The New Testament Documents: The Reliability of the Writings of Luke and Paul

Second of Two Parts

Luke has always been highly regarded for historical accuracy and for his breadth of knowledge. Nevertheless, his reliability has often been questioned. And the pall of doubt falling on one part of the work inevitably casts a shadow on the whole. Can the Gospel According to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles be trusted? In some ways this question is more important than the question whether the Gospel of John is reliable, the problem discussed in the previous section of this article. John’s Gospel could be regarded as a somewhat restructured, even stylized, account of Jesus’ ministry. But Luke explicitly claims to be writing an “orderly account” of Jesus’ life and of the rapid expansion of the early Christian Church (Luke 1:1–4 and Acts 1:1, 2).

What can be said about Luke’s accuracy? In some places there will never be a way to check his data, for often his statements are unique. Over the years, however, Luke’s reputation has progressively been enhanced through archaeology and historical research.

The Accuracy of Luke

It is difficult today to imagine the obstacles that faced a historian in ancient times. There were no newspapers—in fact, no printed documents of any kind. The official records of the Roman Empire were not distributed. Postal service was available only for military or governmental correspondence, and it was irregular. There were few books.

In addition, the task of writing the history of the early Christian Church had its special problems. Herodotus wrote about the clash of empires and Thucydides about the well-known struggles between Athens and Sparta at the height of their influence. But Christianity was, at the beginning, a small and insignificant movement among the lowest classes of society. It was under local leadership. Yet it spread so rapidly that within forty years after the death and resurrection of Christ there were Christian congregations in most of the major cities of the empire—from the eastern capitals of Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch to Rome itself—and in many lesser places. To capture this movement and present it intelligently, concentrating upon its major figures and its major lines of advance, was a monumental task.

Yet this is precisely what Luke did. He speaks of thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities, and nine of the Mediterranean islands, and he presents them in such a way as to chronicle the spread of the Gospel from Jerusalem to Rome. He speaks of four emperors and indicates their significance for Christianity. He speaks of many prominent men: Roman governors (Quirinius, Pilate, Sergius Paulus, Gallio, Felix, and Festus), Herod the Great and his descendants (Herod Antipas, Herod Agrippa I, Herod Agrippa II, Bernice, and Drusilla), and leading Jewish figures such as Annas, Caiaphas, Ananias, and Gamaliel.

Clearly, Luke is concerned to present the expansion of Christianity in its broadest scope within the Roman world and to commend the Christian faith to the widest possible spectrum of intelligent Gentile readers. But this is a dangerous procedure. For having painted upon so broad a canvas and for so wide an audience and having thereby given his critical readers many points to test his work, the author may anticipate rejection of his message if the facts are wrong. Luke, however, repeatedly passes the highest test of accuracy.

1. In the first place, Luke shows amazing accuracy in handling official titles and the corresponding spheres of influence. In a small book entitled The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, Professor F. F. Bruce of the University of Manchester is at some pains to document this fact. He writes:

Luke does feel at home with the Roman titles, however, and he never gets them wrong.

Moreover, Bruce adds, “Luke had a further difficulty in that the titles sometimes did not remain the same for any great length of time.” A province might pass from administration by a direct representative of the emperor to senatorial government, and would then be governed by a proconsul rather than an imperial legate (legatus pro praetore). Cyprus, for instance, an imperial province until 22 B.C., became a senatorial province in that year and was therefore governed no longer by an imperial legate but by a proconsul. Thus, when Paul and Barnabas arrived in Cyprus about A.D. 47, it was the proconsul Sergius Paulus who greeted them (Acts 13:7).

Similarly, Achaia was a senatorial province from 27 B.C. to A.D. 15, and again subsequent to A.D. 44. Hence, Luke refers to Gallio, the Roman ruler in Greece, as “the proconsul of Achaia” (Acts 18:12), the title of the Roman representative during the time of Paul’s visit to Corinth but not during the twenty-nine years prior to A.D. 44 (Bruce, op. cit., pp. 82, 83). Such accuracy is remarkable and argues forcefully for Luke’s care in writing and for his presence at many of the events he describes.

2. In Acts 19:38, the town clerk of Ephesus attempts to calm the rioting citizens by referring them to the Roman authorities. “There are proconsuls,” he says, using the plural. This remark might be considered inaccurate since there was only one Roman proconsul in a given area at a time. But an examination of the data shows that only a short time before the rioting in Ephesus, Junius Silanus, the proconsul, had been murdered by messengers from Agrippina, the mother of Nero, who was yet in adolescence (Bruce, op. cit., p. 83). Thus, since the new proconsul had not arrived in Ephesus, the town clerk’s vagueness may be intentional. It may also be, as Bruce suggests, that the words refer to the two emissaries who had committed the murder, Helius and Celer, who were Silanus’s apparent successors. Disturbances among the populace seem especially appropriate in a time of turmoil among the ruling classes.

3. In a number of places in the Book of Acts (16:10–17; 20:5 to 21:18; and 27:1 to 28:16) Luke speaks in the first person, indicating that he himself was with the characters he mentions and thus an eyewitness of the events. In one of these passages, that which relates the dangerous journey in which Paul was taken to Rome for trial, the technical vocabulary used for the parts of the ship and its management by the sailors is so precise, as shown by other ancient texts, that it is believable not only that Luke was present on the ship, as he indicates, but also that he had taken some time to learn the sailors’ vocabulary.

Readers should exercise great humility in the presence of works whose factual details have so often been vindicated.

4. In the broad sweep of his two-part work, Luke has occasion to report the words of many different people: Jews, like Stephen and Peter; Romans, such as Felix and Festus; and international and bilingual figures, such as the Apostle Paul. These men undoubtedly expressed themselves in different ways and geared their addresses to different audiences. But in each case Luke captures the tone of the speech correctly. Paul’s address to the Greeks of Athens is a remarkable example of a learned apologetic to cultured pagans. The sermons by Peter recorded in the first half of the Book of Acts preserve Aramaic turns of expression, even though they are written for a Gentile audience and recorded in Greek.

It is of interest for this general subject that the accounts of the virgin birth of Christ and the accompanying events of those early days bear a stronger Aramaic flavor than any correspondingly long passage in the New Testament, as J. G. Machen observed years ago. To conservative scholars, this is clear evidence of the antiquity of that section of the Gospel, a section embodying either a very early written tradition or else the personal reminiscences of Mary, whose point of view is reflected throughout.

5. Just as the tone of the speeches is varied, so also were the cities Luke mentions in the course of the narrative. There was Antioch, with its tumultuous mixture of races, its busy atmosphere, and its irreverent populace (as the Emperor Julian found to his mortification many years later). There was Jerusalem, tense and hostile, on the brink of a war that finally erupted in violence and led to the destruction of the city in A.D. 70. There was Ephesus, with its business interests centered in the cult of the goddess Diana. And there were many other cities, each with its own particular flavor. Luke paints each picture perfectly, showing either that he himself was present or that he gathered his information about these places from reliable witnesses.

Any presentation of evidence for the reliability of the Lukan material should mention, however, that in at least two places the author of Luke-Acts appears to be in error, at least on the basis of the information available to historians today. In Luke 2:2, at the beginning of the well-known Christmas story, the evangelist says that the taxing under Caesar Augustus was made while Quirinius was governor of Syria. Apparently this is impossible, for Quirinius became governor of Syria in A.D. 6, ten years after the death of Herod the Great, in whose lifetime Jesus Christ was born. Several solutions to this problem have been offered, the most successful being the arguments for a prior governorship of Syria by Quirinius. But no solution has met with general acceptance.

Similarly, Luke seems to commit an anachronism as well as to reverse the order of two well-known revolutionaries in Acts 5:36, 37. He reports in a speech by Gamaliel that the rebellion under Judas, which took place in A. D. 6, the year in which Quirinius became governor of Syria, was preceded by a rebellion under Theudas. But Josephus dates Theudas’s rebellion A. D. 45, after that of Judas and at least ten years after Gamaliel’s speech in Acts. One may suggest, however, either that Josephus may be the one who is wrong, or that Luke is referring to another Theudas, otherwise unknown to us, who lived in the time he indicates.

In such cases a careful historian will suspend his judgment until further information appears, and he will exercise great humility before a work whose factual details have so often been vindicated.

Pauline Authorship

The writings of the Apostle Paul do not pose the same problems of historical reliability as the Gospels and the Book of Acts, and few scholars of any note question their historical statements. Instead, critical questions have centered around the authorship of the books themselves, particularly the pastoral letters—First and Second Timothy and Titus. According to the most articulate critics, the pastorals differ in style and vocabulary from those letters definitely known to be Pauline and reflect a type of church organization unknown before the second century. To explain the letters’ own statements that Paul is their author, such writers appeal to the alleged acceptance of pseudonymous writing in ancient times. To write in the name of another person was an accepted practice, we are told, and no one considered a pseudonymous work deliberate forgery.

Whatever the value of some of these points of argument (and the value of the evidence varies), it is apparent at the very least that the matter is one of probability. For if the explicit claims of the books to be Pauline are rejected, there are no definitive data to resolve the issue. When, therefore, the alleged disparity in style is set forth as evidence of an author other than Paul, a number of conscientious scholars, without denying the differences, also bring forward factors that weigh against this possibility. And they do so more and more.

The Parable Of The White Rat

One day a scientist who was experimenting with white rats created an intricate maze, and in it he placed one of his choice white rats named “Theo” (short for “Theologian”).

For days and weeks Theo was puzzled about the mysteries of the scientist’s creation. He said to the other white rats in the laboratory, “How great is our scientist!”

Then one day, after weeks of experimenting, Theo was able to solve the baffling network of the maze.

With an air of arrogance, he turned to the other white rats in the laboratory and said, “Our scientist is dead.”—RAY E. STAHL, director of information, Milligan College, in Milligan College, Tennessee.

In the first place, it has become very evident that the form of church organization reflected in the pastoral letters was not confined to the Church of the second century. In actual fact, the offices mentioned (presbyter and deacon) may be of considerable antiquity, for they are reflected in a striking way in the Dead Sea Scrolls, all of which are dated before A. D. 70 and many of which are considerably older. On this point W. F. Albright observes:

There is also increasing cause to question the cavalier manner in which some writers ascribe the acceptance of pseudonymity to the New Testament age. For a number of years some scholars, among them Donald Guthrie, have maintained that evidence for the acceptance of this practice in ancient times is entirely lacking. Now an elaborate work in German—Pseudonimität im Altertum, by Joseph Sint—has made the same point with great erudition and with characteristic German thoroughness. Since two epistles attributed to Paul by the second-century Muratorian fragment (the Epistles to the Laodiceans and to the Alexandrians) were rejected from the canon by the later Church, it might also be argued that the Church of the third century certainly did not accept the principle of pseudonymity and that the Christian scholars of that age, whose language was Greek and who lived much closer to Paul in time than we ourselves, accepted the pastoral books as genuine.

It is not a mark of obscurantism, therefore, if the conservative scholar adheres to the traditional authorship of the pastorals, and includes in his conviction of the reliability of the New Testament documents the belief that they are reliable on questions of their authorship.

Contemporary New Testament studies do not prove the total reliability of the New Testament documents. No amount of research could do that, for frequently the necessary facts are lacking. Nevertheless, the studies of recent years, some of which have been noted, have gone a long way to verify the extraordinary reliability of these books. Verification of the biblical writings is often slow, and many are impatient with the slowness. But little by little the data seems to come. It comes from archaeology, from history, and from a better understanding of the sacred and secular texts. It will also, we believe, continue to come, until, in God’s good time, the sum-total of the overwhelming evidence for an integrated and reliable Bible is complete.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

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