* OK, so traditional gospel authorship could theoretically be accidentally correct, but after listening to Kamil I think you'll agree it's ridiculously unlikely. This is my title, not Kamil's. He's too intellectually rigorous to endorse such a hyperbolic title.
Papias statements about Matthew and Mark don't fit to our todays both gospels. our Matthew wasn't written in Hebrew, it is also not a translation but the author used Greek Mark. Our Matthew and Luke also copied and corrected Mark. The gospel of John is the least reliable gospel, unknown to Papias, written too late, written in high Greek, while Acts says John was illiterate. On top of that, if GJohn is correct the others are not, e.g. at the crucifixion none of the 12 apostles in at least two of the three synoptics were present and in none of the three synoptics Jesus spoke to Mary or the imaginary "beloved disciple". The propability that our todays 4 gospels were written by eyewitnesses is 0. Apologists have to prove the opposite
I don't think it could be (completely) right even by accident. Matthew (the book) copies from Mark while talking about Matthew (the person) whose name is on it. Meaning it was most definitely not written by that person...or by anyone else who was actually there. It wasn't even claiming to be.
@@thelyrebird1310 It is a bit challenging for sure. Perhaps @Paulogia can add subtitles with this excellent professor because the YT subtitles don't work that well.
Sometimes I think I know a lot, and then I listen to Kamil talk for 90 straight minutes on authorship of the gospels, and I realize how little I know, lol. Great video Kamil & Paul!
Apologist preachers on the internet must hate it when Paul makes a video responding to their stuff, it's always so thorough that all they can do is hope their audience doesn't see it.
I would disagree. They probably love it. generates views. And their followers will not care about something contradictory. Facts do not matter when it comes to belief.
@@rick0771true, but there are always some people watching them who have doubts they can’t express publicly, and those people will come to Paulogia’s or MythVision’s channels, etc.
God has revealed to us what we need to know about the Bible and its authorship: For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Peter 1:21). Holy men were given God's word by the Holy Ghost, both Old and New Testaments (see 2 Timothy 3:16). Further, we know that it was to the Jews God's word was given that men might be made wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ (see Romans 3:2, 2 Timothy 3:15). Some books have a particular name within that identifies the man who wrote under God's inspiration; in other instances, a book does not, but it does not negate that it was a holy man chosen by God who penned it. God gave his word and has preserved it that men might learn of their need to be forgiven their sins against him through faith in Christ who bore mankind's sins in his own body upon the tree, died, and rose again (see 1 Peter 2:24, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4). God offers the gift of eternal life to all who believe on Jesus Christ as his Son, the Savior of men, for salvation (see Romans 3:23, 6:23; 1 John 4:14). Without faith in Christ, men perish (see John 3:16). God commands men everywhere to repent! (see Acts 17:30)
God has revealed to us what we need to know about the Bible and its authorship: For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Peter 1:21). Holy men were given God's word by the Holy Ghost, both Old and New Testaments (see 2 Timothy 3:16). Further, we know that it was to the Jews God's word was given that men might be made wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ (see Romans 3:2, 2 Timothy 3:15). Some books have a particular name within that identifies the man who wrote under God's inspiration; in other instances, a book does not, but it does not negate that it was a holy man chosen by God who penned it. God gave his word and has preserved it that men might learn of their need to be forgiven their sins against him through faith in Christ who bore mankind's sins in his own body upon the tree, died, and rose again (see 1 Peter 2:24, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4). God offers the gift of eternal life to all who believe on Jesus Christ as his Son, the Savior of men, for salvation (see Romans 3:23, 6:23; 1 John 4:14). Without faith in Christ, men perish (see John 3:16). God commands men everywhere to repent! (see Acts 17:30)
A feature-length video going into the minutia of a subset of biblical authorship? Going into the weeds around a single question? You know your audience, Paul. Keep it up! 😃
This is a tour-de-force exploration of gospel authorship. Huge kudos to both Paul and Kamil. That said, speaking only for myself as an older guy with mildly failing hearing, I would suggest another layer of production work for Paul (ugh!) in such interviews. I had to slow the speed waaaay down and turn on RUclips's closed captioning for this to be intelligible at all. And I still couldn't get all of it. CC gets most of it but there is much that baffles it and me. Especially when there are so many strange (to modern American ears) ancient Greek and Roman words thrown in. It was a lot of work to get this information. But totally worth it in this case. Apologies for my bad hearing and old brain.
I thought it would be mostly stuff I'd heard before but now it feels like it was mostly new (to me). I'll need to rewatch it so all those points and evidence sticks in my brain. Thanks Paul and Kamil.
@1:12:41 "He says that he saw Polycarp when he was a boy." Would this be like that one time I was sitting in the same SBL session as the great John Strugnell, and saw him stand up and walk out? Maybe I should start identifying myself as also a disciple of John (Strugnell).
This is an area of Christian apologetics that has always confounded me. Even in the Southern Baptist college where I studied for ministry we wouldn't get hung up on authorship. Why? It cannot be proven. The notion of "internally anonymous" is absurd. If you tear out the authors and contributors page of any history textbook, it will be internally anonymous, too. We talked about authorship quite a bit in school, but all we could do is guess. The Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts [of the Apostles] are addressed to "Theophilus," but Theophilus is simple Greek for "God lover" (the affectionate kind). Even though there's reason to conclude that Luke and Acts were written (or dictated) by the same person, we cannot know with any certainty. In fact, one thought is that early Christian writings would all be anonymous so that the author wouldn't be persecuted, prosecuted or tortured. The idea is that if you can attribute the writing to one of the characters in the story, it somehow enhances its authenticity - I suppose. But I think we're about 1,950 years too late. There simply isn't any evidence to ascribe authorship to the gospels. There is only speculation. It would be really nice if we had a contemporary copy but we don't. Even if we did, and we had as good an attribution as we do for the writings of Flavius Josephus, it wouldn't necessarily aid in the gospels' veracity.
Exactly! They want you to believe that eye-witnesses directly wrote down their accounts of Jesus's fantastical life and resurrection. Then these accounts were passed down to us through an unbroken chain of custody, uncorrupted. But even if they could prove all that true, it's still more likely that the accounts are false.
Just one point: Teophilus rather is just a Roman name, because Teophilus is adressed as "most excellent." Also applied to the procurator Felix in Acts 23:26 and 24:2 and to his successor Festus in 26:25. So Teophilus was a Roman official or a Roman of high social status.
@@germanboy14 I respectfully disagree insofar as the identity and position of Theophilus is unknowable. Theophilus is a Greek term - though I concede I cannot know if it is a proper name or a Greek alliteration of a Latin one. What gives me pause that the honorific, “most excellent” refers directly to a person of high status is that the position is excluded. On this point I lean towards my professor’s (in a semester long course on the book of Acts) that Theophilus was a leader in The Way - the church. It is also quite possible that the name referred not to a specific person, but to any leader within the church at large. But, this is mere speculation and for me to say with certainty that the addressee was this or that is dishonest.
@itsjust I agree, the identity is unknowable, we don't even know the author of Luke. the point is that the same honorific title is used for Roman authorities two or three times in Luke Acts and not once for a group or all believers. I have read many commentaries and scholarly opinions which conclude that Teophilus is a person, for me it doesn't matter who. That he was a Roman official or a Roman of high social status makes sense to me. And the group called the way, was a term used in Acts 9 before Paul converted and they would have been mainly Jewish or at least heavily Jewish influenced. I don't think they would use the same honorific titles as the roman authorities. So at the end of the day, Xtians have to come up with evidence, not us. I can conclude what makes sense to me, based on scholars just like you can do it too, because we are not dependent on who it was. But Xtians are dependent on that
@@germanboy14 - I'm glad you said this. I started thinking about what I'd said and that I misunderstood your point. The most likely answer is that Theophilus refers to a Roman patron of some sort. Perhaps a gov't official who needed to understand what all the hubbub was about and why Romans and Jews alike were getting pissed off enough to kill. LOL I really appreciate this discussion. It reminds me of the many problems that eventually pried me away from that fantasy land and into a much happier life in reality.
I am addicted to how the bible was put together. But yeah, when you've not looked into it you just assume God dropped it down from heaven or that it was written by who it's said to be written by
@@jamierichardson7683 I bought a little reader for my 2001 Nissan Altima for the service engine soon light. It gave me two codes, something about a threshold exhaust level, and another about a "knock sensor"?
@@marcomoreno6748i’m not a mechanic but my roommate and ex are, and i got codes like that on my old honda and after several expensive repairs didn’t hold, found it had a hairline crack in the head that got much worse when i repaired the exhaust part… Hope that’s not what you have.
@@marcomoreno6748 I don't know a lot about cars, but I believe "knocking" refers to the sound the motor makes when the octane level of the gas is wrong, and I suspect a wrong chemical composition of the gas could result in changes in the ... what was it ... "threshold exhaust level".
I have a hard time thinking the disciples wrote anything. They truly believed the resurrection was at hand. Jesus was an end times preacher. No need to write anything if you’re gonna be gone in a couple years.
They spoke Aramaic and probably couldn't read or write. These books are written in Greek by Greeks. KJV Christians don't think. God spoke old English and if it's not in the KJV it's Jesuit doctrine. I grow up in the south surrounded by Baptist ect churches. They believe that
According to Mark there wasn't even a post resurrection Story. There was just a man, women flee and tell no one. So we can't say what they believed or not for sure. Apologists have to prove that.
I suspect the twelve disciples (suspicious number, there) are mostly a fiction created for the story. The canonical Gospels can't even agree on exactly who the twelve were.
@@germanboy14 Mark foreshadows that the risen Jesus would be seen in Galilee which is presumably what the initial readers already believed. I think the ending of Mark is meant to justify the empty tomb being added to the stories even though the disciples had never mentioned it.
@sean the problem is that there was no risen Jesus in Mark, no post resurrection meeting etc. So we can see a development of the whole story within the gospels. Therefore it's impossible to say that the 12 apostles believed X or Y. It's quite possible that they weren't even sure of what happened to Jesus, If the women see a man, ran away and say no one of that and remember the gospel of Mark was there 10 to 15 years before Matthew and before Luke. We also didn't have a single sect, but many different sects within Christianity
Man, I love when you have Kamil on, he's incredible. My only issue is that I can't listen to this in the background while I work because he packs in so much stuff I just want to sit and take notes!
As so often, the reality and (what could be tentatively called) truth of the situation is so much more nuanced, fascinating and interesting than the simplified view of biblical literalism.
It’s obvious when you think about it that we R excepted to believe A priori . I’m reading Matthew and Jesus expects his audience to recognize him as the messiah without any miricles what so ever in some circumstances.”A generation that expects signs is a generation of vipers”. I’m not saying this can’t work epistemologically speaking . You can’t u know what you still know. Any evidence is bonas material. At this point of my inquiry I think the contextual evidence for the Res is good to compelling. Ironic in that the centre piece should be the Res itself of course, but it might be the weakest link.
@57:51 Of course Marcion's gospel is the most accurate one. I mean, in this painting he has a film-reel sitting right there on his desk! What else could this be except the video record of Jesus, meticulously captured by his disciples?
One of the major things about this topic I don't get is 'well they could have just verified the information if they really wanted to, thats how we know it actually happened/was really written by whoever', that sort of thing. If modern christians are perfectly content to believe the text based on the assumption that other people have already verified its contents, why would early christians be any different?
If you watch a few RUclips shorts where people make the wildest claims that can be proven to be false with 30 seconds of googling, but the video has 100k likes and 99% of the comments are positive and accept it as true… then for me this perfectly explains how religions could start so easily even with zero evidence.
All of the points are perfectly made but in addition to them, even if we had a gospel written by Jesus himself, that wouldn't mean that what it said within the pages were actually true.
Agree completely. But it is interesting that apologists will claim all five of the first books of the bible were written by Moses (and apparently after his death, since this bit is included), we apparently have NOTHING directly written by Jesus, who is supposed to be a bigger deal. His time on earth would seem to have been put to better use staying in one place and writing out this stuff directly instead of wandering around and trusting to his immediate followers to get it right (who seem to be depicted as morons at times). Or worse, his followers remembering what he said, in Aramaic, and they then remember it perfectly who pass it onto to others, while somewhere along the line, it gets translated into Greek.
@@johnnehrich9601bro the USA might not even be an English speaking country in 20 years. There are parts of the USA today that don't speak English well or can write in a language but not in English. So if someone wanted it written in English they may need assistance. Also Jesus was focused on training his disciples. Had Jesus written himself then people would've written weird stuff and claimed Jesus wrote it. This is what we see with the gnostic "gospels" they try claiming one of the disciples wrote them when they obviously didn't. Do you think Trump or Obama wrote their own books?
Don't forget that there were more than 4 gospels ar the time, most of them anonymous (i think there are some which we're at least signed) so is not only fanfiction, but *curated* fanfiction.
Kamil is not only thorough and astute, but has mastered the English language to a degree that has me in awe as a polyglot and linguist. Amazing presentation!
All I can say about early Christianity's take on Gospel authorship (and indeed authorship of other documents as well) along with how many of those documents were flying around that were being evaluated the same way after watching this video is: "what a mess". Certainly puts paid to the apologetic line of how there is clear and uninterrupted traditional preservation of gospel authorship. What we saw was anything but clear or direct.
Love this detailed analysis! I wonder if the apocalyptic beliefs of early Christians motivated them to be more concerned with the message and less concerned with the messengers.
I think we see early on different sects competing with each other and the need/usage of apostolic authority to refute the opponents. According to Chrysostom the apostles were all not more alive before the Jewish Roman war, so people like Ireneus could freely make stuff up.
@@popsbjdcan you provide some specifics on what you claim is “bad apologetics?” Because Kamil typically falls right in line with current critical scholarship. That’s not “apologetics.”
@@CharlesPayet the series is called "Bad Apologetics." Kamil joins Nathan (of Digital Gnosis) and James Fodor to examine and critique apologists' arguments. I love Kamil. He does great work. Digital Gnosis is a great channel to know as well.
@@popsbjd ahhh, my apologies. I completely misunderstood what you meant. Thank you for clarifying. And yes, I’ve seen a number of good shows by Digital Gnosis (although I often mentally confuse him with Gnostic Informant.)
@@CharlesPayet it's not Gnostic Informant. It's a different channel called Digital Gnosis run by Nathan Ormond. Really good stuff if you are interested in counter apologetics.
The best Paulogia video so far. Deep detail dive enjoyed it. For me the main come away was that by the 150s CE, the authorities were trying to reconstruct lost information as desperately as we are today. 150 years of lost oral and written records is a massive void.
Prof. Walsh’s thesis of Gospel authorship is the one that makes more sense of the data and historical context. I wonder when apologists will catch up and begin seriously engaging with her work.
I'm not sure how you would define "seriously engaging with her work," but the Christian apologist Jonathan Sheffield has debated Prof. Walsh on Gospel authorship on the Mythvision Podcast: ruclips.net/user/livep74uPe5CvjM?si=MgFCscGWnEo4C1Lf
@@worldviewdetective9456debates are Inherently non serious as the Format does not allow for an in depth contemplation of arguments nor for thorough source analysis. It's showboating for the public, not real scholarly exchange.
Appologists really like to draw this strange image of the ancient word where everyones constantly checking their sources, double checking all the claims that come at them, always acutely aware where information is coming from, ect. And frankly this just sounds....inhuman. Especially what we wittness now in an age where checking your sources is easier then ever so many people will just accept stories or claims on their intuition alone, or find out that something theyve believed to be a fact for much of their lives turned out to have no basis at all, but were supposed to believe in an age of limited information, literacy, connection with the rest of the world, far more superstitious, ect, that they were massively more vigilant to these sort of things then we are today, too a degree we can assume many of them cant have made mistakes or jumped to conclusions....i just dont buy it.
@@DesGardius-me7gfyou don't have to wonder. Just think about derek chauvin and george floyd. Think about how people felt about the facts a few years ago.
Good point. As a yard stick of ancient credulity I think of the Samaritan woman at the well who’s, well, shall we say, not chase. She claims to Jesus she’s celibate, he reads her mind or so she thinks( something Kresken could do in his sleep) runs into town, “Abner, Abner” she cries, bringing back a multitude.”And many were saved” And a woman at that.
At best all religious texts, regardless of their position as scripture or supplemental writings, are little more than fan fiction. Expansions of foundational concepts that have no right to claim any validity in the real world. This is also why questioning and/or close scrutiny of texts are openly discouraged by religious leaders who expect you complete acceptance of their interpretations.
One of my favorite things I heard Paulogia say once, was about when he was growing up in the church and he was ''the best at everything they taught'' 👍
It's strange. Even as an ex-Christian I still can't help but feel like I'm watching people argue over a fan fiction or pop fiction book series when watching videos like these. It's so surreal.
The idea that the beloved disciple wrote the Gospel seems to be based on a perverse reading of 21:24. “This is the disciple who testifies about these things and has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.” (NET). The natural reading of this is that the author and his group are the “we”, and the disciple, “he”, is a different person. This reading is reinforced by the following verse. “There are many other things that Jesus did. If every one of them were written down, I suppose the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (NET) The “I suppose” shows that the author is ready to use first person for himself, so it seems unlikely that he was referring to himself in third person in the previous verse. My interpretation fits the larger context as well. The Gospel ends very satisfactorily at the end of chapter 20. 21 is an appendix, almost as though the author (if he is the same author) came across the story in written form after he had finished the book. The “has written” is “γράψας”, which is that annoying aorist tense. “Testifies” is present, but can be historic present. It is common to use historic present for the contents of writing. I interpret “these things “ to refer to the story in 21 only. If the author wanted to invoke the authority of a disciple for the whole book, he would have done so in the main body, not the appendix.
@@maynardmckillen9228your portrait of Jones is the thing that is disingenuous, and shows your lack of ability to interact respectfully with people that do not hold views similar to your own.
47:59 I was listening to this at work with my screen off, and I got to about this point before I thought "I bet Paul is just sitting there blinking with his hands crossed on his desk." Sure enough
As someone who was raised at the leftmost edge of Christianity I wonder if many people involved see how silly these debates are. I'm not saying they aren't necessary, because they are. Religion is a weapon used on outsiders and insiders alike. People need to be talked down from absurd claims. A very smart RUclipsr talking about politics made a very good point. People think (vote) how they feel regardless of argument. I think most people's conscious paradigms are broken, making sense can't convince in a broken system. I think people emotional systems need to be repaired and trained before they'll listen to reason. I'll mention "learned helplessness" and let critical thinkers ponder that emotions can be broken - on purpose
My meaning is that emotion and reason use separate sections of the brain limbic and cortex respectively. I'm my life, and observation of other people, it's easier to ignore what I know than to ignore what I feel. The solution is to train both to create positive (ideally similar) outcomes.
You seem to be drawing the conclusion that because the oldest texts were found at Egyptian monasteries that this confines the proof of where such texts were shared under the same title. Are we then assuming that Irenaeus wrote (or was ascribed authorship) only or primarily in Egypt? Maybe the oldest texts are only preserved in one place because it had the earliest monastic culture that would preserve such texts... This conversation (on both sides) seems to assume a sort of boolean authorship related primarily to the texts themselves. Rather, than many textual variants developing within communities that ascribed their lineage (right or wrong) to particular apostles - which seems much more likely. The idea of someone or a small set of people inventing authorship a few centuries later seems just as problematic, as you point out - by the time of Constantine/Nicea "everybody and their mother" had a sense of the books and their authorship - but this is at the beginning of the 4th century. So obviously we have the texts in a basically concrete form in the 2nd century (whether written in the first or fixed from tradition in the 2nd) and they are being shared in these concrete forms throughout the 2nd and 3rrd century along with titles/authorship that we are arguing about when/how they were fixed. If they were not fixed we would not just see a few varied references or titles, but some discussion about their authorship. While there is discussion about the canon in the 2nd and the 3rd, we don't seem to find much discussion of the authorship of the 4 gospels - which would seem to garner the most attention in such discussions. As such, I would draw the conclusion that while the texts themselves probably crystallized in the late 1st / early 2nd within communities sharing an oral tradition, the authorship of such texts was probably already assumed even if not explicitly assigned as the title - which we then see become common out of practical necessity when discussing the various Gospel traditions.... Seems a lot simpler than one community inventing the authorship and then someone convincing everybody else with no record of such convincing.
0:40 I'm looking forward to seeing how this issue is covered. Inspired Philosophy suggested 2 alternatives, the gospels were written by those named, or they were anonymous. But there is an equally likely third alternative and he should have thought of it. It is entirely possible that the authorship was known at the time they were written but that it was later forgotten and then assigned to the traditional names.
@@malchir4036 I guess we're getting into a question of definitions. We have 3 (not 2) cases. 1. A document whose authorship was known at the time it was published and whose authorship is currently known - NOT anonymous 2. A document whose authorship was secret or unknown to all except the author at the time of its publication and remains so. 3. A document whose authorship was generally known when published but whose authorship is now lost. Some may choose to use a definition of "anonymous" for BOTH cases 2 and 3. But for the sake of clarity I think it's worth pointing out that those are indeed 2 different cases. To use the same word, anonymous, for both risks muddying the issue.
I listen to a lot of academically oriented RUclips videos but this is by far the most informational lyrics dense video I have ever heard. My head is spinning
I've heard before that IP was one of the better Christian apologists but man, his schtick seems so lazy. Wild assumptions and logical leaps posited as if they are likely fact. He guesses that the books had titles before they were named in the second century, he guesses these titles were the same as they are now, he guesses they were put in libraries, he guesses that they would not have been put in libraries if they did not have names, he guesses that they had names because they were sent to people and then further guesses that those people only trusted them because they were named and then drops another guess on top of that that the name is the same today as it was then.
Oh, he is one of the better, at least in youtube, the thing is that apologetics has a low bar, remember the cherished words of one of the best apologists in history William 'Lowbar' Craig. In the words of someone who i don't remember who said it, asking who are the best apologists is like asking 'what is the best looking turd?'
It's their tactic. They usually try to speak about "the gospel", trying to conceal that in the Nt we have 4 different who copied each other and that in the first century we had many different gospels too. Papias mentions a different gospel of Mark and a different gospel of Matthew. He didn't know a gospel of John or Luke, he didn't know Acts. More could be said about Papias. Ignatius mentions other sects with different beliefs because they had different scripture. Then we have Jewish Christian sects who had different gospels too. Even Paul's enemies had a different gospel (maybe not in written form at that time, but later for sure). Now apologists like IP want people to think that there were only 4 gospels in the first century and in their best case even only "the gospel". And they want to hide the conflict between Paul and the apostles, that there were sects with different gospels etc.
I have constantly looked at the practices IP uses, which rely heavily on quotemining. He´s a good adversary since he constantly responds back, but I´m not surprised.
IP: "If there was any disagreement or suspicion of any facts, people could just fact-check it instantly because they were there!" Also IP: "This one group had this one tradition, and this other group had this other tradition! It's not like they could just fact-check each other, that'd be silly!" Never fall for apologists' little games. They don't care what they're saying, let alone if it's true. Their only goal is to convince, no matter how dishonest they have to be. If you're fooled into believing, then at least you believe, according to cultists. The rest of us don't like being fooled and don't like fooling people.
Their trying to save us from hell. I wish I was as afraid of the Christian hell as I am of the Islamic hell. About 10 percent. Not enough to even consider converting.
this is amazing, of course. I feel though it would benefit from Paulogia occasionally interjecting with questions and comments just to break it up a bit
I know Michael (IP) is held in high regard by many, but he appears as prone to motivated reasoning as any other apologist, from the much-vaunted Craig to a common Hovind. The real story of Biblical authorship & compilation is far more messy than apologists would have their audiences believe, but both audience *and* apologist prefer things to be far neater.
@Paulogia Kamil is crushing it. This video is devastating. Expect it to be ignored by every RUclips apologist, because they all just want it to go away.
48:35 Can you direct me the name of some of these works about the women that you refer to? I'd be really interested to read about how the 2nd century Christians identified and misidentified women in the rhe texts
1:05:39-1:05:44 i think all four Gospels were written by jews (“Mark” was a companion of Paul, “Matthew” was a petrine “christian” adapting the Didache, “Luke” was a jew combatting “Matthew,” and “John” was some kind of Essene group).
54:11-54:22 👍 It’s very possible that the chronological sequence was: “John”-“Matthew,” Epistles of “John,” Hebrews-“barnabas”-Marcion’s Evangelion-rest of “John.”
Agreed, if Mark was written by an eyewitness, apologists have to explain why we so much of Homer in Mark as well as parallels from the Septuagint. If a modern witness gave a detective a statement that copied other stories in literature, we'd automatically assume the guy was making things up, duh. Obviously. If you're a real witness, you don't parallel literature.
@@michaelsbeverly ABSOLUTELY! Even worse for the other two related gospels, both of which quote Mark verbatim at times, but with different "facts." Of course, the core problem for apologists who want to claim these writings are direct or indirect from an infallible deity, is why everything so flimsy and contradictory. Like the Problem of Divine Hiddenness, I think there is a related Problem of Divine Ambiguity or of Divine Confusion.
@@michaelsbeverly That’s an interesting argument. Did the early Christians engage in a giant make believe game? Was it like Star Trek fans being like Brandon on Galaxy Quest - i.e. we knew it was just a TV show. But we all wished it was real! 😂 A lot of the claimed parallels with Homer are a bit ambiguous. But even if there was a provable direct correlation that would not demand a causal interpretation that the events never happened. For people of faith, the various effecting of miracles in the New Testament era, to be parallel at times to mythological tropes (e.g. Bacchus, grapes & wine archetypes) serve as a type of “praeparatio evangelica.” As C.S. Lewis once observed, an eclectic mimesis style garbs the coming of Jesus & His Spirit in our space & time history. The yearnings of adventure within the story archetypes in pagan literature has found its fulfillment in the Christian faith. C.S. Lewis, who swam in the field of comparative mythology, once wrote to Christians about these mythological tropes & parallels: “We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology.”
Starbucks.. Greece 75ce Luke: I would like to call this meeting to order now. Thank you for coming John, Matthew, Mark. I thought before we release our 4 scripts on to the world we really, really need something special. I really think the books will be a total failure if we don’t have ….. a cool matching title. John, what do you mean? Luke: Well, we need to agree on a title for our books. John: I already have a cool title in mind. Given that my book is very different from you 3 I think I want to stick with what I have. Matthew: What did you have in mind? John : I am going with “What the beloved disciple saw..” Mark: what? John ““What the beloved disciple saw”. Mark: that’s rubbish and who said you could be the “beloved disciple”? Now, the 3 of us have had a little chat before you came along and decided on “The gospel according to… “ John: Oh really did you now. Well that wont work for me. My entire shtick is that I am writing a mystery story where the reader must guess who the author is. I have been very careful to give them just enough info and of course... I AM the beloved... everyone will know that in years to come. Mark: There is one thing I do want to discuss and that is the royalties. I really don’t think it is fair that we all get the same when these two [nods at Matthew and Luke] have just cut and pasted my entire manuscript and added a few twists and turns. Oh and seriously, you two have a agree on the whole birth story. We cant have two entirely separate stories about his birth we will all look like idiots by association. John: can we please get back to the title? There is no way I am agreeing to “The gospel according to”
Wait I just realized you made a good point how the author wouldn't put 1 Maccabees cause the author had no idea they would write another. The same can be applied with Paul. However we know Paul wrote an earlier Corinthians before 1 Corinthians. The early church if they knew this at the time should label 2 & 3 Corinthians in the Bible to maintain accuracy to everyone that we no longer have 1 Corinthians. Or they didn't do their homework well enough to realize this. Hopefully the early church wasn't ignoring this and trying to prop up what they believe to everyone at that time.
There is simply no comparison between the superficial and narrow minded videos of Inspiring Philosophy, and the exhaustive and very academic work that Kamil has presented here.
Well, that's not charitable on your part, because Michael reads and researches what he shows in his videos. It even places the fonts of the articles or books! Come on...
@@TheServantSlayer7 it's hard to know if you're being sarcastic. In case you're not, you should know that Michael is notoriously bad at research. Experts in every field he wades into have pointed out his mistakes and misreadings, and he invariably appeals to scholars who are not representative of the consensus in order to make weak arguments. But I'd like to think your reference to fonts is supportive of my comment, rather than a counter to it. I mean, you would have to have completely missed the point of actual scholarship if you think an appropriate font is what makes it. Kipp Davis once pointed out an occasion where IP actually had a Hebrew passage copied backwards on his video.
@angelmendez-rivera351 Nice hasty generalization fallacy. It would be great conversation to watch because Micheal Jones is quite intelligent and very good at defending his beliefs.
@angelmendez-rivera351 Oh, ad homimen too, there's also that. It's funny that you claim apologists only have "intellectual dishonesty," while all you seem to have is insults. I will no longer reply to you. God bless and I hope you learn to accept God's love. ❤️
@@SuperBossGiovanni I'm afraid you don't know what an ad hominem is. For the record, screaming "[insert name] fallacy" without any elaboration doesn't constitute a refutation of an argument. Learning the name of a fallacy doesn't make you competent at having a conversation or at logical reasoning. Clearly, you have many things to learn, but you don't have the mindset. That's what makes me different from you.
The problem with IP’s argument is it only makes sense if this is a fully human endeavor. Sure I could believe that maybe in the first century the authors could have been known, but if an all powerful all knowing god wanted these stories to be the basis of revealing his plan for salvation to the entire world, and the validity of the author’s would be a point his apologist would use to defend the documents, then god should have made sure the authorship of the Bible was beyond question.
The fact that Greek and Roman historians mention themselves in their introductions is connected to the fact that classical historians were expected to start by justifying their work- in the case of the Greeks, to explain why their choice of subject matter was worth writing about; and in the case of the Romans, to explain why they were spending their time writing about other people's deeds instead of performing their own.
"it is unlikely just would've accepted any old writing without believing it came from a reliable source" Did he suddenly forget he was apologizing for Christianity? You know, the religion famous for picking and choosing books for its countless canons and denominations?
I thought of a very simple argument which I believe demonstrates we can be certain that at least Matthew and Luke are not written by Apostles or eyewitnesses nor by anyone who had direct access to them. It's a fact that both Matthew and Luke copied large portions of Mark directly to build their gospels. If they were written by an eyewitness or even someone who had direct access to an eyewitness this would never have happened. If you're an eyewitness or have one available to question or interview you should be fully capable of writing the story on your own without needing any other sources much less going so far as to copy word for word huge portions of one. The fact that Matthew and Luke relied so heavily on Mark I think demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that they were not written by any eyewitness or even by a second-hand person with direct access to an eyewitness. The fact they were written 40-50+ years after Jesus' death all but confirms this as well considering life expectancy was around 45 years old. The odds go against anyone who was an adult when Jesus died still being alive when Matthew and especially Luke were written. But this is just a,secondary piece of evidence. Primarily, their reliance on Mark seems to me to obliterate any chance they were themselves eyewitnesses or had one available to them to rely on. Just think about it, suppose you were a 1st hand participant to an event, or that you had available to question or interview someone who was. And you were tasked with writing about said event. Would you go find a book written by someone else who was purported to be involved in the event and copy large portions of their story? Or would you just tell your own story or that of the person you had available that you knew was there?
If the bible is a collection of books, Mark could have successfully sued Mathew, Luke and John for plagerism.And let’s not forget the aledged pagan parrells.
Out of all the scraps of texts that have the oldest dates, what percentage were recovered from a ruin/storage compared to the percentage found in midden heaps?
* OK, so traditional gospel authorship could theoretically be accidentally correct, but after listening to Kamil I think you'll agree it's ridiculously unlikely. This is my title, not Kamil's. He's too intellectually rigorous to endorse such a hyperbolic title.
Papias statements about Matthew and Mark don't fit to our todays both gospels. our Matthew wasn't written in Hebrew, it is also not a translation but the author used Greek Mark. Our Matthew and Luke also copied and corrected Mark. The gospel of John is the least reliable gospel, unknown to Papias, written too late, written in high Greek, while Acts says John was illiterate. On top of that, if GJohn is correct the others are not, e.g. at the crucifixion none of the 12 apostles in at least two of the three synoptics were present and in none of the three synoptics Jesus spoke to Mary or the imaginary "beloved disciple". The propability that our todays 4 gospels were written by eyewitnesses is 0. Apologists have to prove the opposite
While I love Kamil's accent I had to slow the playback to .75 to catch what he was saying
I don't think it could be (completely) right even by accident.
Matthew (the book) copies from Mark while talking about Matthew (the person) whose name is on it. Meaning it was most definitely not written by that person...or by anyone else who was actually there. It wasn't even claiming to be.
@@thelyrebird1310 It is a bit challenging for sure. Perhaps @Paulogia can add subtitles with this excellent professor because the YT subtitles don't work that well.
Lol I wish. They truly probably laugh and think they are right still
Sometimes I think I know a lot, and then I listen to Kamil talk for 90 straight minutes on authorship of the gospels, and I realize how little I know, lol.
Great video Kamil & Paul!
Me too
Intelligence is knowing and accepting that no matter how much you know, someone knows more than you. Wisdom is knowing who those people are 😉
@@rapdactylWisdom comes from knowing how much you don't know.
Waking up to Paulogia & Kamil is what we live for! ❤
I'm waiting for the salty response video/livestream from Manning and Co
@@iluvtacos1231The McApologetics Industrial Complex won't be pleased! And I say: GOOD.
They didn't say anything relevant...
@@TheBibleCode LARPers gonna mald.
@@utubepunk People think when they start speaking they are saying anything relevant which they don't , they didn't make a case at all just dodging 👍
Apologist preachers on the internet must hate it when Paul makes a video responding to their stuff, it's always so thorough that all they can do is hope their audience doesn't see it.
I would disagree. They probably love it. generates views. And their followers will not care about something contradictory. Facts do not matter when it comes to belief.
@@SilortheBladecouldn’t agree with the last part more. For the believers, faith trumps truth
@@rick0771true, but there are always some people watching them who have doubts they can’t express publicly, and those people will come to Paulogia’s or MythVision’s channels, etc.
God has revealed to us what we need to know about the Bible and its authorship: For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Peter 1:21). Holy men were given God's word by the Holy Ghost, both Old and New Testaments (see 2 Timothy 3:16). Further, we know that it was to the Jews God's word was given that men might be made wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ (see Romans 3:2, 2 Timothy 3:15). Some books have a particular name within that identifies the man who wrote under God's inspiration; in other instances, a book does not, but it does not negate that it was a holy man chosen by God who penned it. God gave his word and has preserved it that men might learn of their need to be forgiven their sins against him through faith in Christ who bore mankind's sins in his own body upon the tree, died, and rose again (see 1 Peter 2:24, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4). God offers the gift of eternal life to all who believe on Jesus Christ as his Son, the Savior of men, for salvation (see Romans 3:23, 6:23; 1 John 4:14). Without faith in Christ, men perish (see John 3:16). God commands men everywhere to repent! (see Acts 17:30)
God has revealed to us what we need to know about the Bible and its authorship: For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Peter 1:21). Holy men were given God's word by the Holy Ghost, both Old and New Testaments (see 2 Timothy 3:16). Further, we know that it was to the Jews God's word was given that men might be made wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ (see Romans 3:2, 2 Timothy 3:15). Some books have a particular name within that identifies the man who wrote under God's inspiration; in other instances, a book does not, but it does not negate that it was a holy man chosen by God who penned it. God gave his word and has preserved it that men might learn of their need to be forgiven their sins against him through faith in Christ who bore mankind's sins in his own body upon the tree, died, and rose again (see 1 Peter 2:24, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4). God offers the gift of eternal life to all who believe on Jesus Christ as his Son, the Savior of men, for salvation (see Romans 3:23, 6:23; 1 John 4:14). Without faith in Christ, men perish (see John 3:16). God commands men everywhere to repent! (see Acts 17:30)
I have a feeling these videos of yours are going to be quoted and referenced for a long, long time. I stand in awe. 💖
A feature-length video going into the minutia of a subset of biblical authorship? Going into the weeds around a single question?
You know your audience, Paul. Keep it up! 😃
Getting my flippers out of the attic, bring on the deep dive!
Wow that was amazing! Kamil is a encyclopaedia of early Christian texts!!
This is a tour-de-force exploration of gospel authorship. Huge kudos to both Paul and Kamil.
That said, speaking only for myself as an older guy with mildly failing hearing, I would suggest another layer of production work for Paul (ugh!) in such interviews. I had to slow the speed waaaay down and turn on RUclips's closed captioning for this to be intelligible at all. And I still couldn't get all of it. CC gets most of it but there is much that baffles it and me. Especially when there are so many strange (to modern American ears) ancient Greek and Roman words thrown in. It was a lot of work to get this information. But totally worth it in this case. Apologies for my bad hearing and old brain.
Very beneficial to have a reason-based inquiry into understanding these kinds of materials. Thank you.
And all the more revealing how irrationally insipid philosophistry argues against it.
Holy crap - this is the best and most thorough explanation of the gospels I've ever heard.
Thanks Kamil and Paul.
Glad you liked it!
I thought it would be mostly stuff I'd heard before but now it feels like it was mostly new (to me). I'll need to rewatch it so all those points and evidence sticks in my brain. Thanks Paul and Kamil.
I have no idea what he said but I liked listening to him say it.. 😂
I guess you haven't heard much.
@@jamiehudson3661 can you link to some more thorough videos?
@1:12:41 "He says that he saw Polycarp when he was a boy." Would this be like that one time I was sitting in the same SBL session as the great John Strugnell, and saw him stand up and walk out? Maybe I should start identifying myself as also a disciple of John (Strugnell).
Everyone I’ve been in a room with, I’m a student of.
And that is the most generous interpretation of a very young boy "learning" from a wise old man in the hellen&c Diaspora.... 😬😬😬😬
"any particular identification of a particular author is just a theory, a Bible theory"
I have no words 56:40
*que Game Theory theme*
@53:05 Am I the only one who is creeped out by how Martin Hengel's hand looks detached from his body in this picture?
This is an area of Christian apologetics that has always confounded me. Even in the Southern Baptist college where I studied for ministry we wouldn't get hung up on authorship. Why? It cannot be proven. The notion of "internally anonymous" is absurd. If you tear out the authors and contributors page of any history textbook, it will be internally anonymous, too. We talked about authorship quite a bit in school, but all we could do is guess. The Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts [of the Apostles] are addressed to "Theophilus," but Theophilus is simple Greek for "God lover" (the affectionate kind). Even though there's reason to conclude that Luke and Acts were written (or dictated) by the same person, we cannot know with any certainty. In fact, one thought is that early Christian writings would all be anonymous so that the author wouldn't be persecuted, prosecuted or tortured.
The idea is that if you can attribute the writing to one of the characters in the story, it somehow enhances its authenticity - I suppose. But I think we're about 1,950 years too late. There simply isn't any evidence to ascribe authorship to the gospels. There is only speculation. It would be really nice if we had a contemporary copy but we don't. Even if we did, and we had as good an attribution as we do for the writings of Flavius Josephus, it wouldn't necessarily aid in the gospels' veracity.
Exactly! They want you to believe that eye-witnesses directly wrote down their accounts of Jesus's fantastical life and resurrection. Then these accounts were passed down to us through an unbroken chain of custody, uncorrupted. But even if they could prove all that true, it's still more likely that the accounts are false.
Just one point: Teophilus rather is just a Roman name, because Teophilus is adressed as "most excellent." Also applied to the procurator Felix in Acts 23:26 and 24:2 and to his successor Festus in 26:25. So Teophilus was a Roman official or a Roman of high social status.
@@germanboy14 I respectfully disagree insofar as the identity and position of Theophilus is unknowable. Theophilus is a Greek term - though I concede I cannot know if it is a proper name or a Greek alliteration of a Latin one. What gives me pause that the honorific, “most excellent” refers directly to a person of high status is that the position is excluded. On this point I lean towards my professor’s (in a semester long course on the book of Acts) that Theophilus was a leader in The Way - the church. It is also quite possible that the name referred not to a specific person, but to any leader within the church at large. But, this is mere speculation and for me to say with certainty that the addressee was this or that is dishonest.
@itsjust I agree, the identity is unknowable, we don't even know the author of Luke. the point is that the same honorific title is used for Roman authorities two or three times in Luke Acts and not once for a group or all believers. I have read many commentaries and scholarly opinions which conclude that Teophilus is a person, for me it doesn't matter who. That he was a Roman official or a Roman of high social status makes sense to me. And the group called the way, was a term used in Acts 9 before Paul converted and they would have been mainly Jewish or at least heavily Jewish influenced. I don't think they would use the same honorific titles as the roman authorities. So at the end of the day, Xtians have to come up with evidence, not us. I can conclude what makes sense to me, based on scholars just like you can do it too, because we are not dependent on who it was. But Xtians are dependent on that
@@germanboy14 - I'm glad you said this. I started thinking about what I'd said and that I misunderstood your point. The most likely answer is that Theophilus refers to a Roman patron of some sort. Perhaps a gov't official who needed to understand what all the hubbub was about and why Romans and Jews alike were getting pissed off enough to kill. LOL
I really appreciate this discussion. It reminds me of the many problems that eventually pried me away from that fantasy land and into a much happier life in reality.
Yaaaay. Always a good day when you drop a new video. Especially when it's so long.
And it’s raining out and Inside it’s warm and toasty
The more that gets published on this, the more I realize that I never questioned how the book got into my hand
I am addicted to how the bible was put together. But yeah, when you've not looked into it you just assume God dropped it down from heaven or that it was written by who it's said to be written by
Wow, Kamil's razor logic. Well done as usual!
An hour and a half documentary from Paulogia!?! Grab the popcorn!
Or ear buds and some cylinder heads I need to spend some time on
🍿🍿
@@jamierichardson7683 I bought a little reader for my 2001 Nissan Altima for the service engine soon light. It gave me two codes, something about a threshold exhaust level, and another about a "knock sensor"?
@@marcomoreno6748i’m not a mechanic but my roommate and ex are, and i got codes like that on my old honda and after several expensive repairs didn’t hold, found it had a hairline crack in the head that got much worse when i repaired the exhaust part… Hope that’s not what you have.
@@marcomoreno6748 I don't know a lot about cars, but I believe "knocking" refers to the sound the motor makes when the octane level of the gas is wrong, and I suspect a wrong chemical composition of the gas could result in changes in the ... what was it ... "threshold exhaust level".
I have a hard time thinking the disciples wrote anything. They truly believed the resurrection was at hand. Jesus was an end times preacher. No need to write anything if you’re gonna be gone in a couple years.
They spoke Aramaic and probably couldn't read or write. These books are written in Greek by Greeks. KJV Christians don't think. God spoke old English and if it's not in the KJV it's Jesuit doctrine. I grow up in the south surrounded by Baptist ect churches. They believe that
According to Mark there wasn't even a post resurrection Story. There was just a man, women flee and tell no one. So we can't say what they believed or not for sure. Apologists have to prove that.
I suspect the twelve disciples (suspicious number, there) are mostly a fiction created for the story. The canonical Gospels can't even agree on exactly who the twelve were.
@@germanboy14 Mark foreshadows that the risen Jesus would be seen in Galilee which is presumably what the initial readers already believed. I think the ending of Mark is meant to justify the empty tomb being added to the stories even though the disciples had never mentioned it.
@sean the problem is that there was no risen Jesus in Mark, no post resurrection meeting etc. So we can see a development of the whole story within the gospels. Therefore it's impossible to say that the 12 apostles believed X or Y. It's quite possible that they weren't even sure of what happened to Jesus, If the women see a man, ran away and say no one of that and remember the gospel of Mark was there 10 to 15 years before Matthew and before Luke. We also didn't have a single sect, but many different sects within Christianity
Brilliant! This is clearly well researched and that comes across in spades. Great work!
Man, I love when you have Kamil on, he's incredible.
My only issue is that I can't listen to this in the background while I work because he packs in so much stuff I just want to sit and take notes!
As so often, the reality and (what could be tentatively called) truth of the situation is so much more nuanced, fascinating and interesting than the simplified view of biblical literalism.
It’s obvious when you think about it that we R excepted to believe A priori . I’m reading Matthew and Jesus expects his audience to recognize him as the messiah without any miricles what so ever in some circumstances.”A generation that expects signs is a generation of vipers”. I’m not saying this can’t work epistemologically speaking . You can’t u know what you still know. Any evidence is bonas material. At this point of my inquiry I think the contextual evidence for the Res is good to compelling. Ironic in that the centre piece should be the Res itself of course, but it might be the weakest link.
Sorry. You can’t UN know what you still know.
@57:51 Of course Marcion's gospel is the most accurate one. I mean, in this painting he has a film-reel sitting right there on his desk! What else could this be except the video record of Jesus, meticulously captured by his disciples?
This is quite thorough and loaded! will have to go over it more than a couple of times!
One of the major things about this topic I don't get is 'well they could have just verified the information if they really wanted to, thats how we know it actually happened/was really written by whoever', that sort of thing.
If modern christians are perfectly content to believe the text based on the assumption that other people have already verified its contents, why would early christians be any different?
If you watch a few RUclips shorts where people make the wildest claims that can be proven to be false with 30 seconds of googling, but the video has 100k likes and 99% of the comments are positive and accept it as true… then for me this perfectly explains how religions could start so easily even with zero evidence.
@@ramigilneas9274 : "Religion began the moment the first con man met the first fool." - Mark Twain
Wow Paul, master class is right! Another great job by you!!
All of the points are perfectly made but in addition to them, even if we had a gospel written by Jesus himself, that wouldn't mean that what it said within the pages were actually true.
Really?
@@jeffreyerwin3665it’s not like people don’t make up stuff when writing about themselves, right?
Agree completely. But it is interesting that apologists will claim all five of the first books of the bible were written by Moses (and apparently after his death, since this bit is included), we apparently have NOTHING directly written by Jesus, who is supposed to be a bigger deal. His time on earth would seem to have been put to better use staying in one place and writing out this stuff directly instead of wandering around and trusting to his immediate followers to get it right (who seem to be depicted as morons at times). Or worse, his followers remembering what he said, in Aramaic, and they then remember it perfectly who pass it onto to others, while somewhere along the line, it gets translated into Greek.
@@jeffreyerwin3665these are people who can be convinced that they themselves don't exist. Never doubt how far their own skepticism will take them.
@@johnnehrich9601bro the USA might not even be an English speaking country in 20 years. There are parts of the USA today that don't speak English well or can write in a language but not in English. So if someone wanted it written in English they may need assistance.
Also Jesus was focused on training his disciples. Had Jesus written himself then people would've written weird stuff and claimed Jesus wrote it. This is what we see with the gnostic "gospels" they try claiming one of the disciples wrote them when they obviously didn't. Do you think Trump or Obama wrote their own books?
Happy holidays to all of the kind, compassionate, truth seekers!
An hour and a half long Paulogia video?!
Me: “Hell yeah!”😎
"Alright, lets see it" has become the ultimate tiktok bible scholar reaction intro 😅🥰
...oh...I thought it was "HOW do You know ? -- were You THERE..?"
I've always thought that the authors of the gospels were all anonymous, and they didn't get their names to decades after the fact.
Yes unnamed greek fan-fiction.
Don't forget that there were more than 4 gospels ar the time, most of them anonymous (i think there are some which we're at least signed) so is not only fanfiction, but *curated* fanfiction.
@@Julian0101 yeah they found 50 or more in a clay jar in Egypt in the late 1940s but they never got the press that the Dead Sea Scrolls got.
Normally, I click on athiest videos primarily to brawl with people in the comments, but this time, I largely agree with you.
@@TheMilitantMazdakite yeah we know doesn't change anything though.
Kamil is not only thorough and astute, but has mastered the English language to a degree that has me in awe as a polyglot and linguist. Amazing presentation!
Really? He is extremely annoying and hard to follow with his accent.
@@jamiehudson3661a bit of a self report, dont you think?
@Greyz174 No, and actually, their work has been proven to be terrible if not dishonest and fraudulent.
@@jamiehudson3661 ok, mr cant understand his own language in a different accent :)
All I can say about early Christianity's take on Gospel authorship (and indeed authorship of other documents as well) along with how many of those documents were flying around that were being evaluated the same way after watching this video is: "what a mess".
Certainly puts paid to the apologetic line of how there is clear and uninterrupted traditional preservation of gospel authorship. What we saw was anything but clear or direct.
Love this detailed analysis! I wonder if the apocalyptic beliefs of early Christians motivated them to be more concerned with the message and less concerned with the messengers.
Or with the truth!
I think we see early on different sects competing with each other and the need/usage of apostolic authority to refute the opponents. According to Chrysostom the apostles were all not more alive before the Jewish Roman war, so people like Ireneus could freely make stuff up.
I’ve missed Kamil online. He is such a calm voice of reason when it comes to biblical scholarship. 👏🏻👏🏻
He's done several bad apologetics episodes with Digital Gnosis is you want to eat up 8 hours of your day.
@@popsbjdcan you provide some specifics on what you claim is “bad apologetics?” Because Kamil typically falls right in line with current critical scholarship. That’s not “apologetics.”
@@CharlesPayet the series is called "Bad Apologetics." Kamil joins Nathan (of Digital Gnosis) and James Fodor to examine and critique apologists' arguments. I love Kamil. He does great work. Digital Gnosis is a great channel to know as well.
@@popsbjd ahhh, my apologies. I completely misunderstood what you meant. Thank you for clarifying. And yes, I’ve seen a number of good shows by Digital Gnosis (although I often mentally confuse him with Gnostic Informant.)
@@CharlesPayet it's not Gnostic Informant. It's a different channel called Digital Gnosis run by Nathan Ormond. Really good stuff if you are interested in counter apologetics.
The best Paulogia video so far. Deep detail dive enjoyed it. For me the main come away was that by the 150s CE, the authorities were trying to reconstruct lost information as desperately as we are today. 150 years of lost oral and written records is a massive void.
And very little actual Paulogia! 🤣
That was a lot to take in but it was well worth it! 🙂
Prof. Walsh’s thesis of Gospel authorship is the one that makes more sense of the data and historical context. I wonder when apologists will catch up and begin seriously engaging with her work.
When they stop turning a profit from their shill.
completely off topic, but unfortunate name for anyone who's seen Buffy
I'm not sure how you would define "seriously engaging with her work," but the Christian apologist Jonathan Sheffield has debated Prof. Walsh on Gospel authorship on the Mythvision Podcast: ruclips.net/user/livep74uPe5CvjM?si=MgFCscGWnEo4C1Lf
@@worldviewdetective9456debates are Inherently non serious as the Format does not allow for an in depth contemplation of arguments nor for thorough source analysis. It's showboating for the public, not real scholarly exchange.
This was excellent. I look forward to listening again, slower though.
❤ Kamil as always.
Great work
Appologists really like to draw this strange image of the ancient word where everyones constantly checking their sources, double checking all the claims that come at them, always acutely aware where information is coming from, ect. And frankly this just sounds....inhuman. Especially what we wittness now in an age where checking your sources is easier then ever so many people will just accept stories or claims on their intuition alone, or find out that something theyve believed to be a fact for much of their lives turned out to have no basis at all, but were supposed to believe in an age of limited information, literacy, connection with the rest of the world, far more superstitious, ect, that they were massively more vigilant to these sort of things then we are today, too a degree we can assume many of them cant have made mistakes or jumped to conclusions....i just dont buy it.
Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if the gospels had been written in modern times.
@@DesGardius-me7gfyou don't have to wonder. Just think about derek chauvin and george floyd. Think about how people felt about the facts a few years ago.
Good point. As a yard stick of ancient credulity I think of the Samaritan woman at the well who’s, well, shall we say, not chase. She claims to Jesus she’s celibate, he reads her mind or so she thinks( something Kresken could do in his sleep) runs into town, “Abner, Abner” she cries, bringing back a multitude.”And many were saved” And a woman at that.
At best all religious texts, regardless of their position as scripture or supplemental writings, are little more than fan fiction. Expansions of foundational concepts that have no right to claim any validity in the real world. This is also why questioning and/or close scrutiny of texts are openly discouraged by religious leaders who expect you complete acceptance of their interpretations.
Maybe this nonsensical "critique" is getting in the way of church leaders spending more time to tell his congregation to love you.
One of my favorite things I heard Paulogia say once, was about when he was growing up in the church and he was ''the best at everything they taught'' 👍
Whew! That was a lot. I'll be watching this again.
It's strange. Even as an ex-Christian I still can't help but feel like I'm watching people argue over a fan fiction or pop fiction book series when watching videos like these. It's so surreal.
That’s the feeling of being truly out of the reservation! Congratulations!
I’m completely in over my head watching these kinds of apologist response videos. All I know is I can recognize actual expertise when I see it.
The idea that the beloved disciple wrote the Gospel seems to be based on a perverse reading of 21:24.
“This is the disciple who testifies about these things and has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.”
(NET).
The natural reading of this is that the author and his group are the “we”, and the disciple, “he”, is a different person. This reading is reinforced by the following verse.
“There are many other things that Jesus did. If every one of them were written down, I suppose the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (NET)
The “I suppose” shows that the author is ready to use first person for himself, so it seems unlikely that he was referring to himself in third person in the previous verse.
My interpretation fits the larger context as well. The Gospel ends very satisfactorily at the end of chapter 20. 21 is an appendix, almost as though the author (if he is the same author) came across the story in written form after he had finished the book.
The “has written” is “γράψας”, which is that annoying aorist tense. “Testifies” is present, but can be historic present. It is common to use historic present for the contents of writing.
I interpret “these things “ to refer to the story in 21 only. If the author wanted to invoke the authority of a disciple for the whole book, he would have done so in the main body, not the appendix.
Great work as usual Paul.
Very thorough and thoughtful. Thanks,
Michael Jones vs Kamil Gregor is your classic Bambi vs Godzilla matchup.
Jones is incredibly disingenuous in his assertions, a deficit that contaminates his activity in other areas of his life.
@@maynardmckillen9228your portrait of Jones is the thing that is disingenuous, and shows your lack of ability to interact respectfully with people that do not hold views similar to your own.
@@elanordeal2457 You're projecting.
47:59 I was listening to this at work with my screen off, and I got to about this point before I thought "I bet Paul is just sitting there blinking with his hands crossed on his desk."
Sure enough
Love more collabs with Kamil. 😀
As someone who was raised at the leftmost edge of Christianity I wonder if many people involved see how silly these debates are. I'm not saying they aren't necessary, because they are. Religion is a weapon used on outsiders and insiders alike. People need to be talked down from absurd claims. A very smart RUclipsr talking about politics made a very good point. People think (vote) how they feel regardless of argument. I think most people's conscious paradigms are broken, making sense can't convince in a broken system.
I think people emotional systems need to be repaired and trained before they'll listen to reason.
I'll mention "learned helplessness" and let critical thinkers ponder that emotions can be broken - on purpose
Sorry about the terrible sentence structure. Hopefully my meaning is decipherable.
My meaning is that emotion and reason use separate sections of the brain limbic and cortex respectively.
I'm my life, and observation of other people, it's easier to ignore what I know than to ignore what I feel. The solution is to train both to create positive (ideally similar) outcomes.
Paulogia Rocks !
Happy Holidays dude !
You seem to be drawing the conclusion that because the oldest texts were found at Egyptian monasteries that this confines the proof of where such texts were shared under the same title. Are we then assuming that Irenaeus wrote (or was ascribed authorship) only or primarily in Egypt? Maybe the oldest texts are only preserved in one place because it had the earliest monastic culture that would preserve such texts...
This conversation (on both sides) seems to assume a sort of boolean authorship related primarily to the texts themselves. Rather, than many textual variants developing within communities that ascribed their lineage (right or wrong) to particular apostles - which seems much more likely. The idea of someone or a small set of people inventing authorship a few centuries later seems just as problematic, as you point out - by the time of Constantine/Nicea "everybody and their mother" had a sense of the books and their authorship - but this is at the beginning of the 4th century.
So obviously we have the texts in a basically concrete form in the 2nd century (whether written in the first or fixed from tradition in the 2nd) and they are being shared in these concrete forms throughout the 2nd and 3rrd century along with titles/authorship that we are arguing about when/how they were fixed. If they were not fixed we would not just see a few varied references or titles, but some discussion about their authorship. While there is discussion about the canon in the 2nd and the 3rd, we don't seem to find much discussion of the authorship of the 4 gospels - which would seem to garner the most attention in such discussions.
As such, I would draw the conclusion that while the texts themselves probably crystallized in the late 1st / early 2nd within communities sharing an oral tradition, the authorship of such texts was probably already assumed even if not explicitly assigned as the title - which we then see become common out of practical necessity when discussing the various Gospel traditions.... Seems a lot simpler than one community inventing the authorship and then someone convincing everybody else with no record of such convincing.
0:40 I'm looking forward to seeing how this issue is covered. Inspired Philosophy suggested 2 alternatives, the gospels were written by those named, or they were anonymous. But there is an equally likely third alternative and he should have thought of it. It is entirely possible that the authorship was known at the time they were written but that it was later forgotten and then assigned to the traditional names.
Regardless of whether their authorship was known at the time of writing, which is almost certainly true, they were still written anonymously.
@@malchir4036 I guess we're getting into a question of definitions. We have 3 (not 2) cases.
1. A document whose authorship was known at the time it was published and whose authorship is currently known - NOT anonymous
2. A document whose authorship was secret or unknown to all except the author at the time of its publication and remains so.
3. A document whose authorship was generally known when published but whose authorship is now lost.
Some may choose to use a definition of "anonymous" for BOTH cases 2 and 3. But for the sake of clarity I think it's worth pointing out that those are indeed 2 different cases. To use the same word, anonymous, for both risks muddying the issue.
I listen to a lot of academically oriented RUclips videos but this is by far the most informational lyrics dense video I have ever heard. My head is spinning
I've heard before that IP was one of the better Christian apologists but man, his schtick seems so lazy. Wild assumptions and logical leaps posited as if they are likely fact.
He guesses that the books had titles before they were named in the second century, he guesses these titles were the same as they are now, he guesses they were put in libraries, he guesses that they would not have been put in libraries if they did not have names, he guesses that they had names because they were sent to people and then further guesses that those people only trusted them because they were named and then drops another guess on top of that that the name is the same today as it was then.
Oh, he is one of the better, at least in youtube, the thing is that apologetics has a low bar, remember the cherished words of one of the best apologists in history William 'Lowbar' Craig.
In the words of someone who i don't remember who said it, asking who are the best apologists is like asking 'what is the best looking turd?'
It's their tactic. They usually try to speak about "the gospel", trying to conceal that in the Nt we have 4 different who copied each other and that in the first century we had many different gospels too. Papias mentions a different gospel of Mark and a different gospel of Matthew. He didn't know a gospel of John or Luke, he didn't know Acts. More could be said about Papias. Ignatius mentions other sects with different beliefs because they had different scripture. Then we have Jewish Christian sects who had different gospels too. Even Paul's enemies had a different gospel (maybe not in written form at that time, but later for sure). Now apologists like IP want people to think that there were only 4 gospels in the first century and in their best case even only "the gospel". And they want to hide the conflict between Paul and the apostles, that there were sects with different gospels etc.
The number of times he uses “likely” without any evidence to back it up is impressive.
@@Julian0101 _"what is the best looking turd"_
A pearl.
I have constantly looked at the practices IP uses, which rely heavily on quotemining. He´s a good adversary since he constantly responds back, but I´m not surprised.
IP: "If there was any disagreement or suspicion of any facts, people could just fact-check it instantly because they were there!"
Also IP: "This one group had this one tradition, and this other group had this other tradition! It's not like they could just fact-check each other, that'd be silly!"
Never fall for apologists' little games. They don't care what they're saying, let alone if it's true. Their only goal is to convince, no matter how dishonest they have to be. If you're fooled into believing, then at least you believe, according to cultists. The rest of us don't like being fooled and don't like fooling people.
he said he’s gonna be responding so be ready for a treat
Their trying to save us from hell. I wish I was as afraid of the Christian hell as I am of the Islamic hell. About 10 percent. Not enough to even consider converting.
this is amazing, of course. I feel though it would benefit from Paulogia occasionally interjecting with questions and comments just to break it up a bit
Immediately, I'm in over my head. That's why I'm here.
...It's both Smart- & Honest to acknowledge when we DON'T know as much/have the linguistic & historical 'Chops' of these hosts- & their guests...
An hour and a half? I didn't know. Also, you pictures are cool!
Is there a transcription of this video cuz boy is this deep water… I would like to read it thoroughly and at my own pace.
I learned so much from this. Thanks
I know Michael (IP) is held in high regard by many, but he appears as prone to motivated reasoning as any other apologist, from the much-vaunted Craig to a common Hovind.
The real story of Biblical authorship & compilation is far more messy than apologists would have their audiences believe, but both audience *and* apologist prefer things to be far neater.
Yes they know they cant link the chain back however these apologists need to catch up on what the authors are doing
imagine how gangster Kamil is gonna be in 10 years
This video is an HOUR AND A HALF??!!
That's the kind of research skill that we love you for.
@Paulogia Kamil is crushing it.
This video is devastating. Expect it to be ignored by every RUclips apologist, because they all just want it to go away.
@@DrKippDavisthey’re only defending god and Bible for the untold treasure stored up for them.
@JimmyTuxTv And the very "told" treasure stored up in their bank accounts, probably tax-free because it was donated to a "ministry".
Paulogia is the king of shutting up and letting the guest speak.
I know my place
Canadians! 🤣
1,5 hrs of Paulogia and Kamil? Yeees!
48:35 Can you direct me the name of some of these works about the women that you refer to? I'd be really interested to read about how the 2nd century Christians identified and misidentified women in the rhe texts
90 minutes? Thank you!
"The Apocalypse of Thomas" visual probably would have caused a spit-take were I drinking. Thanks, Paul!
1:05:39-1:05:44 i think all four Gospels were written by jews (“Mark” was a companion of Paul, “Matthew” was a petrine “christian” adapting the Didache, “Luke” was a jew combatting “Matthew,” and “John” was some kind of Essene group).
I think inspiring philosophy is good at imagining scenarios where he's right. I don't know how honest that approach is.
54:11-54:22 👍 It’s very possible that the chronological sequence was: “John”-“Matthew,” Epistles of “John,” Hebrews-“barnabas”-Marcion’s Evangelion-rest of “John.”
15:00-15:01 Not really. “Luke” was redacted around 150 CE. “John’s” Beloved Disciple was a literary creation perhaps directed against cerinthus.
The fact people have to tell people this is scary.
I see Kamil, I must watch.
The gospel of "Mark" was not written BY Mark, it was written FOR all the susceptible marks.
Oops! Your bias is showing!
@@jeffreyerwin3665can you elaborate?
Agreed, if Mark was written by an eyewitness, apologists have to explain why we so much of Homer in Mark as well as parallels from the Septuagint.
If a modern witness gave a detective a statement that copied other stories in literature, we'd automatically assume the guy was making things up, duh. Obviously.
If you're a real witness, you don't parallel literature.
@@michaelsbeverly ABSOLUTELY! Even worse for the other two related gospels, both of which quote Mark verbatim at times, but with different "facts." Of course, the core problem for apologists who want to claim these writings are direct or indirect from an infallible deity, is why everything so flimsy and contradictory. Like the Problem of Divine Hiddenness, I think there is a related Problem of Divine Ambiguity or of Divine Confusion.
@@michaelsbeverly That’s an interesting argument. Did the early Christians engage in a giant make believe game? Was it like Star Trek fans being like Brandon on Galaxy Quest - i.e. we knew it was just a TV show. But we all wished it was real! 😂
A lot of the claimed parallels with Homer are a bit ambiguous. But even if there was a provable direct correlation that would not demand a causal interpretation that the events never happened.
For people of faith, the various effecting of miracles in the New Testament era, to be parallel at times to mythological tropes (e.g. Bacchus, grapes & wine archetypes) serve as a type of “praeparatio evangelica.”
As C.S. Lewis once observed, an eclectic mimesis style garbs the coming of Jesus & His Spirit in our space & time history. The yearnings of adventure within the story archetypes in pagan literature has found its fulfillment in the Christian faith.
C.S. Lewis, who swam in the field of comparative mythology, once wrote to Christians about these mythological tropes & parallels:
“We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology.”
Starbucks.. Greece 75ce
Luke: I would like to call this meeting to order now. Thank you for coming John, Matthew, Mark. I thought before we release our 4 scripts on to the world we really, really need something special. I really think the books will be a total failure if we don’t have ….. a cool matching title.
John, what do you mean?
Luke: Well, we need to agree on a title for our books.
John: I already have a cool title in mind. Given that my book is very different from you 3 I think I want to stick with what I have.
Matthew: What did you have in mind?
John : I am going with “What the beloved disciple saw..”
Mark: what?
John ““What the beloved disciple saw”.
Mark: that’s rubbish and who said you could be the “beloved disciple”? Now, the 3 of us have had a little chat before you came along and decided on “The gospel according to… “
John: Oh really did you now. Well that wont work for me. My entire shtick is that I am writing a mystery story where the reader must guess who the author is. I have been very careful to give them just enough info and of course... I AM the beloved... everyone will know that in years to come.
Mark: There is one thing I do want to discuss and that is the royalties. I really don’t think it is fair that we all get the same when these two [nods at Matthew and Luke] have just cut and pasted my entire manuscript and added a few twists and turns. Oh and seriously, you two have a agree on the whole birth story. We cant have two entirely separate stories about his birth we will all look like idiots by association.
John: can we please get back to the title? There is no way I am agreeing to “The gospel according to”
Well done!
Nice fanfiction buddy who knows if those 4 ever met like this ...
@@mrlaw2729 how else could they possibly have agreed on their joint title!
@@magicker8052 they did not...i know you know that but for future people pls make sure to check the vids about authorship on this channel
@@mrlaw2729 lol how bad do things have to be when you cant parody anymore
Wait I just realized you made a good point how the author wouldn't put 1 Maccabees cause the author had no idea they would write another. The same can be applied with Paul. However we know Paul wrote an earlier Corinthians before 1 Corinthians.
The early church if they knew this at the time should label 2 & 3 Corinthians in the Bible to maintain accuracy to everyone that we no longer have 1 Corinthians. Or they didn't do their homework well enough to realize this. Hopefully the early church wasn't ignoring this and trying to prop up what they believe to everyone at that time.
Hell yeah, early Christmas episode.
what a masterclass
You’ve really outdone him here
There is simply no comparison between the superficial and narrow minded videos of Inspiring Philosophy, and the exhaustive and very academic work that Kamil has presented here.
Well said!
Well, that's not charitable on your part, because Michael reads and researches what he shows in his videos. It even places the fonts of the articles or books!
Come on...
But IP will make a lot of money from his gimmick, and Kamil and Paul will struggle to make pennies.
@@TheServantSlayer7
it's hard to know if you're being sarcastic.
In case you're not, you should know that Michael is notoriously bad at research. Experts in every field he wades into have pointed out his mistakes and misreadings, and he invariably appeals to scholars who are not representative of the consensus in order to make weak arguments.
But I'd like to think your reference to fonts is supportive of my comment, rather than a counter to it. I mean, you would have to have completely missed the point of actual scholarship if you think an appropriate font is what makes it. Kipp Davis once pointed out an occasion where IP actually had a Hebrew passage copied backwards on his video.
@@Paulogia
cheers.
by the way - there's a picture at 31:45 that I found rather curious. One of the people in it has two right hands and no left hand.
This video is incredible 👏
Would Love to see you have a formal debate with Michael on this. I think it would be a fun discussion to watch.
Would it? I think apologists are boring to watch during debates, because the intellectual dishonesty is the only thing they have to provide.
@angelmendez-rivera351 Nice hasty generalization fallacy. It would be great conversation to watch because Micheal Jones is quite intelligent and very good at defending his beliefs.
@@SuperBossGiovanni I strongly disagree, and I have heard him speak enough to feel justified in my conclusion.
@angelmendez-rivera351 Oh, ad homimen too, there's also that. It's funny that you claim apologists only have "intellectual dishonesty," while all you seem to have is insults. I will no longer reply to you. God bless and I hope you learn to accept God's love. ❤️
@@SuperBossGiovanni I'm afraid you don't know what an ad hominem is. For the record, screaming "[insert name] fallacy" without any elaboration doesn't constitute a refutation of an argument. Learning the name of a fallacy doesn't make you competent at having a conversation or at logical reasoning. Clearly, you have many things to learn, but you don't have the mindset. That's what makes me different from you.
The problem with IP’s argument is it only makes sense if this is a fully human endeavor. Sure I could believe that maybe in the first century the authors could have been known, but if an all powerful all knowing god wanted these stories to be the basis of revealing his plan for salvation to the entire world, and the validity of the author’s would be a point his apologist would use to defend the documents, then god should have made sure the authorship of the Bible was beyond question.
Inexcusable cus we get this wrong it’s going to be verrry hot for a verrry long time.
Thorough and convincing
The fact that Greek and Roman historians mention themselves in their introductions is connected to the fact that classical historians were expected to start by justifying their work- in the case of the Greeks, to explain why their choice of subject matter was worth writing about; and in the case of the Romans, to explain why they were spending their time writing about other people's deeds instead of performing their own.
The AI art in these vids gets kinda wild at some points but i loved the in-depth discussion of the topic!
"it is unlikely just would've accepted any old writing without believing it came from a reliable source" Did he suddenly forget he was apologizing for Christianity? You know, the religion famous for picking and choosing books for its countless canons and denominations?
Excellent. Thanks Paul.
I have no idea what this guy said, but I can't stop listening.. 🤣
Me neither 😭😭
I had to pause the video after the Forrest Valkai joke...
It took several moments to recover and actually be ready for a deep dive.
Forrest Valkai joke?
Thanks for the video :)
I found it really difficult to understand exactly what he was saying.
I thought of a very simple argument which I believe demonstrates we can be certain that at least Matthew and Luke are not written by Apostles or eyewitnesses nor by anyone who had direct access to them. It's a fact that both Matthew and Luke copied large portions of Mark directly to build their gospels. If they were written by an eyewitness or even someone who had direct access to an eyewitness this would never have happened. If you're an eyewitness or have one available to question or interview you should be fully capable of writing the story on your own without needing any other sources much less going so far as to copy word for word huge portions of one. The fact that Matthew and Luke relied so heavily on Mark I think demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that they were not written by any eyewitness or even by a second-hand person with direct access to an eyewitness. The fact they were written 40-50+ years after Jesus' death all but confirms this as well considering life expectancy was around 45 years old. The odds go against anyone who was an adult when Jesus died still being alive when Matthew and especially Luke were written. But this is just a,secondary piece of evidence. Primarily, their reliance on Mark seems to me to obliterate any chance they were themselves eyewitnesses or had one available to them to rely on.
Just think about it, suppose you were a 1st hand participant to an event, or that you had available to question or interview someone who was. And you were tasked with writing about said event. Would you go find a book written by someone else who was purported to be involved in the event and copy large portions of their story? Or would you just tell your own story or that of the person you had available that you knew was there?
If the bible is a collection of books, Mark could have successfully sued Mathew, Luke and John for plagerism.And let’s not forget the aledged pagan parrells.
Weeeeeeee down the rabbit hole with apologist claims, love it. Go Paulogia!
Out of all the scraps of texts that have the oldest dates, what percentage were recovered from a ruin/storage compared to the percentage found in midden heaps?