If everybody else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?

Recently Dr. Licona has stated that classicists use the passage-by-passage approach and that they don't even talk about the reliability of whole documents. (This is an approach I've criticized in an earlier video, linked below.) While he does not draw the conclusion that this means we should not talk about the reliability of whole documents, we need to examine this claim. Is it true? Would it matter if it were true? If classicists, even all the classicists in the world, were really so incredibly unreasonable as not even to talk about whole-document reliability, that would be so crazy that we should ignore them. (Hence, the title of the video.) But the statement itself is definitely an exaggeration. Even recent classicists, even those somewhat sympathetic to the "sexy" claim that ancient authors had a somewhat loose view of truth, do talk about the reliability of authors in general and hence of their documents, not just the truth of individual stories. Moreover, the excellent Colin Hemer, whose magisterial book on the reliability of the book of Acts is entirely about the reliability of a whole document (Acts), has some top-notch comments about the need to investigate the reliability of the Gospel of Luke.

• Here is the video with the claim about what classicists supposedly don't talk about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DLW3bkZQGM&t=596s
• Here is my earlier video on the pitfalls of passage-by-passage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrXVbvGGmZQ
• Here is a post with more quotations from Hemer about genre: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2017/06/colin-hemer-on-genre-of-lukes-writings.html
• Books mentioned in the video. Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World https://www.amazon.com/Lies-Fiction-Ancient-World-Christopher/dp/0292727674
• Colin Hemer's excellent The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Acts-Setting-Hellenistic-History/dp/1575063964/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3IKI4L0Z77H2G&keywords=book+of+acts+Hemer&qid=1641479761&s=books&sprefix=book+of+acts+hemer%2Cstripbooks%2C87&sr=1-1
  
  Originally uploaded to YouTube 1.9.21