On Creationism

While the Gospel of Matthew might be seeking to redress the loss of Judaism in Christianity, the Gospel of Luke veers the other way. It too is based soundly on Mark, and likely shares another source with Matthew (or draws on Matthew), in particular a book of sayings, called Q. Unlike Matthew it makes no attempt to link the narrative to prophecies of the Old Testament. Traditionally the author is Luke, a physician and traveling companion of Paul, but the evidence is not convincing either for or against. It is, however, pretty much agreed the same author wrote both Luke and Acts. Luke has the virgin birth, but the nativity he tells is quite unlike that of Matthew, and the census puts it about six years later! In Luke we see an elaboration of the Jerusalem appearances , after the very brief appearance in Matthew. He was writing sufficiently long after the event that such stories could start to circulate in the community without the people who were actually there refuting it. Luke di...

Elsewhere I have cited Paul as the earliest source on the resurrection. The books of Acts has comments that are reported to have been made even early, and it is worth looking at them, if only for completeness. Paul in Acts 13 Acts 13:29 When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb. It must be pointed out that Luke was written around 90 AD, perhaps 40 years after the event. No one can remember a conversation from that long ago verbatim; these must necessarily be a case of the author of Luke putting words in someone's mouth. I think it reasonable to assume Luke sincerely believed this was broadly what was said, but that could have easily been coloured by the author's own beliefs. So does that show that Jesus was buried in a tomb? That could be the case, but a perfectly plausible explanation here is that Paul said Jesus was buried, and Luke, who clearly believed Jesus was buried in a tomb, and after fort...