Was Mark Confused? Birth Narratives? Original Readings?

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Thursday, and we have some important things to talk about. Of course, we try to do that fairly regularly. We certainly did on the last program, where we discussed the issue of Roman Catholicism, and there's been at least one interesting Roman Catholic response to that, that I'll try to get to next week.

I noted that today, Apologia had a program where they were responding to Marcus Rogers with the gripper on. So, I'm sure the gripper has taken care of Marcus Rogers' arguments more than sufficiently, so we won't have to do that.

I tore that phone book. It wasn't a phone book. It was a tract. That was about the depth of that. So, we won't have to worry about that. So, that'll give us time next week to specifically look at Mr. Rule's comments, and I think they'll just verify exactly what I said on the program in regards to the concept of priesthood and Roman Catholicism and the fact that you have to deny sola scriptura.

And, again, once again raises the fact that Roman Catholics, Roman Catholic apologists, what they will do is they will try to parallel divine truths of scripture with their human traditions and say they both developed out of this oral tradition type stuff.

We'll get to that and deal with that. But, having addressed William Lane Craig on the subject of Roman Catholicism, now we need to turn to some very, very important foundational information regarding the subject of the authority of scripture, the nature of the inspiration of scripture, and the dreaded doctrine of inerrancy.

Now, N .T. Wright, it has been said, I don't think he's said it in print, but reliable sources have reported that he calls that the silly American doctrine. And, certainly in our day, if you wish to be accepted within the academy, and, of course, we need to talk about how you define what the academy is, but if you want to be accepted within the academy, it is extremely detrimental to your future advancement within the academy to confess any belief in such things as inerrancy.

If you happen to believe that God could have created the entire universe functionally rather than solely by naturalistic processes over huge amounts of time, these kinds of things, and certainly if you believe God's law remains relevant today, all those things would be enough to pretty much end your aspirations for any type of advancement within the academy.

And, again, I speak of the Society of Biblical Literature broad academy type thing. I suppose we could redefine that phrase to believing Christian scholarship, and things would change. But there's, unfortunately, a tremendous amount of what I would simply have to call in an oxymoronic fashion unbelieving Christian scholarship.

It calls itself Christian, but it rejects fundamental elements of the Christian faith and, as a result, ends up being extremely useful to the enemies of the faith, primarily. Anyway, if you believe in doctrines like inerrancy, now there are certain denominations that, for example, if you want to teach at a Southern Baptist seminary, you have to, at least you back in the early 2000s up through, I think, the last year that I taught for Golden Gate, you had to sign a statement that you basically believed in the doctrine of inerrancy.

Well, unless you define it rather specifically, that doesn't do you a whole lot of good. A lot of people simply redefine the doctrine of inerrancy. Many Roman Catholic scholars will say they believe in inerrancy, and yet, it is painfully obvious that the vast majority of Roman Catholic scholarship believes nothing like the doctrine of inerrancy.

What they'll say is that the Bible does not contain error in regards to the communication of divine principles or divine beliefs, but that it could contain all sorts of historical and scientific error that simply reflects its nature as ancient literature and yet still be used of God to infallibly communicate divine truth.

Looking at liberal denominations, you see how well that ends up turning out. It doesn't end up turning out really well at all. And I think a lot of people are extremely, I don't know, I was gonna say upset, but they're disappointed or frustrated.

A lot of people who have a concern for giving an answer in our day are frustrated by the fact that so very often, the primary response given by opponents of faith draws from people who call themselves Christians.

And I believe that this is a function of the day in which we live. If apologetics was easy, if there was a consistent, clear voice of a healthy Bible-centered church, that's a blessing upon a culture and a nation.

And right now, we are called to minister in a time of great judgment and difficulty. And I think anyone, and it doesn't matter whether you are called to engage in apologetics in the formal sense or just what, I think we all need to recognize that all the standards that had become popular in preceding generations in measuring the success of the Christian faith probably need to be abandoned.

All the pragmatism, all the numbers, all that kind of stuff probably does not communicate anything. We as individuals need to recognize that fundamentally, in living our Christian lives, in pursuing the call of God upon our lives, we need to purposefully adopt the idea that I am going to be concerned about pleasing one person, that I am going to do what I do in the sight of one person and one person only.

I'm not going to be doing this for men, but I need to do what I do for God. And if I am convinced that what I have done and how I've done it is how He would have me to do it and that He's pleased with me, then that needs to be it.

That needs to be all we're concerned about. And that's a sort of radical way of doing things, but I think it's a necessary way because so many people will talk to me, and I feel the same thing, you do your best to present the truth of God, you do your best to give a defense for the faith that's once delivered to the saints, and yet there are just so many countering voices from a bewildering number of directions and perspectives that sometimes just feel like it's not even worth doing this.

And, you know, from certain theological perspectives, if you don't believe that God is sovereignly ordaining what takes place and that He has a purpose in these things, I don't know why, honestly, a lot of people would continue on doing what they do in light of how difficult it is.

You know, I remember when we first started going to PRBC, Pastor Fry had a phrase that he would use. We'd even pray it, break the teeth of the false teachers. That's a good Psalms reference. And, you know, shut their mouths.

This is a prayer. Shut the mouths of the false teachers. Well, that is something to pray for because when there are people looking for reasons to disbelieve, you'll always have false teachers who will come along and give them a reason to disbelieve, and that is extremely frustrating.

So, one of the first things I would say today, even before we get started looking at this material, it is extremely important, I think, to put down a stake, you know, a place where it's going to give you a central focus.

Why do we do what we do? And when you see someone come along and just start throwing out all sorts of citations from, and you know the citations are from a worldview that is inconsistent and all the rest of this stuff, but you don't always have the opportunity of providing a full refutation, or you see them succeeding in blinding people, succeeding in throwing stumbling blocks in the progress of the gospel.

If you think that's up to you, and if you think that it's all our effort, then yeah, you're going to become so frustrated you're going to end up doing something else in your life. But it's a little bit like something we learned the hard way in doing street ministry out at the temple or up in Salt Lake City or whatever, and that is there are many, many, many of those tracts which we had printed and folded and put in boxes and carried around in our bags and given out to people that simply got thrown away, torn up, spit upon, whatever.

And we'd find them laying on the ground trampled under the feet of men, and I don't know who first came up with it. I think I did, but it could have been somebody else. I don't know. We called them fallen warriors, and we had to recognize that the truth of God goes out for salvation and for condemnation, both, and that God is glorified in either one.

And that when you have false teachers, when you have people who are perverting the truth, when you have people who are twisting the truth, when you have people that will utilize people who've become compromised in their theology to blunt the truth of the gospel, the people misusing those sources will be held accountable for what they did.

Those who are false teaching within the church will be held accountable for what they do. You're simply held accountable to honor God and to do what's right. And if his approbation and his approval is all you care about, then you'll be fine.

You will be able to press on in the midst of an ever more challenging and even crushing situation. And so, important to keep that in mind, I think, right at the beginning, as far as what we're saying here.

The Authority of Scripture, Inerrancy, and Christian Apologetics

Now, to our subject today, a couple weeks ago, Dr. Mike Licona appeared on Jonathan McClatchy's webinar, which he does regularly each weekend. And we're going to be looking at three different topics that the Muslims also attending the webinar found to be quite fascinating and have attempted, you know, we have some ya-ya snow jobs here and nothing new about that, but have attempted to say, well, there's all sorts of contradictions here.

Well, on one level, there is, because everyone, well, folks who are actually concerned about understanding what we're saying, not just twisting what we're saying, have known for a very long time. I don't remember how long ago it was, but we have played on this program, Mike Licona's interaction with Shabir Ali, with Bart Ehrman.

And while we've normally been criticizing Shabir Ali and Bart Ehrman, there were times we played things that Mike Licona said, and we said, not quite. Same thing with William Lane Craig, when he made original sins.

Oh, well, you know, it's not really central to any Christian belief or anything like that. You know, we responded to these things. We have been consistent. And of course, there are those, you just attack other Christians.

Well, there's really a fundamental difference in approach, which once again recognizes and flows from a fundamental difference in theology. And we believe that your theology should determine your apologetics, not the other way around.

And so, in general, what you're going to discover is that strong biblical monergists are going to view things quite differently than synergists do. And that's going to end up showing itself especially, well, obviously in discussions of salvation, things like that, but in other areas as well.

Furthermore, I've said many times that unless you have the highest view of Scripture, there's no reason for you to be a Calvinist. Look at any Presbyterian denomination any at one time reformed denomination that abandoned its foundation in having the highest view of Scripture as the very words of God.

The degradation, declension, and eventual destruction of those denominations, it's a matter of history and it's an ugly thing to watch. It's a slow, painful car wreck with explosions and lots of dead bodies.

It's bad stuff. And it's happened over and over and over and over again. If you do not believe that God has spoken, if you do not believe, if you do not have the same high view of Scripture that Jesus and his apostles embody in everything they write and in all of their attitudes and all of their words, you might as well not even be, you can't even be a Trinitarian and you're certainly not going to be reformed.

Because how often have we listened to the Zons and the Olsons of the world on different levels, abandon, get around the tough biblical texts by just simply compromising on the concept of inspiration and what it means and what the authority of the text is and how you interpret the text and come up with the Gumby means of exegesis where you just, well, that Midianite thing, that's just what the ancient Israelites thought about God.

It's not really God speaking and so on and so forth. So this is an absolutely key area as to whether you believe that Scripture is what, you know, Jesus said the Scriptures cannot be broken. For him saying it is written was the final argument.

And if you adopt a perspective that says, well, that's not enough. And please don't get me wrong. I mean, there are some people that get so loopy here, they think that has something to do with the King James Bible or something like that, as if Jesus was quoting from the King James.

That's not what we're talking about here. But if you don't have that view of the Scriptures as Theanoustos, God breathed, if you cannot hear Jesus say, have you not read what was spoken to you by God saying and understand how read and spoken go together with one another there, you're really not going to be in a position to give much of a defense the faith in this day and age.

Just, you're not going to be able to. And as we move into a more and more post and anti-Christian world, you're not going to have a foundation and you're going to find ways of major compromise. And of course, if you're absolutely convicted of these things, then it could cost you everything.

Could cost all of us everything. We will find out and pray that God would cause us to be faithful. So, with that, let's take a look at the first of these videos. Hopefully, I've got the right one here for you.

The first was a question that came up in regards to difficulties in the synoptic Gospels. Evidently, Dr. Lykona is writing a book on this subject. I'm perfectly honest with you, concerned about that, but that's how it goes.

I haven't written a book on this subject, but I did teach the synoptic Gospels for 11 years. So, ran into most of this stuff before. And you've heard me deal with Jairus' daughter and all sorts of things like that numerous times before.

But this one caught me by surprise. It caught me by surprise for a couple reasons. First of all, he's asked, you know, what do you think the most difficult thing is that isn't explained by the concepts you've enunciated before about the nature of the Gospels and things like that.

And much to my surprise, he actually identifies the location of the feeding of the 5 ,000. As one of the toughest examples he can come up with. And as soon as I heard that, as soon as his conclusion was, well, it just seems like Mark was confused, two things came to my mind.

The first is something a lot of you thought of when you saw this as well. Sound like a familiar story? It is a familiar story. It's not this particular incident, but what was the door? What was the unlocking of the door that led to the apostasy of Dr. Bart Ehrman by his own testimony, which he's repeated many, many, many, many, many, many times in almost the exact same words and frequently the same PowerPoint slides with the same misspelled words in it.

Anyway, what's the story? Remember, it was about Mark and the eating of the show bread and the high priest and stuff. And he had written this paper that he thought was pretty ingenious and coming up with a way of rescuing Mark and explaining what it meant.

And he gets the paper back from his professor. I think this was at Princeton, as I recall. Might've been Wheaton, but I think it was at Princeton. And the comment from the professor was, maybe Mark was just wrong.

And that was the key that opened the door that freed Bart Ehrman from the Christian faith. Now, he wouldn't put it that way, but if you follow the decline from there, that was where it started. The final thing that pushed him out the liberal door was the problem of evil, according to him.

But that was a turning point in his thinking. Maybe Mark was just wrong. Oh, wow. I could explain this by all these, wow, how does that work? And so to hear Dr. Licona, who himself, obviously, some of you aren't aware of this, but a few years ago, maybe somebody in channel could give me the year that this started, because I've forgotten.

And when you're over 50, you're perfectly excused for remembering which, for forgetting which year it was, unless it was before you were 20 and then you remember everything. It's really weird. But what year was it when Dr. Licona published his book on the resurrection?

It wasn't long ago. I'm thinking three years, maybe 2013-ish, 2014. And he commented on the resurrection of some saints. It wasn't all saints. Some saints in Matthew, I think it's what, 2754, something like that, just off the top of my head.

And his explanation of it is still difficult to follow to this day, but he identified it as sort of a poetic device. And it really didn't happen. There really wasn't a resurrection of saints. This is just Matthew's poetic way of emphasizing the stupendous nature of the resurrection.

Well, this led to a real brouhaha with people lining up on both sides. And the primary battle was between Licona and Norman Geisler. I love it. I was just given two different dates in the chat channel, which sort of gives you some idea of why there's differences in dates in ancient literature too.

2011 and 2010. So Norman Geisler went after Licona and basically said, um, this man does not believe in inerrancy. And when I, you know, waded into that, I tried to once again do so without unnecessary vituperation, which frequently gets me shot at by both sides as well.

And I guess the book came out toward the end of November. So it was 2010, early 2011 when all this is going on. And, you know, Licona, I guess, sort of lost his job or at least resigned from his position.

And look, I know what it's like to have Norman Geisler come after you. Norman Geisler does not like me anymore at all. That's a sad truth. But the fact of the matter is Norman Geisler isn't always wrong.

And I certainly took exception with Licona's view on the Matthew 27 issue, gave my own understanding of the text. But I likewise, having listened to his debates with Ehrman, I likewise was like, yeah, really, at best, super soft on inerrancy.

In all likelihood, having taught for a number of different seminaries, yeah, I've heard this before. It's, I don't want to deny it. But if you're not passionate about it, you probably don't really believe it.

Okay? If you think it's true, then you're going to be passionate about it. If you, I suppose you could think it's true, but you really don't like it. But on this subject, that wouldn't make any sense.

So at that time, I was like, well, it seems without question to me that what we're going to watch here pretty much ends that whole saga and basically says that, yeah, Geisler was right. And this is the result of it.

And it's a process over time, but yeah, no two ways about it. And see, since I, with a clear conscience, can say that I accurately represented Norman Geisler when I wrote in response to him, then I can say, hey, I don't have skin in this game, as they say.

I don't do what I do for personal reasons. If something's true, it's true. If something's false, it's false. And, you know, accuse me of things, if you will. You know, there's a situation right now. I'm trying to reason with a brother not to go after another brother on a subject that he should not attack him on.

And I think I'm failing. But once that comes out, you're going to discover that I'm trying to convince a brother not to attack a brother who attacked me, because it's not a matter of all the politics and the personal stuff.

It's what matters. And see, when we look at this, what you need to understand is this impacts our evangelism of Muslims. This impacts how we reach out to folks. And so I have to be consistent. I have to respond to this stuff.

It's there. It's right in the middle of what we are addressing and what we're saying. Would it be easier just to keep my mouth shut and stay out of the way? Would we not lose as many supporters over things?

Yeah, yeah. But what can I do? This is out there. It's got to be dealt with. Got to be dealt with. Someone's got to talk about it while we still have the freedom to talk about it. The day's coming. I'm not sure we're even going to be able to talk about these things.

Okay, so here's, say I'm plugged in for audio. Let's go.

Any differences in the Gospels that you don't think are adequately explained by appealing.

To compositional devices such as literary spotlighting? Yes, I do. I think some of the most difficult ones, perhaps the most difficult one I think would be, in my opinion, is the location of the feeding of the 5 ,000.

And I get into detail with this, a lot of detail in the.

Forthcoming book. I don't know what the forthcoming book is. Sorry. I'm certainly going to be looking for it. But I just realized I gave you two reasons. I gave you the first. Sorry. I did a lot. The first reason had to do with the Laikona background, stuff like that.

But the second reason I'll give you right now before he continues on, this is an issue of geographical location. And I've told the story many times of how when I was in seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, which was the only seminary I could go to in the Phoenix area, poor as a church mouse.

I don't remember how many years it took us to pay off the student loans even for then. And back then, it was nothing in comparison to this now. Long time. But that's why I went there and got a good education there.

But I was Fuller's token fundamentalist. And I wasn't at the Pasadena campus. It was here in Phoenix. And fully ATS accredited, by the way, Mr. Prash. Anyway, when somewhere along those lines, somewhere, I don't know where it was.

I was already involved with apologetics. And so, I found most interesting many of the classes that most of my fellow students just found boring. All the old and New Testament background stuff and the geography and archeology.

And you could hear people snoring, literally, during those classes. But I already knew how important that stuff was. And so, I was focused in. So, somewhere along the lines, I don't remember what class it was.

I don't remember what professor it was and anything like that. But when I first started seeing people using, and some of this may have come from Bible college too, because I was involved then at Grand Canyon.

When, for example, I would see people arguing that the Book of Mormon cannot be the Word of God, because it says that Jesus was born at Bethlehem. You never heard me using that argument. You never heard me using that argument.

Why? Because I knew that in comparing, for example, various parallel accounts of Old Testament battles or movements of the people of Israel, or whatever else it might be. If you had more than one account of it.

The only way to accurately see what both of them were saying was to allow for differences. For example, one writer might identify an entire region by the name of the primary city, whereas someone else might be much more specific.

And I realized, somewhere along the lines, we do this all the time. When people ask, where do you live? Well, I live in Phoenix. And right now, technically, I do. But, and I'll say, we came here in 1974, which is true.

But we did not technically live in Phoenix in 1974. Where we lived was technically Glendale. But we told everybody we were moving to Phoenix. And when you leave Phoenix, you pretty much tell people you live in Phoenix.

And even in the years that I've lived here, the borders between those cities have changed, expanded. There's another city up north called Peoria, which has gone way farther north than it used to be. Out in the, you know, places, we used to go rabbit hunting and shoot model rockets off and shoot 300 Winchester Magnums off without worrying about where the ball was gonna land, because there wasn't anything out there but rattlesnakes and lizards.

It's now just nothing but housing developments. So things have changed. So here's the point. These are notoriously the weakest kinds of arguments that can be used against an ancient text. Because if even today, I've lived in Glendale, then Phoenix, then Glendale, then Phoenix, and all that time, I've never differentiated that.

Am I lying? Of course I'm not lying. Anybody would say that's foolish. You can't have a meaningful conversation with someone like that. Phoenix is the general descriptor, but you've got Glendale, you've got Peoria, now you've got Surprise and El Mirage, and these are all getting to be big places, and that's just on the west side of the valley.

And then over on the other side, you've got Tempe and Scottsdale and Mesa and Chandler and Gilbert and all these places, and eventually it's just all going to sort of creep together until Casa Grande is just a suburb, and then Tucson, and it's just the way it works.

So we have GPS maps today. You know, I mean, my Garmin heart rate monitor here. GPS, man. I did a five and a quarter K run this morning, and I just used this. Heart rate, the Hawaiian yards, and I've got a nice little map that shows exactly where I went and can tell the difference between which side of the street I was on and whole nine yards.

It's great. It's wonderful, but you've got to realize this is really, really new technology. Especially millennials think we've always had cell phones with Google Maps on it. Trust me, we have not. We have not.

Paper maps, I remember them well, of trying to get them folded. You could never get a map folded back up the way that, no, it's impossible. Once it's unfolded, it's just sort of like something magical happens to it.

You can't fold it back up again. Anyway, I've been reading a lot on my rides about, and again, this shows you where you're from, Civil War, War of Northern Aggression, War Between the States. I can sort of tell you almost, you can almost identify someone's hometown by how they identify it.

I was just reading about, and this is interesting, if you have a Northern rider, it's the first battle of Bull Run, Southern rider, Manassas, different names. I have seen movie depictions of that first battle.

That's where Thomas Jackson got his Stonewall. I have read a number of histories. As I've tried to picture things, wow, there's a lot of variation. That was only 150, 160 years ago. A lot of variation.

People argue to this day where this particular brigade was or where this battery was. We can still go to the places. It's not like it was 2 ,000 years ago. Arguments based upon figuring out directions of boat travel on water in an ancient text, I'm sorry, that's just the weakest, the most likely to trip us up.

That's the other thing we got to understand. When you're looking at ancient documents, the most likely people to be confused are not the writers of the ancient documents. They're us. We are so arrogant with our technology to think that, well, these writers are guilty until proven innocent.

And so when I heard this, I was like, really? I can think of much tougher, much tougher issues to deal with. Much tougher issues to deal with that do not involve whether ice put on, ice top it on in Greek is to be understood one way or, you know, pros, and all this kind of stuff.

I was a little taken aback. I really was. This is not the kind of argument that I expected to be, you know, more than I can cover right now.

But in that case, you've got Mark. He doesn't identify where it is or the feeding of the 5 ,000. He doesn't say where it is. Luke says it was in Bethsaida, okay, or very close to it. Now, if you imagine the Sea of Galilee, this will be helpful.

If you imagine the Sea of Galilee, it kind of looks like the continent of Africa, kind of. But if you imagine it as a clock, all right, because it's just the top half of the clock that's really important here.

Bethsaida is around 1230. Capernaum is between 10 and 11 o 'clock, all right. And so, and the Gerasenes, that land over there, or what is it, the region of Gerasa, I think it is. I might be wrong with that, okay.

But the region over there is a little bit lower than Capernaum. That's around 9 to 10 o 'clock. All right. Now, with that in mind, Mark doesn't tell us where it occurred. Luke says it happened in Bethsaida or very close.

So, imagine around 1230. John and Matthew, they don't really give a location. But for what they say afterward, they're pretty compatible with Luke here. Now, what's interesting is what happens afterward.

After he feeds the 5 ,000, he sends his disciples to cross the lake. That doesn't necessarily, when the word that's used there doesn't necessarily mean, you know, directly across. It could be just a little bit or whatever.

But they're supposed to cross the lake. That's when a storm comes up. Jesus had been praying after he dismissed the crowd, goes up on the mountain and prays. So, afterward, he comes walking across the water.

And so, they cross the lake and they end up in Capernaum, all right. And pretty much, so you got Matthew, John, you know, is compatible with Luke here, okay. They're supposed to cross the lake from Bethsaida.

And you cross the lake, you go over to Capernaum. So, you're going from 1230 to 10, 11 o 'clock. That makes sense. That works. What's really interesting is in Mark, Jesus says, cross the lake to the other side.

Now, remember, he doesn't say where they were. But he says, he told him to get into a boat and to cross over to Bethsaida. Well, how can you cross over to Bethsaida when, according to Luke, that's where you started out?

Well, you know, you might try to explain that. And that's really difficult, I think. It's really difficult unless you want to engage in that hermeneutical gymnastics of some sort. Okay, so someone, and then they land in Capernaum.

Just one thing to note, hermeneutical gymnastics. I've heard this used many, many times before in my own seminary education. You know, at Fuller, like I said, I was the token fundamentalist. And there were many times when the language would be used, well, there's tension in the text.

There's tension in this text, which was the nice way of saying back in the 1980s, contradiction. And when I would say, well, but couldn't it be understood this way, to where you're not causing a contradiction between the two authors?

It's sort of this patch on the back and, ah, fundamentalist, eh? And, you know, there are some proposed harmonizations that do make you go, eh? But there is very plainly amongst many in New Testament studies today, a complete rejection of even the propriety of considering harmonization.

And very often it's identified in this way, hermeneutical gymnastics. Let me point out what the hermeneutical gymnastics here is. And I think it's on Dr. Licona's part. Because, yes, we, well, let me do something here.

I'm going to let him finish, but let me see if I can, did that bring Logos up for you? No? Oh, how about now? Ah, any way to zoom in on just the map there? Okay. Let's see if we can do that. New program, man.

Give me a second. I'm repeating exactly what I'm hearing through the not quite soundproof wall, which evidently sounds to many people like the Peanuts adult voice. So, I mean, I can use my thing here, but it would be cool if we could zoom into that a little bit so you can see it a little bit better.

But you can see what he was talking about when he says that it looks a little bit like the continent of Africa, sort of, if you had written it in pen and then it got really wet and sort of got all messed up.

Well, that looks, hey, hey, there we go. It just took a little while. There we go. Okay. And, oh, we can even see my little thing here. So, here's Capernaum. This is the area of Gennesaret. So, it's just past Capernaum here.

Now, here you have Bethsaida back off. Now, there's questions as to what the biblical Bethsaida was. There are a number of different archaeological tells, and people argue about which one it is. They're fairly close together, but they're in this general area.

But notice what this says right here, Plain of Bethesda. So, you have a whole area here. You have a city and a plain, and then you've got Capernaum over here, and you've got the plain of Gennesaret over here.

All right. So, that's what he's talking about here. So, Luke says it's over here, and here's the problem, folks. Mark says it was over there, too, and I don't know how Dr. Lycona missed this. I really don't.

You say, how do you know that? Because it specifically says in Mark 645, immediately, Jesus made his disciples get in the boat and go ahead of him. And so, under the other side, and of course, the issue is what does pros mean?

Pros can mean to Bethesda, but anyone who spends much time reading Greek and dealing with Greek prepositions, especially when it comes to travel and things like that, knows that that's not the only way that it can be translated, especially in talking about directional travel.

Well, here's the problem. If you understand 645 to be Jesus commanding them to go to Bethsaida using pros in that way, here's the problem. What you have happening is Jesus walking on the water after this, remember?

And where did they then land? Mark 653, when they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. Well, here's Gennesaret. If this is where Bethsaida is, then you cross over and you pass by a perfectly valid use of pros.

You pass by Bethsaida on your way past Capernaum and landing here in the plain of Gennesaret. So, if you take it the way that Dr. Lycona is taking it, you are creating an internal contradiction to Mark, let alone a contradiction between John and Luke.

One of the reasons, for example, you know, John has been brought up because remember when Jesus talked about defeating the 5 ,000, who did he ask about where to find food? Philip. Well, what does the Gospel of John tell us?

Philip was from Bethsaida. So, he knew that that was the area. There really isn't any question about where it was in the sense of the general region. It's on the east side, northeast side, and they end up on the northwest side.

But Mark himself says that they end up over there at Gennesaret. And so, a simple reading of pros as alongside is hermeneutical gymnastics. So, the default is to assume that Mark doesn't know what he's talking about, even when a few verses later, he does know what he's talking about.

Because it says, when they had crossed over, Mark 6 .53, when they had crossed over, where were they? Were they at Bethsaida? No. Do most of us remember what we wrote just a few sentences ago? You'd think so.

You'd think so. And you would think that a, you know, Christian scholar might, you know, default to trusting Mark, but that's not what you end up getting here. So, let's go back to, uh-oh, are you gonna have to fix things?

Um, yeah. It's a new program, is what he said earlier. It's different than it used to be. And so, it takes longer to, uh, to get it back into the right size or something, I guess. So, how are you today?

So, what's that? You're ready? All right. I was gonna say, uh, everything's fine.

Down here. How are you? Uh, okay, here we go. So, they're supposed to cross over to Bethsaida, and they land in Capernaum. So, is Jesus wrong then, or what? And someone might say, well, they got in the boat.

They were supposed to cross to Bethsaida. Maybe they walked far away from Bethsaida, and he told them to get in the boat and go on back. Well, how come the boat's over there when they landed in Bethsaida?

That's a problem. But then it could be, okay, they get in the boat. They're supposed to go to Bethsaida. They get blown off course. They end up at Capernaum. Well, the problem is, according to John's gospel, when they landed there, it says they landed where they're in, where they had intended.