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I don't understand why you have a hang-up about the authorship of Luke-Acts. There are parts of the NT whose authorship is very much open to question, especially Paul's pastoral epistles, and serious ecclesiological issues are influenced by who the author of those letters might have been. The name of the author of Hebrews seems to have been deliberately suppressed by the early church, possibly because she was a woman (see Priscilla's Letter: Finding the Author of the Epistle Hebrews by Ruth Hoppin 2009). The gospel of John is definitely not the product of a single author, John, though it may have been written by a group that grew up around the testimony of John. As far as I know, there has never been any controversy over the authorship of Luke-Acts. Tradition has held from the earliest days that the author of Luke-Acts was a man named Luke who had some kind of connection with Paul. We cannot be certain whether that man was the Luke of Colossians 4:14, but what difference would that make? No one has ever put forward a claim that it was anyone other than a man named Luke who had a connection with Paul. No one. Robert Jewett, in his A Chronology of Paul's Life (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), makes a strong case that Luke WAS a member of Paul's entourage during the "we" sections of Acts, even though Jewett favors the chronological material from Paul's letters over the chronology of Acts. And Jewett states his reasons for doing so. If Luke was indeed a member of Paul's party during the many days the party was at Caesarea (Acts 21:10), Nazareth was only about forty miles away, a four day walk round trip. It would have been relatively easy for Luke to interview Mary, if she was there. If Mary was elsewhere, possibly in Jerusalem, it would have been even easier. While Luke does NOT say he was an eyewitness to the events recorded in his gospel, he does say that he relied on traditions handed down by eyewitnesses. There is nothing in the language of Luke 1:1&2 that precludes Luke from having received some of those traditions from the eyewitnesses themselves. Do I think Luke-Acts was "God-breathed"? That depends on how we define "God-breathed." If we accept the fundamentalist/evangelical protestant definition as "being without error or contradiction, the inclusion of which even a single one would destroy the trustworthiness of the whole", then NO! Luke-Acts contains many, many errors and contradictions. If we accept that "God-breathed" means "most useful for making sense out of what is happening", or "most useful for equipping people to do good works", then YES, I DO believe Luke-Acts is God-breathed. I don't understand how you are using the phrases "arguing authorship" and "counterarguing authorship". It would seem that you are the person counter arguing Lukan authorship... Peace, friend! :-) Love, Steve