The Case Against New Testament Simplicity (Part 2)

The New Testament can feel like a smooth, finished story until you start asking what happened behind the scenes. I use a movie analogy to make the point: you can love the film and still admit it took edits, choices, and a messy process to get to the final cut. That’s how studying New Testament history has felt for me, and it’s why I keep pushing back on the idea that the Gospels are simple.

We dig into oral tradition and why human memory matters, especially as the Jesus movement spreads beyond its original Jewish context into the wider Gentile world. Then we move into eyewitness claims and the questions historians naturally ask: which Gospels even claim eyewitness status, what counts as direct eyewitness material, and how many layers sit between the events and the written texts. I also walk through why Matthew and John raise unique issues, including scenes Matthew could not have personally witnessed and why John reads so differently from the Synoptics in theology, structure, and timeline.

From there, we zoom out into modern New Testament scholarship: the Gospels as internally anonymous writings, debates over traditional authorship, Markan priority and source criticism, and why figures like Papias and Irenaeus matter for understanding how the four-Gospel framework becomes more stabilized over time. If you care about gospel authorship, early church tradition, and how theology and history intersect, this one will give you a lot to wrestle with. Subscribe, share the episode, leave a review, and then drop a comment with your strongest pushback or biggest question.

Transcript

The Movie Set Analogy

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Imagine you're sitting in a movie theater watching the latest superhero movie. You're an hour into the film, the scenes look incredible, the actors are convincing, and the music is pulling you in. And slowly you're getting completely absorbed into that universe. But in that moment, your focus on the story has completely blinded you to the realities and complexities of how movies are actually made. You're not seeing the editing process, you're not seeing deleted scenes, rewrites, production disagreements, reshoots, script changes, studio influence, continuity problems, and all the moving parts underneath what now appears as one smooth finished story. Right there on your screen. And for most of my life, this is kind of how I approached the New Testament. I mainly focused on the final product sitting in front of me. But once I started studying the history behind it all, it felt less like simply watching the finished movie and more like suddenly walking behind the scenes and onto the set itself. Once you step behind the scenes, the complexity becomes impossible to ignore. Now, technically, this is part two of my case against the simplicity of the New Testament, but this also works as a standalone episode. So if you haven't watched part one yet, don't worry about it. You do not need to go back first in order to follow today's discussion. What's going on, and welcome back to another episode of the Agnostic Bible study. I'm your host, Joe Teal, and in the last episode, I argued that the New Testament is far more complicated than many people realize. We talked about things like the canon formation, translation issues, contradictions, interpretation, and how every layer of the New Testament seems to introduce another question underneath it. But I think we only scratch the surface. We have to do a part two, and that's what this is. Because once you start studying the historical development of the New Testament, the complexity just keeps growing. Questions about oral tradition, source criticism, anonymous authorship, early Christian disagreements, and how theology developed over time start stacking up over and over and over again on top of each other. And eventually you have to step back and ask yourself is this really as simple as I was raised to believe? Now, before we get started, I want to make something very clear. None of this automatically disproves Christianity. That's not what I'm trying to accomplish here. That's not what I'm saying. My point is simply that the historical process behind the New Testament appears far more human, layered, debated, and complicated than many people are ever told. So whether you believe or you don't believe, or you don't know what to believe, you are welcome here on another episode

Complexity Without Trying To Debunk

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of the Agnostic Bible study. Let's get into it. Before there were New Testament books, there were just stories. And I think people underestimate how important that point really is. Jesus did not sit down and write a gospel himself, at least that we know of, and Paul was not traveling around handing people completed New Testaments. For years, Christianity existed primarily as an oral movement. Stories were being preached, teachings were being repeated, memories were being shared, and traditions were spreading from community to community long before our gospels were finalized in written form. Now, to be fair, oral tradition absolutely can preserve information. I am not denying that. Human beings are capable of remembering important events and passing stories down. But oral tradition is also not the same as a video camera. It is still humans remembering, repeating, emphasizing, interpreting, and sometimes reshaping stories over time. And memory itself is incredibly complicated. Even today, with modern psychology, we know human memory is not perfect replay. People can sincerely remember events differently, combine details together, emphasize certain moments over others, forget things, reshape memories over time, or retell stories through the lens of later experiences and beliefs. That does not mean people are automatically lying. I don't want to say that. It just means human memory is not nearly as simple as most people assume. Now, whenever this topic comes up, people will often push back to me by saying, Well, Jewish culture had strong memorization practices and good oral tradition. And I understand that is important context, but there is a difference between memorizing a written text like the Torah, which is the first five books of the Bible, and stories spreading primarily through communities by word of mouth before eventually becoming written narratives decades later. The Torah already existed as a stable written foundation people could study, read publicly, and memorize from. The early Jesus movement is different because Jesus himself did not leave behind written teachings that we know of. Now, could some sayings or stories have been written down early? Yes, that is absolutely possible. In fact, many scholars think early written sources likely existed behind the Gospels. So the Gospels were relying on earlier written sources. We'll get into that later. But historically, we mainly have clues and theories about those sources rather than the sources themselves. So when people compare the oral transmission of Jesus' traditions directly to something like memorizing the Torah, I think that comparison can oversimplify

Oral Tradition And Human Memory

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what may have been a much more fluid process historically. Another thing people sometimes overlook is that the gospel themselves are written in Greek after Christianity had already begun spreading heavily into the Gentile world. This raises another question that people rarely talk about. What do we actually know about Gentile oral tradition practices compared to Jewish memorization traditions? And when I say Gentile, I just mean the other nations outside of the Jews. Because once the movement expands outside of its original Jewish context, stories are now spreading across different languages, cultures, communities, and regions throughout the Roman Empire. At that point, we are no longer just talking about a small circle of disciples in Jerusalem or Galilee remembering some teachings. We are talking about traditions moving through a rapidly growing movement made up of many different kinds of people across multiple decades before our written gospels appear. So historians naturally start asking questions. How stable were these traditions? Did different Christian communities preserve different versions of stories? Did theology shape how events were remembered? Did sayings get expanded, rearranged, or interpreted differently over time? And again, asking those questions does not automatically destroy Christianity, but it absolutely complicates the picture far beyond a simple version many people grow up hearing. Now, at this point, someone will usually respond by saying, okay, maybe these stories did spread orally for a while, but the gospels still ultimately come from eyewitnesses who were with Jesus. And that's where another layer of complexity enters the conversation. Because once we move from oral tradition into eyewitness arguments, historians immediately start asking even more questions. Which gospels are actually claiming to be eyewitness accounts? Are the gospels directly written by eyewitnesses, or are they based on traditions connected to eyewitnesses? How much of the material comes from earlier written or oral sources? How much editing happened over time? And how independent are the gospel accounts from each other really? We'll start our thoughts working in the traditional view that Christians have always had, and then we'll expand from that later. So traditionally, Christians believed the four gospels came from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew was traditionally understood to be the disciple and a tax collector who followed Jesus directly. John was traditionally understood to be the beloved disciple and part of Jesus' inner circle. If those traditional views are correct, which they are highly debated, but if they were correct, then Matthew and John could potentially qualify as direct eyewitness accounts. Now, Mark and Luke are a little different traditionally. Mark was not usually viewed as one of the twelve disciples himself. Instead, early church tradition connected Mark to Peter, with the idea being that Mark recorded Peter's memory and preaching about Jesus later. And our earliest source for that connection is Papius, who is himself a controversial figure historically. And Luke was also not traditionally viewed as an eyewitness disciple walking around with Jesus during his ministry. Instead, Luke presents himself more like an investigator, gathering traditions, stories, and testimony from earlier sources and eyewitnesses. And I think that distinction matters because there is a difference between being a direct eyewitness account, a later account based on eyewitness traditions, and a text built from multiple earlier sources and community traditions. Those are not automatically the same category historically, even though people often talk about them like they are. So even under the traditional view, Mark and Luke would still be affected by many of the same complexities surrounding oral tradition and transmission that we talked about earlier. If Mark is preserving Peter's preaching and memories, there is still a layer between Jesus himself and the final written text. And if Luke is gathering stories, traditions, and testimony from earlier sources, then historians still have to ask how those traditions were preserved, transmitted, interpreted, and organized before reaching Luke. So even before getting into modern scholarly debates, the traditional understanding alone already introduces multiple layers between the events themselves and those two gospel writers. And even if someone strongly connects Luke to Paul, as church tradition often does, Paul himself was not a direct eyewitness to Jesus' earthly life, ministry, miracles, teaching, or crucifixion in the way the disciples would have been. Paul's experience was a later resurrection experience after Jesus' death. So even tying Luke closely to Paul does not suddenly remove all the historical layers and transmission questions surrounding the gospel traditions themselves. Now, let's move specifically to Matthew because this is where the eyewitness conversation starts getting even more complicated. Let me ask you a question. Using the Bible itself, how much of Matthew's gospel would actually qualify as direct eyewitness material from Matthew personally? That is harder to know than many people realize. One thing I found incredibly interesting in my deep dive of Matthew is that he is not even

Eyewitness Claims Get Complicated

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introduced into his own gospel until chapter nine. If Matthew traditionally wrote this gospel, was he personally present for everything before chapter nine? If he shows up in chapter nine, how could he witness everything before chapter nine? Some people might respond by saying the gospel could simply be arranged out of chronological order. And that is possible. But at the same time, if Matthew really wrote the gospel himself, it also seems reasonable to think he would know when he personally entered the story. And I'll come back to that thought later. Then immediately in chapter 10, Matthew and the other disciples are sent out on a mission journey. And after that, Matthew himself is barely highlighted individually again until much later in the Passion narrative around chapter 26. Could Matthew be in those gaps where he's not mentioned? Sure, he could be. But using the Bible alone, you can't definitively prove to me that Matthew witnessed all this stuff. And then we move into an entire different category. This is the category where there's entire sections of the Gospel of Matthew that he couldn't have personally witnessed, regardless of when he entered the story. The birth narrative, he wasn't there for that. The private meetings between Herod and the wise men, he definitely wasn't there for that. Secret discussions among religious leaders, he couldn't have seen that. Jesus and Satan alone in the wilderness. If Matthew was there, then they weren't alone in the wilderness. The transfiguration, the Bible clearly says it was Peter, James, and John. Those were the ones that were present. Matthew must have been at the bottom of the mountain if he was even around at this point. So he did not see that. Then Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane while the disciples repeatedly fall asleep. How can we quote the prayer if he is asleep? That's going to make it tough. Jesus alone before Pilate, that word alone means Matthew is not there. The women discovering the empty tomb on resurrection morning, those were women. Matthew's not a woman. He was not there. And there are several more examples like these throughout the Gospel tradition. So again, how much of Matthew did Matthew actually witness directly? The conversation becomes much more layered than the simple Sunday school explanation that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses. We'll have to get more specific than that. But for now, let's move on to John, because John is especially interesting in this conversation. Out of all four Gospels, John is the one that most strongly feels connected to someone inside Jesus' inner circle. Peter, James, and John repeatedly appear closest to Jesus throughout the tradition, mainly in the synoptics. We'll talk about that in a minute. John is present at major moments like the Transfiguration, the raising of Jerry's daughter, and several scenes during the Passion narrative. So naturally, some people would argue that if any gospel is closely tied to direct eyewitness memory, John might be the strongest candidate. And honestly, I think that might be a fair thing to consider. But once again, the historical questions do not suddenly disappear. They actually start multiplying in a different direction. Because the Gospel of John feels dramatically different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, sometimes called the Synoptics, in multiple ways. The style is different, the theology feels more developed. Jesus speaks differently, the structure is different. Entire stories appear in John that are completely absent from the other gospels, while many famous parables and scenes from the synoptics never appear in John at all. In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus often teaches in short sayings and parables. In John, Jesus gives long theological speeches about himself. In the Synoptics, the kingdom of God is heavily emphasized. But in John, the focus shifts much more towards Jesus' identity itself. In the synoptics, Jesus can sometimes appear more secretive about who he is. In John, Jesus speaks far more openly and directly about his relationship with the Father. Even the apparent length of Jesus' ministry can feel different between John and the Synoptic Gospels. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the story can almost read like Jesus has one main ministry period centered around Galilee, followed by a journey to Jerusalem. So most of his ministry takes place in Galilee, then he makes this final trip to Jerusalem. But in John, Jesus travels back and forth to Jerusalem multiple times, and several different Passovers are mentioned, which can make the ministry appear significantly longer. There's a Passover only once a year. So if he went to three of them, that expands his ministry to somewhere around three years or so. John also places the cleansing of the temple much earlier in Jesus' ministry instead of near the very end, like the synoptic

What Matthew Could Not Witness

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gospels do. And also the time surrounding Jesus' death is a little bit different in John's Gospel. Are they simply different storytelling choices? Did John preserve different chronological traditions? Did one author arrange material more topically rather than chronologically? Or are we seeing theology shape the structure of the narrative itself? If John is the closest eyewitness source, why does it differ so dramatically from the earlier synoptic tradition? Did John preserve independent traditions? Did theology shape the presentation differently? Was the gospel written directly by John himself or by a later community connected to John? So while John may feel closer to an eyewitness source in some ways, it also introduces some of the biggest literary and historical questions in the entire New Testament. And all this is still assuming that John is the beloved disciple and that that is correct in the first place, which itself is highly debated historically. Now, up until this point, we've mostly been working in that traditional authorship framework. Let's move outside of it and let's ask some questions. Because when people start digging into modern New Testament scholarship, that entire framework starts to get contested. And it was way more contested than I ever dreamed of when I first got into all this. And this is where another major layer of complexity enters the discussion because the debates are no longer just about oral tradition, memory, and eyewitness testimony. Now the discussion expands into whether the traditional authorship claims themselves are historically reliable in the first place. So let's take a deeper look at that. One thing many people are surprised to learn is that the Gospels themselves are technically anonymous internally. What I mean by that is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John never directly step into the text and clearly identify themselves the way someone like Paul does in his letters. Paul regularly opens up his letters saying things like Paul, an apostle, or he identifies himself directly in the writing. The Gospels do not really work that way. Instead, the titles, according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, and according to John appear as part of a manuscript tradition connected to the text, and this likely was added later. Now, this does not automatically mean the traditional names are wrong, but it does mean that the authorship discussions become more historically complicated than most people ever imagine. Let's dive into some of that complexity right now. The debates around Matthew's authorship specifically were some of the first Bible debates that really pulled me into all this stuff deeply. I started asking a couple historical questions and realized this is very complicated and it isn't as cut and dry as I thought. For example, what about the Gospel of Matthew internally actually makes us think Matthew wrote it? Is it just that Matthew is named Matthew in this one and he's named Levi in Mark and Luke? That doesn't seem like a thing to base your whole case around. Or I've heard that there's some type of extra money language in Matthew, but the last time I was in a debate with somebody here on the show, I asked them to show me the verses, and then we just we never got to the verses. So I've still been unconvinced of that. Another thing is learning about how the actual tax collecting system works, and that Matthew more than likely was a bottom of the totem pole kind of guy if he was sitting at the booth collecting taxes. So a lot of these different examples you'll hear of why it needs to be Matthew internally, those really haven't clicked for me. And there's even more evidence. Let's look at it further. And then when we get to something called Mark and priority, which is the majority scholarly view that Mark was written first and then later used by both Matthew and Luke as a source, Joe Cain helped, but think of more questions. If Matthew was truly directly written by the disciple Matthew, why does it appear to use so much of Mark to tell a story that Matthew supposedly witnessed himself firsthand? Depending on how scholars calculate it, Matthew appears to contain around 90% of Mark's material in some form, and it even follows its structure, and it looks like Matthew is editing some of the rougher spots of Mark's work. And then there's Papius, who becomes incredibly important in these discussions because he is one of our earliest sources connecting Matthew and Mark to gospel traditions. But Papius himself is controversial historically. We do not even possess his writings directly anymore. We mainly know his statements because later church fathers like Eusebius quote him. His description of Matthew also became debated because Papius says Matthew compiled the sayings in the Hebrew dialect, which does not perfectly match the Greek narrative of Matthew that we have today. Hebrew sayings versus Greek narrative. It seems like they might be talking about different things. Who knows? Scholars debate exactly what Papius meant, whether he was referring to our Matthew at all, whether he meant Aramaic instead of Hebrew, and whether he was talking about a saying source or something else entirely. And this is the most shortest breakdown

Why John Sounds So Different

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of this I could give you because I'm in a hurry, but I could go on about this one for days. I imagine this will eventually become an entire episode itself because once you start digging into it, the rabbit hole gets very deep very quickly. Now, this next part I actually do have an entire dedicated to already. So if you want to go look at that, it's called Who Wrote Mark? It was like my second or third episode. But the more I studied the Gospels historically, the more I became convinced that Mark was likely written first. And because of that, Mark has honestly become one of the most interesting gospels to me personally. Now, traditionally, Mark is attributed to John Mark, who appears in Acts and a few other places scattered throughout the New Testament. But again, what is the internal evidence that this gospel was actually written by him? Virtually none. And the author never names himself as Mark and never clearly tells us he is writing Peter's memory. Man, wouldn't that have been nice if Mark would have just told us hey, I used to run around with Paul at one time, and I knew. Peter. I was an interpreter of Peter. And this is me writing down from memory what Peter used to teach. That would have made everything so simple. We wouldn't have to go chase all these sources and fragments of Papius and all the things Mark could have just told us, but he didn't. And so it remains internally anonymous. But if we follow the sources, once again we run directly back into Papius because he becomes our earliest major source connecting Mark to Peter. According to Papius, Mark wrote down Peter's recollection from memory and did not arrange the material in strict chronological order. So from memory, he wrote down what Peter told him, but it isn't in the right order. And that creates another interesting tension historically. If Mark's gospel was supposedly not arranged chronologically and was based on Peter's remembered preaching, why do Matthew and Luke appear to follow Mark's general structure and order so heavily? Especially if Matthew was supposedly an eyewitness himself. If Matthew walked around with Jesus, he should know the order of events. And another thing that stands out to me personally is that Mark is often the more simple and bare bones version of stories compared to Matthew and Luke. Even in moments involving Peter, Mark sometimes contains fewer details while Luke expands the narrative further. For example, when Jesus calls his first disciples, Luke is the one that gives us a much more fuller story involving the miraculous catch of fish, and Peter crying out in realization about who Jesus is, while Mark gives us a far shorter version. Why is Luke giving us more details about Peter's conversion than Mark, who is writing down Peter's story? Now, none of this automatically disproves Mark and authorship, but it does show us why these debates become far more complicated than I realized growing up. And then there's Luke, which introduces another set of interesting authorship questions. Just like the other gospels, Luke never directly names himself as the author inside the text. The traditional attribution connecting the gospel to Luke mostly comes through church tradition later on. Even when I was a youth pastor, I think that I assume the internal evidence tying the gospel to Luke was much stronger than it actually is. But once I started looking deeper, I realized much of the argument is indirect. One of the biggest arguments comes from the we passages in Acts, where the author suddenly switches into first person language during certain travel sections involving Paul. Since some of Paul's letters mention a companion named Luke, many Christians connected those dots and concluded Luke must have written both Luke and Acts. But even that becomes more complicated historically. The author of Luke never directly says, I am Luke. The we passages themselves

Anonymous Texts And Source Debates

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have multiple interpretations scholars debate. Some think they reflect eyewitness companion source, others think they may be a literary device, a travel diary source, or something else entirely. I've even heard people use editorial fatigue here. So the idea that Luke is looking at a source, and every time it says we, he's changing it to they. But after a while, he gets tired and messes up on a few lines and writes we in when he meant to say they. So not including himself, but just using his source wrong. Now, a lot of people wouldn't subscribe to that, but it's an interesting theory. And while I was throwing theories out, I figured I'd let that one sit there. And then there's the bigger question of how dependent Luke appears to be on earlier traditions and sources. At the very beginning of Luke, the author openly acknowledges that many accounts were already circulating before his gospel was written and says he investigated things carefully from earlier sources. If you don't believe me, go read Luke chapter one. Now that sounds less like someone simply writing direct personal memories and more like someone compiling and organizing traditions that already existed. Luke really could have helped us if he'd have said, I, Luke, traveling companion of Paul, this and that, that would have helped us tremendously. But again, none of this automatically disproves Luke and authorship. But I do think it shows why the traditional picture becomes much more debated and historically layered once you start digging into the details. And then there's John, which may be the most fascinating and complicated authorship debate of all. Earlier, we already talked about how different the Gospel of John feels compared to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The theology feels different, the style feels different, the timeline is different, and Jesus even speaks differently for long stretches of the Gospel, where the synoptics typically keep him short. But once you move specifically into the authorship discussion, another major question appears. Who exactly is this beloved disciple supposed to be? Traditionally, Christians connected the beloved disciple to John, the son of Zebedee, one of Jesus' inner circle disciples. But interestingly enough, the Gospel of John never directly comes out and says, I, John, son of Zebedee wrote this. Another great moment where they could have just said who they were and our lives would be a lot easier. But then we wouldn't have all this fun putting the pieces together. In fact, the Gospel of John never even explicitly identifies the beloved disciple as John at all. That connection mainly develops through church tradition later on. And because that, historians and scholars have debated the issue heavily. Some scholars still defend the traditional attribution strongly. Others think the beloved disciple may have been another follower of Jesus entirely. Others think the gospel may have gone through multiple stages of editing and development inside what scholars call a John community. And then there's an interesting detail people often overlook. In the Synoptic Gospels, John the son of Zebedee is mentioned by name constantly alongside Peter and James. But in the Gospel of John, the sons of Zebedee barely appear by name at all compared to what you see in the other traditions. Especially if one of the brothers, John, is the one that wrote the text. And again, none of this automatically disproves John's authorship, but it absolutely shows why the discussion becomes much more historically complicated than just saying John wrote John. And this is really the bigger point I keep running into over and over and over throughout New Testament studies. The deeper you go historically, the more layers appear. What initially sounds simple at the surface level often becomes much more debated once you really dig in, looking at things like oral tradition, source criticism, literary dependence, church tradition, authorship debates, and how these texts may have developed over time. Now it is important to mention that eventually these traditions surrounding the Gospels did begin stabilizing much more strongly inside the early church. And one of the biggest figures in the process was Irenaeus around 180 AD. Irenaeus strongly defended the idea that there was specifically four authoritative gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Not more, not less, because there were other gospels circulating at this time. He just didn't like what they said. And I think the timing here is incredibly important historically, because most scholars date the gospels somewhere in the first century, and there are people that date them later, different topic for a different day. Yet our first clear defense of all four gospels together as authoritative and tied to these names comes much later. And that leaves a significantly historical gap between the

Papias Irenaeus And A Late Framework

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writing of the Gospels and our late church traditions becoming more stabilized and formalized. And when you really slow down and think about that transmission process, it is not nearly as straightforward as at least I once imagined. Between the Gospels being written and figures like Irenaeus strongly defending the fourfold gospel tradition, we do not have a massive chain of detailed sources carefully explaining every step of how these authorship traditions developed. A huge amount of the discussion keeps circling back to Papius, who is already somewhat difficult historically because we only know his writings through later quotations and fragments, and we guess he's somewhere around 115 to 130 AD, which is still 50 to 60 years before Irenaeus. And what's interesting historically is that by the time you get to Irenaeus, you can already see Christianity becoming much more organized around ideas of orthodoxy and correct belief. Certain books and traditions are being elevated while others are being pushed aside and viewed as unreliable. Irenaeus even argues symbolically for why there must be exactly four gospels. He compares them to things like the four corners of the earth and the four winds. Now, I'm not a scientist, but I don't personally think there's four corners of the earth. Another topic for another day. I just keep saying that. Which is fascinating because it shows that the theological reason and symbolism were sometimes mixed into these conversations alongside the historical tradition itself. Now, again, that does not automatically mean Irenaeus was wrong. But just because he said these were four gospels and those were the names to them, that doesn't mean that is right either. I think it shows something important historically. The authorship traditions and the four gospel framework did not just appear fully formed immediately after Jesus' death. These ideas developed, stabilized, and became more formalized over time as Christianity itself evolved and became more organized institutionally. And this is one of the biggest things that changed how I viewed the New Testament historically. Even towards the later end of my Christian walk, I almost imagined that the New Testament dropped out of the sky complete and settled. But the deeper I studied, the more I realized I was looking at a historical process involving debates, traditions, disagreements, church leaders, competing ideas, and gradual development over multiple generations. And the crazy part is we have still only scratched the surface on the complexity surrounding the New Testament. We are just, we've barely done anything so far. So after everything we covered today, I hope you can at least see why I keep pushing back against the idea that the New Testament is simple in any way, shape, or form. Today we talked about oral tradition, the complexity of human memory, eyewitness claims, gospel dependence, mark and priority, the the infamous papiists, anonymous texts, disputed authorship, and a long historical process through which these traditions eventually became more stabilized inside the early church. And the deeper I study this stuff, the more layers it all becomes. Every topic seems to connect to another complicated topic underneath it. Or tradition connects to eyewitness discussions. Eyewitness discussions connect to authorship. Authorship connects to church tradition. Church tradition connects to canon and orthodoxy. It just keeps going and going and going. And so for someone to say the New Testament is simple in any way, shape, or form, they basically have to skip over every complicated topic we mentioned

Read Widely And Tell Me Thoughts

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in the previous episode and the one today. It's a lot of topics. And the wild part is we are not even close to being done. There will definitely be a part three and likely a part four, because we haven't even got deeply into the disputed Pauline letters, pseudopigraphy, textual variance, early Christian diversity, canon development, and several other major topics yet. And as always, don't just take my word for any of this. Go read scholars from different perspectives. Read the Christian scholars, read the skeptical scholars, read the church fathers, read the sources yourself. Keep reading the Bible, slow down and think critically through all of it. My goal is not to tell you what to think. My goal is to encourage you to wrestle with the material yourself. And if you enjoy these kinds of conversations and want to support the show, make sure to subscribe on YouTube, follow the podcast, leave a review, and share the episode around. And uh most importantly, man, drop down in those comments and tell me what you think, man. I really need the encouragement or the pushback or whatever you offer. Please drop down in the comments and let me know what you're thinking. Thanks again for hanging out with me on another episode of the Agnostic Bible study. I'm your host, Joe Teal, and my final message is always never stop learning. We'll see y'all again next time.