Pratica di Shadowing: 1/ 1 The Case for Christ Chapter Eyewitness Evidence does it reach a reasonable level of certainty - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
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Chapter 1 The Eyewitness Evidence Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?
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When I first met shy and soft-spoken Leo Carter, he was a 17-year-old veteran of Chicago's grittiest neighborhood.
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His testimony had put three killers in prison, and he was still carrying a .38 caliber slug in his skull.
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A grisly reminder of a horrific saga that began when he witnessed Elijah Baptist gun down a local grocer.
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Leo and a friend, Leslie Scott, were playing basketball when they saw Elijah, then a 16-year-old delinquent with 30 arrests on his rap sheet,
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slay Sam Blue outside his grocery store.
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Leo had known the grocer since childhood.
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When we didn't have any food, he'd give us some, Leo explained to me in a quiet voice.
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So when I went to the hospital and they said he was dead, I knew I'd have to testify about what I saw.
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Eyewitness testimony is powerful.
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One of the most dramatic moments in a trial is
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when a witness describes in detail the crime that he or she saw, and then points confidently toward the defendant as being the perpetrator.
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Elijah Baptist knew that the only way to avoid prison
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would be to somehow prevent Leo Carter and Leslie Scott from doing just that.
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So Elijah and two of his pals went hunting.
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Soon they tracked down Leo and Leslie, who were walking down the street with Leo's brother Henry, and they dragged all three at gunpoint to a darkened loading dock nearby.
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I like you, Elijah's cousin said to Leo, but I've got to do this.
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With that, he pressed a pistol to the bridge of Leo's nose and yanked the trigger.
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The gun roared.
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The bullet penetrated at a slight angle, blinding Leo in his right eye and embedding in his head.
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When he crumbled to the ground, another shot was fired, this bullet lodging two inches from his spine.
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As Leo watched from his sprawled position,
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pretending he was dead, He saw his sobbing brother and friend ruthlessly executed at close range.
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When Elijah and his gang fled, Leo crawled to safety.
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Somehow, against all odds, Leo Carter lived.
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The bullet, too precarious to be removed, remained in his skull.
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Despite searing headaches that strong medication couldn't dull,
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he became the sole eyewitness against Elijah Baptist at his trial for killing grocer Sam Blue.
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The jurors believed Leo, and Elijah was sentenced to 80 years in prison.
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And again, Leo was the only eyewitness to testify against Elijah
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and his two companions in the slayings of his brother and his friend.
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And once more, his word was good enough to land the trio in prison for the rest of their lives.
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Leo Carter is one of my heroes.
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He made sure justice was served, even though he paid a monumental price for it.
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When I think of eyewitness testimony, even to this day, all these years later, his face still appears in my mind.
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Yes, eyewitness testimony can be compelling and convincing.
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When a witness has had ample opportunity to observe a crime, when there's no bias or ulterior motives, when the witness is truthful and fair,
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the climactic act of pointing out a defendant in a courtroom can be enough to doom that person to prison or worse.
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an eyewitness testimony is just as crucial in investigating historical matters
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even the issue of whether jesus christ is the unique son of god
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but what eyewitness accounts do we possess do we have the
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testimony of anyone who personally interacted with jesus who listened to
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his teachings who saw his miracles who witnessed his death and who perhaps even encountered him after his alleged resurrection.
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Do we have any records from first-century journalists who interviewed eyewitnesses,
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asked tough questions, and faithfully recorded what they scrupulously determined to be true?
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Equally important, how well would these accounts withstand the scrutiny of skeptics?
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I knew that just as Leo Carter's testimony clinched the convictions of three brutal murderers,
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eyewitness accounts from the mists of distant time could help resolve the most important spiritual issue of all.
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To get solid answers, I arranged to interview the nationally renowned scholar who literally wrote the book on the topic,
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Dr. Craig Blomberg, author of The Historical Reliability of the Gospels.
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I knew Blomberg was smart.
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In fact, even his appearance fit the stereotype.
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Tall at six foot two and lanky with short wavy brown hair unceremoniously combed forward,
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a fuzzy beard and thick rimless glasses.
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He looked like the type who would have been valedictorian of his high school.
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He was.
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A national merit scholar.
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He was.
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And a magna cum laude graduate of a prestigious seminary.
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He was from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
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But I wanted someone who was more than just intelligent and educated.
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I was searching for an expert who wouldn't gloss over nuances or blithely dismiss challenges to the records of Christianity.
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I wanted someone with integrity, someone who has grappled with the most potent critiques of the faith and who speaks authoritatively,
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but without the kind of sweeping statements that conceal rather than deal with critical issues.
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I was told Blomberg was exactly what I was looking for, and I flew to Denver wondering if he could measure up.
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Admittedly, I had a few doubts, especially when my research yielded one profoundly disturbing fact that he would probably have preferred had remained hidden.
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Blomberg still holds out hope that his beloved childhood heroes, the Chicago Cubs, will win the World Series in his lifetime.
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frankly that was enough to make me a bit suspicious of his discernment
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the first interview craig l blomberg phd craig blomberg is widely
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considered to be one of the country's foremost authorities on the biographies of jesus
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which are called the four gospels he received his doctorate in
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new testament from aberdeen university in scotland later serving as a senior research fellow at Tyndale House at Cambridge University in England,
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where he was part of an elite group of international scholars that produced a series of acclaimed works on Jesus.
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For the last dozen years, he has been a professor of New Testament at the highly respected Denver Seminary.
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In addition to the historical reliability of the Gospels, Blomberg's books include The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel,
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Jesus and the Gospels, Interpreting the Parables, Can We Still Believe the Bible?, and Commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew and 1 Corinthians.
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He also helped edit Volume 6 of Gospel Perspectives, which deals at length with the miracles of Jesus.
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And he co-authored Introduction to Biblical Interpretation and a handbook of New Testament exegesis.
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He contributed chapters on the historicity of the Gospels to the award-winning book, Jesus Under Fire.
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His memberships include the Society for the Study of the New Testament, Society of Biblical Literature, and the Institute for Biblical Research.
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As I expected, his office had more than its share of scholarly volumes stacked on the shelves.
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He was even wearing a tie emblazoned with drawings of books.
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However, I quickly noted that his office walls were dominated not by dusty tomes from ancient historians, but by artwork from his young daughters.
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Their whimsical and colorful depictions of llamas, houses, and flowers weren't haphazardly pinned up as a casual afterthought.
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They had obviously been treated as prizes, painstakingly matted, carefully framed, and personally autographed by Elizabeth and Rachel themselves.
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Clearly, I thought to myself, this man has a heart as well as a brain.
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Blomberg speaks with the precision of a mathematician.
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Yes, he taught mathematics too earlier in his career,
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carefully measuring each word out of an apparent reluctance to tread even one nuance beyond where the evidence warrants.
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Exactly what I was looking for.
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As he settled into a high-backed chair, cup of coffee in hand, I too sipped some coffee to ward off the Colorado chill.
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Since I sensed Blomberg was a get-to-the-point kind of guy, I decided to start my interview by cutting to the core of the issue.
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Tell me this, I said with an edge of challenge in my voice.
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is it really possible to be an intelligent, critically thinking person and still believe that the four Gospels were written by the people whose names have been attached to them?
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Blomberg set his cup of coffee on the edge of his desk and looked intently at me.
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The answer is yes, he said with conviction.
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He sat back and continued.
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It's important to acknowledge that, strictly speaking, the Gospels are anonymous.
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But the uniform testimony of the early church was that Matthew, also known as Levi, the tax collector and one of the twelve disciples,
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was the author of the first gospel in the New Testament.
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That John Mark, a companion of Peter, was the author of the gospel we call Mark.
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And that Luke, known as Paul's beloved physician, wrote both the gospel of Luke and the acts of the apostles.
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How uniform was the belief that they were the authors?
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I asked.
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There are no known competitors for these three Gospels, he said.
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Apparently, it was just not in dispute.
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Even so, I wanted to test the issue further.
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Excuse my skepticism, I said, but would anyone have had a motivation to lie by claiming these people wrote these Gospels when they really didn't?
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Blomberg shook his head.
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probably not remember these were unlikely characters he said a grin breaking on his face
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mark and luke weren't even among the 12 disciples matthew was
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but as a former hated tax collector he would have been
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the most infamous character next to judas iscariot who betrayed jesus
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contrast this with what happened when the fanciful apocryphal gospels were written much later
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people chose the names of well-known and exemplary figures to be their fictitious authors
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philip peter mary james those names carried a lot more weight than the names of matthew mark and luke
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so to answer your question there would not have been any
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reason to attribute authorship to these three less respected people
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if it weren't true now that sounded logical but it was obvious
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that he was conveniently leaving out one of the gospel writers.
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What about John, I asked?
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He was extremely prominent.
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In fact, he wasn't just one of the twelve disciples, but one of Jesus' inner three, along with James and Peter.
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Yes, he's the one exception, Blomberg conceded with a nod.
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And interestingly, John is the only gospel about which there is some question about authorship.
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What exactly is in dispute?
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The name of the author isn't in doubt.
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It's certainly John, Blomberg replied.
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The question is whether it was John the Apostle or a different John.
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You see, the testimony of a Christian named Papias, dated about A.D.
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125, refers to John the Apostle and John the Elder.
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And it's not clear from the context whether he's talking about one person from two perspectives or two different people.
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But granted that exception, the rest of the early testimony is unanimous that it was John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee, who wrote the gospel.
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And, I said, in an effort to pin him down further, you're convinced that he did?
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Yes, I believe the substantial majority of the material goes back to the apostle, he replied.
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However, if you read the gospel closely, you can see some indication that its concluding verses may have been finalized by an editor.
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Personally, I have no problem believing that somebody closely associated with John may have functioned in that role,
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putting the last verses into shape and potentially creating the stylistic uniformity of the entire document.
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But in any event, he stressed, the gospel is obviously based on eyewitness material, as are the other three gospels.
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While I appreciated Blomberg's comments so far, I wasn't ready to move on yet.
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The issue of who wrote the gospels is tremendously important, and I wanted specific details, names, dates, quotations.
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I finished off my coffee and put the cup on his desk.
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Pen poised, I prepared to dig deeper.
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Let's go back to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, I said.
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What specific evidence do you have that they are the authors of the Gospels?
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Blomberg leaned forward.
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Again, the oldest and probably most significant testimony comes from Papias, who in about A.D.
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125 specifically affirmed that Mark had carefully and accurately recorded Peter's eyewitness observations.
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In fact, he said Mark made no mistake and did not include any false statement.
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And Papias said Matthew had preserved the teachings of Jesus as well.
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Then Irenaeus, writing about AD 180, confirmed the traditional authorship.
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In fact, here, he said, reaching for a book, he flipped it open and read Irenaeus' words.
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Matthew published his own gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel in Rome and founding the church there.
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After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter's preaching.
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Luke, the follower of Paul, sat down in a book the gospel preached by his teacher.
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Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on his breast, himself produced his gospel while he was living at Ephesus in Asia.
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I looked up from the notes I was taking.
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Okay, let me clarify this, I said.
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If we can have confidence that the gospels were written by the disciples Matthew and John, by Mark, the companion of the disciple Peter,
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and by Luke, the historian, companion of Paul, and sort of a first century journalist,
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we can be assured that the events they recorded are based on either direct or indirect eyewitness testimony.
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As I was speaking, Blomberg was mentally sifting my words.
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When I finished, he nodded.
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Exactly, he said crisply.
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There were still some troubling aspects of the Gospels that I needed to clarify.
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In particular, I wanted to better understand the kind of literary genre they represented.
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When I go to the bookstore and look in the biography section, I don't see the same kind of writing that I see in the Gospels, I said.
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When somebody writes a biography these days, they thoroughly delve into the person's life.
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But look at Mark.
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He doesn't talk about the birth of Jesus or really anything through Jesus' early adult years.
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Instead, he focuses on a three-year period
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and spends half his gospel on the events leading up to and culminating in Jesus' last week.
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How do you explain that?
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Blomberg held up a couple of fingers.
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There are two reasons, he replied.
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One is literary and the other is theological.
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The literary reason is that basically, this is how people wrote biographies in the ancient world.
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They did not have the sense, as we do today, that it was important to give equal proportion to all periods of an individual's life,
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or that it was necessary to tell the story in strictly chronological order, or even to quote people verbatim, as long as the essence of what they said was preserved.
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Ancient Greek and Hebrew didn't even have a symbol for quotation marks.
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The only purpose for which they thought history was worth recording was
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because there were some lessons to be learned from the characters described.
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Therefore, the biographer wanted to dwell at length on those portions of the person's life that were exemplary, that were illustrative, that could help other people,
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that gave meaning to a period of history.
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And what's the theological reason, I asked?
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It flows out of the point I just made.
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Christians believe that as wonderful as Jesus' life and teachings and miracles were, they were meaningless if it were not historically factual that Christ died
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and was raised from the dead and that this provided atonement or forgiveness of the sins of humanity.
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So Mark, in particular, as the writer of probably the earliest gospel, devotes roughly half of his narrative to the events leading up to,
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including one week's period of time and culminating in Christ's death and resurrection.
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Given the significance of the crucifixion, he concluded, this makes perfect sense in ancient literature.
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In addition to the four Gospels, scholars often refer to what they call Q, which stands for the German word Quell or Source.
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Because of similarities in language and content,
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it has traditionally been assumed that Matthew and Luke drew upon Mark's earlier gospel in writing their own.
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In addition, scholars have said that Matthew and Luke also incorporated some material from this mysterious Q, material that is absent from Mark.
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What exactly is Q?
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I asked Blomberg.
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It's nothing more than a hypothesis, he replied, again, leaning back comfortably in his chair.
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With few exceptions, it's just sayings or teachings of Jesus, which once may have formed an independent, separate document.
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You see, it was a common literary genre to collect the sayings of respected teachers,
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sort of as we compile the top music of a singer and put it into a best of album.
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Q may have been something like that.
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At least that's the theory.
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But if Q existed before Matthew and Luke, it would constitute early material about Jesus.
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Perhaps, I thought, it can shed some fresh light on what Jesus was really like.
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Let me ask this, I said.
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If you isolate just the material from Q, what kind of picture of Jesus do you get?
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Blomberg stroked his beard and stared at the ceiling for a moment as he pondered the question.
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Well, you have to keep in mind that Q was a collection of sayings,
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and therefore it didn't have the narrative material that would have given us a more fully orbed picture of Jesus,
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he replied, speaking slowly as he chose each word with care.
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Even so, you find Jesus making some very strong claims.
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For instance, that he was wisdom personified, that he was the one by whom God will judge all humanity, whether they confess him or disavow him.
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A significant scholarly book has argued recently that if you isolate all the Q sayings, one actually gets the same kind of picture of Jesus,
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of someone who made audacious claims about himself, as you find in the Gospels more generally.
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I wanted to push him further on this point.
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Would he be seen as a miracle worker?
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I inquired.
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Again, he replied, you have to remember that you wouldn't get many miracle stories per se, because they're normally found in the narrative, and Q is primarily a
Prime impressioni: perché questo video è ottimo per parlare inglese
Questo video è un tesoro per chi vuole migliorare la pronuncia inglese e la fluidità. La narrazione combina storie reali con discussioni profonde, creando un contesto che mantiene l'attenzione e stimola la memoria. Le frasi sono variate, con un mix di toni (drammatico, riflessivo, informativo) che insegnano a adattare la voce a diverse situazioni. Inoltre, il linguaggio è colloquiale ma articolato, perfetto per esercitarsi con "shadow speak" – una tecnica che consiste nel ripetere immediatamente le frasi dopo il speaker, imitando intonazione e ritmo.
Analizziamolo: frasi naturali e come usarle
Ecco tre frasi chiave e perché sono efficaci per la pratica:
- "Eyewitness testimony is powerful." La struttura semplice ("Soggetto + verbo + aggettivo") rende la frase easy to repeat, ma la parola "powerful" aggiunge un tocco di intensità. Per la pronuncia, focalizzati su "eyewitness" (pronuncia: /ˈaɪwɪtnəs/) e "testimony" (/ˈtestɪməni/), due termini frequenti in contesti formali.
- "Leo had known the grocer since childhood." L'uso di "had known" (passato perfetto) mostra un'azione che inizia nel passato e continua, un tempo grammaticale spesso difficile. La frase è naturale perché usa "since childhood" invece di espressioni più complicate, insegnando a essere chiaro senza overcomplicare.
- "Yes, eyewitness testimony can be compelling and convincing." La ripetizione di "compelling and convincing" (entrambe con il suono /k/) crea un effetto ritmico. E' un esempio perfetto per esercitare la "shadowing in inglese" perché la pausa dopo "Yes" e l'accento su "compelling" e "convincing" insegnano l'intonazione corretta.
Routine di pratica: repeat-and-record per migliorare
Prova questa semplice routine per sfruttare al massimo il video:
- Guarda un frammento di 10-15 secondi e ascolta attentamente l'intonazione e il ritmo.
- Ripeti immediatamente dopo, cercando di imitare ogni dettaglio (usare "shadowing" è fondamentale!).
- Registra la tua ripetizione e confrontala con l'originale: notare le differenze nella pronuncia e nella fluidità.
- Ripeti il processo per 5-10 volte finché la frase suona naturale.
Con questa tecnica, migliorerai non solo la pronuncia inglese ma anche la capacità di capire e riprodurre il linguaggio in tempo reale. Un "shadowing site" può aiutare a organizzare le sessioni, ma anche un cellulare e un po' di impegno bastano! Ricorda: la pratica di conversazione in inglese non è solo parlare, ma ascoltare e imitare – e questo video è la tua migliore alleata.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.