The fundamentalist McLaundry

I recently found an interesting synoptic-problem: Kyle Campbell and Bryan Ross (pdf), on Luke's work. These Scots-Irish sorts even share the same title for their posts: The Incredible Accuracy of Luke. This, and the content, they share with a chapter-lede from Joslin "Josh" McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict - either some older edition the Boomers used to push on us (1984?) or the updates (2007?). Of course they're running a literal Dark Age tactic of pretending to cite a real study (not having read that study themselves).

The literal meaning of "incredible" is "unbelievable". Authors paralleling McDowell should know that, and should know to avoid the word, unless they aren't just plagiarers, but lazy plagiarers. Likewise they should know better than to parrot their sources without critique. Otherwise: why wouldn't they? They're all friends here.

The McDowells' whole shtick (his son Sean has inherited the family-business) was summarising scholarship whose conclusions agree with the (fundamentalist Protestant) Christian kerygma. Joslin often had to dig back in time to find amenable quotes. Here, he was citing Sir William Ramsay and Colin Hemer (1989). The strategem of selective quotes laundered through layers of isnad is, how do I put it, not entirely dissimilar to how Muslims have supplied posterity with the Hadith. These fundamentalists have their own Quran, as well: the Protestant Bible. The McDowell oeuvre has been widely refuted for decades, one large reason McChristianity (and Christianity at large) has fared so ill in the West since Gen-X Christians got the Internet. I don't think the updates have helped the book.

As for Joslin at the personal level, he has issued claims (plural) of molestation by one "Wayne Bailey". The stories don't mutually agree.

Incidentally I just found out that ol' Joslin has been sidelined, since 2021, or Year Two anno floydi. He had said conservativy things about the Black experience which had been widely mooted in such circles up to the mid1990s intermezzo (including by many Blacks) but don't fly in Christianity Today.

To sum up, the McDowell family enterprise is sus as all Hell. Thus, the motive for Campbells and Rosses: copyists reaching back to sources which they likely haven't read direct.

The one I feel worst for is poor Emperor Hadrian. He should have built a higher wall and mined the coasts, too.