F4F | Debunking Dan McClellan on the Gospels and Eyewitness Testimony

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

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This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. Today, we're going to talk about critical scholars.

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The social media platforms, YouTube and Instagram and TikTok, have made it so that the world is a really small place, and as a result of it, if you spend any time on those social media platforms and you show any interest whatsoever so that the algorithm can figure out that you like things related to Christianity, then you probably have run across the content created by a fellow by the name of Dan McClellan.

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Dan McClellan is, the best way I can describe him is he's trying to figure out how to dethrone

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Bart Ehrman. He is a critical scholar's critical scholar, and as a result of it, his claims need to be taken on from time to time.

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Most of them I just find to be just like patently stupid and don't even want to waste my time. But this one just happened to be right in my wheelhouse, and I decided, you know,

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I think it'd be a good idea to actually take on Dan McClellan, the critical scholar, and show you just how full of hot air he is.

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And when we're done with this, he's going to be in tatters, at least his scholarship is going to be in tatters, and I'll just ask the question, if he got all of this wrong, what else do you think he's getting wrong?

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Answer a lot of other things too. But let's take a look at his claim, just so you know, the claim that he's going to be making that we're going to be hearing is that the four gospels, all four of them, none of them contain eyewitness testimony.

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Oh no, they don't contain any eyewitness testimony.

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And we're going to show just how ridiculously, just not only unfounded, just like,

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I'm just going to say stupid. It's a really dumb, non -secular argument that he gives.

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So let's do what we do here, and we're going to whirl up the desktop, and let me pull up my web browser.

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And yeah, I've actually created a keynote for this episode of Fighting for the

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Faith, which I thought was kind of fun, but I've lectured on this before, so it's not like I totally made this whole cloth, but let's listen to some of his claims regarding, and by the way, the name of the video, this was published when

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I recorded, this was seven days before I recorded it, February 7th, 2024, and the claim is there are no eyewitness accounts of Jesus in the

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New Testament, none whatsoever, none, I mean, really, what's your explanation for all these stories about Jesus?

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But I'm getting ahead of myself. So let's listen to some of his claims. The data indicate that there are no eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life in the

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New Testament. Gasp, oh no, the data indicates, no, and so if you don't know how to see through the really lame arguments of critical scholars, you know, you're a layperson, right, and this guy claims to be a biblical scholar, and he uses big words like data and stuff like that, and you just sit there going, oh no, am

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I being foolish for believing in Jesus? No, you're being foolish for listening to this guy, but I'll demonstrate.

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The four Gospels were written and originally circulated anonymously, and that traditional authorship was only secondarily assigned toward the end of the second century

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CE. Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan, I'm a scholar of the Bible and religion. No, actually, he's not a biblical scholar.

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Let me explain. Dan McClellan is not a biblical scholar, he's a critical scholar. Critical scholars are to biblical scholarship as abortion doctors are to pediatric medicine, to keep that in mind.

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He's a special kind of thing. He's one of the scoffers that Scripture prophesied would arise in the last day.

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He's a scoffer, he's a skeptic, okay? That's what he does. Scripture prophesied about guys like him, and so he's not contributing to the world of biblical scholarship, he's contributing to the world of those who are trying to tear down the

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Bible and attack the Scriptures. So like I said, critical scholars are to biblical scholarship as abortion doctors are to pediatric medicine.

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Just keep that analogy in mind as we continue here. And what I'm sharing is not my own argument, it is the state of the field.

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Alright, so this isn't his own argument. And he makes appeals like this regularly. So let's take a look at the next one here.

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This is what we call argumentum ad populum, okay? This is a logical fallacy. Just because a majority of people accept it doesn't make it right, point no good, okay?

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So from time to time you have to point out to these guys. They're constantly engaging in non sequiturs and logical fallacies.

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So his argument is, the majority of scholars believe me and believe this, therefore it's true.

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Well, I would note that the majority of all critical scholars believe nonsense like this.

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That doesn't make it true. In fact, appeals like this are a form of a logical fallacy. Now another name for this logical fallacy, argumentum ad populum, is the bandwagon fallacy.

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In fact, you can look, if you go to Google for a list of logical fallacies, you can find useful websites like this.

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The bandwagon fallacy, you appealed to popularity or the fact that many people do something as an attempted form of validation.

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That's not how this works. The flaw in this argument is that the popularity of an idea has absolutely no bearing on its validity.

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So if it did, then the earth would have made itself flat for most of history to accommodate this popular belief.

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So you get the idea. So he's engaging in a logical fallacy here.

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This isn't my argument. This is the majority of scholars all believe this and I'm here to inform you, you well -meaning deceived

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Christians who believe the Bible is true. Oh, the vast majority of scholars just completely disagree with you.

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It isn't true. And you just need to come to the fact that the data says so.

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And we all have agreed that that's the case, right? Uh -huh. Okay.

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Bandwagon fallacy or argumentum ad populum, either one will do. This is a logical fallacy.

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It doesn't surprise me because this is kind of par for the course for critical scholars.

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Okay. So moving on to his next argument, this is where I'm going to flesh a few things out.

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And the state of the field acknowledges that a close reading of the Gospels does not turn up a single first -person claim to being an eyewitness to Jesus's life.

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Not a single first -person. Notice the nuance there. Not a single first -person claim.

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So since all three Gospels are written in third -person, not first -person, therefore, there's no eyewitness accounts.

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We're going to take this on directly, but note the nuance here. This is the argument. Well, a careful reading of all of the

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Gospels, not a single, single part of the Gospels says, I saw these things, therefore,

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I testify in first -person that these things are true. I would note that's not the standard.

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And I would also note, like, for instance, like the opening of the Gospel of Luke, in as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us.

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Ah, look, Luke, although it's written in third -person, it claims that it is a compilation, an orderly account of what?

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Eyewitness testimony. So we'll talk more about this in a minute.

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So note the nuance in his argument. Not a single first -person account.

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This is the way we determine truth, huh? Mm -hmm. Knowledge is that a close reading of the Gospels does not turn up a single first -person claim to being an eyewitness to Jesus' life.

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Oh, no. That means there's no eyewitness testimony. No, it doesn't. The closest thing we have is the second -to -last verse of the

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Gospel of John, in which an unnamed group of people asserts that the beloved disciple who's mentioned throughout the

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Gospel of John is the one who testified of these things and who wrote these things.

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And then that group of people says, and we know that his testimony is true. Now, we don't know who we is, and we don't know...

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Yeah, who's the we that you're referring to when you were including yourself in the we? A bunch of other critical scholars who've created an arbitrary test for eyewitness testimony.

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And the arbitrary test is, we need first -person voice testimony that this is true, otherwise it's not eyewitness testimony.

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Balogna. That is just an arbitrary test that you guys invented. And then you went through the

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Scriptures and said, well, there are no verses that meet the standard that we've created. Therefore, there is no eyewitness testimony.

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You'll note that I'm not taking this guy seriously because he shouldn't be. All right?

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This argument is just stupid. You know, we've created an arbitrary standard.

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No biblical text meets our standard. Therefore, we can just toss the whole thing out.

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Uh -huh. That tells me more about you than it does about the Bible, by the way. We don't know where to distinguish what we is writing or edited versus what the beloved disciple ostensibly testified of.

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Oh, no. He uses a big word ostensibly. That means he's smart and stuff. I don't know how to argue.

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Listen, don't take these guys seriously. Seeing through their really dumb arguments is not that hard once you know what you're looking for.

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Or wrote. So, the only claim to eyewitness status is a second -hand one that was clearly added later.

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The only claim to eyewitness status. That's weird because Luke, again, he wasn't an eyewitness.

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He created an orderly account. Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, who do you get this information from?

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You know, the eyewitnesses. It seemed good to me also having followed all things closely for some time past to write an orderly account for you, most excellent

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Theophilus, which happens to mean lover of God, so that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught.

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Now, granted, the entire Gospel of Luke is written in third person. It's a historical narrative, kind of along the lines of Tacitus and things like that.

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But does that mean that there's no eyewitness testimony in here? Of course not.

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Okay, so let's come back to Dan here. To what may have been originally written by the beloved disciple.

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But there's also significant evidence of editorial change throughout the Gospel of John. So, that's not a good case.

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The data indicate that from the composition of the

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Gospels all the way up to Irenaeus writing between 170 and 180 CE, every last quotation or reference to every verse or every combination of verses from the

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Gospels treats them anonymously. All right, so I'm not going to argue with him at this point.

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So, his main argument are two things. We don't know who wrote the Gospels. They were all written anonymously.

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And the church clearly had no clue who wrote them. And since there isn't a single first person account testifying,

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I saw these things, therefore there is no eyewitness testimony. Those are his two main arguments and these are just stupid.

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So, let's take a look at what the real data shows, shall we? So, here's my lecture.

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The lecture is called Evidence the New Testament is Based on Eyewitness Testimony. And I didn't come up with this stuff.

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I had help from scholars who make compelling arguments. And I would note you don't have to believe them because they're scholars.

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You can test this data yourself and see if this actually makes sense. So, my special thanks goes out to Dr.

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Peter Williams of Cambridge University. This lecture is based on one of his apologetic lectures.

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And I've had contact with him since and he was generous enough to personally assist me in digging deeper into this topic and thus the presentation that I'm about to give to you.

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All right, so just so you know, I've talked to a scholar or to myself. All right. So, here's my next question.

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We've all been familiar with the phrase, the devil is in the details, right? And there's something true to that.

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But I would note a better way to look at this would be rather than saying the devil is in the details, how about we say instead the truth is in the details?

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Let me give you an example. Okay, you're all familiar with the movie My Cousin Vinny. Now, if you have never watched this.

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If you've never watched this video, this movie, My Cousin Vinny, this is going to be your date night the next time you have a date night or the next time you have a movie night.

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It is fantastic. It is a great movie. And there's a famous court scene where Marissa Tomei, who plays a character by the name of Mona Lisa Vito, all right, she was basically raised as a grease monkey, best way

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I could put it. She had brothers and her father and they were all into fixing cars and stuff like this. And she learned the family trade in this high testosterone environment known as her home.

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And she ends up being put on the stand regarding a murder trial and famous, famous court scene.

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And she kind of says this in her thick New Jersey accent. The defense is wrong.

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There is no way that these tire marks were made by a 64 Buick Skylark.

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These marks were made by a 1963 Pontiac Tempest. The car that made these two equal length tire marks has paws attraction.

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Can't make those marks without paws attraction, which was not available on the 64 Skylark. Okay, this is how she talked.

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And here's the deal. It's one of the big turning points in the actual movie itself.

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It's like, it's the point where everything starts to turn and you begin to say, oh, wow, and she legitimately knows what she's talking about.

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And she's able to determine that by a careful look at the details of the evidence.

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And that's what critical scholars are not interested in doing. Instead, they create their own rules.

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They then make the Bible stand up to their rules. And then when the Bible doesn't stand up to their rules, they chuck the whole thing out and pan it.

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It's not true. It doesn't contain eyewitness testimony. It can't be trusted. You get the idea.

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So C .S. Lewis, famous, famous, famous writer, author, and literary guy from Oxford.

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He made an argument that Jesus is either, he's either the Lord, he's either a liar, or he's a lunatic.

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But recent scholarship has come up with a fourth option. Maybe Jesus is just a legend.

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It makes me wonder what McClellan thinks regarding all of the accounts of Jesus and what we see in the gospels that he claims contains no eyewitness accounts whatsoever.

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Is this just some legend concocted later regarding Jesus? I don't think so.

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So we'll look. So Dan McClellan, he's going to be one of our guys that we're looking at the data. The data indicate that there are no eyewitness accounts of Jesus's life in the

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New Testament. The four gospels were written and originally circulated anonymously. And that traditional authorship was only secondarily assigned towards the end of the second century

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C .E. A little bit of a note here. Authorship is a different question than if the gospels contain eyewitness testimony.

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So regarding authorship, there is a book that I strongly recommend. Okay. And it's this one.

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Donald Guthrie's New Testament Introduction, fourth edition. Guthrie in this, he's fully aware of all the boneheaded skeptical scholar arguments against the authorship of the gospels.

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And in his introductions to each and every one of the four gospels, he addresses authorship and the challenges to authorship.

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And he gives a fantastic scholarly reason as to why we can trust the authorship that we have today for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

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And he does this as a rebuttal to the skeptical scoffer scholars of like Dan McClellan and other people like that.

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We'll put a link down below to this book. This should be in every Christian's library.

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It's written on a lay level. It's wonderful. It's a good, good book. And he answers all the authorship issues.

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But so I would note, so here's the way I'm going to approach this. Even if we grant

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McClellan's argument that we don't know who wrote the four gospels, that is not how you determine if these documents contain eyewitness testimony.

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In fact, McClellan's argument is a non sequitur, total non sequitur. We don't know who wrote it.

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All right, fine. We'll just name the documents M1, M2, L, and J, okay?

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And we'll just take the authorship right off the bat. Does that mean there's no eyewitness accounts in there? Nope. Okay.

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You know, that's not how this works. Authorship is a different question than whether it contains eyewitness testimony.

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Next point. He said, there are no first person accounts. It's not written in first person.

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Okay. A third person historical narrative does not automatically mean the document is not an eyewitness account.

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Voice, you know, when somebody writes a document, if they choose to write in first person or third person, that's a stylistic decision made by the author.

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And that does not negate any eyewitness accounts that may be in there just because it's written in third person.

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So McClellan, again, falls woefully short here because his assumptions cannot be validated in real life.

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Okay. There are plenty of instances where somebody has chosen to use a pseudonym or to write anonymously.

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And yet the information that they've written in their documents is nothing less than eyewitness testimony.

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They wrote these. They made the decision to write in third person for very specific reasons.

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We're not privy to the reasons why the authors of the New Testament wrote in third person.

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Maybe it was piously because they wanted the emphasis to be on Jesus rather than the author.

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But that's just a theory. Okay. The fact is, is that they are all written in third person, but that doesn't negate the fact that they could contain eyewitness testimony.

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In order to determine whether there's eyewitness testimony in these documents would require you to actually read them and take a look at the data that's in the documents themselves to ask, is this consistent with what we would expect from high quality eyewitness testimony?

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So McClellan is falling short here. Again, I strongly recommend Guthrie's New Testament introduction if you're looking for a resource to help you understand how to rebut the lame arguments of critical scholars who claim, we don't even know who wrote the

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Gospels. Okay. Next up, Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman, this guy 10, 15 years ago, he was the pinnacle apex predator when it came to critical scholars.

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Okay. I don't know where he's disappeared to. He's not as popular as he used to be. But back in the day, he was very prolific in attacking the

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New Testament. So here's one of his quotes from Jesus Interrupted. So what do you suppose happened to the stories about Jesus over the years as they were told and retold, not as disinterested news stories reported by eyewitnesses, but as propaganda meant to convert people to faith told by people who have themselves heard them fifth or sixth or 19th hand.

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Did you or your kids ever play the telephone game at a birthday party? Okay. So his claim is that the

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Gospels themselves, they were edited and redacted and changed.

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And as a result of it, they weren't even written by eyewitnesses. This is propaganda. This is legend that has cropped up regarding Jesus.

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That was Ehrman's argument. I don't know what McClellan's is. It doesn't really matter.

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It's just the critical scholar argument de jure, which come and go.

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Y 'all don't remember. Back in the day, there was a book written that claimed that Jesus didn't really die on the cross.

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He only swooned. He faked his death.

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So Jesus hung on the cross and he went, it is finished. And then he went like this and then kind of look up, see if anyone notices that he's still alive and breathing.

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Yeah. The swoon theory is now in the ash heap of human history. But that was, oh, that was back in the day.

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That was quite the favorite of the critical scholars. The swoon theory. Jesus didn't really die on the cross.

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Therefore, there was no resurrection. He just pretended to die. Yeah. Back in the days before there were antibiotics,

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Jesus was able to make victorious appearances dead while bleeding and oozing profusely.

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I don't think so. But so, so our Irwin's argument 10, 15 years ago is, oh, this, the, the, the accounts in the gospels are just legends.

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And it's, it's, it's, it's akin to the game of telephone. But I would note, and Dr.

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Peter, you know, Dr. Peter Williams from Cambridge also noted really well. Telephone game party is a game that is designed to ensure the message gets corrupted so that people can get a laugh.

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It's a faulty analogy. You're required to whisper. You can only say the message once.

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And so, I mean, try this with a bunch of kids. You start off at one end, you know, you get like 12 kids in a line, start off at one end with the

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Gettysburg address, you know, four score and seven years ago. And by the time you get to the 12th kid, that what, what they say is that Britney Spears, she did a dookie, you know, that's how it turns out.

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It's just, it's just stupid. And everyone laughs because there's, there's, there's nothing close to it. That's a faulty analogy.

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That is not how Christianity was passed down. Better analogy, again, Dr. Peter Williams's argument is that no one says karate is being corrupted because it's being taught from one person to another.

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There's discipline. It is taught carefully. There are checks and balances. Better analogy.

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But, you know, I don't think Dr. Bart Ehrman is concerned about things like this. So, here's the next question.

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You know, when you ask, you know, when you ask people, where were the Gospels written? Well, tradition says

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Matthew was written in Judea. Mark was written in Rome. Luke was written in Antioch and John in Ephesus. Skeptics, they're not really sure.

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Well, Matthew was written in Syria. Mark was written in Syria. Luke, maybe Rome and John in somewhere

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Asia minor. Whatever the churches believe, that has to be false, according to the critical scholars.

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And so, therefore, we don't really know where the Gospels were written. Oh, that's helpful. Okay. Bart Ehrman in his, from Jesus Apocalyptic Prophet of the

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New Millennium, pages 46 and 47. Where then did these anonymous Greek -speaking authors, living probably outside of Palestine some 35 years after the events that they narrate, get their information?

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Note what he says there. Okay. Ehrman is basically claiming that these were written outside of Judea by anonymous authors.

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Where did they, you know, where did they even get this information? The stories from eyewitnesses to the hearers who then retold the stories to others, who pass them on to yet others and so on.

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Surely something got changed along the way. Okay. So, here's the question.

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This requires you to actually read the Gospels and to do real scholarship rather than skeptical scholarship.

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Okay. The question is, how well acquainted are the Gospel writers familiar with the land, the geography, the culture, and the names of first century

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Judea? Because we actually have the ability to get at this information objectively. Okay.

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And note that the Gospel writers wrote their Gospels. If these were forgeries that contained legends, then note that this was in the days before Google and Google Earth and websites that can give you data like this.

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Okay. So, keep this in mind. All right. So, objectively, that means you need to read the

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Gospels and test for the accuracy of agriculture, architecture, botany, burial practices, economics, geography, language, law, personal names, politics, religion, topography, and weather.

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If you're not an eyewitness, you can't fake this stuff. And so, the question is, remember, the devil's in the details.

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No, actually, the truth is in the details. Okay. This is like looking for the details regarding pause attraction.

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Okay. Is there pause attraction inside of the Gospels? I would argue absolutely there is.

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So, if the Gospel writers are simply making things up thousands of miles away and almost 60 to 90 years removed from the events that they're trying to pass off as history, they will not be able to get this information correct.

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There's no way for them to get it correct. There are no libraries they can go to.

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There is no internet that they can search through. This information is not available if you don't already have it.

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That's the point. Remember, this is the first century, right?

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Two thousand years ago. Okay. So, case in point, by the way, and this is a great example, the

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Book of Mormon. Okay. The Book of Mormon claims to be a historical account of things that took place in the

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Americas. And the Smithsonian Institution actually has an official statement regarding the

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Book of Mormon. And let's take a look at some of the highlights, shall we? A statement regarding the Book of Mormon.

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Does the Smithsonian Institution consider the Book of Mormon to be an archaeologically important document that gives us a true accurate history of pre -Mesoamerican tribes and people like this, right?

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The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide.

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Smithsonian archaeologists see no direct connection between the archaeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book.

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Okay. Great examples here. Iron, steel, glass, and silk were not used in the

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New World before 1492, except for occasional use of unsmelted meteoric iron.

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Native copper was used in various locations in pre -Columbian times, but true metallurgy was limited to southern

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Mexico and the Andean region, where its occurrence in late prehistoric times involved gold, silver, copper, and their allies.

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When you read the Book of Mormon, I mean, there was iron and steel and glass and silk, and I mean, it was all these things that weren't even in existence in the

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Americas. And so, that shows that the details, the Book of Mormon got all of those details wrong, okay?

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No reputable Egyptologists or other specialists on Old World archaeology, no expert on New World prehistoric has discovered or confirmed any relationship between archaeological remains in Mexico and archaeological remains in Egypt, okay?

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There's more to it, but you get the idea. The Book of Mormon got all these details wrong. So again, if the gospel writers are simply making up things, legend thousands of miles away and almost 60 to 90 years removed from the events that they are trying to pass off as history, they will not be able to get this information correct.

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Book of Mormon fails spectacularly here, shock of shocks. And then, of course, now let's talk about popular personal names.

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And I'm going to note, if you want to do a deeper study on this, that I'm just picking highlights from this book.

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Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Baucom.

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Baucom is a scholar's scholar at Cambridge University. I'll explain that in a minute.

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But I'll put a link also to this below. If you really want to do a deep dive on do the

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Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, this is your book. And what we're going to work through is just a couple of the highlights that are covered in this book.

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So, popular names and personal names. This is kind of a powerful argument, but here's how this goes.

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A percentage of names by decade. So, if you were to go back and kind of look at what were the popular names in the

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United States of America, not the same in Britain, which is also an English speaking nation, not the same in Australia, but in the

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United States. Okay. During the 2000s, the two most popular names were

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Jacob and Emily for male and a female. But in the 90s, it was Michael and Jessica. In the 80s, it was

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Michael and Jessica. In the 70s, though, it was Michael and Jennifer. And the thing is, is that this is important information because we actually have archaeological information that tells us what the most popular names were among Jews in Palestine, I should say, in Judea at the time of the first century.

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We actually have legitimate documentation that backs this up. And these names are different than Jewish names of the

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Diaspora. So, if you were to just travel south to Alexandria, Egypt, it's a completely different list as to most popular names among Jews who are living in Alexandria or other places in the

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Mediterranean. Keep this in mind. Okay. So, if we were to look at popularity of Jacob in the 2000s, it's really popular.

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But in the 1990s, it wasn't. In the 1980s and in the 1970s, not so much.

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This becomes data that's important for us in determining whether or not the Gospels are eyewitness testimonies.

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So, here's the question. Did the Gospel writers get the names right and in the right proportions as it relates to most popular names?

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All right. So, recent archaeological data on Jewish names. Jewish names in Judea show different frequency from names in the

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Diaspora. I already noted that. Despite the fact that all four Gospels in the Book of Acts were written outside of Judea, the personal naming patterns accurately reflect the naming patterns of first century

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Judea. I would note, I agree with the Church Fathers that Matthew was written in Judea.

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He wrote that before he left. But that's a different story altogether.

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So, even if they were all written outside of Judea, it's important to note that they all accurately reflect the naming patterns of first century

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Judea. Let's take a look at the details. By the way, the scholar who did this work was Tal Alon, and she's an

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Israeli -born historian, notably of women's history and Judaism, and she's a lexicographer. She is currently, at the time

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I put this together, I don't know if she still is, she's currently professor of Jewish studies at Freie University in Berlin, and she's the author of Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity.

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This is her specialty. She knows a few things here. And of course, we talked about Richard Bauckham, and now here, so his book,

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Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, he records Tal Alon's findings in this book.

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And let's talk about his credentials. Richard Bauckham is a widely published scholar in theology, historical theology, and New Testament.

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He is currently senior scholar at Ridley Hall in Cambridge. Now, does that mean that he's right? No. We have to test his arguments.

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But he's the author of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. So, coming, continuing on here, here's what the data shows.

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And Tal Alon is the one who put this together. And here's kind of an interesting thing. Here's our sources.

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Josephus, Ossuaries, and I'll explain this in a second, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. These all give us a listing of the most popular names.

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You can actually backwards engineer this list from these sources. Now, Ossuaries are a unique thing.

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And let me explain. So, back in the day, remember when Jesus was alive, there was a construction project going on in the temple.

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Herod was making the temple more spectacular. Let's just say that coming out of the

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Babylonian exile, that the temple that got put in place was less than stellar.

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And so, one of the things that Herod did is he funded a refurbishment project that took a long time.

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And it was during this time that they were quarrying stones to be used in the, you know, in the refurbishing of the temple for Herod's specifications.

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And the stones that didn't make the cut, pun intended, they were oftentimes sold in the marketplace.

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They would actually scoop out, you know, kind of chisel out the innards of these things and turn them into what are called ossuaries or bone boxes.

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And during Jesus's lifetime, there was a unique burial practice that only existed during this time in Judean history.

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And the popular practice was you would bury a body in a tomb and then seal up the tomb for a year.

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And then after a year, you would go in, gather up the bones and put them into an ossuary.

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And then oftentimes you would chisel out the name of the persons or people that were put into the bone box.

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That's how this works. And as a result of it, we have now archaeologically an entire warehouse full of ossuaries from first century

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Judea. And they have names written on them. So Talalon, she went and did all the hard work in actually looking at these things, comparing them with Josephus's writings, as well as the

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Dead Sea Scrolls. And this then becomes the definitive list of the most popular

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Jewish names among Palestinian, we'll say Judean Jews, from 330

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BC all the way up to 200 AD. This is just historical fact. Most popular name,

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Simon. Second popular, Joseph. Third, Lazarus. Fourth, Judas. Fifth, John.

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Six, Jesus or Joshua. Seven, Ananias. Eight, Jonathan.

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Nine, Matthew. Ten, Manan. And then 11, James or Yaakov.

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These are the most popular names. And here's the interesting thing. The New Testament Gospels have these in these correct proportions, which is kind of interesting.

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Again, if you were to travel down to Alexandria, it would be different. I'll explain this. So, top two men's names in Israel, according to Josephus, the

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Ossuaries, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, are Simon and Joseph. Top two most popular names in the

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Gospels, well, Simon and Joseph. Top nine men's names, 41%,

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Gospels get the 40%, it's the same proportions. So, the whole point is, is that you couldn't make this up.

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You legitimately couldn't make this up. Because you're seeing the names of men in the exact same proportion that you would expect to see them according to the objective data that we have archaeologically.

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What are the chances of that? Okay? So, ranks of male names in Palestinian Jews is, you know, so we just walked through this list.

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Same thing in the New Testament, fascinating how this works out. Rank of Jewish male's names in Egypt, and note here, popular names of Jews in Egypt are not even close to the same.

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Most popular name at the time of men, you know, at the same time in the first century,

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Eleazar, Sabateus, Joseph, Dosotheus, Papus, Ptolemaeus, and Samuel.

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Totally different names, totally different list. And so, if these were written much later and don't really contain eyewitness testimony, why did they get the names right?

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So, and you're going to note here that there's a need then before the invention of last names.

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Okay? I am Chris Rosebro. Okay? If I didn't have a last name, what would

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I be? Chris of North Dakota. I don't know. But back in the day, they had to disambiguate.

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So, Jesus is a popular name. That's like the fifth most popular name in Jesus's time.

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And that being the case, when Jesus was out playing with his friends as a kid and his mom said,

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Jesus, it's time for dinner, she would have to find a way to disambiguate from the other

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Jesus's in town. Okay? That's kind of the point. So, disambiguation is an important thing.

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And the disciples from Matthew chapter 10, they, you'll note that the ones who have the most popular names, they have a disambiguation attached to their name, whereas those who didn't have popular names, no disambiguation whatsoever.

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So, Simon who is called Peter, ah, Simon who is called Peter, that disambiguates him from the other

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Simons around there and would have been necessary because Simon's the most popular name of men in Judea in the early first century.

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Andrew, not a popular name, and Andrew his brother. James, 11th most popular name, he gets disambiguated.

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He's the son of Zebedee. And John, fifth most popular name, his brother. Philip 61,

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Philip is not a popular name. It's down low on the list, 61st. Bartholomew, 50th, way down low on the list.

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Notice they don't get, it's not Philip of Galilee or Bartholomew of Judea, nothing like that.

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No disambiguation, no disambiguation necessary. Thomas, not a popular name. Matthew, super popular name.

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Who is he? He needs disambiguation. He's the tax collector. How about James?

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Very popular name. James the son of Alphaeus. And Thaddeus, 39th rank,

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Thaddeus is not a popular name. Simon, most popular name, the zealot. So, Simon the zealot as opposed to Simon who's called

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Peter. And then Judas, which is a super popular name. Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him, it had to be disambiguated.

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So, the idea then is that for men living in that time, if you had a super popular name, you had to find a way to disambiguate yourself from other

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Simons or other people who had that same name. And it's odd when you read the list of the disciples, those who needed disambiguation were disambiguated.

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Those who didn't need disambiguation were not disambiguated because their names were not very popular.

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And that's data you would not expect for them to be able to get right if this were not eyewitness testimony.

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Okay, so note here, stories are easy to remember. Names are difficult to remember.

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And I got to note this, the older I get, the truer this is. Oh man, when

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I get new people showing up at my church, it's like, hi, I'm so -and -so. And all I hear is so -and -so.

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It's like, oh, I know I'm not going to forget this person's name. Just give me one and a half seconds and it's out the door.

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Okay, so if you were to get, if you were getting these stories, by the way, 5th, 6th, 19th hand, there's no way that you can get these names right.

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The Gospels then get the hardest thing right. They get the names right in the right proportions and the disambiguation and all this kind of stuff.

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How is that possible unless this is eyewitness testimony? Okay, so the only way the

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Gospels, all four of them, by the way, not just the three synoptics, all four of them got this data right is because it contains high quality eyewitness testimony.

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There's just no way around it. There's just no way around that. So I find it fascinating that Dan McClellan isn't interested in addressing the real data, okay, the actual data inside of the documents themselves.

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He has no explanation for any of this. So he just has to, he comes up with an arbitrary rule. Well, there's nothing written in first person.

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Therefore, there's no eyewitness testimony. Uh -huh. Okay. Where'd you get that rule from, by the way?

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And why aren't you looking at the actual data? And then, so the note here, let's take a look at, by comparison at the so -called

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Gnostic Gospels. Okay. Gnostic Gospels are not Gospels at all, and they are Gnostic and they're just complete forgeries.

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Okay. Gospel of Thomas. Let's take a look at the names that it gives. It gives Didymus, Judas Thomas, James the

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Just, and Simon Peter. The end. Okay. That's all it gives.

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Okay. How about the Gospel of Mary? Okay. Well, the names it gives are the

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Savior, Peter, Mary, Andrew, and Levi. That's it. The Gospel of Judas.

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It mentions Judas and it mentions Jesus, and then a whole bunch of really strange aliens. Barbello, Sophia, Nebro, Yaldabaoth, Sackloth, Seth, Harmathoth, and Galilah, and Yobel.

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Yeah. You'll note that by comparison, the Gnostic Gospels fall completely flat.

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Hmm. Clearly no eyewitness testimony here. They can't even get the names right.

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Okay. But wait, there's more. Okay. Take a look at how the

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Gospels talk about Jesus. What is the principal character called by other characters in the Gospels? Jesus, whose name is ranked, his name is the sixth in the rank.

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This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth. Note the disambiguation. That's Matthew 21. A servant girl came up to him and said, you also were with Jesus the

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Galilean. Note the disambiguation. Another servant girl saw him and she said to the bystanders, this man was with Jesus of Nazareth.

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Okay. Note that these eyewitness accounts are clearly using disambiguation when it comes to Jesus, whose name is in the top 10.

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It's sixth. And then when you read the epistles, Jesus is often referred to then as the

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Christ. So you'll note that the epistles have a different way of talking about Jesus than the

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Gospels do. But the Gospels are written in a very unique way prior to Jesus being called the

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Christ, like in religious Christian language. Paul constantly referred to Jesus as the

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Christ. Okay. But here you can see an early example. He's disambiguated in Matthew 21.

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Whom do you want me to release for you? Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ? Okay.

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The angel said to the women, do not be afraid. I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. Okay. And then, you know, how was

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Jesus's name quoted in speech? What do we have to do with you? Jesus of Nazareth.

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That's the demons speaking in Mark 1. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out,

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Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. You are also with the Nazarene Jesus. You get the idea here.

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It's very unique the way the Gospels talk about Jesus and people who are quoted in talking to Jesus, how they refer to him.

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It's very unique. In fact, distinctly different than how Jesus is referred to in the epistles.

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And this would be expected if these accounts were really early eyewitness accounts regarding the life of Jesus and still in his

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Judean context, all to be expected. Okay. So, here are the conclusions then.

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The Gospels have the pattern of names that we would expect them to have if they are reporting what real people said and did in first century

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Palestine or Judea. This is true. The pattern would be too complex for an ancient forger to produce.

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This is most certainly true, especially in the days before Google. You couldn't pull this off in the ancient world if you tried.

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And note then, names are the hardest things to remember. If the Gospels got the hardest things right, that also means they got the other things right.

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But we'll show some more of that data here. So, here's the next question. Did the Gospel writers get the geography right?

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Another important detail. When you're reading the Gospels, I mean, you read about different villages and places and travel times and things like this, right?

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And here's the analogy I like to use. So, I currently live in North Dakota and I serve two congregations,

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Lutheran congregations in Minnesota, right? Now, I did not grow up in this region at all.

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And quite frankly, even though I've been living here for 10 years, I'm just still not all that familiar with some of the smaller towns and stuff like this.

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Where did I grow up? I grew up in Southern California. And you say, prove it. Okay. I would say something like this.

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Did you know that golf and stuff is not in Reseda? No, it's not.

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In fact, I used to go to golf and stuff and the way I would get there from Monrovia was to travel down the 605.

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And you say, you did what? That's right. I would take the 210 to the 605 all the way down to golf and stuff.

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And I know how far it is, how long it takes to travel from Pasadena to La Cunada Flintridge.

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And I know which freeway to take. And I can even tell you the way that we would travel from our home in Arcadia to Chavez Ravine.

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And I can even tell you my favorite places to eat would have included

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In -N -Out Burger and a wonderful little taco joint on the southern end of Arcadia named

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Tacolita. Okay. And you're sitting there going, what? What are these names and the places that you're talking about?

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If you've never been to Southern California, you know Los Angeles and you know San Diego and you might know Reseda because of Daniel San and the

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Karate Kid. But unless you grew up there, you don't really know the region really well at all.

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And as a result of it, by me being able to say the things I just said. In fact, I can even tell you how long it takes to drive from Seal Beach to Huntington Beach and then from Huntington Beach all the way down to Newport.

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And if you want, you can keep on going all the way down to Laguna and then Dana Point. Right. I know all of this because I grew up there.

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Now, the question is, do the Gospels have that level of eyewitness knowledge of the region?

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Do they have that level of information embedded in it? And the answer is, yes, they do.

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Okay. So, towns and villages named in the four Gospels. Obviously, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Capernaum, and now we're starting to get down into lesser known places.

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You'll note that in the times that the Gospels were written, if you lived outside of this region, there wouldn't have been maps available, readily available with the names of these places on them.

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So, Bethany, Bethlehem, Bethsaida, Jericho, Sidon, Tyre, Anon, Arimathea, Bethpage, Caesarea, Philippi, Cana, Chorazin, Dalmanutha, Emmaus, Ephraim, Magadan, Nain, Salim, Sychar, which includes traveling times, by the way.

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You'll note that all of that information is in the Gospels. And you sit there and go, yeah, it's kind of boring information.

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It always kind of makes me feel kind of dry and gravely when I read about these details. But remember, the truth is in the details.

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And if the Gospels didn't contain real eyewitness testimony, they wouldn't have this ability to get at the names of these villages and their travel times in different places like this.

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Because they wouldn't have been on the major maps. They wouldn't have been considered important enough to be mentioned at all.

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So, how about the apocryphal Gospels and the Gnostic Gospels, right? How about towns and villages there?

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Well, look at the comparison. The Gospel of Philip, two places named,

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Jerusalem and Nazareth. And whoever wrote the Gospel of Philip thinks

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Nazareth is Jesus' middle name. That's embarrassing. How about the Gospels of Peter and the

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Savior? Only one town each, Jerusalem. How about other 2nd and 3rd century Gospels?

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No cities are mentioned, no villages at all. That's weird. I wonder why that's the case.

51:59

How is it that the four Gospels mention all of these different places and correctly describe where they're at and how long it takes to travel to these places and stuff like this when the

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Gnostic Gospels don't even mention any places at all? Because the Gnostic Gospels are forgeries.

52:17

And the other thing is that when you read the Gospels, the four Gospels, all four of them, they got the botany right, they got the coinage right, they got the size and features of the temple right, they got the weather right, even.

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So, when we subject the four Gospels to objective tests for accuracy, okay, they pass with flying colors in the days before Google.

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They get everything right regarding architecture, agriculture, botany, burial practices, economics, geography, language, law, personal names, politics, religion, topography, weather, and so many places that the authors of the

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Gospels could have gone wrong. But they didn't. They didn't go wrong in any of these things.

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So, are you just going to sit there and go, well, there's no accounts of these written in first person.

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So, therefore, there is no eyewitness testimony when it comes to the Gospels.

53:19

Uh -huh. That's not how you determine this stuff, right? So, McClellan, the data indicate that there are no eyewitness accounts of Jesus's life in the

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New Testament. You've just been owned, sir. You are wrong. Absolutely dead wrong.

53:35

The data shows from the documents themselves, although written in third person, and you can challenge the authorship all you want, that all of the

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Gospels, all four of them, contain high quality eyewitness testimony, and the details, the positraction, shows that that's the case.

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So, McClellan's claim that there are no eyewitness accounts of Jesus's life in the

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New Testament, the four Gospels were written originally, circulated anonymously, and that traditional authorship was only secondarily assigned toward the end of the second century

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CE, this is a fallacious argument from a critical scholar.

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And like I said at the beginning of this, critical scholarship is to biblical scholarship as abortion doctors are to pediatric medicine.

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This guy's arguments are lame, easily debunked if you know how to look for it.

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Again, the two books you're going to want to get are Donald Guthrie's New Testament Introduction, fourth edition, and Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the

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Eyewitnesses, and the data speaks for itself, and the data shows that this guy don't know what he's talking about, and his scholarship is garbage.

54:51

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