The Lydia McGrew Podcast

Are there aspects of the religious context of Jesus' ministry, prior to his resurrection, that provide evidence that he was who he claimed to be? Here I answer yes and highlight C.S. Lewis's trilemma argument, specific confirmations of miracle stories, and prophecy,. My goal is to separate various strands of what might be called the religious context of Jesus' ministry and to show what...

There is an intuition that it's important that Jesus wasn't just some random guy. How does the religious context of Jesus' ministry help to raise the probability that he rose from the dead? How are claims for Jesus different from claims that a random suburbanite suddenly found himself able to fly? Watch more of this video for a bonus bit on what is epistemically incorrect about the &qu...

The Jesus seminar acknowledges that Jesus "healed" (quote-very-much-unquote) at least one blind man. How excited should we be about this? I argue that this is barely admitting anything more than the falsehood of Jesus mythicism. So it isn't a big deal. But it does seem that the religious context of Jesus' life is important to the prior probability that he rose from the dead. Next...

A brief personal discussion of three different directions in which unresolved suffering pulls the Christian.

This is another video in which I address the strange claim that real historians don't even talk about the reliability of a document or author as a whole but rather just use the passage-by-passage approach. Here I discuss a passage from a book on Latin Historians in which the authors, while advocating the theory that Tacitus moved the date of a trial, reveal the fact that this is part of an on-...

How does an evaluation of source reliability avoid a naive acceptance of anything found in the source? How does induction contribute to source reliability? What difference is made by different subject matter? What does it mean to take a document as a "source in itself"? Is it reasonable to require that everything in history be multiply attested? Recently it's been alleged that someon...

If you missed the last two readings that were published during Easter week, 2023, look back and find them. This is the fourth and last reading of the series this Easter in answer to this question: What is the advantage of Jesus' literal, physical resurrection? In his book Miracles, C.S. Lewis talks about the unique quality of Nature as we know it. Though Nature is now fallen, subject to futili...

This is the third reading in my Easter 2023 series on the importance of the resurrection of the body. Several of these readings emphasize the connection to the restoration of all physical nature. Jesus' bodily resurrection is an affirmation of the goodness of literal, physical creation, which (Christianity teaches) God will restore and redeem. What advantage is there in a resurrection of Jesus...

Updike's poem might have been written explicitly for those who ask what advantage there is in a literal, bodily resurrection. This is the second in a series of four Easter readings on that topic.

For Easter this year I am doing four readings of Bible passages, poetry, and books on the importance of Jesus' bodily resurrection. Those who follow my work know that I've often emphasized the importance of affirming Jesus' literal, bodily resurrection in a body that could be touched, photographed, etc., just as Christianity has always affirmed. I've pointed out that this has been...

It might seem that Acts 1:7-8 is just an ad hoc attempt by the early Christians to avoid the embarrassing fact that Jesus didn't set up an earthly kingdom. But these verses are part of a larger pattern of Jesus' personality, both before and after his resurrection, drawn from all four Gospels. Jesus is often cryptic, unwilling to answer questions in the way his listeners would prefer, and e...

Sometimes you will hear the sweeping statement that we can get the content of the disciples' preaching from the writings of the Apostle Paul. While I have no doubt that the writings of Paul are indeed consistent with the preaching of the other Apostles, I would raise a caution about trying to "do it all with Paul" without including the evidence of the Gospels and Acts. Acts provides...

How is traditional authorship connected to Gospel reliability? Can we grant for the sake of the argument that we have no idea who wrote the Gospels and still have a strong case for their reliability? How can we accurately discuss different lines of support for reliability and keep them distinct without making damaging concessions? Here is my earlier video on the minimal facts argument on being car...

Certain opponents of intelligent design in the area of biology insist that God works in obvious ways (as opposed to working through what appear to be merely natural events) only during periods of "salvation history" involving particular religious contexts.  Here I explain how such a dogmatic view would create a problem with getting a religious context off the ground. How could anyone be justi...

Can we be justified in believing that God is "behind" some event when we're not even sure that it was a miracle? What would that mean? Why are obvious miracles important epistemologically?   Here is the testimony of Andrew Klavan that I refer to in the video:  https://youtu.be/KgT43ppxpzY Thumbnail is a picture of baseball player Gary Carter from Wikipedia.

If an author or a person tells a story in which details are mentioned casually, and if some of these details appear to be true, does that confirm the truthfulness of the story? Should we instead think that the author was just counting on common knowledge (or common belief) for some of his details, therefore using them casually without explanation, while making up the rest of the story?  &nbsp...

My new book, Testimonies to the Truth: Why You Can Trust the Gospels, is now available!  Purchase here on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Testimonies-Truth-Why-Trust-Gospels/dp/1947929232/?fbclid=IwAR3OkHnlE00mi-y7oGAonghJRnWF-0uP_R2ikaUg7zU2jOUo2Oo58ZIr-vA Purchase here on Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/testimonies-to-the-truth-lydia-mcgrew/1142990976?ean=978...

Here I apply the analysis I have been giving in this series to a specific external confirmation--Why did the hearing of Archelaus ruling in Herod's stead cause Matthew to move to Galilee in Matthew 2? How does apparent casualness support the factual independence of the reports in Matthew and Josephus and thus show that the co-incidence of their details is (in all probability) undesigned?

Casualness, independence, and undesigned coincidences: A Gospel example

Today we continue a series on how probability theory intersects with New Testament. How does casualness work in undesigned coincidences? Since we're looking for factual independence, how does casualness confirm this. Find out here!

Independence is very tricky! Different accounts of the same event that are independent in the relevant sense can make a powerful cumulative case. But what is the relevant kind of independence? Biblical scholars have a tendency to throw around the term without defining carefully what they mean and how it works. There is an extensive literature in analytic philosophy, especially in probability theor...

Here I deal with the last puzzle of Luke's central section--the apparent loop-de-loop formed by 9:51 (Jesus leaves Galilee with his face set to Jerusalem to be "received up"), 10:38ff (Jesus is at the house of Martha and Mary, which we know from John's Gospel was in Bethany, near Jerusalem, and 17:11ff (Jesus is 'way back up along the border between Galilee and Samaria, in the Jezreel valley). Wha...

I'm continuing to discuss Luke's central section and some of the puzzles that it raises. If Luke records a saying of Jesus in this central section, where Luke 9:51 says that the time was approaching for Jesus to be received up, should we take that to mean that Luke is "placing" that saying in a "different context" from Matthew and Mark, since they tie it closely to the Galilean ministry earlier? H...

The previous videos have addressed the question of whether Gospel harmonization is an appropriate historical tool. We've seen that Strauss's critical scholarly methods lead to implausible disharmonization. At this point I would like to illustrate the way that the use of reasonable historical conjecture applies to a difficult passage--the central section of Luke's Gospel.   Luke 9:51 says...

Here I continue on the theme that Tim McGrew addressed: Did D. F. Strauss put an end forever to the reasonableness of harmonization?   I will be reading a quotation from Dale Allison accusing harmonizers of "trying to erase knowledge" and being motivated only by an outworn theory of inspiration that was "pulverized by the deists."  On the contrary, the satire by Johannes Ebrard, wri...