How Much Do We Pay for Opinons

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