The Lydia McGrew Podcast

If an author or a person tells a story in which details are mentioned casually, and if some of these details appear to be true, does that confirm the truthfulness of the story? Should we instead think that the author was just counting on common knowledge (or common belief) for some of his details, therefore using them casually without explanation, while making up the rest of the story?   Here I discuss this type of attempted response to some undesigned coincidences and some external confirmations. "Oh, well," says the debunker, "The author was casual about that part because he could count on his readers and hearers to make the connection to this other thing just in virtue of common knowledge. It has nothing to do with artless truthfulness. He could have been deviously making some subtle connection to something he knew they'd get all on their own, even if he didn't mention it."  How can we tell when this is not a good response?  I use a dialogue I had in e-mail about the feeding of the five thousand as a springboard for discussing this topic. See others under the "casualness and independence" playlist. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0NbWCs84HuF86v7ZnnUna5

My new book, Testimonies to the Truth: Why You Can Trust the Gospels, is now available!  Purchase here on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Testimonies-Truth-Why-Trust-Gospels/dp/1947929232/?fbclid=IwAR3OkHnlE00mi-y7oGAonghJRnWF-0uP_R2ikaUg7zU2jOUo2Oo58ZIr-vA Purchase here on Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/testimonies-to-the-truth-lydia-mcgrew/1142990976?ean=9781947929234  This video provides a short summary answering questions like  --How is Testimonies different from my earlier books on the Gospels? --Who has endorsed Testimonies? --How is Testimonies different from other books out there about Gospel reliability?   To see all endorsements, read here:  http://lydiamcgrew.com/TestimoniesEndorsements The Table of Contents is here:  http://lydiamcgrew.com/TestimoniesContents

Here I apply the analysis I have been giving in this series to a specific external confirmation--Why did the hearing of Archelaus ruling in Herod's stead cause Matthew to move to Galilee in Matthew 2? How does apparent casualness support the factual independence of the reports in Matthew and Josephus and thus show that the co-incidence of their details is (in all probability) undesigned?

Casualness, independence, and undesigned coincidences: A Gospel example

Today we continue a series on how probability theory intersects with New Testament. How does casualness work in undesigned coincidences? Since we're looking for factual independence, how does casualness confirm this. Find out here!

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

Here I deal with the last puzzle of Luke's central section--the apparent loop-de-loop formed by 9:51 (Jesus leaves Galilee with his face set to Jerusalem to be "received up"), 10:38ff (Jesus is at the house of Martha and Mary, which we know from John's Gospel was in Bethany, near Jerusalem, and 17:11ff (Jesus is 'way back up along the border between Galilee and Samaria, in the Jezreel valley). What's up with that?  I point out how achronological narration means that Luke may very well not have been trying to indicate that Jesus healed the lepers in 17:11ff chronologically after he was in the home of Mary and Martha in Chapter 10. In fact, there's a rather perfect place right in Luke where the incident of the ten lepers fits quite well. Watch to find out where.  (At just after the 8-minute mark I mention an undesigned coincidence, discussed in an earlier video, with John 7. By a slip of the tongue I say Luke 7.)  Check out the playlist on Luke's central section for earlier episodes, here:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn2Xx6b4aHMJr-C2KqdvBSo1

I'm continuing to discuss Luke's central section and some of the puzzles that it raises. If Luke records a saying of Jesus in this central section, where Luke 9:51 says that the time was approaching for Jesus to be received up, should we take that to mean that Luke is "placing" that saying in a "different context" from Matthew and Mark, since they tie it closely to the Galilean ministry earlier? Here I argue for a "no" answer. Luke is recording much sayings material in these chapters for which he gives no context at all--either geographical or chronological. Sometimes he organizes these sayings topically; sometimes he does not even do that but merely moves abruptly from one saying to another. This central section of Luke is filled with notably indefinite indicators of time or place. This is relevant to the claim that Luke was trying to move Jesus' saying about little ones and millstones (Luke 17:2) to a "different context" but suffered "editorial fatigue" when he tried to do so.  If you're interested in this context, be sure to watch two other videos about Luke's central section and how it relates to the other Gospels:  https://youtu.be/aGC7vKMIBug https://youtu.be/2AGfi81iCq0

The previous videos have addressed the question of whether Gospel harmonization is an appropriate historical tool. We've seen that Strauss's critical scholarly methods lead to implausible disharmonization. At this point I would like to illustrate the way that the use of reasonable historical conjecture applies to a difficult passage--the central section of Luke's Gospel.   Luke 9:51 says that Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, but in the chapters that follow he seems to take an inordinate amount of time to get there What's it all about? Here we'll look at a very fruitful conjecture--that Luke 9:51 corresponds to John 7:2-10, when Jesus travels to Jerusalem about six months before his death for the feast of Tabernacles.   This conjecture leads us to note an undesigned coincidence. Why were the Samaritans so annoyed with Jesus in Luke 9:52-53, unwilling to allow him to stay overnight?  See also the previous video on Luke 13 and Jesus' Perean ministry:   https://youtu.be/aGC7vKMIBug

Here I continue on the theme that Tim McGrew addressed: Did D. F. Strauss put an end forever to the reasonableness of harmonization?   I will be reading a quotation from Dale Allison accusing harmonizers of "trying to erase knowledge" and being motivated only by an outworn theory of inspiration that was "pulverized by the deists."  On the contrary, the satire by Johannes Ebrard, written within ten years of Strauss's Life of Jesus, "pulverized" Strauss by pointing out how faulty Strauss's methodology really was. In this "war of the quotations," I will be reading and commenting on Allison, Strauss, and Ebrard. Be sure to like and subscribe!  Find the text of Ebrard's satire embedded in this article, here, beginning with the title "Receipt for Writing..."  https://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/scanned/strauss.htm