The Lydia McGrew Podcast

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.htm I also refer to this monograph: https://archive.org/details/gouldergospelsex0000good And 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.pdf Thumbnail 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=1924s Licona and Pelletier add up the numbers on Markan authorship: https://youtu.be/9TMY3VI-K9U?si=VsdfZI8haEI5MNb1&t=1837 Licona and Pelletier discuss numbers and scholarly opinions in Pelletier's survey on a Petrine source: https://youtu.be/EbBcwb8wtVk?si=fH3_oT3s_HheA5za&t=1383 Habermas'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#_ftnref7 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. 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 Nazareth Lazarus of Bethany Levi son of Alphaeus Nathanael of Cana John the Baptist James the Less Judas 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=reader2 If 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-belsen Hat-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.

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

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 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.

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."