Pray for Obama - Psalm 109:8

Psalm 109:8 - "Let his days be few; let another take his office."

So reads a popular bumpersticker. Interestingly, "Psalm 109:8" was a top Google search term yesterday. When millions of people are Googling the imprecatory Psalms, let the enemies of God be very afraid!

The 109th Psalm concerns the time when King Saul was seeking to kill David, whom Samuel had prophesied would take Saul's place. In those days, taking a king's place meant that the king would die. In case there is any doubt that David is imploring God to take Saul's life, verse 9 reads: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

No, this bumpersticker is not imploring God for a 2012 election day defeat, but for an untimely death due to the curse of God on a covenant-breaker.

Of course, right away the liberal elite and many Christian leaders are decrying this "unloving" use of the imprecatory Psalms to pray for our president.

The question they ask rhetorically is, "When is it ever right to pray for the death of a president?"

The answer: "Always!"

There is a common misconception about prayer. Many people believe that prayer is a form of magic. We pray and God supernaturally answers us according to our whims. Without going into a deep theological treatise on all the reasons why this is wrong, I will quote Bob Dylan here from the 1979 album Slow Train Coming:

Do you ever wonder just what God requires?
You think He's just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires.

When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up
When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

Likewise, Ray Davies of The Kinks recently produced a solo work, Working Man's Cafe, which contains a reference criticizing the popular antinomian view of prayer. While "A Hymn for a New Age" is lacking a positive affirmation of Christian orthodoxy, Davies is correct about one thing:

I don't believe that God is a man with white hair
Sitting in a big chair
Judging the world and its morals
Forgiving today so we can sin again tomorrow

But I believe
I need something to look up to
I believe
I wanna pray but don't know what to

Indeed. Prayer does not move God. God is already moved. Prayer puts us in the position to receive the blessings and promises of God given before the foundation of the earth. We pray according to the model of scripture to know the will of God so that we might obey Him.

Further, all professing believers are in a covenant with God. When we were baptized, the covenant was initiated. This covenant is confirmed by the sacrament of Holy Communion each time we partake of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

In the Christian church, sacraments are covenant-making and covenant-renewing oaths. The Apostle Paul went as far as to say that those who partake of the sacrament in a state of unrepentant sin are knowingly entering into judgment (1 Corinthians 11:26-32).

Even the pagan Roman officials could see this connection in 112 AD. Pliny the Younger, making a report to the Emperor Trajan wrote:

They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, and they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath (sacramentum), not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up. Afterward, it was their custom to ... partake of food, but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.

To be a Christian is to be a covenant-keeper. But what happens when the covenant is broken?

Throughout scripture we see the covenant of God and the corresponding blessings and curses that come when we keep or break the covenant.

Barack Obama is a professing Christian. He was a member of a church that holds to the Apostles and Nicene Creeds and the Heidelberg Catechism. Among his greatest sins, Barack Obama is also pro-abortion. He has fought hard to keep abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy, by any method, for any reason. Obama even opposed the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act in his home state -- a bill that even Planned Parenthood and NARAL refused to oppose because it essentially outlawed the infanticide of children born-alive after botched abortions.

When not only liberal commentators, but also squeamish preachers condemn those who condemn Obama, they are reaching the height of hypocrisy. They cite a so-called "Christian love" that includes looking the other way rather than oppose our president's open support of child murder.

Those who would pray Psalm 109:8 for Barack Obama need to understand that imprecatory prayer is not a magical formula. If God blesses us, who can curse us? For how can our enemies curse whom God has not cursed? We may curse those whom God has already cursed, but in the next breath, we need to also bless those whom God has blessed. The focus must always be God's sovereign glory and the honor of His name.

However wrong the intentions might be, it is no more of a sin to pray the covenantal curses of God on President Obama than it is to remain silent about his sin. Scripture assures us that if Barack Obama, one of God's covenant people, is graced with the gift of repentance, then God will surely bless him.

In short, don't pray Psalm 109:8 for President Obama. We are not to judge or curse our enemies. We are to pray and proclaim what God himself has already decreed before the foundation of the world toward both His friends and His enemies. Pray all of Psalm 109. Pray all of the blessings and curses found in the Law-Word of God.

For reference, here is a list of articles on imprecatory prayer from The Forerunner.

An Imprecatory Prayer Proclamation: Barack Obama

What is Imprecatory Prayer?

The Attitude of the Godly Toward God's Enemies

Imprecatory Prayer: Enforcing the Covenant of God

Imprecatory Prayer! - The Church's Duty Against Her Enemies

Psalm 109 (KJV)

1 Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;
2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
3 They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.
4 For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer.
5 And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.
6 Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.
7 When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.
8 Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
9 Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
11 Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.
12 Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.
13 Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15 Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.
16 Because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.
17 As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him.
18 As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.
19 Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.
20 Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, and of them that speak evil against my soul.
21 But do thou for me, O GOD the Lord, for thy name's sake: because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.
22 For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.
23 I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust.
24 My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness.
25 I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shaked their heads.
26 Help me, O LORD my God: O save me according to thy mercy:
27 That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, LORD, hast done it.
28 Let them curse, but bless thou: when they arise, let them be ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice.
29 Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.
30 I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.
31 For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.

NBC's Law & Order "Dignity" episode takes script material from pro-life website

"Two weeks ago, my son had less rights than a dog or a cat."
- Gaulberto Garcia Jones, Director, Personhood Colorado
Press Conference, July 2, 2009

Speaking to District Attorney Jack McCoy, Michael Cutter (Linus Roache) says, "My God, cats and dogs have more rights than the unborn. Roe v. Wade wasn't written in stone. It could stand another look."
- Law & Order, "Dignity," air date: October 23. 2009

"The timing is perfect because the polls show now that more people are pro-life then pro-death."
- Leslie Hanks, Vice President, Colorado Right to Life
Press Conference, July 2, 2009

"Its time to face the facts, the tide has turned. Most Americans are pro-life now."
- Law & Order, "Dignity," air date: October 23. 2009

Pierre Renelique: Hialeah abortion doctor on the run!

I especially like the part in this video report where the abortionist starts running from the reporter even while he continues giving the interview. Finally, not being able to keep from incriminating himself by running his mouth even while he is literally on the run, he does the logical thing and attacks the microphone.

The irony is that this is essentially what we tried to do in the 1990s with Jay's Killer Web Page, to expose abortionists' evil deeds to the public. Of course, we were sued (unsuccessfully) and labelled terrorists for giving out much the same information on a website. That was back in the days prior to Fox News.

MYFOXNY.COM - The case made national headlines: A botched abortion in Florida and an elaborate cover-up. The physician involved -- Dr. Pierre Renelique -- was banned from practicing medicine there. But nine months after Florida revoked his license, he is seeing patients in the Bronx. Fox 5's Arnold Diaz tracked him down for an exclusive report.

WARNING: Some information in this report is graphic.

MORE INFORMATION ON DR. PIERRE JEAN JACQUES RENELIQUE:

• NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH DECISION
• FLORIDA BOARD OF MEDICINE

View MyFox Tampa Bay's February 6, 2009, report on Dr. Renelique's Florida license revocation hearing:

Baby Rowan Revisited

Can a pro-life video save unborn children? A friend of mine, Patte Smith, has been using this video at Dr. Pendergraft's abortion clinic, where she stands for the unborn as a sidewalk counselor and evangelist. I've been blessed to hear a few people changed their mind on abortion by viewing these videos I have put together in the past few years. Many have been convicted that abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy is a heartless policy. Below is one such testimony Patte received by email. Dr. Pendergraft owns the clinic where little baby Rowan was born alive and left to die.

My name is KC and I’ve been pro-choice as long as I can remember. Yesterday, I took my dear friend to Orlando Women’s Health Center for an abortion. To my surprise, you and a few other demonstrators were there. Of course, my friend and I ignored your calls out to us and went inside. But, then I needed a cigarette. When I went outside to smoke, I was listening to your pleas, just taking it all in. After four hours of waiting @ OWHC, the staff told my friend that they couldn’t do the procedure there. We were instructed to go home and get $300 more and meet the Dr. @ EPOC. We did as instructed. The doctor started the procedure and then told my friend to be back @ 9am the next day (today). They sent her home in the middle of an abortion. So while we were getting the runaround by Dr. Pendergraft’s employees, I couldn’t get your pleas out of my head. After a long and trying day, I came home and tried to get some sleep. Instead, I tossed and turned as your cries nagged at me.

So I gave up and went to youtube.com as you instructed. I typed “baby rowan 911” into the search bar but couldn’t find the courage to press to search button. What was I so afraid of? I’m pro choice. There is nothing anybody can say that will change that, right? So after this little battle with myself, I pressed search. I listened to the horrific 911 call and cried. I couldn’t believe it, so I did more research. I couldn’t believe to horror stories that I found. I was mortified when I found that it is not uncommon for aborted babies to be born alive and the staff just leaves them alone to die. I guess I just figured when babies are aborted they don’t even look like babies yet. I always figured they just kind of looked like a blob of tissue and cells. As I did a little research, my heart broke and my opinion changed. So I wanted to thank you. Thank you for being the voice of these dead babies. Because of you my views are changing. You made me more aware. Keep doing what your doing and try not to get discouraged. Even if people don’t let you know it, you are touching lives. Again, thank you.

Dating the Gospel of Luke (part 5)

Summary: Is Luke the authentic author of the two New Testament books attributed to him?

Here are just a few external and internal evidences for a dating of not later than 63 AD for the Gospel of Luke.

1. External Testimony: The Church Fathers

Irenaeus explained that Luke wrote under the direction, if not at the dictation, of Paul. This would place the Gospel of Luke as having been written before the Acts, whose date of the composition is generally fixed prior to 64 AD for a variety of reasons. One common view is that this Gospel was written about 62 or 63, when Luke was at Caesarea in attendance on Paul, who was then a prisoner prior to his second imprisonment in Rome. On the other hand, if the tradition related by Jerome is correct, that it was written at Rome during Paul's first imprisonment, then it would date earlier, prior to 60 AD.

Here is Irenaeus (c. 185) concerning the authorship of the four Gospels:

Indeed Matthew, among the Hebrews in their own dialect, also bore forth a writing of the gospel, Peter and Paul evangelizing in Rome and founding the church. But after the exodus of these men Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself also delivered to us in writing the things preached by Peter, and Luke also, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the gospel preached by that man. Afterward John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, himself also published the gospel, passing his time in Ephesus of Asia (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1).

But that Paul taught with simplicity what he knew, not only to those who were with him but also to those who heard him, he does himself make manifest. For, when the bishops and presbyters who came from Ephesus and the other cities adjoining had assembled in Miletus, since he was himself hastening to Jerusalem to observe Pentecost, after testifying many things to them and declaring what must happen to him at Jerusalem he added: I know that you shall see my face no more. Therefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed, therefore, both to yourselves and to all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops, to rule the church of the Lord which he has acquired for himself through His own blood. Then, referring to the evil teachers who should arise, he said: I know that after my departure shall grievous wolves come to you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. I have not shunned, he says, to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Thus did the apostles simply, and without respect of persons, deliver to all what they had themselves learned from the Lord. Thus also does Luke, without respect of persons, deliver to us what he had learned from them, as he has himself testified, saying: Even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.14.2-4).

The Muratorian canon (c.175) has:

The third book of the Gospel is that according to Luke. Luke, the well-known physician, after the ascension of Christ, when Paul had taken with him as one zealous for the law, composed it in his own name, according to [the general] belief. Yet he himself had not  seen the Lord in the flesh; and therefore, as he was able to ascertain events, so indeed he begins to tell the story from the birth of John.

Jerome (c. 375) has a more detailed history of Luke, claiming that the Evangelist was born in Antioch, and finally buried in Constantinople. According to Jerome, Acts was composed in Rome, and chronicles the events until “the fourth year of Nero,” which is according to our modern reckoning 58 AD.

Luke, an Antiochene doctor, as his writings indicate, was not ignorant of the Greek speech. A follower of the apostle Paul and companion on all his journeying, he wrote a gospel about which this same Paul says: “We have sent with him the brother whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches, and to the Colossians: Luke the dearest doctor salutes you, and to Timothy: Luke alone is with me.” He also published another distinguished volume which is known by the title Acts of the Apostles, whose story comes down to the two years of the remaining of Paul in Rome, that is, until the fourth year of Nero, from which we understand that the book was composed in the same city.... Certain people suspect that, whenever Paul in his epistles says: According to my gospel, he means the volume of Luke, and that Luke was taught the gospel, not only by Paul, who had not been with the Lord in the flesh, but also by the other apostles. As he himself also declared in the beginning of his volume: Just as they who themselves from the beginning saw and were ministers of the speech delivered to us. Therefore, he wrote the gospel just as he heard; the Acts of the Apostles he composed just as he himself saw. He was buried in Constantinople, into which city, in the twentieth year of Constantius, his bones with the relics of Andrew the apostle were translated (Jerome, On Illustrious Men).

John Chrysostom (c. 375) has:

But the greater part of this work is occupied with the acts of Paul, who labored more abundantly than them all. And the reason is that the author of this book, that is, the blessed Luke, was his companion, a man whose high qualities, sufficiently visible in many other instances, are especially shown in his firm adherence to his teacher, whom he constantly followed. Thus, at a time when all had forsaken him, one gone into Galatia, another into Dalmatia, hear what he says of this disciple: Only Luke is with me. And, giving the Corinthians a charge concerning him, he says: Whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches. Again, when he says: He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve, and: According to the gospel which you received, he means the gospel of this Luke, so that there can be no mistake in attributing this work to him; and when I say to him, I mean to Christ. And why then did he not relate everything, seeing he was with Paul to the end? We may answer, that what is here written was sufficient for those who would attend, and that the sacred writers ever addressed themselves to the matter of immediate importance, whatever it might be at the time; it was no object with them to be writers of books: in fact, there are many things which they have delivered by unwritten tradition (On the Acts of the Apostles).

2. External Testimony: Manuscript Evidence

Manuscript evidence from the second century onward has the following inscriptions:

Matthew: ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΘΘΑΙΟΝ (Gospel according to Matthew).

Mark: ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ (Gospel according to Mark).

Luke: ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΛΟΥΚΑΝ (Gospel according to Luke).

John: ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ (Gospel according to John).

The earliest is the beautiful manuscript, P75, from the second century showing the end of Luke and the beginning of John. These say clearly in Greek, "Gospel according to Luke" and "Gospel according to John."

You will see near the top of the page.

ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΛΟΥΚΑΝ

ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ

A full-page photo of the manuscript may be found at:

http://www.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/tc_pap75.html

There are no earlier Gospel manuscripts with endings and beginnings that have no title and author.

2. Internal Testimony

The internal evidence of this text consists of the use of the first person “we” and “I,” which is an eyewitness claim. Luke claims to be a companion of Paul, and Paul claims that Luke is his companion. The eyewitness claims in John’s writings are even stronger. We have to only establish genuine authorship and eyewitness credibility in Luke and John, to surmise that Matthew and Mark, likely written earlier or around the same time, were also genuine and credible.

Luke is said in Colossians 4.14 to have been a physician and an associate of the apostle Paul.

Luke is mentioned in 2 Timothy 4.11 and Philemon 24.

The Acts of the Apostles claims by its preface (Acts 1:1-2) to have been written by the same individual as the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:1-4) and the style is undoubtedly the same.

The narrative of Acts shifts to the first person first person when Paul comes to Troas and leaves from there to Macedonia (Acts 16.9-18; 20.4-16; 21.1-18; 27.1-28.16) this use of “we” suggests that Acts was written by a travelling companion of Paul. Since Luke is the traditional author, it “fits” that Paul picks up with the author of Acts either at or before arriving in Troas, since Luke is elsewhere associated with Asia Minor. Troas is a region of Asia Minor between Colossae and Ephesus (the location of Philemon and Timothy) and Macedonia. In other words, independent accounts show Luke being at the right place at the right time.

A seldom used argument is the very nature of the diēgēsis as being self-contained and self-authenticating. The Gospel of Luke comprises a self-contained universe that assumes the corroboration of his audience. In other words, the narrative is addressed to a person who is already familiar with the Gospel by a narrator who places himself within the story through the use of the first person pronoun, “I” and “we.” In other words, Luke is not simply a third-person narrator, but places himself within the framework of the story as it opens, claiming to be the same person who composed the previous Gospel and therefore intimately familiar with the characters in the story, and also claiming to be part of the narrative in the last few chapters.

Additionally, the book of Acts not only purports to be a historical narrative, but it addresses and was delivered to people in cities that were at the center of much of the same narrative. Some of the hearers were people who would have been at Pentecost or who had parents or older church acquaintances who were at Pentecost. The story begins by claiming that the miracle was witnesses by Jews and God-fearers were “from every nation under heaven … Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:5,9-11).

These people would have corroborated the miracle or they would have rejected it. Luke writes at the beginning of his Gospel that it is “a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word.”

Throughout the book of Acts, he assumes that his audience can attest to many of the events because they lived in cities that Peter, Paul and Luke would have ministered and preached. In other words, he describes events to some hearers who could have been present in the narrative itself – or who would undoubtedly would have known those who were able to corroborate the story.

Without going into further detail here, I’ll use my novel analogy once again. Suppose I gave a copy of The Acts of Ronald Reagan to my father, who still lived near Washington, D.C. where I was born in 1962. Suppose the copy of my book was then delivered into the hands of my brothers, sisters, children, nephews and nieces. Even if they were ignorant of who wrote the book and didn’t have access to newspapers, media and other historical accounts, they would know that the story was a fantasy based on the numerous anachronisms and fictitious additions. They would already know the correct versions of the events they would have heard undoubtedly from their parents and grandparents.

On the contrary, the account of Luke and Acts had the strength of self-authenticating corroboration due to the eyewitness status of its immediate audience.

My challenge to liberals and skeptics:

1. Where is the external evidence showing that the Gospel of Luke and Acts were anonymous, pseudonymous or written late?

2. Where is the manuscript evidence showing these books without authors attached to the title?

3. Where is the internal evidence that Luke was not claiming both to have interviewed eyewitnesses of Jesus and to have been himself an eyewitnesses to some events in Acts?

For further reading:

http://bibleencyclopedia.net/index.php/Gospel_Of_Luke#Date_of_composition
http://www.textexcavation.com/gospelluke.html
http://bible.org/seriespage/luke-introduction-outline-and-argument

Dating the Gospel of Luke (part 4)

Meet Luke – the 800 pound gorilla

If the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were written as late as 85 AD by a person claiming to have interviewed eyewitnesses of Jesus and claiming to have been a living companion of Paul, it would have been known by those still living who witnessed those events whether the account were true. If it were not, it could not have been accepted and quoted by the Church Fathers as genuine and quoted approvingly. The brief “JFK allegory” (part 1) explains why such an obvious fiction so close to the time span of the account could not have been accepted as authentic and reliable.

But beyond this, we should consider why a late date is deemed necessary in the first place. The culprit thesis behind the late dating of Luke is the wide – although by no means universal – acceptance of the priority of Mark. The date for the second Gospel is most often used as the anchor and all other books of the New Testament are arranged around this date.

The following is from Craig Davis’ e-book, Dating the New Testament:

There are three observations about the synoptic gospels that all seem true from a conservative perspective. However, on the surface, they are not consistent and at least one of them must be false. These observations are:

1. Luke was written before 63 A.D., based on the ending of the book of Acts.
2. Luke is dependent on Mark, so Mark was written before Luke.
3. Mark was written after 65 A.D., after Mark was in Rome.

The most common rejection is number one. However, there are two compelling points for an early dating of Luke. There is no persecution by the Roman authorities mentioned in Acts. Yet we know from several sources that Nero began a mass Empire-wide persecution of Christianity in 64 AD. There is no mention of the death of James, the brother of Jesus, the presiding bishop of the church at Jerusalem. We know from several accounts that James was martyred around 63 AD.

The Dating of Luke and Acts

J.A.T. Robison – a liberal theologian and New Testament scholar who denied the divinity and resurrection of Jesus and biblical accounts of miracles – once did a study using all the internal and external evidence available to determine the earliest possible dates of each of the New Testament books. The result of the study was published as the book, Redating the New Testament. Robinson came to the conclusion that there is nothing that would preclude a date of early composition for all four Gospels – between 40 to 60 AD.

Since even most conservatives place them later – the Synoptics from 61 to 67 AD with a later date for John – Robinson’s thesis constitutes “admission against self-interest.” The author is simply being intellectually honest in demonstrating that there is no internal evidence that would preclude early dating, and in light of the external testimony of the Church Fathers, this early end of the spectrum becomes more likely than the later extremes favored by his colleagues.

In the 19th century, liberals put the Gospels much later, even toward the end of the second century. That was the scenario offered until the discovery of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri which almost without doubt places every New Testament book in the first century. Yet liberals and skeptics cling to an old paradigm. They place the dates at the latest possible time, now thought to be from 70 to 85 AD, for the three Synoptic Gospels and 90 to 100 AD for the Gospel of John. However, a number of other liberal scholars have defected from the late date view, Eta Linnemann being another of the most recent and well-known. The Gospels could very well be earlier than many people suppose – even as early as 40 AD. Conservatives are actually in the main stream by putting most New Testament books from 55 to 67 AD.

Most scholars see an ongoing oral tradition that preceded the Gospels with a few written source-Gospels (or “proto-Gospels”) that later became the basis for the Synoptics. These source Gospels are often thought of as the compilations that Luke mentions in the introduction to his Gospel.

Many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught (Luke 1:1-3).

It is often assumed that Mark, (and sometimes) Matthew, and at least one other source, are among the “many who have undertaken to compile an account.” However, the word for “undertaken” or “taken in hand” is the Greek word, epicheireō, which occurs two other places in the New Testament.

And he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus and disputed against the Hellenists, but they attempted to kill him (Acts 9:29).

Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches” (Acts 19:13).

The word epicheireō can be translated many different ways, but the meaning is simply “to make an attempt.” It does not follow that the idiom used in some English translations, “taken it in hand,” means that Luke is referring to written Gospels. In fact, the word for “account,” diēgēsis, in English is a “recitation” or a “narration.” The classical usage of diēgēsis is a complete account comprising a self-contained universe in which the presence of the narrator intrudes into the story. In Greek drama, this was contrasted with mimēsis, a story in which characters appear and action is described, but into which the narrator never intrudes as a character.

The Gospel accounts take a form in which the narrator is an eyewitness or is relating a story by known eyewitnesses. Matthew intrudes into the Gospel according to Matthew as the “tax collector,” who in the other Gospels is known only by his surname Levi. According to patristic tradition, Mark intrudes into his Gospel as an unnamed “youth” who flees the arresting soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane. John intrudes into his Gospel as one of the few unnamed Apostles, know only as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” These literary devices are part of the diēgēsis of the account.



Scene from Blazing Saddles (1974)

To use a familiar example, diēgēsis is sometimes used as a gag in modern comedies. In the Mel Brooks’ film, Blazing Saddles, the new sheriff rides on horseback across the desert to swelling sound. The audience is accustomed to think that the character must not be aware of the music, because soundtracks in movies usually serve as a mimēsis, a musical representation or descriptive soundtrack to complement what is being watched. But as the camera pans across the scenery to follow the horse’s tracks, eventually the audience sees Count Basie and his big band playing “April in Paris” in the middle of the desert – a ridiculously funny juxtaposition. The diēgēsis works as an joke because the audience is taken by surprise to see a conductor and his musicians intruding into the film as characters – a sort of reverse dramatic irony.

Likewise, the sudden occurrence of the word “we” in the later narrative of Acts is just as odd and startling. It appears without explanation. However, the author is assuming that his immediate audience, Theophilus, already knew that Luke was a companion of Paul. Therefore, as Luke already stated in his “former account” (Acts 1:1) the immediate audience assumes that Luke is giving sure chronological knowledge of the events through careful investigation. Further, the Acts of the Apostles is similar to a Greek drama in which one of the characters is the narrator himself who finally intrudes into the concluding scenes. If this were not the case, then the sudden use of the first person would seem just as illogical as the appearance of Count Basie in Blazing Saddles. But why is the intrusion so sudden with no explanation? If the author was intending to create a believable fiction, then why is the false claim to participation restricted to just a few passages? Why doesn’t the narrator assert himself more forcefully in such a way that the reader might not miss the point? The most probable conclusion is that Luke's audience was already aware of the relationship. Luke is the reliable narrator of the story. The first person, “I” and “we” is simply a reminder that the diēgēsis of Acts includes Luke’s actual presence and intimate involvement with the narrative.

It is extremely difficult in the world of fiction to create a self-contained universe in which the audience can suspend all disbelief. The more complex the story, the more difficult it is to portray a self-contained world with no internal contradictions. Blazing Saddles makes fun of movie-making conventions by having several off-camera audience presumptions spill over to the on-screen action. We suspend our disbelief in order to allow for a musical soundtrack. But this presumption comes crashing down when the camera pans on to a full orchestra playing in a western landscape. However, this is the way that liberal critics view Luke’s Gospel and Acts – as a work of legend written by a anonymous author who expects his audience to simply suspend their disbelief and accept the backdrop of a first person narrator as an accepted literary convention even when he stumbles clumsily into the action.

The person to whom Luke is writing his Gospel, Theophilus, a Christian in Asia Minor, had heard Gospel accounts compiled by people who had in turn heard one or more of the Apostles preach – Paul, Peter, Apollos, or some other disciples of Jesus – and now wished to put it all together. Since Luke was Paul’s traveling companion and had heard many of the Apostles preach, he had memorized the narrative and had also investigated what had happened in the correct chronological order plus a few other important facts that were often left out of these other accounts.

We also have to grapple with the statement by Luke that the Gospel is being written “so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” The obvious intention is to convince the reader of truthfulness of the events described in the book. Taken with the narrative of Acts, it can be assumed that the immediate audience already knew of Luke’s association with the Apostles, especially Paul, and therefore Luke can appeal to their authority in claiming his account is correct. Further, the phrase, “the things you have been taught,” indicates a prior familiarity with at least portions of the account that Luke is about to relate.

According to the Church Fathers, Luke's Gospel is essentially the Gospel that Paul preached. If this were true, then it is reasonable to assume that there should be some internal evidence within the New Testament itself that demonstrates that Paul’s Gospel is the source of the narrative written by Luke. Here the relationship of Luke’s narrative to Paul’s letters is too often neglected or downplayed by the liberal critics. The letters of Paul are usually placed first in the chronology of New Testament books.

However, there are a number of direct quotations and allusions to the Gospels in Paul's writings. The most notable one is a direct quotation from Luke 22:19,20 in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25. This would seem to prove a date of early composition for at least a form of a Gospel identical to Luke 22:19,20 prior to 55 AD when 1 Corinthians was written. The two most logical explanations is that either Luke wrote prior to 1 Corinthians or that this quotation is actually “Paul’s Gospel” from which the Gospel according to Luke assumed its final written form.

Using the same reasoning, the audience to whom the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles is addressed would also be either familiar with the events described in Acts or would know other Christians who had lived during the time of these events. To concoct a narrative with fictional elements would be an absurd exercise even as late as 85 AD. To then have the narrative quickly pass into the canon of inspired writings would be even more absurd. Yet this is the scenario proposed by liberals and taught as accepted fact in their divinity schools.

Dating the Gospel of Luke (part 3)

Isn’t it true that the four Gospels were chosen from “many” Gospels?

I’ll take a brief pause here from dealing solely with Luke's writings to answer a question I just received from a viewer of The Real Jesus video podcast. Inevitably, someone is going to ask a question about the dating of the so-called Gnostic Gospels.

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 10:18 AM, YouTube Service wrote:

Was there a massacre around the time of Jesus birth?

You guys seem a lot more learned about the historical dating of the Gospels. I don’t think anything in the New Testament can be trusted. I have heard a few times from different places that there were over 80 gospels and the oligarchy chose what Gospels it wanted when a lot of people just wrote them up and sold them.

The “many Gospels” referred to here are writings from the second century and later composed by a group called the Gnostics. This was a world-wide religious movement in the ancient world that believed the material world was evil and taught that salvation was spiritual and could only be obtained through “secret knowledge” or gnosis. The Gnostics syncretized the tenets of many other religions into their writings. As Christianity began to become widespread, the Gnostics made use of the sayings of Jesus in order to popularize their own teachings. But we do not see any of these Gnostic Gospels until the mid to late second century.

If one wants to know about the flavor of the Gnostic Gospels, just read them. They contain just the sayings of Jesus and usually claim that a particular disciple of Jesus received “secret knowledge” that the author of the book is now revealing. They are fundamentally different than the four Gospels. Judaism and Christianity are holistic religions, while Gnosticism is dualistic, pitting the evil material world against the spiritual world. Since history of the material world is evil, there is no attempt to give the reader a sense of a connection to history. Just as I have been arguing for the historicity and authenticity for the canonical Gospels, the Gnostic Gospels reveal a blatant agenda to distort the teachings of Jesus with no respect for even an appearance of factual reality.

The “many gospels” hypothesis is the brain-child of professors and popular authors such as John Dominic Crossan, Elaine Pagels and Marvin Meyer. Their writings make for brisk sales and media attention because they are so sensationalistic. No university wants to pay researchers to publish papers and books reiterating the view of the Church Fathers on the dating and origin of the Gospels. Researchers are paid to publish “new findings” and are under a considerable amount of pressure to get some media attention.

There is also an underlying motive by some to promote an “original” form of Christianity that was more liberal and less patriarchal. Whether or not the Gnostic Gospels provide this point of view is debatable. However, this might be one reason why there has been such a flurry of interest in recent years over these “new discoveries.” (In fact, most of these writings have been known through archaeological discoveries since the late 1800s and much of the content of the books has been documented ever since they appeared in the second, third and fourth centuries.) Dan Brown has even made this burgeoning Neo-Gnosticism the thesis of his best-selling novels, which he claims are “based on history” even though his plots are fictional.

The conspiracy theory goes as follows: Gnosticism was the “original Christianity” – in fact, there were “many Gospels” and “many Christianities” based on Gnostic mysticism. Then about 180 AD, Irenaeus the Bishop of Lyons appeared. He and his followers were intolerant bigots who hand-selected and/or edited the four Gospels they felt most represented the patriarchal view of the Apostle Paul toward women and sexuality. (Or in some far-fetched versions, this historical revisionism didn’t occur until the Council of Nicea in the fourth century.) According to this hypothesis, the New Testament canon was a response to a perceived Gnostic threat to the authority of the bishops.

This view is in contrast with the testimony of Irenaeus and Tertullian who explained that various Gnostic sects each adopted one of the four Gospels that they believed best supported their views often editing out parts they disagreed with. The Ebionites used only the Gospel according to Matthew, because they thought it represented a more “earthly” Jesus. The Adoptionists made use only of Mark, because they felt it separated “Jesus” from “Christ.” Marcion used only the Gospel of Luke because he felt it represented a more “spiritual” Jesus. Finally, the Cerinthians and Valentinians used only their warped interpretation of John to show that Jesus was a separate spiritual being from the evil demiurgic God who created the material universe.

By the end of the second century, the Gnostics had already begun writing their own books of “secret knowledge” based on the writings of Jesus that had little regard for the historical-narrative structure of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Some liberal scholars, such as Crossan, Pagels and Meyer, have tried to turn this scenario on its head by saying the Gnostic Gospels came first and the canonical Gospels drew from them. It is true that Gnosticism existed prior to Jesus, but the religion borrowed bits and pieces from Judaism and Christianity, not vice versa.

But here is the bottom line: The four canonical Gospels have a remarkable pedigree. The four Gospels were known and quoted numerous times by other Christian writers in the late first and second centuries. In the late 1800s, some liberal Higher Critics placed the Gospels very late, even at the end of the second century, but due to more recent archaeological discoveries and scholarship, almost every scholar now agrees the four Gospels are first century books. One would have to ignore the writings of the Church Fathers in order not to see this.

My view is that all the books of the New Testament were probably written before 70 AD. The exception to this might be the Gospel of John and the letters of John.

First, there is the Didache and 1 Clement, both written in the late first century, which quote heavily from the New Testament. Then by 90 AD there isn't a decade in which there isn't a work that draws on the New Testament. Around 125 AD, another early yet seldom mentioned Christian apologist, Aristides of Athens, wrote the following to the Emperor Hadrian.

Take, then, their writings, and read therein, and lo! you will find that I have not put forth these things on my own authority, nor spoken thus as their advocate; but since I read in their writings I was fully assured of these things as also of things which are to come. And for this reason I was constrained to declare the truth to such as care for it and seek the world to come.

This shows that within 60 years of the lifetime of the Apostles, the New Testament writings were known throughout the Roman Empire.

In fact, it has been demonstrated that the majority of the 7958 verses in the New Testament could be reconstructed just from the writings of the Church Fathers up until about 200 AD. This includes 268 citations by Justin Martyr, 1,038 by Irenaeus, 1,017 by Clement of Alexandria, 9,231 by Origen, 3,822 by Tertullian, 734 by Hippolytus (Geisler and Nix, General Introduction to the Bible, 431).

As you look at the following timeline, consider that the earliest of the Church Fathers lived early enough to have known the Apostles and that the overlapping lifetimes of all these men indicate a great certainty for the transmission of Apostolic writings. The four Gospels are quoted very early, but the Gnostic Gospels are unknown until after the middle of the second century.

Patristic Writings Timeline

The following authors cite the New Testament. The timeline indicates the most likely dates of their works.

The Didache – c. 70-100 AD
Clement of Rome – c. 96 AD
Ignatius of Antioch – c. 110-117
Polycarp of Smyrna – c. 110-155
Papias of Hieropolis – c. 125
The Epistle of Barnabas – c. 100-132
Aristides of Athens – c. 123-127
Quadratus of Athens - c. 123-127
Hermas of Rome – c. 125-135
Mathetes - c. 130-150
Aristo of Pella - c. 140
Justin Martyr – c. 150-160
Tatian - c. 150-165
Theophilus of Antioch - c. 169-182
Melito of Sardis - c. 172-177
Irenaeus of Lyons – c. 175-185
Athenagoras - c. 176-178
Muratorian Canon – c. 175-200
Clement of Alexandria – c. 180-200
Tertullian of Carthage – c. 200-220
Origen of Alexandria – c. 200-230
Hippolytus of Rome – c. 220

"Dignity" Law & Order episode infuriates pro-aborts, can be watched on iTunes

What's going on? Pro-abortion advocates are ripping ABC-TV (yes, that ABC!) for being unbalanced on the abortion issue.

They've thrown down the gauntlet: "Cry 'God for Barry, pro-choice America and St. George!'"

(As they laud George Tiller, the baby killer, whom the L&A episode thinly veils in its depiction of the trial of an assassin who gunned down a late-term abortionist in a church.)

What they don't get is that over 92 percent of Americans actually do think that killing viable children and infants born-alive is murder. And even if they do not, no one wants to rush out to battle in the name of "abortion rights" to endorse what almost everyone knows is infanticide. Not too many people are actually that arrogant.

I haven't seen the episode, but apparently it gives a nod to the Personhood of the fetus as "deserving of another look," so maybe something good is happening?

If you have an iTunes account, the whole episode can be watched there. If not, you can download the application. It's easy.

Dating the Gospel of Luke (part 2)

Can the Gospels be authenticated?

One of the almost universally held notions of liberal theology is that the Gospels are anonymous writings and the names of the authors were not attached to the original manuscripts. Although we do not have the original manuscripts, this is stated as a certain fact. However, the earliest codices are not anonymous. Here is an image of P75, a papyrus codex that was copied at the end of the second century from an earlier copy.



This is the earliest example that we have of a manuscript in which one Gospel ends and another begins. Even if you can’t read Greek, it is clear that the title and author of the two books appear here near the top of the page – the Greek words say: “Gospel according to Luke” and “Gospel according to John.”

So why do the liberals claim the original autographs were anonymous? There are two reasons for this. The first is scientific skepticism. In any hard science, a theory is not proven unless data exists that can confirm a hypothesis. Scientific skepticism doesn't accept something as fact unless it can be proven. Textual criticism, although not a hard science, uses the same methods. The skeptics will assume the latest date possible until an earlier date can be established. They will assume anonymity or pseudonymity until authorship can be proven. They do not, however, try to prove their position.

When the liberal critics say books are anonymous or too late to be the authentic works of the named authors, they don't have proof of this. They just don't accept the evidence to the contrary as compelling. The problem is that others frequently cite this skepticism as fact, when no textual critic is really ever certain of his dating. They simply assume the latest possible dates based on the evidence. However, there are a surprising number of liberal scholars who have become convinced of early dates based on the evidence available. Two of the most notable are J.A.T. Robinson and Eta Linnemann.

Second, it is stated as a foregone conclusion that the authors' names were added to the manuscripts later on -- perhaps as late as the second century. The critics assume that the Gospels were written too late to have been by eyewitnesses. Mark is assumed to be the first Gospel and the date of 70 AD is assigned. The rest of the Gospels are thought to be at least 10 years later. Certainly, books written so late after the deaths of Jesus and the Apostles could not be by contemporary eyewitnesses of the events.

External testimony is routinely ignored. We have author attributions as early the extant fragments of Papias’ work, Expositions of the Oracles of the Lord, which according to C.E. Hill was written “as early as 110 and probably no later than the early 130s, with several scholars opting for the earlier end of the spectrum.” We also have Irenaeus’ statement (c. 180 AD) that Papias was “a hearer of John, and companion of Polycarp, a man of old time” (Against Heresies 5.33.4). If we take Irenaeus’ statement at face value, there is no reason to suppose that the Church fathers, who wrote between 96 to 115 AD, did not know the names of the authors of the four Gospels and Acts. Papias names Matthew as the author of a Hebrew Gospel according to Matthew, and Mark as the author of what was preached by Peter, the Gospel according to Mark.

If the Gospels were not written by those whose names appeared on the books by the early second century, there is little possibility that they could have had the influence they did in the early church. It is unlikely that such a falsification of authorship could have occurred intentionally or even unintentionally.

Likewise, my fictitious novels about Joseph Fitzgerald Kennedy (see part 1) and his followers might fool a few children and some illiterate hillbillies who have lived their entire lives cut off from written communication, But this was not the civilization of ancient Rome and the early church. Although not everyone could read and write, literacy was the norm for Rome’s citizens and Jewish men especially were highly literate and aware of their own history as a people. The Gospels, to the contrary to the story of Joseph Fitzgerald Kennedy, are historical accounts that may be corroborated with other works, such as the histories written by Suetonius, Tacitus and Josephus. If they were not, they never could have risen to the level of acceptance as inspired and canonical writings recognized as scripture by the end of the first century.

There are two remarkable early examples of New Testament writings being quoted as scripture. The first is 1 Clement 13.8, which has the phrase, “the words of the Lord Jesus,” prior to a quote from the Gospels. Before and after this Gospel quotation, The Epistle of Clement (c. 96 AD) appeals to the authority of Old Testament scripture prefaced with the phrases, “for the Holy Spirit says” and “For the holy word says.” In 1 Clement 22.1, Christ is the source of the words of Psalm 34:11-17 and 2:10, “Christ calls us through his Holy Spirit.” It has been argued by some scholars that the use of the phrase “the words of the Lord Jesus” in chapter 13 indicates scriptural authority for the simple reason that Clement cites Jesus as the speaker of the Psalms in chapter 22.

The other example is Ignatius (c. 117 AD) who was the first Church Father to use many more quotations from the New Testament than from the Old Testament in his writings. Ignatius rebukes those who doubt the authority of the Gospel in his Epistle to the Philadelphians. In chapter 8, Ignatius plainly states that whenever he speaks the words of the Gospel with the phrase, “it is written,” then the Gospel has the same authority as Old Testament scripture. In the same passage, he likens those who would reject the authority of the Gospel by directly quoting the words of Jesus to the Apostle Paul in Acts 9:6, “It is hard to kick against the pricks.” This demonstrates the acceptance of Luke and Acts as scripture by Ignatius.

When was the New Testament written?

No matter your theological disposition, liberal or conservative, the dating of several New Testament papyri in the second century establishes that there is early and late window for the writing of the New Testament. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, thousands of manuscript fragments discovered by the renowned archaeologists, Grenfell and Hunt, in Egypt in the 1890s, yielded over 100 New Testament fragments that were older than any manuscripts that had been preserved up to that point.

Facsimile of P52, the oldest known surviving Gospel fragment, c. 115 AD

The most startling discovery was a small scrap of papyrus called P52 that contains a portion of the Gospel of John. The consensus among paleographers is that the handwriting is circa 115 AD – also incidentally the approximate date of Papias’ Exposition. Since John was likely written in Asia Minor and P52 was found in Egypt, this fragment is likely at least a copy of a copy. This also indicates a wide distribution of copies of John at an early date.

Given the events of Acts, which end abruptly in about 60 AD, the earliest possible date for Acts is about 60 AD. In the world of critical literature and especially on the Internet, we still find people claiming a date as late as 130 AD for Luke. However, it should be obvious that a book could not have been written later than its earliest copy. Due to the almost universally accepted fact that the three synoptic Gospels were written prior to John, and since John was surely written prior to end of the first century, the three synoptic Gospels probably could not have been completed prior to 90 AD.

That's a 30 year window – 60 to 90 AD. That means if the Gospel of Luke was composed, according to the liberal dating, by 85 AD, the book of Acts would have been written soon after that date. In light of the point I made with the fictitious story of JFK, the date of 85 AD by an anonymous or pseudonymous author is impossible. To have gained acceptance among Christians at the beginning of the second century, the authenticity and historical reliability of both of these works would need to be airtight.

Numerous quotes from Luke, Acts, the other three Gospels and most other New Testament books appeared in the works of Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Papias and the writer of the Didache just a few years later. These men lived from the mid-first century onward and wrote their books from 96 to 115 AD. To quote Irenaeus, these writings of the church fathers were composed by men “who had seen and conversed with the apostles, while their preaching was still sounding in [their] ears, and their tradition was still before [their] eyes. Nor were they alone in this, for many who had been taught by the apostles still survived.”

Again, we are presented with the inevitable scenario in which the four written Gospels must have been composed and transmitted among a tight knit community that had some still living who had known and heard the Apostles preach.

Of course, one could make the charge that the letters of Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp are not genuine either and therefore are no witness to New Testament reliability. The problem with this hypothesis is that these books are accepted even by liberals as being completely authentic and genuine -- the simple reason being that the church fathers of the late second century quote from them as well. There is a living link of flesh and blood from generation to generation. The Apostles who were with Jesus passed on their writings to the early bishops who transmitted them to their successors. After 96 AD, the supposed date for the Epistle of Clement, there is hardly a decade in which we don't have a record, a witness, a writing of some type that confirms an earlier record, witness or writing. The New Testament has an incredibly strong pedigree in this regard.

What is meant by “anonymous” Gospels?

There are some accomplished scholars who dispute the authenticity of the Gospels. Bart Ehrman is a world-renowned New Testament scholar. In a brief Internet conversation with Ehrman earlier this year, I asked him about his insistence on Gospel anonymity. He gave his answer:

By definition (is this really a speculation? I thought it was a truism), a writing whose author does not identify him/herself is anonymous…. The authors of the Gospels of the New Testament (unlike other Gospels outside the New Testament, and unlike other books in the New Testament) do not indicate their identity. These books are therefore anonymous. If you want to identify the authors with one person or another, that's fine – and you may have historical grounds. But in doing so you are attributing a book to someone, not indicating what the book itself says about its author.

Ehrman therefore insists that any writing in which an author does not identify himself by name within the text itself is by definition “anonymous.” However, there is absolutely no reason to think that the four Gospel authors’ names were not known or that they were not part of the titles of the books. Everyone knew who wrote The Annals in ancient times, but Tacitus did not put his name within the text. The Annals is not by definition “anonymous.” Consider also that there were four Gospels, each being copied hundreds of times, all the copies going in hundreds of different geographical directions, all ending up thousands of miles apart, yet each called by the same names no matter where they ended up decades later. The logical explanation for this is that before they were distributed throughout the known world, the titles and author names were affixed to them in some way.

I have no doubt that Bart Ehrman and other such critics are scholars and gentlemen. However, to conservative Christians, who have studied the Bible and then hear the speculations of liberal critics, they seem to us as complete idiots. As Paul says: “They profess to be wise, when really, they have become fools. They have been turned over to a reprobate mind.” I am reminded of the proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the room that the skeptic does not want to see.

- to be continued

Dating the Gospel of Luke (part 1)

Gone with the Wind by Ronald Reagan: A Pseudonymous Gospel

Let's pretend for a moment …

In 1985, at the age of 23, I decided to write a story about a statesman hero of mine, Joseph Fitzgerald Kennedy. The novel and its sequel became a best-seller and changed American culture. But for those who have never actually read the two novels, here is a brief outline.

"JFK" was born on December 24th, 1896 in a small town in Maryland on the outskirts of Washington D.C. His parents, two Jewish immigrants from Philadelphia, were traveling to Washington to celebrate the holidays with family members. They were forced to stop in a small hotel for several days due to the onslaught of a sudden blizzard. Since the roads were overrun by wayward holiday travelers, the only person who could take them in was a hotel keeper who gave them a small shed outside his house. The baby was born in these impossible conditions and both mother and child survived by a seeming miracle. A touring group of circus side-show workers staying in the hotel heard the story and decided to share their room with the young family. Noticing the oddity of a Christmas baby born outside an inn, some fortune tellers in the company gathered around and predicted that one day this baby would go to Washington to become president of the United States. In that dark hour, this young president would defeat America's enemies. He'd be responsible for reestablishing the state of Israel and would bring a golden age of peace and prosperity to America.

My first novel goes on to describe a brief detail about the young boy debating professors at George Washington University at age 12, then picks up with him as a Harvard professor at age 29. In a short time, JFK was famous for his public lectures and humanitarian initiatives. He toured the country a few years later giving speeches finally announcing his candidacy for president, though he had never held political office. He received the endorsement of his cousin, William Jennings Bryant, shortly after the famous Scopes Monkey Trial during which Bryant suffered disgrace and died a short time later. Many startling supernatural occurrences followed Joseph F. Kennedy throughout his career. Snippets of his many speeches were recorded in my novel, "Ask not what your country can do for you," "Give me liberty or give me death," "A house divided against itself cannot stand," and perhaps his most famous speech given shortly before he died, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

He was loved by young people and the poor. He was the people's hero. But he ruffled the feathers of both the Republican and Democratic Party leaders. They were unsure which side he stood for – he had populist appeal although he often leaned toward the right in public policy. In a dark speech in the spring of 1933, Joseph predicted that America would soon become engulfed in wars that would lead up to the establishment of Israel as a state. In less than 40 years, he prophesied Israel would be surrounded by its enemy Egypt, but the Israelis would not only prevail, but would recapture the city of Jerusalem from the Palestinians. Joseph also implied that he would not live to see it, but would be betrayed to death by those closest to him.

In 1933, Joseph seemed poised to win his party's nomination for presidency the following year, when an awful occurrence horrified his followers. An embezzling associate, named Jacob Isaacson was suddenly and inexplicably overcome with insane jealousy. While it was widely thought that Kennedy was an Irishman, it was known only to a few that he was a Jew who had designs on the presidency for the purpose of establishing Israel as a nation. Isaacson, although a Jew himself, leaked the truth of Kennedy's Semitic roots to The Washington Post, but the story was suppressed by a few editors. A rigorous campaign season ensued and Kennedy seemed poised to win the nomination of the Bull Moose Party in 1934 with the slogan "Walk softly, but carry a big stick."

Tragically, Kennedy was assassinated by American Nazi sympathizers who learned that Kennedy was a Jew. He was shot in the neck by the son of Charles Lindbergh, whom the Nazis had kidnapped and brainwashed a few years earlier, while Kennedy was watching the premiere of Gone with the Wind in a movie theater in Baltimore in 1934. JFK's followers mourned but vowed to fight on. The tale of JFK sightings persisted among his youthful following. He was seen as a gas station attendant, a gardener, and even some imagined they saw him while traveling in snow storms on Christmas Eve.

The book was originally published as a series of untitled, anonymous articles in Harper's Magazine, but soon became known as Gone with the Wind. A later edition appeared in 1984 under the name of one of Kennedy's most faithful supporters, Ronald Reagan, a washed up B-movie actor who had never met JFK, but ran for office on the Bull Moose Party ticket achieving the governorship of California in 1966.

I later wrote The Acts of Ronald Reagan, an unauthorized pseudonymous autobiography of sorts, which tells the events from Reagan's perspective of Kennedy's death in 1934 up to Reagan's support for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. I was never able to finish the story of Reagan as it abruptly ends with Goldwater's speech at the 1964 Bull Moose Party convention.

**************************************************

Obviously, there is no such presidential candidate as Joseph F. Kennedy. I conflated several factual stories about United States presidents with stories from the Bible, many anachronisms and much outright fiction. I took the framework of the story of Jesus and the Apostles of the first century and brought it about 1900 years into the future. I supposed I was a second generation non-eyewitness writing a legendary story about Joseph F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

I took a perspective that would have been similar to that of the Church Fathers (Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and Papias) the youngest of whom was probably born no later than 65 AD. Since I was born in 1962, I simply fast-forwarded about 1900 years to use that as an anchor date in this fictitious allegory.

But let's now consider something even more outrageous …

Suppose that during Ronald Reagan's second term of presidency, there were JFK followers who had long since grown into a religious cult, who believed that JFK was still alive and ruling as the president of the United States from heaven, waiting come back to earth to supplant the Republican Party with the Bull Moose agenda. These fanatical cultists then took my work of fiction, which I never intended to be taken literally, and assumed it was true. They gathered some other stories about JFK and circulated these throughout the United States, reading them at weekly meetings.

Now it is almost 2010. Would it be possible to sell my novel series to the American people as non-fiction? Is it really possible that some would mistake these stories as a historical narrative?

Of course not!

The reason for this should be obvious. There are many people alive today who were born in the 1930s. They were taught well in school and have a good understanding of United States History. Many of them can remember Charles Lindbergh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, World War Two and many of the historical events that were misrepresented in my story. Many of them voted for John F. Kennedy, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. A story that conflates nonsense with reality could never be thought of as anything but an entertaining work of fiction. And even 50 to 100 years from now, there is no way that any of this could be misconstrued as a work of history.

Yet this is exactly how liberals, skeptics and atheists view the New Testament – as a compilation of Jewish midrash of Old Testament stories by anonymous or pseudonymous writers whose works were then taken as fact just a few years after they died by a burgeoning cult who had their roots in similar beliefs and experiences. Exactly 1900 years ago, after the last of the Apostles had passed away and the Church was in the hands of the bishops, someone had already collated the four Gospels and Acts into several codices, as well as the letters of Paul and some other Epistles. By the second century, someone had made numerous copies and distributed them among the churches. Liberal theologians assume that the bishops, deacons, and the rank and file believers of the late first and early second century were so woefully unaware of history that they were capable of taking a colorful collection of "urban legends" and interpreting it as "truth."

- to be continued