Having A Good Luke
My thoughts on the Gospel of Luke by C A Carlyle
I was reading the Gospel of Luke and I just couldn’t avoid but notice many things that came up. In order to keep them straight, I startred taking a lot of notes. The end result has been rather a haphazardly written essay about some of my thoughts on the Gospel of Luke. You can download it as a PDF file.
It’s not written formally, it really is just a lot of notes, put together into the shape of an essay. I hope you enjoy it, but be aware that as I am also planning to read Acts of the Apostles, it’s likely that some of my opinions about the Gospel of Luke may change. Also, for the sake of convenience, here’s the list of URLs which you can find at the end of the essay:
http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/luke.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1997/6/976which.html
http://www.carm.org/questions/Q.htm
http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1996/2/2third96.html
http://www.religioustolerance.org/gosp_q1.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/gosp_q2.htm
http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/q_linnemann.pdf
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_stone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
September 29th, 2007 at 4:18 am
Thank you for a good reading of your take on Luke. I´m just beginning to take interest in studies like these. Maybe you will like this theory: Jesus and Paul were the same man. According to a swedish writer named Lena Einhorn (her profession is really a physician) this can very well be true because those who wrote the story of Jesus wanted to move back the story some 20-30 odd years since they didn´t want “their” character to be involved in the wars the jews had with the romans. The first writer wanted Jesus to be unique and the following writers just jumped on that train, whether they wanted to or not.
She says that if you move the stories about Jesus 30 years forward in time you will meet a character that is very much a historical figure, namely one the famed jewish writer Josephus called The Egyptian, who had his followers take a stand on the very same mountain as Jesus is said to have done when the romans came to arrest him that night after the last supper. But unlike Jesus, The Egyptian got away and was never seen or heard again until a few years later. This Egyptian is talked about in real historical texts. Einhorn says if you move the story about Jesus to about 50 AD you can put his story on top of the Egyptian’s story with ease.
Lena Einhorn offers what she calles proof from muslim stories where Jesus never died but left the country to spread the gospel throughout the known world. She also looks for proof in the Talmud and roman texts. According to her, Apollonius of Tyana is the same man too. Now, I´m not sure if this book is available in english but look for Lena Einhorn and maybe you can get someone to translate the book for you. Thanks for now.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
well, i’m pretty much sold on the Jesus Mysteries thesis at the moment, where Jesus cannot be proven to have existed historically, and in fact his religion is based entierly on previous Mysteries (paths of initiation from lower to higher self, something similar to the buddhist idea of enlightenment).
Since the only NT author who can be verified is St Paul, and since his authentic letters number at most 7, if we take only those 7 books, we find a very different philosophy from literalist/orthodox christianity. There is almost no mention of Jesus, and the important aspects are transformation of ourselves. he says we are all Christs, that resurrection is perpetual, not in the past, he says that we should not worship the god of this world (traditionally taken to mean Satan, but making much more sense if it means Jehovah as portrayed in the Tanakh). Also, plenty of things in St Paul’s letters which are vague or weird start to make sense if you take away the requirement that they fit in with christian thinking.
Pick up a copy of the book “The Jesus Mysteries” for sure, it takes ages to get into gear but once it gets going, it makes a very interesting and persuasive case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jesus_Mysteries
PS: also, i really am convinced that the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts were NOT written by the same author, as everyone seems to claim. Acts was first mentioned in 172 CE for a start, while Lk is always dated back to c 70-80 CE, not to mention the huge stylistic differences between the two.