Adam

Edwards argues at length against mere Septuagintualisms at 156-162. "Why would Luke seek to imitate the LXX only when he is not following Matthew and/or Mark? " (citing W. Most,("Did St. Luke Imitate the Septuagint?" JSNT `1982 p. 38: "But we can...see a very plausible reason for the variation if we take Luke at his word and affirm that he did use documents.")

aa5874

gLuke does indeed show evidence that the author used the writings of Josephus and was NOT a Jew.

The author mentioned many places, events and names found ONLY in the writings of Josephus.

Luke 5:1 KJV The lake of Gennesaret is found ONLY in gLuke--Not in the other Gospels but it is found in Wars of the Jews 3.

In fact, there is a DETAILED description of both Lake Gennesaret and Gennesaret itself by Josephus.

The Lake of Gennesaret "Wars of the Jews" 3.10.7 The author of gLuke mentioned EMMAUS only once and it is not found in the other Gospels but it is found in the Wars of the Jews by Josephus.

But, even more remarkable is that the ONLY time Emmaus is mentioned in gLuke the author claimed it was THREESCORE furlongs from Jerusalem which is the very SAME distance in Wars of the Jews 7.

Luke 24:13 KJVEmmaus in Wars of the Jews 7.6.6 Only gLuke mentioned the Taxing of Cyrenius in the Canon but it is found in Antiquities of the Jews 18

Luke 2:2 KJV Antiquities of the Jews 18 Only gLuke mentions the Tetrarch of Herod and Philip and the region of Trachonitis and Lysanias.

Luke 3:1 KJVAntiquities of the Jews 18.4 Antiquities of the Jews 18.6. The author of gLuke made the VERY SAME MISTAKE of gMark which virtually dismisses any claim that the writer was Jewish.

The author of gLuke did NOT know that the Jews did NOT anoint a dead body THREE days after it was buried.

The author of gJohn will EXPOSE that the author of gLuke was NOT Jewish.


Luke 241.1 KJV John 19:40 KJV The author of gLuke not only used the writings of Josephus but he was NOT a Jew.

andrewcriddle

Some of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha clearly do go back to a Semitic original fragments of which survive. Tobit Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 1 Enoch...

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

Your claim does not negate the argument that that the author of gLuke was NOT a Jew and that the author used the writings of Josephus.

Please, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha are not considered credible sources when it is already known Apologetic sources are inundated with massive forgeries and falsely attributed writings.

Adam

Thank you for the research in your Post #12, aa,
But it is limited pretty much to marginal notes that could have assimilated to Luke or Josephus from the other's text.
Might we compromise on your last sentence saying instead of "The author" something like "A redactor or copyist" and dropping the final five words as not proven? Since Josephus was a Jew anyone who read him could also be a Jew.

But even that grants too much, as Josephus could have assimilated information from Luke.

Chili

I certainly understand that a distance is sought from Judaism in Luke or Rome would be Jewish as well, and Josephus (nee Joseph) could very well have been their instrument to get this done.
My point was only to make known the difference between Nazareth proper as is shown in Luke, where the necessary condition for the Annunciation as first cause from God makes him true Nazorean-by-nature, and that was upon him by way of tradition (= Zechariah in full assemble outside the temple at high noon of the day, as in 'first things first' for this Joseph in Luke).

If you compare this with Matthew where "out of Egypt he was called" who made a pitstop in Nazareth and "shall be called a Nazorean" but really was not, it is easy to see that things will go wrong in Matthew for sure.

So now Matthew looks Jewish but really was not. Oh sure, in mannerism it was as look-alike but was not Jewish at heart, and please never forget that the Jews do know the difference here! To see this just go to Matthew 27:64 where the chief priest had warned Pilate that they saw an imposter in him as 'look-alike' there, and feared him going back to Gallilee as empowered imposter for the rest of his life.

Adam

I presented my OP in the most radical form of pushing the presumed Greek Evangelist aside. Stated even more that way, a flowery preface (by Luke?) on behalf of someone else would make good sense if we put aside our prejudiced understanding of the man as a dedicated historian and man of letters, all of which would have come after the fact. Then put the dignitary addressing Theophilus not as some itinerant preacher but the Bishop of Jerusalem, Simon. Whatever the latter’s contribution to gLuke, the point in the dedication seems to be one person of eminence to another.

Turned around the other way, however, the man Luke’s role may nevertheless have been almost everything. He may have himself located and used all the documents for the Gospel. He may have translated most of it. (Excluded would be Q2 and also the portions of Mark so closely paralleled in Luke that we know he knew them from a Mark already in Greek.) The Greek of all these is higher than the usage in Mark and has always given Luke a great reputation as a Greek stylist. Yet all this requires us to view L as not his. We would not expect him to have composed the original Aramaic or Hebrew, nor was he the one to translate it. We know this latter because the editorial touches subsequent to it are even more Semitic than L. Apparently he left in Semitisms when he translated, but did so even more when he writing Greek while thinking in his own Aramaic mind. This would of course not be the “Luke” we “know”, as stated in the OP.

If we date L to before the earliest possible date for Acts (62 CE), then Simon was not yet Bishop of Jerusalem and may have qualified himself for that office by writing the Aramaic L. After the man Luke (or someone else) translated Q1 and an early gMark (the Twelve-Source) into Greek, someone got hold of Q2 and the rest of Mark in Greek and combined all these with the L he translated into Greek. Then he turned this over to the man Luke for the Prologue and some marginal glosses perhaps added later. Who this Jewish person was we do not know, but he likely was working under the authority of Simon who became Bishop. He could just as well be called “Simon”, because whether or not Simon was that literate in Greek or not he would have been in a position to commission someone who was (and to later commission the man Luke who primarily spoke Greek).

James The Least

I didn't mean to imply that all of Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha is of Greek origin, just that we need not reflexively assume a Semitic origin because of a few Semitic words.

TedM

Or they BOTH used other (Jewish) sources. Goldberg concluded as much with regard to some striking similarities between the TF and the Emmaus passage in Luke. http://www.josephus.org/GoldbergJosephusLuke1995.pdf (Ironically Carrier cites Goldberg's article as evidence against the TF as being authentic, though that is not at all what the author concluded.)

For all we know, when Luke says there were many gospels written prior to his work, he may have not only been right, but he may have gathered together dozens of writings, and tried his best to sort out what seemed most accurate from them..

arnoldo

The background to this comical event is that there were many Diaspora Jews living in Cyrene, Africa including Mark's family. Aristobulus, Mark's father, took his family from Cyrene to Jerusalem after encountering many setbacks. Aristobulus also had a cousin who came along and eventually became Peter's wife (Paul notes that Peter was married in 1 Corinthians 9:5 ). Since Mark was a relative of Peter then he possibly was an eye witness to the healing of Peter's mother-in-law and wrote about it in the gMark. The above information is taken from Thomas C Oden's book, The African Memory of Mark. (or via: amazon.co.uk)