The Lydia McGrew Podcast

In this "nerdy" addition to our podcast collection, I discuss how the issue of mutual support relates to the issue of circular reasoning and how both of those relate to miracle reports. How can we acknowledge that the deity of Jesus supports the claim that he performed a miracle and that a report of a miracle supports the deity of Jesus without reasoning in a circle?  Here is the JSTOR link for the Erkenntnis article that discusses this more technically.  It is (I'm afraid) available only if you have institutional access to JSTOR, but some readers will. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40267466?seq=1 Here is an accompanying blog post with the diagram and more discussion.  https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2021/01/miracle-reports-independence-and-mutual.html  Here is my new author page on Facebook, which I mention in the episode:  https://www.facebook.com/lydiamcgrewauthor  For a closeup of the graphic, see here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iX9z2EEZFNdPXJCoTR52WLMasGSDwr62/view?usp=sharing  Next up: A discussion of the account of the man born blind in the Gospel of John.  Originally uploaded Jan 11 2021

In this final episode of my Virgin Birth series I treat the viewer to a reading of various interesting quotations from, unfortunately, evangelical scholars expressing...well, you can decide for yourself what they are expressing. Something about the infancy narratives in the Gospels. Something about how defensible they are or are not, historically.  What's the point? When you hear doubts raised by anyone, even an evangelical Christian, about the historicity or defensibility of some portion of the Gospels, you should never assume that these references to profound problems are based on some especially cogent evidence, merely because the person speaking is himself a Christian. An anti-supernatural bias is not the only route to some *highly* misguided conclusions. Fortunately there are not really deep, serious problems with the historicity of the birth narratives. In fact, they fare well historically, and therefore so does the Virgin Birth, even under severe historical scrutiny.   In the course of the episode I refer to Robert Gundry's commentary on Matthew. Here in order are links to an exchange in the 1980s between Gundry and Douglas Moo on Gundry's dehistoricizing claims about Matthew:  https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/26/26-1/26-1-pp031-039_JETS.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1vxCAgQUkG5vO4V_GFgPBVo6MUhRRyRKC0BrFBg1f8KhL_o6mccZRK-7k  https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/26/26-1/26-1-pp041-056_JETS.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2NsxbGeEsJ87MzAMguweoCS3dw_rFMVkuv22xs18YyvWVq5n_XHfJclFY  https://static1.squarespace.com/static/537a4700e4b0cc86709d564c/t/538e0b36e4b08cd19602c159/1401817910720/MatthewandMidrashRejoinder.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0SeqUSvwHutbUUZ6Psc-h6Tvurkdmiu--4d0BbZWEdCrM3BLLuYqqnZAQ  https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/26/26-1/26-1-pp071-086_JETS.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2sQhD9MGaT8wdmSPQkL3oo4xkA3F-xP7chCMaXraALy0-cN_Ilj0LijO4  Here is D. A. Carson's critique of Gundry's commentary:  https://s3.amazonaws.com/tgc-documents/carson/1982_Gundry_on_Matt.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1vxCAgQUkG5vO4V_GFgPBVo6MUhRRyRKC0BrFBg1f8KhL_o6mccZRK-7k   Here is my Themelios article on probability theory and the misuse of the concept of independent attestation to try to bolster the historicity of some minimal "core" of facts even after we have refused to defend robust reliability. I use as one example Michael Licona's mistaken statements about what (he says) would be the case even if Matthew and Luke invented the non-overlapping portions of their birth stories:  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/finessing-independent-attestation-interdisciplinary-biblical-criticism/  Be sure to watch the rest of the series if you haven't already! Like, subscribe, and hit the bell for notifications.   Orig. uploated to YouTube Jan 4 2021

Here I discuss the last two objections I plan to cover to the accounts of the infancy and Virgin Birth of Jesus. These are 1) the claim that Luke contradicts Matthew about when Mary and Joseph returned to Nazareth and 2) the claim that Luke's genealogy of Jesus contradicts Matthew's. Note that the second of these strictly speaking goes outside Luke's birth and infancy story, since he gives the genealogy of Jesus when he tells about his baptism.  I discuss responses to these that would be incompatible with the doctrine of inerrancy but that I consider plausible.  These theories involve understandable, good-faith errors (as it happens in both cases on the part of Luke) resulting from his not having additional information found in Matthew. I also say what approach I would suggest that inerrantists take--that is to say, what responses consistent with inerrancy I consider to be the best options.   Given the nature of these errors (if they are errors), there is no serious "hit" to Luke's very high reliability as an histo3rian even if those theories are true, and no reason whatsoever to think that anything (such as the story of the flight to Egypt) has been deliberately invented by anyone or that any fact has been deliberately changed.  I also discuss how bad arguments from silence are when used as skeptics use them for evaluating historical statements and why we should be extremely reluctant to consider a story in Source A invented merely because we don't find it in Source B and "surely" so-and-so would have mentioned it if it were true. In this case, that argument is relevant to the claim that "surely" if Mary (or a document based on Mary's memories) were Luke's source, she would have told him about the flight to Egypt. Enjoy!   Orig. uploaded to YouTube Dec 31 2020

Here I counter the objection that, if the name "Jesus" were not connected with both accounts, you'd never suspect that the infancy stories in Luke and Matthew were about the same person. They are just sooo different!  If interested, you can see more along the same lines in a couple of old blog posts that I wrote in 2016, including one called "The extreme probability of one's own life," a phrase borrowed from C.S. Lewis's essay "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism."   http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2016/06/the_extreme_improbability_of_o.html   And more here:  http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2016/06/new_post_on_genre_in_the_gospe.html   Originally uploaded to YouTube Dec 26 2020

When we start to talk about objections to the birth stories about Jesus in the Gospels, the supposed problem of the census mentioned in Luke 2:1-2 has pride of place. Luke seems to be saying that Jesus was born at the time of a census ordered by Caesar Augustus for the whole world, and that this "first" census has something to do with a Roman governor named Quirinius. But the only census of Judea that we know about under Quirinius as governor was much too late--in A.D. 6. What's up with that?  The literature on the census is vast, and I can't begin to cover it all. But in this episode I show that it's extremely improbable that Luke is actually saying that Jesus was born that much later. We can tell from other verses in Luke that he knows quite well that Jesus was born in the time of Herod the Great. I respond to several skeptical objections that are fundamentally misguided and lay out several plausible explanations of Luke's reference to the "first" census and to Quirinius.   Here's another point I didn't mention in the podcast: What needs to be probable is that one *or* the other of these is true--what probability theorists call the disjunction. So I am not merely saying that if something is possible it's probable. I'm saying that each of these is reasonably plausible in itself and therefore that it's quite probable that one or the other of them is true, meaning that Luke is accurate here. This is an important point to keep in mind.   It's also extremely *improbable* for other reasons that Luke was just making up the claim that a census occurred at the time of Jesus' birth or was saying that Jesus was born in what we would call A.D. 6.   Here is the accompanying blog post for some more information:  https://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/12/some-more-notes-on-census-in-luke.html  Here is the article by John Thorley that I mention in the video:  https://www.jstor.org/stable/642500?seq=1  Here is my recent debate on the Nativity with atheist Jonathan Pearce:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PloRcUHBMU   Originally uploaded to YouTube Dec 20 2020

In this episode I discuss the realistic picture that we get in Matthew and Luke in which both Nazareth and Bethlehem play a role in the lives of Joseph and Mary at the time of Jesus' birth. I suggest that Mary was from Nazareth and that Joseph was from Bethlehem as his home town, though he may have been living for a time in Nazareth. Mary had family down in the Judean hill country as well. If the couple was planning to settle in Bethlehem, as they apparently did after Jesus' birth for a while until the flight to Egypt, this would also explain why Mary traveled with Joseph to Bethlehem at the census.   Here again are some good resources on Christmas and the nativity narratives from Triablogue.  http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/11/christmas-resources-2020.html  Here is an interesting scholarly article by Stephen Carlson. (Hat tip to Jason Engwer for alerting me to it.) Carlson argues that Joseph was from Bethlehem personally. I don't endorse all of Carlson's speculations--in particular, the idea that the marriage of Mary and Joseph took place in Bethlehem seems incorrect to me. But the article is useful nonetheless.  http://www.hypotyposeis.org/papers/Carlson%202010%20NTS.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0oBuus-5Cw9q8thfl5oKSzwk5muEjo6NcWxDwq7JU8NWGRvlzp_mQgiUQ   Originally uploaded to YouTube Dec 12 2020

Here I talk about the importance of not conceding that the birth narratives of Jesus are late additions coming from who-knows-where. Not only is there no evidence that the Gospel authors felt free to make up stories, and not only is there evidence for their care and veracity otherwise, there are signs of truth in the birth stories themselves. Here I emphasize their Jewish character. The stories appear early, even seeming to encourage messianic expectations of an immediate earthly reign. They aren't at all the kind of thing you would make up as late inventions to try to commend Christianity. I also talk about how the narrative in Luke, in particular, is steeped in the Jewish sacrificial context of pre-70, before the fall of Jerusalem. We shouldn't think of the infancy narratives as having the phony "independence" that results when different authors freely invent based upon a common core of tradition. Rather, they look like they are independently telling authentic stories coming from people who were "in the know."   Here is the article in Themelios on incorrect claims of independent attestation that I mention in the episode.  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/finessing-independent-attestation-interdisciplinary-biblical-criticism/  Check out this roundup of Christmas apologetics resources from Jason Engwer and the Triabloguers. Lots of good stuff here:  http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/11/christmas-resources-2020.html#more  Originally uploaded to YouTube Dec 8 2020

This episode begins what will probably be a five-part series on the Virgin Birth in the larger series on Gospel reliability and miracle reports. Here I focus on what it would mean for the evidence for the Virgin Birth if Mary herself was Luke's witness and told him (or affirmed to him in some other way--e.g., by presenting him with a document or notes) the material that we find in Luke's accounts of Jesus' infancy, the birth of John the Baptist, etc. I examine Mary's motives and the implausibility of her lending credence to such a massive lie about the conception of Jesus. This in turn draws attention to the importance of the reliability of the Gospels, and Luke in particular, in the evaluation of the evidence for the Virgin Birth.  (Side note: I make a verbal slip at one point in the episode as deoes occasionally happen. Since I'm trying to do these in one "take," I did not re-record. I am listing aspects of the birth narratives that would have been accessible to people other than Mary and list Joseph's dream. In the verbal context I appear to be saying that Joseph's dream is found in Luke. Of course it is found in Matthew.)   Here is the lecture on the reliability of Acts that I mention. "Acts Gets Hard Things Right"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sdLTyM7Sks&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR02fIwnuM8jDtMRmycFMxoJvkBmUSWQrNuwT9b90c61vXSFyLFlYg-cRtI   Originally uploaded to YouTube Dec 4 2020

Explore the intriguing nuances of the feeding of the five thousand, uncovering undesigned coincidences that bolster the Gospels' authenticity. Dive into Peter’s walking on water, revealing his impulsive yet heartfelt nature across different accounts. The undeniable public nature of this miracle sparks a compelling discussion, challenging naturalistic explanations and inviting listeners to consider scholarly evidence affirming its reality.

Dive into the fascinating world of Gospel narratives as the discussion highlights four undesigned coincidences surrounding the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. These unexpected connections lend significant support to the reliability of the Gospels. Discover how independent accounts mirror each other, enhancing the overall narrative. The focus on simple observations allows for a clearer understanding of these coincidences, inviting you to ponder the deeper implications of miracles and their storytelling.