The Lydia McGrew Podcast

Is consensus in Gospels scholarship really diverse?The sad fact of the matter is that there is a great deal of social pressure not to be "too conservative," and even some Christian scholars engage in subtle and not-so-subtle pressure tactics against conclusions that are deemed overly conservative. These include name-calling without engaging arguments, straw-manning harmonization, blurring crucial distinctions, and more.Often such unprofessional scholarly tactics even make it into books published by well-known presses. There is an enormous blind spot in this area in the discipline as a whole, so that often the only people who can take positions deemed "too conservative" are outsiders who are not dependent upon the discipline for their careers.What this means in practice is that scholarly consensus in this field is far from diverse.

It's strange, but it's true: Evidence that is *improbable* even given the hypothesis that it supports can provide as strong an argument as you could want in favor of that hypothesis. At the same time, such evidence, if we don't happen to have it, is resistant to being used in an argument from silence. And historical evidence fits this pattern very well. This sounds a warning: Don't be quick to model "strong evidence" for a hypothesis as evidence that is highly expected given that hypothesis. That may be inaccurate and may also unnecessarily open up the possibility of an argument from silence, if such evidence should not be found. Put on your geek hats and enjoy the probability theory!All of this applies to, among other things, the argument for Jesus' resurrection.Here is a free copy of Tim's argument from silence paper:https://timothymcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Argument-from-Silence-Acta-Analytica-Tim-2013.pdf

Here I return to a point I discussed a couple of weeks ago, here:https://youtu.be/Xs4mRIzICKwThe historical reportage model and the fact-changing literary device model give quite different probabilities to finding details in the Gospels confirmed. The literary device model says that it was part and parcel of the Gospels' genre that their authors felt licensed to change details. In fact, Dr. Licona has gone so far as to say that we see these kinds of things all the time in the Gospels. Therefore, finding these details confirmed is evidence for the historical reportage model over the literary device model.Today I revisit the orator Quintilian and discuss the claim that Quintilian is evidence that the Gospels are probably in a genre in which they felt licensed to change facts. Here is an earlier video I did on this topic, in which I quoted Quintilian:https://youtube.com/live/weDCbf7bKDYHere, cued up, is Licona comparing the "green grass" detail to Quintilian's advice and implying that it was added just to make the readers feel like they were there.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcAHjxkvT5A&t=3442sHere is the comparison of errancy and deliberate making up or changing details, with their different effects upon the estimate of reliability:https://youtube.com/live/pS9pFGV8l8wHere is the footnote from The Eye of the Beholder:"Michael Licona has suggested that specific sensory details in the Gospel narratives may be added (apparently with or without factual justification) to make the reader feel like he is present in the scene, citing Quintilian as giving permission to historians to do so. “Do We Have Evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection: Mike Licona Responds,” S. J. Thomason, Christian-Apologist.com, February 2, 2019, minute 57:22, https://youtu.be/qcAHjxkvT5A?t=3442. But Quintilian is discussing high-flown rhetorical embellishment in a speech by an orator in order to excite emotion or win a case. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 4.2.63-64, 8.3.61-71. He envisages either open imagination in painting a lush scene (“I seem to see,” etc.) or outright deception in an attempt to sway the judge to one’s side--an activity of unscrupulous lawyers both past and present. Nothing could be further from either the genre or the style of John’s Gospel, with its sober narration and its casual touches of realism, than what Quintilian envisages. Licona also misses an undesigned coincidence in this context, suggesting that the reference to the green grass at the feeding of the five thousand found in Mark (he accidentally says that it is found in John) may be such a rhetorical flourish. But in fact the “green grass” reference found in Mark dovetails nicely with John’s mention that the Passover was near."

Here I'm anticipating a possible criticism--namely, that no matter what the details are like or even could be like in the Gospels, I'm always going to say that they indicate truthfulness or at least don't constitute any evidence worth speaking of against truthfulness. I give three categories (and I stipulate these aren't exhaustive) of kinds of details that *could be* in a document, but aren't found in the Gospels, that would raise suspicion that the document is at least partially fictionalized. The categories are lavishness, consistency, and infodump. Watch to find out what I mean by each of those and to hear examples.Here is my longer video on the Aethiopika by Heliodorus:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esp1dPJqZ4sHere is my video on arguments from silence:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0VWCdw4epk&t=4sHere is my video on Gospel details in the Goldilocks zone in which I read an example of consistency in narrative detail in fiction:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW1Z_pFPr7c&t=376sLet me know if I missed a link to something that I promised to link.

Today I'm taking a hypothetical police case in which a mother and daughter testify. Since they live together and haven't been kept separate before they testify, it seems like their testimony can't possibly be regarded as independent, right? And that lessens the force of their two testimonies for what they agree on, right? I mean, c'mon. They've got to be influencing one another.Here I illustrate the fact that independence is not a flat, simple thing. Dependence in the form of an undesigned coincidence can even be *good* for the confirmation of some H, because H unifies the testimonies better than ~H. The details can show us that the witnesses don't seem to be even unconsciously influencing each other's memories. All of that can be understood in terms of the mysterious case of Mr. Jones.If you want to get into more geeky details, here's a paper of mine on the value of varied evidence:https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ergo/12405314.0003.010?view=text;rgn=main

Anybody who is trying to study the Gospels honestly is trying to get a good model of what they are like. Those who think that the Gospel authors were writing in a genre in which they were licensed to change and fabricate even details are making non-deductive arguments for their own model. (And it's disturbingly misleading to say that these claims are restricted to just details, but that's not what I'm addressing in this video, except in passing.)So when I argued in The Mirror or the Mask that finding undesigned coincidences is in tension with the view that the authors considered themselves licensed to change facts, I was making a *probabilistic* point about model comparison and explanatory inference. This seems like a good time to review that point.Interested in more? Go here to buy The Mirror or the Mask:https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1

It's important to remember that unexplained allusions are not just realistic details. In fact, they are awkward and puzzling and in that sense "unliterary." I illustrate this by reviewing the "dispute about purification" allusion in John 3 and then reading a passage from one of the widows of Civitella that contains an unexplained allusion.

Unnecessary details provide a commonsense clue to truthfulness. See how this works in the testimony of a witness to the horrific Civitella massacre, which took place in 1944. We also find unnecessary details in the Gospels. "The Witnesses of Civitella," translation of testimonies, found here:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1535685X.1991.11015699Thanks to Luuk Van de Weghe for drawing my attention to this article in his book _Living Footnotes in the Gospel of Luke. https://www.amazon.com/Living-Footnotes-Gospel-Luke-Eyewitness/dp/B0CH23XGNWThumbnail, Civitella photo creative commons license: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Civitella_in_Val_di_Chiana,_piazza_principale.jpg

Two years ago I discussed Dirk Bogarde's visit to Bergen Belsen, his biographer's doubts, and the unexpected confirmation from an independent source. Go here to watch that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW1nLyn70ZE&t=922sI've been revisiting that topic recently in my research, and I was struck by an unnecessary detail in one of Bogarde's interviews that all by itself is noteworthy evidence for the credibility of his story. Discussing it gives me an opportunity to talk a bit more about what unnecessary details really are.Here is Bogarde's interview:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QaNCbig82Q

Have you heard this critique of the "green grass" undesigned coincidence between John 6:4 and Mark 6:39? Here's how it goes: "The green grass around the time of Passover doesn't help to confirm the reliability of John and Mark, because there are times other than Passover when the grass is green in the Holy Land." But we aren't saying that the green grass *predicts* that it's happening around Passover, only that "green grass" and "around Passover" are sufficiently positively relevant to each other that the two accounts confirm each other. Since there is not a large quantity of green grass in Galilee for most of the year, the point stands.Here is an Israeli, with certainly no axe to grind to confirm the Christian Gospels, talking about the "few precious months" of greenness in the Holy Land.Come to think of it, this is a sort of undesigned coincidence in and of itself!https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/a-hebrew-lesson-and-how-the-grass-is-sometimes-greener/

Here Than and I talk about two pieces of mathematical malpractice in Blais and Paulogia's video on Bayes' Theorem and the resurrection. Blais tried to give the impression that Than made a mistake by his in-principle argument that testimony can (in principle) overcome even a very low prior. Blais implied that Than somehow neglected to admit that this "only holds when" the number of testimonies "approaches infinity." This is total baloney. The use of "goes to infinity" in what Than gives in his blog post is just a way of saying that there is no upper bound on how strong the evidence can get (in principle). It's a theorem. It is completely incorrect to say that somehow this "only holds if the number of testimonies approaches infinity." Second, Blais used a completely inapplicable type of statistical context to say that one would have to have at least 30 independent testimonies in order for Than's point to "kick in." Part of the reason that Than and I did these six hours of video together is because these sorts of misleading statements by someone with Blais's credentials can throw people. Therefore, they need to be addressed. Here once again is Than's blog post:https://www.inspiringphilosophy.com/blog/paulogiaits-time-to-stopHere is the Blais/Paulogia video that we are responding to:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6QenX4Oo78Professional articles by Lydia McGrew on dependence and independence. “Evidential Diversity and the Negation of H: A Probabilistic Account of the Value of Varied Evidence,” Ergo 3:10 (2016), available here: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ergo/12405314.0003.010?view=text;rgn=main“Bayes Factors All the Way: Toward a New View of Coherence and Truth,” Theoria (2016) 82:329-350. DOI 10.1111/theo.12102. Accepted manuscript version archived here. https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/BayesFactorsAlltheWayaccepted.pdf“Accounting for Dependence: Relative Consilience as a Correction Factor in Cumulative Case Arguments,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 95:3 (2017), 560-572, DOI 10.1080/00048402.2016.1219753. Accepted manuscript version archived here. https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/Correctionfactoraccepted.pdf“The World, the Deceiver, and The Face in the Frost,” Quaestiones Disputatae, 7:2 (2017, volume appeared in print fall, 2018), 112-146. Draft version archived by permission here. https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Problemoftheexternalworldrevised.pdf“Confirmation, Coincidence, and Contradiction,” Synthese, 2021, Online First 3/14/21, DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03102-x. Author’s Accepted Manuscript archived by permission here. https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/ConfirmationCoincidenceandContradiction.pdfThumbnail "Malpractice" by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images, used under Creative CommonsThanks to  @TestifyApologetics  for helping to get these videos with Than edited and up.

Than and I get into the much-vaunted issue of the prior improbability of miracles. Is it really true that a miracle has such a low prior probability that no testimony can overcome it? Is it really true that one would have to throw out one's knowledge of science and the laws of nature in order to believe that a miracle occurred? Is it true that one would have to be able, on theism alone, to predict that God would perform a particular miracle in order to have reason to believe that a miracle occurred?We refute these misconceptions using detailed discussions of probability and the nature of miracles. Miracles, to be signs, need to have a backdrop of non-miraculous events so that they stand out. Than is even more inclined than I am to think that modern miracles occur, and yet that doesn't stop us from seeing the probabilistic modeling in a similar way.Here again is Than's blog post on these topics:https://www.inspiringphilosophy.com/blog/paulogiaits-time-to-stopHere is the Blais/Paulogia video that we are responding to:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6QenX4Oo78Here is just one of my articles on why we don't have to predict that God will perform a miracle in order to conclude that he has done so in the light of specific evidence:https://jat-ojs-baylor.tdl.org/jat/index.php/jat/article/view/201

Than and I continue our detailed rebuttal to Brian Blais and Paulogia, who claim to be telling us what Bayes' Theorem says about the resurrection.One topic is a set of truly dreadful items of evidence against the resurrection via arguments from silence. Here is Timothy McGrew's published paper on arguments from silence:https://timothymcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Argument-from-Silence-Acta-Analytica-Tim-2013.pdfHere again is Than's blog post where he says that he isn't right there defending the historical reportage model. (In the video he expresses understandable frustration that those we're responding to don't seem to notice that he said this.)https://www.inspiringphilosophy.com/blog/paulogiaits-time-to-stopThe other topic today is the habit of treating testimony as a specially disadvantaged form of evidence. If you're interested in the topic of Bayesian coherentism and its use of testimony as a model, check out my article "Why Bayesian Coherentism Isn't Coherentism":https://eujap.uniri.hr/casopis/content/volume_11/11_1_3.pdfAlso "Bayes Factors All the Way":https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/BayesFactorsAlltheWayaccepted.pdfMy continued thanks to  @TestifyApologetics  for help with posting this series.

Happy Easter, 2026!Here Than and I discuss three alternative "explanations" for the resurrection evidence which Brian Blais claims are just as good as the actual resurrection for explaining the data. These are Kamil Gregor's pareidolia suggestion:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FWyZRnI4e8James Fodor's RHBS theory:https://jamesfodor.com/2017/04/02/the-resurrection-of-jesus-explaining-the-historical-facts-debate-notes/And Paulogia's minimal witnesses theory:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpdBEstCHhmU6oteDUNXsyXAQsJFYe2TKWe explain why they are definitely not just as good.Here is my post on a maximalist use of the conversion of Paul, which we mention:https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2022/09/a-maximalist-use-of-conversion-of-paul.htmlHere is a free-to-read version of my published paper on ad hocness:https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/AdhocarticleforActaAnalytica.pdfHere again is my most recent post on dependence, independence, and the resurrection, where I discuss these issues of greater relative unity given the resurrection than given its negation:https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-resurrection-independence-and.htmlMy continued thanks to  @TestifyApologetics  for help with this video series.

Than and I continue to discuss objections to the resurrection case. Here we talk about the technical question of whether Tim and I overestimated the Bayes factor (a mathematical expression meant to represent the force of the evidence) in favor of the resurrection in our 2009 resurrection article in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. That article, with a few updates, is available here:https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Resurrectionarticlesinglefile.pdfHere is my recent detailed blog post on these issues:https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-resurrection-independence-and.htmlThan and I decided to do this in response to this skeptical video which claims to tell you what Bayes's Theorem really says about the resurrection:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6QenX4Oo78Here is my playlist on Gospel development theories that Than mentions:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn1q1sDUj2GF0W3VYvtfLTn-Here is where Brian Blais tries to argue that more testimony for a miracle is worse!https://bblais.github.io/posts/2022/Jun/14/sometimes-more-testimony-is-worse/Thanks to  @TestifyApologetics  for help with splitting up and uploading these videos.

The first techy topic here: Why you need to use a partition when talking about Bayesian arguments in history.Here is an earlier video I did on this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7umQEVtbx4&t=2sThe next techy topic here: Independence! This is a big and important topic for the resurrection case. In this video I mention Brian Blais's attempt to model independence to critique Tim's and my resurrection article. In this video I also do a quick tutorial on the topic of relative independence.Here is my critique of Blais on independence. As it happens, because the publication of these videos with Than was delayed, I published this blog post sooner rather than waiting until the video went up. The post is complete in itself:https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2025/12/brian-blaiss-attempt-to-model-dependence.htmlHere is a long blog post in which I discuss these same topics--independence, dependence, and the resurrection. https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-resurrection-independence-and.htmlNote that, far from being a "simplistic apologist," as Blais implies, I actually have well over a decade of blind peer-reviewed professional publications on the probability theory of independence. Here are several of the most relevant articles with links where you can access them if interested:Professional articles by Lydia McGrew on dependence and independence. One of my major reasons for being interested in this topic was its application to what's known as the problem of the external world.“Evidential Diversity and the Negation of H: A Probabilistic Account of the Value of Varied Evidence,” Ergo 3:10 (2016), available here: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ergo/12405314.0003.010?view=text;rgn=main“Bayes Factors All the Way: Toward a New View of Coherence and Truth,” Theoria (2016) 82:329-350. DOI 10.1111/theo.12102. Accepted manuscript version archived here. https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/BayesFactorsAlltheWayaccepted.pdf“Accounting for Dependence: Relative Consilience as a Correction Factor in Cumulative Case Arguments,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 95:3 (2017), 560-572, DOI 10.1080/00048402.2016.1219753. Accepted manuscript version archived here. https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/Correctionfactoraccepted.pdf“The World, the Deceiver, and The Face in the Frost,” Quaestiones Disputatae, 7:2 (2017, volume appeared in print fall, 2018), 112-146. Draft version archived by permission here. https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Problemoftheexternalworldrevised.pdf“Confirmation, Coincidence, and Contradiction,” Synthese, 2021, Online First 3/14/21, DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03102-x. Author’s Accepted Manuscript archived by permission here. https://lydiamcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/ConfirmationCoincidenceandContradiction.pdfThere will be more independence links concerning the resurrection in the next video.Thanks again to Erik  @TestifyApologetics  for his help with these videos.

The topic here: The Bible tells me so jingleThan and I discuss the abuse of the jingle "The Bible Tells Me So" by skeptics to trash the legitimate historical use of material in the canonical documents.Why is it wrong to throw out data because we have it only in a single source/Here is Timothy McGrew's article, published in Acta Analytica, on the argument from silence in history:https://timothymcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Argument-from-Silence-Acta-Analytica-Tim-2013.pdfHere is my playlist on this channel on arguments from silence:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn3uou7FjTa5cdHFkg3Px7B4Thanks again to Erik Manning ( ⁨@TestifyApologetics⁩ ) for his help on this series.

Than Christopoulos and I continue discussing the resurrection, the max data case, and skepticism. In this video our topic is the fact that Brian Blais and Paulogia simply dismissed all the evidence for the historical reportage model of the Gospels despite its relevance to the resurrection.Here is their video which we're responding to:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6QenX4Oo78Here is a long video on Inspiring Philosophy about Gospel reliability. Note: I (Lydia) *have not* watched this video and *am not* saying that I endorse everything in it (because I haven't watched it). I'm including it for reference purposes because Than mentions it several times:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aacs0_E7QdwMy own work on Gospel reliability is contained in four books, many lectures, and in a huge number of videos on this channel. Here is my author page on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/stores/Lydia-McGrew/author/B073V1ZP1Y?ref=ap_rdr&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=72037756-4169-401f-aa11-b167b0794c46Thanks again to Erik Manning ( @TestifyApologetics  ) for his help on this series.

Several months ago Than Christopoulos and I got together to record a *lot* of material on Bayes's Theorem and the Resurrection.Our intention was to respond to this video by Youtube skeptic Paulogia and physicist/statistician Brian Blais, which claims to tell you what Bayes *really* says about the resurrection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6QenX4Oo78The topic we discuss here: How are mundane claims related to miracle claims in the reportage model?Here is the blog post by Than that he refers to:https://www.inspiringphilosophy.com/blog/paulogiaits-time-to-stopHere is my CV:https://lydiamcgrew.com/curriculum-vitae/Here is my older video on achronological and dyschronological narration, a topic we mention:https://youtu.be/n4TzGiFCeLEMy deep thanks to Than for doing all of this recording with me and letting me publish it on this channel. And my deep thanks to Erik of  @TestifyApologetics  for getting the material ready and uploaded.

In this second-to-last video in my series on the authorship of the 4th Gospel, I discuss a collection of forceless arguments from such things as John's emphasis on Jerusalem, not having "enough" unique stories about Galilee, and not mentioning some people who aren't mentioned in the Synoptics. The argument from not "enough" Galilee stories involves not even accurately counting all the Galilee stories that there are. It's also typical of these arguments that they don't spell out all their premises. Once one actually tries to fill out just *how* these are supposed to support authorship by a non-itinerant Jerusalem resident who wasn't a member of the 12, it becomes clear that they don't have evidential force.

In this last video of the series I turn to the question, "Who was at the Last Supper?" If only the twelve were present with Jesus, and if the author of the Gospel is the Beloved Disciple and was named "John," then he must be John bar Zebedee.Commentators have long emphasized the fact that it's a natural interpretation to take from the Synoptic Gospels that only the twelve were present. "Other John" theorists reject this as a mere argument from silence--ironic, since their own arguments often contain very weak arguments from silence. I give this argument that only the twelve were present a somewhat different emphasis, which strengthens it and removes it decisively from the category of an argument from silence.

Here I discuss a second much-used line of argument that the author of the 4th Gospel can't be John the son of Zebedee--namely, that Mark (and the other Synoptics) don't mention his presence at the cross. Richard Bauckham admits that this argument is used to claim that the entire idea that the Beloved Disciple was present at the cross is fictional. He rightly rejects that conclusion but tries to wield this same argument for his own conclusion that the Beloved Disciple was not the son of Zebedee and that this explains why Mark doesn't mention his presence following Jesus from Gethsemane or at the cross. I argue that this entire line of argument is wrong and that, if it worked, it would work just as "well" against Bauckham's own position.

Could the son of a Galilean fisherman have been "known to the high priest"? Sure, why not?!Here I argue against what is taken to be one of the strongest arguments against authorship of the Fourth Gospel by John the son of Zebedee. I argue that the argument is a combination of over-reading the meaning of the word "known" and a priori history about who couldn't possibly have been even acquainted with whom.Small correction to my verbal notes in the vid: While recording I thought this was 7th in the series, but as you see, it's actually 8th. Which means the projection now is for 11 parts, not ten.

According to Richard Bauckham, the church father Irenaeus of Lyon believed that the author of the fourth Gospel was the Beloved Disciple but was not the son of Zebedee. Yet in his urgency to find some way to interpret Irenaeus's works as compatible with this view, Bauckham has robbed Irenaeus of terms that would otherwise make it clear whom he is speaking of. Bauckham says that you needed special "Ephesian" knowledge to recognize that these phrases and terms ("the disciple of our Lord" and "the apostle") don't refer to the son of Zebedee. This would mean that, when Irenaeus writes to Victor of Rome, who Bauckham admits didn't have this special Ephesian knowledge, Irenaeus is radically unclear when he refers to the "John" who was known to Polycarp. Yet Bauckham doesn't seem to realize this.Check out _The Eye of the Beholder_ for more on this topic. https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151

Does Irenaeus maintain a distinction between John the evangelist who wrote the fourth Gospel and John the son of Zebedee who led the early church with Peter in the first chapters of Acts? I argue that there is no reason at all to think that he distinguishes these and some reason to think that he is treating them as the same person. I answer Richard Bauckham's claims on this point and show that Bauckham is reading his own views into Irenaeus in a circular fashion. In fact, he almost comes out and admits to doing so!

Does the Muratorian Canon imply that John, the author of the Fourth Gospel, was not a member of the twelve? Here I reply to Richard Bauckham's strained argument to that effect.I briefly mention the "orthodox Johannophobia" thesis at the beginning of the video. Here is Charles Hill's (unfortuately expensive) book that addresses it: https://www.amazon.com/Johannine-Corpus-Early-Church/dp/0199264589I also discuss it and much more in The Eye of the Beholder: https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151Now available from Logos Bible Software:https://www.logos.com/product/416637/the-eye-of-the-beholder-the-gospel-of-john-as-historical-reportage

Did Irenaeus, or a mid-second-century compiler, invent the authorship of John to help oppose Gnosticism? Nope. Turns out, the debate with the Gnostics was over the interpretation of John, not its authorship.

Everybody who's interested in the authorship of John would like to know what the early church father Papias said about the subject. But alas! We have no unquestionable statement from Papias about who wrote John. Though probably he did say something explicit, this is another illustration of the way that the chances and changes of this mortal life leave us missing a lot of things written in the ancient world. They just don't survive to our time.Here I survey the meager evidence on the question, "What did Papias say about the authorship of the 4th Gospel?" I give one ancient piece of evidence that is pretty direct--that it, it claims to be telling us what Papias actually said. But its reliability is genuinely questionable. And I give two indirect arguments, one (reasonable, but IMO not very strong) from Charles Hill and one (so weak as to be valueless) from Richard Bauckham.

A blessed Christmas to all my listeners and viewers. Here we pause in discussing authorship for a Christmas reflection: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. John's Gospel emphasizes truth because literal truth is, in John's view, inherently bound up with the Incarnation of God. The true anachronism is not holding John to this literal, historical standard. The real anachronism is condescendingly imposing upon John a postmodern, fuzzy concept of truth.For more on the historicity of Christmas, see this playlist:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn3za22QzE28xKqhTq5KvCB2

Here I talk about the earliest evidence we have about the authorship of John. as it happens, the author isn't named as "John" in this evidence, but it is still very valuable. It's very important to remember that "the earliest evidence that has come down to us" isn't "the earliest evidence that ever existed." Many ancient writings have simply been lost. See here for a discussion of Bart Ehrman's misuse of the term "anonymous." https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2015/07/on-bart-ehrman-and-authorship-of-gospels.htmlIf you want to hear me read my favorite Richard Bauckham quotation, which I allude to in the video, you can get that here:https://youtu.be/Ineqa_QL9aw?si=8ufEXQtIH4zDdq40&t=1091The Eye of the Beholder is available on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151Or Logos users can get it here:https://www.logos.com/product/416637/the-eye-of-the-beholder-the-gospel-of-john-as-historical-reportage

Today begins a series on the authorship of the Fourth Gospel. In this introduction I explore what one might mean by authorship and what assumptions you shouldn't make when hearing that someone affirms traditional authorship. And just how important is authorship, anyway?Get more content on the Gospel of John in _The Eye of the Beholder: The Gospel of John as Historical Reportage_:https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151The blog post on independence and the resurrection, which I mention at the beginning, is here:https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-resurrection-independence-and.htmlThumbnail: _Saint John and the Eagle_ by Vladamir Borovikovsky

Recently Dr. William Lane Craig has claimed that what we "should be talking about" is how great it is that Dale Allison acknowledges "the appearance to the twelve" and Allison's arguments for it. Craig earnestly urges that we should accentuate the positive when it comes to Allison, emphasizing how very impressive it is that a person who thinks the Gospels have many legendary embellishment nonetheless acknowledges some of the central "facts" that Craig himself uses to argue for Jesus' bodily resurrection.https://content.blubrry.com/reasonable_faith/RF_PODCAST_Dale_Alliosn_on_Resurrection_2025.mp3?fbclid=IwY2xjawNnXMNleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFIdVphNUpRMHBXc3Nyd0J4AR6D--9gESoLXZeZ7Z4bfOIXHycoKgFFeUjw950BET6_-XgD-by2FuQadrftiA_aem_9VaaLpGJj1s-fHA0mNoXzAIn this video I take up Dr. Craig's suggestion that we be talking about Allison's arguments, but I take it in a very different direction from what Craig suggests. I argue that what Allison acknowledges as "the appearance to the twelve" is by his own conception so completely different from what Craig uses as a central fact that, if Allison were right, it would actually be evidence *against* Jesus' bodily resurrection, not for it. I also point out that his arguments show this same problem, to the point that it is just wrong to imply that he is admitting something against his own bias or that his acknowledgement points to the actual strength of the case. In fact, Craig's attempt to insist that we should all, like him, be deeply excited about Allison's acknowledgement points to the weaknesses of his own broadly minimalist approach (not just of a more specific "minimal facts" approach, which he disclaims).I have said more about my disagreements with Craig's "accentuate the positive" advice in this blog post: https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2025/10/on-maximalism-and-dale-allison-david.htmlThumbnail, Jesus Visits the Disciples in Locked Room Without Thomas © Drawn to the Word/Paul Oman Fine Art. All Rights Reserved.www.paulomanfineart.comUsed with permission

Dale Allison admits that there are apparition accounts in which not everybody present can see the apparition. (Ya think?) But despite his insinuation that this has some connection with the "recurrent notice of doubt" in the Gospel accounts, this is actually a strong *dissimilarity* with the Gospel accounts, in which it is strongly implied that everybody present can see and interact with Jesus. And in Acts 1 we're told definitely that the earliest body of believers knew who had and hadn't seen Jesus after his resurrection and that they were thereby able to pick out Matthias and Joseph Barsabbas as candidates to replace Judas Iscariot and testify boldly to the resurrection.Thumbnail: Banquo's ghost at the feast as portrayed by the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Joy Strotz.

How do bereavement apparitions (assuming that they occur) typically end? *Not* with something like the ascension scene as described in Acts 1. Here again I'm investigating whether the bereavement apparition literature, even taken on its own terms, provides a good fit for what is *claimed* in the canonical Gospels and Acts. Dale Allison frequently implies or even states that there are significant parallels between these, but we see again and again that it isn't true. In this video I even describe a truly jaw-dropping eisegesis from Allison of Matthew 28:18.Thumbnail _The Ascension_, John Singleton Copley, public domain

Dale Allison asserts that reports of tangible apparitions create "real ambiguity" concerning the evidential force of the Gospel stories about Jesus being tangible and eating. Is this true?I argue that it isn't. Even aside from the quite uncritical approach that Allison takes to modern apparition reports, the reports as he recounts them are evidentially far less clear than the Gospel stories. While some (apparently only one-person) reports do tell of polymodal experiences, including touch, many others recount vision without hearing, hearing without vision, mere sense of presence, appearing only briefly and then disappearing while doing nothing else, etc. Nor do they correspond to the reports of *group* appearances of Jesus that are strongly polymodal, tangible, and interactive. All of this makes a major difference to probabilities.But as usual, Allison takes the unfalsifiable approach of dismissing details of the Gospel stories as not really being part of the original evidence at all in direct proportion to the extent to which they falsify an apparition theory!

In his book on the resurrection, Dale Allison claims that, in the canonical Gospels, the post-Easter Jesus does not approach but just appears suddenly at once. He also claims that he cannot be followed. But there are specific counterexamples to both claims. If you're going to claim that there are significant parallels between your favored non-bodily explanation and the canonical Gospels, you need to be more careful to remember what's in the canonical Gospels!Image courtesy of freebibleimages.org

I'm continuing to go through telling admissions that Dale Allison makes (without realizing that they are telling admissions) about the apparition literature. These show that there is no significant similarity to what we find in the Gospel accounts, even though Allison suggests that there is. Yes, he also thinks the Gospel accounts are embellished...at just the points where they don't resemble apparitions!Thumbnail: Banquo's ghost at the feast as portrayed by the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Joy Strotz.

Dale Allison says that bereavement apparitions (sometimes called grief hallucinations) provide useful and enlightening "parallels" to the content of the Gospel stories when they describe Jesus' appearances to the disciples. Grief hallucinations are often a skeptical go-to theory to account for the beginning of Christianity. Allison himself uses these alleged parallels to support his own version of an objective vision theory--Jesus really appeared to the disciples, but in a non-bodily form.Even if we don't delve deeply into Allison's rather uncritical survey of literature on apparitions, based on his own admissions, are there really significant parallels?In this series I will show that Allison makes very telling admissions that show that such apparitions (even if they are objectively real) do not constitute a good parallel for the data in the Gospel accounts. Of course, neither Allison nor more skeptical scholars think that the disciples actually experienced what is found in the Gospels. But that is where the bait and switch comes in: Allison sometimes explicitly claims and often strongly implies that the apparition literature provides useful parallels for *what we actually find in the Gospel stories*. Then, when it becomes clear that it doesn't really fit at all well, he switches to dismissing the parts of those stories that don't fit his theory as being made up later.Today we'll see this dynamic at work concerning Allison's telling admission (which he doesn't recognize as a telling admission) that apparitions often speak *only briefly*.

A skeptic recently sent me a link to this article about an ancient novel, the Aithiopika (or Aaethiopica) of Heliodoros.https://www.jstor.org/stable/25010772?read-now=1&seq=22#page_scan_tab_contents(If you are interested in the article, you can log into Jstor using your Google account and read it for free.)Here is a copy of the novel in translation (along with some other works). Find "THE ADVENTURES OF THEAGENES AND CHARICLEA" to read it. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55406/55406-h/55406-h.htm#HELIODORUSDoes the "realism" of this novel serve as a counterexample to claims I have made about the Gospels and Acts, the non-existence of what I have called "hyper-realistic" novels at the time of the Gospels, and the reportage genre? In a word, no. Watch to learn more! (And if I say so myself, for such a dusty subject, the summaries and readings I include later in the video of parts of the Athiopika are rather amusing!)

In this final (for now) video on the question of what skeptical and moderate scholars grant about the resurrection appearances, I argue that the majority of skeptical scholars probably do not even grant a group vision-like appearance experience with some degree of intersubjective content. I discuss how I think Dr. Habermas got, and gave, the impression that at least a lot of skeptical scholars do grant at least that much.Here is the livestream that I cite repeatedly in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YSY_hcIB14&t=349sI had intended to read a quotation from E. P. Sanders in the video but forgot to put it in my notes. There are a number of such quotations in which Sanders expresses complete agnosticism about who was present and what the disciples saw. I have more in my notes. Here is just one:"If we are also unable, as I am, to think that early Christianity was deliberately based on fraud, we must be content with the simplest, vaguest sort of conclusion: something happened to the followers of Jesus, but we do not know what it was.”When someone emphasizes strongly that he's pushing for only the "simplest, vaguest sort of conclusion" that "something happened to the followers of Jesus, but we do not know what it was," I think we should believe him. Sanders also says, "We are unable to find a 'bedrock' description or a fundamental list of appearances.” "But Did It Happen?" _The Spectator_, April 6, 1996, pp. 12ffhttps://archive.spectator.co.uk/page/6th-april-1996/12It looks like only a very small number of scholars one could with any plausibility designate as "skeptical" grant even some kind of group experience. I also implied but want to stress even more: For Ludemann, Goulder, and Vermes, it is difficult to assess what degree of intersubjectivity they actually agree to and whether this meets Licona's definition of a group appearance experience. Those I've designated as "moderates," most or all of whom consider themselves actually to *believe* in some kind of supernatural or paranormal resurrection of Jesus (which is why they shouldn't be called "skeptics") but who make heavy use of critical methodology on the Gospels (which is why I call them "moderates" rather than just "Christians" or "conservatives") do accept some kind of group appearance, but not the kind in the Gospels.What effect would these facts about scholarship have on our ability to make a good argument for Jesus' resurrection *if* we think of what is granted in this way as a representation of what can be argued for "as historians"? Thumbnail, Jesus Visits the Disciples in Locked Room Without Thomas © Drawn to the Word/Paul Oman Fine Art. All Rights Reserved.www.paulomanfineart.comUsed with permission

Do the vast majority, or virtually all, scholars across the critical spectrum grant appearances of Jesus to his disciples *that seeemed to them like what is told in the Gospels*? Emphatically not. When skeptical and even moderate scholars grant some kind of group appearance or other, they absolutely do not grant that it seemed to them like Jesus was eating with them as a group, having long conversations, and so forth. Not even that *phenomenology* of the experiences. (Yes, of course, if they're skeptics they don't agree that that really happened, but this denial goes farther than that.)Yet in a popular article in 2018, Dr. Habermas very strongly implied that virtually all scholars agree that the disciples had experiences as if Jesus was "having conversations with friends just like any of us might do" and that this was what convinced them that Jesus was risen.https://stream.org/surprising-scholarly-agreement-facts-support-jesus-resurrection/No wonder people get confused about how far the minimal facts argument can take us.Next time I'll talk about who does and doesn't grant even a vision-like or non-physical-like type of group experience, and spoiler--that doesn't seem to include a majority of skeptical scholars, either.

Dr. Habermas has astonishingly now claimed that he never gave any definition of "the vast majority of scholars" and that, except for the empty tomb (which he emphasizes is not a minimal fact anyway) he never made any head count of how many scholars affirm a proposition. Here is a blog post I did on this issue recently, with links.https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2025/08/habermas-now-says-that-he-never-made.htmlIn this video I discuss this same topic, what we can say with confidence, and what may be the explanation. It's clearly false that Dr. Habermas never made such claims. He definitely did. That can be documented. But perhaps he did not, in fact, make rigorous head counts. It's especially noteworthy that Volume 3 of his magnum opus, which is supposedly all about scholarly views, explicitly says that it does not document head counts. What, then, might have led to his implications, over decades, that he did so?Those using the minimal facts argument for the resurrection need to face this issue, which affects the argument even taken on its own terms.

In this final video in the series I discuss the use of fudge factors. These are ad hoc changes in a hypothesis of unstated symbolism that occur while the theorist still states that the resemblance between the numbers, events, passages, etc., is just too much for coincidence and hence favors some sort of intentional but unstated symbolism by the author.I discuss two places where people have overtly used such fudge factors.At the end I make a comparison to the claim that the two Temple cleansings in John and the Synoptics are just *too similar* to each other to be two different events, even though they are just generally similar. Enjoy!Thumbnail image fudge licensed under creative commons, copied from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudge#/media/File:Vegan_Chocolate_Fudge.jpg

We're talking about the "Gilbert and Sullivan" problem for dreaming up far-fetched symbolic meanings for narrated Gospel details. "If everybody's somebody, then no one's anybody." This week we see the "it's too easy" objection by considering this: If you can use "the sevenfold gift of the spirit plus the ten commandments, and then take the triangular number of that" as an unstated symbolic meaning of the 153 fish in John 21, you could dream up something just as "good" (that is, just as far-fetched and silly) if the number were something else.This is another way to see that using our creativity to come up with unstated symbolic meanings is a bad method.

What do I mean by saying that it's too easy to come up with theories of unstated symbolism in the details of the Gospels? And why does the fact that it's too easy create a problem for those theories?A song from an operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan says, "If everybody's somebody, then no one's anybody." If you're willing to go far enough to come up with an unstated symbolism theory for the details of the Gospels (such as the view that John is symbolizing some particular theological idea by dyschronologically moving the Temple cleansing), then there is virtually no limit to the additional theories you can come up with. The choice among them is arbitrary. And that's a Gilbert and Sullivan problem.Thumbnail by Studio Ellis & Walery:[1] Alfred Ellis (1854-1930)[2] & Walery (Stanislas Julian, Count Ostrorog, either senior (1830 - 1890) or junior (1863 - 1935).)[3] - Scanned from the 1914 edition of François Cellier & Cunningham Bridgeman's Gilbert and Sullivan and Their Operas., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3987877

I return here to a topic that I think is important, though I'm taking an unpopular position: I think that there is probabilistic tension between the occurrence of *unstated* symbolic or allusive meanings in the details of the Gospels' narratives. This does not mean that it is *strictly impossible* that a detail could be both historical and intended by the author to have an unstated symbolic meaning. I just think it's unlikely. I think there is a pretty good reason why skeptics (and for that matter some Christians) try to use claims that the author put something in as an allusion to the Old Testament (e.g., the claim that Matthew put in the slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem to allude to the infancy of Moses) as an argument against the historicity of that incident or detail. And I think we should hesitate before dismissing such claims merely by saying, "That doesn't necessarily mean it's not historical." No, it doesn't *necessarily* mean that, but there is some tension nonetheless.In this video I explore this tension in terms of genre. If the Gospels' genre is, as I think we have ample evidence that it is, memoir reportage coming from people very close to the facts, whose primary purpose was testimonial, then this is some evidence against unstated symbolic meanings or unstated Old Testament allusions in the events and details of the narratives. In fact, the Gospel authors aren't subtle, because they aren't worrying about making a work of Art with a capital A. If they want to tell you that something fulfills prophecy, they don't hesitate just to come right out and tell you that, so you don't miss it.Here I use some references to works of fiction, including Chaim Potok's excellent novel _The Chosen_, to make these points. Enjoy!

In this last video in this series about Dr. Habermas's misinterpretations of liberal scholars, I discuss what I call "pseudo-updating" of references to Dale Allison, apropos of the conversion of James. Allison apparently changed his mind after he wrote in 1985 accepting the idea that Jesus' brother James was converted by a post-resurrecion appearance. In both 2005 and 2021 Allison expressed great doubt about that proposition, thinking it at least as likely that James became a follower of Jesus first and only after that had some sort of resurrection experience.Habermas triumphantly quotes Allison's now-outdated statement from 1985, footnotes both it *and Allison's more recent writings on the same topic*, but neglects to tell readers that these later references are to pages in which Allison contradicts what he said in 1985!If you are interested in other instances of serious misinterpretation of scholars in Habermas's work, see this series on C.H. Dodd:https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2024/05/gary-habermass-misunderstandings-of-c-h.htmlSee also this post on a truly egregious misinterpretation of David Wenham, in which Habermas quotes half of a sentence by Wenham, purports to summarize Wenham in the rest of the sentence, but summarizes him wildly inaccurately. (Wenham says that Paul may have taken his Damascus Road appearance to have been more physical than his own other visions of Jesus at other times in his life, which he does not characterize as resurrection appearances. Habermas summarizes this as Wenham saying that Paul might have thought that his own Damascus Road appearance was more physical than other resurrection appearances!)https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2025/07/another-egregious-instance-of.html

Bart Ehrman has insisted that he never thought and never said that Paul went to Jerusalem to interview Peter or that Peter gave Paul eyewitness testimony about Peter's resurrection experience. That's very likely true. Ehrman seems to have a fair complaint against Habermas for over-claiming on those points, and such over-optimistic interpretation is only too typical of Habermas, as we've already seen in this series.But that's only part of the story. In fairness to Habermas, I have to say that Bart Ehrman is retconning what he said in his book _Did Jesus Exist?_ about "all" (Ehrman's words) of the traditions that Paul explicitly says he "received." This would include the first verses of I Corinthians 15. Ehrman now emphatically denies that he ever said or ever though that that list of resurrection appearances was extant prior to Paul's conversion. He says that he only conceded that these traditions were in existence prior to Paul's writing his epistles. But here he's wrong. He did write things in _Did Jesus Exist?_ that Habermas quite fairly took to mean that this list was in existence prior to Paul's conversion.Watch to get all the details.Here's the interview between Ehrman and Paulogia where he makes these disavowals:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQmwC4jLzWE

In Dr. Gary Habermas's recent volume on the resurrection, he claims that the members of the Jesus Seminar show a degree of "respect" for the story of Jesus' first appearance to his male disciples in John 20:19-23 which is "rather amazing." He also implies that they show *some* degree of respect, though a lesser degree, to the story of Doubting Thomas later in that chapter.It is demonstrable, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the Jesus Seminar has *no* respect for either of those stories. None whatsoever. They are absolutely explicit, in the very work Habermas is citing, that they consider both stories to be completely fictional and lacking in any historical value. Habermas has apparently been confused by their use of technical form-critical terminology, in which they label the first of those stories as "concise" and the Doubting Thomas story as "intermediate." Habermas apparently thinks that these indicate some degree of historicity to the stories, since the Jesus Seminar also has a category of "legend," which is not the label they use for either of these stories. But in the Jesus' Seminar's usage, the categories of "concise" and "intermediate" should not be taken to indicate any degree of historical respect at all, and "legend" is just being used as a literary term, not an indication that things in that category alone are completely made up.In this video I also refer repeatedly to my series on Habermas's misunderstandings of the moderate liberal scholar C.H. Dodd. That series is here:https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2024/05/gary-habermass-misunderstandings-of-c-h.htmlAnd here is where you can go to check out the book of the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar:https://archive.org/details/actsofjesuswhatd00robe/page/n3/mode/1up?view=theater

I'm reading further quotations from the book of Jesus Seminar conclusions cited by Gary Habermas. According to Habermas, the Seminar acknowledges that a group appearance of Jesus to his disciples is attested by multiple, independent sources. This is not the case. We saw last time that Habermas misunderstands lists of sources by the Jesus Seminar, jumping to the conclusion that these are supposed to be independent sources, when in fact in those places the Seminar is just listing all sources that tell about some event or type of event.Here we see that the Seminar has its own non-independence theory of the origin of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' appearance to the eleven--namely, that they were imaginative embellishments of an appearance to Peter alone and/or of Mark 16:7, in which an angel says that Jesus will meet a group of the disciples in Galilee.Such imaginative embellishments are like the branches of a tree, with the single source (which is not reality itself, but some other account or claim--like the claim that the angel made such a statement), do not constitute independent attestation. So we can see in this additional way that the Jesus Seminar does not acknowledge multiple, independent attestation to a group appearance by Jesus to his core male disciples.Here is the Jesus Seminar book in question:https://archive.org/details/actsofjesuswhatd00robe/page/n3/mode/1up?view=theaterTree thumbnail from Wikipedia. By Łukasz Smolarczyk - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3402545