Prof. Jonathan McClatchie Responds to Paulogia

The following is a pre-recorded program.

Hey friends, this is Michael Brown. In a moment, I'm going to be joined by Professor Jonathan McClatchy to talk about a video I've been asked to respond to. Really, really well done. I'm super impressed with the graphics and the presentation by an atheist. I believe Paul Enns, who goes by Paul Agia, an atheist YouTuber who challenges a lot of the claims of Christians.

I wasn't familiar with him at all. There are a lot of folks out there, of course, that I don't know. And I got a message on Twitter from Capturing Christianity podcast. Dr. Brown, do you have any interest in having an informal exchange with an atheist YouTuber on the evidence for the resurrection on my channel?

The guy I have in mind is Paul Agia. Let me know. So I wrote back, thanks for the invitation, but it's not really my specialty. I love debate and would gladly join you for a variety of subjects, but there are plenty of folks who could do a better job than me. Have you reached out to any of them? And do you know Professor Jonathan McClatchy? He wrote back, I do. Paul Agia specifically asked to debate you. That's why I asked.

No problem at all. And I said another atheist and former Muslim asked to debate me because he knew I was gracious to my opponents. But here, since our gospel witness is at stake, as well as this man's soul, it's best to get someone else who can present the evidence more strongly.

That being said, anything in my wheelhouse to debate, I'm there. So anyway, I found out that that someone on Twitter that has challenged my views about cultural issues sent him a video. I did just a real short summary, five minutes of evidence for the death and resurrection of Jesus. I've got lots of short videos where I just summarize things, put that out and then sent to Paul Agia who said, hey, why don't we have a debate over it? That's how it went through capturing Christianity.

When I declined, he didn't put out the video. So, Paul, really well done. Your stuff is incredibly well done. And I'm not going to try to equal it with like all the snippets and clicks and all of that. But if you haven't seen the videos, they're really well done. Graphics must take a lot of time and effort.

And then he's got an animated figure as him. So thumbs up on that. Great, great job. And raises a lot of good questions, some fair questions that we want to analyze. And I wanted to bring Professor McClatchy on because this is dialogue that we've had lots of the issues, historical evidence, those kind of things. And as a specialist in these areas, I thought, well, great, let's let's take the time. Paul took the time to put the video out, which I really appreciate. Paul, thanks for doing that. And thanks for the offer to debate.

But I'd suggest do a debate with someone like like like Jonathan, because this way you can really get to areas you both focused on more. So Jonathan McClatchy, assistant professor biology at which college in Boston? I'm at Sattler College. Sattler College. And where did you do your doctoral studies? I did my Ph.D. at Newcastle University in England.

And what was your subject? I studied the evolution of the paradox cell cycle. All right.

So the cell division. Got it. Got it. So you have, though, spent many, many years studying the historical background to the New Testament, the claims of the New Testament, and to become a specialist in those areas as well. So is this something you feel comfortable talking about, responding to the things that he raised? Is this something you'd say, hey, you believe you have some expertise here? Absolutely. Glad to interact with the claims and assertions of Apologia.

Is there anywhere in particular you would like to start? So let's let's start with the first claim that I made, that the New Testament is is the best attested ancient document from that time in the world, that it has the the earliest copies. And we'll get back to the exact timing of it in a minute. But the general claim, do you think that's an exaggerated claim when you look at, say, Iliad and Odyssey or ancient historical works, how old the manuscripts are, how many we have? How well attested is the New Testament in comparison?

Sure. I mean, the New Testament is very well attested. I mean, this isn't something that's in dispute among New Testament textual critics, certainly by comparison with other ancient works. The New Testament is very well attested as to its textual integrity, that we actually have what was written down by the original authors. There is a tendency in some apologetic circles, unfortunately, to exaggerate some of these comparisons. So as you may know, there was a book that was published a few years ago called Myths and Mistakes in New Testament textual criticism, which is a really excellent book.

It's edited by Peter Gurry and Elijah Hickson, and it evaluates and assesses some misinformation that you often find exaggerations relating to the discipline of New Testament textual criticism. So oftentimes you'll find in popular apologetic literature where an apologist will take the latest and greatest figure of New Testament Greek manuscripts and will compare that to works like the Iliad or Caesar's Gallic Wars or what have you. And they'll take the figures for those other ancient sources from F.F.

Bruce from decades ago and would update those figures. And so you're comparing essentially apples and oranges at that point. So it's important to use the most recent figures that are available.

And so it's important not to make that mistake. Another common mistake that people make is they'll take, say, the earliest New Testament fragment, which is largely widely agreed to be P52, which is the John Rylands fragment, which is a small credit card sized fragment from the Gospel of John, which is generally dated to be composed between 125 to 175 A.D., perhaps even a little bit later. It's difficult to get more specific than that because of the manner in which these are dated. But it's important to bear in mind also that the vast majority of New Testament Greek manuscripts are quite late. It's more than 94 percent of them are from the 9th century and later. So we have to include those caveats when we're talking about this subject. But I think the more impressive case from the New Testament textual transmission pertains to the different lines of transmission that you have. So it'd be very difficult to impose some sort of textual uniformity upon the text in the same way that is done in Islam in the 650s by Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the rightly guided Caleb. So all that to say, I do think that a good case can be made there.

I just think it's important not to overstep what the evidence actually shows. And Paul correctly called me out on something, just a misstatement on my end when I said the earliest fragments or earliest manuscripts come from within a generation of the apostles, I should have said within a century, because that would be that would be the earliest he referred to. So he knew exactly what manuscript I was referencing when I said generation misstatement. So thank you. You got me on that.

Should say within the first century. So when you talk about the multiple attestations, what would those be? Because he said on the video, hey, look, it's just a matter of you have so many, that means it was popular, not necessarily well attested, but there's so many different lines of attestation. As you said, it's just hard to remove them all and take them all away because so much was being repeated, spoken, written. So what are those multiple lines? So as I said, we have multiple lines of transmission. It's not just that we have one governing authority that produces an authorized textual tradition. We have multiple lines of independent transmission or multiple streams of transmission, which converge upon a substantially common text. And that, I think, I mean, it would be certainly very difficult to deliberately alter the text of the New Testament because of these different lines of transmission.

It would be very difficult to do so without leaving a paper trail. And so if there are textual variants in the New Testament, we can be sure that the original is there somewhere and we can employ certain practices in New Testament textual criticism to try to discern what the original variant is. And so being a difficult reading, for example, all other things being held equal would be more likely to be original because it's more likely a scribe is going to change a more difficult reading to a less difficult reading than the other way around. Earliness of the manuscript, the general reliability of that particular manuscript and multiple attestation in the manuscript tradition and so forth. It's clear in mind that when we talk about attestation here, we're talking about the textual integrity of the New Testament. We're not talking about the historicity of those sources. So you could have a perfect copy of something that's factually false.

And so that is important to make that distinction as well. So the simple statement would be that we can point to the abundant attestation of the New Testament, the ancient world, compared to other documents. But sometimes we've overstated that or oversimplified that, which certainly someone could criticize me for doing in a five minute video summarizing giving highlights that could be stated in two general terms or as a misstated generation versus century. And for me, critics like Paul and others will just sharpen what we're doing.

That's what happened with decades of work that I do in Jewish ministry and apologetics. So all the sharpening that you can give, all the clarification. Wonderful. And thanks, Paul, for pointing out the misstatement about generation versus century. All right. So let's let's start here.

We've got about two and a half minutes before break, then resume. Paul really took issue with my referring to eyewitness accounts or eyewitness writings in the Gospels or in the New Testament. When I mentioned eyewitnesses are passing these things on. Now we're dealing with historicity.

So let's start and we'll take as much time as we need. Give me, in your view, the best evidence for eyewitness accounts in the New Testament. Absolutely. So there's a number of different lines of evidence that one could deduce. And one category of evidence, for example, would be undesigned coincidences. And we could talk about various examples both in the Gospels and the book of Acts.

Let me just give you one before the break quickly. So in Mark Chapter six, we have these and the feeding of the five thousand miracle. And Mark gives the explanation for why Jesus has disciples come to a deserted area to eat because it's very crowded. Then there's people coming and going.

And so they have no leisure to even to eat. So Jesus has them come away to a deserted area to eat. That's in verse thirty one of Mark Chapter six. And then in verse thirty nine, it says that. So unfortunately for them, the crowds followed Jesus. And Jesus in verse thirty nine has the crowd sit down in groups on the green grass. Now the grass, of course, in Israel is not green as browns are the majority of the year, except at a relatively narrow window of time during the spring because of the high levels of rainfall that coincides with the Jewish feast of Passover. Now, if we go over to John's account of the feeding of the five thousand, John Chapter six, we John doesn't mention the people coming and going, which provides the motivation for going to the deserted area. And he doesn't mention the green grass, but he does mention in verse four that the Passover, the feast of the Jews was at hand, which then illuminates why it's so busy, because there's all these pilgrims coming in for the feast of Passover. And it also illuminates why the grass is green, according to Mark, because it's the right time of year during the spring. And so that sort of undesigned coincidence or casual interlocking between Mark and John in an undesigned way, points to or is most consistent with the historical reporters model for understanding the origins of these texts.

All right. And friends, when we talk about these things, undesigned coincidences, this is not some new theory that someone came up with. Even people doing interviews when they're trying to look for who's giving accurate stories in an account, you know, a crime scene or something like that, or who's making things up, or going back to the history to look at which sources are reliable. These are the kind of telltale signs that, again, undesigned, unplanned, that verify what people are saying.

We're going to continue with this question of evidence for eyewitness accounts and incarceration. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Welcome, friends, to the line of fire. I'm responding today with the help of Professor Jonathan McPhee to a video done on the Paula Gia website or, excuse me, YouTube page. We'll make sure we put up a link to his video rebutting my video. And then hopefully we can get a dialogue between Paul and Jonathan. I think that would be great. If Paul wants to discuss with me issues about messianic prophecy or Jesus being the Jewish Messiah, something like that, that's great.

Happy to do it. But something like this, which is not my specialty area, then let's bring in someone that is a specialist in it because, Paul, I understand you spend a lot of time examining these things, so good. Let's get equal in terms of specialists in that regard. Okay, at the end of the video when I reference eyewitnesses again, Paul says, well, you should have spent more time on that. Well, the five-minute video, trying to summarize a lot, I got through as much as I could in that short period of time, very conscious of the fact I was painting with broad strokes necessarily. But since that is something you raised a couple of times in his video, let's dig in more. From a historical perspective, what other evidence is there of eyewitnesses? Absolutely. So I mentioned in the previous segment the undesigned coincidences, and I gave a particular example relating to how Mark dovetails with John in relation to the feeding of the 5,000 miracle.

Let's continue on that theme. So if we look at the next verse, so we just read John 6, verse 4, the Passover, the Feast of the Jews was at hand. Let's continue to the next verse, verse 5, which says, lifting up his eyes then and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, where are we to buy bread so these people may eat?

Now, this raises a question in the mind of the audience. Why does Jesus turn to Philip here in particular? Philip's a fairly minor character in the Gospels.

Why not say turn to Judas Iscariot who's in charge of the money bag or something like that? Well, if we go over six chapters later to a completely different part of John's Gospel, different context, different Passover Feast, in John chapter 12, we learn in verses 21, 22 that there were some Greeks at the Feast of Passover who wanted to speak to Jesus. And it tells us that they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, to ask him, sir, who wished to see Jesus? And notice that John very casually mentions that Philip is from this town of Bethsaida in Galilee. Now, if we go over to Luke's account of the feeding of the 5,000 miracle, this is in Luke chapter 9, and we look at verse 10. Notice that Luke doesn't mention Philip in this context at all, but he does tell us in verse 10, on the return the apostles told them on the Adon, and he took them and withdrew them apart to a place called, to a town called Bethsaida. And that's where the feeding of the 5,000 takes place, in Bethsaida. And so by putting together these puzzle pieces, if you will, from Luke 9, John 6, and John 12, now we have a complete picture or cogent explanation of why Jesus turns to Philip in John 6.

Philip's a local guy, he knows where the shops are to buy bread. But notice that that's never explicitly spelled out for the reader. One has to do the detective work of putting those pieces together, drawing information from those disparate texts.

And of course, there's so much we could get into with geographical references, or ways of speaking, or names that would have been known to people at that time, but later would not have been known. Whole books have been written on that, but just, we're giving just some of the evidences, some of the ideas here, which you can see it's not right. Well, it's in the Bible, and if it's in the Bible, I'm just going to believe it. And Jonathan, that's not your orientation, is it, towards Scripture? Absolutely not. I'm a very staunch evidentialist, so my belief in Christianity is grounded in the public evidence that is objectively accessible to anyone regardless of their current perspective.

Got it. And I think if you're an atheist and you're seeking truth, and the idea of revelation is something that you discount, then listen to an evidentialist talk about these things. All right, what about when you have in the New Testament where it tells us what Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane when he was by himself, or what happened when he was being tempted by Satan in the wilderness? And according to Paul, that's no different than an alleged revelation to Muhammad.

How do we answer that charge? So there are always going to be cases where we just don't know exactly what sources the gospel authors are drawing upon as they give us their accounts that we find in the gospels. I mean, it's quite plausible, it's certainly not implausible, that Jesus himself disclosed to the disciples what he had prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.

There are cases, though, where we have private conversations where we actually do have some at least plausible explanation for how they came upon that information. So, for instance, in Matthew chapter 14, we have an account of Herod Antipas talking to his servants about Jesus. This is in Matthew 14, verse 1 and 2. It says, At that time, Herod the Tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus, and he said to his servants – that phrase is unique to Matthew – to his servants, this is John the Baptist, he's been raised from the dead.

That's why these miraculous powers are at work in him. Now, this raises two interesting questions in the mind of the reader. Number one, why is Herod having a conversation about Jesus with his servants, specifically? Number two, how does Matthew know what Herod is saying to his servants, presumably in the privacy of his own palace? Well, if we turn – Matthew doesn't tell us. Now, if we turn over to Luke's account, not the parallel pericope, but if we turn over to Luke chapter 8, we have a list of Jesus' female disciples who followed him out of Galilee in verses 1 through 3. Soon afterwards, he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God, and the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Huzzah, Herod's household manager.

So, one of Jesus' female disciples was actually married to someone in the highest ranks of Herod's employment, which then illuminates how Matthew plausibly could come to know what Herod was saying to his servants in the privacy of his own palace. Got it. So, even though there are many possible explanations of how something, the inspiration could spread, we have a very plausible chain here, and it's not a coordinated thing where the Gospel writers would say, hey, let's all put our heads together and make this thing work. It's just one of these – look at this. We've got the link right here. Okay. The criterion of embarrassment. So, the idea that it's unlikely that you are going to portray your leaders in negative light, if you're trying to lift someone up, let's say someone's running for political office, you don't now campaign with the embarrassing stories about that person. So, he downplays it, says there could be various reasons for doing it, and then even plays a clip from cold case detective J. Warner Wallace, who seems to downplay in the clip the criterion of embarrassment, and then says this is not really used by secular historians. So, speak to that.

Yeah, absolutely. Apology is simply wrong on that particular point. There are quite a number of cases, actually, many cases that one could adduce the criterion of embarrassment being utilized, employed outside the realm of New Testament studies. I can give you one or two examples or more. So, let's look, for example, at Josephus, for example. Here's a quote from Martin Goodman in his book, Rome and Jerusalem, The Clash of Ancient Civilizations. He says, and I quote, To accept Josephus' often tendentious evaluation of the motives and characters of the Jews and Romans, whose actions constitute his narrative, would be rash, but to accept the details of his narrative, particularly when they contradict his own explanation of events, and so survive in the narrative only because they happened, is reasonable.

As a result, the story of Jerusalem in the years up to 70 CE can be told in far more depth than that of any other city in the Roman Empire at this time, apart from the story of Rome itself. So, there's one example of the criterion of embarrassment being employed outside the realm of New Testament studies. Another example from, this is concerning Confucius, and this is from H.G. Creel in Confucius, The Man and the Myth. And I quote, he says, One of the best evidences of his authenticity is the fact that while the Analects is obviously a Confucian book, it contains much that Confucians would have preferred that it not include. Chapter 19 details squabbles between the disciples, and 1925 tells us that one of them said that Confucius was no better than the disciple Tzu Kong. In 626, it is related that Confucius had an interview with a notorious duchess. This has embarrassed countless British Confucians, and was used by their enemies to mock them in Han times.

Yet these things were not deleted from the text, which must increase our respect for it. Another example, in his book, Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism, Egyptologist James Hoffmeyer briefly talks about the first intermediate period of Egypt. And he covers a piece of wisdom literature that speaks of this time period called the teachings of Meriker. And in the teaching of Meriker, Meriker is offering advice he received from his father, Meriker, who at one point admits defeat and failure. And this is, of course, totally uncharacteristic of pharaohs to boast of their accomplishments and spin defeats into something like victories.

And so Hoffmeyer employs the principle of embarrassment to argue the admission of defeat means it likely happened. So he says, and I quote, Meriker uncharacteristically for a pharaoh takes the blame, even though he was not directly involved, nor he he commanded his troops to desecrate the long revered necropolis that went back to the end of the fourth millennium BC. What makes Meriker's confessions credible is that Egyptian kings rarely admit wrongdoing, and there is no political advantage for this monarch to make such an admission. The reality is that pharaohs typically do not report on failures or they turn them propagandistically into successes.

Consequently, one ought to consider the descriptions of fighting in Abydos as reflecting the struggle between north and south in the first intermediate period. So there's just a few examples. There's more as well. So again, the question is, why include that account? How does it enhance?

How does it make the person look better? What's the what's the reason? What's the motivation when it comes to New Testament? Just just in a minute, what would be the motivation for including so many embarrassing accounts of the disciples unless there's truth behind it? You're completely correct, because when an author includes details that are counterproductive to his cause or agenda, that tends to increase the credibility of the account, even if it isn't sufficient to establish the historicity of the account, at least it bodes in its favor, raises the probability of its historicity relative to what it would have been otherwise.

And so it can be taken within the broader cumulative case for the reliability of these texts. Right, and Jonathan, we've got a whole lot more time, but you have a website for those seeking, struggling, having questions. What website is that? So my website is talkaboutdoubts.com and we basically have assembled a team of more than 60 scholars and specialists in different subjects, philosophy, science, New Testament, Old Testament, biblical archaeology and so forth. And basically people land on our website who are struggling with doubts and questions about the Christian faith and often it's usually Christians are struggling with doubts or perhaps ex-Christians who want to explore whether there's a rational way back to faith.

And then we put them in the form on our website and we put them in contact with a specialist or an expert who can set up a one-on-one Zoom meeting to talk with them about their doubts and confidence. So talkaboutdoubts.com and then my essays are also on my personal website, joplin.com. All right, awesome.

We'll be right back. He's an evidentialist when it comes to the Christian faith. I had a radical experience that changed my life when I was 16 years old, heroin shooting, LSD using, hippie, rock drummer, Jewish kid, no interest in God, no belief in Jesus. God radically rocked my world, changed my life. It was as I was challenged by the rabbis about what I believed that I began to dig deeper and study and ultimately got my doctorate in Semitic languages and so on. Jonathan comes from the viewpoint of show me the evidence and based on the evidence came to put his faith in Jesus.

That's why I thought he'd be an ideal person. That's why I suggested him from the start when Paul and Gia wanted to debate me on some of these issues. So again, Jonathan, we even interacted before where you said, hey, I'm going to take issue with something you said here or you made a misstatement there. So I said truth is what matters. That's making me look good. You know, Paul corrected me on an error earlier.

Great, thank you. We just want to sharpen things even when we're giving a broad presentation. We want everything to be accurate. OK, I made the statement when the challenge is why don't we find more things written about Jesus in the first century? And I said that many of the great historians, when they would write, they weren't writing like reporting the news today, like what's the latest news?

I just got an update on my iPhone. Rather, they were stepping back and then painting broad, writing histories of the arc of history, long periods of time. So was that an accurate statement? Was it an overstatement? Because they said, look, Josephus, and you've got others writing about events in their own day. So respond to that.

Absolutely. So in regards to Josephus, I personally don't use the testimony of Flaviano in my own apologetics and a number of reasons for that. One of which is that I think Josephus is very plausibly getting getting his information from Christians that he had interacted with. And we already know what Christians in the first century believed about Jesus because we have the New Testament. So I'm not sure that it's necessarily independent.

Let me just jump in, though. But he was saying that Josephus was contrary to what I was saying about historians writing about the broad arc of history as opposed to contemporary events, because he does talk about the Jewish wars and events that he lived through. So that would be contrary.

Of course, I know about Josephus, obviously. But the broader question of did historians write kind of like writing the news like we're used to today, or did they normally wait some generations and write larger histories? Or is it both? It's both.

Yeah. I mean, you see elements of both. And I don't think that the argument from silence, by the way, is a particularly good argument. And my colleague, Dr. Timothy McGrew, has an excellent article on the argument from silence showing its deficiencies.

Just to give a couple of examples real quick. So most of the literature from Palestine, by the way, is, as you know, has been lost from the first century. And so if someone else wrote about Jesus, it's not antecedently highly probable that we still have the work to begin with.

And then when we calibrate our expectations about what an ancient author would have written about, our assessments of how likely an author would be to write about particular events, supposing it happened, is usually not very reliable. So, for example, Josephus and Philo, both, and Philo of Alexandria, both pass over the expulsion of the Jews from Rome by Claudius in silence, who was mentioned by the second century Roman historian, Suetonius, in his life of Claudius in the second century. We have just one passing mention of the event in the first century source that happens to be the book of Acts, chapter 18, verse 2.

But despite Josephus' silence, all historians acknowledge the event took place. Another example is that no first century source that we now have reports the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Although Pliny the Younger gives a detailed account of the eruption itself. In fact, his uncle, Pliny the Elder, died in that eruption. But no one inferred from Pliny's silence that the event didn't take place. Just another example, so in the extensive memoirs of Ulysses Grant, Lincoln's general during the American Civil War, there's no mention of the Emancipation Proclamation, right?

I mean, examples like that could be multiplied endlessly, and so we don't, our expectations about what an author should have included are usually not very reliable. All right, then when I talk about the attestation of Jesus' death, I meant that he was crucified, that he was put to death by the government, and Paul says, look, of course he died, everybody died. Are there ancient accounts, or, you know, as the decades go on, I'm not talking about contemporary, but accounts that are considered historically reliable that talk about Jesus being put to death under Pilate or being crucified or anything like that?

Or did they just acknowledge some guy lived and died? There are, and so I mentioned before the Testimony of Flavianum in Josephus' Antiquities, Volume 18, and I give one reason why I personally don't use that argument, because I do think that it contributes particularly significant evidential value besides what we already have in the New Testament. In connection with the fire that broke out in Roman 64 AD, Nero was blamed for the fire, and so he needed a scapegoat, and so he put the blame on the Christians, and so Tacitus mentions Christians and Christ in that context. It's plausible, though, that Tacitus had talked to his friend, Pliny the Younger, who had much experience interrogating Christians. So again, it gives us an insight into what the Christians in the first century believed about Jesus, but we already know that from the New Testament. But of course, one might point out, well, they don't show any knowledge of there being a dispute over whether Jesus existed, so you can make that point, of course. But I think a much more powerful way to argue is to look at cases where, and there are many of these, where there are incidental allusions in the Gospels or Acts that are corroborated and undesigned in artless ways by those sources. Do we have time, for example, before the break? Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

Sure. So if we look at Mark 6, for example, we have an account concerning the martyrdom of John the Baptist, and he is beheaded by Herod Antipas. And Josephus tells us that the reason why Herod, the reason, well, according to Mark, the reason that Herod Antipas has John the Baptist in prison is because of Herod, of John the Baptist's complaints about Herod Antipas' adulterous relationship with his brother, Philip's ex-wife, Herodias. But according to Josephus, there is a slightly different motivation, namely that it was because of Herod's suspicious temper and his fear of an uprising. Now, we know from Josephus also that Herod's adultery with his brother, Philip's ex-wife, and his divorce of Herod's own previous wife had resulted in a war between Herod Antipas and his former father-in-law, Aretas IV, king of the Nabataeans. And this war seems to have dragged on for some time, but according to Josephus, Herod lost that war, and there was this rumor circulating among the Jews that the reason why Herod's armies were defeated was as God's judgment for what he had done to John the Baptist. Now, that makes a lot of sense because when you read Mark's account, we read that the reason why Herod had John the Baptist imprisoned was because of John the Baptist's complaints about Herod's adulterous relationship, the very adulterous relationship that led to that war in the first place. And as I said before, Mark and Josephus have a slightly different take on what Herod's motivations were for having John the Baptist imprisoned. Now, you might wonder, okay, and these, of course, aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. It could be both reasons.

Both could be part of the explanation. But why does Mark have this apparently insider scoop on what Herod's motivations were? Again, we know that Jesus had a female disciple, namely, Joanna, who was married to someone in the highest ranks of Herod's employment. And so it fits, just as you might expect, on the hypothesis of historical reportage. That's just one example of many, many that could be adduced.

So, you know, the thing that's interesting, just looking at all of this, so you can make a wonderful case in depth with many different strands for eyewitness accounts of the life, death, resurrection of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. That gets rejected by Paul. I apologize. That gets rejected. Just throw all that out. And then, well, where's the evidence? Well, hang on. We just gave you a wonderful amount of evidence here from people that were there.

That gets dismissed. And now you're going to try to find something that may have been written and may have been lost to history, as most of what was written back then was lost to history. And then, when you finally have a reference, like a passing reference in Pliny the Younger, who doesn't have an apologetic, he's not some pro-Christian apologist, he mentions what we know about Jesus being put to death under Pilate. It's also interesting that you even have second century Jewish documents that talk about these minim, these cultists who were followers of Yeshua that were known for their healing power.

And again, this is in documents that are hostile to this. And I know that you don't rely on the Talmudic accountants on Hedron about the death of Jesus under the Jewish leadership. Paul Gia mentions that and says, well, that's fifth century. Of course, the final editing of the Talmud is fifth, sixth century.

The source itself would be earlier. But I point to that to say, you have to remember that you've had now a few centuries of Jewish leaders being accused by some of the church of being Christ killers. And if there was anything that they would want to disassociate themselves from, it's the death of Jesus. And yet the Talmud, finally, even if you blend myth and folklore with it, it still talks about Jesus being rejected by the Jewish leadership and put to death. So that's another thing. There's no reason to include that in a traditional Jewish document unless there is some truth behind it. So that's another factor of interest.

In fact, we still got a couple of minutes before the break. So very, very quickly, Paul downplays the importance of the idea that Jesus' death on the cross being a scandal. It's not the kind of thing that you would create, not for a Jewish audience, not for a Gentile audience. Can you unpack that?

Sure. So the Jewish law, Deuteronomy 21, 23, says that anyone who is killed by being hung in the trees under God's curse rendered literally a heretic. And this was actually an item of mockery, both from the Jewish side and the Roman side, after Jesus' death.

Justin Martyr's dialogue with Trifo, for example. Trifo says to Justin Martyr, and I'm quoting from Emory here, so forgive me if it's not entirely word for word, but he says, These and such-like scriptures, sir, compel us to wait for he who is son of man shall receive from the ancient of days the everlasting kingdom. But this so-called Christ of yours was dishonourable and inglorious, so much so the last curse contained in the law of God fell on him, for he was crucified. And so you can see that the Jews were mocking Christians for this belief in a crucified Messiah. And they have in mind, of course, Deuteronomy 21, 23, as he says, the last curse contained in the law of God fell on him, for he was crucified. Also, as for the Roman side, there's a graffiti in Rome, which depicts a man worshipping a crucified donkey.

And the caption is Aleximinos worships his God. And so they were mocking Christians for this belief in a crucified deity. And so, of course, this was something that you'd be unlikely to invent, especially given that the Jews of the first century had no belief in a dying Messiah. The first century concept was that the Messiah was supposed to overthrow the Roman occupiers and re-establish the Davidic reign. And that's the sort of messianic career that you see for those other would-be false messianic pretenders.

Right. And again, this can be unpacked at great length, the scandal of the crucified Messiah. It doesn't prove that he died for the sins of the world. It doesn't prove he was the son of God. It doesn't prove that he wrote. It's just that there's any scenario that you're unlikely to invent. OK, if he died, we know he died. Everybody dies, right? But why invent this when it's definitely going to be a massive stumbling block?

And then later, it's mentioned, yeah, he's put to death under Pontius Pilate. We will be right back. Hey, if you've got questions, doubts, you're a seeker, not a mocker, but you really want to know the truth. You're struggling, you have questions.

It's great. It's fine to have questions. Talkaboutdoubts.com.

Talkaboutdoubts.com. Maybe a friend, family member, loved one used to believe doesn't or they're really struggling. They want to come to the faith, but they have questions. Questions are valid. Let the questions be asked. To those who watch the Paul of Gia video, genuine questions we welcome because truth is what matters.

All right. I mentioned the unlikelihood of making up a virgin birth simply because immediately you're born out of wedlock or you think that in the history of religion, you'd have more leaders saying, oh, I was born of a virgin. It's not something that's a common myth, but Paul's response was, well, it's very common that a God being with a woman and having a child, is that the same as the virgin birth, some God coming down allegedly from heaven taking on human form and having sex with a woman? Is that the same as the virgin birth where we're comparing apples and oranges?

No, I think it's comparing apples and oranges. There are examples of virgin births in ancient literature. I mean, there's Alexander the Great, for example, is said to have been born of a virgin. But as for the criterion of embarrassment, the virgin birth, I think, does fulfill the historical criterion of embarrassment because according to Jewish law, the penalty for being found pregnant outside of marital union was death by stoning. And in addition, Joseph, Mary's fiancée, also had reason to be afraid because he would be suspected as the culprit.

And if Joseph were to marry his fiancée, it would be seen as an admission on his part that he was responsible for the pregnancy. And so it seems unlikely the virgin birth is an invention. There's also no evidence that maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, because you're more familiar with the Jewish literature than I am. But as far as I'm aware, there's no evidence as I 714, which is cited in Matthew 123 was interpreted as a messianic prophecy prior to Christ. And so it's unlikely that this detail was manufactured due to theological motivations.

Yeah, correct. And that we have we have no evidence that the text was seen independently as a messianic text at that time. So Paul acknowledges that followers of Jesus were convinced that he rose from the dead or believed he rose from the dead. The whole idea that they would not invent an account of resurrection and then die for it.

That's the point. You don't die for a lie. So he plays Sean McDowell talking about we may have put too much trust in tradition in terms of what happened to all the apostles.

Did they all die? So can we say plausibly that any of the apostles died for their faith or suffered hardship, terrible persecution for their faith, but genuinely believe Jesus rose from the dead? In other words, if they knew the whole thing was concocted at a certain point, you're being tortured, you're being persecuted, you're gonna be killed, you back away from it. So speak to that situation.

Absolutely. So the argument from martyrdom, unfortunately, a lot of apologists, popular apologists have had a tendency to over exaggerate the case from martyrdom. And you often hear it said in popular apologetics books, all of the apostles except for John died as martyrs and John died in the isle of Patmos. For the most part, we don't know how most of the disciples died. And we do have good evidence for the martyrdom of Peter. We have good evidence for the martyrdom of Paul. We have good evidence for the martyrdom of James, the son of Zebedee, as well as James, the brother of Jesus. James, brother of Jesus, actually is attested by a non-Christian source in Josephus, in Antiquities of the Jews, volume 20. And we have the martyrdom of Peter and Paul attested by Prince Clement. We also have the sufferings that they endured during the course of their lives attested in the Pauline corpus as well as in the book of Acts, of course, as well. We have evidence from the book of Acts from the martyrdom of James, the son of Zebedee as well.

He was beheaded by Herod Agrippa. And so we do have evidence for some of the apostles. But I think that one might object, and I think Paul has made this point elsewhere, I think correctly, that for those that died under the persecution from the Emperor Nero, ensuing from the fire in 64 AD, it seems that Nero's motivations were largely political rather than theological.

He needed a scapegoat on whom he could place the blame for the fire, and so he pointed towards the Christians. And so it's not at all obvious that Peter and Paul, et cetera, would have been given opportunity to recant and thus save their lives by denying the resurrection. But I think that what we can say with tremendous confidence, and this is where I would really rest the argument, is that the early apostles were willing to voluntarily undergo and endure sufferings and hardships and persecutions, labors, dangers, in some cases martyrdom, on account of their testimony that Christ was raised from the dead. And that goes a long way towards establishing their sincerity, because multi-party conspiracies who in life are libertarian at stake have a tendency to break down. And so even if it's not sufficient to establish sincerity, and I do think it does go a long way towards establishing that, it does raise the probability thereof, and so it can be brought into a larger cumulative case. There are other arguments too that bear positively on the sincerity of the apostles.

STEPHAN KINSELLA Right, so the idea that we could say is that they genuinely believed that Jesus rose from the dead as opposed to just invented this, and here's some of the psychological backing for that. But again, let's paint as carefully as we can within the lines, and probably many of us that address many, many different issues don't specialize in all of them, so we might repeat a generalization that should be sharp and wonderful. So here's what I want to do. I believe Paolo Gia sought to be fair with the clips that he played, and he's got a link to our video, so it's not like he's trying to hide anything. But I want to just give one example. First, I want you to see how well he did things. I want you to appreciate how well he did things. But then I just want to show an example where he didn't play the whole thing, which would fail then to give the full strength of the argument.

So let's go first to Paolo Gia, and you'll get to see the quality with which he put his video out. Let's go. And then there's the last thing. There's the prophetic word. The prophetic word. You say, well, how do we know he's born in Bethlehem? The prophet said so, but how do we know what happened? We could argue about that.

We could. I don't have any reason to think that he was born in Bethlehem. Two gospel authors record two very different stories to try to explain how the man known to be from Nazareth was secretly born in Bethlehem after all.

How do we know he was a miraculous birth? We could argue about that. That's pretty much for The Bible Tells Me So.

But the prophets also indicated in the Old Testament that the Messiah would be rejected by his own people and then would be received by the Gentile world. Being rejected by your people and accepted by others is a tediously common story. It applies to me. It applies to Weird Al Yankovic. He's definitely not proud of you. What? Yes, he told me to be crystal clear about that. Also, he still thinks the parody songs are stupid, and I don't have to tell you how he feels about the accordion, do I? OK. Well, Mom, I actually have to go now.

Before his own people would receive him back and that he had to come and die before the second. All right. So he's going to get into just a little more of what I said, but notice he just downplayed it. So you're rejected by your own people, accepted by others. What's the big deal? Let's just watch the whole thing that I said.

I don't think he was trying to be unfair, but I just want you to see the whole thing that I said. Let's listen. There's the prophetic word, the prophetic word. You say, well, how do we know he's born in Bethlehem? Prophet said so. But how do we know what happened? We could argue about that. How do we know he was miraculous birth?

We could argue about that. But the prophets also indicated in the Old Testament that the Messiah would be rejected by his own people and then would be received by the Gentile world before his own people would receive him back. And that he had to come and die before the second temple was destroyed. So how do you plan that out? How do you make that happen?

Second Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. How do you make these things happen and then you get rejected by your own people and then accepted by more than two billion people around the world? You can't quite manufacture that. Ah, he left that point out. Aha. Again, I don't think he was trying to be deceptive.

He just cut it there and he's got a link to the video. So, Paul, I don't think you're trying to be deceptive at all. But the argument stands that, for example, Isaiah 48, where the Messiah speaks as if he's failed in his mission to regather Israel and God says, no, no, you're going to be a light to the nations. And Isaiah 42, that the coastlands will wait for his teaching. So you're talking about a universal mission rejected by his own people, received by nations all around the world. You can't plan that and orchestrate that.

So that is the point that I was making. But Paul, why not have a debate with Jonathan? He's obviously, you see, he's an evidentialist. Obviously, you see, he wants to talk history, facts, documents. And he's sharpened a couple of things I said or corrected one thing specifically.

So by all means, I think you guys should get together. And Jonathan, we've only got about a minute and a half, but maybe you just want to say something directly to Paul. And I know you've done a video rebutting some of his stuff.

We'll link to that as well. But anything you want to say directly to Paul? Yeah, just quickly regarding the last point. So Isaiah 49, actually not 48, Isaiah 496 and Isaiah 42 6, where God says that I will make you, speaking to the Messiah, alike the Gentiles, so God's salvation will reach the ends of the earth. And that's something that is highly predicted if Jesus really is the Messiah, but is really quite surprising on the faucity. The one according to the first three chapters of Isaiah 53, he was supposed to be rejected by his own people, which is not especially impressive, because most prophets were at some point. But given that he was rejected by his own people, he would bring nonetheless representatives of all nations to recognize the God of Israel. It might not be sufficient on its own, but it does tend to move the needle in the direction of Jesus' messianic identity.

Yes. So anything, 30 seconds, anything you want to say directly to Paul? Yeah, thanks, Paul and Gia, for making the video.

As Dr. Brown said, it was very well made. We actually have done a debate a number of years ago, which is on my YouTube channel, and myself and Dr. Max Baker-Heitz, the debate with Paul and Gia and Harry Amos on the resurrection, and check out my video that I made. I see that Paul and Gia hasn't yet made a response to that, that I did with Tim McGrew and Lydia McGrew and Eric Manning on the resurrection and Paul and Gia's remarks concerning that. So do check that out, and I'd love to see your response.

Wonderful. And friends, talkaboutdoubts.com, not a place to go and argue, but a place to go with honest questions and get connected to specialists in various fields. I'm so thrilled this has been put together, talkaboutdoubts.com. So Paul and Gia, thanks for doing the work. I appreciate you taking the time to do it. Really well done. Hopefully, now we've given you and your friends and followers something to think about here on The Line of Fire.