An Easy Way To Date Opposition To Mary's Perpetual Virginity Before Helvidius

Advocates of the perpetual virginity of Mary sometimes acknowledge that there was opposition to the concept before Helvidius. They'll sometimes acknowledge that Tertullian didn't think Mary was a perpetual virgin, for example. However, some of them claim that Helvidius was the first source we know of who held that view. What I want to do in this post is discuss a line of evidence that can be brought up against that claim, some evidence that they'll likely accept more easily than they'd accept an argument that somebody like Luke or Irenaeus denied Mary's perpetual virginity.

Where's the fulfillment of Mark 10:39?

In my last post, I referred to how John 21:18-19 lines up well with what other sources report about Peter and Mark's use of Peter as a source. Something similar can be said of the apostle John, but with another element that adds further credibility to what's reported about him.

The Gospel Authors' Witness To Each Other

We often think of the evidence for the authorship of the gospels in terms of internal evidence and external sources of the patristic era, like Papias and Irenaeus. But we should also think in terms of the testimony of earlier sources, including the evidence the gospel authors provide for each other.

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.

Matthew As A Source On Jesus' Childhood

The authorship of the gospel of Matthew has important implications for issues related to the childhood of Jesus. The gospel says a lot about his childhood, including in chapter 3 and beyond. The apostle Matthew would have been in a good position to have had a lot of reliable information on Jesus' background. But the evidence for his authorship of the gospel has been largely neglected, including among conservative scholars. You can find a collection of articles we've written about that evidence here. See the comments section of the thread for notes about how the collection has been updated over the years. For example, I added a link a few years ago to an article about the significance of Matthew's living and working in the area of Capernaum. More recently, I added a link to a post about evidence for Matthean authorship in the lists of Jesus' disciples in the Synoptics and Acts. That post also discusses the significance of the use of Hosea 6:6 in the gospel of Matthew. And I added a link to a post about evidence for the financial interests of the author. See the collection of links for more evidence of Matthew's authorship of the document and responses to objections.

How To Argue That The Early Sources Agree About Jesus' Childhood More Than Critics Suggest

I've discussed forty examples of agreements between Matthew and Luke about Jesus' childhood. More examples could be cited. Yet, critics often suggest that Matthew and Luke only agree about a few things, or they list some higher single-digit number of agreements, for example. Even lists that consist of some low double-digit number are way off in the direction of underestimating the amount of agreement.

Though these discussions are often framed in terms of what Matthew and Luke have in common, we don't have to limit ourselves to those two sources (or just the infancy narratives within those two sources). There are many agreements among many early sources, not just Matthew and Luke.

One way to effectively remember and illustrate some of the agreements is to place them in categories, such as chronological issues or geographical issues. Think, for instance, of how many agreements there are between two or more sources on issues related to Jesus' familial circumstances:

What relationship did Joseph have with Bethlehem?

People often suggest that Joseph lived in Nazareth at the time of the opening verses of Luke 2 and that his only relationship with Bethlehem was one of distant ancestry. In a post several years ago, I explained why Luke probably wasn't saying that the census in Luke 2 required people to go to their places of ancestry, much less distant ancestry. When considering Joseph's relationship with Bethlehem in general, we can go beyond the census account, though that account is part of the evidence that needs addressed. Here are several reasons for thinking Joseph's relationship with Bethlehem was more than ancestral:

What if Papias wasn't referring to the canonical gospels?

It's become popular to argue that when Papias attributed some documents to Mark and Matthew, he wasn't referring to the canonical gospels we have today. Here's a response I recently wrote to that objection in a YouTube thread:

Why were the early sources so confident about gospel authorship attribution?

A neglected aspect of the evidence for the authorship of the gospels is how much more prominent the authorship of the gospels was than the authorship of other documents. And that greater prominence suggests that the early sources' gospel authorship attributions have greater significance.

What would be the significance of the gospel authors' illiteracy, lack of literary experience, etc.?

It's often suggested that the illiteracy or low level of literacy of the large majority of individuals in the ancient world is evidence against the traditional authorship attributions of the gospels. There are a lot of problems with that objection. We have information about people like Matthew and John that puts them well above the average person in antiquity. For example, not only was John an apostle, which would have provided him with far more motivation than the average person would have had to become more educated, but we also have good evidence that he lived an unusually long time and had a role as a sort of patriarchal figure toward the end of his life. Then there's the fact that there are widespread reports in antiquity that John did compose some documents, which is further evidence we have to take into account rather than just going by how many people in general would be able to produce such a document, how many fishermen in general would be able to, etc. We have much more than such statistics to go by.

Updated Recommendations For Bible Study Resources

Denver Seminary has published the 2024 update for their Old Testament bibliography, and the updated New Testament bibliography is here. Steve Hays kept a bibliography of his own until shortly before his death in 2020. You can find it here. One of the resources he recommended was the Best Commentaries site.

I noticed that Craig Blomberg's New Testament list for Denver Seminary mentions his new commentary on Matthew as coming out this year. I haven't seen it at Amazon yet, but Blomberg's in a good position to know when it should be out.

More Evidence For The Historicity Of Matthew 2:16

I wrote about some evidence for the passage's historicity in a thread several years ago (including in the comments section). In a post last year, I discussed a recent book by Sabine Huebner that addresses some issues related to the infancy narratives, including Matthew 2:16. People in the ancient world had a lot of reasons to discern, remember, and keep records of how long it took to travel from one location to another (e.g., people operating businesses whose success depended on issues of timing). One of the chapters in Huebner's book is about travel in the ancient world. Though she isn't focused on Matthew 2:16, she provides some examples of how issues of how long a journey takes would come up in a variety of contexts, such as letters sent between relatives arranging a meeting with one another (e.g., approximate Kindle locations 2838 and 3163 in Papyri And The Social World Of The New Testament [New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019]). Knowledge about how long journeys should take was somewhat common in the ancient world, including among people of lower social status. In fact, Huebner's chapter is focused on the lower classes. So, it seems that the fact that the magi's journey should have taken much less than two years was easily accessible to Matthew and his original audience. For a discussion of the significance of that situation, see the first thread linked above.

Why Matthew Would Use Mark's Gospel

I've written a lot about the evidence for the apostle Matthew's authorship of the gospel attributed to him. See here for a collection of some relevant posts. One of the most prominent objections to his authorship of the document is the notion that Matthew wouldn't have used the gospel of Mark as much as critics think the author of the gospel attributed to Matthew did. Somebody like Matthew shouldn't have been so dependent on Mark. I've addressed that objection before. I think the most likely scenario is that Matthew oversaw the production of his gospel, but delegated most of the work to one or more other individuals who composed the document under his supervision. But Lydia McGrew provides a good overview of another possible scenario, in which Matthew produced the gospel directly himself. This is from her recent book Testimonies To The Truth (Tampa, Florida: DeWard, 2023):

"Suppose that Mark wrote before Matthew, but that Matthew doesn't want to reinvent the wheel. There are no concerns about plagiarism in that time. It's perfectly fine for him to borrow some of Mark's wording. Mark has, let's suppose, already written a Gospel in Greek based on the memories of Peter, and Matthew decides to use it. It can help with parts of Jesus' ministry before he was personally called as a disciple. It can prompt his memory, and it can give him convenient wording to use, though of course he reserves the right to use his own words as well. So, he starts. But he finds in various places that he remembers or knows something that varies from the story as it is told in Mark. In these places he feels entirely free to supplement Mark from his own memories or from the memories of other people whom he spoke to about the events." (56-57)

Matthew 5 And Miracles Among Non-Christians

A common objection to Christianity is that miracles are reported among non-Christians, not just among Christians, or that miracles are reported to a particular degree or in a particular way among non-Christians. I've interacted with that argument many times, like here. A passage in the Bible that I don't recall having seen cited in this context before is Matthew 5:44-45. The call to pray for our enemies seems to imply that miracles can happen among non-Christians. It's doubtful that such an unqualified call to pray for our enemies would be intended to be limited to activities like praying for their salvation or would be so limited in practice. It's to be expected that such an unqualified principle would sometimes involve prayers for healing and other relevant types of supernatural activity. The examples of God's kindness to unbelievers mentioned in verse 45 are broad, which seems to underscore how broadly we can pray for them. The similar sentiment found in Acts 14:17 is likewise broad. So, the Matthew 5 passage can be added to others (like the ones discussed in my post linked above) showing that the occurrence of miracles among non-Christians is not only consistent with Christianity, but even affirmed by it and in its most foundational sources.

Is Jesus' resurrection appearance being doubted in Matthew 28:17?

Matthew doesn't explicitly tell us what was being doubted. But we get an indication of the most likely answer by reading what follows. Jesus' comments in verses 18-20 don't make sense as an attempt to persuade the people who are present that he had risen from the dead or that they were seeing the risen Jesus. Those subjects don't come up. But his comments do make sense as an encouragement to people who were doubting in the sense of lacking the confidence in him that they needed to proceed as they had to in that context. He reassures them about his authority and that he'll be with them. In other words, the doubt is about the implications of the resurrection, not the resurrection itself or this particular resurrection appearance. Jesus had just been put to death by his enemies, by means of a crucifixion arranged by the Jewish authorities and the Roman empire. He had risen from the dead, but a death, and a horrible one, was part of the process, along with a lot of other suffering. The people Jesus was addressing knew they were going out into a hostile world. In fact, the disciples' abandoning of Jesus in the face of such persecution at the time of Gethsemane is connected to this resurrection appearance in 26:31-32. It would make sense, then, for Jesus to address that sort of doubt in the context of the resurrection appearance anticipated in chapter 26. The worship mentioned in 28:17 and the activities of the Great Commission mentioned in the verses that follow were some of the appropriate ways to proceed, and they should have proceeded with confidence, "but some doubted". The doubt isn't about whether Jesus rose from the dead or whether he was appearing before them on this occasion, but, instead, was about how to proceed. He was removing their doubts and building up their confidence in verses 18-20. Those closing verses make less sense if the doubt in question was about whether Jesus rose from the dead or whether he was appearing to them.

Protestants Are More Consistent With Matthew 16

Peter isn't just singled out in verses 16-19, which Catholics highlight. He's also singled out in verses 22-23. No other apostle is called Satan. Does it follow that Peter was uniquely Satanic, more evil than anybody else or any other apostle or something akin to that? No. For one thing, Peter can be singled out in verses 22-23 without having any relevant sort of primacy. It could be, and it probably was the case, that Peter was singled out in verses 22-23 because he singled himself out by speaking up. It wouldn't make sense for Jesus to respond to Peter by talking to Thomas. It doesn't follow that Peter was singled out because of being more Satanic than anybody else or some such thing. Since we know in the abstract that something like being singled out in verses 22-23 in the manner in which Peter was singled out doesn't imply primacy in any relevant sense, and the evidence as a whole suggests Peter didn't have the primacy in question (e.g., the evidence we have that Judas was more Satanic than Peter), we conclude that a Satanic primacy most likely isn't being referred to. The passage could be referring to such a primacy, but that possibility isn't a probability. Just as Peter's personality, such as his outspokenness, can explain, and seems to best explain, his being singled out in verses 16-19 without the involvement of something like an additional church office, the same is likely true in verses 22-23.

Protestants apply the same sort of reasoning to verses 22-23 that they apply to verses 16-19. Catholics, on the other hand, are less consistent.

The Cumulative Case For The Resurrection Account In Matthew 28:9-10

I've written some posts over the years about some of the reasons we have for believing in the historicity of the resurrection account referred to in Matthew 28:9-10. See here, here, and here. To summarize:

Were the gospel titles added when all four gospels were first collected?

Walter Wilson's recent commentary on Matthew refers to the similarities among the titles of the early manuscripts of the gospels (e.g., "The Gospel According To Matthew") and claims that "the inscriptiones [titles] were affixed to all four gospels at a single point during the process of aggregation, that is, when they first began to circulate as a collection, in order to distinguish them from one another." (The Gospel Of Matthew, Vol. 1, Matthew 1-13 [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2022], approximate Kindle location 1208) Earlier, he had written that the title of the gospel of Matthew was "affixed to the document in the early second century CE as a way of both differentiating it from the other gospels and affirming its authenticity as a witness to the apostolic faith." (605) So, Wilson apparently thinks that the titles were applied when "all four gospels" were collected in the early second century.

Problems With The Eliakim Argument For The Papacy

Some comments I posted in a YouTube thread, in case anybody would find them helpful:

Mary's Pregnancy Showing In Luke 1:56

Several years ago, I wrote about how well the annunciation accounts in Matthew 1 and Luke 1 align with each other, contrary to the false claims of many modern critics. I want to supplement that post with another point that I don't recall having made before.

The pregnancy of a woman typically begins showing around three to four months in. And Luke 1:56 has Mary leaving Elizabeth to return to Nazareth around that time in the pregnancy of Mary. That's historically credible and fits well with Matthew's material. If Mary's pregnancy had begun showing shortly before the time of Luke 1:56, and that showing resulted in Joseph finding out that Mary was pregnant, then it would make sense for Joseph to have received his annunciation at that point. Once he sent word to Mary that he knew what was going on and intended to go forward with the marriage, Mary would have considered it safe to return to Nazareth. Matthew's account assumes that Mary didn't say anything to Joseph about the situation, so that he discovered the pregnancy in a roundabout manner. Luke's account of Mary heading to Elizabeth's house after Gabriel's annunciation and not returning to Nazareth until around the time when her pregnancy would start to show aligns well with Matthew. Both gospels suggest Mary didn't make the pregnancy known to the general public or Joseph in particular. Luke implies that something happened to make Mary think it was safe to return to Nazareth, but doesn't tell us what it was, while Matthew provides the explanation (the revelation received by Joseph). It makes a lot of sense for these events to have occurred at the time Luke 1:56 specifies.