The Controversy Over "Literary Devices" in The Gospels with Dr. Lydia McGrew

BibleThinker

Mike Winger

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2020

⏱️ 121 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are there what appear to our eyes to be significant, deliberate, factual changes about the life of Jesus in the Gospels? Did the gospel writers seem to fabricate significant details about Jesus? If so, was this an expected and appropriate practice when writing a Greco-Roman Biography? Do "literary devices" exist, which were employed by the gospel authors, which allowed an ancient biographer to add fictional information to historical stories as a kind of "special effects"? Dr. Lydia McGrew joins me to discuss several controversial and important issues related to the reliability of the Gospels. This can be a rather complicated issue but I hope that today's interview will be enlightening and bring some clarity. Even if you don't agree with my guest (I'm not entirely sure what all my own views are on this issue) I think it's valuable to hear what she has to say because she has gone to such great lengths to bring clarity to a pretty fuzzy area of scholarship where I am genuinely concerned that some well-meaning, wonderful Christian scholars are making some significant mistakes. Get Lydia McGrew's book "The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices" https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Mask-Liberating-Gospels-Literary/dp/1947929070/ Lydia's new YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSwhBk0vUSg_6prKkR82IDQ Dr. Mike Licona (a genuine Christian who I respect) has a series of videos responding to Dr. Lydia McGrew's book which you can watch on this playlist on his YT channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpPGCP1zKznR06Jxb5RaQYrNIiH7xR7ZR Lydia McGrew did a series of videos in response to Mike Licona's series and you can watch that playlist on her YT channel at this link https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0S9CsFG47bKjcYxsnHujhg

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, for what I can tell, and I'm going to read, by the way guys, welcome to the stream.
0:09.0	I'm going to read a statement I put on Facebook earlier today because I thought it kind of expressed my thoughts on this complicated issue that I'm not entirely sure what to think about and I want to explain what this interview is about in a nutshell. So here it is. From what I can tell there is something of a controversy going on at the moment in New Testament
0:24.7	scholarship. There are sincere Christians on both sides of the issue but the
0:27.8	issue is important and I want to see more discussion of it. To that end, to get
0:31.8	more discussion of it, I am interviewing Dr. Lydia
0:34.8	McGrew today and that is my guest. She's with me already. I'll show her to you guys in
0:38.0	just a moment. So we can hear her interact with this issue. What's the
0:41.8	issue? The issue is the existence of what's called
0:44.1	literary devices in ancient Roman biographies, which appear to modernize to allow
0:49.7	authors to change details in pretty dramatic ways in some cases and whether the
0:53.9	gospel authors, the authors of our Gospels in the New Testament, actually use
0:57.6	these literary devices. So from our perspective it looks like they changed a lot.
1:00.8	Mike Likon is probably the most effective proponent
1:04.0	of an affirmative view,
1:05.0	and Liddy McGrew has been promoting a negative view
1:08.0	saying the Gospels are a reportage model,
1:10.0	which I'll have her explain that,
1:11.0	and don't involve what she calls fictionalizing literary devices a term I think we should try to understand
1:16.8	In my opinion you can be a faithful Christian and you can hold either view that doesn't mean though that both views are totally cool and okay and true.
1:25.0	There are significant implications to consider even if it doesn't impact the truthfulness of Christianity.
1:30.0	I'm not personally decided on all these issues. I don't really know exactly where I stand or who I agree with and disagree with on the on the areas here.
1:38.5	So my guest today is going to share her thoughts and her work for you and for me to consider and think about.
	...

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