The Lydia McGrew Podcast

Paul's goodbye speech to the elders of the Ephesian church at Miletus is recorded in Acts 20:18-35. It shows numerous indications of the accuracy of Luke's record, to the point that it seems likely that at least to some extent, in this case, Luke is recording Paul's exact words. It's striking how clearly we hear the authentic voice of Paul himself, recognizable from his letters. And yet there are also many reasons to think that Luke was not basing his history on the letters. (Among other things, the alleged contradictions that skeptics themselves bring up provide such reasons.)   Here is Testify's video on some overlapping material:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkjdqvlLEZw&t=197s  Here is my earlier discussion of the amazing undesigned coincidences connecting Acts 19-20 with I Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Romans.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq7EDxPC3Fw Originally published to YouTube Jul 10, 2022

Here's some evidence you probably never heard of that Luke didn't make up speeches.   Check out the whole book The Evidential Value of the Acts of the Apostles, by J.S. Howson.  It's totally free!  https://books.google.com/books?id=qnsXAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false  For more info. on ancient speeches and history, check out Chapter VII of The Mirror or the Mask. It's not absolutely free (alas), but pretty inexpensive in Kindle.  https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1600272214&sr=8-1 Originally published to YouTube Jul 3, 2022

If you're into minimalist or minimal-ish arguments for Jesus' resurrection you may be tempted to include the empty tomb as one of your "core facts" because you've heard that it's granted by 75% of New Testament scholars. That isn't a high enough percentage for the minimal facts method as practiced by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, but you might think, "Hey, that's still pretty good, and it will make the argument stronger, so I'll include it."  If you follow my work you know that I don't allow scholarly consensus to influence me in this way, either positively or negatively. But looking at the claim on its own terms, what does that 75% you might hear really amount to?  I don't think anybody is trying to hide the statistical facts here. In fact, I sincerely commend Dr. Licona for making some further information on this available in his 2010 book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. But I think it needs to be made more widely known. It turns out that gauging scholarly consensus by a literature survey whose results are interpreted and reported by one person alone is a pretty messy business. If you're inclined to "beef up" your minimal-ish approach by including the empty tomb on the basis of that alleged 75% consensus, maybe you should think again.  Originally published Jun 26, 2022

But you have to listen to hear it.. (Hint: It comes at about minute 22. But don't mess up my organization. Listen to the whole thing!)   Bart Ehrman claims that in Acts Paul agrees with Peter and James about EVERYTHING of theological or practical importance. Out of this he creates a so-called contradiction with Galatians, which records a conflict between Paul and Peter concerning eating with Gentiles.  But there isn't any real contradiction at all  As is so often the case, Bart is leaning on a weak argument from silence and cherry picking his data. The wider evidential set shows important agreements on the state off the early church concerning these very issues--the relationship of Jews and Gentile in Christianity. Originally published to YouTube Jun 19, 2022

Last time I gave a series of undesigned coincidences that confirm the reliability of Acts, using three of what are known as the undisputed Pauline epistles--I and 2 Corinthians and Romans.  But what good are undesigned coincidences in arguing for the reliability of Acts if they come from epistles that skeptical scholars dispute the authorship of, like 2 Timothy? Is it necessary to first get strong separate evidence that an epistle was written by Paul before it can provide any evidence for the reliability of Acts, even by an undesigned coincidence?  Nope. An undesigned coincidence provides simultaneous evidence for the authenticity of a document (that is, it's authorship by the person it claims to be written by) and for the authenticity and reliability of an historical document like Acts that it intersects with. How is that possible? Isn't that circular? Nope. Watch to find out why.   Go here for a useful graphic:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sFIBs6gc_mrRmlji-gSyfCJV29RwB_wl/view?usp=sharing  Here is an earlier presentation I did on mutual support that makes a similar point.  https://youtu.be/SqkNJ497VJo Originally published to YouTube on Jun 12, 2022

Bart Ehrman claims that the author of Acts wasn’t a companion of Paul, though (says Ehrman) he wants his readers to think that he was. But Ehrman also questions whether the author of Acts read Paul’s letters, though he dates Acts as late as A.D. 85. If the author of Acts didn’t have access either personally to Paul or to Paul’s letters, how do we account for the many astonishing, detailed, but casual agreements between Acts and Paul’s letters? I actually agree that the author of Acts wasn’t basing his work on Paul’s letters. He didn’t need to. He was a personal companion of Paul.  Here I examine in detail just some of the detailed correspondences between Paul’s letters of I and II Corinthians and Romans, on the one hand, and Acts 19-20, on the other hand. The author of Acts knows where Paul was planning to travel at a highly specific moment in his life and where he did travel after that—in meticulous detail. But he doesn’t seem to be copying this information from Paul’s letters.   How is that possible if he’s a fiction-writing bumbler with little concern for truth, as Ehrman claims?  Here are the points I make in outline, with references:  --Paul was in Ephesus. I Cor. 16:8-9, Acts 19 --He was with Aquila and Priscilla. I Cor. 16:19, Acts 18:19, 24-26 --He had already sent Timothy to Greece (Achaia). I Cor. 4:17, Acts 19:22, 20:4 --By way of Macedonia. I Cor. 16:10, Acts 19:22--After staying in Ephesus for a little while (I Cor. 16:8-9, Acts 19:22), Paul was going to go to Greece himself following the same route through Macedonia. I Cor. 16:5-7, Acts 19:21. --Paul did follow this route from Ephesus through Troas to Macedonia and so into Greece. II Cor. 2:12-13, II Cor. 9:2-4, Romans 16:1-2, Acts 20:1-2. --After that, Paul intended to travel to Jerusalem. (I Cor. 16:3) Romans 15:25-26, Acts 19:21. (According to Acts he actually did so.) --After going to Jerusalem, Paul intended to travel to Rome. Romans 15:23 & 28, Acts 19:21. (According to Acts in the end he went to Rome as a prisoner, which probably wasn’t what he had in mind.)  Massive thanks to David Yuen of Digital Pizzazz for his help with the subtitling, the map, and the editing on this video. Couldn't have done it without him!    Check out some recent videos at Testify in answer to Bart Ehrman’s claims of contradiction and for more evidence for Acts:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLc0GBMN1lA&t=43s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8rY6gI__XE  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xf-I82FBl8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-7ehjwMLr0&t=1s  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWktSrNbad0 And check out my book Hidden in Plain View:   https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Plain-View-Undesigned-Coincidences/dp/1936341905/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8  And don’t forget the amazing book by William Paley on this topic, the Horae Paulinae. It’s free!  https://books.google.com/books?id=i5cHAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false Map image used by permission from DeWard Publishing. Originally published to YouTube June 5 2022

This is a continuation of my discussion of the Synoptic problem here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4v_tisDAj8&t=255s  My big point in both videos is to urge you *not* to accept this false dilemma: Either the Synoptic Gospels are totally independent from each other or else, wherever the story is found in Mark and Matthew or Luke has similar wording, Mark is the *only* factual source.  While verbal difference is *one* way of indicating factual independence, it is not absolutely necessary. We find repeatedly that Matthew and Luke have details not found in Mark even in passages that are quite similar to Mark in wording. Sometimes these extra details are confirmed by undesigned coincidences. I talked about several of these in the earlier discussion of the Synoptic problem.  Here I give another example: Luke's mention of Bethsaida as the location of the feeding of the five thousand. Despite striking similarities of wording in portions of the narrative to Mark's wording, Luke alone mentions Bethsaida in this connection.  Don't let references to the Synoptic problem, the two-source hypothesis, and Markan priority be used to bludgeon you into erasing Luke and Matthew as independent sources of information. No, not even when there is similar wording to Mark. Originally published on YouTube May 29, 2022

Here I talk about an alleged literary device (not a fact-changing one) that NT scholar Richard Bauckham thinks we find in the Gospels to indicate their eyewitness sources. I applaud Bauckham's emphasis on eyewitness testimony in the Gospels, but I just don't think this device is really there. In fact, I question whether such a device even existed. (Bauckham doesn't claim that he has any source that explicitly talks about it.) Here I carefully go through arguments that it is found in Mark, Luke, and John and show that they just are insufficient to bear the weight put on them.  Even when an argument supports our own conclusions, it may not be a cogent argument. We should be especially cautious about embracing extremely subtle devices that authors supposedly deliberately put into their documents "under the surface" in order to make a point. The Gospels show plenty of other evidence of eyewitness testimony and sometimes even explicitly claim it. But I don't think we should use the "inclusio" claim. I especially urge that you not refer to it using successful language like, "We have found a device called the inclusion of eyewitness testimony in the Gospels." This can give the false impression that ancient authors actually talked about using such a device, that the case is clear that such a device existed, and that there is a very strong case that this "thing" is in the Gospels.   Here is a two-part review of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses that I wrote some years ago. There's plenty of good stuff in Bauckham's book. I just don't agree with this particular claim:  http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/jesus-and-eyewitnesses-blog-review-part.html https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/jesus-and-eyewitnesses-blog-review-part_18.html  And here is a video on "explaining away" that I refer to:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnz6-WR21H0  Originally uploaded May 22, 2022

What if someone asks questions about Jesus' resurrection body that you don't know how to answer? Does that mean that you don't really know what you're talking about? Does that mean that the bodily resurrection should be considered a secondary issue? The answer is a resounding "no." You may have heard the attempted arguments here against the bodily resurrection. Now you'll have a better idea how to answer them.  Here is the dialogue between Dale Allison and Justin Bass mentioned in the video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o5htZtDBfE Originally uploaded to YouTube May 8, 2022

Following up on the discussion last time, this video argues that apparent casualness has epistemological force. But if we are going to take that force seriously, as we do in the argument from undesigned coincidences and the argument from incidental external confirmations, we have to take apparent casualness seriously in other contexts. Imposing a completely unstated, conjectured theological or symbolic meaning or allusion to an Old Testament passage upon the apparently casual narrative details of a story is treating the authors as highly subtle and cryptic, placing easily-missed 'Easter eggs" into their narratives when they appear to be narrating artlessly.  This is not the image of the authors supported by the argument from undesigned coincidences.   Here is the earlier video on Explaining Away:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnz6-WR21H0 Originally uploaded to YouTube May 8, 2022