The Lydia McGrew Podcast

We're wrapping up our series on how Jesus sounds in John's Gospel and we've seen how argument after argument fails to support the claim that John embellishes, elaborates, invents, or puts his own interpretations into Jesus' mouth.   Today we're getting into the nitty gritty of some specific Greek aspects of what is called Johannine idiom. All too often, the fact that an argument concerns an ancient language is used to make laymen--or indeed anyone who doesn't fluently read that language--feel that they are not entitled to an opinion. The impression given is that having a credential of formal study in an ancient language is akin to being inducted into an ancient mystery religion, and that only those who have received this secret initiation rite have a right to draw any conclusion whatsoever concerning any argument that involves that language.   Here I illustrate the fact that even the understanding of such relatively technical matters of the contrastive use of a Greek conjunction can indeed be understood by those who don't fluently read the language. More importantly, once the data are out there and the alleged arguments, anyone is entitled to hear and evaluate that argument.  What we find is that such extremely trivial matters as whether Jesus used one Greek conjunction or another to expressive the contrastive meaning "but," or whether or not John translated his words in Aramaic differently from the way that Luke would have translated them (but didn't, since these passages aren't in the Synoptics), cannot possibly provide support to the proposition that John embellished or elaborated Jesus' words. Nor even to the claim that he engaged in an especially loose or free paraphrase, since either conjunction expresses the relevant meaning quite clearly in the context.  And in fact, as it turns out, the use of the contrastive "and" (kai) has an especially Semitic sound and may be an especially good representation of Jesus' words, whether he was speaking in Greek or Aramaic originally.  All this and more you'll find in this final segment. Which leaves us with a question: Why doubt John?   For more, be sure to see The Eye of the Beholder:  https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1

Did John systematically replace "Kingdom of God" in reporting Jesus' words with "eternal life" to emphasize Johannine themes? Probably not. Here we see how the attempt to create a statistical contradiction results in a strained scholarly theory.

Here I introduce explicitly what I call the "two-step argument" that John elaborated Jesus' teaching in John. It consists of arguing that Jesus sounds suspiciously like the narrator of John and the author of I John, then *rejecting* the explanation that John was influenced by Jesus and talked like Jesus, on the grounds that Jesus sounds too different in the Synoptics.  I emphasize the exaggerated nature of the claim about differences between Jesus' speech in John and the Synoptics--implying that it is as though Jesus is using highly distinctive idiomatic phrases from one region and time in the Synoptics and inconsistently using highly distinctive idiomatic phrases from another region and time in John. (As if one set of Gospels portrayed him as saying, "Jolly good, old chap," "In for a penny, in for a pound," and other distinctively British expressions while John portrayed him as saying, "Boy oh boy, that's great," "I'll take a rain check" and other distinctively American idioms.)   I also stress the fact that themes are not style. I coin the phrase "statistical contradiction argument" and bring out the unstated assumption that the different Gospels are trying to give a representative sample of how often Jesus used certain words. This would mean that if he uses "witness" or "truth" more often in John than in the Synoptics, there is a problem. But none of them claims to be giving a representative sample of how often he addressed certain topics or used certain words. This statistical assumption also underlies the attempt to place some significance on the absence of story parables in John--a truly poor argument against the robust historical accuracy of John. Obviously a verse like Matt. 13:34 doesn't mean that Jesus literally never taught without telling a story parable!  Be sure to check out the rest of the series!

Here I tackle the claim that Jesus gives longer discourses in John than in the Synoptic Gospels and that this raises a reasonable suspicion that John is elaborating Jesus' teachings, knowingly putting words into his mouth.  The article by Bauckham mentioned in the video appears to be no longer available in full freely on the Internet. (I acquired a copy of it when it was on his website in full-text form.) Here is the reference for "Historiographical Characteristics of the Gospel of John."  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/abs/historiographical-characteristics-of-the-gospel-of-john/DFA624C81A28838FB3E3002AC4219240

Here I tackle the claim that Jesus sounds in certain discourses in John so oddly literary, his words uncannily similar (for many verses) to an "I am" way of speaking supposedly characteristic of Lady Wisdom of the Old Testament and extra-canonical Wisdom literature, that it raises the suspicion that these passages are in a different genre and are not intended to be historical. Short version: Nope.  Watch the whole video for a thorough debunking of these claims.  Want more about the robust, literal historicity of John?  Get The Eye of the Beholder! https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage-ebook/dp/B09HWV6PZ7/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder&qid=1660750477&sr=8-3  Here again is post with many quotations from Craig Evans in 2012:  http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/05/transcript-craig-a.html  Here was my debate on the historicity of John in 2018 with Evans on Unbelievable:  https://www.premierunbelievable.com/unbelievable/unbelievable-is-johns-gospel-historically-accurate-lydia-mcgrew-and-craig-evans-debate/11554.article  Here is the video of Evans's two debates with Bart Ehrman in 2012 from which the above transcript of quotes was taken:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueRIdrlZsvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvCVnlHoFow 

Today we examine another "false fact"--the claim that there are seven, or even about seven, discourses in John that combine the properties of being about an "I am" saying and being fairly lengthy. Sometimes scholars will add the (also false) claim that each of the "I am" sayings with a predicate is combined with both a miracle and a discourse. Of course, nothing would follow either deductively or non-deductively even if this were true, to call into question the fully recognizable historicity of such sermons and sayings. But the premise isn't even true. As I stress in the video, people can pass on these claims while not intending to use them against historicity, but it can also be used as if it puts a question mark on historicity for those passages.   Here is my post with many quotations from Craig Evans in 2012:  http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/05/transcript-craig-a.html  Here was my debate on the historicity of John in 2018 with Evans on Unbelievable:  https://www.premierunbelievable.com/unbelievable/unbelievable-is-johns-gospel-historically-accurate-lydia-mcgrew-and-craig-evans-debate/11554.article  Here is the video of Evans's two debates with Bart Ehrman in 2012 from which the above transcript of quotes was taken:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueRIdrlZsvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvCVnlHoFow 

Charles Darwin said that a false fact is an injurious thing. One of the false facts that gets repeated in New Testament studies, without checking, is the claim that we're often unable to tell in John's Gospel who is speaking--Jesus or the narrator. This alleged fact is then used to support the conclusion that John thinks he's licensed to put his own interpretations and elaborations into Jesus' mouth, as though Jesus said them historically, when John knows that he didn't.  In fact, there is only *one* place in John where it is hard to tell where Jesus stops speaking--in the conversation with Nicodemus, in John 3:10-21.  But in multiple places John scrupulously distinguishes his own explanations from what Jesus historically said. Why would he do that if he thought it was okay to put his own interpretations into Jesus' mouth?  The three discussed in the video are John 2:18-22, John 7:37-39, and John 13:10-11. (By the way, it is in fact a plural "you" in John 13:10, something I did not check before making the video. It still seems possible that Jesus meant that the disciples corporately were clean, but that even those other than Judas needed some further purification. The force of the aside--showing that John distinguishes his own interpretations from Jesus' words--remains regardless, since Jesus does not *at this point* in the chapter relate his comments to Judas, but the narrator does.)   The other two explanatory asides after Jesus' words are found in John 18:8-9 and 21:22-23. Further evidence that John recognizes a distinction between Jesus' historical teachings and John's own teachings, led by the Holy Spirit, is found in John 16:12-13 and John 14:26.   The article by D.A. Carson quoted in the video is here:  https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gp/gp2_tradition_carson.pdf  Originally published to YouTube Aug 7, 2022

John 8:58 and John 10:30 contain quite clear references to Jesus' deity. The fact that these don't appear in the Synoptic Gospels is used as an argument that John invents material. Sometimes the argument is a pure argument from silence. Sometimes an added argument will be that Jesus "wouldn't have" spoken this explicitly about his own deity since, in the Synoptics, he sometimes told people not to tell others that he was the Messiah. If he was secretive about being the Messiah, you'll hear, he wouldn't have spoken explicitly about being God, as he apparently does in John. So John must be inventing those incidents. (Though sometimes the misleading term "paraphrase" will be used to hide what the claim really is.)   I suggest what I believe is the best way of replying to these arguments. And surprise! The best way isn't arguing for high Christology in the Synoptics.  Learn a better way here.   And don't forget to get The Eye of the Beholder for much more:  https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1 Originally published to YouTube Jul 31, 2022

I'm starting a series this week on the claim that Jesus in John sounds soooo different from Jesus in the Synoptics. This is used to argue both for the lesser historicity of the sayings and discourses of Jesus in John's Gospel and for the generally looser grip on history in the Gospel of John.  In this first part in the series, I challenge straight-up the claim that there is virtually nothing (except the famous "Johannine thunderbolt" in Matthew 11:27) in the Synoptic that sound like Jesus in John. This is just a portion of the evidence that Jesus actually says a lot of things that sound similar in John and the Synoptics.   Here is the article at the journal Conspectus that I mentioned (it's 100% free):   https://journals.co.za/doi/10.54725/conspectus.2021.2.2  Here is a free chapter of The Eye of the Beholder:  http://lydiamcgrew.com/EOBChapter1.pdf  Here are the endorsements of The Eye of the Beholder:  http://lydiamcgrew.com/EOBEndorsements.pdf  Here is an earlier video where I discuss the "heads John loses, tails John loses" fallacy and the problem with trying to "defend" John by saying that he moved a Synoptic saying:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGBI9KalFRw Originally published to YouTube Jul 24, 2022

The reference to a revolutionary named Theudas in Gamaliel's brief speech recorded in Acts 5 is a famous "crux," a place where some critics allege that Luke at least partially made up a speech and in doing so created a historical impossibility. If Gamaliel is referring to the same Theudas mentioned in Josephus, they can't both be right. In fact, that Theudas hadn't even carried out his attempted revolution (according to Josephus) at the time of the story in Acts 5.  Did Josephus make a mistake? Did Luke make an honest mistake? Did Luke's informant make a mistake? Or was Luke just throwing in a couple of representative revolutionaries' names in his partly made-up speech, not caring if they were historically possible for that speech or not?   Spoiler: I think the best explanation of all the data is that there were two revolutionaries who were sometimes known as Theudas. Is this just a desperate, ad hoc theory to save Luke's bacon? Nope. (And by the way, it also saves Josephus from the charge of mistake.) Listen to learn why this is such a plausible solution and why it has lots of explanatory power. Originally published to YouTube Jul 17, 2022