Hidden Details in the Bible Accidentally Prove It's True | The Historical Tell | Episode 3

they're written by later people decades later in a different language where did they get their information from they heard stories about Jesus that had been in circulation year after year after year decade after decade down to the time that the gospel writers living in a different country speaking a different language heard the stories what happens to oral stories when they are transmitted orally they change Welcome to our third episode of the historical tell in this series we're looking at subtle details that like a poker player tell can help reveal the truth about in our case the accounts of luuk and ax and help us answer the really important question did Luke rely on eyewitnesses to write these two books today we're looking at the language of eyewitness testimony itself and if this contributes further evidence to our case that the writer of Lucan ax may have have sort of unintentionally exposed his approach to record keepings and his sources in the last episode we picked up on the first two of Luke's tells how naming patterns in Luke and acts match historical non-fictional records and how Luke writes with increased detail and accuracy when he's on the scene in various parts of Axe now Skeptics insist that Luke and Axe were written much later based on unreliable oral stories at best and deliberately fabricated stories at worst it's true I tell you but various New Testament Scholars take issue with this from another perspective that we haven't really touched on yet that historical records around the 1 century were some of the most reliable in ancient times and that the gospels themselves were written within what historians call living memory I talked with Dr Craig Keener to find out why he believes that the gospels and acts may represent the very Pinnacle of ancient historical recordkeeping so Dr kener I believe that your commentary on acts is among the largest commentaries that exist on acts 7,000 manuscript Pages or about uh it was it was well over 3 million words 45,000 extra biblical ancient sources you claim that the gospels were written at the sort of uh Apex of ancient biography when the works of like flut tar and sutus were being written for example so but what makes these types of works the Apex of this genre you know from the earliest period what you might call Proto biography half a millennium before the gospels biography was kind of like a funeral oration you know you just say all all sorts of nice things about the person or maybe if you you know want to run him down really bad things about the person but in terms of having more balance that wasn't that wasn't expected few hundred years after the gospels things are moving towards heg geography where people just tell all sorts of fantastic stories and that was acceptable the Apex the the Pinnacle of where biography met the standards expected for historiography was in the early Roman Empire Alexander the Great you know Alexander died in 323 BC Aryan is writing about 450 years after that the gospels are a different kind of ancient historiography and biography that we call contemporary historiography they're writing within living memory so I mean only a minority of ancient biographies actually were within the time when eyewitnesses were still alive you know if we're going to have confidence in any biographic Source from Antiquity those features give us good reason to trust the the gospels so not only were the gospels written during a Time known for producing relatively accurate ancient histories but they were unique in that they were were composed so soon after the events that eyewitnesses could go and fact check them it's also true that other historians were able to write with accurate detail about events that had occurred decades or even centuries earlier when eyewitnesses were no longer around how did they do this and does this give us another Clue Into the writing of the gospels that could be otherwise missed if you look at the works of suetonius and Plutarch for example why do they have such intricate and accurate naming pth patterns and the most obvious answer is that they had archival information that they can consult suetonius used Center proceedings he had access to the Imperial Library he accessed letters you know Mark wasn't Consulting some kind of Library there were no Santa proceedings on the life of Jesus and the most obvious answer then is that they did consult an archive but it was an oral archive and many of the early Jesus followers were illiterate they lived in an oral society and so the fact that they retained so many of these names so appropriately including Luke likely is explained from a historical perspective by their Reliance on living oral informance so these ancient historians even though they took creative Liberties as we'll discuss later on in episode 5 were able to write accurately detailed biographies because they relied on Dependable archival information and so similarly the gospels and acts get their details right because they too were using accurate sources but not ones found in libraries this was a sort of oral Archive of eyewitnesses that could retell their experiences with Jesus in the early church but Skeptics like Bart man who we heard at the beginning of the episode insists that oral stories change over time and that we can't really rely on the gospels because that oral archive was basically no longer Rel reliable so then what was the oral tradition of the culture like at that time here's Craig Keener again are are there reasons to believe that Jesus's teachings and works were uniquely conserved oral tradition can preserve a lot of information but the period of of living memory actually preserves even more information that's the period when the eyewitnesses are alive provides a control on what goes around so that's why uh second century so-called Gospels 3D Century 4th century and so on you know a lot of things are being made up whereas in the first century all four gospels actually are within the period normally assigned to living memory which is normally like 60 to 80 years interesting so the gospels were written at a time where their accounts could be corroborated by others unlike other fake gospels that first appeared centuries later now is there any actual evidence for this Reliance on original sources in this clip William Lan Craig discusses what is perhaps the earliest Christian Creed found in 1 Corinthians 15:3 through 7 let's look at this Creed in its context and notice how many times Paul name drops individuals and groups of people that could verify specific claims for what I received I passed on to you as of first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures that he was buried that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures and that he appeared to Kaos and then to the 12 after that he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time most of whom are still living though some have fallen asleep then he appeared to James then to all the apostles 1 Corinthians 15 3-7 contains several named individuals why do you think that the early church felt that it was important to name and to memorialize these individuals from the beginning these person persons were regarded as witnesses to Jesus resurrection and it was therefore important for people to recall their testimony in accord with the historical practice of that day of citing Witnesses in order to prove a historical event so Dr Craig there are several Semitic elements in the Creed is that correct yes there there are a number of semitisms and that helps to tip us off to the nonp poine origin of this formula would you mind elaborating on what semitisms are and then how in certain cases they can be a confirmation of earlier Source materials semitisms are traces of the original Aramaic language of the disciples so the presence of these semitisms favors an early date of the tradition as opposed to a tradition that originated later in a Greek speaking context okay so there was a new word in there that I I didn't even know until I started researching this but bear with me because understanding what a semitism is is going to be really important to understanding the next clue that Luke leaves for us but before we get to it really quick this five-part series was made over a period of six months it was a huge effort to bring you a quality analysis of this new Research into the gospels so if you're enjoying the series want me to be able to to make more of it please consider becoming a patron and then you can also subscribe to the channel links are in the description so back to semitisms a semitism is something in the vocabulary or syntax of the original Greek text that betrays a Hebrew or Aramaic way of thinking or speaking and so basically it's like saying something in one language that has clear roots in another language so in this case the Greek New Testament including a Hebrew or Aramaic phrasing or pronunciation vanway found that these semitisms have distinct patterns the book of Acts and Luke giving us or third tell so I compare uh a semitism to a dchm my parents and I immigrated from the Netherlands initially when you learn English as a Dutch speaker you'll incorporate a little bit of what they call danglish into it a danglish speaker will say what mean you and this is because they're taking the Dutch phrase vulia and they're translating it into English but they're retaining the original word order we see the same thing happening in the gospels the gospels among ancient literature including Josephus they're unique in that they have this bar category of names names like barus Barnabas barjona transliterations from Aramaic into Greek which is what the gospel writers were writing so it literally means son of tus son of Jonah son of encouragement but rather than translating they're transliterating the way that these names were pronounced it's just another indication that they were relying on oral informants and they wrote them down in this way because this is how they were known to them and this is how these individuals these eyewitnesses were known to Mark's early audience so the picture that I have in my mind is that a gospel author like Mark is listening to an eyewitness like bmus in the the way that Mark heard bame's name pronounced is how he wrote it down so Semitic names ended up appearing in his gospel even though it was written originally in Greek Mark's account of blind barus is actually remarkable for the way that it's entirely told not through the like eyes of someone who saw it but through the ears of someone who experienced it while being blind someone who knew bamus like Peter could have also passed his account onto Mark Peter is the most frequently named named disciple in Mark's gospel and in fact according to Richard bacham Peter is named proportionately more often in Mark's gospel than in any other gospel and all of this is completely in line with Papi's comment that we quoted in episode one mark in his capacity as Peter's interpreter wrote down accurately as many things as he recalled from memory he made it his one concern not to admit anything he had heard or to falsify anything vay also emphasizes that Scholars do not really agree on what best explains semitisms in Mark's gospel but that surprisingly the Gospel of Luke has a lot of them as well other Scholars have analyzed the semitisms that exist in Luke James Edwards was one scholar who cataloged about 700 semitisms in Luke's gospel and he noticed that in the material that Luke doesn't specifically share with Matthew and Mark Luke has about 400% more semitisms in those areas there's also a uniquely High number of personal names so you have 64% of name persons occur in only 35% of Luke's gospel and in this 35% of Luke's gospel are in fact by far the most semitism you realize that personal names in fact cluster in Luke's gospel around semitisms and so that then develops Luke's third tell the clustering of Semitic language especially around name persons so vand Way's case is the writer of Luke and acts relied on eyewitnesses as well as the gospel of Mark Luke in many places is sort of retelling events from Mark but then in other places it's new material and that's where the semitisms kind of cluster just like we'd expect if he was getting that material from eyewitnesses sort of recounting their stories orally to him or through written notes and this is actually another area where vand Way's book goes into way more detail than we could really share here because he explores like other ways that semitisms found their way into Luke's Greek text one theory is that Luke relayed the eyewitness accounts in the style of the Old Testament to go sort of give them added weight and Authority because Luke's Old Testament had a lot of semitisms this would have made Luke's language more Semitic in those places another theory is that Luke includes Traditions from eyewitnesses that are Greek translations of Semitic originals and you can tell that the infancy account that Luke is recounting likely comes from a Jewish source and one of the name one of the ways you can tell this is because of Mary's name so in our English text Mary is always translated like we know her Mary but in the original text that Luke is writing in Greek Luke uses two forms of her name one is Jewish Miriam and then one is Greek Maria now Luke being a Greek Gentile would have known her by Maria by her Greek name but in this infancy narrative Luke almost always refers to her as Miriam likely because this is the source material that Luke is working with what's really interesting then is that there's one place in this text that Luke calls Mary Maria it's the only place in his gospel where he calls her this and it's this verse right here Luke 29 but Mary Maria treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart this is one of the most personal verses in Luke's gospel and it shows really a personal state of mind that Mary has a personal perspective so why is the only place in Luke's text that Luke uses her Greek name well it's likely because Luke is not getting this bit of information from a stock tradition that he received but he's recounting information from a personal interview that he had with Mary herself so you can see how even here a little detail that shows Luke's personal knowledge then tips his hand demonstrating that he relied on an eyewitness to get this information and then likely also information like where Nazareth happened to be built these semitism sort of clustering around eyewitness material gives us our third historical tell so we've discussed three tells so far we've the patterns of names vividness and now semitism so take me now to the fourth tell so this fourth tell it leans on Mark and priority so Luke's dependence on Mark Luke typically will eliminate anecdotal material from Mark and he will shorten Mark's accounts secondly Luke will generally tone down the emotion content of Mark's gospel that's significant because there are places in Luke's gospel where he does the opposite of what he typically does where he adds anecdotal material and where he also adds emotional content especially from the perspective of a named individual there's also a convergence of vivid historical data and semitisms and the convergence of these features around particular accounts that's the fourth tell so I'll give you one illustration when Mark recounts the calling of the first disciples it's a very very brief narrative Mark says something like you know Jesus is walking along the shore he calls some disciples they drop their Nets and leave everything behind to follow Jesus well Luke has a much more specific account and it focuses on Peter what Peter feels what Peter says what Peter experiences how he Witnesses this miraculous catch of fish it's riddled with Semitic language and in this very account Luke changes the name of the Sea of Galilee which is how Mark refers to that body of water and Matthew and John in certain places and Luke changes this to Lake ganess what is relevant then is that Josephus tells us that the locals of that area didn't refer to that body of water as the Sea of Galilee but as the lake genar so the appropriate local variant of that name Luke has it in his gospel and so you see Luke making a historically nuanced change in the very place where he places an eyewitness account from Peter's perspective and it is also at the same time more Semitic and you have these types of convergences in Luke's gospel so the fourth tell is that these convergences then are merely another indicator of Luke's Reliance on eyewitness sources vandaway sees Peter playing a key role as an eyewitness his Aramaic name is preserved in the early Resurrection Creed that we discussed with William L Craig it's kaaos in 1 Corinthians 15:5 the oral tradition Peter relay was likely memorialized through Mark's gospel accounting for some of its Semitic elements and colloquial style of Creek and then Peter's personal insights are also here captured by Luke the Evangelist like can can you imagine being at the feet of Peter Peter the one that Jesus called the rock the one that Jesus pulled from sinking into the sea Peter the one that denied Jesus three times and then like imagine being Luke with your quill in your hand listening to Peter remembering everything that happened the day that he met Jesus the fourth tell simply states that the oral eyewitness accounts sort of swell in emotion and in detail and in semitisms whenever they appear and again that's exactly what we'd expect to find if Luke interviewed eyewitnesses and their emotion and passion in their retelling was preserved as Luke tried to keep up with them as they spoke so this is Van's case like an ancient historian in the tradition of the Cities Luke the Evangelist wo his eyewitness material throughout his narrative leaving subtle Clues behind for Sharp eyed readers to find kind of like a poker player's tell they're hard for the average person to detect but once you detect them they're pretty hard to unsee is there any way to actually confirm this let's find out in the next [Music] episode

Channel: Capturing Christianity

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Length: 19min 55sec (1195 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2024