Transcription
Rising Star Wes Huff was just on Joe Rogan to talk about the Bible, and so of course I had to make a response. We begin with a claim about the book of Isaiah.
For a long time, our earliest copy of the book of Isaiah dated to the Middle Ages, so it was difficult to know if it had been accurately preserved or changed over the thousands of years since it was written. But then we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls, a set of ancient manuscripts found in Kuman dating to around 2,000 years ago. And amazingly, within them, we found a complete of the book of Isaiah, a thousand years older than the oldest one that we had until then. Take a listen:
"So, when you say the book of Isaiah is intact, how similar is it to the book of Isaiah that's in the Bible?"
"So, that one is fascinating. So, this isn't true for all of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but when we discovered the great Isaiah scroll, previous to that, the earliest copy of Isaiah that we had was, uh, in the Matic text, which is in the Middle Ages. Who, yeah, so it was literally a thousand years. We literally pushed back our understanding of Isaiah a thousand years. And the thing that really shocked scholars—like I said, this isn't true for all the Dead Sea Scrolls—but one of the things that shocked them about Isaiah was that it was word for word identical to the mastic text. Word for word, word for word. Wow. Yeah, wow."
That would be amazing if it were true. In fact, the Dead Sea version of the Isaiah scroll is not quite identical to the Matic text, that is, the one that we know from the Bible. Can you guess how many textual variants there are between the two? Take a guess. One that Wes forgot about? Ten? One hundred? Try more than 2,600. Yeah.
Now, most of these variants are small; there are differences in spelling, for example. But some of them are more significant. For instance, in Isaiah chapter 2, the end of verse 9 and all of verse 10 are simply missing from the Dead Sea version. They're just not there, which tells us that they were a later addition. Here are some words from the Digital Dead Sea Scrolls Project by the Israel Museum, which houses the Isaiah scroll:
"The text of the great Isaiah scroll generally confirms the Matic or traditional version codified in medial codices, all 66 chapters of the Hebrew version in the same conventional order. At the same time, however, the 2,000-year-old scroll contains alternative spellings, scribal errors, corrections, and most fundamentally, many variant readings. Strictly speaking, the number of textual variants is well over 2,600, ranging from a single letter, sometimes one or more words, to complete variant verse or verses."
Well over 2,600. Again, many of these variants are minor, but Wes Huff told Joe Rogan that the scroll is word for word identical with the mastic text. "It was word for word identical to the Matic text. Word for word, word for word," which is simply not true. Okay, moving on to the New Testament.
"Was it the book of Isaiah? Yeah, that the same book is exactly the same as, like, that's a miracle. That's pretty [__] crazy. Yeah, that is crazy. If you just imagine the sheer number of illiterate people, the sheer number of days that have to go by where people are telling the story exactly the same, and that it's entrusted in the hands of these very few people that are so dedicated to it that they get the exact words right a thousand years later. Pretty bananas. Well, I mean, that is kind of the—the crazy thing about Christianity, where you have this Jewish itinerate guy who's walking around for Century Roman occupied Judea. He's making some pretty audacious claims—claims to be God himself. And then he predicts his own death and resurrection. And then his disciples are, they think it's over. Like, they're like, 'He's dead, we're done.' Yeah. And then they go from 11, you know, scared men—because Judas commits suicide—they scared men in an upper room to completely overhauling the Roman World in only a couple hundred years because of this claim that they say they saw Jesus resurrected. Like, there's something different that goes on there that they're like, 'This is a miracle, right? Dead people don't usually rise from the dead.'"
There was quite a lot there. First, Wes says that Jesus was audaciously going around claiming to be God himself. I don't think that's true. Nowhere in Mark, Matthew, or Luke does Jesus actually claim to be God in his own words. At best, it's just in John's gospel that divine claims begin to appear: "I am the father arean," "Whoever has seen me has seen the father," "Before Abraham was, ego Amy." I actually still don't think even these count, and we'll explain why in another video. But let's just say that they do. Even if this was Jesus explicitly claiming to be God, don't you think it's a bit suspicious that these claims only show up in our latest gospel? If Jesus was known to be walking around claiming explicitly to be God himself, did the other three gospel authors just not think was relevant? A minor, unimportant detail not worth including? Come on.
Anyway, Wes also mentioned how it was amazing that the early church Grew From 11 scared disciples to overhauling the Roman world. On this, the sociologist Rodney Stark estimates that in its first 300 years, Christianity grew at a rate of 40% per decade, from a small group in the first century to 3 million in the 4th Century. That sounds pretty impressive, until you learn that this is the same growth rate experienced by Mormonism since its foundation in the 19th century. So, if the rate of Christianity's growth is good evidence of its truth, Mormonism just became a whole lot more plausible.
By the way, we actually have 11 eyewitnesses to the Mormon Golden Plates, whose names and written testimonies we still have today. Three of those Witnesses say that they saw the angel Moroni give Joseph Smith the plates with their own eyes, and even when they fell out with Joseph Smith and left the church, they still continued to assert that they had witnessed these events. We don't have anything like this kind of extan written testimony for the resurrection of Jesus, which we're about to get on to, but I just thought it was worth a mention.
"It's very difficult for anybody who thinks of themselves as an intelligent person who's secular to even entertain the possibility that someone died and come back to life, and I get that. Um, but we've already talked about the fact that we don't think that the only thing that exists is matter in motion—we, as in you and I, right? Like, we believe that there's something else going on in this world that's a little bit crazy. There's something else, and and that to, I think, exclude that, I think, excludes something that that you're kind of putting blinders on for. And you do have, I mean, you're right in terms of all of the—these ancient conventions and the ways that things were spread around, and, but the gospels are written in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, and they're written in this period of time where you have groups of individuals who could have fact-checked those things."
Okay, it gets a bit speculative here. Scholarly consensus is that the earliest gospel, Mark, was written around 70 AD. This is some 40 years after Jesus died, and likely after the death of most of the eyewitnesses, given life expectancy in the ancient world. But even if it were written earlier, even if it were written by Mark himself, we're talking about the resurrection here. And notice that the earliest version of Mark's gospel does not contain any descriptions of post-resurrection appearances. It ends with the empty tomb and a disappeared Jesus, and suggests that he will appear to people, but it doesn't record those appearances. So, even if it's written by an eyewitness, it doesn't report anything about the resurrected Jesus.
The most numerous and detailed post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are in the fourth gospel, the Gospel of John. Scholarly consensus States this to somewhere between 90 and 100 AD. Wes Huff suggests an earlier dating based on an ancient fragment of the Gospel of John called p52. Here's what he says:
"So, you were talking about, like, what is our oldest manuscript evidence? So, this guy is p-52, John ryland's 457. So, that is—so that's a genuine Egyptian papy that I—I made, I cut it out for you, and then I transcribed the text on that manuscript. So, when we're talking about what is potentially our oldest evidence for the New Testament, this manuscript that most likely comes from Ox rinkus, Egypt, um, is the one that usually is universally accepted as our oldest one. And, uh, that contains John 18, where Jesus is on trial before Pilate. And, yeah, so that's the one. It's in the John rylands library in Manchester, England. The reason I bring this up is because before this was discovered by CH Roberts in the 1940s, the convention was, because of a guy named, um, CH Bower, that the Gospel of John was 2 Century. CH Roberts is, you know, literally going through these piles of manuscripts in these drawers that are being, like, stashed away, and he finds this guy, and he sees that it's written on both sides, which is almost exclusively a Christian convention, because in the ancient world, they used Scrolls, and the Christians, for reasons were not entirely clear on, they start to make codices, books, and so they write on both sides. And so he says, 'Okay, this is written on both sides, it's probably a Christian manuscript.' So he sends it off to the leading, uh, paleographers, or guys who date manuscripts, and they all say, 'This is the beginning of the—the second century.' And so there's still debate about the dating of this, but the unanimous consensus is that it's comfortably second century, second century, potentially the beginning of the second century. Which means that this is found in Egypt. John is probably writing his gospel in Ephesus. So it has to be written by John, spread around, find his way to Egypt, be copied, and then end up in this manuscript. Which means that at minimum, you've already pushed the Gospel of John back into the first century comfortably, and potentially even, like, most likely into the lifetime of the eyewitnesses of these events. And so all of the literature up until that point, from the scholarly consensus about the dating of the Gospel of John, gets totally rewritten. Wow."
He correctly points out that there is dispute in the dating here. But notice that while Wes places p-52 in the second century—"it's comfortably second century"—he pushes John's gospel itself, at minimum and comfortably, back into the first century. "Which means that at minimum, you've already pushed the Gospel of John back into the first century comfortably." Why? Well, because of the time it would take after John wrote the Gospel in Ephesus for it to travel to Egypt and be copied: "written by John, spread around, find his way to Egypt, be copied, and then end up in this manuscript."
A few problems with this. First, Wes assumes that the fourth gospel really was written by John the Apostle in Ephesus. This is, to say the least, heavily contested by New Testament Scholars. But even so, Egypt just is isn't all that far away from Ephesus, reachable in a few weeks for an ancient traveler, maybe a bit longer. Originally, p-52 was thought to date between 100 and 150 AD. Split the difference at 125. Even if this early dating is correct, that still gives us 25 years for the gospel to have traveled from Ephesus to Egypt and still have been written within the 2 Century.
But of course, even this dating is disputed. In 2012, professor of early Christianity Brent Nong wrote to paper in the Harvard theological review dispelling this very use of p52 to date The Gospel of John, called "The Use and Abuse of p-52." Here's what he says:
"What I have done is to show that any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for p52 must include dates in the later 2 and early 3rd centuries. Thus, p52 cannot be used as evidence to silence other debates about the existence or non-existence of the Gospel of John in the first half of the 2 Century."
The John rylands Library itself, the library in Manchester which holds p-52, says that recent research points to a date nearer to 200 AD. This would give the gospel a century to travel to Egypt and still have been written in the second century. But West Huff thinks, based on his confidence that p52 is from the 2 Century, that we can again, at minimum and comfortably, place the Gospel of John in the first century. Once again, as with the Isaiah scroll, I think he's just speaking way too confidently.
And to be clear, I'm not claiming that John was written late; for all I know, it could have been written the day after Jesus ascended. The point is that the authorship of the gospels is a hotly contested issue. What Wes Huff is leaving out is just how absolutely disputed almost everything he's saying is.
I also want to mention here something that Wes talks about much later. There are dozens of non-canonical gospels—gospels that were written but didn't make it into the New Testament for all kinds of different reasons. Listen to what Wes Huff has to say about these goels:
"And so these books that were not included, are any of them interesting? I mean, are they're all interesting, but is—does any of it seem like it belongs in the New Testament? Well, so part of the problem with some of these other books is they appear to be almost completely reliant on the other books. So you do have, and some of them have an agenda to them."
Like what? I'm just going to underline that he just said of the non-canonical gospels, "part of the problem with some of these other books as they appear to be almost completely reliant on the other books." The problem here is with basically the first thing that anybody learns about the New Testament. Scholars think that Mark was written first, then Matthew and Luke were written later. Why? Because Matthew and Luke are reliant on Mark, and not just a little bit. More than 90% of Mark's gospel is also in Matthew's gospel. Mark has 660 verses in total; over 600 of them are also in Matthew, often copied verbatim. It is Undisputed that there is a literary dependence between Matthew and Luke and Mark, and almost everyone agrees that it's Matthew and Luke relying on Mark. I genuinely think I must have just misunderstood Wes here, because if heavily relying on an earlier gospel is reason to suspect it, then this would completely undermine the gospels of Matthew and Luke.
He also says that another problem with these non-canonical gospels is that some of them appear to have an agenda: "and some of them have an agenda to them." But one of the most discussed topics in New Testament scholarship is the agendas of the canonical gospels: Matthew's presentation of Jesus as the Fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, Luke's concern for the poor and the marginalized, John's gospel seems to contain polemical material such as strongly emphasizing that John the Baptist is not the Messiah, probably because there were people around at the time who believed that he was. So when Wes Huff says, "part of the problem with some of these other books is they appear to be almost completely reliant on the other books, so you do have, and some of them have an agenda to them," he's just told us that he's got a problem with the New Testament.
Okay, moving on. After mentioning the gospels, Wes goes on to talk about Paul. Whenever the gospels were written, and by whomever, we know that Paul is the earliest source of the New Testament, dating squarely from the middle of the first century. And we think that he actually did write at least seven of the letters attributed to him. And so it's to him that we now turn.
"So, how do you fact check someone coming back from the dead? Well, if you—how many people saw his body, right? Well, Paul says that 400 people saw him all at once."
"400 people saw the crucifixion?"
"No, saw the resurrect—resurrected Jesus."
"Yeah, 1 Corinthians 15. Paul says that Jesus appeared to the disciples, and then he appeared to 400 people all at once."
Wes gets this slightly wrong, as Paul actually says that Jesus appeared to 500, not 400, people at one time. But this only makes it all the more amazing. 500 people witnessing the physically resurrected Jesus would be an amazing proof of his resurrection. Unfortunately, 1 Corinthians chapter 15 is the only mention we have of this event anywhere. It's not in the gospels, nor in Acts, nor in any other historical source. So, what do we learn about this event from First Corinthians? Nothing. Nothing at all.
Paul does write that, quote, "he appeared to more than 500 Brothers at one time," but that's it. We're not told who these people are, or why they were gathered, or when this occurred, or how Paul learned about it, or how he knows the number of people involved. Paul himself wasn't there. Is this just something that he heard about? From whom? When? We're not told anything about this extraordinary event.
And also, even if Jesus did appear to 500 people, how many of them actually believed what they saw? Again, we're not told. Maybe there was an appearance, but only some of them believed it. Remember, Matthew's gospel tells us that even when Jesus appeared right in front of his 11 disciples, some of them doubted. They'd lived with Jesus, and he was standing right in front of them, but they didn't believe. Many people ask me, "Why would the disciples have believed in the Risen Christ if they didn't actually see him?" In response, I point to this verse in Matthew and ask the reverse: "How could the disciples have seen him and then not believed?"
With the 500, we're not told how many of them believed that they saw Jesus. If some of the discip doubted that it was him, why would we trust an unnamed mass of strangers mentioned briefly in One Source by a man who wasn't there but heard that they'd seen him? And even if all of the 500 people did believe that it was Jesus, how would Paul know this, even if he was there, which he wasn't? Did he interview them? Was there a show of hands for anyone who doubted before the crowd dispersed? There was no easy way even for Paul to know what these people believed, which makes it impossible for us to know what they believed.
And even if the 500 people did all believe it was Jesus, how many of them were already predisposed to think this? Remember, sometimes groups do claim to see Visions, such as various apparitions of Mary or the Roman Emperor Constantine's vision of a cross of light in the sky, which may have been seen by his whole Army as well. The source isn't clear. Look at this image. This is a picture of a crowd in fattima, Portugal, in 1917. This crowd, many more than 500 in number, will witness to to the so-called Miracle of the Sun. A prophecy by three Shepherd children said that the Virgin Mary would perform a miracle on the 13th of October, causing this large crowd to gather on that day. And the miracle happened. Testimonies from the members in the crowd were published in the newspaper. They claimed to have seen the sun Dancing in the Sky, zigzagging around, and even advancing towards the Earth, all for 10 minutes. So, a large crowd witnessing a prophesied miracle, and we actually know who saw it and precisely what they saw. We even have their direct testimony. Does Wes Huff believe in this Catholic Miracle? Do you? And if not, why not?
"But Alex, how do you explain this then? If it didn't actually happen, why would there even be this rumor of 500 people seeing Jesus?"
Well, I'm glad you asked. I want to share an idea that I learned from the Christian biblical scholar Dale Allison in his glorious book on the resurrection of Jesus. Think about this for a moment: how could "more than 500 people" all see the man Jesus "at one time"? That's a pretty large group of people. How closely could they have examined him? How could they all have got a good view at one time? Imagine a celebrity like Justin Bieber being surrounded by 500 people in the street. How well would you be able to make him out? Could you even be certain that it was him?
Here's where it gets really interesting. Let's take a look at what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, but in the original Greek in which Paul was writing. Here's Paul talking about the appearances: "He appeared to sephus"—that's Peter—"and then to the 12. Then he appeared to the 500." But notice that in between the words "appeared" and "500," we have this word—excuse my pronunciation—"EPO." This word is typically translated here as "more than," hence, "Jesus appeared to more than 500 Brothers."
But let's investigate this word "EPO." Every other time it appears in the New Testament, it's translated differently. The word epino means not "more than," but "over," or "above," or "upon." The only place in the whole new testament where this word is translated to mean "more than" is, you guessed it, 1 Corinthians chapter 15. That's why, by the way, interestingly, if you look at the King James version of this verse, you'll read the following: "After that, he was seen of above 500 Brethren at once." "Above." It's interesting, right?
So, looking at the Greek, it seems plausible that Jesus did not appear to more than 500 people, but rather he appeared above 500 people. Yes, above. Do you see what I'm getting at? It was a vision in the sky, just like the sun Miracle above Fatima, or the cross of Light Above Constantine's Army. It happened above the crowd.
Now, of course, that word epino does appear here before a number, 500, so it could well mean "over" or "above 500," as in "more than 500." But then again, in Luke chapter 19, during the parable of the 10 meaners, Jesus has a man say to one of his servants, "Take charge of 10 cities," and to his other servant, "You take charge of five cities." If you read the English Standard Version, the translation is, "You shall have authority over 10 cities," or, "You are to be over five cities." Why? Well, because the word there is, you guessed it, EPO—"over." So, even in front of a number, this can still mean "over" rather than "more that."
And even without this linguistic evidence, what do you think is the most likely explanation for a group of 500 people all seeing Jesus at one time, especially considering Paul's own conversion on the road to Damascus? Christians say that this involved him meeting the Risen Christ, but acts tells us that he simply saw a flash of light and heard a voice. That—that was it. That was the nature of Paul's meeting with Jesus. A flash of light. Was the appearance to the 500 of a similar form? We simply do not know. Whatever we believe about this strange verse, it's hardly evidence enough to balance the resurrection upon.
Here are the words of Dale Allison on this appearance to the 500 in 1 Corinthians chapter 15: "It is little more than a tease, a tantalizing hint about something that, barring the discovery of a new source, will forever provoke questions without answers, or at least without robust support. It is important to emphasize this because many Christians continue to appeal to the appearance to the 500 as though it carries great apologetical weight. Yet we really know nothing about this ostensibly stupendous event. We have only a brief assertion from someone who was not there that it happened, and we cannot name a single individual who was involved."
Okay, what's next? Paul says that Jesus appeared to the disciples, and then he appeared to 400 people out once. "I mean, if we read the Gospel of Luke and the gospel of, um, or Gospel of Luke and acts—so same author wrote These both documents—uh, he says that Jesus was walking around teaching them for 40 days after he was resurrected from the dead. And so these are written within a time period when you have people who would have seen Jesus's Ministry, who were there, say, at something like the feeding of the 5000, who could have been able to verify or, um, debunk some of these things that are being said."
Again, Wes appears to be assuming a radically early date for the gospel of Luke's composition. Most Scholars suggest an early EST state of between 80 and 90 AD, in part because of its literary dependence on Mark's gospel. But even if Luke was earlier than this, any eyewitnesses would have been elderly or dead. And besides, Luke's gospel only recounts Jesus appearing to two disciples on the road to Emmas, then the rest of the disciples in Jerusalem before ascending into heaven. The book of Acts implies that he appeared to a few more people, some named, some not, but it's not like we've got a huge list of names that people could find and interrogate, especially since most of them would probably have been dead by then anyway.
Also, some Scholars are beginning to suggest that Luke acts might have been written much later, with some thinking that it displays a knowledge of the writings of Josephus from the '90s. This is a minority view, but one held by some major players in the field. Whatever the case, the point is again that we simply cannot have any certainty on this stuff. Most of it is educated guesswork. For West to say with confidence that the gospels can be dated to within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, and especially to say this of all of them, is, I think, again, just too optimistic.
We're going to jump forward a bit here. Now Wes is arguing that Jesus definitely died on the cross, which I think I agree with. But he then says this: "Atheist, agnostic, Christian Scholars, they will say, if we can know anything about Jesus, like, they'll cast a doubt on a lot of the things that we read about in the gospels in terms of the actual historical Jesus of Nazareth, they'll say one thing we can be sure of is that he died by crucifixion under pontious pilot, because we have not just multiple attested documents that we refer to as the New Testament, but Roman and Greek and Jewish writers refer to that claim afterwards and talk about the fact that you have this guy, and it's mocked within earliest Christianity. So, one of our earliest, in fact, not one of the earliest depiction of Jesus on the cross is called the Alexa Manos grafo, and it's probably from the—the end of the first century. And it's a, uh, it—it depicts a—an individual with their arms raised in an act of worship, worshiping a man with a donkey's head who's being crucified. And right beside it, it says, 'Alexa menos worships his God,' in Greek. Who, and it's mocking."
The Alex aminos graphito is really cool, and indeed, perhaps the earliest surviving depiction of Jesus. I think the so-called magical gemstone in the British library is tied for this spot. Wes says that it's, quote, "probably from the end of the first century," and "it's probably from the—the end of the first century." But again, dating it is difficult, and most experts date it to the late 2 or 3D Century. Some think it could be earlier, sure, but again, I think Wes is just speaking with a little bit too much confidence here. Just like with the Gospel of John, I think Wes is dragging things into the first century that don't necessarily belong there without properly underscoring that all of his datings are highly contested.
Anyway, let's jump forward again. "Then 400 people—people saw him afterwards. That's the claim that—that Paul makes."
"Paul makes this?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how many different people, um, have some sort of a recollection or a writing or, or something that's attribute to them of being witness to his resurrection?"
"Way of Peter, Paul, Jude, James, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke."
Okay, let's break this down. Wes just mentioned seven names, including some gospel authors. We'll start with the non-sp sources: Peter, Paul, Jude, and James. Remember, we're looking for people who wrote about witnessing the resurrection, although interestingly, Rogan actually only asked about who has been attributed as writing about witnessing the resurrection, not necessarily who actually did write about it, or "something that's attribute to them." But even then, there are problems.
So, first is Peter. There are two Epistles in the New Testament attributed to this Apostle: First and Second Peter. Importantly, most Scholars do not think that Peter actually wrote both of these texts, especially Second Peter, which is one of the most disputed texts in the New Testament. They're still early texts, but probably not both written by Peter. At least one of them is likely a forgery. There are Scholars who defend the petrine authorship of both Epistles, of course, but the consensus is against them.
Second is Paul. There are 13 Epistles in the New Testament attributed to Paul, but many of these are also believed not to have actually been written by him. The consensus is that seven of them are Undisputed—his—whereas the rest are contested. Some, like First and Second Timothy and Titus, are firmly believed to be pseudonymous, written by somebody else. But even if Paul wrote all of these letters, remember what we're looking for here. Remember what Rogan asked: "some sort of a recollection or a writing or, or something that's attribute to them of being witness to his resurrection." Paul never claims to have encountered the physically resurrected Jesus. Even his conversion story in Acts just describes him see a flash of light and hearing the voice of Christ while on the road to Damascus. He never even claimed to meet the Risen Jesus In the Flesh, which I think is what Rogan is looking for here.
Our third name is Jude. There's one short epistle in the New Testament which claims to be written by Jude, the brother of James—James being James, the brother of Jesus. Surprise, surprise! This is highly disputed. But whatever the case, it doesn't actually matter, because the real problem is this: judee's epistle doesn't even mention the resurrection. It's not in there. So Wes is wrong even just to say that a written witness to the resurrection has been attributed to Jude, let alone actually written by him. Rogan is looking here for accounts of the Resurrection written by those who witnessed it. Jude simply doesn't count, even if he did write that epistle, because he simply doesn't write about the resurrection in it.
And there's a similar problem with the fourth name that Wes mentions, James, whose epistle in the New Testament—again, with some dispute over the the authorship—also simply does not recount his witness to the resurrection. Wes is wrong to bring him up as well. So, asked by Joe Rogan for people who wrote about the resurrection, Wes Huff is choosing people who have letters attributed to them but either didn't actually write them or didn't even claim in those letters to have seen the resurrected Jesus.
Wes then talks about the gospel authors: "Way of Peter, Paul, Jude, James, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke."
"The thing with Matthew, Mark, and Luke is that Matthew and Luke—or Matthew and John—are attributed to direct Disciples of Jesus. Uh, Luke and Mark are not, so they are not eyewitnesses within the Jesus community. In fact, Luke prefaces his gospel by saying that..."
Just a point of clarification here: where Wes says that the gospels of Matthew and John are attributed to the apostles Matthew and John, they're not attributed by the texts themselves. The gospels do not anywhere identify their own authors. They don't even claim to be written by anyone in particular. It's later Christian tradition which Associates those names—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—with the gospels. I'm not saying that Wes claimed that the gospels do identify their own authors, by the way; I just think it might have been unclear for somebody listening, so just pointing it out.
But some people, and I don't know if Wes is one of them, do think that John's gospel does identify its author, does tell us who wrote it. But he doesn't do this by saying, "My name's John, and I wrote this gospel." Instead, throughout the gospel, a disciple is mentioned who's only ever identified as "the one whom Jesus loved." Here's an example from John chapter 19, the crucifixion of Jesus: "When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to Heroman, 'here is your son,' and to the disciple, 'here is your mother.' From that time on, the disciple took her into his home." So, the Beloved disciple is quite an important figure, seemingly the person who looks after Mary, the Mother of God, after Jesus dies.
Later in that same chapter, the text says, "The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also May believe." And it looks implied here that the man being spoken about is the Beloved disciple, who's mentioned just a moment earlier. In John chapter 21, Jesus is talking about the Beloved disciple, and then the text says, "This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. He's the one that wrote them down."
Now, the Beloved disciple is often identified with John, the son of zebede, that is, the Apostle John. And since we're told here that it's him who wrote it all down, John is the author of this gospel. That is why some people claim that John's gospel identifies its author. But there are a few problems with this. First, the Beloved disciple is never explicitly named as John. Nobody knows who it is. He's mentioned six times in total, only in the Gospel of John, but is never named. Some people think that it might be Lazarus, for example. Some people even think that it might be Mary Magdalene, but I think that's a bit tenuous.
But suppose we just knew that the Beloved disciple is John. Fine. Still, notice that the fourth gospel only ever speaks about the Beloved disciple in the third person. In John 19, "the man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true." It's not clear that this man is the same man writing down the words that we're reading right now. It's not even clear that this man is the Beloved disciple, who's mentioned some n verses earlier as standing nearby the cross with the three Marys. He's the only man that's mentioned stood nearby, so it might have been him, but we don't know. We're never explicitly told.
Okay, but in John 21, we're told that the Beloved disciple wrote his testimony down. Fine. But again, it's in the third person. It doesn't say, "I, the Beloved disciple, wrote these things down." It says, "This is the disciple who testifies to these things and wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true." There's a separation there: "We know that his testimony is true." And even if the Gospel of John is based on the written testimony of the Beloved disciple, it's unclear if we're now reading the words that the Beloved disciple used, and how much was changed or added later.
And we actually know that some parts of John's gospel were changed and added to later. For example, in John chapters 7 and 8, we find the story of the adulterous woman where Jesus says, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." But this story isn't in our earliest manuscripts of John, and so is believed to be a later interpolation, that is, added on at a later date.
Also, just take the whole of John's final chapter, chapter 21, which is also thought by many scholars to have been written much later than the rest of John's gospel and added on at some point in the future. Why do some people think this? Well, here are some reasons identified by Evan Powell in the unfinished gospel:
First, John 21 uses 20 unique Greek terms not found in any of the other chapters of John's gospel. Some of these words are subject specific, like the word breakfast, but others, like the verb to turn, epistane, are not. This word is not found anywhere else in John, but it is found in the synoptic gospels.
Second, John 21 mentions that the disciples are fishermen for the first time in the whole of John's gospel. John 1 through 20 doesn't seem to know that their Fisher at all. Again, though, of course, the synoptic gospels are well aware of their occupation.
Third, John 21 also just seems generally discordant with the end of John 20, which already sounds like it could be the end of the Gospel. Look at the end of John chapter 20: "Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." Doesn't that sound like it kind of could be the end of the gospel? Maybe. Maybe not. Not a particularly strong piece of evidence, but consider this: in John Chapter 20, The Disciples meet the Risen Jesus and they receive the Holy Spirit and are sent out into the world to forgive people's sins. And in the next chapter, they're fishing in Galilee, even though Jesus just commanded them to go out and spread the word and forgive people's sins. They decide to just go back to business as usual, I suppose. It seems a little bit strange.
The upshot is that many scholars think that John 21 was added much later than the composition of the rest of John's gospel, and added by somebody who'd read the synoptic gospels. Now, importantly, we don't have any manuscript evidence for this. We don't have any early manuscripts that are missing John chapter 21, for example. But our earliest complete manuscript of John's gospel only dates from the 4th Century, so we just don't have any really early manuscripts of John at all. We don't know whether the earliest complete manuscripts of John contained chapter 21 or not.
But anyway, we've gone a little bit off track. Do you remember the verse that we were discussing, the one which claims that the Beloved disciple wrote down his testimony? Do you remember where that comes from? John chapter 21. Look, all of this is, of course, as with everything in this field, a matter of dispute. But the main thing is that Wes Huff is making confident claims about who wrote the gospels and when, and about attestations to Jesus's resurrection, in ways which I think require more clarification, at at least, and which run against the scholarly consensus. He's welcome to make these claims, of course, but I would just like to see either a bit more lenience in his claims about the dating and authorship of these texts, or more defense of the dates and the authors that he believes in.
But okay, that's it. Wes, if you're watching, you are, of course, welcome to come on my podcast anytime. Support my work by subscribing to my substack at Alex o con.com. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.