I can’t think of names off the top of my head but it is routinely acknowledged in the literature as a minority position, so it isn’t unique.

I am skeptical of that argument and conclusion myself, but I have to admit there is no real way to be sure; even about John (although that is problematized by the fact that “John” means three different authors with completely different agendas, and we only have the “version” that the last of those wanted circulating, so it is even harder to talk about what “John” was or thought).

You also have to distinguish between “Luke was Jewish” and “Luke used to be Jewish but wasn’t by the time he wrote that Gospel,” i.e. Luke may have abandoned Torah observant Judaism under the influence of Deutero-Pauline thought. There is also the problem of answering the question of whether that even meant he wasn’t a Jew, rather than a Jew adopting a fringe sectarian position. What, actually, is the difference?

At any rate…

That Luke emulates Septuagintal style in his composition is well established. But that does not require a Jewish background, any more than a Jewish author needed to be pagan to emulate Homeric style. This point is part of Walsh’s thesis for example.

The answer would depend on what you mean by “real, accurate, and true.” No book ever written by humankind is “completely” accurate and true. So you’d have to choose a threshold; how accurate and true counts for your metric?

For example, half the letters of Paul are forgeries. But the other half are “real,” and are probably “mostly” truthful in reporting what he thinks and believes and experienced. Probably one could say the same of a few of the other letters not from Paul.

But those are letters. There are no reliable histories in the NT. The Gospels and Acts are simply propagandistic fiction. If anything in them is true, it is mostly beyond our ability now to determine what that is. There are a few things we can get at as true, but not much.

For example, Acts 2 “tells the truth” that the early church practiced glossolalia, but “tells a lie” when it depicts that as magically speaking foreign languages (as Paul attests in 1 Cor. 14, and global anthropology has documented worldwide, glossolalia is random babbling requiring an “inspired interpreter”; it is not a coherent language). The Gospels “tell the truth” when they say the High Priest was Caiaphas when Pontius Pilate was Prefect of Judea, but “tells a lie” about many things it depicts those men doing (which is contrary to all evidence we have as to their characters and the procedures of their offices).

As always, this begs the question, what is historically real, accurate and true in the entirety of New Testament? How many fabrications exactly are there? I’m no historian and find the unraveling of these fictions of great interest.

First, it could have been the case that Luke was mythographical and the other Gospels historiographical. So you still have to prove otherwise for each Gospel separately (which I do in OHJ and in many articles here). That just isn’t my project in this and the next article.

Second, that the Gospels fabricate a home town for Jesus to conform to Scripture is not actually evidence Jesus didn’t exist, any more than that they did the same with Bethlehem. Historicity already assumes they are ready to fabricate home towns for him. So that they did so does not mean he didn’t exist (this is why the Argument from Nazareth is rejected even in principle in OHJ).

This is supported by the fact that (as I explain in Proving History and brief in OHJ) Jesus is most consistently called a Nazorian, and his followers likewise, which is not an inhabitant of the town of Nazareth. So the town is being awkwardly fitted to some other designation that preceded the assignment of where he came from.

Third, we actually don’t know that Nazareth then was so small. We don’t know that modern Nazareth sits in the same place, and in any event, it blocks most excavation there because it’s still inhabited. No one actually says in antiquity that Nazareth was a mere hamlet and not a town. That has always been a presumption.

The Maritima Fragments establish that Nazareth was one of the towns that took in priests after the temple was destroyed in 70 (since they lived in the temple, that’s when they had to move; Jerusalem remained an uninhabited ruin all the way to the Bar Kochba revolt, so this resettling of priests cannot refer to that).

Nazareth cannot have been a mere hamlet were that the case. It clearly had capacity and was an attractive enough settlement for men used to temple luxury appointments, to prefer it to other towns. This is unlikely to be a new development. Odds are, Nazareth was a significant town even when Jesus could have been born there.

Fourth, “synagogue” just means “assembly.” It did not require a stone building. Wooden buildings, even tents would serve. There is therefore no reason to assume there was no synagogue (and thus no Rabbi reading Torah) even in a small hamlet. Maybe there wasn’t. But there could well have been. Even stonework synagogues were extremely abundant in ancient Galilee. So we can count on humbler synagogues being even more numerous.

So we can’t judge the Gospels’ account on these facts alone anyway. It’s entirely possible there was a synagogue in Nazareth and Jesus never really went there. It’s also possible there wasn’t a synagogue there and Jesus really preached in one only in Capernaum (as the Gospels also do say). It’s also possible there was a synagogue in Nazareth and Jesus never even existed. It’s also possible there was neither a synagogue there nor a Jesus. And it is still possible at least that it had a synagogue and Jesus indeed did preach there. These things cannot be ruled out on those premises alone.

However, pointing to the overwhelming likelihood of a mythological basis of Luke, begs the same questions of the rest of Gospel literature, except perhaps of much [of the] Pauline letters.

One can’t highly doubt the fable nature of the entire “New Testament” inherent in a conclusion that there was no historical messianic real person of a Jesus of Nazareth. Anyway, was hardly, (if at all), populated at the supposed time of Jesus, had no synagogue to preach in and there was no Roman population “census” or long lasting eclipse as described therein!

So albeit, Luke is closely patterned as a Greek Odyssey, the entire body of literature of the Gospels is equally suspect as representing factual events.

So while the study of Luke provide guidance on the methodologies of early Christian literature, it’s obvious falsity shouldn’t then suggest any greater and differential veracity of Mathew, Mark or John.

So, the most important conclusion concerning the literature of Luke, is NOT it’s mythological nature, as any description of Jesus must be fallacious, once we have concluded that there was in all likelihood, from archeological studies, no bustling Nazareth with any crowds at the imagined synagogue at that time, and then no historical Jesus of Nazareth to preach there!