Transcription
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Hey everybody, I'm with uh, John, uh, aka the Godless Engineer. And it's kind of an unlikely conversation. We're going to be talking today about undesigned coincidences. Um, John is, uh, to say, not a fan of the argument. Um, and we're gonna just have a friendly discussion. And are there undesigned coincidences in the Gospels? And, you know, what's the implications of that? Um, what's his take on it? And, uh, just be like a friendly kind of back and forth, not some kind of serious, you know, debate or anything else like that. We'll probably go for about 45 minutes or so. And if you have questions, we'll try and save them to the end. So if you want to do, send some questions. Be feel free to do that. Super chats will get priority. But, um, we'll answer questions if we have the time for any others.
So, uh, yeah, anyways, John, thanks so much for, for joining me. Uh, thank you for having me. And I, I just have to say that, yeah, I'm not convinced by the undesigned coincidences. So you're just gonna need to deal with it. I appreciate that. All right, man. That, that was the surprise. Okay, he was warned me ahead of the broadcast. He's got a surprise. And I was like, oh man, he wouldn't tell me what it was. So those are no. Yeah, well, I mean, I know how much you like to use this in your thumbnails. So I thought that that could be a fun little thing to, to share, you know, before we started. Uh, you know, to, I, I guess to, to give us this air of just, you know, a light, a light discussion. Um, uh, you know, no, no, uh, bad intentions on my part or anything like that. I'm just here for a good discussion. Yeah, for sure. And I, the way I feel about these things is like, when you get online and you get on YouTube, um, there's just kind of a different kind of flavor. But when you can kind of discuss things face to face, my understanding is just, my philosophy, I guess you'd say, is just, why can't we just enjoy nerdy things together? You know, these are fun things to talk about and discuss. That's why we spend so much time on them. Um, and I feel like even though we have like major differences, um, I think just the fact that we can enjoy these kind of conversations is something that can unite us. And so, um, yeah.
So undesigned coincidences, I'm going to jump into a very brief presentation. People have probably seen my video. John has responded a long time ago to some of my videos on this. And we're just now being able to kind of connect here finally. But I'm going to just run through a very quick explanation of undesigned coincidences and give a few examples. Uh, and then I'm going to just kind of let John respond. And then we'll just kind of go back and forth in there. And so, um, so undesigned coincidences, what are they? Uh, let me mess with my slides here. Hopefully, I got it right. An undesigned coincidence is basically sometimes two works by different authors interlock in a way that would be very unlikely if one of them were copied from the other completely, or they were both completely copied from a common source. So, for example, one book may mention in passing a detail that answers some question raised by another. And the two records fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
And so, one of the examples, kind of like a real-life example that, uh, Dr. Lydia McGrew, who's kind of more revived the argument from undesigned coincidences and popularized it in her book, "Hidden in Plain View," she talks about like a couple of friends meeting together in a coffee house, uh, to discuss, um, maybe some, like, they have a serious confession that they need to make to one of their friends. And they're telling the story about this confession later. And one of them happens to mention in passing that the coffee house was like extremely busy. And then another person had, the other person mentions in passing that they spilled their coffee and got coffee all over their lap or something like that. And so these particular details, uh, fit together because if a coffee house is really busy, there's a chance that somebody can bump into that person, uh, leading to the spilled coffee. Kind of dovetail one with another. Um, and it looks more like something that's better explained as if they're telling the truth about what was their conversation was about versus, you know, them just kind of making up some sort of like story or lying or something like that.
And so, a few examples, um, I'm going to talk some from the about the feeding of the 5000 because this is what, uh, GE responded to in my video here. Um, I think that the evidence for the feeding of the 5000 is probably one of the better attested miracles in the Gospels, aside from the resurrection, of course. She would dispute both of those pretty vehemently. That's why he showed up. Um, my prayers did not work. He showed up. He did not convert before this happened. Um, but anyways, um, I'm going to quote Matthew 11:21. It says, "What are you, Chorazin? What are you, Bethsaida? For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." Now, what exactly is this comment about from Jesus? He hasn't really, um, mentioned, you know, like, like this just kind of comes up out of nowhere in Matthew. Um, and so just kind of hold that one in your mind. Uh, this is John 6:5. "Lifting up his eyes then and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, 'Where are we to buy bread that these people may eat?'" Okay, so if you're making up a gospel story, why exactly would you use Philip? You know, like, when you're thinking about buying bread, who would have the money bag? Well, maybe Judas or something like that. Or why didn't he ask Peter? Peter's like the most prominent character, um, of all people, right? Philip is a pretty obscure character. And so we find out later from reading in John that Philip was actually from Bethsaida in Galilee. Okay, this is in John 12:21, also in John 14:4. Um, now Luke tells us that on their return, the disciples or the apostles told them all that they had done. And they took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida. And when the crowds learned it, they followed him. This is Luke 9:10 and 11. And so I hit back instead of forward. So Luke doesn't mention Philip at all. And John and Matthew doesn't mention Bethsaida as the location of the feeding of the 5000. And so now you can see why Jesus was so harsh with Bethsaida, because such an amazing miracle had taken place there. Even though the feeding of the 5000 isn't mentioned in Matthew, he talks about it later in the 14th chapter. Okay, so all of these pieces interlock like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. That's just like one example. There's more in the feeding of the 5000. I'm going to try and buzz through these super quick, uh, just so that we can get to the discussion.
Mark 6:31 and 39. "And he said to them, 'Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while,' for many were coming and going. Um, you know, where John went here, let me make sure I can get him back here. There he is. For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure to eat. And then he commanded them to sit in groups on the green grass." Okay, so each Mark is just mentioning that there's a bunch of people there, there's a big crowd, and that there happens to be green grass. Right now, John, in John chapter 6 and verse 4, says that it was Passover time. "The Feast of the Jews was at hand." Right now, if you know anything about topography, uh, in Palestine, in this particular, the grass is not normally green. The grass is normally brown. This is a picture of the grass normally. Either it's only during the rainy season do we get green grass. Well, John happens to mention that the feeding of the 5000 takes place during Passover. Well, that explains all of a sudden the large crowds, because people are coming from all over the diaspora to celebrate the Passover. Right? And then also the grass is green because that's the rainy season of that particular time. And so again, these pieces fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Mark doesn't mention the Passover. John doesn't mention the crowds. Um, and so these things kind of fit together.
Um, I'm only going to give one more example, but I want to pause here and just take a second to reflect here. Why exactly is this important? Well, one, undesigned coincidence, it might be an accident. Right? It just could be by mistake. These could just be like two unrelated pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that fit together by chance. The problem is, um, I would say for the skeptical side, is that if we discover a number of undesigned coincidences that crisscross across all of the documents, then it becomes too absurd to insist that they're all just like accidental. Okay? Now, one other thing that I'll add here is that in, uh, J.J. Blunt's book, which is the one that focuses more on undesigned coincidences in the Gospel, Gospels, I believe he gives like 60 different examples. Lydia McGrew gives 27 different examples. Okay? And so it's a cumulative case. It's not just like, well, one of these might be an accident, and I can explain it because of this or that. It's that there's a multitude of them. I'm only going to give one more example just for the sake of time, because I've already gone for 10 minutes here. Um, but this is a favorite of mine. It says in Matthew 14:2-3, "At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus, and he said to his servants, 'This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.'" And so it's only in Matthew's Gospel that we hear that Herod says something to his servants, um, about who he thinks Jesus is, right? And so now here's a question. It's like, how in the world would Matthew have any idea what is being said to Herod's servants? Like, he's not there, right? And we're just going to say that the Holy Spirit told him or something like that. Um, maybe some Christians might say that, but I think we can do a little bit better than that. Um, and so it says in, I hit back instead of forward. It says in Luke 8:3, "that Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their means." And so Mark leaves this, or not Mark, Matthew leaves this kind of weird question just kind of dangling out there. But then if you flip over to Luke 8:3, which is not like a real passage that people focus on, you know, during their Bible study time, we find out that Joanna, the wife of Chuza, was Herod's household manager. And so that's how they could have been, the Herod servants would have been privy. They would have known about Herod's servants, excuse me, asking this question and making this statement. And again, it explains each other. And so those are just a few examples. Uh, obviously, I have many more examples on videos on my channel. Anywhere that you go on YouTube, if you just look up Lydia McGrew, Tim McGrew, you can find lots of examples, Jonathan McClatchy. And so again, don't just, I'm kind of at a weakness here because I want to give time for discussion. Um, the case is cumulative. And so you might say, well, these are just like a few examples. Um, definitely go out, check out the argument for yourself. Because it's the cumulativeness that I think has where it has the real force. And so, uh, without further ado, John.
All right, what do you think, man? What's your thoughts? I know you got them. Yeah, I do. Um, so, uh, well, I guess we could, we could start back at the very beginning, um, with the, the feeding of the 5000. And I believe you started with, uh, explaining that it had been, you know, done near Bethsaida, right? Uh, and you said that the fact that some of the Gospels specifically mentioned Bethsaida, well, if I'm not mistaken, Mark does as well, does it not? Um, I don't think so. No, I can look it up real quick, though. Keep talking. I'm looking it up while we speak. Well, so the, my main issue with undesigned coincidences in general, and especially this whole, "Where did the feeding of the 5000 happen?" is the fact that you, the way in which the Gospels were written, that you, you have later Gospels directly copying early Gospels and then changing some things. And so my issue lies in determining when, like, like, when are they referencing eyewitness accounts versus just copying or or redacting, rather, and making stuff up, right? Like, there's, I don't see any good criteria within undesigned coincidences to discern between that. Because I mean, we know that the Gospel authors copied previous Gospels. We know that they had authorial license. We know that they changed things. You know, in, uh, the Gospel of John, John extends Jesus's ministry from just a one-year thing to a full three years of of his ministry. And so it, it seems to me like, as you look at the Gospels, how we know that the, or, or the timeline in which we know that they were written, it makes a lot of sense that by the time that you get to these supposed, uh, coincidences, as you say, it seems like the authors would have known what the previous authors wrote, and they worked that into, like, what they were writing. Like, they're just simply writing for the audience that they're speaking to. And so, like, this audience that they're speaking to knows that, that at least one of these, well, as far as Mark goes, there's two feedings of of a lot of people. And I think only one of them's, uh, 5000. But it, it happens near Bethsaida. And then you have Matthew and and Luke, and then subsequently John, who all have this taking place at Bethsaida in one way or another. And so it seems to me like it was established early on, and then working through it, it, it seems like the authors just sort of stuck with that one thing, but they mention it in different ways. Yeah.
Well, it is only Luke who mentions where the feeding of the 5000 was in Bethsaida. If you can find, like, a reference, um, I don't, I definitely don't see one. And I think you said a couple of things here, um, that I want to, um, maybe kind of help you understand. Is that the first one, I think, is probably the one that is most important, and the one that keeps bringing up over and over and over again when you talk about undesigned coincidences. People are just like, whoa, whoa, don't you understand? You know, we have the Synoptic Problem. And obviously that Mark came first, and then Matthew and Luke copied Mark, and then they had some of their own material that was original. Maybe they got it from a hypothetical document like Q or something else like that. And so where the confusion comes is that we're not, I'm not saying Lydia McGrew isn't saying, the McGrews, Jonathan McClatchy are not saying, well, all four Gospels are completely independent. Right? That would be like a huge straw man. Um, in "Hidden in Plain View," Lydia McGrew is very specific in addressing the Synoptic Problem. She talks about it in her other books. She has a video, uh, titled "What I Think About the Synoptic Problem," that people can go and check out. Just Google or search it in YouTube. It'll come right up. Um, and so that's not what we're saying. That's like some kind of hyper-fundamentalism weirdness going on there. Um, but we're also not saying that they're totally dependent in the sense that, like, that everything came from Mark, and then maybe this other source Q, and then John is just doing some weird stuff way over here in left field. Um, okay, I think that's a mistake too. I think it's like a false dilemma. The Gospels could be partially dependent and partially independent. Um, and where they diverge, and so from Mark, for example. And so it doesn't mean that just because that they're saying something different, um, that, well, they must be inventing that, or they must be just making something up for some literary purpose, some theological purpose, some embellishing purpose, embellishment purpose. Just because they're taking a story that is in Mark's Gospel and now they're adding some different phrases of their own, that doesn't mean that they're just making something up or pulling something out of thin air. They could have other independent information that supplements that. And so it's kind of black and white thinking to just be like, well, it's got to be this way, or it's got to be this way. Um, they could have other information from eyewitnesses, or maybe being present themselves, that they're bringing to the table. Um, in addition. Does that make sense?
It does make sense. But I do want to emphasize that what my actual problem was, was that there's, in, in the whole undesigned coincidences hypothesis, there's no good criteria for determining between those two. I see those two as equally likely. Like, it's equally likely that they just, uh, caught, they just redacted and, uh, for the sake of the argument, rather, I guess I should, to be more specific, for the sake of the argument or the discussion that we're having right now, they're equally likely. So what kind of cri, what criteria would allow us to discern between these supposed true facts and stuff that was copied, redacted, or just blatantly fabricated? How would we know between those? But also, I do want to point out that Mark does place the feeding of the 5000 at Bethsaida on, Mark 6, verse 45. It says, "Immediately, and this is immediately after the feeding, Jesus made his disciples get in the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, where he dismissed the crowd." While he dismissed the crowd, it's definitely connected to Bethsaida. And, and it's the, the perception here is that it's, it's at least close enough to Bethsaida for Jesus to be like, "Hey, go to this close town," kind of thing. If anything, people bring that one up as actually a contradiction, in this confirmatory of what I'm saying. Now, there are ways around that. I think it's actually a reconcilable variation. I will refer people to Jonathan McClatchy's article regarding the feeding of the 5000. Just Google Jonathan McClatchy feeding of the 5000. He actually explains that as well as, I think Lydia McGrew has a blog post on that. But actually, people use that to say that it's a contradiction. Now, I, I could just say that Mark necessarily wasn't an eyewitness, and maybe he made a mistake there. Um, that would probably be a problem for inerrancy, but that wouldn't necessarily be a problem for the argument for undesigned coincidences. And so, as far as an independent criteria or something like that, in order to judge this kind of a thing, this is where I think a lot of people make mistakes is that they don't appreciate the casualness of these particular remarks in the Gospels, right? And so, I mean, you're talking about just small, minor details like green grass and the Passover, what time of year it was, and a disciple named Philip, right? Or, or what Herod said to his servants, and then we find out in passing later that Joanna, uh, is the wife of Chuza, who's Herod's household manager, right? These are very casual, small, new details. It's not like they're thinking, like, "Oh, okay, wait a second. Okay, so Matthew said this thing, and I better make something up here in order to, like, fix this for Matthew." But I'm not going to make any attention, draw any attention to it. I'm going to be really coy. I'm going to be really sly. And so when you say that they have like equal probability, I would just say that they, that hypothesis, because of the casualness and because there's like no attention drawn to it whatsoever, it doesn't seem like it's, it, it looks more like testimony than it does like serious redaction, like Luke is trying to cover Matthew's butt or something like that. And so, and the fact that these crisscross all throughout the different documents, uh, it makes it more probable on the high pass hypothesis that this is eyewitness testimony. I would say that it is something like redaction or, or other particular theories that people have opposed. And, and to say, even if what my explanation is, like, maybe you think it's improbable, I would just say that I think it's not equally probable. I'd say it's more improbable. And when you add those things together, well, all of a sudden the ratio starts to add up, and the cumulative force of the evidence kind of would carry the day. I could unpack that a little bit more. It kind of gets into some nerdy number stuff, but, um, so, yeah. Does that make sense?
Well, I, I mean, I understand what you're saying. But, but it does, it doesn't make sense in that, you know, it doesn't make sense with the evidence that we have because, like, for instance, with the whole Passover thing, it doesn't make sense for the feeding of the 5000 to be placed at the Passover in Mark's Gospel, because, like, it, for instance, it doesn't make sense in Mark's Gospel during the feeding of the 5000 for the disciples to be like, uh, "Come on, Jesus, let's, let's dismiss these people so that they can go into the closest town and eat," which I'm guessing might be Bethsaida or something like that. I, I'm not, I'm not sure. But, like, why don't you dismiss them so that they can go and get their own food so we don't have to provide food? This wouldn't make, this wouldn't make a lot of sense if this was Passover time. And maybe McClatchy has covered this in his blog article or whatnot. But there's that, then there's the green grass at this. Go ahead, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, at this point in time, uh, in order to make the connection that because, um, I believe it was Mark that mentions the green grass, um, yes, is that right? Yeah, yeah, that's correct. Um, I mean, it kind of seems like you're, you're saying, "Well, since they're mentioning green grass, that means it happens at Passover," because of what occurs later in the Gospels. But I mean, green grass was around that area for a good portion of the year during that, the time when in which Jesus would have been doing this, if he had actually done it. So it, it seems, it seems rather very, um, speculative to say, "Oh, well, that must mean it was around this date," when it could have literally happened almost any other time. Sure. What am I saying? This is a probabilistic argument.
Oh, there you are. Um, so blinked out there a second. It's a probabilistic argument. Nobody's saying, like, this one thing, bam, it proves it. It's a slam dunk, right? This is, this is probabilistic. Second of all, um, it's John, uh, who talks about it being Passover. It's Matthew who says that the crowds were coming and going and they could find leisure to eat. And so John's explanation is providing a detail that it's Passover. And we know from Josephus that, like, he says, like, millions of people would descend upon, um, the area at that time. I, he, he could be exaggerating a little bit here. Let's just say it's hundreds of thousands. Well, that's a lot of people. That explains why there's all this hustle and bustle. Um, but Mark is not talking about Passover whatsoever. He never mentions Passover. It's, it's only in John. We, we get this detail of hustle and bustle that's just casually mentioned. Just, and then John just happens to mention it's Passover. But he doesn't even mention all the hustle and bustle. He doesn't even mention the, the massive crowds. And so that's how they interlock. Does that make sense?
Well, yeah. Well, I mean, I understand what you're saying. But, like, for instance, the reason why John associates the feeding of the 5000 with the Passover is to sort of, uh, connect, you know, Jesus's sacrifice, him being the bread, and everything like that. Like, that's all, um, supposed to be, um, you know, um, talking about, you know, Jesus as the sacrifice. Like, that's, Jesus as the Passover lamb. And like, that's one common thing throughout John's Gospel is that Jesus is the Passover lamb, and he's represented, uh, symbolically in that way, not only in the feeding of the 5000, but also with when Jesus is, uh, I guess, beaten and put on the cross, because he's, it's done at the time in which the Passover lamb would have been prepared. So, sorry, you got something to say? Oh, no, you're good. You're good. I'm just nodding my head, listening. And so, um, you're good. Um, no, I think you bring up a point. And, and that is something like, even, um, I think it was on the MythVision podcast, um, that, uh, Derek brought this up with, uh, Dr. Dale Allison. And he was like, "Well, you know, maybe it's, um, when he's talking about the green grass and Mark, he's like, 'Well, you know, it says in Psalms 23 that the Lord is my shepherd, you know, and he makes me lie down in green grass.'" And maybe it's something like that. And so it's like, because I can think of like a, uh, a theory about the evangelists made up details for some sort of theological motive, um, which often times, I, this is just my own opinion, don't take this the wrong way, but it just seems like it's something that I can invent now, specifically to predict these details, that the evangelists are just making stuff up. Um, I don't think that that's, I think that's kind of textbook ad hoc reasoning. Um, and an object, listen to this. I'll go ahead. I can, I'll let you address that real quick.
Well, I mean, now, I don't know about that particular thing. I mean, that does kind of seem pretty speculative, the thing that Dale Allison said. But it's no, um, it's not like a new thing or a speculative thing to say, like the feeding of the 5000 was copied from the Elijah miracles. Like, those, like, that particular, like, the miraculous generation of food miracle is a common miracle that was done by prophets in the Old Testament. And so the, and there's actual, and when I say these things, like, when I was talking about the green grass, I'm talking about like actual, like empirical things that kind of don't make sense, not just speculative, you know, symbolic things that could be or could not be symbolic. Like with the grass, it's a known fact that at that time, the green grass in that area was, uh, you know, widespread, uh, you know, through a good portion of the year, like that's just something that's known about the area at the time. So, you know, saying that, "Oh, it, you know, this must coincide with what John says because of this green grass thing," it, it kind of seems a little bit cherry-picky to me, saying, you know, like, "Oh, well, this detail coincides with what John, who was definitely using Mark's Gospel to create his own Gospel, is telling us here." So it doesn't seem like a desi, like an undesigned coincidence. It sounds very designed, the way that it was. But also, we do know that a good portion of the New Testament story about Jesus is copied from the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets. So, I mean, to say that, "Oh, well, this is just, you know, speculative nonsense," to to suggest that the Jews were pulling, uh, information from the Old Testament and symbolically representing them in the New Testament, um, that, that, that is a legitimate argument. That is, you know, in the mainstream of scholars, and it does explain a lot of the things that we get in the New Testament, like with the symbolic representation of Jesus as the Passover lamb, and how John is is seeking to reinforce this idea at his feeding of the 5000. And that, like, that's why, um, John moves the feeding of the 5000 from the lakeshore up on a mountain. That's to solidify this connection between Jesus and Moses. And then he's got the, you know, multiplying of the bread and the fish and everything like that. And that's not only to embody Elisha and Elijah, but also as a way to, you know, emphasize that Jesus is this Passover meal, or he's this Passover lamb that's, uh, you know, a sacrifice, uh, you know, for their sins. So, I mean, for me, there's far more theological explanation that makes more sense than the undesigned coincidence idea. Because with the undesigned coincidence idea, like, you've got to fabricate some of this information. Like, you've got to fabricate the idea that it was, you know, it's only green around that time of the year in Israel or whatnot. And so, like, all that. But to speak to your casualness criteria, I find that that's a little bit too subjective. Um, now, I, I get it that a lot of this stuff in history is a bit subjective, you know, to, to some extent. But saying, "Oh, the casualness that this is thrown in there," it seems like there's way too much room for your own personal interpretation of how casual it is. And I mean, with the connections between, like, um, the, the fact that the feeding of the 5000 is, uh, you know, a copy of an Elisha and Elijah miracle, that this is due to literal, like, word-for-word copies of phrases that exist in both the New Testament sources and the Old Testament, like Septuagint sources. So there's like this hardcore connection between the two. Um, we know that the New Testament authors were using the Septuagint in order to inform them about Jewish ideology and Jewish lore and everything like that. So this, um, hard connection in the phrases there is more than just speculative. Like, it's an actual hard connection. And I just, I don't find anything like that with the undesigned coincidences.
Okay, so gave me a lot. I know that was a lot. No, no, that was good. Well, I've given, I've thrown a lot. I've done the same. So no worries at all. So hopefully I can address all of this. I wasn't taking notes, so I might have to go back. So first of all, not either. No, that's okay. Yeah, like I said, this isn't like a formal debate or anything at all. Um, no, I, I think I appreciate the fact that you think Allison's theory, um, there is out to lunch with theological, theological explanation. Um, but then you made some other ones, like, "Well, it's on a mountain now," and so that's symbolizing Moses. And I kind of found that one to be almost on on par with that, no offense at all. But I did like your Passover theological explanation. That's probably a whole lot better of a symbolic interpretation, of a theological interpretation, that John would be making than than the, whatever Allison was saying there. And so the problem with all of these different things here is that we could just kind of do this ad infinitum, okay? I mean, I could like tell any kind of of a story from real life and give it some sort of, uh, air of, of reality. I mean, like, for example, Napoleon going into exile on an island, not once, but twice. A very clever biblical scholar could come along and say, "Well, clearly this is an example of a doublet. You know, and the, the island is symbolism for England. Napoleon's enemy walls escape represents a mythical trope of the hero escaping from the realm of the dead or something like that." Um, you could make up, you could look at details about Jesus, uh, sleeping on a pillow that you only find in Mark's Gospel. It says that he's just this casual mention of him sleeping in a pillow. It's not an undesigned coincidence. And you could just say, "Oh, Jesus was sleeping on a pillow just like, um, just like Jacob was sleeping on a rock back in Genesis 28." And the disciples were afraid. Well, Jacob was afraid. And then Jacob rested with the angel, and then he had faith. And then Jesus spoke to the winds and the waves, and then the disciples had faith. And you could kind of go on and on and on and on with these things. Um, an object lesson where people make this mistake and then later like have to realize, like, "Oh, that was dumb." Was a French critic by the name of Albert Loisy. Um, I believe he was French. And he talks about, uh, the pool of Bethesda where it's in John 5:3. There's five covered colonnades, right? And there's disabled people, the blind and the lame and the paralyzed. You probably like that one because I think it ties into some of the mythology there. But, um, he says that the ancients who thought they found a spring of symbol of Judaism in the five porticos were an allusion to the five books of the law. No doubt encountered the thought of the evangelist. And then, well, later on, archaeology has proven that, well, no, there were five covered colonnades of the pool of Bethesda. Our best, yeah, Bethesda. And so, and so you can kind of come up with these theological interpretations. But the one thing that I really wanted to to hit on here is that doesn't really even address the coincidence, right? You can come up with, "Well, this is why John was inventing this over here," but that, that doesn't have anything to do with the information that we have with Mark, and that they interlock. They just happen to interlock. And we can think of theological explanations, like I said, infinite. But just explaining a theological explanation on one side with one Gospel, uh, doesn't do anything, do away at all with the interlocking casualness that they have. And, and I think that's the main weakness in where people kind of run off track with this, right?
Well, well, so as far as the, uh, maybe maybe we could just deal with the, the location of the feeding of the 5000, because, um, it's a known, uh, thing in legendary accretion for, uh, previously unknown or nameless characters to be given whole backstories and, and have, uh, stories made up about them. We've been able to analyze ancient, uh, you know, writings, and, and we have, we have found this. And this is even in the mainstream, uh, biblical scholar, uh, stuff, that, you know, nameless or unknown, or maybe people that are names but really aren't given any kind of backstory are later found to be given backstories, or even sometimes whole stories made about them. That's exactly what John was doing. John was creating stories for this, uh, disciple Philip. And so he had Philip come from Bethsaida because, you know, in the story of the feeding of the 5000, you know, he, he, he asks Philip, or whatever, because he's from Bethsaida. John, the author of the Gospel of John, knows that the feeding of the 5000 takes place at least somewhere near Bethsaida due to the fact that he has, uh, Mark, Matthew, and Luke that he's using in order to compose his Gospel. And so that just becomes another story that he makes up about. I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm, I'm not trying to make this sound like I'm saying that this is like 100% what happened. I'm providing what I'm trying to do when I give you these alternate explanations is saying, "Well, this is an alternate explanation that also explains all of the evidence that we have." And if, if we have that, what do we have to discern between that and the undesigned witness coincidence that, you know, we have some kind of unnamed eyewitness account that informed this part? Now, normally with histories, right, we have whole discussions on sources, why these sources are good eyewitnesses, and the authors usually take a very, um, interactive role in their histories, and they'll tell us, "Well, this person told us this," or something like that. We don't have that in, in the Gospels at all. And so if, if this is an eyewitness account, I mean, honestly, we should expect the Gospel author to tell us, "Well, who told us this?" Uh, and the only thing that we really have is at the beginning of the Gospel of John, it talks about how there's a disciple, uh, you know, John, that, and this is his eyewitness testimony about it. And that's it. But I mean, we don't know who the author is of the Gospel of John, and, you know, we don't know if any of it is actually the eyewitness testimony. We just get sort of a vague reference at the very beginning of the Gospel. Um, and so it seems to me like the undesigned coincidence explanation, uh, leaves a lot of unanswered questions versus the, the, the current mainstream explanation that just, that, you know, the Gospel writers were redacting, copying, sometimes making things up, uh, or maybe they were pulling from another, uh, source or something like that. We, we simply don't know. But the fact that, you know, this redaction hypothesis, I guess you could say, makes far more sense of the evidence that we have than undesigned coincidences.
Yeah, I would just strongly disagree there. I mean, because again, this is the kind of things that we see in normal conversation. And that's why you say, like, as far as a criteria goes, or different things like that, um, it's based on what we do know, not what we don't know, um, which is how these things, how eyewitness testimony actually looks and sounds, and the texture of it. Um, and then it's the fact that, just because again, we can think of redactional reasons why they added, like, theological meanings, usually when there's theological, like, they're, they're really trying to reference the Old Testament, or they're really trying to say something about Jesus, like, they tag it, they mention it, they go out of their way explicitly. When the, when, um, John at the crucifixion talks about Jesus, "not one of his bones were broken," and then he highlights a particular scripture passage, okay? Matthew does this stuff all the time with, like, the flight to Egypt and different things like that. Um, now, you could say that those stories are completely made up or whatever, but the point that I'm making is, um, I wish I would argue that they are not, but the point that I'm making here is that when they are doing this kind of heavy theological, like, inferences, they're pointing it out. They're being pretty explicit about it. When they're just talking about what they're reporting, like, they're not doing that. And so we just have to assume that's just kind of what they're doing from the get-go. And what I'm saying is this kind of evidence counts exactly against that particular hypothesis. We can't just come to the table assuming that they redacted because, well, we just, by golly, scholars say that they're redacted. This is the kind of evidence that works against that particular hypothesis, right? And again, when we can kind of always come up with a theological explanation for everything that looks like, uh, what could be an undesigned coincidence, that it doesn't explain that they, the two interlock. And then it doesn't explain the casualness. And then the problem is that you have to come up with these rescues over and over and over again, um, which sounds to me like it becomes very ad hoc. And so I think that's kind of the, the biggest, the biggest problem with the critics of undesigned coincidences is that they just haven't really, I don't think people have quite grappled with the argument. Um, I'm not saying you haven't, um, but I have not seen like a very, I don't know, it's just, it's always redaction, or it's always some, some other thing. And it's just like, these to me don't seem like any more probable than than the hypothesis that you're making. I did want to mention one other thing, and then I'll let you respond, and then, um, maybe we could answer, ask, get some questions, um, or I might, you know, we'll kind of wrap up a little bit here. When you talked about the feeding of the 5000, and it's just like, "Well, it's Elijah, Elijah, and Elisha, right?" Um, and, you know, we do see something like that in the Old Testament. Well, I mean, Jesus could have just acted that out. It just because like something is similar doesn't mean that like Jesus would have done something like that deliberately, uh, to say like, "Hey guys, I'm a prophet. I'm even a better prophet than these guys." And so, um, that kind of gets us into a discussion about miracles and different things like that. But I don't see that just because he's acting in a way similar to them that that gives us grounds for thinking that the event was just completely invented whatsoever. Um, and so I just wanted to address that real quick. So anyways, I'm giving you, yeah, right. Yeah.
Well, I was just going to say on on your last point there, um, now the, the, what convinces me of of that is actually Randall Helms's, uh, "Gospel Fictions." I don't know if you've, I've heard that. Yeah, yeah. He's, okay. Well, I mean, the, the book is interesting if you ever get, um, if you ever really, uh, look into it. Um, what, what, what Randall Helms does in in his book is he looks at the actual Septuagint Greek phrases, right? And he compares them to the New Testament. And he can pull out exact phrases that connect, not just like one or two, but like multiple different phrases that connect the Jesus story, especially the one in in Mark where the, it first, um, first came about. He could, I mean, you can connect whole phrases between the, um, uh, you know, the Old Testament story of, I can't remember if it's Elisha or Elijah, it might have been Elisha. But he, he connects whole phrases. He also connects the progression of events. Like, if you lay out the progression of events, uh, the progression of events are exactly the same in both stories, which is an indication of, um, you know, copying and changing, parallel of a parallel happening. Uh, so, you know, with, with the fact that there are whole phrases that are copied, the fact that the events that took place in the Old Testament, uh, happen in the exact same order, in the exact same progression, well, the exact same progression and everything like that in the New Testament, all of those that cumulatively leads us to believe that there's no way that these stories are are distinct from one another. Now, uh, it's important to know that this is, this is just the story that we know in the Gospels. I mean, for all I know, Jesus could have come by and done some kind of magic trick where he produced a whole bunch of loaves and bread, loaves of bread and fish, you know, like any illusionist would, and convinced people that this happens. But the stories that we have, as they are written in the Gospels, those are definitely inspired and connected to the Old Testament, which kind of obfuscates any kind of real historical event that could have happened, because then it's like, "Well, we don't know. How would we know that this actually happened if the only sources that we have on this, uh, uh, very obviously copied and and, uh, changed stories from the Old Testament that they already knew and just sort of pasted them on top of this Jesus character?" There's no way for us to know that, you know, this story actually happened, uh, because of of that fact. So it's not just speculatively saying, "Oh, well, something similar happened in the Old Testament, so that means that they just used it for the New Testament." Uh, what we're talking about is doing like an actual textual analysis, comparing the two stories, comparing the progression of events, and comparing, uh, Greek phrases that appear in both that are exactly the same. So it's a little bit more harder of, um, harder of evidence, uh, than just, you know, the casualness criteria. Um, I, I, I feel like the casualness criteria involves a little bit more subjective, um, like interpretation as to how casual these are, because I get, I understand that you find them to be very casual references, but when I look at them, I don't see casual references. What I see are crafted stories that the authors use in order to tell the story that they wanted to. Like, they, they wanted to tell this story in the way that they did, so they changed the stories around. They've redacted previous Gospels. Sometimes they even made up information in order to tell the story that they wanted to. And so that, that's why it doesn't seem casual to me, because it seems, uh, you know, crafted specifically to tell that story that they wanted to.
Well, yeah, I mean, this is just where we would disagree. I mean, I would say that the point is, is that they, they do fit together in casual ways, and that does, it is better explained if the recounted events are rooted in truth, other rather than one Gospel author taking his cues from another, especially about small things like an obscure disciple named Philip, where the grass was green, or what time of year it was, or who, where the household, what the household's servants heard, or, or that Joanna is just happens to be married to Chuza, who's Herod's household manager. And again, this is a cumulative case. We've only given, uh, several examples. And so it's kind of like when you just over and over you see these different examples, and I don't think they're as well accounted for on redaction as they are on the hypothesis that it's based on eyewitness testimony. I mean, even if the probability of the evidence that I'm giving here is like 0.2, and the probability of the evidence on the negation of the hypothesis, like say, redaction or something else, is 0.1, that's still a two-to-one ratio. So if you have 10 pieces of evidence, go through that would have a cumulative power of 1001 as terms of explanatory power of a hypothesis. And so I know that these are kind of easy to dismiss because they're small pieces of evidence, and no single one of them by itself is seems to be of great weight, because it's just like, green grass, you know, like a guy named Philip. Uh, but what happens is they combine to create, uh, that cumulative case. And so, uh, yeah, I, I guess I just don't see it as as good of an explanation at all. The other thing that I would say too is, um, if Mark is the, this is the kind of on this hypothesis that you would talk about, right? We would probably find the most coincidences in John, since it's the latest Gospel. We find very few in Matthew and Luke. Um, and then we'd probably find like absolutely none in Mark. But that is precisely what we don't find. Rather, what we find is that coincidences crisscross throughout the Gospels. They're completely multi-directional. And so if it was the other way around, like the opposite of what I just explained, then I might be inclined to agree with you and just be like, "This isn't a very good apologetic argument. Let's junk it," just like I would junk another bad apologetic argument, which, you know, that I'm willing to do. Um, but I just definitely don't see that. So I'll go ahead and let you respond, and then, um, I think we're at 50 minutes, so we'll take a few questions and then we'll wrap up, if that's okay with you. So, um, go ahead and feel free to give some concluding thoughts there, respond to what I said, and then we'll, uh, I see we have a few questions that we'll get to. Okay. All right, awesome. Yeah, I'll just make it kind of brief. I, uh, again, just like with the whole casualness thing, I don't see them as crisscrossing. I, I see that, you know, as the, the Gospels progress and, and the story changes, you know, we have these different stories. And the way in which undesigned coincidences tries to make sense of the stories as if they're all supposed to, as if they're all supposed to fit together, I, I think you kind of end up manufacturing. Not, not like maliciously manufacturing anything, but like you end up having to manufacture, like certain, certain crisscrossing, like coincidences, as, as y'all would put it. And so I, I think that it only looks like they're crisscrossing, but that's just due to how the Gospels were written. Uh, the details that each author decided to put in there. I just think that it, uh, gives the persona, I guess, of crisscrossing, or the facade, that's the word I was looking for, the facade of crisscrossing, rather than actual crisscrossing. But ultimately, for this discussion, you know, we both disagree with each other on it, and I think that we'll probably never agree with each other on the undesigned coincidences, which is fine. But, you know, I guess that means we're both gonna have to deal with it.
Okay, I guess so. Yeah. So I gotta, I need like the Snoop Dogg, you know, like that. Anyway, so yeah, no, that's all right. Um, no, I appreciate you coming on, GE, and having a friendly conversation. And this is, you know, refreshing to have a friendly conversation on this topic. You.