Independence and New Testament Studies

Independence is very tricky! Different accounts of the same event that are independent in the relevant sense can make a powerful cumulative case. But what is the relevant kind of independence? Biblical scholars have a tendency to throw around the term without defining carefully what they mean and how it works. There is an extensive literature in analytic philosophy, especially in probability theory, about testimonial independence and its proper analysis. I've contributed to this literature myself.   In this discussion I give a short breakdown of several ways that source evidence might be, or might not be, independent, and I discuss why this is important for biblical studies, especially studies of the Gospels.  Here is a document containing the diagrams, in case you want to look at them without watching the video:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vk_utlHOibgSPwRaz2iCgskeF-95Fnvp/edit?fbclid=IwAR1hyBKUMAu3lpqL2vAmF0V4MSqEcLFWzPm36V9PhYMgkVvy-WHwUBlhBrg 

Here is my published paper in Themelios on some of these issues. (Free.)  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/finessing-independent-attestation-interdisciplinary-biblical-criticism/ 

Here is an article (free) I have published in the journal Ergo on varied evidence and why it is helpful (having to do with independence):  https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ergo/12405314.0003.010/--evidential-diversity-and-the-negation-of-h-a-probabilistic?rgn=main;view=fulltext 

Here is my preprint version of an article in the journal Erkenntnis on undesigned coincidences and their proper probabilistic analysis:  http://lydiamcgrew.com/UndesignedCoincidencesErkenntnis.pdf 

Here is the reference for the published version of that article:  https://philpapers.org/rec/MCGUCA