Sigh…
So here’s what’s been going on lately. Most of you who read this blog already know that when my wife and I left Christianity, it wrecked most of our family relationships. My wife’s parents and siblings, as well as my own, felt that they could no longer interact with us socially after our deconversion. We were no longer invited to any family functions, and our communication with them all but disappeared. We would speak if it was about religious issues, or if there were logistic issues that needed to be worked out in letting them see our kids, etc.
Over the years, things have gotten a little better, especially with my wife’s parents. Things are by no means back to normal, but at least our infrequent interactions have become more civil and more comfortable. A few weeks ago, I even had a phone conversation with my father that lasted about half an hour and had no references to religion whatsoever. It was nice.
Nevertheless, the awkwardness is still there, just under the surface. And we’re still blacklisted from all the family functions.
Throughout this time, I’ve occasionally reached out to my side of the family with phone calls, letters, facebook messages, etc, in an effort to discuss the issues that divide us. I don’t get much response. I’ve always been puzzled by that, since I know they think I’m completely wrong. If their position is right, why aren’t they willing to discuss it?
In the last five years, I’ve also been sent books and articles and even been asked to speak to certain individuals, and I’ve complied with every request. Why not? How could more information hurt? But when I’ve suggested certain books to them, or written letters, they aren’t read. When I finally realized that my problems with Christianity weren’t going to be resolved, I wrote a 57-page paper to my family and close friends, explaining why I could no longer call myself a Christian. As far as I know, none of them ever read the whole thing. And sure, 57 pages is quite a commitment. But they say this is the most important subject in their lives…
This past week, the topic has started to come back around. A local church kicked off a new series on Monday entitled “Can We Believe the Bible?” It’s being led by an evangelist/professor/apologist that was kind enough to take time to correspond with me for several weeks in the summer of 2010. I’ve never met him in person, but a mutual friend connected us, since he was someone who was knowledgeable about the kinds of questions I was asking. Obviously, we didn’t wind up on the same page.
My wife’s parents invited us to attend the series, but it happens to be at a time that I’m coaching my oldest daughter’s soccer team. So unless we get rained out at some point, there’s no way we can attend. However, we did tell them that if practice is ever cancelled, we’ll go. I also contacted the church and asked if the sermons (if that’s the right word?) will be recorded, and they said that they should be.
Monday night, the weather was fine, so we weren’t able to attend. And so far, the recording isn’t available on their website. However, they do have a recording of Sunday night’s service available, which is entitled “Question & Answer Night.” I just finished listening to it, and that’s where the bulk of my frustration comes from.
It’s essentially a prep for the series that kicked off Monday night. They’re discussing why such a study is important, as well as the kinds of things they plan to cover. What’s so frustrating to me is that I don’t understand the mindset of evangelists like this. I mean, they’ve studied enough to know what the major objections to fundamentalist Christianity are, yet they continue on as if there’s no problem. And when they do talk about atheists and skeptics, they misrepresent our position. I can’t tell if they honestly believe the version they’re peddling, or if they’re purposefully creating straw men.
A couple of times, they mentioned that one of the main reasons people reject the Bible comes down to a preconception that miracles are impossible. “And if you start from that position, then you’ll naturally reject the Bible.” But that’s a load of crap. Most atheists were once theists, so their starting position was one that believed in miracles.
They also mentioned that so many of these secular articles and documentaries “only show one side.” I thought my head was going to explode.
And they referred to the common complaints against the Bible as “the same tired old arguments that have been answered long ago.” It’s just so infuriating. If the congregants had any knowledge of the details of these “tired old arguments,” I doubt they’d unanimously find the “answers” satisfactory. But the danger with a series like this is that it almost works like a vaccination. The members of the congregation are sitting in a safe environment, listening to trusted “experts,” and they’re injected with a watered down strain of an argument. And it’s that watered down version that’s eradicated by the preacher’s message. So whenever the individual encounters the real thing, they think it’s already been dealt with, and the main point of the argument is completely lost on them.
For example, most Christians would be bothered to find out that the texts of the Bible are not as reliable as were always led to believe. Even a beloved story like the woman caught in adultery, where Jesus writes on the ground, we’ve discovered that it was not originally part of the gospel of John. It’s a later addition from some unknown author. To a Christian who’s never heard that before, it’s unthinkable! But if they’ve gone through classes where they’ve been told that skeptics exaggerate the textual issues in the Bible, and that the few changes or uncertainties deal with only very minor things, and that none of the changes affect any doctrinal points about the gospel, then it’s suddenly easier for them to swallow “minor” issues like the insertion of an entire story into the gospel narrative.
Sigh…
I’m going to either attend these sessions, or I’ll watch/listen to them once they’re available online. I may need to keep some blood pressure medication handy, though.
Finding Truth 
. . .and ALL of it is conjecture, not FACT. There’s not one shred of proof, as Crown well knows. And, no, ‘cuz — bible!’ is not FACT
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Crown, what makes you think Jesus was the Son of God? Did he ever say that in so many words?
I know there are those who believe he inferred it by things he said and did … and the big push behind the Gospel of John is to convince others that he was the Son of God, but …
One must remember that by the time the gospels were written, Jesus had become a legend in his own time. The stories about him had been repeated (and elaborated) over several years, plus Paul had been making inroads with his version of who Jesus was, so it’s not surprising his status grew and was magnified.
But I don’t think you’ll find it in the scriptures that Jesus actually said he was the Son of God.
The simple truth is it’s all conjecture. But it’s been repeated so many times it’s become fact within the confines of Christianity.
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If only Christian were a philosophy, like Buddhism, with no threats of punishments if you choose not to follow that philosophy.
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A wonderful thought, Gary – perhaps it’s time for a paradigm shift??
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Nan, I recommend you study some actual New Testament scholarship. All of the gospels portray Jesus as the Messiah. Matthew, Luke, and John refer to him as Son of God with him directly claiming it in Matthew, but the precise meaning of this is disputed. The real question is whether Jesus thought he was divine and whether the earliest Christians believed this (i.e., before John was written). The answer is yes and yes. A scholarly argument can be put forth that even Mark shows Jesus to claim divine nature and our evidence from the early church clearly demonstrates belief that Jesus is divine.
The argument that the gospels are legend has been so thoroughly refuted that it’s shocking you are unaware of this.
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Wait, wait, wait, Brandon.
Even if all four Gospels explicitly have Jesus claiming to be the Son of God (which I agree with Nan that they do not) that would still not prove the Gospels to be factual, historical accounts. They could still very well be legends. It would just mean that the legend of divinity began earlier, with the author of Mark.
Legends can form within days. Superstitious people can get really worked up when an alleged supernatural “miracle” is thought to have occurred. One only has to look at the many Virgin Mary sightings as proof of this.
Please give your evidence that the gospels reliably retell historical facts and are not legend.
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Here is the evidence I have seen Christians give for the accurate historicity of the Gospels:
1. Papias in circa 120 AD gives some support for Matthew and John Mark writing Gospels.
2. Irenaeus declares the traditional authorship of the Gospels in the late second century.
3. The Muratorian fragment, from the end of the second century, declares the traditional authorship of the Gospels.
4. There is no evidence that anyone in the early Church questioned the traditional authorship of the four gospels therefore it must be correct.
That’s it.
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And here are some of the assumptions used by Christians as evidence for the historicity of the Gospels:
1. If the Gospels were false stories, eyewitnesses would have exposed them as false when they were written.
2. The disciples would not have died for something they knew was a lie.
3. The Gospels use women eyewitnesses to the empty tomb. The testimony of women in first century Palestine was not admissible in a court of law, therefore the gospel writers would not have used this detail if the story was a fabrication.
4. Papias knew Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle John. Therefore, Polycarp would have told Papias whether John had written the Gospel of John or not.
5. Even though Paul gives practically no details about the life and teachings of Jesus in any of his epistles, we know that Paul met with Peter and James, Jesus brother in Jerusalem for fourteen days. Therefore Paul would have compared the Jesus he saw on the Damascus Road with the Jesus known by Peter and James. These two apostles would have certainly quizzed Paul on what he saw on the Damascus Road to confirm his story and that his claim to apostleship was true.
6. If the empty tomb was a lie, the Jews and Romans could have taken people to the tomb and brought out the corpse.
7. Christianity spread rapidly and thousands of converts joined the movement even though they faced intense persecution and possibly martyrdom. This would not have happened if the resurrection had not really happened.
8. The dramatic change in attitude and behavior of the disciples is evidence for the truthfulness of the story of the Gospels.
9. James, the brother of Jesus, was not a serious follower of Jesus prior to the resurrection. Only the resurrection would have changed his mind.
10. James the brother of Jesus died refusing to recant his testimony of seeing and touching a resurrected Jesus.
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Hi Gary, there is one important and obvious reason supporting the conclusion that the gospels provide good historical evidence, that you haven’t mentioned.
Secular historians say so.
Here’s a few quotes from a few of the most eminent secular historians, none of whom are (or were – two have died) christians:
EP Sanders was until retirement Arts and Sciences Professor of Religion at Duke University.
“The sources for Jesus are better, however, than those that deal with Alexander …. written nearer his own lifetime, and people who had known him were still alive” The Historical Figure of Jesus p3.
“we have a good idea of the main lines of his ministry and his message. We know who he was, what he did, what he taught, and why he died. ….. the dominant view [among scholars] today seems to be that we can know pretty well what Jesus was out to accomplish, that we can know a lot about what he said” Ibid p 281.
“some aspects of Jesus’ teaching and career are firmly established, some things attributed to him are disproved, and most of the material is placed somewhere in between” Studying the Synoptic Gospels, p304
Bart Ehrman, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina.
“We have more evidence for Jesus than we have for almost anybody from his time period.” Interview with ‘The Infidel Guy’.
Maurice Casey, late Professor of New Testament Languages and Literature at the university of Nottingham.
“The oldest and most reliable of the Gospels is the Gospel According to Mark ….. his best sources were in Aramaic and he translated them as he went along. These sources, though abbreviated, were literally accurate accounts of incidents and sayings from the life and teaching of Jesus. …. The completed Gospels of Matthew and Luke are also important sources for the life and teachings of Jesus.”
Michael Grant, classical historian and author of more than 50 books on the Roman Empire:
“The consistency, therefore, of the tradition in their [the Gospels’] pages suggests that the picture they present is largely authentic. By such methods information about Jesus CAN be derived from the Gospels.” Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels, Appendix.
So those references, and many similar quotes from other scholars, are evidence of the historicity of enough of the gospels to draw conclusions about Jesus.
But do you accept the conclusions of these and many other eminent scholars?
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Nan – I’ve already written up thread why I think Jesus is divine.
Let me restate the litany again: Personal healing miracles (my broken neck, my appendicitis), having the holy dove fly into my head to drive away a visible demon, embracing Jesus in a vision, being pushed down into the black abyss, feeling the heat beneath my feet, and seeing a gate of the City far above. That’s why I know that the supernatural divine exists.
The Lourdes miracles, the Incorrupt bodies of saints, the Lanciano Eucharistic miracle, and the Shroud of Turin form an arc of verifiable miracles spanning back over 2000 years to Jesus, who is on the cloth. And there are no miracles for any other religion or philosophy to compete.
So, I have personal miracle that is part of an arc of public miracle, and all of it is about Jesus.
That’s how I know that Jesus is divine. The divinity of Jesus is proven by direct evidence.
Problem: what does he want? He didn’t say to me. And the public miracles – of healing, mostly, or preservation of known saintly Christians, don’t have much content. The Lanciano Eucharistic Miracle has obvious content, and the content is proof of a particular doctrine of transubstantiation, which only Catholics believe. The Shroud demonstrates the death and, by the particular nature of the image, the Resurrection.
So, I have two miracles that vouch for specific acts of Jesus, plus his Mother’s appearance at Lourdes.
Jesus is divine, and important, and there’s content in what he does. But where is the rest of the content?
It is nowhere other than the Gospels, Acts and Revelation. If I follow the arc of Church history back, all of those Incorrupt saints followed its doctrines. Eventually I get back into the writings of the early Fathers, under terrible persecution. And THEY write from the Gospels.
So, God having manifested himself to me through miracle, and to the world through miracle, and having manifested himself to be Christian, and not manifested himself in any other veridical form, the only place that can explain all of these miracles, their contents, is the Church, and the Church itself references the Gospels.
There being no OTHER place by which to obtain the knowledge of what these miracles and signs means, I conclude that God did, in fact, ensure the preservation of the record of what he wanted to teach in the Gospels.
And then Jesus, in the Gospels, kept pointing back to the Torah, which is the only reason to bother with the Old Testament at all. There are no miracles to back up the claims of the Old Testament, and there is much in there that is difficult to understand and even horrifying. Without Jesus, there would be no reason to give the Torah any more attention than the Koran, The Bhagavad-Gita or the Iliad. Jesus has all the examinable miracles. That’s why HE needs to be read. But he insisted on pointing back to the Torah and vouching for it.
The only reason to give any attention to the Jewish Scriptures at all is because Jesus vouched for them. They contain nothing of moral importance: Jesus gave the terms of judgment and the moral law. But the Hebrew Scriptures contain revelation of the mind of God, and Jesus vouches for them.
So, that’s why Jesus is the authority, by the Gospels are the place to look, and then thanks to Jesus in the Gospels, we bother with the Old Testament and the Jews. Without miracles, Jesus would be another myth, like the whole Jewish business, and without Jesus, the TaNaKh would just be an older, tribal Koran.
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Archaeopteryx wrote:” So what I’m hearing from both Unkie and Crown, is that OT scripture, most especially the Torah consisted, besides the written version, of the priestly opinions d’jour – how reassuring.Scripture is long. Most of it is opinion. The key to it, both testanments, is what God said – the “red letter words”, so to speak. For all law is conveyed in that way. Of course, then you have to actually READ the law, and apply it correctly. In particular, you have to remember that covenants bind the parties to the contract, not everybody on the planet. That is why it wasn’t a sin for the Greeks to eat pork either before or after Jesus.
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Gary – “I find your view of Hell better than that of conservative/fundamentalist Protestants, Crown, but it is still a barbaric concept and all over our ancient ancestors eating somebody’s fruit.”
Gary, it has nothing at all to do with some ancestor eating somebody’s fruit. We are each judged on our OWN deeds. We have to be cleansed of our OWN sins. Jesus said how to achieve that: to BE forgiven our sins by God, we must forgive the sins that others commit against us. To the extent we forgive, we are forgiven. To the extent that we refuse to forgive and remain judgmental pricks, our sins are not forgiven us either, and we have to repay them, descending into prison until the last farthing of debt to God for our sins is paid.
So, if one wishes to skip Purgatory, then be baptized, and then confess whatever sins one has and perform penance, make restitution, eat the body and blood, and most importantly: forgive. Forgive others everything. The things you most want to hold as a grudge, forgive instead, if you can. Try to see the other viewpoint. You want God to do that for you, and he’s told you he will, IF (and only if) you do the same towards others as you want God to do for you.
Committing sins yourself and being haughty and refusing to forgive anybody his sins and crimes and against you means that the Father will put you in prison until the last penny is paid, just as Jesus promised.
So, if you don’t want to worry about Purgatory, then stop sinning. But if you sin, forgive everybody everything.
Christians pray that every time they say the Lord’s prayer, but they don’t seem to hear it:
“Forgive us our trespasses, as [i.e.: to the extent that] we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Unfortunately, reading comprehension seems to be a weak suit of many people. They can say the same words a thousand times, and never realize that they are asking God to judge them by a certain standard.
“Hell” is a Scandinavian pagan concept, not a Christian one. Asgard – the place of the Aesir (the Aces). Valhalla – the hall of valor – was there. Midgard: MIddle Earth, where living men are. And Hell, the underworld, where the spirits of those who did not die in glory and honor go. That was their belief.
Christian Scripture parallels the Jewish: Hades is the Greek word for Sheol, the place of the dead. It is not perforce a place of punishment.
One goes to Scandinavian Hell by being dishonorable, ignoble or simply average. But EVERYBODY dies and goes to Judaeo-Christian Hades. What happens in Hades depends on what one did in life. Gan Eden/Paradise is the Garden of Delight; Gehenna, where the fire never ends and the worm never sleeps, is the place of purgation. A black chasm, an abyss, lies between them. At the end of the word, the City of God comes down from the sky, the dead are resurrected from Gan Eden and Gehenna, and they are finally judged then: to the City, or into the flames of the Lake of Fire for the second death.
Jesus said what will get you the Second Death:
Murder
Sexual immorality.
Trafficking in lies.
Trafficking in drugs to create mind-altered states.
Idolatry.
Cowardice.
He said how to be forgiven.
It’s really not so bad.
And it’s why, for example, Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists, even, COULD end up in the City of God at the end. A peaceful pagan who is honest and brave, and not a killer, and who forgives people their sins against him, may die with some sins to be expiated. And may pay them in Gehenna. Some knife wielding dark priest of human sacrifice who has slaughtered many is probably headed into Gehenna for good, to be resurrected and thrown into the flames.
Because God didn’t give the “Don’t kill” commandment on Sinai, but to the denizens of the Ark after the Flood. All of mankind knows that rule, even instinctively, and holds that rule upon themselves.
Idolatry is forgiveable ignorance. Unless you decide, in 2015, that you’re going to reject Christ, take mind-altering drugs to create altered mental states, and worship Satan in obscene sexual rites. Then you’re probably lost for good.
But who can say? Only God knows hearts. He’s told us the guardrails and guidelines, and except for sexual immorality, honesty, cowardice and not killing people, they’re easy for me to keep.
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In scrolling back through this thread, it seems that there are two themes at work.
The first theme is the frustration of people at one another for not believing the same things. Nate’s family distanced themselves from him for awhile because he and his wife said that they no longer believed what they used to believe. So, we’ve got Christian shunning going on.
On the thread we also see the reverse: there are atheists who utterly despise Christian theology, and despise anybody who is so stupid, gullibly, ignorant and superstitious as to believe in Christian theology; moreover, because of the mass killings of the Book of Joshua, the fact that the Christians remain loyal to a God who ordered such things proves that Christians (and presumably Jews, though I saw no invective directed at them), are savage barbarians who are to be shunned.
So, we’ve got some mutual shunning going on, and Nate’s initial message spoke of going to some Christian apologetic session where the Bible would be flogged and dead horses beaten.
The second theme stems from the first, and it is the problem of death. God commanded that the Canaanites who didn’t flee the territory he gave to the Israelites were to be slaughtered. This offends. But of course, God kills everybody in our day too. So really, the problem is an objection to death, and the complaint: How can you religious people worship a God who kills everybody? And the fact that we do just leads to more revulsion and shunning.
My answer to this is that God kills everybody and destroys everything. Therefore, it’s important to study God just as one studies God’s instrumentalities. Doctors study malaria and AIDS because they’re problems that have to be figured out, if they can be. Malaria and AIDS kill a lot of people, and maybe by studying them we can mitigate the blow. Well, that’s precisely the reason to study God, to find out as much as we can. God is deadly. When we study Nature, we study God. The fact that God has a mind and does this all not by accident but as an act of will is the thing that is most disconcerting. Everybody accepts the reality of disease and gravity rather stoically: These things just ARE.
That gravity and disease have a MIND, and that every death is INTENTIONAL, well, that’s just horrifying, is it not? Of course it is. Death is not a walk in the park. It’s a calamity. And that’s why God needs to be studied and understood, to the extent we can: God is the greatest of all calamities, the ultimate catastrophe for everything.
Only the study of God, and discovering that the grey curtain of death is not the end, but a door to more, turns God into a eucatastrophe.
But only on his terms. Nothing in this universe is EVER on our terms, and ever will be. Engineers know that, and don’t resent gravity. It just is.
It just is because it’s part of God, every aspect of whom just IS.
The reason to study theology is to find out as much as possible what IS is. And then apply that knowledge to get a better outcome for ourselves.
It’s pointless to get mad and shun each other for engaging in the quest to not die – for that is really what it’s all about for both secular medicine and theology..
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UnkleE:
I accept the conclusion of most NT scholars that Jesus lived and was crucified by the Romans. All other information about him is speculation.
You are making a common Christian mistake regarding the Bible: It is either all false or all true. That is not the correct way to look at any ancient manuscript. What you should do is look at every claim of fact and determine if there is evidence to support each statement of fact.
The Bible says that Palestine had been conquered by the Romans. Historical evidence confirms this Biblical assertion. The Bible says that Tiberius was a Roman Caesar. Historical evidence confirms this.
But the Bible also says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. We have no evidence to support that claim. Nor do we have evidence to support many other claims in the Gospels, in particular the miracle claims. For instance, don’t you think that if it had been dark in Jerusalem for THREE hours during the middle of the day and that dead people were roaming the streets, SOMEONE would have recorded such an event other than ONE anonymous author writing decades later?
There is sufficient evidence to conclude that Jesus most likely existed. Please provide evidence that supports the Gospel assertions of a man walking on water, feeding five thousand, raising the dead, etc.
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Your use of Bart Ehrman to support the accurate historical claims of the Gospels is incorrect. Ehrman believes Jesus existed. He does not believe that the Gospels are historically accurate in all their claims.
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The problem with any claim of Biblical inerrancy, or the even stronger form: that the Bible doesn’t conflict, is that it DOES conflict, sometimes in very clear ways.
One of the most obvious, clear, unambiguous and inescapable contradictions is that Genesis tells us that Abraham named the place where he nearly sacrificed his son, Isaac, “YHWH-yireh”. The text tells us that the place is still so-named “to this day” (i.e.: the day that the text was being written).
So, one can easily see a place named YHWH-yireh, that Abraham named it so, and that the name stuck. That’s swell.
The PROBLEM is that near the beginning of Exodus, when YHWH speaks to Moses from the burning bush, he tells Moses his name “YHWH”, and makes the explicit point that Abraham, Isaac and Joseph never knew him by that name, YHWH, but only knew him as “El Shaddai”.
Now, there are two other places in Genesis in which Abraham invokes YHWH, but those can be dismissed by saying that the later author truly records that Abraham DID invoke YHWH, but he did so under the name “El Shaddai”, for El Shaddai and YHWH are one and the same.
That’s fine. But that doesn’t work when speaking of a place still named “YHWH-yireh”, and not “El Shaddai-yireh” at the time that the Torah was being written.
It’s a flat out, irreconcilable conflict, a direct contradiction of a fact.
Is the fact itself important? No. It’s trivial. What is IMPORTANT is the fact of the contradiction, and the fact that the contradiction is so in-your-face. Often, there’s a way to read the text so that it doesn’t conflict, but that’s not possible in this case. Abraham names a place “God sees”, using the appellation YHWH-yireh. And four centuries later God says directly to Moses that Abraham never ever knew the name YHWH.
So, either YHWH is wrong in what he is saying to Moses, OR the place wasn’t really named YHWH-yireh by Abraham.
This is Waterloo for inerrancy and word-perfection. It’s a true contradiction, and best of all, a contradiction between a narrative piece of Scripture and direct words of God. A high-order contradiction.
Another one comes between Isaiah, where YHWH says himself that the he creates evil and good, and the Psalmist who writes that God creates no evil. Once again, we’ve got a pious human opinion contradicting words directly ascribed to God.
These things must be pointed out, because idolatry is one of that list of sins (killing, sexual immorality, lying, cowardice and idolatry) that will get a man thrown into the lake of fire at final judgment, and the man who holds up the Scripture as never contradicting and perfectly inerrant, if he persuades others of this falsehood, ends up making an idol out of the Bible. The Bible says God is perfect. If the Bible is perfect, then the Bible is God
If you believe that, you’re a bibliolater, and you’re serving something made by human hands. The Bible certainly contains many words and intentions of God. But it also certainly contradicts. When men make an idol of it, elevating it above its proper station (which is as a tool, not as an idol), then something happens to them. Their minds become rigid. They worship a text, and if they are shown that the text really and truly does conflict, either with itself, or some externally demonstrable reality, their belief in God himself collapses, because, really, the Bible itself became God in their eyes, the very image of God. To the idolator, an error in the Bible means the faith fails, and he goes rapidly to the position that BECAUSE his idol has failed, that therefore it’s all bullshit and there is no God.
The Bible contradicts. It’s not inerrant. It does convey what God meant to convey, it is “inspired” by God. But then, men were clearly inspired by God within its stories, and yet went and failed and committed sins too. Consider David. Consider the Apostle Judas, who – if the text is taken at face value – cast out demons and performed healings and other miracles just like all the Apostles. But in the end he turned, sinned and fell into darkness. Men are fallible, and the Bible text is imperfect.
One has to know how to parse it. Otherwise one ends up with a bunch of nonsense.
That’s probably why Jesus left a Church of men, inspired by God, not a Bible dispensary.
In its place, the Bible is a valuable tool. Turned into an idol, the Bible has clay feet and destroys faith as it fails, like any other idol.
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Unkle E said: Hi Gary, there is one important and obvious reason supporting the conclusion that the gospels provide good historical evidence, that you haven’t mentioned.
Secular historians say so.
Gary: If you are saying that the Gospels help to confirm that Jesus most probably did exist, then I agree with you. However, if you are saying that most historians believe that the Gospels record accurate history in all or even in most of their details, then we should see evidence of this belief in our history books. The question is, do we? Are all or most of the details about the life and deeds of Jesus as stated in the Gospels considered history in history books?
Here is the opening statement from Wikipedia regarding Jesus. To be clear, Wikipedia does not ;qualify as a history book. I am quoting it because if any secular “historical source” is going to speak favorably about the historicity of Jesus, it would be a website like Wikipedia. You will note that other than the bare facts of Jesus existence, that he was a prophet, and that he was executed by the Romans, historians are NOT in agreement about the historicity of the majority of the claims in the Gospels. Please quote to me any secular history book that states otherwise.
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Wikipedia:
Jesus (/ˈdʒiːzəs/; Greek: Ἰησοῦς Iesous; 7–2 BC to 30–33 AD), also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth, is the central figure of Christianity,[12] whom the teachings of most Christian denominations hold to be the Son of God. Christianity regards Jesus as the awaited Messiah (or “Christ”) of the Old Testament and refers to him as Jesus Christ,[e] a name that is also used in non-Christian contexts.
Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically,[f] although the quest for the historical Jesus has produced little agreement on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the biblical Jesus reflects the historical Jesus.[19] Most scholars agree that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi from Galilee who preached his message orally,[20] was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate.[21] Scholars have constructed various portraits of the historical Jesus, which often depict him as having one or more of the following roles: the leader of an apocalyptic movement, Messiah, a charismatic healer, a sage and philosopher, or an egalitarian social reformer.[22] Scholars have correlated the New Testament accounts with non-Christian historical records to arrive at an estimated chronology of Jesus’ life. The widely accepted calendar era (abbreviated as “AD”, alternatively referred to as “CE”), counts from a medieval estimate of the birth year of Jesus.
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Crown:
Your position on the Bible is commendable.
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@Crown,
I appreciate the fact that your personal miracles affirm to you the divine qualities of Jesus. But the question was — did Jesus ever directly say he was the son of god? And the answer is, no, he didn’t. There is not one passage in the bible where Jesus says, “I am the son of God.”
There is little doubt, based on the scriptures, that his followers believed this of him — and he may have even believed it of himself (again, based on the scriptures). But he did NOT ever make a direct claim of God-ship in the scriptures.
@Brandon,
Thank you for your suggestion that I study some “actual New Testament scholarship.” However, I can assure you I did this in the several years leading up to the writing and publishing of my book.
I agree the gospels portray Jesus as the Messiah, and yes, the gospel writers refer to his divinity, but as I indicated in my response to Crown, Jesus himself never made this claim. And no, the “real question” is not whether Jesus thought so or whether the earliest Christians believed it. The core question is, did Jesus ever directly make this claim. And the answer is … no, he didn’t.
Just because “the church” teaches that Jesus was a human manifestation of the divine does NOT make it so. Studying “actual New Testament scholarship” makes it clear it was the interpretations of the early church fathers (into the second and third centuries) that formed most of the core beliefs that are taught within Christianity today.
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One last thing. Crown, you said, one has to know how to parse it (the bible). I totally agree. But the problem is, each person “parses” it differently based on the teachings they have received, which are then tempered with their own personal beliefs, experiences, and prejudices.
This is why two people will never completely agree. But it’s still a challenge (and sometimes a source of amusement) to discuss the various aspects of our beliefs. 🙂
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I often hear Christians say that the deeds of Jesus are better attested than any other ancient figure in history, including Alexander the Great. However, I would like you to compare the Wikipedia statement on Jesus of Nazareth above with the Wikipedia statement about Alexander the Great below. Look out how the factual assertions related to Alexander are far more in depth and numerous than that of Jesus. I again ask that Christians look in any secular history book and see if you find the same level of detail about Jesus that you will find about Alexander, Julius Caesar, etc.
Wikipedia:
Alexander III of Macedon (20/21 July 356 – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great (Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μέγας, Aléxandros ho Mégas [a.lék.san.dros ho mé.gaːs]),iii[›] was a King (Basileus) of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon[1][2][3] and a member of the Argead dynasty. Born in Pella in 356 BC, Alexander succeeded his father, Philip II, to the throne at the age of twenty. He spent most of his ruling years on an unprecedented military campaign through Asia and northeast Africa, until by the age of thirty he had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from Greece to Egypt and into northwest India.[4] He was undefeated in battle and is considered one of history’s most successful military commanders.[5]
During his youth, Alexander was tutored by the philosopher Aristotle until the age of 16. When he succeeded his father to the throne in 336 BC, after Philip was assassinated, Alexander inherited a strong kingdom and an experienced army. He had been awarded the generalship of Greece and used this authority to launch his father’s Panhellenic project to lead the Greeks in the conquest of Persia.[6][7] In 334 BC, he invaded the Achaemenid Empire, ruled Asia Minor, and began a series of campaigns that lasted ten years. Alexander broke the power of Persia in a series of decisive battles, most notably the battles of Issus and Gaugamela. He subsequently overthrew the Persian King Darius III and conquered the entirety of the First Persian Empire.i[›] At that point, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River.
Seeking to reach the “ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea”, he invaded India in 326 BC, but was eventually forced to turn back at the demand of his troops. Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC, the city he planned to establish as his capital, without executing a series of planned campaigns that would have begun with an invasion of Arabia. In the years following his death, a series of civil wars tore his empire apart, resulting in several states ruled by the Diadochi, Alexander’s surviving generals and heirs.
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Crown, I appreciate reading your unique perspective on these subjects. It does sometimes feel like certain denominations have turned the book into an object of worship. At the same time I also feel hesitant to put too much trust into a “Church of men”. I think you’ve done a fine job of answering questions from a lot of different people – I wonder if you’ll take a few more? In regards to this:
For someone who does not have their own witness of miracles, how do you recommend they begin to study God? I have asked the Creator many times to help me, but I don’t even know if there is anyone listening. What if the shroud of Turin is a medieval forgery, the miracles claimed by many are stories and illusions, and we are actually alone in a strange universe that ticks along with no great mind guiding it along? Wouldn’t that explain why some people die at birth and some people live a long life? How can there be a purpose for this life if some have it taken away before they even get started? I would love to learn that death is not the end, but how can I elevate this beyond wishful thinking?
I apologize, most of these questions are rhetorical, but they may give you some insight into my current frame of mind. You can skip all of those if you like and answer this one: What is your strongest evidence for life continuing after death?
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“Problem: what does he want? He didn’t say to me.” – If I had to venture a wild guess, it would be: “Get thee to a therapist!“
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If the Gospels are really accurate descriptions of historical events, why don’t we find an entry like this in any secular history book?
Jesus of Nazareth (4/5 BC – 33 AD)
Jesus of Nazareth was born in 5 or 4 BC in Bethlehem, Judea, to Mary Ben David, a known virgin, and step-fathered and raised by Joseph of Nazareth, a local carpenter. His birth created a crises for the ruler of Judea, Herod the Great, who was tipped off to the birth of the “King of the Jews” by a group of scholars traveling from the East, who had been following a star to find the child. In a fit of rage, Herod ordered the massacre of all Bethlehem children under the age of two. Jesus escaped with his parents to Egypt where they lived until Herod’s death.
Jesus ministry began in the fall of 30 AD when he was baptized in the Jordan River by the prophet John the Baptist. Numerous Roman and Jewish sources testify that a loud voice came out of the sky which said, “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased”.
In the spring of 31 AD Jesus performed one of his greatest miracles. He reanimated the dead body of a Roman centurion’s daughter. The news of her reanimation from death to life was reported in numerous Roman accounts, even reaching the Emperor in Rome himself.
Other well-documented acts of Jesus were the following, all corroborated in Roman and Jewish writings:
-walking on water
-turning water into wine
-healing the blind
-healing lepers
-healing people of seizures (demon possession)
-feeding five thousand people with just a few loaves of bread and some fishes
-reanimating another dead person, Lazarus of Bethany
However, on Passover eve, April, 33 AD, the Sanhedrin of the Jews arrested Jesus, tried him for blasphemy for claiming to be God, convicted him, and brought him to the Roman prelate, Pontius Pilate, who after much hesitation, agreed to the Jews’ demand to crucify him.
On April 14, 33 AD, Jesus, the King of the Jews, was executed by crucifixion and died. Roman sources state that upon taking his last breath, three hours of darkness covered the city and the entire empire. This unprecedented three hour solar eclipse was also recorded in other parts of the world: in China, Persia, India, and even by the Mayans in Central America.
However, three days later, his guarded tomb was found empty, a great earthquake shook the city, and scores of dead people roamed the streets of Jerusalem, chatting with old friends and family.
The body of the King of the Jews was missing! Dead people were roaming the streets! The city had been covered in three hours of darkness, an unheard of phenomenon, and zombies were invading the city! Pilate was forced to declare a state of emergency. The Emperor himself was advised of the Judean crises. Orders were sent to Syria and Egypt to ready troops to reinforce Pilate’s forces in Palestine in the event that a full rebellion broke out.
Numerous Christian, Roman, and Jewish sources then report sightings of the resurrected Jesus all over Palestine, from a second floor headquarters in Jerusalem, to fishing trips in Galilee, to a levitation/ascension in Bethany!
Palestine was rocked with turmoil for months and even years!
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Nan, you wrote :But the question was — did Jesus ever directly say he was the son of god? And the answer is, no, he didn’t. There is not one passage in the bible where Jesus says, “I am the son of God.
There is little doubt, based on the scriptures, that his followers believed this of him — and he may have even believed it of himself (again, based on the scriptures). But he did NOT ever make a direct claim of God-ship in the scriptures.”
Nan, at several points in the Gospels, God the Father spoke from the sky for all to hear, saying things such as:
“This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” Or “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.”
So it was God the Father, speaking from the sky, who identified Jesus as his Son.
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