Luke Plagiarized

I found this to be a very cool fact about the Gospel of Luke.

"Stephen Farris has shown that the Greek of Luke 1-2 is filled with grammatical and stylistic nuances not found with the same frequency elsewhere in Luke, or in a sizable selection of other ancient Greek writings surveyed, but that make good sense as a very wooden, literal translation of Hebrew or Aramaic into Greek. Farris emphasizes that these features are not the kinds that lend themselves to conscious imitation by one who might want to give his writing a biblical flavor, because they involve the frequency and usage of various prepositions, articles, adverbs and adjectives rather than the more readily reproducible vocabulary or parts of speech. Luke therefore most probably relied on earlier tradition for these chapters."

In other words, there were already writings about Jesus available at the time of Luke writing his Gospel. This emphasizes Luke's care as an author and the closeness of his and earlier writings to the events of Jesus' life.