Mental flatliner wrote:Luke was writing to Theophilus.
This tells us nothing since we don't know who Theophilus was and because that could be a nickname or a title or even a form of address to the audience as a whole.
Luke did not have the luxury of "era dating" as we do. He couldn't say "4 BC", he had to say "in the days of Herod the Great".
And Herod died ten tears before the census of Qurinius, so that's a major problem for Luke and shows that he did not get his nativity story from witnesses.
When telling the story of the gospel to Theophilus, Luke first gives context of time, who were the "players" at the time:
At the time of what? Luke was not writing about his own time.
the players were named, along with their respective territories. This is a clue as to either Luke's location, Theophilus' location, the area of Jesus' ministry, or a combination of all three.
This indicates that Luke read Josephus. Most all of the geographical and historical details found in Luke appear to be culled from Josephus.
This might have been done so that Theophilus could search daily reports available at the time, as well.
What "daily reports?" Who exactly was Theophilus? Where was he living? How was he getting 60 year old "daily reports" from a city that had been destroyed decades earlier?
Luke had no motivation whatsoever to name the "outliers":
"outliers" of what?
Idumea (south of Judea, irrelevant to the gospels)
Perea (east of the Jordan and Dead Sea)
Decapolis (east of the Sea of Galilee)
Tyre and Sidon (well outside the area of interest)
Once again, you're showing that you don't know your Gospels very well. Luke mentions Tyre and Sidon several times. He also mentions the Decapolis (that's where Jesus cast demons into pigs) and Perea (that's where Jesus was baptized and John the Baptist was beheaded).
Idumea is not mentioned by the Gsopels. Correct. So what? How does this tell you what his sources were?
What does any of this have to do with isolating sources? For sure one of Luke's sources was mark. Another was either Q or Matthew. Another was almost certainly Josephus. What other sources do you believe Luke had, and what was your methodology for "isolating" them and how are you able to do this without knowing Greek?
This is what it looks like when you allow the author to tell the story in his own words, in his own way, and in his own context.
This is what it looks like when one author edits the work of other authors together. It's not "his own way and his own words" when most of his material is copied verbatim from other sources.