Richard Carrier: Acts as Historical Fiction, or Atheist Fictional History?
An Article by James McGrath about an article by John Loftus ( his blog 3/14/14 ), about a lecture by Carrier. I can't get the original lecture. Of course Carrier spits on the traditional view that Luke was a good historian. He doesn't stop there, he denies that Luke was even trying to be an kind of historian. According to McGrath, Luke was pretending to do historical research in his preface. Moreover, Carrier charges that Luke's method was sub standard. [1] According to McGrath's report of Carrier he argues that Luke's statement about using sources means he was claiming to slavishly follow them but then he did not. Carrier assumes that Luke is a novel. He thinks there was a genre of ancinet novel and that these novels always included travel, miracles and divine revelation. Paul and Lydia are an ancient literary type the chaste couple reunited. This shows the Ignace of modern historians as novels didn't exist utnil early modern times: