“So what do you think?” asked Jonnie.
“About what?” Dave replied.
“About the things we’ve been discussing over the past few weeks! About all those reasons I’ve given you for God’s existence!” Jonnie said, exasperated.
“Well...I have been thinking about it a bit,” he said. “I’ve even done a bit of research myself.”
“And what have you come up with?” enquired Jonnie.
“Here’s the thing...even if I agree with everything you’ve said up to this point, even if I grant you that, it doesn’t prove that your god is the true god. It could be any number of gods!” he declared.
“You’re right,” said Jonnie, “what we’ve talked about so far has been designed to just look at the existence of god, and these arguments work just as well for the Muslim god or the Jewish god.”
“So how do you know that you’re worshipping the right one?” Dave asked.
“What we need to do is take a cab ride,” Jonnie said.
“A what? How’s a taxi gonna help us?” Dave asked, sounding more confused than usual.
“Not a real cab ride, a metaphorical one. Think about it this way. Imagine you are going on holiday. First thing you do is catch a plane – that gets you most of the way there. But the plane won’t get you to the hotel; you need to catch a cab from the airport. What we’ve done so far is like the plane ride. What we need to do now is catch that taxi to our final destination.”
TFY’d – The Historical Jesus
Over that past few weeks we’ve looked at many topics that were designed to get you thinking about the existence of God. We’ve explored the idea that the universe itself, both through its existence and its structure, make it more probable than not that God exists. We’ve looked at morality and seen how the existence of real, objective morals point to God, and we’ve seen how the problem of evil and suffering in the world is actually proof that God exists, not the opposite. But all of these discussions can only get us to the existence of a God, not the particular God of Christianity. Indeed, these arguments can equally be used to get to the God of Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
Now it’s time to narrow our focus and begin looking at the particular God of the Bible as revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth as the foundation of Christianity is who he is and what he did. If he never existed, and if he did not rise from the dead then Christians are “of all men most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19) because we have our hope in vain. We need to examine the evidence for Jesus so that we can be confident of putting our trust in something real, not a fairy story.
If successful in defending the Biblical account of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection we will have shown Christianity to be the one true religion: Christianity is monotheistic, and our previous Puzzle Pieces have proved that aspect, and Christianity makes unique claims about the life and person of Jesus that Islam and Judaism do not; actually, the Biblical claims contradict the claims of these other two great monotheisms. Therefore, following the Law of Non-Contradiction we learned about in Puzzle Piece 2, we can be certain that the Muslim idea about Jesus (that he was a great prophet who was not crucified or resurrected) and the Jewish idea (that he was a sorcerer or magician and blasphemer) are wrong. After all, Jesus can’t have been crucified and not crucified at the same time, right? So, what’s the first step? The first thing we need to do is figure out if someone named Jesus ever even existed. And to do that, we’re gonna have to turn to history.
Jesus – did he ever exist?
There is a lot of debate amongst historians about Jesus, about who he was, what he did, whether or not he actually walked out of that tomb three days after dying and being buried. It’s very important to note, however, that what is almost never up for debate is whether he existed at all. Almost no historian is willing to say that Jesus is an entirely made up person – the evidence of his existence is simply too overwhelming. Scholars on both sides of the theological isle, Christians and non-Christians, almost unanimously agree that a person named Jesus lived in first century Palestine. In fact, New Testament scholar Mike Licona says you could count on one hand the number of bone fide historians who think Jesus is a complete myth[1]. Theologian Rudolf Bultmann states that “By no means are we at the mercy of those who doubt or deny that Jesus ever lived.”[2] The late Michael Grant, professor of Humanity at Edinburgh University, calls this idea an “extreme view.” But, despite that, there are people who occasionally claim that he never existed, so we think it would be beneficial for you to be able to defend the historicity of the person of Jesus, and that’s what we’ll do now.
New Atheist and one of the so-called Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Christopher Hitchens is probably the most famous person currently making this claim. While he doesn’t claim to have investigated the evidence and arrived at his conclusion through study, he does say that the case against Jesus existence could be made[3]. This is also a claim that you might hear from the average atheist at your work or university (we have!) so we need to discuss the evidence. (Before beginning, though, it’s important to note that the person who makes this claim is making a huge claim that the vast majority of professional historians are wrong, and he or she should be willing to provide evidence for that claim. It’s not your job to immediately jump in with your proofs of his existence – let the doubter shoulder the burden of proof that his claim requires.) Let’s begin with looking outside the Bible.
Source 1: Tacitus
Next, let’s turn our attention to sources outside the Bible. The first of these is the Roman historian Tacitus. In his Annals 15.44 he says this:
Consequently, to get rid of the report [that he started the great fire of Rome], Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.[4]
In this quote it is clear that Tacitus is referring to a real person named Christus (Latin for “Christ”) who began a movement in Judea, and was crucified by Pontius Pilate.
Source 2: Josephus
Josephus was a Jewish historian who lived in the first century AD. Josephus is an interesting source because he mentions Jesus twice in his work. In his book Antiquity of the Jews he says this:
18:3 Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.[5]
Now this is a contentious section of Josephus’ work, one that appears to have been edited by later Christian scribes to enhance Josephus’ opinion of Jesus. Geza Vermes, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at Oxford, suggests that the original is more likely to look like this:
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man...For he was one who performed paradoxical deeds and was the teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews [and many Greeks?]. He was [called] the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him...And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.[6]
Thus, even with the shorter version, his reference to Jesus as an actual person of history remains.
His second reference to Jesus is in 20:9:
He [high priest Ananus] assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.[7]
Again, we see Josephus assuming the historicity of the person of Jesus.
New Testament scholar Gary Habermas says there are about a dozen sources outside the Bible that mention Jesus and for a much more thorough investigation see his book The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ where he discusses each in turn. We will stop here, though, because we don’t have time to go through them all.
Sources 3-6: The Gospels
This might seem like an odd place to turn – after all, how can we use the Bible to prove the Bible? That’s not actually what we’re doing at this stage. What we are doing here is looking at the Bible as any historian would – as historical texts with something to say about the past. Remember, the Bible as we have it today wasn’t always in one book; that didn’t officially happen until the 300s. This is an important distinction to make because we often hear sceptics saying things like, “there’s no historical evidence for Jesus outside the Bible” and even though that’s not true (as we’ve seen), so what if it was? Why should we just throw out the Bible? Because it’s been written by Christians? Again, so what? If we were to discount the Bible just because Christians wrote it we would have to discount everything about the Holocaust that was written by Jews! This is simply an illegitimate attempt to discard some very important historical documents – don’t fall for it! Grant says “if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.”[8] His comments that we should treat the Gospels the same way we treat any other historical document are especially important!
Let’s look at the Bible in its original form as a selection of written sources, some letters from one historical figure to another. The first four books of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) are the first four sources of information we have about the life of Jesus, and they contain the most detailed accounts of his life of any historical documents. What reasons do we have to discount them? Are they factually incorrect in many areas? Certainly not! They record many events, places and people that are supported by non-Biblical sources. In fact, Geisler and Turek list 59 “historically confirmed/historically probable details” from the Gospel of John alone[9]! Luke, the author of both the Gospel bearing his name and the Book of Acts, is such a good historian that professor of New Testament and Archaeology John McRay has this to say:
the general consensus of both liberal and conservative scholars is that Luke is very accurate as a historian...he’s erudite[10], he’s accurate, his Greek approaches classical quality, he writes as an educated man, and archaeological discoveries are showing over and over again that Luke is accurate in what he has to say.[11]
Now, it is true that there are some differences in what the Gospel writers say about Jesus, but far from undermining the case for Jesus’ existence these differences actually strength it. How’s that, you ask? If the Gospels were a fabrication of the early Church we would expect all the accounts to line up perfectly. J. Warner Wallace is a Californian Cold Case detective who has conducted thousands of interviews in his career and he knows that if all his witnesses are saying exactly the same thing then they’ve gotten together and discussed their story. For him, the little differences about peripheral issues prove that the core components, upon which all the witnesses agree, are factual[12]. Investigative journalist of 25 years Ian Wishart shares a similar view. After investigating countless news stories and taking eye witness testimony from many witnesses he knows that the differences in peripheral details do nothing to undermine the core facts. On the contrary, he says, “if they were perfectly harmonious, I’d be suspicious.”[13]
Remember, at this point, all we are trying to do is establish that Jesus existed, nothing more than that, and it is clear that sources both inside and outside Christianity show us that a person named Jesus of Nazareth existed. With the above points in place, we think it’s safe to say that the Gospel writers were writing about a real person, and you should have enough information to counter those who say that Jesus is just a myth.
How was the Bible Preserved?
Even with all that in place, some people are still critical of the Bible’s worth as an historical document because of how long ago it was written and because there are differences between our ancient copies. This brings up the obvious question: how do we know that what our Bibles say is what was originally written 2,000 years ago? The question is one that takes us into the field of history known as Textual Criticism, which is the process of trying to figure out what a piece of writing originally said. We are going to watch a short video on part of this process relating to the number of documents we have and how close in time they are to the original compared to other ancient texts. This video is called An Embarrassment of Riches and compares the number of New Testament manuscripts we have from antiquity to those of other ancient documents (we’ve summarised the important facts in the table below). It’s produced by Dr Daniel Wallace of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts and he’s made a whole series of videos on this topic available via iTunesU.
Histories | Oldest manuscript | Number Surviving |
Livy (59BC-AD17) | 300+years after original | 30 |
Tacitus (AD56-120) | 800 years after original | 3 |
Seutonius (AD69-140) | 800 year after original | 200 |
New Testament | 50-100 years after original | 5700+ in Greek |
10,000 in Latin and other languages | ||
1,000,000+ quotations in Church Fathers |
It’s important to note that not all, or even most, of these manuscripts are complete. Many are fragments, some of
which are only a line or two long. Our first complete New Testament comes from about 300 years after the originals were written, but we have complete copies of the individual books from before that time; in fact, the whole of the New Testament was repeated many times over in the manuscripts written before that time, but our first complete New Testament comes from then.
which are only a line or two long. Our first complete New Testament comes from about 300 years after the originals were written, but we have complete copies of the individual books from before that time; in fact, the whole of the New Testament was repeated many times over in the manuscripts written before that time, but our first complete New Testament comes from then.
Therefore, it seems perfectly reasonable to hold what many scholars do: that what we have in our hands today is 99.5% pure when compared to what the originals probably said. That means that we can have confidence that what we are reading is what was actually written!
Prepared by D England. Translated for Youth by J. Simmons.
[1] Radio interview with Greg Koukl, April 26, 2009, Stand to Reason radio, www.str.org.
[2] Cited in Gary Habermas, ‘A Summary Critique: Questioning the Existence of Jesus (A Critique of G. A. Wells’ thesis)’, Christian Research Journal, 22, 3, 2000
[3] Christopher Hitchens, panel debate with William Lane Craig, , Douglas Wilson, Lee Strobel, and Jim Dennison, March 2009, http://www.rfmedia.org/RF_audio_video/Other_clips/CT-Expo-Panel/, accessed 3 July 2010.
[4] Cited in Chapter IX: Ancient Non-Christian Sources’, in Gary Habermas, 1996, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ, College Press Publishing Company. Electronic Version, taken from http://www.garyhabermas.com/books/historicaljesus/historicaljesus.htm#ch9, 23rd June 2011.
[5] Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 2003, 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc.
[6] Geza Vermes, ‘Jesus in the Eyes of Josephus’, Standpoint, Jan/Feb 2010.
[7] PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 2003, 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc.
[8] In Habermas, ‘A Summary Critique”
[9] Geisler, N., and Turek, F., I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2004, pp. 263-268.
[10] Knowledgeable
[11] Cited in Strobel, Lee, The Case for Christ, Michigan: Zondervan, 1998, p129.
[12] Radio interview with Greg Koukl, February 11, 2009, Stand to Reason radio, www.str.org.
[13] Wishart, Ian, The Divinity Code: The explosive new evidence, North Shore: Howling at the Moon Publishing, 2007, p207.
