Wasn't Luke a sharp historian? | #shorts

The seat of Christianity was in Jerusalem. And maybe that's why Luke has drawn all his attention there.

#shorts #mikelicona

[icypirate]

This is why as an agnostic atheist I respect Licona for being honest enough to admit issues like Luke contradicting himself.

[theuncarvedblock]

NO, because "Luke" never cites his sources.

[edwardtbabinski]

Historical Jesus scholar, James D. G. Dunn asks: “Where did the author of Luke-Acts think the risen Jesus was when he was not visible to the disciples? The phrase in Acts 1:4, ‘while he was staying/eating with them, ’ could be taken to indicate lengthy periods, though the implication of the parallel episodes in Luke 24:32, 51 is that ‘appearances’ were of relatively short duration… Was the resurrected Jesus during his alleged ‘forty days’ on earth dematerialized at times, or somehow ‘in hiding?’... Such questions may seem to be crude or even crass, but it is the author’s own account, with his insistence on ‘convincing proofs’ (Acts 1:3) which prompts them!”

Jesus tiptoes out of Jerusalem following some spotty appearances to disciples, and ascends into heaven (ancient cosmology *cough*)? Then remains physically absent for close to two thousand years while his followers have split into numerous camps (not to mention plenty of Jesus-revering offshoots), denouncing each other to various degrees.

[The-F.R.E.E.-J.]

Luke is the only one who says, right from the beginning of his gospel that, he is giving "an orderly account". I know this is just a clip but, are you suggesting that he intentionally put things out of order so that they would "fit" in Jerusalem?

[edwardtbabinski]

The earliest two Gospels, Mark and Matthew, agree that Jesus told his disciples he would go before them to Galilee after he had risen, that they would see him in Galilee, and they drummed that message into their readers’ brains, repeating it several times in their Gospels, both out of the mouth of Jesus and in their empty tomb scenes, and Matthew added a scene outside the tomb just to have Jesus repeat that same message again! Compare this earliest message repeated in Mark and Matthew with “Jerusalem” appearance stories found in Luke-Acts:

Jesus speaking to his disciples not long before his arrest: “But after I [Jesus] have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” Mark 14:28. Paralleled in Matthew 26:32

That same message, “I will go ahead of you to Galilee, ” was repeated in Mark and Matthew’s empty tomb scene:

“Go and tell his disciples—especially Peter—that Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.” Mark 16:7. Paralleled in Matthew 28:7 “Tell his disciples he has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.”

Matthew, unlike Mark, even features an additional repetition of the above message to women outside the tomb, and even has it delivered by the risen Jesus, in order to reiterate it unmistakably:

“Go and tell my brothers to leave for Galilee, and they will see me [Jesus] there.” Matthew 28:10 Then Matthew ended with a few paragraphs in which the disciples see Jesus in Galilee, along with the line, “But some doubted.”

BUT BY THE TIME LUKE-ACTS WAS COMPLETED it contained NONE of the above passages from Jesus nor from the messenger at the tomb about how Jesus was going on ahead of his disciples to be seen in Galilee. Luke is the first Gospel to feature a different message at the tomb that begins, “Remember, when he was with you in Galilee…” The much repeated message that Jesus was “going on ahead” of his disciples to be seen “in Galilee, ” is now a different message in Luke, a mere reminiscence of a past encounter in Galilee.

The question is, what happened to the original message being hammered into the heads of readers in Mark and Matthew? They were explicit and there were five of them—two in Mark and Matthew that paralleled each other, and even an added final repetition in Matthew. Why do none of those repeated explicit messages about Jesus going before his disciples to Galilee to be seen “there, ” all vanish by the time Luke-Acts and John were written? Which raises the legitimate question, Did the story change over time? It appears it did.

[edwardtbabinski]

Moses allegedly spent 40 days on the mountain and Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness per the OT. Then in the NT Jesus is tempted for another archetypal period of 40, namely 40 days in the wilderness right after being baptized. Then Luke adds in a later post-Gospel work, Acts, another 40 day period, claiming that after Jesus had been executed and resurrected he appeared for 40 days eating with and teaching his disciples. So what did Jesus teach during those alleged 40 days? If the disciples were getting private lessons from a resurrected Jesus for 40 days, wouldn’t they be more likely than ever to pay close attention to every word? What did Jesus say? What questions was Jesus asked? What were his answers? Why couldn’t God ensure such words were preserved for us instead of a later Gospel writer mentioning an alleged archetypical 40 day period of teachings that were never preserved. Maybe the 40 days themselves were a made up period of time?

James D. G. Dunn spends some time and effort explaining the “forty days” that the resurrected Jesus spent with brethren before rising up to heaven. He suggests that it was an invented archetypical cut off period—because one could have too many, rather than too few, people claiming later on that the resurrected Jesus had personally given them special revelations or had authorized them as his extra-special representatives. Also, “forty days” is a nice biblical number going back to stories of Moses on the mountain, and after that it was the length of time Mk says Jesus fasted before his ministry began, so Acts, written still later, adds forty days at the end of Jesus’s story, like a bookend.