What’s the topic for the Deeper Waters Podcast this Saturday? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.
So you’re sitting there wondering what you’re going to do for your Saturday afternoon. How about the Deeper Waters podcast? Well that could depend on who the guest is this week. If you tune in, you’re going to hear an excellent guest. The incredibly scholarly Craig Blomberg will be our guest to talk about the historical reliability of the gospels.
That also happens to be the title of the book that he has under discussion. Some of you might know Blomberg from Lee Strobel’s book “The Case for Christ.” Others of you might know Blomberg as well from the fact that Geisler went after even him for defending Michael Licona. What you should know about Blomberg is that he used the methods of scholarship and wound up defending orthodox Christianity.
We’ll be talking about what it means to say the gospels are historically reliable. Do we mean that they are inerrant? If they are not, does that cost us anything? We’ll be talking about the question of miracles. Since the gospels involve miracles, does that make them automatically suspect? (Spoiler alert for some of you. You can expect more on this when I interview Craig Keener on August 10th.)
What are the approaches of scholarship that are being used? We will talk about all manner of criticism such as form criticism and redaction criticism. We will talk about the concept of the gospels being read as midrash. Should Christians avoid this kind of study and approach altogether? Should we go in wholesale? Or does the ideal method lie in the middle somewhere?
What about the authorship of the gospels? Can we know that Matthew was written by Matthew and that Luke was written by Luke? What about contrary theories to this? Is there a historical method whereby we can determine who it is that wrote a particular book?
Also, we will be talking about supposed contradictions in the gospels. If you go to any atheist website, you are quite likely to see a list of Bible contradictions. Blomberg has seen them as well and obviously, we cannot discuss all of them, but we will try to discuss some of them. Of course, if you have one that you really want to have discussed, then you are free to call in at 714-242-5180.
On the agenda as well is to discuss extrabiblical resources in looking at the biblical record. Is there anything in history that contradicts the Biblical account? Something interesting in light of this is that Blomberg does not really think archaeology can provide the help most people think it can with the gospels. We’ll also be talking about why he thinks that.
Much of this is just possibility as we never know where one question might take us, but these are all possible topics of consideration. I invite you to be listening tomorrow from 3-5 EST to hear this informative podcast and feel free to join in the discussion at the number mentioned above.
A link to it can be found here.
Hope you’re listening!
In Christ,
Nick Peters
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