How much do we pay for opinions?
Recently in my Living
World Religions Class while reading the chapter discussing Christianity, the
author of our textbook “Living Religions,” Mary Pat Fisher, wrote, “There is
little historical proof of the life of Jesus, but extensive scholarly research
has turned up some shreds of evidence,”
(P298). When I read that, I
wondered what she could mean, as I have long understood there is sufficient
evidence to support not only His existence, but also, so much so that the
world’s annual calendar is based on His life.
We refer to time as BC or before Christ and AD or Anno Domini, or, the
year of our Lord, which indicated the years after His birth. Society has changed the references to
reflect, BCE or Before Common Era and CE or Common Era to remove Christ from
the reference but they could not change that the calendar itself is based on
His life. As far as an argument goes
that in and of itself is sufficient to prove that He did live, however, because
there is such rich information opposing the author’s opinion, I choose to lay
out the fallacy of her comment in the following paragraphs.
Fallacy is defined as a
false or mistaken idea. At first blush,
it would seem impossible to have a college textbook make a statement as if it
were fact without the data necessary to support the statement; however, we hear
it all the time, especially in politics.
There is no supporting evidence and yet we, society, believe in, trust
in, and even base major decisions based on those statements when often they are
nothing more than opinions. In this case,
the statement suggests that Christ may not have lived, in effect negating the
Christian religion, which is based on the virgin birth, sinless life,
crucifixion death, and resurrection of Christ all for the forgiveness of our
sins. Without Christ, there is no
Christianity, the New Testament of the Bible is invalid, the Catholic religion
is invalid, and, the world’s annual calendar origination is invalid. The Old Testament of the Bible is called into
question as many passages foretell of Christ in detail. That is an awful lot of foundation ripped out
from underneath us if her statement is accurate. Essentially her basis says, “We accepted the
fables of there being a Christ but now, we have sufficient knowledge to show
that this is mere conjecture lacking in the support necessary for it to be a
meaningful, reliable belief”
If Fishers statement is
accurate then followers of Christ for centuries have mistakenly believed that
God loved us so much that He gave His only begotten Son to die for our
forgiveness, and, that our celebration of Christmas and Easter have no
basis. That is great news for all those
who want separation of church and state where Christianity is banished and seen
nowhere in society except for in churches, which of course wouldn’t be called
churches, they would be called temples, or synagogues, or mosques. While it is true we would still have the Ten
Commandments, what we would not have is, “You shall love the Lord your God with
all your body, mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.” “On these hang all the laws and all the
prophets,” Mt. 22:37-40 NKJV. These two verses capture the essence of how best to
act in society and as humans if we could get just these two right we might not
need courts, jails, litigation, or shelters.
Just because humans get it wrong does not mean God does. Christ is the moral support for all of the
commandments and without Christ; our moral compass is very different.
According to Josh
McDowell in his CD recording, “Bible, Fact Or Fiction,” the best way to start is with a good
definition of history, stating that it is a knowledge or record of the past
based on testimony; physical, written and oral testimony, (CD 10:44 m). Additionally you want to know, is the
testimony reliable, (11:52 m)? The
historiography is the common method used to determine whether the item you are
checking out is accurate, (12:21 m). All
ancient texts go through the same process.
Typically, the closer the copy of the text is to the original manuscript
the greater the accuracy. So how does
what we have in the Bible and on external history measure up as support for
Christ having lived? Showing that the
Bible is accurate does support Christ having lived and we can easily support
that the Bible is accurate. Additionally
we can show external sources that mention Christ, some of which are opposed to
Christianity making those even more reliable sources. One other definition I would like to bring
out is the word, “shred.” According to
Merriam Webster dictionary, the definition of shred is a particle or scrap,
meaning that Fisher is stating that after extensive scholarly research there
are some particles or scraps of evidence of Christ having lived. Let us get to work and see whether her
comment is fact or wishful ignorance of history.
First, let us look at
the sources for the life of Christ in sources outside of the Christian religion
some of who were eye witnesses to Christ living. Because they are not Christians and in some
cases were rigorously opposed to Christianity, they are the best witnesses
because they do not have bias in support of Christ having lived. In three of the sources I used one of the
first names to come up was Josephus. In
Lee Strobel’s book, “The Case For Christ,” he interviews world-renowned
biblical scholar Edwin M. Yamauchi. This
scholar has an extensive career in Biblical studies. For lack of room in this paper, I am not able
to list all of his extensive accomplishments however; his education, writings,
and positions are easily researched though an online search of his name. In the interview, Strobel asks for the
personality and character traits of Josephus. Yamauchi gives the details that
Josephus was a Jew that was hated by the Jews because in the Jewish-Roman war
in AD 66 to AD74, he surrendered to the Romans instead of committing
suicide. He then went on to defend the
Roman actions. He was a priest and a
Pharisee. He wrote a book called, “The
Antiquities.” In it, he writes referring
to James, the brother of Christ and to Christ himself. The book was written at the end of the first
century, (P78). When Strobel asks if we
should have more external proof of Christ having lived Yamauchi responds, “When
people begin religious movements, it is often not until many generations later
that people record things about them,” He went on, “But the fact is that we
have better historical documentation for Jesus than for the founder of any other
ancient religion,” (P86). In the book,
“The Search for Messiah,” written by Mark Eastman M.D., and Chuck Smith, the
external sources for proof of Christ are; Josephus, Thallus, Philopon, all
historians, Tacitus, Hadrian, both emperors, Lucian of Samosata a Greek
satirist, Mara Bar-Serapion, a Syrian philosopher, ancient Rabbinical texts
with references to Y’shua, which is Jesus, and Maimonides, a thirteenth century
revered Rabbi, (P240-254).
In the book, “The New
Evidence That Demands A Verdict,” Josh McDowell lists additional external
sources as Suetonius, a Roman historian, Pliny the Younger, a Governor of
Bithynia, and Phlegon, a secular authority, (P120-123). All of these references not only support
Christ having lived, they also support the accuracy of the Bible. In addition to these sources, there are
archeological proofs of the Bible’s accuracy.
Archaeological finds help to support the scientific study of the texts
that are found. Reformed Jewish scholar
Nelson Glueck has affirmed, “It is worth emphasizing that in all this work no
archaeological discover has ever controverted a single properly understood
Biblical statement,” (P370). The definition of controverted is to deny the
truth of something.
In his audio recording,
“Bible, Fact or Fiction, “McDowell gives us information as to the accuracy of
the Bible; they call it manuscript authority.
The first of two questions asked of all manuscripts of antiquity is, “what
is the timeline from the original manuscript to the earliest copies?” Generally the closer the copy is to the
original the greater the accuracy. Pliny
the Younger’s copies are 750 years from the original. Caesar and the Gaelic wars copies are 1000
years from the original, Plato is 1200 years from the original, Aristotle books
of poetry were written in 343 BC and the closest copy is 1100 AD for a total of
1343 years from the original to the first copies. Thucydides considered the most accurate
historian of antiquity was 1300 years from the time he wrote the original to the
closest copy. Herodotus the famous Greek
historian from the fifth century, was 1350 years from when he wrote to the
first copy, and Euripides a writer of Greek tragedies, had 1500 years between
his writings and the first copies. In
each of these cases, accuracy is not questioned. For the New Testament, there was 80 years
from the original manuscript to the first copy, that is it, 80 years,
(CD17:36-19:40). The historical scholars
are able to date the writings based on different typesets, punctuation,
ornamentation and text division.
The next question that
will determine manuscript authority is determining how many copies of each
manuscript there are. The reason the
number of manuscripts is important is that if you have only four or five copies
of a text and there are discrepancies it is difficult to determine what the
original text was. If you have many
copies then you can reconstruct the text with greater confidence of accuracy. Caesar and the Gaelic wars have ten
manuscripts. Plato has seven. Tacitus the Roman Historian has twenty Pliny
the Younger has seven. Thucydides has
seven copies and remember that those copies are 1300 years from the
originals. Sophocles has 193 manuscripts
and Aristotle has 49. The New Testament
of the Bible has 24,633 manuscripts starting within 80 years of Christ’s
life. The New Testament of the Bible is
the number one book in manuscript authority in all books of antiquity. Fifty six hundred of those books are
handwritten Greek texts, (CD27:45m).
If you still did not
believe that the Bible was accurate, you could burn every single Bible and
every single manuscript, all 24,633 of them and even doing that you could
reconstruct all but eleven verses of the New Testament from copies of letters
written by the early church fathers.
According to scholars, the Hindu text Mahabharata is 90.3% pure that
what we have today is what was written down.
The Iliad by Homer is 95% pure in the 643 copies that we have. The New Testament is 99.5% pure that what we
have now is what was written down. One
scholar of Nestles Greek New Testament examined every word of the New Testament
text. He said that any words in question
that was not in the original texts is less than one-half of one page for the
entire New Testament and that not a single word in question related to any
major doctrine, (CD 32:35m).
Maybe Fisher was not
aware of the extensive scholarly research that has been done in the research of
the Bible and Christ’s life, because all of the evidence quoted here seems to
be more than a few shreds, but there is more.
In addition to all of the scholarly research via books and archaeology,
there is now evidence in the sky. In his
DVD, “The Star Of Bethlehem,” attorney Rick Larsen walks us through how the
stars in the sky, line up exactly the way they are described in both the Old
Testament where it foretold of Christ to the New Testament and Christ’s
life. The stars are in the exact
position described in the Bible for Christ’s conception, birth, and even His
crucifixion death.
In this fascinating
journey, Larsen has purchased software that includes in its calculations the
mathematical equations from Kepler’s original work, that were then improved by
Newton and determine what drives the planets.
The importance of this research is that for centuries skeptics have
refuted the language of the Bible when it came to descriptions because they
describe things that stars cannot do such as stand still, or go in
reverse. Going through the Bible, finding
all the clues and matching those up with the facts that we know from history we
find that every part of Christ’s life is told in the Heavens and the
Bible. God not only protected His word
to us for these thousands of years, but He gave us evidence of the accuracy of
His word that can be seen throughout history in the sky. How can we not be awed by that? Taking all of the verses in the Bible that
foretell of the coming Messiah, each description is supported by the stars
during that specific period. Chinese
records of the stars on those dates support that the stars were actually in the
position that the Bible verses state they were.
Philo a Jewish historian notes that the Magi traveled from the East to
see the King. Verses in Joel talk about
a “blood moon” and using this software and Chinese records show that the blood
moon was actually a lunar eclipse that occurred the day Christ was crucified at
the time he died.
Who would care enough
about humanity that they left evidence in every place possible, nature,
history, water, sky, and mountains supporting their existence? No one but God would have done that for us to
give enough evidence to support a reasonable faith in Him and the Son He sent
us to share eternity with Him by way of the forgiveness of sins. To say that there are only shreds of evidence
is so far off the mark that the burdens for those who believe Fishers comment
as truth and resultantly deny Christ must rest squarely on her shoulders
because she chose opinion over data. How
many beliefs and or decisions are based on her opinion? The true cost of it will only be known in
Heaven with God as her judge.
“All who believe in the
Son of God know in their hearts that this testimony is true. Those who do not believe this are actually
calling God a liar because they do not believe what God testified about His
Son.” 1 John 15:10 NLT
