Continuing to talk about arguments from silence in biblical studies today. Too often biblical scholars fail to recognize the randomness of saliency. What one author thinks to record or not record needn't have, and often doesn't have, any heavy explanation. Recognizing that it's often a bad idea to put a high probability on the prediction that *this* person will report *this* thing in *this* document is not at all akin to deciding that our senses are unreliable. It's more like realizing that it's very difficult to predict who will fall in love with whom. Or realizing based on empirical evidence that a particular symptom isn't always found in a particular disease. It's recognizing the actual quality of variability in human decisions to report.

Here again is Tim McGrew's article on arguments from silence in history.

https://timothymcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Argument-from-Silence-Acta-Analytica-Tim-2013.pdf

This week I'm starting a 3-part series on arguments from silence. Last year Testify channel rightly rejected a skeptical challenge to the Virgin Birth on the grounds that it isn't recorded in the Gospel of Mark. Here's that video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXlZPjFmY9E&t=74s

But philosopher Dustin Crummett challenged the video, saying that Testify's argument is like rejecting sensory reliability just because we can find some cases where our senses lead us astray. And supposedly rejecting the argument from silence in history is like not making the sensible prediction that a brother we're in frequent contact with would tell us if he won the lottery.

I'll be responding to both of these claims in this episode and two more.

Here is a professional paper by Timothy McGrew on problems with the argument from silence in history:

https://timothymcgrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Argument-from-Silence-Acta-Analytica-Tim-2013.pdf

In this, probably the last in my current series on editorial fatigue, I discuss another instance of "sudden onset fatigue syndrome," according to Mark Goodacre. Goodacre postulates that Luke eliminates the fact that Jesus was in a house when the paralytic was brought to him, then suffers "fatigue" and reintroduces reference to the house when he gets to the point where the paralytic's friends go up onto the roof. But this so-called "fatigue" comes up almost immediately after the verse in which Goodacre is insisting that Luke eliminates the house! And Luke has even implied a house a bit earlier by saying that they were trying to bring their friend "in." Goodacre carries this to the point of a wild overstatement--that in Luke men are going up to the top of a house which Jesus has not entered. But of course Luke has never indicated nor even implied that Jesus "has not entered" a house. He simply didn't mention the house immediately in the very first verse of the story, as Mark did.

This series shows the enormous implausibility of Goodacre's editorial fatigue theories.

Lay readers should be encouraged that so-called experts in Gospels studies do not have some special "line" on interpretive truth about the Gospels which allows them to discern that the evangelists are making factual changes in the stories. Though Goodacre scatters his article with Greek quotations, there is not some hidden "Greek wisdom" that shows that Goodacre's editorial fatigue theories are right. Instead, his theories defy legitimate, common sense reading and reasoning.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Freebibleimages.org

Thanks to Erik Manning for splicing this video when I had to record it in two segments.

Here I talk about the claim of editorial fatigue in Matthew's version of the beheading of John the Baptist. I argue that Goodacre takes a rigid, un-nuanced view of Herod's plausible motives, placing Matthew and Mark into artificial conflict with one another.

I also coin the term "sudden fatigue onset syndrome" to draw attention to the claim that an author has suffered "editorial fatigue" even though he has written only a short passage since he supposedly made a decision to change the facts. The suddenness of the supposed fatigue calls Goodacre's whole theory into question.

Something I originally intended to include in this video but in the end didn't mention is an undesigned coincidence early in Matthew's version of the death of John the Baptist. Matthew mentions that Herod was speaking to his servants when suggesting that Jesus might be John the Baptist risen from the dead. This little detail is unique in Matthew. How could Matthew know what Herod was saying to his servants? Is this just made up? Over in Luke 8 we find that Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's household manager, was a follower and financial supporter of Jesus' ministry. This provides a very plausible route for this information to reach the Christian community. If this is the case, then contra Goodacre, Matthew did have a factual source about Herod other than Mark's account of the beheading of John the Baptist, meaning that Matthew can add to our understanding of Herod's motives and feelings about John the Baptist.

This week I continue to examine Mark Goodacre's arguments that Luke invented the Parable of the Minas himself and tried (ineptly) to make it look like a parable that Jesus really told. Does evidence of "editorial fatigue" support this claim? Not at all. Here I argue that the claims that there is something aesthetically wrong with the parable and that this is the sign of Luke's clumsy invention are dubious and subjective. Jesus would have been completely within his rights to start out by mentioning ten servants and then deciding to detail what happened to only three of them. And the claim of "bad math" in the parable is based, ironically, on a wooden literalism (of which more conservative interpreters are often falsely accused) such that Jesus and the servants couldn't refer to the servant whose mina had earned ten more as "having ten."

Here is Goodacre's influential article:

https://markgoodacre.org/Q/fatigue.htm

Thumbnail courtesy of freebibleimages.org

Mark Goodacre says that Luke invented a new Parable of the Minas (Luke 19:11-27), trying to make it different from the Parable of the Talents told in Matthew 25:14-30. But, says Goodacre, Luke made up a clunky parable (that Jesus never really told) due to "editorial fatigue," and we can find the signs of this in the parables themselves.

Here I discuss the question of whether a 10 vs. 1 pattern is really especially typical of Luke, something Goodacre claims is a giveaway of Luke's invention. Where would mainstream NT scholars be without cherry picking and illusory "patterns"?

Goodacre's influential article is available here free:

https://markgoodacre.org/Q/fatigue.htm

I also refer to this monograph:

https://archive.org/details/gouldergospelsex0000good

And this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Synoptic-Problem-through-Understanding-Bible/dp/0567080560

Here I discuss Mark Goodacre's claim that the feeding of the five thousand in Luke shows signs of "editorial fatigue." According to Goodacre, Luke factually changes the location of the feeding to a city and then just two verses later slips back into including elements of the story that are incompatible with this made-up setting. So he "ruins the story."

I bring a little rigorous common sense to bear to show how unjustified this theory is.

Here is Goodacre's article:

https://markgoodacre.org/fatigue.pdf

Thumbnail courtesy of FreeBibleImages.org

Today I start a new series on Mark Goodacre's claims that we find what he calls editorial fatigue in the Synoptic Gospels. These are theories that the Gospel authors started out trying to change something in a source but then grew fatigued and stopped making edits consistent with that change. In this introductory episode I explain more about what "editorial fatigue" is and how it relates to the issue of complexity, burden of proof, and the Synoptic problem. I also point out the self-insulating nature of New Testament scholarship which requires that you show deference to certain theories rather than rejecting them completely.

Here is Goodacre's influential paper on editorial fatigue:

https://markgoodacre.org/fatigue.pdf

Recently Dr. Michael Licona claimed on the Potential Theist channel that a majority of critical scholars writing today affirm that Mark wrote the Gospel traditionally attributed to him and that Peter was his main source. He also said that what these scholars grant means that the resurrection narrative in Mark is "carefully rooted" in eyewitness testimony.

The claim that a majority of critical scholars affirm Markan authorship and Petrine sourcing for the Gospel of Mark is surprising. When a scholar like Richard Bauckham argues for this thesis the strong impression one gets is that he is going up against the majority view in critical scholarship. Where is Licona getting this claim?

Apparently both Licona and Gary Habermas are basing this claim on the MA thesis research of one of Dr. Licona's students, Joshua Pelletier.

In this episode I discuss what actual numbers Pelletier and Licona find in their discussion of this research. The astounding outcome is that Licona states explicitly that 50% of scholars in Pelletier's literature survey (and even at that only 50% of scholars who gave their own opinion on the matter--some were silent) affirmed traditional authorship. This includes all legitimately relevant categories in the survey--outright affirmation of Markan authorship, affirmation that it is "probably" or "plausibly" written by Mark. No more than 80 scholars fell into these categories, put together. Yet Licona and Pelletier in that very context assert a majority! 50% is not a majority. It seems that they must have confused a majority with a plurality.

When Gary Habermas reports the supposed outcomes of this research in his recent resurrection book, he makes the further mistake of stating that it was a majority of the 207 scholars that Pelletier read who affirmed the conjunction of Markan authorship and Petrine sourcing! Apparently he didn't understand that 47 did not state an opinion on the matter.

There is also the further inflation of this statistical claim by stating that this was a majority of *critical* scholars, when there was no apparent limitation of scholars by critical stance but only by broad credential.

In short, this claim is based on a series of rather shocking errors. Yet now it is passing into apologetic lore.

Here are the videos cited. Licona on Potential Theist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0aFUNcF-T8&t=1924s

Licona and Pelletier add up the numbers on Markan authorship:

https://youtu.be/9TMY3VI-K9U?si=VsdfZI8haEI5MNb1&t=1837

Licona and Pelletier discuss numbers and scholarly opinions in Pelletier's survey on a Petrine source:

https://youtu.be/EbBcwb8wtVk?si=fH3_oT3s_HheA5za&t=1383

Habermas's recent book: In the video I give page numbers to Habermas.

https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-1-Evidences/dp/1087778603/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.LNu9h_WqqEh2X3drekhNaY0ew2frT1gdqlY8m1meDTZ6z9gw3Zdb8fHHOSATKd5ziDhFMXA-U25AL6Je5BnMMS3KJjoEFG0cOCShiG9WcsTU0PZNqJMlr-QRH5Hb4Aj4sYIjgG9S8B74AavFXe_WN0HhJSfC4UQoN7QqEKS_ohx7fVjk3IoHIznc-kwMD52GRHMybPZvmehWb5XvQkbx5_RxCLTWrNlUiQpY9RnKVqtH0My8NezjeWBMwofZFi1vcnmE8kWcgRkk8T2VThJ3SEj79eqYlcBfew22jDHIHSU.2o9KBvCSWkyY3HjOsW-TKB6Um-kLpjlpN5bzwx4cclk&dib_tag=se&hvadid=414549576473&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9017271&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=b&hvrand=3920972602515452654&hvtargid=kwd-301749040691&hydadcr=22538_9636739&keywords=gary+habermas+books&qid=1712933555&sr=8-1

In a recent discussion with Potential Theist, Dr. Michael Licona said that most critical scholars, even if they don't acknowledge traditional authorship of the 4th Gospel, do acknowledge that a personal disciple of Jesus was a "primary source" for the information in the Gospel. He tried to apply this to strengthen the case for the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Do the majority of critical scholars really acknowledge anything interesting or helpful about the eyewitness source of John? Not really. In this video I debunk that claim, first by pointing out that Dr. Licona apparently misunderstands Dale Allison (whom he cites by name) on this topic, and then by reading passages from Richard Bauckham that show that Bauckham is going up against scholarly consensus concerning the eyewitness source of the 4th Gospel.

My purpose in pointing this out is to make it clear that, as so often is the case, an argument for a "conservative" conclusion cannot be based on some surprising admission by the majority of critical scholars. Instead, it has to be based upon arguments that challenge the critical scholarly consensus at a far earlier point. I believe these arguments are available and strong, but Christian apologists need to break the bad habit of trying so hard to wring significant argumentative value out of claims that "most critical scholars acknowledge..." something important for the historical value of the Gospels.

For arguments that John's Gospel is reliable historical reportage, check out The Eye of the Beholder. https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1