This will be the last installment in my series on alleged seams in John. Does the fact that John 20:30-31 sounds sort of ending-like provide evidence of an editor? I answer no. I also examine the very strange scholarly tendency to turn John 21:24 on its head. That verse says that the Beloved Disciple is the one who "wrote these things," but oddly, various scholars take this to mean that he didn't write these things, that he merely "stood behind" the Gospel or took "spiritual responsibility" for ...
Oct 27, 2024•27 min
Today's seams in John video describes a truly strange, truly silly claim of a seam or aporia in John. The claim is that in John 19 Jesus is left outside in view of the crowd when Pilate is supposed to be questioning him back in the Praetorium. Huh? Apparently John isn't allowed to leave anything to basic reading or hearing comprehension. If he doesn't spell. it. out. he's saying that it didn't happen. And somehow this "problem" is part of a cumulative case for a complex process of composition in...
Oct 20, 2024•16 min
Is there a contradiction between John 16:5, where Jesus says that none of the disciples is asking him, "Where are you going?" and John 13:36, where Peter asks Jesus, "Where are you going?" I argue that there isn't. Watch (or listen) to find out why. Plus, even if this were contradictory, it would hardly be evidence for a "seam" left by an editor. This is so obvious that Raymond Brown has had to argue that it's evidence for an editor who doesn't edit, due to his reverence for his sources, which i...
Oct 13, 2024•18 min
Today I talk about a passage that is considered a "biggie" among arguments for editorial seams in John: The supposed contradictions created by John 14:30-31. I argue that these contradictions are overblown and that the phrase "arise, let us go" in John 14:31 appears to be the result of vivid witness memory, not a contradictory clue to a bumbling editor. (This is also the position of D.A. Carson.)
Oct 07, 2024•23 min
Gary Burge uses the parenthetical remark from the narrator about Mary of Bethany in John 11:2 as an example of "seams" or "aporias" in John. He considers it to be a "problem" that this is a forward reference to John 12, the story of Mary anointing Jesus, which hasn't yet been narrated when John refers to her in John 11:2 as "the Mary" who anointed Jesus' feet. How is this even *supposed* to be an argument, or even part of a cumulative case, for the activity of an editor in addition to the author...
Oct 07, 2024•18 min
Is there a problem with the chronological order that John indicates for the events in chapters 5, 6, and 7? Here I continue to argue that there is not. Critical scholars have created "problems" where no problem really exists. I discuss several more extremely weak arguments that chapters 5 and 6 are out of order, despite their explicit temporal indicator "after these things," and that there are explanatory benefits to swapping them. I continue to use Gary M. Burge as my foil, from his book _Inter...
Sep 22, 2024•21 min
I'm continuing to argue against the claim that John's Gospel has "seams" that show where editors other than the Beloved Disciple have been ham-handedly stitching material together. This week and next week I'll discuss the claim that John 5 and John 6 are in the wrong order. Should we be trying to sort events in Galilee and events in Jerusalem, putting as many as possible of the Galilee events together and of the Jerusalem events together? I see no reason at all to try to do this. The Synoptics s...
Sep 18, 2024•25 min
Today I'm talking about the alleged "seam" in John 3:22, which says that after these things, Jesus and his disciples came/went "into the Judean land." Does this mean that they weren't in Judea before? Is this an internal contradiction, because Jesus was already in Judea, in Jerusalem, in the preceding events? And does it mean that an editor was trying awkwardly to fit stories together in the Gospel? I answer "no" to all these questions. Here are various translations of the verse: https://biblehu...
Sep 09, 2024•18 min
What are so-called "seams" (or aporia) in the Gospel of John? This week I start a new series on this topic with fresh content that is not even found in my book The Eye of the Beholder. Some scholars use the presence of (allegedly) awkward transitions, (alleged) contradictions, and (allegedly) out-of-order segments to argue for the involvement of editors (even multiple editors) in the composition of the Gospel of John. Evangelical-labeled scholar Gary Burge agrees with the perspective of the skep...
Sep 01, 2024•17 min
In this last in the series on why you should care if the Gospel authors put words into Jesus' mouth I warn again about thinking that "multiple attestation" to some type of teaching or some type of event will make up the epistemic deficiencies of the case, if you've already granted that the Gospel authors did this. As discussed in an earlier video on multiple attestation (see link), what we're looking for is independent attestation to the facts, not just to a "Christian tradition" (which might be...
Aug 25, 2024•26 min
Why should it matter if the Gospel authors put their words into Jesus' mouth? The sayings in John 8:58 and 10:30 are, at least on the face of it, especially clear as statements of deity. In _Jesus, Contradicted_, Dr. Licona takes this to be a reason to question their recognizable historicity. He argues that, if Jesus was reluctant (as reported in the Synoptics) to let it be widely known that he was the Messiah, he would be that much less likely to state so clearly that he was God. But at the sam...
Aug 18, 2024•22 min
Why should you think that it matters if Jesus didn't historically, recognizably say something recorded in the Gospels? What if that is just the author's extrapolation or application of Jesus' teaching put into his mouth, based on the author's belief that this is the "higher meaning" of what Jesus really taught, or that this is what Jesus would have said if asked? Even if you're not a Christian (yet), it's legitimate for you to wonder what you'd be buying into if you became a Christian. Would you...
Aug 11, 2024•29 min
Should you care if the Gospel authors put their own interpretations into the mouth of the historical Jesus? What if the Gospels record things as though said by the historical Jesus when the historical Jesus never recognizably said those things in those contexts? Did the evangelists think that they were licensed to do this because they were inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that their own interpretations had exactly the same status as the words of the historical Jesus? Would it matter if they did? ...
Aug 05, 2024•22 min
In recent interviews Dr. Michael Licona has invoked the name of D. A. Carson, giving the strong impression that Carson shared/shares Licona's own views of the Gospel of John--views which are surprising and controversial coming from a conservative scholar. These include the idea that John invented the sayings "I thirst" and "It is finished" from the cross and the claim that it is impossible to know whether the historical Jesus recognizably uttered the fairly explicit claims to be God that we find...
Jul 28, 2024•35 min
In two recent interviews Dr. Michael Licona has attempted to associate a star-studded roster of conservative commentators with his controversial views on the historicity of John's Gospel. At the same time, he implies that those who disagree with him strongly on these matters (which he refers to as "struggling" with and "having difficulty accepting" his views) are simply unaware of things that Johannine scholars, including all of these conservative scholars, have "known" for a long time. In this ...
Jul 28, 2024•30 min
Dr. Michael Licona has claimed for several years now, since shortly after Norman Geisler's death, that Geisler said that Matthew moved the Temple cleansing (and hence the cursing of the fig tree) by one day. Others have been led by Licona's confidence to accept this statement without question, even though such a move would be incompatible with a major theme of Geisler's entire life and ministry--namely, the literal inerrancy of the Bible. While I myself am not an inerrantist, I think that this i...
Jul 14, 2024•23 min
Is it being properly cautious, if experts disagree about something, to choose some intermediate probability for that proposition and treat that as the best that you can do, as a non-expert, at estimating the probability on all the public evidence? Not really. Such false caution can result in giving undue weight to opinions governed by faulty methodology and kept in place by merely sociological forces. In New Testament studies, such false caution also doesn't take due regard to the way that poor ...
Jul 07, 2024•27 min
If you do a maximal data approach to arguing for the resurrection, does that mean that you have to stop midway through your positive presentation and answer every Gospel contradiction claim that a skeptic might make? Not at all. Here I give three important principles for handling the issue of Gospel contradictions from a maximal data perspective. These principles will also help in thinking about contradictions for oneself.
Jun 30, 2024•22 min
Here I'm challenging the claim that if some section of a Gospel resurrection story is of apologetic value, that makes it suspect as plausibly being an apologetic addition (invented). I argue that that rules out the most reasonable, natural, expected kind of evidence that the early church would have had if indeed Jesus did rise from the dead physically. The fact that critical scholars tend to assume in a circular way that all strongly evidential sections of the Gospel narratives are apologetic ad...
Jun 23, 2024•19 min
Here I consider the various events that can prevent an account in history from being preserved and reaching us. Recognizing these "chances and changes of this mortal life" can help us to avoid making arguments from silence against testimony. We should not demand that we possess multiple accounts of an ancient event. I then revisit the analogy of your brother telling you that he won the lottery, setting it in the 1800s when letters and information are hard to exchange, to give a better sense of t...
Jun 16, 2024•14 min
Continuing to talk about arguments from silence in biblical studies today. Too often biblical scholars fail to recognize the randomness of saliency. What one author thinks to record or not record needn't have, and often doesn't have, any heavy explanation. Recognizing that it's often a bad idea to put a high probability on the prediction that *this* person will report *this* thing in *this* document is not at all akin to deciding that our senses are unreliable. It's more like realizing that it's...
Jun 09, 2024•29 min
This week I'm starting a 3-part series on arguments from silence. Last year Testify channel rightly rejected a skeptical challenge to the Virgin Birth on the grounds that it isn't recorded in the Gospel of Mark. Here's that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXlZPjFmY9E&t=74s But philosopher Dustin Crummett challenged the video, saying that Testify's argument is like rejecting sensory reliability just because we can find some cases where our senses lead us astray. And supposedly rejectin...
Jun 02, 2024•23 min
In this, probably the last in my current series on editorial fatigue, I discuss another instance of "sudden onset fatigue syndrome," according to Mark Goodacre. Goodacre postulates that Luke eliminates the fact that Jesus was in a house when the paralytic was brought to him, then suffers "fatigue" and reintroduces reference to the house when he gets to the point where the paralytic's friends go up onto the roof. But this so-called "fatigue" comes up almost immediately after the verse in which Go...
Jun 01, 2024•22 min
Here I talk about the claim of editorial fatigue in Matthew's version of the beheading of John the Baptist. I argue that Goodacre takes a rigid, un-nuanced view of Herod's plausible motives, placing Matthew and Mark into artificial conflict with one another. I also coin the term "sudden fatigue onset syndrome" to draw attention to the claim that an author has suffered "editorial fatigue" even though he has written only a short passage since he supposedly made a decision to change the facts. The ...
May 19, 2024•19 min
This week I continue to examine Mark Goodacre's arguments that Luke invented the Parable of the Minas himself and tried (ineptly) to make it look like a parable that Jesus really told. Does evidence of "editorial fatigue" support this claim? Not at all. Here I argue that the claims that there is something aesthetically wrong with the parable and that this is the sign of Luke's clumsy invention are dubious and subjective. Jesus would have been completely within his rights to start out by mentioni...
May 12, 2024•16 min
Mark Goodacre says that Luke invented a new Parable of the Minas (Luke 19:11-27), trying to make it different from the Parable of the Talents told in Matthew 25:14-30. But, says Goodacre, Luke made up a clunky parable (that Jesus never really told) due to "editorial fatigue," and we can find the signs of this in the parables themselves. Here I discuss the question of whether a 10 vs. 1 pattern is really especially typical of Luke, something Goodacre claims is a giveaway of Luke's invention. Wher...
May 05, 2024•24 min
Here I discuss Mark Goodacre's claim that the feeding of the five thousand in Luke shows signs of "editorial fatigue." According to Goodacre, Luke factually changes the location of the feeding to a city and then just two verses later slips back into including elements of the story that are incompatible with this made-up setting. So he "ruins the story." I bring a little rigorous common sense to bear to show how unjustified this theory is. Here is Goodacre's article: https://markgoodacre.org/fati...
Apr 28, 2024•21 min
Today I start a new series on Mark Goodacre's claims that we find what he calls editorial fatigue in the Synoptic Gospels. These are theories that the Gospel authors started out trying to change something in a source but then grew fatigued and stopped making edits consistent with that change. In this introductory episode I explain more about what "editorial fatigue" is and how it relates to the issue of complexity, burden of proof, and the Synoptic problem. I also point out the self-insulating n...
Apr 21, 2024•20 min
Recently Dr. Michael Licona claimed on the Potential Theist channel that a majority of critical scholars writing today affirm that Mark wrote the Gospel traditionally attributed to him and that Peter was his main source. He also said that what these scholars grant means that the resurrection narrative in Mark is "carefully rooted" in eyewitness testimony. The claim that a majority of critical scholars affirm Markan authorship and Petrine sourcing for the Gospel of Mark is surprising. When a scho...
Apr 14, 2024•26 min
In a recent discussion with Potential Theist, Dr. Michael Licona said that most critical scholars, even if they don't acknowledge traditional authorship of the 4th Gospel, do acknowledge that a personal disciple of Jesus was a "primary source" for the information in the Gospel. He tried to apply this to strengthen the case for the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Do the majority of critical scholars really acknowledge anything interesting or helpful about the eyewitness source of John? Not really. ...
Apr 07, 2024•25 min
