Readers of this blog have been favored with the observations of Lydia McGrew, detailing many “unintended coincidences” in the New Testament where otherwise unrelated narratives corroborate each other in surprising ways. (Lydia McGrew, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (DeWard, 2017); June 3, 2025 joshualetter post.) McGrew is following in a venerable tradition, of which one of the earliest and greatest exponents was William Paley (1743-1805). Today Paley is more famous for the revival of the argument for the existence of God from design in nature, but he deserves as much credit for his exposition of scripture. Here is one of Paley’s unintended coincidences:
[W]hen I read, in the Acts of the Apostles, that when Paul came to Derbe and Lystra, “behold a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman which was a Jewess;” and when, in an epistle addressed to Timothy, I find him reminded of his “having known the holy scriptures from “a child,” which implies that he must, on one side or both, have been brought up by Jewish parents; I conceive that I remark a coincidence which shows, by its very obliquity, that scheme [collusion] was not employed in its formation.
William Paley, Horae Paulinae (Hardpress 2017, Kindle Location 106.)
If collusion is excluded, and if several accounts are all compatible, the only plausible explanation is that the reason they are consistent is that they all reflect what actually took place. And the greater the number of such accounts, and the more detailed they are, the greater our confidence in that conclusion. At least equally important is the confidence which we thereby also gain in the reporters’ commitment to the truth generally.
Now, memory of the past can be lost, and the past can be misrepresented, but the past itself is fixed. Some of it can be remembered, and some of it can even be documented. For example, Lee Harvey Oswald either acted alone or he did not, and nothing we do or say today can alter the fact. If an account exists which cannot be falsified, we consider that it may be true; but if there are several accounts of the same events and none of them separately, nor all of them together, can be falsified – that is, if combined they all describe a single, coherent set of facts – then absent collusion, our confidence in their veracity climbs, until we begin to say we know what took place.
That is what we find in the New Testament.
I hope to elaborate on that theme in these pages in the near future. In the meantime, Gary Habermas helps us to appreciate the consistently singular quality of the NT writings:
Arguably the best example here is the work of Sir William Ramsay, the famous archaeologist and professor at the universities of Oxford and Aberdeen at the turn of the twentieth century. Trained in nineteenth-century German liberalism at the University of Tubingen and holding to those views, he was a noted archaeologist and authority on the history of Asia Minor. Through his excavation of this region, and contrary to his own opinions on the New Testament, he began to change his view concerning Luke, Paul, and Acts. After decades of research in this area, expressed in several major books on these subjects, he had distinguished himself as perhaps the greatest authority of his day on these subjects. To sum up his research, Ramsay concluded, “Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy . . . this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.” [Gary Habermas, On the Resurrection: Evidences, Kindle Location 891, citing William M. Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament, 4th ed. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920), 222.]
Maybe it’s not so surprising that both Paul and Luke wrote about Timothy. But this is merely one of a great proliferation of such examples demonstrating the truthfulness and the accuracy of the authors. The impression of veracity will never be felt if all you do is look for anomalies. No, one must look at the endlessly repeated instances of meticulous investigation, research, and reportage, and eventually realize, “All of this really happened!” And then you realize, “I am free, glory to God!”
ps. Listen to “Who Is Theophylus?” with Shane Rosenthal of The Humble Skeptic at https://www.humbleskeptic.com/p/who-is-theophilus
Joshualetter 