The Lydia McGrew Podcast

This will be the last installment in my series on alleged seams in John. Does the fact that John 20:30-31 sounds sort of ending-like provide evidence of an editor? I answer no. I also examine the very strange scholarly tendency to turn John 21:24 on its head. That verse says that the Beloved Disciple is the one who "wrote these things," but oddly, various scholars take this to mean that he didn't...

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

Is there a contradiction between John 16:5, where Jesus says that none of the disciples is asking him, "Where are you going?" and John 13:36, where Peter asks Jesus, "Where are you going?" I argue that there isn't. Watch (or listen) to find out why. Plus, even if this were contradictory, it would hardly be evidence for a "seam" left by an editor. This is so obvious that Raymond Brown has had to ar...

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

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

Is there a problem with the chronological order that John indicates for the events in chapters 5, 6, and 7? Here I continue to argue that there is not. Critical scholars have created "problems" where no problem really exists. I discuss several more extremely weak arguments that chapters 5 and 6 are out of order, despite their explicit temporal indicator "after these things," and that there are exp...

I'm continuing to argue against the claim that John's Gospel has "seams" that show where editors other than the Beloved Disciple have been ham-handedly stitching material together. This week and next week I'll discuss the claim that John 5 and John 6 are in the wrong order. Should we be trying to sort events in Galilee and events in Jerusalem, putting as many as possible of t...

Today I'm talking about the alleged "seam" in John 3:22, which says that after these things, Jesus and his disciples came/went "into the Judean land." Does this mean that they weren't in Judea before? Is this an internal contradiction, because Jesus was already in Judea, in Jerusalem, in the preceding events? And does it mean that an editor was trying awkwardly to fit s...

What are so-called "seams" (or aporia) in the Gospel of John? This week I start a new series on this topic with fresh content that is not even found in my book The Eye of the Beholder. Some scholars use the presence of (allegedly) awkward transitions, (alleged) contradictions, and (allegedly) out-of-order segments to argue for the involvement of editors (even multiple editors) in the com...

In this last in the series on why you should care if the Gospel authors put words into Jesus' mouth I warn again about thinking that "multiple attestation" to some type of teaching or some type of event will make up the epistemic deficiencies of the case, if you've already granted that the Gospel authors did this. As discussed in an earlier video on multiple attestation (see link...

Why should it matter if the Gospel authors put their words into Jesus' mouth? The sayings in John 8:58 and 10:30 are, at least on the face of it, especially clear as statements of deity. In _Jesus, Contradicted_, Dr. Licona takes this to be a reason to question their recognizable historicity. He argues that, if Jesus was reluctant (as reported in the Synoptics) to let it be widely known that h...

Why should you think that it matters if Jesus didn't historically, recognizably say something recorded in the Gospels? What if that is just the author's extrapolation or application of Jesus' teaching put into his mouth, based on the author's belief that this is the "higher meaning" of what Jesus really taught, or that this is what Jesus would have said if asked? Even if...

Should you care if the Gospel authors put their own interpretations into the mouth of the historical Jesus? What if the Gospels record things as though said by the historical Jesus when the historical Jesus never recognizably said those things in those contexts? Did the evangelists think that they were licensed to do this because they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that their own interpretat...

In recent interviews Dr. Michael Licona has invoked the name of D. A. Carson, giving the strong impression that Carson shared/shares Licona's own views of the Gospel of John--views which are surprising and controversial coming from a conservative scholar. These include the idea that John invented the sayings "I thirst" and "It is finished" from the cross and the claim that...

In two recent interviews Dr. Michael Licona has attempted to associate a star-studded roster of conservative commentators with his controversial views on the historicity of John's Gospel. At the same time, he implies that those who disagree with him strongly on these matters (which he refers to as "struggling" with and "having difficulty accepting" his views) are simply una...

Dr. Michael Licona has claimed for several years now, since shortly after Norman Geisler's death, that Geisler said that Matthew moved the Temple cleansing (and hence the cursing of the fig tree) by one day. Others have been led by Licona's confidence to accept this statement without question, even though such a move would be incompatible with a major theme of Geisler's entire life and...

Is it being properly cautious, if experts disagree about something, to choose some intermediate probability for that proposition and treat that as the best that you can do, as a non-expert, at estimating the probability on all the public evidence? Not really. Such false caution can result in giving undue weight to opinions governed by faulty methodology and kept in place by merely sociological for...

If you do a maximal data approach to arguing for the resurrection, does that mean that you have to stop midway through your positive presentation and answer every Gospel contradiction claim that a skeptic might make? Not at all. Here I give three important principles for handling the issue of Gospel contradictions from a maximal data perspective. These principles will also help in thinking about c...

Here I'm challenging the claim that if some section of a Gospel resurrection story is of apologetic value, that makes it suspect as plausibly being an apologetic addition (invented). I argue that that rules out the most reasonable, natural, expected kind of evidence that the early church would have had if indeed Jesus did rise from the dead physically. The fact that critical scholars tend to a...

Here I consider the various events that can prevent an account in history from being preserved and reaching us. Recognizing these "chances and changes of this mortal life" can help us to avoid making arguments from silence against testimony. We should not demand that we possess multiple accounts of an ancient event. I then revisit the analogy of your brother telling you that he won the l...

Continuing to talk about arguments from silence in biblical studies today. Too often biblical scholars fail to recognize the randomness of saliency. What one author thinks to record or not record needn't have, and often doesn't have, any heavy explanation. Recognizing that it's often a bad idea to put a high probability on the prediction that *this* person will report *this* thing in *...

This week I'm starting a 3-part series on arguments from silence. Last year Testify channel rightly rejected a skeptical challenge to the Virgin Birth on the grounds that it isn't recorded in the Gospel of Mark. Here's that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXlZPjFmY9E&t=74s But philosopher Dustin Crummett challenged the video, saying that Testify's argument is like reject...

In this, probably the last in my current series on editorial fatigue, I discuss another instance of "sudden onset fatigue syndrome," according to Mark Goodacre. Goodacre postulates that Luke eliminates the fact that Jesus was in a house when the paralytic was brought to him, then suffers "fatigue" and reintroduces reference to the house when he gets to the point where the paral...

Here I talk about the claim of editorial fatigue in Matthew's version of the beheading of John the Baptist. I argue that Goodacre takes a rigid, un-nuanced view of Herod's plausible motives, placing Matthew and Mark into artificial conflict with one another. I also coin the term "sudden fatigue onset syndrome" to draw attention to the claim that an author has suffered "edito...

This week I continue to examine Mark Goodacre's arguments that Luke invented the Parable of the Minas himself and tried (ineptly) to make it look like a parable that Jesus really told. Does evidence of "editorial fatigue" support this claim? Not at all. Here I argue that the claims that there is something aesthetically wrong with the parable and that this is the sign of Luke's cl...