1:1-2 — Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eye-witnesses and servants of the word.
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Luke is unique among the evangelists in that, though he does not name himself, he is the only one who tells us something about himself. Here he stands out and tell us very clearly the reason for his composing the gospel that now carries his name.
First of all, he tells us that many (polloi) other accounts of "the things that have been fulfilled among us" had already been written when he came to the scene. How many had he seen or read? He does not tell us. We know today, of course, that many such so-called 'apocryphal gospels' were circulating in the 1st century. Many of them, as evidenced from what we have, were often plain fanciful stuffs. But Luke knew of those that include what were being "handed down to us by those who were from the first eye-witnesses and servants of the word." That is, they were the eye-witness accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus.
For the last hundred and fifty years, and still repeated in the popular press, skeptical scholars claim that the Gospels where written at least four to eight decades after the death of Jesus, and could not have been eye-witnesses's accounts.1 Typical is Bart Ehrman who says that "all of the Gospels were written anonymously, and none of the writers claims to be an eyewitness." His point, of course, is that the Gospels cannot be reliable2 Luke knows otherwise, as he tells us why in the next verse.
We have, of course, four canonical Gospels in our Bible. One popular question many Christians ask is why it is that we should have four Gospels, instead of just one. That would have made life a great deal simpler, they say. The truth is "the things that have been fulfilled among us" were so stupendously wonderful, a hundred Gospels would not have exhausted their wonders. John reminds us of this truth when he says "if every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written" (Jn 21:25). That Luke could report that many others have undertaken to draw up an account of these things should not, therefore, surprise us. The history of the study of the Gospels has proven John to be right in his claim: even if there were a hundredth Gospel it would still not exhaust the wonder of what Jesus Christ had done.
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©Alberith, 2017