We trust ancient biographies that were written 450 years after the fact. So why do so many Christians get told the gospels can't be trusted as history?

New Testament scholar Craig Keener (author of Christobiography and a four-volume commentary on Acts) is on the show with us. He was a self-described smug atheist before he became one of the most published New Testament scholars alive, and the path he took to find out whether any of this is actually true is worth listening to.

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Most of us were taught the gospel is a ticket to heaven. New Testament scholar Nijay Gupta says that is not what Paul was actually preaching.

Nijay Gupta is professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary and author of Paul for the World. He, Shane Rosenthal, and Nate work through what Paul's gospel actually was, where "I'll fly away" theology came from, and why he thinks C.S. Lewis got heaven wrong.

🙏 Faith Lab is a listener-supported show. If these conversations are helping you, you can support the show at https://faithlabshow.com/support

The hardest critiques of the cross target one version of the gospel. The earliest Christians were teaching something bigger.

For a thousand years before penal substitution became the dominant framework, the church proclaimed something wider: that God entered into death to destroy it from the inside. Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nyssa all described it, and their version answers the questions that trip most of us up.

🙏 Faith Lab is a listener-supported show. If these conversations are helping you, you can support the show at faithlabshow.com/support

Most Christians were taught to trust the Gospels without ever being shown why they should. The historical evidence is stronger than you think.

New Testament scholar Lydia McGrew explains what she calls the "reportage model," a case that the Gospel authors weren't just passing along stories. They were close to the facts, trying to get them right, and highly successful. She walks through the kind of evidence that's hard to explain any other way.

🔓 Get the full unedited interview with Lydia McGrew, including her argument that John's long speeches could be real memories and why she thinks Luke's anointing story is a completely different event than the other Gospels describe. https://faithlabshow.com/premium

Most Christians quietly carry a question they rarely say out loud: after the apostles died, what happened? There's a gap in the story, and in that gap, a worry lives.

One man fills it. He was born 35 years after Jesus, personally knew people who personally knew Christ, and his own words still survive on paper. His name was Polycarp, and the chain connecting him to the eyewitnesses is shorter than you think.

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Most Christians assume the end of the story is leaving earth for heaven. N.T. Wright says that is not the story the New Testament is telling. (Listen to Part 1 here, and the full interview here.)

If Christian hope is really resurrection and new creation, then death, salvation, and the church's mission all start to look different.

🔓 Get the full unedited interview with N.T. Wright, including his unused answer on why Paul carries so much weight in Christianity and why he sees Paul as a trophy of grace, at https://faithlabshow.com/premium

The resurrection isn't a theological idea. It's a historical claim. And most people have never heard the actual evidence historians evaluate. (Listen to Part 2 here, and the full interview here.)

NT Wright, one of the world's leading scholars on early Christianity, walks through the case, and explains why the standard skeptical alternatives keep falling apart. Get Surprised by Hope and God's Homecoming

🔓 Members get the full unedited conversation with NT Wright, including his extended breakdown of what the New Testament actually says about the afterlife. faithlabshow.com/support

Matthew and Luke don't give us the same family tree, and the census in Luke has been called a historical invention. So why would anyone still trust the birth narratives?

New Testament scholar Caleb Friedeman compared them against 95 other ancient biographies, and what he found about Matthew and Luke's sources changes how you'd evaluate every supposed contradiction.

🔓 Members get the full unedited interview with Caleb, including his breakdown of how ancient Jewish genealogies actually worked. faithlab.supercast.com

For decades, scholars have claimed that ancient birth narratives were never meant to be taken as history. Then one scholar went and actually read them.

New Testament scholar Caleb Friedeman tested that claim against the ancient biographers themselves, and what he found in their own writing doesn't fit the story we've been told.

🔓 Members get the full unedited interview with Caleb, including Shelby's pushback on whether these stories are too beautiful to be real. faithlab.supercast.com

There's a story in Genesis where Noah gets drunk and something terrible happens with his son Ham, and the Bible never actually tells you what it was. That's not a mistake. It's a design choice.

In part two of our conversation, Bible Project co-founder Tim Mackie walks through how the biblical authors crafted narratives with intentional gaps, layered patterns, and riddles that unfold across entire books. We get into why "inerrancy" might be the wrong word, what Jesus actually did when asked about marriage and divorce, and why Tim says the Bible isn't a rule book but an epic narrative pointing to a person.

Want the full, unedited conversation? Members get the complete interview with Tim Mackie, including his thoughts on the LGBTQ conversation, church, and more that we trimmed for time: faithlab.supercast.com

Most people were taught to believe the Bible, but almost no one was taught how it actually works. Why does Genesis repeat the same words over and over? Why do later stories echo earlier ones in ways that seem too precise to be accidental?

Bible Project co-founder Tim Mackie walks through how the biblical authors used design patterns, repeated keywords, and narrative "hyperlinking" to build meaning across the entire Hebrew Bible. From the word "good" threading through Genesis to the way Abraham's story mirrors the Garden of Eden, Tim shows why treating the Bible like a rule book or a textbook misses what these ancient literary artists were actually doing.

Want the full, unedited conversation? Members get the complete interview with Tim Mackie, including his thoughts on the LGBTQ conversation, church, and more that we trimmed for time: faithlab.supercast.com