Name: Harmonization in Action: The central section of Luke @LydiaMcGrewChannel
Uploaded: 2026-09-19T08:17:00-05:00
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: Harmonization in Action: The central section of Luke

Harmonization in Action: The central section of Luke

Lydia McGrew 2026-09-19 | Harmonization in Action: The central section of Luke

Deceptions Are Not Devices: Lucians trolling

Lydia McGrew 2025-01-26 | I'm continuing to show how misunderstandings and misapplications of ancient non-biblical literature carry over to misinterpretations of passages in the Gospels.

Here I show how Dr. Licona strangely misapplies a case where the satirist Lucian is *blatantly lying* (and even bragging about how he misled some credulous people by his tall tale) as if it helps to support a mini-genre of non-historical, apocalyptic "special effects" at someone's death. Say what?

Here is my post on Licona's argument concerning the rising saints passage in Matthew.

whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2019/02/on_that_infamous_saints_rising.html

The pages on which Dr. Licona lists Lucian's deception as if it is a data point that helps to support a device of apocalyptic language surrounding a death are 548-549 in The Resurrection of Jesus.

Get The Mirror or the Mask if you're interested in more detail about how the literary device theorists misunderstand ancient literature and history:

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

Discrepancy Hunting in Non-Biblical Literature: Couldnt Sallust just have made a mistake?

Lydia McGrew 2025-01-19 | Today I'm continuing to discuss bad methodology as applied to non-biblical ancient history. Did Sallust deliberately move a saying by the conspirator Catiline to a different meeting with the Senate? First, we should consider the (actually not terribly implausible) possibility that Catiline was just fond of the sound of his own threat against Rome and that he used it on more than one occasion. But next, let's think about how easy it would have been for Sallust to make a mistake about when Catiline threatened to bring down Rome in "general ruin."

Since precisely what is at issue is whether changing sayings to times when they didn't occur was a known and accepted "compositional device of the time," the literary device theorists can't assume that Sallust was likely to make such a deliberate change. That would be circular. Supposedly this incident in which Sallust makes this change is *evidence for* the existence of such a device. It's therefore a real problem when those making that argument are blind to the plausibility of more common causes of the discrepancy like ordinary error.

Discrepancy Hunting in Non-Biblical History: Why Couldnt Plutarch Just Make a Mistake?

Lydia McGrew 2025-01-12 | This week I continue to talk about non-biblical history and the deep problems with the compositional device methodology. In this case I talk about a discrepancy between two of Plutarch's _Lives_ that appears to be a real discrepancy--harmonization between the accounts doesn't quite work. But does it follow that a) Plutarch changed the facts on purpose, b) Plutarch's audience would have expected such factual changes, and c) Plutarch was using a known "compositional device"? Of course not. All of those additional conclusions require further evidence, beyond just finding a discrepancy between two documents. But the compositional device theorists don't realize that. They allege a discrepancy and move immediately to concluding a "device." What about far more natural and common types of explanations, such as that Plutarch made a simple mistake? These are skipped over. So it just isn't the case that a fact-changing device has been objectively "found" or "observed" in Plutarch.

For more details, see _The Mirror or the Mask_:

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 my 2020 series on these subjects:

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0S9CsFG47bKjcYxsnHujhg

Bad Methodology: Discrepancy Hunting in Non-biblical History

Lydia McGrew 2025-01-05 | Even non-biblical historical works should often be harmonized. That's just part of applying common sense to history. For the next few weeks I will talk about the epistemologically bad discrepancy hunting method and how it applies to non-biblical history. In this method, mere differences are often exaggerated into discrepancies. Then further these discrepancies aren't attributed to common human errors (like not remembering quite correctly what one of your sources said, or misunderstanding a source) but are automatically treated as deliberate. Then, further, these allegedly deliberate factual changes are treated as examples of a "compositional device," which "everybody" knew might be found in a document of this genre. All of this is wrong, and each one of these steps is open to very serious doubt.

This week's presentation shows this discrepancy hunting method applied in a strained and strange way to a debate in the Roman Senate discussed by Plutarch in two of his _Lives_. Ever heard of talking points repeated by those who agree with one another in political discussions? Ever heard of one person making a motion and someone else agreeing with it? Of course. These are normal activities in political bodies. This insight could prevent the rather bizarre claim that Plutarch conflated two "logia" and "transferred" them (for no apparent reason) to another Roman senator.

This playlist contains, among other things, my 2020 response series on my book The Mirror or the Mask.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0S9CsFG47bKjcYxsnHujhg

For more, read The Mirror or the Mask:

amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2MG4IKY4L0NB2&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.G-yPCsIV5FQF394zjJ2GEw.QlTf0AoaLD2fq9NT4YbnXgXNse43nZTvv1u1y5l1aVo&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+mirror+or+the+mask+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1735743296&sprefix=the+mirror+or+the+mask+%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1

Dont Do a priori History!

Lydia McGrew 2024-12-29 | The oft-repeated claim that there would *never* be a Roman census in a "client state," used to discredit Luke's mention of a census in the Christmas story, is an example of a priori history. Those who insist on this claim have only the thinnest justification for it--namely, the fact that client states under Rome had *some* measure of independence in matters of taxation. They also ignore or fumble to dismiss the explicit non-biblical example from Tacitus of Roman-style census-based taxation in the client state of Cilicia, during the reign of Tiberius. (So there isn't even the bad excuse of an argument from silence-outside-of-Luke.) To hear them talk, you'd think we had some document that says, "Rules for the Roman Empire: You're never supposed to do a census and taxation, enforced by Rome, in a client state." But we have nothing like that at all.

But more: Even if we *did* have such a document, we know that historically governments do things that they aren't "supposed" to do, if they stuck to founding documents. So that still wouldn't be a sufficient argument to dismiss Luke's report. I give a recent example in American history as a cautionary tale against a priori history.

Here is my post from several years ago on the census:

lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/12/some-more-notes-on-census-in-luke.html

Here is my video on the census:

youtu.be/ZIpi5-pQSVk

Here is my debate in 2020 with Jonathan Pearce on the nativity:

youtube.com/watch?v=1PloRcUHBMU

Here is Pearce's postmortem in which he claims that there was no Roman-style census/taxation in a client state, as reported by Tacitus. (As I explain in my post linked above, the blunder is Pearce's, not that of the Biblical Archaeology Review. Apparently he didn't realize that there was more than one Archelaus in the region and that Tacitus is talking about Cilicia, not Cappadocia, at a time when Cilicia was indeed a client kingdom.)

web.archive.org/web/20220121135953/patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2020/12/14/my-nativity-debate-with-lydia-mcgrew-post-match-analysis

Virgin Birth and Resurrection: No epistemological mystery

Lydia McGrew 2024-12-22 | What do the Virgin Birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus have in common? For one thing, they both emphasize the fact that Jesus had real body. Today I discuss why that is important from the perspective of knowledge (epistemology) and why we Christians shouldn't confuse a theological mystery with a lack of hard evidence.

Have a very merry evidential Christmas!

Links mentioned in today's broadcast:

"Mary, did you lie?"

youtu.be/CdsrlQz_R04

Virgin Birth playlist

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn3za22QzE28xKqhTq5KvCB2

Podcast prior to Novemeber, 2024:

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lydia-mcgrew-podcast/id1629221976

Podcast from November, 2024, on:

open.spotify.com/show/4kLIMQJTJnfQoL4I6xD7HF?fbclid=IwY2xjawGxZoxleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHUjXb4zueeNGNTQzRtDseWeOn0lyd76-yUeY4yhjEg4J41CpUfzf-EvBug_aem_r6Alcdy5Wp0dxegv7pcVMg

Thumbnail image by Frank Ordaz.

The Rigid Rule of Deliberateness

Lydia McGrew 2024-12-15 | In this last segment on the rigidity of critical scholars, I examine a bad methodological assumption--that if the wording of parallel passages is somewhat similar, but there are small differences, these differences very likely resulted from *deliberate editing* (redacting, substituting, etc.) of the earlier version of the story. This rule is also wrongly applied to the evangelists' quotations of Scripture. Critical scholars rigidly ignore far more natural and non-deliberate causes of such differences, including quoting partially from memory, using notes (and memory) from a written source rather than having the source open at all times, variations of witness testimony, and just telling a story partially in one's own words, without consciously making each word the same as or different from the words in some other document.

This rigid assumption of deliberateness is often implausible to the point of silliness, yet it lies at the heart of the so-called "successes" of redaction criticism. Those "successes" are then treated as an objective discovery which is used to bully harmonizers. Moreover, the triviality of some of the differences is used to underwrite non-trivial claims of deliberate fact-changing.

Rigid Scholars Mock Harmonization

Lydia McGrew 2024-12-08 | In this video I read four quotations in which scholars make fun of harmonization by comparing reasonable harmonizations with far-fetched ones, sometimes using views that have never even been seriously advocated as a straw man of harmonizing. This is a tactic that one should be prepared for. This sort of condescension and mockery can make anyone more conservative than the "scholarly consensus" feel foolish and ignorant. But such illicit tactics are less likely to work if one has been prepared for them in advance.

My peer-reviewed article on achronological and dyschronological narration (mentioned in the video): http://jgrchj.net/volume17/JGRChJ17-3_McGrew.pdf

My playlist on how often Jesus cleansed the Temple: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0QhpT_JgxzoxmUolEg9d3K

Michael Licona's mockery of non-fact-changing approaches to what Jairus said (cued up): youtu.be/xtemSTrkogE?si=a-QgYoCgYup3Hyz0&t=1604

Bart Ehrman's post on harmonization, quoted in the video: ehrmanblog.org/harmonizing-gospels

Rigidity, Gateway Drugs, and Jairus

Lydia McGrew 2024-12-01 | What did Jairus say about his daughter when he came to Jesus? Did he tell him that his daughter had died or that she was dying?

This relatively minor question has fueled many-a conversion to the acceptance of fact-changing literary devices. This is why I call it a "gateway drug" to fact-changing by the evangelists.

A reasonable approach to this difference is to attribute it to the normal variation of witness testimony. Perhaps different people heard what Jairus said slightly differently, even though he only said one or the other of these things. Or perhaps they remembered it slightly differently later on. Or perhaps, in his agitation, and knowing that his daughter was barely holding on to life when he left the house, Jairus actually said both things, the second based on his guess that she might have died by the time he was speaking to Jesus.

The insistence that we not use our real-world imagination in these ways arises from the rigid rule of all-or-nothing factual dependence and independence, which I discussed last week.

Be sure to like and subscribe!

Thumbnail courtesy of freebibleimages.org

The Rigid Rule of All-or-nothing Factual Independence

Lydia McGrew 2024-11-24 | Today I'm discussing another aspect of the rigidity of critical scholarship:
Among the Synoptic Gospels, they assume that if Matthew and/or Luke is "using Mark" for a story, then we shouldn't take seriously the possibility that Matthew and/or Luke is also supplementing Mark from additional factual information to which he has independent access. Factual independence is treated as all-or-nothing. So if Matthew and/or Luke differs from Mark, this must be from some way in which he is changing Mark, without factual input--making up details for which he has no evidence, factually altering the story, etc. But that's not how real-life testimony works. It can be partly dependent and partly independent. This realization is a game-changer in considering the so-called Synoptic problem.

The Rigid Rule of First Impressions

Lydia McGrew 2024-11-17 | Critical scholars who reject harmonization like to portray those who harmonize the Gospels as ignorant, rigid, and unhistorical. Supposedly this all arises from allowing one's theological preoccupations to cause one to engage in bizarre behavior (harmonization) that one wouldn't use in other contexts. Perhaps no one is better at giving this impression than Bart Ehrman, and sadly, it's an evaluation that has been internalized by some Christian scholars.

Today I read a quotation from Ehrman in which he makes his famous claim that harmonizing is "writing your own Gospel." He even goes so far as to saying that you're "robbing" the Gospel authors of their individual "integrity" as writers. He makes a question-begging analogy to overt fiction to support these claims and to set up the rigid rule of first impressions.

ehrmanblog.org/harmonizing-gospels

Thumbnail photo by Dan Sears - Dan Sears UNC-Chapel Hill, CC BY 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41276400

Rigid critical scholars: Is there a contradiction about Jesus words on the cross?

Lydia McGrew 2024-11-10 | Today I'm starting a series in which I especially emphasize the rigidity of critical Gospels' scholars who create strained contradictions and reject sensible harmonizations. This theme has been implicit in much of my work, but I'm trying to make it more explicit. The claim that conservatives interpreting the Gospels lack nuance and are rigid is so misguided that the truth is exactly the opposite. It is the critical scholars who create implausible contradiction claims who are interpreting rigidly without the nuance granted by a commonsense understanding of the way real life works.

In this case, Jesus could *easily* have said all the words attributed to him on the cross in the various Gospels, with no contradiction. Merely recogizing that someone can say more than one thing at about the same time is sufficient to recognize this, especially combined with the fact that "I thirst" doesn't even appear to be the same saying as, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Here is the clip from a recent interview in which Dr. Licona insists that there are contradictions about Jesus' words on the cross if one takes them nall to be recognizably historical.

youtu.be/dNUCCeTwCaI?si=g29IfHaSVfB488Dj&t=4104

Three Meanings of Meaning

Lydia McGrew 2024-11-03 | In this video I respond carefully to the unfortunate and incorrect comparison that Dr. Licona has recently made between Mark's hyperbolic language in Mark 1:5 (that all Jerusalem and Judea was coming out to be baptized by John) and the fact-changing literary devices that I have argued the Gospel authors did not use. Licona has literally said that Mark is "changing the facts" in that verse, which is not the case. Mark's statement there is a recognizable figure of speech the semantic meaning of which is merely that many people in these regions were coming out to hear and be baptized by John.

In contrast, if John changed the day of the crucifixion or Matthew changed the location of the Sermon on the Mount, the semantic meaning of the stories in their Gospels really would be different from the historical facts. These would not be recognizable figures of speech.

I make this clear in various ways by showing how it relates to the analogy of a movie based on true events.

In fact, I emphasize that it would be possible to *agree* with me that "fact changing" is an accurate description of these alleged compositional devices while *disagreeing* with me about whether they occurred.

Clarity is so important. Christians who are scholars ought to strive *especially* hard to speak clearly and not to confuse people about what their, and their opponents', views are. Poor analogies only hinder clear thinking.

Check out _The Mirror or the Mask_ on the arguments about whether the Gospels are in a genre like movies based on true events:

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 the most recent video in which Licona makes this comparison:

youtube.com/watch?v=-4cuWoY_p9g

Thumbnail courtesy of Freebibleimages.org

Alleged Seams in John Part 9: Chapter 20-21

Lydia McGrew 2024-10-27 | This will be the last installment in my series on alleged seams in John. Does the fact that John 20:30-31 sounds sort of ending-like provide evidence of an editor? I answer no.

I also examine the very strange scholarly tendency to turn John 21:24 on its head. That verse says that the Beloved Disciple is the one who "wrote these things," but oddly, various scholars take this to mean that he didn't write these things, that he merely "stood behind" the Gospel or took "spiritual responsibility" for it. This is the opposite of what the verse says!

This topic gives me the opportunity to read a favorite quotation from Richard Bauckham on the meaning of the word "wrote" in that verse. Bauckham has "bad tone" (which is a good thing).

Richard Bauckham, _Jesus and the Eyewitnesses_, 2nd ed., pp. 358-361

Alleged Seams in John Part 8: A truly silly argument from silence

Lydia McGrew 2024-10-20 | Today's seams in John video describes a truly strange, truly silly claim of a seam or aporia in John. The claim is that in John 19 Jesus is left outside in view of the crowd when Pilate is supposed to be questioning him back in the Praetorium. Huh? Apparently John isn't allowed to leave anything to basic reading or hearing comprehension. If he doesn't spell. it. out. he's saying that it didn't happen.

And somehow this "problem" is part of a cumulative case for a complex process of composition involving an editor, resulting in a fractured Gospel of John.

So not only are there arguments from silence, the good, the bad, and the ugly. There are also the silly.

youtu.be/W0VWCdw4epk

Six bad habits of New Testament scholars, which I allude to in the video. And yes, argument from silence is discussed here:

youtube.com/watch?v=_9fUKdpPl6k

Alleged Seams in John Part 7: No one is asking where Jesus is going?

Lydia McGrew 2024-10-13 | Is there a contradiction between John 16:5, where Jesus says that none of the disciples is asking him, "Where are you going?" and John 13:36, where Peter asks Jesus, "Where are you going?"

I argue that there isn't. Watch (or listen) to find out why.

Plus, even if this were contradictory, it would hardly be evidence for a "seam" left by an editor. This is so obvious that Raymond Brown has had to argue that it's evidence for an editor who doesn't edit, due to his reverence for his sources, which is rather like a blue elephant that you can't see.

Alleged Seams in John Part 6: John 14:30-31 Arise, let us go.

Lydia McGrew 2024-10-06 | Today I talk about a passage that is considered a "biggie" among arguments for editorial seams in John: The supposed contradictions created by John 14:30-31. I argue that these contradictions are overblown and that the phrase "arise, let us go" in John 14:31 appears to be the result of vivid witness memory, not a contradictory clue to a bumbling editor. (This is also the position of D.A. Carson.)

Alleged Seams in John Part 5: Mary of Bethany

Lydia McGrew 2024-09-29 | Gary Burge uses the parenthetical remark from the narrator about Mary of Bethany in John 11:2 as an example of "seams" or "aporias" in John. He considers it to be a "problem" that this is a forward reference to John 12, the story of Mary anointing Jesus, which hasn't yet been narrated when John refers to her in John 11:2 as "the Mary" who anointed Jesus' feet.

How is this even *supposed* to be an argument, or even part of a cumulative case, for the activity of an editor in addition to the author? Burge doesn't say. In fact, there is no scenario in which this would be a plausible thing for an editor to do. It is far more like what we see in oral recollection of one's life, which often involves asides, digressions, unexplained allusions, and the like, as these happen to occur to the speaker. And in this case the remark also reflects an awareness of the need to disambiguate the popular name "Mary."

Alleged seams in John Part 4: Should John 5 come right before John 7?

Lydia McGrew 2024-09-22 | 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, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403

Alleged Seams in John Part 3: The other side of the Sea of Galilee

Lydia McGrew 2024-09-15 | 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, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403

Alleged seams in John part 2: Into the Judean land

Lydia McGrew 2024-09-08 | 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:

biblehub.com/john/3-22.htm

Here is the Greek text analysis page:

biblehub.com/text/john/3-22.htm

Here is my video on four ways of narrating time. (But note: In this case I don't even think the narration is achronological.)

youtube.com/watch?v=n4TzGiFCeLE&t=8s

Thumbnail by Foto: Jonn Leffmann, CC BY 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403

Alleged Seams in the Gospel of John 1

Lydia McGrew 2024-09-01 | 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, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403

Multiple Attestation Tumbling Down

Lydia McGrew 2024-08-25 | 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).

youtu.be/EGVlEhtv0Zo

Further, 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, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17999924

Explicitness is Evidential

Lydia McGrew 2024-08-18 | 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:

lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/transcript-craig-evans-comments-on.html

Here 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.

youtube.com/watch?v=qP7RrCfDkO4

Here is my earlier video on what's wrong with the "Messianic secret" argument that Licona is using:

youtu.be/9D9glNp2seE

Here is my earlier video cautioning against an incorrect use of multiple attestation:

youtu.be/EGVlEhtv0Zo

Jesus Historical Teaching = Data

Lydia McGrew 2024-08-11 | Why does it matter if Jesus didn't historically, recognizably say something recorded in the Gospels? What if what we find there 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 need to be discerning. One way to check apostolic teaching is to see if it agrees with Jesus' historical teaching. For example, there are sayings of Jesus reported in the story of the centurion's servant 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?

If Jesus was sent from God and did rise from the dead, his recognizable historical teachings are theological data in a special way, even more fundamental than what the apostles taught, and certainly more fundamental than the apostles' views if they non-factually put these into Jesus' mouth.

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 for and against this position. I find these arguments completely lacking in force. See The Mirror or the Mask and The Eye of the Beholder for more information.

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

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

The apostles distinction between their interpretations and Jesus teachings

Lydia McGrew 2024-08-04 | 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.

Can Carson Be Co-opted?

Lydia McGrew 2024-07-28 | 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:

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=8-1

Here is an important article in which Carson discusses these issues:

biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gp/gp2_tradition_carson.pdf

Here is one interview where Licona speaks as if Carson agrees with his controversial views:

youtube.com/watch?v=dNUCCeTwCaI

Here is the interview where Licona explicitly cites the isolated sentence, "John has rewritten the whole" to co-opt Carson:

youtube.com/live/N5N5snM1PSQ?si=MmflT4Jf_7f-TLJ3&t=7900

Liconas Views on John are shared by all the kool kids?

Lydia McGrew 2024-07-21 | 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:

youtu.be/dNUCCeTwCaI?si=kTGTytBoP3_CFv7m&t=3416

Getting Geisler Right

Lydia McGrew 2024-07-14 | 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:

defendinginerrancy.com/bible-solutions/Matthew_21.12-19_(cf._Mark_11.12-14,_20-24).php

Here is the debate at SES just months after Geisler's death in which Licona sprung the alleged gotcha on Geisler.

youtu.be/rLwnjx6-5dc?si=edvCHP5petU3yECG&t=3582

Here is an earlier blog post I wrote on this topic: whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2019/10/getting_dr_geisler_right.html

Here is an earlier video I did on the achronological/dyschronological distinction:

youtube.com/watch?v=n4TzGiFCeLE&t=6s

Here is a peer-reviewed journal article on the need for clarity in talking about chronology: http://jgrchj.net/volume17/JGRChJ17-3_McGrew.pdf

False Caution

Lydia McGrew 2024-07-07 | 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?

amazon.com/Historical-Matters-Matter-Faith-Postmodern/dp/1433525712

Craig Blomberg's contribution is titled "A Constructive Traditional Response to New Testament Criticism." My citing it is not intended to indicate that I agree with everything in it, though I do agree with Blomberg's harmonization on the day of the crucifixion. I also agree with his criticisms of arguments put forth against the possibility of two Temple cleansings.

One small correction: While Blomberg does address some arguments by Kenton Sparks in this essay, the bad argument that no single Gospel records two Temple cleansings is in fact made by Gerald Borchert, and Blomberg is criticizing Borchert when he discusses that claim.

3 Principles for Max Data and Contradictions

Lydia McGrew 2024-06-30 | 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.

Are apologetic sections in the resurrection stories suspicious?

Lydia McGrew 2024-06-23 | 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.

lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2024/05/gary-habermass-misunderstandings-of-c-h.html

Here is my interesting conversation with Matthew Adelstein that got me thinking more about this term "apologetic."

youtube.com/live/LCWViV-8cPw?t=713s

Arguments From Silence: The Chances and Changes of This Mortal Life

Lydia McGrew 2024-06-16 | 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.

timothymcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Argument-from-Silence-Acta-Analytica-Tim-2013.pdf

Arguments From Silence: The Randomness of Saliency

Lydia McGrew 2024-06-09 | 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.

timothymcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Argument-from-Silence-Acta-Analytica-Tim-2013.pdf

Arguments From Silence And Bad Analogies

Lydia McGrew 2024-06-02 | 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:

youtube.com/watch?v=YXlZPjFmY9E&t=74s

But in social media comments 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. He also suggested that 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:

timothymcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Argument-from-Silence-Acta-Analytica-Tim-2013.pdf

Editorial fatigue, Probably Not 6

Lydia McGrew 2024-05-26 | 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.org

Thanks to Erik Manning for splicing this video when I had to record it in two segments.

Editorial fatigue, Probably Not 5

Lydia McGrew 2024-05-19 | 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.

Editorial Fatigue, Probably Not 4

Lydia McGrew 2024-05-12 | 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:

markgoodacre.org/Q/fatigue.htm

Thumbnail courtesy of freebibleimages.org

Editorial fatigue, Probably Not 3

Lydia McGrew 2024-05-05 | 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:

markgoodacre.org/Q/fatigue.htm

I also refer to this monograph:

archive.org/details/gouldergospelsex0000good

And this book:

amazon.com/Synoptic-Problem-through-Understanding-Bible/dp/0567080560

Editorial fatigue, Probably Not 2

Lydia McGrew 2024-04-28 | 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:

markgoodacre.org/fatigue.pdf

Thumbnail courtesy of FreeBibleImages.org

Editorial Fatigue, Probably Not 1

Lydia McGrew 2024-04-21 | 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:
markgoodacre.org/fatigue.pdf

Do the Majority of Critical Scholars Acknowledge Markan Authorship?

Lydia McGrew 2024-04-14 | 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 youtube.com/watch?v=K0aFUNcF-T8&t=1924s

Licona and Pelletier add up the numbers on Markan authorship:

youtu.be/9TMY3VI-K9U?si=VsdfZI8haEI5MNb1&t=1837

Licona and Pelletier discuss numbers and scholarly opinions in Pelletier's survey on a Petrine source:

youtu.be/EbBcwb8wtVk?si=fH3_oT3s_HheA5za&t=1383

Habermas's recent book: In the video I give page numbers to Habermas.

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

Do Critical Scholars Make a Surprising Admission About John?

Lydia McGrew 2024-04-07 | 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. 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

A Max Data Easter: A maximalist approach to the appearance to James

Lydia McGrew 2024-03-31 | 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:

youtu.be/xHxl1vk4vwg?si=pd3bAPWBbrKw04c3&t=2223

Undesigned Coincidences in Secular History: Wheres Paoli?

Lydia McGrew 2024-03-24 | 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.

Undesigned Coincidences in Secular History: Druid Park Spring Water

Lydia McGrew 2024-03-17 | 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.

Undesigned Coincidences in Secular History: The prothonotary warbler

Lydia McGrew 2024-03-10 | 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 Strange Minimalist Use of Liberal Scholar Norman Perrin

Lydia McGrew 2024-03-03 | Advocates of a less "maximalist" approach to arguing for the resurrection will often cite liberal scholars who supposedly acknowledge that the disciples of Jesus had resurrection appearance experiences. This type of citation is meant to show that there exists an "appearance fact" that is acknowledged already by a majority of scholars, including these liberals, and that serves as a very helpful basis for an inference to the best explanation that Jesus really rose from the dead.

While Dr. William Lane Craig does not consider his approach to the resurrection to be a "minimal facts" approach, it is in the larger sense "minimalist," in that he argues that a strong evidentialist case can be made without defending Gospel reliability. He also uses quotes such as the one I focus on here to argue that even very liberal scholars acknowledge the resurrection appearances of Jesus.

But again and again we find that these quotations from liberal scholars mean far, far less than they appear to mean when read isolated from their context. A very striking example of this is a quotation from Norman Perrin given in Dr. Craig's presentation linked below. Dr. Craig implies that one would have to resort to extremely implausible theories such as hallucinations to explain away the "appearances" supposedly acknowledged by Perrin. But I argue in this episode that no hallucinations would be required to explain away what Perrin really means to "admit."

The quotation from Dr. Craig from Norman Perrin, which I discuss in this episode, is found here:

reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-3/s3-doctrine-of-christ/doctrine-of-christ-part-40

Perrin'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.

openlibrary.org/works/OL5920323W/The_Resurrection_according_to_Matthew_Mark_and_Luke?edition=key%3A/books/OL4902689M

Name statistics argument 14: Josephus

Lydia McGrew 2024-02-25 | 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.

Name statistics argument 13: List of the 12 as a source?

Lydia McGrew 2024-02-18 | 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