At the very beginning of his Gospel, Luke said that “many” have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among them. What he’s about to tell us, he's not the first person to try to get this documentation of historical events out saint people. He says tgat “many” people have endeavored to draw up an account of the things that have literally happened or been fulfilled right here among them.
How many will undertake to draw up an account of our lives…? NOT many. That’s how many. Luke tells us that he, and “many” others, have endeavored to write this all down in such a way that people can understand and experience , through what's being written by them, what has actually happened right here among them all.
But not many people even undertook to draw up the accounts of the lives of famous people from ancient times, especially during the first century. Tiberius Caesar was Caesar during the life of Jesus. The emperor of the Roman Empire. But there’s hardly anything about him, especially from the first century. You gotta piece it together to come up with much information about him at all. Same can be said for Pilate, there's practically nothing. Josephus does give us a storyline of the life of Herod the Great. But other than Josephus, that's it. And Herod the Great did extraordinary things, but there's just one account. One, not “many.”
And how many detailed narrative accounts do we have of the lives of ancient peasants who were crucified as criminals…? And how many detailed narrative accounts do we have of the lives of famous first century rabbis…? That’d be NONE. Other than Jesus, who “many” endeavored to document His history, that’d be a big fat NONE. There is nothing that even comes close to what we find in just Luke's presentation of the life of Jesus.
