Explore the intricate history of gospel writing through the lens of Luke, the first Christian historian. This episode delves into the critical role of eyewitness accounts in the early Christian church and the significance of Luke’s narrative structure. Discover the unique characteristics that make Luke’s gospel distinctive in connecting faith with secular historical contexts.
00:00:18 Exploring Historical Writing and the Role of Luke
00:08:21 The Significance of Witnesses and Eyewitness Accounts
00:17:53 The Temple and Other Observations in Luke
00:21:22 Luke’s Unique Characteristics and Influence
SPEAKER 02 :
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 03 :
We take the reading of history for granted. It’s hard for us to realize that most people haven’t got a clue what it takes to actually write a history, what’s involved with it, what raises a work to the level of saying this is history. People call Herodotus the father of history. He composed his work in the 5th century, and he’s considered the first historian in the true sense of the word. His work consisted of inquiries. The word inquiries in Greek is hysteriae, which you don’t have to be a linguist to recognize the origin of the word history. Actually, hysteriae. Modern historians seem reluctant to call his work history for some reason, but never mind. He served a very useful purpose, and his work is valuable. Now, when we come to the New Testament, we encounter the first Christian historian. His name is Luke, and his work consists of the gospel and the book of Acts. He is the only one of the gospels to deal with the very beginnings of the faith. Now, you know, Matthew mentions that Jesus Christ was born and it was on this wise, but none of them develop thoroughly the story of Jesus Christ right from the start except Luke. He alone sets out to provide a continuous record, and this affects the order of events as He records them. Now, I’ve already noted there are differences in the order of events as recorded in the Gospel writers. This is threatening to some theories of divine inspiration, but it’s not to anyone who understands the culture, the time, the language. In Hebrew literature, for example… The climax of a story is often in the middle of the story, while we modern folks put the climax at the end. Matthew or Mark may have chosen a different order to underline a particular point or to lead into a particular point. It’s like you and I might do as we tell our stories to underline a point we’re trying to make, not to make a point of the story itself. Now, remember, these fellows did not have word processors or Xerox machines. Everything was written out by hand. Everything was copied by hand. And if there are going to be any corrections, they can only be done in the margin. So it’s really a very different situation. Everett Harrison, in his introduction to the New Testament, allows that Luke considered his gospel and the book of Acts to be two volumes of one work. Acts takes up right where the gospel leaves off, and it states in the preamble that it’s a follow-up of an earlier work. It’s curious, it never occurred to any of these guys in the New Testament to sign their work. You know, I Mark, I Luke, they just didn’t do it. But in Luke’s case, it takes very little to establish him as the author, especially because it’s so easy to do in Acts. This coupled with the fact that all the early church fathers retained a tradition of the authorship of these books. Now, I think there may be two reasons why they didn’t title their work in their own name. One, they didn’t think that they were the important thing. Christ was the important thing. Second, everyone knew who wrote it. The signature was superfluous. The tradition was so strong that everyone knew that this was Matthew’s gospel, this was Luke’s gospel. It’s not also, I’m sorry, in Luke’s case, there was another reason. He was obviously known by the person that the work was written for. Hardly any necessity of him signing a commissioned work, as it were. It’s not an anonymous document either. It’s quite personal. Listen to the way Luke starts this gospel account. For as much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most assuredly believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which were from the beginning eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also. having had a perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto you in order, most excellent Theophilus, that you might know the certainty of those things wherein you have been instructed. Notice the word me. It was good to me. So this personal touch comes into it. Now, God bless Theophilus. Without him asking for this, without his commission, without him wanting this, we might not have these priceless documents. Now, of course, the Holy Spirit could have brought them to us some other way, down some other road. But still, I think we can be thankful for this man. Luke was often a companion of Paul. And it’s to Paul we are indebted for learning what Luke did as a profession. It’s in the letter to the Colossians. He says, This is all of his salutations in the fourth chapter of Colossians. He’s always looking fervently for you in prayers that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. I bear him record he has a great zeal for you and to them that are in Laodicea and them in Hierapolis. Then he drops this in. Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you. So now we know Luke not only was a constant companion of Paul, he was a physician. The prologue to Luke’s gospel, which I just read to you, is especially interesting. It’s a testimony to gospel writing in general at that time. Looking at it again, Luke chapter 1. For as much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely fulfilled among us. Now, when I read this to you before, I read it just as the King James had it. It’s not those things which are surely believed among us. The word is they were fulfilled among us. And this is an important concept that is developed in Luke, that these things were prophesied in the Old Testament, and only now in our day and age, he says, they have been fulfilled among us. We’ve seen them, and they’ve happened. But it’s really interesting, and it’s not in the least bit surprising, that a lot of people had taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration. Unfortunately, we don’t have much of that. We have Matthew and Mark and John in addition to Luke, and that’s the story. The impression I get is a lot of people were giving attention to this question of ordering, organizing, and setting forth the gospel. And it seems very evident that the early church, right from the get-go, had a very strong oral tradition of the gospel, which they heard again and again and again. He says, we’ve been trying to get this together, even as they who delivered them to us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. This is all about eyewitness testimony. Well, he says, it’s good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first. Now, this is important because Luke felt that he needed to go back and nail this stuff down from the beginning, something that Mark had hardly even noticed and Matthew had given short shrift to, even if he had read their Gospels, which, again, I doubt. I am inclined to think that what seems to be a reading from their Gospels is actually a recitation of the oral tradition. Now, there are several things in this statement I think that are important. One of them is that many have gone after this question of writing of the story. Also, that Luke had perfect understanding of all things from the very first. He really had this story together. Now, some have actually made the case that the story of the nativity of Jesus, Luke got from Mary herself. And there are reasons, if you study it carefully, especially if you’re able to read Greek, that kind of come through to you that this section is set apart. It is different in many important ways. And it may well be that he sat down with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and got her story and then laid it out in an orderly fashion as a preview, really, of the gospel that was to come. It’s also important to realize this question of eyewitnesses that he mentions here is really important in that early church. The impression is that there were numerous eyewitnesses delivering accounts to those who wrote them down. Paul tells us in one occasion there were 500 people that saw Jesus alive at once after his resurrection. These people all had stories to tell. I have no doubt that these witnesses were called on to tell the story over and over and over again. And one thing that tends to tie the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts together is the idea of witnesses. In Luke 24, verse 46, for example, Jesus said to them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day. and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. This is crucial, that people be able to testify. You know how important witnesses are in court? You bring them in, you put their hand on the Bible, and do they still do that? But at least they make them raise their right hand and swear to tell the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Witnesses are important. You can’t establish anything without them. And so it was that Jesus said this was to be the case. Then in Acts, the first chapter, all this starts over again. Jesus says to his disciples, you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth. At last, the disciples had a hard time getting their mind around really going to the world, not just to Jews and Jewry. Later in Acts 1.22, he says, Beginning with the baptism of John to the same day he was taken up from us, must one be ordained in the place of Judas to be a witness with us of his resurrection. So, this question of witnesses and testimony are a dominant consideration in both Luke and Acts. There’s more, but first, grab a pencil and a piece of paper. I want to give you some information, and then I’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 02 :
Is it possible that an infinite God could find himself wanting anything? The Bible says it is not good for man to be alone. If it’s not good for man to be alone, then perhaps it wasn’t good for God to be alone either. Ronald Dart’s book, The Lonely God, is available at your local bookstore or directly from borntowin.net. For more information, write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. That’s 1-888-242-5344. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
SPEAKER 03 :
The text I’m using for this series of programs on Introduction to the New Testament is that of Everett Harrison. The title, Introduction to the New Testament. It’s been around a long time and is out in several editions and it’s still available, still in print and can be obtained from your local bookseller. That’s Introduction to the New Testament by Everett Harrison. Now, in Luke, when he comes to his usual set of characteristics of the book, he has a much longer list than usual, 19 characteristics to be precise. The first one, not surprisingly, is the preeminence or the prominence, I should say, of the Holy Spirit. Now, I know when you read something like this, well, the Holy Spirit’s everywhere through the New Testament. Yeah, it is. But it’s much stronger in Luke and in Acts than it is elsewhere. I had noticed it in Acts. I had not made the connection with the Gospel of Luke until Harrison called it to my attention. The role of the Spirit looms large in Luke’s account of Jesus’ work. It starts off very early on in the first chapter of Luke with the appearance of an angel to the father John the Baptist. He suddenly appeared to him in the temple one day, and he said to Zacharias, Be not afraid. Your prayer is heard. Your wife Elizabeth shall bear you a son. You’ll call his name John. You’ll have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord. He shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb. So right from the start, the idea of someone, in this case John the Baptist, being filled with the Holy Spirit is very important. Now, I sometimes wonder, and I’m reading through the King James Version, in all these places where they render this term Holy Ghost, John will be filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother’s womb. The Father and the Son are presented to us in human form. As Father and Son, these are ideas that we can readily understand and grasp. I believe the expression for it, if I can pronounce the word, is anthropomorphically they are presented to us. That is, in man form. The Holy Spirit is another matter altogether. All four Gospels note that the Spirit at Jesus’ baptism descended upon him like a dove. Only Luke mentions that it was in bodily shape like a dove. For the most part, the Holy Spirit is never seen in any kind of bodily shape at all. It’s seen as wind. It’s seen as fire. And I think because of this, the King James translators chose ghost to render it as a kind of disembodied spirit, nevertheless active. There’s a wide variety of the ways the Holy Spirit is interpreted, thought of, explained in denominations, and so I won’t go down that road. But the Spirit is a major player in Luke’s work. Now, I developed this idea more fully in my book, The Lonely God. It should be available through your local bookstore. Just ask for The Lonely God by Ronald L. Dart. And they can look it up in their catalog, and if they don’t have it, they can order it for you. But this concept of the Spirit and the work of the Spirit, again, is very strong in Luke. For example, there came this point right after Jesus’ baptism where he had to go into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Luke 4, verse 1, says this, “…Jesus, being full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.” Later in Luke 4, verse 14, Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and there went out a fame to him throughout all the region round about. So the Spirit plays large. When you’re aware of this, and as you read through the gospel, you’ll probably see it in more places. The second characteristic that Harrison mentions is the temple. The temple was a dominant presence in both Luke and Acts. which, I might add, persuades me that the temple was still standing when this was written. The temple was just too large in the lives of Jews everywhere for it to have been destroyed, for Jerusalem to have fallen, and for us not to even hear an echo of it in any of the gospel accounts. So I think Luke wrote before 70 A.D., This preoccupation with the temple continues late in Luke. In chapter 24, verse 50, Jesus led his disciples out as far as Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. It was still Jesus’ crucifixion, His burial, His resurrection, His ascension, all this behind them. Where did disciples still go? To what did they still look? To the temple. Later in the book of Acts, chapter 2, verse 44. All the disciples who believed, all the believers were together. They had all things common. They sold their possessions and their goods and parted them to all men as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and then going and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their food with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people.” And the Lord added to the church daily as such as should be saved. But they didn’t have church buildings. They met from house to house or wherever they could get two or three people under shelter. But they went every day to the temple. One clue to this is in the third chapter of Acts where it says, Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. So the hour of prayer was still observed by them in the temple. So this strong reference to the temple and repeated is in Acts and in the gospel according to Luke and is characteristic of them. The third item he mentions is frequent references to angels over 20 times. It suggests a strong otherworldly connection of these events. There was an awareness of the spirit world that was around them. The fourth characteristic, he said, there are several distinctives in Luke’s account of the passion of Jesus. For example, the Sanhedrin details the charges against Jesus in the presence of Pilate. Then there are the three times that Pilate declares he finds no fault in Jesus. The fifth characteristic, repeated references to the redeeming Messiah from Isaiah, and a common grammatical form that he uses to emphasize Jesus’ own awareness of his connection to this mission, that Jesus was really sensitive to the fact that his mission was foretold by the prophet Isaiah. The sixth characteristic is that attention is often centered on Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the core and the heart of it all. The seventh is, of all the Gospels, Luke is the only one to connect the story to secular history. You find it right off the bat in Luke, chapter 2, verse 1. It came to pass in those days there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. This taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. Then there’s in Luke 3, verse 1, “…in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Aeturia, and of the region around Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene.” Well, now, I would think that’s altogether more information than any of us would need, but it’s characteristic of Luke, the historian. to make these connections to secular history of the time. Stay with me. When I come back, we’ll look at some more of the characteristics of the Gospel of Luke.
SPEAKER 02 :
For a free CD of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only and request the program titled, Introduction to the New Testament, No. 10. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. That’s 1-888-242-5344.
SPEAKER 03 :
In case you came in late on this program, and you can think about this for the future in case you missed one, you can always pick these up on the Internet. Just go to our website, borntowin.net, click on the audio link, audio services, and you’ll find there not only this program, but more besides. So be sure and take a look at our website. Harrison’s eighth characteristic of the gospel, according to Luke, is is because of Luke’s intent to cover the story from the beginning, he is the only gospel that covers the birth of John the Baptist, the annunciation to Mary, the adoration of the shepherds, the circumcision of Jesus, Jesus’ presentation in the temple, and his first visit to the Jerusalem at age 12. The others just blow right on by that. Kind of understand why they might think that that’s not important. But Luke thinks it is important. And frankly, I’m on Luke’s side. Because it’s really, as you come to it later in the epistles, especially from John, he that denies that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of the spirit of Antichrist. One of the things that Luke is establishing in the first part of his gospel is that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. He was born in a stable. He was laid on straw, wrapped in swaddling clothes. He was put to his mother’s breast. He was circumcised. All this is important for people to realize Jesus Christ was real. He didn’t fall down from heaven as a man full grown. He did not appear on the scene as though he were a man, even though he was not. He was the real deal. The ninth characteristic Harrison lists is that there’s a section of Luke that presents serious questions that are mostly of interest to scholars. It runs from the end of chapter 9 up to chapter 18, if you’re interested. The questions are mainly geographical, not of general interest. They think Luke may have arranged the material to lead up to the Passion Week, and they commonly call this the travel narrative. If you want to have a little fun, just work your way up to this section, looking at where Jesus is, and follow it on through. Characteristic number 10. Items like those just mentioned are suggestive to scholars that Luke had Mark’s gospel in hand, and he interleaved his own remarks into Mark’s account. It’s a common thing that people do nowadays. They will cite something someone else has written. Nowadays, we kind of discipline ourselves more to footnote these things and then interleave our comments. I think that’s a possibility. On the other hand, there is the oral gospel, which I have suggested forms the basis of all of the gospels, and I don’t think it’s necessarily true at all that Luke had Mark’s gospel in hand. The eleventh characteristic, Luke writes very good Greek. Scholars assume that Luke was a Gentile, and they note that his Greek has some characteristics of Attic Greek, that is classical Greek, that simply aren’t missing, that are missing, I should say, in the other Gospels. The twelfth characteristic was kind of interesting. Luke likes to record the popular response to Jesus. In other words, we’re not going to talk merely about what Jesus said and did. What we’re interested in here is how did people respond to this? Take, for example, Luke chapter 5, verse 24. This is the incident where they let a man down through the roof of a house on a pallet who had palsy for Jesus to heal him. Jesus said to the young man, your sins are forgiven you. And the Jews got upset by that. And he said, what’s the big deal here? except that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. He said to the sick of palsy, I say to you, rise, take up your couch, and go to your house. He immediately got up, picked up his bed, and went out the door glorifying God. And I’ll bet he did. Then Luke tells us, they all were amazed, and they glorified God, and they were filled with fear, saying, we have seen strange things today. Strange? Later, in Luke 7, verse 16, he says, there came a great fear on all because of what Jesus was doing. They glorified God, saying that a great prophet has risen up among us, that God has visited his people. And this rumor of him went forth throughout all Judea, throughout all the region round about. I’ll bet it did. How many campfires, how many dinner tables were there where Jesus was the only thing they talked about all the time? There was also on this occasion a woman who had been bound over by Satan for a year after year. Well, double, couldn’t loop, couldn’t get up. And Jesus healed her on Sabbath. And the people got very upset about this. Some of the people did. And Jesus said, well, hey, you would loose an animal and take him out to get a drink of water on the Sabbath day. Why shouldn’t this woman, who’s a daughter of Abraham, who Satan has bound these 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? When he said all these things, his adversaries were ashamed. And I would think they would be. And all the people rejoiced for the glorious things that were done by him. People got very excited about the things that Jesus did. In spite of this, Luke never speaks of Jesus’ compassion on the multitudes, only on individuals. Harrison lists several more of distinct characteristics of the gospel according to Luke, but one of them caught my attention. Luke alone, among the first three gospels, gives Jesus the title of Savior. which is kind of odd when you think about it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart. You have heard Ronald L. Dart. If you would like more information or if you have any questions, write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. In the U.S. and Canada, call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit our website at borntowin.net.
SPEAKER 01 :
Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at born2win.net.
