146 - Is the New Testament Trustworthy with Ben Shaw

Summary
In this episode of the Apologetics 315 podcast, hosts Brian Auten and Chad Gross speak with Benjamin Shaw, a distinguished Christian apologist and author of Trustworthy: 13 Arguments for the Reliability of the New Testament.'The discussion covers Shaw's personal journey into apologetics, the importance of New Testament reliability, and the historical criteria that support it. Shaw emphasizes the cumulative approach to understanding the New Testament, the significance of the Gospels as Greco-Roman biographies, and the value of both Christian and non-Christian sources in establishing the reliability of the New Testament. The conversation also touches on the minimal facts approach to the resurrection and the mission of Core Apologetics to make apologetic resources more accessible to churches and believers.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Personal Updates
05:46 Introducing Benjamin Shaw and His Work
06:14 Benjamin Shaw's Background and Journey
11:29 Lessons from Gary Habermas
14:52 Core Apologetics and Its Mission
15:50 Exploring New Testament Reliability
16:19 Historical Criteria for Reliability
21:53 Understanding Trustworthiness and Reliability
23:47 Cumulative Approach to Reliability
26:11 Gospels as Greco-Roman Biographies
30:02 Authorship and Its Importance
37:02 Non-Christian Sources and Their Value
41:49 Confidence in Early Sources
48:32 Persuasive Arguments for Reliability
54:39 Minimal Facts vs. Maximal Approach
58:51 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello and welcome to the Apologetics three fifteen podcast with
your hosts Brian Auten and Chad Gross. Join us for
conversations and interviews on the topics of apologetics, evangelism, and
the Christian worldview.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Oh no, no, no, no, I never I never let
anybody read my stories.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. This is Brian Aughton
and I'm Chad Gross, and we're back in the saddle.
Back in the saddle. It's been a couple of it's
been like a month since we've re recorded and had
a guest. I've been traveling in hollidaying and having summer.
What have you been up to, Chad?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Oh, I've been having tons of fun.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I had on July twelfth foot surgery and the joint
in my right big toe was like seventy percent gone basically,
so they opened me up in few bone together and dude,
I gotta be honest with you, I had no idea

(01:07):
what I was getting into. None. The recovery has been
long tedious. Mentally, it's been very difficult because I have
to do a lot of sitting, which I'm not used to,
and so that's been difficult. And then of course, you know,
the long period of time on the painkillers is always

(01:27):
you know, everybody's like, oh, that's the best part. I
particularly did not enjoy that. If you are listening and
you are ever thinking about getting foot surgery, please please
please make sure that you sit down with your pediatrist
and or surgeon and make sure that you know exactly
what you're getting into.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Hear that, sorry to hear that.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
That's yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
I just I just forgot.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
For those who are listening, we've got a guest today.
Our guest is Benjamin Shaw. He's a distinguished Christian apologist, scholar,
and author of the book we're going to be kind
of chatting about a bit here called Trustworthy Thirteen Arguments
for the Reliability of the New Testament. And so he's
got a passion for defending the Christian faith. He's dedicated

(02:20):
years to studying the historical and textual foundations of the
New Testament, and this book offers a robust and accessible
approach to understanding why believers can confidently trust the New
Testament as a reliable account of Jesus life and teachings.
So we've talked about gospel reliability on the podcast before
with other guests that we might wink in the show

(02:42):
notes if you're lucky. But this one goes for the
whole New Testament, and it's a really unique book in
that way. If you've kind of said, hey, you could
pick a handful of books over the last ten to
fifteen years and sort of cobbled the other Hey, read
this about the canon here, Read this about the Gospels here.

(03:04):
Read this about maybe the minimal facts approach. Read this
about undesigned coincidence. Read this about you know, the number
of manuscripts, read this about making a cumulative case. Or
you could say, well, just take this book and it
rolls together all the best stuff. It's like, you know
your trail mix. You got a little bit of everything

(03:26):
in there for a highly nutritious snack leading you to
leading you down the path of truth.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
So well, I wanted to say about the book, if
I may, that what was interesting for me is is
unbeknownst to myself. He refers in the book a lot
to bart Ahman's book Does Jesus Exist, which is of
course the book that bart Airman wrote responding to Jesus mythicism. Well,

(03:52):
I literally, during my recovery read that book and so
I read the book back to back, so it was
really interesting to read Bart's book, which in many ways
is very good. I have a lot of disagreements with Bart,
obviously when it comes to I'm calling him Bart like
I know him, doctor, yeah, doctor Ahrman. When it comes

(04:15):
to the historical Jesus, I think that he is selectively
skeptical in a lot of ways. But the book was
actually quite good, and it was neat to see how
Ben shaw interacts with it directly after reading it. And
I will say that having that luxury of reading doctor
Ehrman's book and then reading Shawl's right after it, he

(04:36):
did a good job representing Erman fairly and honorably. So
that gave me a lot more confidence in some of
the other quotes and things that he shared. And the
other thing is, and I mentioned this to you already
off podcast the footnotes, Man, I don't know how many
books I starred that I was like, oh, I got
to get that one. I'm going to have to read that.
I'm gonna have to read that. And then by the

(04:57):
end of the book, I thought I could literally probably
just read these books and I probably wouldn't get them
all done by the time I was dead unless all
I had to do was right now.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
So yeah, if you were really, if you hadn't read
anything about you know, the reliability of the New Testament
or is it trustworthy? And you know you struggled with
that question, and you started here with this book, and
it would give you all the bunny trails that you
could ever dream for to find. Oh okay, well I
want to know more about this. Well, here's a handful

(05:28):
of books that he points to, and then you know,
all the usual sources. You know, we're going to go
right to this interview, looking forward to talking to Benjamin
Shaw here about his book Trustworthy Thirteen arguments for the
Reliability of the New Testament. Let's go right to it.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
Let's get ready.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Switch me on, Benshaw. Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 4 (05:49):
Hi, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, great to have you. We've enjoyed your book. We'll
talk about it a bit, but tell us a little
bit about yourself and then we'll start with our opening
question after that.

Speaker 5 (06:00):
Yeah, so wow, a lot of different places to begin.
I was I'll just start with I got saved at
a young age. I was my babysitter took me to church,
and I heard the Sermon on the Mount at Sunday School,
and I just recognized Jesus as Lord. Then made a
public profession a couple of years later. Wasn't really disciple though.
Throughout those years God had areas where he definitely encouraged

(06:22):
me and strengthened me along the way.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
But I had a lot of questions.

Speaker 5 (06:25):
I'm from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, so a lot of different
views down there on different things, and so I started wondering.

Speaker 4 (06:32):
Oh, what about their view, what about their view? What
about this? What about my view?

Speaker 5 (06:36):
And no one seemed to have good answers on anything.
Everyone was just doing their own views. And so I
started playing ice hockey. Figured that'd be the wisest move
to do. I wanted to meet a girl.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
And she had loved ice hockey.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
Indeed, I was excited when I read that in the book.

Speaker 5 (06:53):
So yeah, well I thought that I thought that was
that was what the cool guys did, and I wanted,
you know, I didn't know what I was doing, but
I wanted to do it they were doing. I didn't
care much for school at the time. Long story, I
ended up going to Connecticut for three years to play
hockey and did that.

Speaker 4 (07:08):
Realized it was cold up there.

Speaker 5 (07:09):
So I came back to Florida if I wasn't gonna
have an ice rink on campus to play at. I
played for Florida Atlantic University for a year, and then
during the summer after my first year there, one of
the guys who I knew from church because once I
could drive, I started to go. He I was like,
why don't you go to Liberty. You can learn about
God at Liberty and ask questions and things like that.
I'm like, wow, I can do that down here in

(07:29):
Florida where we got warmth, and you know, we don't
have four seasons, we have one. It's green and warm
all the time. And he goes, Okay, I just thought
you might like it.

Speaker 4 (07:39):
Yeah, I can learn about God on Monday. Start Monday.

Speaker 5 (07:43):
And then he was a couple weeks later he's like, hey,
you know they got an ice drink on campus.

Speaker 6 (07:47):
And I'm like, dude, why didn't you start with that?
That's like, how many hockey friends do you have? And
so then I saw a picture of the ice drink
and it was amazing. It just had been built actually
in January that year.

Speaker 5 (08:00):
They were using it for the hockey team at Liberty,
and I applied and got in but two weeks before
school started, and then I made the team. Eventually came
one of the captains my last year. And then during
that process I got to ask a lot of questions
about God. I met the former hockey coach who was
Gary Habermass. I'm not if you guys have part of him.

(08:21):
I'd just done stuff outside of hockey, but he's kind
of got a name in the hockey industry here. But
on our road trips, I started listening to podcasts and
guys doing question and answers at universities and things like that.
I'm like, oh, my goodness, those are the same questions
I have, and so like one of them is I
didn't realize, you know, I didn't know who wrote Romans
or First Corinthians. I didn't know who those guys were.

(08:43):
I didn't know who the authors were and or how
the Bible came together, and just those general questions. And
I learned Paul wrote half the New Testament. When I
came to Liberty, I was like, oh, he was the
persecutor of the church.

Speaker 4 (08:53):
It's kind of a big deal. So I wanted to
start learning more and more.

Speaker 5 (08:56):
I was a marketing major because I wanted to be
law enforcement and I wanted to help people, but I
didn't know how to do that because people have really
big problems and only God.

Speaker 4 (09:07):
Can really help a lot of problems that a lot
of people have.

Speaker 5 (09:10):
So I wanted to learn more about God. Since I'm
from South Florida. I ended up so I got my
marketing degree and then I did a master Arts and
Religious Studies because that allowed me to to continue to
ask questions and also look at other world views because
I'm from South Florida and there's just different worldviews. So
what's the difference is what are the evidential considerations?

Speaker 4 (09:28):
And things like that.

Speaker 5 (09:29):
And then I still had questions and I got given
an opportunity to study as doctor Habermas's research assistant while
going and getting a PhD. So I was like, Oh,
that's amazing, let's do that.

Speaker 4 (09:42):
So then I ended up working.

Speaker 5 (09:44):
With him since like twenty twelve or eleven maybe I
did my master's thesis on the minimal Facts and he
kind of sat in on that. So that was where
we kind of first started plugging away together a little bit.
And then after my first year in the PhD program,
I was one person's research assistant and then I switched
to his and then we just started doing a bunch
of work. And then he started his MO in that

(10:05):
process too, So we've been doing a lot of work
since then, and so that's kind of my background also
since then. I graduated in twenty twenty. I took I
took a good long time to do school, and uh,
I've got a black belt jiu jitsu and that's a
lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
Yeah, so still do that.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
So watch out and don't get in a fight on
a hockey cocky.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Jiu jitsu with ice skates. That could that could be
really bad.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
That could be right.

Speaker 5 (10:31):
Yeah, there was I did use jiu jitsu when I wasn't.
I mean, at my heaviest I was one seventy five
in ice hockey.

Speaker 4 (10:39):
But there was one time.

Speaker 5 (10:40):
This was back at fat when I was playing for
FAU and it was at the end of my shift
and a scuffle happened and I was at the end
of the shift, so I was already really tired. So
I threw what I could and then I just grabbed
the guy and I did a takedown and we just
rafts get in here, get in here, break this thing.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
Up and nice and then we went there, we went
to our benches.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, so you mentioned being Gary Habermass's research assistant. Of
course listeners will know him as the I mean, one
of the foremost experts in the world on the evidence
for the resurrection. And is there any lessons that you
learned from him, one or two things that you could share.

Speaker 5 (11:14):
One we want to stick to the evidence too, keep
the main thing the main thing, and the resurrection is
the main thing, so staying there. We're very similar in
a lot of ways, and we're different in a lot
of ways too. We're both very easy going on a
lot of things, except when it comes.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
To those core things.

Speaker 5 (11:33):
We want to make sure we have those things really
well and really well down pat So that's some of
the stuff. Of course, my interest in the resurrection near
death experiences are those have all grown. But then also
to how to do research. So here's this is a
good tip or trick for guys. This is part of
the way he does research and he's taught us is

(11:55):
when you're doing research, say I'm reading I've got a
book here, Jewish scholarship on Jesus' Resurrection so he's going
to be talking about things like empty tomb burial. But
the beginning of the book, So say I go through
and there's a good section on Jesus is burial. I
write burial at the beginning of the book, and then
I put every time I come across the relevant page numbers,
I can track them down. And so now when I

(12:16):
go back to the book, I don't have to go, oh,
where did he talk about burial? I already have my
own index at the front of the book to go
find out where it is. Yeah, so that's been a
helpful tool because so like we just had, we got
the Olympics going on, and I use this analogy a
lot because Havebermass the same way, So we're built differently.
Havebrimass has a great mind for academics and a great

(12:38):
memory and an ability to recall that's phenomenal, and he's
built for it the same way Michael Phelps is like
built for the water. His brain is built for data.

Speaker 4 (12:49):
My brain is not so but I'm usually pretty quick
on a computer.

Speaker 5 (12:56):
I can I can find information almost as fast as
he could recall it. So I try to use those skills.
But those are the neat things seeing him, and you're
seeing different levels because there's PhDs the same way as
there's black belts, but not all black belts are the same,
not all PhDs are the same. And so there's a
reason he's where he's at and the things he's done

(13:17):
is just God's gifted him that way. And so I
try to I don't want to try to be Habermass
two point zero because God didn't make me like that.
God made me ben Shaw, So I got to be
I got to use the skills and talents he's given
me with the opportunities that gave me as far as
studying goes.

Speaker 4 (13:32):
And actually, one.

Speaker 5 (13:34):
Of the things that we're trying to do right now
with that is that we recently started a ministry in
October November of last year called Core Apologetics. We're trying
to carry on the work he's done, but we're instead
of it just staying in universities. Because right now, if
you want to study with Habermass, all you got to
do is I apply to the PhD program at Liberty,
get accepted, schedule your week and fly here and take

(13:57):
the classes.

Speaker 4 (13:57):
That's most people, yeah, no big deal.

Speaker 5 (14:00):
But so what we want to do is we want
to help get more people access to His information, especially churches,
so they can major on the majors. And so if
you have you know, your church leaders, new believers getting
grounded in the minimal facts and those sorts of things.
I think and we think that will that's just very powerful.
But we also don't want it to just sit in

(14:21):
our minds. It should like if you Sians two ten,
should lead to the doing of good works that God's
prepared beforehand for us to walk in.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
So those are some of the things we're doing.

Speaker 5 (14:30):
What's kind of cool about it, and I know we're
going to talk about it here is like I'll just
share two things because it's it'll be a good segue.
We do a class, an online class on Jesus's resurrection.
You guys, I'm not a surprise there. But what we
do is we teach it live like where it's I'm
teaching it. So it's so people can ask questions. So
if you're going through the case for the resurrection yourself

(14:52):
and you're like, oh, do I have this right? Jesus
is death by crucifixion is multiply attested. Yeah, we can
go through those and ask those questions. We're also going
to be doing one on my book coming up soon
because New Testament reliability is important.

Speaker 4 (15:07):
So it's just six weeks.

Speaker 5 (15:08):
It's online, we talk, we engage in those things. But
it's helpful because you're getting kind of some back and
forth and fellowship on these important topics. And then the
goal with reliability is that you'll then go read your
Bible more and apply it more. So that's that's where
I struggled because I didn't I didn't understand the Bible
come into liberty, and when I learned more about it

(15:28):
and how to read it, it was immensely important in
my maturity as a believer.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
This book is really cool because it covers so many
different angles and facets of New Testament reliability. I was
telling the chat, it's sort of like you're going to eat.
If someone wanted to learn about New Testament reliability, you
could suggest to them about a dozen different books which
all cover these different strands, where you could say, or

(15:56):
you read this book, which sort of brings them together
all the best stuff and a great starting point as well,
just for anybody interested in the topic. So with all that,
it's like where to begin. So for my mind, I'm thinking,
I wonder what ben Shaw would say. Someone came up
and him, why should I believe that the New Testament

(16:17):
is reliable? You know, you have a very short time
to do that. What's the sort of thumbnail sketch you're
going to lay out there?

Speaker 5 (16:25):
I'm assuming I'm not allowed to say the minimal facts
that would not be that would not be allowed, but
that would That's usually my go to because that lets
you not only talk about reliability, but hone in on
the gospel too, so you get to do double duty there.
I typically like historical criteria because it's something intuitive that
we do every day as it is, and so I

(16:48):
like those. I think that's pretty interesting. And the creeds.
Creeds and criteria probably the two I think that are effective,
just because the criteria are things like we just I
just mentioned them. Actually Jesus for examples, multiply attested. So
when we've got multiple reports coming out that are attesting
to you know, some event, well that's good, the Titanic

(17:09):
going down, for example.

Speaker 4 (17:10):
That's why MACONI uses.

Speaker 5 (17:12):
Those are that is at those are multiple reports, each
of which add weight to the historicity of an event.
Now it's not saying, like a retweet counts because that's
not another witness. That's there's someone else copying someone else.
So I like the criteria. You got other things like
embarrassing testimony. I can use a car accident example. So
like if I was driving and I wasn't paying attention

(17:34):
and I bumped into somebody in front of me, and
the cops came and asked my wife what happened. She's like, yeah,
my husband, you're not paying attention. That's embarrassing testimony because
she's working against.

Speaker 4 (17:45):
Her self interests there.

Speaker 5 (17:46):
So I like those I think they're pretty interesting and
it allows someone to intuitively look at the New Testament
based off how how we already look at the past.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Mm hmm. Okay. So I'm just thinking putting myself thinking, oh,
I know a certain person who might listen to this podcast,
and I'm thinking, okay, how are they going to respond
to what you just said. One thing that comes to
mind is like, oh, minimal facts. Okay, to explain that
that's you. You would prefer to argue for the resurrection first,
As you said, you're like Harbermass in the sense of

(18:17):
the keep the main thing, the main thing, the main thing,
is did Jesus rise from the dead. So the minimal
facts approaches take a few really well attested historical facts
that scholars tend to agree upon and argue from that
making a case for Jesus really rose from the dead.
That's the main thing. Now, if you were going for
a New Testament reliability as a whole. One of the

(18:41):
things you mentioned there was historical criteria. So that's eyewitness testimony,
multiple attestation, different ways that we can verify the accuracy
of accounts. So unpack a few of those things you said,
that's one of the first things you go to. So
let's just go down that path and talk about how
do we know what criteriity Historians use to say, Hey,

(19:05):
this is this is reliable and this isn't.

Speaker 4 (19:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (19:08):
Sometimes so I've got a background. When I was in school,
I was also getting at a full time job as
an insurance adjuster, and so you know, we'd come on
car car accidents and things like that. It's that car
accident example, just a moment ago. If you're if you're
a detective and you come on a scene and you
have to figure out what happened, You're going to look
for you know, witnesses first, so that's your multiple attestation
because you're trying to figure out who hit who. Was

(19:30):
it the silver car or was it the red car.
And so as you start having you know, three, four
or five people saying it was the silver car that
hit the red car, well, then that gives you good
reason to believe it was the silver car that hit
the red car. If we start seeing too that some
of those people, some of those say seven witnesses, they

(19:50):
start saying, yeah, look, my friend's the driver of the
silver car too, and it was his fault. Now you're
getting embarrassing testimony. So those as we start adding different criteria.
Another one is enemy attestation. So if we have someone
who has no reason to support anything we're doing and
yet they do.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
So.

Speaker 5 (20:07):
For example, you may have someone who really doesn't like
the red driver, like, oh, I can't stand that guy,
but yeah, the silver guy, it was his fault. Okay,
well he is interested in pinning the blame on the
red driver, but even he is saying it was the
silver car's fault. So each of those add weight to
the historicity of an event.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
Now, with that said, if it.

Speaker 5 (20:28):
Doesn't have those things, because there's a lot of events
in history that are just attested to by one source,
those things can still happen, but if we have these
criteria adds historical weight to them having occurred. So that's
one reason why I do like them, and they're kind
of fun to talk about and see how they apply
to these things. Again, like Jesus's death, we could look

(20:48):
at other events. Jesus as a miracle worker is another one,
and the criteria actually had a lot of weight to
why a lot of scholars think Jesus was a miracle worker.

Speaker 4 (20:58):
It's attested to widely.

Speaker 5 (21:00):
Early sources is another one because and you think about this,
if someone disagrees with these, oh should I be using
later sources? Do you want fewer sources? You want more
biased sources? Okay, I got, of course, these are just
normal natural things. And so I think that's one of
the takeaways too, is the same way it's what's good
for the goose is good for the gander. How we treat,

(21:23):
you know, normal knowledge of the past. We want to
do those sorts of things here. So I hope that
kind of helps unpack the criteria a little bit. I
use those and then the minimal facts use those too,
So there's some overlap there because I'd like to use
that in relation to those core events to the resurrection.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
M So the book's called Trustworthy and then the subtitle
is thirteen Arguments for the Reliability the New Testament. When
we say that the New Testament is trustworthy or reliable,
first of all, are those two words synonymous? And then secondly,
what does that actually mean? Does that mean it's an errant?

(22:01):
What are we talking about when we say it's reliable
or trustworthy?

Speaker 4 (22:05):
Yeah, those are good questions.

Speaker 5 (22:07):
Are the book is not talking and it's not getting
into the discussions of an err and c inspiration or
anything like that. It's just trustworthy and reliable. They're not
quite synonymous, but they're close enough. We're starting at just
the broadest level of what do we mean by reliable
or trustworthy? So I could say, hey, is this chair reliable? Yeah,

(22:31):
I'm sitting in it's working great. A reliable flotation device. No,
Like if I'm drowning and you throw a chair at me,
I'm thinking you're going to kill me. So you know
what is reliable and what is trustworthy? Kind of have
they've got contexts to them, and so each chapter kind
of shades an angle or a level to what we
mean by reliability and trustworthy. For example, just knowing because

(22:55):
I use a map analogy a lot. So we want
to zoom in, we want to zoom out, we want
to know, like this map we're looking at of a
real place or is it Narnia?

Speaker 4 (23:03):
Like those different types of questions.

Speaker 5 (23:05):
So as we look at those different levels, we see, oh,
it's reliable at this level. It's reliable at this level,
and so on and so on. So we do have
it in a very broad term there, and again the
hope is that it will encourage people to, oh, wow,
it's reliable at these different let me read it more.
Now that I understand it at these different levels, and
then I can go engage it and Lord willing, because

(23:27):
scripture is living inactive, it will begin to interpret the
reader as much as the reader seeks.

Speaker 4 (23:33):
To interpret the text.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Good to piggyback on that. One of the things that
you do in the book to show that the New
Testament is reliable is you take a cumulative approach. Can
you talk about the advantages of taking that type of approach?

Speaker 5 (23:51):
Yeah, I think that that just comes in with the again,
the levels, because there's a lot of flexibility in language.
And we mentioned hockey before, and you know, someone could go, oh, Ben,
you played college hockey, you must be good, and you know, yeah, yeah,
I was good. Oh did you ever play with Alexandrovchkin?

Speaker 4 (24:10):
He's good. Well, wait a minute, wait a minute, Wait
a minute.

Speaker 5 (24:13):
We're talking two different things here. So I think it's
important to understand that we can use these words on
different levels. And when we see all these levels coming together,
we are seeing this multifaceted at angle at which the
New Testament is reliable on these different levels, and not
just the rational level, but you know, the heart level,

(24:35):
the application level too. I try to address and touch
on as well, because part of that I didn't share
this beginning, but I tried reading the Bible a number
of times growing up, and you know, you start a
genesis because that's the beginning of the Bible, and then
by Leviticus you're like trying to figure out, oh man,
this is hard. I'm not quite getting stuff what's going
on here? And so I think I I'm hoping that

(24:58):
one of the takeaways is now that you have a
better overview zoomed out and zoomed in view, it will
encourage people to read, read scripture and then understand it
and from those different angles and vantage points. Because when
you're since you guys are apologetics three fifteen, you you know,
I could ask you this question, is knowing that Paul
wrote First Corinthians, is that an apologetic question or discipleship question?

Speaker 1 (25:21):
It's just a yes.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
I was going to say, I was gonna say I
could argue it's both, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (25:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (25:28):
So and that's kind of that's kind of the point, like,
you know, I don't know if I don't know how
to uh package that, I just know it's important to
know it. Yeah, And so if you're a doubter coming to.

Speaker 4 (25:40):
It, well that addresses you.

Speaker 5 (25:41):
If if you're if you need the apologetic element, that's
going to address you. If you're a disciple who just
has questions, because disciples should have questions, that's part of
you know, when you're understanding the hope that you have,
you've got to learn that hope, and in that process
of learning, you're gonna have questions. So aim there is
to help equip equip them as to why it's trustworthy.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
How does understanding the Gospels as Greco Roman biographies do
you think strengthen the case for the reliability and what
sort of evidence supports the traditional authorship.

Speaker 5 (26:13):
Yeah, okay, so we got the genre and authorship questions there.
So the genre question. This is why it's it's fun
to have conversations because I'm like very tempted brand to
ask you back. You know, would it make a difference
if the Gospels were romances or ancient novels as opposed
to Greco Roman biographies?

Speaker 2 (26:35):
So are you saying, does it make a difference whether
or not the Gospels are say, ancient biography versus like
a Nicholas Sparks novel.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Is that what you're asking?

Speaker 4 (26:48):
That kind of romance?

Speaker 5 (26:56):
Does it make a difference if you're watching a Star
Wars movie or the news? Is there a difference in
genre there? Right? Sure, you're understanding things dramatically different. So
with biographies now we know, okay, they're attempting. The goal
with which they're trying to write and which their readers

(27:19):
expected them to write is one where they're not expected
to just invent things whole cloth, invent new events and
all sorts.

Speaker 4 (27:26):
Of things like that. That is not what is typically expected.

Speaker 5 (27:29):
Now, it's really cool development the way that the Gospels
have come to be understood as biographies now. They used
to be understood for biography as ancient biographies for a
long time.

Speaker 4 (27:39):
And then in the I think it was in the forties.

Speaker 5 (27:41):
Fifties, sixties, maybe fifty sixties, seventies, there's some debate maybe
the Gospels are just a unique genre, they're their own thing.

Speaker 6 (27:49):
And.

Speaker 5 (27:50):
So scholars started, you know, debating those issues. And then
Richard Burridge kind of got into the discussion, I think
in the eighties, and he was going to argue against
the idea that the Gospels were biographies, and he wrote,
he started to write his dissertation on that, and then
he came to find out, oh, man, the Gospels are biographies,
and he changed his mind, wrote a book called What

(28:13):
are the Gospels? And that work is now the definitive
work on the fact that it's really convinced basically everybody
that the Gospels are eco Roman biographies. And so now
we can come to that reading with that understanding, and
that also helps us interpret the Gospels. But here's something
really I find it interesting never talked about or rarely

(28:36):
never talked about except by Burridge, because I think you
asked the question this way. What does it mean to
know that the Gospels are biographies? Well, this is a
point that Burge makes. There is no rabbinic biographies. There
are stories about rabbis and the way they teach people
to follow the law, but there are no biographies in

(28:58):
which a rabb i is pointed to as someone to emulate.
Yet with the Gospels, Jesus is the person to emulate.
So Burge's point is they are saying something christological about
Jesus by their very genre, namely, he is the embodiment
of the law and to follow him faithfully because here's

(29:19):
his life and now we can model after it. So
it's a pretty profound point. There's a lot of depth
to it, but it's kind of one of those things
where you're like, Wow, I hadn't thought about that before.
That is a really cool point to make. So anyway
that's that's on the genre, does that feel Yeah?

Speaker 1 (29:36):
So that strengthens the case for its historical reliability because
we know that if their intention was to make a
true historical account of an actual person who lived and
here's the actual things they did and it fits this genre,
then we know that we're not wanting to star wars
we're watching the news, for instance, So that was one

(29:56):
part of the question. Further on to that, what about
the authorship, right, what is the importance of saying that
these authors we would traditionally attribute to the Gospels Matthew Mark,
Luca John, How does that help the case for New
Testament reliability?

Speaker 5 (30:12):
Yeah, let me back up a half a step, Okay.
One of the other significant things about the Gospels as
biographies is the proximity between the events and when they
were written themselves. Too, because we have a number of biographies,
like a number of Plutarch's biographies, they are like centuries before.
So that emphasis on reporting things and trying to stay

(30:37):
as honest and faithful to the facts as possible is
all the more important when it's that close in time
to the actual events. And that even when I use
we use a number of different dates actually for the
dating of the New Testament, but even if we use
the latest ones that I present in the book, they're
within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. So they're all significant
in that In that regards, that adds to that genre issue.

(31:01):
Those are kind of they're mutually beneficial to one another.
And then when it comes to the authorship. Yeah, some
scholars and I used to think like this too. It
doesn't necessarily if say we didn't know who wrote those Gospels.
I don't think it would it. I used to think this.

(31:21):
I'm not quite as much on this path as it
used to be, But it doesn't quite matter as much
if we didn't know who they were, because we can
still do the other historical methods, the historical criteria for
example that I mentioned, we know that when they were written,
even if we're not necessarily sure who. But that being said,
the uniform testimony of the early Church is that it's Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John that wrote the Gospels. We don't have

(31:43):
any competitors for those views. There's no challengers. Simon Gathercole,
he's got a great article where he cites I think
ten different sources.

Speaker 4 (31:53):
I'm pretty sure it's double digits.

Speaker 5 (31:55):
It might be twelve different sources that all reference the
gospel authors up to two hundred, so he has a
cut off point. So this is a basically within a
century and change of the writings, and they're all attesting
to Matthew, Mark, Lukenjohn as the authors.

Speaker 4 (32:09):
So that's that's like.

Speaker 5 (32:11):
Very significant in my opinion, if all the testimony is
that those are the authors.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
Yeah, one of the one of the books you cite.
Sorry to interrupt, but one of the books you cite,
by the way, your footnotes were just glorious. I don't
know how many I don't know how many books. I
told Brian I was a star, star star. I gotta
get that. I got to get that. But one of
the books you cite, and I'm not sure I'm going
to say the author's name correctly, but the Case for
Jesus by Brent Pittree.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
Yes, that he I I think he really makes.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
That point strongly in that book, that we have no
evidence to the contrary. All the evidence we have suggests
that the original four authors were actually the authors of
the Gospels. So I didn't mean to interrupt. I just
thought that was you know, yea, yeah, what you're saying.

Speaker 5 (32:55):
Yeah, No, that's crucial, and that that goes consistent with
what with what gather Coole says. But one of the
other points that Pittree points out, Pittree points.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
Out literation's just fun.

Speaker 5 (33:08):
Yeah, Pittree's probable points.

Speaker 4 (33:13):
Is what he says here.

Speaker 5 (33:14):
So he also makes a point it's a great point
that if the Gospels so and so, I kind of
combined Pittree, Gather, Coole and Balcham here. But the Gospels,
we often hear the Gospels are anonymous, right, and so that's.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
Kind of probably one of this question.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Airman is probably the most famous proponent of that view.

Speaker 5 (33:33):
Yeah, yeah, I'd imagine Barbie Erman has some anonymous books.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
I haven't thought to check this.

Speaker 5 (33:39):
And I say that because I think my book, my
book is technically anonymous. It doesn't, you guys, I mean
just saw it did say anywhere I Ben Shaw authored
this book. Just it doesn't say that in the writings themselves,
like Paul says, I Paul greet you. Right, it doesn't
say that in the book. It's on the cover though,
so you can identify it that way, right. Well, in
the ancient world they had the same thing. They would

(33:59):
have different ways to identify works with the author's name
could be on a tab, for example, on the outside
of the scroll. Because if you've got a libraries of books,
you've got to distinguish between the different books. And so
those are some some of the ways in which a
book Kate maybe uh, technically technically anonymous but not functionally anonymous.

(34:20):
The authors were expected to be known. And Luke Luke
for example, I mean he's writing to someone specifically, and
I doubt Theophlist got this one day. I was like, Oh,
what a curious letter I just have received. Uh so,
but but what But it goes further than that, because
one there's again I like, it's good for the goose,
is good for the gander. Uh, there's It's not the

(34:41):
only They're not the only functionally or sorry, technically.

Speaker 4 (34:44):
Technically anonymous works that we have.

Speaker 5 (34:47):
Lucian sam Masada, he's got a an anonymous work which
names escaping Me.

Speaker 4 (34:53):
Check the footnotes, Yeah, I believe I put it in there.

Speaker 5 (34:56):
Uh. And then there's some others that have it. So
it's not like it's a unique thing to the Gospels.
It's just a normal it's it's normal trade, so to speak.
But if they so, let's let's ride the horse for
a second and just see where it goes. So let's
say they are anonymous, and we have these Gospels getting
spread out to the throughout the Mediterranean. This is Pictre's
point now shifting from welcome to picture. So we start shifting,

(35:17):
and now you've got a copy of the Gospel of
Mark and say you've got one in Alexandria. Say you've
got one in Antioch, say you've got one in Athens,
and you got one in Rome. But they're all anonymous, right,
they don't know it's Mark. Well, those guys are going
to attribute a name to these gospels. What are the
odds that all four areas are going to come up
with Mark as the author? Because he's so well known, Right, Mark,

(35:42):
he's now he's not one of the disciples, So why
are we going to invent him or Luke? Right? So
so that's uh, that's an interesting argument against the functional
anonymy anonymity.

Speaker 4 (35:55):
Sorry, it's late in the afternoon here.

Speaker 5 (35:57):
Of the Gospels. This is why I wrote a book
and not did election. So yeah, so then you and
then not only do you need that with Mark, but
then you need it with Matthew and Luke and John.
So it's a fourfold problem. So I think that combined
with all the references being the same, that being combined

(36:18):
with the fact that we have other works, it's good
to say those stand those are the authors that stand
behind the works. And then you can get into the
technical stuff of if they use the Secretary and what
all that's going to look like, and how that can
shape or affect the writing of the Gospel itself. That's
beyond the scope of my book, So those questions are
for the other guys, right.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
So a lot of times when I get into discussions
with people about the reliability of the New Testament, one
of the things, though, and this will be kind of
a twofold question, one of the things they'll want to
go to immediately is the non Christian sources. They somehow
seem to think that these are more credible or more important.
Why are the writings of the New Testament the best

(37:01):
sources we have? Would be my first question, and then
the second question would be what can we learn from
our some of our non Christian sources?

Speaker 5 (37:10):
Good question. A lot of different jiu jitsu moves you
could put on it. I just trying to figure out
which one.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Just put your hockey skates on it, you know, yeah,
take them one at a time.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
You know, you got this, you got yeah.

Speaker 5 (37:21):
So no, it's because there's different levels at which you
can answer that question. So it depends on the person
who's asking it. So you could respond and say, well, look,
here's some here's some non Christian sources, and here's what
they say. You got tasked to this, You got Josephus
and they attest to, you know, Jesus being crucified under
conscious pilot.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (37:42):
This says that the Christians were checked for a moment
but then sprung back out in Judea.

Speaker 4 (37:48):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (37:49):
These are that's not insignificant. These aren't insignificant reports. I'll
explain why in a minute. So you could just go
and start unpacking the non Christian sources and show you know,
they don't. They're they're corroborating what we find a New Testament.
And that's good, that's helpful. That's very encouraging for believers.
I mean I remember even when I was reading them.
It's encouraging to see those things because again it's not

(38:10):
as though Christianity just happened inside of a bubble that
didn't make any effect in the culture around it. And
so that's helpful to see and how they viewed Christianity
and things like that. So that's one. That's one element two.
So the second angle is I Bartnermitt has a great argument.
He goes, look, if you're gonna use, if you're doing

(38:33):
if you're asking a historian to write on the American Revolution,
what you're asking him to do. The equivalent would be,
you're not allowed to use American sources for the American Revolution.
You know, American George Washington, he's out of here, terrible source,
he's biased. If an America, if if any professor of
American history who did that would be you know, well,

(38:53):
you'd think they would be fired. So that's just a
ridiculous request. And again, you know it sounds if I
understand how it comes across, if you've got a Christian
saying it's ridiculous request. But it's like, okay, look here's
also a skeptic saying it's a ridiculous request, because yeah,
it's every source is biased. The question is as famously
stated by Richard Evans and Carl Truman, it's the question

(39:17):
is to what degree is that prejudice paramount or that
bias paramount? And so and then that gets back into
other issues. But nevertheless, we have different there's bias in everything.
So just because you know George Washington is biased towards
the revolution, that doesn't make him a bad source for
understanding the American Revolution. So that's one thing. Obviously, they're

(39:40):
going to be They're going to be invested, right, that's
why they're involved in the first place. If they were disinterested,
they're not going to write about it or talk about
it or be involved in it. Yeah, if they're disinterested,
they're not going to write about it. And coincidentally, that's
the main reason that a lot of the non Christian
sources talk about Christianity is because they had to because
it connected or touched upon what they were interested in

(40:00):
talking about.

Speaker 4 (40:01):
So that's why they had to talk about it.

Speaker 5 (40:03):
So that's two zero point three. And I think I
say this in the book because non Christian sources are
like chapter ten or eleven or something like that. So
hopefully the first ten chapters or nine chapters before that
will show you why the New Testament sources are reliable
apart from those non Christian sources. Yeah, so because there's

(40:23):
good reasons independently for them to be considered reliable sources.
So that's when I say it depends on the person
who I'm talking to with which of those three types
of responses, because they're three different directions each of them,
but I think they're each helpful and they position imposter
things nicely and then I did mention I'd come back
to this, that the sources like Tacitus and Josephus and
others report Jesus' crucifixion.

Speaker 4 (40:45):
It's important that.

Speaker 5 (40:46):
They say and corroborate what we find in the New Testament,
as opposed to saying Jesus died as a revolutionary in
the war in sixty six to seventy A d in
the revolution, right, So they don't say that he died
in a revolution. They don't say he died in Greece.
They said he died the same way that the Gospels
and the New Testament describe him. So that's all important

(41:07):
because think if they did say those things, we'd be going, oh,
wait a minute, wait a minute, what's going on here.
They must be speaking of a different Jesus or something.
So but they corroborate what we find. So that's significant
and important, and again just another layer and level, and
so hopefully again I want to make sure I always
emphasize this continue to then the question for believers is, oh, wow,
that's great, and that is encouraging. Now I need to

(41:30):
be more encouraged as I go out and live that out.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
We'll put one of the some of the criteria you
say you mentioned earlier when you were chatting with Brian
about criteria that historians use to adjudicate whether or not
a source is reliable. You mentioned multiple ads station, you
mentioned embarrassing testimony, enemy add as station. But one of
the ones you mentioned too were early sources. What kind

(41:54):
of confidence can we have that? And I know you've
you've spoken on this a bit already, but can you
expound a bit on what kind of confidence we can
have that the sources we have in the New Testament
were early enough to the events, or close enough to
the events would be a better way of putting it,
that we don't have to be concerned that legend crept in.

Speaker 4 (42:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (42:13):
So they are early, they're within the lifetime of eyewitnesses.
And that's if we use the late dates that earmic gifts,
so they could be late dating, and they're still within
the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. So those are good sources
in my opinion, especially in antiquity. That's great, those are
great sources because we can have people today talking about
World War two or other major life events that happened

(42:36):
years ago and describe them now. Part of the difference
is these guys, the Disciples, the apostles, they were not
just saying them for the first time during the Gospels,
for example, they were repeating it throughout those years and
decades before the Gospels were written, depending on what take
they were written. So if Mark, like some for example,

(42:57):
some skeptical New Testament scholar think it's not just conservatives
who date things early. Sometimes like skeptics do it, and
vice versa. So two skeptical historians have dated Mark to
the forties a d. So if that's accurate, the disciples
are Mark and Peter. Peter was preaching for a decade
before Mark wrote down this material, so it's not again,

(43:20):
it's not as though it's the first time they're hearing it.

Speaker 4 (43:22):
So those are all good dates.

Speaker 5 (43:24):
Paul's writings typically are considered to predate the Gospels. So
if the Gospels are within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses,
Paul is a witness and he's giving us material writing
two churches, and so that's good as well. That backs
up even earlier. But we also talk about creeds. There's
a whole chapter on the Creeds, and that's sort of
a combination of these criteria because it is the earliest

(43:48):
material we have. It's connected to eyewitnesses and it's what
it's dated to the early thirties a d almost universally.
I can only think of a handful of people who
would be an exception to that rule, and I have
to go look them up because it's I think some
of them are a bit dated. But creeds, so we're
not talking about Nicia, which was centuries later, but we're

(44:10):
talking about oral traditions that were preserved in the New
Testament texts and themselves and the world. Traditions would be
the ways in which formal teachings would be passed on.
The rabbis would use this to pass on traditions very formally,
to make sure someone understood what was being taught and
that they could repeat it and teach it themselves. So
at catechises of sorts and so. There are actually several

(44:35):
different creeds in the New Testament that are preserved in writing.
One Corinthians fifteen is the most noticeable because Paul's explicitly
says I delivered to you that which I received, and
it uses the two Greek words, which are the technical
words that rabbis would use for the passing off and
the handing off of tradition. So Paul's telling us, Hey,
I'm getting ready to give you tradition right now, and
then he goes on to give some of the earliest

(44:56):
evidence we have for Jesus' resurrection, that Jesus died barried,
he was raised, and then he appeared to Peter, Paul, James,
the twelve, all the Apostles, and more than five hundred,
and so you're like, oh, wow, that's powerful.

Speaker 4 (45:11):
That's good.

Speaker 5 (45:12):
Well, it's nice to know that there's a creed there,
but how do we date it and where did Paul
get it? Well, Paul tells us in Galatians one that
three years after his own conversion, he went to Jerusalem
and inquired with Peter.

Speaker 4 (45:25):
The Greek word is histor race i for inquired.

Speaker 5 (45:28):
So some people will say visit, some people say met,
But it's historysi and it has the idea of getting
to know and getting to know firsthand. So Paul's going
down there with intentionality, and so scholars placed this meeting
where he's meeting Peter and James as the place where
he received not just the creed in Frus Corinthians fifteen,
but probably all the creeds that he learned. And so

(45:49):
that's actually a quote from bart Hman's book, Did Jesus Exist?
I think it's page one hundred and thirty one because
I was just looking it up the other day. But
that's that's where scholars are widely agreed that Paul received
this material. So that's pretty powerful evidence because it's from
an eyewitness received from other eyewitnesses that's dated to the

(46:13):
early thirties AD. And we could just make a couple
other additional comments just for fun. But say Paul received
it in Damascus instead of Jerusalem, right, say he received
that creed in First Corinthians fifteen, Well, what happened after
he went to Damascus? He went somewhere three years later.
He went to Jerusalem three years later, So all that
content that he would have received in Damascus would have
been confirmed in that meeting in First Corinthians or in

(46:35):
Galatians rather, and of course in Galatians, the context is
the gospel, and the context in One Corinthians fifteen is
the gospel.

Speaker 4 (46:43):
I'm First Corinthians fifteen one and two.

Speaker 5 (46:46):
It says this is the gospel that has the power
to save and it's of first importance. So he's talking
about the gospel, so those are things he would have
talked about. H. Dodd famously said, we can presume they
did more than talk about the weather, and so it's
just those are really good points now if Paul's receiving
it there, though, it must have been developed prior to that,

(47:09):
so it dates even earlier than those meetings. So we
just say the early thirties because we can't pinpoint that down,
but we just say the early thirties. And there's a
number of different creeds in the New Testament. We just
talked about Romans Chris Corinthians fifteen three and following Romans
ten to nine, very famous one, right. They also go
by names like confessions, homologia, charigmatic statements, things like that

(47:33):
Romans one three to four, Philippians two, five to eleven
are other ones. So there's a number of different creeds.
If you can read Greek, it's easier to identify them.
If you can't, a lot of the Bibles today are
starting to bracket these creeds. Some are more questionable. We
don't really know if it's a creed or not, but
there are some that's it's quite evident that it is
a creed, like first Corinthians fifty. So those are good

(47:56):
evidence for it being even earlier than just those late
gospel datings if we use the lake, if we use the.

Speaker 4 (48:02):
Late dating, excellent.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Yeah, I love that kind of chain of custody there. Yeah,
you laid out that's that's really helpful.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
I love that. So I have two more questions.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
We're going to end with the minimal facts question, but
before we get to that, and you can't answer this
question with minimal facts, so I'm just giving you that
ahead of time. Okay, all right, so you right, you know,
the subtitle was thirteen arguments for the Reliability of the
New Testament.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
All right, So.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Which of the twelve I'm removing the minimal facts just
for now? Do you find most persuasive personally?

Speaker 4 (48:41):
Criteria? Yeah, I think criteria. Okay, Yeah, I.

Speaker 5 (48:45):
Think the criteria. It's hard because it depends on the
different levels. But I think the criteria are good because
we intuitively do it already and a lot of times
I don't know what this guy's saying. All right, maybe
I don't know, But if I can verify someone else
was there or whatever the case is, and we have
I'm getting multiple reports on it, and then I'm saying, oh, look,

(49:08):
here's some embarrassing testimony too, Okay, all right, and then
I can start applying those things.

Speaker 4 (49:13):
If I can do that to scripture, that's.

Speaker 5 (49:15):
One of the that's one of the the embarrassing testimony
is one of the biggest parts too, of the criteria,
because we find in Scripture that all the flaws are
laid bare. Someone put up the quote from nineteen eighty
four the other day about how when certain groups get
in power, or when tyrants get in power, they whitewash
history to make it look like everything they've done has

(49:37):
always been perfect and is always perfect. We don't see
anything like that in the New Testament. Peter's called Satan.
I mean, it's just a yeah, as It's like, man,
I could just you guys couldn't left that part out. Yeah,
but so, I mean, James was a skeptic during Jesus's life.
It's John says, even their brothers didn't believe him. Peter

(49:59):
denied use three times, Paul was persecutor of the church.
Their flaws are there, so they're not interested in covering
their flaws. They're interested in the truth because it's the
truth of the Gospel that is redeeming. There's forgiveness, and
when you've been forgiven, it is very easy to con
especially in this context of the gospel of God's grace,

(50:21):
to confess you know, oh, yeah, this was wrong, and
then that enables you to be more impartial as well. Anyway,
there's some other elements there that are worth unpacking.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
When you mentioned the criteria, I was thinking to myself,
what would be mine, and I thought, well, the textual
evidence that there's such a volume of manuscripts in there
so early. But then I was thinking, well, if there
were fewer and they were later, yet there were those criteria.
That's the good thing about your book being like all

(50:53):
these things working together, is that when you have one
upon the other, when you have so many manuscripts so early,
and then you've got the external corroboration, and then you've
got you know, all these markers of authenticity and the
things you mentioned, they just compound the reliability because if

(51:13):
you just had one, yeah, you've got a lot of manuscripts,
but you don't have any corroboration, or you could say, oh,
you've got corroboration, but it's so late and so few,
you know, but you've got all of these things together.

Speaker 4 (51:24):
One of my.

Speaker 5 (51:25):
Goals is too, is like as people read this, different
different chapters.

Speaker 4 (51:30):
Are going to interest different people.

Speaker 5 (51:31):
Yeah, Like textual criticism is very hard, and it's I'm
glad we have guys that love doing that because for you,
guys equipped in that area, and so I'm happy that
they can go through those different manuscripts that they like
reading the handwritten. I got a hard time reading texts.
So I'm just glad that there are guys. But we

(51:53):
want people who are going to like, oh, this is
God's equipped me such a way that I can produce
value here, and so that's we'll we're highlight two in
the chapters. There's different people skilled in those different aspects
of reliability and it's worth bringing them out. And so
there's different parts of the body that all support one another.
So it's kind of that dynamic going on in there.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
And I love that idea of the I've never thought
of the historical criteria being intuitive.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
I really like that.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
I've never thought of how we can appeal when we're
talking to people about how you do this all the time,
and you can give the example of multiple testimonies or
embarrassing testimony or you know, earlier to the event that
had happened, and all of those things, Like, most people
aren't going to push back on that.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
I've never thought of approaching it like that.

Speaker 4 (52:45):
I'll give you a quick story on that. It's worth noting.

Speaker 5 (52:48):
Look, Lakona has a great article because there are some
scholars in New Testament that push back on the criteria
a little bit. And Kevin Burr, by the way, is
an excellent book on this object.

Speaker 4 (53:00):
I recommend that.

Speaker 5 (53:01):
But also Lakona's article is the Sky Falling in the
Testament Research, I believe is the title. And he starts
going way, he starts questioning these guys who are pushing
back on the criteria. Now, the criteria aren't like it's
not a calculator. It takes some judgment and wisdom in
the application of them. But some of the some were questioning,

(53:23):
you know, maybe we should get rid of all these
criteria and use something else.

Speaker 4 (53:27):
I'm like, is like, really, this is what we're going
to do?

Speaker 5 (53:28):
Then?

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Huh.

Speaker 4 (53:29):
I'm just curious.

Speaker 5 (53:30):
I know, you guys affirm Jesus's crucifixion, How do you
know what happened? Are you guys just taking it by blind?
Like but I don't want to say blind faith, but
just by pure faith, then you're just taking it for
what it says, and you're not doing historical work, because
that was what they were saying. The criteria weren't historical work.
So he's like, well, how do you take how do
you know that Jesus' resurrection happened? Because I think he's
talking to to certain stripes of academia as well.

Speaker 4 (53:53):
So anyway, I.

Speaker 5 (53:54):
Thought that was kind of interesting because if you get
rid of them, well, then how do you know the past?

Speaker 4 (53:58):
What are some of the tools you use?

Speaker 5 (54:00):
And so Kevin Burr's books great because he also challenges
those same group and he highlights how they actually use
the criteria in their own works, even if they call
it a different name.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Yeah, So the last question I had for you is
you're obviously a proponent of the minimal facts approach, as
is doctor Habermass, and there's been a bit of I
don't know what the word hubbub if you want controversy
as you will.

Speaker 4 (54:25):
And how can you say there's a scuffle, yes.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
A scuffle, Yes, indeed, there's a scuffle about whether or
not to use what is the minimal facts approach, which
Brian Brian characterized earlier. You're using those facts that are
highly evidenced and then also that the majority of even
critics would concede. And then what's called the maximal approach,
which is where you kind of argue for the reliability

(54:48):
the gospels and acts, and then you use all of
that data to argue for the resurrection. And in your book,
I noticed that you kind of don't you. I don't
know if you did this intentionally or not, but it
seemed like you were trying to kind of thread a
needle between the two and say that one could lead
to the other. Yeah, and so I don't know if

(55:11):
I've characterized that correctly, but can you kind of unpack
that a little bit?

Speaker 5 (55:14):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean I cite. I mean, I've got
a chapter in there on undesigned coincidences, and I use the.

Speaker 4 (55:19):
Minimal facts too. So I like both. It's a jiu
jitsu move.

Speaker 5 (55:24):
Like you, I want to know as many moves as
I can because I don't know what the context of
the situation will allow me to discuss. So I like,
I like, there's nothing wrong with both approaches. It's great
to have multiple tools in your toolbox that you can
use what happens too. I think in the reliability approach
is so like you got the thirteen to say someone
read the thirteen books and.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
Or the thirteen.

Speaker 5 (55:46):
Argument like, Okay, this is good, I believe they're reliable. Now,
now show me how Jesus rose from the dead. How
do you what do I need to know that Jesus rose.

Speaker 4 (55:54):
From the dead.

Speaker 5 (55:54):
Well, if I'm going to do that, I have to
start somewhere, and I'm going to start with Jesus's death.

Speaker 4 (55:59):
Then I'm and I maybe.

Speaker 5 (56:00):
Try to show I could try to show that he
was buried, that people had experiences of the risen Jesus.
And as I'm starting to do this, the facts I
start with look a lot like the minimal facts that
we start with too, So there's like it's like a
Venn diagram where you can start there. You're starting on
the same facts because the resurrection involves those facts, you can't.

(56:22):
I mean, if we're going to talk about the resurrection,
we got to deal with those facts. So I think
either way you end up at those points. So it
just kind of depends on the person. But typically the
minimal facts, because I'm just starting on those facts, I
can just unpack them without having to get into reliability issues.
And sometimes people just want to go down discussions that
aren't relevant to resurrection, like do we want to spend

(56:44):
an hour or twenty minutes or whatever? Did Mark write
his gospel in the forties a d or sixty five ad?

Speaker 4 (56:51):
Okay? Sure? Did Mark say Jesus die? Yeah? Okay, we
have other tests, so we.

Speaker 5 (56:57):
Can combine that to the argument, But what's going to
help us on Jesus' death and resurrection? So I like
staying on those on those facts because they are the
relevant ones. Because if Jesus died and rose from again again,
Like this is why the Minimal Facts is at the end,
because even if my first twelve chapters are total bunk
and garbage, well you still got Jesus rising from the dead,
and we have some based upon the most reliable data.

(57:21):
And so that's why I do like that, and I
do say this, and my dissertation chapter, my middle chapter
is on the minimal Facts approach and criteria. It kind
of highlights how do we know the past? And I
use the minimal facts as a good place to start.
It's not the finish line starting line, so if you
think it's the finish line, I think there's been a

(57:42):
misstep somewhere, so you can keep going from there.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
Okay, good, that's helpful.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
And hey, I wanted to say you mentioned your chapter
on undesigned coincidences. I've been I have never been particularly
moved by those as an argument. Reading your chapter in
the way that you explained it, it was the first
time that I really was impressed with those, and so
I just wanted to commend you. I thought you did
an excellent job representing those in kind of unlocking those

(58:09):
for me.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
So thank you.

Speaker 5 (58:11):
Oh yeah, thanks that I've probably had a ghost writer
for that chapter.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
Well can you ghost writer then? Please ghost writer? If
you're listening, that.

Speaker 6 (58:21):
Was for you.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
Well, Benjamin Shaw, it's been a fascinating conversation. I appreciate
your time. And you're in the library and they're kicking
you out. I'd see that there's like guards coming in now.

Speaker 5 (58:32):
So thank you for the stereotypical academic position to be.
I'm in the library and they're kicking me out. That's
why I got to talk about the jiu jitsu and
the hockey. More so, it don't sound like such a doork.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Man. Well, watch out for that symmetrical book stacking.

Speaker 4 (58:48):
But right, that's right. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate
you guys having me. It's a lot of fun doing this.

Speaker 5 (58:54):
Well.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Great, We'll point people to your resources online, and thanks
so much for joining us.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
Yes, thank you.

Speaker 4 (58:59):
Thanks guys, thanks for.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Listening to the podcast. If you have a question you'd
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(59:23):
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(59:45):
for today's episode. Find Chad's apologetic stuff over at truthbomb apologetics.
That's truthbomb dot blogspot dot com. This has been Brian
Auten and Chadgross for the Apologetics three fifteen podcast, and
thanks for listening.

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
S