The Historical Tell: Patterns of Eyewitness Testimony in the Gospel of Luke and Acts

Many are familiar with the concept of a poker player's tell: the nervous tick, the slight change in behavior, the pattern of very subtle, largely unintentional cues that give away the truth of a poker player's hand. The Historical Tell looks at similar patterns in Luke's Gospel-at the rich historical details that would be very difficult for Luke the Evangelist to fake and very easy for him to overlook and get wrong.

Bolstering the case for Luke's reliability, The Historical Tell investigates the significant claim Luke makes at the outset: that he relied on eyewitness testimony (Luke 1.1-4). It demonstrates that five patterns in Luke's Gospel are not only best explained by Luke's claim being true, but that these patterns fit together to form a corroborative evidence case. We do not need to take Luke's claim about eyewitnesses at face value; we do not need to simply take the church at its word. But by following the evidence, we can gain new confidence in the claims Luke makes and in the eyewitnesses whose voices echo even today.