The Historicity Of The Christmas Accounts

Lydia McGrew was recently interviewed about the historical reliability of the Biblical accounts of Jesus' childhood and made a lot of good points about the subject.

Evaluating Arguments From Silence

Lydia McGrew recently produced a few videos that make some good points on the subject: here, here, and here.

Responses To Objections To The Name Statistics Argument

I've occasionally discussed a line of argument for the gospels and Acts based on the names of individuals in those documents. Lydia McGrew recently completed a good YouTube series responding to some objections to the argument.

How much does Acts support the apostles' willingness to suffer for their resurrection testimony?

Lydia McGrew just concluded a good series of videos on the following topic:

This week I'm starting a series about this question: Does Acts support the idea that at least twelve specific, named individuals were willing to risk their lives for the claim that they had seen Jesus risen from the dead?

Some skeptics have claimed that even if we take Acts at face value in its account of the early days of Christianity, it still doesn't support this claim. They may downplay the seriousness of the risk. They may imply that only Peter and John among the original twelve disciples actually stood up and took a risk or that the others stopped taking a risk after the religious leaders first told them to stop preaching.

In the coming weeks I'll be addressing these claims from Acts itself. Here I am setting up the question.

Remember, this is addressing what we can learn from Acts itself if we take the narrative at face value about who was proclaiming the resurrection and what they were risking.

Here are links to each part in the series:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Why should we believe the Bible?

1. A very nice 2-part series on why we should believe the Bible from Shane Rosenthal. It's especially nice to see underutilized arguments featured front and center in Rosenthal's series (e.g. argument from prophecy). Glad to see Rosenthal still doing good work for the kingdom post-White Horse Inn.

• Part the first
• Part the second

2. Similarly see Rosenthal's excellent post "Can We Trust Luke's History of the Early Jesus Movement?". (Someday I'd like to pick up Colin Hemer's The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, but as far as I'm aware it's only available used or secondhand and all the copies I've seen are quite expensive.)

3. Speaking of Rosenthal, I appreciate Rosenthal's interviews with Lydia McGrew about her own fine works in this area over on The Humble Skeptic podcast. Lydia's most recent book Testimonies to the Truth: Why You Can Trust the Gospels looks like it'd be quite stimulating as well as edifying to read. It seems aimed at being a port of entry for the reliability of the Gospels (and afterwards, I assume, one can embark on her other three longer works for further voyages). I wonder how it will compare to a standard bearer on the reliability of the Gospels like Craig Blomberg's Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (3rd edition). I'm sure it'd be ideal to read and study both.

What We Should Make Of Passages Like Luke 4:16-30

Lydia McGrew recently posted a good video about an unjustified bias against "the possibility that events have happened on multiple occasions that are broadly similar to each other" (e.g., Jesus' cleansing the temple twice). Two later videos, here and here, discuss the example of Luke 4:16-30 and how it relates to some similar material in Matthew and Mark. People often overestimate such similarities and underestimate other factors involved.

Here's a post I wrote last year that provides some extrabiblical examples. And a post I wrote about Jesus' relatives discusses the plausibility of Luke's use of James the brother of Jesus as a source for the Luke 4 passage.

The Credibility Of John's Gospel As A Resurrection Witness

It's common today to assign little credibility to the gospel of John on resurrection issues (and other subjects). That's a mistake, as we've argued in many posts. Or read Lydia McGrew's The Eye Of The Beholder (Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021), for example.

Shortly after Easter last year, I posted an article about how problematic the early Ephesian church is for Christianity's critics. You can read the article to get all of the details, but it's largely about the evidence for John's relationship with Ephesus. That adds a lot of credibility to the widespread early attributions of the fourth gospel to John, including in Ephesus and among people influenced by Ephesus. And, as my article just linked discusses, the early Ephesian church was highly influenced not only by John, but also by Paul. That underscores how problematic it is to do things like setting Pauline Christianity against Johannine Christianity, as modern critics often do.

Keep in mind, also, that it's not enough for critics to propose other interpretations of John 19:35 and 21:24 when trying to avoid the conclusion that the author of the fourth gospel claimed to be an eyewitness of the resurrection. 1 John has language and themes that are highly similar to those in the fourth gospel, and there's widespread agreement among the early external sources that 1 John was written by the same person who wrote the fourth gospel. 1 John 1:1-3 identifies the author as an eyewitness of Jesus.

See here for a discussion of the best and earliest evidence for the authorship of the gospels. And the post here addresses how John aligns better with the Synoptics than modern critics typically suggest.

Lydia McGrew's New Book

It's largely a reformulation of her earlier books on the historicity of the gospels, intended for a more popular audience. There's some new material in it as well. I'm about 50 pages into it, and it's good so far. You can order it here. She recently appeared on Than Christopoulos' YouTube channel to discuss the book.

The Slaughter Of The Innocents And The Weakness Of Many Appeals To Silence

"Examples abound of cases where we would think a certain writer would surely have reported a certain event or fact, yet he does not do so. Ulysses S. Grant in his memoirs never mentions the Emancipation Proclamation. Should this cause us to doubt other sources that tell us that Lincoln issued it? Obviously not. Two contemporary Romans who describe the eruption of Vesuvius fail to mention the destruction of Pompeii. The church historian Eusebius apparently deliberately suppressed the Emperor Constantine's brutal killing of his wife Fausta and his son Crispus. No doubt Eusebius had his political reasons for doing so, not wholly laudable, but the point is that his mere silence in no way means that Constantine did not carry out the killings. Grafton's highly regarded English Chronicles discuss the reign of King John but never mention Magna Carta. Marco Polo never mentions the Great Wall of China." (Lydia McGrew, The Eye Of The Beholder [Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021], 274-75)

I've sometimes cited Josephus' silence about the Slaughter of the Innocents as an example. Other non-Christian sources provide partial corroboration of Matthew's account of the Slaughter, and Josephus' silence makes sense under a scenario in which the Slaughter did occur. Josephus tells us that he's being selective in which misdeeds of Herod he reports, and the Slaughter has multiple implications supportive of Christianity that neither Josephus nor his Roman audience would want to acknowledge or promote. Why mention an event so supportive of Christianity when mentioning the event can so easily be avoided? See my article on the Slaughter here for further details. Josephus' silence weighs much less than the testimony of Matthew, including the internal evidence for Matthew's account, and the partial corroboration offered by some non-Christian sources other than Josephus. Again, see my first post linked above for more about those non-Christian sources.

How different is Jesus in John's gospel?

Here's a playlist of several videos Lydia McGrew has produced on alleged differences between the Synoptics and John. And here's a collection of some of our posts on the unity between John and the Synoptics. The collection has been updated since I originally posted it, and I'll probably update it with more material in the future.

The Accuracy And Significance Of Acts 5:36-37

Lydia McGrew just produced a good video on the subject. I agree with her view of the Theudas issue, which is what the video is focused on, but she only briefly discusses the importance of Luke's comments on a census in verse 37. I've written some posts on the significance of that verse for how we interpret the census account in Luke 2. Here's a collection of links to some of my Facebook posts on the Luke 2 census, one of which addresses Acts 5:37. Those posts provide brief overviews of the issues involved. For a lengthier discussion of the relationship between Acts 5:37 and Luke 2, see here.

Jesus' Use Of Object Lessons

In her book on the historicity of the gospel of John, Lydia McGrew discusses how the gospels agree about Jesus' frequent use of object lessons (The Eye Of The Beholder [Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021], 393-95). He used the presence of his relatives (Matthew 12:49-50), bread (Matthew 16:5-12), children (Mark 9:35-37, 10:13-16), fishing (Luke 5:4-10), a well (John 4:7-14), a need for feet to be washed (John 13:1-17), etc. to illustrate points he wanted to make. Lydia concludes:

"This is what Paley means by a 'visible agreement of manner' in the teaching of Jesus throughout the Gospels. He points out further, '[N]othing of this manner is perceptible in the speeches recorded in the Acts, or in any other but those that are attributed to Christ….[I]n truth, it was a very unlikely manner for a forger or fabulist to attempt; and a manner very difficult for any writer to execute, if he had to supply all the materials, both the incidents, and the observations upon them, out of his own head.'" (395)

The Treasures Of John

The upcoming Christmas season is another good reason to read Lydia McGrew's recent book arguing for the historicity of John's gospel. (There's now a Kindle version of it.) See here regarding the fourth gospel's underestimated material on Christmas issues.

Imagine a young man, heir to a fortune, who has been told for years that certain portions of that fortune must not be used, claimed, or relied upon. Some of his most beautiful and pleasant properties, some of the loveliest treasures left to him by his ancestors, must never be treated as if they are really his. He may appreciate them aesthetically from a distance, but he may not live on the estates or handle the precious objects, and he is not free to spend any of those treasures for his most serious needs. His earnest advisors tell him (at least initially) that this is not because they themselves think that there is anything questionable about his right to these properties. But, they say, there are learned geographers who doubt that most of the lands even exist. Some lawyers question whether the heir has proper title to the lands; his advisors therefore worry that he will be evicted should he take up residence. Others, eminent financiers, believe that the property in question will disappear in some complex financial fashion if he should attempt to claim it. So the young heir learns to live on a far more modest inheritance and to act in practice as though he does not even possess some of his own property. Even some beautiful places and things that his father particularly wanted him to have do not come into his hands, for he has been taught not to claim them.

Now, suppose that some of his own advisors one day begin to say that they, too, have decided that he does not really own this great portion of his patrimony, that it is a chimera, or that it has disappeared in a financial crash. Will the man be likely to check out their statements? Is he not more likely to conclude that nothing much is at stake? After all, he has lived without this property for many years. He has had to behave as if he did not own it. Why should he bother to find out whether his current advisors are wrong or right, now that some of them also question this property?

In just such a way deference to credentialism and the persistent practical refusal to rely upon John’s Gospel create psychological indifference to its historicity and a passive willingness to let it be taken from us by scholarly skepticism. Yet if John’s Gospel is historically reliable, it is a very great treasure, far dearer than mere houses or lands or any earthly gold or silver. It tells us much that the other Gospels do not relate about the teachings and doings of Jesus Christ, and, if it belongs in the canon of Scripture with all of its overt claims to be the product of witness testimony, then these unique historical stories are gifts that our heavenly Father wanted us to have for our spiritual needs. They cannot truly satisfy those needs if they are merely pious fictions. Should we not then rouse ourselves to investigate the question of whether or not we can rely upon John?

(Lydia McGrew, pp. 18-19 here)

A Discussion Of The Eye Of The Beholder

Lydia McGrew will be on Cameron Bertuzzi's YouTube channel at 1 P.M. this afternoon to discuss her book, The Eye Of The Beholder (Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021). It argues for the historicity of the fourth gospel. It's a great book, and you can order it here.

Agreement Among The Gospels About Some Practices Of Jesus

When discussing issues like the credibility and consistency of the gospels, matters such as Jesus' language and teachings often get a lot of attention, as they should. For example, he frequently refers to himself as the Son of Man in the gospels, whereas he's referred to that way much less often elsewhere. Another category that ought to be brought up in this context is what the gospels report about various nonverbal practices of Jesus, such as his posture:

"Here I am drawing attention to the Gospels' agreement in both John and the Synoptics that it was Jesus' habit to look up to heaven when praying [Matthew 14:19, Mark 6:41, 7:34, Luke 9:16, John 11:41, 17:1]….Though lifting up one's hands to heaven was also a possibility, the Gospels do not say that Jesus did that; they mention only that he looked up to heaven. They did not have to note his physical gestures in prayer, and it is interesting that when they casually do so in the course of telling a story, they note the same gesture and that John agrees with Mark on this point, though in different contexts." (Lydia McGrew, The Eye Of The Beholder [Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021], 386)

The Beloved Disciple's Galilean Interests

I recently finished reading Lydia McGrew's The Eye Of The Beholder (Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021). There are portions of the book in which she interacts with Richard Bauckham's arguments that the author of the fourth gospel was a disciple of Jesus named John, but not the son of Zebedee, one who lived in Jerusalem and didn't travel much with Jesus. You can read Lydia's book for a lot of good responses to Bauckham's case. I want to highlight some points here that I don't recall seeing in Lydia's book. But some of my points are closely related to hers, and I may be forgetting some of what she said.

A Good Discussion Of Many Resurrection Issues

Last week, Jonathan McLatchie did a question and answer session with Tim and Lydia McGrew on Jesus' resurrection. A lot of issues came up during the discussion, and it's worth watching.

You may also want to occasionally check Lydia's YouTube channel for updates, since she keeps adding new videos, like her recent ones on the historicity of the fourth gospel.

The Beloved Disciple, A Fisherman

I've addressed this subject in the past, but Lydia McGrew has a fuller and better treatment of it in her new book on the fourth gospel:

Then there is the story of the disciples rowing across the Sea of Galilee…According to John 6.19, it was "about twenty-five or thirty stadia," which is simultaneously more precise than the Synoptics and also not hyper-precise. It is, in fact, just what one would expect from someone who was there, was capable of estimating distance under the unpropitious circumstances of a storm at night, and had a mind that tenaciously retained such details.

The mention of the Sea of Galilee relates to another matter: The Beloved Disciple does not seem to be a landlubber. Not only does he know multiple names for the Sea of Galilee (6.1), he has a good idea of how far the disciples had rowed when they were about halfway across it. Even more striking, when Peter decides in 21.3 to go fishing, the Beloved Disciple is one of six who immediately decide to go with him. While a normally stay-at-home Jerusalem disciple [like the one proposed by Richard Bauckham] probably would have traveled to Galilee to meet Jesus after the resurrection (cf. Matt. 28.10), it does not follow that he would jump at the chance to stay up all night fishing in Peter's boat [John 21:3-4]. Why would he? A "Beloved Disciple" from Jerusalem who was neither the son of Zebedee nor a traveler would presumably not be a fisherman and would have no particular reason to go on such an expedition. The disciples are not planning to see Jesus on this particular occasion nor expecting a miraculous catch of fish. They're just going fishing. It seems a reasonable inference from all of this that the Beloved Disciple was familiar with and comfortable on the Sea of Galilee, and even perhaps that he was familiar with fishing, which again does not fit well with the hypothesis that he was a non-itinerant Jerusalem resident. (The Eye Of The Beholder [Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021], 146-47)

The Eye of the Beholder is out

Jason already noted that Lydia McGrew's latest book The Eye of the Beholder is out.

I wanted to point out Lydia has released a short trailer about her book too:

In addition, Lydia has a meaty post about her book. Her post includes free material like the book's table of contents, its first chapter, and its conclusion. Not to mention endorsements by very notable NT scholars like Stanley Porter and Tom Schreiner. Schreiner is the icing on the cake for those of us who are Reformed, I think.

Finally, since it might be of interest to Triablogue readers, a friend who already has Lydia's book informs us that Lydia has a dedication to Steve Hays in her book and cites him in her book too.

An Overview Of The Eye Of The Beholder

Here's a new video in which Lydia McGrew provides an overview of her book that just came out on the historicity of the gospel of John. You can order the book at Amazon or at Barnes & Noble.