Hey everybody, today we're debating whether or not Jesus's disciples wrote the Gospels, and we're starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to be here for another epic debate. This is going to be a lot of fun, folks, because we have two seasoned veterans in the debate world, and they're going to be, I should say, discussing rather than debating. It's primarily conversation, and hey, there might be plenty that they actually might actually agree on. There might be things they disagree on. So it's going to be interesting to hear their different perspectives tonight. Want to let you know, though, if it's your first time here, consider hitting that subscribe button as we have many more debates coming up, and we are very excited to have you here, whether you be a Christian, atheist, or one of the many strange creatures in between, no matter what walk of life, we hope you feel welcome here. And with that, want to let you know, folks, I've got the speakers linked in the description, so if you're listening and you're like, hmm, I like that, you can hear plenty more where that came from. That's why I put those links in the description for you. And today's format is going to be 12 minutes for the opening statements, and there's a little bit of flexibility, so, you know, as high as 13 minutes, followed by, after those opening statements, 60 minutes of open dialogue, and then Q&A, which will be about 35 minutes. If you happen to have a question fired into the old live chat, if you tag me with at modern day debate, it'll make it easier for me to make sure I get every question in that list, and we'll try to ask as many as we can in that 35 minutes. Also, Super Chat is an option, which would give you the chance to make a comment to one of the speakers, to which they, of course, would get a chance to respond to, and we ask that you just be your regular friendly selves for that, whether it be a comment or a question. So, with that, very excited to have you here, gentlemen, given that Jonathan is definitely taking the affirmative tonight in terms of arguing that Jesus' own disciples really did author the Gospels, we'll have Jonathan going first, but first, before we do that, I just want to say thanks so much, gentlemen, for being with us again. It's a pleasure to have you. Thanks so much. Yeah. Thanks for having us, James. Absolutely. So, with that, I am going to kick it over to Jonathan for his opening statement, and Jonathan, the floor is all yours. Okay. Thank you. To begin my dialogue with Mr. Dilahante, I believe it's important to note that the very nature of this question before us is not a novel one. In fact, it was a focal point of examination during Augustine of Hippo's discourse with the Manichean luminary Faustus at the end of the fourth century. To provide greater context for tonight's discussion, it is important to understand the procedural precedent established during this discourse. In this discussion, Faustus alleges that the New Testament textual documents that Augustine cited against him were not written by an apostle, but by some pretender under his name, and therefore carried no weight. By way of rejoinder, Augustine tests Faustus' allegation by walking through the legal framework used to identify and authenticate documents in the ancient world. Augustine sets up his argument by asking the following question. How do we know the authorship of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Barrow, and other similar writers, but by the unbroken chain of evidence? How is the authorship ascertained in each case, except by the authors having brought his work into public notice as much as possible in his own lifetime, and by the transmission of the information from one to another in continuous order, the belief becoming more certain as it becomes more general up to our own day. Take the books now before us. Should anyone after some years deny that this book was written by me, or that Faustus was written by him, where is evidence for the fact to be found, but in the information possessed by some at the present time, and transmitted by them through successive generations, even to distant times? In other words, Augustine explains how information can be traced to its resource through time by, one, finding general references to the circulation of the author's publication, and two, tracking to whom these references point back to. Ultimately, Augustine is providing testable and measurable criteria by which we can historically conclude the identification of an author. Very tellingly, the procedure implemented by Augustine are still commonly used in modern courts of law and histographic studies for the identification and authentication of documents. If we were to apply Augustine's criterion to the classical work on the nature of things, a didactic poem widely attributed to Lucretius, we see the procedure is logically sound and leads to a credible answer. Applying the first element, we ask, is there any empirical documentation from those present at the time asserting that Lucretius is a true author and source on the nature of things? The answer is a conclusive yes. In a letter by Cicero to his brother Quintus in 54 BC, Cicero states, the poems on Lucretius are, as you write, they exhibit many flashes of genius and show great master's ship. In addition, Virgil, another Roman author, refers to passages of Lucretius's work in his second book, The Geogrics. Second, was this information transmitted through successive generations and even to distant times? Again, the procedure leaves to an affirmative answer time and time again. Specifically, a number of historical figures either quote from Lucretius's poem or express great admiration for his work. The list includes Quintilius, a Roman educator around the mid-1st century, Tacitus, the prosecutor for the mission, and Marcus Cornelius, a second century Roman grammarian. Because Lucretius was critical of religion, his poem was disparaged and commented on by most early church fathers from the third through the eighth century, including Lactanicus, Jerome, Isidore of Seville, and Bede. While the sole surviving manuscript on the nature of things was only rediscovered in 1417, does a review of the documentary evidence point to any other author other than Lucretius? If not, the only natural conclusion is that Lucretius is the author of this title. The same procedural precedent can also be used for the Aeneid, and it will show no other guilty party can be identified other than Virgil as the author of the Aeneid. For the celebrity of Virgil's work in the Roman world was immediate and lasting. The Aeneid enjoyed the rare distinction of being hailed as a canonical poem while it was still being written. Of the Aeneid, Virgil's friend and fellow poet Prosperous wrote, something greater than the Aeneid is being born. The Aeneid was also lectured on in the schools by Calcius Esperata, a freedman of Cicero's friend Atticus, and the acquaintance of Cornelius Gallus. Even the historian Dr. Carrier affirms that the Aeneid was written in the period of history that is exceptionally well documented compared to the circumstances in which the Towshawon and Homeric epics were composed. This allows us to understand in good detail the context of the Aeneid's formation. From all this it necessarily follows that we should also be able to apply the same procedure and provide ancient documentation to trace when and where the four Gospels of the Apostolic Churches were written and by who. In fact, during the late second century, Iranians, Tertullian, and Gaius were able to name some of the authors and provide details for the formation of the so-called Dothic texts using this precedent. After Augustine explains his methodology, he challenges the mannequins by asking others that knows who have been swayed by the rhetoric assailing the gospel records, who would be so blind to passion as to deny the ability of the churches of the apostles to transmit their writings to prosperity. Otherwise, how do we explain that almost all the independent Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Coptic Apostolic churches come up with the same four books naming the same authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John unless it does go back to the disciples of Jesus, as Iranians, Tertullian, Eusebius, and the Apostolic Churches said it did. Therefore, the self-same investigative principles that led to the identification of Virgil and Lucretius as authors of their respective works will provide the threads of evidence pointing us back to the disciples of Jesus as the authors guilty of writing the four Gospels. Our first lead in building our case comes from Papias, the Bishop of Herapolis. He provides a statement of record identifying Matthew and Mark as authors of their respective Gospels. He identifies his source as John the Apostle, a figure who Iranians corroborates Papias knew. This evidence is remarkable. It supports the authors bringing their work into the public eye and now classifies the disciples of Jesus as persons of interest in our investigation. The next step is to pull on this thread and see where it leads us. Contemporary evidence is also made available through Gospel excerpts found in the letters of Bishop Polycarp, Ignatius, Clement, and the Apostle Paul. When we examine these texts, we're pointed once again in the direction of Jesus' disciples. For the common thread that bind these agents is their personal associations with the Apostles and or their appointments to the Office of Bishops in the Churches of the Apostles in which the writings are found. The thread then takes us to Bishop Uranius around 180 AD. Uranius was a student of Polycarp at the Church of Smyrna whose letter to Florinius recounts Polycarp's intercourses with John and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord and how he would call their words to remembrance. Uranius' statement that Polycarp received information from the eyewitnesses, along with his identification of the Gospel authors by names, begins to paint the disciples of Jesus as likely suspects in our investigation. But let's keep following this thread. Evidence further supporting these suspects are corroborated in the Miraturian cannon around 170 AD, Tertullian's work against Marcian in 190 AD, Taysian's diateseron in 160 AD, and Clement of Alexandria around 180 AD. Common history from Asia Minor, Rome, North Africa, Alexandria, and Assyria all point back towards the disciples of Jesus. The evidence is consistent with Tertullian's and Iranian's statement that the independent objective framework of the apostolic churches provide evidence, which all basically identify Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the respective authors of the Gospels. Iranius and Tertullian affirm that this is founded on the principle that the churches can enumerate those who were established by the apostles as bishops in the churches, and their successors then serve as guardians meant to preserve these apostolic works. This establishes the transfer control and mechanism that links these writings to the apostles, which Augustine cites against Faustus when he refers to the unbroken chain of evidence in his own argument. This again leads us back to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the guilty party, since no exculpatory evidence can be provided in favor of the contrary. While I'll assume that Mr. De La Jante may dispute some of this evidence, I'd like to emphasize that the statistical probability of the accumulated documentation being incorrect is almost zero. Augustine can evade a key point with the Mounted Kids, that if we reject the overwhelming evidence in support of these gospel authors, then the absolute abolishment of all literature will follow. He states that there will be an end to all books handed down from the past. If what is supported and established by the uniform testimony of so many men and so many times is brought into such suspicion that it is not allowed to have the credit and authority of common history. Throughout the ages, this concrete history remained the same as cooperated in the writings of origin, Athanasius, Eusebius, Jerome, Augustine, and others. This led up until the 18th century when the worldview of the Enlightenment was cultivated under the scholarship of people like Semmler, Stor, Greysbach, Frazier, Bauer, Strauss, and even Maximil Rosbierre. And with that, I conclude my opening statements and turn it over to Mr. De La Jante. Absolutely, thank you very much. Over to you, Matt. Thanks so much for being here as well. I had politely muted my microphone during that. Now I'm unmuted. Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate being here. And thanks to Jonathan for agreeing to do this. This is a curious debate. And I appreciate almost being referred to as a doctor, but I'm not. I'm not a testament scholar. I'm not a linguist. I'm not a historian. And honestly, it doesn't matter to me whether or not the Gospels were written by a disciple or an eyewitness. As a skeptic, I understand that eyewitness testimony is unreliable. I understand that memory is faulty. I understand that stories grow in the retelling. And I also know that trying to remember a conversation from last week or even five minutes ago is difficult enough, let alone trying to chronicle a speech that you heard decades ago. As an exercise without rewinding, you can go back and try to quote as much of what I've said so far in the last few seconds as you can. I'm a skeptic and a proper application of skepticism would recognize these issues and many other issues and reach the conclusion that the authorship of the Gospels, even if verified, even if written by Jesus himself would not add credibility to some of the claims that they make. I know that's difficult for people to hear and understand. We rely on and are often forced to make decisions based solely on a hearsay testimonial account. And the conclusion that we reach is based on a fuzzy estimation of how trustworthy we consider the source. We like to get things from the horse's mouth when we can. We prefer, hey, I saw this, rather than a friend of mine saw this and even more than someone saw this. It's natural to do this and as noted, sometimes it's all you have to go on to make a decision, but when it comes to the Gospel authorship, we're not required to make a decision. And as far as I can tell, all attempts to push for this sort of decision are merely an attempt to claim authority, authenticity, accuracy and authorship in order to prop up otherwise weak and unreasonable claims.  The problem is that none of the Gospels are signed. We don't have originals, but none of them claim to be written by the individual whose name is attached to them. None of them claim to be eyewitnesses. The closest we get is the Gospel of John suggestion. Sorry, I restrict the number calling me. This is the Gospel of John suggestion that this Gospel is based on the writings of the beloved disciple, the disciple Jesus loves. But that person isn't identified or referenced with that term outside of the Book of John. People have suggested it was John of Zebedee, maybe. That seems kind of likely. Some others have suggested it was Lazarus and even Mary Magdalene, but the book doesn't say this book was written by the disciple that Jesus loves. It just says that it is based on the testimony of what was written by the disciple, the beloved disciple. Of the four only Matthew and John are even ever proposed as being written by disciples. Mark has claimed to be the translator, Peter and Luke as the associate of Paul. The books are written in Greek decades later after the events seemingly from Greece and Jesus and his disciples would have spoken Aramaic and the events occurred in Galilee. Why, so why put Mark's name on a Gospel? Like, if you were gonna fake something, why would you put Mark's name on the Gospel instead of Peter? Because if Mark is the translator for Peter, wouldn't it make more sense just to call it Peter's Gospel? This is a common argument that I've heard for authenticity. And yes, that'd be very cool. Unfortunately, in the early days of Christian writings there's also a Gospel of Peter written perhaps within a decade or so of the Gospel of Mark. Dating is a big problem, but maybe somebody decided it would be too risky to claim that Peter wrote something. After all, we're talking about a fisherman who spoke Aramaic somehow writing in Greek many years later or perhaps the disciple who betrayed didn't really make for the best reference at a particular time or one of many other countless reasons including the notion that this was written by Mark who wasn't a disciple may actually add some credibility. Oh, I didn't hear it from this disciple. I heard it from the guy who followed him around and chronicled all his stuff. Who knows? But you only have to do a little research to find the truth. None of the Gospels are signed. None of them make any claim to be an eyewitness or a disciple. So if the books aren't claiming to be written by disciples or eyewitnesses, what's the justification for attempting to claim that they are? Why didn't God, for example, instruct people to sign those books? Why not do what foragers of some of Paul's letters did and claim to be Paul? Perhaps because there were known foragers around this time and if a book makes a claim about its authorship and there's no way to verify it, that's a problem. But if you don't claim authorship, if you don't claim a signatory, then there's no risk of reprisal. Maybe it's because we're being a bit anachronistic. I mean, after all, we're sitting here in 2020. We have a canonized Bible that we can open up. By the way, if you have a new international version, you can open yours up and there'll be a cover page in front of the book of Matthew and it will talk about the authorship and right there in that Bible, it will say, we do not know who the author of Matthew is. It is church tradition that Matthew is the author of this or that this has been attributed to Matthew. But modern audiences just see a package of books and consider it a book or a divinely inspired collection of books. They see the names attributed by the church in antiquity and just assume that these individuals who could not have investigated the authorship of these documents somehow got it right. So for clarity, my position is not these four gospels were definitely not written by disciples. My position is these four gospels don't ever claim to be written by disciples or eyewitnesses. They're not signed. The names attributed to them are matter church tradition. The best one can ever do is suggest that this was either God guiding people to pick the right books for the canon or these church leaders made their best guess and had some good reason and other information that we don't have. Imagine a collection of early Christian writings. As a matter of fact, you can go to earlychristianwritings.com and see an incredibly lengthy list along with approximate dates and links to scholarly articles about who potentially wrote them and when and why. And there's countless debates about this. You can see all of that and it's a good reference. I have no idea if that reference is sourced by a Christian or a non-Christian, but it's there. There are disagreements about dating methods, disagreements about which linguistic traits best align with which potential authors. Even when we have no other writings by the proposed authors, there's suggestions of multiple authorship and edits. In the end, we just don't know. If there were 15 unsigned letters about Elvis's life, letters that never claimed to be eyewitness accounts and never identified the authors, someone in Elvis's presence, and they disagreed on facts, how do you decide which four are most accurate and who wrote them? Does it make sense to attribute a letter to a member of his band and another one to Colonel Parker? That's only in the near past that we're talking about. So what's the deal with anonymity? If God had wanted the authors clearly identified, why weren't they? I fully expect somebody an apologist will just acknowledge that we don't know who wrote them to any reasonable degree of confidence. And this is fine because even Jesus' autobiography wouldn't be enough to convince us skeptic. God knew this and didn't bother and that's the trend. So there's no claim to eyewitness. They don't read like eyewitnesses. They're more of a narrative. There's none that identified the author. At most it's an according to, which suggests a second or third hand account. The dating is a potential problem. By the way, I don't know how much time I have left, but I'm gonna skip back to the most important bits. It makes sense that as battles occurred between different Christian sects from the beginning of the second century through the mid fourth century, the doctrinal wars, and there's still no canon at this point. There's loose suggestions about a canon. And so you have competing ideologies.  Why? You can just claim that yours has a direct tie to one of the disciples. And when we look at all of this, we find that for the most part, it seems to all tie back to Irenaeus. Irenaeus was the first to cite John as the author referencing others as well. But why? Why four, let alone these four? Well, here's a quote from Irenaeus. It is not possible that the gospels can either be more or fewer in number than they are for since there are four quarters of the earth in which we live. I know you're having a flat earth debate soon, so maybe you reference this first. Four universal wins. While the church is scattered throughout all the world and the pillars of the ground and the church and the gospel and the spirit of life, it is fitting that she should have four pillars breathing out immortality on every side and vivifying men afresh. Therefore, the gospels in accordance with these things for the living creatures are quadruformed and the gospels quadruformed these things so all who destroy the form of the gospel are vain, unlearned. This is an attack. This is just a bald-ass assertion that, hey, the gospels, there need to be four and exactly four and goes on to these are the four and anybody saying otherwise is problematic. Remember, a century is quite a long time to say that there's a bunch of people within a century or so who all agree on authorship doesn't tell you why they agree on authorship. If they agree because Irenaeus said so, then you have exactly one source. There are church fathers doing this, not unbiased historians, not expert researchers, not time travelers. They can only either tell you what they think or what they've heard. It's not like they lay out an evidence-based claim for authorship. It's, oh, I have it on authority from someone. How do you demonstrate that? And modern people are trying to lay out a claim for authorship and citing church fathers because the books themselves are unsigned, unclaimed, unverified, in disagreement, not written as eyewitnesses, not claimed to be eyewitnesses. There's a motivation to give these four books selected by church authority and named by church tradition the heir of authority because they on their own lack that credibility. Read a gospel that made the cut and one that didn't and please tell me how to find out which is true and who wrote which one. I have no way to tell. And so I cannot reasonably conclude that they were written by disciples, especially giving the motivation for people to claim authority when it can't be demonstrated. You bet. Thanks so much, Matt. Appreciate it. We will jump into the open conversation, folks. So quick reminder, if you haven't had the question fired into the old live chat and I will be putting those into the list for the Q and A at the end. Thanks again, Matt and Jonathan. The floor is all yours. Jonathan, you're muted by the way. I apologize. I just wanted to make sure that background noise comes in to interrupt your opening statement. Yeah, no, no, it's fine. Okay, I think you brought up a lot of fair points in your opening statement. I think for the sake of really going through some of those questions, let's start with the initial point that Jesus and his disciples didn't know Greek which would go to ability. And it's a fair objection to say maybe they didn't have the ability to do so and these documents as Dr. Ehrman points out are written in highly educated Greek and they didn't possess those skills to do so. I think my initial response is, do we get that from the data in the text itself or from any other literary or archeological evidence for the period? Because when we look at the Gospels, we notice that repeated mention is made in the New Testament of conversations but there's no mention of an interpreter needed during Jesus and Pilate's dialogue. Jesus has a conversation with the Roman centurion in Capernaum. Jesus talked with the Cyril Phoenician woman of who it said that she was especially Greek. And when we look through history and we see Josephius writing, he often mentions the need of translation during miscellaneous conversations. And when we look at someone like Philo of Alexandria, he actually gives a detailed account of a journey he made to Rome with an Alexandria Jewish legation to meet with Gaius Caligula at that time. And even though both meanings are described in full, not a word is said about the language they spoke with the emperor because naturally this was assumed Philo would think that Greek was spoken. And I guess my last point on it is J.N. Stevenson, he actually does a full extensive study on there. Do you know Greek? How much Greek could the first Jewish Christians have known? And after assembling and sifting through the considerable evidence from literary and archeological sources outside and inside Palestine, his conclusion is there is no fact, no reason to suggest why Jesus or the first apostles or Jain should not have spoken Greek as well as their native Aramaic, given that the area had been permeated with Hellmesa culture for the last 350 years. And we can see this with the multitudes that Matthew and Mark talk about that were following Jesus and they talk about the areas of Galilee and the Copilus. And when we look at a lot of those cities, we're talking about Hippos, Pella, Gardera, Skypolis, which really formed the center of Hellenistic culture. So I guess starting off that point, if you can share some of your thoughts on why you would agree maybe that they didn't know Greek. I didn't say that they didn't know Greek. And that's one of the problems here is that I'm not asserting what, hey, if Jesus existed and died around 33 CE or so, it's entirely possible that somebody could educate themselves and learn Greek in the 30 to 40 years between then and when they write something down. I just find it strange that we're saying, oh, well, they could have known this and there's no discussion about what language is being spoken. When one of the four gospels that we're pointing to is ostensibly Mark, who is Peter's translator. So this seems to inject, I would have expected somebody saying, oh, well, they had translators, it's fine. And a translator wrote this and Mark's not a disciple, but he's getting it directly from Peter and he's Peter's translator. And so we just rather than writing when ink and paper are precious, hey, we went to this town and in order to speak to him, we had a translator. So one person uttered this and the translator translated it as this and then the other person said this and the translator, that just doesn't make for a narrative and these things are written as a narrative. I have no problem with the notion that some of the disciples could have potentially learned Greek and written something down in Greek at a later time. The thing is, I don't have evidence that that actually happened. And the only reason to suspect that something like that happened, that they knew multiple languages or learned this, is to use that as a prop for them as authors for this. And that makes that kind of assertion clearly biased. You had mentioned that there's this kind of view that when we look at things does, is there evidence that somebody else wrote it? And if not, then the proposed author wins out. But that's not skepticism and that's not the way we go about determining who wrote something. We evaluate the nature of the evidence for a specific author. And in this case, what we have as nature of an evidence for a specific author is the assertion of some early church fathers. And so it's a hearsay account. And like I said, I don't have a lot to bet on this in the sense that it doesn't matter to me if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were actually the authors despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of New Testament scholars, both Christian and otherwise suggest that that is unlikely if not outright false. I'm not saying they didn't know Greek. I'm saying, hey, here's some fishermen who probably weren't literate. At best, they can tell their story to somebody and have them write it down and it still counts. If my fingers are broken and I can no longer use a keyboard, I can bring somebody in here and have them write my memoirs. They're still my memoirs, but there would be a chain of evidence, a chain of custody kind of showing that. And you had mentioned like Augustine who is what, late fourth century? Yeah, late fourth century. And so Augustine is going to be investigating this and citing an unbroken chain of evidence. I find that pretty preposterous. I would agree that an unbroken chain of evidence is correct, but it seems that what we have is an assertion of an unbroken chain of hearsay. And if somebody in the fourth century, we tend to look back with this notion of, oh, well, stuff's easy to research. Well, stuff's easy to research now in the age of the internet. That doesn't mean that it was easy to research then. They didn't have the ability to investigate papers for forgery and printing and stuff. They can only do their best guess. We're talking about early, sincere attempts to come up with the best answer, come up with the best explanation. But if all of your evidence for authorship of A is so-and-so said that so-and-so said that so-and-so said for the last 300 years, I don't really find that a compelling argument. I mean, if somebody came to me and said, hey, here's a blog post that's anonymous, but a friend of mine told me that Jonathan Sheffield wrote it and before I could actually go and investigate that, you unfortunately passed away and nobody else seems to be able to affirm that you did this. And I don't have any evidence that anybody else wrote it. That doesn't mean that we are responsible to say, yeah, the best evidence shows that Jonathan wrote this because somebody said so and we don't have any evidence to the contrary. No, good point, Mr. Delante. I guess I'm following up in some of the other questions and we can go with more of these points as well. You bring up a lot of fair objections. One of the points you talked about is the obscure names. And so maybe I'm looking at it from the other side. So if the author names were being fabricated or assigned either with good or bad intentions, why would foragers or the apostolic churches use obscure names like Mark, Luke and Matthew since there were so many disciples. I mean, Luke is only mentioned a couple of times by Paul along with Mark. Matthew wasn't one of the three on the Holy Mount where the transfigurations occurred that included Peter, John and James. When I used names like Peter, James and Thomas which were actually, as you pointed out, were used and published under the so-called Gnostic text. Why not use those? Wouldn't we just assume then that if we're getting these accounts and they're using names that aren't associated it would be further, I mean, who would make that up? Does that make sense? So yeah, it makes sense. There's a number of problematic kind of assumptions that are going on here. First of all, it assumes that somebody is intentionally trying to deceive on authorship which isn't necessarily something that I'm advocating. One of the things is somebody can sincerely believe that they have the one true tradition from this line. If you take a look, I just, I lost my other document but you're asking why not put other names on them? Well, they did. It's just that those didn't make the cut.  At least Mark and Luke are referenced to some extent by Paul whose works came before the gospels under, I mean, I'm assuming there's no contention there that Paul's works were written before the gospels or the bulk of Paul's works. I also don't know, you know, we have, generally we have this notion that there are some of the Pauline letters were forgeries including one of the ones that says, you know, I write this with my own hands so that you'll know that it's me and yet scholars generally consider that one forgery. So there's this process, the canonization process of figuring out, hey, which books are we gonna reference? And you've got Arania saying there's gonna be four gospels there has to be four gospels. Anybody who suggests that there's anything other than four gospels is just a heretic because Arania loved decrying heres because he had the one true path. Now, if I were gonna write a gospel and intentionally try to fool people, okay, maybe I would try to put a fake name on it but if somebody unknown wrote a gospel that had been around for years, it's much easier for me to claim it and say, yes, look, this is old, here's somebody else writing about it 20 years ago, here's somebody writing about it 30 years ago and while, you know, it wasn't listed, I have it on good authority both from what I read in the writing and from what I was told by Arania's, it was told by, you know, Papias or whoever and you go through all these and say that this is in fact the writings tied to the eyewitness of John, son of Zebedee. Now, if you do something like that, you immediately give this thing some credibility as I talked about because that's what we rely on. Hey, this is coming from John, you know, but do we actually know that it's coming from John? It could have, it might not have but it would seem to me that if it were at all important who wrote this? And in fact, any of this were true that there would be a God who would make sure that we have a good understanding of who the authors of these books are and when the bulk of scholars including Christian scholars are saying, yeah, these, we don't know who wrote them, some of its tradition, there's perhaps a good case for saying that John wrote this or that these are the words of John as written by someone else afterwards. You get those sort of acknowledgements because we don't have a clear case for disciple authorship or even apostolic authorship. What we get is, I believe personally, these were written by people sincerely conveying the stories they had heard and the ones which became popular with the doctrinal sects that one are the ones that got canonized, which is why something like the Apocalypse of Peter which was considered divine scripture and read from and is probably the reason we have Dante's Inferno and other dramatic depictions of hell was considered divinely inspired but was excluded from the canon at least in part from my reading because there were people who didn't like to read from it. It was uncomfortable to read about people suffering and nobody really liked to hear from it and so it kind of fell out of favor. And then there's plenty of other, the shepherd of Hermes and others that didn't make the cut that were at the time by different groups considered sectarian. And so now if you go back and you just say, okay, we've got these four, this is what we've got. We have to presume that those are the four right ones. We have to presume that there are four right ones. We have to presume that we have any good copies of any of the right ones. And if we begin with all those assumptions, it's really easy to say, well, I think it's reasonable to conclude that these are the disciples works, whether written by their own hand or written through a translator, because that's what's consistent with these becoming canonical but that's not the process that developed the canon. There's no evidence that a trail of strong physical evidence led to a canon. You know, when Clement proposed in his Easter cyclical the first full list of 66 books that matched what we have now, I believe that's accurate. I'm doing this for memory. There wasn't any sort of, oh, here's why. It's just this is what has become kind of the most popular where I am and other people are like, yep, yep, yep. And then there's arguing over a couple of books and then you run with it. But prior to Oranias, some of these texts were running around and they're not signed and they're not even referenced in readings and teachings as, oh, this is the story of, you know, Matthew or this is the story of Jesus as told by Luke. That all starts happening once doctrinal wars. If it happened beforehand, if like, let's say, let's say Luke was written in 50, which I think is kind of giving it a little more leeway than it should, maybe by a couple of decades. But if we had good authority that Luke was written in 50 and that from that very moment, it was being referenced as this is the gospel of Jesus as conveyed by Luke and associate of Paul, that would be a pretty strong thing that could lead someone like Augustine to have an unbroken chain of evidence. But as far as I can tell, anything close to an unbroken chain of evidence doesn't even start until the beginning of the second century. And that's when people are starting to put names on this. And then what you have is a collection over saying, why is it surprising that a bunch of church fathers in a hundred year period agree with what the originator of these claims said? Yeah. You bring up a lot of points. Let's talk about Iranius and then a little bit about the evidence. Obviously, Iranius, when he's trying to explain why they're only four, obviously, as a legal voice in the ancient world, he's using arguments that he's familiar with, such as numerology, and he's coming up with this very well-versed view on trying to explain why do we have only four. In the beginning of against heresies, what he does is sets the framework for here's what was handed down to the churches, but his main argument in defending the gospel authors and the canon and texts itself is we have this objective framework throughout the ancient world. So we can see objectively in every church what was physically received. And that acts as our independent verification of what has come down from the apostles. And when we look at that objective framework to look at Paul's churches, because he's writing letters to all these churches in Rome and Philippi and Corinth, actual churches that existed in the first century that even continue to exist to this day. And when we look at that objective framework, we see the same vortex and coming up with these same authors with these groups that were fighting amongst themselves in the very beginning. I mean, in the second century, they were having an argument on when the date of Easter could be observed. So they were fighting about that, but they come up with the same four gospels. The Aramaic churches, they don't accept revelation. Second Peter, they don't accept second and third John, but they come up with the same four gospels that are in those churches with the same four names. So when we're trying to look at how do we establish a empirical basis to identify the author, if first comes out, we get a good lead from Papias. Now, at that point, that's really all it is. It's his allegation. He specifically says that he knows these individuals, that he heard this information from John. And when we take that information, we don't take it at face value. It's like, okay, it's really just a claim or an allegation at this point, but can we cooperate that information against other claims that are made throughout different areas, over different areas, and see if they cooperate on details? And so when we look at what Papias is saying in terms of Mark, he gives us some general details about Mark, was Peter's interpreter or scribe that took this information in role. And when we look at Irenaeus's account, and he represents the area of Asia Minor with Polycarp, he provides us that same basic account that we can compare against what Papias said. And then we have Clement of Alexandria on the opposite side of the world, giving us the same account that we also see in North Africa with Titulian. And so we see spread across the opposite ends of the Roman Empire, the same accounts. And when we look at them, what is the common thread that binds them? So you have these churches that were set up by the apostles. They're coming up with the same books in Rome, in North Africa, in Alexandria, in Asia Minor. And these churches set up a system very early to ensure that their writings and works were preserved to prosperity with an unbroken chain of custody. And that's why Irenaeus begins his arguments with that foundational principle and that we can look at independent churches over vast areas in different languages and Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and they come up with the same testimony. But when we look at the Gnostic texts and those writings, all their claims were different. There was no uniformity. No one was forced because the Aramaic churches are not actually, they don't agree on all the books, but on these four, they do. And they come up with the same names. So that would be great evidence for its truth. So first of all, what you seem to be suggesting is that Irenaeus is convinced he has an objective framework, which begins with, now first of all, Papias, I would hope we would agree was not present at the events and was instead someone who specifically said, I went around and talked to the people who knew these people as much as I could. Yes, I agree with that. So from Papias' own words, not like he's an eyewitness, he's talking to people who are telling him, I was there and I saw this. So Papias is a chronicler of a hearsay account from, I don't know how he checked birth certificates or verified who was there at which speech or whatever else. But Irenaeus' evidently objective framework is to suggest that, hey, we find differences among different churches, but these four books, we continue to find them in, we won't say every church, we'll say almost every church, or the overwhelming majority of churches we find these four are used and that is evidence that these are, that this is what came down from the apostles, except that that's not what that's evidence for. That is evidence for what was popular in those churches, what was pushed on them by the people and authority, which ones they found most compelling. This is about what human beings read and determined, yes, I wanna read from this one, I wanna teach people from this, this one taught me a lesson, this one feels inspired, this one feels consistent doctrinally with what I know and what I believe. And this is why when we have something like Shepherd of Hermes or Apocalypse of Peter that were in the exact same position or pretty close to the same position as the four gospels, they did not become canon. So this entire argument is a fallacious argument to the popularity of these. There's no evidence that these texts actually came from the apostles or came from the disciples. It's just what there's evidence for is that people believed these were the best representations of the testimony of disciples and apostles. And what people believed isn't necessarily tied to what's actually true, which is why we don't just trust a chain of hearsay accounts. So I don't know how that response that you gave was anything other than admitting, yeah, and by the way, I'm not opposed to this, although it entails another assumption, which is God exists, God promised to pervert scripture. And so if there's four texts that everybody's using, those must be the ones that are tied to the apostles and the disciples because God's not gonna let this become perverted. He's gonna give us the strong indication that the popularity of these in churches mean that they are reliable and authentic back to the source. The problem is that it's all predicated on the notion that there is in fact some God guaranteeing the canon. And that's kind of ridiculous when you consider that if God was guaranteeing a canon and it was important who authored it, God didn't seem to care about making sure that authorship was identified and didn't clarify or make sure that the gospels even agreed on certain accounts. So I don't think we get to make that assumption. And now it seems to me we're back at a point where here are four books, four texts that were incredibly popular in the first 100, 150 years after Jesus' existence to whatever extent we can demonstrate that. And because of that, these are the ones that the church fathers, I don't know how you could suggest that this is an objective standard. If the church fathers come along and say, hey, here's what all these churches are reading from. I've read from them. I agree with that. These are the churches that are right. And then you get Arania saying, anybody who says otherwise is a heretic. That's not a method for discovering the truth of authorship. That is a method for continuing to propagate claims of authorship. And I don't mean like a confidence level in this. I don't literally mean in the confidence scam sense, but it's not far removed from that. This is the same thing that a con artist does, which is to build up your confidence. Doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means that we can't know it's right. This is the problem with any logical fallacy is that it doesn't show that your statement is false. It just shows that you can't say that it's true. So how does appealing to the popularity of churches get us to a reasonable confidence level and authorship? Once again, good points. Let's talk about a couple of those. I know you brought up the shepherd of Hermes. The thing about the shepherd of Hermes is we have documentation on it. So the mirror turn canon actually speaks about the shepherd of Hermes. So it says very lately in our time, Hermes wrote the shepherd. So we have a document that attests to authorship. It was written in the city of Rome while his brother Pius de Bishop, which places it right around 150 IED, based when he was Bishop, was sitting in the church of the city of Rome. And therefore it ought to be read since it's just like any other letter, but it cannot be placed amongst the apostles since it was not handed down to us. And when we look at the Bishop of Antioch, Seropian who wrote a book concerning the so-called Gospel of Peter from which Eusebius quotes stating, for our part, brethren, we receive both Peter and other apostles as Christ, but the writings which falsely bears their names we reject as men of experience, knowing that such were not handed down to us. So the criteria that they're applying is what was actually received. And one of the Iranians' statements is that the apostles, disciples of Jesus, they handed records to the physical churches. So when I talk about objective framework is we have a church, a community of Christian brothers. The church of Rome is independent of the church of Alexandria. I mean, the east and west were fighting. There were disputes that they had over textual documents. So in terms of what was popular, what they're documenting in their statements is that the criteria was it had to be handed down or it had to be received because there were cases where there were documents that tried to get into the church either through popularity or good intentions that were actually removed. Tertullian documents that in Asia Minor, one of the prespers there tried to produce a text calling it the Aksapal. They identified it very early on and they were able to get that presper removed as well as catch that. So the objective framework that we're talking about is the particular churches themselves, this notion that they agreed or they would accept something for popularity. I'm having a hard time finding where they agree or where they thought anything was possible. And their writings, they all suggest this was handed down and that was the criteria that they base it off if it was received by the church. And because the apostles like Peter and Paul, they were all spread out and they were setting up churches all over the Mediterranean, we have an objective framework to compare to say, okay, well, what does this church have? What does this church have? And when we can compare them, we can make the logical conclusion that these churches go back to the apostle, independent witnesses that didn't. Oh, go ahead, Matt. I mean, this was the whole thing that I just pointed out that I don't understand how one can say this. And then you just asserted again that we can reach the conclusion that this goes back to the apostles. Well, you're talking about churches, supposedly passing on records, I don't know where they are or what specifically they say or what evidence they cite, but as far as I can tell, the records that were passed on were the same types of things that you were saying, this was received, this was handed down. None of that confirms the claim that it was in fact handed down or that it ties to an apostle. You're still just trusting a hearsay account which isn't, by the way, unbroken because we have manuscript fragments that diverge different copies of different gospels at different time. And so if the claim is this is handed down, well, which one of them was handed down and how can we show that that one is actually tied? We can't get back to the originals. We have no originals for the gospels. We can't get back to that. So if there's no evidential path from the oldest manuscripts, which aren't signed and you can't show necessarily which church received the oldest manuscripts that we currently have, how can we make a good faith claim that what was happening here is that people with an incredible foresight and an understanding of how significant all this was, anytime they received a document that was actually written by a disciple, an apostle or on their behalf through their direction. We kept really good records of these and passed those records on, not just claiming, hey, Paul gave me this or Luke gave me this, but we kept good records of it and we passed those on. But now the records don't exist as anything other than we received this. I mean, I'm missing the key connection that ties us back to the disciples. And for me, like you could absolutely show me a chain that says, bam, these four gospels were either written directly by or on the behalf of disciples. It wouldn't change my position on whether or not the claims in them are believable. I'm getting ready to do an expose on the feeding of the 5,000, which is preposterous at every single turn, not the least of which is that a significant percentage of Judea or of Jerusalem was evidently following Jesus around and didn't bother to bring food or that they could hear anything. I've been in a theater with 3,000 people. I need amplification and I'm pretty good at projecting. I couldn't do that from a hill. There are absurdities in there, which I know are not part of this discussion.  But if we're going to look at this and say this came directly from the disciples, it seems to me the only reason to do that is to basically undercut any objection to, oh, this part is hyperbole or this part was added on or this part is inaccurate. It doesn't provide evidence that those things were added on or weren't added on or are inaccurate. It just completely undercuts it. And yet what is this unbroken chain of evidence? Cause all I see are you saying, oh, well, these are the things that were handed down. Well, I've been handed all kinds of stuff. I've received all kinds of stuff and that doesn't mean that it's true. I mean, you've just, you have just handed down and I have received an account of what your version of what early church fathers or early churches did. Does that mean it's true? Does that mean I have now have a good reason to believe that what you're saying is true? Yeah, you know, you know, I think at the very start, you know, when we look at the information, you know, for me, you know, if a work is going to come into publication and we're trying to identify the author and it's part of what Augustine's trying to make, it's going to have a ripple effect. It's going to get noticed, you know? So if the apostles, Jesus' disciples, created works, are they witnessed by anyone? Because, you know, if you handed to someone, it now becomes noticed if you read it. So what we see happening in the first century is several things that demonstrate this is happening. First, we have letters from bishops over churches of the apostles, so we have Polycarp. And in his letter, Dr. Stephen Boyce mentions that, you know, he's quoting passages that are only found in these gospel records of Matthew and Mark. We see the same information with Ignatius, another bishop of Antioch. We see this information from Clement, the bishop of Rome that he's making citations that are only found in these documents, which demonstrate, they have knowledge of these works. You know, they may not be saying who they got the works from, but they have knowledge that they have access to this information. And even when we look at the didache, it references that there is the Lord's gospel and is quoting directly from Matthew. And even though it's not saying any particular name that's referring to passages found in Matthew as the Lord's gospel, I'm trying to make a connection and say, okay, we have Papias, and you know, once again, he's making an allegation this is from there. And what we want to try to do is check that out. And we have a number of contemporaries with Polycarp, Ignatius, even Paul has an allusion to the gospel of Luke in the writings. So people have this information almost like drugs. You know, you have all these people that get the drugs and you try and ask, where do you get the drugs from? And the connection to everybody is, well, they're all part of these churches, some of them like Polycarp and Papias who was a bishop too, and Clement, they're known associates of the apostles. And when we look at those churches, eventually they all come up with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. What is the logical connection I'm gonna draw that it doesn't point back to these individuals as the guilty suspects on where they got all this information from? Okay, I think it's just when you see all that, you're like, what other conclusion can I draw than it came from the apostles? And my suggestion is that these were the books that were popular, and that I can't go further than that.  Also, you mentioned, you know, once we start publishing things, it's worth reminding people, I, and this is not addressing you specifically. I think this is something all of us do. And that is we get stuck in an anachronistic sense because time is, and the history, and I'm not a historian, can be incredibly confusing. We tend to view things as if they're similar to today. So we're talking about things that were written down. 11, 12, let's see, the printing press was what, 1440? So 1,300 years before the printing press. Now, you and I live in the United States. Our country is 240-some-odd years old, give or take. I couldn't tell you what political party Fillmore was with. I just, I don't even know the history of that. Even if I just went back like 100, I'm 51. So I can only go back 51 years, and actually not even quite to 51 years, in what I actually experienced and recall. But I have, my oldest grandmother just died at 91 a year or two ago. And I can go, I could at one time go to her and find out what life was like in the 30s, in the 40s. And she could tell me her stories. And I would be getting them from her. And I would believe her stories right up to the point where she said, and then the aliens came and abducted me. Anything that was more something other than Monday. But if I, if I was given a letter and somebody said, hey, this is a letter that your grandmother left for you. My process of figuring out whether or not it's authored by her is, A, does it sound like her? I mean, does it, does it read the way I would expect a letter from my grandmother read? I have other letters from her. I've been in her presence. And I'm in a cool position to figure that out. If I handed you a letter from my grandmother, would you be able to conclude at all whether or not it was written from my grandmother? No, and that's a fair question. You know, in my opening, you know, I wanted to demonstrate a similar pattern that we saw in identification of Lucretius' work on the nature of things, which I read and I love. While we only have one contemporary reference, Cicero, a doubt. Once again, I'm not comparing Cicero with Papias because obviously, Cicero has a lot of credibility in the ancient world. You know, when we look at Virgil's need, we have a couple of contemporary references. And when we get to the Gospels, you know, it is an exceptionally well-documented time. And we do have a lot of information that demonstrate these works were published. And we're trying to determine by who, and we're trying to draw that connection. And so, for me, when I'm looking at the claims that are being made by Papias, and I see that this work has been distributed, there is a knowledge base between the Didache and all these churches. And that same information is being carried on through, through history. And, you know, there are good historians. I mean, Jerome was a good historian. Eusebius makes the claim that when he's approaching the question of authorship of the canonical scriptures, that his basis are the historic documents left by the prespers and historians of the church. As a good historian, he's collecting that information and trying to make it determine, you know, where does the evidence lead us? And for me, as we turn into the 18th century, there was a change in worldview, whether good, bad, or indifferent. And here's the point where scholarship changes their particular view. And that idea begins there and then begins to challenge a lot of what I see as the empirical data that supports the authorship to these individuals. Because I look at those, because we can identify authors from ancient works that are first century BC, and we have a lot more documentation in the first century and around the gospel publications, why not use the same methodology to apply to draw that conclusion? So, I think you've given me an idea for a video project to put together that might be a bit fun. If I put up a timeline of like US presidents, some of what you're doing when you say, you know, oh, papias this and Eusebius that, it would be the rough, in some cases, it's like James Garfield telling me something about George Washington when there's nearly a century between them. But others are like a president 150 years from now telling me something about Madison. And only having that president as the primary source, not in the sense of being able to point to other things. I think it'd be useful for some people to see a timeline of some of this. And in some cases, and this may end up being incredibly controversial and I'm not gonna dig in and stand by it, but Eusebius is often cited as the church father who advocated for pious fraud, essentially saying that on some occasions it may be worthwhile and may be necessary to lie, to deceive people in service of the greater good. Now, I don't think that quote from him is particularly controversial as to whether or not he actually said it, how it could be lawful or fitting to use falsehood as a medicine for the benefit of those who want to be deceived. And I'm not necessarily saying he was talking about what he was doing elsewhere. But when you have a concept that it's okay to lie in the service of the greater good, if you have people who aren't actively lying, it's not like I'm not saying somebody, let me write a fake gospel and do this lie in service of the greater good of Jesus. But it's incredibly plausible that there are countless people including church fathers because they're human who rather than creating a forgery and lying about its origin, which is almost preposterous, are yet not likely to be above. Here's some scripture that I am convinced is received, that I am convinced is from the apostles. And the best thing I can do rather than sit around and constantly answer questions and have debates and have people requesting, where did this come from and everything else is just to assert that it was a gospel according to Matthew and not a gospel by Matthew or a gospel according to Matthew. And that in the end, because God's word will not return void and because God will not allow me to corrupt scripture, if in fact I am correct as I think I am, then I have done a service for God in service to the truth of scripture, even though I was not honest in conveying this particular thing. And it's not like people could go and Google stuff back then. It's, this is what my literate preacher told me and this is what they taught in some other church because they're all getting it from, the same group of individuals. In that scenario, I'm not saying this gospel wasn't written by the person whose name is attributed to it. I'm wondering how you deal with those sorts of questions that must in any reasonable mind make us concerned about the authenticity of the claims. And so if there's 23 different little potential problems in this, I don't know how it serves us to say, to A, claim that there was an unbroken chain of evidence.  I don't even think that you necessarily think that it's untrue, but I would be surprised if after discussion you would actually stand by saying, there's an unbroken chain of evidence when what I think we're actually talking about is there is a longstanding tradition of people attesting to the authorship of these things. Which those in my mind are two different things. A longstanding tradition of people attesting to the authorship is fundamentally different from an unbroken chain of custody chain of evidence type thing. Yeah, so, and you made several points. Now, I would have to say somewhere in the first century or at least second century, someone had to be lying. I mean, there were lots of texts that were claimed from Peter, and that's an argument to be made. Was the church lying? Did they have a theological agenda that they were trying to promote? And those were some of the attacks that the ancient apostolic churches had to deal with because they were attacked in that manner that, hey, some of these texts that you created, it was for the purpose of promoting your theological agenda. And that's why the churches, so now when I talk about the chain of custody is, it talks about the succession of bishops that can physically trace back. Now, did some people lie? Possibly, I wouldn't put it past people. I mean, we are humans, but we're talking about all these churches all over the Mediterranean that are making these particular claims. And the difference we see in them is, okay, well, we know a number of Paul's churches where he went to, where he set up. So the bishop that was appointed and set up, received this information, and this is the information that has come down. And when we look at it, it seems like the testimony is cooperating in the terms of authorship, in the sense that the authorship had to make itself known to somebody because I don't think we would believe that the book just shows up out of nowhere. There had to be a physical transfer or it had to get distributed in a manner that there was a physical transfer between either the author or their scribe. And even though, let's say somebody at the church of Rome says, hey, for the best interests of our congregation, it makes sense to say it was John or Matthew or Luke. Because they don't have names on them, without showing any documentation that there was some conspiracy or a central authority trying to push this agenda because Constantine didn't come into place until the early 300s. How do they come up with these names automatically? How do they come up with the same information? They weren't on there. No, that's great because this is the way you look at it. This is the way I used to look at it. This is the way people probably generally look at it. Hey, yes, these things had to come with somewhere. There had to be a first copy somewhere. Why would people pay any attention to it unless there was some name associated with it? So it's most likely that the name associated with it now is the same name that was associated with it at the beginning. The problem is, from a historical perspective, authorship was not considered all that important. There were church fathers who knew of Paul's writing and who knew that this writing was by Paul who talk about the writing without ever talking about Paul. It's not until there are these doctrinal disputes where we're talking about, hey, there are so many books out there, we need some kind of canon. It's not until the canonization process that there's any motivation to put a name on it. And at that point, I think that it's reasonable to assume that when somebody says the history of this as it came to these churches is that this is Peter's thoughts as conveyed by his translator, Mark, who Paul referenced. And that's the way we've heard about it. So we're just going to accept that. It's not like we have the capacity to investigate it or go back to when the first copy of this was handed down, it was given to somebody. There are historical methods that we can use to like, for example, identify typical Christian writings in conflict with Jewish writings. And it has to do like one of the oldest fragments of the New Testament. The clear part is that it's written, it has writing on both sides, which puts it in book form as opposed to a scroll which has writing on one side and is then rolled up. And so as changes happen and how messages are conveyed, we have a good standard by looking at everything else that's happening in the world. What's changing about writing? What's changing in this region? What words are falling out of fashion? What words are in fashion? All of this goes to trying to date this. And in some cases it can go to trying to find the author. But if you don't have any other texts, like if we get back to my grandmother's letter, if neither one of us had any writing from her at all, then we'd both be stuck on confirming the authorship. And just because my mom said, hey, your grandmother wrote this and wanted me to give it to you, I'm gonna accept that. I'm gonna accept that from my mom that she's not lying to me about this. Should anybody else? And by and large, does it make all that much difference? Well, it does when we're talking about a personal letter to me, which is one of the reasons why the Pauline epistles are both incredibly intriguing to me and a little confusing because it's not like Paul was writing with the understanding that this is going to become a canonical scripture that everybody is gonna read forever. It is I'm giving instruction to this church and some of the things that I'm writing are gonna be tailored to this church or I'm writing a letter to this associate of mine or this friend of mine and my writing's gonna be tailored that way. The authors of the Gospels, if they had any inkling that it's, and I would argue that God should have an inkling, that at some point, authorship is gonna be a question, it would seem that they could have attested to this. And for the most part, when we look at them, like if you, here, let me pull this up.  Don't sue me NIV, I know you're copyrighted. Luke one starts with a passage that says, many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the world. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you've been taught.  Now, in order for that to be true, we already need to be considerable number of years afterwards because we don't have a printing press, we don't have mass transit, in order for a bunch of people to write down these stories and for them to spread, there must be some time, which is probably why Luke is dated around 80 or so, because I don't know what other reason there would be to say that that is a closer date. But what Luke is saying is, these stories were handed down to us from the people who were eyewitnesses. Well, him saying that it was handed down by eyewitnesses doesn't mean that it came directly to him from an eyewitness, and it doesn't mean that it even came to the person he heard it from as an eyewitness. All it means is that he's convinced after doing his investigations and talking to people in the same way that Pope Ius would, that ultimately there were eyewitnesses and I'm conveying their story as best I can. Now, that doesn't seem to be something that would be necessary for a disciple or for someone who was an associate of a disciple because it would be very easy to say, hey, I'm an associate of Paul, and Paul told me, except that in Luke's case, that you don't even have that link to an eyewitness. And this is why at the beginning of Luke, you have this statement that, hey, there's a bunch of stories, ultimately they came from eyewitnesses, I've investigated this, I'm gonna tell you my story. Now, I don't know about you, but if I wanted to tell the story of this debate interaction, I would write it myself. And if instead I had someone else write it for me, I would say, hey, write this down for me and note that you are getting this directly from me. Now, that I would argue is my own anachronistic look about the importance of authority and being the eyewitness reference that I see now in the world and in fusing it over the top of what it was like back then. And if I remove that, then all of a sudden it becomes not a problem, because instead of this being written by a disciple or for a disciple, you have someone who is sincerely conveying a story that they've heard as best they can. And on that note, I'll ask you the question that I kinda asked before the debate. If you were to find out that these gospels were not written by disciples or immediate associates of disciples, but instead were, let's say, one more rung on the telephone game removed from the eyewitnesses or perhaps two, would that knowledge make you no longer be a Christian? I would definitely say it would be a game changer because I mean, you point to Luke one and so I take that to understand that first, I mean, Jesus' disciples, they were all over, they were other people casting out demons in Jesus' name. So obviously, people were around, there was other accounts out there. For me, I look at Luke, he was a follower of Paul, Paul knew James, John, and Peter. He would obviously have access to those individuals. So when I'm thinking of this question, he's writing it with I'm going to the eyewitnesses that I have access through, through Paul. And I'm gathering this account to do a thorough investigation of the statement of record based on the testimony I'm getting. So, and when I look at John and they're saying, these things did happen, we were eyewitnesses to it. If, you know, Matt, James, whoever else were able to say, we have identified other suspects, whether they were 50 AD, 70, 100 AD, and said, hey, Jonathan, by the way, we got this information, these are other people. I probably would have to give up Christianity on that point because they're doing what we're saying. Think about it in a court of law. If you brought in a document and this is eyewitness testimony that we've collected, I did my dispositions and this is the information that cleared this person. What happened if you found out there were never eyewitnesses, it was falsified. You know, you'd have to retry that case. That statement could no longer be held. You would have to give up. What you're doing there is a version of a fallacy. You're essentially asserting that until somebody comes up with some other proposed author that has better evidence for it, you're gonna go with the one that is hearsay, but a hearsay account wouldn't be admissible as evidence. Well, you know, we have cooperating statements all across the empire coming up with the same information. So, you know, when we look at all the evidence together, so we have a document in one Peter that places Mark and Peter at Rome. So we have that piece of information that placed them together at Rome. We do find these writings in the church of Rome, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We have a statement from Clement of Alexandria that says this was the case, Mark took this information and from Peter Sermons in Rome, and he came here to Alexandria and set up the church in Alexandria, both the Greek and Coptic, and we have the same information. Eusebius collects the same documents and takes Papias' account from what he had gathered, from who he said was the apostles, and it comes up the same information. So, then we have Iranians and Tertullian coming with the same information. I have a pretty solid case based on that cooperated statement. Where else would it point except to Mark being in Rome? Because it would fit the circumstances. How else would all that occur if it didn't occur that way? I will give Matt a last chance to respond here, and then it's probably about time where we roll into the Q and A. So, go ahead, Matt, thanks so much. Yeah, I don't know how that addresses the fallacious problem of saying, I should accept X and tell there's a better explanation, because the only question that's relevant is, is X good enough? And whether or not we're in a court of law, if there are reasons why courts allow certain things and disallow other things, you keep saying so and so said and so and so said, and then you get to Eusebius. Well, Eusebius is a full two centuries after this. Welcome to Jimmy Carter telling me what George Washington did. Because he heard it and he heard it and he heard it. Instead of going to, hey, so and so told me this and so it's, and now Jimmy Carter had come out and said, look, here's all the presidential diaries and here's what George Washington actually wrote. Now we got a good case for authorship. We haven't necessarily ruled out four-year problems, but if it's just like, oh, I heard this and so and so said this and so and so did this, all of a sudden we're believing that George Washington didn't cut down a cherry tree or that Jesus had fed 5,000 people from a basket of loaves and fishes. Or that these were actually written by eyewitnesses, which they never claim, but we need to get on to Q and A, so I guess we'll do that. Appreciate your questions, folks. We will jump right into it. And as mentioned, I will only be reading questions or comments that are at minimal respectful.  Thanks for your super chat. She says, why does Jesus constantly describe himself in John but rarely in Mark seems to reflect author perspective? I think that's for you, Jonathan. Well, I think it does go back to, I can't read the minds of the actual authors to give the perspective, but I think when we look at the individual accounts, those differences do kind of demonstrate an individual author's perspective from the information that he's gathering, which for me, when we see the four different accounts in the Gospels, it kind of lends itself to these are four different authors. While they're giving similar information, there are differences which show that there wasn't any collusion going on. John, obviously, who I believe wrote the Gospel of John, being an eyewitness, being part of that group is giving his perspective. From the information we have on how Mark was formed, Peter is giving these sermons in Rome. And so in any typical sermon, you're seeing a summary of the information as opposed to an eyewitness perspective giving an account of the details, if that makes any sense. You got it, thanks so much, appreciate that. And jumping into the next one, we have S.J. Thomason, appreciate your super chat. S.J.S., James, Paul, and Peter denied or persecuted Jesus. Then they saw the risen Christ, they preached for decades in all caps. Despite being jailed, beaten, et cetera, they were stone-beheaded and crucified. What motivations did they have? I think this is for Matt, though it's maybe not directly related to the topic. It's not remotely relevant to the subject of this debate. And I think Jonathan would agree as well. What motivations would somebody have to say something? I'm not denying the fact that authors of various things are sincerely convinced that they are telling the truth. That's secondary to whether or not they are in fact being accurate. Just like when people tell me they're abducted by aliens, I'm willing to believe that they are honestly conveying what they experienced and in whatever language and limitations they can, but that doesn't mean they were actually abducted by aliens. And if somebody tells me that so-and-so wrote this book and I have no evidence other than hearsay, generally speaking, I'm not gonna be bothered. Like this comes up with, well, how do you know that Socrates wrote what Socrates wrote or Plato wrote what Plato wrote? How do you know there wasn't some crossover? How do you know that one of them wasn't fictional? I don't know and I don't care because what matters there is not the author, it's the substance of what's in there. And it's why just the other day somebody asked me, hey, who are you debating on Friday? And for whatever reason, Jonathan's name wasn't coming to mind. I had a lot of stuff going on. And I said, I don't know and I don't care because the person I'm debating isn't relevant. What's relevant is the actual subject. And so if the subject is, did the disciples author the canonical gospels? And you're expecting some one person to come down as yes and one person to come down to no. What you've got is somebody coming down with yes and somebody coming down with I don't understand and cannot accept how you can say yes. It's just the evidence to meet this burden of proof hasn't been met. So I don't know how SJ's question, but I guess that's not unusual is particularly relevant to the issue today. Gotcha and thanks for preaching. Thanks Michael W. Robel for your super chat. This one is also I promise we'll just to keep it even. This is a tangentially related. It's not particularly directly related. We have Michael asking Jonathan, if God or Jesus was on earth for 30 years, why didn't he write his own gospel? Oh once again, unless I can read minds, I could understand why Jesus chose Matthew as being a tax collector, which meant for the Roman Empire, he would have had to collect, have records to keep records of tax revenue. And obviously shorthand had been the area for several hundred years. So I could see why he would use Matthew who would be described for the apostles as to why he didn't write his own gospel other than speculation or making some really interesting stories sound good. I really have no idea. Maybe Matt would agree with that too. Yeah, no, I think it's a legitimate good question about something other than the subject of this debate because it, and I kind of referenced it. I kind of opened the door to this by saying, if authorship were important, why wouldn't God make sure authorship was verifiable, and why wouldn't Jesus write something?  My position on this has been for years that if we're not all deserving of the Damascus Road experience, then we're talking about a God who's gonna play favorites. Sorry, we didn't hear the last half or so of that sentence. I think the internet connection dropped down a bit. Yeah, I just got a pop-up that said my internet connection is unstable, but I was just saying that if there was a God that didn't feel that we were all deserving of Damascus Road experience, then he's playing favorites and I don't really care to know him, but I don't think it's relevant to this debate. You got it, and thanks so much. Appreciate your super chats. Jesus is Lord and Dave D'Alefior who said super job James and Brian Stevens and James Rock. Thanks for that. I'll pay you guys back later for saying that. Cigafratos Rabia, thanks for your super chat. Who said, John, who is the author that added Mark 16, nine versus nine through 19 when it doesn't exist in the original manuscript? What are the implications if a spotted Jesus and Virgin Mary wasn't added plus having Mark before Matthew in order? So I think those are meant to be two different hypotheticals, namely if Mark did come before Matthew as well as the implications of, I'll let you answer the first one on Mark 16. The end of Mark 16. Yeah, obviously they're drawing off several theories there. First the implication, so if Mark was first and the last 12 verses of Mark wasn't included, then you don't have an actual eyewitness account in the statement of record placing the disciples of Jesus to seeing Christ after resurrection. All you have is someone that's saying he's not here anymore, which could be interpreted in the other way. So it would definitely challenge the resurrection account as actually happening because you have no statement of record for apostles, disciples actually seeing the risen account. Which would be horrible for our case that we're making. And then you had to add it in. So then it goes to reliability. So you had an account, then you add it in. It kind of goes to this evolutionary development of doctrine which may goes to Matt's position is that there may have been this theological or this what became popular. Hey, we have to promote this for the greater good and let's add this stuff in there. So the ramifications in terms of reliability gets kind of thrown out the window. You can't say that the documents are reliable. If you have this information, then you added it on. It looks like you're promoting your theological agenda and now you're throwing an account where you see the disciples. It seems like everything has been fudged and then you can start questioning how much other stuff was added. And then I can understand why Matt Dillahonte looks at this as stories and just further evolutionary development of what they're promoting. So it's huge to reliability, to the falsification of an actual eyewitness resurrection account. I would say you would have to put down your Bible and really consider if this is really truth anymore. Yeah, I couldn't, I don't know that I could possibly agree more. And the thing is, is that when you say, hey, the oldest manuscripts and the ancient witnesses don't reference verses nine through 20 from Mark 16, is it possible that this is a later interpolation that is in there specifically to cover the gaps as you point out? Because when the Gospel of Mark ends at verse eight, it's just, hey, the women left and they trembling and they said nothing to anyone. Now that already contradicts what's recorded in other Gospels. The Easter account is complete, we should have a completely separate debate on the multiple accounts of the Easter story and how there's no way to reasonably reconcile this. But what you get in verses nine through 20 is, hey, the women went or in verse eight, women went away and didn't say anything to anybody. And then all of a sudden, verse nine, it's like, oh, he appeared to Mary Magdalene and then they went and talked to people and Jesus appeared in different forms. And then, yeah, she went, Mary Magdalene went and told those who had been with him and then Jesus appeared to others. And then you get on to essentially the version of the Great Commission, go onto the world. Well, you'll be able to pick up snakes without dying or without being, you can drink deadly poisons, all these things that aren't gonna hurt you. And so we get snake handling churches. And I would hope that any reasonable person today would look at specifically verses 17 and 18 and say, that can't, I mean, that's not real. This is how guys have died repeatedly in snake handling churches in the United States because they think that this is their commission and they need to show you. So meanwhile, they are being cruel to snakes by not feeding them, letting them waste away. I've had snakes before. Snakes will live for a long time and yet these snake handling church preachers have to keep going out and getting new snakes all the time because they just don't feed them. So they don't have the energy to bite and they're not necessarily producing as much venom.  Why would any God or representative of God put something like that in there and to do it as an addendum? Everything about nine through 20 feels completely different from everything else at Mark and that is an issue of credibility. However, for the purposes of this debate, we could throw out verses nine through 20 and just say that everything up through verse eight was still potentially written by Mark on behalf of Peter. Gosh. I don't think this has been made for that but you could do it. But for nine through 20, I don't know how you can make that case. Thanks very much. And Brian Stevens, thanks for your super chat. We asked, why would a God of all of humanity have a particular chosen people? I think that's for you, Jonathan. Well, I am Calvinistic in my theology for my Anglican background. Once again, it doesn't really relate to the current topic. And just from my perspective or theological background, just like a king, a God can do what he wants, whether we wanna look at the morality or of that it's, a king can do what he wants. And I wanna go into a big theological discussion on the sovereignty of God and God's ability to choose who he wants. Looking at the overall greater purpose he has with creation in teaching his people and leading them through these times. But yeah, that's all I would say. Otherwise, I think we can go on for hours into this particular top, not related to the author, but definitely a good question on the sovereignty of God. You got it. I'll try to keep the questions more restrained, be more choosy.  Thanks for your question. She said, did Iranias really argue that there are four gospels that can't be read independently because there are, quote, four corners of the earth? Unquote. I guess, you know, Iranias is making an argument. Numerology was very big in the ancient world and he was using those legal arguments to try to explain why they're only four gospels. And I think he was trying to do as best as he could. The question is, why was there only four? That's all that was received. That was all that was handed on. And, you know, he's trying best in those legal means, but what he does demonstrate or what he's trying to convey in his arguments and against heresies is we have these churches. These are the four that have come down through the church history. And these are the names that are identified with them and we can trace that back to the apostles. And when we look at the independent churches throughout, this testimony is corroborated with churches that don't necessarily agree with us, but we're all coming up with the same testimony. But I know Matt was talking about the Iranias' numerology, so I don't know if you want to give your thoughts on that, Matt. I actually, I mean, you can view it as numerology. My view from when I was a Southern Baptist is that the Bible, that God was opposed to things like numerology, despite the fact that numbers are significant and God uses it throughout the Bible and stuff. I just find that response to this thing on Iranias. It would be one thing to say, you know, Iranias never said this, in which case, I have no evidence other than I've been told and it's written and I could go look at it and I haven't got authority that he actually said this. But you say that Iranias went with the four because that's all there was that was agreed upon by the churches, but that's not what he says at all. He doesn't say, and it would be very easy for a church father to say, hey, we've scoured the churches and there is agreement on these four and only these four, and that is the reason that we are, can be assured that God has preserved these four gospels from amongst the frauds, from amongst the heretics and spread it to the churches. He could have said something like that, but instead he talks about the four quarters of the earth, the four universal winds, the churches scattered around the world, the pillar of the ground, the church of the gospel and the spirit of life. He goes into all this kind of flowery sophistry and look at the significance of four. I'm surprised he didn't say, look, there were 12 disciples and if we take a look at the Trinity, we can divide them into three. That's three groups of four and that's why we need four gospels. I mean, you could do numerology stuff like that, although perhaps Arrhenius couldn't do that because the concept of the Trinity didn't exist at the time of Arrhenius, but we're not gonna go into, I guess, the Jonah and comma and other things that are problematic about the modern version of the Bible compared to early ones. It could definitely be another conversation which would make for definitely good discussion on. Gotcha, and Garrett Brown, thanks for your super chat who asked, can Matt talk about why eyewitness testimony is unreliable and would John require the same standards of evidence for God that he would for Zeus or Poseidon if they also have alleged eyewitnesses? Yeah, so I can give a whole lecture and have a whole other discussion on the reliability of eyewitness testimony, but I would just recommend that you go Google reliability of eyewitness testimony. This is something that's been studied in detail about the reliability of what people are claiming, including in short time frames. There's a limit to what a human being can retain and retain accurately, and what our brains do is best, this is probably the best way I can describe it, is we experience a bunch of stuff and then our brain puts it together in a way that makes sense to us, which is why I've lost bets with friends of mine on the name of a particular brand of mustard. I was so absolutely confident that this mustard brand was spelled this way instead of this way. We fear a lack of confidence, and so we lie to ourselves and boost a sense of confidence. And if you were, like just all you have to do to demonstrate this is go back and I've read it twice, what was Arrhenius referencing for why there were four gospels? How accurate can you get that to what I said and how accurate is that to what Arrhenius said? Apart from recommending you could do some research on the reliable eyewitness testimony, this is not remotely controversial. There's a reason why we expect testimonial accounts to be backed up with evidence before we make big decisions. There are some things where testimonial account is gonna be fine. If you tell me I just got a new puppy, I'm just gonna believe you because if in fact you didn't get a new puppy the only consequences of that are I believe someone who lied and I will then file that away and use that to judge your character later. Or you were somehow mistaken or confused or whatever. But at the end of the day, if you say, hey, I just got a new baby dragon and it's invisible. Okay, the nature of that claim is something that I'm gonna need more than your word on it because we know that people exaggerate, people lie, people engage in hyperbole, people have faulty memories, people don't reason accurately. And if you needed any proof of that, Jonathan and I are sitting here having read many of the same things and heard what each other has said and we still don't agree. And yet if we were to each write down what happened in this debate we would have a perspective I suspect that would not match up with each other and would not match up with what actually happened. And we've done tests on that. Gotcha. And then Jonathan, your question was, would you require the same standards of evidence for God that you would for Zeus or Poseidon if they also have alleged eyewitnesses? Or kind of think of it flipped. If you go with that. Yeah, and I think this goes back to T-Jumps and mine discussion on the resurrection is in Christianity with the resurrection, my assertion is we have falsifiable criteria such as, okay, was there a tomb, was there not? If there wasn't a tomb, something that the Roman Empire could have falsified. Were there other authors, these weren't the guys, it's somebody else, don't believe any of this BS that you're hearing, that's falsified. No one rose from the dead, the body was still there. Someone stole it. Now, when we look at other religions, like Zeus or Poseidon, or even if we look at Mormonism, there's no falsifiable criteria in the sense that Joseph Smith talked to the angel Moroni. I wasn't present there, there's nothing I can take to falsify or Muhammad's conversation in the cave with the angel, Gabrielle. There's no falsification or anything I can use to falsify that in Christianity, and particularly with the resurrection account, there's falsifiable criteria that either the Roman Empire, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, could have said this is all hogwash, this is actually what really happened. So my point is there's criteria to falsify in Christianity, whether it's to the document, to the resurrection account, they say this did not happen, it was checked on. And the other religious areas, you don't have that criteria to falsify. So that would be my point on there. Gotcha. I would add at some point in the future, we should have a discussion about falsification because I think at least listening, you somehow managed to claim that aspects of Christianity are both falsifiable and not falsifiable, and that they're falsifiable but haven't been falsified. I don't say that claims like the resurrection are in fact falsifiable, which is one of the reasons I can't accept them, so. No, and that would make for a good discussion on that basis. Gotcha. My internet connection was unstable for a minute. I thought James had locked up. Go ahead, James, sorry. No problemo, we've got, this is an interesting one. So Dean Meadows, thanks for your super chat. Ask Matt, do you think that Plutarch wrote the quote lives? If so, what historical criteria did you use to come to that conclusion? Yeah, this is something I kind of addressed when I was talking about Socrates and Plato. I have no idea whether or not Plutarch wrote something and it doesn't matter. And this is an incredibly important thing. In the same way, remember when I talked about, I'm not that concerned about who I'm debating, I'm concerned about what the subject is and what the evidence is and that stuff. Everything else puts me in a position where I'm going to be arguing towards the person and risking ad homonyms and misrepresentations instead of arguing about the subject. So it doesn't matter to me whether or not Plutarch wrote it, somebody wrote it and it's the content that matters within that thing. And so I assess the content. It's a curiosity that one of the only situations where it matters who the author is is in something like the gospels. Because let's imagine, I'm not a mythicist but I have friends who are, let's imagine that Jesus never existed and yet we have these stories and these sayings of Jesus. We could all read that and say, hey, take no thought for tomorrow, be like the lilies in the field. Is that good advice or bad advice or whatever and evaluate that. Turn the other cheek, be forgiving, sell all your belongings, give the money to the poor. These things attributed to Jesus we could all just say, you know what, I'm not sure that's good advice or yes, that's absolutely good advice. And the character and person of Jesus, whether exists or not has no impact on whether or not what he said was true and good and useful. It is only when we talk about Jesus being divine and the one true path to salvation that all of a sudden his existence, character and whether or not the events of his life are actually reported, that is the situation where it matters. So it doesn't matter what Plutarch wrote or not but it does matter whether or not Jesus lived, whether or not Jesus did the things that are reported because Plutarch isn't his character. I mean, he could have been a terrible human being or a fictional creation of a terrible human being and that has no bearing on whether or not what he said is true and accurate. Gotcha, thanks so much. Appreciate your super chat from Michael McCaffrey who says donation slash vote to get Pine Creek back on at modern day debate. Well, we can ask him. Thanks for your super chat from Dr. Osiris. Appreciate that.  Thanks for your super chat said everyone knows that a gospel source requires a sorcerer. Not sure if she's referring to the extra biblical gospels. It would have been easier to say a written work requires a writer. Gotcha. Jesus is lard. Thanks for your super chat and I said a command you to hit the like button. Appreciate your support. Uganda, let's see. It's a tough one. It's kind of not directly related. It's a little bit too peripheral.  Thanks for your super chat. She said, Matt, what impact does what we know about the qualities of human memory have on the traditions on the historical Jesus found in the synoptic gospels? Well, what we know about the reliability of human memory just means that if we are to assume that these are written by normal humans or about experiences by normal human beings that we should take them with a grain of salt and some dubiousness in order to investigate whether or not is this reasonable? Is it consistent with what else we know about the world? It would be, you know, it's like when you read the book of Daniel and there are people from the air quotes history channel who want to say that Daniel was writing about ancient aliens because that's their particular interpretation of it. Even if that's not what Jews or Christians happen to think about it, maybe there are some that are. Just knowing that what we're getting is at best, Jesus through a lens once removed. And for an issue that is, if it were true, it would be the single most important thing. You know, what must I do to be saved? Well, is there an afterlife? Is there something to be saved to and from? An issue of that significance, it is incredibly problematic to view it through that lens. It's like if somebody wanted you to make an investment and rather than showing you data about the performance of a particular stock, told you about how they were getting emails from somebody who kept giving them stock tips and every time they got a stock tip, they doubled their money in a week. Well, that's pretty convincing. And they could show you the data of this actually happening. They could show their bank account going up. And yet we still know that that is in fact a common scam. I'd recommend going to watch like Darren Brown's the system for sort of an explanation of that type of scam. But anytime we're hearing about someone through another person, it's the, you know, believe half of what you see and none of what you hear type of thing, perhaps not that extreme. Gotcha. And sigafredo sarabia. Thanks for your super chat who said to Jonathan, would it matter if these churches in Alexandria, Antioch, et cetera, along with Eusepius, father of the Christian church were really Arian and not today's Christian? Would it matter if they were Arians? Well, from a theological perspective, yes, now the fathers had different views. And I don't think I would ever say that any father in particular articulated in the same manner at a different church. They had different views. They had different theologies.  And I'm pretty sure a whole host of fathers that I can respect their works held beliefs that I believe are not consistent with the statement of record that I would agree with. So now, when I'm looking at Eusepius or Clement of Alexandria, and even though I wouldn't agree with the theological positions of Clement of Alexandria, I have to take the information that he's providing and determining we have other information in different areas that even though there are some minor differences between what Clement of Alexandria, Iranius, Papias is saying on some points, on some points, their main information is all correct. And so that's what I'm basing it on, not necessarily their theological positions, because all three of those fathers had different views. Let me, can I jump in with something kind of quasi related to that real quick? Sure. This, by the way, is not a slight from Jonathan at all. We actually talked about this before the debate, but throughout this, people can observe that Jonathan is referencing a ton of sources, church fathers, stuff like that, and that's fine. I generally don't do that. I mean, I referenced Iranius and Eusepius because they were brought up and because I knew they would be, but it's not like I'm saying this philosopher or this person agrees with me, even though we know that there are countless, well, all right, countless is probably inaccurate. There are many, many, many Christians and New Testament scholars and Christian scholars who agree with me that we don't have sufficient evidence to conclude that the disciples authored or were the direct contributor to the authorship of the Gospels. That's just unremarkable. I am gonna reference somebody and one book in particular because it's a favorite of mine that relates to this. And that's Bart Ehrman's book, Lost Christianities. Now, Bart and I don't agree on everything. I was fortunate enough to moderate a debate that he did. And I'm gonna say something that's kind of dangerous. Bart goes through this book to show all the different or a good chunk of the different varieties of groups that identified as Christian and how they had different beliefs about how many gods there were, whether or not Jesus was God, whether or not Jesus was man, whether or not there was a Trinity, all of these things. And some of them were very subtle issues of theology and some of them are huge, like are there 12 gods? I found that book as one of Bart's best and incredibly interesting. But unlike what some people would suspect, I'm not sitting here as an atheist going, ah ha ha, look, that place was, that was just a mess. There's no way to tell anything is truth. No, no, no, I could put my Southern Baptist hat back on or just my skeptic hat back on and say the fact that there were a hundred, let's say different versions of Christianity doesn't mean that we are limited in concluding that maybe this group of 10 or 15 are the best representations of what likely started it and that these other things are perhaps heretical diversions. So for the people who just wanna do that, oh, Matt's super skeptic, he's not gonna believe anything. No, I'm fine with the notion that Jesus existed and was an itinerant rabbi who said things and that other people tried to record what they'd heard about what he said and that somebody who's suggesting that Christianity must have, necessarily has to have 12 gods. Of course we can write that off as a heresy and not just because the Christianity with one God or a triune God won but because that's what's most consistent with all of the available evidence. However, that's separate from whether or not it's true which is the reason I'm an atheist. Gotcha, we've got to cruise through these last ones that we have. So P. Barnes, thanks for your super chat who said two speakers who know what they're talking about having an adult conversation, more of this please, James. Well, glad you enjoyed it P. Barnes, me as well. And Ronald Mendonca, thanks for your super chat. Who said, some of these wanna get you guys, get to know you guys personally. Matt, do you like diet, Dr. Pepper? No. Gotcha, thanks, Cibella, Shepard. Thanks for your super chat. I think this, I wasn't sure who this was for. They said, did you know that, things is kind of like a trivia on the book of Acts that it's the Acts of, it's actually called that the book of Acts is actually in its whole title called the Acts of Paul and is it Thecla? Yes, and I refer to that because Titoian records in his writings of that particular document, they were able to identify the presper in Asia Minor, or it could have been Ephesus, that produced that document. Now, Titoian's account displays that the presper had good intentions when he was writing it. So in that particular case, the person had good intentions, but the act itself was noticed by the congregation, by the bishop and he was deposed as a result of it, which goes to the point that they just weren't willing to accept anything. They had an understanding of what was real, what wasn't, whether it's because this is what's come down, whether it's right or not, this is what we're gonna go with, but they were aware of other stuff trying to be passed on. Yeah, and Luke Acts is, Luke and Acts are considered like two works by the same author. I don't know enough to say whether or not they are, I don't have a problem with it either way, but there was one question and this escaped me earlier and you can skip this if it's too late and too complicated. Matthew, the author of Matthew quotes word for word verbatim for some length, the author of Mark. If Matthew is a disciple and Mark is an associative one, why would Matthew have to copy anything from Mark? I mean, word for word in Greek, there are some areas that are just lifted straight from Mark, which is why people say that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a reference. You can say they didn't, but now you have to explain why they're word for word in the best manuscripts. And it just doesn't make sense to me to say that, oh, here's a disciple, here's an associated disciple, but the disciple is gonna lift stuff from the associated disciple. Yeah, I'm giving you a really quick response, Jonathan, and then we gotta keep moving for sure. Okay, no, because this is a good discussion point, but I'll make it quick. My point on the matter, I understand the two hypothesis theory and they're saying they're cribbing off each other using. My thing is the common denominator or thread that ties back Matthew and Mark's gospel is Peter, they both knew Peter. So they have a lot of the same sources. So when you look at the synoptics, Luke who knew Paul, they had access to Peter, obviously Mark had access to Peter, and if it was Matthew, he would have had access to Peter as well and been at the event. And this is why we see in the synoptics a lot of the same accounts. Okay, I'm gonna let James go on, because you and I both witnessed this and I wouldn't expect more than a handful of words to line up, but that's another debate. Gotcha, and next up, David Smith, thanks for your super chat said, when does the incessant court analogy break down? In a courtroom, real people present themselves and swear in the open on perjury and still they lie. Yeah, the thing with liars is, liars don't agree in the case of when we're passing on information. Now, if the information was colluded on, just like we're referencing before, if there was some collusion to say, we're gonna take parts of Matthew and put it in Mark or Mark from the same. If there was some conspiracy or where they got together, that's different. So in a courtroom, you're taking witness testimony or what they're getting and they're displaying, what they're trying to see with all those witnesses and I get where Matt says about memory, that's true. Everyone's looking through their own perspective and things do get distorted. You forget things after an event, but what we're trying to see in the witnesses in a courtroom is where do they agree? Are they agreeing on the main stuff? And if so, the minor details that are different isn't gonna override the main facts that they have. Now, with liars, they don't agree and my point to that is the Gnostics, they have similar claims and when you look at those groups against each other, they don't agree where all these apostolic churches that come up with basically the same testimony. So if I can't show collusion was the by-product of that similar testimony, I would naturally rule that the Gnostics were lying because they weren't agreed amongst themselves. And the same thing with the liars on a court case. Gotcha.  Thanks for your other super chat. She said, does the use of, quote, Legion in what is usually considered the earliest gospel point to a Romanized populace and thus the lateness of this gospel account, Legion as in Legionnaire? I have no answer. I have no idea on etymology of that particular term or which language it goes to or whether it's a popularization of Roman things at all. And I'm sorry, while I do enjoy your name every time he reads it. Yeah, I don't have any thoughts on that or nor do I think it's relevant. I'd probably have to agree with that on the whole point. That's a cool question. Yeah, I'm not expert on linguistics. Yeah, I wouldn't know what to say on that either. Gotcha. And no problem. We have another one or two asking wanting to get to know you guys personally. They appreciate you. William Perry, thanks for your super chat who asked Matt, one pocket or nine ball? One pocket all day long. Gotcha. Let's see, Garrett, thanks for yours. We got that one.  She says, there are Mormon witnesses who saw the golden plates. Yeah, so with the golden plates and this goes back to the idea of falsification. Now, we don't have those golden plates. There's been no evidence to produce that. With the Gospels that I think Matt would agree we do at least have physical attestation that we have records that have come down at least from that standpoint now. With the Mormons, we have no golden plates. We have ancient documents on the Gospels, not saying their first century or second century, but we can show some physical creation of actual documents. No. Golden plates we don't have. Yeah, I would have never expected that near the end of this Q and A, somebody would ask a question that seems so out of left field that is actually so accurate to what's going on. Yes, we don't have the golden plates just like we have no original copies of any of the Gospels. What we have are transcriptions and copies of copies which is exactly what we have for the Book of Mormon. So to object to the Book of Mormon on the grounds that we don't have the originals undermine your entire case with regard to the Gospels. Gotcha, thanks so much. Appreciate your super chat from Ed Gain O'Kanian. Thanks for your super chat. They said, just to hear James struggle with my name. Tasteless joke. All right, next up, Mike Guy really appreciates you guys, wants to ask a question for both. What is your favorite color? This is our last question for the night. Mine is blue. I've always, I probably have 25 shirts that are different shades of blue, probably one or two reds, couple of pink and salmon. But yeah, I would definitely say blue. I don't know. I'll go with purple because I'm wearing it. I don't know that I have a favorite color. I appreciate the fact that it's a light question. For most people it's a light question, but it's like when I do my Twitch streams and people come in, they're like, what's your favorite movie, Matt? I don't know. I couldn't even pick like, what's your favorite sci-fi movie? Maybe aliens? I don't know. I just don't think about things in terms of favorites like that. I like stuff. Gosh, yeah. We just had one fly-in stripper liquor. Thanks for your super chat. Said, good debate. Both presenters engaged well. Kudos. Well, I will, it's a great opportunity, by the way, folks. I agree. This is a great one. And you can hear more from both of these gentlemen. If you look in the description box, I've put their links in the description for you folks just so you can conveniently hear more. So thanks for that. Want to say thanks one last time to our speakers. We really appreciate Matt and Jonathan. Thank you very much for being here with us tonight. Yeah, thank you. I enjoyed it. Thank you, Jonathan. No, thank you, Matt. It's been a really good discussion. Absolutely. And thanks everybody for hanging out with us tonight, watching and asking your questions and just engaging. Really appreciate it. So we hope you have a great night. Keep sifting out.