The man who tried to disprove the Gospel of Luke

Sir William Ramsay was one of the most learned men of his time -- indeed, of all time. As a professional archaeologist, he journed to the Holy Land in an attempt to disprove the reliability of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. After years of research, he was forced to reverse his position. Ramsay declared that Luke was "a historian of the first rank" and that he "should be placed along with the very greatest of historians."

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Apologetics
• Christianity
• Bible
• Luke
• Acts
• William
• Ramsay

[grammastola]

@gerudgutierrez You assert that these quotations are fraudulent, but they are not, and you offer no evidence for your claim. Quite the contrary; these quotations are readily verifiable. For example, you can look up Ramsay's book, "The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament," which is even available online.

Frankly, it seems to me that your claim is the one that has no proof and that you treat the readers of your post (Christian or otherwise) are just gullible.

[JainaKay]

I have to say, your videos have inspired me!

One thing I'm curious about: at around 6:46 you say that a source hostile to Jesus would not have written about his miracles. Though I definitely agree that a hostile source wouldn't have gone into detail about miracles, my understanding was that Jesus' enemies acknowledged that he did miracles - they just attributed the work to demons, not God. Doesn't Josephus mention that Jesus did wonderful works?

Keep up the great work! Can't wait for more :)

[grammastola]

You raised a good point, JainaKay. You're right; hostile sources could (and in some instances, did) claim that Jesus performed miracles through the power of demons. Strictly speaking, your formulation is more precise. They would not, however, attribute these to God, nor would they report favorably on his miracles.

As for Josephus, his Testimonium Flavianum did say that Jesus performed wonderful works, but he stopped short of calling them miracles.

[SeraphsWitness]

Your fans want more!!! When's your next one?

[grammastola]

Heh. Going has been slow due to work obligations, new church duties, and my new exercise program. However, I have just finished editing a two-part video on so-called "unintelligent design." It will be posted during the weekend.

[grammastola]

Since the subject of Marcus Borg, Robert Funk, and John Dominic Crossan has come up, I should mention that I plan to produce a video on these folks and their group, the so-called "Jesus Seminar" someday. In the meantime, I refer you all to William Lane Craig's article on them at the leaderu website. Suffice to say that none of them are archaeologists and their views represent the extreme fringe of "scholarship." They certainly are not reflective of NT scholarship at large.

[grammastola]

Continuing the subject of dating Luke's gospel... j4rosen mentions Jesus Seminar members Borg, Funk, and Crossan, as though their claims somehow refute those of Ramsay. Even the Jesus Seminar dates Luke to within AD 80-100 though, so not even their claims support the defunct Tubingen hypothesis.

Furthermore, even if we accept their dating, this does nothing to disprove the accuracy of Luke's gospel per se. Hence, Ramsay's claims are not disproven, even if we accept their work.

[regelemihai]

Only sensationalist nowadays point to the inexistance of Christ. Not a single credible scholar, even among skptics, will deny the historicity of Jesus.

A more productive debate would be on his divintiy. Any dimissal of his existance is an intelelctual cop-out that usually states this "fact" by employing an argument from ignorance.

"There are no contemporaneous texts pointing to his existance." YAWN.

As if Jesus was some kind of celebrity during his time that got the attention of scholars.

[SeraphsWitness]

You're videos are great, don't let any commenters dampen your spirit.

[TENJHOTENGE1]

@regelemihai But for me he is not divine.

[gerudgutierrez]

These quotes are frauds...you christians are so gullible and dont really know the definition of evidence and proof.

[odephraimchai]

All this does not matter because paul was a false apostle and Luke was his disciple.

[azkeyz]

I don't know the man in the video , sent him some private posts , he's a mighty weapon against babylon the great , aka america , once he finds out about paleo hebrew we can get on with crushing the pagan vatican.

[stopplayingchurch]

I love your posts I wish I had found them earlier

[damianGray]

Whereas I'm not going to argue against the existence of Jesus, as I myself am a believer, I would like to point out that yes Jesus WAS a celebrity in his time. The bible is FULL of examples of large crowds and people speculating on who this man was. And the scholars (pharisees, etc.) of the day did in fact know about him.

[JainaKay]

Ah. I see what you're going for here. :)