Not long ago, fellow blogger John Zande wrote an excellent post titled “Jesus Christ: Just Not Worth a Sheet of Paper.” It’s actually not as derogatory as the title suggests. Some apologists have suggested that the reason we have no contemporary accounts of Jesus’ life is that paper was so expensive. That’s the argument John deals with in his post.
His post is great — you should read it. But what I actually want to write about is one of the comments that someone left on it. Diana of NarrowWayApologetics.com left a lengthy comment that I decided to include here in its entirety. I identified with it a bit. It reminded me of some of the thoughts I used to have as a Christian:
One of the main reasons people believed Paul was because he explained the reason for Jesus coming into the world. His teachings were amazing. They explained how Jesus “fulfilled the law and the prophets.” I wrote this comment in response to John Zande’s comment on my blog last night. Forgive me for posting it here. Just ignore if you don’t want to read it.
“This passage about Jesus fulfilling the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17-20) is one of the main reasons I believe the Gospel message. The incredible ways that Jesus did this are beyond human ability to create. I don’t think any mystery writer could have weaved together the incredible ways Jesus fulfilled the law and the prophets.
I know this post is long, so if you want to skip the parts between the dotted lines, I understand. I just wrote it for anyone who might be interested.
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First of all, there are many ways Jesus fulfilled the law. In fact, believers are constantly astounded by how intricately Jesus fulfilled the law.One way he fulfilled the law was by fulfilling the Sabbath. The Sabbath was the seventh day of rest that the Jews were commanded to obey. Jesus fulfilled the law of the Sabbath by becoming our rest for us. (Hebrews 4:9-11) He said his burden was light and his yoke was easy. Christians no longer practice the Sabbath. They worship on Sunday, rather than Saturday. They enter into his rest and no longer do religious works for salvation. (They are saved by grace through faith.)
Jesus fulfilled the law when he became the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. His death on the cross was similar to the Exodus story, which described the lamb, whose blood would be placed on the doorposts of the home, causing the death angel to pass over that home. (Hebrews 9)
Jesus fulfilled the law when he became the unleavened bread of the Exodus story. Leaven is a symbol of sin and false teaching (1 Cor. 5:6-8, Matt. 16:12). Jesus fulfilled this feast by being sinless and being the TRUTH.
Another way that Jesus fulfilled the law was by becoming a tithe (firstfruits) for us. (Leviticus 23:10) He fulfilled the tithe by becoming the firstfruits from the dead when he was resurrected. (1 Cor. 15:20) Christians are no longer bound by a tithe, instead we are told to be cheerful givers. We are also promised that there will be a resurrection for us because of what Christ did for us.
Jesus fulfilled the law when he became a light to the Gentiles. In the law of Moses, the people were commanded to leave behind the gleanings (or leftovers) of the harvest for the poor and aliens. (Lev. 23:22) This would be fulfilled at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down and the gospel was preached in all languages, offering salvation to all, not just the Jews. (Acts 10:34-35)
These fulfillments of the law were actually the first 4 feasts that would be celebrated every year by the Jews. They would be celebrated according to the seasons. The feasts celebrated during the early rains were the fulfilled at the time of the early church. Three more feasts are waiting to be fulfilled at the end of the age (or at the time of the latter rains). These three feasts are the feast of trumpets (representing the return of Jesus), the feast day of atonement (representing the salvation of the Jews), and the feast of tabernacles (representing the time when we will all be with the Lord).
There are so many other ways in which Jesus fulfilled the law and the prophets. And none of it has to do with Jesus expecting or commanding Christians to obey the law to perfection. It has to do with how it’s impossible for anyone to keep the law. That is why Jesus came. How could any human conceive of a way to have even a made-up, fictional character fulfill all these things? And I’ve barely scratched the surface of the way Jesus accomplished these things.
The greatest concern I feel burdened about is how to convey the magnificence of what I’m trying to explain. He was the manna from heaven. He was the living water. He was the high priest in the order of Melchizedek. He is the “I AM.” He is the Word become flesh. He became a slave for us. (Philippians 2:7) He became a curse for us. He became sin for us, so we could become righteous before God. He offers us mercy because his blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat. All of this is explained in the scriptures.
I haven’t even begun to explain the way Jesus fulfilled the prophets.
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The story of Jewish history and the giving of the law is actually a way to PROVE the reality of God’s plan for the salvation of humanity through Jesus Christ. One random fact doesn’t prove anything, but the cumulative effect of ALL the fulfillments makes the Bible a miraculous book. This is why some of the brightest and best minds in the history of the world have loved and received Jesus. It isn’t a decision based on emotion alone, but a decision based on knowledge. And the more I learn, the more I am in awe of what God did and how he accomplished it.”
To say that the story of Jesus was just created by pasting together myths, fictional narratives, sayings, and borrowed phrases (as Ken Humphreys does) is a ridiculous claim because only a Christ could have conceived of a Christ. Who could have created the amazing Jesus portrayed in the Gospels and explained further by Paul?
Of course, I now see that there are several problems with this line of thinking. In 2015, Star Wars Episode 7 is supposed to hit theaters. Will it shock anyone if the movie syncs up perfectly with the previous 6? The thing is, when there is already an established back story, it’s not impossible to construct a narrative that builds upon it. The fact that we as readers see the parallels between the stories of Jesus and events in the Old Testament is not an accident. The authors intended for us to see those parallels, and there’s no reason why they couldn’t have invented them — even if Jesus was a real person.
Matthew is one of the best books to look to for evidence of this. Matthew is the only book that tells of Jesus’ family fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod’s infanticide. Both events, fleeing to Egypt and the infanticide, seem to be inspired by Matthew’s reading of the Old Testament. Hosea 11:1 says, “out of Egypt, I called my son.” Matthew says that this prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus’ family returned after fleeing to Egypt. But when you read the entire chapter of Hosea 11, it’s very evident that the passage has nothing to do with the Messiah, but is simply talking about Israel’s period of captivity in Egypt.
Matthew also claims that Herod’s slaughter of infants in Bethlehem was to fulfill this prophecy:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more.
But once again, when we read all of Jeremiah 31, this was no prophecy at all. The chapter is talking about Israel’s captivity in Assyria. Nothing else.
The author of Matthew took these passages and used them to add parallels to the story about Jesus’ birth. It didn’t require magic or divine inspiration to do that — it only took knowledge of these passages. Just like the people working on Star Wars 7 don’t need divine intervention to let them know about Darth Vader.
Diana ends her comment by asking who could have created such a compelling story. Who could have created Christ? But why couldn’t we ask this about anyone? Who could have created Darth Vader? He’s quite a compelling character himself. Who could have created someone as magnificent as Santa Claus? Or Paul Bunyan? Or Achilles? Or King Arthur? Just asking this question doesn’t really mean anything. If Jesus never existed, then someone did just create his story. Or if he was a real person, but not divine, then his story was embellished. We have to draw our conclusions about Jesus based on the evidence, including the fact that Matthew seemed to feel the need to create “prophecies” to give Jesus credibility.
Finding Truth 
Actually, yes.
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Ha ha ha ha!!!! Okay… You proof text my work and come back with all of that but you give Ron a big fat amen! Seriously! So king Nebuchadnezzar has a dream about a big tree, and that clearly makes the earth flat. You just want to be right no matter what is really true, and that is fine by me! Frankly I am impressed that you looked it up. I don’t agree with you, but that’s okay! 😉
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“I thought I had made that clear …. Am I amiss, unkle”
Hi archaeopteryx1, I wasn’t questioning you about anything else, just querying the facts related to two of your statements, the two statement I quoted in my last. And it seems to me that those two statements are not quite accurate, as I also outlined in my last comment.
In the light of the facts which we have both referenced, do you still think those two statements of yours are accurate?
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I wouldn’t have posted them otherwise.
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Laurie – regarding your “spherical earth” theory, I ran across this, from “The Three Story Universe,” by N. F. Gier:
“The final evidence I draw from rabbinic accounts. In Nachmanides’ commentary on the Torah, he quotes from the ancient rabbis: ‘The heavens were in a fluid form on the first day, and on the second day they solidified.’ Another ancient rabbi said: ‘Let the firmament become like a plate, just as you say in Ex. 39:3.’ Nachmanides himself describes the firmament as ‘an extended substance congealed water separating’ the waters from the waters. Apart from the congealed water thesis, a modern Jewish Bible scholar agrees with this interpretation: ‘raqia’ suggests a firm vault or dome over the earth. According to ancient belief, this vault which held the stars, provided the boundary beyond which the Divine dwelt. As far as I can ascertain, the idea of a spherical earth did not enter Jewish thought until the Middle Ages.”
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“Are you saying that Matthew could have been the author of one of those 6 sources you mentioned? Is that what you’re driving at?”
Hi Nate, some scholars (e.g. Maurice Casey) think Matthew could have been the author of some or all of the Q material, and I’m inclined to think that may be true, but that isn’t what I’m “driving at”.
I don’t spend much time these days trying to argue beliefs and opinions – I’m happy to discuss and answer or ask questions, but that’s about it. But I do feel getting the facts right is important, for opinions and beliefs should be based on facts, and discussion can only proceed if we agree on the basic facts.
archaeopteryx1 made a couple of apparently factual statements that I believe are mistaken, so I asked him about them to see if I had misunderstood. That was all. But it seems the matter may not be that simple, as my next post to him/her will outline.
Best wishes to you and yours!
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Hi archaeopteryx1,
As I said to Nate, I’m not trying to make any comment about your conclusions about Jesus and history, just trying to verify if your apparently factual statements accord with the known facts. Let’s just start with one of them:
“only Mark, John and Paul had any significant degree of originality about their work”
Now according to the information I looked up, the following are the approximate number of verses in each category (the numbers can vary slightly according to who counts them):
Mark 678
Q (non Markan material in Matthew & Luke) 235
M (specifically Matthew material) 226
L (specifically Luke material) 577
This means that Q & M are about a third of Mark and L is about 85% of Mark. I would guess these numbers are all much greater than the number of historical references to Jesus in Paul.
Do you agree with these numbers? If so, how can you justify the statement above? Surely Q, M & L are significant, non-Markan and original?
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“the entire chapter deals with the coming end of the world, culminating in the prophecy that all of these events will occur within the lifetimes of his audience”
Hi archaeopteryx1, here I am again, I’m sorry. I don’t necessarily agree with everything Laura says about this chapter – it is a much argued over chapter with many, many different interpretations so that isn’t surprising. But I do think your statement can be questioned.
At the start of this group of sayings, Jesus says (Matt 24:6,8) “Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ….. All these are the beginning of birth-pains.” So it is clear that he isn’t only talking about the end, but times well before the end.
Then in v 14 he says: ” And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
Now clearly that couldn’t occur quickly. It didn’t occur at least until the 19th century, and possibly not even yet. So again we have this long time period.
So if we consider the whole passage, it seems clear that fulfilment will be over a long period of time, at least 2 millennia. I personally think most of it applied to the immediate future, but I don’t think we can say that all of it did. And once we say that, a lot of the criticisms made about this passage cannot be sustained. It makes it murkier and less certain, I agree, but as the man in black said, we must “get used to disappointment” 🙂
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“only Mark, John and Paul had any significant degree of originality about their work”
That’s it?
You made all of those posts asking if I wanted to retract anything, and went to all of the trouble to find and copy the Matthew, Luke and Q material, and it was all about this statement?
I can tell you that I certainly have far more going on with my life, than to sit down and count the number of Markan references in Matthew and Luke. I know nothing about the sources of your statements. And it still, as I’ve tried saying on several occasions, has nothing to do with the validity of these anonymous authors, and that was the point of our original conversation, in the event that you’ve lost sight of that.
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@Unklee
You have got to be kidding, right?
You are a Christian. Nothing you believe regarding Christianity is based on facts and you have the gall to question out Nate and Archeopteryx over interpretation of Matthew?
There is only a belief concerning the Q source. No evidence whatsoever.
The gospel authors are unknown. Period.
Mark wrote first and Matthew and Luke copied mush of their material.
Luke trawled Josephus.
There is no consensus nor evidence regarding this Aramaic source/gospel anywhere.
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“Then in v 14 he says: ‘And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.’
“Now clearly that couldn’t occur quickly. It didn’t occur at least until the 19th century, and possibly not even yet. So again we have this long time period.”
You’re saying that he was discussing something distant in time, because what he was discussing didn’t happen before the 19th century, whereas I say that what he was discussing didn’t happen before the 19th century, because he was wrong. When people of those times spoke of “all nations,” they referred to the tiny world they knew, with no knowledge of the size of the planet, or for that matter, even that they lived on a planet! Of course you will maintain that he had supernatural knowledge of all nations, of all times, and equally of course, I would not concur.
In my opinion, had Emperor Constantine not adopted Christianity, it would have died a slow death like the hundreds of other minor religions that were so plentiful in the Middle East.
I think astrophysicist Neill Degrasse Tyson said it best: “God is a scientific pocket of scientific ignorance, that gets smaller and smaller as time goes by.” Give it another half-millennium, and the Judeo/Christian/Islamic religions will take their rightful places with the other myths of antiquity, which people of the future will read and muse, “What were they thinking –?”
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“You made all of those posts asking if I wanted to retract anything”
No I made those posts because I was interested in the truth of the matter. You made a statement that I thought wasn’t accurate, and I wanted to check that I understood you correctly, and if I had, to point out the facts. I have done that. There are in fact at least 6 significant sources, not just the 3 you mentioned. I think that is worth knowing. Thank you.
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“You’re saying that he was discussing something distant in time, because what he was discussing didn’t happen before the 19th century, whereas I say that what he was discussing didn’t happen before the 19th century, because he was wrong”
I wasn’t trying to make a point about whether he was right or wrong – that is something we can each choose our opinion on – but whether you were right or wrong to say the prophecy was that “all of these events will occur within the lifetimes of his audience”.
Whether you are right about your other comments we can all speculate and have our opinions, but it seems the statement I picked up on was inaccurate – at least you haven’t offered any explanation of how it could be correct i the light of the statements I referred to.
I’m sorry to be a pain and aggravate you, I tried to be as gentle as I could. But three of your apparently factual statements appear to have been erroneous, and I think in a discussion like this, we need to at least begin with correct facts. I’ll get out of your hair now. Best wishes to you.
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Before finishing my first cup of coffee, I misquoted Tyson – sorry, Neill:
“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance, that gets smaller and smaller as time goes on.”
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First of all, I mentioned four, not three – Pseudo-Mark, Pseudo-Matthew, Pseudo-Luke and Pseudo-John – I didn’t mention Q because Q was irrelevant to my point. Still, that is only five anonymous sources, not six.
Can you imagine a court situation, in which an attorney says, “I have five people here as witnesses – now they must remain anonymous, and they most likely didn’t actually witness the events in question, but definitely heard about it from someone who heard about it, whose second cousin Mildred said she witnessed it! We’re not going to have a problem with their credibility, are we Your Honor?”
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RE: “I wasn’t trying to make a point about whether he was right or wrong – that is something we can each choose our opinion on – but whether you were right or wrong to say the prophecy was that ‘all of these events will occur within the lifetimes of his audience’.”
And I still maintain that I am correct, and that you, in order to make it appear as though your Yeshua did not make a mistake, are interpreting his words to be other than they are.
I never allow inconsequential things to “aggravate” me, but thank you for your concern.
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“First of all, I mentioned four, not three “
Your statement was “only Mark, John and Paul had any significant degree of originality about their work” and that is 3. And there are three other significant original sources – Q, M & L, which makes 6.
That was all I was questioning, and it is beyond dispute. Why not just agree, show that you are willing to follow the evidence, and we can move on?
“And I still maintain that I am correct, and that you, in order to make it appear as though your Yeshua did not make a mistake, are interpreting his words to be other than they are.”
So how do you interpret “such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ….. All these are the beginning of birth-pains. …. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” to mean “within the lifetimes of his audience”?
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@ Unklee
Avoid…really?
And yet you comment even more that I do…..
Your attempts at being self-effacing are transparent.
Some might be forgiven for considering you just a little hypocritical, unklee.
Why must we assume it was?
What’s the source of Papias? Eusebius.
Thank you.
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@unklee
Simple….the ”whole world’ of a 1st century Jew would have been about the same size as the Known World. In other words…not that big at all.
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UnkleE,
Someone may have already addressed this — I haven’t read the latest comments yet — but I wanted to make a caveat to one of the points you brought up.
You said:
Jesus could only have meant a long period if he knew how big the earth was. I don’t think he was aware of that. Paul certainly wasn’t:
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I agree with Ark’s response to your question. I’d also add that verse 34 clearly says “all these things”:
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RE: “So how do you interpret ‘such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ….. All these are the beginning of birth-pains. …. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.’ to mean ‘within the lifetimes of his audience’?”
I don’t, as clearly those statements are so ambiguous as to be impossible to determine any deadline, but this certainly does: Matthew 24:34, “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, til all these things be fulfilled.”
This is what I’m seeing unk, and I’ve run into this tactic before, I made the statement that there is no verifiable evidence that the New Testament character, Yesua, ever actually existed. You have no evidence to support your belief that he did, so the best you can do is nit-pick my statements, in order to find SOMEthing about which to make me wrong, which I see as a deflection tactic.
If you wish to provide some verifiable evidence that your Yeshua existed, I’ll be more than happy to entertain it, but as far as continuing to support your sycophantic nit-picking, designed to irritate, I fear I have no more time for such indulgences.
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@Nate – are you claiming that the gospel of the kingdom WAS preached in the whole (known) world as a testimony to all nations, and STILL the end didn’t come? SAY it isn’t SO!
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😉
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“If you wish to provide some verifiable evidence that your Yeshua existed”
To rephrase what I wrote earlier:
In the end, the only evidence that really matters is an actual, living, breathing, resurrected messiah.
Can anyone present such a being?
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