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Does God Treat Women like Second-Class Citizens in the Old Testament?

Perhaps the most scathing statement ever made about the God of the Old Testament came from the pen of Richard Dawkins. He famously snarled:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”[1]

Dawkins and his fellow New Atheists have successfully persuaded the masses into believing that God is a moral monster.

Sadly, Christians have not been immune to these attacks either. Dating back to the second-century heretic Marcion, people within the church have succumbed to the notion that the God of the Old Testament is radically different from Jesus in the New. Commenting on Marcion’s views, Michael Kruger notes that his “theology was shaped by what he regarded as an insurmountable problem with the Old Testament. He viewed the God of the Old Testament as vengeful and wrathful; and viewed the God of Jesus, as described in the writings of Paul, as peaceable, merciful, and loving.”[2]

Among other complaints, one of the more powerful critiques leveled against the God of the Old Testament is that he is anti-women. Some go so far to suggest that God places women on par with chattel. This critique is especially powerful considering the contemporary feminist movement. But is this critique warranted? Does the Old Testament portray God as negatively as some would like us to believe?

In this article, I will argue that a close examination of the Old Testament vindicates God’s morality with respect to women. I will substantiate this claim in two steps. First, I will demonstrate that the skeptic’s objections are largely based on poor hermeneutics. And second, I will examine some of the most popular “problem” texts used to advance the false narrative that God is misogynistic and establish that they do not portray God in a negative light.

Hermeneutical Principles

A surface reading of a few Old Testament texts may lead some to believe that God thinks women are inferior to men. One reason detractors have reached this conclusion is because they fail to use basic hermeneutical principles when interpreting biblical text. Specifically, critics ignore historical context, overlook the distinction between case laws and God’s ideals, and assume a mere description of an event means God’s prescription of it.

Historical Context

“The first stage in serious Bible study,” notes Grant Osborne, “is to consider the larger context within which a passage is found.”[3] He goes on to note, “Since Christianity is a historical religion, the interpreter must recognize that an understanding of the history and culture within which the passage was produced is an indispensable tool for uncovering the meaning of that passage.”[4] Osborne’s advice is especially pertinent considering the wide chasm that exists between the Ancient Near East (ANE) and twenty-first century America.

If we are to understand what Moses meant in the Penteteuch, we must have some understanding of his millieu. Moreoever, we must remember that Israel was birthed out of the ANE where partriarchy, primogeniture, polygamy, and slavery were accepted norms.[5] That is to say, Israel did not exist in a vacuum, isolated from its neighboring nations. This close proximity explains why many of those less than ideal structures existed in ancient Israel.

With this context established, one readily observes that God does not endorse the broken structures of patriarchy, polygamy, slavery and so forth. Rather, we observe that God worked within those already existing structures, seeking to make incremental moral improvements on established practices.[6] This strategy is not too different from a new pastor who aims to take his church in a new direction, but he does so gradually lest he leave others behind.

A good example of this approach comes from Jesus when talking about divorce. He notes in Matthew 19:8, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” In other words, divorce was not God’s ideal. As Jesus mentions, “from the beginning it was not so.” However, Israel existed in a fallen context where people abused their marriages. In an attempt to mitigate against divorcing one’s spouse for any reason or not being able to get a divorce even though the spouse was habitually unfaithful, Moses permitted it under certain circumstances. In this way, God’s aim was to move the needle closer towards his ideals outlined in Genesis 1-2.

Case Laws vs. God’s Ideals

Detractors also make a mistake by confusing case laws with God’s universal ideals. Unlike God’s ideals, case laws were not universal in scope. Rather, they were given in the Mosaic Law to address specific situations where people had disregarded God’s ideals. One can spot a case law because it usually begins with the words “if” or “when” and goes on to describe a certain less than ideal situation with some concluding judgments or provisions.[7]

A clear example of a case law is found in Exodus 22:1. The law states, “If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.” Notice that this case law does not endorse theft. Instead, it recognizes that moral concessions have been made against God’s ideals (Exod 20:15). As a result, this law aimed to make the best out of a bad situation by prescribing the appropriate amount of restitution for stolen property.

With respect to women, consider Exodus 21:7-11. This case law states:

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.

Notice that the text begins with the word “when,” indicating that God is not prescribing slavery or misogamy. Rather, this case law assumes that the described situation is less than ideal. In this particular case, a father attempts to arrange for his daughter to marry a man with means, thus providing long-term security for her. The difficulty with the text revolves around why a man would want to buy a woman who functioned as both a servant and a wife at the same time.

What we can discern from this text is that the master had been previously married, given that he has a son. And since the son is of marriageable age, the master must be older. Therefore, the most likely explanation is that he is a widower, although divorce is a possibility. Therefore, in an attempt to protect the inheritance for his existing children from his first wife, he makes a special agreement with the woman’s family in what amounts to an ancient prenuptial agreement.

With the special considerations aside, the man was still to treat this woman as his legal wife. Biblical scholar Douglas Stuart remarks, “The original Hebrew text brings out that a woman whose service contract is purchased along with her bride price is still a real wife, with all the protections that would accrue to anyone’s daughter given in marriage in Israel under the provisions of the covenant.”[8] Meaning, if the man married the woman, he had to protect her and love her as his own wife.

The text goes on to provide additional provisions for the woman. First, if the master did not follow through with marriage, then the woman could be redeemed. This provision implies that the original agreement assumed marriage, not simply servitude. He cannot, however, sell her to foreigners.

Another viable option was that the woman could marry the master’s son. If this situation were to transpire, then the father must treat her like his own daughter.

But, if the son marries someone else, and no other suitor redeems the woman, then the father is to provide for her as if she had married into the family. Because most women could not provide for themselves in the patriarchal world of the Ancient Near East (ANE), women relied on marriage as a means of survival. Again, this sample case law does not provide a universal norm. It merely seeks to make the best out of a less than ideal situation.

God’s ideals, on the other hand, refer to his heart on the matter and are universal in scope. Meaning, God’s ideals are his desires for all people at all times. And a quick examination of these ideals reveals that God is actually for not against women. Consider Genesis 1:27 which claims, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” As a result of being made in God’s image, both men and women are equally valuable to him.

Also consider Genesis 2:24 which asserts, “a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” According to biblical scholar Gordon Wenham, it is easy for us to miss the significance of this transition in relationships. He remarks, “In modern Western societies where filial duties are often ignored, this may seem a minor point to make, but in traditional societies like Israel where honoring parents is the highest human obligation next to honoring God, this remark about forsaking them is very striking.”[9] In other words, God placed such a high value on the new wife, that he commanded man to make her his highest priority, even higher than his parents.

In these two passages alone, we discover God’s heart for women. He values them just as much as he values men.

Prescriptive vs. Descriptive

A third hermeneutical principle critics ignore is the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive texts. Prescriptive texts are clear commands or prohibitions from Scripture. For example, God forbids murder (Exod 20:13). At the same time, Scripture describes murder (Gen 4:8). What should be plainly obvious is that Scripture’s description of an event does not imply God’s approval of it. Certainly, God did not approve of how the men treated the concubine in Judges 19 despite Scripture’s description of the horrific event.

If someone fails to grasp these hermeneutical principles, they will misinterpret the Old Testament.

“Problem” Texts

In this section, we will consider three types of texts that skeptics claim portray God as misogynistic. Specifically, we will consider texts dealing with polygamy, the bride-price, and women POWs.

Polygamy

The practice of polygamy is well established in the Old Testament. Be that as it may, God never prescribes polygamy. On the contrary, he asserts that a man should “be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). Moreover, Leviticus 18:18 forbids polygamy when it declares, “And you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive.” While some argue that this text-only forbids incestuous relationships, a good case can be made that it forbids polygamy altogether. As Paul Copan argues, “This phrase ‘a woman to her sister’ and its counterpart, ‘a man to his brother,’ are used twenty times in the Hebrew Scriptures, and never do they refer to a literal sister or brother.”[10] Finally, God specifically forbade the kings of Israel to take multiple wives (Deut 17:17).

At the same time, the Old Testament describes several polygamous situations. One thinks of David and Solomon who disregarded God’s prescribed ideal (Deut 17:17). When it came to Israel’s rulers, however, taking multiple wives and concubines was typically for political purposes, not sexual advances.[11] But again, a mere description of polygamy in no way suggests that God endorsed it. In fact, where polygamy is described, discord and strife quickly follow.[12]

Consider the case law found in Deuteronomy 21:15-17. It reads:

If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him children, and if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved, then on the day when he assigns his possessions as an inheritance to his sons, he may not treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the unloved, who is the firstborn, but he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the unloved, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his strength. The right of the firstborn is his.

This case law refers to a polygamous situation which is already under way—a clear violation of God’s ideals (Gen 2:24). Now that the deed is done, how should the Israelites make the best out of this messy situation?

Some might be tempted to think that the man should divorce one of his wives. But taking that route would actually do more harm than good. After all, it was extremely difficult for a non-virgin woman to get married in that culture. More than that, women had difficulty fending for themselves and relied heavily on men. For these reasons, the law does not encourage divorce.

Moreover, polygamy is not even the point of the law. As Eugene Merrell notes, “The matter of law that is pertinent here is the proper bestowal of inheritance rights.”[13] In other words, this law ensured that the husband followed the proper customs by giving the firstborn son the inheritance, irrespective of who his mother was. Yes, the case law assumes polygamy occurred; but that is a far cry from God’s endorsement.

Bride-Price

In addition to polygamy, many of the same skeptics suggest that bride-price laws treated women like chattel. A closer examination of the law, however, reveals that it existed to protect woman and express the solemnity of the marriage covenant. As Paul Copan notes, “the bride-price was the way a man showed his serious intentions toward his bride-to-be, and it was a way of bringing two families together to discuss a serious, holy, and lifelong matter.”[14]

The bride-price also provided compensation to the woman’s father for the work she would have otherwise contributed to her family and served as a financial safety net for the women in the case of divorce or the husband’s early death.[15]

Consider Exodus 22:16-17. This case law reads, “If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins.”

In this particular case, a man seduced a virgin whom he had no intentions of marrying. His act showed complete disregard for the value of the woman, jeopardizing her future prospects of marriage. Therefore, in an attempt to hold him accountable for his sexual advances, the law mandates that he pay the bride-price and marry the woman, provided that her father agrees. Douglas Stuart suggests, “Since it would be much harder to marry her to someone else once she had been sexually compromised, [the father] was still owed the bride price for her, lest no bride price ever be paid in the case that she was never, in fact, married thereafter.”[16]

While the arrangement may not find its way into a Hallmark movie, it presents the best-case scenario for the woman in ancient Israel. It protected her from unwanted sexual advances, and it provided her with long-term financial security. At the same time, though, the father of the woman had the right to refuse the suitor while simultaneously keeping the bride-price. One can assume that the father and the daughter usually made a joint-decision in situations like this one (Gen 24).

In sum, the bride-price protected women against sexual advances, expressed the seriousness of the marriage covenant, strengthened relations between the two families, and offered financial security for the woman. It did not imply that women were mere property.

Women POWs

Finally, critics also claim that Israelite men were allowed to capture and rape foreign woman POWs. Yet, a closer examination of key texts refutes this assertion. Deuteronomy 21:10-14 declares:

When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails. And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.

Notice how this case law actually offers protection for women. Instead of instantly raping the women—which was normal procedure among other ANE cultures[17]—the law ordered Israelite men to wait at least a month before getting married and engaging sexually with the woman.

This waiting period served multiple purposes. First, it prevented the Israelite soldier from entering into marriage too hastily in uncontrolled lust like one might see in Las Vegas. In fact, we can assume that this allotted time period prevented scores of unhappy marriages since the law assumes that Israelite soldiers often lost desire for the woman after the month’s end. If this change in feeling occurred, the soldier was to let the woman go. In no circumstances was her allowed to treat her as a slave.

A second reason for the waiting period was to allow the woman time to mourn her family and reflect on the prospect of integrating into the Israelite community. As Eugene Merrill argues, “The idea behind all these procedures seems to be that of cutting off all ties to the former life in order to enter fully and unreservedly into the new one. This presupposes a degree of willingness on the part of the maiden to forsake the past and to embrace a new and different way of life, for one can hardly conceive of all this taking place coercively.”[18]

In the end, this law forbade rape of any kind by prescribing a one-month waiting period for women POWs. At month’s end, the Israelite soldier could choose to marry the woman (if she acquiesced) and then have sexual relations with her.

Another difficult text related to women POWs is Numbers 31:17-18. When referring to the Midianite women, Moses ordered the Israelite officers to “kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.” Admittedly, this text looks damning on the surface. The context, however, provides explanation.

In Numbers 25 we read that the Midianite women seduced the Israelite men and compelled them to worship Baal. Baal worship, it must be noted, was not simply bowing to an idol. Rather, it included temple prostitution, bestiality, and a whole littany of other sexual sins. This pagan worship involving sexual immorality was the motivation behind God’s command to destroy the Midianite women while sparing the virgins.

The virgins, after all, had not seduced the Israelite men. It was the non-virgin women who participated with the Israelite men in pagan sexual immorality.[19] And lest we think God did not hold the men accountable for their action, Numbers 25 tells us that God sent a plague and wiped out twenty-four thousand of them for their sin. After sparing the virgins, then, the Israelite men would have then followed protocal from Deuteronomy 21:10-14, waiting at least one month before marrying the virgin and engaging sexually with her.

Conclusion

As this article indicates, a close examination of the Old Testament vindicates God’s morality with respect to women. I substantiated this claim in two steps. First, I established that most critics reach their negative conclusions using faulty hermeneutics. And second, I examined several “problem” texts and demonstrated that they do not portray a misogynistic attitude on God’s part.

Certainly, the ancient patriarchal society was far from ideal. But Israel’s treatment of women was a vast improvement over their Canaanite neighbors. And while we might wish that the Israelites had progressed, even more, they laid the groundwork for even more female advancement in the New Testament. Eventually, it was the church, following the example of Jesus, who dramatically raised the status of woman worldwide. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to state that modern-day feminists have Christians to thank for the advancement of women in our society.

Footnotes

[1] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 51.

[2] Michael J. Kruger, Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Press, 2018), 117.

[3] Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Downers Grove, IVP Press, 2006), 37.

[4] Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral, 158.

[5] Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of The Old Testament God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011), 60.

[6] Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? 61.

[7] Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Press, 2004), 292.

[8] Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, The New American Commentary (Nashville, B&H Publishing, 2006), 483.

[9] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15: Word Biblical Commentary (Mexico City: Thomas Nelson, 1987), 71.

[10] Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of The Old Testament God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 113.

[11] Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, 330.

[12] Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, 331.

[13] Eugene H. Merrill, Deuteronomy: The New American Commentary (Nashville, B&H Publishing, 1994), 292.

[14] Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? 117.

[15] Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? 117.

[16] Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, 510.

[17] Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? 120.

[18] Eugene H. Merrill, Deuteronomy, 291.

[19] Gordon J. Wenham, Numbers: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Press, 1981), 211.

Without Training, The Church Will Create More Jon Steingards

Atheism, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Erik Manning

Recently Jon Steingard made headlines after he announced over Instagram that he had lost his faith. Steingard was the lead vocalist of the Christian music group Hawk Nelson, which became popular in the early 2000s. Since they had so many fans, this obviously sent shockwaves over social media.

In the post, Steingard gives several reasons why he no longer believes. He does ask some challenging questions when he writes, “If God is all-loving and all-powerful, why is there evil in the world? Can he not do anything about it? Does he choose not to? Is the evil in the world a result of his desire to give us free will? OK then, what about famine and disease and floods and all the suffering that isn’t caused by humans and our free will?”

Philosophers call this the problem of natural evil, and I think it’s one of the bigger challenges out there. That said, I think it’s been addressed successfully. But I do get that not everyone is going to be convinced by every theodicy given for natural evil.

But what I want to address is another objection Jon brought up, because it raised a red flag. He wrote:

“Why does God seem so p***sed off in most of the Old Testament, and then all of a sudden he’s a loving father in the New Testament? Why does he say not to kill, but then instructs Israel to turn around and kill men, women, and children to take the promised land? Why does God lead Job to suffer horrible things just to win a bet with Satan?! Why does he tell Abraham to kill his son (more killing again), and then basically says, “Just kidding, that was a test”?”

Why Is God Nice In The Old Testament, But Always Angry In The New Testament?

So there’s inconsistency with the mean God of the OT and the nice, friendly Jesus of the New. Or is there? Let me run a similar argument to Steingard’s:

“Why is God always ticked in the New Testament, but a loving husband in the Old? Why does Jesus say not to kill, but then he turns around and says “I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.”

And why does God kill Ananias and Sapphira, even though they gave away half of their property to the church?! Why does he allow Paul to turn a man over to Satan for “the destruction of his flesh” just because a man was in a relationship outside of marriage? (Is this some kind of sick bet?) And why does God allow the Corinthians to become sick and die young, (more killing again) because they took communion wrong?

Or why does Jesus call a Syrophoenician woman a dog? Or why does he curse an innocent fig tree? Or why does Jesus say he hasn’t come to bring peace, but a sword?

In the Old Testament God’s a loving husband, who even stays with Israel even though she’s accurately depicted as a faithless prostitute in Hosea. He says he’d tattoo her on the palms of his hands, and sing over her with joy. He even just forgives the Ninevites even though they had done terrible things in the book of Jonah. In the Old Testament, he’s a good shepherd who will follow Israel with goodness and mercy all the days of their life.“

How Could Steingard Not Know?

So you see, we can easily run this argument of Steingard’s in reverse and twist the texts. What is confusing to me because his father and father-in-law are both pastors. Steingard was a Christian his entire life. How can he not be aware of these verses?

I bring this up to say there’s no disconnect between Yahweh of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New. The reason why God seems harsh under both covenants is that he doesn’t change, he always hates sin. But he still delights in showing mercy. He’s patient and kind in both testaments, not willing that any should perish. (2 Peter 3:9, Ezekiel 18:41) As Paul writes in Romans 11:22, “Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off.”

A Cultural Recipe For Apostasy

I can’t say for sure, but judging from his statements, it’s as if Steingard previously only considered one side of God’s character. When you look at a lot of the seeker-friendly movement that is so prevalent in today’s western church, all you hear is the side of love. So perhaps reading these passages in the Old Testament came as a shock, but shouldn’t when you read the entire New Testament.

It also seems that in our Western-democratic culture, our belief and confidence in the powers of our intellect has increased to the point where we think we can play armchair God and assume we know and would do better. As the philosopher Charles Taylor has observed, it’s only in our modern era that we get “the certainty that we have all the elements we need to carry out a trial of God.”

Steingard Is Sawing Off The Branch He’s Sitting On

But we can’t just assume that a God beyond our understanding can’t exist without begging the question. By abandoning faith in God, he’s put his faith instead in his ability to reason and judge God. But this isn’t a better foundation.

As Douglas Wilson has written, “If there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter. If this is true then the difference between your thoughts and mine corresponds to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. You simply fizz atheistically and I fizz theistically. This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true, but rather because of a series of chemical reactions. Morality, tragedy, and sorrow are equally evanescent. They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain, in turn, created by too much pizza the night before. If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical epiphenomena, like swamp gas over fetid water. This means that we have no reason for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right and wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality. If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else.”

In other words, Steingard has tragically sawn off the branch he was sitting on. According to many atheistic philosophers, naturalism spells trouble for reason, free will, and the morality that Steingard is judging God with. If atheism is true, we’re all dancing to the music of our DNA, as Richard Dawkins says.

That means all our beliefs are the product of non-rational, deterministic physical forces beyond our control, whether we’re theists or naturalists. In fact, if Steingard’s conclusions are right, it’s only by accident, not because he’s now more intellectually better than the believer. That is to say; the atheist would have a true accidental belief (which isn’t the same thing as knowledge) rather than warranted true belief (which is knowledge). I hope he scrutinizes his newfound unbelief at least as much as he scrutinized his faith.

The Church Needs To Do Better

As Christians, we can do better in several areas: We need to poke holes in atheism and show where the greater absurdities lie. Hint: Not with Christianity. Naturalism removes the foundation for reason and morality that secularists so greatly cherish. A book I’d highly recommend for this topic is Mitch Stokes’ How to Be An Atheist.

We also need to defend the character of God and not hide from difficult passages in both the Old and New Testament. While it’s good and right to study arguments for the existence of God and especially for the resurrection, we need to go a step further and be able to deal with difficult passages in both the OT and NT. On this topic, I highly recommend Paul Copan’s book Is God a Moral Monster?

It’s also notable that Steingard said nothing about the evidence for the resurrection. It doesn’t matter if we always like what we find in the Bible if Jesus rose from the dead. We have to teach on these bedrock truths of our faith.

And finally, pastors can no longer only preach 20-minute sermons on the love of God in hopes of attracting crowds. Don’t get me wrong. I think we should absolutely major on the love of God. After all, God is love. But even love gets angry at sin, and we need to stop minimizing God’s wrath. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’re going to create many more Jon Steingards.

Is Earth Just A Pale Blue Dot?

2. Does God Exist?, Atheism

By Ryan Leasure

In his book Pale Blue Dot, the late astronomer Carl Sagan had this to say about the above photograph taken aboard Voyager I:

Because of the reflection of sunlight… Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light as if there were some special significance to this small world. But it’s just an accident of geometry and optics… Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Sagan reiterates what is commonly known as the Copernican Principle, or the Principle of Mediocrity. It’s the idea that earth and by extension human beings aren’t significant in the grand scheme of things. We’re just a random speck of dust revolving around an average star in the corner of an average galaxy.

Sagan was so confident of his view that he predicted the Milky Way galaxy probably contains as many as a million advanced civilizations. But is this a reasonable conclusion? I think it’s unlikely. In fact, the more we learn about the requirements for habitability, the less probable life in other places becomes. To demonstrate this claim, I want to highlight seven different habitability requirements — or habitable zones — that are necessary for advanced life to exist in the universe. As far as we know, the earth is the only planet to meet all the requirements.

The Right Kind Of Galaxy

Astronomers have placed galaxies into three categories — spiral, elliptical, and irregular. Of these three, only spiral galaxies can support life. Elliptical galaxies contain mostly ancient stars that lack necessary resources — like heavy elements — that life needs. Additionally, because of the shape of elliptical galaxies, and the close proximity of the stars, stable planetary orbits are impossible.

Similarly, irregular galaxies lack the necessary qualities for habitability. For starters, their irregular shape leads to chaotic stellar and planetary orbits which result in planets colliding or brushing too closely to ultra-violet emitting stars. Additionally, large irregular galaxies possess active nuclei which spew too much deadly radiation for life to exist. Conversely, small irregular galaxies lack the necessary heavy elements for habitability.

Only spiral galaxies can support life. And not just any spiral galaxy, but one that possesses the right size and structure that can yield heavy elements and protect a host planet from deadly radiation and gravitational disruptions along the spiral arms. It just so happens that the Milky Way meets these necessary requirements.

The Right Location In That Galaxy

Not only is the right kind of spiral galaxy necessary for habitability, but the location inside that galaxy is also just as important. And that location is close to the mid-plane of the galaxy about halfway between the galactic nucleus and the external edge.

If the earth’s solar system was closer to the nucleus, it would face the onslaught of radiation and overwhelming gravitational force from the galactic black hole nucleus. Moreover, this territory inside the galactic habitable zone contains trillions of comets, which combined with the erratic gravitational forces would inevitably lead to several comet collisions and wipe out any existing population. Conversely, stars located towards the outer galactic edge can only host small terrestrial planets that are too small to retain an atmosphere or sustain plate tectonics.

This galactic habitable zone is usually represented by a thin ring that circles around the Milky Way galaxy. Only stars that land on this narrow ring can realistically sustain life. Furthermore, our solar system is located in a safe place between the Sagittarius and Perseus spiral arms. Spiral arms are dangerous places with fluctuating radiation and erratic orbits. And as many astronomers have pointed out, this relatively gas and dust free environment proves to be the ideal location for viewing the universe and making further discoveries.

The Right Kind Of Star

In addition to being in the right location of the galaxy, the star must possess the right qualities to support life. Of the stars located in the galactic habitable zone, about 3 percent of them have the right qualities for any kind of life to survive. In fact, to emit a sufficient level of ultra-violet radiation, the host star must be virtually identical to the sun. Larger stars than our sun give off extreme variations of UV radiations, as do smaller stars than the sun. Our sun is also metal-rich compared to most stars making it possible to host planets like earth.

While it’s true that the sun is an average star (a yellow dwarf) as far as size goes, its average quality is essential for life. In addition to emitting erratic levels of UV radiation, larger stars burn their fuel faster and have shorter life spans — too short to host advanced life. On the other hand, smaller stars, like red dwarfs, give off such low levels of energy that a planet would have to orbit extremely close to it. This close proximity inevitably leads to tidal locking where one side of the planet bakes in unending misery while the opposite side remains frozen in perpetual darkness.

The Right Distance From The Star

Next, for habitability to be possible, a planet must maintain liquid water. And this is only possible for planets that are the right distance from their host star. For example, if the earth were slightly closer to the sun, all water would evaporate. If it was slightly further away, all water would freeze. Furthermore, for water to remain, the planet must have the appropriate level of atmospheric pressure.

The planet must also receive the right amount of UV radiation, and much of this depends on its distance from that star. If it receives too little, vitamin D levels would be too low to produce strong bones, prevent cancer, and maintains healthy immune systems. On the flip side, if UV radiation were stronger, most if not all would suffer from skin cancer and bad eyesight.

Additionally, a planet must be the right distance from its host star for photosynthesis to occur. While some life-forms could exist without photosynthesis, large-bodied warm-blooded animals could not.

The proper distance also impacts its rotation rate. As I mentioned earlier, a planet that is close to its host star experiences tidal locking, meaning it does not rotate due to the intense gravitational force. This results in one side of the planet enduring an onslaught of heat and radiation while the opposite side remains perpetually in the cold dark. This kind of planet could not sustain life as it could not have liquid water. Conversely, if the earth rotated faster, we’d experience extreme temperatures and atmospheric winds that would make life virtually impossible.

The Right Kind Of Neighbors

While the other planets in our solar system aren’t suitable for life, they still serve a purpose in contributing to the earth’s own habitability. For starters, larger planets such as Jupiter and Saturn serve as earth’s bodyguards against comets or asteroid bombardments. Due to their size and relative force of gravity, these large gas giants act like giant vacuum cleaners for potentially dangerous collisions. Even smaller planets like Venus and Mars offer protection despite their limited gravity. Mars, for example, stands between us and an asteroid belt and has taken a few hits for us over the years.

Additionally, these other planets have contributed to important scientific discoveries. Johannes Kepler formulated his famous laws of planetary motion by observing these other planets. One of these discoveries was that planetary orbits are not circles but ellipses. And these discoveries served foundational for Newton’s laws of motion and gravity, which became the foundation for Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

The Right Kind Of Moon

Of the dozens of moons in our solar system, the moon if fifty times larger than any other moon compared to the mass of its host planet. Moreover, the moon orbits more closely to earth than any other large satellite yet discovered.

The size and proximity of the moon stabilize the earth’s rotation on its axis around 23.5 degrees. If the moon were smaller, like the Martian moons, the tilt would wobble about 30 degrees like Mars. The results of an unstable title would be catastrophic. If the North Pole, for example, were leaning more sunward during the summer, most of the Northern Hemisphere would experience months of scorching heat and perpetual daylight. Then in the winter months of the year, any survivors would experience extremely cold dark winters that would make Antarctica feel mild by comparison.

With no tilt, the earth would not experience seasons and rain distribution across the planet. The result would be large swaths of arid land uninhabitable for life.

It’s also worth noting that earth is the only place in our solar system where a perfect solar eclipse is possible. This phenomenon is possible because while the moon is four hundred times smaller than the sun, it is four hundred times closer making them both appear the exact same size from our vantage point. This phenomenon is highly coincidental if the earth is just a “pale blue dot.”

The Right Kind Of Planet

Finally, the right planet is also necessary for habitability. For example, life could not survive on a gas planet, but one made of rock. Additionally, this planet must have liquid water. But if the planet was perfectly smooth, the entire planet would be submerged in water. Fortunately, the earth has continents, mountain ranges, and valleys which allow for life to exist simultaneously with oceans and lakes. And this is made possible by plate tectonics. Yes, plate tectonics can be dangerous, but without them, life could not exist. And earth is the only planet in our solar system with plate tectonics.

A planet must also maintain a powerful, stable magnetic field. Without this protective fence, the earth’s atmosphere would eventually float away towards the sun making it impossible to sustain life. Of course, to maintain the right magnetic field requires the right internal composition of a rocky planet. Specifically, it requires a liquid iron outer core and a solid iron inner core.

Additionally, the planet must also have the right kind of atmosphere. In particular, the ozone shield is necessary for protecting a planet from receiving too much harmful radiation. Currently, earth’s ozone layer absorbs about 98 percent of the sun’s harmful UV radiation while allowing the beneficial radiation to pass through to earth’s surface. In this sense, the ozone layer acts as a shield or a type of sunscreen protecting us from too much of the sun’s radiation but allowing just enough beneficial for life.

Just A Pale Blue Dot?

So many are the requirements necessary for habitability that extraterrestrial life seems improbable. Back in the 1960s, when Sagan’s theory began to pick up steam, scientists launched the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). When the search began, scientists were convinced we would find advanced life on the moon or Mars. Now the search is more modest. They hope to find some kind of lower life form to an obscure moon orbiting Saturn that may or may not contain liquid water. In other words, the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in SETI have been spent to no avail.

Additionally, this search raises some important questions. If life really exists all over the universe, why haven’t they found us yet? After all, are we so conceited to think that we are the most advanced civilization? Surely, if millions of other civilizations exist, some of them would have greater capabilities than us.

Furthermore, good scientific theories are always falsifiable. But isn’t this theory unfalsifiable? At what point will those who say the universe is teeming with life say they were wrong? After sixty years of searching, they’re still saying, “Just give us more time. We’ll find it.” And they could keep saying it for a thousand years. In the end, the search for extraterrestrial life seems like a fools errand. So many are the conditions necessary for habitability. Earth appears to be pretty special after all.

Don’t the Resurrection Narratives Contradict?

3. Are Miracles Possible?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Erik Manning

The apostle Paul said that if Christ hasn’t risen, Christianity is a sham. (1 Corinthians 15:17) Many atheists agree and will happily point to the gospel accounts. Just how seriously should they take the claim of the resurrection? After all, aren’t the accounts riddled with contradictions? How can they possibly be trusted?

Historians don’t normally conclude that just because individual accounts have apparent contradictions that the event in question didn’t occur. But let’s allow that to pass for now. I think the majority of the discrepancies that critics bring up can be easily resolved. Here’s a list of four of the most popular contradictions in the resurrection account that skeptics like to point to.

#1. HOW MANY WOMEN WERE AT THE TOMB OF JESUS?

How many women came to the tomb Easter morning? Was it one, as told in John? Two (Matthew)? Three (Mark)? Or more (Luke)?…

Atheist blogger Bob Seidensticker

LET’S LOOK AT THE TEXTS

“On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark. She saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.” (John 20:1)

“After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to view the tomb.” (Matthew 28:1)

“When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they could go and anoint him.” (Mark 16:1)

“On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices they had prepared…Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them were telling the apostles these things.” (Luke 24:1,10)

Whoa there! On the face of it, you can see why skeptics would point to these passages to discredit the gospels. It seems like they can’t get their details straight. But are these accounts really so contradictory? Not really.

“NEVER READ ONE BIBLE VERSE”

It’s a bit amusing that Bob thinks that because John said that Mary Magdalene came to the tomb, he’s implying that others were not present. All we need to do is to keep reading to see that isn’t the case at all. In the very next verse, John says: “So she went running to Simon Peter and to the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said to them, “They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they’ve put him!” (John 20:2)

Wait a second. Where did this we come from? In passing, Mary Magdelene’s own words clearly show that there were other women. John reporting this implies that he’s well aware that there were other women at the tomb. No bludgeoning required. As Greg Koukl has famously said, “never read a Bible verse.” You have to keep reading and get the context before making assumptions about the text. Otherwise, it would seem that you’re either looking for a negative verdict or you’re just trying to fleece someone.

THE SKEPTIC’S BAD ASSUMPTIONS

As for the other accounts, why assume that each gospel account is supposed to give us a complete, detailed list of the women? Luke explicitly says that there were others that he didn’t name. In no gospel did it say these were the women who came to the tomb and there was no one else.

There’s no contradiction here unless you bring that assumption to the text. Selecting to name some women is not an automatic denial that there were no others. If I say I went to the store with my wife last night, I’m not automatically excluding the fact that I brought my four kids with me. I just left out a detail. So what?

#2 WAS THE TOMB OPENED OR CLOSED WHEN THE WOMEN ARRIVED?

“Was the stone already rolled away when they arrived at the tomb (Mark, Luke, and John), or explicitly not (Matthew)?”

Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God

LET’S LOOK AT THE TEXTS OURSELVES

And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. (Mark 16:3-4)

And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb…(Luke 24:2)

Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. (John 20:1)

So far all Mark, Luke, and John say that the tomb was open when the women found it. Now here’s Matthew’s version:

At the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. (Matthew 28:1-4)

So far it looks like Bart and the critics have a good point.

GETTING A GRIP ON THE GREEK

So what’s going on here? Is Matthew signifying that the women saw the angel coming down and rolling the stone away? If Matthew comes after Mark, then it feels like he’s adding an extra layer of supernatural ad hoc. While it makes the account sound more impressive, we now get this contradiction.

But let’s reconsider what Matthew says. We’re introduced to the passage about the angel by the Greek participle γὰρ (gar). Strong’s Greek Concordance defines it as: “For. A primary participle; properly assigning a reason.” In other words, it exists to explain the earthquake and set of circumstances as the women found them.

As philosopher Tim McGrew points out, “Matthew uses an aorist participle, which could be (and in some versions is) translated with the English past perfect: “… for an angel of the Lord had descended …”

One such translation is Weymouth, who phrases Matthew 28:2 as follows: “But to their amazement, there had been a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord had descended from Heaven, and had come and rolled back the stone, and was sitting upon it.”

And here’s Young’s Literal Translation, which is about as a word-for-word Greek translation you can get: “and lo, there came a great earthquake, for a messenger of the Lord, having come down out of heaven, having come, did roll away the stone from the door, and was sitting upon it”

So Matthew isn’t claiming that the women saw the angel descend or that they saw the guards get knocked out. It’s not in the text. It seems like the critics are looking for fault here.

OK, BUT WHERE IS MATTHEW GETTING HIS INFO FROM?

But now a question arises. If the women didn’t tell them this story about the stone’s rolling away and the guards falling out, who did? That’s a fair question.

While can’t say for sure, we can venture a safe guess here. In Matthew 28:11-15 we find out that the author had some info about the guards. What happened to them could have come from the same source — perhaps one of the guards themselves.

Matthew 28:2-4 gives us an explanation for the women at the tomb found when they got there. And that is the stone rolled away and no guards. This just isn’t meant to be a description of what the women saw. The stone moved before they got there, and that seems to be what Matthew is communicating when properly read.

#3. DID THE WOMEN AT THE TOMB OF JESUS SEE A MAN AT THE TOMB, TWO MEN, OR TWO ANGELS?

“Did they see a man, did they see two men, or did they see an angel? It depends on which gospel you read.“

Bart Ehrman (The Craig-Ehrman debate)

AGAIN, LET’S LOOK AT THE TEXTS IN QUESTION:

Mark 16:5-6: “And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, …”

Matthew 28:5: “But the angel said to the women…”

Luke 24:4: “While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel…”

John 20:11-13: “But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.”

So is this a major difference like Bart and other skeptics claim? Nah. Not if you’ve read the rest of the Bible. Angels often appear to humans as men. Let’s look at just a few texts to prove this out:

6 TIMES IN THE BIBLE WHERE ANGELS APPEAR AS MEN

When Abraham was sitting by the oaks of Mamre, “he lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him” (Genesis 18:1-2). These visitors in the very next chapter are called angels. (Genesis 19:1)
Jacob wrestled with the man until daybreak in Genesis 32:22-32. We read in Hosea 12:4 that he wrestled with the Angel of the Lord.
Joshua encountered the “captain of the host of the LORD” who was called “a man” (Joshua 5:13-15).
Here again, we see the same thing in Judges: “And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field. But Manoah her husband was not with her. So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, “Behold, the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.” (Judges 13:9-10)
Daniel had visionary experiences where he describes his angelic visitor as “one in the likeness of the children of man”. (Daniel 10:16-18)
And finally, Hebrews 13:2 tells us that “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Because of medieval, we picture angels as babies or women with wings on their back floating on white clouds. But if it’s possible to entertain angels unawares as the writer of Hebrews says, then they can look just like a human being.

HOW MANY ANGELS WERE THERE?

This shouldn’t be that hard to figure out. Wherever there are two angels, there is always at least one. That’s just an unfailing principle of math. It’s Matthew and Mark who focus on the one who spoke. They don’t mention the other. But omission itself doesn’t equal denial. There is no account saying that there was one and no other.

I mean, we’ve all experienced this before, haven’t we? I’m thinking of my own life for certain job interviews I had. There were two managers in the room interviewing me for a promotion, but my focus was only on the one who was asking me questions. When talking about the interview later with others, me describing the questions and body language of manager Steve wouldn’t mean that manager Suzy wasn’t also in the room with her head down, taking notes.

#4. THE WOMEN SPREAD THE WORD OF THE EMPTY TOMB (OR DID THEY?)

In the other gospels, women discovered the empty tomb of Jesus and returned to tell the others:

“The women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” (Matthew 28:8).

“When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others” (Luke 24:9).

Mark tells us the women kept it hush-hush:

“Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.” (Mark 16:8)

That’s how the original version of the gospel of Mark ended.

BUT DOESN’T MARK 16 HAVE TWENTY VERSES?

Now some of you might be thinking to yourself: “Whoa. Hold up! Doesn’t Mark 16 have more than 8 verses? What about “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” and that strange stuff about drinking poison and handling snakes that we find in the ending of Mark?

Seemingly strange statements aside, I’m not at all here to argue against the inspiration of Mark 16:9-20. But most scholars believe that the original ending of Mark ends at verse 8. Unless you’re reading from the King James Version, most translations alert us to the fact that verses 9-20 are not in the earliest manuscripts. Here’s a sampling:

ESV : [Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9–20.]

NIV : [The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20.]

CSB : [Some of the earliest mss conclude with 16:8.]

NLT : [The most ancient manuscripts of Mark conclude with verse 16:8. Later manuscripts add one or both of the following endings.]

These are all fairly conservative versions of the Bible. There’s no liberal conspiracy happening here. You can still believe verses 9-20 are historically reliable and even inspired. But nearly all textual specialists agree that the long ending of Mark wasn’t part of the original text. This gives us an apparent contradiction about what the women said after discovering the empty tomb.

LETTING THE SKEPTICS SPEAK

“One point, in particular, seems to be irreconcilable. In Mark’s account, the women are instructed to tell the disciples to go meet Jesus in Galilee, but out of fear, they don’t say a word to anyone about it.”

Jesus Interrupted. Page 49

Bart wants to create a contradiction by reading Mark as saying they never said a word to anyone. But is this the right reading of the passages?

IS MARK’S GOSPEL INCOMPLETE?

While the general scholarly consensus is that the long ending of Mark wasn’t originally there, what we’re not being told by the skeptics is that there’s debate regarding whether or not Mark meant to end it there or if the original text was cut off or left incomplete.

The late Bruce Metzger was a biblical scholar and longtime Princeton professor. He thought the original ending was cut off. Why did he believe that? Mark has a pattern of making blanket statements before adding an exception. Just take a look:

“He did not let anyone accompany him except Peter, James, and John, James’s brother.” (Mark 5:37)
“Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.” (Mark 9:8)
“As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” (Mark 9:9)
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “No one is good except God alone.” (Mark 10:18)
“Now concerning that day or hour no one knows—neither the angels in heaven nor the Son —but only the Father.” (Mark 13:32)

This is a clear pattern in Mark. So how would we expect Mark to continue if Metzger is right and the text is broken off? It would probably look a lot like what we read in Matthew 28:8. Let’s combine the two passages: They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid, but departing quickly from the tomb…, they ran to tell his disciples the news.”

Ehrman did his doctoral dissertation under Metzger, so he has no justification in keeping his audience in the dark.

BUT WHAT IF MARK REALLY INTENDED ON STOPPING AT VERSE 8?

If you read Mark carefully in one sitting, you’ll find a common thread. After Jesus reveals himself in some way, he asks the witnesses to keep it on the down-low.

“Then a man with leprosy came to him and, on his knees, begged him: “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched him. “I am willing,” he told him. “Be made clean.” Immediately leprosy left him, and he was made clean. Then he sternly warned him and sent him away at once, telling him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go and show yourself to the priest, and offer what Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” Yet he went out and began to proclaim it widely and to spread the news, with the result that Jesus could no longer enter a town openly.” (Mark 1:40-45)
“They brought to him a deaf man who had difficulty speaking and begged Jesus to lay his hand on him. So he took him away from the crowd in private. After putting his fingers in the man’s ears and spitting, he touched his tongue. Looking up to heaven, he sighed deeply and said to him, “Ephphatha!” (that is, “Be opened!”). Immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was loosened, and he began to speak clearly. He ordered them to tell no one, but the more he ordered them, the more they proclaimed it.” (Mark 7:32-36)
“But you,” he asked them, “who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he strictly warned them to tell no one about him.” (Mark 8:29-30)

Reading this, we see that there’s a pattern silence, or requested silence, followed by proclamation. The silence never sticks. The whole punchline of Mark is that Jesus is the Messiah. Why we’d expect this pattern to stop seems silly. Just think about Mark’s Gospel as a whole for a minute:

In the first half of Mark, everyone questions who Jesus is.
In the middle, Jesus questions the disciples’ belief about Him.
The second half tells how Jesus became the Messiah.

Mark is making a point about Jesus’ identity. Many Jews hoped that the Messiah would overthrow the Romans and rule as king, but as we read his gospel, we see that Jesus came to set up a kingdom different than their expectations. He came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for sin. (Mark 10:45) His kingdom would start small but gradually become great, like a mustard seed. (Mark 4:26-29)

With that in mind, it’s possible that the gospel’s abrupt ending is there to intentionally challenge us to decide if we believe Jesus is the Messiah. Mark could be making the understood assumption that of course, the women eventually said something, that’s why you’re reading about this – but what do you think? Who do you think Jesus is?

THE RESURRECTION ACCOUNTS AREN’T HOPELESSLY CONTRADICTORY

“[T]he sources [regarding Jesus’ resurrection] are hopelessly contradictory, as we can see by doing a detailed comparison of the accounts in the Gospels.”

Bart Ehrman, The Historical Jesus (2000), p. 90

Bart’s claim is a strong one, but we’ve seen from this quick review that this claim just isn’t true. These accounts can all rather easily be reconciled. There are other alleged discrepancies in the accounts, and so this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive rebuttal to every objection that could be made. But in examining a handful of the skeptics’ toughest objections, we’ve seen that the narratives are very far from being hopelessly contradictory. Don’t let the critics ruin your Easter.

Could The Universe Be Eternal?

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Ryan Leasure

One of my favorite arguments for God’s existence is the Kalam Cosmological Argument. While this argument has historical roots, contemporary Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has popularized it more recently. The argument goes like this:

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.

This is a logically airtight argument. That is, if we can demonstrate that both premise (1) and (2) are true, the conclusion (3) necessarily follows as true. Let’s consider the premises in turn.

(1) Everything That Begins To Exist Has A Cause.

This first premise seems intuitively obvious. To reject it, one would have to posit that something can come from nothing. But that view has to be the height of absurdity. Nothing can’t produce anything. After all, our own experiences and scientific observations tell us that things just don’t pop into existence uncaused. None of us, for example, have ever experienced a new Corvette popping into existence in our driveways, as nice as that would be. Additionally, if things can pop into existence uncaused, then it remains inexplicable as to why this doesn’t happen all the time.

As one might imagine, most embrace this premise, although a few have sought to refute it over the years. Quentin Smith, for example, suggests that “the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing.”¹ But I must confess, I’m not sure I understand how this is possible. How did we come from nothing? How did nothing have the capability of causing anything at all?

If prior to the existence of the universe, nothing existed – including space, time, matter, or God – how did the universe come to be? People, like Quentin Smith, must violate everything we know about the cause and effect relationship in our universe to adopt this position. Even the great skeptic David Hume once remarked, “I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause.”²

To get around this metaphysical impossibility, skeptic Lawrence Krauss suggests that the universe came into being from nothing. But then he goes on to explain that “nothing” is really a quantum vacuum of fluctuating energy. And as many have already pointed out, Krauss equivocates on the word nothing. After all, a quantum vacuum of fluctuating energy isn’t no-thing. It’s something. One still needs to explain how this vacuum came to be.

Additionally, others have adopted the position that premise (1) is true for all things inside the universe, but it’s not necessarily true of the universe itself. The problem with this view is that it commits the taxicab fallacy. That is to say, it adopts the standard cause and effect principle when it’s convenient but then hops off — like one would a taxi — once it gets to its desired destination. Not only is this view logically inconsistent, it assumes that the causal principle is only true of the material world. But the cause and effect principle is a metaphysical principle, in that it’s true for all reality. Being cannot come from nonbeing.

Finally, the last objection to premise (1) usually comes in the form of a question: “Who caused God?” But this misunderstands the premise. The premise doesn’t state that “whatever exists has a cause.” Rather it states that “whatever begins to exist has a cause.” And theists have maintained that God has never had a beginning. He exists eternally by necessity. If he doesn’t, then he’s not God. This is what we mean when we say “God.” If he owes his existence to an external cause, that external cause would be God. So asking the question, “who caused God?” doesn’t help the skeptic get around premise (1). Theists have maintained for millennia now, that God is necessarily eternal. And to ask, “what caused him?” misunderstands our position.

(2) The Universe Began To Exist.

Since it’s difficult to disprove premise (1), many skeptics set their sights on premise (2) which asserts that the universe began to exist. In a previous post, I laid out scientific evidence which suggests the universe is not eternal. In this post, however, I want to focus on the philosophical reasons for rejecting a past-eternal universe.

To get around premise (2), the skeptic must maintain that the physical universe has existed for all eternity and has thus existed for an infinite number of moments. However, while we use infinity in mathematical or theoretical worlds, infinity, in reality, is impossible as it results in all sorts of logical absurdities.

Think, for example, about a meter stick that you divide in halves forever. Could you divide the meter stick in half an infinite number of times? How do you know the point at which you cross the threshold of a natural number to infinity? And if you reach infinity, isn’t it true that you could subdivide the meter stick one more time?

Perhaps the most famous example demonstrating the absurdity of infinity, in reality, is David Hilbert’s thought experiment — Hilbert’s Hotel. Hilbert told us to imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. Additionally, he said to imagine that all the rooms are occupied so that not a single room is vacant. Now, suppose a guest comes to the check-in desk and asks for a room. The manager says, “yes, of course, you can have a room.” He then proceeds to move the person in room #1 to room #2, and the person in room #2 to room #3, and the person in room #3 to room #4, and so forth to infinity. He then takes the new guest and places them in the vacant room #1. But remember, before the guest showed up, the infinite number of rooms were already occupied.

Now, Hilbert says to suppose an infinite number of guests show up to a fully occupied hotel asking for a room. “Of course, the manager says.” He then proceeds to move the person in room #1 to room #2, and the person in room #2 to room #4, and the person in room #3 to room #6, and so forth to infinity, always putting the previous occupants in a room number twice their original one. Because all the former occupants now reside in even-numbered rooms, the infinite number of new guests all go into the odd-numbered rooms. Remember, though, before the infinite number of guests arrived, all the infinite number of rooms were occupied.

In the first example, we already had an infinite number of guests, but we were able to add one more. So, the equation would look something like this: infinity + 1 = infinity. In the second example, we had an infinite number of guests already staying in the hotel before adding another infinite number of guests. This equation would look like this: infinity + infinity = infinity. Despite adding a different amount to infinity in both equations, we still ended up with the same sum of infinity. The mathematical impossibility of such a hotel demonstrates the absurdity of an actual infinity in reality.

Consider another example. The medieval philosopher al-Ghazali asks us to imagine both Jupiter and Saturn orbiting the sun from eternity past. If for every time Saturn orbits the sun, Jupiter orbits it 2.5 times, which planet has orbited the sun more times? Well, if both planets have been orbiting from eternity past, the answer is that they’ve both orbited the sun the same amount — infinity. But doesn’t that seem absurd? In fact, we know that the higher the number of orbits, the greater the discrepancy that exists between the two. But if Saturn has orbited an infinite number of times, even though Jupiter has been orbiting 2.5 times for every Saturn orbit, they’ve both orbited the sun the same amount.

These illustrations help demonstrate that an actual infinite number, in reality, is impossible. And if an actual infinity is impossible, the universe could not exist for an infinite number of moments.

These absurdities raise another significant problem for the person who wants to reject premise (2). And that problem is that it’s impossible to traverse the infinite. Put another way; if the universe has existed for an infinite number of days, we could never arrive at today because that would mean infinity came to an end. But infinity can’t come to an end. That’s what it means to be infinity.

Or think about it another way. Before we can arrive at today, yesterday would have to occur, and the day before that, and the day before that, and so on to infinity. But how does one know when we’ve reached infinity in the past? There’s no point at which we could start counting the days backward to today. That would be like counting all the negative numbers from infinity back to zero.

Interestingly, many skeptics acknowledge our universe isn’t past eternal based on the scientific evidence. A lot of these same skeptics, however, attempt to get around this problem by suggesting an eternal multiverse. But the absurdity of infinity still applies to a multiverse. It’s impossible to traverse an infinite number of points in any physical universe, even one beyond our ability to detect. So, the skeptic still faces the same problem.

In sum, since it’s absurd to suggest that the universe has existed for an infinite number of moments, the universe must have begun to exist a finite time ago.

(3) Therefore, The Universe Has A Cause.

Since whatever begins to exist has a cause (1), and the universe began to exist (2), it follows necessarily that the universe has a cause (3). Based on this argument, what can we know about the nature of this cause?

First, whatever caused the universe must come from outside the universe itself. That is to say, it must transcend the natural world.

Meaning, this cause must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial since space, time, and matter all came into existence at the beginning of the universe. Especially relevant to this argument is that the cause is timeless and, therefore, never had a beginning. Now, the skeptic might object that a past eternal cause faces the same dilemma of a past eternal universe. But he would be mistaken because the cause of the universe exists outside of, or independent of, time. That is to say, this cause existed in a timeless state and thus hasn’t traversed over an infinite number of points.

The cause must also be personal. We reach this conclusion based on the fact that there are only two possibilities for a spaceless, timeless, and immaterial entity — either an abstract object like a number or an unembodied mind. But abstract objects don’t possess causal power. They can’t do anything. This leaves a conscious mind who made a free will choice to create as the best explanation.

Finally, based on the size and complexity of our universe, this spaceless, timeless, immaterial, personal being must be all-powerful and extremely intelligent. And this being is what theists refer to as God.

Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Ryan Leasure

Richard Dawkins’ famous quote just about sums up how skeptics view the God of the Old Testament. He retorts:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.¹

Whew. Other than his obvious thesaurus skills, we notice that Dawkins takes great offense at God’s behavior in the Old Testament. He scorns Scripture’s portrayal of slavery and the poor treatment of women, but it’s the Canaanite invasion that attracts most of his contempt. For example, he uses words such as bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, racist, infanticidal, and genocidal to make his point loud and clear.

But this raises an obvious question. Did God really command genocide? Did he really order Israel to wipe the Canaanites from the face of the earth? Some texts seem to suggest this:

“So Joshua struck the whole land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings. He left none remaining, but devoted to destruction all that breathed, just as the LORD God of Israel commanded.” — Joshua 10:40

“Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword.” — Joshua 6:21

It certainly looks like genocide. But as I’ll argue in a minute, I’m persuaded something other than genocide is going on here.

Joshua’s Claims vs. Reality

I’m persuaded something else is going on because several times Joshua makes claims that they “utterly destroyed” the Canaanites and “left none alive,” yet we read shortly thereafter that several survivors remain. Let me give you a few examples:

Joshua’s Claim: In Joshua 10, he says they left “no survivors” and “destroyed everything that breathed” in “the entire land” and “put all the inhabitants to the sword.”

Reality: Judges 1 states several times that Israel had failed to conquer the entire land of Canaan and couldn’t drive out all the inhabitants.

On the one hand, Joshua tells us that they left “no survivors.” On the other hand, Judges 1 tells us multiple times that Israel failed to drive out all the Canaanites.

Joshua’s Claim: Josh 10:39 says “every person” in Debir was “utterly destroyed.”

Reality: Josh 11:21 states that later, Joshua “utterly destroyed” Anakites in Debir.

Again, Joshua says they “utterly destroyed every person” in Debir. But the very next chapter, we read of survivors in Debir who Joshua “utterly destroyed” again.

Joshua’s Claims: In Joshua 11:21, he tells us the Anakites were “cut off” and “utterly destroyed” in Hebron.

Reality: A few chapters later in Joshua 15:13-14, we read that “Caleb “drove out” the Anakites from Hebron.

Once again, Joshua claims utter destruction while a few chapters later, he tells us that Caleb drove out the same people group he just “utterly destroyed.”

Just as the LORD had commanded

Certainly, Joshua’s claims and reality appear to contradict one another. Yet we read on multiple occasions that Joshua did just as God had commanded. Consider these two examples:

Joshua captured all the cities of these kings, and all their kings, and he struck them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed them; just as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded. — Joshua 11:12

They struck every man with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them. They left no one who breathed. Just as the LORD had commanded Moses his servant… he left nothing undone of all that the LORD had commanded Moses. — Joshua 11:14-15

I’ve listed several examples where God commanded Joshua to “utterly destroy” the Canaanites. We’ve also seen that Joshua was faithful to do just as the LORD had commanded. Yet, we read several instances where survivors remain.

What is going on here?

God didn’t Mean Literal Genocide

As a quick caveat, I’m a biblical inerrantist. I’m not someone to play “fast and loose” with the text. Yet I’m persuaded that Joshua didn’t intend for us to interpret the “utterly destroy” language literally.

How could he if in Joshua 11 he tells us that they “utterly destroyed” the Anakites in Hebron, and then just a few chapters later in Joshua 15, he tells us that Caleb “drove out” those same Anakites in the same Hebron?

Would Joshua really be that irresponsible with his reporting? It’s doubtful. After all, God made it clear elsewhere that “utterly destroy” didn’t mean complete annihilation.

Consider Deuteronomy 7:2-4:

And when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction…you shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they will turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods.

Now, wait a second. God ordered them to devote the Canaanites to complete destruction, but then he forbids them from intermarrying with them. How could they intermarry with people they had completely obliterated?

It seems obvious that whatever “utterly destroy” means, it doesn’t mean genocide.

“Utterly Destroy” was Common Hyperbolic Rhetoric

Just recently, the Golden State Warriors defeated the Portland Trail Blazers by 22 points. As I read various ESPN articles and listened to different radio shows, I heard commentators say things like the Warriors “annihilated” or “killed” the Trail Blazers. And shockingly, nobody called them out for lying. You see, this is how people talk nowadays with respect to athletic competitions. We speak in hyperbolic terms.

In the same way, military leaders during Joshua’s day used to speak in exaggerated terms. They would regularly make claims that they “utterly destroyed” their enemies and left “no survivors.” In reality, they defeated their enemies but didn’t commit them to genocide. Yet nobody was calling them liars because this was how military leaders communicated back then. Consider these examples:²

King Mesha of Moab (840 BC) reported that the Northern Kingdom of Israel “has utterly perished for always.” — In truth, Israel was around long enough to be taken into exile one hundred years later.

Tuthmosis III of Egypt (1500 BC) declared that “the numerous army of Mitanni was overthrown within the hour, annihilated totally, like those now not existent.” — Actually, Mitanni continued to fight for another two hundred years.

Merneptah of Egypt (1230 BC) bragged “Israel is wasted, his seed is not.” — Guess who is still around today?

When Moses or Joshua spoke in exaggerated ways, they were simply adopting the common hyperbolic rhetoric that all ancient Near Eastern military leaders used. Everyone reading the accounts would have understood it that way, just like we understand hyperbolic sports language.

Drive them Out, Not Genocide

It seems that God’s desire was for Israel to drive out — or dispossess — the Canaanites from the land, not to commit them to genocide. Truth is, “driving out” language is used far more frequently with respect to the Canaanites than “utterly destroy” language.³

We saw earlier in Deuteronomy 7:2-4 that God ordered Israel to commit the Canaanites to “complete destruction,” and then he ordered them not to intermarry with the Canaanites afterwards. These dual commands only make sense if the “complete destruction” means to drive them out, rather than annihilating them altogether.

On another occasion, God threatens to “destroy” Israel for their disobedience, but this destruction did not mean genocide. It meant driving them away from the promised land. Consider Deuteronomy 28:63-64

And the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in destroying you. You shall be plucked off the land… And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other.

Here is a clear example where “destroying” really meant driving them out of the land. With this in mind, we can be confident that this was God’s purpose in issuing the “utterly destroy” commands.

Did they Really Commit Women and Children to Genocide?

As I’ve argued above, the stock language of “kill everything that’s alive” was hyperbolic language and really meant “driving out” the Canaanites. This means, the Israelites never slaughtered women or children in their conquests. They simply defeated the various Canaanite armies as they infiltrated the promised land.

After all, God had instructed Israel to always offer peace before attacking anyone (Deut. 20:10) which would have given women and children time to flee before any battle ensued. Unfortunately, almost nobody took them up on the offer (Josh. 11:19).

Furthermore, it appears that most of their battles occurred at military strongholds — like Jericho and AI — away from the populated civilian countrysides. Archeology digs suggest that Jericho housed roughly one hundred soldiers with no civilians,⁴ which explains how Israel could march around it seven times in one day. Rahab and maybe another female or two worked in the tavern to take care of travelers passing through.

Rahab, who turned from paganism, also serves as a great example that ethnic cleansing is not the goal of these conquests. The goal was to rid the area of the pagan influence that could easily lead Israel astray from worshipping Yahweh.

Why Drive Out the Canaanites?

In Genesis 15:16, God told Abraham that he would give the land to the Israelites after four hundred years of slavery in Egypt because the “sins of the Amorites (Canaanites) was not yet complete. That is, God wouldn’t drive them out yet, because it wouldn’t be justified. But after hundreds of years of wickedness, the Canaanites would be ripe for judgment.

What did they do that prompted this judgment exactly? While they were notorious for temple prostitution, incest, and bestiality, perhaps their worst crime was their practice of child sacrifice. It was their ritual practice to burn their children alive on the god Molech.

Skeptics often ask why God doesn’t stop evil. Well, here is a clear example where he does, but they still find fault nonetheless.

Ultimately, God wanted to establish the nation of Israel in the land free of pagan influence to provide a context for the coming Messiah. Yes, Israel defeated these Canaanite armies, but the ultimate goal was to be a blessing to all the nations (Gen. 12:3). And that blessing would come through the person of Jesus Christ who came to fulfill the law and die as the once for all sacrifice for the sins of the world.

*For more on this topic, check out Paul Copan’s book Is God A Moral Monster?

Ryan Leasure holds an M.A. from Furman University and an M.Div. from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He currently serves as a pastor at Grace Bible Church in Moore, SC.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2wFn2mK

June 9, 2019/by Guest

Did Jesus Have a Wife? – A Simple Response to The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Mikel Del Rosario

The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

So your skeptical friend just heard about something called, “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” But unlike the fiction Dan Brown created in the Da Vinci Code, this wasn’t in a movie or a novel. She just caught another sensational segment on the evening news talking about how controversial this new find is, and now she’s wondering, “Did Jesus have a wife?”

But here’s the thing. This fragment really isn’t rocking anyone’s world. Especially in the academic community. In fact, Karen L. King, the Harvard Professor who actually presented this at the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies said:

…this new discovery [highlight] does not prove that the historical Jesus was married. [/highlight] This gospel (is)…too late, historically speaking, to provide any evidence as to whether the historical Jesus was married or not

So this is all about later, Egyptian views about who Jesus was–not about the historical Jesus of the 1st century.

In this post, I’ll share a simple way to respond to this fragment because we’ve only got two real options here. But first, here’s what scholars are saying about the fragment itself.

Scholars are Skeptical

I got an e-mail about this from Dr. Dan Wallace as soon as this hit the nightly news. Later, he expanded on his initial thoughts on his blog, saying:

Does this fragment prove that Jesus was married? [highlight]The answer is an emphatic no [/highlight] … it says nothing about true history, about Jesus of Nazareth.

He says that if this thing wasn’t faked (May 2014 Update: Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Looks More and More Like a Fake), one possibility is that it’s a Gnostic source (basically a totally different religion) which meant something other than real marriage here (since they weren’t big into physical stuff being good). Another possibility is that it’s talking about the church as Jesus’ wife, kind of like John does in the book of Revelation. Other scholars like Dr. Darrell Bock and Dr. Gary Habermas agree, saying there just isn’t an awful lot of context here to even figure out what the author was trying to say.

How I Answer, “Did Jesus Have a Wife?”

So what can you say to a skeptical friend who asks you, “Did Jesus have a wife?” Seems like I’ve been hearing this question off and on for a while now. Sometimes, it comes in the form of a possibility: “Isn’t it possible that Jesus had a wife?” I usually agree, which sometimes surprises people and grabs their attention. I say, “Sure. Anything’s possible. But the question is, are there any good reasons to believe that the historical Jesus of Nazareth really had a wife?” If you want to be confident in conversations about this fragment, here’s what I suggest.

Get the Facts

Blow past the headlines and get the hard facts. There are a whole bunch of Web sites covering The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, but this short post on Talbot School of Theology’s The Good Book Blog will give you the skinny on this fragment (which despite its sensationalized name, really isn’t a gospel) that’s basically the size of a business card.

Dr. Darrell Bock was recently quoted by CNN as saying:

“It’s a small text with very little context…It’s a historical curiosity but doesn’t really tell us who Jesus was…[highlight]It’s one small speck of a text in a mountain of texts about Jesus. [/highlight]”

Indeed, even if this fragment turns out to be real, there are over 5,000 New Testament manuscripts and other ancient sources outside the Bible that talk about Jesus. None of these sources indicate that Jesus ever had a wife. And if you’re really interested in the historical Jesus, you know that the four traditional gospels–Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John–were recognized as the most accurate biographies of Jesus by A.D. 125. It’s really these ancient documents that give us the very best picture of Jesus’ life and his teachings.

How History Answers, “Did Jesus Have a Wife?”

So did Jesus have a wife? The best ancient, documentary evidence for the historical Jesus says “no.” As historian Dr. Mike Licona observes:

The most powerful evidence that Jesus was single comes from a deafening silence. In 1 Corinthians 9:5 Paul writes, “Do we [i.e., Paul and Barnabas] not have a right to take along a believing wife, as do the rest of the apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Peter?” It appears that all of Jesus’ disciples, all of his blood brothers, and even the lead apostle, Peter, were married. If Jesus had been married, …we certainly would expect for Paul to have mentioned it here, since it would have provided the ultimate example for his point.

A Simple Response You Can Use

So what can you say when someone asks you, “Did Jesus have a Wife?” after hearing something about this fragment? Let me share a simple response to The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. You don’t have to be a historian or a scholar to say this. It’s easy to remember and something you can use today. Tell your skeptical friend that when it comes to this little fragment, we’ve only got two real options here:

Option 1: It’s a fake fragment that tells us nothing about the historical Jesus. [See 2014 updates below]
Option 2: It’s a real fragment that tells us nothing about the historical Jesus.

As Christians, it’s important that we’re able to honestly look at something like this fragment without it messing with our faith. After all, if it’s fake, no one should care. If it’s a real 6th-century fragment, it could help us learn more about the kinds of things some Egyptian Gnostics were writing in Coptic hundreds of years after any of the actual eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life and teachings.

As for the question, “Was the historical Jesus married?” The historical evidence points to “no.”

Updates on the Fragment

2012

MSNBC: “One the most suspicious grammatical errors in the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife appeared to be a direct copy of a typo in the PDF file version of the Interlinear translation (of the Gospel of Thomas)”

More: See how Dr. Mark Goodacre compares the fragment text to the PDF.

Still More: Read Leo Depuydt’s conclusion Harvard Theological Review. “The author of this analysis has not the slightest doubt that the document is a forgery, and not a very good one at that.”

2014

Boston Globe: King responds to the alleged grammatical error and forgery charge: “such a combination of bumbling and sophistication seems extremely unlikely.”

Huffington Post: “Scientists have concluded the fragment dates back to at least the sixth to ninth centuries, and possibly as far back as the fourth century.” Still, 6th to the 9th century is way too late to tell us anything about the historical Jesus. Furthermore, there is no external or internal evidence suggesting this goes back to the 2nd or 4th century. According to Dr. Bock, “It is a suggestion based on when these discussions commonly arose. That is all it is.”

[highlight] New! [/highlight] 05/01/2014 Wall Street Journal: How The ‘Jesus Wife’ Hoax Fell Apart. 05/02/2014 GLive Science: Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Looks More and More Like a Fake. Tyndale House quotes Askeland on the “smoking gun”:

The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife was one of several fragments which were announced by Karen King. There was also in this group of fragments a fragment of the Gospel of John in Coptic. Just recently, when I gazed upon Karen King’s Coptic John fragment, what I saw was immediately clear. [highlight] Not only were the writing tool, ink and hand exactly the same as those of the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife fragment, but also the method of composition was the same. As I looked at Karen King’s Gospel of John fragment, I finally saw that it was clearly copied (by the forger) from Herbert Thompson’s 1924 edition of Codex Qau. [/highlight] Indeed, the Gospel of John fragment had exactly the same line breaks as Codex Qau – a statistical improbability if it were genuine.

Scholars Discuss The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife (2012)

Did Jesus have a wife? Sit in on a discussion I attended on responding to The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife and get the details from Dr. Richard Taylor and Dr. Darrell Bock at Dallas Theological Seminary. You’ll even get to recite some Coptic before the end of this video! How many people get a chance to do that? I rarely post full-length videos on my blog. But if you’re read this far, this one will definitely be worth your time.

Mikel Del Rosario, M.A., Th.M. helps Christians explain their faith with courage and compassion. He is a doctoral student in the New Testament department at Dallas Theological Seminary. Mikel teaches Christian Apologetics and World Religion at William Jessup University. He is the author of Accessible Apologetics and has published over 20 journal articles on apologetics and cultural engagement with his mentor, Dr. Darrell Bock. Mikel holds an M.A. in Christian Apologetics with highest honors from Biola University and a Master of Theology (Th.M.) from Dallas Theological Seminary where he serves as Cultural Engagement Manager at the Hendricks Center and a host of the Table Podcast. Visit his Web site at ApologeticsGuy.com.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2M8oWa2

May 26, 2019/by Guest

Answering Two Common Objections To The Author Of Life Argument

Atheism, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Evan Minton

When atheists accuse God of being immoral, they usually point to nasty Old Testament accounts like the conquest of Canaan, God sicking two female bears on a group of youths for harassing Elisha, or destroying humanity in a massive flood (Genesis 6-9). In addition to various other considerations regarding these specific incidences, one factor I always bring up is that God does no wrong in ending the life of an individual human being. Why? Because He is the author of life and therefore He can take life as He sees fit. It’s wrong for humans to kill humans because we aren’t the Author Of Life. The Author Of Life can take life. If you didn’t give life, it isn’t yours to take. It is God’s prerogative as God to decide when the date of our death is.

How Skeptics Typically Respond To This

Two common responses from the skeptic are typically raised against this as reductio ad absurdum arguments. First, they’ll say, if giving someone life entails that you have the prerogative to take that life, then this would entail that parents have the right to kill their children since parents gave their children life. Second, they’ll say something like “If a scientist were able to create a living thing in the lab, your logic would entail that the scientist would have the right to kill that living thing.” Professor Utonium could smother the PowerPuff Girls in their sleep. Dr. Frankenstein could kill his monster. Yet we intuitively recoil at such an idea. This suggests that there’s something wrong with the argument.

The Problem With These Responses: The Fallacy Of The False Analogy

The problem with these responses is that it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. As far as parents and children go, parents only give their offspring life insofar as they come together in sexual union, and the mother allows the child to grow to full term before giving birth. Yet, my mother did not create any of her eggs, and my father didn’t create any of their sperm. Secondly, they wouldn’t exist unless their parents likewise came together in sexual union and so on. Ultimately there would be no sexual reproductive process if the universe weren’t created and finely tuned for life. As I recently told an atheist on Twitter “Parents and having sex and conceiving VS. God creating life is comparing apples to oranges. Create a living, breathing spirit by the word of your mouth; then we’ll talk about whether you can kill it.” The point is that God is the ULTIMATE creator of all things (Genesis 1, John 1:1-3) and sustains everything’s existence moment by moment (Colossians 1:17). While my mother and father certainly participated in my creation, they didn’t and couldn’t have done it apart from the will of God. Eve recognized this when she gave birth to her firstborn son Cain. She said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man.” (Genesis 4:1)

Regarding the lab creation, again, the major key difference between God taking life and you taking the life of your lab experiment is that God is the supreme Creator of literally everything (as I’ve just said). There wouldn’t be anything if God had decided not to make the universe. Even if you could make life in a lab, you wouldn’t be the ultimate source of life. It reminds me of that joke in which scientists tell God that they create lifelike He can, and when they scoop up a pile of dirt to do so, God responds with “Hey! Hands off! Get your own dirt!”

Is The Argument Ad-Hoc?

Recently when debating this issue on Twitter, an atheist accused The Author-Of Life argument as being “ad-hoc.” The ad hoc fallacy occurs when you make up an explanation just to save your belief from being refuted. In this case, the Twitter atheist accused me of making up this God-Has-Sovereignty-Over-Life-And-Death position just to avoid the conclusion that God did something wrong in sicking the bears on Elisha’s harassers or exterminating the Canaanites.

However, this charge would only stand if that were my reason for making the proposal, but it isn’t. The church has long held that God is sovereign over life and death precisely because He is the source of all life. This isn’t something I or other contemporary apologists came up with to get God off the hook. Only if this position on God’s sovereignty over life were invented solely with the purpose of answering God-Is-Immoral arguments would the charge of the ad hoc fallacy stand. I asked this person “Can you show me historical evidence that any of the church fathers or the Rabbis that preceded the rise of Christianity held to the view that God has sovereignty over life and death SPECIFICALLY to answer objections like the Elisha bears incident?” He denied that he could and ultimately said that it was unprovable. I told him he ought to refrain from making unprovable assertions in the future.

In Conclusion

The attempts of the skeptic to make a murderer out of God fail.

“The Lord giveth and The Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of The Lord!” – Job 21:1 (KJV)

Evan Minton is a Christian Apologist and blogger at Cerebral Faith (www.cerebralfaith.blogspot.com). He is the author of “Inference To The One True God” and “A Hellacious Doctrine.” He has engaged in several debates which can be viewed on Cerebral Faith’s “My Debates” section. Mr. Minton lives in South Carolina, USA.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2O4YPML

October 30, 2018/by Guest

Did Jesus Even Claim to Be God?

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By J. Brian Huffling

I sat down with some Jehovah’s Witnesses who were visiting with me. The elder who was leading our study stated that Jesus never claimed to be God. Jehovah’s Witnesses argue that Jesus is a created being. Liberal “Christians” argue that Jesus never claimed to be God. Many other groups say the same. If such is the case, then Christians have some explaining to do as they teach that Jesus is God. But did he ever claim this title for himself? Let’s look at what he actually said.

I am going to argue that, yes, Jesus, in fact, did claim to be God. This can be seen by the fact that he claimed to be identical with God in various ways.

Jesus Claimed to Be Identical with God

Jesus made statements about himself that were expressly made of Yahweh in the Old Testament. Let’s look at the OT claims and then Jesus’ claims.

“I AM”

One of the clearest passages of Jesus claiming to be God is his claiming to be Yahweh as being the great I AM of Exodus 3:14.

OT Claim: “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’” The designation “I am” was solely reserved for Yahweh and was recognizes by the Jews as such. (Exodus 3:14)

Jesus Claim: “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.‘ ⁵⁹So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple” (John 8:58-58). Clearly, the Jews understood Jesus to be making himself equal with God. That’s why they wanted to kill him.

First and the Last

OT Claim: “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last; besides me, there is no god.’” (Isaiah 44:6)

Jesus’ Claim: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, ‘Fear not, I am the first and the last, ¹⁸and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.’” (Note for Jehovah’s Witnesses: This can’t be Jehovah since for them Jehovah never died.)

Having the Glory of God

Jesus claimed to have the glory that only God had.

OT Claim: “I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.”

Jesus’ Claim: “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

His Acceptance of Worship

The OT and NT also forbade the worship of any other being, idol or otherwise (Exodus 20:1-4; Deut. 5:6-9; Acts 14:15; Rev. 22:8-9). However, Jesus accepted worship on several occasions and never reprimanded anyone else for it (Matt. 14:33; Matt. 20:28; John 9:38; John 20:28). In this last example, Thomas explicitly calls Jesus God and Jesus didn’t correct him.

He Claimed to Have Authority and Equality with God

Throughout Matthew 5 Jesus claims his words have the same authority as God. Repeatedly he says regarding the OT, “You have heard it said, but I say to you . . .” (See 5:22, 28, 32)

In the baptismal formula he gave at the Great Commission, he claimed equality with the Father and Spirit: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18-20)

He claimed to be able to forgive sins, which only God could do: “And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ ⁶Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ^{7 ‘}Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’” (Mark 2:5-7)

Perhaps the clearest passage is John 10:30-33: Jesus claimed to be one with the Father. “I and the Father are one.” ³¹The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. ³²Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” ³³The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”

Objections to Jesus Being God

Objection: Some will object that Jesus can’t be God. God, they say, is infinite and unlimited; however, Jesus claimed to be limited in various ways. For example, in Matthew 24:36 Jesus said, referring to his second coming, “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”

Response: We have to understand that Jesus did in fact claim (and prove) to be God. The traditional Christian teaching is that Jesus had two natures even though he was just one person. One nature was his divine nature that he shares with the Father and Spirit. The other is his human nature. Sometimes he refers to his divine nature, such as having glory with God, being the first and the last, etc. However, sometimes he refers to his human nature. When we ask questions about his ability to do something or know something we have to be clear as to whether we are talking about his divine or human nature. In this verse, Jesus is referring to his limited human nature. This does not deny his divine nature.

Objection: Jesus also said “The Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28)

Response: The same basic answer is used here. The Father is greater in office while not being greater in nature, that is, in Jesus’ divine nature. Of course, the Father is greater than Jesus’ human nature. An illustration may make this clearer. The President of the United States is greater than me. However, he is only greater in office. We are both of the same nature.

Objection: in Matthew 19:17 we read: “And behold, a man came up to him, saying, ‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ ¹⁷And he said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good.’” In other words, only God is good, so why are you calling me good?

Response: Notice there is no explicit denial of his deity. He is likely saying, “Do you realize that in calling me good you are calling me God?” However, even if this is not what he is saying, there is no explicit denial of being God, and we have already seen several (select) examples of him claiming to be God.

Conclusion

Above are a few of the many passages where Jesus claims to be equal with God in various ways. The notion that he didn’t claim to be God is simply false. He was also understood to be God by his followers and the Church. Objections to this idea fail when properly examined. Jesus, in fact, claimed to be God.

*I am indebted as a student of Dr. Norman L. Geisler for the above connections and general thought. See for example his Christian Apologetics.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2QiYEzE

September 18, 2018/by Guest

The Evidence For Jesus’ Resurrection, Part 9: Probabilities and Plagarism

Atheism, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Evan Minton

This is part 9 in a blog post series on the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. In parts 3, 4, 5, and 6, we’ve seen powerful historical evidence that (1) Jesus died by Roman crucifixion, that (2) His tomb was found empty the following Sunday morning, that (3) the twelve disciples believed they saw Jesus alive after His death, that (4) a church persecutor named Paul converted to Christianity on the basis of what he perceived to be an appearance of the risen Jesus, and (5) a skeptic named James converted to Christianity on the basis of what he perceived to be appearance of the risen Jesus.

In part 7, we looked at various ways that skeptics have tried to account for the minimal facts, and we saw that they all fail. No naturalistic theory can account for all 5 of the minimal facts. The only theory that can account for them is not a naturalistic theory at all, but a supernaturalistic theory: God raised Jesus from the dead. The hypothesis that God The Father miraculous raised Jesus to life explains all of the data perfectly. It explains why Jesus’ tomb was found empty, why His disciples (and Mary Magdalene) believed they saw Him alive after His death. It explains why a hard-headed, hard-hearted terrorist like Saul of Tarsus would become one of the people he sought to destroy virtually overnight, and it would explain why James, despite being skeptical of his brother’s claims, would become such a firm believer that he would be willing to die a martyr’s death. The resurrection explains every piece of data that is in need of explanation, but even the best of the naturalistic theories could explain one of the five facts at most. The majority didn’t even explain that many. The “He Is Risen” hypothesis has exhaustive explanatory scope and power and ergo outshines any other proposed explanation. In part 8 (the previous blog post), we saw that even though some may have some lingering questions about the resurrection (e.g. why didn’t Jesus appear to convince his enemies?), these questions had good answers, but most of them wouldn’t have affected the case for the resurrection even if they went unanswered.

The state of scholarship today regarding the historical Jesus is this; the 5 minimal facts are true, skeptical non-Christian historians can’t come up with a good way to explain them, but they won’t admit a resurrection.

Why is this? It could be (1) they’re on a happiness quest, not a truth quest. They just don’t want it to be true. (2) They have some lingering questions like the ones I addressed in the previous blog post.

I answered some of the more minor lingering questions in the previous blog post, but in this blog post, I’ll address two more. Nine out of ten of the unanswered questions in the previous blog post wouldn’t have affected the case even if left unanswered, but there are a couple of remaining objections that would impact the case if left unrefuted.

Objection 1: The Resurrection Is So Improbable, We Can Never Conclude That It Occurred
Some skeptics will say that we need more evidence for the resurrection than for any other event in history because the probability against a resurrection ever occurring is so extreme. After all, the vast majority of people who have ever lived have remained in their graves. They’ll say “Even though our naturalistic proposals are abysmal failures, they’re still at least more likely than a miraculous resurrection.” As a result, we can either never have enough evidence to affirm the resurrection, or at the very least we need far more evidence for it than other events. Sometimes skeptics will assert that the experience against miracles (i.e., I’ve never witnessed one, you probably haven’t either) militates against the resurrection hypothesis. The evidence for natural events far outweighs supernatural events by leaps and bounds.

If this objection succeeds, then it would seem that the skeptical scholar’s attitude of “We can’t explain it, but it’s probably not a miraculous resurrection” would be justified. What are we to say to this objection?

1: I’m Not Concerned With Probabilities, But With Explanatory Ability

I am not arguing here that a miraculous resurrection is the most probable explanation of the data, only that it is the best explanation. The resurrection is the best explanation of the facts no matter what number a person might ascribe to its probability. The resurrection is the best explanation because it explains all of the data, every single fact, while the naturalistic explanations we looked at in part 7 and fail miserably. The resurrection succeeds in explanatory power. Moreover, it also succeeds in explanatory scope. Even the best of the naturalistic explanations explain, at most, one, but most of them don’t even explain that many. Most of them explain 0 of the facts. Every single possible naturalistic theory one could come up with fails, but the resurrection, the supernaturalistic explanation, succeeds. And therefore, we ought to conclude that this hypothesis is the true explanation. Detective Sherlock Holmes would agree with me. Sherlock Holmes once said, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” (emphasis mine).[1] The Resurrection is the only explanation that remains, and it’s the only one that adequately accounts for all five facts. Ergo, in Detective Holmes’ reasoning, it must be the truth. If you can think of another explanation, be my guest, but until then, I’m sticking with “He is risen”.

It’s not ad hoc or contrived. It’s plausible in light of the religious-historical context of Jesus’ life and claims (i.e. His claim to be God, see here). It outstrips its rival theories in the aforementioned. It passes all 6 of C.B Mcullah’s tests for a viable historical theory. And therefore, I believe we are epistemologically warranted in affirming that it occurred. It’s the only hypothesis that works! I don’t care about probability. To quote General Han Solo “Don’t tell me the odds,” instead, give me a viable naturalistic theory. If you can’t, and if the best and brightest minds in scholarship haven’t been able to after all this time, then maybe, just maybe, Jesus rose from the dead.

2: If Jesus Did Not Rise From The Dead, Either The Minimal Facts Shouldn’t Exist Or A Naturalistic Theory Should Be Able To Explain Them

I would argue that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then it’s extremely improbable that the minimal facts should be facts. I would argue that in light of the hypothesis “Jesus did not rise from the dead,” then His tomb should be occupied, His disciples should never have claimed and come to believe that they had seen him, and Paul and James should have remained skeptical the rest of their lives.

Here’s an analogy; let’s say that a woman is brought before a jury on charges of murder. She’s accused of having killed her young son. Now, at the start, you might think that it’s extremely unlikely that she is guilty. After all, the vast majority of mothers who’ve ever lived do not harm their children. They love and care for them. In light of this background information, the claim that she is guilty is enormously improbable, and you’d be justified in thinking that if that background knowledge was all you had to go on. However, investigators found a bloody knife in the back seat of her car next to a mud-covered shovel. In her house, they found a pair of pants that also had been chemically spot cleaned. They also have several eyewitnesses who said that they heard a child screaming just before seeing the defendant carrying a black garbage bag and a shovel out her house in the middle of the night, the same night as the murder. When investigators found the dead child, he was in a black garbage bag. The defendant also had a history of mental illness and domestic violence. In light of these “minimal facts,” the claim “She is not guilty” becomes improbable. The defendant’s attorney throughout every alternative explanation he could think of, but the Jury all saw the various holes in them and rejected them. They knew that the claim “This woman murdered her child” could explain all of the evidence. Even the best of the defense attorney’s explanations could account for one piece of evidence at the crime scene at most, but the majority of his alternative explanations didn’t even go that far. The only explanation that worked is “This woman murdered her child.”

Now, it would be an invalid move on the part of the defense attorney to argue that the majority of mothers care for their children rather than killing them, and he’s never witnessed a woman murder her child, and so the probability against any mother ever killing her child is so great that they should return with a “not guilty” verdict. Sure, the hypothesis “this woman killed her child” is improbable in light of the background information that mothers usually don’t kill their sons and that we’ve personally never witnessed a mother kill her son, but the guilty verdict is still justified.

In fact, the existence of the evidence is improbable if she is not guilty. If she’s not guilty, the detectives should not have found what they found. If she didn’t do it, what are the odds that “the minimal facts” at the trial (the blood-covered knife in the back of the car, the muddy shovel in the trunk, the dead child being found in a black garbage bag, the eyewitness statements of her leaving the house with a black garbage bag and shovel, and the history of mental illness and domestic violence) should all exist? In the same way, the existence of the minimal facts (2) Jesus’ Empty Tomb, (3) Postmortem Appearances To The Disciples, (4) Postmortem Appearance To The Skeptic James, and (5) the postmortem appearance to Paul, should not exist if Jesus did not rise from the dead. It’s enormously improbable that these five facts would be true if Jesus did not rise from the dead.

At the very least, if the woman didn’t kill her child, there should be a viable alternative theory than “she is guilty.” Likewise, there should at least be a viable explanation for the minimal facts than “He is risen.” Alas, there is no other explanation.

3: The Existence Of God Bolsters The Probability Of A Resurrection

The objection I’m addressing in this subsection would never be made by Muslims or adherents to Judaism. Why? Because they believe miracles can, do, and have occurred. Why? Because they believe that a God powerful enough to perform miracles exist. They would object to the resurrection on theological grounds, but not on the grounds that an event like this is improbable.

If an omnipotent God exists, then the likelihood of this God raising Jesus from the dead increases. Of course, I think the resurrection can be an argument for the existence of God in and of itself,[2]but nevertheless, if God’s existence can be demonstrated, any improbability of a miraculous resurrection shrinks drastically. I have argued in several articles on CerebralFaith.blogspot.com and in my book Inference To The One True God: Why I Believe In Jesus Instead Of Other Gods that there are several good arguments for the existence of God. And in my book, I argue that only the Christian God matches the attributes that the God that these syllogistic arguments prove exists.

Conclusion
Imagine a scale in your mind’s eye and picture bricks on each side of the scale. On one side of the scale, the bricks are labeled, “The Existence Of God”, “The Five Minimal Facts”, “No Theory Other Than The Resurrection Hypothesis can explain the 5 minimal facts”, “Jesus made claims to divinity prior to being executed”[3], and “Jesus Predicted His Resurrection”[4]. On the other side, there are bricks labeled, “The majority of dead men stay dead,” “I’ve never personally seen a miracle,” “I have a cosmic authority problem.” Okay, I’m joking about that last one.

Which side of the scale is leaning more? The side in favor of Jesus’ miraculous resurrection. In light of the full scope of the evidence, in light of all the scale’s “bricks,” Jesus’ resurrection becomes more probable than not. Now, it’s true that I haven’t demonstrated that all of the aforementioned bricks are there in this series, but they are there, and I talk about one of them in footnote No. 5 and the other in Appendix A (of the e-book adaption of this series). When you take all of the data into consideration, Jesus’ resurrection comes out to be probable.

By the way, William Lane Craig responds to this objection in Part 23 of “The Doctrine Of Christ” section of his Defenders 2 class. But it’s rather technical. I gave a more accessible response, but for those interested in a more technical response, click here.

Objection 2: Jesus Was Just Plagiarized From Dying And Rising Gods Of Pagan Religions

The irony of this blog post is that I’m addressing two different objections that come from two different groups of people. The first one is made widely by skeptical historians and scholars, but the second one is only reported by lay people, skeptics you encounter in internet chat rooms and on social media. No scholar would ever put forth this objection.

What is the objection? Well, if you surveyed atheist blogs at all, you’ve probably heard that Jesus is just a copy of pagan gods in mythology. Jesus’ story mirrors the story of Horus, Mithras, Krishna, and others. Therefore, Jesus’ resurrection isn’t a historical event, but a plagiarized story. Many skeptics use this argument to go so far as to say Jesus of Nazareth didn’t even exist at all! This argument was popularized by the movie Zeitgeist. There are several problems with this claim.

1: The similarities are so vague, claims of plagiarism are implausible

When you actually compare the gospels’ claims about Jesus with the stories of Horus, Mithras, etc. what you find is that (A) some of these similarities don’t exist at all, and (B) the ones that do are so vague and ambiguous that it’s a stretch to say that the New Testament copied these stories.

Let’s look at just a few examples: One example is that Dionysius is said to have died and risen again like Jesus. But when you examine the stories, you find that Dyonisis wasn’t miraculously raised from the dead by his deity Father, but that his mother pieced him back together. Other stories say that Dionysus was killed by Zeus swallowing his heart and his heart was made into a potion given to Semele. Does this sound like Jesus at all? Dionysis was born on December 25th just like Jesus. This proves plagiarism, right? Well, first of all, it isn’t strange for multiple people to share the same birthday. I share a birthday with actor Zachary Quinto, but that doesn’t mean that if biographies were written about our lives that you could claim one copied the other. Secondly, The Bible never says that Jesus was born on December 25th. That date for Christmas was chosen by The Pope hundreds of years after Jesus was born.[5] Most modern scholars believe Jesus was born in the summer, sometime between June and September. The people behind Zeitgeist were so ignorant of the facts that they didn’t even know The Bible didn’t give us Jesus’ birthday date!

It is said that Mithras was born of a virgin, just like Jesus. Newsflash: Mithras was born out of a rock. Now, I guess technically one could say that since rocks can’t have sex, the rock was a virgin, and therefore you do have a virgin birth. But by that logic, Frosty The Snowman was also born of a virgin since I’m pretty sure that old soot hat of his wasn’t gettin’ any! This is ridiculous. The birth of Mithras was nothing like the birth of Jesus. Jesus was born of a human woman, not a rock.

What about Horus? During his battle with Set, he lost an eye, but he never died. Since he never died, he couldn’t be resurrected. Death is a prerequisite to resurrection.

Osiris was killed by his brother, chopped up into 14 pieces and the pieces were scattered all over Egypt. The goddess Isis retrieved all of these pieces (except for one) and put him back together again. Moreover, Osiris wasn’t resurrected but merely given the status as god of the gloomy underworld.[6] Now, does this sound like Jesus’ death and resurrection? Sure, you have a guy who is killed, and he’s brought back to life in a sense, but Jesus wasn’t chopped up into 14 pieces by one of his brothers and had his body parts scattered all over Israel, He was crucified by the Roman government. Moreover, when Jesus rose from the dead, He had all of his parts (unlike Osiris). The only thing Jesus and Osiris have in common is that they both died and came back to life, but the skeptics aren’t taking the various differences between these two into account.

These are just a few of the not-so-similarities between Jesus and pagan gods.

2: This Logic Would Bring Us To Believe Doctor Who Is Copied From Jesus

If you want to cherry pick vague similarities to prove plagiarism, then you should believe that the writers of Doctor Who ripped off The New Testament.

Doctor Who — Is 2,000 years old as of season 10 of the modern series. He even said in one episode “I’m old enough to be your messiah!”

Jesus – is 2,000 years old as of the 21st century.

Doctor Who — has an archnemesis called “The Master.”

Jesus — has an archnemesis called “The Devil.”

Doctor Who — Came to Earth from another world (Gallifrey)

Jesus — Came to Earth from another world (Heaven).

Doctor Who — called a Time “Lord.”

Jesus — Called “Lord”

Doctor Who — traveled around with many companions.

Jesus — Traveled around with many companions.

Doctor Who — Regenerates when he is fatally wounded.

Jesus — Rose from the dead.

Doctor Who — Isn’t recognized by people who knew him prior to regenerating (e.g. Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart).

Jesus — wasn’t recognized by the two men on the road to Emaus after rising from the dead.

You can see how ridiculous this line of argumentation is. It’s no wonder why professional historians and scholars of ancient history give this objection no credence. Yes, there are some similarities between The Doctor and Jesus, but they’re vague similarities. The differences between them far outnumber whatever they might have in common. The same goes for the pagan myths and Jesus.

3: This Logic Would Lead Us To Believe The Titanic Sinking Wasn’t A Historical Event

A long time ago, there was an incredible tragedy that occurred. A huge passenger ship, which people said was unsinkable, on a cold night in the North Atlantic about 200 miles off of Newfoundland, struck an iceberg and sank. Many people died because there weren’t enough lifeboats. Now, you believe I’m talking about The Titanic, right? Nope. I’m talking about a ship called Titan, in a novel written in 1898, fourteen years before the wreck of the Titanic, called The Wreck of the Titan written by a person named Morgan Robertson.

Unlike Jesus and the pagan gods, the parallels between the fiction of The Wreck Of The Titan and the historical event of The Titanic actually are striking! However, I don’t know of anyone who would argue that there never really was a ship called The Titanic that sank. Thanks to this silly theory, I now have Celene Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” playing in my mind now. Thanks, atheists who don’t do their research.

4: Most Of These Stories Come After The Rise Of Christianity

As if the above 3 points weren’t enough to refute this silly objection, most of the pagan myths post-date Christianity. Therefore, if any plagiarizing were being done, it would be done in the opposite direction![7]

5: Jews were committed to an exclusive faith.

Jews were adamantly committed to their religious beliefs and traditions and refused to blend their religious ideas and traditions with that of others (a view known as syncretism). Mystery religions were inclusive. They would adopt any doctrine or theological concept that they wanted to. They were very loose and didn’t have a measure of orthodoxy, but Judaism and Christianity were exclusive. In general, Jewish people adamantly resisted outside religious ideas, most likely due to the fact that they had, by the time of the first century, learned from The Old Testament that God did not tolerate mingling with other nations.
In Antiquity of the Jews, the Jewish historian Josephus talks about an event in which the Romans try to force something on the Jews and how the Jews responded to it.:

“But now Pilate, the procurator of Judea, removed the army from Cesarea to Jerusalem, to take their winter quarters there, in order to abolish the Jewish laws. So he introduced Caesar’s effigies, which were upon the ensigns, and brought them into the city; whereas our law forbids us the very making of images; on which account the former procurators were wont to make their entry into the city with such ensigns as had not those ornaments. Pilate was the first who brought those images to Jerusalem, and set them up there; which was done without the knowledge of the people, because it was done in the nighttime; but as soon as they knew it, they came in multitudes to Cesarea, and interceded with Pilate many days, that he would remove the images; and when he would not grant their requests, because it would tend to the injury of Caesar, while yet they persevered in their request, on the sixth day he ordered his soldiers to have their weapons privately, while he came and sat upon his judgment seat, which seat was so prepared in the open place of the city, that it concealed the army that lay ready to oppress them; and when the Jews petitioned him again, he gave a signal to the soldiers to encompass them round, and threatened that their punishment should be no less than immediate death, unless they would leave off disturbing him, and go their ways home. But they threw themselves upon the ground, and laid their necks bare, and said they would take their death very willingly, rather than the wisdom of their laws should be transgressed; upon which Pilate was deeply affected with their firm resolution to keep their laws inviolable, and presently commanded the images to be carried back from Jerusalem to Cesarea.” (Josephus, Works Of Flavius Josephus, 18:55–59)

It is undeniable that Christianity sprung up out of a thoroughly Jewish culture. The idea that a group of devout Jews would see ideas in other religions and then adopt them into their own religious views is incredibly implausible in light of what we know about ancient Jews.
6: Even If This Went Unanswered, It Wouldn’t Hurt The Case For The Resurrection

The 5 minimal facts were true even if the similarities between Jesus and these pagan myths were as strong as the chatroom atheists would have us believe. None of the arguments given in favor of Jesus’ death by crucifixion, his empty tomb, or the apostles claiming and believing to have seen him alive after his death would be affected by this objection even if went unanswered.

As I said in part 8, poorly attested miracles (as the pagan myths certainly are) cannot be used to rule out well-evidenced ones.

Conclusion

These two last-ditch efforts on the part of skeptics to keep us from being justified in believing in Jesus’ resurrection are failures.

To skeptics: are you convinced yet? If so, what are you going to do about it? Now that you’re convinced, what are you going to do with Jesus? Check out the next and final blog post in this series to know where to go from here.

Notes

[1] Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four, ch. 6 (1890) Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four (Doubleday p. 111)

[2] My argument goes like this

1 – If Jesus rose from the dead, then a miracle has occurred.

2 – If a miracle has occurred, then there exists a miracle working God.

3 – Jesus rose from the dead.

4 – Therefore, a miracle has occurred.

5 – Therefore, God exists

In order for the conclusion to be true, the three premises have to be true. I think everyone would agree with premises 1 and 2. The only debatable one is premise three. Premise three can be arrived at through The Minimal Facts Approach.

[3] See the article “A Quick Case For Jesus’ Divine Self Understanding” if you’re reading this on Cerebral Faith. If you’re reading the e-book adaption of this blog series, see Appendix A. The blog post will be found copy-pasted there, though it will be edited slightly to avoid repetitiousness (e.g I’ll remove the explanation of historical methodology).

[4] Did Jesus Predict His Resurrection? There are at least four reasons for affirming that He did. First of all, Jesus’ predictions concerning his resurrection are usually denied because the resurrection itself is denied as a historical event. If the resurrection is historical, and we’ve seen in parts 2-7 that it most likely is, then this is not a good reason for rejecting the prediction accounts. Secondly, when Jesus predicted his resurrection from the dead, the gospels depict the disciples as being confused, as not knowing what the heck Jesus is talking about (see Mark 8:31–33;9:31–32; 14:27– 31; Luke 24:13–24). On the basis of the principle of embarrassment, we can conclude that these instances are historical. The gospel authors wouldn’t depict the disciples as dim-witted. If Mark really wrote Mark and got his gospel from Peter (as church tradition says), then it would be especially unreasonable to believe Mark 8:31-33, Mark 9:31-32, and Mark 14:27-31 to be made up. Can you imagine Peter telling Mark “Hey, write this down! Even though Jesus explained his death and resurrection to us over and over, we just didn’t get it.” if it weren’t true? However, even if one wants to attribute these to some early church fathers or something, the principle of embarrassment can still be applied, as the early church had a high respect for the disciples. Thirdly, Jesus’ use of the title “Son of Man” in reference to his resurrection predictions (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34) weighs in favor of authenticity. As I point out in Appendix A (of the e-book adaption of this blog post series), this saying of Jesus is multiply attested. And moreover, the principle of dissimilarity applies since Jesus was never called “Son Of Man” anywhere else in The New Testament, and the early church fathers never referred to Jesus by this title. If this saying were made up by the early church and retroactively inserted into the mouth of Jesus, we would expect the early church fathers and NT epistles to use this title of Jesus more frequently. Finally, the principle of multiple attestations applies to Jesus predicting that He would get out of his grave (see Matthew 12:38–40; 16:1–4,21; 17:23; 20:19; Mark 8:31–32; 9:31; 10:33; Luke 9:22; John 2:18–21. Cf. Mark 14:58; Luke 11:29–30).

[5] https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/25th.shtml

[6] My sources for this information: https://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=10&article=186, and https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/jesus-and-pagan-mythology/ , and http://i.stack.imgur.com/29UE7.jpg, and “The Case For The Resurrection Of Jesus” by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, pages 90-91, Kregle.

[7] I have several sources for this information. (1) – Gary R. Habermas, “Resurrection Claims in Non-Christian Religions,” Journal of Religious Studies 25 (1989): 167–77. (2) – Günter Wagner, Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967), 197–201. (3) Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, “The Case For The Resurrection Of Jesus,” page 90, Kregle.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2l364c3

June 17, 2018/by Guest

Tag Archive for: Objections

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