Lecture - Dr Peter Williams - New Evidences the Gospels were Based on Eyewitness Accounts
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- Опубліковано 2 кві 2011
- This is from The Lanier Library Lecture Series titled New Evidences the Gospels were Based on Eyewitness Accounts by Dr Peter Williams given March 5, 2011
The authorship of the first four books of the New Testament has fascinated scholars for centuries. If the authors were eyewitnesses, one could assume greater reliability. If not, then questions are naturally raised about the historicity of details in the writings. Because the first three Gospels are so similar, many theories have been proposed and argued to explain the sources of verbatim sections, as well as the unique material. Did Mark rely on Peter for eyewitness details? Luke admits his use of other sources, but did he use Mark or Matthew or both? What about Matthew and John? New evidence in the discussion of these questions and more will be the focus of this lecture.
Dr. Peter Williams. is a biblical scholar and also the Director of Tyndale House, Cambridge.
The Lanier Theological Library is an exciting new resource for all students and scholars of the Bible. The LTL is a research library and is open to everyone who will use it responsibly. Within the library, you will find a comprehensive collection of books, periodicals, historical documents and artifacts with topics ranging from Church History and Biblical Studies to Egyptology and Linguistics. The LTL regularly hosts events with noted authors, guest lecturers, and researchers who will challenge you both academically and spiritually. Come to the Lanier Theological Library and find serious tools for serious study.
For more info on this: www.laniertheologicallibrary.org/
For those interested in Dr Peter Williams and the translation work he is involved in here is a UA-cam clip from those proceedings here:
www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Mx06m...!
This summer the Translation Oversight Committee of the English Standard Version (ESV) met at Tyndale House in Cambridge, England to consider improvements in certain specific English word choices. For example, should the Hebrew word 'ebed and the Greek word doulos be translated "slave," "bondservant" or "servant"? The question involved lexicography, biblical theology, and both ancient and modern culture.
During deliberations, the BBC stopped by and filmed a segment, which they reduced to a four-minute clip--reflecting hours of discussion based on hundreds of hours of scholarly research. Speaking in the video are C. John Collins (Covenant Theological Seminary), Peter Williams (Senior Warden of Tyndale House, Cambridge, and a past and future presenter in the Lanier Theological Library Lecture Series), Gordon Wenham (Trinity College, Bristol; son of the late John Wenham of Oxford, who contributed the Foreword to the second edition of The Fire That Consumes), Paul House (Beeson Divinity School), Wayne Grudem (Phoenix Seminary), and Lane Dennis (Crossway Books & Bibles).
I am a Christian Believer from India...and it's a blessing to hear from this speaker and this message.
thank you. Indian believers have long been attracted to my channel. Blessings to you and your country.
@@fleetwd1 Thank you so much.
This man dropped a jewel like it was all in a days work. God bless this man!
yes to Pete it probably is. Tyndale House Cambridge of which he is head (Warden) is a great place for serious Biblical research. Just in a days work really quite fitting..
Indeed I never knew of this type of scholarship for the public to learn from. I mean I knew of scholarship and lectures but this is and seems to be the best of the best when it comes to biblical scholarship. Thanks for your upload i'll definitely watch these videos for serious scholarship God bless you and yours.
thank you. I have been blessed to be a small part of this. Mark Lanier gave me permission to post these videos that The Lanier Theological Library in Houston Texas offers. all Lectures and Scholar Panel Discussions are free but you must sign up to attend on their website. Pete is a regular lecturer. This was his first. many world class lecturers have come. It is gaining a reputation of a place to come give a lecture to reach a wider audience. i have a link to the library site under description. but here it is again: www.laniertheologicallibrary.org/
Amen and thanks for the information and i'm glad you can post it, You'll definitely see me around.
Hiding in plain site of the greek language of the four Gospels is an intrinsic 1st century Jewish identity in parables, sayings, word plays, idioms, prose and polemic. It's there and it is UNDENIABLE and you don't find this in later gnostic writings. Such a vivid contrast is but one of many proofs that the four Gospels are authentic and that the gnostic gospels are later non Jewish Greco-Roman forgeries.
Peter Williams is among the leading scholars at Tyndale, Cambridge University.
His work, especially on NT studies, is currently among the best in our time.
This lecture evaluates the authenticity of selected Bible segments. Watch and enjoy. Praise be the Lord. Amen
I first watched this lecture years ago, and I keep coming back to it to refresh all the evidence to my mind. I've linked many to this video as I believe it contains some very important and scientific evidence for the truth of the Gospels; Undeniable evidence. Dr. Williams also is a awesome lecturer, he keeps you attentive and adds some laughs. A big thank you to fleetwd1 for uploading this gem.
thank you, it is truly my pleasure. Peter has become a dear friend. this was the first video of the lecture series that went viral through the efforts of those like yourself. blessings to you for being a part of it's success. i like to revisit these as well. Greek teachers often say repetition is the mother of wisdom. It certainly helps my learning.
Same here I come back to it every year or 2 for the same purpose.
Can the skeptical commenters here please lift their game? There are plenty of insults - "pathetic", "nonsense", "long-winded load of double-talk", "tripe", "BUNK", "outlandish", "magic", "utter baloney", "falacious", "monkey-text", "ridiculous" - but very little comprehension, let alone interaction.
its all they have, Luke--lol
I'm very skeptical, but I agree with your comment. We should be able to disagree in our discussions without the insults.
Marco Hernandez being skeptical is all good, just don’t grow cynical. That erases any ability to reason.......
Bad Gator I agree.
You have adequately described the body of popular atheist arguments.
I’m glad I found this channel. Thank you Dr Peter Williams for the great teaching. God bless you ✊❤️
Jamal K, as am I. Mark Lanier is a true servant of the Lord.
All the four gospel writers wrote these incidents from the life of Jesus Christ at the time when christians were being persecuted and church was growing majorly outside of Jerusalem itself. Their accounts were written from first hand accounts and witnesses.
There was no reason for these to be 'made up' since the apostles of Jesus Christ were still able to correct them if there would have been any attempt to dramatize or falsify these actual incidents.
These gospel writers also took great pains to collect these information, like Luke, who heard from eye witnesses and compiled the details.
Biblical and skeptics both agree on the realibilty and canonicity of the Gospels.
Gospel accounts are politically, geographically, culturally and historically accurate. No other manuscripts of ancient accounts have been transmitted and dated to the earliest copies except the Gospels. This is due to the fact that early Christians took their own life in their hands to copy and transmit the Gospels and spread the word. There was no central counsel or administration to plan and forge these gospel accounts.
Basically there was no free time for early church to make up fables and fictional passages, since they were running from door to door with their lives. The gospel writers and the early church were just following their Master Jesus Christ in their way of life and collective responsibility to the world..Amen.
@Dave The Brahman Where do you get your info from I wonder? Make it up in your mind maybe? We have papyri from the early 2nd century (125ad or earlier), and the full Gospels by 180ad or so. We also have writings from the Church fathers, one possibly from the late first century. Several from the 2nd century, which quote thousands of passages from the Apostle's writings. We even have writings from opponents of Christianity from the early 2nd century, which also quote Gospel passages. Your assertions have been refuted.
@Dave The Brahman Sorry bud, but all I asserted is from Biblical Scholars of the highest rank. P52 now from the 3rd century? LMAO, so your source and where you've been studying is Wikipedia I see.
@Dave The Brahman How would listening to a nobody's baseless assertions help me understand the matter? Maybe its you who is lost on the matter?
Refreshing methodology in reflecting on the Gospels!
An xtra-ordinary tack on the dating of the gospels. I find it riveting. I'd never have conceived of such an approach. We'll done Dr Williams.
As a follower of Jesus who has left traditional Evangelical Christianity, I find this lecture very refreshing and am grateful to Dr Williams for sharing it with us. He did not come across as trying to force anyone to see it his way and he did with pertinent statistics and profiling make the 4 biblical Gospels plausible. I have stepped away from being a religious Bible thumper realizing I can not change or fix anyone but myself and that takes letting go and letting God. And a Jewish Rabbi said nearly 2000 years ago one should work on getting the plank out of his own eye and since I've been whittling away at the plank in my eye, the speck that loomed so large in Dr Williams' eye has suddenly disappeared. Blessings on your work and to you Dr Williams.
Well said... I am on the same path.
Tell the story of your journey to others. Please share about your personal reflection and truths. Such stories are the most encouraging to hear and to understand. Most Christians fail to acknowledge personal failings (holier than thou), and its a turn off to unbelievers who feel inadequate or aren't interested also it kind of eliminates the need for ongoing salvation but this is an honest testimony of personal struggle and I'm as someone spiritually bumbling around right now I'm encouraged to hear it. Thank you!
It’s really helped me to know . U saved not only one but many because I m going to tell many . Thanks
The man who made Harvard Law school what it is today, Simon Greenleaf, argues that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the best attested to historic event ever.
Does Harvard Law School teach 6th grade math?
365-360 = 5
5 / 2 = 2.5
This math demonstrates that it is the Sun that dies and resurrects on the 3rd day.
365 days in a year.
360 degrees in the earth's orbit around the sun.
The ancients measured the sun move 1 degree everyday, with the exception of the 2 solstices, Winter and Summer. Thus, 5 / 2 = 2.5 days the sun does not move at each solstice.
Thus, the Sun dies in a "coffin" which is the constellation of Ophiuchus. The 13th secret sign of the zodiac, like Joseph of Aramathea being the 13th secret disciple.
and then the sun resurrects on the 3rd day or 2.5 days.
I think any 6th grader can prove that the resurrection of the Sun on the 3rd day is the best-attested event that happens every year during the winter solstice.
You must be one of the group that is planning to land on the sun at nighttime. Good luck. Maybe you should throw those garbage astrological books in the fire before you get thrown in the lake of fire.
VegasKJV The lake of fire is the Milky Way. You see the Serpens Cauda and the Serpens Caput make a circle around Ophiuchus, thus Ophiuchus is where you go for eternity or like Oroboros, for infinity. If you don't make it to heaven (Ophiuchus) then you are caste in to the lake of fire, which is the Milky Way.
If you would like for me to explain a biblical story as an astrological allegory just ask. I aim to please.
Thanks for your opinion Ra Mabus. Would you please explain Proverbs 18:2 as an astrological allegory? Thanks!
Proverbs 18:2 "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion."
And Greenleaf should have lost his position at Harvard for making what any 1st year law student could tell you is a demonstrably false statement.
His argument basically was that the gospels would constitute solid evidence in a court of law and that as such they prove that Jesus both existed and that he was the Son of God.In addition he knows of no other event in ancient history that we better evidence for.
He wasn't a historian and we know much more about ancient history now than we did in the early 1800's when he was writing - so we can perhaps excuse him being wrong in his claims about the attestation of the resurrection compared to other historic events.
However his obviously false claims about the gospels acceptability as evidence from a legal standpoint are simply lies. They fail every single test of admissibility that we have.
Love this lecture. Possibly my favorite lecture ever on literary Biblical criticism.
Thank you for the hard work you've done, interesting angle.
Well worth the time, it is nice to see the science behind the Scholarship
Jerald McGowin Anyone can make a compelling argument even from the Lord of the Rings
and bitch around about what each character said in the books.
*****
No you don't!!!! Give me your best!!!!
*****
BTW, Gandalf DID exist, as a fictional character in a movie, so it is relative.
+Oscar Alvarez donald trump is comming for u where are u goin to hide? under the bed?
felizz happy
I am in the UK, that prick DT can visit me anytime!!!
Best speach I ever see. Well done
Absolutely masterful! Thank you so much, and Lord bless you!
For all those who commented about evidence (or lack thereof) please see Josh McDowell's books. There is much documented evidence out there. You have to be willing to look and dig a little with no presupositions. Just look at the evidence.
McDowell's book suffers from an extreme form of Confirmation Bias - a cognitive distortion that results in poor scholarship. Good scholarship presents all the material, both pro and con, and then makes a decision that best fits the totality. McDowell only presents material that conforms to an already decided conclusion - and many elements of his material are mutually contradictory. Not a recommended book for anyone but someone who is already convinced of McDowell's conclusion.
Rosemary Lyndall Wemm If that is the case, then why is McDowell even a Christian? When he first examined the evidence for Christianity, his conclusion actually subverted his confirmation bias--any confirmation bias he might've had at the time would've been directed toward proving Christianity to be wrong!
Philip McNiel I don't think you understand what is meant by "confirmation bias". McDowell only quotes primary sources that agree with his final conclusion. This is a biased investigation with only one possible outcome. Academic and judicial inquiry requires that opposing views be given equal time and that the witnesses for these views not be prejudicial. For the most part McDowell completely ignores contradictory viewpoints and arguments but in the rare instances where he mentions them he quotes "strawman" versions from secondary and tertiary sources that are sympathetic to his conclusions. He had a non rational emotional investment in proving that his wife's beliefs were valid - and avoided any sources that might have challenged a conclusion of this nature. In summary, it was a mistrial based on biased presentation of evidence for only one side.
If I remember correctly, McDowell set out with the goal of disproving the Bible, and assumed it would be easy to blow it right away. He was not a Christian, and scoffed at Christians, at the time when some Christians challenged him to examine the evidence for himself. Seeking to scoff at them, he decided to tear their "evidence" apart. It was only when he looked into it--with confirmation bias pulling the other direction--that he began to accept what the Bible had to say.
Rosemary Lyndall Wemm, I guess you are unaware that he started with the objective to take down the faith. Otherwise you wouldn’t ascribe to this kind of nonsense. He already did the homework. You are the one starting with a bias. Wake up! Jesus came for all who will call on His name.
The Gospel of John claims to be an eyewitness account: The Apostle John was an eyewitness to the events he describes. ‘’The disciple whom Jesus loved’’ is described as being present at various events described in the book of John. At the very end of the book of John we are told:
‘Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper…’ (John 21:20). We are then told, regarding the disciple whom Jesus loved that ‘This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.’ (John 21:24).
I found this talk highly illuminating.
Peter, God bless you! Thanks so much!
Wow, that was really interesting!
that was a very insightful and helpful lecture. thank you and may god continue to bless you
Fascinating! Thank you.
What fascinating evidence! Thank you, Dr. Williams.
23:14, "People can get really interested in broken texts; they can make up the bits in between." This is what is technically called "conjectural emendation". The probability that the guess is accurate largely depends on whatever textual evidence is extant.
Brilliant, thank you Dr. Williams! :-)
Fascinating information, some of which I'd not heard or thought about before!
Brilliant, well said, well argued.
This is an outstanding use of logic and data that needs to be heard everywhere. Just goes to show that if you don't believe in Jesus, it's not because there is no evidence. It's that no amount of evidence will convince you.
P.S. - Does anyone else think Dr. Williams looks like the English Jim Carrey?
don't know. when i google all i get is Jim Carrey Canadian Actor.
I bet he ages better.
Very well explained, I need help can any body tell me where these artifacts are kept, please help me
not sure what you mean by these artifacts. Peter used a algorithm that was created in the early 2000s and then fed into it the texts of the 4 Gospels and the book of Acts. then they did the same for the other gospels that did not make it into the biblical canon. the algorithm analyzed the content to determine how familiar the writers would be with the area being described. it is not foolproof evidence but the contrast between the Gospels and Acts to other gospels written later was a stark contrast. So the new evidence is an algorithm's analysis. I do not know where the algorithm is located but it is likely this project was done at Tyndale House Research Library in Cambridge in the UK. Peter is Warden there. So perhaps they could answer you question. just google Tyndale House Cambridge,
Loved this, thank you...🙏
I love the Karate analogy -- it really captures the spirit of the Christian tradition. To extend the anagolgy a bit, how can we best live our tradition in this new, smaller, MMA world? 🤗
any suggestions as to how?
@@fleetwd1 I've got a few thoughts. We should try really hard to love each other and take all the Christian traditions seriously. After all, how can we possibly expect anyone to take the faith seriously when they see how much we hate each other? 😥 There's more we can do beyond that, but that seems like the obvious place to start.
How can we balance the proper goal of having good doctrine, while treating with dignity anyone who claims Jesus as lord and believes in their heart that God raised him from the dead?
To return to the analogy, that would be like adding BJJ sparring to our toolkit -- entangled combat, no hitting. And pushing people away means you aren't doing it right. And we should shut up and just worship together -- call it a "hug break"?
Great video!
Yes it was among the favorites on my channel. Pete has said he has gotten more name recognition from this videos popularity.
This is great!
Great work.
Which of his points did you disagree with, and why?
Thank you for the video
Great. I will turn to the gospels for guidance on agriculture, botany and geography etc.
only if you are living in that region. the algorithm used to evaluate authentic historical writings was used by Tyndale House Cambridge to test the gospels and other writings claiming to be gospels. the authentic ones fared well the others fell flat.
Excellent. Thanks very much for this.
you solved my biggest problem great job
Excellent
John 17 : 18 "I also sent them forth into the world and I am sanctifying
myself in their behalf that they also may be sanctified by means of
Truth."
If anyone claims that the gospels were written by people so foreign to the land and people concerned, I stand corrected.
It would not be a strawman, but selecting the weakest counter-argument, which is valid.
What stays very very weak is the argument that, since the authors got probable names and specific places right, it follows that any supernatural claims made about such names and places must also be credible.
"I saw Madonna levitate over Boston on July 4th, Independence Day". Credible?
This is the internet. Thanks to all the niches, groups, categories, and sub-categories, all preaching on the internet is done to the choir.
Robert Eisenman, a scholar of ancient Palestine and the Dead Sea Scrolls, quite convincingly shows that Jews of this time were mining Isaiah for passages to interpret as prophecy for events of the day. Jews all over the Empire had access to these
old Testament and would have gotten details about Palestine from there. He also shows how Luke could have reworked many of Josephus' stories about the siege of Jerusalem.
Cornelius and the Gospel of Peter: The case against Mohammed and John Dominic Crossan
While I agree that your synopsis reflects the operating consensus of current commentary, it has been my experience that the Gospels, themselves, can shed a great deal of light on the commentaries. Among other things, there is a nascent consensus that the Gospel of Luke and Acts can be seen as an amicus brief for the defense of Paul in Rome, which means that the timing of the commencement of the two volumes occurs during Paul’s imprisonment by Felix in Caesarea in 59 CE and continues up until Paul’s execution in 66. This means that Mark was available to Luke (and Matthew) prior to this instant and could have been available as early as 40 CE.
Which fits my time table. As I say, Cornelius is the author of what is called the Gospel of Jesus according to Mark. First of all, I tend to see the four gospels and Acts as being a coordinated polemic designed to a dramatic, albeit accurate, account of the essence of the ministry of Jesus, which means that certain elements, such as the Nativity episodes, are constructed to produce certain narrative objectives leading into the divine Truth of the good news. In this respect, my recent acquaintance with Sura 74:30 of the Qua’ran (which establishes for me the divine nature of that parabolic literature) establishes the general accuracy of Luke’s account of the events leading up to His birth in Sura 19:19, while Sura 12 has been revealed to me that Matthew was not created to establish Jesus as the Messiah but as the essential text to bring the children of Ishmael into covenant with Abraham through a personal relationship with Jesus, Son of God. The fact that Mohammad failed in this task reflecs his disobedience as reflected by Sura 74:30.
It is also clear to me that Cornelius is the centurion which encounters Jesus in Matthew 8 and Luke 7, of whom Jesus sanctifies with the immortal blessing “Not in all of Israel have I found such faith”. As you say, nobody around Jesus understands who He is, but this godfearing Pagan identifies His righteousness long before even His enemies fully recognize His threat to the status quo. The fact that he is not mentioned in Mark has to do with subsequent events, including those covered in The Gospel of Peter, which I will comment upon momentarily. Given the timing of his approach to Jesus, and the happy result for his sick servant, his example emboldens Jaraius to approach Him to heal his sick daughter in spite of his previous censorship of His ministering to the man with the palsied hand.
Luke’s commentary regarding this incident reveals that Cornelius had a substantial relationship with Jaraius and his congregation and had apparently helped finance the construction of the synagogue. His demurral of Jesus’s offer to visit his home reflects his understanding of the Jewish purity laws which are discussed at some length in a similar idiom in Mark 7 And, of course, Acts 10 emphasizes the righteousness of Cornelius by the mere fact that he received a vision in the middle of the day to send for Peter as well as the fact that he feared god and gave alms. The fact that his household was in Caesarea tends to indicate that the range of his duties extended routinely into Capernaum. Except for his Baptism and the last week of His life, virtually the entire action of Mark occurs north of Samaria and under the official jurisdiction and observation of Cornelius.
And it is during this period that Cornelius began to maintain a routine intelligence dossier on Jesus which describes the narrative arc of Mark, but does not contain the content associated with Peter. The Romans were superb at building roads, making war and documenting everything and it would fall into his military duties to create this dossier and to maintain a network of spies and informants to keep tabs on potential insurgents as a function of local security. And, with His baptism, Jesus definitely fell into this category. The fact that He turns out to be a benign threat to Rome was probably apparent to the spy-masters by the time the centurion approached Jesus in Matthew, but it js something I did in Vietnam very informally and it arises from an abundance of caution.
In addition, this intelligence journal would have been kept in Latin. While Greek was the language of the courts and formal society, the Romans fought in Latin and ran their internal affairs in Latin and what ever intelligence product that was produced during this period was produced in Latin.
Finally, Cornelius and his household are the only people to have been baptized by the Holy Spirit before being baptized by water, including Jesus. He was brought forward by the Holy Spirit for a particular task and it wasn’t just to introduce the novelty of the gentile admission into the Jewish cult. That became Peter’s task and, thereafter, Paul’s mission, to take the Gospel to the peoples of the world.
But Cornelius’s task was to build upon his confession at the foot of the cross. I tned to believe the centurion in Mark 15:39 was Cornelius, but it really doesn’t matter. It is my contention that the narrative of Mark, without Peter’s content, was being circulated within the Roman legions immediately after that first Easter. This is where the Gospel of Peter comes in: while Peter supplied Cornelius the content associated with him in Mark during the extended debriefing after the baptism by the Holy Spirit, Cornelius supplied Peter with all the Roman content contained in the other Gospels, but, in particular, the Gospel of Peter. The reasons given for The Gospel of Peter being excluded from the Canon is that it appears that the narrative was assembled from the Synoptic gospels after the fact and that the Gospel “embellished” the events.
And I think this exactly backwards. The narrative may have been embellished in the centuries after the other three gospel’s were available, but I think The Gospel of Peter is part of the Q source Matthew and Luke drew upon for their versions of events. All that Roman content came from somewhere and the alternative source is that it was all invented instead of coming from Cornelius and his colleague. And, of course, at the time, the Disciples had gone to ground for fear of their life: the betrayal of Peter, as a mechanism of staging, establishes that he was the last friendly face Jesus saw until He was marched out to His crucifixion and John makes it clear that no Jewish eyes would have ventured inside the Praetorium for fear of being made unclean.
There are three problems with Peter’s Gospel: the alternative cry of despair, the presence of the Jewish authorities in the cemetery over night and the puppy dog cross with the Greek chorus walk-on. The alternative cry is the most problematic and my guess is this was the single most important factor to keep it out of the canon. But, more important than that, the treatment of the subject matter has a certain elegance of economy without losing the important elements of the aftermath of the execution.
And, as I say, all of these becomes part of the Q source and reflects my contention that this entire episode had a predictable on the 600 Roman soldiers who were witness to their part in the Passion and, by the time Cornelius brought Peter to his house, it had gone through the Roman legions like grass through a goose, but without the content Peter added. Black soldiers in Georgia heard about the massacre at Fort Pillow in Tennessee within days of its occurance.
So, immediately after his debriefing with Peter, Cornelius composed the Gospel of Mark in a spasm of the Holy Spirit and it was largely completed before Mark returned from his sojourn with Paul and Barnabas (this is reminiscent of Handel’s composition of Messiah in 24 days after receiving the lyrics from Charles Jennens in 1741). The consensus is that Mark wrote the gospel in Rome for a Roman audience around 70, but I contend that it was written by a Roman for the military market that was already talking about the episode throughout the Roman empire. The prose style reflects the quality of the Roman military narrative found in Caesar’s Commentaries and the official correspondence of Claudius Lysias to Felix in Acts 23:26 - 30. As they say, The Gospel of Mark marches.
As to the abrupt ending of Mark, there are three apparent reasons: the first is that Cornelius preferred not to become associated with a tract that could end up in crucifixion for sedition. I suspect that the name of the centurion in The Gospel of Peter was an alias for the same reason. The second is an issue of habeas corpus: if it appeared that Jesus escaped execution, His guards are liable to replace His body with their own. The narrative goes to a great deal of trouble to establish the chain of custody for His body when it came off the cross. The question may arise, why doesn’t Mark mention the coup-de-grace of the speak thrust in John? Because, for a Roman soldier, dead is dead, The detail of the spear thrust would have been significant to a civilian but just another day at the office for all the Roman guard mount (the little segment where the soldiers decide not to break Jesus’s legs out of spite is just totally characteristic of soldiers more or less universally. It’s like when John McCain got bayoneted when he was captured, a little demonstration of how far “fuck you” goes when you are a POW). In any event, Jesus was dead when Joseph took possession and Cornelius could see no profit to add any detail beyond the revelation of the young man in the empty tomb.
And, thirdly, the Romans were bribed by the Jewish authorities to conceal His resurrection. There is a certain “don’t throw me in that briar patch, Brer Fox” quality to this transaction, but it suits Cornelius’s purposes to honor the terms of the bribe, including the representation that the women told no one. The soldiers who were there were telling the soldiers who weren’t there just exactly what happened around camp fires throughout the Roman empire and everybody agreed this was one Messianic Secret they could keep to themselves.
Now, all this evidence exists in the Gospels, themselves, that and the fact that, 2000 years later, people are doing back flips through their assholes trying to prove it didn’t happen pretty much as written. For example, I tend to agree with John Dominic Crossan’s characterization of Jesus as an Apocalyptic insurgent and the thrust of His social gospel, which Pope Francis embraces with the total investment of his office.
But I diverge with Crossan when it comes to his assertion that Jesus was buried in a shallow grave, dug up and eaten by dogs and that He did not bodily arise and exit His tomb.
Like Mohammad, he is wrong. As Cornelius observed at the time, Jesus is the Son of God and He was crucified until He was dead, was buried in a tomb which was closed by a stone requiring 16 men to move into place and, between then and the first light of the first Easter Sunday, left an empty tomb behind. And all this was put into writing by Cornelius, Christian, before Paul got back from Tarsus.
TLDR
@@JohnFBurrows ?
@@JohnFBurrows TLDR?
His undesigned coincidence section is interesting. This is much more likely to work if the gospels are following historical reportage rather than employing Greco-Roman literary devices .
I may not fully understand your comment but this is not based upon Greco-Roman literary devices. it is based upon an algorithm created in the early 2000s. it evaluates literature as to whether it is a genuine eyewitness account. Tyndale House decided to use this algorithm to evaluate New Testament Gospels and Acts and compare them with noncanonical gospels. this is their research evaluation.. .
@@fleetwd1 : You did not understand my comment. 'Undesigned coincidences' work if the gospels are simple historical reporting. They are much less likely to work if the gospel writers are employing so called Greco-Roman literary devices - an argument that is becoming ever more popular within some Evengelical circles.
@@gerryquinn5578 thanks for clarifying for me.
"The unanimity of the attributions in the second century cannot be explained...other than the assumption that the titles were part of the works from the beginning..It is inconcievable...the Gospels could circulate anonymously for..sixty years.. then in the second century suddenly display unanimous attribution to certain authors..Hengel concludes that the..gospels were never even formally anonymous."
An Introduction to the New Testament (2nd Ed). DA Carson and Douglas Moo. Zondervan:2005.
This guy is great
If you believe what you're claiming about the gospels being based on eyewitness accounts, answer these questions:
1. Which eyewitness could have recorded the conversation between Jesus and Satan in the wilderness?
2. Which eyewitness could have recorded the prayers of Jesus in Gethsemane while his disciples were asleep?
3. Which eyewitness could have recorded the trial of Jesus in Pilate's palace and given us such conflicting accounts of it?
4. Why do Matthew and Luke base their gospels on Mark, who was NOT an eyewitness?
They may not have ALL been completely asleep the whole time. He doesn't name all 12 when complaining about them being asleep. Also he could have told them about it after the resurrection (he was with them off and on for 40 days) Mark was a companion of Peter and traveled with him so he had access to an eyewitness. Luke writes like a professional historian or biographer of that time and was a companion of Paul. Paul knew and met w disciples several times and Luke was likely with him and probably visited w the apostles on his own as well and it is likely he interviewed Mary herself. He has proven to be a very accurate historian. On top of that the Risen Jesus promised them the help of the Holy spirit (Comforter) in guiding them to truth and bringing everything to their remembrance, so no reason he could not have revealed those things to them after he was risen. Remember the question must assume He is who the scriptures SAY he is and that he DID rise from the dead -IF that is TRUE then there is NO problem. If not your question doesn't matter anyway. There is enough evidence (hope u watched the whole video) that they were likely written by eyewitnesses. I don't go by this video alone. This is just one (very interesting) line of evidence. There are many other's and put together make a very strong case. but there isn't space here for all of it would take lots of books (which i have read). I highly recommend "Cold Case Christianity by J Warner Wallace" its a great place to start and is also a unique angle on the subject. I'm not going to continue the conversation cuz i hate typing and am terrible at it. :) so it takes and excessive amount of time for me to type something this long. Just start with that book.
To say that Jesus "could have probably told them" and then claim that the writers are eyewitnesses entirely runs counter to the very definition of an eyewitness account. If the writers themselves did not see for themselves and relied on accounts of others who claimed that they did, then the writings themselves are no longer eyewitness accounts but hearsay testimonies.
+Equine dreams
I am just reading your comment from three months ago. Sorry for the delay. I don't always get email notifications.
You did not answer my questions. Instead you made dubious and unsubstantiated claims about the reliability of Paul, who had nothing at all to do with any of my four questions.
The only attempt you made was in response to my question #2: Which eyewitness recorded the prayers of Jesus? You said "They may not have ALL been completely asleep the whole time." YES. According to Jesus, they were. Read the gospels.
And are all written in 3rd person!
yawn
If anyone wants to read the detailed version of the information contained within this presentation, please look up the following book: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
Worth my time
Also, though the description says that Dr. Williams will focus on the idea of the gospels copying one another (verbatim section, Q doc, etc...), this is not brought up at all except as a minor point (in the questions, I think), and he doesn't discuss it, but merely outlines the common theory and says that he doesn't really accept it.
As that seems like a very significant point, I was disappointed. As an earlier commenter mentioned, the later gospels could be more akin to fan-fiction.
I apologize, but who else laughed with the crowd at 21:35?
God bless you . Your are Man of god
I'm sure Dr. Williams gets a great deal of his information in this wonderful lecture from Dr. Richard Bauckham. I've read Bauckham quite a lot and really enjoy him. I'm curious, however where he get's his information on the statistical analysis of place names and names of people. I find that fascinating and would like to read his source material.
Pete used an algorithm created in the early 21st century that analyzed written work determining the likelihood of it being from an eyewitness account. Tyndale House Cambridge decided to enter the Gospels and the Book of Acts to see how they measured up using this algorithm. Later they decided to also feed into it the other gospels not found in the New Testament as a means of comparison. The Lecture shows the results of this research project.
You are right about Williams and Bauckham they are colleges. I have a Lecture of Richard Bauckham on the Divine and Human Community in the Gospel of John as well. if interested go here: ua-cam.com/video/5vKCVDJiyDE/v-deo.html
@@fleetwd1 That is amazing and extremely interesting. Is this project documented in a book or anything that I could study? I also saved the other lecture you mentioned to watch later. Thank you so much for this channel, it's extremely important information!
@@Hall102 Peter is head of Tyndale House a research library in Cambridge England. (They are not the publishing Tyndale House of the US.)
I do not know for sure if Peter has a book on this subject, but you could contact him through their website here: tyndalehouse.com/
you are welcome. it is my privilege to be able to share the content made available to me.
Great lines of reasoning for eyewitness authorship. Peter Williams always delivers the most persuasive contemporary evidence.
This is a unique exposition on a very important topic. I wish I could "star" this lecture as one of the most intriquing lectures on youtube. Overall, one of the top lectures I have enjoyed on Bible History. Thank you for uploading it for us and our students to review.
yes this one is very unique and popular. I have quite a few of Pete's videos. his one on the Septuagint is also a quite interesting twist ua-cam.com/video/xhmMKwl3KeE/v-deo.html it was given to the 2016 at the Evangelical Theological Society's annual gathering in San Antonio Texas.
There's an interesting bit of information about the frequency of names in the Gospels+Acts and other works of the time, which does lead me to conclude that the stories originated from the region which they describe. He does not look at discrepancies of the Gospels. A common discrepancy within the Gospels is local geography in the events outside of Jerusalem. The later Gospel writers did their best to correct the mistakes of earlier writers. This is evidence against eyewitness testimony.
I realized that this video was posted 9 years ago. Now that we know the authenticity of the Gospel, the word of God. But I am just wondering what one may conclude if Quran is subjected to this kind of test noting that the book mentions Jesus 24x, Mahomet 4x, and Mecca is none? Also by the fact that Quran was not codified until 1924.
@jb san - There are plenty of others online who deal with the reliability or truthfulness of the quran. Check out David Wood or the Apostate prophet for instance. From what I've learnt, the quran cannot withstand any scrutiny whatsoever. We Christians can scrutinize our Bible and Jesus actually told us to, and to use reason, whereas in the Islamic cult it warrants death if a muslim dares to scrutinize the quran or mohamet.
Walter Veith
The Roman & Muslim Connection
Is an eye opening lecture.
Thank you
The argument using video-watching is applicable when we watch videos, because we identify people by seeing their faces. If a book is written it will be necessary differentiate people using secondary identifiers, like their alias or family name. Therefore it comes to no surprise that people remembered names correctly, it does not mean the writer was an eyewitness.
wow, great lecture.
Thanks.
Just like the parable of Lazarus: "If you do not listen to Moses and the prophets then neither will you believe even if someone were to rise from the dead."
God wants to be found. But you have to seek Him out. You can neither prove or disprove Him explicitly. You can only axiomatically accept Him based on the overwhelming depth of evidence thrown at you.
So, telephone game works that way because of whispering & because you must say it only once. How about a school or a town, talking loudly & repeating it many times?
You should compare your NT data with OT data which was base text for all writers in NT
Actually the names attached to those gospels pop up quite early. And if you are going to make up names why would you make up names like "Luke" or "Mark" who weren't apostles themselves. I would recommend reading Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Regardless, his argument doesn't even rely on the name attached to the book. "there are still discrepancies and omissions amongst the three synoptics." They are written from different perspectives. If the same, you would think they were fake
It's rather stunning this apologist is arguing the validity of gospels based on names, when all four gospel authors are anonymous, they never identify themselves or the date they're writing, and we know virtually nothing about the gospel authors. The names Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were assigned by the church later, yes? And while Mark, Matthew and Luke copy from each other, there are still discrepancies and omissions amongst the three synoptics. Why is divinely-inspired text so vague?
So do you have any response to the actual points raised in this talk? Or do you just wish to continue with the No True Scotsman fallacy?
I love how ironic it is that he made the argument toward the start that people have poor ideas of what names are common in places they are not familiar with, and in some cases, even places that they are familiar with, only to then make a comment about how generic it would be to describe an Australian named Bruce.
As an Australian, let me tell you that such an example was actually better evidence of the earlier argument, given that I've never met a single Bruce in my life. 🤣
yes Down Under can be a vast area. I am sure Peter was talking in jest. you know how the English feel toward their former prison mates. I would not let that effect the rest of what Pete has to say. Jewish names were quite different in Alexander Egypt or in Assyria than in the area of the NT writers. and they had no surnames to distinguish and they seemed to only use the added terms when necessary for clarity Like Judas (not Iscariot) John 14:22 ESV KJV GNT NLT AMP NASB CJB NIV adds Judas after not.
There is a kiwi band called Rubicon that has a song called Bruce, which basically just the lyric: "Who would call a kid Bruce anyway?
The poor kid would have to hang his head in shame." over and over again. :)
My niece name my sister gave her was Marivic. From Marjorie and Victor. Ooooo Only one in the world, NOT, other people were using it already.
Very good video. While I understand that he did give a disclaimer for using the term "Palestine" and "Palestinian" as not being a political statement, it's ridiculous to use this to identify Judea and northern Israel of the 1st century. The name "Palestina" was a cruel moniker given to the land by the Romans as a play on the word "Philistine" LONG AFTER the time in question (AFTER 135 A.D.)
Steve W, wasn’t it closer to 70AD? I have been having trouble finding the information that was up on the internet, years ago. I had heard that after the fire, the Romans had what was left buried under sand using thousands of slaves. It is refreshing to see someone else who has read the same as I had. The Palestine/ Philistine naming. Bless you
Thanks
Penny, if you'll notice, he's not at all using the names of the gospel authors to prove anything, but rather the names the gospels record of people living in Israel in the first century.
He is not testing to support traditional authorship by Matt. Mark Luke John, but rather testing to see if the names the gospel writers record accurately represent what one would expect of an eyewitness recording events in Israel in the first century. And they do.
Does this argument work for the quran.
They did not feed the Quran into the algorithm used to analyze the 4 Gospels for accuracy. they did compare other gospels that were not included in the Canon of Scripture with stark contrasts. The principles would work the same in theory..
How would people in Italy or Greece know of little villages in Palestine?
Life 76 Josephus.
And when I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealins, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered.
Josephus bin Mithas
Joseph of Arimathea
There is no record of any gospel before Josephus, and the references to Nazareth in the gospels show the writers to be clownishly ignorant of the geography.
Thanks for your comment. I think i understand your point of view but let me ask to make sure I do. So are you suggesting that Josephus could be a source of information to people in Italy or Greece who may have authored the 4 New Testament Gospels and in this way they are not based upon eyewitness accounts?
wow. almost like it was designed from the beginning, so we would be without excuse or something. weird.
@jerico641 Did you even bother to watch the video?
Who Wrote The Four Gospels?
I wanna see Dr. Peter Williams debate Dr. Shabir Ally at a Baptist Church
Libertarian Prince, we have the testimony of the early church fathers. Look into what turned Dr. Nabeel Qureshi away from Islam. It was the paper trail from the Gospels thru the Patristic fathers
@LifeIsSoAwesome I do not disagree. However, arguments showing the strength of the Christian position can be used to impact the heart. That is how my girlfriend came to Christ from Atheism--logical arguments, like the ones used by Dr. Williams, given by people obeying 1 Peter 3:15, which commands us to have evidence for our hope.
I have told Dr. Williams' argument to a many agnostic and Atheistic friends, who have been intrigued by it.
Interesting talk when I imagine the gospels I imagine men (possibly principally) and women who'd known Jesus and been principally scared and then empowered by some event sitting around talking about Jesus like "hey Phillip do you remember when Jesus did that" yeah I remember Andrew you weren't there but Simon I remember that because the thong on your sandal broke and it fell off you nearly tripped over your own feet you laughed at yourself and even Jesus cracked a little smile he put a reassuring hand on your shoulder and taught us a little." Bathomelew smiling said "Yes I missed the lesson as I went to find a cobbler" Everyone laughs and they all start recounting what they remember of Jesus lesson. Eventually they tell others the most important bits of the story. Jesus said or Jesus did, and it happened here and these people were present as people of learning become believers scraps get written down (long lost) then someone sits down and writes down the different accounts most probably whilst people who knew or knew of Jesus were still alive.
31:18, ""And anyway, people on crosses don't waste words."
Sura Maryam 19:1 - 33: The 4th Gift of the Magi
As I say, I first encountered the mind of Islam in 1995 at the Million Man March by Minister Louis Farrakhan. I was impressed with his oratory and agree with his theme that America’s racism is a mental illness, but the thing that I came away from this encounter is that the mind of Islam, like the mind of the Pharaoh’s, has been shaped by an 8-base numerology and that the number 19 was important to Minister Farrakhan.
Subsequently, I checked a copy of the Cairo translation of the Qur’an out of the library and read it. My overall impression was that the Spirit of God does not abide therein, at least in translation, and that my initial intuition of the primacy of an 8-base numerology was correct. Although there is a strong 7-base influence from the lunar calendar and residual idolatry, a 7-base numerology is characterized by divination while the thrust of an 8-base numerology is calculation. 2 is the cube root of 8 and this reflects the engineering and defining constraints of Egypt and Islam. A thousand years before Moses was pulled from the water, the Pharaoh’s had fashioned a society with sufficient social organization to put a man on the moon and it was the paradigm shift that occurred when the pharaohs and priests adopted the 8-base numerology as the theological and mystical standard that led to the success of the nation.
The problem with an 8-base numerology is that it is something of an intellectual cul-de-sac, in that it permits sublime executive manipulation of the finite boundaries and the material, but it becomes limited entirely by those boundaries. This is why the priests and advisors of the Pharaoh could not interpret his dream of the 7 fatten cattle and the 7 lean cattle nor the dream of the 7 fat sheaves of grain and the 7 withered sheaves of grain.
Enter Joseph, whose heritage from the God of Abraham is a 9-base numerology. Where as an 8-base numerology is characterized by the boundaries of knowledge, a 9 base numerology is characterized by the horizons of wisdom, knowledge expanded by the Spirit of the Lord.
And that was my impression of the Qur’an: it was firmly anchored in the finite and measurable and bereft of the Spirit of God I associate with the scripture of the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels.
On the other hand, it held the same intellectual qualities for me as the epistles of Paul. From my perspective, if you take Jesus out of the theology of Paul, you have Islam. Recently, I have reviewed virtually all the Bishop NT Wright’s videos on UA-cam and I come to appreciate the intellectual design of Paul’s theology, but I have no passion for it. Bishop Wright is an ENFP, while I am an ESTP, and NFs are all about passion while SPs tend to be significantly more existential. The important thing about Paul’s theology is that is originates in the Jerusalem doctrine that is defined by Peter’s confession in Acts 10: 32 - 43 and is absolutely reliable in this regards, For myself, I am aligned with Bishop Wright’s epistemology and his emphasis on the Cross, the here-and-now of the Kingdom of Heaven, Agape as the coin of redemption and Filos as the engine of the Christian community.
In short, Islam offered me nothing, The argument that the power of the Qur’an is lost in translation may be true, but it is a weak argument on the face of it. I don’t read Greek, Hebrew, or Latin, but none of the essential power of the Gospel story is lost in translation, Bart Ehrman notwithstanding. I would say that the biggest cultural problem Americans have with Bible stories, generally, is that we have absolutely no analogue for life under a monarchy. Evangelicals like to work themselves into a lather about King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but it doesn’t translate for me.
But what does translate is Jesus as a study in Duty and Servant-Leadership as it relates to translating the Kingdom of God on Earth as it is in Heaven. From my perspective, Islam amounts to little more that a re-invention of the Torah and adopting an Arabic version of an Amish lifestyle.
So, I moved on. I have been interested since 1990 in establishing Cornelius as the author of the Gospel according to Mark, which has been made apparent to me by the Holy Spirit and certain elements of numerology associated with the chapter=and=verse numbering. If you want to see the divine in action, this is about as blatant as it get. In the first place, the numbering for the chapters and verse was not added until 1511: it is not part of the original text of the 20.000 manuscripts of the first 400 years and was added primarily to facilitate type-setting. In addition, the symbols we use for numbers are a direct result of Islam and didn’t exist as such, generally until about the 12th century.
My point being that the insights I will cite are based on elements added to the Bible (and Qur’an) for purely utilitarian purposes: these numbers were added to make it easier to access the text. Period.
But the hand of God has employed this pedestrian exercise with revelation.
Starting first with the number 13, this is an important symbol, numerologically, of the Finger of God in the Hebrew Bible. In the dreams of the Pharaoh, Joseph recognized that the dreams represent a 13 year weather cycle in that there will be 7 years of plenty and 7 years of famine which over lap at the 7th year of plenty and the 1st year of famine, This configuration,
6-1-6 occurs at regular intervals throughout scriptures and is recognizable to anyone familiar with DeVinci’s Lsst Supper. 13 can be seen as an Ideogram, with a lightening bolt being held over the head of the Trinity. It just shows up everywhere in the text. Itself.
But in the chapter-and-verse addition, Revelation 13 jumps out at me for a number of reasons, First of all, it is something of a Cubist portrait of the centurion in charge of Jesus’s execution (Paula Gooder observes that William Blake reveals to her that Revelation is less a book than an art gallery). Of course, this chapter is famous for the Number of the Beast 666. I’ve read a lot of commentary that this is the result of numerology associated with the name of a Roman emperor or a particular Jewish patriarch, but I think it is literally the number on Jesus’s death warrant. The Romans were hopelessly bureaucratic and the centurions were what we call “warrant officers” in the modern military organization and carried a cudgel of their authority in the same way British police carry a warrant card. Jesus was number 666 execution in that fiscal year.
Now, as an Ideogram, I happen to like 666 because, with the modern number symbols, they can be seen as the bent nails driven into Jesus’s flesh. Military officers are in the habit of knocking wood 3 times if they say anything that might be construed as hubris and tempting fate and the tradition originated on Golgotha.
But, it turns out that a newly discovered manuscript of Revelation 13 is the oldest version yet discovered and the number is 616, which is equally satisfying to me, for several reasons, including its reflection of the chapter=and-verse addition of Revelation 13. But, as an Ideogram, 616 is symbolic of the Risen Lord as a butterfly newly emerged from its chrysalis and spreading its wings to dry in the sun before taking flight.
Take your pick: I like either one.
But that isn’t the important revelation from Revelation 13. One of the questions about Christianity is why and how it spread so quickly and I think the connection between this chapter in Revelation and the Synoptic Gospels, generally, provide the explanation.
If you compare the verse structure of Revelation 13 to the first 18 lines of Matthew 13, they are identical (at least, close enough for government work). This is the Parable of the Sower. Now, there is a certain gestalt with the narrative constructed of the figure of the SEED being spread by the Sower and the ground of the GROUND upon which the SEED falls, Bishop Wright inevitably focuses on the SEED and characterizes the seed that falls on the GOOD GROUND as GOOD SEED and the seed that falls on the inhospitable ground as BAD SEED.
Well, the hidden message of this relationship is that the GOOD GROUND which produced the 100 fold return is, generally, the Roman Empire and, more specifically, the Roman Legions. That’s why the numerology of Revelation 13 is pointing at Matthew 13: it is my premise that the news of Jesus’s resurrection was being circulated by the Roman soldiers who witnessed it first hand that first Easter morning and that the event spread throughout the Roman legions in Italy long before either Peter or Paul got there. My position is that Cornelius wrote the Gospel according to Mark after he debriefed Peter in Acts 10 in 40 CE and that Peter’s narrative was added to what was already circulating around campfires and ready rooms across the empire. In fact, at the same time that Mark can be seen as the result of what Peter told Cornelius, the Gospel of Peter is what Cornelius told Peter at the same time. As bizarre as that narrative may seem to us, it reflects the psychological impetus behind the spread of the story of the resurrection.
Now, as I say, Revelation 13 points to Matthew 13 and, in the methods of numerology, in which all numbers are reduced to a single digit, 13 reduces to 4 and Mark 4:1 - 18 is the Parable of the Sower. Where 13 can be seen as the Finger of God as a lightening bolt, 4 is the number of the material world and represents the place where the lightening strike occurred. Revelation 13 is a divine revelation to lift the veil on the mystery of the proliferation of Christianity and the author of Mark. Cornelius is both the author of Mark and the source of the Gospel of Peter and the reason the details of the resurrection was not included between Mark 15:47 and Mark 16:1 was to conceal his identity and in compliance with the arrangement the soldiers made with the Jewish authorities. Plus, they didn’t need a reminder of the details of the resurrection.
All this is background to the subject of this commentary, that is, the divine revelation in Sura 74:30 “And above it is nineteen”. 19 years ago, I came away from the Million Man March with the numbers 8 and 19 emergent in my intuition, I have been dabbling in numerology since 1965 and I am constant alert to numbers as I encounter them in my environment. For one thing, it is one way the Holy Spirit communicates with me. Not the only way, but numbers are handy: He just hasn’t found it necessary to give me some winning Power Ball numbers, but it’s a little bit like the angels who dwelt with Jesus in the Wilderness, a reminder of His constant presence.
So, when 19 pops up, I tend to pay attention, the most famous being the 19 Jihadists who carried out the 911 attacks. 20 people originally comprised the attack team, but one of them got arrested before the assault, so only 19 conducted the attack. These details came out almost immediately and it would be hard not to see the hand of God in these circumstances,
Only, I had no idea what it meant except I was suppose to pay attention to it (just for the record, it so happens that there are 19 bones in the hand and 8 in the wrist, so my reference to the Hand of God is not without a literal reference). What changed was that my brother gave me a lap top in 2012 and, earlier this year, I began to expand my research into Mark in UA-cam videos. One of the first of these was Dale Martin’s Study of the New Testament on Princeton Online. For various reasons, the most important fact regarding the historicity of Jesus I gleaned from this series is John 19:19, which describes the sign Pilate attaches to the cross of Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. All four gospels mention this fact, but the numbers caught my attention.
At some point, it occurred to me to google the relationship between 19 and Islam and that’s when I was led to various UA-cam videos around the theme of “The Mathematical Miracle of 19 in the Qur’an” around the Hidden Secret of Sura 74:30 and the computer analysis Dr Rashad Khalifa undertook employing 19 as the common denominator. Muslim propagandists are beginning to take these sites down because the revelation 19 represents is doing to 1446 years of Muslim academics and Islamic apologetics what Jesus did for the money changers in Mark 11. The fact is, Dr. Rashad Khalifa didn’t understand what he had wrought, because he claimed for himself the status of Prophet by virtue of being named in the Qur’an. He assumed the status qua would remain constant and his personal status would be elevated in the rarified air of Muslim scholarship. The fact that he was assassinated had more to do with intramural jealousies and blood feuds than any understanding of the essential reconfiguration 19 represents to the status quo.
While the various producers of these videos are spiking the ball and taking a victory lap with their various calculations, their efforts are invested in trivia. While what they reveal is the extent to which 19 is woven into the fabric of the Qur’an, they miss the true significance of The Hidden Secret.
When I apply the numerology of 19 to the Qur’an in the same way I did with Revelation 13, the meaning of the Qur’an reveals itself like the embedded image in one of the 3-D Magic Eye graphics: the Qur’an reveals itself to be a parable that Mohammad never understood and Sura Maryam 19:1 - 33 is the crown jewel literature. In fact, a case can be made that the rest of the Qur’an can be thrown away as Satanic Verses while its meaning is perfectly preserved for Islam in these 33 ayat. There is no other context but 19 and the need for Arabic to tell the tale is completely obviated.
What 19 reveals is that Mohammad was a Christian heretic whose task was to lead the Children of Ishmael to Jesus and into covenant with Abraham. Instead, he hijacked the revelations for political expedience and personal benefit. Once Ta’if converted in 631, his usefulness to God was complete. As it is written, God opened his aorta soon after he issued the blasphemy and apostasy of Sura 9.
At the same time, Sura 74:30 is the legacy of Mohammad. The Qur’an is the beginning of Arabic literature and Sura Maryam is the last gift of the Magi to be laid at the crèche of the Baby Jesus. The future of Islam leads through Sura Maryam, with its opening ayat Christ is my God and ayat 19:19 that leads to John 19:19 and the Jihad of the Cross.
It is not a coincidence that Malala Yousafzai has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize she shares with a kindred spirit from India, but an expression of divine purpose. Malala is engaged in the Jihad of the Cross.
Maryam is her Guardian Angel who cradled her back to life when the Jinns of the Jihad of the Sword tried to chill her blood. Maryam is the Patron Saint of Islam and, in the fullness of time, her ayats will be adopted by the catholic church as liturgy to be sung for Mary, Mother of God, Redemptrix during Advent.
Amen.
@MrAdversusHaereses, indeed! Remember when we argued about this, CT? I guess you're forcing my hand, huh?
@rguyshipe If anything, he's not dismissing the "Legend" interpretation, but rather refining it; suggesting that perhaps a real person or some real events existed to base the events of the gospel on, rather than the entire thing being a fabrication.
This good stuff and love the whole teaching
thank you. blessings to you
Dr. Williams said quite a few hysterically funny things, here, and . . . crickets, most of the time.
But he did not argue his point as proof of miracles. In fact, one of his concluding remarks is that this cannot prove everything (miracles) to be historical. That's a different set of arguments for another time and place. The problem Christians have is that skeptics use a shotgun to spray assertions. We can only deal with a single pellet at a time. We show one assertion is false and the skeptic moves on to two or three others as though we haven't answered anything.
Penny, the gospels were never anonymous, that is an assertion never advance until relatively recently. Martin Hengel, regarded as the world's greatest NT scholar has informed us that they were attributed since the beginning, there was no confusion on this during the second century and the historical context that the jews would never allow anonymous writings to be regarded as authoritative make this recent claim untenable. Two quotes will follow since this wont let me post a link.
Extremely well presented.
From what I have seen, the historicity of the feeding of the 5000 has only been placed in doubt by the ignorant (there are none so blind as those who will not see). To me, it has always been the more likely alternate explanation, that some in the crowd had brought food with them. The 'miracle' then would have been enticing them to bring it out through empathy, by the the display of one act of generosity. Thus, this particular miracle, is still not proven to have occurred in the form envisioned by the disciples, by Williams' analysis.
The statistics/biography argument holds -- the NT gospels were due to someone interviewing Christian elders. It is a strong argument.
The Jesus vs. Christ argument presumes too much, it presumes that Jesus was the Christ/Messiah, and we know there were other Messiah proponents. It also presumes that everything that is Christ is Jesus. For Paul, this might be a mistake -- it might be that the earliest Messianists believed that Christ was a status that could be inherited. Combine this with the early theory of a preexistent Christ being and this becomes messy indeed.
Also: the parable reasoning is not valid -- Church Fathers cite the parables. There was a canon of parables, it is reasonable to assume that most of them originated from one or another apostle, but there *are* spurious parables and sayings, and some of them could originate from outside Christianity rather than within -- those of the Jesus Seminar make some good case to put a few wisdoms to Greek Cynicism rather than from the Hebrew traditions.
Lastly: the place name similarity have little significance -- the only oddity is why John has the same distribution. For the rest, the three Synoptic Gospels were based on *one* source, so they *should* have the same distribution.
The miracle part of the lecture is bunk. It essentially undercuts the authority of the earlier parts of the lecture and makes it flimsy and weak. I suspect the statistics part is borrowed from someone, and the rest is the lecturer's own invention, which is very weak.
Not true. Many people have come to faith through Apologetics. Lee Strobel and C.S Lewis are famous examples. William Lane Craig told the story of how a polish Physicist came back to faith just by hearing the Kalam Cosmological Argument.
People *have* come to Christ via examining the Word of God and its claims and by reading/listening to apologetics material like this. Lee Strobel is one. I believe Josh McDowell did as well. There are others I can't think of at the moment.
Interesting info, thanks.
None of it proves mythicism, but definitely makes the conclusion "they knew something about Palestine, therefore they had to be eyewitnesses" completely invalid.
Only problem with the gospels and the evidence presented is it ignores the fact that all 4 gospels were based off of Mark and they all are telling the same story in the same order. Why wouldn’t they have similarities in the relationships shown. If anything this just further confirms what’s already known.
Amen!