Neglected Evidence For The Authorship Of The Fourth Gospel

A neglected line of evidence for the fourth gospel's authorship is how closely John 19:35, 20:31, and 21:24 align with what Jesus said about the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the work of the apostles, and other issues in John 14-17. What the author of the document says in the passages I cited from John 19-21 seems to allude to Jesus' earlier comments in chapters 14-17. The implication is that the author of the fourth gospel is fulfilling what Jesus predicted. He's suggesting that he's one of the apostles Jesus was addressing in chapters 14-17.

Holding Skeptics Accountable For Their Claims

One of the implications of what I discussed in my last post is that critics have to pay a price for something like assigning a late date to a gospel. For example, though I've argued elsewhere that Luke and Acts were written no later than the mid 60s, it's possible that a companion of Paul, like Luke, lived until later and published his work later than the mid 60s. If a skeptic assigns Luke/Acts to the 80s, let's say, he still has to allow for the possibility of Lukan authorship (or authorship by some other companion of Paul), and pushing the documents a couple of decades later pushes them that much closer to the later sources who comment on authorship in one way or another. That closer chronology adds credibility to those later sources. (And that's also true for other matters, like genre and historicity, not just authorship.) Skeptics are often schizophrenic about this kind of thing. They'll disregard the implications of what they said in a particular context when acknowledging the implications would be unfavorable to their conclusions in another context. I've written elsewhere about how they sometimes do that with certain Christmas issues, for instance, like the virgin birth and the Bethlehem birthplace.

Eyewitnesses Of Acts' Events Living Into The Second Century

We're accustomed to framing timing issues in early Christianity around Jesus' life. He died in the 30s, so we think of a document written in the 60s as postdating Jesus' life by about three decades, for example.

But we need to keep in mind that many significant events, like the ones narrated in Acts, occurred after Jesus' life on earth. Acts closes with events in Rome in the 60s. Some people who were in Rome at the time surely lived into the second century, probably multiple decades into the second century in some cases. That diminishes the popular skeptical suggestion that individuals in the second century wouldn't have had firsthand knowledge about issues like the dating and authorship of documents, were just speculating about such issues without much to go by, etc.

I've cited Acts as an example here, and something else that's significant about Acts is its connection to the third gospel. The fact that people with firsthand knowledge of Acts' authorship and the circumstances surrounding it could so easily have lived well into the second century, and that some probably did, adds weight to the universal testimony from the second century onward that the third gospel was written by Luke. (And there are multiple sources who partially or fully corroborate that authorship attribution prior to Irenaeus, as discussed here.)

This distinction between the timing of Jesus' life and the timing of later events is also relevant in many other contexts: the suffering of the apostles, their martyrdom, apostolic miracles, etc. Always ask yourself what timeframe is relevant to the issue under consideration. Be careful not to assume the timeframe of Jesus' life in contexts that involve a different timeframe instead.

Josephus' Potential Sources On Jesus

What's quoted below is from Tom Schmidt's recent book on Jesus in Josephus. This is an overview of Josephus' potential sources from whom he got his information about Jesus. The cumulative effect is especially significant. How likely is it that somebody would live where Josephus lived, have the parents Josephus had, know the other people Josephus knew, etc., yet not learn anything about Jesus from any of those non-Christian sources or only receive information that was false or unreliable? It seems very likely that Josephus got reliable information about Jesus from multiple non-Christian sources on multiple occasions. Schmidt writes:

What if men like Papias and Polycarp weren't eyewitnesses of the apostles?

I've argued, in other posts here and elsewhere, that they were. But if they weren't, what would follow?

There still would have been other individuals in early church history who had been an eyewitness of one or more of the apostles. There would have been many eyewitnesses, and some of them would have lived well into the second century. That's the nature of life. Skeptical challenges to the eyewitness status of individuals like Papias and Polycarp don't change that. It's not as though the presence of eyewitnesses depends on the status of particular individuals who have traditionally been thought to have been eyewitnesses of the apostles. The fact that eyewitnesses would have existed and have lived until well into the second century can't reasonably be denied. Keep that in mind when you see people questioning the eyewitness status of certain people.

And even those who weren't eyewitnesses could have been in a good position to have had significant information. They were contemporaries of the apostles, lived in an area where one or more apostles had been, etc. Think of the evidence for the apostle John's long lifespan and his interactions with Christians and churches in Asia Minor, for example. On his long lifespan, see here. For a discussion of the evidence for his influence on the Asia Minor region, go here. That post is focused on Ephesus, but much of what's said there is also applicable to Smyrna and other locations in the area. It's not as though Polycarp had to be a disciple of John in order to have had significant information about John and other eyewitnesses of Jesus. Polycarp was in the right place, at the right time, in the right sort of leadership position to have had a lot of reliable information about Jesus and the apostles, even if he wasn't a disciple of John (though the evidence suggests he was).

Anytime skeptics raise doubts about an issue like whether a certain person was an eyewitness of the apostles or whether a New Testament author was an eyewitness of whatever type, it's helpful to begin by asking what's at stake. Even if the skeptic's position were granted for the sake of argument, what would follow from it? Often, even if we granted the skeptic's position, the source in question still offers a large amount of evidence against the skeptic's view of Christianity.

What communities did the early Christian documents come from?

1 Corinthians 15 often comes up in the context of Easter. A lot of attention is given to the state of the Corinthian church at the time, what circumstances Paul was addressing there, and so on. But we should keep in mind that a document sent out involves at least two communities. In addition to the community in the location the document is sent to, like Corinth, we should also think about the community in the location the document came from.

1 Corinthians seems to have been written by Paul while he was in Ephesus. So, in addition to his expectation that the Corinthians would be familiar with the resurrection appearances he mentions in 1 Corinthians 15, there's also a likelihood that the Ephesians would have heard about those appearances in the context of Paul's composition of 1 Corinthians. To the extent that they'd heard about the appearances before then, the circumstances surrounding Paul's letter to the Corinthians would have reinforced what the Ephesians had heard previously. And they would have had opportunity to get further information from Paul about the appearances and related matters.

Look at 1 Corinthians 16, all of the individuals and multiple churches mentioned there ("the churches of Asia" in verse 19, etc.). Or look at the similar comments in other New Testament (and extrabiblical) letters.

We should think of at least two communities when considering a document like 1 Corinthians. That's true not just with regard to the contents of the document, but also other issues involved, like authorship and genre. That means a larger number of people, accordingly, would have been well informed about such issues from the start. It's not as though a matter like who wrote 1 Corinthians, the gospel of Matthew, or 1 Peter, for example, would have been well known only to the author and the original recipients of the document. There likely would have been at least two communities who were well informed from the beginning. These documents were a means of informing multiple groups, typically groups that were some significant distance apart geographically. So, there was some diversity built into the circumstances at the outset. For more about topics like these, see here.

An Interview With A Police Officer Who Worked The Bridgeport Poltergeist Case

I've often cited the work of the late Roman Catholic patristic scholar Robert Eno. His younger brother, Paul, is a paranormal researcher. One of the cases he worked was the Bridgeport Poltergeist in the 1970s. It seems to be an authentic case and one that's highly evidential. You can read about it in depth in a book by William Hall, The World's Most Haunted House (Pompton Plains, New Jersey: New Page Books, 2014). Paul has discussed the case and his involvement in it in many places, including in some YouTube videos. He hosts a radio program with his son, Ben, and they recently interviewed Joe Tomek, a police officer who went to the house involved in the Bridgeport case and witnessed some of the paranormal events there.

Did the resurrection witnesses have an opportunity to recant?

Skeptics occasionally suggest that the people who claimed to have seen Jesus after he rose from the dead may have been willing to renounce that claim, but were never given an opportunity to do so. Or it will be suggested that we should be agnostic on issues of recantation, since we don't have enough evidence to go by.

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.

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.

A personal narrative of Jonathan Edwards

Personal Narrative

I had a variety of concerns and exercises about my soul from my childhood; but had two more remarkable seasons of awakening, before I met with that change, by which I was brought to those new dispositions, and that new sense of things, that I have since had. The first time was when I was a boy, some years before I went to college, at a time of remarkable awakening in my father's congregation. I was then very much affected for many months, and concerned about the things of religion, and my soul's salvation; and was abundant in duties. I used to pray five times a day in secret, and to spend much time in religious talk with other boys; and used to meet with them to pray together. I experienced I know not what kind of delight in religion. My mind was much engaged in it, and had much self-righteous pleasure; and it was my delight to abound in religious duties. I, with some of my schoolmates joined together, and built a booth in a swamp, in a very secret and retired place, for a place of prayer. And besides, I had particular secret places of my own in the woods, where I used to retire by myself; and used to be from time to time much affected. My affections seemed to be lively and easily moved, and I seemed to be in my element, when engaged in religious duties. And I am ready to think, many are deceived with such affections, and such a kind of delight, as I then had in religion, and mistake it for grace.

The Importance Of Your Testimony As A Miracle Witness

In the comments section following my recent tribute to Maurice Grosse, I had a discussion with a commenter, Anthony, about a subject I want to expand upon here. It's significant, and it has implications beyond Enfield. He commented on how we haven't been hearing much lately from some of the Enfield witnesses. I discussed how common that sort of thing is (in life in general, not just in paranormal contexts), and I went into some of the reasons why it may happen in a given situation.

In the course of the discussion, I mentioned some examples of Enfield witnesses who have remained active in discussing the case and their involvement in it (Graham Morris and David Robertson). Another example who came to mind, though I didn't mention him there, is John Rainbow. You can go here to read a post I put up in January of 2019 about what Rainbow experienced and his importance as a witness. Something that's significant about him in this context is the situation surrounding his death. When Melvyn Willin was putting together his recent book on Enfield, he contacted some of the people involved in the original events to get their thoughts on the case a few decades later. Concerning Rainbow, he wrote:

Mrs Rainbow - the wife of John Rainbow a local tradesman who had witnessed Janet levitating - replied that unfortunately her husband had died in July 2018, but she confirmed that he had continued to believe that what he had seen was a genuine levitation. She added, "…he also had a witness who also saw what was happening [an apparent reference to Hazel Short]." (The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes [United States: White Crow Books, 2019], 117)

Notice how much had to be in place to produce that section of Willin's book. Rainbow would have to have an ongoing willingness to discuss the issues with other people. He did it to such an extent that his wife had the impression described above, that he held the belief in question until his death. And he'd made the relevant contact information available. His wife not only read the letter sent by Willin, but even responded to it and provided so much significant information and allowed her response to be published.

By contrast, think of how many people never tell anybody about such an experience they've had, only mention it once, don't provide any means of contacting them again later if the need arises, etc. How many witnesses' spouses would be willing to read a letter like Willin's, respond to it in such a valuable way, and allow the response to be published? Many people would be so apathetic, lazy, angry, or whatever that they wouldn't even do half that much. What Rainbow and his wife did is commendable, and I wish more people would do it.

If you've witnessed a miracle of some sort (or had some other significant experience), have you left any record of it for other people? Have you provided the relevant details to relatives, your church, or other people who could pass the information on to others over time? Have you made yourself available for further contact in case more information is needed? We should ask ourselves questions like these and apply the same scrutiny to ourselves that we apply to other miracle witnesses.

The 500 eyewitnesses

One of the sillier objections to Paul's appeal to 500 eyewitnesses (1 Cor 15:6) is that Paul doesn't name them. But what difference would that make? These aren't famous men. Even if he named them, few 1C readers would recognize the individuals by name. And of course, modern readers are in no position to identify them even if they were named. If Paul listed them by name, they'd be anonymous to us, given our historical distance. So the objection is just a distraction. 

Sifting non-Christian miracle claims

In this post:

https://randalrauser.com/2020/04/are-christians-inconsistent-for-rejecting-non-christian-miracle-claims/

apostate Randal Rauser makes some good general points. However, I disagree with him on one or two issues:

i) I think the reported miracles of Sathya Sai Baba lack credibility, not because those claims are inconsistent with other things I believe about the world, but for the specific reason that there's evidence that he was a fraud:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/11/hindu-miracles.html

ii) I don't think non-Christian miracles are inconsistent with the nature of reality. Indeed, Scripture acknowledges the power of witchcraft (e. g. Deut 13:1-5; Mt 24:24; Acts 16;16-18; 2 Thes 2:9; Rev 13:13-15).

"Neutral bystanders"

An exchange I had on Facebook:

Mike

As to the case against Jesus Christ and the New Testament I have heard from critics that there is no reliable outside written references that would support the existence or life of Jesus Christ other than those written sources within the believing community. The claim is that trust and reliability in the New Testament and the words of Jesus Christ do not pass historical scrutiny. Putting this to the test then this claim is here stated in form of a question : Are there written references outside the scope of church writings , specifically outside writers of the believing Christian ✝ community , that validate that Jesus Christ was a historical figure ? Furthermore , can the claims of the New Testament and life of Jesus Christ solidified by asking dates of these writings fall between 60 AD to approximately 250 AD ?

In other words please provide support in the reliability of Jesus' Christ life and existence and that of the New Testament Scriptures by providing early outside ( secular ) sources between 60AD to 250AD.

Hays

There are outside sources. However, it's necessary to challenge the premise of the objection. Critics are making the contradictory demand for unbelievers who said Jesus was who he claimed to be. It's like demanding that you will only accept evidence for a murder by an eyewitness who says they saw the murder but doesn't believe it happened!

Mike

No . I would disagree with your objection. Critics are asking for testimony or references ( relatively close to the time of Jesus' historical existence ) from writers who are neutral and have no dog in the race. It's only fair , in my view , that , along with the witness and testimony of believers who have thrown all their chips in this cause , to also provide neutral testimony or outside testimony of folks " not in our club . 

Hays

"Neutral bystanders" in what sense? That they have no prior bias going in? But they can't stay neutral if they know what happened. Asking for testimony from observers who have no dog in the fight at that stage is is nonsensical. Either they know what happened or they don't. If they know what happened, then they have to take sides. At that point they have a dog in the fight.

Mike 

Still disagree with the premise of your argument. So , in the case of the New Testament - the writings of the believing community is testimony of Jesus Christ after the writers have already cast in all their lot in favor of Jesus Christ and made a decision to be in the believing community. In other words all the writings that are testimony in favor of Jesus Christ and the reliability of the New Testament are post conversion. Neutral writers / neutral references to validity of Christ Jesus are pre conversion or no conversion at all which means we have sources to testify of Jesus Christ who are on the outside " looking in."

Hays

The question at issue isn't bias but the source of bias. What makes them believers? If the evidence makes them believers, then their bias is justified. Once again, you can't be neutral if you know the facts. You could be neutral prior to conversion if you don't know the facts, but in that case you're a useless witness because you're uninformed.

Holy sexuality

"'Holy Sexuality' – Solas in Conversation with Christopher Yuan"

I never fail to enjoy reading people's testimonies about how they became Christian and how they remain Christian "through many dangers, toils, and snares" over the years. Here's an excerpt:

Meanwhile my parents prayed for a miracle. My mother prayed that God would do “whatever it takes” for me to come to surrender my life to Jesus. She prayed and fasted every Monday for seven years, she fasted once for 39 days, and enlisted over a hundred prayer warriors to pray and fast for me. However I remained totally resistant, to the point that once, when my parents came to visit me I kicked them out! As they left, my Dad gave me his Bible, but I immediately threw it in the trash.

[...]

In prison, I was diagnosed with HIV, and hit a personal low-point. A few days after that I was walking around the cell block and I passed by a rubbish bin, and what I found on top of the trash was a Gideon’s New Testament! I took it to my cell and began reading it...

John Frame's testimony

https://frame-poythress.org/how-has-john-frames-apologetic-changed-over-time/

Why I'm still a Christian

I mentioned a while back that there's an overemphasis on Christian conversion testimonies. Why these can be edifying to read, what's more useful is to read follow-up testimonies of why someone is still a Christian after 50 years, give or take. Recently I ran that question by some Christian thinkers who are approaching the end of their pilgrimage. The answers for interesting but off-the-record. Then one of them asked me how I'd answer my own question. So, for what it's worth, here's the question and my own answer:

Q. Have you written anything about why you're a Christian at this stage of life? As you know, there's a testimonial genre about how people became Christian in their teens/twenties or how they personally embraced the faith they were raised in at that time of life, but that's frozen in the past. At that age their reasons will be thinner. Over a lifetime, the reasons may evolve or change or be augmented or replaced with deeper reasons. Approaching the end of life, a Christian thinker has thicker reasons for his faith, due to all the life-experience under his belt, study, reflection, and interaction with others. 

A. There's why I became a Christian and then there's why I'm still a Christian. I've been a Christian for 44 years. I became a Christian at 16.

I grew up in a moderately Christian home. My father was intellectual, but agnostic and aloof. My mother was a P.K., pious, but religiously rootless when I was growing up. My grandmother, who lived in town until I started junior high, was the most devout. I adored her, but she wasn't intellectual, so her faith wasn't a reason for me to believe . My Aunt Grace was the best educated Christian I knew at that time, but she was more scholarly than analytical. And we didn't see her that often. My uncle Fred, who was Dean of Education at Anderson U, was a closet apostate. 

I never attended a fundamentalist church. We attended mainline denominations. No doctrinal preaching.

When I came of age around 13, I began to think about death. Not because I expected to die anytime soon, but I was beginning to think about what I'd do with the rest of my life as an adult. And since I was mortal, it made sense to mentally begin at the end and work back from there. At the time I was an atheist. However, it seemed to me that if we pass into oblivion when we die, then life is unimportant. It made me feel alienated from the world.

At that age I didn't have a philosophically astute argument for my intuition, but over the years I've definitely firmed up my view that atheism is a euphemism for moral and existential nihilism. Indeed, one of my pastimes is to collect atheists who admit that.

That didn't make me a Christian, but it did mean I've never been able to consider atheism as a viable fallback option. At one end, my Christianity begins with atheism. That's the backstop. That's just not a tenable alternative. 

I became a Christian at 16 simply by reading the Bible, beginning with Matthew. That was it. Apologetics came later. I backed into apologetics, not to answer my own questions, but to advise others.

As a new Christian it became quickly apparent that I could ask questions the people I knew couldn't answer, so I'd have to find my own answers.

Although I'm cerebral, I'm naturally an intellectual drifter. I coasted through public school on raw talent. I was never studious. 

Partly because I found public school boring. For instance, I was probably mathematically gifted, but they didn't know what to do with gifted students. They just taught techniques for solving problems, whereas I ignored the textbook and toyed with equations until they balanced out in my head. The teacher didn't approve.

Some guys excel academically because they have a competitive streak. I don't. I always thought living to beat the competition was a stupid goal in life. Until I became a Christian, I was an intellectually lazy, indifferent student. It took a sense of Christian duty to galvanize my abilities.

Theologically, I'm primarily interested in exegetical and philosophical theology. Intellectual challenges to Christianity have never been the chink in my armor. I've read all the best atheists. 

In addition, I've invested a great amount of  time in evidence for Christianity as well as evidence refuting naturalism, including neglected lines of evidence. 

As you know, Christian faith has several components. One is belief or conviction, grounded in evidence. My faith is pretty invulnerable in that respect, although I'm only human, so I don't claim to be indestructible.

Where I'm vulnerable is the emotional problem of evil. The way to harm me is through harming those I care about. My three closest, most devout relatives suffered the most. 

I think some Christians lose their faith, not because they cease to believe in God's existence, but God's benevolence. They feel God betrayed them or betrayed those they loved. If you doubt God's goodness, then his existence is secondary. 

However, I'm a presuppositional Christian and an existential Christian. I think God is the source of meaning, math, modality, morality, and logic, as well as creation. On that front alone, naturalism is not an option.

In addition, I've never been a truth for truth's sake, follow the evidence wherever it leads thinker. That bifurcates the good and the true. But both are necessary. Without truth, goodness is illusory; without goodness, truth is worthless. 

Watching what happened to my closest relatives was emotionally damaging to my faith, but damaged faith is worth clinging to. We can't live without hope.

So between the positive evidence for Christianity, as well as the evidence for the falsity of naturalism, I remain a Christian. Atheism is repellent, and the other religious offerings aren't serious rivals. 

I should add that I've had a number of uncanny experiences over the years (as well as witnessing like phenomena with some of my relatives), so it's not confined to abstract public evidence. 

The Credibility Of The Enfield Witnesses

An important component of evaluating Enfield or any other paranormal case is to judge the character of the witnesses. On the reliability of witnesses in general, especially as it pertains to the paranormal, see Stephen Braude's article here. I've said a lot in other posts about the evidence we have for the trustworthiness of the witnesses in the Enfield case (the initial skepticism of some of the witnesses; the ongoing skepticism of witnesses who corroborated the case; witnesses admitting facts against their interest when they could easily have denied those facts without being refuted; evidence against the fabrication of the case for money; evidence against the fabrication of the case for attention; etc.). What I want to do in this post is provide some additional illustrations from the tapes of Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair. I'll use "MG" to refer to Grosse's tapes and "GP" to refer to Playfair's. MG3B is tape 3B in Grosse's collection, GP78A is 78A in Playfair's, etc.

Human testimony is generally reliable. Many of our previous posts, on Enfield and other topics, have addressed the reliability of human memory and the limitations of the explanatory value of hallucinations, for example, and Braude's article linked above addresses such issues. We don't begin with a default assumption that people are lying, nor should we even be agnostic. Liars typically are highly selective in what they lie about. They don't have an interest in lying about most topics. And there's a danger of lying so much that their dishonesty isn't as believable as they want it to be. So, even unusually dishonest people have a lot of motivation to often tell the truth. And there are checks and balances in life. A desire to be dishonest in a particular context can be outweighed by some negative consequences that might or probably would follow from that dishonesty. Where one person has a motive to be dishonest, other people involved have motives to be honest and to oppose the dishonesty of the first individual. Where multiple people are involved in a deception, coordination is required, not only initially, but also for however long they want to maintain the deception afterward. The obstacles that sort of coordination will face are often difficult or impossible to anticipate. Planning and carrying out a deception involve time, effort, and other resources, and the more extensive the deception is, the higher the price that has to be paid to carry it out. Even where two people are sufficiently motivated to be dishonest, they can be dishonest in opposing ways. The larger the number of people we're supposed to think are lying in the same way, even though one or more of them could benefit significantly from lying in a different manner, the more problematic a fraud hypothesis becomes. And so on.

In the remainder of this post, I want to move on from these general principles to the details involved in the Enfield case. I'll start with some of the general parameters of the case, then get into some of the lesser details provided by Grosse and Playfair's tapes.

From son of Sam to son of God

https://world.wng.org/2020/01/finding_life_in_a_life_sentence