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     Luke, a physician and companion of the Apostle Paul, wrote the Gospel according to Luke and the book of Acts, fully occupying 25% of the New Testament.  The book of Acts records Paul missionary travels throughout Asia Minor, Macedonia and Greece and his first trip to Rome.
     Sir William Ramsay (1851-1939), a classical scholar, archaeologist and professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at Oxford and then of Latin at Aberdeen (expert on the Graeco-Roman world), believed the New Testament was a product of some ambitious churchmen (circa. AD150), rather than being inspired of God, thus it had no credibility.  Ramsay considered the New Testament’s weakest point to be the missionary travels of the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts.  So in 1881 Ramsay set out on a 12 year expedition in Asia Minor and Palestine, literally digging up the archaeological evidence to reveal flaws of Luke’s accounts of Paul’s journeys and confirm his skepticism.
     Although to even cite one example of his analysis is too lengthy for our article, initially Ramsay considered the account of Paul’s travels as being from AD 160-180 (as he had been taught by skeptics at the university).  Luke’s account in Acts only made sense when he considered the evidence of Paul’s travels in the geographical and historical context of AD 30-60.  He studied the minute details of Luke’s descriptions in chapters 13-21 of Acts, not from the viewpoint of a theologian, but as a Roman historian.  In 1896, he wrote his conclusions in “Saint Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen,” shocking his scholastic colleagues who had expected an affirmation of their skepticism.  Over the next 20 years Ramsay wrote prolifically (books and articles) regarding the credibility of the New Testament as he had tested it on the spot in the archaeological digs of Asia Minor, revealing the historical and geological accuracy of Luke’s writing of Acts.
     In 1898 Ramsay met a skeptical scholar’s challenge that Luke was not a credible historian based on his assertions that the Gospel of Luke was inaccurate.  Ramsay met the challenge in his book “Was Christ Born in Bethlehem.”  He concluded that Luke was a historian of the first order.  In short the writings of Luke are credible.  In 1902 Ramsay wrote “The Education of Christ.”  In that book is an essay “The Cross of Christ the Center of History” reflecting that he was no longer a skeptic, but a believer in Jesus as Lord and Savior.
     Simon Greenleaf, Dane Professor of Law at Harvard University (1840s) and world renown for his book on the rules of evidence concluded, “All the Bible asks of men is that they treat its evidence as they treat the evidence of other things.”  The Bible meets the legal tests of evidence, being both authentic and credible.

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