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the physician and historian Luke authored both the gospel bearing his name and the book of Acts, which together constitute about 1/4 of the entire New Testament, consequently, a critical issue is whether Luke was a historian who could be trusted to get things right, when archaeologists check out the details of what he wrote, do they find that he was careful or sloppy? the general consensus of both liberal and conservative scholars is that Luke is very accurate as a historian, he's erudite, he's eloquent, his Greek approaches classical quality, he writes as an educated man, and archaeological discoveries are showing over and over again that Luke is accurate in what he has to say, in fact, there have been several instances, similar to the story about the harbor, in which scholars initially thought Luke was wrong in a particular reference, only to have later discoveries confrim that he was correct in what he wrote, for instance, in Luke 3:1, he refers to Lysanias being the tetrarch of Abilene in about AD 27, for years scholars pointed to this as evidence that Luke didn't know what he was talking about, since everybody knew that Lysanias was not a tetrarch but rather the ruler of Chalcis half a century earlier, if Luke can't get that basic fact right, nothing he has written can be trusted, that's when archaeology stepped in, an inscription was later found from the time of Tiberius, from AD 14-37, which names Lysanias as tetrarch in Abila near Damascus - just as Luke had written, it turned out that there had been 2 government officials named Lysanias, another example is Luke's reference in Acts 17:6 to "politarchs" which is translated as "city officials" by the NIV in the city of Thessalonica, for a long time people thought Luke was mistaken, because no evidence of the term "politarchs" had been found in any ancient Rome documents, however, an inscription on a 1st century arch was later found that begins "In the time of the politarchs ..." and then, lo and behold, archaeologists have found more than 35 inscriptions that mention politarchs, several of these in Thessalonica from the same period Luke was referring to, but in his gospel, Luke says that Jesus was walking into Jericho when he healed the blind man Bartimaeus, while Mark says he was coming out of Jericho, isn't this a clear cut contradiction that casts doubt on the reliability of the New Testament? it only appears to be a contradiction because you're thinking in contemporary terms, in which cities are built and stay put, but that wasn't necessarily the case long ago, Jericho was in at least 4 different locations as much as a quarter of a mile apart in ancient times, the city was destroyed and resettled near another water supply or a new road or a nearer mountain or whatever, the point is, you can be coming out of one site where Jericho existed and be going into another one, like moving from one part of suburban Chicago to another part of suburban Chicago, both Luke and Mark could be right, Jesus could have been going out of one area of Jericho and into another at the same time, again archaeology had answered another challenge to Luke, and given the large portion of the New Testament written by him, it's extremely significant that Luke has been established to be a scrupulously accurate historian, even in the smallest details, one prominent archaeologist carefully examined Luke's references to 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands, finding not a single mistake, here's the bottom line: if Luke was so painstakingly accurate in his historical reporting, on what logical basis may we assume he was credulous or inaccurate in his reporting of matters that were far more important, not only to him but to others as well? matters, for example, like the resurrection of Jesus, the most influential evidence of his deity, which Luke says was firmly established by "many convincing proofs" (Acts 1:3)