Uploaded February 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
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."
youtube.com/watch?v=qSJCSR4MuhU
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."
youtube.com/watch?v=qSJCSR4MuhU
