Reliability of the Bible

Interview: Defending The Gospel of John with Dr. Lydia McGrew

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In this interview, I speak with Dr. Lydia McGrew about the reliability of the Gospel of John. Dr. McGrew is a widely published analytic philosopher and author. She received her Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University in 1995. She has published extensively in the theory of knowledge, specializing in formal epistemology and in its application to the evaluation of testimony and to the philosophy of religion. She defends the reliability of the Gospels and Acts in her books Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels From Literary Devices, and most recently The Eye of the Beholder: The Gospel of John as Historical Reportage, … Read more

The Mind-Blowing Meaning Behind the Sign of Jonah

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Recently I stumbled across what I thought was a rather silly meme: Oof. Here’s the thing: No matter if you believe Jonah is historical or ahistorical (and some Christians, like C.S. Lewis, believed it was the latter), this meme misses the point. Science tells us what nature does when left to itself; miracles happen because nature is not left to itself. Whoever wrote the book of Jonah probably understood that human beings don’t normally get swallowed by whales, let alone survive if they did. But did Jonah survive? No, and yes.  Let’s read Jonah’s parts of the prayer from the whale’s belly: Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the … Read more

A Case For the Early Dating of Matthew’s Gospel

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The majority of modern scholars believe Matthew’s Gospel was written between AD 80 and 90. That’s quite some time after Jesus lived and died. Matthew was likely dead by then, so how could he have written it? After all, during Jesus’ time, a person could expect to live another 30 or more years if they lived to be 20 years old. Matthew would have been in his 70s or 80s when he wrote. While that’s not impossible, it does seem unlikely. So why do scholars assign such a late date? And is late dating worth reconsidering? Let’s dive into the first question. At the risk of oversimplifying, here are the four main arguments for late … Read more

Video: Don’t Blindly Follow “Biblical Scholarly Consensus”

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I’ve made a lot of content defending the historical reliability of the gospels. And one of the most common objections I hear is that my views aren’t in line with modern scholarship. And I admit it. If you’re a Christian and you’re looking for evidence for your faith, you and I are guaranteed to lose the credential war. Yes, there are good conservative Christian scholars out there like DA Carson or Craig Blomberg. But they’re a minority voice. The scholarly consensus is against me. I get it.  Here’s the thing though: That doesn’t really bother me, and it shouldn’t bother you. When it comes to biblical scholarship, we have some reasons to be seriously skeptical. … Read more

The Anti-Christian’s Favorite Fallacy – 19th Century Logician Richard Whately

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Richard Whately (1 February 1787 – 8 October 1863) was a brilliant guy. He was an English academic, rhetorician, logician, philosopher, economist, and theologian who was also a reforming Archbishop of Dublin of the Church of Ireland. That’s a lengthy resume. In addition to his role as a leader in the Anglican church, he was a prolific author who tackled a wide variety of topics, and he was one of the first people to discover the legendary Jane Austen. This is a quote from his book “Elements in Logic”, and I believe it’s extremely relevant today. Here Whately tackles one of the skeptic’s favorite fallacies. “Similar to this case is that which may be called … Read more

The Apocryphal Gospels Were Rejected By the Church For Good Reasons

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The mainstream media loves the apocryphal gospels.  When discussing Jesus – usually around Easter or Christmas – it’s typically hinted that the real story of Jesus appears in these lost gospels. The juicy story is that nothing was agreed upon for the first four centuries of Christianity and that there were hundreds of stories about Jesus. Only after Constantine’s arrival that the church decided to keep Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and suppress the rest. The implication is that the four gospels have no more historical validity than that of the so-called gospels of Thomas, Peter, or Judas.  Conspiracy theories sell like hotcakes, but we should note that the apocryphal gospels have been known for … Read more

Why Do the Gospels Contain Unnecessary Details?

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The Four Gospels are full of pointless minutia. Have you noticed this? For instance, John tells us there were six waterpots at the wedding in Cana that could hold 20-30 gallons of water each. Well, that’s oddly specific. It serves no obvious theological meaning or literary purpose. Why are statements like these there?  Scholar Lydia McGrew calls these “unnecessary details.” She writes: “An unnecessary detail appears to be there for no special reason; it is just there because the author believed it was true. It lends verisimilitude to the account precisely by being so pointless, and in some cases (though not always) vivid. Such details are thus plausible marks of eyewitness testimony — either from … Read more

Unexplained Allusions – A Sneaky Good Why Reason the Gospels Aren’t Myths

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Have you ever noticed that people often mention trivial details when describing events they were involved in? You know, stuff not totally related to the story?  The Gospel writers do that, too. Some comments are left dangling without any explanation. These remarks don’t seem to advance the story or serve any sort of theological or literary purpose. Scholar Lydia McGrew calls these unexplained allusions. Verses like these usually fly under the radar. But when we pay attention to them, we find they have the ring of truth. Fiction writers would have no reason to include unexplained, puzzling details and would have every reason to leave them out.  Let’s look at some examples, and you’ll get … Read more

Video: Did the Feeding of the 5000 Really Happen?

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According to the Gospels, Jesus fed the 5000 with fives loaves, and two fish. But is this a legend, or a historically reliable account? I believe it is historical, largely due to the evidence of undesigned coincidences. Philosopher Lydia McGrew defines undesigned coincidences as “a notable connection between two or more accounts or texts that doesn’t seem to have been planned by the person or people giving the accounts. Despite their apparent independence, the items fit together like pieces of a puzzle.” These are hard to fake and even more unlikely to come about by pure chance in fictional or manipulated stories. Fictions and forgeries don’t normally converge. Or when they do, it’s in an … Read more

The Gospels Are Embarrassing for the Apostles

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If you want people to trust their leaders, you usually would try to paint them in the best light possible. You don’t go out of your way to undermine their authority. But that isn’t what we see at all in the Gospels. Those who would eventually lead the church often look impulsive, incompetent, boastful, and stupid. If the Gospels are supposed to be PR for the apostles, their propaganda team was a dismal failure.  This kind of information is what NT scholars call the criteria of embarrassment. In his book, Marginal Jew, Meier writes: The point of the criterion is that the early church would hardly have gone out of its way to create material … Read more

Is Jesus Alive?