Was the Bible writer Luke an accurate historian?

NO.  Luke who worked for Theophilus, Head of Religious Affairs for the ROMAN GOVERNMENT, infiltrated Paul's 'church' by becoming paul's disciple 17 years after Jesus' crucifixion in 30A.D.. Neither Luke nor Paul was ever a disciple or an Apostle of Jesus. Luke borrowed "Mark", "Matthew", and "Q" to write Luke and Acts. Luke used Acts to introduce the counterfeit Paulism/Romanism which became Catholicism and other denominations. The 5th and final scroll of Mark was destroyed by fire in Syria in 69A.D., Luke added a bogus 12 verse ending, Mark 16:9-20. Theophilus had Luke rewrite 'Mark' and 'Matthew' to please the Roman Government and never returned the original manuscripts to their rightful owners.

He interviewed quite a number of eye witnesses to the events and compiled their testimonies. Sounds like he was being pretty accurate overall.

Probably more so that the paid liar Josephus

Discoveries in archology show that the writings of Luke are from the period in question. He uses terminology that fits the period which would not have been used in the second, third or later periods. These are called "internal evidences".

The issue of how much of the work is factual is of course subject to debate.

His work of Acts is a mixture of investigation and personal experiences. This is seen by the use of the word "we" and the absence of it (they or he to mention a few).

It is clear he investigated the issue of if Mary had been playing around on Joseph, if Joseph was the father or if the birth was by a virgin. If he did in fact interview the mid-wife or who was the source for his conclusion that Mary still had her maidenhead when Jesus was born is not stated, nor any other persons he interviewed for what he wrote in the book of Luke.

No, Luke was an apologist for Paul, focusing most of the book of Acts on how he wanted Paul to be perceived. This corrupted the true history of the early Christians and contradicts what Paul wrote.

Yes.

In fact, he's practically the only ancient source for life on the high seas in the first century, especially how they handled storms (Ac 27).

Luke certainly makes the claim in the book that bears his name that he “traced all things with accuracy” and a careful consideration of his Bible accounts and history itself bears that out. Consider this information taken from the January 1, 2014 issue of the Bible journal “The Watchtower” under its section entitled “Did You Know?”

“Luke touches on historical facts that can be verified. For example, he uses a number of obscure titles of Roman civic officials, such as praetors, or civil magistrates, in Philippi; politarchs, or local rulers, of Thessalonica; and Asiarchs, or leading men, in Ephesus. (Acts 16:20, Kingdom Interlinear; 17:6; 19:31) Luke calls Herod Antipas a tetrarch, or district ruler, and Sergio Paulus he calls the proconsul of Cyprus.—Acts 13:1, 7.

“Luke’s correct use of titles is noteworthy because when the status of a Roman territory changed, so did the title of its administrator. Yet, “time after time such references in Acts prove to be just right for the place and time in question,” says Bible scholar Bruce Metzger. Scholar William Ramsay calls Luke “a historian of the highest order.”

So yes it would seem that Luke was an accurate historian.

Hannah J Paul

 Not on your life

No one knows.  But probably not.

None of the gospel authors are known to history.  In fact, the names of the gospels are almost certainly not the names of their actual authors.  Mark was the first gospel and there's a lot of scholars that think that Luke and Matthew are really just revisions of Mark as they based their gospels on Mark.  John just went off and did his own thing.

History wasn't the same thing back then as it was today.  Even actual historians of the day didn't really just DOCUMENT proceedings the way we want historians to do today (and quite frankly even they often don't do that).  Instead history was about promoting narrative and propaganda.  There may be facts, but cherry picking and even a little lying wasn't seen as wrong.  Apocryphal stories were seen as fair game if they promoted the narrative that was seen as 'right'.

And gospels were even more so.  The gospel writers are not Jesus' biographers in the modern sense.  They're propagandists.  They're looseness with the truth, even as they understood it, would have been seen as understood by readers of their time.  It's only our modern lens of wanting to treat the book like documentary that turns it from morality stories into an attempt at fact and truth...which it clearly isn't.

No, modern ideas of accuracy didn't exist at the time.  "Because I said so" was usually enough.