrote a significant part of Acts.
The church fathers didn't know that Luke and Matthew are copied from Mark so I really can't see how anyone can in good faith give their opinions much weight.
Luke and Matthew only share about 1/3 of their text in common with Mark. And also they are written in a different literary style and by writers with very different levels of scholarly skill due to the grammar and syntax used. So no, they weren't written by the same person. It's possible that the authors of Luke and Matthew used Mark as a source. It's equally possible that they just knew Mark (or the author of the gospel of Mark) and talked to him. It was a small world without many Christians around at the time when the gospels were written and many of them knew each other, after all.
Q is conjectured to exist