Transcription
But maybe I'm missing something. If you're a Christian and you think that undesigned coincidences are compelling evidence for the veracity of the Gospels, please leave a note in the comments and let me know that I'm wrong about the real-world persuasive power of this argument.
Hey Apologia, it's me again. You boy, you asked for people to respond to you if they thought that you were wrong about undesigned coincidences. So, you're wrong. That pretty much settles it. Into video. Thanks everybody for watching.
Come on back, everybody. But before we jump in, we should probably talk about what undesigned coincidences are. Let me bring you up to speed. The argument from undesigned coincidences originated in the 18th and 19th century with William Paley and J.J. Blunt, and has been recently revived by Christian philosopher Lydia McGrew. In short, an undesigned coincidence is where two or more things fit together with each other, but without the authors trying to make it happen that way. This is a casual interlocking that points to truth. Paley, Blunt, McGrew argue that there are dozens of these interlockings found in the Gospels and Acts, therefore showing the Gospels to be a product of eyewitness testimony.
Sometimes a modern example helps to illustrate. Imagine two witnesses to a bank robbery. One says the robber wore untied shoes. The other says that the robber tripped and almost fell. Each piece of information fits together perfectly, but neither witness mentioned both of those details. This is an example of an undesigned coincidence where the details confirm each other without being planned. The two statements fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Each witness describes a part of what fits together in a larger picture.
But what if the witnesses weren't separated? If they weren't separated, then maybe they talked to each other and colluded, and that explains his two statements. No eyewitness testimony needed. McGrew says that absolute witness separation would be ideal, but isn't necessary for an undesigned coincidence, as a connection between details seems unintentional. The fact that one person's testimony raises a question about another provides the answer as a sign of factual independence. This coincidence is casual and psychologically implausible for a liar. It's evidence that both witnesses saw what really happened and are telling the truth. We should take seriously the evidential value of their casualness and the way their statements fit together. It's not like one person is thinking, "I'll mention the tripping, but not the shoelace, in order to make this story look more real." You'll see why this is relevant as we go along, but I'm sure that some of you have a guess of where this is going.
Anyway, I'm doing a video response to Apologia, who was responding to Jonathan McClatchy and Michael Brown, because Apologia was responding to Michael Brown about a video about the resurrection. So, yeah, we're many layers deep of response here. So let's let Dr. McClatchy give Dr. Brown an example of an undesigned coincidence and see what Apologia has to say.
"Give me, in your view, the best evidence for eyewitness accounts in the New Testament." "Absolutely. So, one category of evidence, for example, would be undesigned coincidences. So, in Mark chapter six, we have these, the feeding of the 5,000 miracle. And Mark gives the explanation for why Jesus has disciples come to a deserted area to eat because it's very crowded. Jesus, in verse 39, has the crowd sit down in groups on the green grass. Called it now, the grass, of course, in Israel is not green the majority of the year, except at a relatively narrow window of time during the spring, because of the higher levels of rainfall. This coincides with the Jewish Feast of the Passover. Now, if we go over to John's account of the feeding of the 5,000, John chapter 6, John doesn't mention the green grass, but he does mention in verse 4, 'Now the Passover, the Feast of the Jews, was at hand.' Which then illuminates why the grass is green according to Mark, because it's the right time of year during the spring."
For about seven years, I lived in Northern California, and it was a similar situation. The grass was brown most of the year and lush green only during the few months of rainy winter season. Human-curated and irrigated lawns aside, of course. If you were telling a local anecdote that included green grass in a field, in their mind, that local would probably place the tale in rainy winter. So far, the green grass is just an unnecessary detail. It gives an appearance of testimony. And maybe Mark is just mentioning that the grass is green because he expects his audience to know that grass is green during the springtime in Palestine. Or maybe he's just saying that grass is green because grass is often green, and it's as simple as that. To me, the simplest explanation is that if Mark wrote that the grass is green, it's because the grass was green. I don't think he's just making up a detail in order to make his story more real.
When Mark describes the feeding of the 4,000, he never mentions anything about the grass being green. But this is just one half of the coincidence. It's only when we put Mark together with John do we get the undesigned coincidence. This feels like Apologia is just stepping in a little bit prematurely here. And so that sort of undesigned coincidence or casual interlocking between Mark and John in an undesigned way points to you, or is most consistent with the historical reporters model for understanding the origins of these texts. While consistency in details would be a requirement for a claim that the Gospels are independent eyewitness accounts, is it fair to say that small congruences are most consistent with Jonathan's conclusion? Does it not equally support a notion that the Gospel accounts have literary dependence? Few deny that Matthew and Luke use Mark as a source. They copy word for word. But modern New Testament scholars increasingly acknowledge that the author of John likely utilized Mark as well. Indeed, it would be quite a stretch to say that the author of John was unaware of Mark. So either the author or the oral traditions that preceded him heard Mark say "green grass" and in their minds would place that story during spring, no different than my Northern Californian friends would assume a time frame based on the detail. The source for John knows Mark's detail, so includes the detail about the Passover consciously or subconsciously. To say that the later retelling affirms the earlier telling is entirely circular.
Okay, so Apologia says that John probably was aware of Mark's Gospel. Sure, if that's absolutely plausible. But let's just break down this idea that John was looking at Mark's Gospel and decided to add this detail for just a minute. So, paying extra special attention, John noticed the bit about the green grass and the big crowds. He thought to himself, "Hmm, I should probably fill this out more. Mark left out some subtle details that raise questions." Then John had a light bulb moment. He says to himself, "I know! I'll mention that it was Passover. That will explain why the grass was green and not brown, and why there was so much hustle and bustle." But in doing so, he never brings Mark's details back into the story. Yeah, this seems like quite a stretch.
If John had made up the detail that it was Passover, intending to fit it together with the crowds coming and going and the grass being green, it is highly improbable that he would have left out any mention of the crowds and the grass being green. Remember, John probably wasn't writing his gospel for people who were familiar with Palestinian topography. Church history tells us that John was writing his gospel in Ephesus. This detail would be completely lost on his original audience, just like Apologia talking about the grass being brown in California is lost on somebody like me, a Midwesterner. I need that explanation. Iowa, you live in the middle of a cornfield. This isn't at all circular. John just has his own specific details, just like we saw earlier with the bank robber scenario.
It's also possible that the author of Mark was blissfully unaware of Jerusalem climate and simply wrote "green grass" because grass is often green. He could be getting this detail entirely wrong, even if in broad strokes the event otherwise happened. No scholars suggest that Mark was a first-hand eyewitness to this event. There's also an answer right in the name, undesigned coincidences, that these congruencies are merely a coincidence of no historical import whatsoever. What if this just happened by accident? Well, in this scenario, Mark is either inventing a story about the feeding of the 5,000, or he's just coloring in some details that he has heard from a long chain of oral tradition in order to make the story more vivid. He mentions that the grass was green and that there was lots of hustle and bustle. Then, a couple of decades later, John comes along and tells his version of the story. He happens to mention that it was Passover time. This explains the green grass and the crowds, but it's just a coincidence. No big deal.
I actually think that this is a perfectly reasonable explanation, but there's a big "if" that I'll add here. As anyone familiar with the argument knows, the evidence for undesigned coincidences is cumulative. As advocates of the argument have often said, one undesigned coincidence might be an accident, like having two unrelated pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fit together by chance. But if we discover numerous undesigned coincidences crisscrossing across the documents, it becomes ridiculous to insist that they're all accidental. For Apologia to spend nine minutes swatting away at two undesigned coincidences, as if that just neatly sweeps the argument away, makes me wonder just how much he's really looked at this. Did he even try?
Well, Dr. McClatchy is doing here is just trying to wet people's appetites by giving them an evidential sampler. He doesn't have time to go into a whole lot of depth. At best, what Apologia is doing here is just popping a couple links in some sturdy chainmail armor. Let's move on to Jonathan's next example and see what Apologia has to say in response.
"Let's continue to the next verse, verse 5, which says, 'Jesus said to Philip, where are we to buy bread so this people may eat?' Now, this raises a question in the mind of the audience: why does Jesus turn to Philip here in particular? Philip's a fairly minor character in the Gospels. In John chapter 12, John very casually mentions that Philip is from this town of Bethsaida in Galilee. Now, if we go to Luke's account of the feeding of the 5,000 miracle, this is in Luke chapter nine. Luke doesn't mention Philip in this context at all, but he does tell us about errors 10, 'On the return, the apostles told them all that he had done, and he took them and would drip apart to a place called to attend called Bethsaida.' And that's where the feeding of the 5,000 takes place, in Bethsaida. And so, by putting together these puzzle pieces, if you will, from Luke 9, John 6, and John 12, now we have a complete picture, our cogent explanation of why Jesus turned to Philip in John 6:5. Philip's a local guy, he knows where the shops are to buy bread. But notice that that's never explicitly spelled out for the reader. One has to do the detective work of putting those pieces together, drawing information from those disparate texts."
This one is better than "green grass and crowded." You should open with this one. But again, from this, there are any number of scenarios that are consistent. That there was a historical kernel of a real Philip, and perhaps even an actual event near Bethsaida from which the feeding of the 5,000 legend grew. That in the growth of the feeding of the 5,000 legend, the details about Bethsaida and Philip gradually became part of a common oral tradition accessible to all the Gospel authors. Or perhaps this is again purely coincidental. Remember what Dr. Brown asked Jonathan to defend: is that the Gospels are eyewitness accounts? We'll get more into the historical kernel objection just a bit. For now, let's put a pin in it. Let's talk a little bit about this "it could all just be dumb luck" objection.
Now we have two undesigned coincidences in the same pericope. Big deal, says Apologia. But remember, the case is cumulative. There are dozens of undesigned coincidences throughout the Gospels, including several more in the feeding of the 5,000 story. While Jonathan had to deal with the constraints of radio, I'm not so constrained here. So let's dig in just a little bit. Hold on to your butts.
Jesus harshly denounces unrepentant cities in Matthew 11:21, but the reader is left wondering, "Um, what miracles happened in Chorazin and Bethsaida?" Although Matthew 14:13-21 narrates the feeding of the 5,000, Bethsaida isn't even mentioned, making it really difficult to understand why Jesus is being so strong here. Luke's account of the feeding of the 5,000 tells us where it happened, so that information makes sense of why Jesus is being so strong here. Now, we should note that Matthew arranged his material thematically, and only by comparing Luke's account can we discover that the feeding of the 5,000 occurred before Jesus pronounced woes upon Bethsaida. But the fact that Matthew contains no information about any miracle performed in Chorazin undermines the notion that Luke mentions Bethsaida to fill in the missing information in relation to Jesus's statement in Matthew 11:21. Luke also records Jesus's condemnation of the two cities in Luke 10:13, but interestingly enough, Luke's mention of Bethsaida as the location of the feeding of the 5,000 is found in a completely different and totally unrelated context of the woes. But there's even more. Apparently, Jesus was pretty serious about the woes that he pronounced on Bethsaida. Only in Mark 8:22-26 do we read about Jesus leading a blind man out of the city of Bethsaida, healing him, and then instructing him not even to return to the village. But remember, Mark says absolutely nothing about the feeding happening in Bethsaida. That's only in Luke. And Mark doesn't mention the woes that Jesus pronounced on Bethsaida. That's only in Matthew and Luke. And Mark, we're left wondering why Jesus heals a blind man but doesn't even let him return to the village where he came from. Is this just another mere coincidence?
By the way, there's more. When we read about the feeding of the 5,000, one question that comes up is how the evangelists knew the exact number of people who were fed. Matthew's account says that it was "about 5,000 men, besides women and children," and the other Gospels also mention that it was specifically 5,000 men. So how did they figure this out? Well, Mark and Luke describe how Jesus had the people sit down in groups of hundreds and fifties, which would make it easier to distribute the food and estimate the number of people. But John's Gospel, which doesn't even mention the organization into groups, gives us an important clue. John says that when Jesus told the people to sit down, it was the men who actually sat down, and there were about 5,000 of them. This casual detail helps us understand how the number of men could be reliably estimated, even though the Gospels don't give us all the details about how they arrived at that number. To say that this is just all dumb luck seems pretty absurd.
But let's get back to this historical kernel business. Remember, Apologia says there are any number of scenarios that are consistent: that there was a historical kernel of a real Philip, and perhaps even an actual event near Bethsaida from which the feeding of the 5,000 legend grew. That in the growth of the feeding of the 5,000 legend, the details about Bethsaida and Philip gradually became part of the common oral tradition accessible to all the Gospel authors. Let's break this down. Apparently, to Apologia, there was something that happened to Bethsaida, but definitely not the feeding of the 5,000, but something happened and it was noteworthy, and the tale grew in the telling. Much like the game of telephone, the original story had become more and more garbled, and legendary bits seeped into the story, and it got more and more grand. Finally, these stories were written down decades after the events, far from where they took place. But somehow, these little true kernels about Bethsaida and Jesus turning to Philip and asking where he could buy bread stuck. That's absurd. I gotta say, this sounds pretty ridiculous.
Keeping track of the main elements of the narrative is pretty easy, but keeping track of insignificant details is a lot more difficult. This is especially true if these things are passed down through a long line of oral tradition. So, if two independent sources match up on these small details, it's a good sign that they are reliable sources. Apologia can't have his telephone game cake and eat it too. If the Gospels are mostly unreliable oral traditions about major events or words of Jesus that they probably got terribly wrong, why would one then argue that they got the insignificant and forgettable events incredibly right? And who in Rome, Ephesus, Antioch, or wherever, would even care about such obscure details, such as a relatively small Hamlet like Bethsaida, or a conversation about Philip about where to buy bread? Apologia is a fan of Bart Ehrman, but can he tell me where Bart Ehrman was born without looking it up? Katie, tell me where Bart debated William Lane Craig without checking Google. Even if he can, what's the percentage of Ehrman blog subscribers who just know this from memory?
So again, what if this is just another case of John being aware of Mark's Gospel? Well, again, this just doesn't work. If John made up the detail that Jesus asked Philip on purpose to fit together with the location of the miracle, it's highly unlikely that he would have left out any mention of Philip's hometown or any mention of the location of the feeding. If he'd done that, he'd be forcing the reader to find both of these facts for himself in other places. This is if John said to himself, "Hey, look how clever I am. I'll mention that Philip is from Bethsaida, but I won't mention it when I get to the feeding of the 5,000, even though that's extremely relevant. These readers will just have to piece it together, and I sure hope they have a copy of Luke." The same thing is true if John knew of the Gospel of Luke. Even if John did know Luke, he doesn't seem to have this part of Luke in mind. If the mention of Bethsaida was influencing John's account, he would have been much more likely to mention the town than to invent a question for Philip. It would be highly indirect to ask Philip a question, since Philip was from Bethsaida, without saying anything about the town at all. And of course, this would be even more unpalatable if John is just inventing Philip's connection to Bethsaida in other parts of his gospel.
Let's let Jonathan give another example of an undesigned coincidence and see what Apologia has to say in response.
"When you have in the New Testament where it tells us what Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane when he was by himself, or what happened when he was being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. And according to Paul, that's no different than an alleged revelation to Muhammad. How do we answer that charge?" "So, there are always going to be cases where we just didn't know exactly how the, what sources the, the Gospel authors are drawing upon as they give us the, their accounts that we find in the Gospels." "Aha! So Jonathan is on board that the Gospel authors are drawing on sources, not merely recollecting their own first-hand experiences." "I mean, it's quite plausible. It's certainly not implausible that Jesus himself disclosed to the disciples what he had prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. There are, there are cases though where we have private conversations where we actually do have some at least plausible explanation for how they came upon that information." "And Jonathan is setting his standard for not worrying about such problems as having at least plausible explanations." "One of Jesus' female disciples was actually married to someone in the highest ranks of Herod's employment, which then illuminates how Matthew plausibly could come to know what Herod was saying to his servants in the prophecy of his own palace." "Let's call that plausible. What you're conceding is that the Gospels are not eyewitness narratives, but rather a compilation of narratives that the author couldn't personally attest to. If I'm to accept that the authors got conversation details from others, why would I need to accept the details like green grass came from the author's own experiences? Or perhaps Jonathan would concede that nothing in the Gospels need be from first-hand experience of the authors, but that instead these stories are rooted in eyewitness testimony, where rooted in eyewitness testimony means hearsay, could be second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand. We have no idea. The author of Matthew wasn't even the source for the story about Jesus meeting Matthew. And when you're dealing in hearsay, you're in the realm of intentional or unintentional deviations from reality that the later author has no way to distinguish. There's no amount of green grass or 'Philip was from that town' coincidences that more firmly establishes reliable second-hand sources than it does exaggerated narratives. Both are equally plausible here."
Okay, so did you notice the red herring here? Hey, look over there! Instead of grappling with the undesigned coincidence regarding Herod's servants, Apologia turns this into Jonathan granting that parts of the Gospels aren't firsthand. But no one is saying that the Gospel authors didn't use sources at times, or that they personally witnessed nearly everything that they wrote down. Clearly, Mark and Luke use sources because they weren't disciples, and Matthew obviously wasn't present when Herod was talking to his servants. But Chuza's wife, and she was married to Joanna, one of Jesus's female followers. The whole point is that Luke and Matthew did have a closed source: Joanna's husband. Clearly, Luke didn't mention Joanna in Luke 8:1-3, but the intention of explaining Matthew. Luke doesn't mention Chuza or Joanna at all when he tells about Herod beheading John the Baptist in Luke 9:7-9. It looks like Luke mentions Joanna as a follower of Jesus because he knew about her and the other women that he names. Luke may have known Joanna personally. He's the only evangelist to mention her, and he brings up her name again in Luke 24:10, where he lists her as one of the women who went to the tomb.
But notice that this story cuts against one of Apologia's favorite theories about the Gospels. He often places for the Bible tells me so jingle because he largely looks at the Gospels and is coming from mostly a single source. After all, Matthew and Luke often copy Mark word for word. Apologia often sneaks in the assumption that if Matthew or Luke change Mark's wording a bit, then they're probably just inventing something. But it is exactly here where Matthew adds something to the wording of Mark that we find an undesigned coincidence. The point is that Matthew has his own factual information to add to the story. And again, this is a cumulative case that's being made here.
The problem for Apologia is that at some point, his explanation becomes way more complex and less likely than the alternative. The proponent of undesigned coincidences has one hypothesis that explains all the data in one fell swoop. But if you need literary dependence for X number of events reported, and historical kernel for another set of Y events reported when literary dependence doesn't fit, and when literary dependence doesn't fit for Y, you can just call it speculation for Z, and for everything else, you could just say, "Eh, coincidence." Then, man, I really don't know what else to tell you.
Okay, so I want to back up and just deal with one more thing here. Note that someone like Jonathan will want to place great evidential weight on places of overlap, but will want to retreat to strained harmonization in places where the Gospels seem to have contradictions. Personally, I find harmonization to be plausible enough that I don't argue from contradiction. But if you're like Jonathan, simultaneously rejecting plausible explanations for overlap and embracing merely plausible explanations for differences, then you're suffering from confirmation bias.
But he doesn't actually give examples of Jonathan using any kind of strained harmonization. He just kind of throws it out there like chum in the water for his audience to gobble up. But the truth is, we harmonize historical accounts all the time. It's just good, standard scholarly practice. But for some reason, when Christians do it with the Gospels, it becomes this very pathetic and desperate thing to do. But the thing about it is, is that Jonathan McClatchy, or Lydia McGrew for that matter, aren't inherentists. So no one is advocating forced and strained harmonization here. And it's not as if Jonathan hasn't ever answered this question before. I'll link his blog post in the description. But in a nutshell, McClatchy has written that he's often been asked if the same approach used to show the reliability of the Gospels and Acts can be used to show their unreliability by highlighting their contradictions. However, the positive evidence, such as undesigned coincidences, is far more numerous and carries greater evidential force than the apparent discrepancies. There is an epistemic asymmetry between the positive and negative evidence, and the appearance of parallel arguments evaporates once our expectations are properly calibrated.
Tim and Lydia McGrew know multiple times where ancient historians widely considered to be generally trustworthy involve various small apparent contradictions. They write, "Even a passing acquaintance with the documents that form the basis of secular history reveals that the reports of reliable historians, even by witnesses, always display selection and emphasis, and not infrequently contradict each other outright. Yet this fact does not destroy or even significantly undermine their credibility regarding the main events they report." Here's just a few examples that the McGrews give: "Almost no two authors agree regarding how many troops Xerxes had for his invasion of Greece, but obviously the invasion, or its disastrous outcome, are not in doubt. Josephus' account of the number of troops at the Battle of Pharsalus differs from Caesar's own account by 150,000 men, yet no one doubts that there was such a battle, or even that Caesar won it. According to Josephus, the embassy of the Jews to the Emperor Claudius took place in summertime, while Philo places it in harvest time, but that there was such an embassy is uncontroversial." I could go on and on, multiplying examples like these. But the bottom line is this: If we assume that a group of historical documents is strongly reliable, then we can expect to find small differences between their accounts, just like in other documents that are considered reliable. Therefore, the existence of these small differences can't be used as strong evidence against their reliability.
And this will mention about contradictions again goes against one of Apologia's theories about the Gospels, which is that they are a product of copying. For instance, John doesn't try to match the story of the feeding of the 5,000 with the Synoptic Gospels. He just leaves it with some major open ends. John talks about how Jesus went up to the mountain to avoid people who wanted to make him king, and only after that does it say that the disciples came down and got in a boat in the evening. So it might seem like they didn't even start down to the shore until after Jesus went up the mountain. Mark 6:45-46 tells us that Jesus sent the disciples away in a boat while he dismissed the crowd. There is a variation between this account and John's account, but this does not mean that there's an irreconcilable contradiction. Different parts of the story can be taking place at once. For instance, Jesus could have told the disciples to leave right away while all of them were some distance from the shore. It could have taken them some time to make their way down through the crowd to the boat, while Jesus was dismissing the crowd and eventually going up the mountain. Each author has to tell the events in some order. Mark does not have to mean that the disciples sailed away before Jesus dismissed the crowd.
Apologia wants to call this "strained harmonization." I guess he's welcome to make that charge against me, but the independence ought to be obvious here. John is telling his own story as he knows it. He's not tailoring his account in order to fit the Synoptics, yet he's not contradicting the Synoptics, and his account dovetails with the Synoptics in very subtle and undesigned ways.
Finally, Apologia says that he doesn't have to take undesigned coincidences all that seriously because they haven't persuaded the vast majority of scholars, even the vast majority of Christian scholars. "I join the vast swath of Christian scholars who remain largely unmoved by the argument from undesigned consequences. It does nothing to quell legendary development in the oral tradition. At best, it gets you a historical kernel to certain pericopae." All this is is just a sociological fact that has absolutely no bearing on the evidence itself. There are minority views that have become majority views in the field of biblical studies over the last 200 years, things that are just widely accepted now. That doesn't mean that I'm expecting undesigned coincidences to become mainstream, but just because it's not popular doesn't mean that it's wrong.
There's also the fact that a lot of Christian scholars have accepted undesigned coincidences and have referred to them in their scholarly works. I'm talking about F.F. Bruce, Colin Hammer, Peter J. Williams, and Paul Barnett. These are scholars, not pop apologists. There's also the fact that many scholars have in fact endorsed Lydia McGrew's books, all of which discuss undesigned coincidences. I don't think that it would be very fair to say that these scholars are also suffering from confirmation bias.
Thank you so much for watching this video, and I hope you found it helpful.