Peter Williams lectures on the historical reliability of the gospels

Peter J. Williams

This is a lecture I found from British historian Dr. Peter J. Williams.

Here’s the main lecture: (54 minutes)

And here’s the Q&A: (9 minutes)

About Peter Williams:

Peter J. Williams is the Warden (CEO) of Tyndale House and a member of the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. He received his MA, MPhil and PhD, in the study of ancient languages related to the Bible from Cambridge University. After his PhD, he was on staff in the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University (1997–1998), and thereafter taught Hebrew and Old Testament there as Affiliated Lecturer in Hebrew and Aramaic and as Research Fellow in Old Testament at Tyndale House, Cambridge (1998–2003). From 2003 to 2007 he was on the faculty of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, where he became a Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Deputy Head of the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy. In July 2007 he became the youngest Warden in the history of Tyndale House. He also retains his position as an honorary Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University of Aberdeen.

Summary of the lecture:

• What if the stories about Jesus are legendary?
• were the gospels transmitted accurately?
• were the gospels written in the same place as where the events happened?
• do the gospel authors know the customs and locations where the events happened?
• do the gospels use the right names for the time and place where the events took place?
• do the gospels disambiguate people’s names depending on how common those names were?
• how do the New Testament gospels compare to the later gnostic gospels?
• how do the gospels refer to the main character? How non-Biblical sources refer to Jesus?
• how does Jesus refer to himself in the gospels? do the later Christians refer to him that way?
• how does Jesus teach? do later Christians teach the same way?
• why didn’t Jesus say anything about early conflicts in the church (the Gentiles, church services)?
• did the writers of the gospels know the places where the events took place?
• how many places are named in the gospels? how about in the later gnostic gospels?
• are the botanical details mentioned in the gospels accurate? how about the later gnostic gospels?

And here are the questions from the audience:

• how what about the discrepancies in the resurrection narratives that Bart Ehrman is obsessed with?
• what do you think of the new 2011 NIV translation (Peter is on the ESV translation committee)?
• how did untrained, ordinary men produce complex, sophisticated documents like the gospels?
• is oral tradition a strong enough bridge between the events and the writers who interviewed the eyewitnesses?
• what does the name John mean?
• why did the gospel writers wait so long before writing their gospels?
• do you think that Matthew and Luke used a hypothetical source which historians call “Q”?
• which gospel do critical historians trust the least and why?

I really enjoyed watching this lecture. He’s getting some of this material from Richard Bauckham’s awesome book “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”, so if you aren’t familiar with it, you can get an idea of what’s in it. Peter Williams is a lot of fun to listen to – an excellent speaker.

You can read an interview with Peter Williams here on Between Two Worlds.

And you can listen to the Peter Williams vs Bart Ehrman debate. That link contains a link to the audio of the debate as well as my snarky summary. It’s very snarky.

And Apologetics 315 also posted Peter Williams’ assessment of Bart Ehrman’s “Misquoting Jesus”.

Filed under: Videos, Author, Bart Ehrman, Biography, Common, Disambiguate, Disambiguation, Eyewitness, Eyewitnesses, Geography, Gnostic, Gnostic Gospel, Gospel, Gospels, Historical, History, Invention, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Lecture, Names, Peter, Peter Williams, Qualify, Richard Bauckham, Texas, Tyndale House, Writer

Obama administration retaliates against Texas by cutting funding for medical care

From Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services has withdrawn $30 million worth of funding from a Texas Medicaid program that provides health care services for low-income women.

It did so because Texas recently passed a law that said its Women’s Health Program could not disperse funds to abortion and contraception providers such as Planned Parenthood.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius personally traveled to Houston to make the announcement that the Obama administration would cut funding of the program and would no longer continue the waiver that Texas had previously been given to continue funding of the program temporarily.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has issued an opinion declaring that federal law allows states to exclude abortion providers and their affiliated organizations from Medicaid. In a letter to Obama, Texas Gov. Perry accused the administration of trying to violate states’ rights “by mandating which health providers the state of Texas must use.”

WHP provides health services to 130,000 low-income women. Of the more than 1,000 certified WHP providers across the state, the Texas law excludes fewer than 100 Planned Parenthood providers. Yet the Obama administration is willing to cut off all the other providers and all the women who receive health care through them in pursuit of its ideological agenda.

Texas considers Planned Parenthood, which performs 300,000 abortions a year, a poor allocation of public funds intended to promote women’s health, noting they cannot treat breast cancer and do not have a single mammogram machine in the entire state of Texas. But if you want an abortion or contraceptives, Planned Parenthood provides one-stop shopping for that.

Nor does Planned Parenthood need public funds. As we’ve noted, when the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation announced it was planning to stop giving money to Planned Parenthood, within hours some 6,000 donors pledged a total of $400,000. A family in Dallas offered $250,000, and New York’s Mayor Bloomberg promised to match that.

In other news, Sandra Fluke admitted that she had no idea that she could get birth control from Target for $9 a month.

Related posts on Planned Parenthood

• Does the United Way give money to abortion-provider Planned Parenthood?
  
• New House GOP bill de-funds Planned Parenthood
• Obama administration wants birth control to be covered by health insurance
• Obama administration threatens Indiana for defunding Planned Parenthood
• Are the Girl Scouts linked to the abortion provider Planned Parenthood?
• 91% of Planned Parenthood clinics help hide statutory rapists
• What is Planned Parenthood and why do Democrats support them?
• Does Planned Parenthood really use taxpayer money to provide mammograms?
• Feminists push liberal sexual agenda at United Nations
• Planned Parenthood stung three more times by Live Action
• Planned Parenthood caught helping pimp to run underage sex-trafficking ring
• Planned Parenthood releases annual report – 324,008 babies aborted
• Undercover video of Planned Parenthood selling abortion with misinformation
• Is Planned Parenthood overbilling state and local governments?
• Planned Parenthood conceals rape and breaks the law
• How much money does Planned Parenthood receive from taxpayers?
• How much profit does the non-profit Planned Parenthood make?
• Researchers link rise in some cancers to increased sexual activity
• Should birth control pills be dispensed over the counter?
• Another study confirms the link between abortion and breast cancer
• New study finds that abortion increases risk of breast cancer by 40%

Filed under: News, Barack Obama, Contraceptives, Health-care, Marxism, Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, Saul Alinsky, Socialism, Spending, Texas, Waste

Brian Auten interviews Peter J. Williams about New Testament reliability

I found this interview at Apologetics 315. Click through to get the MP3.

Details:

Today’s interview is with Peter J. Williams, Warden ofTyndale House, Cambridge. He talks about his work and background in biblical languages, the reliability of the Gospels, internal vs. external evidences, the genre of the Gospels, the authorship of the Gospels, the Gospels as eyewitness testimony (link to talk here), historical methods past vs. present, oral culture and literacy in the first century, the dating of the Gospels (years vs. generations), approaching apparent contradictions, correcting substandard approaches to defending the Gospels, looking at morally difficult subjects in the Old Testament, tips for answering moral objections, advice on doing apologetics, and more.

But I have even more Peter J. Williams stuff!

This is a lecture I found from Dr. Peter J. Williams. He’s giving the lecture in Texas! Isn’t that a hoot?

Here’s the main lecture: (54 minutes)

And here’s the Q&A: (9 minutes)

About Peter Williams:

Peter J. Williams is the Warden (CEO) of Tyndale House and a member of the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. He received his MA, MPhil and PhD, in the study of ancient languages related to the Bible from Cambridge University. After his PhD, he was on staff in the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University (1997–1998), and thereafter taught Hebrew and Old Testament there as Affiliated Lecturer in Hebrew and Aramaic and as Research Fellow in Old Testament at Tyndale House, Cambridge (1998–2003). From 2003 to 2007 he was on the faculty of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, where he became a Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Deputy Head of the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy. In July 2007 he became the youngest Warden in the history of Tyndale House. He also retains his position as an honorary Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University of Aberdeen.

Summary of the lecture:

• What if the stories about Jesus are legendary?
• were the gospels transmitted accurately?
• were the gospels written in the same place as where the events happened?
• do the gospel authors know the customs and locations where the events happened?
• do the gospels use the right names for the time and place where the events took place?
• do the gospels disambiguate people’s names depending on how common those names were?
• how do the New Testament gospels compare to the later gnostic gospels?
• how do the gospels refer to the main character? How non-Biblical sources refer to Jesus?
• how does Jesus refer to himself in the gospels? do the later Christians refer to him that way?
• how does Jesus teach? do later Christians teach the same way?
• why didn’t Jesus say anything about early conflicts in the church (the Gentiles, church services)?
• did the writers of the gospels know the places where the events took place?
• how many places are named in the gospels? how about in the later gnostic gospels?
• are the botanical details mentioned in the gospels accurate? how about the later gnostic gospels?

And here are the questions from the audience:

• how what about the discrepancies in the resurrection narratives that Bart Ehrman is obsessed with?
• what do you think of the new 2011 NIV translation (Peter is on the ESV translation committee)?
• how did untrained, ordinary men produce complex, sophisticated documents like the gospels?
• is oral tradition a strong enough bridge between the events and the writers who interviewed the eyewitnesses?
• what does the name John mean?
• why did the gospel writers wait so long before writing their gospels?
• do you think that Matthew and Luke used a hypothetical source which historians call “Q”?
• which gospel do critical historians trust the least and why?

I really enjoyed watching this lecture. He’s getting some of this material from Richard Bauckham’s awesome book “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”, so if you aren’t familiar with it, you can get an idea of what’s in it. Peter Williams is a lot of fun to listen to – an excellent speaker. And this material was NEW TO ME. I like the way that this lecture is filled with little UK expressions like “mind the gap” and “Yah?”. He doesn’t say “if you like” as much as Justin Brierley, though. Just once I would like to have a discussion with Justin and have him say that, then I would say “no I don’t like that”. I think that would be funny, and I would love to see the expression on his face when I said that.

You can read an interview with Peter Williams here on Between Two Worlds.

And you can listen to the Peter Williams vs Bart Ehrman debate on Apologetics 315.

Filed under: News, Author, Bart Ehrman, Botany, Common, Disambiguate, Disambiguation, Eyewitness, Eyewitnesses, Geography, Gnostic, Gnostic Gospel, Gospel, Gospels, Historical, History, Invention, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Lecture, Names, Peter, Peter Williams, Qualify, Richard Bauckham, Texas, Tyndale House, Writer

Peer-reviewed paper in medical journal challenges Darwinian evolution

Casey Luskin explains over at Evolution News.

Summary: (links removed)

A new article by Dr. Joseph Kuhn of the Department of Surgery at Baylor University Medical Center, appearing in the peer-reviewed journal Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, poses a number of challenges to both chemical and biological evolution. Titled “Dissecting Darwinism,” the paper begins by recounting some of the arguments raised during the Texas State Board of Education debate that challenged chemical and biological evolution. Those challenges include:

1. Limitations of the chemical origin of life data to explain the origin of DNA
2. Limitations of mutation and natural selection theories to address the irreducible complexity of the cell
3. Limitations of transitional species data to account for the multitude of changes involved in the transition.

(Joseph A. Kuhn, “Dissecting Darwinism,” Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Vol. 25(1): 41-47 (2012).)

It’s a good little introduction to where the action is on the origins debate but regular readers will have read it all before.

But there was one thing I found interesting.

The naturalistic response to this paper:  (links removed)

The journal also published a rebuttal to Dr. Kuhn by Charles Stewart Roberts, a cardiovascular surgeon in Virginia. Dr. Roberts’s rebuttal simply asserted, as if it were a truth that required no scientific backing, that all biological features could be produced by evolution:

The notion of “irreducible complexity” in a cell, as an argument against evolution, is beyond my present understanding. Knowing that life has existed on planet earth for billions of years, however, I suspect that there has been time enough for evolution, no matter how complex, with reducibility.

I was having a debate with an atheist on Facebook and this guy did nothing but duck and dodge by citations of peer-reviewed evidence, like the paper from December 2011 on the oxygen in the early Earth’s atmosphere, which destroys naturalistic origin of life scenarios. My favorite of his speculations was when he responded to the Big Bang cosmology by saying “one can easily envision a scenario in which the universe has existed eternally”. Or something like that. Atheists – always easily envisioning things that are falsified by the available experimental evidence.

Casey comments on Roberts’ “rebuttal”: (links removed)

We’ve addressed this sort of unsophisticated and poorly articulated argument in defense of defending Darwinian evolution many times. You can’t just vaguely appeal to vast and unending amounts of time (and other probabilistic resources) and assume that Darwinian evolution can produce anything “no matter how complex.” Rather, you have to demonstrate that sufficient probabilistic resources exist to produce the feature.

Rather than making assumptions, proponents of intelligent design ask what the Darwinian mechanism can, or cannot, do. For example, a 2010 peer-reviewed research paper by pro-ID scientist Doug Axe modeled a population of evolving bacteria, and found that there are severe limits on the ability of Darwinian evolution to produce multi-mutation features. (A multi-mutation feature is one that requires multiple mutations to be present before there is any advantage given to the organism.)

Axe’s research makes assumptions very generously favoring Darwinian evolution. He assumed the existence of a huge population of asexually reproducing bacteria that could replicate quickly — perhaps nearly 3 times per day — over the course of billions of years. But he found that complex adaptations requiring more than six neutral mutations would exhaust the probabilistic resources available over the entire history of the earth.

[...]Axe’s work suggests that we cannot assume, as Roberts does, that sufficient probabilistic resources exist to produce all the features we see in life, “no matter how complex.” Indeed, follow-up research by Axe and Ann Gauger suggests that many features might require more mutations before conferring an advantage than could arise in the history of the earth. Their 2011 study attempted to convert one protein into another, closely related protein — the kind of transformation that evolutionists claim happened easily in the history of life. Through mutational analysis, they found that a minimum of seven independent mutations — and probably many more — would be necessary to convert the protein and its function into that of its allegedly close relative.

Evolutionary theory certainly can explain some things. It works up to a point. But there is only so much time available, so much material to react, and so many reactions per second. Hand-waving is not going to prove the neo-Darwinian hypothesis. It’s going to take published experimental results. Like the results of Doug Axe and Ann Gauger.

Oh by the way, there’s another peer-reviewed article confirming the inability of naturalistic mechanisms to create first life discussed on Evolution News. (David L. Abel, “Is Life Unique?,” Life, Vol. 2:106-134 (2012)). I can’t blog on all of them!

Filed under: Polemics, Ann Gauger, Cambrian Explosion, Darwinism, Doug Axe, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Irreducible COmplexity, Journal, Limits, Mutation, Natural Selection, Origin of Life, Peer-Reviewed, Research, Science, Selection, Teach the Controversy, Texas

Court of Appeals upholds Texas sonogram law

From Life News.

Excerpt:

A federal appeals court has upheld a pro-life law in Texas allowing women a chance to see an ultrasound of their unborn child prior to an abortion.

During the recent 82nd Texas Legislative Session, the Sonogram Bill (House Bill 15) was passed and signed into law by Governor Rick Perry.  This historic law protects a pregnant woman’s right to view her unborn child and hear the heartbeat of that child before making a decision about an abortion. On August 30, federal district court Judge Sam Sparks enjoined crucial parts of this law – further jeopardizing the health of women undergoing abortions—just two days before the law was to go into effect.

The injunction was sought by the New York based Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion advocacy group that files lawsuit against pro-life legislation.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is pro-life, quickly filed an appeal on the same day that the lower court released the injunction with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

Last Tuesday, a federal three-judge panel heard arguments to determine whether to lift the injunction. The panel was critical of the grounds for the injunction and Jonathan Mitchell, Solicitor General, argued for the law before the panel.  Mitchell explained that the level of scrutiny and the arguments used to rule the law as unconstitutional — and thus block the law from going into effect — were misapplied and needed to be overturned.

Chief Judge Edith Jones, of the three-judge panel, asked pro-abortion attorneys how medical sonogram imaging, and a factual description of that image could be viewed as radical or against the health of women.

Today, the court ruled the state can enforce the law and said Judge Sparks was wrong to rule that abortion practitioners would likely win their case in court.

[...]The legislation allows women to see the ultrasound 24 hours before the abortion and abortion centers typically do ultrasounds to estimate the age of the baby before the abortion but they don’t normally allow women a chance to see or explain to them in detail the development of their unborn child. When used in pregnancy centers offering abortion alternatives, approximately 80 percent of women change their mind about having an abortion.

There are so many incremental laws and initiatives that a pro-lifer like Rick Perry can implement. What I find disturbing is when people accept a candidate like Mitt Romney, who has a pro-abortion record, as being equal to candidates who have a pro-life record.

Filed under: News, Abortion, Court, Incremental, Law, Pro-Life, Sonogram, Texas, Unborn Child