Jason Engwer admits professional bible skeptics have integrity

I found this posted by Jason Engwer at Triablogue here:  

Sunday, May 16, 2021

The Moral Value Of Intellectual And Apologetic Work

"On the one hand, writing the way [the apostle Paul] usually writes - developing precise arguments with cogency and clarity - is not, in my view, morally neutral. It is a sign of honesty. To give reasons for what you believe and to strive for clarity that reveals what you truly think are marks of integrity." (John Piper, Why I Love The Apostle Paul [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2019], 94)

“… the objector is right. Paul has driven himself into a position in which he has to deny that God’s freedom of action is limited by moral considerations. ‘Has the potter no right over the clay?’ It is a well-worn illustration. But the trouble is that a man is not a pot; he will ask, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ and he will not be bludgeoned into silence. It is the weakest point in the whole epistle.”

(C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, London (1932), p. 159)

"cogent"?  "clear"?  Then why do so many Christian scholars admit that Paul's use of the OT is a subject of never-ending debate?  Just how prevalent is the "problem of Paul"?

If Paul argued in "clear" fashion, why didn't anybody notice what he really meant about grace until Dodd, Sanders and others invented the "New Perspective on Paul"?

Do today's neo-evangelicals counsel unbelievers that becoming a genuinely born-again Trinitarian bible-studying praying Jesus-fanatic Christian apologist might not do all that needs doing in order to gain proper understanding of Paul?  

From Gary v. Smith, "Paul's use of Psalm 68:18 in Ephesians 4:8", JETS 18-3-pp181-190

Jason Engwer either doesn't know about, or doesn't care about, authenticating evidence: The Enfield poltergeist farce, again

 I cannot believe what a dipshit Jason Engwer is.   I've written about his Enflield Poltergeist crap before.  See here and here.

He is expecting his readers to draw confident conclusions about the paranormal based on audio recordings of the "Enfield Poltergeist" that somebody else uploaded to YouTube.  See here.

Gee, Jason, have you never heard of authentication, and what is implied when you cannot or will not authenticate the evidence you supposedly want skeptics to deal with?

Or maybe you think authentication was invented only by skeptics to make sure they could get rid of most of the evidence for the spiritual world?

An examination of the people who uploaded that audio also doesn't inspire confidence:

DescriptionWe are The Paranormal Detectives - a duo of paranormal investigators that visit haunted locations in an attempt to catch evidence of the paranormal on camera. Everything you see on this channel is real. No evidence is tampered with. Nothing is faked. Be sure to subscribe to us and follow our journey of the paranormal world.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheParanormalDetectives/about

In other words, Engwer wants his Christian readers to think that these promises of authenticity are dependable, when in fact the "paranormal detectives" won't claim to have been the person who made the recording.  

That would be like me telling you that the moon rocks in my possession are not fakes.  Given that i wasn't the one who originally obtained them, how the fuck could I possibly expect you to believe that claim of authenticity was reliable?

Engwer is willing to talk all day and night about what he knows from the tapes, but he doesn't upload them, nor provide any authenticity declaration.  See here.

Engwer created a post entitled "The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes Made More Accessible",  but, as usual, he doesn't direct us to downloads of those tapes. instead, he boasts "I've only listened to a small minority of the audio so far. I intend to write posts about the contents of the tapes as warranted."  See here.

Engwers most comprehensive resource page for this paranormal fakery appears to be "The Enfield Poltergeist And Skepticism", but, as usual, he doesn't provide links to downloads of the audio, but instead boasts "After the digitizing of Guy Playfair's tapes was completed, I wrote a post about it."  LOL!  See here.

Let's just say that if Engwer were being prosecuted for murder in court, and the chain of custody for the incriminating recordings had all of the flaws the "Enfield tapes" do, Engwer would be screaming his head off that charges need to be dropped for lack of authentication.  We skeptics are not the least bit unreasonable to demand, before we turn over our entire lives to an invisible man, that the evidence in favor of the spirit world meets the highest tests of authenticity. Jason, did you forget that spiritual evil exists everywhere, and according to you, especially in the case of people who are considering taking the spirit world more seriously?

And so you think that believing some shit found on the internet should be "good enough" to pretend that the reviewer has been placed under an intellectual obligation to either confess the reality of the spirit world, or confess their bias against supernaturalism renders them unable to objectively evaluate the evidence?

So unless Engwer thinks the authentication tests required in a Court of law are unreasonably high, he cannot balk at skeptics who demand that checkable Affidavits of Authentication demonstrating a chain of custody and authentication accompany these alleged recordings from the 1970's, before there is any chance of this evidence foisting the least bit of moral or intellectual obligation upon a skeptic to 'explain' it.

Yes, that would make things impossible for Engwer, because the two girls who played this joke on paranormal investigators have never done what would otherwise be normal in court, and testified under oath to the authenticity of those tapes.  At most they visited the haunted house 40 years later, and they have appeared on talk programs, but they have never done anything remotely near as serious as testifying under oath.

So the truth is, you don't have the first fucking clue how much of such alleged audio is authentic and how much isn't.  Maybe Jason has a better idea, but that is hardly relevant to the skeptic, who isn't getting anything more from Engwer except endless trifles about how skeptics aren't dealing with certain details and have misinterpreted the evidence.

Release the properly authenticated Enflield recordings, Jason, or use up some brain cells trying to reconcile the obvious contradiction between your strong belief that this poltergeist was real, and your own refusal to release the relevant recordings.

NOW what are you going to do, Jason?  Maybe direct us to equally unauthenticated videos and audios "from the internet" ?

Since Jason cannot be accused of being retarded, it is certainly reasonable to infer that Jason's refusal to release the tapes is not due to oversight, but intention.  Well gee, if the tapes prove so much, why are you unwilling to release them?  Did you have a deal with SPR to keep the tapes private so other people could make money charging access fees?  What exactly?

Did you have a vision of God who told you to avoid writing down what the clouds said releasing the tapes?

LOL

Jason once said "The case and the tapes deserve further study."  See here.

Correction:  the case and the PROPERLY AUTHENTICATED tapes deserve further study.  Which apparently means they don't become deserving of further study until Jason decides that the unbeliever's peril in refusing to believe in the spiritual is so great as to "deserve" giving them Jason's best possible evidence...as opposed to his ceaselessly trifling about this shit as if he thinks it was the 28th book of the NT.

Jason's post at the Paranormal Detective YouTube channel from about January 2021 is:

Jason Engwer 

2 months ago 

Thanks for posting these clips. I've listened to all of the tapes, in their digitized form, and have posted a lot of articles on the contents of the tapes, if anybody is interested. Search for a post titled "The Enfield Poltergeist And Skepticism" at Triablogue. The tapes have a triple-digit number of hours of material, including a lot that hasn't been discussed publicly much or at all. The evidence for the case is much better than people typically suggest.

Then why aren't you releasing the full and properly authenticated audio?  Maybe you are afraid of bowling over the skeptics with so much evidence for the spiritual world that skeptics will start committing suicide?  YEAH RIGHT.  Triablogue exists for no other reason than to stomp down skeptical arguments.  So we are reasonable to believe that if you seriously believed the Enfield tapes proved your conclusions, you'd have uploaded them by now.  You've had since July 2018 to do this, but you haven't.  You forfeit your right to balk if skeptics become suspicious that you know your evidence is nowhere near as compelling as you pretend.

So now that we know Jason has all the tapes digitized, we have to wonder why he thinks it would be better for the world if they were only given mere tidbits of unauthenticated bits of the tapes here and there, downloadable without the slightest assurance of authenticity, interspersed with his endlessly trifling comments about how skeptics didn't account for this and that.  FUCK YOU.  

Jason Engwer fails to defend the veracity of Paul's experience on the road to Damascus

Herein I reply to Triablogue's Jason Engwer on the subject of Jesus' resurrection.  Jason's post was from here.

First, it doesn't matter if Jesus really was the true messiah, I have excellent arguments against the "eternal conscious torment" version of hell (such as that the NT contradicts the OT on the point) and therefore, no apologist can pontificate that I'm irrationally ignoring a danger-alarm when I reject Christianity.  As an atheist I already accept extinction of consciousness as my fate, and since the bible teaches that fate for unbelievers, I'm not ignoring danger signals by ignoring the bible.  I ask myself "what if the bible is true!?" about as often as Engwer asks himself "what if the Koran is true!?"

The Christians feel comfortable that there comes a time when you can draw an ultimate conclusion without worrying about the gainsayers.  So they cannot balk at skeptics who likewise draw an ultimate conclusion without worrying to stay up with the latest in Christian apologetics.

Jason's basic problem is common to all apologists:  Whether he will allow a naturalistic inference from the story depends on whether it coheres with the story. In Jason's fantasy-land of bible inerrancy, all inferences that might challenge bible inerrancy are obviously stupid and fallacious.  If Jason were a prosecutor faced with a criminal defendant whose alibi of being home asleep at the time of the murder could not be positively falsified, he would drop charges.  After all, the guy said he was home asleep at the time of the murder, and nobody is able to positively falsify that statement.  You have no rational choice but to accept that testimony.  And yet we know perfectly well that you can reasonably find such a man guilty even if you cannot positively falsify his alibi.

Jason EngwerMarch 23 ·
It's often claimed that Jesus' resurrection appearance to Paul isn't described as a physical appearance in Acts or elsewhere.

That's because the details of the story forbid classifying Paul as an "eyewitness", for if he truly saw the person of Jesus, the details would not fail to support the point.

But it is described as physical, in Acts and in Paul's letters.

Space aliens are also "described as physical". Doesn't mean the testimony foists the least bit of intellectual compulsion on anybody else. And Christianity evolves like Judaism, so I don't really care if the Paul of the epistles testifies to a physical experience of the risen Christ, all he is doing is embellishing his original experience to make it sound more concrete than it really was.

Acts tells us that Paul saw Jesus, not just a light (9:27, 22:14).

Your trouble is the the alleged eyewitness, Paul, never says he saw this person.  Furthermore, Acts 9:27 indicates Paul's seeing Jesus was merely Barnabas' inference, a person who did not have personal knowledge of this Damascus road experience:

 27 But Barnabas took hold of him and brought him to the apostles and described to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that He had talked to him, and how at Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus. (Acts 9:27 NAU)

Furthermore given the details in the story, it is reasonable to suppose Paul leaped from "all evidence indicates it was Jesus" over to "I saw Jesus".  Your problem is that Luke would hardly tell the story the way he did if Paul had "seen" Jesus.

Luke's story details will not permit Barnabas' inference.  In fact, if the light was "brighter than the noon-day sun" (Acts 26:13) and if it blinded Paul (Acts 22:11) we have the perfect right to assume Paul would have done what anybody does when hit with a bright light, and close his eyes.  And since the light blinded him, we can also assume that he would have kept his eyes closed.   In your arguments you frequently refer to what we can "naturally assume", and Paul's keeping his eyes closed until the light disappeared is a perfectly natural assumption.

Acts 9:8 only says his eyes were open when he got up from the ground, it neither expresses nor implies he kept his eyes open the whole time or most of the time.

If you were being tried for murder and the prosecution's only witness said they saw you pull the trigger, but at no time did they provide any detail that plainly alleged they "saw" you pull the trigger, you'd ask the judge the drop the case for lack of evidence. You would not trifle that because the prosecutor is the only one drawing the inference that the witness 'saw', that's good enough.

That Paul never opened his eyes during the encounter is also strongly implied by Acts 26:14.  If you visited a friend and saw them physically, you would never later characterize their talking to you as "I heard a voice..."  So Paul's phrase is reasonable on the assumption that either his eyes were closed, or that he went blind before he heard the voice.  Either way, you aren't going to demonstrate that the theory of Paul never "seeing" Jesus during this encounter, is "unreasonable". 

What do you recommend skeptics do when apologists cannot show some skeptical theory to be unreasonable?

Paul says the same in his letters (1 Corinthians 9:1).

He also admits in the next verse that other Christians did not view him as an apostle (v. 2) which only makes sense if they rejected his story about seeing Jesus on the road to Damascus.  Now we have Christians contemporary to Paul who thought his story was bullshit.  but I'm sure that in your happy bubble world of inerrancy, the only testimony that matters is testimony in favor of your own doctrines.

Paul might have said he saw the risen Christ (v. 1), but he's also a self-confessed liar (v. 20-21).  There is no way Paul could have viewed himself free from the law, then pretend to be under the Law when in the company of Jews, and do all this without giving a false impression of his beliefs.  The Jews knew of a rumor that he set aside the Law of Moses in his Gentile preaching (Acts 21:18-24), so we can safely assume that if Paul ever fellowshipped with Jews, they would not be satisfied with external apperances, or his merely going along with their rituals...they would have asked him whether he believes obedience to the law puts one in right standing with God. 

If he truthfully answered "no", they would thrust him out of the Synagogue as an apostate.  So the only way Paul's "be a Jew to the Jew" strategy could possibly work, is if he falsely confessed to believing in the efficacy of the Law the exact same way that his non-Christian Jewish friends understood it. 

How would you like it if your local Satanist became a "Christian to the Christians" whenever he visited your church?  If you found out he denied the faith, wouldn't you subject him to some seriously clarifying questions before allowing him back in your church?  Or would you just shine him on as he joins the others in singing "Old Rugged Cross"?  If he honestly said he only pretends to be a Christian when among Christians, would you allow him back into your church?  DUH. Once again, the only way Paul could believe his "be a Jew to the Jews" strategy could work, is if he lied to them an affirmed he agreed with them about the salvific efficacy of the Law.

Resurrection in Paul's letters and early Christianity in general involves the raising of the physical body that died, so a physical appearance of Jesus would make more sense than a non-physical one in that context.

or maybe like everything else in Judaism and Christianity, Paul's understanding of his Damascus road experience changed during that time he spent in Arabia (Galatians 1:17).  Gee, eyewitnesses never alter their testimony due to the passing of time, do they?

Similarly, the context of the remainder of Luke and Acts and earlier resurrection appearances in general is a context in which all of the earlier appearances were physical ones.

Sorry, the details in the 3 versions of the story of Paul's experience on the road to Damascus will not permit characterizing it as having the same physicality as other alleged appearances. 

So, it makes more sense for the appearance to Paul to be physical than it does for the appearance to be non-physical.

The fact that you have to argue the point proves Luke's data is sufficiently ambiguous as to render the skeptical position reasonable.

But given the fact that the bible doesn't assign to unbelievers a fate any worse than the consciousness-extinction that I already accept as an atheist, I'm not seeing why I should CARE whether Jesus rose from the dead.  I only bother refuting apologists because I feel sorry for those fundamentalists who experience anguish from their cognitive dissonance (i.e., everything the bible says is true, but actual real life disproves many biblical statements).  Some people just have less tolerance for the "god's ways are mysterious" excuse, Mr. Engwer.  You aren't going to change that by ceaselessly trifling about everything under the sun.

But you also forget that Paul was a stupid mystic who couldn't even tell when some of his instances of flying up into heaven were spiritual or physical (2nd Corinthians 12:1-4).  Incidentally, Paul characterizes that dementia with the Greek word for vision, "optasia"...the same word he uses in Acts 26:19 to characterize his experience of Christ on the road to Damascus.

The objective, physical nature of how Paul and his companions heard Jesus' voice, with different people having heard him to different degrees, makes more sense if the voice came from Jesus' body than if Jesus wasn't physically present.

Then apparently you aren't familiar with the absurd mysticism of Acts.  In a "vision" Paul is able to hear the voice of another earth-bound human being who was, at that exact moment, 200 miles away across the ocean. Acts 16:9.

And passages like Acts 22:15 group the hearing and seeing involved together, suggesting that both the hearing and the seeing of Jesus were of a physical nature.

If that's how the prosecutor had to fix the testimony of the only witness, to say they experienced you shooting somebody else, you'd be asking for charges to be dropped for lack of evidence.  Once again, Paul says he "heard a voice..." which is not the way you describe that talk to another person, if the source of the voice had been a physical person you SAW.  The story details are stilted because what actually happened was not clearly a physical experience.  Of course, I'm reasonable to accuse Luke of fabricating most of the account, such as the detail about the traveling companions partially experiencing this thing.

22:14 refers to the voice coming from the "mouth" of Jesus.

That's Ananias, v. 12, and he didn't have personal knowledge of the road experience.  DISMISSED.  It must suck to be you...the only way you can get "physical" out of the eyewitness's testimony is to smoosh it together with the inferences draw by those who came along and talked to Paul at a later time.

That terminology normally refers to a portion of the human body.

Terminology that says "I heard a voice behind me..." also normally refers to a portion of the human body, but it is still employed the author of Revelation to describe an experience limited to his mind (Revelation 1:10).

Jesus is a human

That terminology normally refers to a person who lacks the ability to float up into heaven solely by non-physical means. Discover, then, the purely Ad Hoc nature of Christian apologetics.  If a prosecutor had to qualify normal terms in a criminal case as often as Christianity requires qualification of normal terms, he would probably be disciplined by the Bar for bringing charges without sufficient probable cause.  And he'd probably be referred for mental health services.

who was speaking in the context of a resurrection appearance,

There is no reason to characterize Acts 9 as a "resurrection" appearance, except of course for your indefatigable need to make everything in the bible harmonize.  This appearance occurred after Jesus "ascended" in Acts 1.  And don't even get me started on how a god of truth would never act in a way that helps a person confirm the truth of their scientifically inaccurate viewpiont that heaven is physically "up there".

which involves a raised physical body, so the reference to a mouth in 22:14 is most naturally taken as a reference to Jesus' being bodily present during the appearance to Paul.

Except that Paul was the sort of person who sometimes couldn't tell whether an event happened only to his spirit, or also to his body (2nd Corinthians 12:1-4).  Any witness in court who admitted this kind of gullibility could never persuade a reasonable jury, especially if their testimony about an interaction with another person had so conspicuously lacked plain indicators of where the other person was, the way Paul's bullshit story of conversion lacks these.

There's no reason to think that something like an anthropomorphism is involved in 22:14.

There's also no reason to believe the story.  Contrary to popular belief, there is no rule of common sense or historiography that says the objective person will accept testimony as true until it can be positively falsified.  Josh McDowell was lying when telling the world about Aristotle's Dictum.  When a stranger on the bus tells you his real pet snake sometimes talks to him in English, trying to get him to commit a sin, you do not assemble a team of investigators to check out the snake, the man, his friends, his family, his possible credibility supports or problems, and then only reach a verdict after careful deliberation.  You call him a crazy cocksucker, and you'd be "reasonable" to do so even if by some freak space-warp his pet snake really did talk to him.

The passage is most naturally taken to refer to Jesus' bodily presence.

A point you wouldn't have to argue if the original eyewitness had made that clear.  Do you also 'argue' that Jesus was a man?

Furthermore, Paul groups the appearance to him with the appearances to others (1 Corinthians 15:5-8),

Yeah, those other appearances that the canonical gospels strangely omit, like the appearances to Peter, then James, then to the 500 at once.  Paul could just as easily be implying he thinks the other apostles' experiences of Christ were similar to his own.  You resist that conclusion by noting the obvious physical nature of the gospel resurrection appearances, but the earliest of these, Mark, said nothing about Jesus being seen by anyone, an argument from silence that is very certain, since if Mark felt anybody saw the risen Christ, he surely would have mentioned it.  James Patrick Holding insists Mark chose to leave the resurrection appearances out of the written version but this is fucking ludicrous.  Shall we think Mark thought the parable of the sower (Mark 3) deserved to be included in the writing, but not the details of the event that is allegedly infinitely more important?

And don't even get me started on how the expectation of the women going to the tomb that Jesus would still be dead on the third day, makes the skeptic reasonable to say they didn't find any of the miracles Jesus did before the crucifixion to be the least bit compelling.

And don't even get me started on how, in light of Luke 24:23, ANY part of the canonical gospel story of Jesus' resurrection might have been a "vision".

and early Christian tradition, reflected in a large number and variety of sources, portrays the appearances to the other resurrection witnesses as bodily appearances.

What are you gonna say next?  The Jews were monotheists, hoping the reader won't read every other page of the NT that shows them being polytheists? 

Sorry, those who denied Jesus' fleshly reality existed in the days of the apostles (2nd John 7), and he says there are "many" such Christians.  Such a movement could hardly have gotten started sufficiently to blossom into "many" or become important enough for John to warn his church against, if denying Jesus' fleshly reality was an obvious stupidity.

Did any heretics deny the fleshly reality of Nero?

Like Paul's writings, the book of Acts portrays Paul as a resurrection witness in the same category as the others (13:31-32, 22:15), and those other witnesses are said to have seen bodily appearances of Jesus.

There is no reason to equate the appearances to the disciples, with the appearance to Paul.

Answering Jason Engwer's questions on why skeptics distrust Acts

Jason Engwer of Triablogue posted to Facebook a few questions intended to rationally justify his acceptance of the reports in Acts about apostle Paul's experience of Christ on the road to Damascus.

See here

I respond to each question respectively, showing that skeptics can answer those questions in a way that renders their continued distrust of Acts and Luke reasonable.

Jason EngwerMarch 29 ·

Some of the reasons we have for accepting what Acts tells us about Jesus' resurrection appearance to Paul:
- There's no competing account.

Most modern day "miracles" have no competing account, yet despite their allegedly involving the Christian god, you do not automatically trust them.  Or is that granting you too much?

- Luke's general reliability.

No, the only reason he made sure to get the names of cities and people correct was to make his lies about miracles seem more believable.  All professional liars realize the obvious truth that if you want to make a lie seem convincing, you have to surround it with nuggets of historical truth.  And there is no rule of historiography that requires a person to believe a report or testimony until it can be proven false.  Josh McDowell lied about Aristotle's dictum.

Engwer will carp that anti-supernaturalism is fallacious, but not even he or anybody at Triablogue would believe biblical miracle claims if they were made by people today.  Suppose your single female pregnant neighbor says no man got her pregnant, it was only god, just like with Mary in the gospels.  You know god-damn well you'd be immediately suspicious, would you NOT robotically remain neutral so you could gather the evidence and weigh hypotheses.  Go fuck yourself, you trifling self-deceived liar.

- Why fabricate an account in which Paul's companions don't convert?

It makes Paul look more special and unique.  And his companions more than likely didn't convert, so saying they did carried a risk of being falsified.  And the fact that the companions are utterly unknown and disappear forever from history reasonably justifies the conclusion that if they ever existed, they actually didn't convert...which means they likely did not believe Paul was telling the truth that the experience was Jesus.

- Why fabricate an account in which Paul's companions don't see the risen Christ and don't hear all that was said?

See above.  Why would Mel Tari fabricate tales of Christians walking on water, fire falling from heaven..."

- Why not make the physicality of the appearance more obvious, as with earlier resurrection appearances, like the earlier ones in Luke and Acts?

Because Paul was an absurd mystic who liked the idea of quasi-dimensional nonsense that left him stymied as to what exactly happened and how, such as his experience of flying up in heaven, but being unable years later to tell whether it happened physically or spiritually:

 1 Boasting is necessary, though it is not profitable; but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.
 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago-- whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows-- such a man was caught up to the third heaven.
 3 And I know how such a man-- whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows--
 4 was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak. (2 Cor. 12:1-4 NAU)

And of course, you know that Paul boasted of manifesting the nonsensical gift of tongues more than the Corinthian church, 1st Corinthians 14:18.  So Paul thought talking to himself in a language his mind could not understand constituted his talking to 'god'. 14:14.  He also thought that the time it took for all Christians to float up in the air and be with Jesus would be no longer than the time it takes to blink.  15:52.

- Why make the events so complicated (as discussed above)?

Its hard to juggle the desire to look special, along with the desire to tell a convincing story about a quasi-dimensional event.  Maybe you should interview a few lying eyewitnesses, who could have lied in court in a less complex way than they did?

Finally, Engwer and all Christian apologists routinely overlook the fact that the bible itself denies that the doing of a miracle automatically means the wonder-worker's theology is approved of by God, it also says God might give a false prophet the ability to do a miracle, merely to test the people:

 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,
 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.   (Deut. 13:1-3 NAU)

So even if skeptics granted that Luke was telling the truth about Paul's experience of Christ on the road to Damascus, the fact of the miracle does not mean "Christians 1, Skeptics 0".

By what criteria can a person tell when the theology of a miracle-worker is divinely approved, and when the theology of a miracle-worker is merely a test from God?  Engwer cannot answer this in any objective fashion (what's he gonna say?  Jesus and Paul were nice people?), and therefore, skeptics would remain reasonable to be completely apathetic toward Jesus and Paul even if the skeptics acknowledged that they did genuinely supernatural miracles.

And if Engwer came up with any such criteria, that would be stupid since, what?  Are we supposed to apply that test to the wonder-workers in various Christian denominations to figure out which one is right?  How could we have time to conduct our lives if we were investigating miracle claims like that?

Or will Engwer cite Matthew 19:29 and insist the only rational thing to do is to give up custody of our kids so that we can have more time to obsess about Jesus?  LOL

TRIABLOGUE HAS DONE NOTHING IN 15 YEARS TO REMOTELY JUSTIFY CALLING SKEPTICS FOOLS.  IF YOU THINK THEY HAVE, I'LL GLADLY DISCUSS IT WITH YOU IN ANY INTERNET FORUM OF YOUR CHOOSING. RESPOND HERE OR AT barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

Triablogue: Dividing up Christianity is just as easy as we suggested

This is my reply to a Triablogue article by Jason Engwer entitled:

Dividing Up Early Christianity Is More Difficult Than Often Suggested

It's common for people commenting on Easter issues, as well as issues in other contexts, to put one strand of early Christianity against another. They'll claim that a particular belief is found in one gospel, but not another. The Pauline letters have one view of a subject, but a contrary view is found in the gospels.

They are correct.  Apostle Paul taught that righteousness doesn't come from the Law.  Galatians 2:21.  But Jesus not only taught that it does (the context for Matthew 5:17-20 is not "imputed righteousness" but v. 21 ff, which make actual personal righteousness a requirement for salvation), but that anything he taught the original apostles is also required of all future Gentiles, see Matthew 28:20, the part of the Great Commission most Christians miss.  If that is true, then because Jesus ordered the apostles to obey the Pharisee's commands (Matthew 23:3), Matthew also thought the risen Christ required the same of Gentiles. 

And that's how you prove Matthew was one of the Judaizers that Paul cursed in Galatians 1:8. 

And so on. In the context of Easter, we'll be told that Paul had no concept of the empty tomb

Making me wonder what you do with skeptics like me, whose arguments against the empty tomb are far more powerful than that.  1st Corinthians 15 is too convoluted to bother with, and any idiot who believed what you think Paul believed, could have expressed himself more clearly on the point.  Had Paul any concern for the historical Jesus, which he didn't, he could have appealed to the resurrection of Lazarus, and that would have made things as clear as Jesus wanted.  Adding apostle Paul to your Christianity is like getting married to a mentally retarded criminal.  You have to be sick in the head to do it.

or that some portions of early Christianity believed in a form of resurrection that didn't involve the transformation of the body that died, for example.

Ever read 2nd John 1:7?  How could the 1st century gnostic Christians possibly believe in a bodily resurrected Christ, when they asserted that his pre-resurrection body was illusory?   And there you go, a first century group of Christians who saw nothing particularly compelling with the "bodily resurrection" hypothesis.  Hell, even Paul's churches included people who denied resurrection outright (1st Cor. 15:12).

One of the points that ought to be made in these contexts is that the alleged differing strands of early Christianity often express agreement with one another. On the resurrection, Paul refers to how he and the rest of the apostles were in agreement (1 Corinthians 15:11).

FAIL.  That is only Paul alleging that the other apostles experienced things similar to himself.  A quick analysis will reveal serious problems justifying skepticism toward Paul's testimony here:

 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
 5 and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
 6 After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep;
 7 then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles;
 8 and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also. (1 Cor. 15:3-8 NAU)

Paul's list was intended to convey the notion of chronological progression, therefore the appearance to Cephas was first.  But assuming the gospel of Mark really is the written form of Peter's preaching as some church fathers alleged, sure is strange that Peter (assuming he is the same as Cephas) didn't mention his own experience of the risen Christ (didn't the apostles value eyewitness testimony as much as Triablogue does?  If the apostles didn't find it necessary to write 6,000 articles addressing every possible trifle against theiir faith, Triablogue will have to admit there is a serious probability that it's sin of word-wrangling truly does signify a lack of sanctification.  A true Christian cares more about walking in the light, and less about "my arguments are still powerful whether I live in sin or not"). 

It's more strange if Peter did give his testimony and Mark somehow didn't think that part sufficiently important to justify mentioning despite the fact that Peter was the source, and the resurrection of Jesus the capstone of the gospel.  Your conjured up possible scenarios (Maybe mark forgot, maybe this, maybe that) will never be powerful enough to render my skepticism at this point unreasonable. Even stranger, even assuming Mark's long ending is canonical, there is no appearance to Peter there either.  We are fully justified to say the gospels don't mention any appearance to Peter before an appearance to the 12, because the gospel authors did not know of any such appearances, not because they were knowingly suppressing relevant testimony.  They already had a hard case to prove, they would likely regard ALL resurrection testimony, which they viewed as reliable, to be indispensable.  So skepticism toward Paul's resurrection summary is justified.  Contrary to popular belief, skepticism doesn't need to be founded on absolutes anymore than Christian faith does.

The appearance to 500 brothers at one time is recorded nowhere else in the NT, and worse, there can be no intellectual constraint on the skeptic to admit that testimony, since you don't know whether Paul says such a thing based on his own personal knowledge, or if he is conveying hearsay, or if he simply made it up in the typical fashion of Semitic exaggeration, which Flannagan and Copan tell us was the case with the "kill'em all" passages in the OT.

There is no appearance to 'James' in any of the gospels, except of course the Gospel to the Hebrews...wanna go there?  I didn't think so.  Like the atheist who has already decided that miracles are impossible, YOU have already decided that the Gospel to the Hebrews is not worthy of being taken seriously, since you aren't stupid enough to open epistemological doors you'll never close again.  Welcome to the club of smug presuppositionalism.  Maybe God wants you to do something else in life beside spend his money resurrecting demon inspired events for posterity, you fuckin fool.

Paul's using the same word for "appear" (Greek: horao) for all the listed appearances including to himself was dishonest, since the most explicit NT stories about Jesus appearing to Paul, neither express nor imply that he was an "eyewitness" in the sense that the gospels portray the Christ-appearances to the other apostles.  Go ahead, read Acts 9, Acts 22 and Acts 26.  Let me know when you find anything saying Paul saw anything more than a "light from heaven".  I also answered Steve Hays' trifles about the historicity of Paul's Damascus road experience, here.  Paul was NOT an "eyewitness" of the risen Christ.  And it wouldn't matter if he was, the apostolic test for apostleship is not "did you see the risen Christ?" but "were you present among Jesus' followers from the beginning of his earthly ministry"? (Acts 1:21).  You'll excuse me if I reject Paul's criteria of apostleship in favor of Peter's.  Feel free to join J. Vernon McGee in accusing Peter and the church in Acts 1 of defying the will of God, but don't say so publicly, you're liable to get steamrolled with details in Acts 1 you've shut your eyes to.

On the other hand, a theory that Paul wasn't being dishonest in 1st Cor. 15 would require that the manner in which Paul experienced Jesus on the road to Damascus is the way Paul thought the apostles experienced Jesus, which is bad news for you, given the nonsensical "Jesus-was-there-but-didn't-allow-anybody-to-see-him-except-Paul" absurdity, the likes of which would get any case based on similar nonsense tossed out of court, the the Plaintiff sued for filing a frivolous claim.  The reasonableness of the skeptical alternatives is not going to disappear merely because you can trifle about this or that.

To cite another example, see here regarding the likely reference to Luke's gospel as scripture in 1 Timothy 5:18.

Don't forget to tell them that some inerrantist Christian scholars deny the connection:

  It is not likely that Paul was quoting the Gospel of Luke, a document whose date of writing is uncertain. Paul may have been referring to a collection of Jesus’ sayings, some of which appear in Luke’s Gospel.
Lea, T. D., & Griffin, H. P. (2001, c1992). Vol. 34: 1, 2 Timothy, Titus (electronic ed.). The New American Commentary (Page 156). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

But I'm sure that Jason Engwer will still "expect" spiritually dead skeptics to successfully navigate the disputes that conservative inerrantist Christian scholars have with each other.  To think anything else is to give them excuse to deny God, and Romans 1:20 must be upheld to the death, amen?

Paul's letters are referred to as scripture in 2 Peter 3:15-16.

You say nothing here that might intellectually obligate a non-Christian to agree.

An example cited less often, but which has a lot of significance, is the early patristic attestation of how highly John viewed the Synoptic gospels.

Matthew made Jesus into a Judaizer (23:3, 28:20), yet John's gospel nowhere expresses or implies that Gentiles must obey the Pharisees.  Perhaps somebody can have high regard for an author, without agreeing with everything that author said?  Just like Jason Engwer has high regard for Steve Hays, while thinking Hays' Calvinism is an absurd misinterpretation of scripture (or did you become a Calvinist since 2015?)

See here concerning what Papias tells us about John's view of the gospel of Mark.

And just forget about  Papias' credibility problems.  You are here to live through your blog, not "convince" anybody of anything.  Also forget about the fact that you cannot demonstrate that any modern person is under the least bit of intellectual or moral obligation to give two shits about ancient hearsay.  So when we refuse to consider it, we aren't breaking any rules of intellectual or moral integrity. 

It sucks to be you because you are doing more to promote the gospel than even your own god!  Don't tell me God works through you, or I will ask why you don't profess to write inerrantly.  Where does the bible say God's inspiration would affect people of the future to a lesser degree than it did the biblical authors?

(And for more about Papias and his relationship with the apostle John, see here.) Clement of Alexandria cited some elders who commented on John's view of the Synoptics. See here for more about that passage.

Wow, I never knew Triablogue put so much stock in ancient hearsay at third-hand.  Jesus' resurrection is as obvious as the existence of trees.  I faint from fear of your god.  Can I borrow some dust and ashes?  Or are you a dispensationalist?

Notice, too, that much of what I'm saying here holds up even if the traditional authorship attributions of the New Testament documents are rejected. I explain some of the reasons why in my article on 1 Timothy 5:18 linked above, and those principles apply to other documents as well, not just 1 Timothy.

How much would Christianity suffer if it could be proven that the modern person is not under the least bit of intellectual compulsion to give two fucks what the 4 gospels say?  Sounds like a reasonable argument for rejecting traditional gospel authorship, which I can easily make and have made numerous times before, disposes of 4 of those resurrection witnesses, in a circumstance where you don't have very many witnesses anyway, and therefore the loss of 4 witnesses could not possibly be trivilaized, unless you are a Pentecostal Calvinist like Steve Hays, who thinks his personal experience of Christ counts for beans in such a debate.

Similarly, even if you think the elder Papias referred to was somebody other than the apostle John, the fact would remain that Papias was highly influenced by the Johannine documents (as I argue in my material linked above), and he held a high view of the Synoptics.

He also held a high view of talking grapes.  Let's just say I don't exactly lose sleep at night wondering whether Papias should still be believed or not despite his credibility problems.   I've rejected him and you haven't given me the slightest reason to worry I might have been wrong.  The difference between you and I is that I'm always open to dialogue and debate; YOU are just a chickenshit cocksucker who carefully avoids explaining why he won't put up or shut up.

For example, I asked you for all the evidence you had on the Enfield Poltergiest that you think God wants you to endless blog about, perhaphs thinking in doing so you are mirroring the apostles.  I'm still waiting.  Perhaps you have a new theory?  Maybe atheists who want to evaluate the same evidence you do, are not "worthy" to be given access?

 You can tell from my debates here that when I'm involved in formal debate, I use nicer language, so don't hide behind the pretext of "foul language".  I'll talk nicer if that's what you demand, you posterboy for masculinity, you.  And if you demand I talk nicer, I'd love to hear you comment on whether James Patrick Holding's use of foul insulting language and slurs for the last 20 years can intellectually justify a person to be suspicious that his claim to salvation is complete bullshit.

Any fool can post endless blog entries about Christian theology, but direct debate is where you find out whether their blog posts are substantive, or just organized noise.

Furthermore, saying that the elder Papias refers to wasn't the apostle John doesn't change the fact that he was some sort of prominent early church leader who didn't write the gospel of Mark and seems to have operated largely outside of the circles that gospel's author is usually associated with, yet he held a high view of that gospel.

An anonymous person held a high view of an anonymous gospel.  Don't make me put my beer down, turn off the stereo and start trembling in fear before your empty sky.

Rejecting something like Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy or the identification of Papias' elder as the apostle John would weaken my argument, but the argument would still carry some weight.

But you'll never establish that there is the least bit of intellectual or moral obligation upon any modern person to so much as CARE what the gospels say in the first place.  I can make a reasonable biblical case that Jesus' warnings about eternal conscious torment contradict the Old Testament, so that there's about as much danger in rejecting the gospel as there is in deleting spam email.

Times are changing, you won't be scaring anybody into heaven if I can help it.   Now tell yourself the Holy Spirit allowed me to post this rebuttal piece because he wants you to think of new creative ways to convince yourself that you can stand up to my debate challenges without needing to actually debate.

Demolishing Triablogue: it's still reasonable to balk at Matthew's writing in the third-person

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue entitled

Writing About Yourself In The Third Person

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Critics of the Bible are often ignorant of ancient (and sometimes modern) literary practices that undermine their analysis of the Bible.

Ditto for most Christians.

For example, people will sometimes object to a document like the gospel of Matthew or the gospel of John on the basis that those documents shouldn't speak of Matthew and John in the third person if those men wrote the documents.

Because the third-person shows personal detachment, whereas you expect others to believe Matthew was written by some guy who became "amazingly transformed" by seeing the resurrected Jesus.  Writing in the third person is not an issue unless the author is claimed to have been all happy and excited beyond reason to provide the world his own account of some great miraculous thing.

But as Richard Bauckham explains:
"All of these passages [in the gospel of John] refer to him, of course, in third-person language. This is in accordance with the best and regular historiographic practice. When ancient historians referred to themselves within their narratives as participating in or observing the events they recount, they commonly referred to themselves in the third person by name, as Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Julius Caesar, or Josephus." (Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], 393)

But

a) the fact that the gospels represent a new type of genre might justify the skeptic to say the authors didn't feel compelled to imitate standard practice, and

b) many 1st century historians use the first person, Philo, Josephus.  Bauckham doesn't say most 1st century authors used the third person, he merely says "best and regular historigraphic practice".

c) doesn't matter if you are correct: using the third-person is unexpected under your other Christian assumptions that Matthew was "amazingly transformed" by seeing the resurrected Christ and therefore all happy and giddy to go around giving his personal testimony.  You can avoid this criticism by denying you think that way about Matthew, but then you raise the probability that Matthew wasn't quite as happy about his own experience of Christ as some Christians are today.

d) Jesus expanded the need for two or three witnesses to important events beyond the judicial context of its first appearance in the OT, (Matthew 18:16), so did Paul (2nd Cor. 13:1, 1st Timothy 5:19), so we are reasonable to expect that if the testmony in Matthew's gospel actually was written out by Matthew, he would find it important to make clear to the reader that he is the one doing the testifying.

Years ago, a skeptic told me that the phrase "I, Paul" in some of the Pauline letters was clear evidence that the documents are forgeries. Paul wouldn't have written that way. (See my response to that skeptic here.)

Probably because known forgeries before and after Paul use the same phrase to make the alleged author unmistakably clear, when this is nothing but pseudepigrapha.  See Daniel 8:15, Revelation, 1st Enoch, Infancy gospel of Thomas, Holy Constitutions, etc.  It could also mean Paul was gullible and thought such self-designation was the style of legitimately divine authors, so he chose to imitate it.

But I wouldn't push the point since Jesus' resurrection is abundantly steamrolled by my own arguments, which often allow early dating and apostolic authorship of everything in the NT.  Such as rendering Jesus resurrection irrelevant given that the OT gives Gentiles nothing to fear from god but physical death, and the NT doctrine of eternal conscious torment directly contradicts the OT.  Always use the earlier standard to test the newer standard.  I already accept that I will endure "annihilation" at death, so I'm not seeing how attacking the gospel puts me in any "danger".  If I'm not in "danger", then whether Jesus rose from the dead need never be anything mroe important than a mere intellectually curiosity for people who just naturally like to debate matters of ancient history.

A lot of critics don't make much effort to consult Biblical commentaries or other relevant scholarship.

I do.  It's why the draft of my book on justifying denial of Matthew's resurrection testimony is more than 700 pages long, I've written at least 50,000 pages of book draft (lost in a recent computer malfunction) not including 20 years of posting arguments on the internet.  It's why I constantly answer Triablogue posts in point by point fashion.  Clearly Romans 1:20 is true and I just don't like the idea of being accountable to a sky-daddy.  Yeah, that's it.  Sort of like the idiot Mormon who pontificates that the Triablogue boys are without excuse for rejecting the Book of Mormon.  Empty pontification is quite easy to engage in, and Paul apparently developed it into a science.

They make judgments based largely on their own ignorant impressions and poor reasoning as they read the Bible or other sources without much assistance. The results are often disastrous.

You could just as easily have been talking about Christians.  Nothing in your article tips the probability scale the least bit in the direction of Matthean authorship of the gospel now bearing his name.

Demolishing Triablogue: Richard Bauckham is reasonable to deny Matthew's authorship

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue entitled

Richard Bauckham Is Wrong About Matthew's Authorship

Monday, May 29, 2017

 I deal with Engwer's trifles here since I believe Matthew and Levi were seperate persons only equated due to corruption in the earliest gospel traditions. Such a problem is part of my very extensive justification for denying Matthew's authorship of the gospel now bearing his name.

He's mostly right about gospel authorship issues. 

That would be enough for skeptics, if they chose, to view Bauckham's view as at least as reasonable as any other view. Reasonableness doesn't require post-graduate studies, nor does it require that one can defend one's views from skeptical attack, otherwise, most Christians would be unreasonable since they accepted Jesus at a time when they were horrifically ignorant of most biblical issues. would you ever counsel a biblically ignorant unbeliever from accepting Christ as their savior, if in fact they only confessed his bodily resurreciton and full diety, but had no clue how to defend such orthodoxy from the "heretical" arguments?  Probably not.  So even fanatical inerrantists are forced to agree one can possibly be reasonable to adopt viewpoint X, even if they cannot defend the view from attack.  Maybe you should hesitate before you label the ignorant skeptic "unreasonable".  Reasonableness doesn't require that she refute any attack.

He thinks Matthew may have had some sort of role in the origins of the gospel attributed to him, accepts the traditional authorship attributions of Mark and Luke, and attributes the fourth gospel to a close disciple of Jesus named John. But he doesn't think Matthew is responsible for the first gospel as we have it today, and he thinks the John who wrote the fourth gospel wasn't the son of Zebedee.

Which would be enough for a skeptic to conclude that Bauckham, a conservative, did not reach those conclusions lightly, but only reluctantly, since his obvious tendency, as a conservative and somebody interested in defending eyewitness authorship of the gospels, would be to make any plausible argument in favor of Matthew's authorship.  That is, a skeptic could be reasonable to say a guy like Bauckham would never have admitted the weakness of Matthew's authorship, unless he felt compelled by the evidence to do so.  You aren't going to demonstrate that any skeptic who accepts Bauckham's conclusions is "unreasonable". You may as well say sphere-earthers are unreasonable if they cannot "refute" flat-earther arguments.  The boys at triablogue couldn't really say exactly how much scholarly tit-for-tat the skeptic needs to research, before she can become "reasonable" to adopt a position on a biblical issue.  Instead, they blindly insist that as long as they can come up with some type of reply the skeptic hasn't quite answered yet, then presto, another vindication of the fool who wrote Romans 1:20. 

Now that the second edition of Bauckham's Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017) is out, I want to revisit the issue of gospel authorship with a focus on his material on the subject in that book. This post will mostly be about the authorship of the first gospel. A later post, which I'll link here when it becomes available, will respond to Bauckham's view of the authorship of the fourth gospel.
You can search the archives for posts we've written over the years that cite some of Bauckham's comments on Mark and Luke. See, for example, here, here, and here.
Regarding Matthew, Bauckham argues (108-12) that it's highly unlikely that a first-century Jew living in Israel would have had two Semitic personal names as common as Matthew and Levi.

Inerrantist Craig Blomberg argued just the opposite:

Only Matthew uses the name “Matthew” here (but cf. Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13). Mark and Luke call this disciple Levi. It was common for first-century Jews to have two or three names. Sometimes more than one name was Jewish; more commonly one was Jewish and one Greek (cf. Saul-Paul).

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 155). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 If we find that two respectable very conservative Christian scholars take opposite positions on how likely it was for a first century Jew to have two first names, it might make the skeptic reasonable to conclude the issue is not capable of reasonable resolution, and to therefore do what most Christian scholars do anyway and simply choose for himself the argument he personally finds the most compelling.

It's very unlikely, then, that Matthew is the Levi referred to in Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27. And if Levi were another name for one of the Twelve, Mark surely would have explained that in his list of the Twelve, where so many other details are included (108). Since the author of the gospel of Matthew uses a passage about another man to tell his readers about Matthew's calling (Matthew 9:9), the author must have been somebody other than Matthew.

I think Bauckham was only making a probability argument, I wouldn't expect a person as knowledgeable as he about historiography to mischaracterize the issue as who the Matthew-author "must" have been.

"Matthew himself could have described his own call without having to take over the way Mark described Levi's call." (112) Bauckham also thinks the replacement of "his house" (Mark 2:15) with "the house" (Matthew 9:10) suggests that the author of the gospel of Matthew was only applying Mark 2:14 to the apostle Matthew and didn't think the rest of the passage was applicable (111).
What about the unlikelihood of somebody being named both Matthew and Levi? There are extremely rare names and combinations of names, sometimes even unprecedented ones, in every culture. Why do we conclude that people with such names exist? Because the prior improbability that somebody would have such a name is just one factor among others that have to be taken into account as well, and those other factors can outweigh the prior improbability that somebody would have that name. How reliable is a source who reports that somebody had such a name? How likely is it that such a report would exist if the person under consideration didn't have the name in question? And so on. In his book, Bauckham often accepts a highly unusual name if there are ancient sources attesting it, even just one source. He does it in his section on Matthew's authorship, where he mentions some ancient Jews who are referred to with two names, including at least one that's "unusual" or "very unusual" (109-10). The many comments he makes elsewhere in his book about how popular or unpopular various names were assumes that some unpopular names existed, even ones attested only once. Even if naming somebody both Matthew and Levi would have been "virtually unparalleled", "very unlikely indeed", etc. (109-10), we should go on to look at the other evidence pertaining to Matthew's names and Matthean authorship of the first gospel. We should try to determine the significance of the improbability Bauckham is appealing to in light of the evidence as a whole.

The gospels never specify that Jesus gave Matthew another name, despite specifying that he gave new names to other apostles (John 1:42, Mark 3:17).

Origen thought "Lebes" (Levi) was a tax-gatherer but different from Matthew, and said the view that equates them as one single person is not supported in the NT except in one copy of Mark:

And after such statements, showing his ignorance even of the number of the apostles, he [Celsus] proceeds thus: “Jesus having gathered around him ten or eleven persons of notorious character, the very wickedest of tax-gatherers and sailors, fled in company with them from place to place, and obtained his living in a shameful and importunate manner.” Let us to the best of our power see what truth there is in such a statement. It is manifest to us all who possess the Gospel narratives, which Celsus does not appear even to have read, that Jesus selected twelve apostles, and that of these Matthew alone was a tax-gatherer; that when he calls them indiscriminately sailors, he probably means James and John, because they left their ship and their father Zebedee, and followed Jesus; for Peter and his brother Andrew, who employed a net to gain their necessary subsistence, must be classed not as sailors, but as the Scripture describes them, as fishermen. The Lebes also, who was a follower of Jesus, may have been a tax-gatherer; but he was not of the number of the apostles, except according to a statement in one of the copies of Mark’s Gospel. And we have not ascertained the employments of the remaining disciples, by which they earned their livelihood before becoming disciples of Jesus. I assert, therefore, in answer to such statements as the above, that it is clear to all who are able to institute an intelligent and candid examination into the history of the apostles of Jesus, that it was by help of a divine power that these men taught Christianity, and succeeded in leading others to embrace the word of God.

NPN, Origen: Against Celsus, book 1, ch. 62

Clement of Alexandria distinguished Matthew from Levi:

“And when they bring you before synagogues, and rulers, and powers, think not beforehand how ye shall make your defense, or what ye shall say. For the Holy Spirit shall teach you in the same hour what ye must say.” In explanation of this passage, Heracleon, the most distinguished of the school of Valentinians, says expressly, “that there is a confession by faith and conduct, and one with the voice. The confession that is made with the voice, and before the authorities, is what the most reckon the only confession. Not soundly: and hypocrites also can confess with this confession. But neither will this utterance be found to be spoken universally; for all the saved have confessed with the confession made by the voice, and departed. Of whom are Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Levi, and many others. And confession by the lip is not universal, but partial.

NPN, Clement: “Stromata” book 4, ch. 9

Eusebius says a "Levi" was the "13th" Bishop of the church in His.Eccl. Book IV Chapter 5.

Skeptics have quite sufficient evidence to insist that Matthew and Levi were separate persons and that a corruption in the gospel tradition, or foul play on the part of a gospel author, is why the gospels attribute the same actions to each.

Engwer continues:

D.A. Carson refers to some problems with how Bauckham goes on to handle the remainder of the evidence:
"Yet whatever the onomastic improbability, the identification of Levi (Mark's gospel) with Matthew (here [in Matthew 9:9]) seems less implausible than Bauckham's explanation: the unknown evangelist knew that Matthew was a tax collector (like Levi), and knew he was one of the Twelve, and so simply transferred the story across (on the assumption that the conversion of one tax collector would be very much like the conversion of another?)." (The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Revised Edition, Vol. 9: Matthew & Mark [Gran Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2010], 263)
What's mentioned in Matthew 9:9 isn't what we'd expect of the calling of every tax collector, most of them, or even one other tax collector. How many tax collectors would be in their booth at the time of the calling and would be sitting while Jesus walked by?

All of the ones who were on lunch break?

How many would immediately leave their work and follow Jesus upon being told "Follow me"?

I'm a skeptic:  I don't believe every last little details of everything reported in the gospels.  Jesus might have had disciples, but I don't think they "left everything" quite as quickly as the bible insists.

How many would experience all of those things? It's doubtful that the author of the gospel of Matthew would have thought that the story of the calling of this tax collector would be so applicable to another tax collector.

Or maybe the real Matthew only wrote out Jesus' sayings, and only the non-Matthian author responsible for canonical Greek Matthew thought, for unknown reasons, that Matthew and Levi were the same person.
Or that the authors of Matthew were not trying to harmonize anything, we are simply seeing disparate traditions about two people in Matthew and Mark/Luke, and the only people insisting Levi=Matthew are later readers who have mistaken biblical inerrancy for something that deserves anybody's attention.  Like the lunatics at Triablogue.

Bauckham is wrong in commenting that "The story, after all, is so brief and general it might well be thought appropriate to any tax collector called by Jesus to follow him as a disciple." (111), since the story isn't "so brief and general". The appropriate response to Bauckham's claim that "Matthew himself could have described his own call without having to take over the way Mark described Levi's call." (112) is that anybody could have. There wouldn't have been anybody, whether Matthew or somebody else, who would have needed to use Mark's account about the calling of another man to describe the calling of Matthew. And it's very unlikely that the author of the first gospel would have wanted to tell Matthew's story in that manner. Why give such a significant figure in early Christianity such secondhand treatment, especially if the author of the gospel was associating his work with Matthew as much as Bauckham thinks he was?

Maybe because the later author knew that Matthew was more prominent in early circles, but faded in popularity over a few decades.

The scenario Bauckham is proposing is highly improbable.But he makes a good point about Mark's list of the twelve apostles. You'd think Mark would mention that Matthew was also known as Levi, if Mark had held that view. Luke's list of the Twelve isn't as detailed as Mark's, so the lack of clarification in Luke's list is less important, but it's significant that Luke, like Mark, doesn't explain to his readers, inside his list of the apostles or elsewhere, that Matthew and Levi are different names for the same person.

Agreed.  So skeptics can be reasonable to assume Matthew and Levi are two different people.  The problem is created by the inerrantist who wants to harmonize the Matthew of Matthew with the Levi of Mark, but the historical evidence indicates the reason the accounts give different names is because they were different people.  It could also just as easily be that the Matthew-author invented the name, or wanted to change Levi's name.  Engwer is doing nothing to foist an intellectual obligation upon skeptics to accept the equation of the persons.

However, there's other evidence Bauckham doesn't discuss that suggests that Mark and Luke viewed Levi as one of the Twelve. It follows that though Mark and Luke don't tell us who among the Twelve had the alternate name of Levi, they thought somebody among the Twelve did. That weakens Bauckham's argument about what's "clear" from Mark's list of the Twelve and how Mark "surely" would have included the detail that Matthew had that other name if he'd known about it (108).

Feel free to reduce "surely" to "it is reasonable to conclude".  John and Mark reveal when apostles were given new or surnames, so we are reasonable to conclude that, had Mark known Levi was later named Matthew, he would have said so.  The belief of Origin and Clement that Matthew and Levi were separate men remains significant.

In Mark and Luke's passages about the calling of Levi, the language, themes, and placement of the text are reminiscent of the calling of other apostles, which suggests that whoever is being called in the passage is an apostle as well. Compare Mark 1:16-20 to 2:14-17. Compare Luke 5:1-11 and 5:27-32. In both gospels, the calling of Levi is narrated in close proximity to the calling of those other apostles, with similar language and themes, leading up to the nearby choosing of the Twelve by Jesus and the listing of them by the gospel authors (Mark 3:13-19, Luke 6:13-16). Jesus is walking by and looks at the individual(s) in question and says "Follow me" and is immediately followed, which involves leaving a profession (fishing or tax collecting), in both contexts in Mark (1:16-20, 2:14). That theme of leaving a profession makes sense for the calling of an apostle in the sense of being one of the Twelve, since that sort of apostleship would require so much devotion. Similarly, both of Luke's passages have the individuals in question "leaving everything" to follow Jesus (5:11, 5:28). That theme of the apostles leaving everything is repeated elsewhere (Mark 10:28, Luke 18:28). Their leaving the professions they were involved with was important, "so that they would be with him [Jesus] and that he could send them out" (Mark 3:14). So, the passages in Mark and Luke about Levi have a series of connections both backward to the call of Peter and his associates and forward to what's said of the Twelve. Even without reading Matthew, the accounts about the calling of Levi in Mark and Luke look like the calling of a member of the Twelve.

You aren't refuting anything I believe.  I don't see how pointing out that Matthew puts Matthew in the same position that Mark and Luke had placed Levi in, does anything to hurt my arguments. Yes, the gospels as we now have them in their final polished form, certainly appear to say identical things about Matthew and Levi.  So?  We can assume Origin and Clement would have seen the similarities between the calling of Matthew and Levi, if we assume their own copies of the gospels textually read the same as ours do today.  Were these church fathers simply blind?  Or might their copies of the gospels have made it reasonable to assume Matthew and Levi were different men?

Some passages in Mark and Luke about people other than apostles refer to themes like following Jesus and leaving possessions and making other sacrifices to follow him. But those other passages have less similar language and themes and less significant placement in the text of the gospels. Something like Jesus' call to discipleship in Mark 8:34-38 or his interactions with Zaccheus in Luke 19:1-10 is somewhat reminiscent of the calling of the apostles, but also significantly different. Jesus walks by Zaccheus and looks at him (verse 5), and Zaccheus gives up possessions to follow Jesus (verse 8), for example, but Jesus is only staying in Zaccheus' house briefly (verse 5), there's no reference to his leaving his profession, the passage is far removed from the appointing of the apostles earlier in the gospel, etc. Likewise, Jesus' exchange with the rich young ruler (Mark 10:17-31, Luke 18:18-30) involves a call to discipleship and to giving things up to follow Jesus, but the man doesn't follow Jesus, the passage is far removed from the context of the calling of the apostles, and so on. Both passages contrast the rich young ruler's rejection of Jesus' call and the apostles' acceptance of it (Mark 10:28-31, Luke 18:28-30). While the calling of individuals like Peter and Levi is similar to Jesus' interactions with other people elsewhere in Mark and Luke, there are substantial differences as well. The calling of Levi is significantly similar to the calling of Peter and his associates in a way in which other passages in these gospels aren't. So, independently from the gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke give us reason to place Levi among the Twelve.

Sure, but they also render skeptics reasonable to assume Jesus had more than 12 apostles, and the later redactors did a less than perfect job of reducing the historically true number of Jesus' closest disciples to the conveniently typological 12.

But they don't refer to any of the Twelve as Levi when they list the apostles, nor do they tell us elsewhere which apostle went by that name. They also leave out other information about apostolic names. Peter is referred to as Simon Barjona in Matthew 16:17, but not anywhere in Mark or Luke. Similarly, Luke doesn't tell us that James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were referred to as Boanerges, a detail that Mark does include. And so on. Bauckham doesn't claim that Mark and Luke are exhaustive about apostolic names. More significantly, Bauckham thinks the identification of Thaddaeus (Mark 3:18) with Judas the son of James (Luke 6:16) is "very plausible" (108), but neither Mark nor Luke offers that identification, even though Bauckham thinks Luke used Mark as a source and appeals to such sources in the opening of his gospel.

Well maybe Bauckham is not a fanatic who thinks it cannot be true unless a gospel author specifically admits it.

That's an instance in which Luke knew about a potential confusion over apostolic names, but didn't offer a clarification. Still, Luke's failure to clarify something potentially seen as a discrepancy between what he wrote and what's in a source he used and that many of his readers would be familiar with (Mark) isn't the same as a failure to clarify something that people could misunderstand in his own writings (that Levi and Matthew are the same person). I'm just giving some examples of Mark and Luke's failure to provide details and clarifications they could have provided about apostolic names, even though the examples I've cited in this paragraph are less significant than not clarifying the relationship between Levi and Matthew.

The fact that Origen and Clement think Matthew and Levi are different, is quite sufficient to render reasonable the skeptic who says they are, and who says inerrantist attempts to converge them into a single person in the name of biblical inerrancy are not convincing.   But I'm sure you'll attribute stupidity to any church father whenever expediency dictates.  But that certainly doesn't impose an intellectual obligation upon the skeptic to back off from saying Origin's NT probably didn't make an equation between Matthew and Levi very clear.  Origen often defended the gospels from charges of historical unreliability and was a great textual scholar himself. If the gospel manuscripts in his day made it clear that Levi and Matthew were the same person, we would expect he would not view them as separate persons.

Chrysostom, Homily XXX,  says Mark and Luke intentionally "concealed" Matthew's identity under the name "Levi", so if he is correct, we'd only be honoring the intent of Mark and Luke to continue "falsely" believing the two names referred to two men:

And we have cause also to admire the self-denial of the evangelist, how he disguises not his own former life, but adds even his name, when the others had concealed him under another appellation.

Engwer continues:

What's most important to recognize in this context is that identifying Levi and Matthew as two different individuals still leaves you with a substantial lack of clarity in Mark and Luke.

That doesn't bother anybody except inerrantists.

If Levi isn't Matthew, then which member of the Twelve is he, given the evidence cited above that he's portrayed as a member of the Twelve in the two gospels under consideration?

Fallacy of loaded question, there is the equally reasonable option, in light of Clement and Origin, that Jesus had more than 12 official 'disciples'.  My view is that Jesus had probably about 100 "disciples" and was later said to be most close to 'twelve' because some such disciples would naturally be closer to him than others, and the gospel authors couldn't resist changing historical fact for purposes of typological correspondence with the OT.

Or if you deny that Mark and Luke meant to portray Levi as one of the Twelve, why did they use language, themes, and text placement that are so suggestive of Levi's identity as one of the Twelve?

I think they did an imperfect job of whittling down the number of "disciples" to "12".

I don't see how a significant lack of clarity in Mark and Luke is a problem only for those who consider Levi and Matthew the same person. There's a substantial clarity problem for Bauckham's position as well.

I don't argue that position the way he does.  Good luck.

What should we think of the change from "his house" in Mark 2:15 to "the house" in Matthew 9:10?

Maybe a desire on the part of the author to do something modern apologists don't want him to do, and taunt the reader with hints of his identity, but without wishing to make it explicit, thus testifying against any claim that he was "amazingly transformed" and justifying the skeptic to consider such an author unworthy of serious consideration.

It could easily be an attempt on Matthew's part to clarify the passage rather than an attempt to distance verses 10-13 from verse 9. As Bauckham notes (111), the "his" in Mark 2:15 is sometimes taken as a reference to Jesus rather than Levi, so Matthew may have changed "his" to "the" in order to avoid that confusion.

Sounds like Matthew thought Mark wrote in a way that facilitates confusion.  Not a happy day in inerrancy-land.

Luke makes the passage clearer by referring to how "Levi gave a big reception for him in his house" (5:29). Perhaps Matthew intended to provide clarification. Or he may have just chosen different terminology than Mark without any intention of clarifying anything and without intending to distance verses 10-13 from verse 9 in the way Bauckham suggests. Furthermore, how would changing "his house" to "the house" have the implications Bauckham claims? To the contrary, the lack of qualification for "the house" motivates the reader to look at the surrounding context for indications of what house is in view. Why would the author send his readers to the surrounding context if he wanted them to avoid the conclusion that verse 9 provides the context they're looking for? The most natural way to take "the house" in verse 10 is as a reference to Matthew's house, since Matthew's booth had just been mentioned, and the reference in verse 9 to Jesus' traveling makes it more likely that he'd be in somebody else's house rather than his own.

Sorry, the only significance I see in the change from "his house" to "the house" is mere stylistic preference.  You may as well write a 5,000 page article psychoanalyzing Matthew and asking why 13:52 doesn't include the "among his own relatives" phrase given that he was copying Mark 6:4 anyway.  I deny that inability to answer such trifling questions suddenly tilts the probability scale in favor of the apologist.

And since I already have good grounds for saying somebody other than Matthew is responsible for the canonical Greek version we have today, I'm not under any obligation to give a fuck why a later anonymous redactor would have wanted to change "his house" to "the house".  It could also be that the later redactor changed it because HE thought this was Matthew's own house.  The option of saying Matthew is the guy making the change and wanting the reader to notice that the house was owned by the author of that gospel, is not the only reasonable option.

If the author of the gospel of Matthew had wanted to distance verses 10-13 from verse 9 as much as Bauckham suggests, he could have put one or more other accounts between the content of verses 9 and 10 or changed or added language to verses 10-13 to distance those verses from verse 9 rather than keeping them together and so undistinguished (e.g., he could have referred to "the house of Levi, a tax collector").
Most of the evidence for Matthew's authorship of the gospel isn't addressed by Bauckham. See here for a collection of posts discussing a lot of that evidence.

I'm almost done answering all of your posts on that subject point by point. 

Notice the number, variety, and strength of the factors involved: the unlikelihood of fabricating attribution to such a minor apostle,

But such attribution can just as easily argue that he wasn't minor in the very early period, he merely faded from view and now you fallaciously view him as always having been minor.

the universal acceptance of Matthean authorship while the authorship attributions of other documents were being disputed,

the early church was also universal that Matthew was written first, which is now found highly unlikely by most Christian scholars who adopt Markan priority.  This particular skeptic doesn't feel the least bit moved by "universal acceptance".  Neither do desperate apologists who reject the majority scholarly acceptance of Markan priority view merely because they don't like how easy Markan priority makes it for skeptics to justify denying Jesus' resurrection.

hostile corroboration of Matthew's authorship,

You forgot Jerome's comment that "many" in his day viewed Gospel to the Hebrews as "authentic Matthew", as if they only came to such view after investigating two different gospels each claiming to be from Matthew.

how well Matthean authorship explains the early prominence of the gospel, etc.

Ditto for GoH.