The Lydia McGrew Podcast: Recent Episodes
The Lydia McGrew Podcast
The goal: To take common sense about the Bible and make it rigorous.
I'm an analytic philosopher, specializing in theory of knowledge. I've published widely in both classical and formal epistemology. On this channel I'm applying my work in the theory of knowledge to the books of the Bible, especially the Gospels, and to apologetics, the defense of Christianity. My aim is to bring a combination of scholarly rigor and common sense to these topics, providing the skeptic with well-considered reasons to accept Christianity and the believer with well-argued ways to defend it.
Is there a problem with the chronological order that John indicates for the events in chapters 5, 6, and 7?Here I continue to argue that there is not. Critical scholars have created "problems" where no problem really exists. I discuss several more extremely weak arguments that chapters 5 and 6 are out of order, despite their explicit temporal indicator "after these things," and that there are explanatory benefits to swapping them. I continue to use Gary M. Burge as my foil, from his book _Interpreting the Gospel of John_. I also show that two of Burge's complaints about the placement of John 5 are in tension with one another: If one of them is a problem and is solved by the move he suggests, the other must not be a problem.Thumbnail by Foto: Jonn Leffmann, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403
I'm continuing to argue against the claim that John's Gospel has "seams" that show where editors other than the Beloved Disciple have been ham-handedly stitching material together.This week and next week I'll discuss the claim that John 5 and John 6 are in the wrong order. Should we be trying to sort events in Galilee and events in Jerusalem, putting as many as possible of the Galilee events together and of the Jerusalem events together? I see no reason at all to try to do this. The Synoptics say nothing that implies that Jesus' Galilean ministry was uninterrupted by any visits to Jerusalem and returns to Galilee. Gary Burge continues to be my foil, as he discusses these supposed "seams" in his book _Interpreting the Gospel of John_. I refute his strange claim that there are "no transitions" between geographical places in John 4-7. (In fact, there are very clear transitions in those chapters with only one exception.) I argue that the phrase "the other side of the Sea of Galilee" in John 6:1 doesn't mean that an editor has awkwardly reversed the events in chapters 5 and 6.Thumbnail by Foto: Jonn Leffmann, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403
Today I'm talking about the alleged "seam" in John 3:22, which says that after these things, Jesus and his disciples came/went "into the Judean land." Does this mean that they weren't in Judea before? Is this an internal contradiction, because Jesus was already in Judea, in Jerusalem, in the preceding events? And does it mean that an editor was trying awkwardly to fit stories together in the Gospel?I answer "no" to all these questions.Here are various translations of the verse:https://biblehub.com/john/3-22.htmHere is the Greek text analysis page:https://biblehub.com/text/john/3-22.htmHere is my video on four ways of narrating time. (But note: In this case I don't even think the narration is achronological.)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4TzGiFCeLE&t=8sThumbnail by Foto: Jonn Leffmann, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403
What are so-called "seams" (or aporia) in the Gospel of John? This week I start a new series on this topic with fresh content that is not even found in my book The Eye of the Beholder.Some scholars use the presence of (allegedly) awkward transitions, (alleged) contradictions, and (allegedly) out-of-order segments to argue for the involvement of editors (even multiple editors) in the composition of the Gospel of John. Evangelical-labeled scholar Gary Burge agrees with the perspective of the skeptic John Earman in saying that "seismic seams" and "editorial traces" are "abundantly evident." While Burge holds that the Beloved Disciple lies somewhere behind all of this editorial activity, he seems to ignore the effects of unnecessarily distancing the Gospel we have from an eyewitness of the events. Ehrman, of course, does not pretend to consider the fourth Gospel to be historically reliable in the first place, so this distancing fits very well with his model.In this introductory video I explain the concept of seams and what they supposedly show, and I give one example using Ehrman's claim of a contradiction between John 2:23 and John 4:54.Thumbnail by Foto: Jonn Leffmann, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403
In this last in the series on why you should care if the Gospel authors put words into Jesus' mouth I warn again about thinking that "multiple attestation" to some type of teaching or some type of event will make up the epistemic deficiencies of the case, if you've already granted that the Gospel authors did this.As discussed in an earlier video on multiple attestation (see link), what we're looking for is independent attestation to the facts, not just to a "Christian tradition" (which might be erroneous).https://youtu.be/EGVlEhtv0ZoFurther, many specific doctrines and events are not overwhelmingly multiply attested, in such a fashion that we can just toss out as inauthentic one or more of them without having a significantly weakened case.Also, the methodology that calls into question the historical accuracy of a given attestation may, consistently applied, undermine many of the attestations all at once. For instance, if we're putting a big question mark over the recognizable historicity of John's reports of Jesus' teachings, this may affect the vast majority (or even all) of the places where Jesus teaches some particular doctrine explicitly, if these are in John. The need for caution about being cavalier about Gospel accuracy and then trying to fall back on multiple attestation is thus intertwined with the emphases of the previous videos in this series--Jesus' personal teaching is data in a special way, and explicitness is evidentially important.I give several examples of these points, including Jesus' explicit teachings of his pre-existence and Jesus' explicit teachings that the believer need not fear the unintentional loss of his salvation.Thumbnail image by Guma89 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17999924
Why should it matter if the Gospel authors put their words into Jesus' mouth?The sayings in John 8:58 and 10:30 are, at least on the face of it, especially clear as statements of deity. In _Jesus, Contradicted_, Dr. Licona takes this to be a reason to question their recognizable historicity. He argues that, if Jesus was reluctant (as reported in the Synoptics) to let it be widely known that he was the Messiah, he would be that much less likely to state so clearly that he was God.But at the same time, he argues that it doesn't matter anyway, because Jesus presents himself as God so clearly through his actions reported in Mark that it "came to the same thing." Can you spot the tension here?I'll be exploring that tension in this video as well as emphasizing the commonsense fact that explicitness and clarity come together, and that clarity is evidentially relevant. Put simply, the more clearly Jesus made a claim, the better evidence we have from that report that this was what he taught.Here are some quotations from Craig Evans on John, greatly downplaying its literal historicity:https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/transcript-craig-evans-comments-on.htmlHere is the link to Michael Licona's debate with Bart Ehrman in which he says that it's "irrelevant" whether or not Jesus recognizably taught what is recorded in John about his own deity.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP7RrCfDkO4Here is my earlier video on what's wrong with the "Messianic secret" argument that Licona is using:https://youtu.be/9D9glNp2seEHere is my earlier video cautioning against an incorrect use of multiple attestation:https://youtu.be/EGVlEhtv0Zo
Why should you think that it matters if Jesus didn't historically, recognizably say something recorded in the Gospels? What if that is just the author's extrapolation or application of Jesus' teaching put into his mouth, based on the author's belief that this is the "higher meaning" of what Jesus really taught, or that this is what Jesus would have said if asked?Even if you're not a Christian (yet), it's legitimate for you to wonder what you'd be buying into if you became a Christian. Would you have to adopt the position that apostolic teaching put into the mouth of Jesus is just as authoritative as what Jesus really historically taught? That is hardly obvious. The historical teaching of Jesus constitutes theological data in a special way. The Apostle Paul makes it clear in Galatians that he thinks apostles can err, and that Peter did err in not eating with Gentiles. He also says that "we" (presumably himself or other apostles) could in theory teach the Galatians something that contradicted the gospel they had taught before, and that the Galatians needed to be discerning. One way to check apostolic teaching is to see if it agrees with Jesus' historical teaching. There are sayings of Jesus reported in the story of the centurion's sermon that are quite relevant to the question of Jewish and Gentile Christians eating together. But what if he never said them? What if Matthew made them up?Before we accept uncritically the view that it doesn't matter if the evangelists put their words in Jesus' mouth, we should consider the ramifications if they did. Then, knowing that it does matter, we can examine the arguments that they did so. I find these arguments completely lacking in force. See The Mirror or the Mask and The Eye of the Beholder for more information.https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1
Should you care if the Gospel authors put their own interpretations into the mouth of the historical Jesus?What if the Gospels record things as though said by the historical Jesus when the historical Jesus never recognizably said those things in those contexts? Did the evangelists think that they were licensed to do this because they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that their own interpretations had exactly the same status as the words of the historical Jesus? Would it matter if they did?Here I start to address that question. First I point out that the position I'm disagreeing with is very strong, because functionally it amounts to attributing infallibility to the apostles' interpretations, equal to the infallibility of Jesus, solely on the grounds that Jesus did commission apostles. This strong theological position is hardly an unquestionable given!Then I address this question: Is the importance of the distinction between what Jesus recognizably taught on earth and apostolic interpretations a modern imposition on ancient documents? I answer that it isn't. The Gospels themselves and the apostles themselves made this distinction. The Apostle Paul himself makes this distinction. And in fact, this distinction is especially prominent in the Gospel of John, despite the fact that John's Gospel is the one where critical scholars most often say that the author elaborated Jesus' teachings, while putting them in Jesus mouth. If John was doing this, while giving the strong impression that he recognized and maintained the distinction between his own interpretations and Jesus' historical teachings, he was being deceptive.Thanks to Erik Manning for help with the thumbnail image.
In recent interviews Dr. Michael Licona has invoked the name of D. A. Carson, giving the strong impression that Carson shared/shares Licona's own views of the Gospel of John--views which are surprising and controversial coming from a conservative scholar. These include the idea that John invented the sayings "I thirst" and "It is finished" from the cross and the claim that it is impossible to know whether the historical Jesus recognizably uttered the fairly explicit claims to be God that we find in John, and more.If Carson and all the others Licona lists really hold such views of John's Gospel, a Christian conservative audience is more likely to feel that the arguments for these views must be very strong and that they have no choice but to accept them.I have argued directly that these views are false, so regardless of what "big name" holds them, that doesn't mean that we're epistemically required to believe them. But further: The attempt to co-opt Carson is completely illicit, based upon his published writings. Carson has not endorsed the views that I have criticized in Licona.Licona uses a quotation from Carson's commentary on John in which Carson says, "John has rewritten the whole" to defend his attempt to co-opt Carson. But the context makes it clear that there Carson is only talking about trivial matters of style which need not compromise the recognizable historicity, in the very contexts reported, of any of Jesus' teachings. Moreover, on every single one of the other issues where Licona takes a view that would be considered non-conservative (e.g., the day of the crucifixion, the recognizable historicity of the "I am" sayings, and many more), Carson takes the conservative view instead and argues for traditional harmonizing. Even more striking: Carson shows himself well aware of the tendency to slide from discussions of John's style and the way Jesus sounds in John to questioning the recognizable historicity of Jesus' teaching, and he explicitly blocks this slide in passage after passage of his writings, defending instead the view that Jesus recognizably taught and said what John reports on the occasions where John places him. This is as far as possible from the view of John that Licona is endorsing.Here is Carson's commentary on John, available in Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Gospel-according-Pillar-Testament-Commentary-ebook/dp/B09151YFSY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2I984OE95ZVM9&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.AmOevBpNCC5z9NrvEvhJsy4vFbwSRZEk_vqv3KHhAJirYtrCG9XGqkI9q-KYSojdTgPFzbrNqPE7XeHuf2xjG68h_22r7E1-jQY_beAbuEcizFigWOB7Z0mf862276nYtxrCaax6E-0Hh9mNHW5Kb3AeYd8JLk8zYcHUdnbo4J8VOcYaSG8RFRQ9CtJBSwtdFVUx2-teDiaSFCNpBP3b-fRQG2v_h-lmRsdAQKEd_zk.HFzIjtn85T8JMzdSJBuDnZSGNKcF1Yij5WnF0YDEYqg&dib_tag=se&keywords=carson+john+commentary&qid=1721312510&sprefix=%2Caps%2C170&sr=8-1Here is an important article in which Carson discusses these issues: https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gp/gp2_tradition_carson.pdfHere is one interview where Licona speaks as if Carson agrees with his controversial views:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNUCCeTwCaIHere is the interview where Licona explicitly cites the isolated sentence, "John has rewritten the whole" to co-opt Carson: https://www.youtube.com/live/N5N5snM1PSQ?si=MmflT4Jf_7f-TLJ3&t=7900
In two recent interviews Dr. Michael Licona has attempted to associate a star-studded roster of conservative commentators with his controversial views on the historicity of John's Gospel. At the same time, he implies that those who disagree with him strongly on these matters (which he refers to as "struggling" with and "having difficulty accepting" his views) are simply unaware of things that Johannine scholars, including all of these conservative scholars, have "known" for a long time.In this episode I analyze the various sociological and rhetorical moves being made, such as appeal to authority, implying that anyone who disagrees is merely uninformed, and more. I also point out that if some laymen have not heard of the fact that there are some previously conservative-labeled scholars (but by no means as many as Licona implies) who question the robust historicity of John, this is in part because of a strong taboo in evangelical circles surrounding even telling laymen about this in the first place, if one is going to criticize the views of other believers. That means that, if this is now being sprung on you as something you just have to accept, that is very far from a reason for you to trust the self-styled experts. Finally, of course, there is the question of whether, in fact, all of these iconic conservatives actually do agree with Licona's views on John. I will turn to that next time in a detailed discussion of D.A. Carson, whose name Licona invokes by way of a highly selective quotation.Here is the exchange to which I'm referring in the video:https://youtu.be/dNUCCeTwCaI?si=kTGTytBoP3_CFv7m&t=3416
Dr. Michael Licona has claimed for several years now, since shortly after Norman Geisler's death, that Geisler said that Matthew moved the Temple cleansing (and hence the cursing of the fig tree) by one day. Others have been led by Licona's confidence to accept this statement without question, even though such a move would be incompatible with a major theme of Geisler's entire life and ministry--namely, the literal inerrancy of the Bible. While I myself am not an inerrantist, I think that this interpretation is unfair to Geisler, particularly when no other option is even suggested as a possible interpretation of the passage in question. Given that New Testament scholarship, both conservative and liberal, has long needed and lacked a concise vocabulary for distinguishing places where an author does not intend to provide a chronological narrative and places where he does so intend (and changes chronology deliberately), it is not surprising that the brief passage in Geisler and Howe's book is somewhat cryptic.I suggest that it is more accurate and fair to Geisler and Howe to interpret them as suggesting what I've called achronological narration on the part of Matthew rather than, as Licona takes it, that they are suggesting dyschronological narration (knowingly and deliberately changing chronology). They appear to be saying that Matthew's narrative could give the accidental impression of a chronology inconsistent with Mark's, but that in fact the two Gospels are harmonizable in a traditional fashion.I think we should call upon anyone who discusses this issue to offer at least the plausibility of this interpretation of Geisler and Howe as an option rather than stating that they are advocating dyschronological narration and then saying that it is "ironic" that Geisler opposed dyschronological narration elsewhere.Here is the passage in their book: https://defendinginerrancy.com/bible-solutions/Matthew_21.12-19_(cf._Mark_11.12-14,_20-24).phpHere is the debate at SES just months after Geisler's death in which Licona sprung the alleged gotcha on Geisler. https://youtu.be/rLwnjx6-5dc?si=edvCHP5petU3yECG&t=3582Here is an earlier blog post I wrote on this topic: https://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2019/10/getting_dr_geisler_right.html
Is it being properly cautious, if experts disagree about something, to choose some intermediate probability for that proposition and treat that as the best that you can do, as a non-expert, at estimating the probability on all the public evidence?Not really. Such false caution can result in giving undue weight to opinions governed by faulty methodology and kept in place by merely sociological forces. In New Testament studies, such false caution also doesn't take due regard to the way that poor standards and methodology have become accepted even by some conservative-labeled scholars, as if they are objectively good standards of the discipline.The anthology I have in mind at about minute 21 is Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith?https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Matters-Matter-Faith-Postmodern/dp/1433525712Craig Blomberg's contribution is titled "A Constructive Traditional Response to New Testament Criticism."
If you do a maximal data approach to arguing for the resurrection, does that mean that you have to stop midway through your positive presentation and answer every Gospel contradiction claim that a skeptic might make?Not at all. Here I give three important principles for handling the issue of Gospel contradictions from a maximal data perspective. These principles will also help in thinking about contradictions for oneself.
Here I'm challenging the claim that if some section of a Gospel resurrection story is of apologetic value, that makes it suspect as plausibly being an apologetic addition (invented). I argue that that rules out the most reasonable, natural, expected kind of evidence that the early church would have had if indeed Jesus did rise from the dead physically.The fact that critical scholars tend to assume in a circular way that all strongly evidential sections of the Gospel narratives are apologetic additions should indicate the hopelessness of basing a strong argument for Jesus' physical resurrection only on what is granted by nearly all scholars across the critical spectrum.Here is my series on Dr. Habermas's misunderstandings of C. H. Dodd. https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2024/05/gary-habermass-misunderstandings-of-c-h.htmlHere is my interesting conversation with Matthew Adelstein that got me thinking more about this term "apologetic."https://www.youtube.com/live/LCWViV-8cPw?t=713s
Here I consider the various events that can prevent an account in history from being preserved and reaching us. Recognizing these "chances and changes of this mortal life" can help us to avoid making arguments from silence against testimony. We should not demand that we possess multiple accounts of an ancient event. I then revisit the analogy of your brother telling you that he won the lottery, setting it in the 1800s when letters and information are hard to exchange, to give a better sense of the problems with arguments from silence in history. Here again is Tim McGrew's article on arguments from silence in history.https://timothymcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Argument-from-Silence-Acta-Analytica-Tim-2013.pdf
Continuing to talk about arguments from silence in biblical studies today. Too often biblical scholars fail to recognize the randomness of saliency. What one author thinks to record or not record needn't have, and often doesn't have, any heavy explanation. Recognizing that it's often a bad idea to put a high probability on the prediction that this person will report this thing in this document is not at all akin to deciding that our senses are unreliable. It's more like realizing that it's very difficult to predict who will fall in love with whom. Or realizing based on empirical evidence that a particular symptom isn't always found in a particular disease. It's recognizing the actual quality of variability in human decisions to report. Here again is Tim McGrew's article on arguments from silence in history.https://timothymcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Argument-from-Silence-Acta-Analytica-Tim-2013.pdf
This week I'm starting a 3-part series on arguments from silence. Last year Testify channel rightly rejected a skeptical challenge to the Virgin Birth on the grounds that it isn't recorded in the Gospel of Mark. Here's that video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXlZPjFmY9E&t=74sBut philosopher Dustin Crummett challenged the video, saying that Testify's argument is like rejecting sensory reliability just because we can find some cases where our senses lead us astray. And supposedly rejecting the argument from silence in history is like not making the sensible prediction that a brother we're in frequent contact with would tell us if he won the lottery.I'll be responding to both of these claims in this episode and two more.Here is a professional paper by Timothy McGrew on problems with the argument from silence in history:https://timothymcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Argument-from-Silence-Acta-Analytica-Tim-2013.pdf
In this, probably the last in my current series on editorial fatigue, I discuss another instance of "sudden onset fatigue syndrome," according to Mark Goodacre. Goodacre postulates that Luke eliminates the fact that Jesus was in a house when the paralytic was brought to him, then suffers "fatigue" and reintroduces reference to the house when he gets to the point where the paralytic's friends go up onto the roof. But this so-called "fatigue" comes up almost immediately after the verse in which Goodacre is insisting that Luke eliminates the house! And Luke has even implied a house a bit earlier by saying that they were trying to bring their friend "in." Goodacre carries this to the point of a wild overstatement--that in Luke men are going up to the top of a house which Jesus has not entered. But of course Luke has never indicated nor even implied that Jesus "has not entered" a house. He simply didn't mention the house immediately in the very first verse of the story, as Mark did.This series shows the enormous implausibility of Goodacre's editorial fatigue theories.Lay readers should be encouraged that so-called experts in Gospels studies do not have some special "line" on interpretive truth about the Gospels which allows them to discern that the evangelists are making factual changes in the stories. Though Goodacre scatters his article with Greek quotations, there is not some hidden "Greek wisdom" that shows that Goodacre's editorial fatigue theories are right. Instead, his theories defy legitimate, common sense reading and reasoning.Thumbnail image courtesy of Freebibleimages.orgThanks to Erik Manning for splicing this video when I had to record it in two segments.
Here I talk about the claim of editorial fatigue in Matthew's version of the beheading of John the Baptist. I argue that Goodacre takes a rigid, un-nuanced view of Herod's plausible motives, placing Matthew and Mark into artificial conflict with one another.I also coin the term "sudden fatigue onset syndrome" to draw attention to the claim that an author has suffered "editorial fatigue" even though he has written only a short passage since he supposedly made a decision to change the facts. The suddenness of the supposed fatigue calls Goodacre's whole theory into question.Something I originally intended to include in this video but in the end didn't mention is an undesigned coincidence early in Matthew's version of the death of John the Baptist. Matthew mentions that Herod was speaking to his servants when suggesting that Jesus might be John the Baptist risen from the dead. This little detail is unique in Matthew. How could Matthew know what Herod was saying to his servants? Is this just made up? Over in Luke 8 we find that Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's household manager, was a follower and financial supporter of Jesus' ministry. This provides a very plausible route for this information to reach the Christian community. If this is the case, then contra Goodacre, Matthew did have a factual source about Herod other than Mark's account of the beheading of John the Baptist, meaning that Matthew can add to our understanding of Herod's motives and feelings about John the Baptist.
This week I continue to examine Mark Goodacre's arguments that Luke invented the Parable of the Minas himself and tried (ineptly) to make it look like a parable that Jesus really told. Does evidence of "editorial fatigue" support this claim? Not at all. Here I argue that the claims that there is something aesthetically wrong with the parable and that this is the sign of Luke's clumsy invention are dubious and subjective. Jesus would have been completely within his rights to start out by mentioning ten servants and then deciding to detail what happened to only three of them. And the claim of "bad math" in the parable is based, ironically, on a wooden literalism (of which more conservative interpreters are often falsely accused) such that Jesus and the servants couldn't refer to the servant whose mina had earned ten more as "having ten."Here is Goodacre's influential article:https://markgoodacre.org/Q/fatigue.htmThumbnail courtesy of freebibleimages.org
Mark Goodacre says that Luke invented a new Parable of the Minas (Luke 19:11-27), trying to make it different from the Parable of the Talents told in Matthew 25:14-30. But, says Goodacre, Luke made up a clunky parable (that Jesus never really told) due to "editorial fatigue," and we can find the signs of this in the parables themselves. Here I discuss the question of whether a 10 vs. 1 pattern is really especially typical of Luke, something Goodacre claims is a giveaway of Luke's invention. Where would mainstream NT scholars be without cherry picking and illusory "patterns"?Goodacre's influential article is available here free:https://markgoodacre.org/Q/fatigue.htmI also refer to this monograph:https://archive.org/details/gouldergospelsex0000goodAnd this book:https://www.amazon.com/Synoptic-Problem-through-Understanding-Bible/dp/0567080560
Here I discuss Mark Goodacre's claim that the feeding of the five thousand in Luke shows signs of "editorial fatigue." According to Goodacre, Luke factually changes the location of the feeding to a city and then just two verses later slips back into including elements of the story that are incompatible with this made-up setting. So he "ruins the story." I bring a little rigorous common sense to bear to show how unjustified this theory is.Here is Goodacre's article:https://markgoodacre.org/fatigue.pdfThumbnail courtesy of FreeBibleImages.org
Today I start a new series on Mark Goodacre's claims that we find what he calls editorial fatigue in the Synoptic Gospels. These are theories that the Gospel authors started out trying to change something in a source but then grew fatigued and stopped making edits consistent with that change. In this introductory episode I explain more about what "editorial fatigue" is and how it relates to the issue of complexity, burden of proof, and the Synoptic problem. I also point out the self-insulating nature of New Testament scholarship which requires that you show deference to certain theories rather than rejecting them completely.Here is Goodacre's influential paper on editorial fatigue: https://markgoodacre.org/fatigue.pdf
Recently Dr. Michael Licona claimed on the Potential Theist channel that a majority of critical scholars writing today affirm that Mark wrote the Gospel traditionally attributed to him and that Peter was his main source. He also said that what these scholars grant means that the resurrection narrative in Mark is "carefully rooted" in eyewitness testimony.The claim that a majority of critical scholars affirm Markan authorship and Petrine sourcing for the Gospel of Mark is surprising. When a scholar like Richard Bauckham argues for this thesis the strong impression one gets is that he is going up against the majority view in critical scholarship. Where is Licona getting this claim?Apparently both Licona and Gary Habermas are basing this claim on the MA thesis research of one of Dr. Licona's students, Joshua Pelletier.In this episode I discuss what actual numbers Pelletier and Licona find in their discussion of this research. The astounding outcome is that Licona states explicitly that 50% of scholars in Pelletier's literature survey (and even at that only 50% of scholars who gave their own opinion on the matter--some were silent) affirmed traditional authorship. This includes all legitimately relevant categories in the survey--outright affirmation of Markan authorship, affirmation that it is "probably" or "plausibly" written by Mark. No more than 80 scholars fell into these categories, put together. Yet Licona and Pelletier in that very context assert a majority! 50% is not a majority. It seems that they must have confused a majority with a plurality.When Gary Habermas reports the supposed outcomes of this research in his recent resurrection book, he makes the further mistake of stating that it was a majority of the 207 scholars that Pelletier read who affirmed the conjunction of Markan authorship and Petrine sourcing! Apparently he didn't understand that 47 did not state an opinion on the matter.There is also the further inflation of this statistical claim by stating that this was a majority of critical scholars, when there was no apparent limitation of scholars by critical stance but only by broad credential.In short, this claim is based on a series of rather shocking errors. Yet now it is passing into apologetic lore. Here are the videos cited. Licona on Potential Theist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0aFUNcF-T8&t=1924sLicona and Pelletier add up the numbers on Markan authorship:https://youtu.be/9TMY3VI-K9U?si=VsdfZI8haEI5MNb1&t=1837Licona and Pelletier discuss numbers and scholarly opinions in Pelletier's survey on a Petrine source:https://youtu.be/EbBcwb8wtVk?si=fH3_oT3s_HheA5za&t=1383Habermas's recent book: In the video I give page numbers to Habermas.https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-1-Evidences/dp/1087778603/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.LNu9h_WqqEh2X3drekhNaY0ew2frT1gdqlY8m1meDTZ6z9gw3Zdb8fHHOSATKd5ziDhFMXA-U25AL6Je5BnMMS3KJjoEFG0cOCShiG9WcsTU0PZNqJMlr-QRH5Hb4Aj4sYIjgG9S8B74AavFXe_WN0HhJSfC4UQoN7QqEKS_ohx7fVjk3IoHIznc-kwMD52GRHMybPZvmehWb5XvQkbx5_RxCLTWrNlUiQpY9RnKVqtH0My8NezjeWBMwofZFi1vcnmE8kWcgRkk8T2VThJ3SEj79eqYlcBfew22jDHIHSU.2o9KBvCSWkyY3HjOsW-TKB6Um-kLpjlpN5bzwx4cclk&dib_tag=se&hvadid=414549576473&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9017271&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=b&hvrand=3920972602515452654&hvtargid=kwd-301749040691&hydadcr=22538_9636739&keywords=gary+habermas+books&qid=1712933555&sr=8-1
In a recent discussion with Potential Theist, Dr. Michael Licona said that most critical scholars, even if they don't acknowledge traditional authorship of the 4th Gospel, do acknowledge that a personal disciple of Jesus was a "primary source" for the information in the Gospel. He tried to apply this to strengthen the case for the bodily resurrection of Jesus.Do the majority of critical scholars really acknowledge anything interesting or helpful about the eyewitness source of John? Not really. In this video I debunk that claim, first by pointing out that Dr. Licona apparently misunderstands Dale Allison (whom he cites by name) on this topic, and then by reading passages from Richard Bauckham that show that Bauckham is going up against scholarly consensus concerning the eyewitness source of the 4th Gospel.My purpose in pointing this out is to make it clear that, as so often is the case, an argument for a "conservative" conclusion cannot be based on some surprising admission by the majority of critical scholars. Instead, it has to be based upon arguments that challenge the critical scholarly consensus at a far earlier point. I believe these arguments are available and strong, but Christian apologists need to break the bad habit of trying so hard to wring significant argumentative value out of claims that "most critical scholars acknowledge..." something important for the historical value of the Gospels.For arguments that John's Gospel is reliable historical reportage, check out The Eye of the Beholder. https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1
Happy Easter, 2024! Today's episode tackles this question: Since the New Testament documents contain no narration specifically of the appearance to James, Jesus' brother, listed briefly in I Cor. 15:7, does this mean that that appearance has no place in a maximal data approach to the argument for Jesus' resurrection? The answer is that it does have a place, but that putting it together requires fitting in the missing piece: The original disciples apparently testified that Jesus left our world entirely on a particular day, from a particular place, after he had appeared for weeks to them on multiple occasions. This claim of the ascension apparently marked a sharp distinction between kinds of appearances of Jesus. After that point, the disciples never seem to have seen Jesus in the 3-dimensional, on-earth way that is narrated in the Gospels. This sharp distinction between pre-ascension and post-ascension appearances is one which Allison rejects, due to his skepticism about the bodily nature of Jesus' resurrection and his belief that the robustly bodily aspects of the resurrection appearances in the Gospels were later apologetical embellishments.Combining the missing piece of the Ascension with the apparently chronological list of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances in I Cor. 15 and noting that a group appearance to all the apostles is listed there after the appearance to James yields an argument that James probably said that he had an on-the-earth-like appearance experience like those recounted in the Gospels. I don't mention it in the video, but we do have a mention of the death of James by Josephus and a narration of its circumstances from Hegesippus, and this attests to James's steadfastness as a Christian believer.Here is the conversation, which I mention in the video, between Dr. Licona and Dr. Allison about the conversion of James:https://youtu.be/xHxl1vk4vwg?si=pd3bAPWBbrKw04c3&t=2223
Today, one more co-incidence between Whittaker Chambers's testimony and that of Alger Hiss--where did Hiss's wife grow up? Chambers says "near Paoli," Hiss says "Frazer." Both are true, and the similarity with natural variation provides evidence for Chambers's close acquaintances with the Hisses.I compare this to the evidence of undesigned coincidences that the author of Acts really knew the Apostle Paul.
Continuing to talk about undesigned coincidences in the Chambers-Hiss testimony, I discuss the detail Chambers knew about Hiss's childhood business collecting and selling spring water from Druid Hill Park, at that time on the outskirts of Baltimore.I compare this connection to the undesigned coincidences discussed in Hidden in Plain View between Acts and II Corinthians, concerning Paul's escape from Damascus.Are undesigned coincidences some distinctively religious "apologist" thing? Not at all.
I'm often asked if "real historians" use undesigned coincidences. I answer that of course they do, if they're good historians, even though it's unlikely that they use that exact phrase. Here I begin to explore confirmations in the Chambers-Hiss hearings in 1948. Alger Hiss had claimed (at first) that he didn't know Whittaker Chambers at all. Later he changed that and said that he had known him slightly as a down-and-out named George Crossley who took advantage of Hiss's good nature to get money loans. Chambers, in contrast, swore that they had been close friends for years while they were both Soviet spies. The details that Chambers knew about Hiss were not the sorts of things that could plausibly have been researched in a world without social media. Nor were they the kinds of things that one would be likely to share with a down-and-out whom one was never close to. The Congressional committee carefully separated the two men, and Hiss's testimony in which he confirmed details about himself was given after Chambers's testimony, so even if someone on the committee were "feeding" Hiss's answers to Chambers (for which there was no good motive in any event), this would not have helped Chambers with the details in question.Today I discuss the prothonotary warbler, a bird that, Chambers testified, Hiss had seen and spoken of with excitement.
The quotation from Dr. Craig from Norman Perrin is found here:https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-3/s3-doctrine-of-christ/doctrine-of-christ-part-40#_ftnref7Perrin's book is found here. I am reading from the conclusion, pp. 80 and following. Perrin's book can be electronically checked out fully legally from Open Library.https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5920323W/The_Resurrection_according_to_Matthew_Mark_and_Luke?edition=key%3A/books/OL4902689M
In principle it would have been barely possible for someone to make use of the works of Josephus to learn about 1st-century Palestinian male name statistics. In this respect the Josephus suggestion by Gregor and Blais passes a very minimal threshhold of possibility, unlike their other suggestions for sources of invented persons, which can't explain anything even aside from their intrinsic improbability.But the Josephus suggestion suffers from severe problems as well. How cumbersome would the process of collecting name statistics from Josephus have been under ancient conditions? Given that none of Gregor and Blais's other suggestions explain anything, how many different people would have had to undertake such an incredibly cumbersome, complex, self-conscious process? How likely is it that anyone would even think of doing so? What is the relevance of the fact that the realistic name statistics in the Gospels and Acts are the result of a few persons of each name in different documents, put together?Learn all that and more in this last presentation on the Gregor and Blais critique of Bauckham's name statistics argument.
Gregor and Blais suggest that the lists of Jesus' brothers and of the twelve apostles circulated prior to, and separately from, the Gospels and constituted a source from which realistic name statistics made their way into the rest of the Gospels and Acts. They suggest this despite the fact that the lists of the twelve and of Jesus' brothers are part of the Gospels and hence part of the data to be explained! They also suggest it despite the fact that they regard the existence many of the persons in these lists to be "contested," as elsewhere in the Gospels and Acts.All of this means that these lists don't really help in explaining the data. The presence of popular names, sometimes multiples of popular names (such as Simon and Jude) in the lists requires Gregor and Blais to "piggyback" the lists theory onto the Maccabean theory (discussed last time), so that they now have multiple stages at which informed invention is supposed to have happened. And there are more problems beyond this with this theory.The theories discussed so far don't even clear the first hurdle that a source of non-factual invention would have to get past!Thumbnail courtesy of freebibleimages.org
Do the books of Maccabees and the popularity of Maccabeean names help to explain away the name statistics evidence for the historicity of the Gospels and Acts? Nope. If anything, for a fictionalizer to notice this pattern and invent names based upon it (rather than just basing them directly on the Old Testament) would be more difficult, requiring extra steps in addition to the brute collection of statistical data.Gregor and Blais's attempt to suggest that the Pauline epistles are a source of information about Palestinian male name statistics only underlines the feebleness of their suggestions and the very real difficulty a person at the time of the Gospels would have in gathering name statistical data. Paul's epistles would be a very poor source of information on this topic.Two additional notes not made in the presentation: 1) Paul in his letters never refers to Peter by the popular name "Simon." He always calls him either "Peter" or "Cephas." So Paul's letters offer no clue at all about the popular name "Simon." In fact, he never refers to anyone by that name. 2) Lazarus (Eleazar) is a Maccabean name but occurs only once for a person presented as real in the Gospels. This is as much of an anomaly for the idea that the authors or community tale-tellers were making up fictional characters with Maccabean names as it is for the theory that the authors were merely telling about rel people.Just for fun: "Candlelight" Hanukkah song by the Maccabeats, parody of "Dynamite."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSJCSR4MuhU
It's getting weird now! This week I examine Gregor and Blais's suggestion that Macdonald "doublets" of names would (if true) help to explain the accurate name statistics in the Gospels in a non-veridical way. The theory in question is that Mark made up mirror image pairs--one Simon who denies Jesus, one who carries his cross, etc. To be clear, they say that they consider the theory implausible (low prior) but they say that if it were true it would have explanatory value. But this is completely false as well. Such invented doublets have no explanatory power whatsoever for the fact that the Gospels and Acts track the actual name statistics of Palestinian males at the time.
Now that we've talked about unnecessary clumps, what about more unnecessary disambiguations? Like Jesus of Nazareth and Lazarus of Bethany, these are additional places where there's no reason within the narrative of a particular book to give an extra qualifier with a name. Even if it's a popular name, if there's only one person in the book by that name, or if his identity is made amply clear by context, there's no need to add another qualifier.First of all I discuss evidential "noise," where the information in question would likely be given regardless of whether the name was popular or unpopular. This applies for example to titles like "the high priest" that are important to the story. It also applies to obviously interesting pieces of information like the fact that Manaean was brought up with Herod or the fact that Andrew was Simon Peter's brother.Using fairly stringent standards for "unnecessary," so as to filter out such "noise," I come up with eight narratively unnecessarily qualified names in the Gospels and Acts.In two cases we do have narratively unnecessary qualifiers for not-very-popular names: Levi son of Alphaeus and Nathanael of Cana. These may just be included as examples of unnecessary details more generally.But in six out of the eight (3/4), the first names are either Tier A or Tier B popular names, based on Bauckham's Table 6 of name popularity. (I designate Tier A as place 1-9, Tier B as place 10-12, and Tier C as anything lower.)The list is: Jesus of NazarethLazarus of BethanyLevi son of AlphaeusNathanael of CanaJohn the BaptistJames the LessJudas the Galilean (in Gamaliel's speech in Acts)Joseph of Arimathea (in particular in Mark)For further details, watch the video or listen to the podcast!
Just in case you didn't get enough two weeks ago on unnecessary clumps and disambiguators, here are two more: If the other Judas among the twelve were not historical, why did John go to the trouble of awkwardly attributing a unique question to him in the farewell discourse, which required John to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot by calling him Judas, not Iscariot?And then there's Joseph Barsabbas aka Justus. He's just the other candidate besides Matthias for being elected to the twelve (in place of Judas Iscariot) in Acts 1. Luke gives him three different names--Joseph, Barsabbas, and Justus. If Luke didn't distinguish him, he might have been confused with Joseph Barnabas, whom Luke introduces several chapters later. But why call him Joseph at all? Why not just call him Justus and avoid the possible confusion in the first place? Most likely because Luke really did have evidence that there was a second candidate and that he had all these names, which Luke decided to report.These touches of realism are worth taking account of in evaluating the Gospels and Acts.
The names "Jesus" and "Lazarus" were quite popular at the time of Christ, but they are not highly represented in the Gospels and Acts. But the use of classic disambiguators for Jesus and Lazarus are well explained by the fact that there would have been others with the same name at the time. In the case of Jesus, this is illustrated even in a separation between the way the narrators consistently speak of Jesus in the narrative voice, without needing to disambiguate (since there is only one Jesus that anyone would think they are talking about) and the use of disambiguators by persons in the stories set at the time, where it would be understandably unclear which "Jesus" was in view.I also examine a convoluted and rather garbled attempt on the part of Gregor and Blais to claim that they have a superior fictionalization hypothesis to explain the low frequency of the name "Lazarus" in the Gospels and Acts.
What is the disambiguation argument, and how does it intersect with the broader name statistics argument? Does the use of disambiguators ("second" names like "bar Jonah") in the Gospels and Acts provide evidence that supports historicity in a way that goes beyond the use of popular names for more characters? I'll argue that the answer is "yes" and I'll show how this works with unnecessary clumps of three names--Simon, Judas, and Mary.
In this second episode to be released on January 7, 2024, I examine Gregor and Blais's criticism that the Gospels and Acts percentage of rare names is too low. I point out the "elephant in the room" that they have overlooked--the comparison between the percentage of rare names in the Gospels and Acts, on the one hand, and the percentage expected in a sample taken from a flat chance distribution of 451 names. That comparison yields a result vastly to the advantage of the Gospels and Acts.
In my two discussions today I discuss a hypothetical chance model used by Gregor and Blais to emphasize the supposedly uninformative nature of the Gospel and Acts name statistics. First I discuss how they ignore the "shape" of the data in the Gospels and Acts--"swoopy" rather than flat--which resembles the data in Ilan's statistics far better than does a random set of draws from an unweighted set of names.Please note that another episode will be published a bit later today on Youtube (this is unusual) on the comparison between the Gospels and Acts and a random model.
As my response to recent criticisms of Richard Bauckham's name statistics argument continues, I disagree with a move to add over 400 "artificial occurrences" to Tal Ilan's name database. I note how this move tends to flatten the database and blur the distinction between more popular and less popular names.
I continue discussing the decision made by Gregor and Blais to remove from the Gospels and Acts sample all persons whose existence is separately attested--approximately a third of the sample used by Richard Bauckham in his name statistics argument. Although the full impact of this decision (combined with other aspects of their methodology) can only be assessed with a full statistical re-analysis, we can already see places where it is likely to have an impact. This is unsurprising, as Gregor and Blais state quite clearly that this alteration of the sample set is a crucial part of their critique.
I critique a central pillar of Blais and Gregor's attempted refutation of Richard Bauckham's name statistics argument: They remove from the sample of persons in the Gospels and Acts any person whose existence is attested in other documents--specifically Josephus, the acknowledged Pauline epistles, and Papias. This reduces the sample of persons from the Gospels and Acts from 79 to 53. They justify this strange procedure on the grounds that they themselves do not contest the existence of these persons, due to their outside attestation, as if it were simply obvious that therefore their occurrence in the Gospels and Acts is simply irrelevant to the name statistics argument so that they should be removed from the sample. I argue that this is an important mistake.
I give a brief overview of the name statistics argument for the Gospels and Acts as found in the work of Richard Bauckham, Peter Williams, and others. I also give a brief overview of the recently published critique by Kamil Gregor and Brian Blais. Over the next weeks I'll be talking about some things I see right away as problems with Gregor and Blais's critique.The official link for their article is here:https://brill.com/view/journals/jshj/21/3/article-p171_002.xml
In this last installment of my 2023 undesigned coincidence series, I touch on a lot of topics. Which is stronger, a UC where something in a later work explains something in an earlier work or a UC where something in an earlier work explains something in a later work? I suggest that neither is per se stronger and that apparent casualness is far more important than the direction of explanation. I also suggest that if someone is going to dismiss a UC because he can come up with a hyper-subtle possibility in which an author deliberately connects his work with another work but makes it look like he's doing it casually, that person isn't going to be fazed by either direction of explanation.But if you think that one direction is stronger than the other, you should know that we do have apparent UCs both directions.I then discuss the scene where Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love me more than these?" I suggest that this forms an undesigned coincidence with Peter's earlier boast that even if the other disciples forsook Jesus, he never would do so. That boast is reported only in the Synoptics.I also talk about what I think is wrong with the interpretation that by "these" Jesus is referring to the fish, the boats, or the "worldly" life of a fisherman.Finally, I give a hint of where I'll be going next on this channel, where we're making common sense rigorous.Thumbnail courtesy of FreeBibleimages.org
Today I wrap up the discussion of an undesigned coincidence between Matthew and Luke concerning the parable of the wicked tenants. Differences of detail between otherwise similar stories needn't be taken to indicate non-factual redaction. Plausible explanatory relationships between Synoptic Gospels are a good illustration of this point.
Here I discuss the Synoptic parable of the vineyard or parable of the wicked tenants. I'm going to suggest (next time) an undesigned coincidence between Matthew's telling of this parable and Luke's telling.Here I set up some methodological issues. I acknowledge freely that there are very close verbal parallels among the three versions in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. I also acknowledge that these could very easily be a result of literary dependance. But at the same time I bring out and question the assumption that if, say, Matthew had a memory of this, or if Luke had a witness of the parable, they would never have made literary use of Mark. Why not? If it has been years since the event, one might as well make use of someone else's memory of it.But the differences are as undeniable as the similarities. And I don't think that we should assume that the differences cannot be due to memory. Memory is naturally paraphrastic. This is the legitimate place for the notion of paraphrase--recognizable, casual variation. And I suggest that it could very well be true that both Jesus' audience and Jesus himself affirmed that the owner of the vineyard would come and destroy the wicked tenants.This sets the stage for the suggestion of an undesigned coincidence, coming up next time...!
Anyone who has made an argument from undesigned coincidences in the Gospels has likely encountered hasty dismissal because of "Something something Synoptic problem." And no matter how often one makes it clear that one does understand the Synoptic problem, the skeptics (or snobby biblical critics, whether skeptic or Christin) will continue making this same claim: "These people don't understand the Synoptic problem." What emerges is that "understand" here means "agree with a particular view," and that view is the erasure of Matthew or Luke as real sources of additional content within any passages that are similar to Mark. In those passages, a hardline criticl scholarly view is that anything different or new from Matthew or Luke must be an outright invention without factual basis.This video shows how internal evidence of independence and a connection between Matthew and Luke, in a passage where Matthew resembles Mark (are you following this?), calls into question this erasure of Matthew's status as a source in his own right. The phrase "to his servants," unique to Matthew (Matt. 14:2) in his account of Herod and John the Baptist, fits very well with a comment made by Luke in a completely different context.
We've been talking about internal evidence of independence for a couple of weeks now. Now let's see how this works in a Gospel example of an undesigned coincidence. John's record of a thing Jesus said after cleansing the Temple explains Mark's record of what the hostile witnesses said about Jesus at his Sanhedrin trial. But get this: This saying of Jesus in John occurs in a passage that constitutes one of the most famous alleged contradictions between John and Mark--the early Temple cleansing.
Here I discuss a modern example of the way that internal evidence of independence can allow us to use two reports as evidence even when we know that the people giving the reports might well have known one another and might have spoken to each other.The substack piece that I use in this video is found here (free content):https://www.furtherup.net/p/blood-witnesses?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Fbloody%2520sunday&utm_medium=reader2If you like what you read there, consider subscribing to Bethel's substack, Further Up.
In this methodological discussion I'm talking about what kind of independence is relevant to undesigned coincidences and about how we can know that two accounts have that kind of independence. Too many critics of the idea seem to be under the impression that only "witness separation" independence could possibly underlie any important undesigned coincidence. If the authors or speakers knew one another, if they could have talked to each other after the event, that's supposed to spell DOOM for any undesigned coincidence argument from their testimony.But matters aren't that simple. Learn here about external and internal evidence of independence and how the more we have of one kind, the less we need of the other kind.Here is one of my older videos on multiple attestation:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGVlEhtv0Zo&t=5s
I'm kicking off a new series on undesigned coincidences with the question, what does it mean to ask if we can refute the argument from undesigned coincidences?Obviously you can't tell a priori that any source is going to be supported as a historical document by evidence of undesigned coincidences. So in that sense of course we can't just sit in our armchairs and say that we know a priori that the Gospels and Acts are supported by them. But when skeptics dismiss the argument they sometimes give the impression that the whole concept of undesigned coincidences is some weird "Christian apologist thing" which can be dismissed en toto. This is obviously not true. Undesigned coincidences are just one type of corroborative historical evidence. It's obvious--yes, from the armchair--that under the proper not-far-fetched circumstances there could be such a thing as an undesigned coincidence (whether called that or not) that would have significant force in favor of the historicity of a given claim or hypothesis. And it's also obvious--yes, from the armchair--that a lot of evidence that an allegedly historical source knows what it's talking about is positively relevant to whether, y'know, it actually knows what it's talking about.In this broader sense, of course you're not going to be able to argue against undesigned coincidences en toto.To illustrate that this is more than a pure hypothetical, I discuss the case of the 20th-century British actor Dirk Bogarde and his alleged visit to the Bergen-Belsen death camp shortly after it was liberated by British forces. Bogarde's own biographer questioned the historicity of this visit, but corroborative, independent, testimonial evidence later led him to admit that Bogrde did indeed visit the camp.I should have said this explicitly in the video, but the case I discuss here is an example of a secular historian "using undesigned coincidences." We're often asked if they do use them. Coldstream is clearly impressed by the independent corroboration of Bogarde's claim to have been at the camp.Read more about it here:http://dirkbogarde.co.uk/dirk-bogarde-and-belsenHat-tip to Eldest Daughter, Bethel McGrew, for this story about Bogarde.
Stephen wasn't one of the Twelve, and we don't even know if he claimed to have seen Jesus after his resurrection. So is the stoning of Stephen irrelevant to the trilemma argument for the Twelve? Nope. If a leader of your community was lynched by a mob for preaching a sermon, and if more and more people from your community were then dragged out to jail (as happened in the persecution from Saul of Tarsus), that would mean that it would take courage to go on saying what that person was killed for saying. And the Apostles stayed in Jerusalem during the persecution from Saul. Later, James the son of Zebedee (one of the Twelve) was killed by Herod Agrippa I.Acts has lot to say about the courage of the Twelve under persecution. Acts strongly supports the claim that they were attesting to Jesus' resurrection at the risk of their lives.
Acts 5 and 6 are very important in seeing the boldness of the Twelve in proclaiming the Gospel. Acts 6:2 is explicit that the Twelve (who were named in Chapter 1, remember) were still leading the Jerusalem church at this time. Acts 5 details the repeated arrests of the Apostles, their being beaten, and their determination to keep on publicly proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus.
Acts 4 describes the arrest of Peter and John and the warning they receive from the Sanhedrin not to keep preaching about Jesus. Does this mean that from now on the book of Acts is "just the Peter and John show" and that it provides no reason to think that the rest of the twelve disciples continued risking their necks for their message? Not at all. Acts 4 provides continued evidence of the united front and boldness of the twelve apostles. Be sure to listen to the end to hear one very interesting piece of evidence about the use of the word "apostles" in these chapters!
Some skeptics have claimed that even if we take Acts at face value as a history of the earliest Christian movement, it doesn't support the claim that the original disciples of Jesus risked death for the claim that they had seen Jesus risen.This video examines what Acts actually says in the first two chapters. It emphasizes the identities of the eleven disciples who remained after Judas's death, it emphasizes the fact that they viewed themselves as witnesses of Jesus' resurrection, and it emphasizes the fact that they elected a twelfth person who met these same criteria to be a witness with them. The report of Peter's Pentecost sermon is emphatic that this was a very public event and that the other eleven disciples (who have already been named) were publicly and overtly endorsing what he said. (So much for Bart Ehrman's claim that they weren't "out on street corners" claiming that Jesus was risen.)
This week I'm starting a series about this question: Does Acts support the idea that at least twelve specific, named individuals were willing to risk their lives for the claim that they had seen Jesus risen from the dead?
Some skeptics have claimed that even if we take Acts at face value in its account of the early days of Christianity, it still doesn't support this claim. They may downplay the seriousness of the risk. They may imply that only Peter and John among the original twelve disciples actually stood up and took a risk or that the others stopped taking a risk after the religious leaders first told them to stop preaching.
In the coming weeks I'll be addressing these claims from Acts itself. Here I am setting up the question.
Remember, this is addressing what we can learn from Acts itself if we take the narrative at face value about who was proclaiming the resurrection and what they were risking.
I wrap up the series on development theories of the Gospels with a discussion of John's use of the phrase "the Jews." Some of these uses are undeniably "negative," in the sense that the phrase is used to refer to a group of people that is negatively portrayed in the story. Does this mean that John is portraying the Jewish people as a whole negatively? Does this mean that he is advocating hatred of his own people? I argue that it does not mean this, based upon the variety of different kinds of uses to which John puts the phrase. The most important use of the phrase may be its use by Jesus in John 4:22, where he is speaking to the woman at the well.
Bart Ehrman claims that the Gospels' crucifixion stories become increasingly anti-semitic. According to Ehrman, Pilate becomes more innocent in Jesus' death and the Jews more guilty as we go through the Gospels chronology. Here I argue that this is all bunk, focusing on the three Synoptic Gospels. Ehrman misrepresents Mark, points to one verse in Matthew, and then switches to a completely different measure of Pilate's supposed increasing innocence in Luke.
Here is the link to the discussion between Tim McGrew and Bart Ehrman. Around minute 17 and following Ehrman gives his development theory.
https://www.premier.plus/unbelievable/podcasts/episodes/ehrman-vs-mcgrew-round-2-do-undesigned-coincidences-confirm-the-gospels
(In passing, notice that Ehrman is bringing up this development theory to try to answer undesigned coincidences between John and Luke concerning Pilate. This is merely a change of subject. Claiming that "the Jews become more responsible" for Jesus' crucifixion as the Gospels go on is not even relevant to the jigsaw-puzzle fitting of Luke and John concerning the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate and Pilate and the crowds.)
In an attempt to make John's Gospel sound like the pinnacle of so-called "anti-semitic" portrayals of Jewish responsibility for Jesus' death, Bart Ehrman makes the false statement that the chief priests carry out the crucifixion in John.
Here is the audio in which he discusses his development theory, beginning around minute 17:
https://www.premier.plus/unbelievable/podcasts/episodes/ehrman-vs-mcgrew-round-2-do-undesigned-coincidences-confirm-the-gospels
In this methodological episode I lay out some basics about even getting started with a development claim for the Gospels. The idea here is supposed to be that "finding" these developments provides evidence in itself that the Gospels are not, or at least not fully, historical. What would it take for such an argument even to get off the ground? What are some things that skeptics and critical scholars don't seem to understand about methodology?
Do the resurrection stories get gradually more "developed" as we go from earlier Gospels to later Gospels? Nope. You can choose one definition of "development" to argue that they do, but if you choose a different and equally legitimate (or illegitimate) definition of "development," they don't. Which just goes to show, once again, that development theories of the Gospels are all bunk.
Video on the so-called "Johannine Pentecost":
https://youtu.be/KlVwOode2gs
Blog post on the raising of the saints passage in Matthew (referred to in the video):
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2019/02/on_that_infamous_saints_rising.html
Development theories about the resurrection stories usually start with the observation that, if the longer ending of Mark is non-canonical, Mark "doesn't have" any appearance stories. This assumes, further, that Mark originally ended after verse 8 (which I'd say is probably false). But it also treats the alleged absence of appearance stories as if Mark was denying appearances. Not only is this the worst kind of argument from silence, it also runs contrary to other indications right in the undeniably canonical text of Mark itself.
Is there development in the Passion narratives because Simon of Cyrene isn't mentioned? What about Jesus giving the sop to Judas Iscariot? Did Jesus really say, "I thirst"?
Here I discuss the strained "evidence" brought to support the claim of development in the Gospels in Jesus' Passion. I also show how contrary evidence is dealt with in an ad hoc way.
Be sure to invite others to like and subscribe to a channel that is making common sense rigorous.
New Testament scholarship is full of development theories of the Gospels, based on an evolutionary model. Mark is supposedly the most primitive, and from Mark onwards there is supposedly development through Matthew and Luke to John. This supposedly concerns things like Christology (getting gradually higher and higher, culminating in John), alleged anti-Semitism (supposedly greatest in John), and the topic of today's episode--Jesus' alleged "control" of his own death. According to Bart Ehrman, Jesus in Mark is a mere tragic victim. He doesn't know why he has to die. Mark's account is supposedly the most "stark." Jesus suffers greatly, then dies. He is allegedly much nobler and in control of his own death in Luke, with a through line to John in which "everything is part of the plan" and Jesus' death on the cross isn't even agonizing for him.
Here is Testify's discussion of why this is wrong:
https://isjesusalive.com/death-of-jesus-mark-luke/
Here is Jonathan McLatchie's debunking:
https://jonathanmclatchie.com/more-misrepresentations-and-distortions-by-bart-ehrman-a-review-of-jesus-interrupted-part-2/
Next week I'll talk about the way that this alleged "development" in the passion narratives has become a doctrine and has sparked implausible attempts to find other examples of how Jesus is "more in control of his own death" as the Gospels go on and to explain away obvious contrary evidence, like "I thirst" in John.
Mark says Jesus "couldn't" do many miracles in Nazareth because of the people's unbelief. Matthew says he "didn't." Is this a sign that Matthew is redacting Mark in the service of a higher Christology? Nah, probably not! Scholars who explain trivial wording differences by such redactive agendas are often relying on cherry-picked data. Watch for more evidence!
Was Jesus rejected at Nazareth, his home town, only once or more than once? I'm arguing that the incidents recorded in Mark and Luke are different incidents. Here I examine the only really close parallel between the two stories--the fact that Jesus says to the people in the synagogue that a prophet is without honor in his home town. I argue, using both the "How Dad Are You?" meme and a Ronald Reagan reference, that this doesn't amount to an uncanny resemblance between the two stories. I also discuss some more differences between the two accounts.
This week I start comparing Mark 6:1-6 and Luke 4:16-30. These passages portray Jesus being rejected in his home town of Nazareth, but there is at least a weak prima facie case from narrative order that they describe different events. Plus they don't really sound all that much alike.
Something I meant to say in the video (but forgot to say) is that we don't want to reach for achronological narration as our only tool. It is one tool, but the possibility of more than one broadly similar event is another legitimate tool. And being a non-inerrantist, I would also say that the possibility of good-faith error is another tool. In this case, I think the best conclusion is that these were two broadly similar events.
I list five similarities in a way that makes it sound like the two passages are uncannily similar. If that were true, it would be strained to think of these as different events. But upon further examination, the appearance of uncanny similarity disappears. Watch or listen to find out why!
I wanted to clarify that when I refer to the ugliness of my personal web page, that is no one else's fault but my own. Erik Manning of @TestifyApologetics helped me to fix a security certificate issue and to get Google off my back, but he is in no way responsible for the appearance of the website. I "designed" it myself, which is why it looks like it was made in 1990 by a couple of 10th graders. Eventually I'll have a better site built!
Is a bias against miracles the only problem we need to guard against in biblical studies? By no means. Many problematic methodological assumptions have become entrenched in the field. Even if they may have originated due to an anti-supernatural bias long ago, they have become disconnected from that origin and have taken on a life of their own. Even Christian scholars often mistake these biases for legitimate professional norms.
One of the most common is an allergy to the possibility that events have happened on multiple occasions that are broadly similar to each other.
Here I discuss three ways in which that bias is passed down by sociological mechanisms having nothing to do with the evidence.
If you're interested in more on the Temple cleansing, that playlist is here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0QhpT_JgxzoxmUolEg9d3K
Here is Allan Chapple's article on the Temple cleansing:
https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/58/58-3/JETS_58-3_545-69_Chapple.pdf
Today I'm discussing one argument that might be made against the max data proponent from the perspective of a "classical" approach to apologetics. The classical approach says that you must (for epistemological reasons) argue for theism before arguing for a historical miracle like the resurrection. Here I consider an argument that the classicist might make: The max data person asks the skeptic and others to consider the Gospels as "wholes" and evaluate their reliability. But the skeptic will say that he dismisses the Gospels for that very reason, since they record miracles, and he rejects miracles altogether.
Does the max data holist have to beg some question against the skeptic by asking him to consider the evidence that the Gospels are highly reliable? Here I explain why the answer is "no."
Are there aspects of the religious context of Jesus' ministry, prior to his resurrection, that provide evidence that he was who he claimed to be? Here I answer yes and highlight C.S. Lewis's trilemma argument, specific confirmations of miracle stories, and prophecy,.My goal is to separate various strands of what might be called the religious context of Jesus' ministry and to show what role they play, or don't play, in the overall argument for Jesus' identity and resurrection.
There is an intuition that it's important that Jesus wasn't just some random guy. How does the religious context of Jesus' ministry help to raise the probability that he rose from the dead? How are claims for Jesus different from claims that a random suburbanite suddenly found himself able to fly? Watch more of this video for a bonus bit on what is epistemically incorrect about the "classical" approach to apologetics according to which we must argue that God exists before arguing for any specific miracle claim.
The Jesus seminar acknowledges that Jesus "healed" (quote-very-much-unquote) at least one blind man. How excited should we be about this? I argue that this is barely admitting anything more than the falsehood of Jesus mythicism. So it isn't a big deal.But it does seem that the religious context of Jesus' life is important to the prior probability that he rose from the dead. Next time I will be saying more about what is right in this intuition.
A brief personal discussion of three different directions in which unresolved suffering pulls the Christian.
This is another video in which I address the strange claim that real historians don't even talk about the reliability of a document or author as a whole but rather just use the passage-by-passage approach. Here I discuss a passage from a book on Latin Historians in which the authors, while advocating the theory that Tacitus moved the date of a trial, reveal the fact that this is part of an on-going discussion among historians about how reliable Tacitus is about chronology. They make it clear that Tacitus was at the time (1997) generally regrded as quite reliable chronologically, but that this view would have to be revised if it were true that he dyschronologically moved a trial in his history.In passing, I should mention that there were historians even then who thought that Tacitus did not change the trial date, and one historian (named Mellor) who apparently changed his mind on the matter, so that in 2010 he concluded that indeed Tacitus didn't change the date. For purposes of this video, my only point is that yes, of course, historians concern themselves with whether Tacitus can be regarded as a reliable author and whether, therefore, his implicit and explicit chronological indicators can be taken as prima facie accurate.Hearty and humble thanks to David Yuen of Digital Pizzazz, who helped me to fix a slip in the audio of this video (three of them, actually) and did it so seamlessly that it is hard to find. Here is an earlier video in which I discuss this same odd claim that real historians just use passage-by-passage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXj4KtFLunoAnd here from last week is the discussion of probability theory and the rejection of the passage-by-passage approach:
How does an evaluation of source reliability avoid a naive acceptance of anything found in the source? How does induction contribute to source reliability? What difference is made by different subject matter? What does it mean to take a document as a "source in itself"? Is it reasonable to require that everything in history be multiply attested?Recently it's been alleged that someone who rejects the passage-by-passage approach, which I've discussed (and rejected) in other videos is advocating the claim that a source must be "100% reliable or 100% unreliable." This is simply not true. It's also been claimed that real historians don't think in terms of holistic document reliability, which is also untrue. Indeed, historical inquiry would be impossible without considering whether or not a source is reliable.Jonathan McLatchie and Erik Manning (Testify) have done an excellent job rebutting this misrepresentation of holistic reliability. See their discussion here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoSL9_7-VZY&t=1088sLast week on Facebook I re-shared a video I did some time ago in which I anticipated this false claim about "real historians" or classicists not using the concept of source reliability but focusing only on individual events. Here that link is again:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXj4KtFLunoI've decided to contribute some probability-theoretic geekery to this discussion.
If you missed the last two readings that were published during Easter week, 2023, look back and find them.This is the fourth and last reading of the series this Easter in answer to this question: What is the advantage of Jesus' literal, physical resurrection?In his book Miracles, C.S. Lewis talks about the unique quality of Nature as we know it. Though Nature is now fallen, subject to futility ("vanity," in the King James translation), as St. Paul says, it will be restored. As Lewis emphasizes, that restoration will bring back a real, recognizable, physical nature and through our acquaintance with it now, we will recognize it then. And that will be a merry meeting!Happy Easter.I'll be taking a couple of weeks off now from producing new content as I try to do some writing.
This is the third reading in my Easter 2023 series on the importance of the resurrection of the body. Several of these readings emphasize the connection to the restoration of all physical nature. Jesus' bodily resurrection is an affirmation of the goodness of literal, physical creation, which (Christianity teaches) God will restore and redeem. What advantage is there in a resurrection of Jesus so literal that it included atoms and bodily organs? Much every way.
Updike's poem might have been written explicitly for those who ask what advantage there is in a literal, bodily resurrection. This is the second in a series of four Easter readings on that topic.
For Easter this year I am doing four readings of Bible passages, poetry, and books on the importance of Jesus' bodily resurrection. Those who follow my work know that I've often emphasized the importance of affirming Jesus' literal, bodily resurrection in a body that could be touched, photographed, etc., just as Christianity has always affirmed. I've pointed out that this has been definitional of Christianity from Day 1 when it was preached by the apostles at Pentecost. Not just a vision (no, not even just an objective vision) but a bodily presence with whom they talked and ate. By this important definition, someone like theologian Dale Allison is not a Christian, because he will not affirm and even seems to scoff at this idea. He says, dismissively, "What is the advantage of an interpretation of the resurrection so literal that it forces the conclusion that the risen Jesus retained his kidneys and genitals, had a body full of carbon and oxygen atoms, and sported a material costume?" (The Resurrection of Jesus, 2021, p. 261), a comment that smacks of Gnostic contempt for the value of the body, especially Jesus' resurrection body.To my surprise, some commenters on social media, though (I assume) Christians themselves, have contended that we should not be so-called "gatekeepers" on this matter. One even went so far as to imply that if we say that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is creedally definitional, we are risking leaving ourselves with a Christianity that has only two members, because such a requirement is so stringent.But Christianity has always been a creedal religion. While it is more than creedal, it is certainly not less. And Jesus' bodily resurrection is at its heart.These readings are meant to address, if only partially, the question, "What is the advantage of affirming the bodily resurrection of Jesus?" The bodily resurrection of Jesus' is tied up intimately with all of the significance of Jesus' death and the promise of our own bodily resurrection and (crucially) the resurrection of physical Nature, which Scripture promises.I hope that you enjoy these readings. There will be two more of them released during the week this coming week (notice that this is different than usual), one on Tuesday and one on Friday, and then the last on the first Sunday after Easter.
It might seem that Acts 1:7-8 is just an ad hoc attempt by the early Christians to avoid the embarrassing fact that Jesus didn't set up an earthly kingdom. But these verses are part of a larger pattern of Jesus' personality, both before and after his resurrection, drawn from all four Gospels. Jesus is often cryptic, unwilling to answer questions in the way his listeners would prefer, and even sharp in his speech. The disconcerting resurrection Jesus is the same person as the disconcerting Jesus of the earlier ministry. Yet at the same time, Jesus loves his followers and uses different approaches for their benefit, to teach and to comfort.
Sometimes you will hear the sweeping statement that we can get the content of the disciples' preaching from the writings of the Apostle Paul. While I have no doubt that the writings of Paul are indeed consistent with the preaching of the other Apostles, I would raise a caution about trying to "do it all with Paul" without including the evidence of the Gospels and Acts. Acts provides crucial information about the dating of Paul's letters, the specifics of Paul's conversion experience, and the history of his interactions with the Jerusalem church. What happens if we "concede for the sake of the argument" that the author of Acts felt free at times to change the facts? Or consider Pauline theology on crucial matters like the Holy Spirit or the deity of Christ. Paul's independent spirit and his insistence that he has received information by direct revelation from Jesus, both amply attested in his letters, trigger an entirely legitimate desire to double check his theology on these matters from the teachings of the historical Jesus. Fortunately, the Gospels provide us with just such an independent check.Let's not be reckless in setting aside evidence due to a desire to "do it all with Paul" because, in critical scholarly circles, Paul is "in" while the Gospels are "out." Once again, be careful what you grant!
How is traditional authorship connected to Gospel reliability? Can we grant for the sake of the argument that we have no idea who wrote the Gospels and still have a strong case for their reliability? How can we accurately discuss different lines of support for reliability and keep them distinct without making damaging concessions?Here is my earlier video on the minimal facts argument on being careful what we grant:https://youtu.be/N2Sdf-3urmI
Certain opponents of intelligent design in the area of biology insist that God works in obvious ways (as opposed to working through what appear to be merely natural events) only during periods of "salvation history" involving particular religious contexts. Here I explain how such a dogmatic view would create a problem with getting a religious context off the ground. How could anyone be justified in the first place in believing that God was performing a miracle, if the immediate past events appeared to be ordinary? If Moses accepted this view, how could he be justified in believing that the burning bush was real? After all, just before he saw the burning bush, everything seemed to be going along naturally, and he had little or no independent reason to believe that he, personally, was going to be a central figure in "salvation history." The article by Meredith that I mention in the video is here: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/02/looking-for-god-in-all-the-wrong-places
Can we be justified in believing that God is "behind" some event when we're not even sure that it was a miracle? What would that mean? Why are obvious miracles important epistemologically? Here is the testimony of Andrew Klavan that I refer to in the video: https://youtu.be/KgT43ppxpzY Thumbnail is a picture of baseball player Gary Carter from Wikipedia.
If an author or a person tells a story in which details are mentioned casually, and if some of these details appear to be true, does that confirm the truthfulness of the story? Should we instead think that the author was just counting on common knowledge (or common belief) for some of his details, therefore using them casually without explanation, while making up the rest of the story? Here I discuss this type of attempted response to some undesigned coincidences and some external confirmations. "Oh, well," says the debunker, "The author was casual about that part because he could count on his readers and hearers to make the connection to this other thing just in virtue of common knowledge. It has nothing to do with artless truthfulness. He could have been deviously making some subtle connection to something he knew they'd get all on their own, even if he didn't mention it." How can we tell when this is not a good response? I use a dialogue I had in e-mail about the feeding of the five thousand as a springboard for discussing this topic. See others under the "casualness and independence" playlist. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0NbWCs84HuF86v7ZnnUna5
My new book, Testimonies to the Truth: Why You Can Trust the Gospels, is now available!
Purchase here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Testimonies-Truth-Why-Trust-Gospels/dp/1947929232/?fbclid=IwAR3OkHnlE00mi-y7oGAonghJRnWF-0uP_R2ikaUg7zU2jOUo2Oo58ZIr-vA Purchase here on Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/testimonies-to-the-truth-lydia-mcgrew/1142990976?ean=9781947929234
This video provides a short summary answering questions like --How is Testimonies different from my earlier books on the Gospels? --Who has endorsed Testimonies? --How is Testimonies different from other books out there about Gospel reliability?
To see all endorsements, read here: http://lydiamcgrew.com/TestimoniesEndorsements The Table of Contents is here: http://lydiamcgrew.com/TestimoniesContents
Here I apply the analysis I have been giving in this series to a specific external confirmation--Why did the hearing of Archelaus ruling in Herod's stead cause Matthew to move to Galilee in Matthew 2? How does apparent casualness support the factual independence of the reports in Matthew and Josephus and thus show that the co-incidence of their details is (in all probability) undesigned?
Today we continue a series on how probability theory intersects with New Testament. How does casualness work in undesigned coincidences? Since we're looking for factual independence, how does casualness confirm this. Find out here!
Independence is very tricky! Different accounts of the same event that are independent in the relevant sense can make a powerful cumulative case. But what is the relevant kind of independence? Biblical scholars have a tendency to throw around the term without defining carefully what they mean and how it works. There is an extensive literature in analytic philosophy, especially in probability theory, about testimonial independence and its proper analysis. I've contributed to this literature myself. In this discussion I give a short breakdown of several ways that source evidence might be, or might not be, independent, and I discuss why this is important for biblical studies, especially studies of the Gospels. Here is a document containing the diagrams, in case you want to look at them without watching the video: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vk_utlHOibgSPwRaz2iCgskeF-95Fnvp/edit?fbclid=IwAR1hyBKUMAu3lpqL2vAmF0V4MSqEcLFWzPm36V9PhYMgkVvy-WHwUBlhBrg
Here is my published paper in Themelios on some of these issues. (Free.) https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/finessing-independent-attestation-interdisciplinary-biblical-criticism/
Here is an article (free) I have published in the journal Ergo on varied evidence and why it is helpful (having to do with independence): https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ergo/12405314.0003.010/--evidential-diversity-and-the-negation-of-h-a-probabilistic?rgn=main;view=fulltext
Here is my preprint version of an article in the journal Erkenntnis on undesigned coincidences and their proper probabilistic analysis: http://lydiamcgrew.com/UndesignedCoincidencesErkenntnis.pdf
Here is the reference for the published version of that article: https://philpapers.org/rec/MCGUCA
Here I deal with the last puzzle of Luke's central section--the apparent loop-de-loop formed by 9:51 (Jesus leaves Galilee with his face set to Jerusalem to be "received up"), 10:38ff (Jesus is at the house of Martha and Mary, which we know from John's Gospel was in Bethany, near Jerusalem, and 17:11ff (Jesus is 'way back up along the border between Galilee and Samaria, in the Jezreel valley). What's up with that? I point out how achronological narration means that Luke may very well not have been trying to indicate that Jesus healed the lepers in 17:11ff chronologically after he was in the home of Mary and Martha in Chapter 10. In fact, there's a rather perfect place right in Luke where the incident of the ten lepers fits quite well. Watch to find out where. (At just after the 8-minute mark I mention an undesigned coincidence, discussed in an earlier video, with John 7. By a slip of the tongue I say Luke 7.) Check out the playlist on Luke's central section for earlier episodes, here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn2Xx6b4aHMJr-C2KqdvBSo1
I'm continuing to discuss Luke's central section and some of the puzzles that it raises. If Luke records a saying of Jesus in this central section, where Luke 9:51 says that the time was approaching for Jesus to be received up, should we take that to mean that Luke is "placing" that saying in a "different context" from Matthew and Mark, since they tie it closely to the Galilean ministry earlier? Here I argue for a "no" answer. Luke is recording much sayings material in these chapters for which he gives no context at all--either geographical or chronological. Sometimes he organizes these sayings topically; sometimes he does not even do that but merely moves abruptly from one saying to another. This central section of Luke is filled with notably indefinite indicators of time or place. This is relevant to the claim that Luke was trying to move Jesus' saying about little ones and millstones (Luke 17:2) to a "different context" but suffered "editorial fatigue" when he tried to do so. If you're interested in this context, be sure to watch two other videos about Luke's central section and how it relates to the other Gospels: https://youtu.be/aGC7vKMIBug https://youtu.be/2AGfi81iCq0
The previous videos have addressed the question of whether Gospel harmonization is an appropriate historical tool. We've seen that Strauss's critical scholarly methods lead to implausible disharmonization. At this point I would like to illustrate the way that the use of reasonable historical conjecture applies to a difficult passage--the central section of Luke's Gospel. Luke 9:51 says that Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, but in the chapters that follow he seems to take an inordinate amount of time to get there What's it all about? Here we'll look at a very fruitful conjecture--that Luke 9:51 corresponds to John 7:2-10, when Jesus travels to Jerusalem about six months before his death for the feast of Tabernacles. This conjecture leads us to note an undesigned coincidence. Why were the Samaritans so annoyed with Jesus in Luke 9:52-53, unwilling to allow him to stay overnight? See also the previous video on Luke 13 and Jesus' Perean ministry: https://youtu.be/aGC7vKMIBug
Here I continue on the theme that Tim McGrew addressed: Did D. F. Strauss put an end forever to the reasonableness of harmonization? I will be reading a quotation from Dale Allison accusing harmonizers of "trying to erase knowledge" and being motivated only by an outworn theory of inspiration that was "pulverized by the deists." On the contrary, the satire by Johannes Ebrard, written within ten years of Strauss's Life of Jesus, "pulverized" Strauss by pointing out how faulty Strauss's methodology really was. In this "war of the quotations," I will be reading and commenting on Allison, Strauss, and Ebrard. Be sure to like and subscribe! Find the text of Ebrard's satire embedded in this article, here, beginning with the title "Receipt for Writing..." https://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/scanned/strauss.htm
Did David Friedrich Strauss refute forever the method of harmonizing Gospel accounts, as Dale Allison has claimed? Not at all. In fact, Strauss's own theories about the way that Gospel narratives were supposedly invented are enormously complex and improbable, showing that his judgement about the factuality of the Gospels is far off-base. We welcome Tim McGrew giving a reading from William Lindsay Alexander on the Straussian approach to the Gospels, with reference to the birth of John the Baptist.
This new coincidence connects Jesus' words about Herod Antipas in Luke 13, the Perean ministry described in the other three Gospels, and Josephus. Did Luke make a mistake about Herod or make up an event? Nope. Here is my older post on the chronology of Luke's central section and Jesus' seemingly endless "journey to Jerusalem." http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-possible-solution-to-long-standing.html
Here I give you an undesigned coincidence between Paul's letters and Acts 20:4-5. This was part of a section that had to be cut in an article I'm currently writing. The earlier video and audio concerning Acts and the epistles is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq7EDxPC3Fw&t=1123s https://anchor.fm/lydiamcgrew/episodes/Just-HOW-WRONG-can-Bart-Ehrman-be-about-Acts-and-Pauls-epistles-e1m8eop
In this last video about evidentialism and reformed epistemology, I tackle some analogies that have been made, such as knowing that you are innocent of a crime when the forensic evidence is against you. I point out important disanalogies between the alleged defeater-defeating witness of the Holy Spirit and these cases. RE folks cannot simultaneously say that the IWHS is self-authenticating and defeater-defeating while also claiming that it's epistemologically similar to more ordinary types of events. Here is the transcript of the talk by Dr. Craig that I read from: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/videos/lectures/epistemic-justification-of-christian-faith-for-talbot-school-of-theology
Here I answer a potential objection to the discussion in Part 3. The potential objection, based on Hebrews 6:4-6, is that reconversion after apostasy is impossible. Therefore (the objection would go), if God is going to be faithful and provide what man needs to be saved, he is going to have to provide a Christian in an evidence-poor situation with some other powerful defeater-defeater before that person deconverts, because otherwise it will be too late. I've never heard anyone make this precise argument for the defeater-defeating internal witness of the Holy Spirit for believers, but it seems like a reasonable thing to try. Here I suggest four alternative interpretations of that passage which would retain the possibility of reconversion.
Continuing my series on evidentialism and its contrasts with reformed epistemology, here I tackle the question: Is rational deconversion possible? My answer is, yes, but...
This is the second part of my attempt to answer misconceptions of evidentialism. Here I discuss the evidentialist's proper attitude toward objections. No good evidentialist should be telling someone that he should deconvert if he can't answer all objections to Christianity, in order to show that he is open to evidence. That is a caricature which both friends and foes of evidentialism sometimes adopt.
There are plenty of misconceptions going around about evidentialism as opposed to Reformed Epistemology or presuppositionalism. Here I start a series intended to lay some of those confusions to rest. Here is my former video on this topic: https://youtu.be/k2Tv90y2G58 Here is a post I wrote on this topic some years back: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/what-evidentialism-is-not.html
This is the second part of my discussion of the statement, "We have to use ancient standards of reliability to interpret and evaluate the Gospels." Last time we saw that this is false both because it is internally inconsistent and because it conflates seeking information with being pressed into evaluating a practice in one particular way. Saying, "The ancients accepted this," even if it were true (and it often isn't) shouldn't automatically mean, "You have to think it's no big deal." In this part I discuss uncontroversial things like simple figures of speech, achronological narration, and rounding and explain why even for these we shouldn't refer to "ancient standards of reliability." Paradoxically, the use of such phrases leads to our being less well-informed. If you want to know more about achronological narration, see this video which is part of my series on the Temple cleansing, or see Chapter II of The Mirror or the Mask or Chapter II of The Eye of the Beholder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4TzGiFCeLE&t=6s
"We have to use ancient standards of reliability when studying the Gospels" is the kind of thing you'll hear pretty frequently. At first it sounds obviously true, even profound. The initial instinct is to agree with this statement, because to disagree sounds like endorsing ignorance and unfairness. In this first of (probably) two videos, I examine the inherent contradiction in this claim. If the alleged "standards of reliability" are so different that we have to make a big effort to know and apply them, then why is the modern English term "reliability" the right word? I discuss how the application of the phrase "ancient standards of reliability" to fact-changing literary device confuses information with evaluation and amounts to a kind of illicit pressure to say that something is unimportant even when it is entirely legitimate to think that it's important. Part of what I bring to New Testament that is fresh and different is an analytic philosopher's willing to ask, "What do you mean?" and "If that's what you mean, is that really true?"
We're wrapping up our series on how Jesus sounds in John's Gospel and we've seen how argument after argument fails to support the claim that John embellishes, elaborates, invents, or puts his own interpretations into Jesus' mouth. Today we're getting into the nitty gritty of some specific Greek aspects of what is called Johannine idiom. All too often, the fact that an argument concerns an ancient language is used to make laymen--or indeed anyone who doesn't fluently read that language--feel that they are not entitled to an opinion. The impression given is that having a credential of formal study in an ancient language is akin to being inducted into an ancient mystery religion, and that only those who have received this secret initiation rite have a right to draw any conclusion whatsoever concerning any argument that involves that language.
Here I illustrate the fact that even the understanding of such relatively technical matters of the contrastive use of a Greek conjunction can indeed be understood by those who don't fluently read the language. More importantly, once the data are out there and the alleged arguments, anyone is entitled to hear and evaluate that argument. What we find is that such extremely trivial matters as whether Jesus used one Greek conjunction or another to expressive the contrastive meaning "but," or whether or not John translated his words in Aramaic differently from the way that Luke would have translated them (but didn't, since these passages aren't in the Synoptics), cannot possibly provide support to the proposition that John embellished or elaborated Jesus' words. Nor even to the claim that he engaged in an especially loose or free paraphrase, since either conjunction expresses the relevant meaning quite clearly in the context. And in fact, as it turns out, the use of the contrastive "and" (kai) has an especially Semitic sound and may be an especially good representation of Jesus' words, whether he was speaking in Greek or Aramaic originally. All this and more you'll find in this final segment.
Which leaves us with a question: Why doubt John? For more, be sure to see The Eye of the Beholder: https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1
Did John systematically replace "Kingdom of God" in reporting Jesus' words with "eternal life" to emphasize Johannine themes? Probably not. Here we see how the attempt to create a statistical contradiction results in a strained scholarly theory.
Here I introduce explicitly what I call the "two-step argument" that John elaborated Jesus' teaching in John. It consists of arguing that Jesus sounds suspiciously like the narrator of John and the author of I John, then rejecting the explanation that John was influenced by Jesus and talked like Jesus, on the grounds that Jesus sounds too different in the Synoptics. I emphasize the exaggerated nature of the claim about differences between Jesus' speech in John and the Synoptics--implying that it is as though Jesus is using highly distinctive idiomatic phrases from one region and time in the Synoptics and inconsistently using highly distinctive idiomatic phrases from another region and time in John. (As if one set of Gospels portrayed him as saying, "Jolly good, old chap," "In for a penny, in for a pound," and other distinctively British expressions while John portrayed him as saying, "Boy oh boy, that's great," "I'll take a rain check" and other distinctively American idioms.) I also stress the fact that themes are not style. I coin the phrase "statistical contradiction argument" and bring out the unstated assumption that the different Gospels are trying to give a representative sample of how often Jesus used certain words. This would mean that if he uses "witness" or "truth" more often in John than in the Synoptics, there is a problem. But none of them claims to be giving a representative sample of how often he addressed certain topics or used certain words. This statistical assumption also underlies the attempt to place some significance on the absence of story parables in John--a truly poor argument against the robust historical accuracy of John. Obviously a verse like Matt. 13:34 doesn't mean that Jesus literally never taught without telling a story parable! Be sure to check out the rest of the series!
Here I tackle the claim that Jesus gives longer discourses in John than in the Synoptic Gospels and that this raises a reasonable suspicion that John is elaborating Jesus' teachings, knowingly putting words into his mouth. The article by Bauckham mentioned in the video appears to be no longer available in full freely on the Internet. (I acquired a copy of it when it was on his website in full-text form.) Here is the reference for "Historiographical Characteristics of the Gospel of John." https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/abs/historiographical-characteristics-of-the-gospel-of-john/DFA624C81A28838FB3E3002AC4219240
Here I tackle the claim that Jesus sounds in certain discourses in John so oddly literary, his words uncannily similar (for many verses) to an "I am" way of speaking supposedly characteristic of Lady Wisdom of the Old Testament and extra-canonical Wisdom literature, that it raises the suspicion that these passages are in a different genre and are not intended to be historical. Short version: Nope. Watch the whole video for a thorough debunking of these claims. Want more about the robust, literal historicity of John?
Get The Eye of the Beholder! https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage-ebook/dp/B09HWV6PZ7/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder&qid=1660750477&sr=8-3
Here again is post with many quotations from Craig Evans in 2012: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/05/transcript-craig-a.html
Here was my debate on the historicity of John in 2018 with Evans on Unbelievable: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/unbelievable/unbelievable-is-johns-gospel-historically-accurate-lydia-mcgrew-and-craig-evans-debate/11554.article
Here is the video of Evans's two debates with Bart Ehrman in 2012 from which the above transcript of quotes was taken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueRIdrlZsvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvCVnlHoFow
Today we examine another "false fact"--the claim that there are seven, or even about seven, discourses in John that combine the properties of being about an "I am" saying and being fairly lengthy. Sometimes scholars will add the (also false) claim that each of the "I am" sayings with a predicate is combined with both a miracle and a discourse. Of course, nothing would follow either deductively or non-deductively even if this were true, to call into question the fully recognizable historicity of such sermons and sayings. But the premise isn't even true. As I stress in the video, people can pass on these claims while not intending to use them against historicity, but it can also be used as if it puts a question mark on historicity for those passages.
Here is my post with many quotations from Craig Evans in 2012: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/05/transcript-craig-a.html
Here was my debate on the historicity of John in 2018 with Evans on Unbelievable: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/unbelievable/unbelievable-is-johns-gospel-historically-accurate-lydia-mcgrew-and-craig-evans-debate/11554.article
Here is the video of Evans's two debates with Bart Ehrman in 2012 from which the above transcript of quotes was taken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueRIdrlZsvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvCVnlHoFow
Charles Darwin said that a false fact is an injurious thing. One of the false facts that gets repeated in New Testament studies, without checking, is the claim that we're often unable to tell in John's Gospel who is speaking--Jesus or the narrator. This alleged fact is then used to support the conclusion that John thinks he's licensed to put his own interpretations and elaborations into Jesus' mouth, as though Jesus said them historically, when John knows that he didn't. In fact, there is only one place in John where it is hard to tell where Jesus stops speaking--in the conversation with Nicodemus, in John 3:10-21. But in multiple places John scrupulously distinguishes his own explanations from what Jesus historically said. Why would he do that if he thought it was okay to put his own interpretations into Jesus' mouth?
The three discussed in the video are John 2:18-22, John 7:37-39, and John 13:10-11. (By the way, it is in fact a plural "you" in John 13:10, something I did not check before making the video. It still seems possible that Jesus meant that the disciples corporately were clean, but that even those other than Judas needed some further purification. The force of the aside--showing that John distinguishes his own interpretations from Jesus' words--remains regardless, since Jesus does not at this point in the chapter relate his comments to Judas, but the narrator does.)
The other two explanatory asides after Jesus' words are found in John 18:8-9 and 21:22-23. Further evidence that John recognizes a distinction between Jesus' historical teachings and John's own teachings, led by the Holy Spirit, is found in John 16:12-13 and John 14:26.
The article by D.A. Carson quoted in the video is here: https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gp/gp2_tradition_carson.pdf
Originally published to YouTube Aug 7, 2022
John 8:58 and John 10:30 contain quite clear references to Jesus' deity. The fact that these don't appear in the Synoptic Gospels is used as an argument that John invents material. Sometimes the argument is a pure argument from silence. Sometimes an added argument will be that Jesus "wouldn't have" spoken this explicitly about his own deity since, in the Synoptics, he sometimes told people not to tell others that he was the Messiah. If he was secretive about being the Messiah, you'll hear, he wouldn't have spoken explicitly about being God, as he apparently does in John. So John must be inventing those incidents. (Though sometimes the misleading term "paraphrase" will be used to hide what the claim really is.) I suggest what I believe is the best way of replying to these arguments. And surprise! The best way isn't arguing for high Christology in the Synoptics. Learn a better way here.
And don't forget to get The Eye of the Beholder for much more: https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1
Originally published to YouTube Jul 31, 2022
I'm starting a series this week on the claim that Jesus in John sounds soooo different from Jesus in the Synoptics. This is used to argue both for the lesser historicity of the sayings and discourses of Jesus in John's Gospel and for the generally looser grip on history in the Gospel of John. In this first part in the series, I challenge straight-up the claim that there is virtually nothing (except the famous "Johannine thunderbolt" in Matthew 11:27) in the Synoptic that sound like Jesus in John. This is just a portion of the evidence that Jesus actually says a lot of things that sound similar in John and the Synoptics.
Here is the article at the journal Conspectus that I mentioned (it's 100% free): https://journals.co.za/doi/10.54725/conspectus.2021.2.2
Here is a free chapter of The Eye of the Beholder: http://lydiamcgrew.com/EOBChapter1.pdf
Here are the endorsements of The Eye of the Beholder: http://lydiamcgrew.com/EOBEndorsements.pdf
Here is an earlier video where I discuss the "heads John loses, tails John loses" fallacy and the problem with trying to "defend" John by saying that he moved a Synoptic saying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGBI9KalFRw
Originally published to YouTube Jul 24, 2022
The reference to a revolutionary named Theudas in Gamaliel's brief speech recorded in Acts 5 is a famous "crux," a place where some critics allege that Luke at least partially made up a speech and in doing so created a historical impossibility. If Gamaliel is referring to the same Theudas mentioned in Josephus, they can't both be right. In fact, that Theudas hadn't even carried out his attempted revolution (according to Josephus) at the time of the story in Acts 5. Did Josephus make a mistake? Did Luke make an honest mistake? Did Luke's informant make a mistake? Or was Luke just throwing in a couple of representative revolutionaries' names in his partly made-up speech, not caring if they were historically possible for that speech or not? Spoiler: I think the best explanation of all the data is that there were two revolutionaries who were sometimes known as Theudas. Is this just a desperate, ad hoc theory to save Luke's bacon? Nope. (And by the way, it also saves Josephus from the charge of mistake.) Listen to learn why this is such a plausible solution and why it has lots of explanatory power.
Originally published to YouTube Jul 17, 2022
Paul's goodbye speech to the elders of the Ephesian church at Miletus is recorded in Acts 20:18-35. It shows numerous indications of the accuracy of Luke's record, to the point that it seems likely that at least to some extent, in this case, Luke is recording Paul's exact words. It's striking how clearly we hear the authentic voice of Paul himself, recognizable from his letters. And yet there are also many reasons to think that Luke was not basing his history on the letters. (Among other things, the alleged contradictions that skeptics themselves bring up provide such reasons.)
Here is Testify's video on some overlapping material: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkjdqvlLEZw&t=197s
Here is my earlier discussion of the amazing undesigned coincidences connecting Acts 19-20 with I Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Romans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq7EDxPC3Fw
Originally published to YouTube Jul 10, 2022
Here's some evidence you probably never heard of that Luke didn't make up speeches. Check out the whole book The Evidential Value of the Acts of the Apostles, by J.S. Howson.
It's totally free! https://books.google.com/books?id=qnsXAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
For more info. on ancient speeches and history, check out Chapter VII of The Mirror or the Mask. It's not absolutely free (alas), but pretty inexpensive in Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1
Originally published to YouTube Jul 3, 2022
If you're into minimalist or minimal-ish arguments for Jesus' resurrection you may be tempted to include the empty tomb as one of your "core facts" because you've heard that it's granted by 75% of New Testament scholars. That isn't a high enough percentage for the minimal facts method as practiced by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, but you might think, "Hey, that's still pretty good, and it will make the argument stronger, so I'll include it." If you follow my work you know that I don't allow scholarly consensus to influence me in this way, either positively or negatively. But looking at the claim on its own terms, what does that 75% you might hear really amount to? I don't think anybody is trying to hide the statistical facts here. In fact, I sincerely commend Dr. Licona for making some further information on this available in his 2010 book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. But I think it needs to be made more widely known. It turns out that gauging scholarly consensus by a literature survey whose results are interpreted and reported by one person alone is a pretty messy business. If you're inclined to "beef up" your minimal-ish approach by including the empty tomb on the basis of that alleged 75% consensus, maybe you should think again.
Originally published Jun 26, 2022
But you have to listen to hear it.. (Hint: It comes at about minute 22. But don't mess up my organization. Listen to the whole thing!)
Bart Ehrman claims that in Acts Paul agrees with Peter and James about EVERYTHING of theological or practical importance. Out of this he creates a so-called contradiction with Galatians, which records a conflict between Paul and Peter concerning eating with Gentiles. But there isn't any real contradiction at all As is so often the case, Bart is leaning on a weak argument from silence and cherry picking his data. The wider evidential set shows important agreements on the state off the early church concerning these very issues--the relationship of Jews and Gentile in Christianity.
Originally published to YouTube Jun 19, 2022
Last time I gave a series of undesigned coincidences that confirm the reliability of Acts, using three of what are known as the undisputed Pauline epistles--I and 2 Corinthians and Romans. But what good are undesigned coincidences in arguing for the reliability of Acts if they come from epistles that skeptical scholars dispute the authorship of, like 2 Timothy? Is it necessary to first get strong separate evidence that an epistle was written by Paul before it can provide any evidence for the reliability of Acts, even by an undesigned coincidence? Nope. An undesigned coincidence provides simultaneous evidence for the authenticity of a document (that is, it's authorship by the person it claims to be written by) and for the authenticity and reliability of an historical document like Acts that it intersects with. How is that possible? Isn't that circular? Nope. Watch to find out why.
Go here for a useful graphic: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sFIBs6gc_mrRmlji-gSyfCJV29RwB_wl/view?usp=sharing
Here is an earlier presentation I did on mutual support that makes a similar point. https://youtu.be/SqkNJ497VJo
Originally published to YouTube on Jun 12, 2022
Bart Ehrman claims that the author of Acts wasn’t a companion of Paul, though (says Ehrman) he wants his readers to think that he was. But Ehrman also questions whether the author of Acts read Paul’s letters, though he dates Acts as late as A.D. 85. If the author of Acts didn’t have access either personally to Paul or to Paul’s letters, how do we account for the many astonishing, detailed, but casual agreements between Acts and Paul’s letters? I actually agree that the author of Acts wasn’t basing his work on Paul’s letters. He didn’t need to. He was a personal companion of Paul. Here I examine in detail just some of the detailed correspondences between Paul’s letters of I and II Corinthians and Romans, on the one hand, and Acts 19-20, on the other hand. The author of Acts knows where Paul was planning to travel at a highly specific moment in his life and where he did travel after that—in meticulous detail. But he doesn’t seem to be copying this information from Paul’s letters.
How is that possible if he’s a fiction-writing bumbler with little concern for truth, as Ehrman claims? Here are the points I make in outline, with references: --Paul was in Ephesus. I Cor. 16:8-9, Acts 19 --He was with Aquila and Priscilla. I Cor. 16:19, Acts 18:19, 24-26 --He had already sent Timothy to Greece (Achaia). I Cor. 4:17, Acts 19:22, 20:4 --By way of Macedonia. I Cor. 16:10, Acts 19:22--After staying in Ephesus for a little while (I Cor. 16:8-9, Acts 19:22), Paul was going to go to Greece himself following the same route through Macedonia. I Cor. 16:5-7, Acts 19:21. --Paul did follow this route from Ephesus through Troas to Macedonia and so into Greece. II Cor. 2:12-13, II Cor. 9:2-4, Romans 16:1-2, Acts 20:1-2. --After that, Paul intended to travel to Jerusalem. (I Cor. 16:3) Romans 15:25-26, Acts 19:21. (According to Acts he actually did so.) --After going to Jerusalem, Paul intended to travel to Rome. Romans 15:23 & 28, Acts 19:21. (According to Acts in the end he went to Rome as a prisoner, which probably wasn’t what he had in mind.) Massive thanks to David Yuen of Digital Pizzazz for his help with the subtitling, the map, and the editing on this video. Couldn't have done it without him!
Check out some recent videos at Testify in answer to Bart Ehrman’s claims of contradiction and for more evidence for Acts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLc0GBMN1lA&t=43s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8rY6gI__XE
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xf-I82FBl8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-7ehjwMLr0&t=1s
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWktSrNbad0 And check out my book Hidden in Plain View:
- https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Plain-View-Undesigned-Coincidences/dp/1936341905/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
- And don’t forget the amazing book by William Paley on this topic, the Horae Paulinae. It’s free! https://books.google.com/books?id=i5cHAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false Map image used by permission from DeWard Publishing.
Originally published to YouTube June 5 2022
This is a continuation of my discussion of the Synoptic problem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4v_tisDAj8&t=255s
My big point in both videos is to urge you not to accept this false dilemma: Either the Synoptic Gospels are totally independent from each other or else, wherever the story is found in Mark and Matthew or Luke has similar wording, Mark is the only factual source. While verbal difference is one way of indicating factual independence, it is not absolutely necessary. We find repeatedly that Matthew and Luke have details not found in Mark even in passages that are quite similar to Mark in wording. Sometimes these extra details are confirmed by undesigned coincidences. I talked about several of these in the earlier discussion of the Synoptic problem. Here I give another example: Luke's mention of Bethsaida as the location of the feeding of the five thousand. Despite striking similarities of wording in portions of the narrative to Mark's wording, Luke alone mentions Bethsaida in this connection. Don't let references to the Synoptic problem, the two-source hypothesis, and Markan priority be used to bludgeon you into erasing Luke and Matthew as independent sources of information. No, not even when there is similar wording to Mark.
Originally published on YouTube May 29, 2022
Here I talk about an alleged literary device (not a fact-changing one) that NT scholar Richard Bauckham thinks we find in the Gospels to indicate their eyewitness sources. I applaud Bauckham's emphasis on eyewitness testimony in the Gospels, but I just don't think this device is really there. In fact, I question whether such a device even existed. (Bauckham doesn't claim that he has any source that explicitly talks about it.) Here I carefully go through arguments that it is found in Mark, Luke, and John and show that they just are insufficient to bear the weight put on them. Even when an argument supports our own conclusions, it may not be a cogent argument. We should be especially cautious about embracing extremely subtle devices that authors supposedly deliberately put into their documents "under the surface" in order to make a point. The Gospels show plenty of other evidence of eyewitness testimony and sometimes even explicitly claim it. But I don't think we should use the "inclusio" claim. I especially urge that you not refer to it using successful language like, "We have found a device called the inclusion of eyewitness testimony in the Gospels." This can give the false impression that ancient authors actually talked about using such a device, that the case is clear that such a device existed, and that there is a very strong case that this "thing" is in the Gospels.
Here is a two-part review of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses that I wrote some years ago. There's plenty of good stuff in Bauckham's book. I just don't agree with this particular claim: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/jesus-and-eyewitnesses-blog-review-part.html https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/jesus-and-eyewitnesses-blog-review-part_18.html
And here is a video on "explaining away" that I refer to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnz6-WR21H0
Originally uploaded May 22, 2022
What if someone asks questions about Jesus' resurrection body that you don't know how to answer? Does that mean that you don't really know what you're talking about? Does that mean that the bodily resurrection should be considered a secondary issue? The answer is a resounding "no." You may have heard the attempted arguments here against the bodily resurrection. Now you'll have a better idea how to answer them.
Here is the dialogue between Dale Allison and Justin Bass mentioned in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o5htZtDBfE
Originally uploaded to YouTube May 8, 2022
Following up on the discussion last time, this video argues that apparent casualness has epistemological force. But if we are going to take that force seriously, as we do in the argument from undesigned coincidences and the argument from incidental external confirmations, we have to take apparent casualness seriously in other contexts. Imposing a completely unstated, conjectured theological or symbolic meaning or allusion to an Old Testament passage upon the apparently casual narrative details of a story is treating the authors as highly subtle and cryptic, placing easily-missed 'Easter eggs" into their narratives when they appear to be narrating artlessly. This is not the image of the authors supported by the argument from undesigned coincidences.
Here is the earlier video on Explaining Away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnz6-WR21H0
Originally uploaded to YouTube May 8, 2022
Here I'm using the undesigned coincidence concerning the green grass (Mark 6) and the time of Passover (John 6) for the feeding of the five thousand as an illustration of the weakness of theological invention theories. In the course of it I "help out" the theological theorists by presenting three suggested symbolic allusions to Old Testament passages for the pillow on which Jesus was sleeping in Mark 4:38. This is intended to show that our ability to think up a clever-sounding connection between some apparently factual, casually narrated Gospel detail and an Old Testament passage is of no epistemic value. It's much, much too easy. I'm taking the occasion from Dale Allison's recent discussion of this on Mythvision, where he said that it is "just as good" an explanation of the green grass in Mark that this is an allusion to Psalm 23 rather than evidence of eyewitness testimony.
Here is the exchange on mythvision (cued up): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohvL5FoCgHA
Here is an older article by Allison where he makes this same suggestion: https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/irish-biblical-studies/05-3_132.pdf
Originally uploaded to YouTube May 1, 2022
I've been talking for some time about the importance of giving a maximal data case for the resurrection rather than a case that relies only on what is granted (supposedly) by a majority of scholars. I've sometimes been asked what that would look like in practice, especially if one were delivering it in the time frame of about half an hour. I already have a video where I give some shorter versions of this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyqF_9qPiG4&list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0sWTtdaXPg8oMRqmYnhU6M&index=3 As I've always said, everyone who makes a presentation (even of a minimal facts case) will have things that can be fleshed out more elsewhere and debated at more length elsewhere. Recently a skeptic and a Christian did a seven-hour (!) debate, even though the Christian scholar in question does not use a maximal data case in debates. So evidently there is nothing intrinsically "short" about a more minimalist type of case. By the same token, there is nothing particularly "long" about a maximal data case that makes it unsuited for a context where you have to state your case in an opening statement and then debate the premises and/or the inference as the debate goes on.
Here is a video where I dispel several misconceptions about the maximal data argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIr4iG6RBY8&list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0sWTtdaXPg8oMRqmYnhU6M&index=10&t=70s
In the presentation for Areopagus I give an opening statement length and type. My thanks to Areopagus 2022 and Women in Apologetics, the organizers of the conference, for inviting me and for permission to share this video, which was originally recorded on Good Friday, 2022.
Originally uploaded to YouTube Apr 24, 2022
This is an Easter episode! I'm drawing attention here to the details of physical motion in the meeting between Mary Magdalene and Jesus in John 20--one of the most beautiful scenes in the Bible.
For more information on the "Goldilocks zone" and Gospel details, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW1Z_pFPr7c&t=364s
For a discussion of the other women at the tomb and "I told you so" Jesus, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZeV7VPUM1U
Originally uploaded to YouTube Apr 17, 2022
For Palm Sunday, I'm talking about one of the most common objections urged against John's literal historicity--the claim that he contradicts the Synoptics about the day of Jesus' crucifixion. Therefore, so goes the theory, John moved the day of the crucifixion to make Jesus appear more like the Passover lamb. In this video I thoroughly discuss the three prooftexts used to allege this change by John and show that there's no there there. I'm relying heavily on the work of Craig Blomberg and Brant Pitre in my discussion here.
Originally uploaded to YouTube Apr 10, 2022
Arguments from silence are widespread in biblical studies. What makes the difference between a strong argument from silence and a weak one? Here is the abstract for Tim McGrew's paper on this question: https://philpapers.org/rec/MCGTAF-2
Originally uploaded to YouTube Apr 3, 2022
Be careful about trying to use multiple attestation to support propositions, especially if your overall methodology tends to undermine the individual access to the facts and individual literal truthfulness.
Here is my Themelios article on multiple attestation: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/finessing-independent-attestation-interdisciplinary-biblical-criticism/
Here is the written debate with Bart Ehrman mentioned in the video. (Search "midrash" on the page to find the relevant portion.) https://tinyurl.com/LiconavsEhrman
Here is the recent discussion of Jesus' appearances that I discuss in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTXZb3IPaFw&t=2673s
Originally uploaded to YouTube Mar 27, 2022
When you encounter a theory about unstated authorial intentions in a narrative work, how can you evaluate it correctly? Too often, scholars give epistemic value to their own ingenuity, counting a highly complex theory of hidden authorial meaning as plausible merely because someone thought it up and because other scholars take it seriously. This approach means that interpreters are coming to the document with the unargued assumption that the author is creating a literary work rather than a more straightforward work of narrative history. These literary theories, then, aren't subject to sufficiently rigorous scrutiny or made to carry the due burden of proof. I suggest what I call "breaking it down" in order to evaluate a theory about some subtle authorial intention in the Gospels, using the theory that John moved the Temple cleansing as an example. For more on the Temple cleansing, see the playlist, here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0QhpT_JgxzoxmUolEg9d3K
Originally uploaded to YouTube Mar 20, 2022
Three weeks ago I discussed Dale Allison's attempt to parallel the claims of the "rainbow body" phenomenon with the evidence for Jesus' resurrection. There I said that unless someone could show me reason to think that Allison overlooked some important type of evidence for rainbow bodies, I did not need to read another book other than Allison's chapter on the topic to see that the case looks extremely weak. When I encountered pushback on this, I issued a challenge to tell me in what way Allison was underselling his case or what important evidence he had failed to represent. This challenge was declined. I have since then gotten hold of Francis Tiso's book on the topic containing his allegedly rigorous, skeptical, outsider's investigations of the rainbow body phenomenon and found them to be...underwhelming. Allison certainly did not undersell the case. If anything, he oversold it. This is a common thing I have run into: "You have criticisms of this book? Well, you have to read this other book instead! No, I'm not going to tell you why, I'm just going to insist that you read this other book or else you're not investigating responsibly! Oh, now you've read the other book? Well, now you need to read another-other book! Otherwise, nope, nope, you haven't done a real investigation. Doesn't count. That's it." Cue the Allison fans telling me that now I have to read another-other book in 3...2...1.
So if you're interested, watch here to see my review of Tiso's evidence for rainbow bodies. https://www.amazon.com/Rainbow-Body-Resurrection-Attainment-Dissolution/dp/1583947957/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1XW14P1ON90C1&keywords=francis+tiso&qid=1646256629&sprefix=francis+tiso%2Caps%2C112&sr=8-1
Originally uploaded to YouTube Mar 6, 2022
This channel is all about Gospel reliability. But you might be surprised to find out how many different ways the term "reliability" can be used. Here I discuss four different possible uses of the term and distinguish them, and I explain why I'm going to try to avoid the phrase "general reliability" in the future myself, due to ambiguity.
Here is the link to the recent volume of The Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, which I mention at the end of the video. I've just had two articles (free to read) published in this volume. The topics there are slightly different, but I want to make people aware of these recent peer-reviewed publications in New Testament studies: http://www.jgrchj.net/volume17/?page=volume17&fbclid=IwAR1wtvZs7l-V0VgWpt7WPXvjem7P3ZzCBba1WklDUXXRsOl9euKJeRLyTjc
Uploaded to YouTube Feb 27, 2022
In this longer video I discuss a chapter of the book _The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History_ by theologian and New Testament scholar Dale Allison. https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-Apologetics-Polemics-History/dp/0567697568/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1XL4S3AYS9I0F&keywords=allison+resurrection+Polemic&qid=1644510654&sprefix=horae+evangelicae%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1
The chapter I am discussing concerns the alleged phenomenon of "rainbow bodies" in which eastern sages' dead bodies supposedly dissolve into light after their deaths. Allison strongly implies that Christians should be "ill at ease" with these reports if they wish to affirm the resurrection of Jesus evidentially while dismissing the rainbow body claims. Here I analyze Allison's argument for epistemological parallels between the claims and find it wanting. This discussion strongly illustrates the importance of taking a "maximal data" approach to arguing for the resurrection, since this makes plain the asymmetry between the evidence for "rainbow bodies" and the evidence for Jesus' resurrection. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe!
Originally uploaded to YouTube 2/13/2022
Is it really true that harmonization of reports is a desperate conservative Christian ploy to ward off the threat of biblical contradictions? In this reading from 19th-century theologian Johannes Ebrard, we learn of what I call The Case of the Swiss Messenger, in which various accounts of a non-biblical event turn out to be quite compatible with one another, though a skeptic could make them appear discrepant. A reading by Tim McGrew.
Here is the book from which the reading is taken: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Gospel_History.html?id=IAMpl0PhPVwC
Originally uploaded to YouTube 2/20/22
The more things change, the more they stay the same! Here is the 18th-century clergyman George Horne on how skeptics raise the same objections after they have been repeatedly, carefully answered. "Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer."
Originally uploaded Feb 6 2022
This week we have a fun discussion of agnosticism, probability, and the existence of God. (And the existence of Tim McGrew!) Is agnosticism the "safe" epistemic position? Is it always reasonable to withhold belief from the position that affirms more? Suppose that I told you that the logically stronger, more committal proposition always has a lower probability (on the same evidence) than the proposition that affirms less. Would that mean that agnosticism is more reasonable than Christianity? The answer is no. Watch to find out why!
Originally uploaded to YouTube 1/30/22
This week Tim McGrew reads from 19th-century clergyman Richard Cecil on what to do when you are confronted with an objection to your faith.
Originally uploaded to YouTube 1.23.22
Here I discuss how the argument from prophecy intersects with Gospel reliability. If we already have a good argument for Christianity and have good evidence for Gospel reliability, can the argument from prophecy add any force to the case? Is there a problem with independence if one uses both the evidence of the resurrection and the argument that Jesus fulfilled prophecy?
Check out my virgin birth series if you're interested in more information on Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn3za22QzE28xKqhTq5KvCB2
Check out this post by Jonathan McLatchie that discusses other arguments and the prior probability of the resurrection: https://jonathanmclatchie.com/extraordinary-claims-and-evidence-a-review-of-jonathan-pearces-book-on-the-resurrection-part-1/
Originally uploaded to YouTube 1.16.21
Recently Dr. Licona has stated that classicists use the passage-by-passage approach and that they don't even talk about the reliability of whole documents. (This is an approach I've criticized in an earlier video, linked below.) While he does not draw the conclusion that this means we should not talk about the reliability of whole documents, we need to examine this claim. Is it true? Would it matter if it were true? If classicists, even all the classicists in the world, were really so incredibly unreasonable as not even to talk about whole-document reliability, that would be so crazy that we should ignore them. (Hence, the title of the video.) But the statement itself is definitely an exaggeration. Even recent classicists, even those somewhat sympathetic to the "sexy" claim that ancient authors had a somewhat loose view of truth, do talk about the reliability of authors in general and hence of their documents, not just the truth of individual stories. Moreover, the excellent Colin Hemer, whose magisterial book on the reliability of the book of Acts is entirely about the reliability of a whole document (Acts), has some top-notch comments about the need to investigate the reliability of the Gospel of Luke.
- Here is the video with the claim about what classicists supposedly don't talk about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DLW3bkZQGM&t=596s
- Here is my earlier video on the pitfalls of passage-by-passage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrXVbvGGmZQ
- Here is a post with more quotations from Hemer about genre: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2017/06/colin-hemer-on-genre-of-lukes-writings.html
- Books mentioned in the video. Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World https://www.amazon.com/Lies-Fiction-Ancient-World-Christopher/dp/0292727674
- Colin Hemer's excellent The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Acts-Setting-Hellenistic-History/dp/1575063964/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3IKI4L0Z77H2G&keywords=book+of+acts+Hemer&qid=1641479761&s=books&sprefix=book+of+acts+hemer%2Cstripbooks%2C87&sr=1-1
Originally uploaded to YouTube 1.9.21
Today I'll be talking about evidence for the reliability of the Gospels that also has devotional and pastoral value--the unity of Jesus' personality. I'll be focusing on one aspect of that evidence: Jesus' tendency to predict, to talk about his own predictions, and to say, "I told you so!" This video will provide a sneak preview of some of the content in the new, popular-level book I'm drafting, Testimonies to the Truth: Why You Can Trust the Gospels. A new aspect of "I told you so" Jesus just recently occurred to me, and it is encouraging. If you use my work in something you write or in a sermon, please be sure to cite me! The last chapter of The Eye of the Beholder contains a lot more information on the unified personality of Jesus.
You can buy The Eye of the Beholder (EoB for short) in physical or Kindle form. https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1
Tom Gilson's book, mentioned in the video: https://www.amazon.com/Too-Good-False-Incomparable-Character/dp/1947929097/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=too+good+to+be+false&qid=1636213692&qsid=136-4038130-8833003&sr=8-1&sres=1947929097%2CB07NKP5TQK%2C0736976159%2C0446310786%2C0310111277%2C0736982876%2CB083W53PBD%2CB08M8Y5G36%2CB00T0C9XRK%2C0310362016%2CB00HLJL3OU%2C1786090074%2C0062990691%2CB08HGBVY9N%2CB004BCXAM8%2CB005GX5218
Here is my author page on Facebook. Even if you're not on Facebook you can read my posts there. I've put up two posts this past week there that are a bit "blog like." One of them is on the Temple cleansing, and one of them is on the entanglement of positive evidence for Gospel reliability and "negative" arguments against the literary device views. https://www.facebook.com/lydiamcgrewauthor
Originally uploaded to YouTube 11.6.21
Here in a fairly short video I clear up three misconceptions about the differences between the minimal facts (or core facts) and maximal data approaches to arguing for the resurrection of Jesus. If you are inclined to say, "Well, you start with minimal facts, because that has a fast presentation, and then you add more later" or "We have to start with minimal facts because we have to start with common ground with the skeptic" or "I use minimal facts because I don't have time to prepare a maximal data case," this video is for you. If you have a better idea for a descriptive phrase, feel free to let me know on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/lydiamcgrewauthor
@Testify has been doing a great series on the minimal facts case recently.
Check out his videos that are out so far here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY8NnBSAqbM&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOL2p9tstOo
Here are some of my longer treatments of the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUt3r3dXBr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H54Tjh1tkRU #minimalfacts #maximaldata #resurrection
Originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 28 2021
It's easy to wonder where the plain proclamation of the gospel, without the presentation of an evidential case (at least, at that time) fits into the mindset of a person who is an evidentialist in apologetics. If we think that you need to defend the Gospels in order to have a sufficiently strong case for the resurrection of Jesus, does this mean that you should be opposed to "bare" proclamation of the Good News? Or should you change your mind about what constitutes a good case in order to be consistent with your evidentialism? Should you tell someone to wait to get right with God (if he shows a strong desire to do so) until he's been given a lengthy course in apologetics? These are fascinating questions that I've been thinking about for quite a few years. See the relevant blog posts I link below, especially "What Evidentialism Is Not." The upshot is that the evangelist and the evidentialist should be friends. We can understand why evidentialism is not in conflict with plain gospel proclamation when we understand two very different meanings of the word "justified."
http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/what-evidentialism-is-not.html http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/why-christian-parents-get-nervous-about.html http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-not-to-tell-young-inquirer-about.html
Originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 21 2021
How can the word "hosanna" show that the Gospel authors knew their stuff? Watch here to find out!
Originally uploaded to YouTube 10.14.21
In the previous video on definitions of "inerrancy" and the reportage model, I explained that if you are a traditional inerrantist, you already believe the reportage model of the Gospels. I also argued that any "inerrancy" that there is any point in believing is incompatible with the compositional device views, according to which the evangelists felt themselves free to change various facts. But I also left space within the reportage model for those who aren't inerrantists, like myself. What if someone then said that there is nothing to choose between my own viewes and those of the compositional device theorists, claiming that both undermine reliability to an equal extent? I address that criticism in this video.
If you're interested in more on the topic of Gospel reliability and the compositional device theories in video form, see "The Device Dilemma": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJBiyXtlRAs&t=557s
If you want to dive deeper into the arguments for and against, get The Mirror or the Mask, available in paperback or Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1 #gospelreliability #mikelicona #lydiamcgrew
Originally uploaded Jul 18 2021
Here we're talking about the story of the raising of Jairus's daughter, mostly, and a bit about the woman who was healed when she touched Jesus' robe. This video is about what I think is a wrong approach to variations in the stories among the Synoptic Gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This redactive-critical approach overinterprets trivial differences, creates contradictions where none are present, and attributes any additional information in Matthew and Luke to invention when it isn't in Mark, rather than realizing that Matthew and Luke could add information to a story even if they were also using Mark. Don't let anyone tell you that you have to accept this approach because most scholars accept "Markan priority." It's okay to use more commonsense explanations of Gospel differences, and at this channel we're trying to make common sense rigorous.
I use this article as a foil for the discussion: https://www.academia.edu/40139908/The_Rhetoric_of_Redaction_A_Rhetorical_Analysis_of_Redaction_in_Luke Here are some other places where I've discussed the use of "the exercise books" in a way that functionally undermines Gospel reliability: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLb6rsnNycc&list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0S9CsFG47bKjcYxsnHujhg&index=2 https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-on-greco-roman.html http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/04/going_chreiazy.html
And, of course, The Mirror or the Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1 #mirrororthemask #gospelreliability #lydiamcgrew
Originally uploaded Jun 18 2021
In this video I talk about "spotlighting." This is a name that Dr. Michael Licona has given to a standard harmonization move: Just because one account mentions two while another account mentions one, that doesn't mean that they are in contradiction. One author might just have been focusing on one. There is nothing wrong with this move or with giving it a new name. The problem arises when we think that this is something we are "learning" from "Greco-Roman compositional devices" and thus come to think that we need to endorse the literary device views more broadly in order to use "spotlighting" as a harmonization. I give as an illustration the fact that elsewhere Dr. Licona (and Dr. Keener) suggest that perhaps Matthew made up an extra demoniac! This is justified (by Dr. Keener) on the basis of a non-existent "device of inflection," which simply represents a blunder in interpreting a simple Greek grammar exercise. Dr. Licona suggests both "spotlighting" and Matthew's making up an extra demoniac in a "menu" of possible solutions to that alleged contradiction. Here is the video on Inspiring Philosophy to which I'm responding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaXHOO14i5c I talk a bit about "spotlighting" in this video from last summer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSexrkVMGuk&list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0S9CsFG47bKjcYxsnHujhg&index=4&t=313s
Here is a blog post to go with that: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-equivocation-plutarch.html See also pp. 38-39 in The Mirror or the Mask. https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1
Here is a blog post from last summer where I discuss the "exercise books" more and specifically the blunder concerning inflection, which I mention in this video.: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-paraphrase-exercise.html
Here is the video I did last summer on the "exercise books." There is much, much more in The Mirror or the Mask (TMOM): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oldgDKH_xKY&list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0S9CsFG47bKjcYxsnHujhg&index=4&t=328s
One more point to add: If someone means by "spotlighting" that an author was trying portray only one (angel, demoniac, man, etc.) as present in his narrative when the author knew that two or more were present, then this would of course be a factual change. But by that same token, it would not be the simple, uncontroversial claim that most people take Dr. Licona to be referring to. And it would require a lot more evidence to show that an author was trying to do this. It would also be quite confusing to readers for an author to do such a thing in an apparently historical document. So if Dr. Licona is conflating the harmonizing kind of "spotlighting" discussed in the video with fact-changing spotlighting, that is another distinction that needs to be made. I really hope that he is not doing this. But in the case of alleged discrepancies about time, there is often equivocation going on (between achronological and dyschronological "telescoping" and "displacement," as I've discussed elsewhere), so I bring up this possibility for the sake of completeness.
Originally uploaded June 29 2021
Who was Quintilian, and does he have something to tell us about the genre of the Gospels? Here I read passages from Quintilian and talk about the vast difference between his cynical advice for Roman orators and the Gospels' sober, restrained narrative. For more information on the genre of the Gospels, read The Mirror or the Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary-ebook/dp/B0896W473Q/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1 Here's another video where I discuss how the Gospels sound and contrast them with modern fiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW1Z_pFPr7c&t=1s
Originally uploaded to YouTube Jun 11, 2021
Today I talk about how to use the conversion of Paul in a cumulative case for the resurrection. We should distinguish Paul's experience of seeing Jesus from the experiences of the disciples while Jesus was on earth. Paul's experience did not have the same physical aspects that their experiences had, directly verifying the physicality of Jesus' resurrection. How can we acknowledge the legitimate force of Paul's conversion as an argument for the resurrection while acknowledging that his experience was different from that of the other apostles?
Originally uploaded June 4 2021
Why should we be cautious about adopting symbolic explanations of details in a biblical narrative? After all, the details could be both literal and symbolic, couldn't they? Here I discuss the probabilistic phenomenon of "explaining away." Two explanatory theories can compete for the force of evidence even if those theories are, strictly speaking, logically compatible. That's why you would be a bit offended if you were just telling about what happened and your friend or spouse started theorizing all sorts of symbolic reasons for the details of your story. The idea of a theological meaning for an apparently literal detail is an extra hypothesis, which means that we need extra evidence before we accept it.
Originally uploaded to YouTube 5/29/21
Here I make a new argument for the reliability of the Gospels from the pacing and inconsistency of their use of specific, vivid details. I read a passage of modern fiction and contrast it with the feeding of the five thousand (in Mark) and the foot washing (in John) to show the difference between the "camera rolling" in fiction and the way that the Gospels drop in details in their narratives. (By the way, in my view of the video it looked like the Pargeter book cover was showing backwards, but actually it showed correctly!) Be sure to like and subscribe to this channel and hit the bell to get notifications! Don't forget to get a copy of The Eye of the Beholder if you don't have one already. https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1
Originally uploaded to YouTube 5/21/21
Today's session discusses how the minimal facts approach to the resurrection involves trying to help oneself to a "consensus of scholarship" by describing what scholars grant in a "fuzzy focus" (that there were "appearances" to the disciples) while not recognizing from the beginning that many of the scholars in question actually believe that the appearance experiences were such as to indicate that Jesus was probably not risen from the dead. This involves treating something as evidence for the resurrection which (if the scholars' opinions are to be taken as authoritative) would actually be evidence against. A better approach is not to use scholarly opinion all by itself as evidence but rather to look at the underlying evidence on which scholars are relying and then to describe it clearly and evaluate what it really supports or does not support. Here was my earlier webinar on the minimal facts approach to the resurrection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUt3r3dXBr4
Originally uploaded May 1 2021
Here I discuss what it might mean to defend the story of the raising of the saints in Matthew 27. We can legitimately use the other evidence for Jesus' resurrection to raise the probability that this event actually occurred. And we can answer a priori objections to this event, rather than dismissing it out of hand, without concluding that it happened aside from our evidence that Jesus himself arose. See my earlier video on mutual support and miracles for more on this concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqkNJ497VJo See my post on the question of "apocalyptic literature" and Matthew's account: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/on-that-infamous-saints-rising-passage.html
Originally uploaded to YouTube April 24 2021
Here I discuss Dale Allison's views on the nature of Jesus' resurrection and contrast these with the traditional, orthodox view that Jesus rose bodily. I counter the implication that we do not have a clear, coherent concept of Jesus' bodily resurrection if we have unanswered questions, such as whether Jesus after his resurrection walked to Galilee, whether he needed to eat, and where he lived "in between" the times when he was with his disciples. There are two places in the video where I briefly mis-speak but decided not to re-record, given the video length: At one point I refer to Doubting Thomas as being embarrassed because he didn't recognize Jesus, though I immediately affirm that he did recognize Jesus! My meaning was that he was embarrassed because he didn't (previously) believe the other disciples. At another point I refer to Paul's Damascus Road experience as occurring after the resurrection, which is true as far as it goes, but what I meant to say in the context was that it occurred after the Ascension. Clearing away foggy definitions and concepts is part of making common sense rigorous.
Originally uploaded Apr 17 2021
In this video I discuss a mainstream criticism of the historicity of John. According to this criticism, John or the "Johannine community" made up the part of John 9 where it says that the Jewish leaders would throw anyone out of the synagogue who confessed that Jesus was the Messiah. Supposedly that was an anachronistic allusion to the "life situation" of the readers of the Gospel, a situation that didn't arise until late in the 1st century. Should we take this criticism seriously?
Originally uploaded to YouTube Mar 23 2021
In this meaty video I discuss and rebut the theory that John dyschronologically moved Jesus' references to his "hour," Jesus' expression of distress about his forthcoming crucifixion, and Jesus' reference to dying to live from different scenes in an earlier "Synoptic tradition" and constructed non-historical places for them within his own Gospel in an entirely different setting in John 12. I talk once again about mainstream scholar Jörg Frey, who thinks that this is exactly what John did. Frey rightly sees that such a theory seriously undermines the historicity of John, if it is true. Of course he's wrong to think that the theory is true! I then read an extensive segment of conservative scholar Craig Keener's commentary on John, showing that he is advocating a theory much like Frey's but trying to draw a more optimistic conclusion from it--at least John had sources and didn't make up things that Jesus said entirely out of whole cloth! But the "source" is apparently supposed to be some tradition (perhaps a document or perhaps an oral version of what is found in the Synoptics) of Jesus' anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane and his teaching in other Synoptic contexts (e.g., where Jesus talks about dying to live in Mark 8:35), not knowledge of a completely separate, historically recognizable occasion when Jesus spoke in this way.
What we're seeing here is a "glass ceiling for John"--he can be this historical, but no more. We need to be willing to go beyond the invisible ceiling and see John as never inventing anything. This entirely historically plausible theory is supported by the evidence, far more than elaborate theories of theological adaptation. Don't forget our drawing. If you're a new subscriber (since Holy Saturday), be sure to get in touch with me to enter the drawing for a free book! See the previous video for details. And don't forget to get a copy of The Eye of the Beholder: https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1
Originally uploaded April 9 2021
This is a reading from "The Evidence and Authority of the Christian Revelation" by the great Scottish divine Thomas Chalmers. Chalmers is here laying out the nature of the evidential case for Christianity. https://books.google.com/books?id=-qAPAAAAIAAJ In a recent blog post I noted an historical misstatement by William Lane Craig in Reasonable Faith. Craig states there that in the 19th century it would be difficult to find an influential thinker defending the Paley-style approach to arguing for Christianity. Chalmers is a counterexample to this historical claim. http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2021/11/on-minimal-facts-case-for-resurrection_29.html
Originally uploaded 1.2.22
What does it mean to say, "I believe that as a Christian"? How does that sentence interact with evidence? Is it possible to "believe that as a Christian" and be thoroughly rational about it? All of this, surprisingly, is related to the issues of miracles, the Virgin Birth, and even intelligent design in science. Watch here to find out why!
Originally uploaded 12.26.21
Here I connect the question of the truth of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke with the question of whether they were trying to bring their Gospels into conformity with the conventions of Greco-Roman biography. Would they have required that motive for including birth narratives? If they thought that these remarkable stories were true, wouldn't that have been enough to motivate them to include them?
For more on the Gospels' genre and on the genre of Greco-Roman biography, see The Mirror or the Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1 For last year's series on the Virgin Birth, see here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn3za22QzE28xKqhTq5KvCB2
For some sensible reflections by classicist and NT scholar Colin Hemer on Luke's genre, see here: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2017/06/colin-hemer-on-genre-of-lukes-writings.html While rewatching this after uploading it, I realized that I make what is going to look like an overstatement concerning whether or not Luke alludes to prophecy about Jesus' birth. What I had in mind was the narrator's alluding to prophecy and saying that a particular thing happened to fulfill Old Testament prophecy, as Matthew does at times. Of course the words of the angel to Mary, the Magnificat, and the song of Zechariah do allude to OT prophecy.
Merry Christmas to all my subscribers!
Originally uploaded 12.19.21
Today we have another reading from an historical apologist, the historian George Rawlinson. Our special guest Tim McGrew returns! See here for a different passage by Rawlinson on the accuracy of the Gospels in factual matters: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-annotated-rawlinson.html Remember all of this when anyone suggests to you that the negative connotation of fabrication is modern and that any of the Gospel authors were more interested in spiritual truth than in historical truth.
Originally uploaded 12.12.21
We have a special guest this week! Tim McGrew, aka Esteemed Husband, provides us with a reading from the Library of Historical Apologetics. This is taken from the writings of Richard Whately, Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. He is talking about how we do need to use our minds to investigate the truth, but we should not think that we are obligated to answer every objection. Rather, we need to get a sense of the relative strength of the objections on both sides of the argument. This is a reading from the work Introductory Lessons on Morals and Christian Evidences, available here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Introductory_Lessons_on_Morals_and_Chris/mxcSAAAAYAAJ Entry on Whately here: https://historicalapologetics.org/whately-richard/ Browse other great works on: https://historicalapologetics.org/
Orig. uploaded 12/5/21
This is my second video on the phenomenon I've called artificial disharmonization in the previous video and that I call utterly unforced error in The Mirror or the Mask. Here I discuss three more examples where a scholar questions the historicity of an event or saying for (in effect) no reason at all, creating a problem or an issue out of nowhere and then applying the heavy-handed tools of literary conjecture to explain something that didn't need any special explanation in the first place. The three I discuss here are... Did John the Baptist call himself the voice of one crying in the wilderness? Did Jesus say, "I thirst" on the cross? Did Jesus breathe on his disciples and say, "Receive the Holy Spirit"? Hey, while I have your attention: Christmas is coming up!
Consider putting Hidden in Plain View, The Mirror or the Mask, or The Eye of the Beholder into someone's stocking.
Or maybe all three! https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Plain-View-Undesigned-Coincidences/dp/1936341905/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1
Originally uploaded 11/28/21
This is a very different video from my usual. In it I discuss a recent serious (and possibly permanent) health condition I have developed and how this intersects with my Christianity and my defense of Christian evidences. The existential problem of evil is going to hit all of us in one way or another at some time in our lives. It behoves us to gather evidence on the ultimate questions when we have the opportunity. Thank God that the evidence is there for Christianity! Here is the link to the video by @Joni and Friends on finding peace in pain, which I mention in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FheUIFQ6pI Here is a link to a Facebook post where I talk about my condition: https://www.facebook.com/lydia.mcgrew.5/posts/10165489537245640 My thanks again to the ever-patient David Yuen of Digital Pizzazz who helped with the sound on this video.
Originally uploaded 10/10/21
Here I continue discussing Luke's central section, sometimes called the "travel" section. I bring out some really interesting connections with John's Gospel and with Josephus and make some chronological suggestions. This is an illustration on the use of reasonable conjecture and imagination in dealing with apparent discrepancies in the Gospels. Here is my older post on the topic: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-possible-solution-to-long-standing.html
Here is a map showing the Jezreel valley: https://leejagers.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/jezreel-valley-place-of-victory-and-slaughter/
Here is a video on the concept of achronological narration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4TzGiFCeLE&list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0QhpT_JgxzoxmUolEg9d3K&index=1&t=6s
Originally uploaded Oct 3 2021
Here's a new undesigned coincidence that also incorporates some external evidence from Josephus. In Luke 13, why is it a little odd that the Pharisees "warn" Jesus that he needs to get out of there, or Herod Antipas will kill him? Watch to find out what's odd about that, and what the explanation is!
Originally uploaded Sept 26 2021
Here I'm once again going to show how those of us who think the Gospels are reliable can take the "forward" position and go on the offensive rather than letting the skeptic or liberal scholars set the agenda. It is so common to characterize any response to an alleged Gospel problem as "artificial harmonization," but in many cases this is the purest projection on the part of the critic. The critic creates an artificial problem where no problem exists at all and then impatiently and arrogantly dismisses a completely reasonable attempt to point out that there is no problem by calling that response an "artificial harmonization." I will be using a recent video discussion between liberal New Testament scholar Dale Allison and skeptical Youtube host Derek Lambert, on the topic of the donkeys at the triumphal entry, to illustrate this sort of artificial objection, followed by projection of artificiality onto the defender of the Gospels. That video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ9y3k9Nq6s For Ebrard's "recipe" that rightly lampoons David Strauss (which I mention in today's video), see here. Search on the page for "receipt," and you'll find Ebrard's actual text. Ebrard notes, rightly for his own time, that the supernatural is the ultimate target of Strauss's skepticism. Unfortunately in our own time there are those who don't reject the supernatural who nonetheless make the same ridiculous moves that Strauss makes. https://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/scanned/strauss.htm #gospelreliability #harmonization Be sure to like and subscribe!
Originally uploaded 10.12.21
Alternative titles: The Synoptic Problem is No Problem Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Synoptic Problem? I like both of those, but I decided to go with What I Think About...because it makes it easy to point to this video as a corrective to misunderstandings about what I (or "the McGrews") do and don't think about the Synoptic Problem. I prefer to call it "the Synoptic puzzle," because that shows that it's really nothing more than a somewhat interesting and esoteric scholarly puzzle, but rightly understood even the now-popular "two-source hypothesis" does not undermine reliability at all. Why not? Watch the video to find out!
For more details, see The Mirror or the Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1 Don't forget to like and subscribe! Thanks to David Yuen for help with synchronizing audio and video.
Orig. uploaded 9.19.21
This is a slightly techy video that I nonetheless try to make fun. It concerns what it might mean to set aside the prior probability of the resurrection of Jesus (or the prior improbability) when discussing the specifics of the case from testimony. In our article back in 2009 on the resurrection, Tim and I didn't give a specific prior or posterior for the resurrection, but we did "back-solve" for a low prior that, we argued, the evidence we gave could overcome. Here is a link to a free version of that older article, archived with publisher permission: http://www.lydiamcgrew.com/Resurrectionarticlesinglefile.pdf
Orig. uploaded 9-12-21
Is it really true that we have virtually nothing in the Synoptics that sounds like the Jesus of John? In this video I read a sample passage from The Eye of the Beholder that gives you a taste of the evidence refuting that claim. You can purchase The Eye of the Beholder here. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for an announcement at the end of the video! https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1
Originally uploaded to YouTube Sep 5 2021
Here I continue reading sample passages. This time the section is from The Mirror or the Mask, aka TMOM. I explain how blocking the "third option" (that the Gospel authors were sincere non-deceivers but nonetheless changed facts) forces us to confront squarely their claims to being scrupulously factual. They would have had to be really deep deceivers to exploit their hearers' expectations of literal truthfulness while deliberately changing what happened to "teach" theological truths. Because in reality fiction doesn't provide, by itself, epistemological grounding for believing theological truths. In the book section I also talk about parables. I didn't read that section here. Jesus does use openly fictional parables to teach. But where does the epistemological force come from in that case? From the authority of the teacher (Jesus), which must be confirmed in some other way (e.g., by his miracles or resurrection). Moreover, Jesus never tries to make anyone think that his parables really happened. He uses a definite tag, such as, "A certain man had two sons," much like "once upon a time," and it's clear from the surrounding context that his disciples and the people understood that he was telling fictional stories. So the parables of Jesus are not a counterexample to "fake points don't make points." Consider picking up a copy of TMOM today! https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary-ebook/dp/B0896W473Q/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1
Originally uploaded to YouTube Aug 29 2021
Here I'm beginning a series of videos featuring short readings from my recent books. This one is from The Eye of the Beholder and is about how Jesus suffers mentally from his knowledge that his closest friends will fail him. This is a unified aspect of Jesus' personality across all four Gospels, including John, and across very different passages. We can see from this that the so-called "Jesus of John" is actually the same man as the "Jesus of the Synoptics." Reflection on Jesus' desire for personal friendship and loyalty has devotional value as well. (For some reason the audio on this video is a little quieter than usual, so turn your sound up. I thought it turned out very well in other respects. The audio may be quieter because I am standing rather than sitting, so I'm a little further from the microphone. Also, I was having a little trouble with my voice.) Hopefully this reading from The Eye of the Beholder will whet your appetite for more! https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1
Video originally uploaded to YouTube Aug 22 2021
Here I finally get to answering that question: Why I am not an inerrantist. I give several relevant examples (not a comprehensive list!) and a bit of history. I also discuss how this can be seen as related to the Problem of Evil. One of my goals is to show how a very conservative position is possible that is not inerrantist but also not averse at all to harmonization of alleged contradictions. Here is the blog post on the Old Testament slaughters mentioned in the video: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2014/08/no-magic-bullet-copans-insufficient.html Here is a two-part cordial discussion between me and traditional inerrantist Phil Fernandes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GMfDeOY-4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrek9fQnx1w
Uploaded to YouTube Aug 8 2021
Here I'm setting up the discussion of some of my reasons for not being an inerrantist by making a four-part taxonomy of kinds of traditional inerrancy. This episode also contains a little bit of autobiography about the types of inerrancy I held when I was an inerrantist. This taxonomy of kinds of inerrancy should be useful to everyone, and there is one type that I have never seen anyone else talk about explicitly. Be sure to like and subscribe!
Originally uploaded to YouTube Aug 8 2021
In which I discuss the centurion incident recorded in Matthew 8 and Luke 7 and the discrepancy between them. Was the centurion there or not? I distinguish between "transferral" in a non-fact-changing sense (as if you said, "John is building a house" when John is hiring contractors) and in a fact-changing sense (as if you described John as personally building the house when you knew that he didn't do so). I discuss a couple of attempts to harmonize these two accounts using a non-fact-changing, unintentionally ambiguous reference to the centurion's conversation with Jesus and ultimately conclude that that is not plausible. It appears that Matthew is portraying the centurion as personally present. But why should we assume that he knew that the centurion wasn't present? Perhaps he misunderstood the story as it was told to him by someone else, if he didn't witness it himself. I show how this could plausibly have happened. Such a conclusion is incompatible with traditional inerrancy, but it is far less corrosive to Matthew's reliability than the conclusion that Matthew deliberately tried to make it look like someone was present when he knew that person wasn't there at all. I recommend a harmonization you should use if you want to retain traditional inerrancy, while admitting openly that I don't find it convincing. I also explain how, if you do this, you can avoid leaving yourself or your audience open to the idea of fact-changing on the part of the evangelists. It's important as well to admit that this is a difficult harmonization and being able to recognize the specific difficulties (such as the singular words in the Greek of Matt. 8:13) so that you harmonize with open eyes and don't grasp at a vague reference to "compositional devices of the time" to paper over the problems. We have no evidence that Matthew's readers expected him to portray people as present who weren't present, nor that this was a known "device of the time"! Be sure to like, subscribe, and share!
Orig. uploaded to YouTube Aug 1 2021
In which I explain how what I call the "reportage model" of the Gospels intersects with the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible. In fact, if you hold to inerrancy, you probably already believe the reportage model! I also talk about how the attempt to make the compositional device views compatible with inerrancy creates confusion. What is the point in saying that a book that looks historical to all appearances is "inerrant" while holding a view that entails that it isn't literally reliable? This is why so many traditional inerrantists, including J. W. Montgomery, J. P. Moreland, Randy Leedy, Thomas Schreiner, Douglas Bookman, and more have endorsed my work on the Gospels. Here is some further friendly discussion (in two parts) of these concepts between me and traditional inerrantist Phil Fernandes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLn75s6Wriw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8FKBaXrHqQ
Originally uploaded to YouTube Jul 18 21
Here I continue with my response to a video that was drawn to my attention that was posted on Inspiring Philosophy. In that video Michael Jones did some quite ordinary harmonization of the resurrection accounts but strongly implied that this was made possible chiefly by reliance on special, expert knowledge gained from Dr. Licona's work on ancient "compositional devices." In the previous video I discussed how this relates to "spotlighting." Here I discuss the concept of paraphrase and the way that Dr. Licona and others use that word in multiple senses. Ordinary, moderate, historically recognizable paraphrase (which easily explains many differences in wording in the Gospels) is not a literary device nor anything that we need to learn about from special knowledge of ancient culture. Memory is naturally paraphrastic. Whether a Gospel author was writing partly from his memory of another written document (such as Mark) or whether different witnesses were telling about how they remembered a scene, there will be a natural and casual (not highly deliberate nor specially motivated) type of paraphrase that takes place. But if you had been present in the scene, you would have been able to recognize the accounts by witnessing what happened. Sometimes the authors, by using different sources, include additional details along with such trivial paraphrase. For example, Luke includes the additional fact that the angel at the tomb reminded the women that Jesus, while in Galilee, predicted his death and resurrection. Here is a discussion of the way that all of the Gospels fit together concerning the women from Galilee: http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/01/new_undesigned_coincidence_the.html
But Dr. Licona, Dr. Craig Evans, and others use the word "paraphrase" also in a far more problematic way to talk about what is really inventing things that did not historically occur. One of the most striking of these is Dr. Licona's claim that John's report that Jesus said "I thirst" from the cross is a "paraphrase" of the (obviously) entirely different saying, "My God, why have you forsaken me," reported in the Synoptics. Calling this "paraphrase" is highly misleading. See this recent discussion starting around minute 19 in which Licona uses the word in this strange and far more controversial way. https://youtu.be/-6Unz9iMAHg?t=1166 In case you are wondering, there is no good argument that John made this theological invention nor anything close. I examine the supposed arguments for it in both The Mirror or the Mask and The Eye of the Beholder. But it certainly should not be called a paraphrase, as that simply causes people not to notice what is really being said--that John invented the saying and then wrote as if it happened historically.
Here again is my video from last summer on paraphrase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oldgDKH_xKY&list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0S9CsFG47bKjcYxsnHujhg&index=5&t=328s
And here is a blog post on it: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-paraphrase-exercise.html Here is my debate with Dr. Evans from three years ago: https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Is-John-s-Gospel-historically-accurate-Lydia-McGrew-Craig-Evans-debate
Video Originally uploaded to YouTube 7-11-21
Here I talk about a probabilistic "bottleneck" and argue that piling on more and more evidence that the disciples believed that Jesus was risen physically, without further details of their reasons and without a defense of the non-embellished nature of the Gospel accounts, is no substitute for a more robust approach. Here is the blog post that I mentioned in the video. The cordial exchange with Justin in the combox is what I was talking about. http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2021/01/an_irony_of_minimalism_in_defe.html
Originally uploaded to YouTube 5-18-21
In this episode, I discuss the Maximal Data approach to the resurrection and contrast it with a modified or enhanced version of the Minimal Facts approach. This version attempts (like the ordinary MFA) to avoid defending the reliability of the Gospels but tries to make up for this refusal by arguing indirectly that the disciples must have had physical-type experiences of the risen Jesus, thereby defending the physical resurrection. In the course of critiquing this approach I debunk some misunderstandings of the Maximal Data approach and suggest ways of setting aside (bracketing) one issue while making an argument one wishes to focus on, without conceding anything in the process.
Here is the discussion I did on the White Horse Inn of the alleged discrepancies in the resurrection accounts. https://whitehorseinn.org/resource-library/shows/reconciling-accounts-of-the-resurrection/ I also discuss many of these in The Mirror or the Mask, which I mention several times in this episode: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1
Originally uploaded May 7 2021
In this first new channel episode since the trailer for The Eye of the Beholder I discuss a 2018 book called Theology and History in the Fourth Gospel by mainstream New Testament scholar Jörg Frey. Frey accuses more conservative scholars of following "aprioristic" methods, but the shoe is on the other foot. It is Frey himself who so strongly assumes that John is at least partially ahistorical, and who is so captivated by hyper-complex literary theories, that he is closed to strong, commonsense evidence for John's historicity. Even Jesus' saying, "Get up, let's go!" in different scenes is taken by Frey to be evidence of John's "adapting" the Gospel of Mark. I don't know: Have you ever said, "C'mon, get up, let's go" on more than one occasion? Maybe even in the same evening? I bet you have. For more on John's Gospel, see The Eye of the Beholder, currently in stock at Barnes & Noble. (Amazon is waiting for more stock.) https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-eye-of-the-beholder-lydia-mcgrew/1138856063?ean=9781947929159 To see the table of contents and free samples, follow the links under the book cover image here: http://lydiamcgrew.com/ #gospelofJohn #gospelreliability #lydiamcgrew Here is the trailer for The Eye of the Beholder: https://youtu.be/Z0SmeHZjaH0
Originally uploaded 3-17-21
The Eye of the Beholder is now available for purchase! In this video I go through the table of contents at a rather leisurely pace describing the contents of the book and explaining why it is unique. Here is the link at Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947929151/?fbclid=IwAR38tRMeIYMYH7X03nFUg-KvOZ-T0PZMq4YYb5XIOgZfOp9dzOM_XaG7Ml8 Here is the link at Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-eye-of-the-beholder-lydia-mcgrew/1138856063?ean=9781947929159 Here is the link at DeWard: https://deward.com/shop/books/jesus/the-eye-of-the-beholder-the-gospel-of-john-as-historical-reportage/ Here are samples. Table of Contents: http://lydiamcgrew.com/EOBTableofContents Chapter I: http://lydiamcgrew.com/EOBChapter1.pdf Conclusion: http://lydiamcgrew.com/EOBConclusion.pdf Here is the article by D. A. Carson that I mention in the video.
Carson discusses the impact of C. H. Dodd's famous book on John and how we can, and should, go farther than Dodd did in arguing for the historicity of the Fourth Gospel. Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel: After Dodd, What? https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gp/gp2_tradition_carson.pdf
If you are a seminary or college professor teaching a course for which The Eye of the Beholder is plausibly relevant, you can contact info@deward.com to request either a free PDF virtual desk copy or, in the continental United States, a 50% discount on a physical desk copy. Please understand that any such virtual desk copy is not for general distribution.
Originally uplooaded to YouTube Mar 1 2021. Eye of the Beholder was released on Mar. 1, 2021.
Here I discuss a rather surprising scholarly theory that John narrates "theologically" by inventing the incident in which Jesus breathes on his disciples and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit." I point out that, aside from questioning the resurrection appearance itself, there is no special reason to doubt this particular sub-incident. So why do scholars do so? Why do they talk about a "Johannine Pentecost" when the two events are so obviously different? You'll be able to see the weakness of the claims and the reasoning behind them in this discussion. Here is an older blog post in which I discuss this issue. Please note that at the time that it was written, Dr. Craig Keener had not yet clarified that he does affirm the historicity of the event in John 20 where Jesus breathes on his disciples. I am by no means the only scholar to be previously confused about his views on this topic; as I mention in the video, some who apparently thought they were agreeing with Keener on this point have taken the position that the incident is not historical. You'll be able to see the quotations from his earlier works on the subject. The blog post remains useful as a discussion of the perils of theologizing our historical investigation rather than asking ourselves about the probable historicity of the plainly narrated events and building our theology subsequently.
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/06/does_john_narrate_theologicall.html
We're getting closer to the release of my new book, The Eye of the Beholder, all about the Gospel of John! Here I discuss what I call three "false facts" about John. A false fact is something that is taken to be a fact (though it really isn't) that all theories must take into account. It often goes unquestioned and thus distorts theories. The three false facts I discuss here all concern the way that Jesus speaks in John's Gospel and the way that John represents Jesus' speech. This is a theme that has caused a lot of confusion in approaching the historicity of John--the idea that Jesus sounds soooo different in John as opposed to the Synoptics, supposedly calling into question the robust historicity of John. Enjoy!
Originally uploaded to YouTube Feb 1 2021
This is another methodological discussion. What do I mean by the "passage-by-passage" approach to Gospel historicity, why is it a bad idea, and how do you know if someone is using that approach? What are "the criteria of authenticity" in studying Jesus and history? If you say that a passage is likely historical because it would be embarrassing to the Christians to include it, does that mean that you're using the passage-by-passage approach? Where does authorship come into this discussion? I advocate a holistic approach to Gospel reliability. We should try to see if the evidence favors our trusting authors and the whole documents that they created. It is possible to do this in a reasonable, inductive, historically sound way. This is especially relevant to the Gospel of John, since a number of the stories, sayings, and discourses in that Gospel are not told in the other Gospels, so they are what is known as singly attested. And yet it is possible to obtain strong evidence for John's reliability nonetheless. When we have a good case that a whole document is reliable, we should not hesitate to use that case to support other passages and details in the Gospel, even if we have no special reason for believing that particular detail individually.
Video originally uploaded to YouTube Jan 25 2021
Today I pivot to starting to talk about the Gospel of John as we ramp up to the release of my new book, The Eye of the Beholder, in March 2021. I argue that the account of the healing of the man born blind in John has marks of realism that contribute to its own credibility. One involves a small mark of consistency in the narrative. One involves an undesigned coincidence with the Synoptic Gospels. And the most striking--the personality of the healed man himself.
Be sure to follow and get notifications from my author page on Facebook. You don't have to be my Facebook "friend" to follow either my author page or the public content on my regular page. https://www.facebook.com/lydiamcgrewauthor https://www.facebook.com/lydia.mcgrew.5/
Video originally uploaded to YouTube Jan 18 2021
In this "nerdy" addition to our podcast collection, I discuss how the issue of mutual support relates to the issue of circular reasoning and how both of those relate to miracle reports. How can we acknowledge that the deity of Jesus supports the claim that he performed a miracle and that a report of a miracle supports the deity of Jesus without reasoning in a circle? Here is the JSTOR link for the Erkenntnis article that discusses this more technically.
It is (I'm afraid) available only if you have institutional access to JSTOR, but some readers will. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40267466?seq=1 Here is an accompanying blog post with the diagram and more discussion. https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2021/01/miracle-reports-independence-and-mutual.html
Here is my new author page on Facebook, which I mention in the episode: https://www.facebook.com/lydiamcgrewauthor
For a closeup of the graphic, see here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iX9z2EEZFNdPXJCoTR52WLMasGSDwr62/view?usp=sharing
Next up: A discussion of the account of the man born blind in the Gospel of John.
Originally uploaded Jan 11 2021
In this final episode of my Virgin Birth series I treat the viewer to a reading of various interesting quotations from, unfortunately, evangelical scholars expressing...well, you can decide for yourself what they are expressing. Something about the infancy narratives in the Gospels. Something about how defensible they are or are not, historically. What's the point? When you hear doubts raised by anyone, even an evangelical Christian, about the historicity or defensibility of some portion of the Gospels, you should never assume that these references to profound problems are based on some especially cogent evidence, merely because the person speaking is himself a Christian. An anti-supernatural bias is not the only route to some highly misguided conclusions. Fortunately there are not really deep, serious problems with the historicity of the birth narratives. In fact, they fare well historically, and therefore so does the Virgin Birth, even under severe historical scrutiny.
In the course of the episode I refer to Robert Gundry's commentary on Matthew. Here in order are links to an exchange in the 1980s between Gundry and Douglas Moo on Gundry's dehistoricizing claims about Matthew: https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/26/26-1/26-1-pp031-039_JETS.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1vxCAgQUkG5vO4V_GFgPBVo6MUhRRyRKC0BrFBg1f8KhL_o6mccZRK-7k https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/26/26-1/26-1-pp041-056_JETS.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2NsxbGeEsJ87MzAMguweoCS3dw_rFMVkuv22xs18YyvWVq5n_XHfJclFY https://static1.squarespace.com/static/537a4700e4b0cc86709d564c/t/538e0b36e4b08cd19602c159/1401817910720/MatthewandMidrashRejoinder.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0SeqUSvwHutbUUZ6Psc-h6Tvurkdmiu--4d0BbZWEdCrM3BLLuYqqnZAQ https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/26/26-1/26-1-pp071-086_JETS.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2sQhD9MGaT8wdmSPQkL3oo4xkA3F-xP7chCMaXraALy0-cN_Ilj0LijO4 Here is D. A. Carson's critique of Gundry's commentary: https://s3.amazonaws.com/tgc-documents/carson/1982_Gundry_on_Matt.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1vxCAgQUkG5vO4V_GFgPBVo6MUhRRyRKC0BrFBg1f8KhL_o6mccZRK-7k
Here is my Themelios article on probability theory and the misuse of the concept of independent attestation to try to bolster the historicity of some minimal "core" of facts even after we have refused to defend robust reliability. I use as one example Michael Licona's mistaken statements about what (he says) would be the case even if Matthew and Luke invented the non-overlapping portions of their birth stories: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/finessing-independent-attestation-interdisciplinary-biblical-criticism/ Be sure to watch the rest of the series if you haven't already! Like, subscribe, and hit the bell for notifications.
Orig. uploated to YouTube Jan 4 2021
Here I discuss the last two objections I plan to cover to the accounts of the infancy and Virgin Birth of Jesus. These are 1) the claim that Luke contradicts Matthew about when Mary and Joseph returned to Nazareth and 2) the claim that Luke's genealogy of Jesus contradicts Matthew's. Note that the second of these strictly speaking goes outside Luke's birth and infancy story, since he gives the genealogy of Jesus when he tells about his baptism. I discuss responses to these that would be incompatible with the doctrine of inerrancy but that I consider plausible.
These theories involve understandable, good-faith errors (as it happens in both cases on the part of Luke) resulting from his not having additional information found in Matthew. I also say what approach I would suggest that inerrantists take--that is to say, what responses consistent with inerrancy I consider to be the best options. Given the nature of these errors (if they are errors), there is no serious "hit" to Luke's very high reliability as an histo3rian even if those theories are true, and no reason whatsoever to think that anything (such as the story of the flight to Egypt) has been deliberately invented by anyone or that any fact has been deliberately changed.
I also discuss how bad arguments from silence are when used as skeptics use them for evaluating historical statements and why we should be extremely reluctant to consider a story in Source A invented merely because we don't find it in Source B and "surely" so-and-so would have mentioned it if it were true. In this case, that argument is relevant to the claim that "surely" if Mary (or a document based on Mary's memories) were Luke's source, she would have told him about the flight to Egypt. Enjoy!
Orig. uploaded to YouTube Dec 31 2020
Here I counter the objection that, if the name "Jesus" were not connected with both accounts, you'd never suspect that the infancy stories in Luke and Matthew were about the same person. They are just sooo different! If interested, you can see more along the same lines in a couple of old blog posts that I wrote in 2016, including one called "The extreme probability of one's own life," a phrase borrowed from C.S. Lewis's essay "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism." http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2016/06/the_extreme_improbability_of_o.html
And more here: http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2016/06/new_post_on_genre_in_the_gospe.html
Originally uploaded to YouTube Dec 26 2020
When we start to talk about objections to the birth stories about Jesus in the Gospels, the supposed problem of the census mentioned in Luke 2:1-2 has pride of place. Luke seems to be saying that Jesus was born at the time of a census ordered by Caesar Augustus for the whole world, and that this "first" census has something to do with a Roman governor named Quirinius. But the only census of Judea that we know about under Quirinius as governor was much too late--in A.D. 6. What's up with that? The literature on the census is vast, and I can't begin to cover it all. But in this episode I show that it's extremely improbable that Luke is actually saying that Jesus was born that much later. We can tell from other verses in Luke that he knows quite well that Jesus was born in the time of Herod the Great. I respond to several skeptical objections that are fundamentally misguided and lay out several plausible explanations of Luke's reference to the "first" census and to Quirinius. Here's another point I didn't mention in the podcast: What needs to be probable is that one or the other of these is true--what probability theorists call the disjunction. So I am not merely saying that if something is possible it's probable. I'm saying that each of these is reasonably plausible in itself and therefore that it's quite probable that one or the other of them is true, meaning that Luke is accurate here. This is an important point to keep in mind. It's also extremely improbable for other reasons that Luke was just making up the claim that a census occurred at the time of Jesus' birth or was saying that Jesus was born in what we would call A.D. 6.
Here is the accompanying blog post for some more information: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/12/some-more-notes-on-census-in-luke.html Here is the article by John Thorley that I mention in the video: https://www.jstor.org/stable/642500?seq=1 Here is my recent debate on the Nativity with atheist Jonathan Pearce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PloRcUHBMU
Originally uploaded to YouTube Dec 20 2020
In this episode I discuss the realistic picture that we get in Matthew and Luke in which both Nazareth and Bethlehem play a role in the lives of Joseph and Mary at the time of Jesus' birth. I suggest that Mary was from Nazareth and that Joseph was from Bethlehem as his home town, though he may have been living for a time in Nazareth. Mary had family down in the Judean hill country as well. If the couple was planning to settle in Bethlehem, as they apparently did after Jesus' birth for a while until the flight to Egypt, this would also explain why Mary traveled with Joseph to Bethlehem at the census.
Here again are some good resources on Christmas and the nativity narratives from Triablogue. http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/11/christmas-resources-2020.html Here is an interesting scholarly article by Stephen Carlson. (Hat tip to Jason Engwer for alerting me to it.) Carlson argues that Joseph was from Bethlehem personally. I don't endorse all of Carlson's speculations--in particular, the idea that the marriage of Mary and Joseph took place in Bethlehem seems incorrect to me. But the article is useful nonetheless. http://www.hypotyposeis.org/papers/Carlson%202010%20NTS.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0oBuus-5Cw9q8thfl5oKSzwk5muEjo6NcWxDwq7JU8NWGRvlzp_mQgiUQ
Originally uploaded to YouTube Dec 12 2020
Here I talk about the importance of not conceding that the birth narratives of Jesus are late additions coming from who-knows-where. Not only is there no evidence that the Gospel authors felt free to make up stories, and not only is there evidence for their care and veracity otherwise, there are signs of truth in the birth stories themselves. Here I emphasize their Jewish character. The stories appear early, even seeming to encourage messianic expectations of an immediate earthly reign. They aren't at all the kind of thing you would make up as late inventions to try to commend Christianity. I also talk about how the narrative in Luke, in particular, is steeped in the Jewish sacrificial context of pre-70, before the fall of Jerusalem. We shouldn't think of the infancy narratives as having the phony "independence" that results when different authors freely invent based upon a common core of tradition. Rather, they look like they are independently telling authentic stories coming from people who were "in the know."
Here is the article in Themelios on incorrect claims of independent attestation that I mention in the episode. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/finessing-independent-attestation-interdisciplinary-biblical-criticism/ Check out this roundup of Christmas apologetics resources from Jason Engwer and the Triabloguers. Lots of good stuff here: http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/11/christmas-resources-2020.html#more
Originally uploaded to YouTube Dec 8 2020
This episode begins what will probably be a five-part series on the Virgin Birth in the larger series on Gospel reliability and miracle reports. Here I focus on what it would mean for the evidence for the Virgin Birth if Mary herself was Luke's witness and told him (or affirmed to him in some other way--e.g., by presenting him with a document or notes) the material that we find in Luke's accounts of Jesus' infancy, the birth of John the Baptist, etc. I examine Mary's motives and the implausibility of her lending credence to such a massive lie about the conception of Jesus. This in turn draws attention to the importance of the reliability of the Gospels, and Luke in particular, in the evaluation of the evidence for the Virgin Birth. (Side note: I make a verbal slip at one point in the episode as deoes occasionally happen. Since I'm trying to do these in one "take," I did not re-record. I am listing aspects of the birth narratives that would have been accessible to people other than Mary and list Joseph's dream. In the verbal context I appear to be saying that Joseph's dream is found in Luke. Of course it is found in Matthew.)
Here is the lecture on the reliability of Acts that I mention. "Acts Gets Hard Things Right" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sdLTyM7Sks&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR02fIwnuM8jDtMRmycFMxoJvkBmUSWQrNuwT9b90c61vXSFyLFlYg-cRtI
Originally uploaded to YouTube Dec 4 2020
This wraps up my series on the feeding of the five thousand with two more undesigned coincidences, several more indications of independence and individual veracity, and a discussion of the intersection of the miraculous and the non-miraculous aspects of the accounts.
Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 30 2020
Here I turn to the positive evidence contributed to the case for Gospel reliability by the stories of the feeding of the five thousand. I discuss four undesigned coincidences that confirm details of the feeding--two about place and two about time.
Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 27 2020
Here I continue explaining apparent discrepancies between accounts of the feeding of the five thousand. These apparent discrepancies help us to see that the accounts are not dependent on a common source. And they are the kinds of things that could easily arise from different accounts that come from separate witnesses of the events.
Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 23 2020
This episode begins a sub-series on the feeding of the five thousand. The feeding accounts in the Gospels make an important contribution of their own to the case for Gospel reliability. But what about alleged discrepancies between them? Here I point out how the appearance of discrepancy between accounts contributes to the case that they do not come from a common source--a type of independence. This is especially valuable if the apparent discrepancies can be well explained by causes that we expect to arise when we have different accounts that go back to separate people with knowledge of the events. Here I address the first alleged discrepancy between accounts of the feeding: The question of where Jesus was when he first saw the large crowd.
Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 20 2020
This is the second, shorter, section of my discussion of the miracle accounts of Jesus raising Jairus' daughter and healing the woman with the issue of blood. Here I discuss potential naturalistic competitors for a miraculous explanation and how well they hold up if the externally observable facts occurred as told in the Gospels. Note that I'm asking how much these accounts themselves support a miraculous explanation without bringing in other evidence we have about Jesus' ability to work miracles. I conclude that in the case of the woman with the issue of blood we do need to rely somewhat more on our other evidence that Jesus was able to work miracles, though this is a rational and historical way of proceeding. The reason that we need to do so is that, even granting the externally observable facts, we don't have follow-up information showing that she was truly relieved of her symptoms for a significant period of time. However, there is an interesting confirmation in Jesus' claim that someone touched him for healing and the woman's admission that she did so. In the case of Jairus's daughter, the chief naturalistic competitor would be the theory that the girl was not really dead. In this case the naturalistic explanation does not seem to explain the facts well, however. Even if all brain activity had not ceased, one wouldn't expect her to wake up immediately, when she had previously (one presumes) had no pulse or visible breathing, and be able to walk just when Jesus took her by the hand and spoke to her in a simple fashion. This sort of evaluation shows how we can try to evaluate miracle accounts while separating out the various strands of our evidence and being neither credulous nor hyper-skeptical.
Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 16 2020
In this continuation of my series on Gospel reliability and miracles, I evaluate the stories of Jesus' healing the woman with the issue of blood and raising Jairus's daughter. These stories are told in intertwined accounts. We find them in all three Synoptic Gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Here I discuss issues of independence between the accounts and of the credibility of the accounts and conclude that, between the other evidence we have for reliability and the credibility of these accounts, we have a good case that the external events recounted in these stories took place and were observed by the disciples. These stories provide a good test case for the methodology I have been advocating for historical evaluation, here looking at accounts that are briefer and less varied than the accounts of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances. Check out a recent video I did for Ratio Christi at Western Michigan University on how we know that the Gospels are reliable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM6IomPKB2w&feature=youtu.be
Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 11 2020
In this podcast, I take the methods that I talked about in the previous episode on methodology and Miracles and show how they apply to the central miracle of Christianity--Jesus' resurrection. I outline a "Paley-style" argument for the resurrection and give both a super-brief version of it and a somewhat expanded version. I show how Gospel reliability fits into the argument to bolster the claim that the evidence we have is highly improbable if the witnesses were just mistaken in thinking that Jesus rose from the dead. This type of an approach is an alternative to the more common "minimal facts" argument, which I don't think is as strong as its proponents believe it to be or as strong as what is needed to support Christianity. (See link below.) The Paley-style argument has never been rendered obsolete. It has merely fallen out of fashion, probably due to an unjustified deference to more skeptical "critical scholarship" concerning the Gospels and a desire to avoid having to go unequivocally against that tide--something I think we should consider a privilege.
Here again is my webinar on "Minimal Facts vs. Maximal Data" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUt3r3dXBr4 Here is the blog post that I mention in the episode, "Independence, Conspiracy, and the Resurrection" http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/independence-conspiracy-and-resurrection.html
Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 5 2020
This is the introductory episode in a new series on historical methodology, Gospel reliability, and miracle reports. How can we avoid being either too skeptical or too credulous about miracle stories in the Gospels? How can we take proper account of evidence for high Gospel reliability while recognizing that miracles are unusual and exercising due care in evaluating miracle stories? Suppose that we end up relying on our independent evidence that Jesus was God in order to conclude that he really performed a certain miracle. Does that mean that we're "believing as a Christian" rather than using historical reasoning? In this preliminary episode I try to sort out some of these questions. We'll learn more about how this works in the series as a whole when I discuss particular examples.
Originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 30 2020
Suppose that you're inclined to accept the existence of fact-changing "compositional devices" in the Gospels, without carefully investigating the arguments against them, because you believe that this will simplify your apologetic task. Now, thank goodness, you don't have to "get into the weeds," "get off-track" discussing alleged discrepancies and harmonizations. What a relief! But this comes with a heavy cost, as I discuss in this video. Examine these theories carefully, and the arguments on both sides, before you adopt them!
You may also be interested in my discussion with Mike Winger on his show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiE-J6U3kCY&feature=youtu.be
Also, see my discussion here of minimal facts vs. maximal data approaches to the resurrection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUt3r3dXBr4 And here is my book, The Mirror or the Mask. https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1603580557&sr=8-1
Originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 26, 2020
In this final episode of my series on the Temple cleansing, I point out the subjectivity and implausibility of the theological motives attributed to John. If it's too easy to come up with imaginative ideas about what theological or literary symbolism John might have intended by such a factual change, isn't that a clue that none of those various theories are well supported? And how would John's audience have known what symbolic lesson they were supposed to learn?
Scholarly ingenuity is a poor guide to historical probability.
This episode was originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 19, 2020.
In this episode I discuss a specific reference to the year of the Temple cleansing in John's Gospel--46 years. How does this time reference confirm the historicity of an early Temple cleansing as record.
This episode was originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 16, 2020.
In this episode I talk about how the Jerusalem religious leaders try to "spin" Jesus' early miracles by saying that he is casting out demons by the prince of the demons. This is after some of them have witnessed Jesus healing a paralytic man while claiming to be able to forgive sins. Following New Testament scholar Alan Chapple, I argue that the fact that these scribes and teachers of the law, apparently representing the Jerusalem leadership, traveled all the way to Galilee from Jerusalem and were so hostile to Jesus so early in his ministry is well explained by the early Temple cleansing recorded only in John. Yet these instances of their visiting Galilee and their early hostility are recorded only in the Synoptics.
This episode was originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 12, 2020.
Here I continue the series on the Temple cleansing, defending the conclusion that John reports historically rather than changing the facts. This episode discusses an undesigned coincidence between some dialogue in John's account of the Temple cleansing and the testimony of some hostile witnesses in Jesus' trial. This casual connection provides evidence both that John and the Synoptic authors are reporting accurately and that John's account describes (as he says it does) an event that occurred early in Jesus' ministry.
This episode was originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 6, 2020.
In the second part of my series on the Temple cleansing, I discuss what one sometimes hears vaguely referred to as "other" reasons why many scholars reject two Temple cleansings. These reasons consist of the insistence that Jesus would not have been allowed to cleanse the Temple twice or would not have been allowed to continue to live and carry out a ministry for several years as described in the Gospel of John if he really cleansed the Temple early as John reports. I show that this is completely unfounded speculation. The Gospel of John presents a coherent and believable account in itself in which Jesus does just that--cleanses the Temple early and continues his ministry thereafter. The Synoptics all by themselves show that it is false to think of the Temple cleansing, all by itself, as a sufficient cause to determine that Jesus would die within a short time thereafter.
This episode was originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 1, 2020.
In this first episode on the Temple cleansing, I discuss the objection to two Temple cleansings that says that the two accounts in John and the Synoptics are just too similar to describe different events and that therefore such a harmonization is strained and artificial. I point out various differences that make it entirely open and not implausible that these were indeed two different events, just as the evangelists' reporting would normally lead us to believe.
This episode was originally uploaded to YouTube Sep 28, 2020.
Today I begin a new series of short episodes on New Testament reliability. These episodes will highlight a concept or issue in this area. This first episode discusses the reporting of time order or chronology. I distinguish four different ways that one might report time. 1) You state or imply a time and get it right. 2) You state or imply a time and get it wrong by honest error. 3) You state or imply a time that you know is contrary to fact. (I call this dyschronological narration.) 4) You don't really intend to state or imply a time, though someone might misunderstand and think you are doing so. (I call this achronological narration.)
I'll be doing a short series on the Temple cleansing in John and in the Synoptics. This discussion of time is intended to be helpful in general and also as a prelude to that. Did John "move" the Temple cleansing, as many scholars say he did? And what would that mean?
This episode was originally uploaded to YouTube Sep 25, 2020.
My book, The Mirror or the Mask, goes into these issues in more detail. You can buy it on Amazon either in Kindle or paperback. https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1
In my recent book, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, I argue that the Gospels are historical reportage. This argument involves both positive evidence for literal accuracy and arguments against the views of Michael Licona, Craig Evans, and others that the evangelists felt free to make historical changes due to the literary conventions of their time. Dr. Licona has recently released a video series in which he claims to refute my work in The Mirror or the Mask. In this series, I respond. If you are interested in more information, please see the fuller discussions of these issues in The Mirror or the Mask and in the accompanying blog posts. In this final episode of the series I discuss what is at stake in this debate. How do these issues have the potential to affect the work of pastors, Christian counselors, and the individual devotional lives of laymen? My deepest thanks to Immanuel Fellowship Church for their studio facilities and hard work in helping me to put together this video series. This episode was originally published on Jul 27, 2020 on YouTube.
Associated blog post: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-conclusion-whats-at.html Bonus blog post on Matthew's use of the Old Testament: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-matthews-use-of-old.html The Mirror or the Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070 Lydia McGrew on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lydia.mcgrew.5 Michael Licona's book Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? https://www.amazon.com/Why-Are-There-Differences-Gospels-ebook-dp-B01MQFWQHD/dp/B01MQFWQHD/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1596112501 Michael Licona's video series on my work: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpPGCP1zKznR06Jxb5RaQYrNIiH7xR7ZR
In my recent book, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, I argue that the Gospels are historical reportage. This argument involves both positive evidence for literal accuracy and arguments against the views of Michael Licona, Craig Evans, and others that the evangelists felt free to make historical changes due to the literary conventions of their time. Dr. Licona has recently released a video series in which he claims to refute my work in The Mirror or the Mask. In this series, I respond. If you're interested in more information on these issues, please see the accompanying blog posts and, most importantly, The Mirror or the Mask itself. In this episode, I discuss the way that the reportage model--which is just the view that the Gospel authors were trying to report with literal historical truthfulness and were highly successful--deals with some specific Gospel differences. I also discuss how that differs from the way that the compositional device model deals with them. My deepest thanks to Immanuel Fellowship Church for their studio facilities and hard work in helping me to put together this video series. This episode was originally published on Jul 24, 2020 on YouTube.
Associated blog post: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-gospel-differences.html The Mirror or the Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070 Michael Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? https://www.amazon.com/Why-Are-There-Differences-Gospels/dp/0190264268 Lydia McGrew on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lydia.mcgrew.5 Mike Licona's video series on my work: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpPGCP1zKznR06Jxb5RaQYrNIiH7xR7ZR
In my recent book, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, I argue that the Gospels are historical reportage. This argument involves both positive evidence for literal accuracy and arguments against the views of Michael Licona, Craig Evans, and others that the evangelists felt free to make historical changes due to the literary conventions of their time. Dr. Licona has recently released a video series in which he claims to refute my work in The Mirror or the Mask. In this series, I respond. If you're interested in more information on these issues, please see the accompanying blog posts and, most importantly, The Mirror or the Mask itself. In this episode I discuss ways in which the reportage model is supported by undesigned coincidences and other confirmed details in the Gospels and how this means that the compositional device model is disconfirmed by that same evidence. My deepest thanks to Immanuel Fellowship Church for their studio facilities and hard work in helping me to put together this video series. This episode was originally published on Jul 20, 2020 on YouTube.
There are two associated blog posts. https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-methodological.html https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-does-origen-support.html The Mirror or the Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070 Michael Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? https://www.amazon.com/Why-Are-There-Differences-Gospels/dp/0190264268 Lydia McGrew on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lydia.mcgrew.5 Mike Licona's video series on my work: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpPGCP1zKznR06Jxb5RaQYrNIiH7xR7ZR
In my recent book, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, I argue that the Gospels are historical reportage. This argument involves both positive evidence for literal accuracy and arguments against the views of Michael Licona, Craig Evans, and others that the evangelists felt free to make historical changes due to the literary conventions of their time. Dr. Licona has recently released a video series in which he claims to refute my work in The Mirror or the Mask. In this series, I respond. If you're interested in more information on these issues, please see the accompanying blog posts and, most importantly, The Mirror or the Mask itself. In this episode, I discuss how equivocation on terms creates confusion in this discussion. I also give examples of how the literary device model is even a misguided way to approach secular historical works like the writings of Plutarch. My deepest thanks to Immanuel Fellowship Church for their studio facilities and hard work in helping me to put together this video series. This episode was originally published on Jul 17, 2020 on YouTube.
Associated blog post: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-equivocation-plutarch.html The Mirror or the Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070 Michael Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? https://www.amazon.com/Why-Are-There-Differences-Gospels/dp/0190264268 Lydia McGrew on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lydia.mcgrew.5 Mike Licona's video series on my work: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpPGCP1zKznR06Jxb5RaQYrNIiH7xR7ZR
In my recent book, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, I argue that the Gospels are historical reportage. This argument involves both positive evidence for literal accuracy and arguments against the views of Michael Licona, Craig Evans, and others that the evangelists felt free to make historical changes due to the literary conventions of their time. Dr. Licona has recently released a video series in which he claims to refute my work in The Mirror or the Mask. In this series, I respond. If you're interested in more information on these issues, please see the accompanying blog posts and, most importantly, The Mirror or the Mask itself. In this episode, I discuss what paraphrase is. I also explain why, contra some recent scholars, ancient Greek exercise books do not support the theory that the Gospel authors felt free to make changes to historical facts in their writings. My deepest thanks to Immanuel Fellowship Church for their studio facilities and hard work in helping me to put together this video series. This episode was originally published on Jul 13, 2020 on YouTube.
Blog post accompanying this video: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-paraphrase-exercise.html Extra blog post for more on "Black and White Thinking": https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-black-and-white.html The Mirror or the Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070 Michael Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? https://www.amazon.com/Why-Are-There-Differences-Gospels/dp/0190264268 Lydia McGrew on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lydia.mcgrew.5 Mike Licona's video series on my work: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpPGCP1zKznR06Jxb5RaQYrNIiH7xR7ZR
In my recent book, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, I argue that the Gospels are historical reportage. This argument involves both positive evidence for literal accuracy and arguments against the views of Michael Licona, Craig Evans, and others that the evangelists felt free to make historical changes due to the literary conventions of their time. Dr. Licona has recently released a video series in which he claims to refute my work in The Mirror or the Mask. In this series, I respond. If you're interested in more information on these issues, please see the accompanying blog posts and, most importantly, The Mirror or the Mask itself. In this episode, I discuss the genre of the Gospels. What do scholars mean when they say that the Gospels are or "have much in common with" Greco-Roman biography, and is it true? My deepest thanks to Immanuel Fellowship Church for their studio facilities and hard work in helping me to put together this video series. This recording was originally published Jul 10, 2020 on YouTube.
Blog post accompanying this video: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-on-greco-roman.html
The Mirror or the Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070 Michael Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? https://www.amazon.com/Why-Are-There-Differences-Gospels/dp/0190264268
Mike Licona's video series on my work: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpPGCP1zKznR06Jxb5RaQYrNIiH7xR7ZR
In my recent book, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, I argue that the Gospels are historical reportage. This argument involves both positive evidence for literal accuracy and arguments against the views of Michael Licona, Craig Evans, and others that the evangelists felt free to make historical changes due to the literary conventions of their time. Dr. Licona has recently released a video series in which he claims to refute my work in The Mirror or the Mask. In this series, I respond. If you're interested in more information on these issues, please see the accompanying blog posts and, most importantly, The Mirror or the Mask itself. This episode kicks off the series by discussing the concept that I've dubbed a "fictionalizing literary device" or "fact-changing literary device." What is it? Why do I use those phrases for what some scholars claim are in the Gospels? Are those accurate descriptions? Understanding this matter can help us to see what is at stake in this debate. My deepest thanks to Immanuel Fellowship Church for their studio facilities and hard work in helping me to put together this video series. This recording was originally published Jul 6, 2020 on YouTube.
Blog post accompanying this video: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-fictionalizing.html The Mirror or the Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070 Michael Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? https://www.amazon.com/Why-Are-There-Differences-Gospels/dp/0190264268
Mike Licona's video series on my work: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpPGCP1zKznR06Jxb5RaQYrNIiH7xR7ZR