Why Name Popularity is a Good Test of Historicity - a Summary

This paper, titled "Why Name Popularity is a Good Test of Historicity," by Luuk van de Weghe, Jason Wilson argues that the statistics of personal names found in the Gospels and Acts (GA) provide strong evidence for their historical reliability.

Here is a summary of the key points:

The central thesis presented by Luuk van de Weghe and Jason Wilson is that the authors of the Gospels and Acts did not arbitrarily invent names for their characters. Rather, they accurately reflected the specific naming reality of their time and place.

Every culture and time period has a unique statistical signature regarding names (e.g., how "Jennifer" or "Michael" were ubiquitous in the 1980s US but less so in the 1920s). The authors argue that the Gospels and Acts possess the exact statistical "fingerprint" of Palestinian Jewish society between 4 BCE and 73 CE.

The argument isn't just that the names sound Jewish; it's that the frequency of specific names in the New Testament mathematically correlates with the frequency of names found in independent archaeological records (ossuaries, manuscripts) from that era, specifically the Lexicon of Jewish Names by Tal Ilan. This correlation is significant because it is extremely difficult for a fiction writer—especially one writing decades later or in a different region—to unconsciously replicate the complex demographic data of a specific past era.

For example, the summary notes that fictional narratives often avoid repeating names to prevent reader confusion. Real history, however, is messy. In this period, Hasmonean names like Simon, Joseph, and Judah were massively popular. The Gospels reflect this "clumping" of popular names (which requires the text to use nicknames or descriptors like "Simon Peter" vs. "Simon the Zealot" to tell them apart), a pattern that realistic fiction rarely mimics successfully.

Because the name distribution in the text matches the real-world population so closely (and fits better than random chance or fiction), the authors conclude the narratives must be rooted in genuine eyewitness testimony or reliable records that preserved the true names of individuals.

The Debate

This section of the paper outlines an ongoing academic conversation regarding the historical reliability of the Gospels, specifically focusing on statistical analysis of names. The debate follows a clear "claim, counter-claim, and defense" structure:

The current study relies heavily on the groundwork laid by scholar Richard Bauckham in his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Bauckham was the first to utilize Tal Ilan’s Lexicon of Jewish Names to compare the names found in the Gospels with names found in historical records (like ossuaries and manuscripts) from the same period. He argued that the names in the Gospels accurately match the historical frequency of names in ancient Palestine, suggesting they are based on genuine eyewitness accounts rather than later fiction.

The Counter-Argument: Gregor and Blais

The paper specifically addresses and refutes a recent challenge from researchers Kamil Gregor and Brian Blais. They argued that the sample size of names in the Gospels is too small to be statistically significant, meaning the "match" Bauckham found could just be a coincidence.

 They further claimed that the name patterns in the Gospels are statistically indistinguishable from "anonymous community transmission". This implies that the names could have been generated by random oral tradition (stories changing as they are passed down) rather than by preserving specific historical facts.

Van de Weghe and Wilson's Rebuttal

The paper by Luuk van de Weghe and Jason Wilson acts as a defense of Bauckham's original thesis against the criticisms of Gregor/Blais

They use a "Chi-squared goodness-of-fit test" to provide a more rigorous statistical analysis than previous attempts. Their objective is to mathematically prove that the Gospel names fit the actual historical population (Ilan-1) far better than they fit the "random noise" of anonymous transmission or the patterns found in fiction

The core of Van de Weghe and Wilson’s methodology was the Chi-squared goodness-of-fit test. In simple terms, this statistical test measures how well "observed" data (the names in the Gospels) matches "expected" data (historical reality).

To determine the true nature of the names in the Gospels and Acts, the authors compared them against three distinct categories of data:

1. Real History

• Dataset: Ilan-1 (Palestinian Jewish names from Tal Ilan’s database).

• The Test: They treated the Ilan-1 database as the "control group" representing the actual population of 1st-century Palestine. The primary question was: Does the frequency of names in the Gospels mathematically mirror this real-world population?

2. The Alternative Explanations The authors tested the Gospels against scenarios that critics might propose to explain the names:

• The Telephone Game Model: They tested against a "uniform distribution" to represent "anonymous community transmission." This checks if the names are just random noise generated by oral tradition over time.

• The Fiction Model: They compared the Gospels to both ancient fiction (apocryphal gospels) and modern historical novels (Ben Hur and The Spear). This checks if the Gospels resemble the patterns of authors who are trying to sound historical but are actually inventing characters.

3. Comparative History

• Dataset: The writings of Josephus.

• The Test: They compared the Gospels to the works of Josephus, a known 1st-century historian. This served as a benchmark for what a genuine historical text from that era should look like statistically.

The Logic of the Method

By running these tests, the authors aimed to do more than just show a "match." They wanted to prove a negative: that the Gospels do not look like fiction and do not look like random noise. If the Gospels fit the "Real History" data better than they fit the "Fiction" or "Random" models, it scientifically supports the claim that they are based on accurate records or memory.

Key Findings

• 1. The Historical Match is Near-Perfect

  The primary finding is that the frequency of names in the Gospels and Acts (GA) aligns remarkably well with the actual population of 1st-century Palestinian Jews found in the Ilan-1 database. The authors found that the biblical texts accurately reflect the specific naming trends of that exact time and place, rather than generic "Jewish" names.

  2. Fiction Fails the Clumping Test

  The study showed that the Gospels performed significantly better than both ancient apocryphal gospels and modern historical novels.

  • The Clumping Phenomenon: In reality, a few names (like Simon, Joseph, Judah) were massively popular, while others were rare.

  • The Fiction Problem: Even meticulous authors, such as Louis de Wohl in The Spear, failed to replicate this pattern. Fiction writers subconsciously avoid repeating names to prevent reader confusion (e.g., they wouldn't have multiple characters named "Simon"), whereas the Gospels faithfully record these clumps of popular names.

  3. Rejection of the Telephone Game

  The statistical tests explicitly rejected the anonymous community transmission model. This suggests that the names in the Gospels are not the result of random noise or stories morphing over time as they were passed down orally, effectively countering the telephone game theory.

  4. Comparison with Josephus

  When compared to the writings of Josephus (the standard benchmark for history of that era), the Gospels performed just as well, and in one aspect, even better.

  • Name Origin: The Gospels fit the data better than Josephus regarding the origin of names. Josephus tended to Hellenize (Greek-ify) names to suit his literary audience, whereas the Gospels retained a more authentic Semitic/Aramaic distribution.

Conclusion The paper concludes that the Gospels and Acts accurately retain the specific naming patterns of Palestinian Judaism in a way that is highly unlikely to result from fiction or later invention. This supports the view that the narratives rely on eyewitness sources who correctly remembered the names of individuals.