Luke was clearly a careful historian.  He makes sure to give plenty of data to fix the dates of the birth of Jesus, of the beginning of his ministry, if the return of Paul to Jerusalem and more.  He also did interviews with witnesses, as he implies.  Like he says, he “carefully investigated everything from the beginning.”  We do not know who he interviewed.  That would require speculation, but we can assume that he talked to many eye-witesses, as he traveled with Paul to Jerusalem.   Luke may very well have used written documents as well.  Most scholars believe that he had Mark in front of him when he wrote Luke, or one of the sources Mark used.  I have no reason to doubt this theory, but it is just a theory.   So, we can assume that almost certainly he used both eye-witness interviews and written material in producing his gospel.  With Acts, Luke was a participant in many of the events recorded, especially in the last ten chapters.

The idea that the story of Jesus in Luke and the other gospels was borrowed from pagan sources should not be taken seriously.  The idea that Peter and John, Paul and the other apostles would allow pagan myths to enter into the gospels and the letters that Paul wrote is ludicrous.  These men gave their entire lives and their deaths to the Jesus movement because they believed it was true.  There is no other rational way to explain the facts.  Skeptics try to claim that the gospels are a late production in the second century, but this simply is not true.  The three synoptic gospels were almost certainly all written before AD 70, which means within 40 years of the events themselves.  There were hundreds of eye-witnesses still living at the time, who also staked their lives on the truth of the gospel.  Would any of them allow lies, myths and misinformation to be passed along to the churches?  This idea should not be taken seriously at all.

John Oakes