Gospel Contradictions? w/ Mike Licona

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Gospel Contradictions? w/ Mike Licona

September 4, 2024

Mike Licona is one of the world’s most recognized experts on the resurrection. Join us live to hear his toughts abou the gospels, inerrancy, historical evidences, and the validity of the gospels. We are so excited to host this conversation and be sure to join us during the call in section and hop into the conversation!

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 non-profit organization. Welcome to the Risen Jesus podcast.

This is Dr. Kurt Juris, and today we will be listening to an interview Dr. Mike Licona gave on the truth conversation with Bill Scott of Rachio Christi. In this episode, Dr. Licona delves into the inerrancy, historical evidences for, and the reliability of the gospels. We have a special guest with us tonight.

You know, normally we do this thing at like midday, Wednesday, but our schedules are lining up. Dr. Licona is with us tonight. We're going to be talking about Jesus contradicted.

This is such a cool book, and I have also on display. My other Mike Licona collection here too. Dr. Licona was one of my favorite professors of all time, and that's pretty big honor.

He doesn't know that, but I think I went to four or five colleges before I finally got some degrees behind me. So, my favorite professors, and one of my favorite guys, and I'm looking forward to this conversation. I know you've been looking forward to this conversation.

So, you're not on here to listen to me blab. Let's get to this and talk to Dr. Mike Licona on wait for it. The truth conversation.

I don't know if you saw that come in or not, but there it was. It just floated in if you can't see that. But how you doing, Dr. Licona? Oh, great.

Thanks for having me on bill. It's good to see you again. And you were one of my favorite students.

You were just a great student. And so it was, it's cool. The feeling's muted.

You know, like making me cry, dude. You know, I can't all choked up. You know, it takes a big man to cry, but it takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man.

Okay. That's, that's funny. I am a pretty big man.

I was going to be in Abuja, Nigeria here in the next three weeks. And my buddy told me, he said, you may, we may need to hire some security detail in case you get like they try to kidnap you or something. And I'm like, you really think they're going to try to kidnap a 285 pound guy from Texas.

It took at least three Nigerians to carry. But, uh, so anyway, we're here to talk about this. You wrote another book.

Now, first question. Why, why do, why do we need another book? Mike, come on, you've, you've written four or five and edited others like what you. So now you're having another book about the rest right now.

Seriously, great book. I just finished it this week. It's, it was, um, wonderful.

It's kind of reminiscent of, of all the other work that you've done. I've, you're one of the guys that I've read everything. Like I've, I've had you in class.

I've read and wrote about some of the stuff. Um, it's, it's what I love about is it takes a lot of your ideas and puts it all in one, one book that's accessible to almost like a, let's say like a Sunday school kind of lay person audience. That's how I was explaining it to somebody earlier.

Um, so what compelled you to write the book, Mike? Well, uh, what, what put this on your heart? Well, just, uh, real briefly, the reason I wrote the first book that you also read, why are there differences in the gospels? Uh, that was published in 2017 is because, um, Bart Ehrman was coming out with, you know, these objections against resurrection and against the gospels and differences in the gospels. Contradictions was the number one, or at least one of the top objections. And it is certainly one of the top objections you hear from skeptics.

Um, but that is an academic monograph and on, and it's, it's dry reading. Give a lot of examples. We cover, you know, things that is, you know, usually covered in for graduate students in New Testament studies and theology students.

Um, but as I was lecturing on this stuff around the world, people were loving it. Um, you know, Scandinavia, Singapore, um, South Africa, Indonesia, um, people were really Philippines. People were responding very well to it, but they said, uh, Dr. LeConan, it's just, it's kind of heavy stuff.

We don't know how to share this. Turn around and share this with others. And we'd like something that's just a little simpler.

So to be honest with you, Bill, I didn't want to do it. And I resisted it for a while, because I had another research project that I'd already began working on. Um, but you know, when you get enough of those requests, well, it's time to take it seriously.

So I took about, I don't know, maybe three years, and I worked on it, did some additional research, tightened up some things, clarified some things. And then I added content like, um, um, the, um, the outer limits of the kind of liberties that the gospel authors would take. Um, aside from the typical things, I didn't cover that in the, in the original book, plus, um, over the years since publishing the first book, a lot of people were asking me, well, how does this fit in with the doctrines of the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture.

And so I, I devote a chapter to each of those things. And then, you know, there were a number of people. They, they feel very passionate about the views that they held that, um, aren't, aren't the same as what I put forward in the book.

And it's like, okay, but you know, the final chapter is, you know, we're all on the same team here. And, um, you know, let's treat one another with the love of Christ and treat one another respectfully. And, you know, we can agree to disagree, but, um, let's do it in the right way.

True. And, um, and we'll get there, but you know, I was, I was at your, your talk at ETS this year. And, um, yeah, there's a good spirit of unity and quisitiveness in that room and things.

It's not, not at all what you see reflected sometimes in social media, but that's another, that's another story. But, uh, no, it was, um, you know, you had your, you had people, uh, your interlocutors and you had your fans in there. And they all, they all seem to, um, really get along marvelously and, and we're thinking.

And that's what we have to do. It's like, this is a thoughtful exercise that we're on. So, let's get into the book.

I mean, there was a couple of times in here, you said that you were, you know, in the midst of your research, um, you know, you're schooled in Greek. You're, you're an advocate of Greek. I've seen you get excited when students say that they're studying Greek.

So you said you've read, you read the Bible in some cases for a couple of things. I was trying to remember where it was, but I didn't mark it. So I wish I did.

Uh, there's a couple of parts in there. Maybe you can remember, um, remind me that you said you read the Bible in Greek eight times or read the gospel. I read the gospel in Greek eight times because, uh, now that's, that's for this particular study.

Um, you know, for the resurrection, I remember doing my doctoral research. I read the, uh, burial and resurrection narratives like 35 times in Greek. Um, because, you know, when you read it in the original language, it does two things.

Number one, the original language, especially Greek, is a lot more precise. And so it says things in a more precise way than it does in English. Um, moreover, um, with, with, you know, my primary language is English.

So I've been a Christian since the age of 10. So that's 52, almost 53 years. And, um, and, and so, you know, you read in the Bible that many times you tend to, you know, start reading a story.

You already know what it says and your mind just goes on autopilot. Well, because Koine Greek in which the New Testament was written is not my primary language and it's not even spoken anymore. So you just can't read it, uh, you know, fluently like you could, you know, your primary language.

It causes you to stop to slow down and to look at things more carefully. And so you, you notice things like the, the word that, um, Luke uses for tomb is different than the one that Matthew and Mark use. And you see sometimes the authors using synonyms, but it's translated as the same word in English, but in Greek, they're two different words, but they mean the same thing.

And, um, and they're just little nuances to the language that you just don't pick up in English, but it's kind of cool in Greek, but it makes you, it slows you down and look at those things. And when you do that, boy, a lot of the differences that you don't notice in English, they just pop at you. And so that's, that's why I did it that way.

And I found it to be a beneficial exercise, plus you, you, you tend to notice the writing styles with a little more clarity than you do when you're doing it in English. Yeah. And that, and that's some of the stuff that you, that you bring up, I don't want to get too far ahead here, you know, and, and, you know, because we can get in the weeds real quick with this stuff.

But, you know, a lot of people don't realize that, um, I believe one, for me, anyway, the most eye-opening stuff that I've learned from you is like, you know, what are the Gospels and, and how do we give answers to our skeptical friends when they're supposed contradictions and things like that? And, and what, and how do we, you know, how is it different talking to maybe a Muslim about the Gospels versus a struggling Christian when they're, you know, they watch their first barred arm in the video and they're talking about thing. You know, there's, there's just so much that, that this can touch. There's so many reasons why this is important.

And I think of some of the countries that we're operating in, in, in, in, in, in, in some countries, I'm going to be in the summer. Um, this is, this is some real important stuff. And I can't emphasize that enough.

I've come to, I've come to the conclusion, Mike, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here. But at least I'm thinking that if we're going to do apologetics around the globe, there's at least two things that we have to know really, really well. One is the Trinity and the other is, who is Jesus? And so that's your world.

Who is Jesus? And why does all this matter? And what we know about Jesus mostly comes from the, um, from the Gospels and there's very, we know very little about him outside of that. And then, you know, of course, early church writers and them and those that came after building on the gospel. So what we, what we think about the Gospels is very, very important.

And so how do we think about the Gospels, Mike? Like what, like what are the, what are the Gospels? Like could you, could you put them in a certain literary genre? Sure. No, they are ancient biographies. Now, I mean, what is a biography? Well, it focuses on the life of a single person.

Of course, it mentions others, but it focuses on the life of a single person. And the Gospels do that. It focuses on life of Jesus.

Now, um, the genre of ancient biography was a fluid one. In other words, um, there were some set things that you find common throughout ancient biographies, but sometimes the lines were blurred between different genres. So for example, in the Gospel of Luke, there are a number of scholars like Ben Witherington and I think Craig Keener, they tend to align the Gospel of Luke more as ancient history rather than biography.

Um, I disagree with that. I do agree that given the preface in, in Luke's Gospel that reads more history and there are things in Luke's Gospel that sound more like history than biography. But at the end of the day, it's focused on a single individual and that's Jesus.

That's biography. Moreover, in Plutarch's lives, Plutarch is the most highly respected biographer in antiquity. It considered the finest ancient biographer and Plutarch in his Plutarch's lives.

They were called lives back then, not biographies. His life with Caesar has a lot of the qualities of a history rather than a biography. And yet it's still focused on that character of Julius Caesar.

And so therefore, it's biography. Now, you know, like I said, it's fluid. You've got Philistratice's life of Apollonius of Tiana, which, you know, is mixed with myth and legend.

So that creeps over into ancient biography. My point is, I'm not saying that's in the Gospels, but what I'd say is just because it's ancient biography doesn't mean that everything in it must be historical. We can't conclude that because the Gospels are ancient biographies, that everything in them is historical.

You're going to have to use different arguments for that. But yeah, there are ancient biographies. I'd say the majority of New Testament scholars grant that today.

And even those that don't would say that the Gospels participate in that genre. They share a lot in common with the genre of ancient biography. And the last thing I say is it's important because reading the Gospels through the proper lens makes a big difference.

If you read them through the wrong lens, like if you read them as an ancient novel, you would miss some things. If you read them through the lens of 21st century biography, you miss some things. If you read them through the lens of 1st century biography and the literary conventions in plan that day, a whole lot more is going to come into focus.

Yeah, and that's true. I can remember in my undergrad. My first undergrad was in history.

I almost had that finished. And then circumstances brought me back into school. I left and came back and started over basically and got a undergraduate degree in religion, biblical studies.

It was, you know, kind of Christian leadership too, but it was a lot of Bible. I mean, our Bible college is a lot of Bible. Shout out to Kentucky Mountain Bible college.

Greatest Bible college you've never heard of. It's a wonderful little Bible school. It was a wonderful school with a bunch of mission minded people that were teaching men.

It was wonderful. And I can remember in one of our classes, the professor saying, you know, the Bible was written, you know, on three different continents over the course of thousands of years through the personality of 40 different people and rightly understood has no seeming contradictions. And at the time, I was like, oh, so the Bible didn't have any contradictions.

Okay. But the thing that he, that I think he was trying to emphasize this, rightly understood. And I think that's what you're trying to do here.

If you're helping us to understand these things, there are some, you know, anybody who can read and see that they're like glaring, like, like differences, you know, and, and like cold case Christianity, Jay Warner Wallace, he's went over this too. It's like, well, that's what you would expect to see. It's like you're seeing these different perspectives and things like that.

But you have, I wouldn't say it's a, I guess it is a unique way of looking this, but it seems very plausible. And when you see these contradictions in scripture, that's not something that should alarm us as Christians, but that some people really do get tore up on this. And so why shouldn't, if you do see something that looks like a contradiction, like what, what's step one and why shouldn't we be alarmed? Step one, I think is to recognize that if Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true.

It's game set match period. And so even if there are contradictions in the gospels, even if there are errors in the gospels, Christianity is still true. If Jesus rose, he did so in the year 30 or 33.

And the first gospel wasn't written until probably two or three, maybe even four decades later. So if Jesus rose, then Christianity was true in all those years, in all those decades between when he rose and when the first gospel was written, if we grant that it's got errors and contradictions in it. So if Christianity was true before any of the gospels were written, then why would it be negated if some of the gospels had errors or contradictions in it? That doesn't make sense.

You might have to revamp your doctrine of inspiration or inerrancy, fine tune them, nuance them. But you don't have to give up Christianity if there are any errors or contradictions in the gospels. So I'd say that's the first thing that you got to look at.

A second thing, I think we have to be honest and acknowledge that there are surface contradictions in the gospels. Let me just give you one. Let's see.

At some point in Jesus' ministry, Luke's gospel, the disciples are arguing amongst themselves. Maybe it's Mark's gospel. I think it's Mark's gospel, maybe it's Luke's.

They're arguing amongst themselves which one of them is the greatest. And later on, Jesus says to them, hey, what were you fellows arguing about along the way? And they're quiet. They don't say anything.

Why? They're embarrassed, right? And so when you read the same story in Matthew, Matthew simplifies the story. And he just has the disciples come right up to Jesus and say, hey, Lord, which one of us is the greatest. Now, what do you think actually happened? It's the way that either Mark or Luke reports it, probably not the way Matthew reports it.

Matthew is doing there. What he does, multiple occasions throughout his gospel, he simplifies. He just simplifies it.

It does what a lot of us guys do on an everyday basis when we are retelling stories. So is that a contradiction on the surface? Yes. But for the meaning or it's still an essentially faithful representation of what occurred.

So origin in the early third century said, yeah, there are a lot of surface contradictions that cannot be reconciled. He says, but it's the meaning behind these texts, what they're claiming, what they're reporting that really matters here. So did the temple veil split in two before Jesus died as Luke reports or was it after Jesus died as Matthew and Mark report? You know, the temple veil split in half.

And that's what's important there. Yeah. So looking at this through the lens of these personalities and different styles and things like you pick up on this kind of stuff like you were saying.

And you are what they, what we would call in your circles, I guess a Mark Ham priorities. You are very much into Mark wrote the gospel first and he wrote the first gospel, which tends to make sense to me too. It's the shortest gospel seems like everybody else is filling in the skeletal outline.

But when you think about it in those terms, you know, we don't often think of, the Holy Bible that way, you know, let's, let's face it, the, and what terms I'm talking about here is the, the terms of there's human personality behind some of this. Like, why is Mark so short, sweet to the point on Matthew is, you know, he gives a lot more details, but the most details came from Luke because he was obviously, you know, he was out on a mission to write a history book, basically, you know, and John's all together different. And, you know, as one of our, one of our, our trustworthy guests, Alex Collins, she's one of our graduates here from Raphael Christian H.C.U. She said, everyone was saying the same exact thing in the gospels, I'd be more suspicious.

The variety in the gospels make it more trustworthy. And yeah, I would agree with that. So that is true to an extent, especially when you're looking at the difference between, let's say, Mark and John.

Most scholars will, they'll say, even if, if John knew of Mark, he, he's still independent of Mark where that does not, so that does come to play that way. And then there are other things like one of my favorites is examples would be Jesus before pilot on trial before pilot. I think we have four independent accounts here, but there are many places in the gospel where in the gospels where Matthew Mark and Luke are very, very suspiciously similar.

And there are good reasons to think as most scholars do that Matthew and Luke use Mark as their primary source and supplemented him. And so in that case, where they differ from Mark is of interest to us because it would seem that the difference is intentional. And those differences fit into a kind of pattern that we would expect these kind of differences if they're following some of the rules for paraphrasing that were laid out for ancient writers in that day.

We see it in the compositional textbooks laid out by Theon, by Quintillion, Hermogenes, Ephthonius and others. They talk about specific things that authors and poets and orators are to do in order to paraphrase. And so you read the gospels through that lens and you say, okay, if they are you, Matthew and Luke are using Mark as their primary source, and they are using these techniques for paraphrasing, what would we get? And you look at them and you say, yeah, we get what we would expect.

Well, let's talk about some of that because you dedicate at least one chapter in your book about that chapter seven here. You go into some of these things like compression, literary spotlighting, things like that. And why are these things? Now, people that are listening right now, don't be afraid, don't run off just yet.

This stuff is very important. It's actually very interesting because you have to, you know, there's going to be a time in all of our lives when we have to answer these questions. I mean, people, we live in such a skeptical generation right now.

We have to wonder, as I was saying before, you know, how much of this was human personality and then how much of this is, what does it mean to be inspired? Like, what does it mean to the word of God is inspired? And do these differences hurt in errancy and hurt the word of God? And that's some of the questions we're about to get into. I can guarantee it. But let's talk about this a minute.

You talk about these different devices that could be used, these compositional devices. Tell us about, tell us about compression. Well, you did a little bit there, but like compression, displacement, transfer, we'll go through some of these.

So what do you, like, what's your, why is this important? Like, what are these guys, what do you think these guys were doing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Yeah, well, I mean, I believe scriptures are divinely inspired. God's hand was certainly involved in it. But there's also a human element in it.

And, you know, we see everybody acknowledges that there are different writing styles, different educational levels. Even when you read it in Greek, you know, Luke is using much more advanced words, you could say, than Matthew Mark and John. John is using kind of a more limited vocabulary.

So it's kind of like, once you take your first year of Greek, you learn a thousand vocabulary words. That's every word that occurs 10 or more times throughout the Greek New Testament. And you can make your way through John's gospel pretty well after your first year.

You may not do so well with the other gospels, but even after studying Greek for several years, you're going to find yourself looking at vocabulary words quite often when reading through Luke. That's just the way it is. So it's like, well, God, it doesn't have multiple personalities.

You know, he's using the personalities of the biblical writers involved. We don't know exactly how inspiration worked, but we do see human elements in scriptures. We will often see Matthew and Luke, well, not often, but sometimes we see Mark having awkward grammar that Matthew and Luke will improve.

So, for example, I think it's Mark 4.22. You have Jesus saying, well, nothing is hidden except that it be revealed. Well, we kind of know what that means, but if you were to step back just for a moment and think about that in proper grammar, it's kind of awkward. And it's every bit as awkward in Greek as it is in English, for nothing is hidden except that it be revealed.

So it's interesting to see that Matthew and Luke improve that grammar, and when you read it, it's very smooth. For nothing is hidden that will not be revealed. Ah, now that sounds right.

When Jesus goes into the wilderness after being baptized, Mark says that Jesus was cast out into the wilderness. The Greek term that he uses there is echbalo. It's the same Greek term that Mark uses throughout his gospel for a violent event.

And on most occasions, it's referring to Jesus casting out demons. So, I mean, with that kind of thought in mind, you have the Holy Spirit casting out Jesus into the wilderness. But when you read the same thing in Matthew and Luke, they really soften that word.

On a ballo, and I think it's ballo, or ballo and on a ballo, or he was led into the anago and things like that. He was led or led up into the wilderness. That's a lot smoother.

So, yeah, we see Matthew and Luke improving Mark's grammar. Well, you know, if the Holy Spirit is dictating, then that means that he's looking at Mark at a later time and saying, you know what, I can do better than that. Let's say it this way in Matthew and Luke.

Or you got Paul's memory lapse in 1 Corinthians 1, 16, where he says he doesn't remember if he baptized anyone outside the household of Staphonus. If it's divine dictation, you got a problem here because the Holy Spirit has to tell Paul to hold up while he checks Heaven's records, only to find the relevant item missing. So, it's not a divine dictation.

We have some kind of a human element in Scripture, and it's a matter of what that is. So, we do see these literary devices, compositional devices, that were part and parcel of writing ancient biography. At least this is what the classes say.

And what's interesting, we use a lot of these in our everyday, ordinary conversations, be they oral or e-mail. And we don't think a thing about it. So, it shouldn't come to any surprise when we see the gospel authors doing this.

So, just for example, you mentioned compression, conflation. Let me just give an example of that. So, you look at Jesus' parable of the vineyard and wicked farmers.

And in that, you have Mark and Luke say, you know, the vineyard owner, he set up everything into vineyard, brought in farmers. They were to do, you know, tend to the vines and everything. And then, what happened back then is payment for that as a lease is the owner got the first fruits.

So, according to Mark and Luke, the owner sends a servant to collect the first fruits, and they beat him up and send him away. So, he sends a second one, and they kill him. And then he send a third, and they either kill or beat him up or treat him terribly.

And then finally, he sends his son, says, well surely they'll listen to him, and so they kill him. Well, when Matthew, he sends three the first time. Not one, two, and then a third trip.

He sends three the first time. And then, he says, he sent more than he did the first time. Ah, so you see what Matthew is doing is he's compressing, he's conflating these stories together into one there.

And then it's interesting, after they, Jesus says the tenants kill the son because they say, hey, this is the heir. Let's kill him, and the vineyard will be ours, so they kill him. Then, Jesus says, what will the owner of that vineyard do? He will take the vineyard and give it to those who will, you know, give back to him in his proper season.

So, he asks and answers his own question in Mark. But in Matthew, he asks the question, and it's the Jewish leaders who provide the answer. So, there's a little bit of a dialogue created there, and then it's, there's another technique that Matthew uses called elaboration that is discussed in the compositional textbooks by, let's say, Theon, where he elaborates on this.

And he says, oh yeah, he'll take those, those wretches and put them to a miserable death and then he'll give the vineyard to others. So, it's kind of interesting to see that stuff happening. And this is all throughout the gospels.

If, you know, I made a list of all the differences I could find. I came up with over 50 pages worth of those, and I can tell you that more than 90% way over 90% can be easily explained using these compositional devices. That's not to say that all of them should be explained in that way, and that compositional devices is the reason.

In some cases, it might be because of differing oral traditions. I think we find that in the different traditions between the Eucharist reported by Luke and Paul, which are virtually verbatim, as opposed to that reported by Mark and Matthew, which he's said at the last supper about the bread and wine. The cup and the bread.

So, there's oral tradition, there's other kinds of reasons, but I do think that probably compositional devices are responsible for the large majority of differences that we find in the gospels. They're not there by accident. A lot of them are there intentionally for, because this is the kind of stuff they were taught to do, but it doesn't, it may change some surface details, but it doesn't change the essence of the story, the gist of what's going on.

And you said, you know, as a historian, you've looked into these things in Plutarch and these other people too, and they use the same, you know, what was the example, you could explain it much better than me, Mark, the example of Caesar in these two different accounts. There's two different accounts of C, and they use compression. Yeah, you want to explain that really quick so we can see the genre.

Well, there's a lot of them. There's different ones we could talk about with Caesar, but let's just take, for example, a real famous one, his assassination. So, that is reported by Appian Cicero, Dio, Livy, Nicolaus, Plutarch, Swaytonius and Velias.

In fact, Plutarch reports the assassination of Julius Caesar in four of his lives, the life of Caesar, life of Antony, life of Brutus, and life of Cicero. Cicero just mentions it. He doesn't really give any details, but the rest do.

And it's interesting to see just how Plutarch tells the same story. I mean, there's lots of differences. In fact, Nicolaus Horstfall says that there's probably more data that has survived about that fateful day on the Ides of March, 44 BC than there is for any other event in ancient history.

And he says that is also accompanied with an abundance of differences, but they are all in the surface details. And in fact, even in Plutarch's three descriptions of the event, it's really interesting to look at just, I mean, lots of them, but if you focus on just the aftermath, he's got, I think it's in Caesar, his life of Caesar, he rushes through these things. And he compresses, conflates events so that Antony ends up giving, I don't know if it's one speech on one day or two speeches on the same day.

My mind's a little fuzzy with the details right now. But in his life of Antony, well, then he's focusing on that character and he explains how, I'm sorry, life of Brutus, he focuses on that character because he was one of the conspiracy. He was one of the spiriters who killed Caesar.

And so what he does in that is he will show that Brutus gave a speech on the Ides of March, March 15, and then he gave another speech to the Senate in front of the people on the following day, the people on the Senators. So he explains it a little bit more. And sometimes in some of those accounts, you even have transferral or difference in who they're in the life of Cicero.

Cicero's the hero who helps convince the Senate along with Antony to pardon the conspirators, whereas in Plutarch's life of Antony, it's only Antony who is the hero. He doesn't say Cicero wasn't, but he's shining a spotlight, his literary spotlight on Antony because that's his main character. So much going on in these accounts.

And we find these same kinds of things happening in the Gospels. In fact, the Gospels contain less discrepancy, surface discrepancies than we clearly find when the same author is reporting the same event using the same sources. And so looking at one of these, so your thesis is that this is what we're likely reading at least in the synoptics are Greco-Roman biographies.

So Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you know, I like this example. I mean, sorry, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And we say something here.

When you say Greco-Roman biographies, don't let that put anyone off here because the Greeks and the Romans who were almost exclusively the ones writing biographies. You do have four biographies written by Jews other than the Gospels in the first century. You got three written by Philo and then Josephus' autobiography.

And two of the three of Philo's biographies are more like commonterries on the Old Testament. The other one, the life of Moses and Josephus' autobiography fit in just like the other ones written by the Greeks and Romans. So that's why they call them Greco-Roman biographies.

It's because they were primarily the ones writing them, but it's not like they had different ways of writing necessarily than the Jews did. So don't be put off by that. Just, you know, look at them as ancient biographies.

Yeah, ancient biographies inspired by God. And because it's like you have to think of it like this, at least this was kind of an eye-opener for me. If you think about what creates your personality and especially if you're in working in academics, you'll see somebody's personality.

Now, I heard Nancy Pierce say one time I can understand somebody's personality profile after I read a paper that they've written. Like you can, you can, she can guess their four letters on the, whatever you call it thing, Myers Briggs. And she did it live in class one day too.

She would say, well, I've been reading your papers and, yeah, Bill, you're probably an NTJ. What? And you can see personality and writing so much and training and all these other things. And there's this kind of stigma about the apostles that, oh man, if you've heard it all, everybody's heard it preach.

The Lord turned the world upside down with a bunch of idiot fishermen that didn't have any schooling or anything like that. But it's like, well, I mean, Luke was very schooled. I mean, his stuff is very, like you said, you have to have a Greek dictionary in front of you to understand where he's going sometimes.

At least some of the word usage it is. He had a very wide vocabulary. In other words, excuse me.

And then you had Matthew, who was a Roman tax collector. I mean, I'm sure they're not hiring uneducated people to collect their taxes. I'm sure he had some sort of schooling behind me.

And then you had the gospel of Mark, who was a train to Manuensis, which means he had to have an education somewhere. And these guys, and so where are they getting educations from? I mean, you're in the middle of the Roman Empire. Of course, you're going to be studying some of the Roman greats, some of the Greek greats and things.

It was that time, shortly after Alexander the Great had taken over most of the known world. And then the Roman Empire came in after him and took it back over again. So yeah, the Greco-Roman stuff was all throughout Jerusalem.

Even so much when I did my thesis on the Logos, you couldn't talk about the Logos without reading Philo. I mean, and Philo was a Jewish thinker. And here's all of this Logos stuff coming from all the Greeks.

And he is taking that and expounding on that. And then that's probably where John got the idea right in the beginning was the Logos. And the Logos was with God, you know, and so on.

So you see all these ideas cross pollinating. So it makes sense that if God is using men to, you know, he's using under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, this is just the writing style in which they've been taught. And so it really just kind of eliminate things looking through this lens.

And when you start thinking about all of that and think of what they could do, if you look at this example of Peter, for example, you said the, you know, you pointed out in your book, let me see the short part. He said, yeah, the number of male disciples who visited the tomb differ. Right? There's all these differences.

John 20 verses 3 through 20 informs us that Peter and the beloved disciple ran to the tomb. At first look, this appears inconsistent with Luke 24 12, which only mentions Peter running to the tomb. However, only 12 years later in Luke 24 24, the two amazed disciples report that earlier that day, some of those with us went to the tomb and found it was just as the woman said.

And then so Luke appears to be shining his, what you call, the literary spotlight on Peter in verse 24 12. And so understanding those devices, it really starts to eliminate like, okay, so you see these discrepancies, but that's exactly what you'd expect to see. I mean, that's the way things were done in that time.

Very good scholarly work here, Mike. I'm just really elaborating your stuff. I would just kind of add that, yeah, we got literary spotlighting on at least three occasions in the resurrection narratives alone.

The one to the amazing disciples you pointed out. Plus, you've got John reporting, he just mentions Mary Magdalene is going to the tomb, whereas the other gospels have multiple women, but then she comes in and reports to Peter in a beloved disciple. They have taken the Lord and we don't know where they've laid him, which makes sense.

That is more, that's probably referring to the other women along with her because of, well, of course Peter in a beloved disciple, they didn't even know the tomb was emptying until five seconds before. And then you have John report that Peter in a beloved disciple ran to the tomb where, as well like you said, it's just Peter that ran to the tomb, right? Well, but Luke doesn't say just Peter, he only mentions him. And then, of course, you have Matthew and Mark only mention one angel at the tomb, whereas Luke and John mention two.

So I think that's probably the literary spotlighting where they're focusing on the angel who's making the message, that Jesus rose from the dead. It's kind of like what Plutarch does with his life of Antony focusing on Antony as saving the day after the conspirators killed Caesar, whereas in the life of Cicero, it's Antony and Cicero. So Plutarch is shining his literary spotlight on Antony in that life.

One thing I'd also say about the authorship, we don't really need for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to have written those gospels. We don't know how much literacy was required for a tax collector. It may have been minimal.

Luke different, of course. But what we do find is that Cicero, as intelligent and highly educated as he was, he used an amanuensis named Tyro, a secretary named Tyro. And he used Tyro for a lot more than just taking dictation.

Because one time, Pompey came over and was spending the evening there and he asked Cicero to read something. And Cicero said, I'm not going to do it because Tyro isn't here. And without him, my tongue is tied.

So he knew that Cicero was a lot more valuable and did a lot of editing to make him sound better. With Paul, very highly educated man. And Paul, on at least three occasions at the end of his letters, says, I Paul write this greeting with my own hand, which means he didn't write the rest.

When he said, well, maybe he just, you know, the rest was a secretary taking dictation, maybe. But that doesn't work with Romans. The crown jewel of all of Paul's letters.

The literary quality of Romans is far better than what you have for any other Paul's letters. And in chapter 16 verse 22, it says, I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you and the Lord. So it's almost certain that Tertius did a whole lot more than just take dictation.

Now here's the point I'm making. You'll have people like Bart Erman and other skeptics saying, well, you've got fishermen with John. You've got Matthew, a tax collector.

You got Mark. We really don't know anything about Mark. So, but these were Jews.

They would have had a high education. We have no reason to think they had a high education. So they couldn't have written the Gospels.

All they wouldn't have had to have write the Gospels. All they needed was a secretary who would have known these kinds of things and been literate. And they probably, in at least John and Matthew's case, they probably used a secretary.

Matthew's Gospels written in a very artistic manner, more so than the rest of the Gospels. So when you really look at it and through the proper lens and it's like, well, I'm not going to imagine a tax collector doing that. But I could imagine a skilled amanuensis, a skilled secretary who was acting as Matthew's ghost writer, let's say.

Matthew is doing all the input and the secretary is taking notes and then pending the goal. And then before publishing it, it's Matthew's final approval. Same thing with John.

And possibly with Mark or Mark may have done it himself. We just don't know. But yeah, I think that just destroys the objection that people like Herman and others have.

Well, these people would not have been literate enough. Well, even if they weren't, they didn't have to be. Their secretaries would have been.

Yeah. And whether or not they were literate is beside the point. They spent three and a half years with the Son of God.

I mean, they was all like they were idiots. You know, like these people really know what they were doing, what they were saying. And it would make sense.

You know, all of us who write, I mean, you're obviously write a lot more than I do. But we all have people that read our work and tell us how to do it better and things like that. And there's no reason to believe that that wasn't the case because, you know, it comes back to that.

Default assumption is divine dictation. We talked about that a little bit earlier that we think of the Bible, sometimes almost like how Muslims think about the Quran. That, you know, that that Muhammad was in a cave, had a divine visitation from an angel or something like that.

And then he resotted it and there's no word out of order, no word out of line and things like that. But the Bible is much more freeing than that. There's, you know, there's a lot more freedom in Christianity and that God would use man to communicate a message.

That's the way he's always done it. You know, we're made in his image. That's he loves us, you know, and he speaks through us, reveals himself through us.

And so, yeah, we've got some great questions coming in. And you know what? We're going to go ahead and start getting to some of those guys. I mean, some awesome questions.

I want to thank Chasing the Amazing and Christ is King underscore one. Appreciate you guys. And of course, our regular, the faithiest, atheist.

Have you met this guy yet, Mike? He's, I tell him he's my favorite. I like him. Yeah.

Yeah. He's a great guy. It's fun to talk to you.

I've had dinner with him. I think we've sat next to each other. I like the guy.

Yeah. We've had dinner with him and he used to not too long ago. It's part of my feed and atheist campaign, I call it.

They're starving, man. We all have, we need to take responsibility and feed and atheists. So anyway, that's right.

Richard just reminded me, we all had dinner together at one time in Texas down here. Yeah, I forgot about that. That's right.

For those of you who know Bill, you know Bill was a lot of fun to be with. But what you may know is he's even more fun when he's got a couple of margaritas in him. Oh, man.

Just easy. Just easy. I just lost 10% of my supporters just then.

No, I know. I know some of the guys, some of the guys had a drink that night. But I don't remember seeing you with any.

Oh, man. That's been so many conferences ago. I have no recollection.

And it wasn't because of margaritas either. So let's get to some of these. Well, first of all, you've ran it before we take some, we usually start our Q&A at about an hour into it.

We've got a few minutes, but you've been hit with some pretty big pushback. And let's talk about that just for a minute. You've got some pushback because, you know, at ETS, I was there when you challenged the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy and things like that.

And I wanted to give you a moment just to say like, where are you going with that? Because there's, I've noticed that almost every critique I've heard of you, Mike, has been wrong. It's people that have not read your literature. They've not read where you came from.

I'm like, no, I think you're missing it. So I've almost become an apologist for my clock on us. I'm like, no, I was sitting there.

I've actually got a recording on my phone with a Chicago Statement talk if you want to hear it. So, yeah, where are you going with that? And why do you think that we should revise the word revise the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy? Just a little bit. I mean, not overboard, but you're calling for a revision.

So is that separate from the book? I do talk about inspiration and inerrancy of the book, but, and I do think we need to engage in a little nuance of our views of inspiration and inerrancy. But the talk at ETS was different than what I'm talking about in the book, of course. Well, that is fair.

Yeah, that's fair. I guess you touching on it in the book was bringing up some memories, but yeah. Yeah, that's okay.

I'm happy to say something about that here. What even got me thinking about inerrancy, and for some time I've been thinking, I think there's some problems with the Chicago Statement. And I've given it some real thought over the last decade or so.

Even before Norman Geisler started attacking me back in 2011. So I guess it's been 15 years or more that I've been thinking about the doctrine of biblical inerrancy or how it should be viewed. In fact, if anyone is interested and they don't have the book, I'd encourage them to go on my YouTube channel and just type in inerrant or inerrancy and you'll find a debate I had with my friend, Dr. Richard Howe, who's a Christian philosopher.

And back in 2019, we had a debate on inerrancy. And it was a collegial debate. It was a good time.

And you can see both of our views. Now, a more recent since the other book came out in 2017 on gospel differences, some have said, well, what Mike is saying here is incompatible with the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Well, I don't agree with that.

And they said, well, it's incompatible with the Chicago Statement on biblical inerrancy. Well, I don't agree with that either. Back in 2016, I spoke at a conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

And another one, let's see, Greg Minnet, Dan Wallace, we're also speaker. So was J.I. Packer. And J.I. Packer was one of the three scholars along with R.C. Sproul and Norman Geister, who crafted the Chicago Statement on biblical inerrancy.

And after I gave my lecture on gospel differences, which is the same kind of stuff that I've said in my two books on the topic, J.I. Packer came up to me. He was the first one to come up to me after I walked off the stage. And he said six words to me.

He shook my hand, looked me in the eye. He said six words. And I remember them verbatim because I wrote them down immediately afterwards.

He said, thanks, tops, agreed with every word. So here you have one of the three guys who crafted the Chicago Statement. And he apparently saw no tension whatsoever between what I was saying about viewing gospel differences and the Chicago Statement on biblical inerrancy.

Now, someone might say, yeah, but Norman Geisler had problems with your approach to gospel differences. And he said that your approach was incompatible with biblical inerrancy. Well, I can show number one where Norman Geisler was inconsistent in that.

But aside from that, what you're looking at then is you're not just saying one must believe in inerrancy. You're not just saying one must believe in the way that's defined by the Chicago Statement, but you're also saying you have to accept the interpretation of the Chicago Statement by Norman Geisler over that of J.I. Packer. And when you get to hair splitting a matter on a tertiary doctrine like that, it may be time to step back and ask if that's the kind of thing that God wants you to spend your time on.

So, yeah. So here's a good follow up to that. For those who don't live in this world, and it's like my pastor said the other day, I was preaching at our church this Sunday here in Houston.

It was Acts 17 Sunday, so they called him the apologist guy. And he said, you know, just don't talk over people's heads like you live in a different world sometimes. And that's true.

We kind of are. We do run in these circles that like to talk. We throw words around like inerrancy and we're like, yeah, you know, some of my students will be like, hold on.

What do you mean by that? And this is a good example. My friend, Alex, again, she said, I've had questions about inerrancy myself. Like what exactly does inerrancy mean? Because I see it defined differently sometimes.

Plus on how to interpret scriptures relating to inerrancy. And so how would you interpret the scripture that says that, you know, all scripture is, you know, God is, you know, profitable. I just forgot it.

All scripture. You don't know. All scripture is God-breathed.

God-breathed. That's what I thought I said. God-breathed.

To teach you the proof, correction, training, righteousness. Right. So you don't disagree with that.

You do not disagree with that. I know that. So, so how do you like so that that's going toward Alex's question there.

So what do you think? Well, it's a great question, Alex. So I looked up with that, what that word means, I looked up by looking at references to it in the ancient literature. It's actually used about 2500 times Alex in the ancient literature.

But of course, over the years, the meaning of words can change. I mean, right now, there's no, except the definition on male and female now, or man and woman. You know, so apologize used to mean to provide in English, you know, a century or two ago, and to be able to defend something now to apologize means to say, you're sorry.

So over time, where the meaning of words can change. And so I'm most concerned with what is written within the first couple hundred years. So there are somewhere between eight and thirteen occurrences of the term theanustas.

God-breathed. That occurs in the ancient literature from before the time of Christ could be as early as 150 years before Christ, all the way up until around the year 200. And the only time it appears in the Bible is in 2 Timothy 3 16, where it is referring to Scripture.

But what does God-breathe mean? So when I say eight to thirteen occurrences, it's because some of those occurrences were not certain exactly when they happened. It might have been after the year 200, it may not have been. There may be as many as three occurrences of theanustas that appears before 2 Timothy, depending on when you date 2 Timothy.

But two of those would be in the Sibilene oracles. Now Sibil was a female prophetess, a pagan prophetess. And the Sibilene oracles talk about a river, a river that passes through the city of Kaimay, where the Sibils were, it says that that river was theanustas.

Interpreting dreams, you would have to be theanustas ointment that is put on a corpse can be theanustas. In the lives of Karpus, Papalus and Agathanes, it talks about not only Scripture being theanustas, but also the teachings of the church. So there's all these different things.

And it's like, all right, well, exactly still, what does it mean to say something is theanustas? Well, it could mean as much as divine dictation, which we know it doesn't in 2 Timothy 3 16. If you take the word at face value, God breathed, that would seem to mean divine dictation. But it's not what it means in 2 Timothy 3 16, obviously, for the reasons we've talked about, and I don't think anybody thinks it means that.

But what we can say is at minimum, it means that it has its origin in God, but that's at minimal. It could mean more. It may not mean more.

It's hard to say. So what you have to do, I don't want to read more into it than is there. I don't want to do a top down approach where I'm just going to assume it means something a whole lot more and then read and then force that view on scripture.

What I'm going to do is what my friend, a New Testament scholar, Mark Strauss, and with the late FF Bruce, an amazing, amazing conservative New Testament scholar, they both take a bottom up approach. So you consider what scripture says about itself, but then you look at the nature of scripture itself and determine things. So it's like, okay, because Matthew and Mark, Matthew and Luke will improve Mark's grammar.

If you look at the memory labs in 1 Corinthians 1 16 and things like that, and you see occasional editorial fatigue, I can think of a really good example in Luke right off, then you say that there is a human element involved, a strong human element, and that scripture at times includes some human imperfections. So you develop your view of scripture and inspiration in that sense and you say, okay, well, then you're doing this bottom up approach and you're saying, all right, what kind of a model of inspiration would result in the Bible that we have today? And so, I mean, this is just a brief thing, there's more to it than that. I have a short video that was just put on our YouTube channel, I think last week or the week before, about considering our views of inspiration, you can go there, I don't know, it's like three or four minutes long, and I get into more depth or detail with it there.

And the book really gets in good, of course. Sure, and that's actually a follow up. I wanted to ask you, in chapters 11 and 12, that's going to be the most provocative chapters in the book, say, the best or last month, they discuss the doctrines, they discuss the doctrines of inspiration and things like the an inerrancy and things.

So, is what you're proposing with these compositional devices with, is that still compatible with a doctrine of inerrancy, like an inerrancy level? It's compatible with the Chicago statement, I mean, even J.I. Packer. So, I mean, he's the one that wrote that definition. So, if you're going to say it's not, well, then you're disagreeing with one of the guys who wrote it, that was his authorial intent, and he's saying, yep, it's what Mike is saying here, is compatible with an inerrancy, and in fact, he ended up endorsing that first book.

So, of course, he died a couple of years ago, so he didn't endorse this one, but he endorsed that first book, and he had no problems with it whatsoever. So, again, if you are going to disagree with that, well, then now you're fighting on interpretations over the definition of inerrancy, and well, you're welcome to do that, but I'm not going to join you on that. Yeah, and you know, when you're talking about looking in these literary devices and things like that, I mean, there's a lot to try to wrap your head around there that, you know, a few critics have expressed concern that this might even, if you're looking at things like, like some of them, you look at some of these events as literary devices, like with long terms, they're going to undermine the resurrection, they're going to undermine like what you're trying to do in the first place, which is show that the resurrection is true, like that's your whole thing, right? So, are you afraid you're going to undercut yourself on any of this stuff? No, build these compositional devices and approach the gospel differences.

It doesn't even undermine the reliability of the gospels, much less the resurrection of Jesus. For decades, I mean, Gary Habermas, let's say he will turn, he's 11 years older than me, so he will turn 74 this year. So, he has been studying the resurrection for over half a century, over half a century, he has been studying the resurrection and has been putting forth what he calls the minimal facts approach, an approach, a way of defending the resurrection that he coined.

He takes facts that are so strongly supported by the data, that the over, that the vast majority of critical New Testament scholars, including skeptics, atheists, agnostics, bartermen, you know, they grant these as facts because the supporting data is so strong and Gary can take just those facts and build a very strong and compelling case for the resurrection of Jesus. So, it doesn't give you everything that you find in the gospels, but it gives you the resurrection of Jesus. So, it doesn't undermine that case.

I take a little different approach, slightly different approach than Gary does. When I was doing my doctoral research, it's like, man, the case for the original disciples believing in the physical bodily resurrection is so strong, and the arguments against it are so weak and misguided, I'm going to start really pushing for this in my debates and lectures. And so, in my debates, all, you know, since getting my my doctorate, I've been throwing in there for the most part the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

And I can do it without even appealing to the gospels. So, no, I don't think this undermines the case for the resurrection of Jesus at all. Good answer.

So, we have a couple more questions from the audience here. And guys, you all are welcome to put your questions in the chat. And, of course, some of your real brave, you're welcome to call me on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger.

If you're my close friend, you can just call my phone. My phone is hooked up into here and we can bring you on. You can join the conversation with us.

That does happen from time to time. I hope that takes up more in the future because that takes off a little bit more in the future. That's a lot of fun.

So, you know, I've got the trusty phone over here. If you guys call in, we'll bring you on the show. If I know you and you're not a crazy person.

So, King says, you kind of already answered this, but I want to make sure his question is specifically answered. He said, he was actually hanging out with us too in the Salado conference a couple of years ago. You've met these guys.

Cool guy. Doctrine of solo scripture is heavily influenced on the basis that scripture is God breathed. But if there are other writings that are as well God breathed, doesn't the doctrine begin to fall apart? No, I think it just depends on what you're, you know, how you're looking at God breathed.

Scripture is not only God breathed, but it is also authoritative. It's infallible. And I believe this because of what Jesus thinks about scripture.

You say, well, that's arguing in a circle. No, because I can look at it historically as a historian and say, well, I've got multiple independent sources, at least with Mark and John. And then also you have stories about Jesus and Matthew and Luke that are unique to them.

And we see how Jesus treated scripture. So the motif of Jesus thinking of scripture as, let's say divinely inspired, without using that word, he still thinks it comes from God. And it's entirely authoritative and trustworthy.

This is something that is multiple tested as a motif throughout the Gospels. Plus, you got to look at and you say the New Testament authors looked at the scripture as being entirely authoritative, something that was trustworthy. Where do they get this idea if Jesus didn't hold it himself? So I think historically speaking, it's it's pretty much indisputable that Jesus held a very high view of scripture, even if he doesn't use the word theanustas or God breathed at time.

And that separates it from other writings that secular writers or whatever may have called something like a river or an ointment being theanustas, God breathed. Very cool. All right, we're just rolling through these.

See, we didn't really get to that. We'll bring it on here. You might know you're Greek enough to get onto that.

I'm sure John 21, 15 through 17, two different Greek words are translated love in each of these verses. I kind of know the answer to this when we hear how you're saying it, how you would say it might. In most translations, why is it so impossible to render a better and more accurate translation in the English? Yeah, I don't know.

Well, the amplified Bible kind of, you know, Jesus it out a little, but yeah, it's when Jesus and Peter are walking along the shore to see a Galilee and Jesus says to him, Peter, do you love me? And Peter says, Lord, you know that I love you. You know, feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? He asked him a second time.

Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. 10 my lambs. Peter, do you love me? And Peter was grieved because he asked him the third time, do you love me? Well, there is a play of Greek words that are going on here.

Jesus asked him, Peter, do you agape me? And Peter says, Lord, do you know that I fill us you? Peter, you know, do you agape me? Do you love me with all your heart that you have a genuine concern for me above all else? Lord, do you know that I fill us you? I've got brotherly light love toward you. Peter, do you fill us me? And that's why Peter was grieved because he changed that word the third time. Do you really even love me as a friend? And Peter was grieved.

Now, of course, that's because he also because he denied him three times. But when you see the differences in the Greek words here, well, then you know that there's something a little bit different going on. There's something more than just because it was the third time.

He changed that word from agape to fill us that third time. You don't see that in English, but it's there in Greek. And there are other verses that you have that kind of stuff too.

It's like in first Peter, I think it's in chapter one, I'm thinking 120, but that might not be it. He says, now that you have purified your souls in obedience to the truth, now that you have purified your souls in the fervently loved one another from the heart. That's pretty close to what it says.

Well, you know, I remember before learning Greek, I was looking at that and thinking there's got to be more. What is it in that verse? Well, there is. There's the play and the two words love there.

And basically what Peter is saying now that you have become Christians, now that you become Philadelphia, Philadelphia that comes from two Greek words, fill us and meet brotherly love and Adelphos, meaning brother, so that warm affectionate brotherly love. That's why they call Philadelphia the city of brotherly love. Now that you have become followers of Jesus and it has resulted in a warm affectionate brotherly love toward one another, love one another from the heart.

He uses the term agape and he uses the heiress tense there and the heiress tense has many different uses, but the only one that really works here is called the aggressive heiress, meaning to begin something. So what Peter is saying there, now that you become Christians and it's resulted in brotherly affectionate love toward your fellow believers. Don't just stop at that.

Begin now to manifest a genuine love concern for one another and do this from the heart. So it's neat to see what the Greek can do to just kind of bring something alive. Yeah, here's another here's another Greek question for you.

It's not really related to exactly what we talked about, but since it's since it's prod month, we'll throw it in here. Could someone argue the writers got the teachings on sexuality wrong or use the wrong words to express Jesus' message in these areas. I guess we could add on there maybe given your hypothesis, given what you're you're talking about here, but yeah, this from Carla.

She's one of our RC workers in Ohio, actually. So cool people. Well, you think of course, of course, anything is possible, but you got to look at what's probable.

And you know, I don't see it as probable. I mean, same-sex marriage back then with Jews as well as Gentiles was taboo. It was looked down upon.

The Old Testament is very clear that same-sex relationships is immoral, and it's pretty clear in the New Testament, the Greek word that's used there. I'm trying to think what it is, but it is the term that Paul uses and sexual love of a man for a man. So, but Paul, even without using that term, is crystal clear in Romans chapter 1, verses 20 and follow, where he talks about how men exchange the natural function of a woman and burned in their lust toward one another.

And same thing with women exchanging the natural function of a man, burning in lust toward one another. So, I mean, that's obviously talking about same-sex sexual relationships, the same gender sexual relationships. And Paul just says it is wrong.

So, and again, he uses that without using any of those typical Greek words, the Greek word that he uses later on in one of his letters. I think it's 1 Corinthians when he places same-sex marriage as those horrible sins that same-sex relationships there, along with drunkenness and witchcraft and pride and gluttony, things like that. So, yeah, we focus on the same-sex stuff because that's where our culture is today.

That's where the language, the debate is today on the same-sex thing. That's why Christians focus on that. But we must not forget that pride and drunkenness are in that same list.

Sure is. It's important to remember, too, that Paul's stunning statement in 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11, as he lists off all that list of people, the drunkards and the homosexuals and all these different kinds of sins. He said, at the end of that, in such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were, you know, you're justified in the name of the Lord our God.

So, it's really clear that there's redemption for all of that. And so, we thank you. Thank you, Jesus, for dying on a cross for us.

We will be where we are today and raising, and most importantly, raising from the dead. And that is a perfect segue to this next question from my friends over at Apologetics on mission. These guys are teaching apologetics all over the world right now.

It's really cool to watch them go a couple of Bible grads. If you don't know who they are, look them up. They're good people.

So, they said, he asked, what is the best non-botily resurrection explanation you have encountered of the minimal facts that we need to be prepared for? Non-bot, I'm guessing he's saying by that, what is the best objection to the bodily resurrection of Jesus? Yeah, what is the best non-botily resurrection explanation you've encountered of the minimal facts that we need? Oh, well, that would probably be 1 Corinthians 15, where verses 42 through 50, where Paul talks about, he distinguishes between our present body, the body that is buried, and then the body that is raised, and in verses 44, verse 44, he says, it is sown a natural body and raised a spiritual body. Now, there are some English translations, like the New Jerusalem Bible, the New Revised Standard Version, the Common English Bible, the Amplified Bible, and there's some others, and they translate that as it is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. In other words, it's contrasting a physical material body with an immaterial spiritual body.

So what I did in my doctoral research is we looked at every time these two terms appear in the ancient literature, from the 8th century BC, which is the oldest that we have of the Greek literature, all the way up through the 3rd century AD, and there are, for the term that translated physical there in some of those translations, most translations correctly render it as natural, only a few render it as physical. But that term in the Greek is Succacon, and the 800, I think 836 or 846 occurrences of that term, none of them meant physical. They had different meanings that usually meant something like the mortality of a body.

It usually carried a negative connotation to it, but it never meant physical. So right away, that translation in those English translations, it's physical, is no longer sustainable. And then you have the other term, Succacon, spiritual, and that can mean immaterial, but it can also mean other things as well, like Chrysopus talks about Stoics being spiritual people.

That'd be kind of like if I said, hey, Bill Scott's a spiritual man. We find these two terms earlier in the same letter, 1 Corinthians, chapter 2, I believe it's verse 14, when Paul says, the natural man, Succacon, natural man doesn't understand the things of the spirit, for they are spiritually pumatikas, spiritually discerned. He's not contrasting material and immaterial there.

And finally, let's say that if Paul was going to use terms to contrast physical with spiritual, he had some better terms to do that, because in chapter 9, I think it is a first Corinthians, he says, since we have sown physical things, fleshly things, I'm sorry, since we have sown spiritual things among you, Succocas, aren't we entitled to fleshly or material things, sarcocas, and so he's using a different Greek word there, and those would have been the perfect way of contrasting physical versus immaterial. Material versus immaterial, he would have used the term pumatikon there, but he didn't do that. So the other, I could just say real quickly, is verse 50, where he says, flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

And skeptics are saying, see, he's talking about bodily there, physical. Well, like, you know, yeah, physical resurrection, you're not going to have a physical resurrection, but that's not what he means there. The term flesh and blood, I've done a surtial net throughout the ancient literature, and it means, always, it's a semitism that means something in the mortal body with all of its weaknesses.

This is the way it's used in all the Jewish literature, and it's used elsewhere in the Greek literature that way as well. So it's kind of like, it's different in flesh and bone when Jesus says that in Luke 24, a spirit does not have flesh and bone, as you see, I have. Now, that is talking about physical, but flesh and blood is a whole different kind of figure of speech.

It's a semitism. It'd be kind of like I'm saying, you know, Bill Scott is a red-blooded man. Well, that's not really focusing on really the color of your blood.

It means something else, or if you say, that guy's a cold-blooded murderer. It's not talking about the temperature of his of his blood. It's a figure of speech.

Well, you could call me a blue-blooded man because I'm from Kentucky and college basketball fans understand that. There we go. Yeah, it's like you bleed blue.

Green with envy, or, you know, if he's yellow, he's a coward, right? I mean, these are just figging the speech, and that's what we have with flesh and blood. Okay. Well, we've got a ton of questions that have come in here.

And so I'm going to have to put a pause on the like any, any more questions. I don't think we'll be able to get to them, but we have a few that- I'll try to put the answers quick. Yeah.

Yeah, we've got, we've got eight lined up here. They're all good. Follow up with apologetics on mission.

So these are guys that keep their finger on the pulse of apologetics across the globe. And so it makes sense that they ask this question, could you speak on the possibility of a real-time dialogue with Lydia McGree? No, there's no possibility for that. Oh, really? No, there's no possibility that I have already interacted with Lydia.

I've not found those conversations to be fruitful. And she's already stated her position, not only in her blogs, but also in a book. I have stated my position in two books now.

And I've also responded to her by offering a 75 page written critique of her book, The Mirror or the Mask. You can find that on my website, risenjesus.com. I also have it in eight videos that appear on my YouTube channel. You just go to a playlist and type in Lydia McGrew or answering Lydia McGrew.

I've got those. They've got lots of slides on. You can watch all eight of them with, it take you about three and a half hours.

And right now those are being just put in audio version on the risen jesus podcast, which you can find on Google Play or Apple and all that is being put on the various things. So you can see, you know, you can read her book and look at my response to it, where my criticisms of her book, I think it's target rich for criticisms. And a lot of problems with it.

But I haven't found my interactions with her to be fruitful. I can only wish her the best, but no, I'm not going to engage. I'm done with that.

And I'm not going to engage in live dialogue with her. All right, hear me out, Mike, pay per view special. Okay.

No, all the money goes to missions now. Okay. So, so, okay, good follow up question from one of one of my fellow students here, Richard, Richard Ng, he might have been one of your students as well as graduate.

Hey, why? It's great. Hey, Richard. That does, that does surprise me at all.

He's actually got an interview on our, on our channel here where he's writing children's books and apologetics to right now. It's really cool. So Richard asks Dr. LaCona, have you run into objections outside of Lydia McGrew? If so, like what? And I'm sure you've had several, but what would be like, maybe you'll say top two in, in brief? Well, I mean, the main one aside from what what she's offered is that, you know, this undermines reliability because they're actually, when we talk about these compositional devices, that that's actually fact-changing.

And yeah, it is fact-changing. If you're going to look at it in a very technical level, but it's undeniable that they're fact-changing. All you have to do is go to Mark chapter one, verse five, and Mark reports that all of the, the, the region of the entire region of Judea and every Jerusalemite went out to see John the Baptist and they were baptized by him.

Now it is obvious that this is hyperbole. Not everybody was going out to be baptized and being baptized. By John the Baptist, not everyone from Jerusalem.

They're certainly the high priest wasn't right. Certainly the Sanhedrin weren't going out and being baptized by John the Baptist. And there were a lot of people in Jerusalem who didn't care about things.

It'd be like saying, you know, years ago, yeah, Billy Graham came into town, did a, did a crusade, and the whole city came out to see him. The stadium was packed. The whole city was there.

Well, no, they weren't. That's hyperbolic. We understand what Mark is doing there and we don't have a problem with it.

But he is fact-changing from what reality was. The reality was a lot of people were coming out to see John the Baptist and many, perhaps most of them were being baptized by them, but not everyone. So that does not undermine the reliability of Mark's gospel.

And likewise, you know, nobody really complains about that because we're familiar with hyperbolic language. Well, the ancients were familiar with this other stuff. The kind of paraphrasing that Theon and the other rhetoricians talk about in their compositional textbooks and the various compositional devices that classicists for some time, like compression, conflation, displacement, transferral, that classicists say were part and parcel and universally used by ancient biographers.

So, yeah, I don't think it, I mean, that's a main objection that I'm hearing. But I think it's quite weak and easily dispelled. I mean, I've just given you one example.

I could give you many. Well, as you're sitting there talking, you're just brought up several within, like from class. I can remember us talking and, you know, and your class has given me, I'm it's largely inspired by you, but then it's John Warwick Montgomery to said same thing.

Said no matter where you start, you end with the resurrection. If you're an apologist, like that's where you have to go eventually is who is Jesus did he raise from the dead? If he did, what are you going to do about it? And I will say that the using the information I had from your class, I've seen hardly ever see people get saved from the other other presentations, but it's that one that is the most evangelistic when people begin to understand that, you know, it's a scary thing for us to say is still kind of chokes me up to say it because people could take it out of context and say I'm some sort of heretic. But so I don't want you to think I'm a heretic, but it's like, you know, if the Bible never existed, if we never had it, if Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is still true.

And all of that applies to you. And so you can have, there's room in Christianity to be thinking about all these doubts and what's hyperbole and what isn't and all this stuff. And that's one of the fun things about Christianity is we have the freedom to explore.

And God's big enough to handle our doubts. And he's some of the best apologists. I know where people that came from that part that live, you know, like, man, I'm had doubts and we figured out there's really good answers to all my doubts every time.

That's pretty meaningful. And look at one of the big doubters in the in the gospels, John the Baptist. We just talked about him, right? Yeah.

He is doubting. He's in prison and he sends two disciples to Jesus and say, Hey, John wants to ask you, are you the one or are we to expect someone else? Now, John had seen all this phenomena at the baptism of Jesus. He knew Jesus was he pointed people to Jesus, but now that he's languishing in prison and facing possible execution, which we know he was beheaded.

You know, he's feeling lonely. He's probably thinking, Where are you, Lord? I've served you my whole life. And now I'm here and it's like you forgot me.

Are you the one or are we to expect someone else? And so it's really interesting to see how Jesus responded to him. Um, you know, he says, go back and tell John what you have seen and heard the blind see the deaf here, the dead are raised, the lame are walking, the gospels preach to the poor and blessed are those who don't stumble on on account of me. So it's like they saw the miracles.

He provides evidence for them. And then he's encouraging him. Blessed are those who do not stumble on account of me.

So now the disciples go away. And now Jesus, people are looking at him because it's like, Whoa, your wingman here is now questioning you. Now here it gets real interesting.

How does Jesus respond? What does he say about John? When you came out in the wilderness, did you to see John, did you come down to see a reed blow back and forth by the wind? He knew John was doubting. Said, Nope. Did you come to see a man dressed in fine clothing? Nope.

You find that in King's palaces. Let me tell you, he came out to see a prophet, a great prophet. And I tell you, no one greater has been born of woman than John the Baptist.

So in the midst of John's doubts, he provides evidence. He encourages him and he compliments him. That is amazing.

So I got to think that when we are having honest doubts that he is not condemning us. And so it's good to look for the evidence and to recognize that he understands what we're going through. I think God appreciates a thoughtful faith.

I think a thoughtful faith is deep. And you cannot be thoughtful. And you cannot go deep unless you get very, very concerned about some of the stuff sometimes.

And that's, I may be biased to that. But I think that's been pretty true about anywhere I've went in the world. The ones that are most thoughtful are the ones going, you know, that really mean that though.

And then they'll spend, you know, I've got a buddy of mine that's writing a book right now. It's just a lot of doubts and questions he had about all kinds of things. And he's in his 70s, but he's written, he's been working on this book now for four years or something.

It's just, you know, you're going to end up people like that. It's, it's pretty cool. You know, so we got to bring this plane to a landing here.

I do want to, anytime an atheist writes into this podcast and has a good question, I want to make sure it gets featured. If history, if historians, faithiest, atheist asks, if historians change their mind and allowed supernatural, the supernatural as possible explanations for history, could that lead to a competition of other miracle claims that drown out the resurrection? Well, it would certainly allow for other miracle claims and other religions, sure. I don't know that it would drown out the resurrection of Jesus, but it would certainly allow others.

Now, I'll say this, there has been, in recent decades, there have been debates among professional historians, general historians, not those that deal with religious issues, but general historians who deal with general historical questions and they have had debates. This has been in like history and theory and, and other journal articles, journals, and they're talking about can historians investigate miracle claims? And there was the theme issue of 2006 of history and theory. I talk about this in my big book on the resurrection, how there's a lot of them, there's a changing of thought, there's a warming now amongst historians, this is in chapter two of that book, a warming among historians to, you know, be open to the investigation of miracle claims.

Now, here's my take on it. I think that historians can investigate a miracle claim. They can even talk about that miracle, they could even say it happened, but as a historian, they really can't say that God did it because they don't have any tools to detect God.

So let me put it on a science level. Let's say that astronomers have been tracking a comet and that comet, they know is going to slam into the moon on a certain day and time. And when that day and time comes, you've got these space telescopes that are zoomed in on the lunar surface and some planetariums that are strategically positioned on earth.

And we're able to watch on television as that comet slams into the moon. And as the lunar us settles, there is a message written on the moon surface. And it says, Jesus is Lord.

And it's written in Hebrew and in Greek. Now, a good scientist would say, that's an extraordinary event. And I have no plausible natural explanations for it.

It would appear to require God. However, as a scientist, I have no tools to detect God. So I can only affirm that the event itself occurred, but I must leave the cause of the event undetermined.

That's reasonable. That's what a good scientist would do. And here's what a bad scientist would do.

That's an extraordinary event. And I have no plausible natural explanations for it. And it certainly seems like it would require God.

But I don't have itself occurred. Now, as crazy as that sounds, that's what a lot of historians and biblical scholars want to do when it comes to the miracles of Jesus. They want to just say that it's an illegitimate exercise to try to confirm whether these events occurred historically.

I say, no, the historian we can look and we can see is the evidence sufficient for it, that these occur in a context charged with religious significance. In other words, a context in which we might expect the God to act. And if those things are present, and there are no plausible natural explanations for it, then I think that we can conclude that the event itself occurred.

But as a historian, we just leave the cause of the event undetermined. There you go. I would say I think too that the only thing I would add to that is that it's also significant when you ask who is Jesus and all of historical backing about who he is as the Messiah that has all kinds of Old Testament prophecies were 360 prophecies in the Old Testament, him claiming to be the son of God, God in the flesh several times.

And if you understand what people were saying, how people use that language, it goes back to that too. And Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it's very evident that in his grammatical historical context, he claimed he had several times. Mark Comashevsky has written some great books on that too.

And Ed, sorry, I say Mike, yeah, Ed, sorry, trying to get a lot out in the short amount of time. But yeah, Ed's, Ed's one of the best lecturers I've ever, he's like one of those, if you don't know, Ed Comashevsky, just go read some of his stuff, read Jesus is God, claimed to be God in the flesh several times. And he rose from the dead.

And he ascended into heaven too in front of witnesses. And it's, there's a lot there. So I don't think there's, I don't even, you know, miracles, false miracles actually do happen a lot.

You know, you more you work in a foreign mission field, more you see that. I mean, more is this way. I mean, it's, but acknowledge, you could acknowledge that that event occurred.

Yeah, we would just leave a small moment. Right. And I mean, we might, as Christians within our worldview, we might interpret it as demonic.

But it's still we can acknowledge the event happened. We can't prove that it was demonic, you know, even though we suspect it might be, but we can at least acknowledge that that event occurred. Right.

And it's a very serious question. Questions for Dr. Mike LaCona. Who is his favorite cubs fan that drinks Dr. Pepper and lives in Chicago? Yeah.

Okay. That was that had to be my buddy Kurt Jarrus, Dr. J. Dr. J. He had to put that I had to spotlight you a little. That's my spotlighting for Kurt Jarrus.

That's a guy. I love Kurt. He's a he's a brilliant guy.

And his his channel apologetics 315 APOL 315. That's a good channel. Check it out if you haven't already.

Yeah, he's I saw him as he actually works with Rothio Christie. And I saw him lecture. One day and I had no idea he's part of Rothio Christie.

I was like, this guy's awesome. And I found out. Oh, he's he's in our group.

I didn't know that. Like, that's awesome. I love Kurt.

Kurt's one of my favorite people on the planet. All right. Last two.

Last question. This is from one of our students at H.C.U. Who are Dr. Mike LaCona's favorite New Testament scholars and historians. Wow.

Good. Good place. Good place.

The other one. That's probably your hardest question, actually, isn't it? Yeah, it is because there's so many good ones. And, and you know, they're good and different areas.

So I love Darryl Bach. I think he's got the best, he's the best commentary ever on the gospel of Luke. It's it's phenomenal.

If you don't have Darryl Bach's commentary on Luke, you need to get it. I love Craig Keener, because we're we're one mind when it comes to things like studying this stuff historically and the philosophy of history and applying it to the gospels. And he's one of the godliest people I've ever met.

Dan Wallace. I mean, he's amazing when it comes to textual criticism. I mean, all these people are great men too.

I love Craig Blomberg. I love Paul Anderson when it comes to the gospel of John. Craig Evans is amazing.

I mean, he's good in so many different ways in terms of a commentator knowing the text. He's great with archaeology. He's great with the historical Jesus.

One who is not an evangelical that one of my favorite New Testament scholars in the world would be Dale Allison who teaches at Princeton. He's a really neat guy. He has inspired me in in terms of just trying to be as best a scholar as I could be and to be authentic and to approach these difficult questions in as honest a manner as I can.

He really inspired me in that way. I think he's one of the most honest New Testament scholars out there. There's a number of things we don't agree on.

But I love Dale Allison. I mean, it's just and I know there's others that I probably as soon as we stop this, they'll come to my mind and say, oh, I can't believe I didn't mention that person. But there's so many really good New Testament scholars out there today.

There is and yeah, and you're one of them, man. You know how I know that this. I saw this in the mail room and they see you the other day and brought it in here just for this podcast.

You know, you're on the front cover of Zondervin's magazine? I know, you know, it's just so cool and that thing came out and it's like, wow, you know, they're featuring this, you know, this like quarter or yeah, yeah, you're like more than a two dozen new books and like ours is one of the top six featured. And in fact, it's the most prominent of all of them on there. They devote two full pages in that catalog.

Hey, you know, it's Nate. If you can see this, guys, this is NT Rotsney book. It gets a little tiny thing, but my clock on is the front of the catalog.

Just just note that. Let's just know. Yeah, that's that's great.

I want to know who did your artwork on that too. I like that artwork. It's pretty neat.

Zondervin did it, but the actually, the the image of Jesus on there, I'll tell you this real quick, because it's a cool story. I was getting something framed in a frame shop and I saw this icon of Jesus and it was gorgeous. They were framing it.

And I said, where'd you get that? And they said, we have a local artist who does these and donates it to the Catholic church. I said, do you think she would do one for me on the risen Jesus? And well, I don't know. And he asked if asked the artist if I could contact her.

She said, yes, I did. And she did one for us on on the risen Christ. I've got it in my office.

It's pretty large. And it's got a lot of marks on it like you find on the shroud of Turin. And actually the stuff on it that's gold is real gold paint.

And it's just beautiful. And so she did that for our ministry. I had to pay her a little bit, but relatively speaking, it wasn't much.

I mean, it's a really high quality thing. Well, when you use these kinds of things and a museum painting is involved, like on my book by Oxford University Press, the first one, I got to pay like, I don't know, it's like 20 cents for every cover that uses that because it goes to the museum. This one? No, the one through Oxford, the one with the white cover.

Oh, it goes a little different. I got to pay like 20 cents for every time a book is sold to use that because that's from a museum. They've got a copyright on it.

So I suggested to Zondubin, I said, look, I own this. And I took a picture of it. We could do this.

And so they used it. They said, man, that looks great. And so that's what they put on there.

Now, of course, I've got the full thing. They only included part of it on there. But yeah, that's the, that's the only copy of it.

That's the only time that has ever appeared in public. That is really cool. What a cool story.

And yeah, it really jumped out to me. I'm an art person. And you are too little known fact about Michael O'Connor.

He plays jazz saxophone. Not a lot of used to. Used to.

I haven't done it very long time. Give you six months, you'll be able to do it again. That's your retirement planner.

Every time it plans, we're gonna start a jazz band one day. That's we've already talked about it. Already got a contract.

We ought to do that. We ought to do that at ETS one year. Just have a live jazz band with a bunch of us senators.

That would be fun. That would be a lot of fun. That would be kind of fun.

The only thing is in order to get back into playing shape again, I have to take time away from my research. And I just don't want to do that. And I have a hobby.

I do, but I have a different one. Okay. All right.

Well, Mike, man, we appreciate it. We've went about 15 minutes or so over our time. And you've been gracious with us.

I know you're a very busy man. But you always make time for people, man. I've noticed that about you.

And I appreciate you. I appreciate the work you're doing and the depth of scholarship and the work you're doing and how personal you are in person. Like we just appreciate that.

I know many people agree with you. Probably less people disagree with you anymore. But everybody loves you, man.

So keep up the good work. Keep being a lot of Jesus. I love what you're doing.

Love your ministry. And I hope you'll keep doing what you're doing because you are a valuable warrior for the kingdom. Thanks a bunch for doing what you do, Bill.

Well, I do appreciate that, man. That means a lot coming from you, Mike. So yeah, we've, thanks for all the support.

Help mentorship. Rather, we stand on the shoulders of giants and we all do. And I can say that you're one of them.

Appreciate it, man. And we will see you. We'll see you soon.

Have a good night. You too. All righty, guys.

Well, that brings us up to a halt here. Been a great night. And I appreciate you all sticking along this long.

I think this probably one of the biggest stuff you'd podcast as we've had largest viewing audience. Certainly the most comments, we broke records with comments tonight. And just do appreciate you guys just being interested in this podcast and keep watching.

Keep locking, keep subscribing and keep sharing our videos around. If you think this is valuable, hit your social media outlets, like just go ahead and share and share it all over and get people out there listening to this stuff. I hope that we have a whole lot of people reading this book.

That's my hope. So thank you guys. God bless you.

God be with you and keep us in your prayers. We shall see you next week, probably a little bit earlier, but next week, have a good one. See you guys.

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.