The Lydia McGrew Podcast

In the previous video on definitions of "inerrancy" and the reportage model, I explained that if you are a traditional inerrantist, you already believe the reportage model of the Gospels. I also argued that any "inerrancy" that there is any point in believing is incompatible with the compositional device views, according to which the evangelists felt themselves free to change various facts.  ...

Here we're talking about the story of the raising of Jairus's daughter, mostly, and a bit about the woman who was healed when she touched Jesus' robe. This video is about what I think is a wrong approach to variations in the stories among the Synoptic Gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This redactive-critical approach overinterprets trivial differences, creates contradictions where none are present...

In this video I talk about "spotlighting." This is a name that Dr. Michael Licona has given to a standard harmonization move: Just because one account mentions two while another account mentions one, that doesn't mean that they are in contradiction. One author might just have been focusing on one. There is nothing wrong with this move or with giving it a new name. The problem arises when we think...

Who was Quintilian, and does he have something to tell us about the genre of the Gospels? Here I read passages from Quintilian and talk about the vast difference between his cynical advice for Roman orators and the Gospels' sober, restrained narrative.  For more information on the genre of the Gospels, read The Mirror or the Mask:  https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Li...

Today I talk about how to use the conversion of Paul in a cumulative case for the resurrection. We should distinguish Paul's experience of seeing Jesus from the experiences of the disciples while Jesus was on earth. Paul's experience did not have the same physical aspects that their experiences had, directly verifying the physicality of Jesus' resurrection. How can we acknowledge the legitimate fo...

Why should we be cautious about adopting symbolic explanations of details in a biblical narrative? After all, the details could be both literal and symbolic, couldn't they? Here I discuss the probabilistic phenomenon of "explaining away." Two explanatory theories can compete for the force of evidence even if those theories are, strictly speaking, logically compatible. That's why you would be a bit...

Here I make a new argument for the reliability of the Gospels from the pacing and inconsistency of their use of specific, vivid details. I read a passage of modern fiction and contrast it with the feeding of the five thousand (in Mark) and the foot washing (in John) to show the difference between the "camera rolling" in fiction and the way that the Gospels drop in details in their narratives. &nbs...

Today's session discusses how the minimal facts approach to the resurrection involves trying to help oneself to a "consensus of scholarship" by describing what scholars grant in a "fuzzy focus" (that there were "appearances" to the disciples) while not recognizing from the beginning that many of the scholars in question actually believe that the appearance experiences were such as to indicate that...

Here I discuss what it might mean to defend the story of the raising of the saints in Matthew 27. We can legitimately use the other evidence for Jesus' resurrection to raise the probability that this event actually occurred. And we can answer a priori objections to this event, rather than dismissing it out of hand, without concluding that it happened aside from our evidence that Jesus himself aros...

Here I discuss Dale Allison's views on the nature of Jesus' resurrection and contrast these with the traditional, orthodox view that Jesus rose bodily. I counter the implication that we do not have a clear, coherent concept of Jesus' bodily resurrection if we have unanswered questions, such as whether Jesus after his resurrection walked to Galilee, whether he needed to eat, and where he lived "in...

In this video I discuss a mainstream criticism of the historicity of John. According to this criticism, John or the "Johannine community" made up the part of John 9 where it says that the Jewish leaders would throw anyone out of the synagogue who confessed that Jesus was the Messiah. Supposedly that was an anachronistic allusion to the "life situation" of the readers of the Gospel, a situation tha...

In this meaty video I discuss and rebut the theory that John dyschronologically moved Jesus' references to his "hour," Jesus' expression of distress about his forthcoming crucifixion, and Jesus' reference to dying to live from different scenes in an earlier "Synoptic tradition" and constructed non-historical places for them within his own Gospel in an entirely different setting in John 12.  I...

This is a reading from "The Evidence and Authority of the Christian Revelation" by the great Scottish divine Thomas Chalmers. Chalmers is here laying out the nature of the evidential case for Christianity.  https://books.google.com/books?id=-qAPAAAAIAAJ In a recent blog post I noted an historical misstatement by William Lane Craig in Reasonable Faith. Craig states there that in the 19th centu...

What does it mean to say, "I believe that as a Christian"? How does that sentence interact with evidence? Is it possible to "believe that as a Christian" and be thoroughly rational about it?   All of this, surprisingly, is related to the issues of miracles, the Virgin Birth, and even intelligent design in science. Watch here to find out why! Originally uploaded 12.26.21

Here I connect the question of the truth of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke with the question of whether they were trying to bring their Gospels into conformity with the conventions of Greco-Roman biography. Would they have required that motive for including birth narratives? If they thought that these remarkable stories were true, wouldn't that have been enough to motivate them to includ...

Today we have another reading from an historical apologist, the historian George Rawlinson. Our special guest Tim McGrew returns!  See here for a different passage by Rawlinson on the accuracy of the Gospels in factual matters:  http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-annotated-rawlinson.html Remember all of this when anyone suggests to you that the negative connotation of fabricat...

We have a special guest this week! Tim McGrew, aka Esteemed Husband, provides us with a reading from the Library of Historical Apologetics. This is taken from the writings of Richard Whately, Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. He is talking about how we do need to use our minds to investigate the truth, but we should not think that we are obligated to answer every objection. Rather, we need to get a s...

This is my second video on the phenomenon I've called artificial disharmonization in the previous video and that I call utterly unforced error in The Mirror or the Mask.   Here I discuss three more examples where a scholar questions the historicity of an event or saying for (in effect) no reason at all, creating a problem or an issue out of nowhere and then applying the heavy-handed tool...

This is a very different video from my usual. In it I discuss a recent serious (and possibly permanent) health condition I have developed and how this intersects with my Christianity and my defense of Christian evidences. The existential problem of evil is going to hit all of us in one way or another at some time in our lives. It behoves us to gather evidence on the ultimate questions when we have...

Here I continue discussing Luke's central section, sometimes called the "travel" section. I bring out some really interesting connections with John's Gospel and with Josephus and make some chronological suggestions. This is an illustration on the use of reasonable conjecture and imagination in dealing with apparent discrepancies in the Gospels.  Here is my older post on the topic:  http:...

Here's a new undesigned coincidence that also incorporates some external evidence from Josephus. In Luke 13, why is it a little odd that the Pharisees "warn" Jesus that he needs to get out of there, or Herod Antipas will kill him? Watch to find out what's odd about that, and what the explanation is!  Originally uploaded Sept 26 2021

Here I'm once again going to show how those of us who think the Gospels are reliable can take the "forward" position and go on the offensive rather than letting the skeptic or liberal scholars set the agenda. It is so common to characterize any response to an alleged Gospel problem as "artificial harmonization," but in many cases this is the purest projection on the part of the critic. The critic...

Alternative titles:  The Synoptic Problem is No Problem Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Synoptic Problem?  I like both of those, but I decided to go with What I Think About...because it makes it easy to point to this video as a corrective to misunderstandings about what I (or "the McGrews") do and don't think about the Synoptic Problem. I prefer to call it "the Synoptic puzzle," because that...

This is a slightly techy video that I nonetheless try to make fun. It concerns what it might mean to set aside the prior probability of the resurrection of Jesus (or the prior improbability) when discussing the specifics of the case from testimony.   In our article back in 2009 on the resurrection, Tim and I didn't give a specific prior or posterior for the resurrection, but we did "back...

Is it really true that we have virtually nothing in the Synoptics that sounds like the Jesus of John? In this video I read a sample passage from The Eye of the Beholder that gives you a taste of the evidence refuting that claim.  You can purchase The Eye of the Beholder here. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for an announcement at the end of the video!  https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-...