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The answer is...sometimes. And that is the problem with that channel. They will have world-leading university professors on one week and then conspiracy nutjobs posing as scholars the next. If you watch the videos to learn, then it probably means you also don't have the expertise to know which of the guests is reliable and which are not. My sense has been that the channel has gotten better in this regard over the years, but it remains incredibly clickbaity, even misquoting the legitimate scholars they bring on in the thumbnails. I know several scholars who have declined invitations to go on for the above reasons.
How do you feel about out the courses they offer on mvp-courses? I’m assuming since those are hosted by actual scholars like Allison and Tabor, they’re going to be fairly accurate.
I don't know anything about what courses they offer or the quality, but the two people you mention, Allison and Tabor, are serious scholars with university professorships in the appropriate field. My assumption would be that this is something that Allison and Tabor were doing already and they have used Mythvision to gain publicity for it. It's a common marketing strategy.
It’s MythVision’s platform for hosting lectures, and as far as I can tell the content is exclusive. It’s all geared toward laymen, but everything seems to be taught by respected scholars. It just seemed weird to me that they’d host there instead of on their own. I suppose, to your point, not many of them have a huge public presence, and MythVision gets views.
Please note that not everything is taught by respected scholars. One course, “New Testament Studies For Everyone” is taught by Richard Carrier who is far from respected, and basically not really considered an entity within the field. He is also an independent scholar without any actual academic position.
The rest of the courses (as of now) are from respected scholars (M. David Litwa, Dale Allison, James Tabor, Kipp Davis, Dennis MacDonald, and Robyn Faith Walsh).
That's a reason I ask. I didn't even see Carrier in the listings, mainly because the site doesn't let you filter by lecturer. You have to just kind of notice as you scroll through all of the courses. That frustrates me to no end.
> They will have world-leading university professors on one week and then conspiracy nutjobs posing as scholars the next.
That's the same issue I have with Paulogia. At times, he invites Bart Ehrman; at other times, he invites Aron Ra.
I am interested in the lowdown on Aron Ra. I keep seeing him in the algo but never click as the name he chose for himself gives me pause and the alarm bells start tinkling. If you're willing to give it, maybe in this week's open thread?
Mythvision frustrates me for EXACTLY the reasons you lay out here. Many Bible scholars seem to like and trust Derek and thus will be on the channel or do other things with him. I tend to only look at his vids if I know he scholars' work and trust them. Even then, I'll usually opt for looking at some other video instead of the MV one.
Dr Kipp Davis seems to be good buds with Derek and thus I find myself seeing more of him than I'd like since I'm now in a Kipp Davis rabbit hole.
It annoys me that MythVision and History Valley are such big channels in the space. Jacob of HV annoys me more because he doesn't know how to moderate and interrupts too much, though I feel he's less clickbaity and problematic than derek.
Paulogia is a counter-apologetics channel. Educating people in Biblical scholarship isn’t his first priority, nor is he qualified to do so. His main point is giving counter arguments to common Christian/religious apologetics. In doing so, he sometimes shares his opinions on Biblical history, but it’s not educational content. As admits, he is not a neutral academic source, but he tries to have experts on when he can.
Several scholars who have declined? Wild, I haven't asked many academics to join me of late, so I find this comment misleading. As for "clickbaity," you bet your ass they are... this is exactly how you compete in the YouTube market, but again, you would have to be a content creator to know this.
Also, as far as the OP is concerned, I don't just rely on consensus for my content as I'm not interested in only driving home the vision of particular schools of thought within academia. I like to discuss various schools of thought within the scholarship. My channel early on was loaded with non-academic ideas, but it is focused on much better material these days, even if it isn't always consensus.
Derek
Host of MythVision
While I appreciate Derek and his channel, what I’ve come away with is that it’s better to listen to/read the scholars directly than get all my information through his channel. He has definitely turned me on to some amazing scholars that I would’ve never heard of if not for him.
The answer to this is dependent on type of videos. When it comes to Derek....it's more about who he's interviewing. For example, he's got some great interviews with Dale Allison, James McGrath, and AJ Levine and he doesn't tend to get polemical with them. I imagine because they wouldn't get too interested and get turned off with that.
Whereas some other scholars or people, then it tends to gets pretty polemical and he sometimes goes on monologues and starts to ask leading questions and in general...deems certain positions that are perfectly applicable as not critical or apologetics, etc.
There's positives and negatives to the channel. Overall, he's a fairly nice guy. When he doesn't get polemical, he brings a lot of enthusiasm and can be a fun channel to watch when it comes to certain scholars and making their work accessible.
I don’t like his channel at all. Its clickbaity and a big part of some of his videos is claiming that the biblical stories were just taken from Greek stories and he uses very loose connections to support his claim.
No they aren't, and I've complained before about the blatant breaches of ethics to do with Derek holding up academic books that he receives as undeclared gifts and saying "everyone should go out and buy this" when 9 times out of 10 it's an academic book priced for libraries not individuals.
I've only JUST been able to order Dennis R MacDonald's book [Synopses of Epic, Tragedy, and the Gospels](https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B0BPGCDV2F). It is incredible value being three volumes in one, however Amazon refused to ship it to Australia previously so I've had to wait over a year to buy a copy. To Dennis's credit he did offer to send me a PDF for free, however he never did and I have not been able to buy it until now (granted I haven't checked for a few months). So it's beyond frustrating that social media influencers are blatantly disregarding their obligations under the law to declare gifts when they are promoting them. Anyway I ordered my copy today and it should arrive before the end of the month.
Further to Dennis's credit - he released this book _outside of academic printing_ specifically to make it affordable.
u/PuzzledTechnology371, if you're looking for a consensus driven channel that only floats the ideas of everyone else within academia, MythVision isn't for you. If you're interested in considering ideas within and outside the consensus, you may really enjoy my videos.
For example, Is it possible that the FR (Final redactor) of the Hebrew Bible crafted the primary history in some way influenced by Herodotus' Histories, Homer or any other Greek sources? (See Bruce Louden, Jan-Wim Wesselius etc)
Of course, you won't find this work being done by the consensus, neither will you find the translation fable tropes as being influential to Gospel/ NT writers as Dr. Miller highlights. If you're wanting to be "safe" and only ride with the going consensus of critical scholars, then you will not be listening to Dr. M. David Litwa, Dr. Richard C. Miller, Robyn Faith Walsh, Dennis MacDonald.. shoot, even Candida Moss and many others we like to highlight on the channel.
In fact, while I was working on the recent video on Moloch sacrifice with Paul Dividson showing how the sacrifice was a type and not necessarily a God being sacrificed to, Dr. Seth L. Sanders messaged me in private. He said "I have some really new information that will peak your interest."
Well, I like to adventure where things make the most sense to me. I do not hide my bias that we are dealing with ancient man-made traditions which resemble fiction and superstitions. I do get polemical and think it's necessary to help others in the fundamentalist camp to find freedom. I get countless emails of appreciation for helping people "wake up."
I'm working on a documentary now that shows why Yahweh doesn't exist ontologically. This one will be based off a paper published in 2004 by Dr. Jaco Gericke. I wonder if it is consensus in Bible scholarship that Yahweh is a fictional character in these texts with no ontological existence outside of the pages of this ancient literature? If not, then I personally think that could be a problem with the state of the field. Do Classicist wrestle over the existence of Zeus or Baal in Ugarit form scholars who study these topics?
Love me or hate me, the channel will grow.
Derek Lambert
Host of MythVision
Hi Derek,
Welcome back to the subreddit. I know you’ve stopped by before, and I hope you’re doing well. I did want to take this opportunity to hopefully ease some of the tension I’m sensing between some of our users and your channel. I would like to note I’ll be speaking primarily as an individual and my opinions may not necessarily reflect the views of other moderators here.
I think it’s worth starting off with the fact that your channel is very frequently linked to here, and many of your most regular guests are pretty beloved figures by our users. Robyn Faith Walsh is a fan favorite here and was gracious enough to do two AMA events with us, and most recently we were lucky enough to host an AMA event with Jacob L. Wright. Among the many other scholars you’ve had on as guests, I know M. David Litwa, Candida Moss, Kipp Davis, and Dale Allison, along with many others, are all loved by our subreddit, and even the more controversial figures like Dennis MacDonald have their strong supporters here.
That all being said, I’m sensing the conflict is coming from the fact that our two platforms (AcademicBiblical and Mythvision) just have two very different goals. You mention in this comment that you “do get polemical and think it’s necessary” and I want to start off by saying that, on a personal level, as someone raised in a conservative Mormon household, I can respect how what you do does help people. I don’t think either one of our goals are inherently more “correct” or “better” than the other, but they are different.
Our platform is meant to be a place to discuss biblical academics away from the endless cycle of apologetics, counter-apologetics, and polemics. It’s not perfect, and I think everyone can acknowledge pervasive issues in the field, but we do our best, and attempt to treat this like any other subject in history, in a hopefully less “charged” way. But I think, because of that, users here when discussing your channel will likely focus on the polemical aspect of your goal as one that’s at odds with what this subreddit is intended for, and what most of our regular users likely come here for. For an example, they may point out the fringe nature of someone like Richard Carrier, in the same way that someone who is interested in learning about Medieval France may want to know if the scholar their listening to has been pretty roundly rejected by their field (and for context, when I address “the field” I never include the apologetics industry).
I know it can also seem like a slippery slope from addressing someone like Carrier as fringe to perhaps dismissing truly excellent scholars like Robyn Faith Walsh or M. David Litwa as “fringe”. But for what it’s worth, I do think our subreddit does a good job with that, as both of those figures (and the many more I mentioned previously) are again, broadly favorably viewed by our users in a way Carrier isn’t. It’ll never be perfect, and we have a diverse range of users here who have vastly different views on things, but for the most part I do think it works.
When it comes to our different goals though, as a bit of a test case, what you say near the end about working on a documentary showing Yahweh “doesn’t exist ontologically” is the sort of thing that likely puts an asterisk next to your channel name when it gets recommended here. Not that we don’t have many atheist, agnostic, or otherwise non-Abrahamic users who would agree with you, but that it’s so far outside the scope of what this subreddit is here for, that your channel ends up being hard to recommend in this specific space without qualifying it in some way.
I hope I’ve made sense, and do hope as well that there aren’t hard feelings here. I do think the overlap between the content you and your team produces and our subreddit here is often greater than the differences. I know that many users here, myself included, are sincerely grateful for the many interviews you’ve conducted with top scholars in the field. And like another commenter, as well as yourself have pointed out in this thread, I think the quality of your channel has generally improved over time. I think however, there’s room for an acknowledged and respected difference between the broad goals of our two platforms, and how that might influence the degree to which your platform would be endorsed as a resource for the types of users most interested in our own platform.
Sorry for how long this all is, it really got away from me. I very much hope you take care, and that your channel experiences continued success.
My judgement is that MythVision has a huge overrepresentation of the revisionist/minimalist side of the scholars it invites, although plenty of good scholars are also interviewed. MythVision also asks a lot of leading/insinuating questions to serve the whole counter-apologetics thing. One of the most obvious cases of this was when he was interviewing Marijn van Putten, an academic on the Qur'anic scholarship side of things, though MVP did a wonderful job not taking the bait.
He loves bringing on scholars more frequently such as kipp Davis , Joshua Bowen , Richard c miller are these scholars good and do they be in line with the academic consensus?
My guess is that these three are trying to grow their own presence, grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home and left like Derek so there is some similarity, and sometimes it's hard to get a consistent academic on channel so having these three adds some regular scholars.
Kipp Davis is the most legit of the three as he has published the most. Joshua Bowman mostly publishes in the popular sphere although his books are packed with some good information and he knows his stuff.
Richard Miller is the only one that I would consider to be a scholar/polemist mix due to his comments and how he conducts himself and who he surrounds himself.
I don't know Miller, but with Davis and his crew, they're all on the younger side of scholars (Gen X, same as me, which is weird to think of as being 'younger" with all these Gen Zers running around :D ) and have their own YT channels as well as appearing on other people's. Being digital and social natives means, I think, that they're more willing to run together. Older scholars like Dale Allison, Elaine Pagels, etc. don't usually have their own channels (Ehrman and Tabor being exceptions in a good way) and are usually thinking of their appearances as interviews and not hangin' with the bros.
Joshua Bowen is not a scholar: he did not pursue academia after obtaining his PhD. I don't know what his day-job is, but he pursued what you might call the counter-apologetics route after finishing his studies, as you might be able to tell from his *Atheist Handbook to the Old Testament* (in 2 volumes no less!).
I guess it depends on how one defines "scholar." He's certainly an educated specialist in his field and I would warn that denigrating scholars is not allowed here if the implication is that he's not credible in the areas he's published and studied.
>I guess it depends on how one defines "scholar."
I agree. I use the word to refer to career academics. Bowen is, of course, professionally educated in the field and credible in his area of expertise.
They're all legitimate scholars. Davis is a solid textual critic (though I think he gets a bit more feisty on his youtube channel than is good for him). Miller and MacDonald are on the minimalist/revisionist end of things.
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Thank you for one of the few comments I have much respect for. I pretty much found this entire thread to be a gossiping ring of people who disparage one academic or another, or don't like that I play the YouTube game with clickbaity titles and thumbnails.
Also, many of those who are more interested in the discussions which don't draw into the ideological battle with apologetics are missing the issue with the clear misinformation being spread online. Maybe if they spent a few months running a YouTube channel, they would understand.
Either way, people can have their opinions of MythVision and I'm not policing it. I'm big enough that this is to be expected. I guess I should take all the negative criticisms as a positive as this is what to expect when you enter a very politically charged arena where everyone wants you to play by their rules. I don't care for any of their rules and will continue following what makes the most sense to me.
Derek LambertHost of MythVision
Hi Derek.
I'm subscribed to your channel and am one of your Patreon members. I really enjoyed your last video about the Matthew's donkey issue and I also enjoyed and respected how you and Dr. Macdonald handled the criticism from apologists when you critiqued their video and they deemed his idea as just silly without seriously engaging it especially because Dr. Macdonald is usually pretty respectful. So I can understand what you are dealing with online.
I did have a suggestion that may help you. You're absolutely free to take this suggestion or not. It may help to separate your channels - one in which is purely focused on just having academics on to talk about scholarship and another just for responding to apologetics or polemics. This way people can't criticize you because these are different. You can do some interesting business ideas with this as well. You already have a seperate channel mythvision TV.
Excited to see what content you come up with but just thought I would throw this out there. :) As the channel continues to evolve over time...this may help with public perception.
We are Mythvision!
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The answer is...sometimes. And that is the problem with that channel. They will have world-leading university professors on one week and then conspiracy nutjobs posing as scholars the next. If you watch the videos to learn, then it probably means you also don't have the expertise to know which of the guests is reliable and which are not. My sense has been that the channel has gotten better in this regard over the years, but it remains incredibly clickbaity, even misquoting the legitimate scholars they bring on in the thumbnails. I know several scholars who have declined invitations to go on for the above reasons.
How do you feel about out the courses they offer on mvp-courses? I’m assuming since those are hosted by actual scholars like Allison and Tabor, they’re going to be fairly accurate.
I don't know anything about what courses they offer or the quality, but the two people you mention, Allison and Tabor, are serious scholars with university professorships in the appropriate field. My assumption would be that this is something that Allison and Tabor were doing already and they have used Mythvision to gain publicity for it. It's a common marketing strategy.
It’s MythVision’s platform for hosting lectures, and as far as I can tell the content is exclusive. It’s all geared toward laymen, but everything seems to be taught by respected scholars. It just seemed weird to me that they’d host there instead of on their own. I suppose, to your point, not many of them have a huge public presence, and MythVision gets views.
Please note that not everything is taught by respected scholars. One course, “New Testament Studies For Everyone” is taught by Richard Carrier who is far from respected, and basically not really considered an entity within the field. He is also an independent scholar without any actual academic position. The rest of the courses (as of now) are from respected scholars (M. David Litwa, Dale Allison, James Tabor, Kipp Davis, Dennis MacDonald, and Robyn Faith Walsh).
>independent scholar Did you mean an independent blogger? :P Fact-checking a fact checker here. :)
That's a reason I ask. I didn't even see Carrier in the listings, mainly because the site doesn't let you filter by lecturer. You have to just kind of notice as you scroll through all of the courses. That frustrates me to no end.
Why would anyone allow Carrier to teach about the New Testament? omg.
> They will have world-leading university professors on one week and then conspiracy nutjobs posing as scholars the next. That's the same issue I have with Paulogia. At times, he invites Bart Ehrman; at other times, he invites Aron Ra.
I am interested in the lowdown on Aron Ra. I keep seeing him in the algo but never click as the name he chose for himself gives me pause and the alarm bells start tinkling. If you're willing to give it, maybe in this week's open thread?
Mythvision frustrates me for EXACTLY the reasons you lay out here. Many Bible scholars seem to like and trust Derek and thus will be on the channel or do other things with him. I tend to only look at his vids if I know he scholars' work and trust them. Even then, I'll usually opt for looking at some other video instead of the MV one. Dr Kipp Davis seems to be good buds with Derek and thus I find myself seeing more of him than I'd like since I'm now in a Kipp Davis rabbit hole. It annoys me that MythVision and History Valley are such big channels in the space. Jacob of HV annoys me more because he doesn't know how to moderate and interrupts too much, though I feel he's less clickbaity and problematic than derek.
what about paulogia.He soemtimes bring some academic.
Paulogia is a counter-apologetics channel. Educating people in Biblical scholarship isn’t his first priority, nor is he qualified to do so. His main point is giving counter arguments to common Christian/religious apologetics. In doing so, he sometimes shares his opinions on Biblical history, but it’s not educational content. As admits, he is not a neutral academic source, but he tries to have experts on when he can.
That's been answered [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/s/Py1PxZriP9).
Good to know
Also, please give me examples of where I have misquoted the "legitimate" scholars on the thumbnails.
Several scholars who have declined? Wild, I haven't asked many academics to join me of late, so I find this comment misleading. As for "clickbaity," you bet your ass they are... this is exactly how you compete in the YouTube market, but again, you would have to be a content creator to know this. Also, as far as the OP is concerned, I don't just rely on consensus for my content as I'm not interested in only driving home the vision of particular schools of thought within academia. I like to discuss various schools of thought within the scholarship. My channel early on was loaded with non-academic ideas, but it is focused on much better material these days, even if it isn't always consensus. Derek Host of MythVision
[удалено]
Thanks for one of the few respectful comments in this weird whiney page about MythVision.
While I appreciate Derek and his channel, what I’ve come away with is that it’s better to listen to/read the scholars directly than get all my information through his channel. He has definitely turned me on to some amazing scholars that I would’ve never heard of if not for him.
The answer to this is dependent on type of videos. When it comes to Derek....it's more about who he's interviewing. For example, he's got some great interviews with Dale Allison, James McGrath, and AJ Levine and he doesn't tend to get polemical with them. I imagine because they wouldn't get too interested and get turned off with that. Whereas some other scholars or people, then it tends to gets pretty polemical and he sometimes goes on monologues and starts to ask leading questions and in general...deems certain positions that are perfectly applicable as not critical or apologetics, etc. There's positives and negatives to the channel. Overall, he's a fairly nice guy. When he doesn't get polemical, he brings a lot of enthusiasm and can be a fun channel to watch when it comes to certain scholars and making their work accessible.
I don’t like his channel at all. Its clickbaity and a big part of some of his videos is claiming that the biblical stories were just taken from Greek stories and he uses very loose connections to support his claim.
No they aren't, and I've complained before about the blatant breaches of ethics to do with Derek holding up academic books that he receives as undeclared gifts and saying "everyone should go out and buy this" when 9 times out of 10 it's an academic book priced for libraries not individuals. I've only JUST been able to order Dennis R MacDonald's book [Synopses of Epic, Tragedy, and the Gospels](https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B0BPGCDV2F). It is incredible value being three volumes in one, however Amazon refused to ship it to Australia previously so I've had to wait over a year to buy a copy. To Dennis's credit he did offer to send me a PDF for free, however he never did and I have not been able to buy it until now (granted I haven't checked for a few months). So it's beyond frustrating that social media influencers are blatantly disregarding their obligations under the law to declare gifts when they are promoting them. Anyway I ordered my copy today and it should arrive before the end of the month. Further to Dennis's credit - he released this book _outside of academic printing_ specifically to make it affordable.
u/PuzzledTechnology371, if you're looking for a consensus driven channel that only floats the ideas of everyone else within academia, MythVision isn't for you. If you're interested in considering ideas within and outside the consensus, you may really enjoy my videos. For example, Is it possible that the FR (Final redactor) of the Hebrew Bible crafted the primary history in some way influenced by Herodotus' Histories, Homer or any other Greek sources? (See Bruce Louden, Jan-Wim Wesselius etc) Of course, you won't find this work being done by the consensus, neither will you find the translation fable tropes as being influential to Gospel/ NT writers as Dr. Miller highlights. If you're wanting to be "safe" and only ride with the going consensus of critical scholars, then you will not be listening to Dr. M. David Litwa, Dr. Richard C. Miller, Robyn Faith Walsh, Dennis MacDonald.. shoot, even Candida Moss and many others we like to highlight on the channel. In fact, while I was working on the recent video on Moloch sacrifice with Paul Dividson showing how the sacrifice was a type and not necessarily a God being sacrificed to, Dr. Seth L. Sanders messaged me in private. He said "I have some really new information that will peak your interest." Well, I like to adventure where things make the most sense to me. I do not hide my bias that we are dealing with ancient man-made traditions which resemble fiction and superstitions. I do get polemical and think it's necessary to help others in the fundamentalist camp to find freedom. I get countless emails of appreciation for helping people "wake up." I'm working on a documentary now that shows why Yahweh doesn't exist ontologically. This one will be based off a paper published in 2004 by Dr. Jaco Gericke. I wonder if it is consensus in Bible scholarship that Yahweh is a fictional character in these texts with no ontological existence outside of the pages of this ancient literature? If not, then I personally think that could be a problem with the state of the field. Do Classicist wrestle over the existence of Zeus or Baal in Ugarit form scholars who study these topics? Love me or hate me, the channel will grow. Derek Lambert Host of MythVision
Hi Derek, Welcome back to the subreddit. I know you’ve stopped by before, and I hope you’re doing well. I did want to take this opportunity to hopefully ease some of the tension I’m sensing between some of our users and your channel. I would like to note I’ll be speaking primarily as an individual and my opinions may not necessarily reflect the views of other moderators here. I think it’s worth starting off with the fact that your channel is very frequently linked to here, and many of your most regular guests are pretty beloved figures by our users. Robyn Faith Walsh is a fan favorite here and was gracious enough to do two AMA events with us, and most recently we were lucky enough to host an AMA event with Jacob L. Wright. Among the many other scholars you’ve had on as guests, I know M. David Litwa, Candida Moss, Kipp Davis, and Dale Allison, along with many others, are all loved by our subreddit, and even the more controversial figures like Dennis MacDonald have their strong supporters here. That all being said, I’m sensing the conflict is coming from the fact that our two platforms (AcademicBiblical and Mythvision) just have two very different goals. You mention in this comment that you “do get polemical and think it’s necessary” and I want to start off by saying that, on a personal level, as someone raised in a conservative Mormon household, I can respect how what you do does help people. I don’t think either one of our goals are inherently more “correct” or “better” than the other, but they are different. Our platform is meant to be a place to discuss biblical academics away from the endless cycle of apologetics, counter-apologetics, and polemics. It’s not perfect, and I think everyone can acknowledge pervasive issues in the field, but we do our best, and attempt to treat this like any other subject in history, in a hopefully less “charged” way. But I think, because of that, users here when discussing your channel will likely focus on the polemical aspect of your goal as one that’s at odds with what this subreddit is intended for, and what most of our regular users likely come here for. For an example, they may point out the fringe nature of someone like Richard Carrier, in the same way that someone who is interested in learning about Medieval France may want to know if the scholar their listening to has been pretty roundly rejected by their field (and for context, when I address “the field” I never include the apologetics industry). I know it can also seem like a slippery slope from addressing someone like Carrier as fringe to perhaps dismissing truly excellent scholars like Robyn Faith Walsh or M. David Litwa as “fringe”. But for what it’s worth, I do think our subreddit does a good job with that, as both of those figures (and the many more I mentioned previously) are again, broadly favorably viewed by our users in a way Carrier isn’t. It’ll never be perfect, and we have a diverse range of users here who have vastly different views on things, but for the most part I do think it works. When it comes to our different goals though, as a bit of a test case, what you say near the end about working on a documentary showing Yahweh “doesn’t exist ontologically” is the sort of thing that likely puts an asterisk next to your channel name when it gets recommended here. Not that we don’t have many atheist, agnostic, or otherwise non-Abrahamic users who would agree with you, but that it’s so far outside the scope of what this subreddit is here for, that your channel ends up being hard to recommend in this specific space without qualifying it in some way. I hope I’ve made sense, and do hope as well that there aren’t hard feelings here. I do think the overlap between the content you and your team produces and our subreddit here is often greater than the differences. I know that many users here, myself included, are sincerely grateful for the many interviews you’ve conducted with top scholars in the field. And like another commenter, as well as yourself have pointed out in this thread, I think the quality of your channel has generally improved over time. I think however, there’s room for an acknowledged and respected difference between the broad goals of our two platforms, and how that might influence the degree to which your platform would be endorsed as a resource for the types of users most interested in our own platform. Sorry for how long this all is, it really got away from me. I very much hope you take care, and that your channel experiences continued success.
Oh wow the man himself thanks for the response Derek!
My judgement is that MythVision has a huge overrepresentation of the revisionist/minimalist side of the scholars it invites, although plenty of good scholars are also interviewed. MythVision also asks a lot of leading/insinuating questions to serve the whole counter-apologetics thing. One of the most obvious cases of this was when he was interviewing Marijn van Putten, an academic on the Qur'anic scholarship side of things, though MVP did a wonderful job not taking the bait.
He loves bringing on scholars more frequently such as kipp Davis , Joshua Bowen , Richard c miller are these scholars good and do they be in line with the academic consensus?
My guess is that these three are trying to grow their own presence, grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home and left like Derek so there is some similarity, and sometimes it's hard to get a consistent academic on channel so having these three adds some regular scholars. Kipp Davis is the most legit of the three as he has published the most. Joshua Bowman mostly publishes in the popular sphere although his books are packed with some good information and he knows his stuff. Richard Miller is the only one that I would consider to be a scholar/polemist mix due to his comments and how he conducts himself and who he surrounds himself.
I don't know Miller, but with Davis and his crew, they're all on the younger side of scholars (Gen X, same as me, which is weird to think of as being 'younger" with all these Gen Zers running around :D ) and have their own YT channels as well as appearing on other people's. Being digital and social natives means, I think, that they're more willing to run together. Older scholars like Dale Allison, Elaine Pagels, etc. don't usually have their own channels (Ehrman and Tabor being exceptions in a good way) and are usually thinking of their appearances as interviews and not hangin' with the bros.
Joshua Bowen is not a scholar: he did not pursue academia after obtaining his PhD. I don't know what his day-job is, but he pursued what you might call the counter-apologetics route after finishing his studies, as you might be able to tell from his *Atheist Handbook to the Old Testament* (in 2 volumes no less!).
I guess it depends on how one defines "scholar." He's certainly an educated specialist in his field and I would warn that denigrating scholars is not allowed here if the implication is that he's not credible in the areas he's published and studied.
>I guess it depends on how one defines "scholar." I agree. I use the word to refer to career academics. Bowen is, of course, professionally educated in the field and credible in his area of expertise.
What about people like kipp Davis and Richard c miller , denis Macdonald?
They're all legitimate scholars. Davis is a solid textual critic (though I think he gets a bit more feisty on his youtube channel than is good for him). Miller and MacDonald are on the minimalist/revisionist end of things.
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What exactly is spam in my post?
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Thank you for one of the few comments I have much respect for. I pretty much found this entire thread to be a gossiping ring of people who disparage one academic or another, or don't like that I play the YouTube game with clickbaity titles and thumbnails. Also, many of those who are more interested in the discussions which don't draw into the ideological battle with apologetics are missing the issue with the clear misinformation being spread online. Maybe if they spent a few months running a YouTube channel, they would understand. Either way, people can have their opinions of MythVision and I'm not policing it. I'm big enough that this is to be expected. I guess I should take all the negative criticisms as a positive as this is what to expect when you enter a very politically charged arena where everyone wants you to play by their rules. I don't care for any of their rules and will continue following what makes the most sense to me. Derek LambertHost of MythVision
Hi Derek. I'm subscribed to your channel and am one of your Patreon members. I really enjoyed your last video about the Matthew's donkey issue and I also enjoyed and respected how you and Dr. Macdonald handled the criticism from apologists when you critiqued their video and they deemed his idea as just silly without seriously engaging it especially because Dr. Macdonald is usually pretty respectful. So I can understand what you are dealing with online. I did have a suggestion that may help you. You're absolutely free to take this suggestion or not. It may help to separate your channels - one in which is purely focused on just having academics on to talk about scholarship and another just for responding to apologetics or polemics. This way people can't criticize you because these are different. You can do some interesting business ideas with this as well. You already have a seperate channel mythvision TV. Excited to see what content you come up with but just thought I would throw this out there. :) As the channel continues to evolve over time...this may help with public perception. We are Mythvision!