The Bible: Embarrassing and True (Part 2)

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Do the New Testament documents tell the truth about what really happened in the first century?  As I wrote in my last column, authors claiming to write history are unlikely to invent embarrassing details about themselves or their heroes.  Since the New Testament documents are filled with embarrassing details, we can be reasonably certain that they are telling the truth.

Notice that the disciples frequently depict themselves as dim wits.  They fail to understand what Jesus is saying several times, and don’t understand what his mission is about until after the resurrection.  Their thick-headedness even earns their leader, Peter, the sternest rebuke from Jesus:  “Get behind me Satan!” (What great press the disciples provided for their leader and first Pope! Contrary to popular opinion, it seems the church really didn’t have editorial control of the scriptures after all.)

After Jesus asks them to stay up and pray with him during his greatest hour of need, the disciples fall asleep on Jesus not once, but twice!  Then, after pledging to be faithful to the end, Peter denies Christ three times, and all but one of them run away.

The scared, scattered, skeptical disciples make no effort to give Jesus a proper burial.  Instead they say a member of the Jewish ruling body that sentenced Jesus to die is the noble one—Joseph of Arimathea buries Jesus in a Jewish tomb (which would have been easy for the Jews to refute if it wasn’t true).  Two days later, while the men are still hiding, the women go down and discover the empty tomb and the risen Jesus.

Who wrote all that down?  Men—some of the men who were characters in the story.  Now if you were part of a group of men trying to pass off a false resurrection story as the truth, would you depict yourselves as dim-witted, bumbling, rebuked, lazy, skeptical sissies, who ran away at the first sign of trouble, while the women were the brave ones who discovered the empty tomb and the risen Jesus?

If men were inventing the resurrection story, it would go more like this:

Jesus came to save the world, and he needed our help.  That’s why we were there for him every step of the way.  When he was in need, we prayed with him.  When he wept, we wept with him (and told him to toughen up!).  When he fell, we carried his cross.  The gates of Hell could not prevent us from seeing his mission through!

So when that turncoat Judas brought the Romans by (we always suspected Judas), and they began to nail Jesus to the cross, we laughed at them.  “He’s God you idiots!  The grave will never keep him! You think you’re solving a problem, but you’re really creating a much bigger one!”

While we assured the women that everything would turn out all right, they couldn’t handle the crucifixion.  Squeamish and afraid, they ran to their homes screaming and hid behind locked doors.

But we men stood steadfast at the foot of the cross, praying for hours until the very end. When Jesus finally took his last breath and the Roman Centurion confessed that Jesus was God, Peter blasted him, “That’s what we told you before you nailed him up there!” (Through this whole thing, the Romans and the Jews just wouldn’t listen!)

Never doubting that Jesus would rise on the third day, Peter announced to the Centurion, “We’ll bury him and be back on Sunday. Now go tell Pilate to put some of your ‘elite’ Roman guards at the tomb to see if you can prevent him from rising from the dead!”  We all laughed and began to dream about Sunday.

That Sunday morning we marched right down to the tomb and tossed those elite Roman guards aside.  Then the stone (that took eleven us to roll into place) rolled away by itself.  A glowing Jesus emerged from tomb, and said, “I knew you’d come! My mission is accomplished.” He praised Peter for his brave leadership and congratulated us on our great faith.  Then we went home and comforted the trembling women.

There are other events in the New Testament documents concerning Jesus that are also unlikely to be made up.  For example, Jesus:

  • Is considered “out of his mind” by his own family who come to seize him to take him home (Mk 3:21,31).
  • Is deserted by many of his followers after he says that followers must eat his flesh and drink his blood. (John 6:66).
  • Is not believed by his own brothers (John 7:5).  (Disbelief turned to belief after the resurrection—ancient historians tell us that Jesus’ brother James died a martyr as the leader of the church in Jerusalem in A.D. 62).
  • Is thought to be a deceiver (John 7:12).
  • Turns off Jewish believers to the point that they want to stone him (John 8:30-59).
  • Is called a “madman” (John 10:20).
  • Is called a “drunkard” (Mt. 11:19).
  • Is called “demon-possessed” (Mk 3:22, Jn 7:20, 8:48).
  • Has his feet wiped with hair of a prostitute which easily could have been seen as a sexual advance (Lk 7:36-39).
  • ·Is crucified despite the fact that “anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse” (Deut 21:23).

If you’re inventing a Messiah to the Jews, you don’t say such things about him.  You also don’t admit that some of you “still doubted” Jesus had really risen from the dead, especially while he’s standing right in front of you giving the great commission (Mt. 28:17-19).

Finally, anyone trying to pass off a false resurrection story as the truth would never say the women were the first witnesses at the tomb.  In the first century, a woman’s testimony was not considered on par with that of a man.  An invented story would say that the men—the brave men—had discovered the empty tomb.  Yet all four gospels say the women were the first witnesses – all this while the sissy-pants men had their doors locked for fear of the Jews.  (After I made this point during a presentation, a lady told me that she knew why Jesus appeared to the women first.  “Why?” I asked.  She said, “Because he wanted to get the story out!”)

In light of these embarrassing details—along with the fact that the New Testament documents contain early, eyewitness testimony for which the writers gave their lives—it takes more faith to believe that the New Testament writers were not telling the truth.

(This column was originally published at www.Townhall.com)

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The Bible: Embarrassing and True (Part 1)

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What are your most embarrassing moments?  You don’t want to admit them. And if you do admit them, you certainly won’t add to your shame by inventing embarrassing moments about yourself to make you look even worse.  Who’s going to lie to make himself look bad?  People will lie to make themselves look good (especially politicians), but no one will lie to make himself look bad.

That’s why when historical accounts contain events embarrassing to the authors (or heroes of the authors) those events are probably true.  Historians call this the principle of embarrassment, and it’s one reason why I think the writers of the Bible are telling the truth.  There are far too many embarrassing details about the supposed heroes of the faith to be invented.

Just take a look at the Old Testament storyline.  There’s little chance the Jews would have invented it.  A story invented by Hebrews would more likely depict the Israelites as a noble and upright people. But the Old Testament writers don’t say this.  Instead they depict their own people as sinful and fickle slaves who, time after time, are miraculously rescued by God, but who abandon him every chance they get.  For example, after witnessing miracle after miracle that frees them from slavery in Egypt, they can’t resist worshiping the Golden Calf when Moses spends a few extra nights on the mountain.  Talk about ungrateful folks with short memories!  (We seem to suffer from this in America too).

The Old Testament writers record a Hebrew history filled with bone-headed disobedience, distrust, and selfishness. Their leaders are all world-class sinners, including Moses (a murderer), Saul (a paranoid egomaniac), David (an adulterer, liar, and murderer), and Solomon (a serial polygamist). These are supposed to be the “chosen people”—the ones through which God brings the Savior of the world?  Yes, and the Old Testament writers admit that the ancestors of this Messiah include deeply sinful characters such as David and Solomon and even a non-Hebrew prostitute named Rahab. This is clearly not an invented storyline!

While the Old Testament tells of one embarrassing gaffe after another, most other ancient historians avoid even mentioning unflattering historical events. For example, there’s been nothing found in the records of Egypt about the Exodus, leading some critics to suggest the event never occurred. But what do the critics expect? Peter Fineman imagines what a press release from Pharaoh might say:

“A spokesman for Rameses the great, Pharaoh of Pharaohs, supreme ruler of Egypt, son of Ra, before whom all tremble in awe blinded by his brilliance, today announced that the man Moses had kicked his royal butt for all the world to see, thus proving that God is Yahweh and the 2,000-year-old-culture of Egypt is a lie. Film at 11:00.”

Of course no press secretary for Pharaoh would admit such an event if he wanted to keep his head!  The Egyptian silence on the Exodus is understandable.

By contrast, when the Egyptians scored a military victory, they went to press and exaggerated greatly. This is apparent from the oldest known reference to Israel outside the Bible. It comes from a granite monument found in the funerary temple of Pharaoh Merneptah in Thebes. The monument boasts about the military victory of the Pharaoh in the highlands of Canaan, claiming that “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.” Historians date the battle to 1207 B.C., which confirms that Israel was in the land by that time.  We know this account is exaggerated because, as history attests, Israel was not laid waste. Its seed lived on and sprouted into a great empire under David 200 years later.  And its seed lives on to this day more than 3,200 years later.

How does the New Testament measure up to the principle of embarrassment?  While embarrassing testimony is alone not enough to ensure historical reliability—early, eyewitness testimony is also necessary (which the New Testament has)—the principle of embarrassment is even more pronounced in the New Testament.  The people who wrote down much of the New Testament are characters (or friends of characters) in the story, and they often depict themselves an extremely unflattering light.  Their claims are not likely to be invented.

Let’s put it this way: If you and your manly friends were concocting a story that you wanted to pass off as the truth, would you make yourselves look like dim-witted, uncaring, rebuked, doubting cowards who ran away at the first sign of trouble while the women were the brave ones who remained faithful? No way! But that’s exactly what we find in the New Testament.  That’s one reason why I don’t have enough faith to believe that the New Testament tells an invented story.

I’ll highlight some of the New Testament’s more embarrassing details in the next column—even a few details that some could interpret as embarrassing to Jesus.  In the meantime, you can find a cumulative case for God and Christianity in the book from which this column is adapted: I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.

(This column originally appeared at Townhall.com)

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In ancient wall, scholar sees proof for Bible

In ancient wall, scholar sees proof for Bible

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Back in 1993, archaeologists found an inscription in the Israeli town of Dan bearing the name of the Hebrew King David.  This put to rest the theory that the David of the Bible was just a myth.  Now at least one archaeologist is claiming that Jerusalem was fortified at the time of David lending further credence to the Bible’s account that David was indeed a King. Here is the AP article explaining her findings with the obligatory opinion of someone who disagrees:

 

JERUSALEM – An Israeli archaeologist said Monday that ancient fortifications recently excavated in Jerusalem date back 3,000 years to the time of King Solomon and support the biblical narrative about the era.

If the age of the wall is correct, the finding would be an indication that Jerusalem was home to a strong central government that had the resources and manpower needed to build massive fortifications in the 10th century B.C.

That’s a key point of dispute among scholars, because it would match the Bible’s account that the Hebrew kings David and Solomon ruled from Jerusalem around that time.

While some Holy Land archaeologists support that version of history — including the archaeologist behind the dig, Eilat Mazar — others posit that David’s monarchy was largely mythical and that there was no strong government to speak of in that era.

Speaking to reporters at the site Monday, Mazar, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, called her find “the most significant construction we have from First Temple days in Israel.”

“It means that at that time, the 10th century, in Jerusalem there was a regime capable of carrying out such construction,” she said.

Based on what she believes to be the age of the fortifications and their location, she suggested it was built by Solomon, David’s son, and mentioned in the Book of Kings.

The fortifications, including a monumental gatehouse and a 77-yard (70-meter) long section of an ancient wall, are located just outside the present-day walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, next to the holy compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. According to the Old Testament, it was Solomon who built the first Jewish Temple on the site.

That temple was destroyed by Babylonians, rebuilt, renovated by King Herod 2,000 years ago and then destroyed again by Roman legions in 70 A.D. The compound now houses two important Islamic buildings, the golden-capped Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Archaeologists have excavated the fortifications in the past, first in the 1860s and most recently in the 1980s. But Mazar claimed her dig was the first complete excavation and the first to turn up strong evidence for the wall’s age: a large number of pottery shards, which archaeologists often use to figure out the age of findings.

Aren Maeir, an archaeology professor at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said he has yet to see evidence that the fortifications are as old as Mazar claims. There are remains from the 10th century in Jerusalem, he said, but proof of a strong, centralized kingdom at that time remains “tenuous.”

While some see the biblical account of the kingdom of David and Solomon as accurate and others reject it entirely, Maeir said the truth was likely somewhere in the middle.

“There’s a kernel of historicity in the story of the kingdom of David,” he said.

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Bart Ehrman’s "Misquoting Jesus"

Some have come to doubt the reliability of the New Testament documents by reading Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus.  But after reading Dr. Thomas Howe’s response to that popular book, if you’re fair minded you’re more likely to doubt the reliability of Misquoting Jesus.  You can download Dr. Howe’s detailed response here.

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Matthew’s "Raised Saints"

Some question why the dead “saints” who were “raised” after Christ’s resurrection are mentioned in Matthew (Mt. 27:52) but not anywhere else. This is a fair question. After all, if this really happened, why didn’t the other gospels mention it?

When addressing this question, we must keep in mind that each saint’s body was not resurrected into a glorified, imperishable state as was Jesus’s body. After Christ’s resurrection (as Matthew puts it), the bodies of the saints were raised. It seems that they were resuscitated into their previous mortal bodies, which would mean they would die again. In other words, the “saints” would have looked like normal people–like Lazarus, so only family members and their closest friends would know about this, if those friends and families were still alive at the time. We don’t know how many, if any, were still alive. If they weren’t still alive, probably few other people would know about this. If some friends and families were still alive, the word would have spread among some in Jerusalem about these saints being raised, but not to the extent of the resurrection of Christ (a public figure who also performed miracles). So perhaps only Matthew of the four writers knew about this.

But if the others did know about it, why didn’t they include it? Perhaps because each gospel writer appears to have a different audience in mind, and all authors must select what they choose to include and exclude. The main focus of each gospel writer was to report the historical facts about Jesus to their different audiences, not to report on everything significant that may have happened (indeed, it would be impossible to do so as John asserts at the end of his gospel). Amazingly, the gospel writers seem so concerned with sticking to just the historical facts that they hardly even mention the theological implications of Christ’s resurrection; only John briefly notes its impact on individual salvation (John 20:31). So including the saints event (if they knew about it), may not have served their purposes with their intended audiences.

However, it may have helped Matthew accomplish his purpose. How so?

Matthew is the gospel written to the Jews. The theme of Matthew is that Jesus is the true Israel– He does what Israel failed to do. His resurrection is what makes the ultimate resurrection predicted in the Old Testament possible (a resurrection is predicted in Daniel 12:2 and Ezekiel 37:12b-13). Matthew mentioning these saints being raised confirms his main point– that Jesus accomplished what Israel could not. Because of His perfect life, the resurrection is guaranteed and the barrier between God and man due to sin has been torn down signified by the veil in the temple being torn in the verses just preceding it. So while it didn’t fit the purposes of the other gospel writers, Matthew briefly mentioned the saints being raised because of its theological significance to his Jewish audience.

Another possibility is that the resurrection of the saints was not literal, but symbolic. Dr. Michael Licona will be advancing this theory in a forthcoming article called “The Saints Go Marching in” (of which I have a copy). Citing many examples, Licona points out that when writing about the death of an emperor, ancient Jewish and Roman authors frequently used phenomenological language in a symbolic manner. Writing to his Jewish audience, Matthew may have done the same.

But does that mean Christ’s resurrection could also be symbolic? Licona answers no. He writes:

There is no indication that the early Christians interpreted Jesus’ resurrection in a metaphorical or poetic sense to the exclusion of it being a literal event that had occurred to his corpse. Indeed, that a literal bodily resurrection was the primary intended interpretation seems clear. Paul asserted that Christian faith is worthless if Jesus had not been raised (1 Cor. 15:17). It is difficult to imagine Paul informing Caiaphas that, although he had believed it had been God’s will for him to hunt down Christians and destroy the Church, he was now more strongly compelled by their metaphor of Jesus’ resurrection and would jeopardize his eternal soul by abandoning the Judaism to which he had clung in order to become a Christian. Moreover, if Jesus’ resurrection was meant to be interpreted as a poetic metaphor, why is it that no known Christian opponent criticized the early Christians or their opponents for misunderstanding poetry as history? Why was there no known correction from any of the early Christian leaders to this effect? The early opponents proposed that Jesus survived death, his body was stolen, the witnesses were unreliable, and that the disciples hallucinated. These are all answers to claims of a literal bodily resurrection.

It also seems unlikely that the early Christian martyrs would die for a metaphor. Moreover, John’s gospel talks of feeling literal wounds (John 20:27), and Luke states explicitly that the body of Jesus was made of “flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39).

What about the skeptical view that Matthew meant it to be literal, but it never really happened? That would certainly defeat biblical inerrancy, but it would not defeat the evidence for the resurrection of Christ. There are too many early, eyewitness sources that testify of it, and too much converging circumstantial evidence (prophecy, embarrassing details, martyrs, establishment of the church, etc.) that confirm it. (For details see I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.)

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Resurrection Reported VERY Early

Some people say that the resurrection is myth.  Unfortunately for them, scholars report that the earliest testimony for the resurrection goes back to the very year it supposedly occurred– far too early for mythological development.  New Testament Scholar Craig Blomberg reports that one such scholar is even an atheist. This is from Blomberg’s blog  (HT: Melinda Penner at STR.org):

At the “Earnestly Contending” Apologetics conference at New Life Church in Smithfield, RI, this weekend, Professor Dr. Gary Habermas of Liberty University, an internationally known expert on the resurrection of Jesus, reported on a forthcoming work of Richard Bauckham, prolific New Testament scholar for many years at the University of St. Andrews.  In it, Habermas explained, Bauckham builds on research by evangelical writer Larry Hurtado and atheist historian Gerd Ludemann, both of whom have argued that belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus must have emerged within two or three years of the death of Jesus (whether or not one believes it actually happened).

The argument goes like this.  1 Corinthians 15:3-6 contains, in credal form, a list of the eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Jesus.  By including reference to Jesus’ crucifixion and burial, Paul makes it clear he is talking about bodily resurrection.  But verses 1-2 describe that this is information that Paul passed on just as he had received it, using verbs that were technical terms for the transmission of oral tradition.  When would Paul have first learned this information?  Almost certainly as one of the very fundamentals of the Christian faith taught him when he first became a follower of the Risen Jesus–perhaps by Ananias who instructed him while he was still temporarily blind, in Damascus, after the Risen Christ appeared to him en route.

But when one compiles the most probable dates of the relevant events, based on Paul’s own information in Galatians 1-2, if Jesus was crucified in A.D. 30, the most likely date, then Paul’s conversion must have come no more than two years later, in 32.  (See any standard conservative New Testament introduction for how the dates are computed).  But for Paul to have been given an already established creed including resurrection witnesses, known not just in Jerusalem but also in Damascus, some time must have already elapsed for this foundational information to have been crystallized in this form and become widely known in the various locations believers lived and become widely agreed on as the kind of information to be passed on to each new convert.

Ludemann, the atheist, says this means within one to two years from Jesus’ death, it was widely agreed on that Christ had been bodily resurrected.  Bauckham, according to Habermas, apparently moves that date back to within about one-half year’s time, in order for the necessary time to elapse for this to become widely standardized by the time of Paul’s conversion.

One may still choose to follow Ludemann’s antisupernaturalism (we know resurrections can’t happen) and thus opt for some version of the mass hallucination hypothesis.  But the most common skeptical alternative in recent years, that the resurrection stories are just late myths in which beliefs about Jesus’ cause living on became embodied in mythological garb, simply doesn’t have the decades (or sometimes centuries) needed for it to have developed the way all other ancient myths did.  At some point, one has to say that it takes more faith to believe in the alternatives to the historic, Christian conviction at this point than to believe orthodox tradition!

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Earliest Church Found

The earliest church found to date has been found in Jordan.  Click here.

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CIA: Your Chance to Make an Impact with Christian Apologetics

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If you have some expertise in the area of Christian Apologetics, we are looking for instructors to help us take I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist to students and churches around the country.  Greg Koukl and Brett Kunkle of Stand to Reason, and Jason Reed of Southern Evangelical Seminary will join me, Frank Turek, in leading the CrossExamined Instructor Academy (CIA), August 13-15 in Charlotte, NC.  Hank Hanegraaff, The Bible Answerman, will join us for a special Q and A on Wednesday night August 13.  This is a great opportunity for you to make an impact through apologetics. But hurry– the application deadline is June 24.  Click here for details.?

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The Resurrection: An Impact Event

The New Testament writers don’t just say that Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead—they actually back up that testimony with dramatic action. First, virtually overnight they abandon many of their long-held sacred beliefs and practices. Among the 1,500-year-old-plus institutions they give up are the following:

-The animal sacrifice system– they replace it forever by the one perfect sacrifice of Christ.

-The binding supremacy of the Law of Moses– they say It’s powerless because of the sinless life of Christ.

-Strict monotheism– they now worship Jesus, the God-man, despite the fact that 1) their most cherished belief has been, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4); and 2) man-worship has always been considered blasphemy and punishable by death.

-The Sabbath– they no longer observe it even though they’ve always believed that breaking the Sabbath was punishable by death (Ex. 31:14).

-Belief in a conquering Messiah– Jesus is the opposite of a conquering Messiah. He’s a sacrificial lamb (at least on his first visit!).

And it’s not just the New Testament writers who do this– thousands of Jerusalem Jews, including Pharisee priests (Acts 6:7), convert to Christianity and join the New Testament writers in abandoning these treasured beliefs and practices. Even references from ancient non-biblical sources attest to this Jewish movement we now call Christianity.

J. P. Moreland helps us understand the magnitude of these devout Jews giving up their established institutions virtually overnight:

[The Jewish people] believed that these institutions were entrusted to them by God. They believed that to abandon these institutions would be to risk their souls being damned to hell after death.        Now a rabbi named Jesus appears from a lower-class region. He teaches for three years, gathers a following of lower- and middle-class people, gets in trouble with the authorities, and gets crucified along with thirty thousand other Jewish men who are executed during this time period.  But five weeks after he’s crucified, over ten thousand Jews are following him and claiming that he is the initiator of a new religion. And get this: they’re willing to give up or alter all five of the social institutions that they have been taught since childhood have such importance both sociologically and theologically. . . . Something very big was going on.

How do you explain these monumental shifts if the New Testament writers were making up a story?  How do you explain them if the Resurrection did not occur?

Second, not only do these new believers abandon their long-held beliefs and practices, they also adopt some new radical ones. These include:

-Sunday, a work day, as the new day of worship

-Baptism as a new sign that one was a partaker of the new covenant (as circumcision was a sign of the old covenant)

-Communion as an act of remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice for their sins

Communion is especially inexplicable unless the Resurrection is true. Why would Jews make up a practice where they symbolically eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus?

Only an “impact event” like a Resurrection could explain such a swift and monumental shift in Jewish thinking and practice. What’s an impact event?  An impact event is something that is so dramatic in your life that it changes you forever.  It’s something that you can’t forget.  For those of you are old enough, where were you November 22, 1963?  It’s my earliest memory.  Although I was only two years old, I can still see my Mother weeping uncontrollably in front of the TV– “The president has been shot!”   For those a bit younger, where were you when the Challenger exploded?  Where were you when the second plane hit the tower?

Why can you remember where you were and what you were doing on September 11, 2001 but not September 11, 2007?  Because an impact event changes everything. An impact event known as the resurrection of Jesus Christ changed everything for thousands of Jews two thousand years ago, and today it can still change you, me and the rest of the world. That’s why we still celebrate Easter.

(If you want more on this, get our book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Some of this post is adapted from Chapter 11.)

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The Case for the Real Jesus

I think The Case for the Real Jesus is Lee Strobel’s best book so far, and that’s saying a lot.  Josh McDowell claims, “Whatever Lee Strobel writes, God reads!” 🙂

David Limbaugh has posted a review of Lee’s book that challenges skeptics to take a fair look at the evidence.

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