Bible Synapse
Did Luke’s Gospel record everything Jesus did?
Hard question · Acts and the letters · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
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Luke’s former book told “of all that Jesus began both to do and teach”, up to the day he was taken up.
The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:
Jesus did “many other things”; if every one were written down, the world itself could not contain the books.
And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.
The objection
Luke opens Acts by saying that his Gospel told “of all that Jesus began both to do and teach”. John closes his Gospel by saying that Jesus did so many other things that the world could not hold the books if they were all written down. Either Luke recorded everything Jesus did or he did not.
The answer
Luke does not claim to have recorded every act of Jesus. His Greek says that he wrote peri pantōn, ‘concerning all’ that Jesus did and taught, and he then marks out the span: from the beginning “until the day in which he was taken up” (Acts 1:2). He is describing the scope of his first book, which ran from the start of the story to the ascension (Luke 24:51), not claiming that nothing was left out. ‘All’ is often used this way, in Greek as in English: an account of ‘all that happened’ means the whole story told in its main parts, not every detail. Barnes and Gill both read the verse in this way.
Luke himself shows that he knew his Gospel was a selection. In Acts he quotes a saying of Jesus that his Gospel does not contain: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). He mentions forty days of teaching after the resurrection that the Gospel only touches on (Acts 1:3), and he says that the risen Jesus expounded “in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27) without telling us what was said. A writer who adds sayings of Jesus in his second book did not think his first had recorded them all.
So Luke and John agree. The Gospels tell the story truly, but none of them tells all of it, as John says plainly: “many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book” (John 20:30).
Other answers Christians give
‘Began to do and teach’
Many readers stress the word ‘began’: the Gospel told what Jesus began to do and teach on earth, and Acts tells what he went on doing through his apostles by the Spirit. Barnes, by contrast, takes ‘began to do’ as a Hebrew way of saying simply ‘did’. On either view ‘all’ describes the scope of the book, not a complete record.
John’s overstatement
John’s closing words are widely read as deliberate overstatement, a way of stressing how much more could be told. Gill applies them to the many miracles that no Gospel records. Either way they say that the record is a selection, which Luke does not deny.
From the classic commentators
That is, of the principal, or most important parts of the life and doctrines of Christ. It cannot mean that he recorded all that Jesus did, as he had omitted many things that have been preserved by the other evangelists. The word "all" is frequently thus used to denote the most important or material facts.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible, on Acts 1:1 (1834)