Paraphrase vs. "Paraphrase"

Here I continue with my response to a video that was drawn to my attention that was posted on Inspiring Philosophy. In that video Michael Jones did some quite ordinary harmonization of the resurrection accounts but strongly implied that this was made possible chiefly by reliance on special, expert knowledge gained from Dr. Licona's work on ancient "compositional devices." In the previous video I discussed how this relates to "spotlighting." Here I discuss the concept of paraphrase and the way that Dr. Licona and others use that word in multiple senses.  Ordinary, moderate, historically recognizable paraphrase (which easily explains many differences in wording in the Gospels) is not a literary device nor anything that we need to learn about from special knowledge of ancient culture. Memory is naturally paraphrastic. Whether a Gospel author was writing partly from his memory of another written document (such as Mark) or whether different witnesses were telling about how they remembered a scene, there will be a natural and casual (not highly deliberate nor specially motivated) type of paraphrase that takes place. But if you had been present in the scene, you would have been able to recognize the accounts by witnessing what happened.  Sometimes the authors, by using different sources, include additional details along with such trivial paraphrase. For example, Luke includes the additional fact that the angel at the tomb reminded the women that Jesus, while in Galilee, predicted his death and resurrection. Here is a discussion of the way that all of the Gospels fit together concerning the women from Galilee:  http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/01/new_undesigned_coincidence_the.html  

But Dr. Licona, Dr. Craig Evans, and others use the word "paraphrase" also in a far more problematic way to talk about what is really inventing things that did not historically occur.   One of the most striking of these is Dr. Licona's claim that John's report that Jesus said "I thirst" from the cross is a "paraphrase" of the (obviously) entirely different saying, "My God, why have you forsaken me," reported in the Synoptics. Calling this "paraphrase" is highly misleading. See this recent discussion starting around minute 19 in which Licona uses the word in this strange and far more controversial way.  https://youtu.be/-6Unz9iMAHg?t=1166  In case you are wondering, there is *no* good argument that John made this theological invention nor anything close. I examine the supposed arguments for it in both The Mirror or the Mask and The Eye of the Beholder. But it certainly should not be called a paraphrase, as that simply causes people not to notice what is really being said--that John invented the saying and then wrote as if it happened historically.  

Here again is my video from last summer on paraphrase:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oldgDKH_xKY&list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0S9CsFG47bKjcYxsnHujhg&index=5&t=328s  

And here is a blog post on it:  https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-licona-series-paraphrase-exercise.html  Here is my debate with Dr. Evans from three years ago:  https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Is-John-s-Gospel-historically-accurate-Lydia-McGrew-Craig-Evans-debate  

Video Originally uploaded to YouTube 7-11-21