ecco

As a lifelong atheist most of my knowledge of the bible has come in the past year, from this forum. I have learned much from posts by atheists and theists alike and from the links you have posted. I am in a discussion about the authorship of the gospels with a Christian. I recognize that the actual authorship of the gospels is unknown. The gospels of the Marcionite church, which predated the formation of the Christian gospel, comprised only a shortened version of g-luke and ten letters of Paul. Given that Marcion put so much stock in Paul, is there any likelihood that g-luke was actually authored by Paul. I appreciate any help with this from those of you who are much more knowledgeable than I am.

Muad'Dib

Not particularly; the writings styles and emphases are markedly different, and there are certain discrepancies between the details of Paul's life and teachings as described in Acts and as described by Paul himself in his own letters.

These, like any other difficulties, are resolvable to the satisfaction of inerrantists, but it is unlikely that Paul (if he were the author of Luke) would have been so unclear on these matters as to cause problems.

I'm running late to class, but later today I'll give a couple of examples with references.

Nomad

As Muad'Dib pointed out, it is extremely unlikely that Paul wrote the Gospel of Luke. Marcion accepted GLuke largely because, like everyone else in his day (c. 144AD) he believed that this particular Gospel was written by a companion of Paul, namely the doctor Luke. It also most closely resembled his own theology, although he had to make some significant alterations to remove all favourable references to Jews, or the God of the Old Testament (whom Marcion considered to be a lesser god than the true God of the NT... long argument, won't bore you with the details unless you want to go there).

As for a discussion of Lucan authorship of the Gospel bearing his name, I will refer you to Dr. Daniel Wallace's article that can be found online at Luke: Introduction, Outline, and Argument. Wallace addresses most of the arguments for and against Lucan authenticity, and comes down in favour of Luke being the actual author of his Gospel, and of Acts.

For a more sceptical view, I would have to refer you to some books on the subject, though I am sure there are articles on the Web that reject Lucan authorship. I would recommend starting with Peter Kirby's web page The Gospel of Luke.

A good balanced book on the subject is Raymond Brown's Introduction to the New Testament. Though Brown was a Catholic priest right up to the time of his death, his views are well balanced, and present a good cross section of scholarly thought in this and all other matters regarding the New Testament. He was officially agnostic on the question of Lucan authorship, though he probably did not think that GLuke was written by Luke, or a companion of Paul.

If you are interested on my own views as to the dating and authorship of GLuke, I will refer you to Redating the Books of the New Testament, Page 2 middle of the page, dated February 17.

Nomad

Toto

The most interesting view on the authorship of GLuke is by Randy Helms, in Who Wrote the Gospels?

Helms puts together a reasonable case that the author of the third Gospel was a woman, probably a wealthy widow.

ecco

Thank you all for the replies and links

doodad

I always have felt that Luke, being a physician, was better educated than the other disciples, and his writing shows it. His style is much more polished than that of the others. The Christmas story according to Luke is especially attractive to me.