Lydia McGrew Answered! Black & White Thinking

00:00

Lydia McGrew Answered! Black & White Thinking

June 17, 2024

In this episode, part 4 in an 8 part series, Dr. Licona demonstrates Lydia McGrew’s rigid approach that’s founded upon her presumptions pertaining to ancient historical reporting. Her black and white thinking leads to an all-or-nothing approach, exaggerated opinions, and inaccurate conclusions about how the ancients reported the past. Moreover, she often interprets those she criticizes in a manner that’s both inaccurate and uncharitable. These audio clips are taken from Dr. Licona’s YouTube channel, originally published in 2020.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the Risen Jesus podcast with Dr. Mike Licona. Dr. Licona is professor of New Testament studies at Houston Christian University, and he is the president of Risen Jesus, a 501c3 nonprofit organization. In this episode, part 4 in an 8 part series, Dr. Licona demonstrates Lydia McGrew’s rigid approach that’s founded upon her presumptions pertaining to ancient historical reporting.

Her black and white thinking leads to an all-or-nothing approach, exaggerated opinions, and inaccurate conclusions about how the ancients reported the past. Moreover, she often interprets those she criticizes in a manner that’s both inaccurate and uncharitable. Jesus said, I have come into the world in order that I may testify to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. Pilate replied, what is truth? A few years ago, we asked that question to some people on the street in Atlanta. I would say anything that's defined by itself and permanent.

Everyone's going to believe what they think is true, and I can say I think it's true, and you can say there isn't anything that's true, but we can't really know. Truth is correct, something that's correct, but we would just say was correct. Truth is absolute, there's no gray area for truth.

It's hard to pin down, truth is something that you can never know 100%. If you're intellectually honest with yourself, truth is something you can never know. The truth Jesus said is him.

He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. What do you say? I believe. You know, the example of slavery is wrong, so we can say the subjugation of women is wrong.

You have to say there's a universal truth, or you're left with something like mole rope. Truth is something real, something not hidden, nothing behind the curtain, just out there for you to know. Something that is always right, and it doesn't hurt people in any physical way or monetary way.

Whatever a person wants to believe, it would be, I think. Truth can be, I guess, based in culture and myth and beliefs, and that can be different for lots of different people. I think it's defined by the person with, by society.

Truth is speaking or saying what's fact and not fixed. So whether we can know what that absolute truth is or not, it's a different question, but I think there definitely is an absolute truth that's discoverable through reason and through experience. I am really not.

I don't know. I'm still thinking all that out. Truth is what it is.

That's a tree, a part, that's the sky, that's the truth. Well, I think truth is an absolute thing, which you know is real. That's truth, and one sense can be correspondence between beliefs and reality.

I would take the facts, or what's right. Truth, to me, means everything. Without truth, there's nothing.

Truth is exactly how you define it. It comes to what you believe in, pretty much. You can have a statement, and if you have faith in it, you can believe it, then that's your truth.

So, something that is unequivocally not false. Truth is a good question. In the first chapter of my large book on the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, I defend a correspondence theory of truth.

I go on to explain how the tools of historians do not always allow them to discover the truth or to know it with complete accuracy. A number of evangelicals somehow interpreted what I wrote to mean that I don't actually embrace a correspondence theory of truth. But that's not what I said.

The current discussion on compositional devices is not about the existence or no ability of truth. It's on the latitude afforded writers in antiquity when reporting truth. One of the profound weaknesses in Lydia McGrew's book is that it's marinated in a black and white concept of truthful reporting.

McGrew cites Aristotle on Plato on truth. Aristotle said that it's a falsehood to claim that something is when it's not, or to claim that it's not when it is. Plato taught something similar.

McGrew contends that the compositional device is posited by classists, many New Testament scholars, and those I have posited in my book promote falsehood. In fact, she contends that even if historians employed the techniques for paraphrasing and narrative prescribed by Theon that I discussed in my previous video, they would be fictionalizing their account. McGrew defines fictionalized as an alteration of fact, and unpacks this with three criteria, all of which must be present.

Number one, what is presented in a seemingly realistic fashion in the work is actually contrary to fact. The real facts have been altered. Number two, the alteration of fact was made by the author deliberately.

And number three, the alteration of fact is invisible to the audience within that work itself. In other words, there is nothing in the text that would alert readers that a change has been made. In addition to fictionalized, McGrew speaks of fact-altering and changing historical facts.

To me, these appear to be loaded terms. When most people think of fiction, they have in mind a story that did not occur. For a few examples, how about the movies Avengers and Joker? In the Bible, parables are fiction.

We move closer to history, however, with historical fiction, whereby a story that did not occur is located in a historical setting. For example, Gone with the Wind. We move even closer to history and away from fiction with a story that's loosely based on actual historical events, such as the movie 1917.

Closer still is when movie makers narrating true stories very often use dramatic license to conflate two characters, narrate events as though they had occurred over a shorter period of time, and other devices. Darryl Bach provides a nice example. One film, Hacks All Ridge, portrays the life of Desmond Doss, a war hero who chose never to wield a weapon in battle for religious reasons.

In the movie, Desmond enlists in the army in support of the World War II effort, even though he does not believe in killing, and will not bear arms in battle. In real life, he was drafted, as an article shows from The Washington Post on March 25th, 2006. Obviously, this is a difference.

A colleague disturbed by the movie's change pointed out this detail to me and asked what I thought of the move. When I checked this out, what I found was intriguing. Desmond had been drafted, but was offered a conscientious objector status that would have allowed him out of the draft and out of the army.

He refused to take it, arguing he wanted to be a medic and serve in a way that could contribute to the war effort in light of his convictions. The army took him in on this basis. So now the question remains.

In the movie, summarizing did portraying him as enlisting. That is, choosing to serve actually fit well what he did. I might contend this is an adequate summarizing of what took place, reflecting the state of choosing to serve.

The example shows the potential ambiguity of a creative detail when considered in light of literary tendencies to summarize. It would be a gross misrepresentation to regard the movie Hacks All Ridge as fiction. If one were to assert that the creative retelling used in that movie pertaining to how dolls came to be in the army would be changing historical facts and fictionalizing, that would cause the wrong impression.

It would muddy the waters in a discussion about the historical reliability of Hacks All Ridge, where some historical facts changed in a technical sense, yes. However, there are degrees of change, and the impression one gets from McGrew's terms is that the essence of a story was compromised. To say the director of Hacks All Ridge fictionalized, giving the impression that what is being portrayed has little correspondence with what actually occurred.

McGrew is clear that she is using fictional in a technical sense. However, that use is not common among classicist New Testament scholars and virtually every lay reader. And when used repeatedly, in fact, more than 400 times in her book, where she denounces compositional devices in the strongest of terms, the well becomes poisoned.

And unaware readers are easily led to think that compositional devices are the tools of terribly misguided and inept historians. In fact, she comes close to saying this on page 272 when claiming that the appeal to compositional devices by myself and others is founded upon the blinkered, hasty assumptions of anti-realistic redactive criticism. But this is only a taste of McGrew's charged language, in addition to referring to positing the use of compositional devices by ancient authors as unnecessary, hyper-complex literary theories.

She insists that the contentions of those she criticizes are vastly exaggerated, vastly overstated, and vastly under-supported. They are likewise utterly unconvincing, utterly unjustified, utterly irrelevant, utterly unnecessary, and utterly false. She's even more fond of the terms extreme and extremely using them 99 times in her book with half of them being used in a negatively critical sense.

Explanations with which she's in disagreement are extremely misguided, extremely strained, tendentious in the extreme, extremely unhelpful, extremely poor, extremely vague, extremely bad, extremely weak, extremely rigid, extremely choppy, extremely odd, extremely strange, so extreme as to be wildly out of proportion, so extreme as to be almost breathtaking, and even more extreme. There are also extreme changes, extreme theories, extreme overeating, extreme weakness, extreme suggestion, and other matters posited in an extremely broad sense. In contrast, when McGrew relates items to her approach, they are extremely fruitful, extremely scrupulous, extremely common, extremely modest, extremely strong, extremely simple, extremely easy, and extremely minor.

Back to my main points. McGrew goes so far as to suggest that compositional devices would negate the historical reliability of a text and require that any reference to truth made by an ancient author must have a large asterisk by it. Context is important.

Even in our ordinary communications today, we often simplify by altering minor details. When I retell a back and forth conversation I had with someone, I may weave into it something that person had told me on the prior day as though it had occurred in our later conversation. I may do this because it renders the person's true thoughts more clearly or simply to abbreviate and simplify.

I may sense no need to tell my friend that I have weaved content in from a previous conversation, and I would not think that I had deceived my friend in neglecting to do so. Nor would my friend think I had deceived him if he later learned that I had included an item from an earlier conversation in the latter. In my previous video, pertaining to the rhetorical exercises found in the compositional textbooks, we observed how Matthew substitutes Kingdom of Heaven for Kingdom of God and conflates a question and a statement in Jesus' parable of the mustard seed.

He alters these facts deliberately and without providing any clue to his readers that he did. It's noteworthy that these alterations fulfill McGrew's three criteria for fictionalization. But how many of you would charge Matthew of being guilty of perverting the truth by doing these things? In Jesus' parable of the vineyard and wicked tenants, Mark and Luke portrayed Jesus asking and answering his own question.

But Matthew appears to transfer the answer to the chief priest and Pharisees, then he elaborates their response. I don't think such moves are what Cicero had in mind when he said that the first law of history is an author must not dare to tell anything but the truth. Neither do I think Polybius would have objected to Matthew's moves when he said the historian must record what really happened, the true words and deeds.

But McGrew thinks that if the differences in Matthew resulted from him transferring the answer to Jesus' question from Jesus to the chief priests and Pharisees, then using elaboration to boot, he would have been fictionalizing and changing historical facts. That's a black and white concept of truthful reporting. McGrew does not believe such moves are ethically allowable.

However, we saw in the previous video that Theon prescribed such devices, and we will now see that there are no reasons to think that any other ancient historian disagreed with Theon. When it came to sticking to the facts, Thucydides and Polybius were some of the more scrupulous historians in the Greco-Roman period, but even they sometimes invented content for their speeches. Of course, they learned to do this using the compositional textbooks.

Others, such as Josephus, speak of the importance of accurate reporting and that they will proceed to report with accuracy. However, what they say they will do and what they actually do are often two different things. Regarding Josephus, classicist Paul Meyer writes, Another fault in Josephus is one he shares with most of the ancient historians, a propensity to exaggerate, particularly with numbers.

Casual lists after some of the battles are so implausibly high that even to note such overstatements would clutter too many pages in the text. The reader must also discount such hyperboles as, for example, the claim that so much blood was shed in Jerusalem during its conquest, that streams of gore extinguished fires there. Exaggeration, however, was so common a conceit among most of the ancient sources that if a Herodotus could claim Xerxes invaded Greece with a total force of 5,283,220, Josephus may have felt it unwise to provide accurate figures if such inflation was common fair at the time.

Josephus also claims that he will accurately describe what is contained in the Jewish scriptures without adding to them or subtracting from them. However, Josephus adds and subtracts from the scriptures, though not in a major way. He also rearranges the order of events.

McGrew cites a number of texts from Lucian of Samusada. History has one task and one only, what is useful, and that comes from truth alone. The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.

For history, I say again, has this and this only for its own. If a man will start upon it, he must sacrifice to no God but truth. Above all, let him bring a mind like a mirror, clear, gleaming bright, accurately centered, displaying the shape of things just as he receives them, free from distortion, false coloring, and misrepresentation.

His concern is different from that of the orators. What historians have to relate is fact and will speak for itself, for it has already happened. Tell the thing as it happened.

Tell it free from distortion, false coloring, and misrepresentation. Sounds really good, but would Lucian approve of an author such as Matthew changing a question to a statement or creating a short dialogue that includes a very slight bit of elaboration? McGrew thinks not, but what does Lucian mean by free from distortion, false coloring, and misrepresentation? Would he regard the changing of a question to a statement to be a misrepresentation? When Matthew moves, Jesus' temple cleansing from Monday to Sunday and conflates it with his temple visit on the previous day, during which Jesus merely looked around and left, would Lucian have regarded this as a distortion, false coloring, and misrepresentation? We may never know for sure. However, if we observe how Lucian reports historical events in the passing of Peregrinus, we will be prone to conclude that either he would not have regarded them as misrepresentations, or he did not live up to the standards he articulates.

On page 121, McGrew quotes Polybius who wrote, The peculiar function of history is to discover in the first place the words actually spoken, whatever they were. This does not mean Polybius had in mind that every word must be written precisely as spoken, that paraphrase and approximation are for Bowton, and that numbers could not be rounded up or down. McGrew does not think Polybius had these things in mind either, for she acknowledges that Polybius and Thucydides fabricate to some extent the content of some speeches, and that Lucian permits certain rhetorical moves, including the historian making full use of his rhetorical skills in order to improve a known speech.

Yet McGrew proceeds to overstate her case by referring to the statement she quotes by Polybius and Lucian as, the absolutely unequivocal statements of ancient historiographers concerning historical accuracy. Her black and white concept of truthful reporting impairs how she interprets their statements, while she never appears to stop to consider why classes do not interpret them as she does. She repeats this error when providing similar quotes from the Gospels.

John 1935, and he who is seen has testified, and we know that his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth so that you may also believe. John 21, 24, and we know that his testimony is true. John 2030, therefore many other signs Jesus performed in the presence of the disciples, who were attesting to incidents that really happened.

John 1527, when the helper comes whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me, and you will also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning. 1 John 1-1, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands. Acts 4-20, we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.

2 Peter 1-16, for we did not follow cleverly devised tales, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty, and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain. After listing these texts, McGrew writes, again and again, the literary device view would require us to reinterpret radically the gospel authors and apostles own explicit statements of what they were attempting to do and to ignore clear statements by other early Christians about the importance of truth. McGrew appeals to John 1426, where Jesus tells his disciples the Holy Spirit will remind them of everything he had taught them.

She then comments, the verse does not speak of a function in which the Spirit gives the author license to write as if Jesus is teaching the theology that the author extrapolates from Jesus' authentic statements. On the contrary, the very fact that John chooses to record a promise to bring to their remembrance what Jesus had said implies that John considers it important that they remember and relate to others what Jesus historically said. McGrew is too hasty in her interpretation of the text.

Jesus is only telling his disciples that the Holy Spirit would remind them of what he had taught them. He provides no instructions pertaining to the manners by which they were permitted to communicate his teachings. And there are no hints whatsoever forbidding them from redacting Jesus' words while maintaining the message behind those words.

McGrew is reading her own black and white view of truthful reporting into Jesus' intention to have him say something he does not say. Furthermore, she cannot know whether John has not already done with Jesus' words in 1426, which he imagines Jesus would have forbidden. These biblical authors are claiming to be serious about reporting their message accurately.

But contrary to McGrew, what they said is not even close to suggesting they would have eschewed compositional devices in their own reporting. This seems to be an appropriate time to touch on John's gospel. McGrew fails to appreciate all that John is doing in his gospel.

In Craig Keener's very large and historically informed commentary on John, he says that all scholars acknowledge some adaptation and conformity with Johannine idiom. If you would like to see this for yourself, read through the Synoptic Gospels five times in a row. Read Matthew five times, then Mark five times, then Luke five times.

You'll notice that Jesus sounds very similar in all of them. Then read John's gospel five times. Finally, read 1 John five times.

You'll observe that although Jesus' message in John is very much like what we read in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the way Jesus sounds in John is very different than the way he sounds in the other Gospels. You'll also observe that the way Jesus sounds in John's gospel is very much like how John sounds in 1 John. The grammar, vocabulary, and overall style of writing in both are astonishingly similar.

The second observation could have resulted from John adjusting his style to be similar to that of his master after spending so much time with him. This would be similar to how some married couples adapt their laughs and expressions to one another's over time. The other option, and the one held by most Johannine scholars, is that John often paraphrased Jesus using his own style and words.

The reason scholars go with this latter view is because Jesus sounds so differently in John than he does in the Synoptic Gospels. There are additional items that draw attention to how John differs from the other Gospels. Consider the following reported by Matthew.

Jesus said all of these things in parables to the crowds, and he did not speak to them without a parable so that what was spoken by the Prophet may be fulfilled saying, I will open my mouth in parables. I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world. Not only does Jesus teach in parables, he does so in fulfillment of prophecy.

It is of interest then that in John, none of Jesus' teachings appear in parables. These are just some of the reasons why scholars think John adapted Jesus' teachings. Jesus' precise words, the obscisim of verba, may not be preserved in John, but his voice, the obscisim of ox, is.

It's determining the extent to which John adapted Jesus' teachings that perplexes scholars. And he writes humor's comment accurately summarizes the thoughts of many Johannine specialists. He said, I feel like John, like I feel about my wife.

I love her very much, but I wouldn't claim to understand her. Even such a conservative scholar as F. F. Bruce wrote of John's different way of reporting. In the introductory matter of his commentary on John's Gospel, Bruce refers to how John retails the words of Jesus as an expanded paraphrase, a translation of the freest kind, a transposition into another key, all this and much more the Holy Spirit accomplished in our evangelist.

It is through the Spirit's operation that, in William Temple's words, the mind of Jesus himself was with the fourth Gospel disclosed, and it is through the illumination granted by the same Spirit that one may still recognize in this Gospel the authentic voice of Jesus. The point I'm making here is that there is so much more going on behind John's Gospel that Lydia McGrew fails to appreciate. Despite the fact that Johannine specialist find John's Gospel to be a challenging conundrum, including evangelical scholars who have spent years focused on John and have published commentaries on it, McGrew apparently thinks the matter is grossly overblown and has announced that she's working on her book on John's Gospel.

One wonders what she will find that has gone totally unrecognized by those who have spent lifetime studying the fourth Gospel. In wrapping up this segment, we've observed that McGrew has a black and white view of truthful reporting. This results in her use of numerous loaded terms, such as fictionalized, fact-altering, and changing historical facts.

That she uses these terms repeatedly throughout the more than 500 pages of her book creates false impressions for her readers. McGrew also projects her view of what is allowable and truthful reporting into what ancient authors stated, resulting in questionable interpretations. In our next segment, we will observe McGrew's clouded reasoning and additional questionable readings of ancient texts.

Thanks for joining us today. If you'd like to learn more about the work and ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona, visit RisenJesus.com, where you can find authentic answers to genuine questions about the reliability of the Gospels and the resurrection of Jesus. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast, visit Dr. Lacona's YouTube channel, or consider becoming a monthly supporter.

This has been the RisenJesus Podcast, a ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona. Bye!