Last night I stumbled across an example that shows how, when used creatively, such techniques can expand our knowledge and appreciation of a text. Dr. Peter Williams, a Senior Lecturer in New Testament at the University of Abeerdeen, has conducted what I’d call an “algorithm-enhanced close reading” of the canonical gospels and compared them to the apocryphal testimonies about Jesus.
Normally, my attention span for videos on the web is limited to about 2 minutes. But when I started watching this video last last night I got sucked in by Dr. Williams engaging style and watched the entire lecture. As Evangel blogger Tom Gilson says, it’s a “talk on apologetics like you’ve never heard before.”
For an academic book on the issue of eyewitness testimony and the gospel accounts, see Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony.
