The Lydia McGrew Podcast

Bart Ehrman claims that the author of Acts wasn’t a companion of Paul, though (says Ehrman) he wants his readers to think that he was. But Ehrman also questions whether the author of Acts read Paul’s letters, though he dates Acts as late as A.D. 85. If the author of Acts didn’t have access either personally to Paul or to Paul’s letters, how do we account for the many astonishing, detailed, but cas...

This is a continuation of my discussion of the Synoptic problem here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4v_tisDAj8&t=255s  My big point in both videos is to urge you *not* to accept this false dilemma: Either the Synoptic Gospels are totally independent from each other or else, wherever the story is found in Mark and Matthew or Luke has similar wording, Mark is the *only* factual sou...

Here I talk about an alleged literary device (not a fact-changing one) that NT scholar Richard Bauckham thinks we find in the Gospels to indicate their eyewitness sources. I applaud Bauckham's emphasis on eyewitness testimony in the Gospels, but I just don't think this device is really there. In fact, I question whether such a device even existed. (Bauckham doesn't claim that he has any source tha...

What if someone asks questions about Jesus' resurrection body that you don't know how to answer? Does that mean that you don't really know what you're talking about? Does that mean that the bodily resurrection should be considered a secondary issue? The answer is a resounding "no." You may have heard the attempted arguments here against the bodily resurrection. Now you'll have a better idea how to...

Following up on the discussion last time, this video argues that apparent casualness has epistemological force. But if we are going to take that force seriously, as we do in the argument from undesigned coincidences and the argument from incidental external confirmations, we have to take apparent casualness seriously in other contexts. Imposing a completely unstated, conjectured theological or sym...

Here I'm using the undesigned coincidence concerning the green grass (Mark 6) and the time of Passover (John 6) for the feeding of the five thousand as an illustration of the weakness of theological invention theories.   In the course of it I "help out" the theological theorists by presenting three suggested symbolic allusions to Old Testament passages for the pillow on which Jesus was s...

I've been talking for some time about the importance of giving a maximal data case for the resurrection rather than a case that relies only on what is granted (supposedly) by a majority of scholars. I've sometimes been asked what that would look like in practice, especially if one were delivering it in the time frame of about half an hour. I already have a video where I give some shorter versions...

This is an Easter episode! I'm drawing attention here to the details of physical motion in the meeting between Mary Magdalene and Jesus in John 20--one of the most beautiful scenes in the Bible.   For more information on the "Goldilocks zone" and Gospel details, see this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW1Z_pFPr7c&t=364s  For a discussion of the other women at the tomb a...

For Palm Sunday, I'm talking about one of the most common objections urged against John's literal historicity--the claim that he contradicts the Synoptics about the day of Jesus' crucifixion. Therefore, so goes the theory, John moved the day of the crucifixion to make Jesus appear more like the Passover lamb.  In this video I thoroughly discuss the three prooftexts used to allege this change...

Arguments from silence are widespread in biblical studies. What makes the difference between a strong argument from silence and a weak one?  Here is the abstract for Tim McGrew's paper on this question:  https://philpapers.org/rec/MCGTAF-2 Originally uploaded to YouTube Apr 3, 2022

Be careful about trying to use multiple attestation to support propositions, especially if your overall methodology tends to undermine the individual access to the facts and individual literal truthfulness.   Here is my Themelios article on multiple attestation:  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/finessing-independent-attestation-interdisciplinary-biblical-criticism/&n...

When you encounter a theory about unstated authorial intentions in a narrative work, how can you evaluate it correctly? Too often, scholars give epistemic value to their own ingenuity, counting a highly complex theory of hidden authorial meaning as plausible merely because someone thought it up and because other scholars take it seriously. This approach means that interpreters are coming to the do...

Three weeks ago I discussed Dale Allison's attempt to parallel the claims of the "rainbow body" phenomenon with the evidence for Jesus' resurrection. There I said that unless someone could show me reason to think that Allison overlooked some important type of evidence for rainbow bodies, I did not need to read another book other than Allison's chapter on the topic to see that the case looks extrem...

This channel is all about Gospel reliability. But you might be surprised to find out how many different ways the term "reliability" can be used. Here I discuss four different possible uses of the term and distinguish them, and I explain why I'm going to try to avoid the phrase "general reliability" in the future myself, due to ambiguity.    Here is the link to the recent volume of The Jo...

In this longer video I discuss a chapter of the book _The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History_ by theologian and New Testament scholar Dale Allison.  https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-Apologetics-Polemics-History/dp/0567697568/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1XL4S3AYS9I0F&keywords=allison+resurrection+Polemic&qid=1644510654&sprefix=horae+evangelicae%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1...

Is it really true that harmonization of reports is a desperate conservative Christian ploy to ward off the threat of biblical contradictions? In this reading from 19th-century theologian Johannes Ebrard, we learn of what I call The Case of the Swiss Messenger, in which various accounts of a non-biblical event turn out to be quite compatible with one another, though a skeptic could make them appear...

The more things change, the more they stay the same! Here is the 18th-century clergyman George Horne on how skeptics raise the same objections after they have been repeatedly, carefully answered. "Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer." Originally uploaded Feb 6 2022

This week we have a fun discussion of agnosticism, probability, and the existence of God. (And the existence of Tim McGrew!)   Is agnosticism the "safe" epistemic position? Is it always reasonable to withhold belief from the position that affirms more?   Suppose that I told you that the logically stronger, more committal proposition always has a lower probability (on the same e...

This week Tim McGrew reads from 19th-century clergyman Richard Cecil on what to do when you are confronted with an objection to your faith. Originally uploaded to YouTube 1.23.22

Here I discuss how the argument from prophecy intersects with Gospel reliability. If we already have a good argument for Christianity and have good evidence for Gospel reliability, can the argument from prophecy add any force to the case? Is there a problem with independence if one uses both the evidence of the resurrection and the argument that Jesus fulfilled prophecy?   Check out my v...

Recently Dr. Licona has stated that classicists use the passage-by-passage approach and that they don't even talk about the reliability of whole documents. (This is an approach I've criticized in an earlier video, linked below.) While he does not draw the conclusion that this means we should not talk about the reliability of whole documents, we need to examine this claim. Is it true? Would it matt...

Today I'll be talking about evidence for the reliability of the Gospels that also has devotional and pastoral value--the unity of Jesus' personality. I'll be focusing on one aspect of that evidence: Jesus' tendency to predict, to talk about his own predictions, and to say, "I told you so!" This video will provide a sneak preview of some of the content in the new, popular-level book I'm drafting, T...

Here in a fairly short video I clear up three misconceptions about the differences between the minimal facts (or core facts) and maximal data approaches to arguing for the resurrection of Jesus. If you are inclined to say, "Well, you start with minimal facts, because that has a fast presentation, and then you add more later" or "We have to start with minimal facts because we have to start with com...

It's easy to wonder where the plain proclamation of the gospel, without the presentation of an evidential case (at least, at that time) fits into the mindset of a person who is an evidentialist in apologetics. If we think that you need to defend the Gospels in order to have a sufficiently strong case for the resurrection of Jesus, does this mean that you should be opposed to "bare" proclamation of...

How can the word "hosanna" show that the Gospel authors knew their stuff? Watch here to find out!   Originally uploaded to YouTube 10.14.21