The Lydia McGrew Podcast

Here I continue explaining apparent discrepancies between accounts of the feeding of the five thousand. These apparent discrepancies help us to see that the accounts are not dependent on a common source. And they are the kinds of things that could easily arise from different accounts that come from separate witnesses of the events. Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 23 2020

This episode begins a sub-series on the feeding of the five thousand. The feeding accounts in the Gospels make an important contribution of their own to the case for Gospel reliability. But what about alleged discrepancies between them? Here I point out how the appearance of discrepancy between accounts contributes to the case that they do not come from a common source--a type of independence. This is especially valuable if the apparent discrepancies can be well explained by causes that we expect to arise when we have different accounts that go back to separate people with knowledge of the events. Here I address the first alleged discrepancy between accounts of the feeding: The question of where Jesus was when he first saw the large crowd. Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 20 2020

This is the second, shorter, section of my discussion of the miracle accounts of Jesus raising Jairus' daughter and healing the woman with the issue of blood. Here I discuss potential naturalistic competitors for a miraculous explanation and how well they hold up if the externally observable facts occurred as told in the Gospels. Note that I'm asking how much these accounts themselves support a miraculous explanation without bringing in other evidence we have about Jesus' ability to work miracles. I conclude that in the case of the woman with the issue of blood we do need to rely somewhat more on our other evidence that Jesus was able to work miracles, though this is a rational and historical way of proceeding. The reason that we need to do so is that, even granting the externally observable facts, we don't have follow-up information showing that she was truly relieved of her symptoms for a significant period of time. However, there is an interesting confirmation in Jesus' claim that someone touched him for healing and the woman's admission that she did so. In the case of Jairus's daughter, the chief naturalistic competitor would be the theory that the girl was not really dead. In this case the naturalistic explanation does not seem to explain the facts well, however. Even if all brain activity had not ceased, one wouldn't expect her to wake up immediately, when she had previously (one presumes) had no pulse or visible breathing, and be able to walk just when Jesus took her by the hand and spoke to her in a simple fashion.  This sort of evaluation shows how we can try to evaluate miracle accounts while separating out the various strands of our evidence and being neither credulous nor hyper-skeptical.   Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 16 2020

In this continuation of my series on Gospel reliability and miracles, I evaluate the stories of Jesus' healing the woman with the issue of blood and raising Jairus's daughter. These stories are told in intertwined accounts. We find them in all three Synoptic Gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Here I discuss issues of independence between the accounts and of the credibility of the accounts and conclude that, between the other evidence we have for reliability and the credibility of these accounts, we have a good case that the external events recounted in these stories took place and were observed by the disciples. These stories provide a good test case for the methodology I have been advocating for historical evaluation, here looking at accounts that are briefer and less varied than the accounts of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances.  Check out a recent video I did for Ratio Christi at Western Michigan University on how we know that the Gospels are reliable.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM6IomPKB2w&feature=youtu.be   Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 11 2020

In this podcast, I take the methods that I talked about in the previous episode on methodology and Miracles and show how they apply to the central miracle of Christianity--Jesus' resurrection. I outline a "Paley-style" argument for the resurrection and give both a super-brief version of it and a somewhat expanded version. I show how Gospel reliability fits into the argument to bolster the claim that the evidence we have is highly improbable if the witnesses were just mistaken in thinking that Jesus rose from the dead. This type of an approach is an alternative to the more common "minimal facts" argument, which I don't think is as strong as its proponents believe it to be or as strong as what is needed to support Christianity. (See link below.) The Paley-style argument has never been rendered obsolete. It has merely fallen out of fashion, probably due to an unjustified deference to more skeptical "critical scholarship" concerning the Gospels and a desire to avoid having to go unequivocally against that tide--something I think we should consider a privilege.   Here again is my webinar on "Minimal Facts vs. Maximal Data"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUt3r3dXBr4  Here is the blog post that I mention in the episode, "Independence, Conspiracy, and the Resurrection"  http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2020/08/independence-conspiracy-and-resurrection.html   Originally uploaded to YouTube Nov 5 2020

This is the introductory episode in a new series on historical methodology, Gospel reliability, and miracle reports. How can we avoid being either too skeptical or too credulous about miracle stories in the Gospels? How can we take proper account of evidence for high Gospel reliability while recognizing that miracles are unusual and exercising due care in evaluating miracle stories? Suppose that we end up relying on our independent evidence that Jesus was God in order to conclude that he really performed a certain miracle. Does that mean that we're "believing as a Christian" rather than using historical reasoning? In this preliminary episode I try to sort out some of these questions. We'll learn more about how this works in the series as a whole when I discuss particular examples. Originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 30 2020

Suppose that you're inclined to accept the existence of fact-changing "compositional devices" in the Gospels, without carefully investigating the arguments against them, because you believe that this will simplify your apologetic task. Now, thank goodness, you don't have to "get into the weeds," "get off-track" discussing alleged discrepancies and harmonizations. What a relief!  But this comes with a heavy cost, as I discuss in this video. Examine these theories carefully, and the arguments on both sides, before you adopt them!   You may also be interested in my discussion with Mike Winger on his show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiE-J6U3kCY&feature=youtu.be   Also, see my discussion here of minimal facts vs. maximal data approaches to the resurrection:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUt3r3dXBr4  And here is my book, The Mirror or the Mask. https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mirror+or+the+mask&qid=1603580557&sr=8-1 Originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 26, 2020

In this final episode of my series on the Temple cleansing, I point out the subjectivity and implausibility of the theological motives attributed to John. If it's too easy to come up with imaginative ideas about what theological or literary symbolism John might have intended by such a factual change, isn't that a clue that none of those various theories are well supported? And how would John's audience have known what symbolic lesson they were supposed to learn?    Scholarly ingenuity is a poor guide to historical probability. This episode was originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 19, 2020.

In this episode I discuss a specific reference to the year of the Temple cleansing in John's Gospel--46 years. How does this time reference confirm the historicity of an early Temple cleansing as record.  This episode was originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 16, 2020.

In this episode I talk about how the Jerusalem religious leaders try to "spin" Jesus' early miracles by saying that he is casting out demons by the prince of the demons. This is after some of them have witnessed Jesus healing a paralytic man while claiming to be able to forgive sins. Following New Testament scholar Alan Chapple, I argue that the fact that these scribes and teachers of the law, apparently representing the Jerusalem leadership, traveled all the way to Galilee from Jerusalem and were so hostile to Jesus so early in his ministry is well explained by the early Temple cleansing recorded only in John. Yet these instances of their visiting Galilee and their early hostility are recorded only in the Synoptics. This episode was originally uploaded to YouTube Oct 12, 2020.