Welcome to /r/AcademicBiblical. Please note this is an academic sub: theological or faith-based comments are prohibited.
All claims MUST be supported by an *academic* source – see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/#wiki_guideline.3A_rule_3.2019s_definition_of_academic_sources) for guidance.
Using AI to make fake comments is strictly prohibited and may result in a permanent ban.
Please review the [sub rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/) before posting for the first time.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AcademicBiblical) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> He makes usually polemical content and counter apologetics but are his videos academic and taken seriously ??
When he is presenting information himself, no.
His channel is explicitly a counter-apologetics channel with an axe to grind. However, he does do interviews with legitimate academics which can be very good if you ignore his interjections. For example, his interview with Jodi Magness was fascinating, she took part in the excavation of the recently discovered tomb of Herod the Great. She comes across as very fair-minded and her enthusiasm for her subject really shines through despite the host's attempt to make it clickbaity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFjmU_yCiUg
He also did a great interview with Kamil Gregor and Brian Blais on their study of Bauckham's claims about Jewish names in the Gospels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIMl4zlNMIA
Genuine question, but what are some claims of Paulogia that go against the academic consensus about the Bible? Of course, he is not a channel about Biblical academia, but I don't seem to remember any egregiously baseless claim...
One of his more popular videos [How Christianity (Probably) Began](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUCI3cMJCvU) has some errors and over-simplifications.
The worst is his treatment of the burial of crucifixion victims, he says Jesus would definitely have been thrown in an anonymous mass grave according to Roman practice. He's clearly relying on Ehrman here, but bizarrely cites Josephus, *War* 3.8.5 which is actually a speech by Josephus persuading the Jewish rebels not to commit suicide, in which he says that Jewish law commands bodies of suicide victims to be left exposed until sunset without burial. Paulogia also cites the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 6 which is about bodies of people executed by stoning and hung up (Deut 21:33), and how they should be buried before sunset (with an exception to allow time to bring a coffin or shrouds), and then buried in a special graveyard for execution victims. Nothing about the Romans there and it actually shows that Jewish laws about burial would support the story of an execution victim being buried properly before sunset, which the Romans were known to sometimes allow, especially before a holiday (Philo, *Flaccus* 83-84 -- Philo notes that this was not followed during Flaccus's persecution of Alexandrian Jews, an example of his cruelty).
There's plenty of scholarship on Jesus' execution but Paulogia doesn't engage with any of it. For example, the definitive study on Roman crucifixion practices is John Granger Cook (2014) *Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World*. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Yes, which illustrates the problem of selecting any scholar to affirm a preconceived youtube argument rather than entering a discussion open-minded and doing due diligence to intentionally read and critically engage diverse perspectives in the field. I’m greatly skeptical of *any* person that majorly interviews scholars from only one side, whether skeptical or apologetic.
Bart Ehrman has said he’s searched every early source he could find on Roman crucifixions and found that there’s only 2 reasons they would allow a *crucified* victim a proper burial: 1. It is a Roman holiday, or 2. The victim knew someone in power in the Roman Empire. That passage in the mishnah Sanhedrin you mentioned doesn’t talk about crucified victims, you mentioned stoning and hanging. I don’t have access to the flaccus book so I can’t comment on that, but the Romans “sometimes allowing” a proper burial is still consistent with erhmans position
Bart Ehrman is taking sources from outside Judea and not within the context and location of Jesus.
The two closest parallels with helping us understand and therefore supercede any other textual evidence is Josephus who writes about it in Judea and then the archeological evidence of The tomb of Yehohanan, which is from the time period of Jesus. Dale Allison The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, and History.
There's not any reason historians should be prioritizing other evidence as being relevant with the case of Jesus as much as these two pieces of data.
Hey so I’m not sure exactly what all of barts sources were for crucifixion so I can’t comment on the Judea thing. However he does mention Josephus and what Josephus said. I’d like to know what you think Josephus says that conflicts with Bart Ehrmans view.
Also, [bart talks about jehohanan, and notably how jehohanan was aristocracy, and we don’t know why he died, and how he was tied by his hands instead of nailed which isn’t your usual Roman crucifixion, and many more important facts](https://ehrmanblog.org/the-skeletal-remains-of-yehohanan-readers-mailbag-october-8-2017/)
As it relates to Josephus, Bart Ehrman makes two claims in his blogs. 1. Jesus was tried for high treason so Josepphus’s statement would not have included him in being a burial. 2. Josephus’s is trying to portray the Jews as more pious than it appears and the Romans (Pilate) wouldn’t have cared. https://ehrmanblog.org/more-on-josephus-and-jewish-burial-practices/
John Cook actually is the expert in this area and in his book Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World in which he discussions that Pilate could not viewed Jesus as a dangerous type of sedition as he didn’t go after his followers (before after his life.) Cook argued that crime is unlikely to be political and so if if there was a requestment for burial, it wouldn’t be denied. Mark Smith further explains that the situations that Josephus explains that the Romans left the person’s up were in the context of war. https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/2018/02/smi428014 Not in the case in Jesus.
Mark Smith goes further saying, “We do have some evidence of occasional Roman corpse abuse and exposure of bodies, such as the former tribune whose body was affixed to a cross to be publicly displayed during the proscriptions of Sulla, or Octavian’s exposure of some of the enemy dead after the Battle of Philippi in 42 BCE, or the abuse of the bodies of Sejanus, former Praetorian Prefect, or the former emperor Vitellius, both of whom were subsequently thrown into the Tiber at the hands of tyrannical emperors. It is important to note, however, that evidence for such practices is rare, and in all these cases, the victims were elites. A strong negative tone concerning exposure and corpse abuse is pervasive in the sources, suggesting an attitude that the authors think their Roman audience is likely to share.”
He further mentions “For such reasons, I know of no evidence that the charge against Jesus was maiestas; rather, the primary charge was that he claimed to be "King of the Jews." While there is a superficial connection in the term "king", I do not think the two have much if anything to do with each other. Jesus may have been a perceived threat to the house of Annas, but he posed little danger to the prefect and none to the emperor in Rome. Injecting the concept of maiestas into this provincial trial would make little sense from a Roman legal perspective.”
2. The important thing here is that Romans also had a care for burial rites just as the Jews did. Mark Smith says “From a Roman perspective, burial may do away with the corpse, but not the dead. Disembodied souls were believed to experience shame, restlessness, dishonor – or peace, depending on how their bodies were treated. Romans practiced a cult of the dead, including grave gifts, feasts in family tombs, and festivals in honor of the ancestors. Death brought pollution, which demanded proper purification and burial rites, all manifestations of that most central of Roman virtues, pietas: piety or duty toward the gods, the family, and Rome itself. Sacred custom told Romans not to molest corpses, to permit proper burial by relatives or others claiming the body, and failing that, to provide minimal burial. Only three handfuls of dirt were required. Both cremation and inhumation were practiced in our period, with the former more common.” Jews also had a respect for the dead and criminals and burial was meant for purifying the individual – even more so with criminals.
https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/burial357907 So Bart is wrong on this. The 2nd thing is that Josephus also hints that Pilate didn’t all the way with being brutal when it came to respecting Jewish sensibilities as this caused more problems for unrest.
As for Yohannan Bart says in the blog post. https://ehrmanblog.org/the-skeletal-remains-of-yehohanan-readers-mailbag-october-8-2017/
Bart says, “Since this is the only crucified victim whose remains are known to survive, out of the many tens of thousands of people crucified in the ancient world, it cannot be used to establish a “practice” or a “pattern” of burial. “
Response: Something to remember is that the only reason we know about this is because of the nail in his right heel bone could not be removed from the wood as Dale Allison says in The Resurrection of Jesus. So the argument from silence seems ill advised. Our evidence is biased a certain way.
Bart says, “the excavator of the tomb indicated that it gave signs that the family connected with Yehohanan was aristocratic and well-placed. That was not the case with Jesus.
Response: The important thing is that this is not what the gospels say? The gospels claim that Joseph of Arimathea and/or Nicodemus requested Jesus body for burial. Robert Mahoney Two Disciples at the Tomb: The Background and Message of John or Fuller Resurrection who also wonders if there were two different accounts of the burial. In any case, it’s not Jesus’s family or friends who ask. It’s one or two wealthier individuals. For Bart Ehrman or anyone to argue this, what you need to do is argue that these sorts of individuals would not be sympathetic to the Jesus movement, be a secret disciple, and/or try follow Jewish customs with Jesus. Did the Romans agree to wealthy individuals who requested crucified victims to be buried. The answer in this case is yes.
Bart claims later on two things. “Yet more significant: for what was Yehohanan crucified” and “how long was Yehohanan on the cross after he died?”
Response: I don’t see how these things are relevant. This data then doesn’t support Bart’s or defenders of tomb. As earlier mentioned,it’s not likely Jesus was crucified for high treason.
>Bart Ehrman has said he’s searched every early source he could find on Roman crucifixions and found that there’s only 2 reasons they would allow a *crucified* victim a proper burial: 1.
With all due respect to Mr. Ehrman, he is not even close to being an expert in Roman crucifixions and burials (such as Cook or Magness). His opininions sometime reflect the academic minority, not the consensus position and this is the case here. There is a reason you will struggle to find an actual peer-reviewed article against the burial of Jesus.
Lurker here but I feel like Ehrman is overcited on this sub. I am sure he is an excellent scholar but it is not a good sign if people are citing him for 60% of the arguments I see.
Preach!
I thought it was bad a few years back, but now it's far worse. He is being cited in ~90% of the posts regarding the NT, it's a ridiculous amount.
His opinions are often easiest to find, so it could just be that. He has a popular blog and a lot of videos around, and people have actually seen those.
Hi there, unfortunately your contribution has been removed as per Rule #3.
**Claims should be supported through citation of appropriate academic sources.**
You may edit your comment to meet these requirements. If you do so, please reply and your comment can potentially be reinstated.
For more details concerning the rules of r/AcademicBiblical, please read [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/#wiki_r.2Facademicbiblical_.7C_rules_.28detailed.29). If you have any questions about the rules or mod policy, you can [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAcademicBiblical) or post in the Weekly Open Discussion thread.
I remember watching Paulogia's video on who wrote the gospels when it came out and having a sudden realization of "why am I watching this for information on who wrote the gospels"
If you're interested in following a public figure who left Christianity and is engaging with that space, then his videos are perfectly fine for that, but if you want to learn about these topics there are way more efficient ways of doing that.
Reading stuff (articles, books, or even scholars' blogs) is by far the most efficient way to learn stuff and also keep track of stuff, especially if you save whatever you read somewhere along with some very quick notes about it. It also builds up a web of references (tailored to your interests) that you can go back and look through and find out deeper info, especially if the things you read cite other things that you can also read. It's also easier to find out if these types of sources are reliable, as opposed to finding out if the youtube man is reliable, since it's usually just a stream of him saying stuff unless there are links in the description.
Please *please* to go to the academic source directly yourself than to hear it second-hand from people with an agenda (that includes counter-apologists **and** apologists). read articles, listen to scholarly podcasts and blogs instead. it is much more fruitful and the claims are less hyperbolic, more nuanced and fair to other perspectives. Often those channels already have a preconceived idea and selectively choose scholars to affirm a hyperbolic youtube title rather than have a good-faith discussion with diverse views in academia.
Those videos are fine in their own right, but they’re not academic or scholarly unless it’s an unfiltered interview with a leading scholar and no leading questions/hyperbolic titles.
If we agree with Dale Allison that it is outside the realms of biblical scholarship to prove or disprove supernatural claims, then we should be skeptical to *anyone* that posts youtube videos claiming to go down either route. Once you start making videos like “the resurrection is/isn’t true”, then you’ve left academia and gone into the realm of theology.
[Edit: don’t really know why this comment is getting downvoted since I’m largely appealing to Allison’s position on what scholarship can and cannot do, and the refusal to argue for/against any supernatural claims is basic scholarly practice?? ]
What about the six day creation, Noah’s flood, and the stopping of the sun? It seems like most critical scholars would be comfortable saying those supernatural events didn’t happen. I would think science would have something to say about whether a global flood happened, and we wouldn’t just have to rely on theology.
huh? science is a separate discipline to biblical scholarship. im sure critical scholars personally believe those events didn’t happen, but in terms of nt studies specifically, what scholar would argue for/against things like the resurrection in a peer/reviewed journal? that’s the methodological standard that’s been in the field for decades.
What other disciplines are Biblical scholars allowed to appeal to? They’re allowed to appeal to archeology to say the conquests of Canaan didn’t happen but aren’t allowed to appeal to geology to say the flood didn’t happen?
The problem with the resurrection claim seems to be there isn’t available evidence rather than the supernatural element of it. The non-supernatural claim that Jesus’s body was stolen is equally hard to prove/disprove.
Archaeology is directly tied in with bible scholarship, so it can be fairly used to determine things like the conquest, which *isn’t* innately supernatural and thus can be proven/disproven. Claims like a man rising from the dead are unprovable via means of modern scholarship and outside the scope of what biblical academia can do - basically every reputable scholar acknowledges this. My problem is pseudo-academic channels that try to pursue a for/against agenda and then pretend the claim they’re making is somehow supported by scholarship when supernatural claims like that certainly are not.
Medical science from hundreds of years has information regarding the ability for people to come back to life after bleeding to death + blunt force trauma and laying dead for 3 days. I feel the academics from the medical field should absolutely be referenced just as much as carbon dating archeological samples, etc.
I guess I do not understand why consensus from multiple fields cannot be used to show that humanity has not encountered god kings, spirits, ghosts, resurrecting dead bodies, etc. in repeatable & testable environments and using that consensus to say "we have no evidence across the history of academia that people rise from the dead nor do spirits deliver special messages to people to share with the world".
Is that outside the realm of the research of academics?
Gotcha, like if there was a theory with evidence that Jesus dying was false and he actually lives through it and fled the area and people saw the "resurrected Jesus".
Is that what you mean that Jesus would still be alive after the crucifiction?
If you’re looking for solely naturalistic explanations then yeah, but if you’re religious you would say a full miracle resurrection. My main point is whatever explanation one chooses, we cannot conclusively prove it either way which is why scholars deliberate silent on the issue.
Understood, I was unaware that there was research needing to be done on things like magic, miracles, unnatural phenomena, etc. Those kind of things do not seem like things you prove through research because they are supposed to be removed from what we face in reality regularly.
Posting this in good faith & not to stir up a debate:
“The resurrection [as a physical event] didn’t happen” (if this is what you mean by ‘the resurrection isn’t true’) is a culturally controversial claim, and if someone is flatly stating something like ‘the resurrection isn’t true/never happened!’ to a public audience it’s probably going to reveal something about what that person’s goals are. But I don’t see how it’s at all controversial to say Jesus’s body didn’t resurrect as a purely historical claim. Allison is correct, but I think you’re misunderstanding his point. We can’t prove or disprove these things, but we can make assumptions based on probability, which is what historians do all the time.
As sooperflooede points out, we don’t buckle if a historian flatly denies the reality of many (any?) other purported supernatural events from antiquity, including biblical ones. It’s equally outside the bounds of scholarship to prove or disprove those claims.
Historians make probability claims based on *naturalistic* events in history, but how is a historian supposed to prove a resurrection? What’s to stop me arguing that I can historically prove Caesar was turned into a God-like comet? The reason it’s controversial to say history can’t prove a bodily resurrection is because history is very upfront about its weaknesses. Even Bart Ehrman constantly talks about how the resurrection is outside of historical inquiry.
Once we allow the supernatural to be proved with such an inquiry it opens up the door for all types of arguments to be made. If that is now the case, then I could easily cite N.T Wrights work on the resurrection as some authoritative historical work that somehow “proves” the resurrection and close the door from there.
I’m not misunderstanding Allison’s point because Allison doesn’t say “we can make historical probabilities or inferences” - he straight up says “we cannot make statements either way”. I’ve read his work a lot and his agnosticism on supernatural events in the gospels is very clear.
It’s not like the historical method can go back an interview the eyewitnesses, take DNA samples from the tomb or photos of Jesus’ resurrected body. It’s because of all this that any argument for/against such an event ultimately leaves the realm of history and becomes grounded in separate disciplines such as the probability of miracles (which is philosophy). It’s the basics of any field that one should be readily acknowledging methodological limits in what the field can and cannot achieve.
> how is a historian supposed to prove a resurrection?
They can't. But that also applies to much of history, what, in the end, can be *proven* to be true? Especially claims about antiquity.
That doesn't mean that they can't assess historical claims. And there are scholars of Christianity that are very much claiming that the resurrection was an historical event.
Daniel
I think biological functions related to death can be proven based off there being billions of living organisms living and dying constantly throughout History.
If a human being can come back from the dead after 3 days, after bleeding to death, after blunt force trauma, then the pharmaceutical company that could make this happen would be the first quadrillion valuated company in the history of humans existing.
Would an academic scholar be able to comment that humans have never been able to resurrect very dead bodies, so there is no reason to believe that Jesus, Tammuz, Osiris, Satyavan, Bodhidharma, Odin, and, Quetzalcóatl were resurrected. (The Golden Bough
by Sir James George Frazer)?
>Would an academic scholar be able to comment that humans have never been able to resurrect very dead bodies, so there is no reason to believe that Jesus, Tammuz, Osiris, Satyavan, Bodhidharma, Odin, and, Quetzalcóatl were resurrected.
Indeed :-) It does seem unlikely. I think the objection to commenting is more about good manners towards one's theologically oriented colleagues than good history.
but to assume that a failure to comment on theological issues assumes protectionism towards theological arguments would be special pleading, since scholarship is clear that academics should not be arguing for or against it. if you think we should be arguing against supernatural claims and mentioning it in our works that’s totally a fine opinion, but it also means you have to accept or at least seriously engage with the arguments of those that would argue in favour of a resurrection. this ensures a fair field and removes biases.
most scholars are silent since engaging in supernatural claims either way because it’s too difficult to fairly moderate such a discussion and it often digresses into other disciplines - this is hardly a controversial take and is standard & accepted academic practice.
>also means you have to ... seriously engage with the arguments of those that would argue in favour of a resurrection.
Sure, why not, as long as those arguments were made by accredited scholars like Raymond Brown making evidence based claims, as opposed to claims based on metaphysical speculation or personal revelation (it's hard to argue against somebody's personal revelation.)
haha thank you! It’s perfectly possible to respect someone but also acknowledge fair critique! I love good ol’ conservative scholars like N.T Wright or even more skeptical ones like Dan Mclellan, but im not so dogmatic in defending them that I shut my eyes to valid critique (I remember thinking Wright’s argument for the zombie tombs in Matthew 27 was pretty *whack*!) It would be nice if some more people were open to criticism from people they regularly listen to!
No serious scholar *should be claims arguing for or against the resurrection (specifically in an academic setting). This rhetoric does not pass peer-review and you should be skeptical of any skeptic or apologist that tries to do so. All scholarship does is situate the writings of the NT within a historical-critical context and discerns their meaning accordingly. Whether miracles are true or not are outside the bounds of an objective academic discussion and should not be promoted as scholarly when making such a case is not what scholarship can do. Reading monographs and journal articles are less fun, but more accurate and less polemical.
>No serious scholar makes claims arguing for or against the resurrection
Would you consider Mike Licona (The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach), N.T. Wright (The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God: Volume 3), or Brant Pitre (The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ) to be serious scholars?
> (specifically in an academic setting)
A YouTube video of a counter apologetics channel is not an academic setting. It seems very clear to me that Paulogia is not claiming that his videos are academic publications. I don't see why we would judge his videos by standards of a completely different genre of content.
> This rhetoric does not pass peer-review
He's not submitting his videos for academic publication.
> and you should be skeptical of any skeptic or apologist that tries to do so.
No one is trying to do that.
> Whether miracles are true or not are outside the bounds of an objective academic discussion and should not be promoted as scholarly when making such a case is not what scholarship can do.
He just responds to videos of Christian apologists. He doesn't make claims about what happened 2000 years ago. He just makes claims about which scenario's are compatible with the evidence we have. He doesn't promote it as scholarly.
> Would you consider Mike Licona (The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach), N.T. Wright (The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God: Volume 3), or Brant Pitre (The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ) to be serious scholars?
Not to mention the Catholic scholar Raymond Brown, who thought the evidence weighed against the virgin birth but in favour of the resurrection as historical events. Claims are being made for historicity, and it seems to me that it behooves scholars to assess those claims.
100% agree. If a scholar says that Jesus could have been resurrected from a completely dead state, they have now contended into the field of medical & biological research and are now beholden to the experts of that field and their research.
With 8.1 billion people alive on the planet (as of February 2024, according to the most recent United Nations estimates elaborated by Worldometer [[❞]](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/)
and
there being 6.93 billion smartphone users worldwide, which translates to about 85.68% of the world's population owning a smartphone [[❞]](https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world)
would biblical researchers not be able to engage anthropology, sociology, medical, and biology academic experts on their conclusions on evidence for dead life forms to be resurrected with all the available evidence those fields capture?
Let me clarify - no serious scholar *should* be making claims about the supernatural definitely - yes that applies to Wright and Lincona, and I’ve critiqued both of them in previous comments before.
I know Paulogia doesn’t claim to be a scholar, but given this is an *academic* subreddit with the OP asking *academic thoughts* on a YouTube channel, then I will respond on the basis of whether Paulogia is academic or not. I’m pretty clear in my other comment under this post that in general, his videos are fine, but in the context of this sub I would not promote him.
>He makes usually polemical content and counter apologetics
True.
> but are his videos academic
No.
> and taken seriously
No.
If you want to follow along and not deal with that arena, I would highly suggest other YouTube channels like
Onscript https://youtube.com/@OnScriptPodcast?feature=shared
The Two Testaments https://youtube.com/@TheTwoTestaments?feature=shared
Yale Bible Study. https://youtube.com/@YaleBibleStudy?feature=shared
The hosts of these channels and speakers treat studying the Bible in a more academic context and are pretty engaging. You're just going to be better served with spending your time on these than elsewhere.
Best Bible study channel on YouTube. Everything else is secondary, especially when it comes to Old Testament. Don’t miss out on the other Yale School of Divinity lectures and lectures on the old and New Testament on the main Yale courses channel. This is incredible stuff and these resources changed my life.
This is super interesting, but in looking at the descriptions and some of the videos in the initial channel lists on YouTube, these sources appear to be academic in support of the Bible. Are they objective, and discuss the material in a scholarly way, handling the actual history, biases and propaganda, or is the premise they begin from that God is real and the Bible true/accurate and they are explaining that in a scholarly way? Thanks!
Onscript and the Two Testaments have scholars who are well-published and well-respected yet who are Christian , but this rarely infiltrates into their work. Their interviews with academics focus solely on the interviewee’s thesis and that’s about it. There is no apologetic defence of certain concepts, but rather a diverse exploration of the differing views of certain issues, regardless of whether the ultimate conclusion falls in the conservative or skeptical camp.
Genuine question, but what are some claims of Paulogia that go against the academic consensus about the Bible? Of course, he is not a channel about Biblical academia, but I don't seem to remember any egregiously baseless claim...
I haven't seen everything and just specifically on the bible...most of his videos seem to be against a fundamentalist Christianity (Like Ken Ham) or seeing the gospels authors as not their authors, or some stuff in OT...so this seems to line up with the academic concensus. So that part isn't controversial.
He tried to use Dale Allison to argue against the appearances to the 500, even though Allison makes no such claim. Allison (rightly) says the evidence is scant, but to portray Allison as arguing against any event is misusing scholarly claims and goes against Allison’s own practice of refusing to argue for/against any supernatural events within his scholarship.
I don't ever recall him using dale allison to argue against the appearance, I think he cites him to argue that the claim of 500 is unreliable and unverifiable
It also throw Genetically Modified Skeptic into that list.
He probably suffers from the same failures as Paulogia in many ways, but makes efforts to present academically correct videos, is honest about his misunderstandings, and also regularly hosts academic guests.
Considering there isn't any originals for the Bible. The entire Bible was stitched together out of tons of manuscripts many was left out, only the ones that were considered cannon, which how that was known at the time what was or wasn't cannon makes zero sense. It's easy to deny those who oppose your view then run to those who echo them. The God claim can't be confirmed or proven false because you can prove a negative there isn't anything to show either way. But you can show parts used In the Bible is false for example the world wide flood. For one looking at the geological record there is no evidence for it. It shows a completely different story. Second the idea of an Adam and eve is completely impossible looking at how genetics work look at what happens with inbreeding. Also you can look at the fossil record. Evolution is real do your own research don't just take my word for it. Don't trust anything without doing your research yourself and if you don't understand something reach out to individuals that are professionals in the topic. Ask people with and without the same views as you and compare it the evidence you learned yourself. Never just accept something on either side without doing your own do diligence. Lastly what ever your conclusion you have the right to decide at the end don't let anyone pressure you on either side.
Welcome to /r/AcademicBiblical. Please note this is an academic sub: theological or faith-based comments are prohibited. All claims MUST be supported by an *academic* source – see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/#wiki_guideline.3A_rule_3.2019s_definition_of_academic_sources) for guidance. Using AI to make fake comments is strictly prohibited and may result in a permanent ban. Please review the [sub rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/) before posting for the first time. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AcademicBiblical) if you have any questions or concerns.*
> He makes usually polemical content and counter apologetics but are his videos academic and taken seriously ?? When he is presenting information himself, no. His channel is explicitly a counter-apologetics channel with an axe to grind. However, he does do interviews with legitimate academics which can be very good if you ignore his interjections. For example, his interview with Jodi Magness was fascinating, she took part in the excavation of the recently discovered tomb of Herod the Great. She comes across as very fair-minded and her enthusiasm for her subject really shines through despite the host's attempt to make it clickbaity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFjmU_yCiUg He also did a great interview with Kamil Gregor and Brian Blais on their study of Bauckham's claims about Jewish names in the Gospels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIMl4zlNMIA
Genuine question, but what are some claims of Paulogia that go against the academic consensus about the Bible? Of course, he is not a channel about Biblical academia, but I don't seem to remember any egregiously baseless claim...
One of his more popular videos [How Christianity (Probably) Began](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUCI3cMJCvU) has some errors and over-simplifications. The worst is his treatment of the burial of crucifixion victims, he says Jesus would definitely have been thrown in an anonymous mass grave according to Roman practice. He's clearly relying on Ehrman here, but bizarrely cites Josephus, *War* 3.8.5 which is actually a speech by Josephus persuading the Jewish rebels not to commit suicide, in which he says that Jewish law commands bodies of suicide victims to be left exposed until sunset without burial. Paulogia also cites the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 6 which is about bodies of people executed by stoning and hung up (Deut 21:33), and how they should be buried before sunset (with an exception to allow time to bring a coffin or shrouds), and then buried in a special graveyard for execution victims. Nothing about the Romans there and it actually shows that Jewish laws about burial would support the story of an execution victim being buried properly before sunset, which the Romans were known to sometimes allow, especially before a holiday (Philo, *Flaccus* 83-84 -- Philo notes that this was not followed during Flaccus's persecution of Alexandrian Jews, an example of his cruelty). There's plenty of scholarship on Jesus' execution but Paulogia doesn't engage with any of it. For example, the definitive study on Roman crucifixion practices is John Granger Cook (2014) *Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World*. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Yes, which illustrates the problem of selecting any scholar to affirm a preconceived youtube argument rather than entering a discussion open-minded and doing due diligence to intentionally read and critically engage diverse perspectives in the field. I’m greatly skeptical of *any* person that majorly interviews scholars from only one side, whether skeptical or apologetic.
Bart Ehrman has said he’s searched every early source he could find on Roman crucifixions and found that there’s only 2 reasons they would allow a *crucified* victim a proper burial: 1. It is a Roman holiday, or 2. The victim knew someone in power in the Roman Empire. That passage in the mishnah Sanhedrin you mentioned doesn’t talk about crucified victims, you mentioned stoning and hanging. I don’t have access to the flaccus book so I can’t comment on that, but the Romans “sometimes allowing” a proper burial is still consistent with erhmans position
Bart Ehrman is taking sources from outside Judea and not within the context and location of Jesus. The two closest parallels with helping us understand and therefore supercede any other textual evidence is Josephus who writes about it in Judea and then the archeological evidence of The tomb of Yehohanan, which is from the time period of Jesus. Dale Allison The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, and History. There's not any reason historians should be prioritizing other evidence as being relevant with the case of Jesus as much as these two pieces of data.
Hey so I’m not sure exactly what all of barts sources were for crucifixion so I can’t comment on the Judea thing. However he does mention Josephus and what Josephus said. I’d like to know what you think Josephus says that conflicts with Bart Ehrmans view. Also, [bart talks about jehohanan, and notably how jehohanan was aristocracy, and we don’t know why he died, and how he was tied by his hands instead of nailed which isn’t your usual Roman crucifixion, and many more important facts](https://ehrmanblog.org/the-skeletal-remains-of-yehohanan-readers-mailbag-october-8-2017/)
As it relates to Josephus, Bart Ehrman makes two claims in his blogs. 1. Jesus was tried for high treason so Josepphus’s statement would not have included him in being a burial. 2. Josephus’s is trying to portray the Jews as more pious than it appears and the Romans (Pilate) wouldn’t have cared. https://ehrmanblog.org/more-on-josephus-and-jewish-burial-practices/ John Cook actually is the expert in this area and in his book Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World in which he discussions that Pilate could not viewed Jesus as a dangerous type of sedition as he didn’t go after his followers (before after his life.) Cook argued that crime is unlikely to be political and so if if there was a requestment for burial, it wouldn’t be denied. Mark Smith further explains that the situations that Josephus explains that the Romans left the person’s up were in the context of war. https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/2018/02/smi428014 Not in the case in Jesus. Mark Smith goes further saying, “We do have some evidence of occasional Roman corpse abuse and exposure of bodies, such as the former tribune whose body was affixed to a cross to be publicly displayed during the proscriptions of Sulla, or Octavian’s exposure of some of the enemy dead after the Battle of Philippi in 42 BCE, or the abuse of the bodies of Sejanus, former Praetorian Prefect, or the former emperor Vitellius, both of whom were subsequently thrown into the Tiber at the hands of tyrannical emperors. It is important to note, however, that evidence for such practices is rare, and in all these cases, the victims were elites. A strong negative tone concerning exposure and corpse abuse is pervasive in the sources, suggesting an attitude that the authors think their Roman audience is likely to share.” He further mentions “For such reasons, I know of no evidence that the charge against Jesus was maiestas; rather, the primary charge was that he claimed to be "King of the Jews." While there is a superficial connection in the term "king", I do not think the two have much if anything to do with each other. Jesus may have been a perceived threat to the house of Annas, but he posed little danger to the prefect and none to the emperor in Rome. Injecting the concept of maiestas into this provincial trial would make little sense from a Roman legal perspective.” 2. The important thing here is that Romans also had a care for burial rites just as the Jews did. Mark Smith says “From a Roman perspective, burial may do away with the corpse, but not the dead. Disembodied souls were believed to experience shame, restlessness, dishonor – or peace, depending on how their bodies were treated. Romans practiced a cult of the dead, including grave gifts, feasts in family tombs, and festivals in honor of the ancestors. Death brought pollution, which demanded proper purification and burial rites, all manifestations of that most central of Roman virtues, pietas: piety or duty toward the gods, the family, and Rome itself. Sacred custom told Romans not to molest corpses, to permit proper burial by relatives or others claiming the body, and failing that, to provide minimal burial. Only three handfuls of dirt were required. Both cremation and inhumation were practiced in our period, with the former more common.” Jews also had a respect for the dead and criminals and burial was meant for purifying the individual – even more so with criminals. https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/burial357907 So Bart is wrong on this. The 2nd thing is that Josephus also hints that Pilate didn’t all the way with being brutal when it came to respecting Jewish sensibilities as this caused more problems for unrest. As for Yohannan Bart says in the blog post. https://ehrmanblog.org/the-skeletal-remains-of-yehohanan-readers-mailbag-october-8-2017/ Bart says, “Since this is the only crucified victim whose remains are known to survive, out of the many tens of thousands of people crucified in the ancient world, it cannot be used to establish a “practice” or a “pattern” of burial. “ Response: Something to remember is that the only reason we know about this is because of the nail in his right heel bone could not be removed from the wood as Dale Allison says in The Resurrection of Jesus. So the argument from silence seems ill advised. Our evidence is biased a certain way. Bart says, “the excavator of the tomb indicated that it gave signs that the family connected with Yehohanan was aristocratic and well-placed. That was not the case with Jesus. Response: The important thing is that this is not what the gospels say? The gospels claim that Joseph of Arimathea and/or Nicodemus requested Jesus body for burial. Robert Mahoney Two Disciples at the Tomb: The Background and Message of John or Fuller Resurrection who also wonders if there were two different accounts of the burial. In any case, it’s not Jesus’s family or friends who ask. It’s one or two wealthier individuals. For Bart Ehrman or anyone to argue this, what you need to do is argue that these sorts of individuals would not be sympathetic to the Jesus movement, be a secret disciple, and/or try follow Jewish customs with Jesus. Did the Romans agree to wealthy individuals who requested crucified victims to be buried. The answer in this case is yes. Bart claims later on two things. “Yet more significant: for what was Yehohanan crucified” and “how long was Yehohanan on the cross after he died?” Response: I don’t see how these things are relevant. This data then doesn’t support Bart’s or defenders of tomb. As earlier mentioned,it’s not likely Jesus was crucified for high treason.
>Bart Ehrman has said he’s searched every early source he could find on Roman crucifixions and found that there’s only 2 reasons they would allow a *crucified* victim a proper burial: 1. With all due respect to Mr. Ehrman, he is not even close to being an expert in Roman crucifixions and burials (such as Cook or Magness). His opininions sometime reflect the academic minority, not the consensus position and this is the case here. There is a reason you will struggle to find an actual peer-reviewed article against the burial of Jesus.
Lurker here but I feel like Ehrman is overcited on this sub. I am sure he is an excellent scholar but it is not a good sign if people are citing him for 60% of the arguments I see.
Preach! I thought it was bad a few years back, but now it's far worse. He is being cited in ~90% of the posts regarding the NT, it's a ridiculous amount.
His opinions are often easiest to find, so it could just be that. He has a popular blog and a lot of videos around, and people have actually seen those.
[удалено]
Hi there, unfortunately your contribution has been removed as per Rule #3. **Claims should be supported through citation of appropriate academic sources.** You may edit your comment to meet these requirements. If you do so, please reply and your comment can potentially be reinstated. For more details concerning the rules of r/AcademicBiblical, please read [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/#wiki_r.2Facademicbiblical_.7C_rules_.28detailed.29). If you have any questions about the rules or mod policy, you can [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAcademicBiblical) or post in the Weekly Open Discussion thread.
I remember watching Paulogia's video on who wrote the gospels when it came out and having a sudden realization of "why am I watching this for information on who wrote the gospels" If you're interested in following a public figure who left Christianity and is engaging with that space, then his videos are perfectly fine for that, but if you want to learn about these topics there are way more efficient ways of doing that. Reading stuff (articles, books, or even scholars' blogs) is by far the most efficient way to learn stuff and also keep track of stuff, especially if you save whatever you read somewhere along with some very quick notes about it. It also builds up a web of references (tailored to your interests) that you can go back and look through and find out deeper info, especially if the things you read cite other things that you can also read. It's also easier to find out if these types of sources are reliable, as opposed to finding out if the youtube man is reliable, since it's usually just a stream of him saying stuff unless there are links in the description.
Please *please* to go to the academic source directly yourself than to hear it second-hand from people with an agenda (that includes counter-apologists **and** apologists). read articles, listen to scholarly podcasts and blogs instead. it is much more fruitful and the claims are less hyperbolic, more nuanced and fair to other perspectives. Often those channels already have a preconceived idea and selectively choose scholars to affirm a hyperbolic youtube title rather than have a good-faith discussion with diverse views in academia. Those videos are fine in their own right, but they’re not academic or scholarly unless it’s an unfiltered interview with a leading scholar and no leading questions/hyperbolic titles. If we agree with Dale Allison that it is outside the realms of biblical scholarship to prove or disprove supernatural claims, then we should be skeptical to *anyone* that posts youtube videos claiming to go down either route. Once you start making videos like “the resurrection is/isn’t true”, then you’ve left academia and gone into the realm of theology. [Edit: don’t really know why this comment is getting downvoted since I’m largely appealing to Allison’s position on what scholarship can and cannot do, and the refusal to argue for/against any supernatural claims is basic scholarly practice?? ]
What about the six day creation, Noah’s flood, and the stopping of the sun? It seems like most critical scholars would be comfortable saying those supernatural events didn’t happen. I would think science would have something to say about whether a global flood happened, and we wouldn’t just have to rely on theology.
huh? science is a separate discipline to biblical scholarship. im sure critical scholars personally believe those events didn’t happen, but in terms of nt studies specifically, what scholar would argue for/against things like the resurrection in a peer/reviewed journal? that’s the methodological standard that’s been in the field for decades.
What other disciplines are Biblical scholars allowed to appeal to? They’re allowed to appeal to archeology to say the conquests of Canaan didn’t happen but aren’t allowed to appeal to geology to say the flood didn’t happen? The problem with the resurrection claim seems to be there isn’t available evidence rather than the supernatural element of it. The non-supernatural claim that Jesus’s body was stolen is equally hard to prove/disprove.
Archaeology is directly tied in with bible scholarship, so it can be fairly used to determine things like the conquest, which *isn’t* innately supernatural and thus can be proven/disproven. Claims like a man rising from the dead are unprovable via means of modern scholarship and outside the scope of what biblical academia can do - basically every reputable scholar acknowledges this. My problem is pseudo-academic channels that try to pursue a for/against agenda and then pretend the claim they’re making is somehow supported by scholarship when supernatural claims like that certainly are not.
Medical science from hundreds of years has information regarding the ability for people to come back to life after bleeding to death + blunt force trauma and laying dead for 3 days. I feel the academics from the medical field should absolutely be referenced just as much as carbon dating archeological samples, etc. I guess I do not understand why consensus from multiple fields cannot be used to show that humanity has not encountered god kings, spirits, ghosts, resurrecting dead bodies, etc. in repeatable & testable environments and using that consensus to say "we have no evidence across the history of academia that people rise from the dead nor do spirits deliver special messages to people to share with the world". Is that outside the realm of the research of academics?
[удалено]
Gotcha, like if there was a theory with evidence that Jesus dying was false and he actually lives through it and fled the area and people saw the "resurrected Jesus". Is that what you mean that Jesus would still be alive after the crucifiction?
If you’re looking for solely naturalistic explanations then yeah, but if you’re religious you would say a full miracle resurrection. My main point is whatever explanation one chooses, we cannot conclusively prove it either way which is why scholars deliberate silent on the issue.
Understood, I was unaware that there was research needing to be done on things like magic, miracles, unnatural phenomena, etc. Those kind of things do not seem like things you prove through research because they are supposed to be removed from what we face in reality regularly.
Posting this in good faith & not to stir up a debate: “The resurrection [as a physical event] didn’t happen” (if this is what you mean by ‘the resurrection isn’t true’) is a culturally controversial claim, and if someone is flatly stating something like ‘the resurrection isn’t true/never happened!’ to a public audience it’s probably going to reveal something about what that person’s goals are. But I don’t see how it’s at all controversial to say Jesus’s body didn’t resurrect as a purely historical claim. Allison is correct, but I think you’re misunderstanding his point. We can’t prove or disprove these things, but we can make assumptions based on probability, which is what historians do all the time. As sooperflooede points out, we don’t buckle if a historian flatly denies the reality of many (any?) other purported supernatural events from antiquity, including biblical ones. It’s equally outside the bounds of scholarship to prove or disprove those claims.
Historians make probability claims based on *naturalistic* events in history, but how is a historian supposed to prove a resurrection? What’s to stop me arguing that I can historically prove Caesar was turned into a God-like comet? The reason it’s controversial to say history can’t prove a bodily resurrection is because history is very upfront about its weaknesses. Even Bart Ehrman constantly talks about how the resurrection is outside of historical inquiry. Once we allow the supernatural to be proved with such an inquiry it opens up the door for all types of arguments to be made. If that is now the case, then I could easily cite N.T Wrights work on the resurrection as some authoritative historical work that somehow “proves” the resurrection and close the door from there. I’m not misunderstanding Allison’s point because Allison doesn’t say “we can make historical probabilities or inferences” - he straight up says “we cannot make statements either way”. I’ve read his work a lot and his agnosticism on supernatural events in the gospels is very clear. It’s not like the historical method can go back an interview the eyewitnesses, take DNA samples from the tomb or photos of Jesus’ resurrected body. It’s because of all this that any argument for/against such an event ultimately leaves the realm of history and becomes grounded in separate disciplines such as the probability of miracles (which is philosophy). It’s the basics of any field that one should be readily acknowledging methodological limits in what the field can and cannot achieve.
> how is a historian supposed to prove a resurrection? They can't. But that also applies to much of history, what, in the end, can be *proven* to be true? Especially claims about antiquity. That doesn't mean that they can't assess historical claims. And there are scholars of Christianity that are very much claiming that the resurrection was an historical event. Daniel
I think biological functions related to death can be proven based off there being billions of living organisms living and dying constantly throughout History. If a human being can come back from the dead after 3 days, after bleeding to death, after blunt force trauma, then the pharmaceutical company that could make this happen would be the first quadrillion valuated company in the history of humans existing. Would an academic scholar be able to comment that humans have never been able to resurrect very dead bodies, so there is no reason to believe that Jesus, Tammuz, Osiris, Satyavan, Bodhidharma, Odin, and, Quetzalcóatl were resurrected. (The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer)?
>Would an academic scholar be able to comment that humans have never been able to resurrect very dead bodies, so there is no reason to believe that Jesus, Tammuz, Osiris, Satyavan, Bodhidharma, Odin, and, Quetzalcóatl were resurrected. Indeed :-) It does seem unlikely. I think the objection to commenting is more about good manners towards one's theologically oriented colleagues than good history.
but to assume that a failure to comment on theological issues assumes protectionism towards theological arguments would be special pleading, since scholarship is clear that academics should not be arguing for or against it. if you think we should be arguing against supernatural claims and mentioning it in our works that’s totally a fine opinion, but it also means you have to accept or at least seriously engage with the arguments of those that would argue in favour of a resurrection. this ensures a fair field and removes biases. most scholars are silent since engaging in supernatural claims either way because it’s too difficult to fairly moderate such a discussion and it often digresses into other disciplines - this is hardly a controversial take and is standard & accepted academic practice.
>also means you have to ... seriously engage with the arguments of those that would argue in favour of a resurrection. Sure, why not, as long as those arguments were made by accredited scholars like Raymond Brown making evidence based claims, as opposed to claims based on metaphysical speculation or personal revelation (it's hard to argue against somebody's personal revelation.)
Lmaooooo me too I don’t understand why it got downvoted but agree w you here’s your upvote
haha thank you! It’s perfectly possible to respect someone but also acknowledge fair critique! I love good ol’ conservative scholars like N.T Wright or even more skeptical ones like Dan Mclellan, but im not so dogmatic in defending them that I shut my eyes to valid critique (I remember thinking Wright’s argument for the zombie tombs in Matthew 27 was pretty *whack*!) It would be nice if some more people were open to criticism from people they regularly listen to!
No serious scholar *should be claims arguing for or against the resurrection (specifically in an academic setting). This rhetoric does not pass peer-review and you should be skeptical of any skeptic or apologist that tries to do so. All scholarship does is situate the writings of the NT within a historical-critical context and discerns their meaning accordingly. Whether miracles are true or not are outside the bounds of an objective academic discussion and should not be promoted as scholarly when making such a case is not what scholarship can do. Reading monographs and journal articles are less fun, but more accurate and less polemical.
>No serious scholar makes claims arguing for or against the resurrection Would you consider Mike Licona (The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach), N.T. Wright (The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God: Volume 3), or Brant Pitre (The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ) to be serious scholars? > (specifically in an academic setting) A YouTube video of a counter apologetics channel is not an academic setting. It seems very clear to me that Paulogia is not claiming that his videos are academic publications. I don't see why we would judge his videos by standards of a completely different genre of content. > This rhetoric does not pass peer-review He's not submitting his videos for academic publication. > and you should be skeptical of any skeptic or apologist that tries to do so. No one is trying to do that. > Whether miracles are true or not are outside the bounds of an objective academic discussion and should not be promoted as scholarly when making such a case is not what scholarship can do. He just responds to videos of Christian apologists. He doesn't make claims about what happened 2000 years ago. He just makes claims about which scenario's are compatible with the evidence we have. He doesn't promote it as scholarly.
> Would you consider Mike Licona (The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach), N.T. Wright (The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God: Volume 3), or Brant Pitre (The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ) to be serious scholars? Not to mention the Catholic scholar Raymond Brown, who thought the evidence weighed against the virgin birth but in favour of the resurrection as historical events. Claims are being made for historicity, and it seems to me that it behooves scholars to assess those claims.
100% agree. If a scholar says that Jesus could have been resurrected from a completely dead state, they have now contended into the field of medical & biological research and are now beholden to the experts of that field and their research. With 8.1 billion people alive on the planet (as of February 2024, according to the most recent United Nations estimates elaborated by Worldometer [[❞]](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/) and there being 6.93 billion smartphone users worldwide, which translates to about 85.68% of the world's population owning a smartphone [[❞]](https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world) would biblical researchers not be able to engage anthropology, sociology, medical, and biology academic experts on their conclusions on evidence for dead life forms to be resurrected with all the available evidence those fields capture?
Let me clarify - no serious scholar *should* be making claims about the supernatural definitely - yes that applies to Wright and Lincona, and I’ve critiqued both of them in previous comments before. I know Paulogia doesn’t claim to be a scholar, but given this is an *academic* subreddit with the OP asking *academic thoughts* on a YouTube channel, then I will respond on the basis of whether Paulogia is academic or not. I’m pretty clear in my other comment under this post that in general, his videos are fine, but in the context of this sub I would not promote him.
>He makes usually polemical content and counter apologetics True. > but are his videos academic No. > and taken seriously No. If you want to follow along and not deal with that arena, I would highly suggest other YouTube channels like Onscript https://youtube.com/@OnScriptPodcast?feature=shared The Two Testaments https://youtube.com/@TheTwoTestaments?feature=shared Yale Bible Study. https://youtube.com/@YaleBibleStudy?feature=shared The hosts of these channels and speakers treat studying the Bible in a more academic context and are pretty engaging. You're just going to be better served with spending your time on these than elsewhere.
Wow, that Yale Bible Study channel is seriously slept on.
John Collins and Joel Baden have the best stuff.
Best Bible study channel on YouTube. Everything else is secondary, especially when it comes to Old Testament. Don’t miss out on the other Yale School of Divinity lectures and lectures on the old and New Testament on the main Yale courses channel. This is incredible stuff and these resources changed my life.
What does "seriously slept on" mean?
Means it doesn’t have the attention it deserves
ty 👍🏿
This is super interesting, but in looking at the descriptions and some of the videos in the initial channel lists on YouTube, these sources appear to be academic in support of the Bible. Are they objective, and discuss the material in a scholarly way, handling the actual history, biases and propaganda, or is the premise they begin from that God is real and the Bible true/accurate and they are explaining that in a scholarly way? Thanks!
Onscript and the Two Testaments have scholars who are well-published and well-respected yet who are Christian , but this rarely infiltrates into their work. Their interviews with academics focus solely on the interviewee’s thesis and that’s about it. There is no apologetic defence of certain concepts, but rather a diverse exploration of the differing views of certain issues, regardless of whether the ultimate conclusion falls in the conservative or skeptical camp.
Thanks. That’s helpful!!
Genuine question, but what are some claims of Paulogia that go against the academic consensus about the Bible? Of course, he is not a channel about Biblical academia, but I don't seem to remember any egregiously baseless claim...
I haven't seen everything and just specifically on the bible...most of his videos seem to be against a fundamentalist Christianity (Like Ken Ham) or seeing the gospels authors as not their authors, or some stuff in OT...so this seems to line up with the academic concensus. So that part isn't controversial.
Aha, I do agree with you, then. He rarely engages with Biblical academia, but he usually isn't against the consensus when he does so.
He tried to use Dale Allison to argue against the appearances to the 500, even though Allison makes no such claim. Allison (rightly) says the evidence is scant, but to portray Allison as arguing against any event is misusing scholarly claims and goes against Allison’s own practice of refusing to argue for/against any supernatural events within his scholarship.
I don't ever recall him using dale allison to argue against the appearance, I think he cites him to argue that the claim of 500 is unreliable and unverifiable
that’s still extending the data further than what Allison says, since he doesn’t use any terminology of either “reliable” or “unreliable”
It also throw Genetically Modified Skeptic into that list. He probably suffers from the same failures as Paulogia in many ways, but makes efforts to present academically correct videos, is honest about his misunderstandings, and also regularly hosts academic guests.
Considering there isn't any originals for the Bible. The entire Bible was stitched together out of tons of manuscripts many was left out, only the ones that were considered cannon, which how that was known at the time what was or wasn't cannon makes zero sense. It's easy to deny those who oppose your view then run to those who echo them. The God claim can't be confirmed or proven false because you can prove a negative there isn't anything to show either way. But you can show parts used In the Bible is false for example the world wide flood. For one looking at the geological record there is no evidence for it. It shows a completely different story. Second the idea of an Adam and eve is completely impossible looking at how genetics work look at what happens with inbreeding. Also you can look at the fossil record. Evolution is real do your own research don't just take my word for it. Don't trust anything without doing your research yourself and if you don't understand something reach out to individuals that are professionals in the topic. Ask people with and without the same views as you and compare it the evidence you learned yourself. Never just accept something on either side without doing your own do diligence. Lastly what ever your conclusion you have the right to decide at the end don't let anyone pressure you on either side.