PLUTARCH'S PARABLE Lux Gospel and the Axe of the Apostle |
| SAMPLE CHAPTER CHAPTER TWO BIOGRAPHIES |
I realized that Luke was a pseudonym for Plutarch just as I was wrapping up
Gabriel's Gift. Since the discovery was inadvertent and not the purpose for
writing that book, it received only nominal mention in it. When I discovered that
virtually all the characters who appeared in Acts were historical or mythological
characters who had also appeared in Plutarch's Parallel Lives, I did realize that I
had been assigned another research and writing project. You're now reading
the results of that assignment.
Another clue that Plutarch was Luke was that his collection of essays known as
the Moralia contains teachings similar to those of Pythagoras and the Nasoreans
and Essenes. The question was, could I support this deeply held "opinion" with
data from other sources? And what about the two thousand year tradition that
Luke was Paul's beloved physician? Before I could even begin to present
convincing proof that Plutarch was Luke, I first had to determine if there was any
real proof that he was a physician who traveled with Paul.
All sources agree that the Church's position has long been that Luke's gospel
was written by the person Paul named as the beloved physician at Colossians 4:
14. Most people who have attempted to write a biographical history about Luke
work under that assumption, and it is a deeply held conviction for most. But
because Luke's gospel all but screams in protest to that tradition, I was forced to
look for something that might suggest the tradition was not based on any
supportable facts.
A most helpful web site, titled From Jesus to Christ: The Story of the Storytellers,
can be found at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/luke. It's
a collection of essays by various biblical and religious scholars.
The first essay is by Harold W. Attridge: The Lillian Claus Professor of New
Testament Yale Divinity School. It begins with the following:
"Traditions report that Luke was a companion of Paul, a physician and therefore
someone learned in Hellenistic literary and scientific culture. All of those are
secondary traditions and most scholars view them as somewhat unreliable. What
we can infer from the evidence of the Book of Acts and the third gospel is that
the author was someone who was steeped in scripture, in the Septuagint, and
who was aware of Hellenistic literary patterns, historiographical and novelistic.
And these kinds of patterns certainly have an impact on his literary products."
Attridge also reports that: "Luke was probably writing in the latter decades of
the first century, probably in a thoroughly Hellenistic environment. Scholars
speculate on whether the gospel was written in Antioch, which would have been
a significant Hellenistic city, or in Asia Minor, in places like Ephesus or Smyrna.
In either case, Luke would have been in touch with, and very heavily in dialogue
with, Hellenistic culture broadly conceived."
The same web site posted the following from an essay written by L. Michael
White: Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program,
University of Texas at Austin:
"Luke's audience seems to be a much more cultured literary kind of audience.
Luke's Greek is the highest quality in style of anything in the New Testament. It
reads more like a novel in the Greek tradition, rather than Mark's gospel, which
has a kind of crude quality at times to the Greek grammar. So anyone on the
street of a Greek city picking up Luke's gospel would have felt at home with it if
they were able to read good Greek."
White also notes: "Jesus in Luke's gospel comes across differently, he's much
more like a philosophic teacher, kind of like Socrates: he's reasoned, he's
dispassionate, he's a critic sometimes of society but he's certainly concerned
about the way his teachings bear on society. And in the end he dies very much
like Socrates. The death of Jesus in Luke's gospel is more like a martyr's death,
it's much calmer, he goes inexorably to the cross, knowing that it is what must
happen. Pilate isn't at fault at all. Pilate tries to get rid of the case by sending
Jesus away to Herod ... Pilate isn't the enemy of Jesus, he isn't the bad guy. And
once again this may reflect the kind of political concerns of Luke's gospel. Jesus
also isn't a source of concern because he's not a kind of rebel figure now, rather
he's a teacher, a philosopher, a social critic, a social reformer. He's a good
member of the Greco-Roman world."
According to Kenneth S. Wuest, Quotes About the Bible and History, www.bible-
history.com/quotes/kenneth_s_wuest_1, taken from his book, Word studies in
the Greek New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmann 1979) pp. 52-54:
"Luke was a Greek, educated in the Greek schools, prepared for the medical
practice which was held in high regard as a profession, and among the Greeks
had attained to a place of eminence among the nations of the world. Greek
doctors of medicine were in attendance upon many of the royal families of other
nations. The Greeks were by nature and training, a race of creative thinkers who
pursued their studies in a scientific manner. Their sense of what really
constituted scientific accuracy and method in the recording of history was well
developed."
"The writings of Luke . . . demonstrate Luke's training as an historian."
" . . . Luke arranges the facts of our Lord's life in historical order as they
occurred. The other Gospels do not claim to do that."
" . . . Luke had the historian's mind, a thing native to the educated Greek.
Herodotus, the father of Greek history, exhibited the Greek determination to get
at the truth no matter how much work it required . . . Sir William Ramsey said, 'I
regard Luke as the greatest historian who has ever lived, save only Thucydides.'
Thus we have no doubt but that Luke made a personal investigation of all the
facts he had recorded. He interviewed every witness, visited every locality. If
Mary was still alive, he, a doctor of medicine, investigated the story of the virgin
birth by hearing from Mary's own lips. And as Professor John A. Scott, a great
Greek scholar has said, 'You could not fool Doctor Luke.'" (Emphasis added.)
So, even investigators who are clearly "fundamentalist Christians," and who also
believe the tradition that Luke was a physician, are forced to focus more on his
"historian's mind" and Greek heritage than on his practice of medicine. There is
simply no evidence that he practiced medicine except for Paul's reference to
the beloved physician and the fact that he was clearly quite well educated. The
evidence is overwhelming, however, that he was a skilled writer, a historian,
and a Greek, all of which describe Plutarch.
Another web site has posted An Introduction to the New Testament by Richard
Heard, (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1950), prepared for Religion-Online by Ted
and Winnie Brock. (www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=531&C=553)
"The tradition of Luke's authorship of the gospel remained undisputed till
modern times, and can be traced back to the second half of the second century
AD. An early prologue to the gospel survives, which was perhaps written to
stress the genuineness of the full gospel against a garbled version which
Marcion, a second century heretic, edited to propagate his own views. In this
prologue are given a number of details about Luke which may well preserve
much genuine tradition.
"'Luke is a Syrian of Antioch, a doctor by profession, who was a disciple of
apostles, and later followed Paul until his martyrdom. He served the Lord without
distraction, unmarried, childless, and fell asleep at the age of 84 in Boeotia, full
of the Holy Spirit.'"
As stated in the article, it is known that this supplemental information about Luke
was furnished almost a century after Luke wrote his gospel, and only after
Marcion, described as a "second century heretic," became a significant
competitor of the official Church.
Marcion rejected the Old Testament and all gospels except Luke's, but he
altered Luke's to exclude any reference to Old Testament texts. This prologue,
then, was created by the official church to counter Marcion's competing religion.
This hardly qualifies as proof that Luke was a physician, and it is pure conjecture
that the tradition, " . . . may well preserve much genuine tradition."
This tradition, though, has been adopted by many who repeat it without
explanation of where and how it came to exist: "The reports of Luke's life after
Paul's death are conflicting. Some early writers claim he was martyred, others
say he lived a long life. Some say he preached in Greece, others in Gaul. The
earliest tradition we have says that he died at Boeotia in 84 CE after settling in
Greece to write his Gospel." (www.user.senet.com.au/~gwilym/Saint%20Luke)
These two sources conflict in that the first claims that Luke " . . . fell asleep at
the age of 84 in Boeotia," while the second says that " . . . he died at Boeotia in
84 CE." Since the "tradition" being reported by both was written in the second
half of the second century, prior to the modern measure of dates as "CE and
BCE," it’s certain that the tradition was that "eighty-four" was his age at the time
of his death and not the year of his death.
But buried in this tradition is a piece of information that is of immense
importance to my hypothesis that Plutarch was Luke. Whoever created this
description of Luke in the second half of the second century must have known
that he wrote his gospel while residing in the province of Boeotia. And
coincidentally, Plutarch's history includes the same province:
" . . . Plutarch was probably born in 46 in the Boeotian town Chaeronea." (Note:
Others offer 44 or 45 as his year of birth.)
"In the 90's, Plutarch, who had seen much of the world, settled in his home town.
When asked to explain his return to the province, he said that Chaeronea was in
decline and that it would be even smaller if he did not settle there." (www.livius.
org/pi-pm/plutarch/plutarch)
Of course the province referred to here, Boeotia, is the very province in which
church tradition says Luke settled to write his gospel! And Luke's age at his
"traditional death," 84 (although contradicted by other sources), recalls Anna's
age. My guess is that the church father who recognized what Plutarch had done,
and realized that it was he who had written Luke-Acts, thought it might be clever
to use Plutarch's "birth code number," 84, to allege Luke’s death at that age.
After Plutarch settled back in Boeotia to live out his life where he was born, a
library was built near the sanctuary in the holy city of Delphi where he served as
one of the two permanent priests:
"In these years, a library was built near the sanctuary, and it is tempting to
assume that Plutarch was behind this initiative." (www.livius.org/pi-
pm/plutarch/plutarch.)
I believe that would be a safe assumption; Plutarch accumulated all the ancient
myths, plays, and stories, including his own, in one place so that people could
read Luke-Acts and figure out exactly what the truth was, and also figure out
who wrote them.
The question, "Is there any real proof that Luke was a physician who traveled
with Paul?" has, I think, been answered. All the church has to support the claim
that Luke was Paul's physician comes from Paul's letter to the Colossians (4:14)
and "church tradition" created decades, if not centuries, later. And the
"traditions" surrounding Luke do not always agree.
No real proof exists.
Now I can set about to prove that Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus was Luke.
***
"PLUTARCH"
"Plutarch traveled widely, visiting central Greece, Sparta, Corinth, Patrae,
Sardis, and Alexandria, but he made his normal residence at Chaeronea, where
he held the chief magistracy and other municipal posts and directed a school
with a wide curriculum in which philosophy, especially ethics, occupied the
central place.
"He maintained close links with the Academy at Athens (he possessed Athenian
citizenship) and with Delphi, where, from about 95, he held a priesthood for life;
he may have won Trajan's interest and support for the then-renewed vogue of
the oracle . . .
" . . . and perhaps enjoyed the acquaintance of the emperors Trajan and
Hadrian." (www.crystalinks.com/plutarch)
" . . . Plutarch's philosophy was eclectic, with borrowings from the Stoics,
Pythagoreans, and Peripatetic (but not the Epicureans) grouped around a core
of Platonism. His main interest was in ethics, though he developed a mystical
side, especially in his later years; he reveals that he had been initiated into the
mysteries of the cult of Dionysus, and both as a Platonist and as an initiate he
believed in the immortality of the soul . . ."
From www.livius.org/pi-pm/plutarch/plutarch: " . . . Plutarch was probably born in
46 in the Boeotian town Chaeronea. His parents were wealthy people, and after
67 (ACE), their son was able to study philosophy, rhetoric, and mathematics at
the Platonist Academy of Athens. However, Plutarch never became a Platonist
puritan, but always remained open to influences from other philosophical
schools, such as the Stoa and the school of Aristotle. It is likely that the young
man was present when the Emperor Nero, who visited Greece at this time,
declared the Greek towns to be free and autonomous.
"Because Plutarch was a rich man, he became one of the leading citizens of
Chaeronea and he is known to have represented his town on several occasions.
For example, he visited the governor of Achaea, and traveled to Alexandria and
Rome (several times). Again, this proves that he was a rich man.
"Among his friends was Lucius Mestrius Florus, a consul during the reign of
Vespasian, and Plutarch's guide during his visit to Bedriacum, where two
important battles had been fought in 69, the year of the four emperors. Mestrius
also secured the Roman citizenship for Plutarch, whose official name now
became Mestrius Plutarchus. At the end of his life, he was honored with the
procuratorship of Achaea, an important office that he probably held only in
name. His involvement in the Roman world, although from a carefully maintained
distance, explains why he shows so much interest in the history of Rome.
"In the two first decades of the second century, he studied and wrote many
books. According to an incomplete third-century catalogue, there were between
200 and 300 titles. These books brought him international fame, and the home of
the famous author became a private school for young philosophers. He was
often visited by Greeks and Romans, although not necessarily to study
philosophy. The emperor Trajan may have been one of the visitors (winter
113/114?), and it may have been on this occasion that Trajan honored Plutarch
with the ornaments of a consul, an important award. From now on, Plutarch was
allowed to wear a golden ring and a white toga with a border made of purple.
"Plutarch died after his procuratorship, which was in 119, and before 125 . . ."
These various resources begin to paint pictures of Plutarch and Luke that
contain an inordinate number of parallels: They were both city boys; both were
wealthy; both were educated and had intimate knowledge about government
and government positions. Both used the same unique phrases and words, and
both used the same unique styles of writing. Only Luke mentions "Nasoreans" as
being a "sect." And the traditions and teachings of Nasoreans, based on OT
descriptions of "nazirites," describe the traditions and teachings of Pythagoras
and Plato, both of whom Plutarch studied and imitated: he wore white, did not
cut his hair, and was a vegetarian, among many other similarities.
An important question has long plagued biblical
scholars attempting to identify the historical Jesus.
Plutarch of Chaeronea lived in the midst of the new
religion in both geography and time. Yet, in spite of the
prolific amount of biographical and historical material
Plutarch produced, not one word suggests he knew of
Jesus or his teachings.
Now a biblical investigator has collected and compiled
evidence from modern scholars and biblical texts that
answers this nagging question. Lucius Mestrius
Plutarchus did, in fact, write of Jesus and Christianity.
Nearly twenty-five percent of the New Testament was
written by Plutarch using a clever pseudonym. These
biblical texts are known as Luke's Gospel and The Acts
of the Apostles.
Luke means light; Lux was the goddess of light. Luc is
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus -- Plutarch. Just as
wordsmiths before him, Plutarch was fond of puns and
parables and plays on words. He left the titles his two
works were to be called, and they demonstrate his skill
with puns: Lux Gospel and the Axe of the Apostle.
Plutarch's Parable is a step-by-step journey that invades
the mind of Plutarch as it walks the reader through his
two bestselling masterpieces. Gott produces evidence
that Luke was not "Paul's beloved physician" after all.
Plutarch's "Axe" was wielded by Paul, and with it he
attempted to destroy the "Tree of Life," used for
centuries to describe in mythological terms the genesis
and the operation of Creation. The evidence gradually
accumulates, and it shows a far greater likelihood that
Luke was a Greek, a historian, and a skilled writer.
Plutarch hid the truth and left the clues that tell of the
destruction of The Way of the Nazoreans, the
philosophical teachings of Jesus which became a
heresy. And he left clues that it was he who wrote
Luke-Acts.
Plutarch used Mark's gospel, which he copied faithfully;
Matthew's gospel, which he sought to correct; the work
of Josephus the historian and a contemporary; the
Torah; various classical literature of the time, including
the works of Homer, Euripedes, Aratus, Tiresias,
Epimenides, and others; and his own Parallel Lives and
Moralia which he wrote at approximately the same time.
Using the "Rules for the Allegorical Interpretation of
Scripture," created by Philo of Alexandria in the first
century, Gott peels away the fiction and uncovers the
hidden story of Jesus and Christianity locked away for
two thousand years. Plutarch's Parable: Lux Gospel and
the Axe of the Apostle is a groundbreaking but
entertaining work written in simple terms for both
scholars and lay readers.
scholars attempting to identify the historical Jesus.
Plutarch of Chaeronea lived in the midst of the new
religion in both geography and time. Yet, in spite of the
prolific amount of biographical and historical material
Plutarch produced, not one word suggests he knew of
Jesus or his teachings.
Now a biblical investigator has collected and compiled
evidence from modern scholars and biblical texts that
answers this nagging question. Lucius Mestrius
Plutarchus did, in fact, write of Jesus and Christianity.
Nearly twenty-five percent of the New Testament was
written by Plutarch using a clever pseudonym. These
biblical texts are known as Luke's Gospel and The Acts
of the Apostles.
Luke means light; Lux was the goddess of light. Luc is
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus -- Plutarch. Just as
wordsmiths before him, Plutarch was fond of puns and
parables and plays on words. He left the titles his two
works were to be called, and they demonstrate his skill
with puns: Lux Gospel and the Axe of the Apostle.
Plutarch's Parable is a step-by-step journey that invades
the mind of Plutarch as it walks the reader through his
two bestselling masterpieces. Gott produces evidence
that Luke was not "Paul's beloved physician" after all.
Plutarch's "Axe" was wielded by Paul, and with it he
attempted to destroy the "Tree of Life," used for
centuries to describe in mythological terms the genesis
and the operation of Creation. The evidence gradually
accumulates, and it shows a far greater likelihood that
Luke was a Greek, a historian, and a skilled writer.
Plutarch hid the truth and left the clues that tell of the
destruction of The Way of the Nazoreans, the
philosophical teachings of Jesus which became a
heresy. And he left clues that it was he who wrote
Luke-Acts.
Plutarch used Mark's gospel, which he copied faithfully;
Matthew's gospel, which he sought to correct; the work
of Josephus the historian and a contemporary; the
Torah; various classical literature of the time, including
the works of Homer, Euripedes, Aratus, Tiresias,
Epimenides, and others; and his own Parallel Lives and
Moralia which he wrote at approximately the same time.
Using the "Rules for the Allegorical Interpretation of
Scripture," created by Philo of Alexandria in the first
century, Gott peels away the fiction and uncovers the
hidden story of Jesus and Christianity locked away for
two thousand years. Plutarch's Parable: Lux Gospel and
the Axe of the Apostle is a groundbreaking but
entertaining work written in simple terms for both
scholars and lay readers.
Contact Paula Gott at: PaulaGott@aol.com $12.00 + $1.50 shipping/handling |
| Plutarch's Parable Lux Gospel and the Axe of the Apostle |
| GOTT |
"LUKE" |
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