The Evolution of Jesus Mythicism

Here's a ministry idea. Someone with a YouTube account ought to read this on video. Do a rant in your own inimitable tone. Make sure you cite the author because when it goes viral he'll be wanting royalties. I didn't write this. This is from a guy named Vinnie, who obviously has some kind of gift. Don't ask me what it is though.

Just a note for people who don't get this. I constantly get responses to my Real Jesus video series from young postmodernist atheists who insist there is no proof that Jesus ever existed. I know that makes no sense, but welcome to the 21st century. If you do get it, then you agree with me that this guy Vinnie is brilliant.

Mythicism in 27 to 30 A.D.

Yes, mythicists go back to the first century where they were constantly arguing with Jesus about whether or not he existed. Nothing he could do would prove his existence to them. They asserted and reasserted that he did not exist.

One guy who was a real "Freke" traveled to Australia and came back and told Jesus triumphantly "No one has ever heard of you in Australia. Ergo, you do not exist."

Many of Jesus friends (maybe even 500 of them!) testified that this man was in fact Jesus of Nazareth to them but the mythicists accused the men of fabrication and mass hallucination. They were stubborn and unrelenting and would not give up their hyper-skepticism.

Men and women came claiming to be Jesus' family but the mythicists argued that their testimony was invalid unless backed by a scientifically controlled and carefully conducted DNA testing.

Jesus invited the mythicists over to his house one night for supper and when he was done entertaining them he tried one last time to prove his existence to them. But not even the wine they drank loosened them from their hyper-skepticism. Led by their leader "Doherticus ben Earl" they dogmatically asserted that unless he could show them a valid driver's license with his picture on it they would not accept his existence.

Since he had no clue what a driver's license was he was silenced and his opponents assumed victory and taunted him with drunken slurs like "Na na na na na. You don't exist. Na na na na na."

Mythicism in 30 to 70 A.D.

Many who who knew Jesus of Nazareth and followed him during his lifetime believed he was an actual person and they found him to be a great teacher and they continued to follow him after his death and carried on his message.

But the mythicists kept arguing against his existence. They now asserted that the Christians invented the story and they accused them of being Christians! "Because you are followers of this man you are clearly biased and nothing that you say he said or did can be considered as evidence. What could a follower of Jesus tell us about Jesus?" they retorted.

One day during this time period some Gentile converts interpreted something they heard attributed to Jesus to mean that shellfish and pork were now clean. But this only fueled the debate as popular mythicist "Petros ben Gandy" used this material to argue against the historicity of Jesus' existence. He stated, "I lived next door to Jesus and ate with him often. He never declared shellfish and pork clean. You or whoever you heard this from are clearly making this material up just as you make up these claims that Jesus was a real person. He could never provide us with a valid picture I.D. and I doubt you can do any better!"

Jesus' brother James become quite popular and continued to argue that his brother was a real person during this time period but he could never provide the mythicists with their required evidence of a DNA test as he knew not what a DNA test was.

Mythicism from 71 to 95 A.D.

Jesus' original followers were all dead and the mythicists ran rampant during this time period. Anything anyone said about Jesus was considered hearsay because no one was actually there to witness it. The mythicist's mythicist-children now demanded primary-contemporary source data. Anything less than that would not even be considered!

One Christian brought forth some documents that contained a lot of material on Jesus. He said these documents should constitute evidence for the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. Much material inside them was embarrassing and there wasn't really any valid reason to think that all stuff was woven from whole cloth (let along the really embarrassing stuff like Baptism by JBap) but the mythicists were not swayed. At first they weren't sure how to treat them and they argued that no one ever heard of these documents and they have no name on them so they must not exist. Christians then decided to name them and the mythicists changed their argument. Many of them now speculated that these documents were late second century documents that wouldn't be written for another 100 plus years. This position became central to the mythicist case. It was canonical you could say. "Do you really expect us mythicists in the year 83 A.D. to accept these 2nd century documents that won't even be written for about another 100 years as evidence? What do you take us for? Idiots?" That quickly became their standard response.

Mythicism from 96 to 2000+ A.D.

Nothing has changed and Jesus is now sitting in heaven laughing in heaven at the sight of this nonsense.

The Real Jesus (revisited)

We live in a postmodernist age. People, especially the younger generation, are able to hold onto contradictory notions without batting an eye. It's a perfect era to be a skeptic who believes in nothing, but wants to take the fast track to being a pseudo-intellectual by attacking traditional worldviews and contributing nothing positive to the conversation except to say, "The burden of proof is on the believer!"

I've had hundreds of comments from young postmodernists in response to my Real Jesus DVD, which is posted on YouTube and my website. The following is one such conversation with a UFO enthusiast (who doesn't think there is evidence that Jesus existed) named "Boyinthemachine."

The conversation took an interesting turn when I insisted that 99.99 percent of scholars accept the fact that Jesus was a real historical figure.

____________________

Jay Rogers: "That Jesus is a historical figure is accepted by 99.99 percent of secular historians."

Boyinthemachine:

"Where did you get that figure? Look, even I believe there most likely was a historical Jesus. The problem is that my belief is not based on the fact that Jesus' historicity has been proven, but rather, based on the fact that there are countless cases of men deified after their death, such as various Caesars. Last, the Epistle of James is not a Gospel. It leads no proof to a historical Jesus."

Jay Rogers: "Can you name even five PhDs teaching history at the university level who claim Jesus never existed? If you can, I'll revise my number to 99.98 percent. Also, what do you do about the eyewitness claims in the New Testament, especially those in the Gospel of John and 1 John?"

Boyinthemachine:

"Why should I? The burden of proof is on those making the claim.

"We don't know who wrote the Gospel of John. The author was not an eyewitness, but like all the other Gospels, merely put to word oral stories, i.e. 'The Gospel According To John.' Most scholars believe the Gospel of John was written between 90-100 AD, with a small number of scholars suggesting earlier or later dates. Thus, like the other Gosples, John is very weak evidence for the historicity of Jesus."

Jay Rogers: "The New Testament actually has a very good pedigree. The Apostles who knew Jesus preached and wrote from 30 to 70 A.D. Then early bishops such as Ignatius, Clement, Polycarp and Papias (35 to 115 A.D.) received the books of the Apostles and wrote their own works quoting from most of the books of the New Testament. Later second century church fathers quoted from every New Testament book and named the authors. The earliest canonical list is from the second century. There is a continual unbroken witness to the authors of the New Testament in every generation up until the great Codices of the fourth century."

Boyinthemachine:

"The Apostles were eyewitnesses, if Jesus existed. However, we don't know who wrote the gospels. The assumption, by the Church, was that it was 'Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John' who wrote the Gospels. Most scholars do not accept this. Most scholars believe the gospels were written anonymously, from about 40 years after Jesus' death to about 100 years after Jesus' death.

"It would be great if we had overwhelming evidence for the historicity of Jesus, but we just don't have it."

Jay Rogers: "Form critics and source critics act as scientists working from the null hypothesis. They ignore all documentary evidence and assume nothing from the beginning. They then are able to draw all kinds of conclusions. In the 1800s, the form critics had the Gospel of John written in the late second century. Then in the early 1900s a papyrus fragment of John was found that dated to about 115 A.D. One scrap of paper wiped out over 100 years of liberal conjecture! Assuming that this fragment was a copy of a copy, and since it was discovered in Egypt, the latest John could have been written was 95 A.D. The earliest would be the mid-first century.

"Liberals will almost always assume the latest dates and an unknown author. The problem for them is that all extra-biblical documentary evidence from the first and second century onward points to definite authors. Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and Papias wrote in the late first to early second century, but they were born and lived during the time when some disciples who had seen Jesus were still alive. We see no debate among them on who the authors of the New Testament were. Then almost all the NT manuscript fragments of the second century have titles and authors. You can actually go on-line and see the titles (called supercriptions and subscriptions) of manuscript fragments.

"Another interesting thing is that form the early second century, and maybe earlier, the books of the NT were bound into five codices, the four Gospels and Acts, Paul's Epistles, the Pastorals, the General Epistles, Revelation. As in modern times, books had titles and authors. There is no reason to think that the authors did not assign their names to the original autographs. Then in the third century, Origen wrote that there were some doubts about Hebrews and Revelation because of stylistic differences in Paul and John's other writings.

"In modern times, this skepticism was stretched to call every book into question. But it is very easy to see these liberals have an agenda. An unbiased researcher might doubt the traditional authorship of books like 2 Peter, Revelation, Hebrews and maybe 3 John, but there is no documentary evidence that these books were ever in dispute shortly after they were written. To the contrary, they are all quoted early. According to all models of textual criticism, they ought to be considered authentic and reliable."

My response to a cynic on the chronology of Jesus' life

John Armstrong -- Jesus' doubter, cynic and Deist -- posted a video response to The Real Jesus. Above is his video and here is my written response to him. I may do a video response if I have time.

I've written on most of the points you bring up in your video on my blog and on my YouTube V-logs. I think maybe that's why you linked to my v-log in the first place.

I don't see any new objections here.

That being said, biblical chronology is interesting to me and I've come to the conclusion in the past two years that it's a key issue in solving a lot of theological debates within the church as well as apologetic battles with skeptics and seekers.

I am a partial preterist, so I think that the 70 A.D. mark is important to help Christians understand not only the book of Revelation and the Mount Olivet Discourse, but also why the NT was written when it was written and why these dates are non-negotiable.

I presuppose that the NT is correct. I admit my bias. I also reason backward in time from the 70 A.D. mark to get certain dates.

Here is one time marker for example: The Mount Olivet Discourse can't be correct unless it was given in or after 30 A.D. "This generation shall not pass away until all these things shall take place" -- speaking of the destruction of the Temple.

A Hebrew generation is 40 years, so that gives the EARLIEST year for the Mount Olivet Discourse and the crucifixion which took place that same time.

30 A.D. plus 40 years = 70 A.D.

Since Jews never entered the rabbinical ministry before their 30th year (which is actually age 29 in Hebrew reckoning) then Jesus entered the ministry at age 29 or 30. If three Passovers are recorded in the Gospels, then that would give a date of 26 or 27 A.D. when Jesus reached age 30.

So when was Jesus born?

If you subtract 30 from 27 A.D. The birth of Jesus occurred around 4 B.C.

John the Baptist was six months older than Jesus (Luke 1:36). He entered the ministry in the days of Pontius Pilate (26 A.D; Luke 3:1).

Here I think Luke is giving really specific dates. Jesus could not have been younger than 33-years-old in 30 A.D. and John the Baptist could not have entered the ministry prior to 26 A.D.

John the Baptist was conceived in the days of Herod (Luke 1:5; 2:1). Here, Luke refers to King Herod the Great of Judea and NOT Herod Antipas, who he later names as Herod Tetrarch of Galilee (Luke 3:1).

Herod the Great died in 4 B.C.

So from this much alone, Luke's account matches Matthew's. John the Baptist was born in 5 B.C. (Luke 1:5; 2:1) and Jesus was born no later than 4 B.C. during the last months of the reign of Herod (Matthew 2:1).

This chronology matches other dates such as the beginning of Pilate's administration coinciding with John the Baptist's ministry (26 A.D.) and the administration of Herod's sons (Luke 3:1).

Now let's deal with Quirinius.

Your entire argument rests on the idea that Quirinius had NO ADMINISTRATION WHATSOEVER over Syria during Herod the Great's reign. You don't prove that he did NOT. You say you have contrary evidence, but you do NOT cite it.

However, I have in Justin at least one historical record to corroborate this.

Justin, Apology, Chapt 34: "And hear what part of earth He was to be born in, as another prophet, Micah, foretold. He spoke thus: 'And thou, Bethlehem, the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah; for out of thee shall come forth a Governor, who shall feed My people.' Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty-five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing made under Cyrenius, your first procurator in Judaea."

Quirinius was a ruler in the eastern Roman Empire from the time of 14 B.C. to 12 A.D. Quirinius, at the time of King Herod's death was doing military expeditions in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire (Tacitus, Annals 3:48; Florus, Roman History 2:31). Justin's "First Apology" indicaties that he either was a co-ruler with the governor of Syria (Quintilius Varus) over Judea or at least placed in charge of the census in Judea.

So Quirinius is hardly a problem if you believe Justin. He was not the "governor" of Syria, but simply a "procurator" in both Judea and Syria. In fact, the phrase "hegemoneuontos tes Syrias Kyreniou" (Luke 2:2) can be taken to mean ANY kind of ruler. The word "hegemonoi" in Greek can mean a variety of titles meaning ruler, governor, procurator, authority, etc.

For instance, Pilate is also called a "hegemonoi," in the New Testament, but Herod of Judea (another of Herod the Great's son) was the Tetrarch at the time of the crucifixion. Pilate was a prefect or a procurator, yet he had greater authority than Herod of Judea. It's no problem since "hegemonoi" is translated variously as governor, procurator, prefect, in the New Testament.

Furthermore, Roman rulers often held more than one title in a province and sometimes held titles over several provinces.

Justin records that Quirinius was a "procurator of Judea." Other histories record that this would have been while Varus and Saturnius served as governors.

Why would Luke then call him "governor of Syria" if he were simply a regional procurator? Why does he not name Varus or Saturnius? There is no contradiction here. He could have had MORE AUTHORITY than Varus or Saturnius, just as Pilate had more authority than Herod.

It's also interesting that Justin didn't simply copy Luke and call him "governor of Syria" -- he calls him "procurator of Judea." Sometimes historical accounts that don't match exactly just give MORE information not necessarily contradictory information. And more importantly, whether he was right or wrong, Justin obviously used another source than Luke -- one that puts Quirinius in the right place at the right time.

Tertullian also does the same thing in his fourth book Against All Heresies: "But there is historical proof that at this very time a census had been taken in Judaea by Sentius Saturninus, which might have satisfied their inquiry respecting the family and descent of Christ."

Note that Tertullian mentions Saturnius, and doesn't simply copy Luke. He can't be making it up because he states emphatically that proof of the census existed.

So if we try to reconcile the various sources, we have information that Jesus was born when Herod was governor of Judea, Saturnius had been governor of Syria and a ruler of Judea, and Varus had been governor of Syria, and Quirinus was procurator of both Syria and Judea.

If all the secular dates are correct that puts Jesus' birth in an 18 month window from late 6 B.C. to early 4 B.C.

A lot of these questions about overlapping administrations are understood better if you see a map of Palestine and realize how small the area is. We are talking about an area 100 miles in length to travel from Judea, through Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, then to Syria and Abilene. Then Asia Minor begins about 200 miles north of that area.

As you stated correctly, Quirinius was in Asia Minor overseeing campaigns against the Homonadensians from 5 to 3 B.C. This campaign was waged in Cilicia in the southeastern part of Asia Minor. He would have been on the border of Syria. So it's possible to place him in Syria sometime from 6 to 4 B.C. We know he was at the most 100 to 200 miles away.

I've given you a plausible time-line. But for the sake of argument, let's say you are right and that Tacitus contradicts Luke about Quirinius. At the very most, all you've proven is that Tacitus and Luke disagree and so at last one of them is wrong. You must admit that secular historians often make mistakes!

You raise several other points too, but I think those are much weaker and fairly easy to refute. These concern the arrangement of materials in the Gospels but it is well know that Matthew and John don't always arrange their materials chronologically, but are concerned with thematic arrangement. A good harmony of the Gospels is needed. I can point you to one if you want.

I think if the discussion were to be continued it ought to be on a forum such as TheologyWeb, or as a forum on our websites.

That being said, we are covering ground that has been covered thousands of times before.

Do you want to talk about the census next?

Was Jesus crucified body buried -- or just eaten by dogs?

This three minute video clip is made up of "left-overs" from The Real Jesus DVD that was recently released in December.

You can find ordering information at the link above.

I know that on the surface the title of this video clip title seems blasphemous, but that is what the post-modernists have recently hurled at Christian orthodoxy in a vain and stupid attempt to defeat the truth of the resurrection.

(And by "hurled," I do mean "hurled.")

Jesus Seminar scholar, John Dominic Crossan, who lives a few miles up the road from me in Clermont, Florida, thinks that Jesus' body must have been eaten by dogs, despite having no evidence or documents to back this up.

On the basis of Crossan's comments, I've heard self-proclaimed experts say that crucified bodies were never buried as the Gospel describes, despite having a corroborating passage in Josephus that tells how Jews often took crucified bodies off the cross for burial before the scavenger beasts came out at sundown.

J.P. Holding offers evidence to refute Crossan's thesis.

And just for fun I asked:

We hear a lot of comments from Jesus Mythists about how there is no evidence of the crucifixion of Jesus in Roman records. What about these so-called "missing Roman records"?

The Jesus Mythists think that somehow the argument from silence applies here, even though there is not one existing "crucifixion record" from Judea during the time of Jesus' crucifixion.

They don't know how common an occurrence crucifixion was in the first century.

They also don't know that Josephus' description of crucifixion closely matches that of the Gospels in recounting what happened with Jesus' body.

How many times does Josephus describe or record crucifixions in his History of the Wars of the Jews?

Depending on how you count, Josephus mentions or describes crucifixion 9 or 10 times.

Does any of this information corroborate the record of Jesus body being taken from the cross and buried?

"Nay, they proceeded to that degree of impiety, as to cast away their dead bodies without burial, although the Jews used to take so much care of the burial of men, that they took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun" (Josephus Wars 4.5).

Compare this with Gospel account about Joseph of Arimathea.

"Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man. He had not consented to their decision and deed. He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock, where no one had ever lain before. That day was the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew near" (Luke 23:50-54).

The Real Jesus DVD

The Real Jesus: A Defense of the Historicity and Divinity of Christ

Who is the Real Jesus?

Ever since the dawn of modern rationalism, skeptics have sought to use textual criticism, archeology and historical reconstructions to uncover the “historical Jesus” — a wise teacher who said many wonderful things, but fulfilled no prophecies, performed no miracles and certainly did not rise from the dead in triumph over sin.

Over the past 100 years, however, startling discoveries in biblical archeology and scholarship have all but vanquished the faulty assumptions of these doubting modernists. Regrettably, these discoveries have often been ignored by the skeptics as well as by the popular media. As a result, the liberal view still holds sway in universities and impacts the culture and even much of the church.

This presentation explodes the myths of these critics and the movies, books and television programs that have popularized their views.

Presented in ten parts — perfect for individual, family and classroom study — viewers will be challenged to go deeper in their knowledge of Christ in order to be able to defend their faith and present the truth to a skeptical modern world – that the Jesus of the Gospels is the Jesus of history — “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

He is the real Jesus.

Speakers include: George Grant, Ted Baehr, Stephen Mansfield, Raymond Ortlund, Phil Kayser, David Lutzweiler, Jay Grimstead, J.P. Holding, and Eric Holmberg.

Ten parts, over two hours of instruction!

Running Time: 130 minutes

$19.95 — ORDER NOW!

Click here for more information

The Real Jesus (DVD) completed (really!)

I just got finished doing some edits to the complete and final version of The Real Jesus DVD.

I was happily surprised when I began production on this in 2005 that “The Real Jesus” has become an apologetics buzzword of sorts. Lee Strobel’s The Case for the Real Jesus and Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Real Jesus are two books I highly recommend.

I used Johnson’s book as a reference in the video and I just got Strobel’s book as I was finishing up the video. I was surprised to see that the format of Strobel’s “Six Challenges” and my “Seven Myths of the Higher Critics” were so similar.

The final version is now finished! Really! The total running time with all the extras is now 2 hours and 20 minutes -- up from the hour-long project I announced was almost finished earlier this year.

The DVD just needed a few cosmetic edits (nothing the average viewer would even notice) and we even added seven minutes of a "Bonus Feature" entitled: "Who is Jesus?"

It's the best feature of the DVD and adds a lot of appeal especially as an introduction when it will be show to small groups as a five to ten week seminar. The video is divided into ten parts for this reason.

The final version is available now!

Check out the YouTube clips at TheRealJesus.com website. Then you can order it if you like what you see. The final version has over an hour of additional materials, interviews, a bonus feature and is re-edited with Eric Holberg as the host and narrator.

I've been doing a weekly radio show on Tuseday nights with Pastor Joe Dunn of Metro Praise Church in Chicago. It's a Skype-based web-cam/chat-room/radio-show with two pastors in Chicago and Indiana. A lot of diverse people show up in the chat room -- witches, atheists, nihilists, etc. -- and ask crazy questions.

I sent Joe Dunn an advance copy of The Real Jesus DVD. I was really pleased to hear his comments. He opened the show by holding it up to the web cam and saying, "I just got done watching the best video on Jesus that I've ever seen! This is the greatest thing ever! I've seen all kinds of stuff by Ankerburg and other guys like that and this is by far the best thing I've seen on the topic of The Real Jesus."

He loved the interviews with the experts, the graphics, the music, everything. He said he wished he had 100 to give away, and so on. He said he likes all the "charts" and was going to go back and study them on still mode. That, of course, speaks to me about what is needed in a future study guide, not just text, but the same visuals I used in the video.

This is a good review because I have all kind of ideas about how I want to continue. I have enough script material to do at least two more of these in the next few years. I was thinking that that there are at least 10,000 Joe Dunn's out there, pastors who are training young Christians in their churches how to stand up against postmodernist reinterpretations of Jesus and militant atheist attacks on the Bible. This video is the perfect training tool.

The big question is how to reach these pastors.

Obviously, we need to get about a dozen endorsement quotes from pastors and a few well-known church leaders on The Real Jesus -- then we need to advertise this to thousands of church leaders throughout the world.

Bible Babylon (part 2)

The Contribution of Dr. John Henry Ludlum, Jr.
Refuting the Marcan Priority Hypothesis and the Fabled "Q" Gospel

One of the theologians mentioned in The Real Jesus (DVD) is a little known linguistics prodigy named John Henry Ludlum, Jr.

Ludlum is known today for a groundbreaking article that was published in four parts in Christianity Today.

"New Light On The Synoptic Problem," Vol. III, Nos. 3 and 4, 1958

"Are We Sure of Mark's Priority?" Vol. III, Nos. 24 and 25, 1959

The article is cited in lots of places, but isn't on the WWW at this point. I am currently trying to locate copies of the article and if you know quick and easy way I can get them, let me know.

One book that cites the articles is The Jesus Crisis: The Inroads of Historical Criticism into Evangelical Scholarship by Robert L.Thomas and F. David Farnell, which is on my reading list. You can read a limited version here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=QtE1orv4Xg0C&dq

If you are like me, you can't get your hands on nearly enough articles and books on textual criticism for your reading pleasure, so I've pointed you to this paper by John Henry Ludlum. Sorry that it's 260 pages of tiff files and hence the size.

You can download the PDF file from the following link:

http://messiahskingdom.com/jhludjr/anewcomprehensiveapproachtothegospels.pdf

John Henry Ludlum, Jr. was the only doctoral candidate at Yale University to receive honors in all seven of his oral examinations. He was a linguistics expert and textual criticism prodigy. His first assignment after graduating gave him enough free time to read many of the German Higher Critics including Bruno Bauer, who has only one theological work translated into English.

He was shocked as a liberal to find out how flimsy the arguments of the historical criticism -- so widely accepted as iron-clad among liberals -- really were. They were so bad in fact, that Ludlum did his own Synoptic harmony of the Gospels and found many errors on the part of the liberal critics. He spent the rest of his career lambasting the liberals and he was blacklisted in his own denomination -- eventually founding a Bible College in Maine.

Today, there is very little published by Ludlum. His most notable work is the series of articles published in Christianity Today in the 1950s debunking the Marcan Priority Hypothesis. Many at the time thought his argument -- in embryonic form in the attached paper -- was irrefutable. I am not committed to any Synoptic hypothesis -- Matthean, Marcan or Independence -- at this point, but I am concerned that so many evangelicals accept the Marcan Hypothesis without understanding the liberal presuppositions that gave rise to its popularity.

Anyway, if you skim through the paper, I am sure you'll find a few fascinating insights even if you don't have time to read all of it carefully.

A Short Bio

Dr. John H. Ludlum, Jr. is one of those Bible scholars whose experience was the mirror image of other liberal theologians. Too often conservatives are corrupted by seminary education. Ludlum was one who began as a liberal, but as his education was steeped in skepticism, it made him question the foundation of such skepticism.

David Lutzweiler has written the following biography of Ludlum:

Back in 1951, Dr. Ludlum received his Ph.D. from Yale University and received on his orals in seven fields at the Department. of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Literature the highest scores that anyone ever had received as far as they had records going back for the department at the time. (I have a copy of the department's report on his rating). At that time, of course, he was a liberal. He studied under Marvin Pope and that crowd.

Then he got a job that was more or less a sinecure, an office which requires or involves little or no responsibility, in NYC at a Reformed Church, and had a lot of time to pursue his own studies independently. He read the whole German higher criticism in the original language, and a lot of other stuff; and the more he read, the more he saw that the whole liberal position was just plain silly, not to mention dishonest. In a few years, he moved out of liberalism (or "Up From Liberalism," as William F. Buckley put it) and into evangelicalism.

This created problems. The RCA liberals could not stand up to him, because he was too good. He knew the scholarship inside out and backwards. Thus, the word went around that under no circumstances was Ludlum going to be permitted ever to teach at New Brunswick, etc.

They shunted him off to pastor a small church in Englewood, NJ.It was a bad decision on their part. That only gave him more time to study, write, and fight, which he did. I came to know him when he was in Englewood, in the middle of his prime, and that was one of the most enriching contacts in my life.

• 
  

The Real Jesus (DVD)

The Real Jesus:
A Defense of the Historicity and Divinity of Christ

Who is the Real Jesus?

Ever since the dawn of modern rationalism, skeptics have sought to use textual criticism, archaeology and historical reconstructions to uncover the "historical Jesus" -- a wise teacher who said many wonderful things, but fulfilled no prophecies, performed no miracles and certainly did not rise from the dead in triumph over sin.

Over the past 100 years, however, startling discoveries in biblical archaeology and scholarship have all but vanquished the faulty assumptions of these doubting modernists. Regretably, these discoveries have often been ignored by the skeptics as well as by the popular media. As a result, the liberal view still holds sway in universities and impacts the culture and even much of the church.

This presentation explodes the myths of these critics and the movies books and television programs that have popularized their views.

Presented in ten parts -- perfect for individual, family and classroom study -- viewers will be challenged to go deeper in their knowledge of Christ in order to be able to defend their faith and present the truth to a skeptical modern world – that the Jesus of the Gospels is the Jesus of history -- "the same yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). He is the real Jesus.

Speakers include: George Grant, Ted Baehr, Stephen Mansfield, Raymond Ortlund, Phil Kayser, David Lutzweiler, Jay Grimstead, J.P. Holding, and Eric Holmberg.

Ten parts, over two hours of instruction!

Running Time: 130 minutes

$19.95

ORDER NOW!

For more information

The Real Jesus (DVD) now available!

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!

The Real Jesus (DVD) is available beginning today. You can now order the expanded two hour, ten minute presentation at the following link.

Order The Real Jesus

Although the DVD is completely finished, we have the DVD inserts on order. This is the insert here. However, it will take a week or two to get them in. You can pre-order the video or if you want the DVD right away without an insert, I can send it right away and will send the Amaray case later.

I am also looking for people to write reviews of The Real Jesus. If you order the DVD and write a review of it on Amazon.com, we'll be giving a free copy of Amazing Grace: The History and Theology of Calvinism or God's Law and Society absolutely free. Send me an email if you are interested in this "two-for-one" offer. Then look for the product on Amazon in a week or two.

This offer is good through January 30th, so do it now. Over 100,000 people have viewed the 10 parts of The Real Jesus on YouTube. You can watch the V-log "podcast" version here:

http://therealjesus.com/

The DVD version has more than an hour of additional materials than the "podcast version" and is hosted by Eric Holmberg of the Apologetics Group. We've had literally hundreds of comments from atheists and skeptics on YouTube. So if you order this product, you'll also be helping to make other videos like this available to believers, seekers and skeptics alike. The scripts for The Real Jesus parts two and three are already written and production has already begun!

Was there really a "Massacre of the Innocents" in Bethlehem around the time of Jesus' birth?

According to Matthew chapter 2, in the days of Herod the Great, astrological portents brought Magi from the east naively inquiring about a newborn King. Ironically, this triggered a reaction from Herod that closely resembled the events surrounding Augustus Caesar's own birth.

Most liberals will say that the so-called "Massacre of the Innocents" is a myth. However, they are using the "argument from silence" fallacy. There is only one account of this isolated event in a small country that isn't recorded elsewhere. But that doesn't disprove Matthew's account by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the massacring of infants was a common practice in Roman days.

According to Julius Marathus, a personal confidant of Augustus Caesar, the Roman Senate ordered all the baby boys killed who were born in 63 B.C. because prophetic dreams and astrological signs suggested that a "King of the Romans" was to be born.

Ironically, Augustus was born on Sept. 23 of that year! Since we only have one account of this event, do we discount this massacre as well? No, historians accept Suetonius as generally reliable.

So all things being equal, Herod's "Massacre of the Innocents" recorded in Matthew 2 is not a myth.

The following is from Suetonius, The Divine Augustus, 94:

"Since we are upon this subject, it may not be improper to give an account of the omens, before and at his birth, as well as afterwards, which gave hopes of his future greatness, and the good fortune that constantly attended him. A part of the wall of Velletri having in former times been struck with thunder, the response of the soothsayers was, that a native of that town would some time or other arrive at supreme power; relying on which prediction, the Velletrians both then, and several times afterwards, made war upon the Roman people, to their own ruin. At last it appeared by the event, that the omen had portended the elevation of Augustus.

"Julius Marathus informs us, that a few months before his birth, there happened at Rome a prodigy, by which was signified that Nature was in travail with a king for the Roman people; and that the senate, in alarm, came to the resolution that no child born that year should be brought up; but that those amongst them, whose wives were pregnant, to secure to themselves a chance of that dignity, took care that the decree of the senate should not be registered in the treasury."

Is Josephus' passage about Jesus a forgery?

I get lots of responses to these YouTube videos from atheists and skeptics. One of the most common objections to The Real Jesus concerns Myth #1: “The Historical Jesus is different from the Jesus of the Bible.” This briefly mentions the so-called Testimonium Flavianum, the testimony of Flavius Josephus, the first century Jewish historian who mentions Jesus Christ and Christianity a few times in his works.

The common reaction is, "This was a FORGERY!!" or "Josephus was a FRAUD!!" But most people criticizing the validity this passage – or the reliability of Josephus as a historian – don't know too much about it. They are repeating the widely accepted conclusion that this passage on Jesus from Josephus' Antiquities may have been interpolated due to two suspicious phrases that make Josephus sound like a Christian. The consensus is that a Christian scribe may have tried to elucidate Josephus for his Christian audience.

Contrary to what you might hear, the passage is judged authentic by most scholars once the perceived Christian additions are removed. And whether the passage has been altered greatly or with just a few minor words or phrases added, Josephus' references to Jesus, James and John the Baptist are an authentic witness that validates first century Gospel stories.

I get a more than a little tired of answering this objection in the short 500 character responses allowed on YouTube. Skeptics want to believe the passage is a forgery and don’t want to go and do the research for themselves. So I wanted to briefly deal with this in a short video response. I decided to interview the well-known Internet apologist, J.P. Holding, and ask him some questions.

1. What is an interpolation?
2. Do most (or all) of ancient writings contain interpolations?
3. What is the difference between an interpolation and a forgery?
3. Are there any credible modern scholars who believe that the Josephus passage in question has not been interpolated?
4. Are there any who think it is an outright forgery?
5. What is the consensus of the textual critics on what the passage must have originally read like? How can we be certain of this?
6. What about the other passage containing the phrase "the brother of Jesus who was called Christ"?

And just for fun: I hear a lot of comments about why there are not records of the crucifixion of Jesus in “Roman records.” They think that somehow the argument from silence applies here, even though there is not one existing “crucifixion record” from Judea during the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. People don’t know how common an occurrence crucifixion was in the first century. People also don’t know that Josephus’ description of crucifixion closely matches that of the Gospels in recounting what happened with Jesus’ body.

7. How many times does Josephus describe or record crucifixions in his History? Does any of this information corroborate the record of Jesus body being taken from the cross and buried?

“Nay, they proceeded to that degree of impiety, as to cast away their dead bodies without burial, although the Jews used to take so much care of the burial of men, that they took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun” (Josephus Wars 4.5).

Compare this with Gospel account about Joseph of Arimathea.

“Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man. He had not consented to their decision and deed. He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock, where no one had ever lain before. That day was the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew near” (Luke 23:50-54).

My neighbor and Jesus Seminar scholar, John Dominic Crossan, thinks that Jesus’ body must have been eaten by dogs, despite this passage by Josephus and despite having no evidence or documents to back this up.

And on a related note:

8. What about the idea that Luke and Acts were written in the second century and that similar passages in Luke and Acts were based on Josephus (and not vice versa)?

These and other questions are answered in the Real Jesus DVD and you may see a preview of it on The Real Jesus Vlog at YouTube.

The Real Jesus DVD nears completion

We've had the podcast version on the Real Jesus done now for about six months. It's available by going to the What's New link at my website and of course at my V-Log channel on YouTube. In June, I started working with Eric Holmberg on the standups and getting some interviews with experts in history and theology to corroborate the points covered. I'll be receiving the last of these interviews next week. From there the DVD ought to be available in mid to late October.

I've worked on half a dozen projects with Eric and Reel to Real Ministries (now The Apologetics Group). By the way, if you haven't seen anything by The Apologetics Group, you should check them out.

Writing, producing and editing The Real Jesus been a long process. This is mainly due to the fact that I didn't have any video equipment when I first got started with the script. Then I got sidetracked by a couple of big life and career changes -- getting married for the first time at age 39, moving three times, starting as a first year teacher in two different schools. Finally, we got settled in a nice house in the Kissimmee/Clermont area about five miles west of Disney World. I was able to pull together a small production budget to move forward. All during this time, I told Eric about the project and tried to get him interested in being the host and narrator for the script. Of course, he is always busy with several other pressing projects.

In the meantime, I laid out a narration track and got two friends of mine from Melbourne, Joel and Ariel, who did a pro-life activism segment on MTV's Unfiltered, to do the "podcast version." Originally, I was going to release it as is, but then Eric saw it and got excited about the project. In the past few months, I've been re-editing the video with new material. It's definitely a big step up from the Internet version. I imagine that lot of serious productions start off as simple podcasts and are then produced on a higher level once they generate a buzz. That shows the revolutionary power of YouTube.

I was surprised to see that all 10 parts together have about 60,000 views to date. So it's not just a video that is being shown to other Christians. It's been interesting to note which parts draw the most viewers and the most comments. Most of the discussion generated on YouTube comes from skeptics and Jesus Mythists. I don't expect that these are people who will buy the DVD so it's a great apologetics outlet to generate controversy and let the enemies of Christ do some free advertising for us.

Here's what's left to be finished:

1. Edit interviews into relevant clips to be used in each section.
2. Create "B-Roll" material to illustrate the interviews.
3. Re-edit some of the musics tracks.
4. DVD packaging -- inserts and disc art (this is essentially finished).

Just a little bit more! At this point, I am really anxious to get it done. There are so many other projects to get to work on and this has taken most of my time. I am shooting for October 15th. That way we can start marketing it everywhere in November and December.

Time really flies when you get older. Six years come and gone since I first conceived of the idea. I am happy that I was able to accomplish a lot during this time through writing and publishing two books, staying involved with missions in an effort to reach teachers in Ukraine, and now getting started with several video projects. I am just thankful to God that He has brought me to a new threshold of opportunity.

Two Questions for the Jesus Mythists

They seem to be everywhere on the Internet. From the Blasphemy Challenge on YouTube and the Rational Responders website, to unfounded screeds such as The God Who Wasn't There, there is a small vocal minority who have presented the idea that Jesus was not a real person, but a myth.

A quick bit of research will show that the Jesus as Myth hypothesis was not formulated until after 1850. In fact, the first full treatment of the idea is not found until Bruno Bauer's book, Christ and the Caesars, which was published in 1877.

The idea gained some momentum in the early 20th century, but today even the most liberal of modern critics, such as the Jesus Seminar, do not support the Christ-as-Myth hypothesis. No serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus and they have not succeeded in refuting the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Today, the hypothesis is promoted not by scholars, but by "popularizers," such as Rook Hawkins who, with nothing more than a high school diploma, claims to be a "historian" and "expert in ancient texts," papyrology and symbology (whatever that is!) and is notorious for mispronouncing big words on his Rational Responders video podcasts. Brian Sapient, an unemployed atheist activist, appeared last year on various news programs to promote his Blasphemy Challenge project on YouTube. Then we have Brian Fleming who produced a video full of ad hominem fallacies, The God Who Wasn't There, and organized a campaign to distribute copies in churches in order to defeat Easter.

So here are my two questions for the Jesus Mythists.

1. Can you name even one historian prior to 130 years ago who claimed that Jesus was not a real person?
2. Can you name any supposed historical person who was universally accepted to be a real figure, who was later discovered to by purely mythological?

I have a feeling I'll be waiting a long time for answers to these questions. So in the meantime here are my comments.

1. The bulk of the writings of second and third century apologists dealt with attacks on Jesus Christ and Christianity. It would have been easy to the early pagan critics to simply claim that Jesus did not exist. But it was well-accepted just 100 years after the fact, that He did.
2. There are many figures such as St. Christopher, King Arthur, Beowulf, Odysseus and various legendary god-men or heroic figures who have no proven historical status. However, in these cases, the people who told their story seemed to have known that they were participating in the spinning of a folk-tale that later became a legend. And though it's debated whether these people actually existed, it is impossible to tell whether or not these figures were at least based on a true person who arrived at a legendary status after a few centuries. In short, Jesus could not have been a "myth" or a "legend" simply because the story of his life (even in the most liberal reckoning) appeared in written form too soon after he lived.

Update on The Real Jesus DVD

The Real Jesus: A Defense of the Historicity and Divinity of Christ

Who is the Real Jesus?

Ever since the dawn of modern rationalism, skeptics have sought to use textual criticism, archeology and historical reconstructions to uncover the “historical Jesus” — a wise teacher who said many wonderful things, but fulfilled no prophecies, performed no miracles and certainly did not rise from the dead in triumph over sin.

Over the past 100 years, however, startling discoveries in biblical archeology and scholarship have all but vanquished the faulty assumptions of these doubting modernists. Regrettably, these discoveries have often been ignored by the skeptics as well as by the popular media. As a result, the liberal view still holds sway in universities and impacts the culture and even much of the church.

This presentation explodes the myths of these critics and the movies, books and television programs that have popularized their views.

Presented in ten parts — perfect for individual, family and classroom study — viewers will be challenged to go deeper in their knowledge of Christ in order to be able to defend their faith and present the truth to a skeptical modern world – that the Jesus of the Gospels is the Jesus of history — “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

He is the real Jesus.

Speakers include: George Grant, Ted Baehr, Stephen Mansfield, Raymond Ortlund, Phil Kayser, David Lutzweiler, Jay Grimstead, J.P. Holding, and Eric Holmberg.

Ten parts, over two hours of instruction!

Running Time: 130 minutes

$19.95 — ORDER NOW!
Click here for more information

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UPDATE FROM SEPT 20th, 2007

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I am currently working on editing the Stephen Mansfield interviews for The Real Jesus. His comments on "Was Jesus a Myth?" were suitable for YouTube. I put one Mansfield clip up on YouTube last night and already it has a lot of views. This may end up in an "extras" assortment on the DVD. An entire video on "Jesus as Myth" might be a good seller. This idea is gaining momemtum among militant atheists and there isn't a lot out there to refute it simply because it is so ridiculous.

I am not going to use this clip in the Real Jesus because it's a can of worms. The old saying applies here, "He who frames he question wins the debate." In my next post, I'll frame a few such questions for the Jesus Mythists.

Strangely, I discovered how popular the Jesus Mythist position is among young postmodernists when I posted my refutation of the liberal critics on YouTube. The Jesus Mythist position is not covered in The Real Jesus simply because in refuting liberalism, the more extreme position of the Mythists just appears to be silly.

Besides Mansfield's sound bite, I don't have any other material on the "Jesus as Myth" position, so it seems out of place. I think there is one possible place it fits in, but I think it breaks the flow of ideas no matter where I would put it. Mansfield's other quotes will make up two good clips on the DVD and I will use a lot of B-Roll to cover it. His topic was to critique the sudden popularity of the Gnostic Gospels as a popular writer and historian.

I am having some difficulty knowing how expansive The Real Jesus DVD should be. With the added interviews and all the extra materials, part one is now well over 90 minutes up from about 60 minutes just a month ago. I'll see just how long when I finish the next section. I am constantly coming up with more material to add to part one and what I need to do is get this project in the can and move on to the next one. It's taken more than two years since I started editing the video, but several times I didn't work on it for a month or longer and I am doing this as a part time effort.

The YouTube cultural phenomenon rescued the project last year when I redid the entire series as a video podcast. From that I began to get a lot of interest in the project. It's now due out in November with Eric Holmberg as the narrator and host. There is a lot more to cover. There will likely be a Real Jesus parts 2 and 3. Judging just by the reaction to the YouTube videos, this is a powerful ministry for years to come. I'll soon have 100,000 views of the various parts. Even if this doesn't translate into a bestseller on DVD, it's something that can be done inexpensively and will remain relevant for years to come. I eventually forsee a three to four hour series in three parts. The remaining script is better and more interesting than part one. The main problem is going to be cutting it down to about half of what I have now. Otherwise, we are talking about at least four more hours.

There has been a special "podcast edition" of part one available since last spring. But I am not going to sell this DVD because the new version is going to be far superior. If you want a review copy however, contact me. I have several copies on hand.

The entire script for parts one, two and three are at http://therealjesus.com/. If you ever want to critique what is coming up, I am open to suggestions.

"Once more unto the breach!" -- Refuting the Jesus Mythists ... once again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q390o4hNXek

KabanetheChristian

The following is from a 14-year-old young man who has done extensive YouTube videos refuting atheism. He's brilliant for his age. I'd encourage you to check out Kabane's YouTube V-logs. (Be forewarned that he's also a theistic evolutionist. I am a creationist, so I'd like to change his mind of course.) He contacted me about The Real Jesus and has been asking a lot of questions. We are sharing information and debating.

The Jesus Mythist movement is a weird phenomenon. During my 20 year foray as a Christian writer, editor, publisher and promoter of biblical studies, I was always under the impression that even the most skeptical of the skeptics at least admitted that Jesus was a real person. The "Jesus as myth hypothesis" was popular for a brief time among skeptics in the early 20th century, but was soon rejected by even the most liberal scholars. Now suddenly in the 21st century, it's popped up again with a vengeance. Fueled by the Internet and the appearance of self-published "scholars," such as one high school graduate who claims to be a historian, many are intent on enlightening the world with the "well proven fact" that the historical person Jesus did not even exist.

Intitially, I didn't even want to give time to this idea. I put the Jesus Mythists in the same category as Roswell/Area 59 UFO believers and JFK assassination conspiracy theorists. But it's a growing movement especially among young semi-literates, pseudo-intelletual college age atheists and fervent Neo-Gnostics who have absorbed the ideas of The God Who Wasn't There DVD produced by Brian Fleming and other simple minded works of narcissism, such as Richard Dawkin's The Root of All Evil DVD.

______________________

Atheist Claims
Message from: KabaneTheChristian

Hey, I hate to annoy you, but an atheist is claiming some stuff, and I do not know how to respond. Here are his comments:

Let's lay out the facts that are available.

Writings of Jesus: none.

Contemporaneous records, such as tax receipts, or Roman administrative documents: none.

Books or other accounts written by eyewitnesses (more on the gospels further on): none.

Physical descriptions, such as height, weight, eye and hair color: none.

What do we have? Dozens of "gospels" composed by later followers, four of which were canonized into the New Testament. These were written between thirty and two hundred years after the claimed date of Jesus. But we also have references in the letters of Paul. Paul was a second generation Christian who probably never met Jesus. Most of the letters which bear his name are approved by scholars as really having been written by him. Incidental references to Christians and Jesus can be found in Tacitus and Suetonius.(**) Suetonius spells the name, "Chrestus"; either this is a confusion on his part, or it refers to someone else. ** Ref: Tacitus, Annales, 4.44; Suetonius Vita Claudii, 25.4, Vita Neronis, 16.

Suppose we use the canonical gospels for evidence of biographical detail about Jesus. Where was Jesus born? The writers of the gospels disagree among themselves. Matthew and Luke support the usual notion that the event took place in Bethlehem; while John and Mark give the impression that they had never heard of such a thing. Jesus was commonly known as a Nazarene, an inhabitant of Nazareth, a hundred miles away. When was Jesus born? According to Luke, it was during the reign of the Roman governor Quirinius,during a census ordered by Augustus throughout the whole world. According to both Luke and Matthew it was also during the reign of king Herod "the Great." The problem is that Herod died in 4 B.C.E., and this was fully ten years before Quirinius' census. Furthermore, during Herod's reign, no Roman census could have been held in his territory, which included both Judaea and Galilee, the locations of both Bethlehem and Nazareth. Herod would have collected his own taxes, and given tribute to the Romans. Lastly, the existence of a census throughout the whole empire is contrary to the practice of the Romans, who collected taxes province by province, often subcontracting the process to "publicans." Furthermore, during Herod's reign, no Roman census could have been held in his territory, which included both Judaea and Galilee, the locations of both Bethlehem and Nazareth. Herod would have collected his own taxes, and given tribute to the Romans. Lastly, the existence of a census throughout the whole empire is contrary to the practice of the Romans, who collected taxes province by province, often subcontracting the process to "publicans."

______________________________

I respond:

You have a lot of stuff here. I've seen it all because they usually regurgitate the same old stuff.
If you haven't seen the http://tektonics.org/ site, then check it out for extensive answers to these questions.

I'll answer the points not covered in The Real Jesus.

* On the Gospels being written by eyewitnesses prior to 70 A.D. Although I cover this in some detail in the video, no Jesus mythist challenges this fact: the Church Fathers, Clement, Polycarp, Papias and Ignatius claim to have known the Apostles and others who saw Jesus. They quote extensively from the Gospels and most of the letters of the New Testament. They refer to these books as authoritative, as scripture, and as written (not oral) documents. They claim to have received the books directly from the Apostles. They do not refer to the second century "Gnostic Gospels" since these were written later. If the Gospels were not written prior to 70 A.D. then these church fathers who lived at the end of the first century could not have received them as scripture nor could they have quoted from them in their works.

The demands for "contemporary" records (that is, accounts written during Jesus' life) are as unreasonable as the demands for eye and hair color in order to prove a person existed. Many people from history were not written about during their life times. Jesus was not an internationally known figure in 30 A.D. The Jesus movement was all of 120 people -- and later 500 by the time of the resurrection. Christians were initially thought of as a sect of Judaism, but as they started to grow there appeared enough literature by pagan authors to corroborate what the New Testament says about Jesus. There are hundreds of corroborating events in pagan literature that confirm the New Testament. None of the pagan or Jewish writers at the time claimed Jesus was not a real person. In trying to refute the early Christians, the Jews and pagans would have found this easy enough to do if He were not a true person. This idea has been made up in the last 150 years. No credible, credentialed historian holds this view.

The fact is that we know more about Jesus' life than we do about William Shakespeare. There are no "contemporary" biographies of Shakespeare. However, we have to explain the body of literature bearing his name and the other contemporary playwrights of his day who mention him after his death as being the true author.

The passage by Suetonius is similar to the passage by Tacitus in that either they both are reporting the same information about the persecution under Nero, or Seutonius refers to an earlier persecution of the Jews under Claudius (I think more likely) that has nothing to do with Christ. The sense of the passage indicates that "Chrestus" was a person among the Jews who instigated a riot. Either this is the case or Suetonius is confusing what happened to the Christians under Nero with this earlier revolt under Claudius. Other accounts are stronger, Josephus, Pliny and especially Tacitus. The Jesus mythists like to say that the accounts of early Christians by pagan historians don't prove Jesus existed as a real person, because all the early Christians were Gnostics, who believed Christ was a spiritual being only. But Gnosticism is condemned by the New Testament itself.

Quirinius was a ruler in the eastern Roman Empire from the time of 14 B.C. to 12 A.D. If it were not for Luke' account, we would not know exactly what he was governor of at the time of Jesus birth. Quirinius, at the time of King Herod's death was doing military expeditions in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire (Tacitus, Annals 3:48; Florus, Roman History 2:31). There is some evidence indicating that he either was a co-ruler with the governor of Syria (Quintilius Varus) or at least placed in charge of the census in Palestine. Justin of Rome records that he was a "procurator" while Varus and Saturnius served as governors during this time. The word hegemonoi in Greek can mean a variety of titles meaning ruler, governor, procurator, etc. Pilate is called a hegemonoi, which is translated variously as governor, procurator, prefect, in the New Testament.

The account of Herod's death as occurring 4 B.C. is assumed by historians who see Josephus account of a lunar eclipse shortly before his death. There was a partial lunar eclipse this year, but there was a total lunar eclipse in 1 B.C. It's far from a settled issue when Herod died. If Luke records that he was alive durign the census, then from a purely historical analytical viewpoint, this favors the later year of 1 B.C.

Mark and John are silent on the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. However, in Revelation 12 we see an allusion to Matthew's account of Jesus birth. John records that the Pharisees thought Jesus could not have been the messiah or a prophet because he was from Nazareth. Jesus did not refute them in this account, but He almost never directly answers the Pharisees false accusations. This is a feature of John's Gospel. That John was familiar with the Gospels of Matthew and Luke when he wrote his Gospel is assumed by most scholars and corroborated by the testimony of the Church Fathers. This is a great example of the famous "argument from silence" fallacy. It's a stupid way of thinking: since two of the Gospels don't mention it, then it could not have possibly happened.

There are numerous references to a worldwide census that occurred in 3 B.C. Josephus records this census as for an oath of allegiance. Some translations have "taxed," but the Greek word apographe can mean either tax or census. Seeing that Joseph as from a line of kings it makes sense that he would be required to travel to his birth town to swear allegiance. Some have theorized that Mary was the oldest daughter of her father, since her sisters are mentioned in the Gospels but no brothers. According to Jewish law, this would have made her the heir, and as one with a kingly heritage, she would have had to register with Joseph as well.There is a great book on all this called The Star That Astonished the World by Ernest L. Martin. It can be read on-line in it's entirety.

http://www.askelm.com/star/index.asp

The Real Jesus: Conclusion (10 of 10)

Debunking the Myths

Christians in our day do not need to be persuaded to lay aside the historical accounts of Jesus found in the Gospels, in order to find a historical Jesus. Although there is outside evidence, the greatest proof that the Bible is true comes from the Word itself.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God ... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1,14).

The name given to Jesus is the Word. The authority of the Word of God comes from the fact that it is the testimony Jesus Christ has given of himself:

“If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true ... I am one who bears witness of Myself, and the Father who sent Me.” (John 8:14,18).

The authority of the Word of God does not come from the study of the historical accuracy of the Bible; the study of archaeology to prove the validity of the Bible; or the study of science to prove the account of creation. Instead we believe the authority of the Word because Jesus Christ Himself gave it.

The authority of the Word of God does not come from us being able to prove that it is true. The authority of the Word of God comes from the fact that it is God's Word. God spoke it; it is truth.

This approach is sometimes called presuppositionalism. The authority of the Word of God is presupposed (believed ahead of time). It is the opposite of evidentialism, the idea that we must seek to prove that the Bible is true by offering evidence. Evidentialism is not wrong; it is important to defend what we believe. However, it is impossible to “prove” Scripture using evidence from philosophy, history, archaeology, science, and other rational proofs. To do so would be to claim that these proofs have the same infallible authority as God himself.

The Word of God preached is all the evidence that a person needs in order to be saved. We do not need to “prove” the Gospel in order for it to be effective. The Word of God preached is a living and powerful sword that pierces the hearts of its hearers. While the Word preached is the only weapon of our warfare, there is already much evidence of the truth in natural revelation.

“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20).

But the truth preached, not the evidence that the Word is true, is the only effective message of salvation. Paul writes in Romans 3:4:

“Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4).

We should not lay aside the evidence completely. Paul preached a sermon in Athens (Acts 17:23-31), and appealed to evidences that God exists from Greek philosophy. But Paul concluded his Gospel message with this idea:

“Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30,31).

Truth is revealed, not by evidence, but by the Word preached. Our problem is not that we lack understanding or need more information. Our problem is that each one of us is a sinner and needs repentance.

The Authority of the Word of God

The authority of the Bible is implied by the fact that we call it: “God’s Word.” Inspiration is the means by which the Bible received its authority. The apostolic writings of the New Testament were boldly described in the same authoritative terms that denoted the Old Testament as the Word of God. The New Testament books were called “scripture,” “prophecy,” “the Word of the Lord,” and so on.

[Scroll the following scriptures on screen over the narration in the following two paragraphs]

"Hear the word of the LORD ..." - Jeremiah 31:10

"But the word of God grew and multiplied." - Acts 12:24

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God ..." - 2 Timothy 3:16

"... as they do also the rest of the Scriptures." - 2 Peter 3:16

“Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.” - Revelation 22:7

"So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed." - Acts 19:20

Every book in the New Testament contains some claim to divine authority. The New Testament church read, circulated, collected, and quoted the New Testament books right along with the inspired Scriptures of the Old Testament.

The contemporaries and immediate successors of Jesus’ Apostles recognized the divine origin of the New Testament writings along with the Old. All of the great Fathers of the Christian church from the earliest times held to the divine inspiration of the New Testament. There is a continuous claim for the inspiration of both Old and New Testaments from the time of their composition to the present.

The “New" Skepticism

Of course, skepticism about the Word of God is nothing new. And there have been many great works defending the scriptures written by Christian apologists throughout the centuries. What is new to the challenge to divine inspiration of scripture are the voices of doubt coming from those within the Church. Only in the past 150 years has Truth been challenged by those professing to be Christians.

It is the attack on the Gospels by those claiming a connection to the church that has garnered the attention of the media. The fact that there is no positive evidence for the liberal critics’ “historical Jesus” does not discourage the media from repackaging the claims of the Jesus Seminar. It is startling that a small group of self-promoting liberals using poor scholarship have been able to focus the power of media attention to convince even sincere Christians that the “Historical Jesus” is the true Christ of the Gospels.

In recent years, there has been a flood of publications depicting some sort of newly discovered secret or scandalous information about Jesus. These books, and the TV programs and news articles that represent their findings, ought to be exposed as nothing more than self-promotion resting on flimsy scholarship.

John Spong, an Episcopal bishop, is a prime example of reductionist thinking on the historical Jesus. His position in books such as, Born of A Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus, is based on the recurring theme that “what really happened was covered-up” by the first century evangelists. Spong’s reading of the story of Mary, the mother of God, is that she was really a teenage girl who was raped and became pregnant with Joseph participating in a cover-up in order to protect her.

Such analysis prompted Dr. Luke Timothy Johnson to respond:

Having a bishop with opinions like these is a bit like hiring a plumber who wants to “rethink pipes.” — Luke Timothy Johnson, Professor of Theology, Emory University

From Jesus’ illegitimate birth, it is not a stretch for Spong to argue that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and that the wedding feast at Cana was really His own wedding. While conservative Christian scholars have dismissed these creative imaginations as pure fantasy, many less discerning people, who are nevertheless serious inquirers into the Christian faith, are led to believe that the liberals’ reconstructed historical Jesus and their version of the origin of Christianity must have a basis in fact.

Christological heresies, or errors about the person of Jesus Christ, are all around us in the modern media.

Although Christians may soon forget the books, films and TV programs of the skeptics, liberal heresy that distorts the true nature of our Lord Jesus Christ will be with us for generations to come.

That is, unless we act.

If we, the true believers of our age, will only use the resources we have before us, then we will confront the apostasy that has gripped much of the Church for the past 150 years and defeat the skeptics once and for all. We will defend the faith and pave the way for the people of God to fulfill the Great Commission.

Four Questions About the Resurrection

Hello, my name's Sam. I'm a freshman student in Mt. Vernon High School, Illinois. I greatly admire your passion to defend our faith. I think my favorite "subject" to defend is Jesus' Resurrection. Christianity has proven to be true for thousands of years and its core foundation, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, after many assaults from the enemies, still stands strong to this day. YEAH!!

Now, I have some questions concerning the resurrection:

1. I want to know how it is that Jesus has been there for three days in the tomb. Some believe that he has not been buried in the tomb for there days but less.

That’s one that some people stumble over. We have to understand that the ancients numbered a different way than we do today and they used different expressions for time. For instance, if you are 18-years-old, a first century Jew would say you are “in your nineteenth year.” They would say that even if you were 18 and one day.

Likewise the phrase “three days and three nights” is found in Matthew 12:40.

"An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

The Hebrew way of numbering days was from sunset to sunset. “Days and nights” does not mean a 24-hour period. The Jews counted any part of a day as a “day” or even using the idiom “a day and a night” whether it was a full 24-hour period or not.

• 1st day – Jesus was crucified and buried on Friday before sunset
• 2nd day – Jesus was in the tomb Saturday until sunset
• 3rd day – Jesus was in the tomb until sunrise Sunday morning

“Days and nights” doesn’t mean a literal 24-hour period. For instance, in Genesis it says that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights.

“For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth” (Genesis 7:4)

I can remember hearing the story as a child and wondering why the “nights” were significant. Why not just say it rained for 40 days?

Another example is Exodus 24:18: “And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.”

The answer is simply that it is an idiom or a figure of speech not a literal 24 hours. We use non-specific time references today as well.

“Can you give me just two more minutes to explain this?”

If I took one minute and 30 seconds, then was I lying? No one nitpicks over idioms that we all understand.

Further proof that this is an idiomatic expression is backed up by the fact that in other places the Gospels say Jesus was raised “on the third day,” and “after three days.”

In a strict literalist English rendering “on the third day” could be the Sunday after a Friday. But “after three days” would be Monday. Why two different idioms here? This is explained by the fact that Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience and Mark is writing to a Roman Gentile audience.

"From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised" (Matthew 16:21).

"And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again" (Mark 8:31).

2. Some people say that there are contradictions in how the events took place. Ex: on how Jesus was buried. (Lk. 23:50-56). The passage doesn't seem to show that Jesus' burial was complete. So, does it give a chance that Jesus could have easily unwrap himself since he wasn't properly wrapped? Also, they say that just because the tomb was empty doesn't mean that Jesus was resurrected.

Yes, they do say that! I answered this objection on another forum earlier today. My response is that there were eyewitnesses to the events. John was present, according to his Gospel, as were other disciples mentioned by name. Matthew records that because Jesus claimed he was going to rise from the dead, Roman soldiers guarded the tomb to keep His followers from stealing the body (Matthew 27:65).

If this was not true, then the way to dispel rumors after the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) when the resurrection was preached would have been to simply produce the body.

"And he that saw it (John) bears record, and his record is true; and he knows what he says is true, that you might believe" (19:35).

John is speaking about himself. He calls himself the “disciple whom [Jesus] loved” (19:26).

The skeptics conjecture that Jesus was not crucified and that He lived past the time of what is recorded in the book of Acts is everywhere else refuted. There's simply no evidence or record of that Jesus lived beyond the time of Acts 2, but only to the contrary.

To claim otherwise is hyper-skepticism beyond reason.

3. Some people say that the Gospel Mark since doesn't say anything about the 500 witnesses (note that Mark is the first written Gospel), then the 500 witnesses are just made up stories.

This is a good example of where the modern critics have influenced evangelicals beyond reason. To state emphatically that Mark was the first written Gospel is mere conjecture. This became a popular idea in the 1800s when traditional church teaching on just about everything came into question. The historical view is that the Gospels appear in the canon in the order written.

Irenaeus, writing in the early second century, says: “Matthew published among the Hebrews, in their own tongue, a written form of the Gospel, while Peter and Paul preached the gospel in Rome and founded the Church. It was after his departure that Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also transmitted in writing what Peter preached. Luke, Paul’s companion, also wrote in a book what Paul preached. Then John, our Lord’s disciple, the same one who laid his face on his breast (John 13:23), also published the gospel while living in Ephesus” (Against Heresies III, 1,1).

Similar commentaries can be found in Papias of Hierapolis and Clement of Alexandria (cf Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, 3, 39,15:6, 14, 5-7).

If these accounts are true, then Matthew was written before “his departure” from Jerusalem as a missionary and was later translated into Greek. Mark is an abbreviation of Matthew also making use of Peter’s account, but not a source document for Matthew.

In any case, this is an example of the "argument from silence" fallacy. Just because one New Testament writer mentions an event that another one omits does not mean it did not happen.

4. I'd classify myself as a beginner in apologetics, any tips on how to study them and to put them into use? Also, where can I get more resources for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

“The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning. And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt.”

– F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Books

The following non-believers all set out at one point to either disprove the resurrection or to see if it was historically accurate.

Lee Stroble, The Case for Christ and The Case for Easter

Josh McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict

Dr. Greenleaf, the Royal Professor of Law at Harvard University, An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice

Ralph O. Muncaster, A Skeptics Search for God

F.F. Bruce on the New Testament:
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/ffbruce/ntdocrli/ntdocc02.htm

Overview of Evidence by Ex-Atheist Josh McDowell
http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/josh2.html

therealjesus.com

See the bumper for Apologetics Talk:

I love what you have done here and on YouTube!

Check out http://therealjesus.com

I have had the domain for several years now. I just needed a awesome site like yours to point it to.

Have a blessed day!

Mike Cunningham

Above is an email from a viewer who is doing part of my advertising job for free out of a pure love for God and will probably keep doing it.

He's pointed his own registered website domain name toward my site.

Check it out: http://therealjesus.com

I first did the YouTube experiment just to see what type of feedback I'd get and it's exceeded my expectations. Of course, I'd like to have millions of viewers, but for now I'll settle for tens of thousands.

Now the big question is: How would the presentation do in the market if it were kicked up a few notches and given to distributors?

We live in a world where more and more people are "Jesus crazy" -- young people talk about Jesus more than in any other time in recent history. At the same time, most of the current young generation of believers are more clueless than any generation that has come before them.

On one level the popularity of Dan Brown's books and programs such as "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" illustrate the point that people are hungry to know more. Controversy about Jesus sells. Hollywood and Madison Avenue understands this. What we have not done as Christian witnesses is to present "pop apologetics" on the same level of quality as these books, movies and TV shows. Instead we present pale and palsied televangelism.

One basic reason for this is that Christology is a lost area of study.

As you might know, I have script materials for at least three to four more hours on The Real Jesus -- Examining the Christological Heresies of Pop Culture.

Most of the Real Jesus (part 1) was written in the fall of 2000. I think the material that I've written more recently is a lot better and more interesting. I've also begun a series of short 3 to 5 minute segment called "Apologetics Talk" -- in which I answer the many comments, questions and objections from atheists, skeptics and seekers who have responded to The Real Jesus series.

I'll be unveiling it sometime this summer.

For now here is the bumper that I've produced for the new series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c29YbdAUvNs

Three Questions from a Biblical Skeptic

This is one of the latest responses to The Real Jesus series.

From: thematrix606
Sent: April 22, 2007
Subject: The Real Jesus

Hi,

I would first like to say you've done a great job on the Real Jesus documentary, nice directing. I personally don't believe in the God from the Bible so much, I am more spiritual. I have three simple questions that I would find very interesting to be answered by you. I really hope you won't ignore this but reply to me as I am not a hater or anything like that.

1. Before Jesus, before people knew right from wrong, what would happen to them? Would they go to hell or heaven? Also what of other parts of the world where Jesus was unknown and still is? Would they suffer for something they don't know?

2. How could, God in all conscious, knowing and seeing the past, present and future, condemn someone to eternal damnation or salvation? I.e. God puts a person into a ghetto for example, knowing that this person would be involved into crime, and punish him for it, even though the person might have not even heard of the Bible.

3. Why is it, if Jesus was so great, that only six to eight people wrote about him? I am referring to the Bible.

It would be great to hear what your answers are, I'm merely trying to get people to be open minded and think for themselves rather than accepting a piece of writing that could very well be propaganda of some kind.

Thank you.

Dear TheMatrix606,

Thank you for the compliment and for your questions. This is why I produced this Real Jesus series in the first place -- to answer questions and objections held by biblical skeptics. I am already planning on doing several follow-up projects based on some of the comments and questions I've been receiving.

1. Your first question is both simple and complicated. It is similar to the proverbial "What about all those tribal people in Africa" question.

All Christians have either heard or thought about that question at one point. Other people have done a better job at answering the question, but I will give it a try here.

The simple answer to your question is that no one is going to hell because they haven't heard of Jesus. The Bible teaches that each person will be judged by his or her own works and that each person will give an account. The Bible also teaches that God is a just judge.

The complicated answer is that it is precisely because God is a just judge that we ought to be worried. Any person who is honest with himself will tell you that scripture is correct when it says in several places, "All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God." But we ought to rejoice that God is also an all loving and merciful Father. God has provided a payment for our sins in the ministry and sacrifice of Jesus Christ -- both in His perfect life and His death on a cross.

Jesus himself preached: "I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me." This is what Jesus said. It is an exclusive statement and not a concoction of modern evangelists.

In regard to your question about how people are judged who have never had a chance to hear about Jesus, I simply reply that they will be judged by their works.

So while no one is going to hell for not hearing the Gospel, one thing is clear. You have now heard the Gospel. The real question is: What are you going to do about that? A good start would be to read the words of Jesus in scripture and take His claims seriously.

2. Your second question is related to the first one. How could a loving God condemn someone to an eternal hell?

I ought to begin by asking another question. Is there anyone who deserves to go to hell or simply does not deserve to be rewarded by an eternity in heaven?

If your answer is yes, then you are really answering your own question. Since the all loving God is also a just judge, He alone can make the determination on who deserves to go to hell.

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the "special cases" because I don't think that there is enough information given in scripture to lead us to a sound conclusion. While some have attempted to construct a theology of a "natural salvation" for such people who have never heard the Gospel from the idea of "natural revelation" that is mentioned by Paul in Romans chapter 1, I think that there are many things regarding eternity that are not answered by scripture.

See Deuteronomy 29:29. "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."

I simply trust that if God is real, then His judgments are righteous and true.

3. You would be correct in numbering the authors of the New Testament as eight or nine depending on who you think wrote Hebrews.

These would be Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Jude, Peter and Paul. These are exactly the people who we would expect to have the authority to write about Jesus.

Three of the Twelve Apostles wrote books, Matthew, John, and Peter.

John Mark is thought to be the interpreter and scribe of Peter.

Luke is known for his close relationship with Paul and also with John and Mary the mother of Jesus.

James and Jude are usually thought to be the half-brothers or family members of Jesus.

Paul is a special case in that he was the last of the Apostles called by Jesus "out of due time" in the New Testament.

One way of looking at the limited number of books in The New Testament is that compared to the Old Testament, there is a good representation of authors to account for events occurring over a much shorter period of time.

Five of the eight writers, Matthew, John, James, Jude, Peter (and possibly also John Mark) were eyewitnesses to Jesus life and ministry. The other three -- Paul, Mark and Luke -- were chosen because of their training in theology and writing.

One thing that a lot of people don't understand is that less than one-third of the ancient world was literate. The Jews had a much higher literacy rate than the Gentile Greeks and Romans, however, only a few among their group could write. That may sound odd to us today, but in those days, writing materials were expensive and the vocation of a scribe was a profession that required specific training.

Most of the Apostles had Christian scribes to write their accounts and letters. Paul had Timothy as a scribe and at least two church fathers tell us that John Mark was Peter's scribe, thus the Gospel of Mark can be thought of as Peter's Gospel.

The two exceptions to this rule were Matthew and Luke, who as a tax collector and a physician had the training to write their own books.

If a famous teacher were to have an accurate biography written about his life, one might choose three associates who knew the person intimately (Peter, John and Matthew) and two professional writers with educational credentials to investigate the basic facts and specific details that the other three may have overlooked (Mark and Luke). Then to round out the account of the life and teachings of that person, I might rely on two family members (James and Jude) and an expert in the aforementioned teacher's field (Paul).

These are the only accounts that were recognized as authoritative by the men known as the Church Fathers, who lived after the era of the Apostles from 70 to 200 A.D. There are a few mentions of "lost" writings by several of the Church Fathers. Most likely if these other accounts actually existed in the first century, they did not come down to us because these authors lacked the same authority as the eight who wrote the New Testament.

An Atheist's Backhanded Compliment

I got the ultimate compliment today to The Real Jesus video. I am always questioning how good the production is, even though I am pleased the content.

In response to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji2ohptJ2Qg

jobaby51 has commented on your video: "The Real Jesus: Myth #2 (4 of 10)."

I have seen fundamentalist Christian camps supporting Intelligent Design, biblical inerrancy etc. use similar slick high production computer graphics and new-age background music in an attempt to add credibility to their perspective, but I can't help but notice that an atheistic view on this topic is never presented as such, nor do I ever expect them to do so, as their arguments really aren't in need of these embellishments. Their arguments speak for themselves.

I wrote to this person that the atheist position (without embellishments?!) is strong enough to win about 1 to 3 percent of the population.

It's an ironic statement because I produced the video in response to the programs on the Discovery Channel, ABC, A&E, National Geographic, and many others, that purport to draw in a religious audience with biblically themed programs, only to disappoint us by trotting out the "theologians" of the Jesus Seminar and other liberal viewpoints.

I thought that if I could respond with something approaching their production quality that I could contribute to the voice of Christian apologetics.

I have never expected the as-yet-unreleased DVD to be a best seller, but the YouTube phenomenon has already garnered The Real Jesus video (watch parts 1-9) approximately 18,000 viewers. While it doesn't come close to some of the videos on YouTube -- the ones that defy all common sesnse by drawing tens of millions of viewers -- it is still a good audience and I am getting many comments daily. I've had hundreds of comments so far. A response to these criticisms from skeptics is forming the basis for the next project.

More on that later.

The greatest irony is that when a skeptic wants to insult my low budget effort, he does it by calling it "slick high production."

And to think it's all done on an $1800 iMac with used Final Cut Studio software I bought on EBay.

Now that I am within a couple days worth of work of finishing up part 10 this makes me feel better.

The Real Jesus: Myth #7 (9 of 10)

Myth #7: Jesus never really rose from the dead

John Dominic Crossan: “Was Jesus even buried at all? ... I feel terribly sympathetic toward the followers of Jesus because I hear hope there and not history.”

In his book, The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan is clear about the agenda behind his attack on the truth of the resurrection. Remember that in Crossan’s mind, the resurrection is not plausible and the Gospel accounts are not reliable. Therefore, he uses historical reconstructions based upon what he believes might have happened. Again, there are no written historical records to back up his claims. Instead, he writes:

"If you cannot believe in something produced by reconstruction, you may have nothing left to believe in" (John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, p. 426).

Crossan’s attack on the truth of the resurrection, in the big picture, is really an attack on the nature of truth itself. According to Crossan, truth fluctuates from generation to generation. He writes:

"It is not … that we find once and for all who the historical Jesus was way back then. It is that each generation and century must redo that historical work and establish its best reconstruction ... it is that Jesus reconstructed in the dialogues, debates, controversies, and the conclusions of contemporary scholarship that challenges faith to see and say how that is for now the Christ, the Lord, the Son of God" (John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, p. 217).

In Crossan’s reconstructed version of the story, Jesus’ death was accidental — the type of execution that the oppressive and arbitrary justice of the Romans might carry out on any given day. In the days following the crucifixion, one or more of the Apostles may have invented a story about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead in order to give themselves some credibility. And then some followers of the Apostles, who just happened to be scribes, may have recorded the event as though it were history -- another unfortunate accident -- according to Crossan.

But Crossan fails to answer some obvious questions: If the resurrection were a hoax, why would there be a Christian movement in the years after Jesus’ death? If Christ’s death were an accident, why would there even be a scribe who would want to record a distorted record of Jesus’ death?

Lacking answers to these questions as well any real evidence for their claims, the scholars of the Jesus Seminar speculate endlessly as to how and why the resurrection story came about.

Jennings: “Some scholars think that the resurrection stories were borrowed from eastern pagan cults called mystery religions.”

Jennings: “The mystery cults had an influence because the people who wrote the Jesus story took an earlier story and passed it on via Jesus.”

The writers of the New Testament also mention the “mystery religions” that Peter Jennings refers to here — most notably, the Apostles Peter, John and Paul. What is being described here is Gnosticism — an eastern cult that had followers the world over at the time of the Roman Empire. At the time of Jesus, even Judaism had succumbed to the effects of the ancient mystery religions.

But do similarities among stories told among cults and mystery religions disprove the resurrection of Jesus? Let’s look at some evidence:

According to the Apostle Paul, writing in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8, there were over 500 eyewitnesses, including the Apostles, who saw Jesus after the resurrection. Many preached the Gospel and a few of them wrote books and testimonies.

There is also the testimony of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the blood of the martyrs in the first century. Many of the eyewitnesses to Christ’s resurrection died as martyrs for their faith. It would be hard to imagine people dying for what they knew was a fraudulent claim.

[J.P HOLDING INTERVIEWS: “What are the evidences for the resurrection?”]

In contrast to this strong evidence, Marcus Borg of the Jesus Seminar states:

“If we don’t understand why he could be executed, then we miss the political passion that animated his mission ... When we turn Jesus’ death instead into the eternal sacrifice for sin that makes our forgiveness possible, then we really set aside that which mattered so much to Him ...”

The epitome of liberalism is the false dichotomy between the social Gospel and eternal salvation. Of course, there is no contradiction between the two.

Christ lived a perfect life, not only as an example for us, but actually according to scripture to be the “second Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45) to fulfill the covenant of righteousness so that His righteousness may be imputed to us.

In Christ’s death we find forgiveness for our sins, not only because he died as a martyr for the truth, but also because He became sin on our behalf. His eternal sacrifice through his death for sin does not in any way obscure the message of His perfect life.

The Real Jesus: Myth #6 (8 of 10)

Myth #6: The miracles of the New Testament were invented by the Gospel writers.

Jennings: "Most scholars think these stories were invented by the Gospel writers as advertisements for Christianity in its early years."

Jennings: "Did Jesus really heal people?"

[INTERVIEWS WITH APOLOGIST J.P. HOLDING: "Did Jesus heal people?" Refer to Mat. 11:2-6]

And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?" Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: "The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me" (Mat. 11:2-6 NKJ).

Note that Jesus is declaring himself to be the Messiah, the Son of God, by showing John the Baptist that specific prophecy is being fulfilled. Hundreds of years before, Isaiah wrote of the Messiah:

Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness and streams in the Arabah (Isaiah 35:5-6).

The Real Jesus: Myth #5 (7 of 10)

Myth #5: The Gospels contradict one another and contain fiction

Jennings: "Scholars don't take everything that they read in the New Testament literally because there are four different and sometimes contradictory versions of Jesus' life."

Yes, there are differences in the Gospel accounts. Let's begin with the first obvious difference that seems to concern Jennings so much -- the story of Jesus birth. First, there are different genealogies of Jesus. The Jews knew that the Messiah was to come from the house of Judah and specifically must be a descendant of David. Up to this point, Matthew and Luke agree with one another.

There could be several reasons why Matthew and Luke contain different genealogical accounts. The church historian Eusebius, writing in the early fourth century, records that separate genealogies appear for the following reason. Jesus had both a biological mother, Mary, and a legal (but not biological) father, Joseph. Matthew records Jesus' genealogy by "law" through his adoptive father, Joseph, and Luke records the genealogy of "nature" through his biological mother, Mary. According to Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, Julius Africanus, a third century church father, explained this alleged contradiction in his Letter to Aristides (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book I, chapter 7).

[CONTRAST JENNINGS' FOLLOWING CLAIMS WITH RESPONSES BY APOLOGIST J.P. HOLDING]

Jennings: "The Gospels give different versions of what happened on the day that Jesus was baptized ... "

Jennings: "Historians differ about what happened a the Last Supper. Some people think His whole speech about the Body and Blood was added by the Gospel writers."

Jennings: "The Jewish leaders take Jesus to Pilate and pressure him before he will pass the sentence. Many historians don't believe it."

Jennings: "Jesus is not an heroic figure at all until He gets into the hands of all the people who are going to write and embellish him."

The Real Jesus: Myth #4 (6 of 10)

Myth #4: Jesus did not claim to be God

The idea that Jesus did not claim to be God is often put in a more subtle way.

Jennings: “The word Messiah did not mean the Son of God. It simply meant ‘the anointed one.’”

[INTERVIEWS WITH J.P. Holding: “Did Jesus claim to be God?” “Is the Old Testament Messiah divine?”]

The idea that the Jewish Messiah is God himself is not something that first century Christians made up. The divinity of the Messiah is something we find throughout the Old Testament.

The great Reformed scholar Benjamin Warfield wrote:

“It is quite clear, at the outset, that the writers of the New Testament and Christ Himself understood the Old Testament to recognize and to teach that the Messiah was to be of divine nature. For example, they without hesitation support their own assertions of the Deity of Christ by appeals to Old Testament passages in which they find the Deity of the Messiah afore-proclaimed.” (Dr. Benjamin B. Warfield, The Divine Messiah In The Old Testament)

As an example of this, let’s look at Psalm 110, which happens to be the most quoted Old Testament passage by New Testament writers.

“The Lord said to My Lord, sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool.” — Psalm 110:1

Jesus himself brought this prophecy into focus when He confronted the skeptics of his day.

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, "What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?"

They said to Him, "The Son of David."

He said to them, "How then does David in the Spirit call Him "Lord,' saying:

"The LORD said to my Lord,
"Sit at My right hand,
Till I make Your enemies Your footstool"'?

If David then calls Him "Lord,' how is He his Son?" And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore. (Matthew 22:41-46)

Let’s look at Psalm 110 carefully: God addresses the Son as God. He tells us that the Lord Jesus sits upon God’s own throne. We have to ask: Who except God could sit upon God’s throne? Jesus sits on God’s throne because He always was and always will remain God in every sense of the word.

Countering the Jesus Mythists (2 of 2)

I was watching a YOUTUBE video with one of the proponents of the Jesus Myth theory, who not surprisingly did his work on this theory when he was in his late 20s. In the video, he asks viewers to "send research" so he can write a book claiming that Luke and Acts were not written until the mid-second century.

It doesn’t bother him that Clement the Bishop of Rome writing at about 95 AD quoted Luke and Acts in his letters. The 19th century liberal view that parts of the New Testament were written 100 years after Jesus death was refuted in the early part of the 20th century, but it continues today, strangely promoted by liberal academics, self-appointed Internet “scholars” and the popular media.

To understand the widespread misperception, a few facts need to be examined.

No original manuscript of any document from the first century or earlier exists today. There are a couple of reasons for this. The papyrus books and scrolls that make up the earliest manuscripts of the Bible were extremely fragile and subject to decay. At most, they could be expected to last only a few hundred years before they began to disintegrate into dust. The job of the scribe was to be in a mode of continual copying, since the entire body of literature in the entire world needed to be recopied in every generation. Scribes would often destroy the older copies to differentiate them from the newer ones. Or if the papyrus was usable but faded, he would copy another sometimes entirely different work over the older one. As a consequence, most of the works from ancient times have been lost forever.

A more durable material called vellum had been invented by the first century but didn’t come into frequent use until about 300 A.D. The life expectancy of vellum is about 1000 years or longer. Prior to this time, we find remarkable preserved fragments containing excerpts from many books in the New Testament. There is no single New Testament compilation from the first two centuries, but we find surprisingly numerous fragments that taken together form the content of much of the New Testament.

After the period when vellum came into use, we find an explosion of manuscripts. The majority of the extant manuscripts of the New Testament from 300 until 1000 AD are much earlier and more numerous than the manuscripts of any other ancient literary work of importance. Many of these compilations, called codices, contain the entire text of the New Testament.

When we look at manuscript evidence for works from ancient times, the New Testament is by far the most reliable document we have. There are more extant manuscripts of the New Testament than of any other work from antiquity.

In fact, there are over 24,000 copies of New Testament manuscripts, the earliest existing manuscript fragment, a portion of the text from the Gospel of John chapter 17, was copied within 35 years of the Apostle John’s death. Many other partial and complete manuscripts exist within the first three centuries after Christ.

This is quite amazing when we compare the New Testament with the closest contenders from this time period.

Homer’s The Iliad. About 600 copies of exist. The earliest was made 1,300 years after the originals were written.

The works of Plato. Only seven copies exist the earliest being 1,200 years removed from the original autographs.

The works of Julius Caesar. Only 10 copies still exist, and they were made 1,000 years after he died.

The works of Tacitus. Only 20 copies exist over 1000 years after the originals.

That any of these early papyrus fragments exist today is a providential circumstance if not a miracle. There are simply no complete manuscripts or any fragments left of Homer, Plato, Caesar, Tacitus or any other work from this time period.

In addition, most ancient manuscripts have widely variant copies and much of the text has suffered corruption. About five percent of the lines from the Iliad are corrupted due to variations in extant copies. Compare that with the most reliable New Testament manuscripts that have variations of less than one half of a percent.

The Internet has changed scholarship forever. Compared to the problem that first century scribes faced, we are living in a Golden Age of communication that the ancients would have thought to be miraculous. What I am typing at this moment could conceivably last forever without any corruption in transmission. What is published on the Internet is immediately viewable by millions of people in every country in the world in a matter of seconds.

We have more information at our fingertips than ever before, but unfortunately we moderns are less capable of discerning the media material we view, hear and read. As R.J. Rushdoony has written, we are the “New Barbarians” – a generation of semi-literates barely able to think logically. It is sad and yet encouraging. Take the hubbub over the “Lost Tomb of Jesus” special on the History Channel on Sunday night. Even the liberal commentator Ted Koppel was openly disgusted at the lack of credibility of these filmmakers. At least they admitted Jesus was a real person. The Jesus Mythists are one step beyond left field.

This is actually the best time in history to be a Christian apologist. If you can think logically and read on a college level, you are already head and shoulders above the average 21st century American. Add to this the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who teaches us all things and you won’t find too many arguments against Christianity that are not a veritable house of cards.

Countering the Jesus Mythists (1 of 2)

One of the blessings and scourges to Christian apologetics in our time is the widespread availability of electronic text publishing and digital video production. It is a great blessing because never before has the Christian layman had access to the ability to study theology and communicate the Gospel to so many people. It is a terrible scourge because never before has the quality and reliability of materials related to the Gospel been so poor.

During the whole time when I was the editor of The Forerunner newspaper, our highest press run was just under 25,000 copies. Most copies were sold nearly at cost in bundles of 100 or more for evangelism purposes. We always had a couple thousand faithful subscribers and donors. This generated a budget of a few thousand dollars a month to pay the printing, shipping, and postage bills.

Now with the Internet, Forerunner.com has over 200,000 page accesses per month and over 100,000 visitors (according to one statistics analysis program). I recently put up some clips from the videos I’ve produced on my YouTube video blog and since November 2006 – about four months time – this has generated tens of thousands of viewers. We – meaning me and all the people who have helped me put this together over the years– are reaching many times the number of people than we did with print media and analog video.

A friend of mine, J.P. Holding, who lives just a few miles up the road in Ocoee, Florida, started Tektonics.org in the late 1990s. It’s a similar site to Forerunner.com in many ways. J.P. and I agree that one of the negative byproducts of the postmodernist flood of media technologies has been the emergence in droves of the “Jesus Mythists.” These are people who not only deny the existence of God, but also claim that the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth never even existed.

The proponents of the Jesus Myth theory are almost always without credentials. They do their “research” from a lot of out of date sources to prove an ill-conceived idea that almost no one in the academic community – not even the most liberal of the liberal Bible scholars – will entertain. Almost every scholar agrees that Jesus was a real person and that the Gospel accounts contain a historical outline of His acts and sayings.

The Mythists’ argument is that no one from the time of Jesus wrote anything about him. They discount all the writings of the Apostles and early Christians because they were “biased.” They discount the dozen or so accounts of Jewish and pagan writers who mention Jesus near the end of the second century because they were not eyewitnesses. What they are looking for is a “smoking gun” – an actual letter or manuscript recording the existence of written by someone prior to Jesus’ death.

Such a plea for comtemporary written evidence is extremely unreasonable. We do not doubt the existence of other ancient figures who were not written about until after their death. Until the 20th century, we had no contemporary evidence that Caiaphas the High Priest or Pontius Pilate, who were mentioned several times in the New Testament, were real people either. They are mentioned by later historians, but except for the Gospels and Acts, there was not a single letter, writing or inscription by them or by a person living in theri time who recorded their sayings or doings.

That is, until very recently.

In 1990, diggers in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City uncovered an ossuary (repository for bones) with the inscription JOSEPH SON OF CAIAPHAS. This marked the first archaeological evidence that the high priest Caiaphas, who according to the Gospels presided at the Sanhedrin's trial of Jesus, was a real person. So, indisputably, was Pilate. In 1961, diggers in Caesarea found the fragment of a plaque indicating that a building had been dedicated by PONTIUS PILATUS, PREFECT OF JUDEA.

There is also a lot of physical evidence that validates the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus and the Apostles. Archaeologists have uncovered a first century house in Capernaum that according to tradition was the home of St. Peter. The building contains a meeting room that might have been used for worship. Some experts speculate that this was the synagogue where Jesus preached, as recounted in John 6:59.

The Gospels contain no fewer than 45 references to boats and fishing as they relate to Jesus. These fishing communities have been proven to exist! In 1986, two members of a Galilean kibbutz came across the remains of a 26-ft.-long wooden dory, buried in the mud near Kinneret on the Sea of Galilee, that has been carbon-dated to the first century. Almost certainly, this was the kind of vessel used by Peter, James, John and the other fishermen whom Jesus recruited as his first disciples.

Although movie director John Cameron claims to have discovered the ossuary of the family of Jesus (even claiming Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene on sketchy and far-fetched evidence) it’s unlikely that we should expect find such physical or written evidence of Jesus from a contemporary source other than His disciples.

The reason is that according to the Gospels, Jesus was viewed by almost everyone during His lifetime -- including most of his disciples and family members -- as either an ordinary rabbi, perhaps a prophet, or maybe the promised Messiah -- although even Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist had doubts. This view changed dramatically after the Resurrection when His followers universally began to preach Jesus as the risen Christ and Lord of the universe.

Until His death on the cross, he was controversial yet ordinary. After the resurrection, He was sensational and extraordinary.

To the left is the Pilate inscription discovered in 1961. It reads: "PONTIUS PILATUS, PREFECT OF JUDEA."

The Real Jesus - Myth #3 (5 of 10)

After taking a little break to do some pro-life videos and a series on my cousin Keith the sculptor, I am trying to finish the Real Jesus video this month.

Below is the script:

Myth #3: There was no virgin birth and
Jesus was not born in Bethlehem
By Jay Rogers

Jennings: "We cannot tell you whether or not Jesus is the Son of God, that is a matter of faith. But if you have difficulty with the idea that the Virgin Mary could get pregnant without a man involved, there are a number of ways to explain why in Luke it is written that way."

Jennings: "Some scholars think that Jesus was illegitimate and that the story was a cover-up."

That Jesus was born of a virgin is confirmed by both Matthew and Luke. In his Gospel, Matthew writes that this miracle was a fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14:

"Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel."

The name Immanuel in Hebrew means literally "God-With-Us." In other words, God himself was to be incarnate in human form. And the miraculous sign would be that He would be born of a virgin.

Now some have said that the word "virgin" in Hebrew can simply mean a maiden or an unmarried woman. The problem with this speculation is the context of Isaiah's prophecy. A "sign" in the Hebrew language is simply another way of translating the word "miracle." And the exclamation "Behold!" means to look with wonder. Both Isaiah and the Gospel writers meant to say that the Messiah would be born of a virgin and the witnesses would look in wonder at the event.

Peter Jennings is right about one thing. There is no physical evidence other than the scripture left to us today to determine the miracle of the Incarnation. But not only is the virgin birth called into question, but also the place and circumstances of Jesus' birth also prophesied in scripture.

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, "Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him."

When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So they said to him, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet:

'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
Are not the least among the rulers of Judah;
For out of you shall come a Ruler
Who will shepherd My people Israel.'"

-- Matthew 2:1-6

According to prophecy given hundreds of years before Jesus was born, not only would He be born of a virgin, but He would also be born in the city of David, his forefather, in Bethlehem. Of course, Peter Jennings disagrees.

Jennings: "Luke writes that Joseph and Mary came here to Bethlehem from Nazareth because the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus had ordered a world wide taxation. Now there is no record outside the Gospels that the Emperor Caesar Augustus ordered such a tax. Roman tax records do show that a man is to be taxed where he lives and where he works and Joseph lived and worked in Nazareth. Tax records also show they didn't count women. And so why would Joseph have brought Mary on this very difficult journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem through the desert especially when she was very pregnant?"[10:33-11:06]

But let's look at what the Gospel of Luke actually says:

"And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered" (Luke 2:1-6).

Some translations have the word "taxed" for the Greek word apographÈ, a word that comes from the Greek verb meaning to enroll or to register. What Luke actually wrote is not that Joseph came to Bethlehem "to be taxed," but that he came "to register" in a census. In the ancient world, a census was often used to assess the amount of able-bodied males eligible for military service.

According to ancient historians, this census was for a renewal of loyalty in the form of an oath of allegiance to Caesar Augustus. In order for the oath to be taken, all adult men had to be registered and actually sign their names to the oath of allegiance.

Josephus states, "The whole Jewish nation took an oath to be faithful to Caesar and to the interests of the king [Herod] ..." He adds that "above 6000 Pharisees refused to swear." Based on Josephus' writings, this oath was sworn in the year 3 B.C. This was the census for the taking of the oath to which Luke refers. The actual census may have been conducted the year before in 4 B.C. which is in accord with most reliable dates for the time of Christ's birth and stay in Bethlehem.

Furthermore, the fact that Josephus knew the number of Pharisees who did not take the oath indicates that some sort of record was made of who did and did not take the oath. This too, seems to prove that a registration or census took place.

Other ancient historians note that the census took place in other parts of the known Roman world as well. An inscription was found in Paphlagonia (a region in North Central Asia Minor) dated to 3 B.C. stating that an oath of obedience was "taken by the inhabitants of Paphlagonia and the Roman businessmen dwelling among them."

The Armenian historian, Moses of Khorene, stated that the native sources he had available showed that in the year of Abgar, king of Armenia in 3 B.C., a census brought Roman agents "to Armenia, bringing the image of Augustus Caesar, which they set up in every temple." (Martin, Ernest L., The Star That Astonished the World, ©1996, ASK Publications; Portland, OR, p.185.)

For a fascinating look at the historical reliability of the Gospels' nativity accounts, we recommend the Ernest L. Martin's book, The Star That Astonished the World, (1996, ASK Publications, Portland, OR).

So it is even more amazing that Peter Jennings would sweep aside this evidence only to tell his viewers:

"Now there is no record outside the Gospel that the Emperor Caesar Augustus ordered such a tax."

In order for Jesus to claim to be the Messiah, the Son of God, He would have to be born of a virgin in Bethlehem according to Old Testament prophecies.

The Real Jesus: Myth #2 (4 of 10)

Myth #2: The New Testament was written 100 years after Jesus

Read the whole script at: http://forerunner.com/realjesus/part1.html

Jennings: “There is no reliable evidence about who the authors actually were. It is pretty much agreed that they were not eyewitnesses. In fact, the Gospels were probably written 40 to 100 years after Jesus’ death.”

Jennings is simply echoing a popular myth: some of the theologians of the Jesus Seminar have suggested that writers pretending to be Matthew, Mark, Luke and John took a historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, and invented a genealogy and added historical references as time went by thus “improving” the authenticity of their story.

There is no evidence that the earliest manuscripts of the Bible were altered to be more “historic.” In fact, there is proof that little of the New Testament has been altered. If we look at early copies of the New Testament books, we find that there are some differences between variant manuscripts. But these are mainly misspellings and scribal errors in copying small words, prepositions and numbers.

In addition, most modern translations make note of these differences in the form of footnotes. In fact, you could take all the variant readings of the most reliable New Testament manuscripts and fit them all on one page. There is no major Christian doctrine that would be affected or changed by these small differences. Therefore, even with minor textual variations in the older manuscripts, Christians can still view scripture as inerrant and inspired of God.

What of the charge that historical references and stories surrounding Jesus’ life were added later on?

The fact is that the Jews recorded exact historical references -- the best of all the ancient historians -- because they believed that God was trying to teach them something through history. In keeping with this tradition, the writers of the Gospels sought to record accurate historical events surrounding the life of Christ.

In Luke 2:1, we see that Jesus was born in the days when Quirinius was governor of Syria; and when Caesar Augustus was Emperor. In Luke 3:1, we are given the exact year of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar; Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea; Herod being tetrarch of Galilee; his brother Phillip the tetrarch of Iturea and the region of Trachonitis; and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene.”

These were the rulers of the surrounding countries of Judea in the first century. These are all true persons and places that may be corroborated in other recorded histories.

And what of the charge that the Gospel accounts were written many years after Christ? The higher critics face a huge problem with credibility here. In dating the New Testament in the second century rather than the first, they must ignore the fact that there were a number of late first century and early second century writers who quoted extensively from the New Testament. The Christians of that era already thought of what we know today as the New Testament — as being authoritative — as scripture.

We have already seen that Christian writers named Clement, Barnabas, and Polycarp wrote about Jesus in the first century. There are other documents as well.

• The Didache, a late first century catechism, quotes extensively from the New Testament.

• Ignatius (A.D. 35-110), the Bishop of Antioch, quotes from 16 New Testament books.

• Irenaeus (A.D. 130 -200), the second century Bishop of Lyons, makes 1,819 references to New Testament scriptures.

• Tertullian (A.D. 160 -220) quotes from the New Testament 7,258 times.

The problem for the higher critics and those searching for a “historical Jesus” is that these people were writing in the late first and second centuries. Since they quote from the New Testament books extensively, we can know that the church in many areas of the Roman Empire had access to all of the New Testament scriptures. So the Gospels must have been written sometime in the first century, during the time of the Apostles.

William Foxwell Albright, one of the world’s foremost biblical archaeologists, said: “In my opinion, every book in the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew between the 40s and 80s of the first century A.D. (very probably sometime between about A.D. 50 to 75).”

In the 19th and 20th centuries, there have been thousands of archaeological discoveries of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament that are hundreds of years older than the manuscripts available prior to modern times. There are now more than 5,300 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and 24,000 manuscript portions available for study. In other words, there are more reliable New Testament manuscripts in the original Greek language available for direct translation into modern English today than ever before.

Sir Frederic Kenyon, who was the director and principal librarian of the British Museum, states, “The last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and general integrity of the books in the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.”

The Real Jesus: Myth #1 (3 of 10)

Myth #1: The "historical Jesus" is different from the Jesus of the Bible.

Peter Jennings: "Jesus was a real person."

It is good that Jennings admits that Jesus was a real person. Some have tried to make Jesus into a myth. But the evidence that Jesus lived in Judea in the first century is overwhelming. Jesus was a historical person recorded by Christian, Jewish and pagan historians. In fact, there are many well-known non-Christian historians who mention Jesus:

• Tacitus in his Annals (c.115 A.D.) mentions that Christ was crucified under Pontius Pilate and gives detailed descriptions of Nero's persecutions — which are also alluded to in several places in the New Testament.

• The correspondence between Pliny the younger and the Roman Emperor Trajan (98-117 A.D.) corroborates the New Testament history including the persecution of the Christians under the Emperor Nero.

• Flavius Josephus (37-100 A.D.), the first century Jewish historian, makes mention of Jesus, John the Baptist and James, the brother of Jesus.

Scholars note that the New Testament corroborates Josephus in minute detail. Keep in mind that Josephus wrote his history after the time of the New Testament. In other words, both sources were written independently, but both agree with each other. So Josephus testifies to the historical reliability of many passages in the New Testament.

We know of many other early references to Christ by pagan writers, but there are also manuscripts from the first and second centuries written by Christians. The fact that early Christians recorded their own history does not discount their reliability. Christianity is not a religion that has its origin in shadowy legend, but has definite historical roots, strong personalities and a tremendous amount of source documents to prove it.

Other first and second century writers who wrote about Jesus as the Son of God, the promised Messiah and Lord of Creation, are:

• Clement (A.D. c. 30-100) the Bishop of Rome

• The writer of the Epistle of Barnabas (A.D. c. 70-130)

• Polycarp (A.D. 70-155) the Bishop of Smyrna, a student of the Apostle John

• Ignatius (A.D. 35-110) the Bishop of Antioch

• Irenaeus (A.D. 130 -200) the second century Bishop of Lyons

• Tertullian (A.D. 160 -220) a second century apologist

• Clement (A.D. 150 -215) the second century Bishop of Alexandria

Despite the overwhelming testimony from the early centuries that confirm the Gospel stories, the Higher Critics continue to search for a "historical Jesus."

Contrary to what the liberals of the Jesus Seminar tell us, we have far more than "likelihood" and "possibility" to confirm the reliability of the Gospel stories. We have substantial authentic evidence that the Jesus of history is the same person revealed to us in the Gospel accounts. We have the first and second century apologists who wrote extensively about Jesus and Christianity. Some of these were men who knew the Apostles. There were reliable second-generation historians who were taught by the Apostles who were in turn alive during the ministry of Jesus.

The Real Jesus: Introduction (2 of 10)

Here is the latest video podcast. The following is from the script.

A Response to Peter Jennings' The Search for Jesus

On June 26, 2000, ABC television aired The Search for Jesus, a two hour-long special hosted by Peter Jennings. The program took viewers to Israel and interviewed locals, Christian pastors, clergymen and laymen, but Jennings focused mainly on seven experts in the field of researching the historical Jesus.

Four out of seven experts interviewed by Jennings hailed from the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars who make it their life cause to disprove the divinity of Jesus. The other three "experts" interviewed in the program were also skeptics.

Jesus Seminar

There were a few voices of genuine faith in the Jesus of the Bible. But most of the so-called experts were liberal theologians, that is, those who do not believe the Bible to be the inspired and inerrant Word of God. Absent from the program were the great number of well-known and credible historians who have a deep, committed faith in the inerrancy of scripture and the deity of Jesus Christ.

Liberal Theology: The Higher Critical Method

The Search for Jesus relied almost solely on a school of thought called liberal theology or the Historical Critical Method. At the end of the 19th century, a school of liberal theologians arose in Germany. They were called the higher critics. Their proclaimed goal was to isolate the "historical Jesus" from the "God-man" who has been worshipped and adored by the Church for two millennia.

The divinity of Jesus Christ was presumed to be a myth. His many miraculous works were deemed to be legend. The circumstances of His life, His teachings and works were brought into doubt. The effect of these apostates has grown to the current day as they have stripped layer upon layer from the Jesus of the Bible, until they now have a common man.

The claims of the higher critics are nothing new. In the first and second centuries, early Christians had to deal with ridicule and abuse from Jewish rabbis and intellectual skepticism from Greek scholars and philosophers.

Throughout the early centuries, bold apologists for the Christian faith, such as Irenaeus, Tertullian and Justin Martyr, wrote volumes of practical wisdom defending the Gospel from the attacks of pagan critics. Succeeding centuries gave the Church many other brilliant experts in apologetics. But once Christianity had taken hold of the western world, a new breed of skeptics arose out of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

"Voltaire, the noted French infidel who died in 1778, said that in one hundred years from his time, Christianity would be swept from existence and passed into history. But what has happened? Voltaire has passed into history, while the circulation of the Bible continues to increase in almost all parts of the world, carrying blessing wherever it goes" (Sidney Collett, All About the Bible).

"Only 50 years after Voltaire's death, the Geneva Bible Society used his press and house to produce stacks of Bibles" (Geisler and Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible) a great irony of history!

The early American patriot, Thomas Paine, published Age of Reason, a popular book ridiculing Christianity. Although Paine was a Deist and not an atheist, he popularized the theory that the books of the Bible, especially the Gospels, were full of contradictions. This view continues to be popular among scholars even to this day.

In the 1800s, rationalists such as Hermann Samuel Reimarus and David Strauss published sensational works denying the supernatural miracles of the Bible. The philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who coined the phrase, "God is dead," is said to have lost his faith around the time he was reading Strauss's Life of Jesus Critically Examined.

The Jesus Seminar: Liberal Theology Repackaged

Most recently there was the Jesus Seminar, a council of liberal theologians who meet twice a year in an attempt to debunk the accuracy of the Gospels. Many of their "discoveries" are simply repeats of what the liberal theologians of the 19th century said. Strangely, these opinions are rigidly held even though 20th century archaeology and textual criticism has refuted many of their claims.

The Jesus Seminar's attempt to debunk the Gospels as invented history is not based on a thorough examination of the Bible's manuscripts. Unbiased examinations reveal ample evidence that the Gospel accounts are, in fact, historically accurate. But these "experts" are undaunted by facts. Even today, the skeptics continue to spread the error of a "historical Jesus."

Archaeological Evidence for the Validity of the Bible

Liberal scholars up until the time of the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in 1947 assigned a later date to many books of the Old Testament. They rejected the early date of books that accurately predicted the coming of the Messiah, because so many of the prophecies were fulfilled to the letter.

Since liberals rejected the supernatural in scripture, they presumed there must have been a later date to the writings that accurately described the life of Jesus.

For instance, the second half of Isaiah was deemed to contain forgeries by second century Christians because it contains so many prophecies accurately fulfilled by Jesus' life and mission.
Then one of the main pillars of liberal theology fell in 1947 with the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls including a complete Isaiah scroll.

In his prime time special, Peter Jennings does note that Qumran exists.

With the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, we now have an Old Testament in complete form that existed at least 150 years before Christ. All of the books of the Hebrew Bible except Esther are represented in the Dead Sea Scroll collection. Jennings fails to mention this in his documentary.

Jennings fails to mention that the Dead Sea scrolls give us evidence that the Hebrew Bible has been virtually unchanged over thousands of years, including the famous Isaiah scroll that contains many remarkable prophecies about Jesus the Messiah.

For many years, the Higher Critics held that the Bible both the Old Testament and the New Testament had been altered and changed over the years. Therefore, the critics tried to eliminate the myths and discover the historical Jesus.

"The Search for Jesus" rejects or ignores all of the archaeological evidence that supports the claims of the Bible. Throughout the special, Jennings ignores the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament that were fulfilled by Jesus. He also neglects to examine the overwhelming evidence that the New Testament has come down to us in virtually unaltered form.

Real Jesus Video Podcast (1 of 10)

Here begins the Real Jesus video podcast.

You can also access the video directly at YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLyFZ5QBYuY

Or at this website: http://forerunner.com/realjesus/open.html

I'll give a link in a later blog entry on how people can subscibe directly through an RSS feed. But I already know that out of the thousands of people who download this blog page, most are looking at the HTML web page and only a few dozen are accessing the RSS or XML code via a feedreader. Yes, it will be possible to directly access the videos as stand alone "Pods" to an IPod or a feedreader. You can see how to subscribe to The Forerunner video channel at the YouTube site. I'll write more on that later. I am new to all this myself!

There is some difference of opinion as to what constitutes a video podcast versus a video blog. Some use the terms interchangeably. But technically speaking a podcast is an RSS feed that may be accessed by a stand alone device such as an IPod, while a video blog -- or "vlog" -- is a website that may also be accessed directly through RSS or XML. We are told that eventually all people will subscribe to feeds and that RSS or XML will become the medium of all information and TV channels through high speed cable. We are seeing the beginning of that with Google's purchase of YouTube. Already, many television programs are publishing short excerpts from their programs through YouTube.

For now, I am going to begin by using the Forerunner.com website as the host from which to stream embedded videos. However, if you want to see The Real Jesus video blog, you can bookmark the following page.

http://forerunner.com/blog/labels/Real%20Jesus%20DVD.html

The Real Jesus Podcast

For the past year or so, I've been working on a video documentary called The Real Jesus. Part one is entitled: Debunking the Myths of the Jesus Seminar. It is almost an hour long. I also have a working script that would take several more hours if it were produced in its entirety.

You can read the scripts and see clips from the video here:

http://forerunner.com/realjesus/open.html

Part one of the DVD has been about 90 percent complete since August. I like the way it came out. However, my biggest frustration has been that I am not a professional narrator. I am also not a theologian. So I wanted to recruit a good narrator and get about ten Bible experts in front of a camera to record answers to questions in order to flesh out the remaining ten percent of the project. However, the time and expense required has delayed completing the DVD.

Believe it or not, I work as a teacher and The Forerunner International has been my "hobby" for the past five years. I used to work on Christian media projects full-time in the 1990s. This is the type of project that would have taken a month or two to complete on a full-time schedule. I was recently at the point where I felt terrible that this is still not finished and requires more work.

But here is the good news.

Last week, I had a revolutionary idea on what to do with this video.

First, go here and look at this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MLyFZ5QBYuY

I uploaded this last week. It's lower quality streaming video compared to the same thing I already have at my web site:

http://forerunner.com/realjesus/open.html

But it occurred to me that I might eventually get a bigger audience on YouTube, which has become one of the most popular Internet sites since Google bought it a few months ago. My clip doesn't have a huge amount of traffic so far, but that will change once I advertise the following on my website.

I am going to produce the entire Real Jesus Seminar as a weekly Podcast!

Within the next few months, I expect that thousands of people will have watched The Real Jesus on YouTube (and as embedded video on other websites). In addition to offering one long seminar on DVD, I am going to offer 10 minute weekly or biweekly clips on the Internet. It will be just like having my own TV show. I will also create Podcasts of other videos I've produced.

People will still have the option of ordering the DVD, but I am going to do it differently at first. This way tens of thousands of people will be affected rather than hundreds.

THE PLAN

Let me explain how I came to this conclusion. As I explained, the main log jam I encountered in completing the DVD was in getting good narration and finding some "expert theologians" to do the interviews.

It's not as though theologians are hard to find in central Florida, the main problem is my time and money. I also talked to a video producer friend of mine about hosting the video. That is still an option, but the problem is his commitment to other projects.

Then it dawned on me that I don't need experts to make it appealing. I can just do it in the style of a Podcast -- since that is going to be the format in which most people would want to view it. Essentially, the "stand-ups" can take the form of a round table discussion with two or three friends.

I have two friends in Melbourne, Florida who produced a pro-life video for MTV's Unfiltered program in 1997. (Yes, I know that sounds strange, more on that later!) I helped my friends, Joel and Ariel, with the videotaping since I was around pro-life activism 24/7 back then. I thought at the time that one day we would do a TV show together.

The way all television is going to be done in the future will be Internet based. When I was growing up, there were less than 10 channels to choose from. When cable came around, suddenly we had a few dozen channels. Then came digital cable and satellite with hundreds of choices. Now within a few years, we will literally have millions of Podcast channels on the Internet. Everyone who wants a TV show will have one.

THE FORMAT

When I say that I want to produce a Podcast, really what I am talking about is one or two minutes of commentary within one of the videos that I have already produced. Each Podcast will start with a short introduction:

Introductions: “Hi! I’m Joel” and “I’m Ariel”

Ariel: “This is our program on The Real Jesus. This is a DVD produced by Jay Rogers of The Forerunner and we are going to look at the presentation in 10 parts.

Joel: "We are going to look at part one of The Real Jesus -- this is a presentation that examines the phenomenon of The Jesus Seminar and whether or not Christians ought to take their claims seriously."

Ariel: "What is the Jesus Seminar? First, let’s explain what we are talking about.

Joel: “Apparently, it's this group of liberal theologians who meet once a year and discuss what Jesus really said and did."

Ariel: "So these are people who claim to be Christian theologians but all they do is cast doubt the validity of the Bible.

Joel: “And whenever there is a popular program about the Bible on ABC, the History Channel or the Discovery Channel, these are the so-called "expert" theologians that get the most air time."

Ariel: "As Christians we want to be able to offer another view when we encounter someone who has seen one of these programs. I know I do because my friends always want t know what I think. So watch this and you'll understand more."

Then we will have the video for seven to nine minutes. It would be followed by a wrap-up of a short discussion and summary. "Wow! That's great Joel! How can people get this on DVD?"

http://forerunner.com/realjesus/open.html

Some of the Podcasts will have more discussion. Rather than interview the experts, we will research what the experts have written and quote them as part of a round table discussion. I will appear in some of these as the video producer.

That's it. We will produce the introductions and conclusions to ten programs at a time.

A few years ago people starting putting up streaming videos about their personal lives. It was a newsworthy phenomenon. But webcasting and podcasting have become even more popular now that more people have broadband. Streaming video will soon be up to broadcast quality and beyond. I read somewhere that by 2010, most people will get their television and entertainment this way.

So that's the plan for the weekend. By Monday, I'll write up a report on how it went.

Solving "The Jesus Puzzle"

Recently, I entered into a squabble with an atheist on The Forerunner discussion board on the topic of whether Jesus ever existed.

This atheist insists that the early Christians were actually Gnostics who took some ancient pagan myths and invented a god-man hero by the name of Jesus. He also insists that there is no evidence whatsoever that Jesus of Nazareth was a true historical person. This idea is popularly known as the “Jesus myth.” When I asked who among academic scholars actually accepts the Jesus myth conspiracy theory, I was pointed to the writing of Earl Doherty and Timothy Freke.

The problem with writers such as Freke and Doherty is that they are authors who read some books written in the late 19th and early 20th century heyday of higher criticism. They are basically regurgitating the modernism of 100 years ago.

J.P. Holding comments:

Does the "Jesus-myth" have any scholarly support? In this case, to simply say "no" would be an exaggeration! Support for the "Jesus-myth" comes not from historians, but usually from writers operating far out of their field. G. A. Wells, for example, is a professor of German; Drews was a professor of mathematics; Acharya only has a lower degree in classics; Doherty has some qualifications, but clearly lacks the discipline of a true scholar. The greatest support for the "Jesus-myth" comes not from people who know the subject, but from popularizers and those who accept their work uncritically. It is this latter group that we are most likely to encounter - and sadly, arguments and evidence seldom faze them. In spite of the fact that relevant scholarly consenus is unanimous that the "Jesus-myth" is incorrect, it continues to be promulgated on a popular level as though it were absolutely proven.

A quick read proves these are not accomplished scholars. They are self-proclaimed “experts” who present a one-sided view. The basic tactic of Earl Doherty is to deny everything. There are evidences for the existence of Jesus that are accepted by most modern scholars, but Freke and Doherty simply deny the facts.

In "The Jesus Puzzle," Doherty makes some amazing denials, such as:

In the first half century of Christian correspondence, including letters attributed to Paul and other epistles under names like Peter, James and John, the Gospel story cannot be found.

Huh?

Here Doherty makes a huge assumption popular among the 19th century critics that the Gospels were not written in the first century. Most scholars now admit that they were.

He then goes on to state that none of the Gospel story appears in the Epistles.

Here is just a brief summary of the “non-narrative” evidence from the Epistles that also appear the Gospel stories. Those points also attested to by non-Christian writers are marked with an asterisk.

The following is from Luke Timothy Johnson’s book The Real Jesus:

1. Jesus was a human person (Paul, Hebrews)*
2. Jesus was a Jew (Paul, Hebrews)*
3. Jesus was of the tribe of Judah (Hebrews)
4. Jesus was a descendant of David (Paul)
5. Jesus mission' was to the Jews (Paul)*
6. Jesus was a teacher (Paul, James)*
7. Jesus was tested (Hebrews)
8. Jesus prayed using the word ABBA (Paul)
9. Jesus prayed for deliverance from death (Hebrews)
10. Jesus Suffered (Paul, Hebrews, Peter)
11. Jesus interpreted his last meal with reference to his death (Paul -- mentioned also in the writings of Tacitus and Josephus)*
12. Jesus underwent a trial (Paul)*
13. Jesus appeared before Pontius Pilate (Paul)*
14. Jesus death involved the Jews (Paul)*
15. Jesus was crucified (Paul, Hebrews, 1 Peter)*
16. Jesus was buried (Paul)
17. Jesus appeared to witesses after death (Paul)

So it is clear to see that the most vital elements of the Gospel story appear in the Epistles.

In “The Jesus Puzzle,” Doherty then goes on to write that:

The Gospel Jesus and his story is equally missing from the non-Christian record of the time.

Ironically, what follows is the list of pagan historians who do mention Jesus. Doherty counters this by denying the fact that they all mention Jesus. Then in the same paragraph he admits that the they do mention Jesus. He brushes this off by claiming that they must be forgeries.

The problem is that historians do not universally consider these passages to be forgeries. In addition, Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny, Lucian and Celsus refer to Christ and Christians sometimes in negative terms. This is hardly the strategy for a Christian forger who is trying to gain credibility for his movement.

When we look at Freke (great name!) we see much of the same posturing by a man holding a B.A. who professes to be a modern day Gnostic. The agenda here is not scholarship, it is to promote Neo-Gnosticism.

To say that Paul was a Gnostic is to deny many the points made by Paul (in the above list) that are incompatible with the religion of Gnosticism. Since the Gnostics believed that all matter is evil, they taught that Christ was a spirit being and had only an illusive body. The Gnostics taught that Christ was a spirit temporarily inhabiting the body of the man Jesus who died.

Freke describes his beliefs on his website as – “the timeless wisdom of awakening” – and this gem: “that the Earth could be conceived as a Global Brain which was in the process of awakening to itself, with the explosion of connections being made across it right now comparable to neural networks.”

Yes, I am supposed to take seriously the rantings of a man who claims that the earth is a giant brain and yet there is no evidence that the historical Jesus existed. Am I supposed to take this seriously? In fact, it strengthens my faith as a Christian to see that the alternative is so, well, “Freke-ish.”