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Evidence That Demands a Verdict: With Sean McDowell — The Alisa Childers Podcast #20

4/26/2018

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On today's podcast, I talk with Sean McDowell about experiencing a time of doubt as a young adult. We also talk about the brand new fully updated Evidence that Demands a Verdict, and his PhD work on the fate of the apostles.

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3 Comments

Daniel

4/27/2018 12:00:34 pm

Very good podcast, Alisa. The Josh and Sean Mcdowell have done a great work together for the kingdom of God.

Ben link

5/1/2018 09:17:55 pm

Alisa,

Thank you for another great podcast. As usual, I'm impressed with your professionalism, poise, and speaking abilities, and I'm also pleased with your general knowledge on and familiarity with the technical and scholarly issues.

I was pleasantly surprised by the genuineness of J. Warner Wallace in your podcasts with him. It was the first time I got to hear him speak, and it was a pleasure to hear his honesty. I had previously only known him from his blogging presence, which, I must say, didn't seem too promising. But getting to hear him convinced me that he was doing his best, and not putting up some artificial front (as I sometimes worry with professional apologists). I still disagree sharply with him, but I have a newfound respect for him thanks to you and your discussions.

I say that because this contrasts a great deal with my impression of Sean McDowell. I don't know; maybe I'm making too quick of a judgment, here, but I just don't get a good vibe from him. He seems a little inauthentic to me.

Just to take one example, consider this bit about a typical ancient author having his manuscripts span "four feet" (really? four feet? is that even enough length for a single ancient book?) against the NT spanning miles and miles... I don't know, that seems really silly to me. Even if it were true (and come on, how realistic is it to suppose someone has actually calculated such a thing with any accuracy?), it seems very cheap and gimmicky to me, not remotely indicative of serious study----indeed, quite the opposite!

Anyway, my skeptical pessimism aside, I thank you for your time and your presentations. I hope I'm not too annoying peppering your blog with comments from an atheist! Thanks for putting up with me; I hope you continue to do so.

Alisa Childers

5/30/2018 03:02:44 pm

Hi Ben, so glad you are enjoying the podcasts. Just a quick thought on the manuscripts. The reality of the numbers is that the current count for New Testament manuscripts in Greek is close to 6,000 (that's not even counting the 15,000-19,000 in other ancient languages), and that number is continually growing as more manuscripts are being found. In total, we have 2.6 million pages of Greek NT manuscript, and if you piled them up on top of each other, the stack would be a mile high. In contrast, if you piled up the extant manuscripts of the average classical writer, the pile would only be about four feet high.

Sean gave this example to help listeners visualize how many manuscripts we have, and his example is based on the actual numbers. In fact, this visualization was first introduced by Dr. Dan Wallace, a world renown New Testament scholar who has debated Bart Ehrman, and is highly respected in the world of textual criticism.

I can understand how this may seem gimmicky, but I actually think this is a really helpful visualization, as it can otherwise be difficult to imagine 2.6 million pages of something. I recommend checking out the updated "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" if you want to know more about the precise numbers...the information in there is from the most current scholarship available.

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Evidence That Demands a Verdict: With Sean McDowell — The Alisa Childers Podcast #20

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