Review: WHAT AN ENIGMA
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 12, 2013
My mother believed every word of the Bible. She said," God said it, I believe it, that settles it."Then I asked her how many animals Noah took on the ark. Everyone knows the answer is two, right?Wrong. Check your Bible. There are actually two flood stories. In one flood story Noah took two of each animal; in the other flood story Noah took one of every unclean animal and seven of every clean animal. It's in Chapter 7 of Genesis, check it out yourself.I told my mother," God said it, but man wrote it, and man has never been perfect."She never forgave me for finding a mistake in God's Holy Word.The Life and Prayers of Saint Luke points out a few puzzling things about the man, things I never would have noticed on my own.As far back as I can remember, I've known that Luke was one of the original twelve, one of those famous faces Leonardo DaVinci portrayed in a little painting called "The Last Supper".This book tells me maybe he was and maybe he wasn't. Maybe there were two men named Luke.As far back as I can remember I've known that Luke was Greek and that he was a doctor.But this book offers evidence that maybe he just spoke Greek, and maybe his father educated him instead of sending him to school and you won't believe the reason why.I've always known Luke authored the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, but I've also known the oldest copies we've ever had of those two books were written fifty to eighty years after Luke died. That's if we were lucky. The quality of papyrus being what it is, those original copies are likely incomplete. More copies were made from those original copies, but man isn't perfect. Transcription errors may have occurred, especially when you are making a copy of a copy that was a copy of a copy.After reading this book I want to shout to the heavens, " Will the real Luke please appear in my dreams and tell me who you are?!?!!"I knew Luke traveled with Paul. I was taught that the only person in that famous painting who died a natural death was John, the beloved disciple, and he was under exile at the time. Yet this book tells me that Luke might have died in his sleep.What's going on here?The big trouble is that it's been nearly two thousand years since Luke lived and died. We can't exactly pick up his high school year book or call his latest girl friend to find out what he was like. Yes, there werehistorians, but even they didn't write about the man (men) until centuries later.This book raised questions about Luke, but it taught me so much more than I knew. I've got my Bible in my lap now (NKJV), so I can read all those 'we' statements they were talking about. I own several translations, but the New King James Version has always been easier for me to understand.All anyone can do is look at the facts and make their own decision. What do YOU believe? And if you have a friend who disagrees with you, don't argue about it; you'll both find out the truth, sooner or later.