I on the other hand am more sceptical. I cannot bring myself to accept tales from ancient man, no matter how apparently out of the ordinary.
For me it was always a matter of converging data that seems to compile on top of itself, in other words there is no piece of evidence that I can point to as 'THE reason' that I believe, but rather a summation of details that I feel goes beyond coincidence. For instance I can completely withdrawal myself from the historical time frame all together and STILL be impressed at how Jesus seems to create his own historical pattern. Let me back track, I'm a big believer that history repeats itself (or at least rhymes). If I look at 10,000 pages of history I see tons of these religious leaders...none of them really break any molds...
For the most part you'll have category 1 - 'Gods' who were not real historical people such as Hercules, Zeus, etc. You'll have category 2 - which are prophets of God who have visions or dreams of God and proclaim his message. Prophets like Muhammad, people who do not claim to be anything more than a messenger of God. You couldn't exactly call Muhammad out on his divinity claims because his claim were that Allah (and not him) was God. Category 3 - people who are 'Untouchables' and succeeded in selling themselves off as God. Such as kings, Pharaohs, Emperors, etc. Sure you can call them out if you want to...but I'm trying to focus on historical patterns. Category 4 - people who 'Selectively' succeeded in selling themselves off as God. People such as Jim Jones, people who very diligently seclude their victims into cult like environments that are out of the public eye of scrutiny.
Where am I going with this? I'm going into human psychology. I believe that history repeats itself because human psychology remains the same, meaning that you are limited in what you can pull off. If you were to find somewhere in history where a person was able to 'Pull the wool over peoples eyes' that they WERE God then you should expect to find such a case 1,000 times over in history, because history at least rhymes. But the strange thing is that Jesus did break the historical mold (and I consider this either impossible or at least very suspect). Nevermind the specifics for a moment and look at the broad pattern...in Jesus you have this man who claimed to be God in an atmosphere of public opposition, and succeeded!! It seems to me that if Jim Jones were to walk down streets of LA and preach that he was God he would wind up in a straight jacket, as opposed to his success via secluding his weak minded believers into his sectioned off area that was far away from the eye of public scrutiny. I wish I recalled the name but I do remember one time listening to this Middle East history audio book and sometime around the 11th century there was this Muslim Caliphate who claimed to be God...and the author simply said "So & so became insane and claimed to be God" and literally the audio book just skipped to the next chapter, that's all it had to say about him.
So basically I'm saying that yes I realize that 1,000 objections can start pouring in over the specifics of what I just wrote...but isn't it pretty strange when you think about it? Who can sell themself off as God incarnate to their contemporaries in an environment of opposition? You might say "Well he wasn't God he was just smooth." Ok, I'll grant you that and then rephrase the question...who has their own historical category (call it category 5), he sold himself as God in an environment of strong public opposition, in an environment of a 1,500 year established religion that had it's concept of God set in stone. If anything it is a very intriguing historical question.
I really do find it fascinating, for every point I make I know that you can make counter points. It's fascinating how neither person is able to pin the other guy into a corner, and how the New Testament constantly points out this fact...that "Though you have eyes you will not see...though you have ears you will not hear..." I admit that from a bird's eye view it all seems coincidental...YET from a bird's eye view it ALSO seems true. Israel itself is also a historic enigma. In world history which nationalities are there that get conquered, lose their land, yet hang on to their heritage? Do you ever run into Phoenicians, or Babylonians, or Hittites?
Having said that you can probably come back at me and explain the specific details about how the Jews survived in European ghettos, about how strong their national pride was, and point towards historical anomalies that made it possible...yet the historical pattern remains, no matter how well you might explain the reasoning the fact remains that Israel flat out breaks a historical mold in the way that they were conquered yet retained their heritage. I can tell you how the Bible claims that God's people are to reestablish the nation, I can tell you how mind boggling it is that Israel did in fact do that. I can tell you how it is even more strange that Israel accomplished what they did during the Six Day War, 19 years afterwards...then you can come back at me with rebuttals about how the UN made it possible, how certain anomalies made the success of the Six Day War possible, etc...but isn't it funny how it always seems to skate right in the middle ground of 'Totally obvious (to the Bible believer) vs totally explainable (to the non-believer).' I always found it to be a fascinating ambiguous pattern, yet I can't see any other historic/religious people who can claim such a similar strange historical ambiguity.
At times it makes my head want to explode, I sort of have double vision...I could see how both sides rationalize the information, but at the same time I see how God says that "Though they have eyes they will not see..." I understand how skeptics rationalize the data, BUT, I don't believe that other world religions can ever be afforded the historical coincidences that could validate their data like the data that Christianity has going for it.
I cannot accept that Luke (if he was one person) had any way of verifying these story claims that happened generations before.
I believe that when debating history there is one instance in which you can take a short cut, and one instance in which you can't take a short cut. Too often people will quote experts...'My guy says this' vs 'My guy say otherwise.' IMO when the huge majority of liberal AND conservative historians agree on something you are fortunately allowed to take a short cut and quote 'The experts.' It actually becomes the duty of the person who disagrees with such an agreed upon stance to bear the burden of proof. I think this should make sense! But...if the liberal & conservative historians are divided you can no longer take that shortcut, you must instead break down the arguments. When it comes to Paul historians are pretty much stuck on the dating due to the across the board agreement. It is known that Paul's earliest writings were between 49AD and 55AD (Jesus' crucifixion is also vastly agreed upon between liberal & conservative historians to be either 30AD or 33AD). The basic conclusion is that Paul confirmed (at most) 25 years after Jesus that he was worshiped as a divine figure, that he 'Was believed to have come back from the dead', and that this belief was a belief in a bodily resurrection and not in a spiritual resurrection (this is a grammar issue).
Anyway, I'm just trying to put into perspective the time intervals. As for Luke, as far as I am concerned, their are strong logical reasons to believe that both 'Luke' and 'Acts' were composed prior to 62AD. Although my belief of a pre-62AD date no longer falls into the category of 'Short cut' status I can provide my reasoning for that belief if you wanted me to. Cheers!!
EDIT...wanted to add something. Linguistically you can get skeptics who assault the gospels/Acts due to stylistic inconsistencies. It gets very speculative because there are SO many stylistic techniques, complimentary referencing of older sources, quotes from older sources, etc, that gospel writers could have incorporated. Think about it, imagine if 1,000 years from now a 21st century author was labeled as a 'Plagiarizer' for merely quoting somebody? Well those are some claims made against the gospel writers. They indeed had different styles, and who knows what kinds of linguistic techniques could have been prominent in that day.
Anyway, linguistically we can tell when a New Testament writer is skating outside of his own style or not. For instance Acts is full of 'Non-Lukan' semitisms, traces of early Aramaic speeches (that clearly reaches back before Luke himself). Well likewise inside the letters of Paul we come across Non-Pauline sections. 1 Corinthians was a letter confirmed to be 55AD and it has crucial verifications of earlier beliefs of Jesus. Embedded inside of Paul's letter to the Corinthians are these classic pre-Pauline Jewish linguistic formulas that are the official formula for the transmission of historical information. So, the passages that speak of the resurrection details in the 55 AD document are actually linguistic retro statements of a Jewish tradition that Paul is referencing, they are not Pauline but rather pre-Pauline. So at the very least we know that these beliefs reach back even earlier than 55AD when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians.
