How The Historicity Of The Bible Gets Obscured

R. Alan Culpepper just published a commentary on the gospel of Matthew (Matthew: A Commentary [Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021]). (It was due out last year, but got delayed, so it has a publication date of 2021. It didn't come out until earlier this month.) I've read about 50 pages of it so far, including the introduction and his comments on Matthew's first two chapters. I was struck by some remarks Culpepper makes that are wrong and should easily be recognized as wrong. I'll discuss a few examples.

The Practical Flowing From The Doctrinal

"The apostle [Paul] had been putting forth all his strength to prove the doctrine of the resurrection, yet he was not diverted from his habitual custom of making practical use of the doctrine which he established. He proves his point, and then he goes on to his 'therefore,' which is always an inference of godliness. He is the great master of doctrine: if you want the Christian creed elaborated, and its details laid out in order, you must turn to the epistles of Paul; but at the same time he is always a practical teacher. Paul was not like those who hew down trees and square them by rule and system, but forget to build the house therewith. True, he lifteth up a goodly axe upon the thick trees, but he always makes use of that which he hews down, he lays the beams of his chambers, and forgets not the carved work thereof. He brings to light the great stones of truth, and cuts them out of the live rock of mystery; but he is not content with being a mere quarryman, he labors to be a wise master builder, and with the stones of truth to erect the temple of Christian holiness. If I shift the figure I may say that our apostle does not grope among the lower strata of truth, hunting out the deep things and spending all his force upon them, but he ploughs the rich upper soil, he sows, he reaps, he gathers in a harvest, and feeds many. Thus should the practical ever flow from the doctrinal like wine from the clusters of the grape. The Puritans were wont to call the end of the sermon, in which they enforced the practical lessons, the 'improvement' of the subject; and, truly, the apostle Paul was a master in the way of 'improvement.'…My brethren, this is a lesson for us; let us never reckon that we have learned a doctrine till we have seen its bearing upon our lives. Whatever we discover in God's word, let us pray the Holy Spirit to make us feel the sanctifying influence of it….There are some brethren who are so enamored of doctrine that no preacher will content them unless he gives them over and over again clear statements of certain favourite truths: but the moment you come to speak of practice they fight shy of it at once, and either denounce the preacher as being legal, or they grow weary of that which they dare not contradict. Let it never be so with us. Let us follow up truth to its practical 'therefore.'" (Charles Spurgeon)

Enoch In Heaven In Genesis 5:24

Since it's common to question or deny belief in an afterlife in early Judaism, we should keep in mind that an afterlife and significantly related concepts, such as the existence of heaven, are often implied where they're not spelled out (e.g., passages forbidding attempts to contact the dead). An example too seldom discussed is Enoch in Genesis 5:24.

For confirmation that something other than death is being referred to, see the many references to other individuals dying in Genesis 5, in contrast to what's said about Enoch. And notice the emphasis on how Enoch "walked with God", which implies that he would therefore receive favorable treatment. The language of being "taken" is more naturally interpreted as referring to ongoing existence elsewhere rather than ceasing to exist, and ceasing to exist after a shorter lifespan than so many other figures of that era doesn't make sense as a form of favorable treatment. The later taking of Elijah to heaven without dying shows that such a concept was known in ancient Jewish thought. And as far as I know, later accounts of what happened to Enoch suggest that his going to heaven was the most widespread interpretation of the Genesis passage. The text isn't as explicit as we'd like it to be, but an interpretation involving Enoch's going to heaven makes the most sense.

Who has the bigger prophecy problem?

James Tabor recently posted a video in which he discusses some aspects of ancient Jewish messianic movements. He portrays Jesus as a failed apocalyptic prophet whose movement had to adjust their eschatology over time, since Jesus' prediction about his second coming wasn't fulfilled. That's a common objection to Christianity. I've written a lot about it over the years, and some of what I've written hasn't been posted on Triablogue, so I want to use this post to gather some links to my material. I won't be linking everything I've written. Anybody who's interested can search our archives for more material like what I'll be citing below. These are just some highlights.

Tabor refers to how he's become increasingly open to a later dating of the gospel of Luke, even to placing it in the second century. He contrasts the eschatology of Luke/Acts to the eschatology found in the gospel of Mark. But the internal and external evidence strongly support a date for Luke/Acts no later than the mid 60s. See here for a brief overview of that internal and external evidence and links to other posts that go into more depth. It's also worth noting that placing Mark and Luke so far apart in time, especially under a scenario in which Luke isn't written until the second century, offers a weaker explanation of the similarities between Mark and Luke. They are, after all, commonly grouped together, with Matthew, as the Synoptics. The similarities among those three gospels don't require that the documents were written closer together, but their being written closer in time makes more sense of their similarities. So, Tabor's dating of Mark and Luke is problematic in all of these contexts.

But whatever dates you assign to Mark and Luke/Acts, the contrast Tabor draws between Acts 1:7 and the eschatology of Mark is wrong. As far as I recall, Tabor's video doesn't discuss Mark 13:32-33, which demonstrates that "day and hour" are interchangeable with "time", so that Mark 13 is in agreement with Acts 1.

For a summary of some of the most significant points that can be made against the claim that Jesus and the earliest Christians falsely predicted the timing of his second coming, go here. That post includes a link to another one that discusses the issues in a lot more detail.

Several years later, I had a discussion on Facebook with a non-Christian about the alleged false eschatology of the early Christians. It was largely about whether the early opponents of Christianity reacted to the alleged false prophecy as we'd expect them to have reacted if there was such a false prediction. I make some points there that I've seldom or never seen other people bring up (e.g., the discussion of Lucian's comments on Christianity). After following the link above, you'll have to click on Comments in the lower right to see the comments section, then keep clicking on the relevant areas to see the entirety of the comments that follow.

A bigger issue than the alleged false prediction of the timing of Jesus' second coming is the fulfillment of other prophecies. The latter is much more difficult for the non-Christian to explain than it is for the Christian to explain the former. We have Jewish (and, in that sense, non-Christian) documents like Ezra and Nehemiah that place Jesus' life in significant alignment with Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy. Non-Christians acknowledge that the Romans later destroyed both Jerusalem and the temple. Jesus' Galilean connections, his initial rejection by the Jewish people, his widespread influence on the Gentile world, and other facts about him that are widely admitted by non-Christians put him in significant alignment with Isaiah's Servant Songs and other passages connected to them in Isaiah. Psalm 22 is strikingly reminiscent of a crucifixion scene, and the psalm concludes by referring to the major significance of what's happened, how people across the world will hear about it and turn to God as a result of what's been accomplished (verses 27-31). See here for a collection of Christian prophecies fulfilled by non-Christians or whose fulfillment was corroborated by non-Christians. For an explanation of why it's inadequate for critics to object that the prophecies in question allegedly aren't Messianic, along with responses to other common skeptical objections, see here and here.

Escaping Putin's War

In 1994 or 1995, the pastor of my church (who also happened to be my dad) held a missions conference where he invited several missionaries in to give presentations. The goal was to recruit missionaries to go to various places around the world and spread the Gospel. It was a resounding success because, by the end of it, two new missionaries had indeed been recruited.

They were my parents. When they joined Mission to the World, MTW asked them where they would like to serve, and without hesitation they said, “Siberia would be nice.” You see, my dad grew up in Alaska, and my mom met him there when they were both in college, so the cold temperatures weren't a deterrent to them. Rather, it was an invitation.

At the time, MTW responded, “We don't have anything in Siberia, or Russia as a whole, at the moment. But since you like cold temperatures, we have an opening in the high mountains of Ecuador. Would you be interested in that?” My parents agreed and began to train for that. If I remember correctly, it was when they were en route to language school that someone caught them and said, “I heard you wanted to go to Siberia. Would Ukraine be close enough?” and immediately my parents accepted that ministry instead.

And so it was that in April of 1996, while I was finishing up my senior year of high school, I was abandoned for several weeks, having to fend for myself against the wilds of civilization, making myself get up and attend high school even though ditching would have been more fun, while my parents took their first trip to Ukraine. And then, a couple of years later (1998—who said high school math taught me nothing?), my parents cured empty nest syndrome by boarding a plane which would take them to Europe, with their final destination being a little known city called Kherson.

The Difficulty Of Paul's Labors

One of the factors we should take into account when evaluating a figure like the apostle Paul is the difficulty involved in accomplishing what he did. That gives us some information about his sincerity, his confidence, his love, and other aspects of his character. For example, among many other things that could be said:

"Paul's unbounded confidence, irrepressible energy, directness, and personal charm were irresistible (though not to all), and soon there were tiny Christian communities scattered throughout the region. He was an indefatigable traveler. Given the difficulties and dangers of travel in those days and the extent of territory he covered, his success as a missionary is astonishing." (Robert Wilken, The First Thousand Years [New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2012], 20)

We should keep things like those in mind as we read Acts, Paul's letters, the early patristic comments on Paul, and other relevant sources. A lot of work went into what we so easily think about and read about (2 Corinthians 11:23-33). We can have some awareness of these facts without having much appreciation for the full weight of their significance.

Why doesn't Paul mention Jesus' miracles?

Skeptics occasionally object to the historicity of Jesus' miracles on the basis that they aren't mentioned in Paul's letters. I responded to the objection as formulated by John Loftus several years ago. I won't repeat everything I said there. Those who are interested can read that post. What I want to do here is expand on what I said there.

The Church Of The Holy Sepulchre As The Site Of Jesus' Burial

Here's a good article by Caleb Jackson on the subject. The blog the article appears on, Think Christian Theism, has a lot of other good posts as well. It's worth following.

Christians Need To Be Far More Active On The Internet

It's common for people to object that Christians are behaving irresponsibly on Twitter, Facebook, and other online settings, especially in political contexts, but occasionally in other contexts as well. And it's popular to make derogatory comments about the internet and how unimportant it supposedly is (e.g., the popular dismissive comments about how it's allegedly ridiculous to be concerned that "somebody is wrong on the internet"). Supposedly, there's a major problem with people being unloving, arguing too much, and so forth, and that problem needs to frequently be addressed. But far less is said about the other end of the spectrum, the people who are much less involved than they should be with controversial issues, especially in religion, where it matters most. Yet, as I've documented many times, the percentage of people who are involved in these matters too little - far too little - vastly outnumbers the percentage who are involved too much or are involved in a way that's unloving, contentious, or some such thing.

So, when something like a small fraction of one percent of the population is highly involved in apologetics, while ninety-some percent are less involved than they should be - typically much less involved than they should be - why does the former group get so much more criticism than the latter? Probably largely because of the popularity of that latter group. Peer pressure, in other words. If you're a pastor or radio host, your audience doesn't want to be criticized for their neglect of apologetics, theology, ethics, politics, or whatever else. It's much easier to flatter the large majority of your audience while criticizing a small minority. It makes you more popular, keeps your paychecks coming, and so on.

A common example of this kind of thing is the handwringing we often see over the political atmosphere on Twitter. But what percentage of the population is involved in some kind of inappropriate behavior in Twitter exchanges? A tiny percentage. How many are involved in political discussions on Twitter in general, including discussions of a better nature? Few. The same Americans who tell pollsters and other people how concerned they are about how negative the political atmosphere of the nation is, how politically divided the nation is, etc. aren't involved much in politics themselves. After they hang up the phone with the pollster, they'll go sit in front of the television to watch some trivial (or worse) program, read a trivial book, do some cooking, go to a family gathering, or whatever, with little or no concern about politics. Americans aren't too political. They're too unpolitical.

Religion is more important than politics, and the level of neglect is worse with religion than with politics. But whether it's religion, politics, ethics, philosophy, the paranormal, or whatever other area of life that tends to be neglected, it's not difficult to figure out which side of the spectrum is more in need of correction. It's not the people who are highly involved or even the subset of those people who truly are unloving, contentious, or wrong in some other way. It's the large majority of the population who are more in need of correction, the large majority who are doing little or none of the relevant work and are so apathetic and contemptuous toward the people who are doing it. The people who should be criticized more are the ones who rarely or never try to persuade others about religious issues, make little or no use of the opportunities they have online, etc. Think of how many significant books on Amazon don't have any reviews from a Christian perspective, how frequently atheists and other groups who are smaller than Christians outnumber Christians in online discussions, how often ninety-some percent of the Christians who watch a good YouTube video won't even click the like button, how many Christians spend years online doing things like emailing relatives and posting family photographs on Facebook while doing little or nothing in contexts like theology and apologetics, etc.

There are billions of people in the world. You won't be interacting with the vast majority of those people face-to-face. The internet is the best tool most people have to reach a much larger audience (and a better audience, in the sense of being more interested, more informed, and so forth). It's good for people to also use television, books, radio, the telephone, and other tools to reach a bigger audience, but the internet is what's most efficient for most individuals. We don't need Christians to be less active online. We need them to be far more active online in the contexts that matter most.

Whether, When, And How The Enfield Poltergeist Concluded

The issues surrounding the conclusion of the case are larger and more complicated than is often suggested. Many of the factors involved haven't gotten much attention and remain unsettled. I can't answer every question, but I want to discuss what I know at this point.

I'll be citing the tapes of Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair. Grosse's tapes will be referenced with "MG", so that MG22B is a reference to tape 22B in his collection. Playfair's tapes will be designated with "GP", so that GP12B is a reference to his tape 12B.

The Contexts In Which An Assumption Of Mary Could Have Been Mentioned

I've often mentioned that sources in the earliest centuries of Christianity who discuss assumptions to heaven and related topics keep citing examples other than Mary, but never cite Mary as an example. (See here and here, for example, and the other posts linked within those ones.) It's helpful to think of the number and variety of categories involved, so that we know how significant the lack of reference to Mary is. Since Roman Catholics have disagreed about whether Mary died prior to being assumed to heaven, the contexts in which Mary could be mentioned will vary somewhat depending on what view of whether she died is held. If we combine both views, think of the contexts in which Mary could be mentioned:

- People who didn't die.
- People who have been raised from the dead.
- People who have experienced resurrection to an immortal body rather than just being raised in the sense of resuscitation.
- People who were bodily taken up to heaven.
- People who are currently living in the afterlife in a bodily state, prior to the general resurrection in the future.

We find these topics discussed in scripture and the patristic literature, frequently in some cases. So, it's not just that Mary's alleged assumption goes unmentioned in one context or on some small handful of occasions. Rather, it's unmentioned across a large number and variety of contexts and occasions for hundreds of years while other figures keep getting mentioned over and over again (e.g., Enoch, Elijah, Paul). And we're often told by Catholics that Mary was held in such high regard by the earliest Christians, that she's the greatest being after God, etc. You'd think an assumption of Mary would have been prominent in their thinking accordingly if they'd believed in her assumption.

A Debate On Isaiah 9:6 And Jesus' Deity

Jonathan McLatchie and Samuel Green (Christians) recently debated Shabir Ally and Yusuf Ismail (Muslims) on Isaiah 9:6 and the deity of Jesus. They covered many related issues that went beyond that one verse. Here are some comments I posted about the debate on Facebook and YouTube, followed by links to other relevant articles at Triablogue:

Some Points To Remember About The Dating Of The Gospels

- The author of the third gospel and Acts tells us the scope of his two-volume work in Luke 1:1-4 and Acts 1:1. He's addressing "the things accomplished among us" (Luke 1:1), which he recharacterizes as what Jesus did and taught in the world (Acts 1:1). So, the best explanation for the ending of the book of Acts is that the events there are the last significant events of Christian history that occurred before the author published his work. It apparently was published, then, in the early to mid 60s. It would be unreasonable to suggest that the author was writing significantly later, but didn't want to include anything after what's narrated in Acts 28, since those later events weren't important enough. Many highly significant things happened after the conclusion of Acts 28, including shortly afterward and including things the author himself had suggested would be noteworthy (Paul's martyrdom, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, etc.). The interpretation of the opening verses of Luke and Acts I've just outlined is a far better explanation of the scope of the books than the popular appeal to Acts 1:8 to explain why Acts ends where it does. See here and here for discussions of the many problems with that appeal to Acts 1:8.

- The earliest external source to comment on the dating of Luke/Acts is 1 Timothy 5:18. It refers to Luke's gospel as circulating during Paul's lifetime. See here for more about that passage. Notice that its value as the earliest external evidence doesn't depend on Pauline authorship. We should accept and defend Paul's authorship of the document, but a critic of the early dating of Luke/Acts can't just object to Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy. He has to do more than that. Whoever wrote 1 Timothy and whoever the initial audience was, the document reflects an early belief in the early dating of Luke (and, by implication, Acts). As my post linked above explains, there's a way in which denying Pauline authorship of the document even increases its evidential significance in this context, since such a denial implies a larger initial audience for the letter. (And any sort of group authorship proposal would have a potential similar implication on the authorship side.)

- The later dates typically put forward for the gospels have much less of a negative implication for Christianity than is often suggested. Mark is usually dated roughly five years after Paul's death. And it's commonly suggested that Paul is a significantly early source, that there would be substantially more evidential value in a claim about Jesus if it appeared in Paul's writings, and so on. But five years doesn't have much significance in this context. There are many ways of illustrating that. One way is to think of the timespan involved in Paul's most widely accepted letters. They're typically dated anywhere from the late 40s to the mid 60s. If somebody dated Philemon five years after Romans, would anybody think those five years make Philemon much less historically credible than Romans when addressing events that happened before both documents were written? I doubt that anybody holds such a view. I doubt that the thought ever even entered the mind of most of the people who object to the alleged lateness of Mark's gospel. Does the person who dates 1 Thessalonians fifteen years earlier than Philippians consider 1 Thessalonians a far earlier source, as if those fifteen years justify placing the two documents in highly different categories? I doubt it. Or think of the time between Jesus' death and Paul's letters. Why assign so much more significance to something Paul wrote twenty-five or thirty-five years after Jesus' death than you assign to something written around forty years after his death? It should be noted that I'm not denying that people take factors other than dating into account when judging the credibility of a source (e.g., how Paul's value as a source is increased by his interactions with individuals like James and Peter). But the dating issue is often singled out, as if Paul's dating is much better or much less problematic than the dating of Mark and other sources. My point is that the significance of differences in dating is often exaggerated, regardless of what you make of other issues involved.

Productivity Amid Suffering

Jerome wrote about a time of many illnesses in his life:

"The Lord 'who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble, who touches the mountains and they will smoke' [Ps 104:32], who says in the song of Deuteronomy, 'I shall kill and I shall make alive, I shall strike and I shall heal' [Deut 32:39], makes my earth tremble mightily as well by means of frequent sicknesses. It was said to it, 'Earth you are, and unto the earth you shall go' [Gen 3:19], and often forgetting my human condition, he reminds me to be aware that I am a man, and old, and at any time now I shall be dead. Of this it is written, 'Why do earth and ashes boast?' [Sir 10:9]. This is why the one who had struck me suddenly with an illness healed me with unbelievable speed, to frighten rather than crush, and to reform rather than to flog. And so, knowing that my whole life belongs to him, and that perhaps the reason my sleep is being postponed is so that I may complete the work I have begun on the prophets, I hand myself over completely to this pursuit. And stationed as it were in a watchtower, I survey the storms and shipwrecks of this world, not without groaning and pain. I do not think about the present but the future, nor about my reputation among men and their gossip, but I greatly tremble at the prospect of God's judgment [cf. Phil 2:12]. And you, Eustochium, virgin of Christ, who have aided this sick man by your prayers, pray also for the grace of Christ to be upon him now that he has been healed, so that by the same Spirit with which the prophets sang of the future, I may be able to enter into the cloud and the gloom [cf. Exod 20:21] and know God's words, which are heard not with ears of flesh but with those of the heart. May I say with the prophet, 'The Lord gives me a tongue of instruction, to know when it is fitting for me to speak' [Isa 50:4]." (Thomas Scheck, trans., St. Jerome: Commentary On Isaiah [Mahwah, New Jersey: The Newman Press, 2015], p. 631, section 14:1 in the commentary)

A Historical Argument For The New Testament Canon

My last post cited Charles Hill's Who Chose The Books Of The New Testament? (Bellingham, Washington: Lexham Press, 2022). The book makes a lot of good points (e.g., the manuscript and patristic evidence that the canonical gospels were more widely accepted and viewed more highly than the non-canonical ones in the earliest centuries of Christianity).

However, his focus when discussing canonical criteria is on the self-authenticating nature of scripture, and he doesn't provide what I consider the best argument for the canon. See here for a series I wrote in 2009 that makes a historical argument for the canon on the basis of the criterion of apostolicity. Some parts of that series are somewhat dated, and you can find more recent material in our archives (e.g., I've written substantially more about 1 Timothy 5:18 since then, like here). But the 2009 series provides the general parameters and many of the relevant details.

One of the good aspects of Hill's book is that he cites the existence of our 27-book New Testament canon in Origen more than a century before it appears in Athanasius. But Hill doesn't go into much depth when discussing the subject. See here for my article on the topic, which covers a lot of details Hill doesn't mention, some of which I haven't seen anybody else bring up. As I explain in that article, there are multiple lines of evidence that the 27-book canon predates the letter of Athanasius that's typically cited. People ought to stop citing that letter or Athanasius as an individual as the first source supporting the canon.

Should we trust the histories written by skeptical winners?

Scholars like Ehrman cite in this regard the well-worn adage: "It's the winners who write the histories." That is, those who get to write the histories are those who have already won the cultural battle. Thus they write history in a way that favors their own party, and puts any rivals in a bad light. The winners who wrote the histories were biased, often so biased, they couldn't even see their own biases. So, when we read early orthodox [Christian] writers today, we need to adopt a hermeneutic of suspicion, and read against the grain.

This is what the history books are telling us today. But then, isn't history always written by the winners? And aren't the winners often so enmeshed in the reigning cultural narrative that they can't see their own bias? Which is why we ought to read today's historians with the same sort of critical suspicion as they recommend we apply when reading the ancient writers.

(Charles Hill, Who Chose The Books Of The New Testament? [Bellingham, Washington: Lexham Press, 2022], approximate Kindle location 99)

A Great Resource On Jesus' Resurrection

Than Christopoulos recently had several guests on his YouTube channel to discuss the resurrection of Jesus. The video isn't exhaustive, and they weren't attempting to make it exhaustive, but they provide a great summary of much of the evidence for the historicity of the resurrection. It's about four-and-a-half hours long, but the discussion is excellent and worth watching all the way through. It's the culmination in a long series of videos, but you don't need to watch the previous ones to benefit a lot from watching this one. If you don't want to watch the entire video in one sitting, it's easy to break it into segments to watch separately. Go here for the beginning of the segment on the historical data, here for the one on objections to the appearances of Jesus, and here for the discussion of inference to the best explanation and rival hypotheses, for example. Or you can just stop wherever else you see fit and start there when you have time to watch more of it. The whole thing is worth watching, so I recommend going through all of it. I'll supplement their points with some of my own, though I'm also not trying to be exhaustive:

Onward

"What they build with one hand they pull down with the other. Sad that it should be so. I must confess I find it far easier to climb the greatest heights of grace, and especially of communion, than to maintain the elevation. For a flight now and then our wings are sufficient; we mount, we soar, we rise into the spiritual regions, and we exult as we rise; but our pinion droops, we grow weary of the heights, and we descend to earth like stones which have been thrown into the air. Alas! that it should be so. Be ye stedfast. When ye climb ask for grace to keep there; when your wing has borne you up ask that there you may be poised till the Lord shall call you to your nest in heaven. Is your faith strong? Why should it decline again? Is your hope vivid? Why should that bright eye of yours grow dim, and look no more within the golden gates? Is your love fervent? Why should it be chilled? Cannot the breath of the Eternal Spirit keep the fire at full blaze? Wherefore is it that we do run well and then are hindered? We are short-winded, we cannot watch with our Lord one hour, we grow weary and faint in our minds. Alexander could not thus have won a world if after fighting the battle of Issus he had stopped short of the Granicus: if the Macedonian hero had said, 'I have done enough, I will go back to Greece and enjoy my victories,' his empire had never become universal. Nor would Columbus have discovered a new world if he had sailed a little way into the unknown ocean and then had turned his timid prow towards port. 'Onward!' is the motto of the earnest, all the world over, and should it not be the watchword of the Christian? Shall we be content with a wretched poverty of grace? Shall we be satisfied to wear the rags of inconsistency? God forbid." (Charles Spurgeon)

Protestant Ecclesiology

The Other Paul recently discussed ecclesiology with Gavin Ortlund. They made a lot of significant points.

What are you doing with the knowledge you have?

"I hold that it is unworthy of any man who possesses knowledge to keep his knowledge to himself, and rejoice in his own enlightenment, without making any effort to bring others to share in his privileges. Justly did the four lepers at the gate of Samaria feel their conscience smite them: 'We do not well; this is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace.' [2 Kings 7:9] Had those to whom the light of Christianity was first given dealt so with our ancestors, we should still be lying in heathen darkness." (George Salmon, The Infallibility Of The Church [London, England: John Murray, 1914], 7)

Music And The Paranormal

Melvyn Willin, the archive liaison officer for the Society for Psychical Research, just published Music And The Paranormal: An Encyclopedic Dictionary (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2022). The relationship between music and the paranormal is a significant and neglected topic and one that Willin has studied in a lot of depth for a long time. I'll quote some of his comments from the preface:

Since music is arguably the most intangible of the arts and since the paranormal, in all its manifestations, continues to intrigue people, the placing of these two subjects together seems long overdue. My own career in music as both a teacher and performer was infiltrated throughout my life with anomalies that intrigued me and my fellow musicians. Nobody seemed to be able to explain why some people appeared to be able to compose music or perform beyond their normal ability which, in some cases, they attributed to the deceased. Nobody seemed to be able to explain why music was sometimes heard when there was no obvious, or even un-obvious, source of the sound. Nobody seemed to explain why a number of people heard music when they were close to death which they remembered when they were resuscitated. Nobody seemed able to explain how intrusive operations could be conducted on people without anesthetic, but by using music to eliminate the pain. Nobody seemed able to explain why autistic people often possessed phenomenal musical abilities….I decided to undertake research into these and other related musical anomalies over a period of many years which culminated in two doctorates being awarded by Sheffield University and Bristol University, both in the UK. Previous pure music degrees were awarded by London University and Surrey University and a graduate diploma from the Royal Academy of Music, London. For more than thirty years I have been a member and then council member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) and more recently the archive liaison officer. During this time, I have been directly involved with the archiving of the Society's manuscripts collection stored at Cambridge University Library. The audio-visual archive is held at my own premises in Essex, England….

The printed sources for my extensive research are many and varied, but I have not found a single book that has brought the multiple strands together….An earlier work of my own, Music, Witchcraft and the Paranormal (see Willin, 2005), outlined my original academic study of the material. I shall also be able to present my own case histories taken from interviewing a wide range of people and visiting sites where music has allegedly been heard from unknown sources. The end result will be a reference work that can be used to explore the academic study of music and the paranormal in a comprehensive alphabetical order as well as be of interest to the general public.

Enfield Miscellany (Part 7)

(See part 1 here for an explanation of what this series is about. The other parts in the series: two, three, four, five, and six. When I make reference to the Enfield tapes of Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair, I'll use "MG" to cite a tape from Grosse's collection and "GP" to refer to one from Playfair's. So, MG38B refers to tape 38B in Grosse's collection, and GP5A refers to 5A in Playfair's.)

The Death Of Vic Nottingham

A lot of the Enfield witnesses haven't been discussing the case publicly in recent years, and it's sometimes difficult to find out whether they're still alive. I came across a 2016 article that refers to Vic Nottingham as deceased, so I want to mention it. There are some errors in the article, and it could be wrong about Nottingham's death even if there were no errors on other subjects. But there's nothing in the article that makes me doubt what it reports about his death, and it would make sense for him to be dead by now given his age.

From what I know of him, including hearing him a lot on Grosse and Playfair's tapes, I find Nottingham likeable and honest. He was a good witness who added a lot to the case. I've been recommending the twelve-minute video here, from November of 1977, as an introduction to Enfield. Nottingham has a prominent role in that video. It serves as a good tribute to him. The video refers to how Peggy Hodgson was "ill in bed" at the time of the filming. That's an understatement. See the post here to get some idea of how difficult the events of November of 1977 were and what state Peggy was in at the time. I suspect one of the reasons why the Nottinghams are so prominent in that 1977 program is that they were trying to cover for Peggy, to help her in a difficult situation. They often did that sort of thing. One of the reasons why the Enfield case is of such an unusually high quality is that the Nottinghams were such unusually good neighbors. As Grosse commented on one occasion, "I think that in some respects this case has been remarkable for the amazing way that the people involved in it - the Hodgson family, the Burcombes, and the Nottinghams - have behaved during the whole of the investigation. They have behaved with an enormous amount of common sense. The incredible lack of hysteria at any time has been quite remarkable, considering that some of the things that have happened have been very frightening indeed." (MG14A, 18:42) In his book on Enfield, Playfair wrote, "Nobody could ask for better neighbors in a crisis, or indeed at any time, than the Nottinghams." (This House Is Haunted [United States: White Crow Books, 2011], 3) "They've always been good neighbors….I think a lot about Peggy and Vic. They'd do anything for you." (Peggy Hodgson, MG59A, 30:31, 33:21)

Eric Svendsen's Doctoral Thesis On Mary Available Online

A correspondent on Facebook recently informed me that Eric Svendsen's doctoral thesis, about Mary in the New Testament and Roman Catholicism, can be viewed online. I've had a paper copy of an earlier version for around 20 years, and I never even thought to search for it online. But it's available here for anybody who wants it. To see the thesis itself, click on the file under "View/Open" on the left side of the screen.

Justification Through Faith Alone Before The Reformation

Gavin Ortlund recently released a video providing an overview of a Protestant perspective on justification. Much of the video involves a comparison between Protestant views on the subject and Catholic understandings of it. A large portion of the video responds to the common objection that there isn't enough historical precedent for a Protestant view of justification prior to the Reformation.

I want to expand on what he says about that issue. For my argument that justification through faith alone is found in scripture and in sources between the time of the Bible and the Reformation, see here, here, and here, among other posts on the subject that can be found in our archives. Read the comments sections of those threads as well, since I discuss other sources and other issues there and interact with critics. My posts in those threads include documentation of belief in justification prior to baptism among sources between the New Testament era and the Reformation. Gavin cites John Chrysostom as his primary example of a pre-Reformation source whose soteriology seems to agree with certain Protestant themes, but he acknowledges that Chrysostom believed in baptismal justification. I concur with Gavin that we don't have to agree with every soteriological belief of a source in order to cite that source in support of our view on a soteriological issue. Partial agreement is less significant than full agreement, but lesser significance isn't equivalent to no significance. Citing Chrysostom on some issues while disagreeing with him on others is fine. But there are sources who advocate justification apart from baptism in the patristic era and other pre-Reformation contexts, and that fact gets far less attention than it should. My posts linked above discuss the topic and give it more attention than it typically gets.

I also want to mention that I've discussed Hilary of Poitiers' soteriology in his commentary on the gospel of Matthew in a lengthy thread here. Gavin referred to Hilary's material in passing, but chose to focus on Chrysostom without elaborating on Hilary's views. For those who are interested in Hilary, see my thread just linked.

Arguing For Miracles

Than Christopoulos recently hosted a video discussing miracles, with Caleb Jackson and David Pallmann. They make many good points. Caleb has done a lot of good work on the subject and has a book about it coming out soon.

Rewriting History Is Harder And Rarer Than Often Suggested

Late last year, I discussed Stephen Carlson's recent book on Papias. Among other things, the book documents several dozen passages about Papias in various historical sources, spanning about 1500 years. You notice some recurring themes as you read through those passages. One of them is the widespread opposition to premillennialism during most of those centuries. Over and over, there are negative comments about the premillennialism of Papias and some other sources (Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc.). Notice not only that so many documents and fragments of documents advocating premillennialism were preserved for so long, but also that even the opponents of premillennialism kept discussing the subject, acknowledging the belief's existence and the fact that early sources like Papias and Irenaeus advocated it, etc. We see the same kind of thing in other contexts, such as later sources acknowledging that an early form of church government was different than what developed later. That doesn't go well with the notion that the early Christians had the ability and the will to rewrite history to the extent that skeptical hypotheses often require.

Another approach to take toward this issue is to think in terms of the differing circumstances of individuals within groups. If thousands or millions of people across countries and continents were opposed to something (Papias' premillennialism, a claim about the authorship of a certain book, a passage contained in a book considered scripture, or whatever), how likely is it that all of those individuals would simultaneously have sufficient motivation and opportunity to do something like destroy copies of a document or change its text? People range across a spectrum in terms of their interests, moral standards, how much risk they're willing to take in a given situation, their health, the responsibilities they have, etc. The fact that two people oppose something like the premillennial beliefs of Papias doesn't prove that both would be willing to do something to suppress what Papias said, that they'd both have sufficient opportunity to do so if they had that interest, that they'd agree on taking one approach toward the situation rather than another (e.g., destroying copies of Papias' writings rather than changing the text of those documents), and so on. Critics of Christianity often put forward hypotheses that would require an inordinately large amount of coordination among the people involved. The fact that people are sometimes dishonest, for example, doesn't justify a hypothesis involving a far larger degree of dishonesty than we typically see. If skeptics are going to increase the number and variety of people involved in that sort of activity, they need to increase their argumentation accordingly. It's one thing to forge a document written to an individual on one occasion, such as a letter from Paul to Philemon. It's something else to forge multiple documents written to a much larger number of people on multiple occasions, such as two letters of Paul to the Corinthians. It's one thing to speculate that one or two of the individuals who allegedly saw Jesus after he rose from the dead were hallucinating. It's something else to suggest that most or all of the witnesses were hallucinating. We have to make these distinctions.

You Make Your Burden Heavy By Struggling Under It

"Your own discontent is that which arms your troubles with a sting; you make your burden heavy by struggling under it. Did you but lie quietly under the hand of God, your condition would be much more easy than it is. 'Impatience in the sick occasions severity in the physician.' This makes God afflict the more, as a father a stubborn child that receives not correction. Beside, it unfits the soul to pray over its troubles, or receive the sense of that good which God intends by them. Affliction is a pill, which, being wrapt up in patience and quiet submission, may be easily swallowed; but discontent chews the pill, and so embitters the soul. God throws away some comfort which he saw would hurt you, and you will throw away your peace after it; he shoots an arrow which sticks in your clothes, and was never intended to hurt, but only to drive you from sin, and you will thrust it deeper, to the piercing of your very heart, by despondency and discontent." (John Flavel, Keeping The Heart [Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2019], 46-47)

Updated Recommendations For Bible Study Resources

Denver Seminary recently posted a 2022 update to their bibliographies for the Old Testament and the New Testament. See here for Steve Hays' bibliography, which he updated shortly before his death in 2020.

How Much The Author Of Luke Is Identified

Modern critics of Christianity make a big issue of the supposed anonymity of the gospels. The weakness of that objection should be evident to anybody who's looked closely at the narrow sense in which anonymity is being appealed to and how much the gospel authors were identified outside of that narrow context. The third gospel provides a good example.

The author isn't named anywhere in the main body of the text in Luke or Acts. The obvious question that follows is: So what? As I've discussed before, there are many reasons to think the author was named in other contexts early on, sometimes from the start. And we can learn a lot about the author even from the main body of the text. He isn't named there, but he is described there and acts there. We can discern a lot about his knowledge, interests, and so forth from his writings, and he refers to himself as somebody who was a travel companion of Paul and had met James, a member of Jesus' immediate family, for example. We know of particular occasions on which he was with such individuals, many details about significant events he experienced, etc. I'm just summarizing here. The amount of information we can gather from all of these contexts (mentioned here and in the post linked above) is large. The fact that the author isn't named within the main body of the text doesn't have much significance.

Making Excuses For Neglecting Activities Like Evangelism And Apologetics

We often hear comments like the following offered as an alternative to doing something like evangelism or apologetic work:

"Just let Christ's light shine through you."

"Preach the gospel. Use words if necessary."

"People won't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

"You can't argue people into the kingdom."

Greg Koukl and a caller on his podcast recently made some good comments in response to such sentiments. Start listening at 30:12 here.

People aren't always persuaded by means of reason and evidence, but that is one of the means by which people are persuaded, it's a major means, it's superior to other means in some significant ways, and Christians have a standing obligation to frequently make use of it. For further discussion of such issues, see my post here on the significance of apologetics, including in converting people to Christianity. The post also discusses the significance of apologetics in contexts other than conversion. For some examples of the involvement of apologetics in converting people, see here and here.

When I hear the claim that you can't argue people into the kingdom, I respond by citing the example of Paul arguing people into the kingdom in Acts 19:8. The assertion that you can't argue people into the kingdom is ambiguous enough that it can be reconciled with a passage like Acts 19:8, if you interpret the phrase that you can't argue people into the kingdom in a certain way, but how many of the individuals making such comments have that sort of interpretation in mind? In my experience, it's commonplace for individuals who say that you can't argue people into the kingdom to have little or no involvement in the sort of work Paul did in Acts 19 and to show little or no interest in seeing others do that sort of work. If you're just making the point that we're dependent on the Holy Spirit in one or more ways when we try to persuade people, then what's the significance of making that point? How many people in the relevant contexts are unaware of that point or deny it? Jesus said that we can't do anything apart from him (John 15:5), that God provides us with food and clothing (Matthew 6:25-34), etc., but I don't see the people who keep saying that we can't argue anybody into the kingdom giving comparable attention to how we can't do housework without God's empowerment, can't work our jobs without him, can't pay our bills without him, etc. And they surely aren't as negligent about things like housework and paying bills as they are about apologetics. The same people who want to do little or nothing in apologetic contexts, waiting for the Holy Spirit to change people, don't take the same approach in other contexts, like the ones I just mentioned.

Part of what's going on is that people realize how much it will cost them, in terms of time, effort, reputation, relationships, and so forth, to do work like apologetics and evangelism. They don't want to pay that cost. They want a certain social standing, certain relationships, comforts, conveniences, and such that something like apologetics or evangelism would interfere with too much, at least if they did it beyond a low level. So, they're looking for excuses for their negligence. Another factor is a fear many people have of subjecting their beliefs to scrutiny. In some cases, people are dismissive of something like apologetics because of how poorly it's gone for them in the past. Instead of blaming the inadequacy of their past efforts, they act as though the problem is with apologetics in general. There are many Christians (and other people in contexts other than the ones I'm addressing here) who put forward far too little effort to persuade people about an issue, then act as if the problem must be that persuasion is too difficult or impossible. They stop after one or two rounds of a discussion, for example, as if we should expect disputes to easily be resolved after one or two (often token) efforts to resolve the controversy.

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)

A Happy God

"We have a happy God. And one thing that makes him happy is doing good to his people with all his heart and with all his soul. This is absolutely breathtaking. 'I will rejoice in doing them good...with all my heart and all my soul.' [Jeremiah 32:41]" (John Piper)

Skeptical Inconsistencies On The Historicity Of Christian Sources

"Harnack, Acts, 272: 'The agreement which in these numerous instances exists between the Acts (chaps. i.-xiv.) and the Pauline epistles, although the latter are only incidental writings belonging to the later years of the Apostle, is so extensive and so detailed as to exclude all wild hypotheses concerning those passages of the Acts that are without attestation in those epistles.' The logic is the same as arguments that a source unreliable where it can be checked should be assumed unreliable elsewhere (cf., e.g., Ehrman, Interrupted, 110, on Papias)." (Craig Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, Volume I [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2012], n. 120 on 238)

Obstacle To Comfort

I recently mentioned a documentary on the history of the Bible hosted by Ken Connolly. He also hosted some other good documentaries. One of them was about George Muller, titled Obstacle To Comfort, but I don't think you can watch it online anywhere. (Please let me know if you ever find it online.) There are directions for ordering it at kenconnolly.org. I've seen used copies on Amazon.

"My chief object was the glory of God, by giving a practical demonstration as to what could be accomplished simply through the instrumentality of prayer and faith, in order thus to benefit the Church of Christ at large, and to lead a careless world to see the reality of the things of God, by showing them, in this work, that the Living God is still, as four thousand years ago, the Living God....That it may be seen how much one poor man, simply by trusting in God, can bring about by prayer; and that thus other children of God may be led to carry on the work of God in dependence upon Him, and that children of God may be led increasingly to trust in Him in their individual positions and circumstances" (George Muller, cited in Roger Steer, Delighted In God! [Wheaton, Illinois: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1981], 157-58)

Material On Patristics From Gavin Ortlund

Here's a discussion he recently had with an Anglican about apostolic succession. Here's a good discussion he had with Tony Costa that addresses a broad variety of patristic issues. And here and here are some Ortlund did on purgatory.

Enfield Material At A University Of Cambridge Web Site

The University of Cambridge hosts an archive for the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). There are listings of the contents of that archive available online. Go here and run a search with the term "Enfield" to find some results that are relevant to the Enfield Poltergeist. The material is old in one sense, but new in another. It's archived material that's been around for a while, some of it for close to half a century. But some of it hasn't gotten much attention yet, as far as I know. For example, on the page here, we read the following about Cambridge's archived material related to Anita Gregory's doctoral thesis that discusses Enfield:

New Books To Get In 2022

This is the second post in a series I started last year. I'll mention some books I'm looking forward to that are due out next year, and anybody who's interested can add their own books they're looking forward to in the comments section of the thread. You don't have to be expecting to agree with everything in the book or even most of what's in it. These are just new books, coming out next year, that you think are worth getting for whatever reason. And you don't have to be exhaustive. You can mention one, two, or however many you want. I'm hoping these posts will help us be more aware of what books are coming out and to make better plans about which books to get, which to read, in what order, and so on.

Gary Habermas recently mentioned that the first volume of his series on Jesus' resurrection could come out as early as December of 2022. Lydia McGrew has been working on a popular-level book on the evidence for the reliability of the gospels, which apparently will be titled Testimonies To The Truth. It might come out next year. Charles Hill has written a small book on the New Testament canon, for a popular audience, titled Who Chose The Books Of The New Testament?. If it's anywhere near as good as his Who Chose The Gospels? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), it will be well worth reading. The canon is a neglected topic, and it's good to see such a significant scholar writing a concise book on the topic for the general public. I also want to get a book I heard about from one of our commenters, Lucas, last year, Jonathan Bernier's Rethinking The Dates Of The New Testament. It was initially supposed to come out in 2021, but got delayed to next year.

A Video Discussing The Authorship Of The Gospels

Than Christopoulos and Bram Rawlings recently produced a video addressing gospel authorship. It covers a lot of ground and makes many important points that are seldom brought up.

All These Things Accrued To Us Through His Poverty

"Then he proceeds afterwards to the head and crown of his persuasion. 'For ye know the grace of our Lord, that though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich.' [2 Corinthians 8:9] 'For have in mind,' says he, 'ponder and consider the grace of God and do not lightly pass it by, but aim at realizing the greatness of it both as to extent and nature, and thou wilt grudge nothing of thine. He emptied Himself of His glory that ye, not through His riches but through His poverty, might be rich. If thou believest not that poverty is productive of riches, have in mind thy Lord and thou wilt doubt no longer. For had He not become poor, thou wouldest not have become rich. For this is the marvel, that poverty hath made riches rich.' And by riches here he meaneth the knowledge of godliness, the cleansing away of sins, justification, sanctification, the countless good things which He bestowed upon us and purposeth to bestow. And all these things accrued to us through His poverty. What poverty? Through His taking flesh on Him and becoming man and suffering what He suffered. And yet He owed not this, but thou dost owe to Him." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Second Corinthians, 17:1)

David's Horn Exalted

One of the passages of scripture I often read at Christmastime is Psalm 89. Jesus' Davidic ancestry is a prominent theme in the infancy narratives, as well as in the accounts of Jesus' adulthood. Psalm 89 says a lot about how David's throne will be eternal (verses 3-4, 29, 36-37). Yet, the psalm concludes mostly with despair:

Videos On Christmas And Paganism

Wesley Huff and Michael Jones recently put out videos arguing against the supposed pagan nature of Christmas.

Luke 2:39 In Context

One of the foremost objections critics raise against the infancy narratives is the alleged contradiction between Luke 2:39 and Matthew 2. Supposedly, Luke 2:39 suggests that Joseph and Mary had lived in Nazareth prior to being in Bethlehem and stayed in Bethlehem for only a little over a month, after which they returned to Nazareth. So, they shouldn't be in a house in Bethlehem in Matthew 2, and Matthew 2:22-23 shouldn't be worded as it is. I've answered that argument in the past, such as here. But an article I wrote earlier this year adds some points that are rarely made.

As I explain there, Luke's material leading up to 2:39 suggests that Joseph had lived in Bethlehem prior to 2:4, that the wedding of Joseph and Mary occurred there, and that they were in the city for about six months prior to 2:39. In that context, 2:39 can't be saying that Joseph and Mary had both lived only in Nazareth prior to 2:4, and it can't be assuming that they would have had no reason to stay in Bethlehem after the fulfilling of the law referred to in 2:39. If Joseph had lived in Bethlehem prior to 2:4, the wedding occurred there, and they had spent about half a year in the city leading up to 2:39, then the view that there was a larger rather than a smaller amount of time that passed between the fulfilling of the law and the move to Nazareth is more plausible accordingly.

In fact, it makes more sense in the larger context for the family to have stayed in Bethlehem longer. Most likely, Joseph and Mary would have at least gathered their belongings and made other preparations for the move to Nazareth between the time when they fulfilled the requirements of the law and the time when they left for Nazareth. They wouldn't have gone to Nazareth immediately after the last requirement of the law was fulfilled. There's nothing in the context of taking Jesus to the temple prior to verse 39 that suggests the family would uproot themselves from Bethlehem to move to another city and one so far away. The move makes more sense under the circumstances Matthew refers to, and that probably is when it occurred. If the reason for moving occurred in a timeframe not covered by Luke, such as Matthew's timeframe close to when Jesus was two years old (Matthew 2:16), then Luke's not providing a reason for the move becomes more coherent. Furthermore, it's clear that Luke is encapsulating a large amount of time in a short space in verse 40, and Jesus is already at age twelve when we get to verse 42. So, a compressing of a large amount of time into one verse in verse 39 would be consistent with the verses that immediately follow. We have to explain not only the text of verse 39, but also the context. And the context substantially weakens the critics' view of the passage.

A Video Of The McGrews And Others Discussing Christmas Issues

Than Christopoulos recently hosted a good Christmas program on his YouTube channel. There were several guests: Tim and Lydia McGrew, another Tim (I don't know his last name), Erik Manning, Bram Rawlings, Lucas (I won't use his last name, since he doesn't use it in the video and may not want it mentioned), and Michael Jones. They made a lot of good points about the historicity of a traditional Christian view of Jesus' childhood and the supposed pagan roots of Christmas.

National Geographic's Reconstruction Of Christmas

National Geographic just published an article by the New Testament scholar Antonio Pinero on the events surrounding Jesus' birth. The article often refers to scholars and scholarship without naming names or citing the percentage of scholarship holding a particular view. The author favors liberal conclusions and sometimes mentions views that are only held by a minority of scholars without indicating how unpopular those views are. People often write without providing the sort of information I just referred to, for the sake of saving space, to make an article more readable, or for whatever other reason, but the information is worth noting when responding to an article like Pinero's. It's common for people to think a source like National Geographic or a scholar like Pinero who's writing in such a context is representing more of scholarship and better scholarship than he actually is.

Evidence For Jesus' Genealogies

Peter Williams makes some good points about Jesus' genealogies in the New Testament:

In terms of the different accounts of Joseph’s father, it’s not difficult either today or back then to imagine that someone might have a legal father other than his biological one, especially if Joseph’s biological father disowned him over the shame of Mary’s irregular pregnancy. But there are a few other interesting things to notice about the genealogies. First, though they give different grandfathers for Jesus, the name of his great-grandfather in both genealogies is almost identical: Matthan in Matthew and Matthat in Luke. The only difference is in the final consonant, and this is of a kind that is readily explicable: these names reflect two Hebrew words — mattan and mattat — both of which mean “gift”.

Secondly, taking our cue from this name, we see that a number of the names in Luke’s genealogy share a single root. The name Matthat along with five other names in the genealogy after David come from the Hebrew three-consonant root NTN which means “give”. (Sometimes the Ns are hidden by turning into Ts.) These are Mattathias (3:25), Mattathias (3:26), Matthat (3:29), Mattatha (3:31), and Nathan (3:31). This makes some sense as this is the genealogy through David’s son Nathan. The root for “give” was used to form some of the most popular names of Nathan’s descendants. As is common in families, names are repeated. There are three Josephs, two Levis, two Melchis, and the name Er (3:28), which is only ever attested for the tribe of Judah (see Genesis 38:3). These are features we might expect in a true narrative. We may also note that the genealogy doesn’t blunder by having any of the popular Greek names, such as Philip or Herod, for the period before Alexander the Great.

Thirdly, in both Matthew and Mark we’re told the names of Jesus’s brothers: James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas (Matthew 13:55) or James, Joses, Judas, and Simon (Mark 6:3). These differ only in the order of the final two names and in the adaptation of the Hebrew name Joseph to a Greek ending in the form Joses in Mark. However, these names also link with the genealogy in Matthew. Boys were often called after their grandfathers (a practice known as papponymy) and sometimes after their father (patronymy). If Jesus’s name was indeed given by the angel as stated in Matthew 1:21, then neither the father’s nor the grandfather’s name was an option. However, we see both these names used in the family. James is usually understood to be the first son born to Joseph and Mary after Jesus’s birth. He was therefore called James, or strictly Jakobos, ie his grandfather’s name Jacob with the Greek noun ending -os. Jakobos evolved into English as James through centuries of sound changes. The next son after Jakobos was named after his father Joseph.

Thus we can see in the names of Jesus’s brothers a tiny coincidence which supports Matthew’s genealogy.

A Geographical Argument For Christmas

A concise, memorable way to begin a case for a traditional Christian view of Jesus' childhood is to focus on geography. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. He was raised in Nazareth. He chose to live in Nazareth for a while as an adult. He then moved to Capernaum. During his public ministry, he became closely associated with Galilee more broadly. Since then, he's become highly influential among the Gentile nations. That series of events lines up well with the geography of Micah 5:2 and Isaiah 9:1. (It's also a significant fulfillment of other passages referring to a Jewish messianic figure who will become highly influential among the Gentiles. For discussions of the significance of the reference to Gentiles in Isaiah 9:1 and references to influence over the Gentile world elsewhere in Isaiah, see here and here.) Jesus' living in Nazareth and Capernaum as an adult and his giving so much attention to the region of Galilee in general during his public ministry were things he could have done by normal means without significant difficulty. They were prophecy fulfillments he had a lot of control over by natural means rather than having little or no control. Still, his deciding to do those things provides evidence that he viewed himself as the figure of Isaiah 9:1-7. That's significant in light of what the passage says about that figure's Davidic ancestry, Messiahship, and deity. And being born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth from so young an age and becoming so influential among the Gentiles weren't things he had that sort of control over.

Why Nazareth?

I've written about the significance of Jesus' upbringing in Nazareth as a fulfillment of Isaiah 9:1. It should be kept in mind that other cities in the region of Zebulun could have been chosen if the early Christians were fabricating the claim about where Jesus was raised. There was another Bethlehem in the region of Zebulun, for example (Joshua 19:15). Or Cana could have been chosen. It doesn't seem that such alternatives had the bad reputation of Nazareth (Matthew 2:23, John 1:46). The best explanation for why the early Christians claimed he grew up in Nazareth and was there so long (thus making the claim more falsifiable if it wasn't true) is that he did grow up there and was there so long. Earlier this year, I wrote about how the nature of Luke's material on Nazareth and other issues suggests the material is unlikely to be fabricated, which supports some kind of family background in Nazareth:

The scenario I've just outlined is large and complicated, but the evidence warrants a large and complicated explanation. It's not the sort of situation the early Christians are likely to have made up if they were free to have made up whatever they wanted. When the pregnancy is premarital, Mary lives in Nazareth rather than Bethlehem, Joseph is in Nazareth shortly before the wedding in spite of having a home in Bethlehem, etc., the early Christians probably were operating under significant historical constraints that prevented them from giving an account that was as simple and easy as they would have preferred.

See here for an acknowledgment of the significance of one of my points about Nazareth from Christopher Hitchens. Bart Ehrman has gone as far as to refer to Jesus' upbringing in Nazareth as "certain": "Little can be known about Jesus' early life, but one thing that can be said for certain is that he was raised in Nazareth, the home village of Joseph and Mary." (The New Testament [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012], 269)

Michael Shermer And Bart Ehrman On Christmas And Christianity

Michael Shermer recently had Bart Ehrman on his YouTube channel. There are too many problems with the comments made by both of them for me to interact with everything. They address a wide range of topics: Jesus' existence, the virgin birth, Trinitarianism, the atonement, the resurrection of Jesus, the problem of evil, etc. But Ehrman was on the program primarily to discuss Christmas issues. He had an online seminar on the subject coming up on December 5, and that was Shermer's main interest. What I want to do in the remainder of this post is respond to some of their comments about Christmas and prophecy fulfillment.

Micah 4-5 Fulfilled In Jesus

I want to have a post that links all three parts of my series in one place:

Jesus' Fulfillment Of Micah 4-5

How difficult was it to determine Jesus' birthplace?

Jesus' Birthplace Outside Matthew And Luke

Jesus' Birthplace Outside Matthew And Luke

Among the earliest sources, the place of Jesus' birth is discussed most explicitly in Matthew and Luke. But his birthplace is implied elsewhere in the New Testament and is discussed in the early patristic literature, and those other sources get much less attention in modern considerations of where Jesus was born. The evidence from ancient non-Christian sources has been neglected as well. What I want to do in this post is address some of those sources outside Matthew and Luke.

For some important background to this post, see my article on Micah 4-5 and my article on how difficult it would have been for people to determine where Jesus was born. You don't need to read those in order to understand what I'm arguing here, but those other posts will help you understand the larger significance of this one.

How difficult was it to determine Jesus' birthplace?

I've argued that Micah 4-5 is an eschatological, messianic passage that predicts the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem. Issues like whether that prophecy has been fulfilled and whether it's been fulfilled by Jesus in particular are important, but they're rarely discussed in much depth. One of the subjects that doesn't get much attention is what access the relevant historical sources had to information on Jesus' place of birth. How well could they have judged the subject? Were they in a position to pass on reliable information to future generations?

Not enough consideration has been given to how Jesus' birthplace is connected to other issues. His birthplace wasn't an isolated issue about which people either were ignorant or had the most direct, explicit sort of knowledge. Rather, it's a subject with a lot of connections to other topics, so that people could discern Jesus' place of birth and corroborating evidence for it by a large variety of direct and indirect and explicit and implicit means.

Jesus' Fulfillment Of Micah 4-5

A few years ago, I wrote about Isaiah 9:1-7, and much of what I said there is relevant to chapters 4 and 5 in Micah. I won't repeat everything I said in those posts. See here regarding issues like the origins of the Israelite monarchy in 1 Samuel 8 and some material that Isaiah and Micah have in common. In another post, I explained why we shouldn't think Isaiah 9 was fulfilled by Hezekiah or some other Jewish king of the Old Testament era. Some of what I said there is applicable to the material in Micah. Since there's so much overlap between what's said in Isaiah and what's said in Micah, those posts from a few years ago provide a lot of background for this post.

Micah 5:2 is often singled out in discussions of prophecy fulfillment, but the remainder of the chapter and the previous one should get more attention than they usually do. Chapters 4 and 5 are both eschatological and messianic. Chapter 4 opens with a discussion of Yahweh ruling the nations forever from Jerusalem in "the last days", and chapter 5 concludes with a reference to his executing vengeance on the nations. Both are addressing what will happen "in that day" (4:6, 5:10). Some of the same or similar themes are found in both chapters, and they often shed light on one another.

Enfield Miscellany (Part 6)

(See part 1 here for an explanation of what this series is about. Here are links to the other parts: two, three, four, and five. I'll be citing the Enfield tapes of Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair. I'll use "MG" to reference a tape from Grosse's collection and "GP" to designate one from Playfair's. MG44A refers to tape 44A in Grosse's collection, and GP10A refers to 10A in Playfair's, for example.)

Hazel Short's Other Experiences

She's typically discussed in the context of a levitation of Janet Hodgson that Short witnessed on December 15, 1977. The other events she witnessed don't get much attention. An article published several years ago reports:

Hazel, now 65, said: “I was once invited into her [Peggy Hodgson's] house, it was a boiling hot summer’s day outside but inside it was like a freezer, ice-cold.

“Peggy, Janet’s mum, led me through to the downstairs toilet and stuck to the wall was the toilet brush and a bottle of bleach.

“I will never forget what I saw and felt in that house. “It’s just a surprise that the story has taken this long to be turned into a film.”

She seems to be saying that the toilet brush and bottle of bleach were sticking to the wall in a paranormal manner.

Luke 1:56 And The Importance Of Bracketing

In a post about Luke's census account a few years ago, I mentioned the value of bracketing the first three verses of Luke 2 to highlight the fact that Jesus and his family don't enter the narrative until verse 4. Bracketing is often helpful in understanding Biblical passages and working through some of the issues involved. And Luke's material on Jesus' childhood provides us with another example.

As I mentioned in a post earlier this year, Joseph's presence in Nazareth in Luke 2:4 makes more sense if you read 2:4 in the context of 1:56. But people typically don't do that, since the material between 1:56 and 2:4 is distracting them from 1:56 and what led up to it. If you bracket the material about Mary and Jesus in 1:26-56 and the material about Jesus and his family starting in 2:4, you'll have a better understanding of some aspects of what's going on. You can read the post linked at the beginning of this paragraph for an explanation of how 2:4 makes more sense in light of 1:56. Luke had good reason to present the material as he did. The paralleling of John the Baptist and Jesus, going back and forth between the two, accomplishes some good things. But it's helpful to also bracket the material I've mentioned above and read that bracketed material together.

And it helps to do the same in other contexts. A major example outside of Luke that I've often cited is John 7:53-8:11. That passage shouldn't be included in John's gospel, but when it's present, it's important to bracket it to assist in reading 8:12 in light of 7:52 and what led up to it.

Christmas Resources 2021

I've written some articles that can be used as starting points for researching Christmas issues. One is about how to concisely argue for a traditional Christian view of the childhood of Jesus. The other is about how Jesus viewed himself as the figure of Isaiah 9:1-7 and framed his public ministry around that identity.

The following are examples of other Christmas issues we've addressed over the years:

Appreciating The Accomplishments Of Past Generations

I see the years like billows break
Upon the passive strand of time,
And as they break, sweep off in turn
Man's works of every age and clime.
Who, what am I amid the wreck
Of all this beauty, love, and power,
O'er which I weep, but whose decay
I cannot hinder for an hour?
The true is never obsolete,
The never old is never stale;
I guard the gold of ancient mines,
And gather gems, though few and pale;
I call them fair - as fair as when
They dropped from God's bright heaven for men.
(Horatius Bonar, "The Silence Of Faith", Hymns Of The Nativity [London, England: James Nisbet & Co., 1879], 53)

The Light Of His Eternal Glory

"Indeed, it is adversity on the outside that is often the catalyst for regained fellowship with God on the inside (Ps. 119:67). In 1745 Boston pastor Benjamin Colman's daughter died, following the death of another daughter, the debilitating illness of his wife, and the death of his associate pastor. [Jonathan] Edwards wrote a moving letter to Colman with a desire that 'when you are thus deprived of the company of your temporal friends, you may have sweet communion with the Lord Jesus Christ more abundantly, and that as God has gradually been darkening this world to you, putting out one of its lights after another, so he would cause the light of his eternal glory more and more to dawn within you.'" (Dane Ortlund, Edwards On The Christian Life [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2014], 118)

Precedent For Metaphorically Drinking Blood And Eating God

Do a Ctrl F search for "John 6" in Glenn Miller's article here. In a video here, Steven Nemes makes a lot of good points about the eucharist and whether Christ is physically present in it. My main interest in this post, though, is his examples of precedent for viewing the eucharist in a way that doesn't involve a physical presence. We often apply the same sort of reasoning in other areas of life (when speaking of the Passover elements, when referring to how an actor is the character he represents, etc.).

He Gives His Rest Under A Yoke

I've been reading John Piper's recent book on providence. As he continues to produce so much good work in his retirement years, it's useful to look back at a poem he wrote about retirement and the dangers of sloth shortly before he retired. If you go here, you can read the poem, with an introduction explaining its background, and watch a video of Piper reading it.

Don't Underestimate Prophecy Fulfillment

Prophecy fulfillment is often underestimated in a lot of contexts for a lot of reasons. For example, it seems that people often underestimate the value of prophecy fulfillment that's occurred since the Biblical era, and there's probably more than one reason why that happens. We hear more about the postbiblical era than the Biblical era, since we have more evidence for the former and it's closer to our time. We become more accustomed to it accordingly, and we often grow increasingly less appreciative of something the more we're accustomed to it. And we don't have any Biblical passages informing or reminding us that the prophecies have been fulfilled and how significant those fulfillments are, since the fulfillments occurred after the Bible was written. I suspect there's also an overreaction to false claims that have been made about alleged prophecy fulfillment in our day and in previous generations. People overreact to those false claims by going too far in the other direction, so that they neglect the fulfillments that have occurred.

Here's a post I wrote a couple of years ago that provides some examples of postbiblical prophecy fulfillment and how to argue for it. And this post goes into more depth about how to think through and articulate the principles involved. Here's one that lists some examples of prophecies fulfilled by non-Christians and/or whose fulfillment is acknowledged by non-Christians. The list includes some postbiblical fulfillments.

If Jesus was teaching a physical presence in the eucharist, why didn't he explain it better?

Advocates of a physical presence of Christ in the eucharist often suggest that he couldn't have made the concept much clearer than he did, that he should have made some other view of the eucharist clearer if he had some other view in mind, and so forth. For example, we'll be asked what could be clearer than what Jesus said in John 6. Or if Jesus wasn't teaching a physical eucharistic presence there, then why didn't he clarify that fact, especially after people expressed their opposition to such an interpretation of his comments (6:52, 6:60) and some abandoned him (6:66)? Or what could be clearer than Jesus' words at the Last Supper? And so on.

There are a lot of problems with that sort of reasoning. I'm not going to address all of those problems here, but I want to discuss some of them. The primary issue I want to address here is that a lack of clarification from Jesus is more of a problem for the physical presence view than for views of the eucharist not involving a physical presence.

Where have you been?

"All that I beg for is this, that you would step aside oftener to talk with God and your own heart; that you would not suffer every trifle to divert you; that you would keep a more true and faithful account of your thoughts and affections; that you would seriously demand of your own heart at least every evening, 'O my heart, where hast thou been today, and what has engaged thy thoughts?'" (John Flavel, Keeping The Heart [Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2019], 111-12)

Making Good Use Of People's False Priorities

When Christians are talking about younger generations - Millennials, Generation Z, or whoever - there's a tendency to focus on issues like those associated with the LGBTQ movement and racial controversies. We'll often be told that those are the issues people in those generations are the most concerned about, are talking about the most, or some such thing.

But why defer to the judgment of younger people on these issues, since they are, after all, younger people who tend to be less wise, less experienced, and so on? It's like the polls asking people what man or woman they admire most. Many will name somebody like the President, the First Lady, or the Pope, whichever names quicky and easily come to mind and seem like respectable answers at the moment. It's not as though they've given the issue much thought.

And it doesn't make sense to think that something like transgenderism, race relations, or legalizing marijuana is the most important subject in life or what we should be talking about most. I want to focus on another point, though, which should get more attention than it does.

We ought to be using the false priorities of people as an argument against their worldviews and those of the people influencing them. If what you're most concerned about in life is something like transgenderism or race relations, what does that suggest about your priorities? If the people influencing you the most - your relatives, your friends, Hollywood, academia, the media, and so on - keep neglecting God, the afterlife, and other issues that are so obviously so much more important than what the people most influencing you talk to you about the most, what does that suggest about their trustworthiness? We should make more of an issue of how unloving and irrational it is for people to be so negligent about what's most important in life while giving so much attention to matters that are so much less significant. The fact that young people are so focused on the issues they're most focused on is itself a strong line of evidence that they've been misled and should be questioning the sources who have taken them so far astray. It's not difficult to explain to people why subjects like God and the afterlife are so important. And it's not difficult to demonstrate that those subjects have been highly neglected by the relevant sources, who keep encouraging people to focus on matters of much less significance.

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 Day Living With A Poltergeist

One way of conveying what it's like to live with a poltergeist is to walk through the events of a particular day. And I've been wanting to write more about the events of May 30, 1978 in the Enfield case, since it was one of the most significant days in the case and has received much less attention than it should.

In the process of discussing what happened that day, I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes. I'll refer to Grosse's tapes with "MG", meaning that MG31A is a reference to tape 31A in his collection. And I'll refer to Playfair's tapes with "GP", so that GP68B is a reference to his tape 68B.

No Bishop Of Bishops

"For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience; since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another. But let us all wait for the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only one that has the power both of preferring us in the government of His Church, and of judging us in our conduct there." (Cyprian)

As you can see on the page linked above, dozens of other bishops at the council spoke after Cyprian made his comments. Nobody voiced any disagreement with what he said. They often appeal to scripture and reason to justify their position on the matter before them, but nobody appeals to papal authority. And nobody gives any indication of thinking that such an office existed or that departing from it or operating independently of it needed to be justified.