The Accuracy of Luke

For instance, several years ago a Scottish scholar named Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, while studying the writings of Luke, discovered what he thought to be errors in the book of Acts. He decided to travel throughout Turkey and the Middle East to prove the Bible wrong. However, in every point of dispute, Ramsay lost his argument. Luke was correct, even in the minutest of details. Ramsay was surprised and later wrote that “no period in ancient history is so assured and well attested” as the times described by Luke. “There are few events,” he said, “which cannot be dated to the year, and sometimes to the month, and even to the day.”

He went on to write: “You may (investigate) the words of Luke in a degree beyond any other historian’s, and they stand the keenest scrutiny and the hardest treatment.” Ramsay’s conclusions are summarized this way: “The author of Acts [and thereby of the Gospel of Luke] is not to be regarded as the author of historical romance, legend, or third- or second-rate history. Rather he is the writer of an historical work of the highest order.”