Many people are under the impression that Christians are so divided on theology, there is hardly anything that unites them. I’ve often told my students that there is a basic core of Christian beliefs that unites Bible-believing Christians.
What I just found out is that this “core” is actually more extensive than I thought. For example, check out the 42 Articles of the essentials of a Christian Worldview. This document was produced by a coalition of “evangelical leaders from every major denominational and theological perspective…Anabaptist, Lutheran, Wesleyan, Calvinist and Arminian, charismatic and non-charismatic, covenant and dispensational theologians as well as premillennial, amillennial, and postmillennial theologians. They all agreed on these 42 articles.
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Freedom from Religion
I’m still mulling over the “Imagine no Religion” billboards by the Freedom from Religion organization.
So imagine no Religion. Just imagine all the people who would no longer benefit from the money raised by Christian Aid Ministries ($211 million), Samaritan’s Purse ($237 million), Food for the Poor ($643 million), WorldVision ($804 million), Habitat for Humanity ($902 million) Feed the Children, ($958 million), Salvation Army ($3.1 billion), Catholic Charities ($3.1 billion, and, yes, the last two were billion with a B). And this doesn't count the the hundreds, if not thousands, of other smaller ministries, like homeless shelters, pregnancy centers and all the mission agencies which help the poor and sick.
I heard an atheist recently state that if we just gave up the idea of God, everyone would still give money to all these charities anyway. Unfortunatly, he demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of genuine Christianity. People who are truly Christian, don’t give money to charity because we think we are such good people.
On the contrary, we know we are not good people and that it is only because of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we are accepted by God. The good that we do is out of gratitude for the grace God has shown to us. Without God, there is no guarantee at all that Christians would continue to give so generaously to strangers.
So go ahead. Imagine a world without religion. It's easy if you try. Just imagine what would happen to all the homeless, sick, poor, even starving people in the world if all the billions of dollars in Christian giving suddenly dried up.
So imagine no Religion. Just imagine all the people who would no longer benefit from the money raised by Christian Aid Ministries ($211 million), Samaritan’s Purse ($237 million), Food for the Poor ($643 million), WorldVision ($804 million), Habitat for Humanity ($902 million) Feed the Children, ($958 million), Salvation Army ($3.1 billion), Catholic Charities ($3.1 billion, and, yes, the last two were billion with a B). And this doesn't count the the hundreds, if not thousands, of other smaller ministries, like homeless shelters, pregnancy centers and all the mission agencies which help the poor and sick.
I heard an atheist recently state that if we just gave up the idea of God, everyone would still give money to all these charities anyway. Unfortunatly, he demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of genuine Christianity. People who are truly Christian, don’t give money to charity because we think we are such good people.
On the contrary, we know we are not good people and that it is only because of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we are accepted by God. The good that we do is out of gratitude for the grace God has shown to us. Without God, there is no guarantee at all that Christians would continue to give so generaously to strangers.
So go ahead. Imagine a world without religion. It's easy if you try. Just imagine what would happen to all the homeless, sick, poor, even starving people in the world if all the billions of dollars in Christian giving suddenly dried up.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Israel Knohl and the Gabriel Revelation
An article published yesterday in the New York Times about the discovery of an ancient stone tablet written in the first century B.C. is causing quite a stir on the internet. The text on this tablet draws from the Old Testament books of Daniel, Zechariah, and Haggai, and contains an apocalyptic vision from the angel Gabriel.
Although the text on the tablet was written (not engraved) and the text is so faded that many of the readings are illegible and disputed, one scholar named Israel Knohl insists that he can make out the readings.
Knohl says that this text contains a prophecy by the angel Gabriel to the “prince of princes” (cf. Daniel 8:25 where the Prince of Princes is apparently God). Knohl identifies this prince of princes as a commander in the Herodian army to whom Gabriel says “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice” and “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.” Another passage speaks of “blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.”
According to the New York Times article, Knohl thinks this tablet “should shake our basic view of Christianity.” Why does Israel Knohl think this? Probably because in 2002 Knohl wrote a book called, The Messiah before Jesus; The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
I reviewed this book for a library journal called CHOICE several years ago. In Knohl's book he argued that some hymns in the Dead Sea Scrolls describe an Essene messiah figure who claimed divine status and believed he was the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. Knohl argued that Jesus was influenced by this earlier “messiah” and expected to be rejected, killed and resurrected after three days.”
According to the New York Times article, Knohl’s “theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus” (emphasis mine).
The New York Times has it wrong. Knohl believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls actually contain textual evidence for an Essene messiah figure even before the Gabriel tablet was discovered. The reason Knohl’s theory failed is because it flew in the face of what critical scholars had been teaching about Jesus for well over a hundred years.
According to most critical scholars, the Jesus of the New Testament was largely a creation of the early church. Radical Jesus' critics don’t even think that Jesus thought of himself as a messiah, much less a son of God.
When Knohl came along and said, in effect, yes, Jesus did think of himself as a messiah and a divine being, that didn’t fit well with critical scholarship and Knohl’s message was largely ignored. Knohl thinks that this stone tablet will confirm the theory he outlined in his earlier book. But would this tablet and Knohl’s theory shake the foundations of Christianity as many on the internet are already suggesting?
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument that this tablet turns out to be an authentic first century B.C. artifact. Let’s further assume that that Knohl’s speculative reconstruction of some practically illegible words is accurate, and that the text contains a prophecy based on the Book of Daniel about the future death and resurrection of a “prince of princes.”
Far from discrediting Christianity, it actually lends credibility to what we find in the Gospels. According to the Gospels, Jesus believed that his life’ and death were the fulfillment of Jewish Scriptures (Luke 22:37; 24:15-27). Although this was certainly not a widespread belief, why would it come as a great shock if we discovered that other Jews of that era also interpreted Old Testament prophecies in similar fashion?
But Knohl believes that Jesus patterned his ministry on this earlier “messiah” figure whom Knohl believes was a commander in Herod’s army. If we want to find a pattern for Jesus’ ministry, we might look to Ezekiel 34, Isaiah 53, Pslam 22 or Zechariah 9:9 and 12:10, but the idea that the Gospel writers were patterning their story of Jesus around a military hero is just silly.
Nevertheless, the internet is buzzing with stories of how this shakes the foundations of Christianity. Tim Etherington summed up the situation pretty well. He says, in effect, that on the one hand the critics generally argue that the idea of a dying and raising messiah was not part of the Jewish tradition of Jesus’ day so the Gospel writers must have made it up. On the other hand, Knohl and his internet followers come along and basically argue that since the prophecy about a resurrected hero was part of Jewish tradition, Jesus and/or the Gospel writers must have borrowed from it.
So regardless of whether a resurrected messiah was part of the Jewish tradition or not, the critics will try to spin the evidence against the Gospels. And given the fact that Knohl’s reading is based on a faded text, a broken tablet, and disputed speculative reconstructions of illegible words that, even if accurately reconstructed, would not damage Christianity in the least, the reaction by many on the internet to this tablet shows how desperate some people are to latch on to anything, regardless of how flimsy or silly, to give them an excuse to dismiss the claims of the New Testament writers.
Although the text on the tablet was written (not engraved) and the text is so faded that many of the readings are illegible and disputed, one scholar named Israel Knohl insists that he can make out the readings.
Knohl says that this text contains a prophecy by the angel Gabriel to the “prince of princes” (cf. Daniel 8:25 where the Prince of Princes is apparently God). Knohl identifies this prince of princes as a commander in the Herodian army to whom Gabriel says “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice” and “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.” Another passage speaks of “blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.”
According to the New York Times article, Knohl thinks this tablet “should shake our basic view of Christianity.” Why does Israel Knohl think this? Probably because in 2002 Knohl wrote a book called, The Messiah before Jesus; The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
I reviewed this book for a library journal called CHOICE several years ago. In Knohl's book he argued that some hymns in the Dead Sea Scrolls describe an Essene messiah figure who claimed divine status and believed he was the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. Knohl argued that Jesus was influenced by this earlier “messiah” and expected to be rejected, killed and resurrected after three days.”
According to the New York Times article, Knohl’s “theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus” (emphasis mine).
The New York Times has it wrong. Knohl believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls actually contain textual evidence for an Essene messiah figure even before the Gabriel tablet was discovered. The reason Knohl’s theory failed is because it flew in the face of what critical scholars had been teaching about Jesus for well over a hundred years.
According to most critical scholars, the Jesus of the New Testament was largely a creation of the early church. Radical Jesus' critics don’t even think that Jesus thought of himself as a messiah, much less a son of God.
When Knohl came along and said, in effect, yes, Jesus did think of himself as a messiah and a divine being, that didn’t fit well with critical scholarship and Knohl’s message was largely ignored. Knohl thinks that this stone tablet will confirm the theory he outlined in his earlier book. But would this tablet and Knohl’s theory shake the foundations of Christianity as many on the internet are already suggesting?
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument that this tablet turns out to be an authentic first century B.C. artifact. Let’s further assume that that Knohl’s speculative reconstruction of some practically illegible words is accurate, and that the text contains a prophecy based on the Book of Daniel about the future death and resurrection of a “prince of princes.”
Far from discrediting Christianity, it actually lends credibility to what we find in the Gospels. According to the Gospels, Jesus believed that his life’ and death were the fulfillment of Jewish Scriptures (Luke 22:37; 24:15-27). Although this was certainly not a widespread belief, why would it come as a great shock if we discovered that other Jews of that era also interpreted Old Testament prophecies in similar fashion?
But Knohl believes that Jesus patterned his ministry on this earlier “messiah” figure whom Knohl believes was a commander in Herod’s army. If we want to find a pattern for Jesus’ ministry, we might look to Ezekiel 34, Isaiah 53, Pslam 22 or Zechariah 9:9 and 12:10, but the idea that the Gospel writers were patterning their story of Jesus around a military hero is just silly.
Nevertheless, the internet is buzzing with stories of how this shakes the foundations of Christianity. Tim Etherington summed up the situation pretty well. He says, in effect, that on the one hand the critics generally argue that the idea of a dying and raising messiah was not part of the Jewish tradition of Jesus’ day so the Gospel writers must have made it up. On the other hand, Knohl and his internet followers come along and basically argue that since the prophecy about a resurrected hero was part of Jewish tradition, Jesus and/or the Gospel writers must have borrowed from it.
So regardless of whether a resurrected messiah was part of the Jewish tradition or not, the critics will try to spin the evidence against the Gospels. And given the fact that Knohl’s reading is based on a faded text, a broken tablet, and disputed speculative reconstructions of illegible words that, even if accurately reconstructed, would not damage Christianity in the least, the reaction by many on the internet to this tablet shows how desperate some people are to latch on to anything, regardless of how flimsy or silly, to give them an excuse to dismiss the claims of the New Testament writers.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Pastor Stephen Boissoin on trial
A Canadian pastor named Stephen Boissoin has been on trial for violating Canada’s Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act (2000).
According to most Right wing blogs and news sources I’ve read, the pastor’s crime was that he sent a letter opposing homosexuality to his local newspaper. And even though Canada’s Human Rights Act specifically says, "Nothing in this Section shall be deemed to interfere with the free expression of opinion on any subject," the pastor has spent the last four years having to defend himself in court.
This is one of those cases where I would normally be ranting and raving about the horrible abuse of a pastor’s right to express his faith.
Unfortunately, the right wing sources I’ve read are not telling the whole story (I know my left wing readers are going to take delight in rubbing this one in). Anyway, the pastor’s letter included the phrase, “It is time to stand together and take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the wickedness…” (emphasis mine).
The pastor should have qualified his statement by saying “…legal and non-violent steps.” I would like to think this was just an oversight on his part but the facts of the case lead me to think otherwise.
Not long after the pastor’s letter was published, some kid shattered another kid’s cheek bone saying, “you’re a faggot, right?” As it turns out, the perpetrator was someone who often frequented the pastor’s youth center.
Now this wouldn’t necessarily mean anything except that in this case, according to court testimony, when the pastor found out about the assault, not only did he take no action to suspend the perpetrator from the youth center (the normal procedure when violence occurs), but the pastor was reported (under oath) to have said, “God called him to be active with his beliefs.”
Excuse me? God called some punk to smack someone in the face just because he was gay?! If the pastor really said this, something is seriously wrong with this pastor’s theology!
This pastor should have:
1) explained to the offender that the Bible never allows us to take the law into our own hands by persecuting someone for their sexual orientation or sexual behavior,
2) explained that we are to show Christ’s love even to those who behave in ways we think are sinful,
3) suggested that the offender needs to seek forgiveness and possibly even make restitution to the one he assaulted and
4) suspended the offender in accordance with youth center policy.
I'm afraid I have to break ranks with some of my fellow conservatives on this one. If the court records are accurate, I think this pastor's statements above were unbiblical and irresponsible.
According to most Right wing blogs and news sources I’ve read, the pastor’s crime was that he sent a letter opposing homosexuality to his local newspaper. And even though Canada’s Human Rights Act specifically says, "Nothing in this Section shall be deemed to interfere with the free expression of opinion on any subject," the pastor has spent the last four years having to defend himself in court.
This is one of those cases where I would normally be ranting and raving about the horrible abuse of a pastor’s right to express his faith.
Unfortunately, the right wing sources I’ve read are not telling the whole story (I know my left wing readers are going to take delight in rubbing this one in). Anyway, the pastor’s letter included the phrase, “It is time to stand together and take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the wickedness…” (emphasis mine).
The pastor should have qualified his statement by saying “…legal and non-violent steps.” I would like to think this was just an oversight on his part but the facts of the case lead me to think otherwise.
Not long after the pastor’s letter was published, some kid shattered another kid’s cheek bone saying, “you’re a faggot, right?” As it turns out, the perpetrator was someone who often frequented the pastor’s youth center.
Now this wouldn’t necessarily mean anything except that in this case, according to court testimony, when the pastor found out about the assault, not only did he take no action to suspend the perpetrator from the youth center (the normal procedure when violence occurs), but the pastor was reported (under oath) to have said, “God called him to be active with his beliefs.”
Excuse me? God called some punk to smack someone in the face just because he was gay?! If the pastor really said this, something is seriously wrong with this pastor’s theology!
This pastor should have:
1) explained to the offender that the Bible never allows us to take the law into our own hands by persecuting someone for their sexual orientation or sexual behavior,
2) explained that we are to show Christ’s love even to those who behave in ways we think are sinful,
3) suggested that the offender needs to seek forgiveness and possibly even make restitution to the one he assaulted and
4) suspended the offender in accordance with youth center policy.
I'm afraid I have to break ranks with some of my fellow conservatives on this one. If the court records are accurate, I think this pastor's statements above were unbiblical and irresponsible.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Hollywood hate speech
I was flipping channels on TV last night and happened upon an old movie (1990’s) called “The Rapture.” It was already about half over but the last half was about a naive, but sincere and peaceful evangelical Christian woman who eventually became convinced that God was calling her to go out to the desert to await his return.
When God didn’t come back she eventually became convinced that God wanted her to shoot her little girl to death to send her to heaven (the woman then intended to commit suicide but decided not to when she determined that suicide victims could not go to heaven).
Stricken by remorse, she then began to hate God for deceiving her and for commanding her to kill her little girl. The movie pretty much left the impression that you should really watch out for these sincere, kind and peaceful, evangelical Christians--especially those who are vocal about their faith--because underneath they are actually severe mental cases who just may deconstruct into insanity.
Then I thought about the last movie I saw portraying a peaceful Muslim, or a kind homosexual who deliberately shot their little girl in the head….oh wait, not only have I never seen such a movie. I’ve never even heard of such a movie! A movie like that would be universally condemned as vitriolic hate speech! Not only would every media outlet in the country rant against it, but it would likely even be condemned by members of Congress!
Yet Hollywood has produced a consistent stream of anti-Christian bigotry. And while Americans decry every other kind of prejudice, bigotry and hate speech, when it comes to the anti-Christian variety they just kind of yawn. In fact, any Christian who dares to complain about it may even be attacked as overly sensitive, self-pitying, or even as being against free speech.
When God didn’t come back she eventually became convinced that God wanted her to shoot her little girl to death to send her to heaven (the woman then intended to commit suicide but decided not to when she determined that suicide victims could not go to heaven).
Stricken by remorse, she then began to hate God for deceiving her and for commanding her to kill her little girl. The movie pretty much left the impression that you should really watch out for these sincere, kind and peaceful, evangelical Christians--especially those who are vocal about their faith--because underneath they are actually severe mental cases who just may deconstruct into insanity.
Then I thought about the last movie I saw portraying a peaceful Muslim, or a kind homosexual who deliberately shot their little girl in the head….oh wait, not only have I never seen such a movie. I’ve never even heard of such a movie! A movie like that would be universally condemned as vitriolic hate speech! Not only would every media outlet in the country rant against it, but it would likely even be condemned by members of Congress!
Yet Hollywood has produced a consistent stream of anti-Christian bigotry. And while Americans decry every other kind of prejudice, bigotry and hate speech, when it comes to the anti-Christian variety they just kind of yawn. In fact, any Christian who dares to complain about it may even be attacked as overly sensitive, self-pitying, or even as being against free speech.
Missions
There is a book called, Mission Handbook: U.S. and Canadian Protestant Ministries Overseas 2007-2009 which is over 600 pages long and contains the listings of hundreds and hundreds of Christian missionary organizations. For hundreds of years, Christian missionaries have gone into all the world not only preaching the gospel, but providing medical care, food, housing, and education to people of every race, religion, and virtually every nation on the face of the earth—often at great personal risk to themselves.
So I was just wondering: can anyone think of any Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim missions that have provided food, medical care and education to people who are not of their own nation or religion?
So I was just wondering: can anyone think of any Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim missions that have provided food, medical care and education to people who are not of their own nation or religion?
Monday, May 26, 2008
Muhammad and Jesus
I just created a new web page which compares the earliest sources for Muhammad and Jesus. There is no place on the web page to post comments, but if Recliner Commentaries readers have time, I would appreciate any corrections you find or suggestions you have.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Charitable giving
Recently prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have launched an all out attack on religion. The subtitle of one of Hitchens' books, for example, is "How religion poison's everything."
A recent study, on the other hand, says that churches are giving 8.8 billion dollars to developing countries! I am curious to know how much atheists are giving.
A recent study, on the other hand, says that churches are giving 8.8 billion dollars to developing countries! I am curious to know how much atheists are giving.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
100,000 Myanmar deaths?
CNN is now reporting that Myanmar deaths may exceed 100,000 (hat tip: Kevin).
The CNN article says that World Vision is already on the ground in Myanmar. I'm sure they would appreciate donations. Samaritan's Purse and Gospel for Asia are also involved in the relief efforts.
The CNN article says that World Vision is already on the ground in Myanmar. I'm sure they would appreciate donations. Samaritan's Purse and Gospel for Asia are also involved in the relief efforts.
Myanmar disaster
As the death toll rises to 22,000, Samaritan's Purse is responding to the disaster. To read more or to donate, click on Samaritan's Purse.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Myanmar death toll up to 10,000!
The death toll for the devestating cyclone in Myanmar is now up to 10,000! A Bible College located in the capital city is providing shelter and aid for residents.
If you'd like to donate to the relief efforts, you can send your money to Gospel for Asia, which runs the Bible College. There is more information about the cyclone and a donate button at the bottom of the Gospel for Asia link above.
(Gospel of Asia is a good organization and is a member of ECFA, which audits member organizations to ensure financial accountability).
UPDATE: MSNBC is now reporting that there are an estimated 22,000 dead and over one million homeless.
If you'd like to donate to the relief efforts, you can send your money to Gospel for Asia, which runs the Bible College. There is more information about the cyclone and a donate button at the bottom of the Gospel for Asia link above.
(Gospel of Asia is a good organization and is a member of ECFA, which audits member organizations to ensure financial accountability).
UPDATE: MSNBC is now reporting that there are an estimated 22,000 dead and over one million homeless.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Muslim hospitals
I wonder if anyone can help me with some information. Can anyone think of any cases in which Muslims established hospitals or clinics in non-Muslim countries specifically for the purpose of helping non-Muslims in the name of Islam? I could be wrong, but I don’t think there is—or if there is, my guess is that such cases would be very, very limited.
While many Muslims are known for their hospitality, throughout history Islam as a religion was spread at the point of the sword. Christians and Jews—people of the book— were viewed as people to be subjugated and humiliated, and almost everyone else was either forced to convert to Islam or die. In such a religious system, you don’t go into all the world to build hospitals and clinics, or to educate the “infidels.” You go to bring them into subjection to Allah, peacefully if possible, forcefully if necessary.
For hundreds and hundreds of years Christians have literally risked life and limb to go into all the world, not only to tell the good news about Jesus, but to build hospitals, clinics, orphanages, schools, and homeless shelters for non-Christians. I don’t think any other religion can make such a claim.
People who assume that all religions are basically the same are very, very misinformed.
While many Muslims are known for their hospitality, throughout history Islam as a religion was spread at the point of the sword. Christians and Jews—people of the book— were viewed as people to be subjugated and humiliated, and almost everyone else was either forced to convert to Islam or die. In such a religious system, you don’t go into all the world to build hospitals and clinics, or to educate the “infidels.” You go to bring them into subjection to Allah, peacefully if possible, forcefully if necessary.
For hundreds and hundreds of years Christians have literally risked life and limb to go into all the world, not only to tell the good news about Jesus, but to build hospitals, clinics, orphanages, schools, and homeless shelters for non-Christians. I don’t think any other religion can make such a claim.
People who assume that all religions are basically the same are very, very misinformed.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Hiding Place
According to the Christian Newswire:
"Israeli Ambassador to the Netherlands Harry Kney-Tal today presented members of the Netherlands' ten Boom family with a certificate posthumously honoring two of its members for saving nearly 800 Jewish lives during the Holocaust."
If you've never read the book about this amazing family you owe it to yourself to do so. It is called the Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom.
"Israeli Ambassador to the Netherlands Harry Kney-Tal today presented members of the Netherlands' ten Boom family with a certificate posthumously honoring two of its members for saving nearly 800 Jewish lives during the Holocaust."
If you've never read the book about this amazing family you owe it to yourself to do so. It is called the Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Muslim women and the hijab
One of the blogs I read frequently is called Muslim Matters. Today’s post was an article by Ruth Nasrullah who responds to the question, “Why don’t they dress like us? In other words, why don’t American Muslim women dress like other women in America?
Ms. Nasrullah says the question “reeks of ignorance.” Actually, I think it is a very good question, as was her answer (in spite of her defensiveness).
Ms. Nasrullah makes four main points. 1) Nuns wear head coverings which are basically like a hijab (Muslim head covering) but we don’t look down on them. 2) The virgin Mary is nearly always depicted as wearing a head covering so why don’t Christian women honor her by dressing like her. 3) Western women who dress immodestly in public have to worry about what society thinks. Muslim women only have to worry about what their husbands think. 4) Muslim women dress like they do because they are following the mandates of their religion, which takes real courage in Muslim-minority societies.
Ms. Nusrullah could have strengthened her case by mentioning that the Apostle Paul commands modesty and tells women to wear head coverings (at least while praying).
Frankly, as a Christian, I respect Muslim women in America who wear the hijab. They always dress modestly and have the courage of their convictions.
On the other hand, from a Christian perspective, I suspect that Paul’s commands about head coverings are cultural rather than universal (Mennonite and Amish women would disagree).
And I think Paul’s commands about modesty apply to both men and women, but those commands don’t require one particular type of clothing. It is possible to dress modestly and still wear contemporary, fashionable clothing (some Muslim-American women would agree).
Unfortunately, the immodest dress exhibited by many Christians shows that they are much more influenced by modern pop culture than they are by the Bible. Would that Christians (men and women) had the same courage of convictions that most Muslim women do.
Ms. Nasrullah says the question “reeks of ignorance.” Actually, I think it is a very good question, as was her answer (in spite of her defensiveness).
Ms. Nasrullah makes four main points. 1) Nuns wear head coverings which are basically like a hijab (Muslim head covering) but we don’t look down on them. 2) The virgin Mary is nearly always depicted as wearing a head covering so why don’t Christian women honor her by dressing like her. 3) Western women who dress immodestly in public have to worry about what society thinks. Muslim women only have to worry about what their husbands think. 4) Muslim women dress like they do because they are following the mandates of their religion, which takes real courage in Muslim-minority societies.
Ms. Nusrullah could have strengthened her case by mentioning that the Apostle Paul commands modesty and tells women to wear head coverings (at least while praying).
Frankly, as a Christian, I respect Muslim women in America who wear the hijab. They always dress modestly and have the courage of their convictions.
On the other hand, from a Christian perspective, I suspect that Paul’s commands about head coverings are cultural rather than universal (Mennonite and Amish women would disagree).
And I think Paul’s commands about modesty apply to both men and women, but those commands don’t require one particular type of clothing. It is possible to dress modestly and still wear contemporary, fashionable clothing (some Muslim-American women would agree).
Unfortunately, the immodest dress exhibited by many Christians shows that they are much more influenced by modern pop culture than they are by the Bible. Would that Christians (men and women) had the same courage of convictions that most Muslim women do.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Muhammad and clay birds
There is an ancient Greek text called The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas). The Infancy Gospel of Thomas says that Jesus:
Second, our earliest sources about Jesus are all Jewish and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas shows no knowledge of first century Judaism.
Third, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus’ did his very first miracle, not when he was a child, but as an adult when he turned water into wine.
Fourth, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas betrays elements of Gnostic thought which is characteristic of the second century AD but not the first century AD.
Finally, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas tells a series of bazaar stories about Jesus that portray him as a vindictive little brat, which doesn’t fit anything else we know about Jesus from much earlier sources.
For example, according to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, when a little boy “took a branch of a willow and…dispersed the water which Jesus had gathered together,” little Jesus called him a “godless dunderhead” and placed a curse on him causing the boy to wither up.
On another occasion, a boy was running and bumped into Jesus.’ Jesus cursed that child too and the boy fell down dead! Parents in the village understandably began to complain to Jesus’ father, Joseph, so according to the story, Jesus punished the complainers with blindness!
For these reasons, virtually no scholars (or anyone else) believes that the stories about Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are true—the only exception is Muslims. Muslims believe the story is true because Muhammad—who lived more than 300 years after the story was written—seems to have believed it! At least twice in the Qur’an Muhammad talks about how Jesus took a clay bird and made it come alive (Sura 3.49 and 5.10).
This creates a dilemma for Muslims. Since they believe that the teachings in the Qur’an were given to Muhammad from God word-for-word, they are forced to believe a story which no one but Muslims believe, written 100 to 150 years after Jesus lived. If the clay bird story isn’t true, it would mean that Muhammad did not get it word-for-word from God, and that would place the Qur’an, the prophethood of Muhammad and all of Islam in question.
Although Muhammad had great respect for Jesus, Muhammad adamantly denied that Jesus was the Son of God. That’s interesting because the same Infancy Gospel of Thomas that tells the story of the clay birds, also tells a story about Jesus standing in the Temple of God and calling it “My Father’s house.” In other words, according to the writer of the clay bird story which Muhammad believes, Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.
“…made soft clay and fashioned from it twelve sparrows. And it was on the Sabbath when he did this. And there were also many other children playing with him. Now a certain Jew saw what Jesus was doing in his play on the Sabbath, he at once went and told his father Joseph: ‘See, your child is at the brook, and he has taken clay and fashioned twelve birds and has profaned the Sabbath.’ And when Joseph came to the place and saw it, he cried out to him, saying: ‘Why do you do on the Sabbath what ought not to be done?’ But Jesus clapped his hands and cried to the sparrows: ‘Off with you!’ And the sparrows took flight and went away chirping (Infancy Gospel of Thomas. 2.2-4. New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, 1991).With one exception, virtually no one believes this story is true. First, the story wasn’t written until about 100 to 150 years after Jesus’ death, which is much later than our earliest sources about Jesus.
Second, our earliest sources about Jesus are all Jewish and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas shows no knowledge of first century Judaism.
Third, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus’ did his very first miracle, not when he was a child, but as an adult when he turned water into wine.
Fourth, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas betrays elements of Gnostic thought which is characteristic of the second century AD but not the first century AD.
Finally, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas tells a series of bazaar stories about Jesus that portray him as a vindictive little brat, which doesn’t fit anything else we know about Jesus from much earlier sources.
For example, according to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, when a little boy “took a branch of a willow and…dispersed the water which Jesus had gathered together,” little Jesus called him a “godless dunderhead” and placed a curse on him causing the boy to wither up.
On another occasion, a boy was running and bumped into Jesus.’ Jesus cursed that child too and the boy fell down dead! Parents in the village understandably began to complain to Jesus’ father, Joseph, so according to the story, Jesus punished the complainers with blindness!
For these reasons, virtually no scholars (or anyone else) believes that the stories about Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are true—the only exception is Muslims. Muslims believe the story is true because Muhammad—who lived more than 300 years after the story was written—seems to have believed it! At least twice in the Qur’an Muhammad talks about how Jesus took a clay bird and made it come alive (Sura 3.49 and 5.10).
This creates a dilemma for Muslims. Since they believe that the teachings in the Qur’an were given to Muhammad from God word-for-word, they are forced to believe a story which no one but Muslims believe, written 100 to 150 years after Jesus lived. If the clay bird story isn’t true, it would mean that Muhammad did not get it word-for-word from God, and that would place the Qur’an, the prophethood of Muhammad and all of Islam in question.
Although Muhammad had great respect for Jesus, Muhammad adamantly denied that Jesus was the Son of God. That’s interesting because the same Infancy Gospel of Thomas that tells the story of the clay birds, also tells a story about Jesus standing in the Temple of God and calling it “My Father’s house.” In other words, according to the writer of the clay bird story which Muhammad believes, Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.
Monday, March 24, 2008
The God who wasn't there
Over the Easter weekend I watched a DVD entitled, The God who wasn’t there, edited and narrated by someone named, Brian Flemming. Since it was an all-out attack on Christianity I thought it deserved a thorough critique (this is probably the longest article ever posted on Recliner Commentaries).
Introduction
The DVD begins with images of the earth revolving around the sun, and the sun revolving around the earth. The narrator asks, if Christianity was wrong about the Solar System could they be wrong about Jesus also?
Of course we might also ask, if atheists who ran the former Soviet Union (and were responsible for the deaths of about 100 million people) were wrong, could they be wrong about Jesus too?
The point is that what medieval Roman Catholic bishops believed about the solar system has nothing whatsoever to do with the existence of Jesus. Of course, the narrator is smart enough to know that. The little solar system scene was not about rational arguments. It was about emotionally directing the audience down an anti-Christian path.
The path continues with testimonies of numerous happy—though not very well informed—Christians coming out of a Billy Graham crusade. The narrator then says, “of course, those aren’t the only faces of Christianity.” What follows are pictures of mass murderer Charles Manson with a caption reading “aka Jesus Christ”—as if Charles Manson actions had anything to do with love for Jesus!
Another picture was shown of a woman said to have been a devout Christian who cut off her baby’s arms for God—as if her actions had anything whatsoever to do with Christianity. Pictures of Pat Robertson and Tim LaHaye were also thrown in.
I’m not a particular fan of Pat Robertson or Tim LaHaye, but regardless of what you think of them, when their pictures are placed in the same group as a mass murderer and a woman who cut off her baby’s arms, you know that we are not looking at an objective treatment of Christianity! What followed was a mockery of the story of Jesus from birth to ascension using cheesy old Hollywood film clips.
The case for a mythical Jesus
In a nutshell, we could summarize the case for the non-existence of Jesus as laid out by the DVD in the following six points:
First, the Gospel of Mark was the first Gospel written and the other three were derived from Mark.
Second, the Gospel of Mark mentions the destruction of Jerusalem which occurred in AD 70. Since Jesus couldn’t possibly have predicted the destruction of Jerusalem 40 years before the destruction of Jerusalem occurred, the Gospels must have been written after AD 70. Since, Jesus died in AD 33, that means there is a 40 year gap between the time when Jesus died and the when the first Gospel was written.
Third, all we know about that time gap comes from the letters of Paul and Paul never even heard of the idea that Jesus was a real person who lived in the recent past. This is clear because there is no mention in any of Paul’s letters of Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, John the Baptist, Jesus’ miracles, Jerusalem, Pilate, Jesus’ trials or anything Jesus ever said.
Fourth, the only thing Paul knows about Jesus is that he died, rose, and ascended into heaven, and Paul doesn’t place these events on earth. Rather, Paul places these events in the mythical realm just like stories of other savior gods of the time.
Fifth, since the Gospels are filled with outrageous improbabilities they cannot be understood as historical.
Sixth, since allegorical literature was extremely common back then, and since the story of Jesus fits the pattern of ancient mythical heroes, it is clear that the Gospels take Paul’s myth and make it appear historical, just like many stories on the internet which start out as fiction and are eventually believed as actual, historical events. The Gospels, therefore, are myth or symbolic narratives, not historical accounts.
Let’s examine each of these points one by one.
First, the Gospel of Mark was the first Gospel written and the other three were derived from Mark.
Although most scholars would agree that Matthew and Luke were derived in some way from Mark, few would agree that John was derived from Mark. The narrator’s understanding of biblical scholarship is apparently lacking.
Second, the Gospel of Mark mentions the destruction of Jerusalem which occurred in AD 70. Since Jesus couldn’t possibly have predicted the destruction of Jerusalem 40 before the destruction of Jerusalem occurred, the Gospels must have been written after AD 70. Since, Jesus died in AD 33, that means there is a 40 year gap between the time when Jesus died and the when the first Gospel was written.
The narrator is right that most scholars think the Gospels were written between AD 70 and AD 100, and that these dates are largely based on the fact that Mark records the destruction of Jerusalem. Many scholars once just assumed that Jesus couldn’t possibly have predicted the fall of Jerusalem, so the Gospels must have been written after that time.
Actually, this opinion is now somewhat outdated. Many critics today--even some pretty radical critics--are now starting to recognize that Jesus really did predict the fall of Jerusalem 40 years before it actually fell! They have reluctantly come to this conclusion because the vast majority of them believe in a “Lost Gospel of Q” in which Jesus alludes to the fall of Jerusalem. They acknowledge that Q contains the words of Jesus and that it was written before before the fall of Jerusalem.
What many critics don’t seem to realize, however, is that this undermines the main reason for dating the Gospels after the fall of Jerusalem! There is actually much more evidence that Matthew, Mark and Luke were written before AD 70 than after AD 70, and there are many scholars today who believe that this is the case. But if Matthew, Mark and Luke were written before AD 70, the narrator’s case for the 40 year gap is destroyed along with his case for the mythical Jesus.
Even if there was a 40 year gap, however, that means nothing. Ancient historians (and modern ones too) often write about events that occurred long before their time, but scholars don’t automatically assume the events, therefore, never happened. For example, almost everything we know about Alexander the Great was written about 400 years after he lived and is recorded in only one source! By contrast, what we know about Jesus comes from multiple sources written as early as 20 to 70 years after he lived.
Third, all we know about that time gap comes from the letters of Paul and Paul never even heard of the idea that Jesus was a real person who lived in the recent past. This is clear because there is no mention in any of Paul’s letters of Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, John the Baptist, Jesus’ miracles, Jerusalem, Pilate, Jesus’ trials or anything Jesus ever said.
First, scholars call Paul’s letters “occasional” letters, which means that Paul was addressing specific problems and issues in specific churches. He was not writing to re-tell the story of Jesus any more than a missionary might repeat the story of Jesus when they write a letter back to their home church from the mission field.
Second, although there is no reason Paul should have mentioned Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, John the Baptist, etc., in his letters; contrary to the assertions presented on the DVD, Paul nevertheless, knows Jesus as an actual person of history. For example, Paul says in the letter that we call “First Corinthians,” that Jesus was buried and raised from the dead and that this fact was witnessed by Jesus’ disciples and more than 500 other people, many of whom, Paul says, were still alive when Paul wrote the letter in AD 55 (1 Corinthians 15:3-6; cf. 12-20).
Furthermore, in an earlier letter to the Galatians written about AD 49, Paul writes about how fourteen years earlier he went to Jerusalem and met with the leaders of the church, Peter, James and John, and that they gave him their blessing to preach his gospel to the Gentiles (Galatians 2:1-10). In other words, Paul is not making up his own mythology about Jesus—those who actually waked with Jesus and heard Jesus preach, gave their blessing to Paul to preach his gospel.
And while the Paul never mentions Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, John the Baptist, etc., what the narrator doesn’t tell his audience is that Paul says Jesus was born and raised Jewish, had a brother named James, knew some of Jesus’ disciples by name including the fact that Peter was married. Paul knew that Jesus had a last supper with his disciples on the night of his death and that he was betrayed and executed by crucifixion (Galatians 1:19, 3:16, 4:4, 5:11, 6:12; First Corinthians 1:17-18, 9:5, 11:23-25; Romans 1:3 and Philippians 2:3, 3:18. See Eddy, Paul and Gregory Boyd. The Jesus Legend. Grand Rapids : Baker, 2007, 209).
In other words, by selectively picking out some things in Jesus’ life that Paul doesn’t mention, the narrator concludes that Paul doesn’t mention anything of a historical nature about Jesus’ life and then further concludes that Jesus must not have existed!
The narrator also argues that Paul never quoted from Jesus. While Paul doesn’t quote Jesus verbatim, scholars have demonstrated that Paul was to a great extent simply passing on and contextualizing the teachings of Jesus. I won’t repeat the evidence here but anyone who is interested should consult the outstanding book by Oxford University scholar, David Wenham entitled, Paul; Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity?”
The idea that Paul didn’t know anything about the real historical Jesus is just factually wrong.
Fourth, the only thing Paul knows about Jesus is that he died, rose, and ascended into heaven. Paul doesn’t place these events on earth but, just like the other savior gods of the time, in the mythical realm
This is an old theory which many scholars now reject. First, nearly all scholars acknowledge that Paul experienced a dramatic change in life, changing from someone who persecuted Christians, to someone who worked tirelessly and suffered immense persecution to preach Jesus.
Pagan myths would likely have been disgusting to a former Pharisee like Paul so the idea that Paul’s whole life changed dramatically when he started borrowing from non-Jewish or pagan myths to create some kind of mythical Jesus, and then was willing to suffer beatings and imprisonment for the myths he knew were fictional—is harder to believe than the message Paul preached!
Second, if you actually read the myths about Mithras, Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz, or Dionysus you will find that they don’t look anything like Jesus as all! The supposed parallels are arrived at by cherry-picking the stories--and even then the imagined parallels are a stretch.
For example, with Osirus, there is no real resurrection. The Osirus myth says the god’s body was drowned, dismembered and scattered but later gathered, reassembled and rejuvenated. The story of Attis records his death but not a resurrection or even a rebirth. The story of Augustus’ “virgin birth” was nothing of the sort. Augustus’ wife was said to have slept overnight in a pagan temple during which a snake crawled up inside her vagina and impregnated her! Some parallels!
Third, the narrator didn’t bother to tell his audience that much of the evidence for such supposed parallels comes from a hundred to three hundred years after the time of Jesus! If there are parallels at all it is because pagan authors are borrowing from Christianity!
Finally, far from writing in the “mythical realm” Paul argues that if Jesus did not really rise from the dead, his whole ministry was worthless (1 Cor. 15)! That hardly sounds like he is basing his ministry on a myth.
Fifth, since the Gospels are filled with outrageous improbabilities that cannot be understood as historical.
First, the DVD quotes Robert Price—a noted proponent of the Jesus myth theory—as saying the gospels are filled with “outrageous improbabilities.” But as the world-famous Jesus scholar, N.T. Wright, once said, “History is filled with improbabilities, but my goodness, they happened!” Wright is right. History should be determined primarily on the basis of historical evidence, not simply on what someone thinks was improbable.
Interestingly enough, however, Price doesn’t mention Jesus’ miracles or resurrection as examples of the “outrageous improbabilities,” though I’m sure he regards them as such. To do so would be like saying, “I don’t believe Jesus existed because I don’t believe in the stories about his miracles or resurrection.” This would have been an honest way of dealing with the evidence (I’m not implying that Price was in any way being dishonest) because in fact, this is why many people don’t believe in the Gospel’s portrayals of Jesus. They simply don’t believe the supernatural events recorded about his life. Most other arguments against the Gospel’s views of Jesus are just smoke and mirrors.
The best examples of “outrageous improbabilities” Price provides, therefore, are 1) the “slaughter of innocents”, that is, the killing of the babies in Bethlehem at by Herod at the time of Jesus’ birth 2) the Jewish supreme council meeting on Passover eve to get rid of Jesus and 3) Pontius Pilate releasing “a known killer of Romans” and turning Jesus over to be killed after trying to let him off the hook.
Price’s only argument about the “slaughter of innocents” is that it is mythological and derived from the book of Exodus. This is like arguing that given any two similar events, the second one must be mythical and derived from the first. So, for example, the assassination of John F. Kennedy must be a mythical story derived from an earlier Presidential assassination!
Of course, Price would say this is nonsense, but so is his dismissal of the killing of the babies as mythical simply because the book of Exodus has a story about the death of the firstborn. The fact is that there is nothing unhistorical about the possibility that Herod the Great—who even had members of his own family killed—killed a few babies to eliminate one who might one day threaten his throne. This is entirely in keeping with everything historians know of Herod’s character.
Another “outrageous improbability” Price provides is the Jewish supreme council meeting on Passover eve to get rid of Jesus. Passover was a time in which hundreds of thousands of people descended on Jerusalem to celebrate the feast. Given the “hell-on-earth” Jews had suffered in the previous two hundred years, they were desperate for a “Messiah” to come and liberate them from oppressive, pagan Roman rule. Jesus had entered Jerusalem on Passover to the cheers of huge crowds who had heard of his mighty works. Perhaps he was that Messiah. Perhaps this Passover would be when he would “make his move.”
The Jewish authorities were well aware of the enormous potential for disaster that could be caused by a Messiah, or Messiah wannabee during a feast like Passover. If things got out of hand, the Romans would come in—as they had done before—and slaughter people by the thousands. It may well be that the Jewish Council believed this was a matter of national security that couldn’t wait. When viewed in historical context, not only is this not improbable, but may even be likely.
Another scholar, not mentioned in the DVD, argued that it was very improbable that Jesus entered Jerusalem to cheering crowds (triumphal entry), but a few days later the crowds were yelling, “crucify him.” But to Jewish people the idea of “Messiah” was a king who was going to kick out the pagans. The idea that pagans would gain control of the Messiah was absolutely unthinkable. So when Jesus came to Jerusalem there was high expectation that this miracle-working Messiah might make his move against Rome. When the people later saw him beaten, bloody and chained to Roman soldiers, they became furious at being deceived by what the now saw as an imposter. Far from being improbable, these stories are very probable.
The other outrageous improbability Price provides is the story of how Pontius Pilate released Barabbas, “a killer of Romans,” and turned Jesus over to the crowds after trying to get him released.
First, Price is right that the idea that Pilate would show any kind of concessions to the Jews is unusual, but Pilate’s career depended on keeping peace in Judea, and even military men often make political concessions when it is to their advantage.
Second, we don’t know who instituted this custom of releasing a prisoner on Passover. It may be that Pilate was just carrying out a custom begun by a previous governor and that to drop the custom now could cause more unrest than it was worth.
Third, Pilate’s attempt to release Jesus was probably not because he felt any compassion toward Jesus, but simply because the religious leaders wanted Jesus killed and because Pilate hated them, his knee jerk reaction was to deny their wishes.
The fact is that all we have is what was written in our ancient sources. The more we start re-writing history based on what seems improbable to us, the greater the risk that we are not really recovering history, but re-writing history and creating our own myths.
Sixth, since allegorical literature was extremely common back then, and since the story of Jesus fits the pattern of ancient mythical heroes, it is clear that the Gospels take Paul’s myth and make it appear historical, just like many stories on the internet which start out as fiction and are eventually believed as actual, historical events. The Gospels, therefore, are myth or symbolic narratives, not historical accounts.
First, histories and biographies were common back then also. Just because allegorical literature was common says nothing about the genre of the Gospels.
Second, scholars have shown that the Gospels simply do not fit the genre of myth. When Luke, for example, writes
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene—during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiphas…”
...he is obviously trying to place his story in a concrete historical place and time. This is no story about Zeus on Mt. Olympas! The emphasis on history is even more pronounced in the sequel to Luke’s gospel (the book of Acts) in which dozens of places and events find historical verification.
The Oxford scholar, C.S. Lewis, who was an expert in myth, once wrote that he knows myth and the Gospels are just not myth. For a more recent study see, Burridge, Richard. What are the Gospels; A comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography. New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Third, the DVD then tries to argue that Jesus is just a myth like Romulus, Hercules or Zeus. It does this by listing 22 supposed characteristics of the “hero tradition.” The DVD argues that the story of Jesus follows this tradition closely.
The 22 characteristics are listed below with an asterisk (*) next to the ones the DVD says are true of Jesus and an X next to those in which the story of Jesus does not fit the pattern.
1) The hero’s mother is a royal virgin*, 2) The hero’s father is a king*, 3) The hero is often a near relative of his mother*, 4) The circumstances of his conception are unusual*, 5) He is reputed to be the son of a god*, 6) At birth an attempt is made often by his father to kill him*, 7) He is spirited away*, 8) And reared by foster parents in a far country X, 9) We are told nothing of his childhood *, 10) On return he goes to his future kingdom*, 11) After victory over a king or Jinn or dragon X, 12) Marries a princes X, 13) He becomes king*, 14), King reigns uneventfully* 15) The king prescribes laws* 16) He later looses favor with his subjects* 17) He is driven from the throne of the city* 18) He has a mysterious death* 19) Often at the top of a hill* 20) His children if any do not succeed him* 21) His body is not buried* 22) He has one or more sepulchers*
When Jesus is compared to other mythological heroes we find that Oedipus and Thesius meet 22 of the characteristics, Jesus meets 19, Romulus and Hercules meet 17, Perseus meets 16, Zeus and Jason meet 15, Robin Hood meets 13 and Apollo meets 11.
A closer look at these characteristics, however, will show that the whole thing is contrived. While Jesus' mother was a descendant of David, she was a poor peasant, hardly a "royal" virgin. Jesus’ adopted father was not a king, he was also a peasant—unless you count God as his father but that is counted under his reputation as son of God. To count this twice is stacking the deck.
To say that the hero is often a near relative of his mother is also contrived. Most people are near relatives of their mothers! Jesus adopted father made no attempt to kill him as the fathers of heroes in other hero stories. It is true that we are told almost nothing of his childhood, but that is a characteristic on ancient bios, or biography, not just of heroes.
Jesus’ future kingdom is not just Galilee or Judea, but the world. The whole story of the Gospels is how Jesus will one day be the king, but he was never an earthly king and never ruled, eventfully or uneventfully.
Jesus certainly taught the crowds, but not in the sense of an earthly king prescribing laws. He did not loose favor with his subjects, but with those who never were his subjects to begin with (unless you count Judas). He couldn’t be driven from the throne of the city because he never sat on the throne.
There was nothing mysterious about his death and his body was in fact buried. The whole thing was contrived to make it look like Jesus was just like ancient mythological heroes, but when you count up the actual similarities, Jesus doesn’t even make the list of “heros.” If you actually read the Gospels and then read the stories of these mythological characters, you will find that they are as different as night and day!
But on the other hand, even if the Gospel writers had written their stories in such a way as to make them conform to some accepted pattern, that does not mean they are necessarily unhistorical. For example, someone once showed that Abraham Lincoln fits the hero pattern better than Oedipus, who is at the top of the list! Others have shown that stories about Napoleon, Churchill, Kennedy also fit the myth patterns!
Finally, Barbara and David Mikkelson (from Snopes.com) were interviewed in the DVD to show that fictional stories can take on a life of their own and become believed as actual history. The difference is that stories about Jesus were being told at a time when both the eyewitnesses and enemies of Jesus were still alive and could debunk false rumors going around (just like Snoops.com debunks false internet rumors).
Few of those who spread internet rumors would be willing to put their life on the line for the rumors they spread. Everything we know about early Christians supports the fact that they were so convinced that what they believed about Jesus was true, they were willing to face beating, prison and even death.
Seventh, since there were ancient Jews and Jewish Christians who thought Jesus had been killed a century earlier under Alexander Jennaeus or Herod, this diversity of opinion about Jesus supports the idea that Jesus of the Gospels was a myth based on earlier stories circulated before the time Jesus was supposed to have existed. The Jesus of the Gospels, therefore, never existed.
First, the idea that early Christians had any significant disagreement about when Jesus lived is simply not true. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts and First Timothy all agree that Jesus was executed during the rule of Pontius Pilate who ruled Judea from AD 26-36.
That Jesus was crucified during the rule of Pontius Pilate is confirmed by Ignatius, an ancient Christian leader whose letters are not in the New Testament. It is also confirmed by the Jewish historian, Josephus and the Roman historian, Tacitus. Both Luke and Tacitus also place Jesus during the time of Emperor Tiberius (AD 14-37).
Contrary to Price, the Gospel of Peter is no exception to this. The Gospel of Peter says that Jesus was tried under Herod. Far from being a disagreement about when Jesus lived, this fact is confirmed by the Gospel of Luke (23) which affirms that Jesus was sent to Herod by Pontius Pilate, who then sent Jesus back to Pilate. This Herod is Herod Antipas, a contemporary of Pontius Pilate and the son of Herod the Great.
In the DVD, Price doesn’t say where he gets the idea that Jesus lived during the rule of Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BC), but in his book entitled Jesus, he says that “it is attested in both the Talmud and in the Toledoth Jeschu.” Price doesn’t bother to mention that the “Toledoth Jeschu wasn’t compiled until the fifth century AD, and the Talmud wasn’t compiled until AD 400 (Palestinian Talmud) or AD 600 (Babylonian Talmud).
So essentially, what Price is doing is throwing out the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, First Timothy, Josephus and Tacitus—all written from about 20 to 100 years after Jesus death—in favor of two documents written about 400 or more years after Jesus’ death! Some might say that something other than objective scholarship is going on here.
Conclusion
Finally, nearing the end, the DVD then moves on to blood sacrifice, mockingly saying, "of course Christians today aren’t obsessed with blood sacrifice" anymore. What follows are some of the most graphic clips from Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ and an extended list of every instance of violence in the film. The DVD emphasizes how this film was so overwhelmingly accepted by Christians. The point seems to be to portray Christians as violent, bloodthirsty, animals.
Of course the narrator didn’t bother to mention all the slasher films that many non-Christians (and sometimes even Christians!) attend regularly—Films that show people being brutally terrorized, tortured and slaughtered for the shear bloodthirsty pleasure of the audience.
Christians did not go to Gibson’s Passion film to satisfy some blood-thirsty pleasure any more than they would want to watch a film of any other close loved one being tortured! But the historical fact is that Jesus was crucified, and crucifixion could be every bit as brutal as Mel Gibson portrayed it to be.
The value of The Passion lies in the fact that modern Christians let the words “Jesus died for your sins” roll of their tongues without so much as a moment’s thought about what that means. Indeed, most Christians had no idea about the brutality of crucifixion before Gibson showed them. Gibson’s film was so powerful to Christians, not because we enjoyed the brutality—we didn’t, not at all—but because it dramatically demonstrated the amazing extent to which God would go to save us from judgment.
Of course any talk of saving us from the penalty of our sin leads to the other side of this coin—hell. The DVD emphasizes the horribleness—not only of hell itself—but of the doctrine of hell and the very idea that people would go to hell.
It is important to note that whether there is a hell or not has absolutely nothing to do with whether God exists. The narrator’s argument is something like saying, “I don’t like the idea of hell so I refuse to believe in God.” This is absurd. You may not like the horror of the Iraq war either, but it would be rather ridiculous to therefore, to conclude that George Bush doesn’t exist! Serious scientists have, for years, been looking for extra-terrestrial life in the SETI project. If they ever found evidence for such life, it would be rather ridiculous for them to deny its existence just because they found that it was malevolent!
What many people want to do is to create a God in their own image—a God who fits their view of what a god should be. Of course this is usually a god who will look with fondness on them even when they lie, steel, cheat, envy, slander, lust, maliciously gossip, cause strife or heartbreak, or live arrogant, uncompassionate self-absorbed lives. They simply deny the existence of any god who does not fit their own personal desires and either make up a god to suit them, or deny that God exists at all.
But we should consider the alternative. No final judgment means that for the billions of people throughout history who have been brutally oppressed, tortured, starved or slaughtered, there is no justice. Ever! The Hitler’s, the Stalin’s, the Saddam’s of this world—or even many of those who have misused or abused you—all get away with it.
More and more people who are raised in the public education system are now understanding that no final judgment means that there is no right or wrong and that whatever you can get away with is perfectly OK. Of course this doesn’t prove the existence of a final judgment any more than the doctrine of hell proves the non-existence of God. The point is only that there is a downside to the idea of no final judgment.
The video ends with the narrator interviewing the head of a Christian school he once attended. It is clear that this school principal was completely unprepared for this interview. Eventually it also becomes clear the school principal had been duped into the interview on false pretenses. The principal says he thought the discussion was going to be about the narrator’s behaviors that got him kicked out of the school in the first place. We began to wonder if the whole video project was an act of hateful vengeance against a Christian school that disciplined him for bad behavior.
I’ve only scratched the surface of arguments that can be marshaled against this DVD and against the Jesus’ myth theory. Anyone who wants an in-depth discussion of the issues should read the outstanding book, The Jesus Legend by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory Boyd, Baker, 2007.
Introduction
The DVD begins with images of the earth revolving around the sun, and the sun revolving around the earth. The narrator asks, if Christianity was wrong about the Solar System could they be wrong about Jesus also?
Of course we might also ask, if atheists who ran the former Soviet Union (and were responsible for the deaths of about 100 million people) were wrong, could they be wrong about Jesus too?
The point is that what medieval Roman Catholic bishops believed about the solar system has nothing whatsoever to do with the existence of Jesus. Of course, the narrator is smart enough to know that. The little solar system scene was not about rational arguments. It was about emotionally directing the audience down an anti-Christian path.
The path continues with testimonies of numerous happy—though not very well informed—Christians coming out of a Billy Graham crusade. The narrator then says, “of course, those aren’t the only faces of Christianity.” What follows are pictures of mass murderer Charles Manson with a caption reading “aka Jesus Christ”—as if Charles Manson actions had anything to do with love for Jesus!
Another picture was shown of a woman said to have been a devout Christian who cut off her baby’s arms for God—as if her actions had anything whatsoever to do with Christianity. Pictures of Pat Robertson and Tim LaHaye were also thrown in.
I’m not a particular fan of Pat Robertson or Tim LaHaye, but regardless of what you think of them, when their pictures are placed in the same group as a mass murderer and a woman who cut off her baby’s arms, you know that we are not looking at an objective treatment of Christianity! What followed was a mockery of the story of Jesus from birth to ascension using cheesy old Hollywood film clips.
The case for a mythical Jesus
In a nutshell, we could summarize the case for the non-existence of Jesus as laid out by the DVD in the following six points:
First, the Gospel of Mark was the first Gospel written and the other three were derived from Mark.
Second, the Gospel of Mark mentions the destruction of Jerusalem which occurred in AD 70. Since Jesus couldn’t possibly have predicted the destruction of Jerusalem 40 years before the destruction of Jerusalem occurred, the Gospels must have been written after AD 70. Since, Jesus died in AD 33, that means there is a 40 year gap between the time when Jesus died and the when the first Gospel was written.
Third, all we know about that time gap comes from the letters of Paul and Paul never even heard of the idea that Jesus was a real person who lived in the recent past. This is clear because there is no mention in any of Paul’s letters of Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, John the Baptist, Jesus’ miracles, Jerusalem, Pilate, Jesus’ trials or anything Jesus ever said.
Fourth, the only thing Paul knows about Jesus is that he died, rose, and ascended into heaven, and Paul doesn’t place these events on earth. Rather, Paul places these events in the mythical realm just like stories of other savior gods of the time.
Fifth, since the Gospels are filled with outrageous improbabilities they cannot be understood as historical.
Sixth, since allegorical literature was extremely common back then, and since the story of Jesus fits the pattern of ancient mythical heroes, it is clear that the Gospels take Paul’s myth and make it appear historical, just like many stories on the internet which start out as fiction and are eventually believed as actual, historical events. The Gospels, therefore, are myth or symbolic narratives, not historical accounts.
Let’s examine each of these points one by one.
First, the Gospel of Mark was the first Gospel written and the other three were derived from Mark.
Although most scholars would agree that Matthew and Luke were derived in some way from Mark, few would agree that John was derived from Mark. The narrator’s understanding of biblical scholarship is apparently lacking.
Second, the Gospel of Mark mentions the destruction of Jerusalem which occurred in AD 70. Since Jesus couldn’t possibly have predicted the destruction of Jerusalem 40 before the destruction of Jerusalem occurred, the Gospels must have been written after AD 70. Since, Jesus died in AD 33, that means there is a 40 year gap between the time when Jesus died and the when the first Gospel was written.
The narrator is right that most scholars think the Gospels were written between AD 70 and AD 100, and that these dates are largely based on the fact that Mark records the destruction of Jerusalem. Many scholars once just assumed that Jesus couldn’t possibly have predicted the fall of Jerusalem, so the Gospels must have been written after that time.
Actually, this opinion is now somewhat outdated. Many critics today--even some pretty radical critics--are now starting to recognize that Jesus really did predict the fall of Jerusalem 40 years before it actually fell! They have reluctantly come to this conclusion because the vast majority of them believe in a “Lost Gospel of Q” in which Jesus alludes to the fall of Jerusalem. They acknowledge that Q contains the words of Jesus and that it was written before before the fall of Jerusalem.
What many critics don’t seem to realize, however, is that this undermines the main reason for dating the Gospels after the fall of Jerusalem! There is actually much more evidence that Matthew, Mark and Luke were written before AD 70 than after AD 70, and there are many scholars today who believe that this is the case. But if Matthew, Mark and Luke were written before AD 70, the narrator’s case for the 40 year gap is destroyed along with his case for the mythical Jesus.
Even if there was a 40 year gap, however, that means nothing. Ancient historians (and modern ones too) often write about events that occurred long before their time, but scholars don’t automatically assume the events, therefore, never happened. For example, almost everything we know about Alexander the Great was written about 400 years after he lived and is recorded in only one source! By contrast, what we know about Jesus comes from multiple sources written as early as 20 to 70 years after he lived.
Third, all we know about that time gap comes from the letters of Paul and Paul never even heard of the idea that Jesus was a real person who lived in the recent past. This is clear because there is no mention in any of Paul’s letters of Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, John the Baptist, Jesus’ miracles, Jerusalem, Pilate, Jesus’ trials or anything Jesus ever said.
First, scholars call Paul’s letters “occasional” letters, which means that Paul was addressing specific problems and issues in specific churches. He was not writing to re-tell the story of Jesus any more than a missionary might repeat the story of Jesus when they write a letter back to their home church from the mission field.
Second, although there is no reason Paul should have mentioned Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, John the Baptist, etc., in his letters; contrary to the assertions presented on the DVD, Paul nevertheless, knows Jesus as an actual person of history. For example, Paul says in the letter that we call “First Corinthians,” that Jesus was buried and raised from the dead and that this fact was witnessed by Jesus’ disciples and more than 500 other people, many of whom, Paul says, were still alive when Paul wrote the letter in AD 55 (1 Corinthians 15:3-6; cf. 12-20).
Furthermore, in an earlier letter to the Galatians written about AD 49, Paul writes about how fourteen years earlier he went to Jerusalem and met with the leaders of the church, Peter, James and John, and that they gave him their blessing to preach his gospel to the Gentiles (Galatians 2:1-10). In other words, Paul is not making up his own mythology about Jesus—those who actually waked with Jesus and heard Jesus preach, gave their blessing to Paul to preach his gospel.
And while the Paul never mentions Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, John the Baptist, etc., what the narrator doesn’t tell his audience is that Paul says Jesus was born and raised Jewish, had a brother named James, knew some of Jesus’ disciples by name including the fact that Peter was married. Paul knew that Jesus had a last supper with his disciples on the night of his death and that he was betrayed and executed by crucifixion (Galatians 1:19, 3:16, 4:4, 5:11, 6:12; First Corinthians 1:17-18, 9:5, 11:23-25; Romans 1:3 and Philippians 2:3, 3:18. See Eddy, Paul and Gregory Boyd. The Jesus Legend. Grand Rapids : Baker, 2007, 209).
In other words, by selectively picking out some things in Jesus’ life that Paul doesn’t mention, the narrator concludes that Paul doesn’t mention anything of a historical nature about Jesus’ life and then further concludes that Jesus must not have existed!
The narrator also argues that Paul never quoted from Jesus. While Paul doesn’t quote Jesus verbatim, scholars have demonstrated that Paul was to a great extent simply passing on and contextualizing the teachings of Jesus. I won’t repeat the evidence here but anyone who is interested should consult the outstanding book by Oxford University scholar, David Wenham entitled, Paul; Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity?”
The idea that Paul didn’t know anything about the real historical Jesus is just factually wrong.
Fourth, the only thing Paul knows about Jesus is that he died, rose, and ascended into heaven. Paul doesn’t place these events on earth but, just like the other savior gods of the time, in the mythical realm
This is an old theory which many scholars now reject. First, nearly all scholars acknowledge that Paul experienced a dramatic change in life, changing from someone who persecuted Christians, to someone who worked tirelessly and suffered immense persecution to preach Jesus.
Pagan myths would likely have been disgusting to a former Pharisee like Paul so the idea that Paul’s whole life changed dramatically when he started borrowing from non-Jewish or pagan myths to create some kind of mythical Jesus, and then was willing to suffer beatings and imprisonment for the myths he knew were fictional—is harder to believe than the message Paul preached!
Second, if you actually read the myths about Mithras, Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Tammuz, or Dionysus you will find that they don’t look anything like Jesus as all! The supposed parallels are arrived at by cherry-picking the stories--and even then the imagined parallels are a stretch.
For example, with Osirus, there is no real resurrection. The Osirus myth says the god’s body was drowned, dismembered and scattered but later gathered, reassembled and rejuvenated. The story of Attis records his death but not a resurrection or even a rebirth. The story of Augustus’ “virgin birth” was nothing of the sort. Augustus’ wife was said to have slept overnight in a pagan temple during which a snake crawled up inside her vagina and impregnated her! Some parallels!
Third, the narrator didn’t bother to tell his audience that much of the evidence for such supposed parallels comes from a hundred to three hundred years after the time of Jesus! If there are parallels at all it is because pagan authors are borrowing from Christianity!
Finally, far from writing in the “mythical realm” Paul argues that if Jesus did not really rise from the dead, his whole ministry was worthless (1 Cor. 15)! That hardly sounds like he is basing his ministry on a myth.
Fifth, since the Gospels are filled with outrageous improbabilities that cannot be understood as historical.
First, the DVD quotes Robert Price—a noted proponent of the Jesus myth theory—as saying the gospels are filled with “outrageous improbabilities.” But as the world-famous Jesus scholar, N.T. Wright, once said, “History is filled with improbabilities, but my goodness, they happened!” Wright is right. History should be determined primarily on the basis of historical evidence, not simply on what someone thinks was improbable.
Interestingly enough, however, Price doesn’t mention Jesus’ miracles or resurrection as examples of the “outrageous improbabilities,” though I’m sure he regards them as such. To do so would be like saying, “I don’t believe Jesus existed because I don’t believe in the stories about his miracles or resurrection.” This would have been an honest way of dealing with the evidence (I’m not implying that Price was in any way being dishonest) because in fact, this is why many people don’t believe in the Gospel’s portrayals of Jesus. They simply don’t believe the supernatural events recorded about his life. Most other arguments against the Gospel’s views of Jesus are just smoke and mirrors.
The best examples of “outrageous improbabilities” Price provides, therefore, are 1) the “slaughter of innocents”, that is, the killing of the babies in Bethlehem at by Herod at the time of Jesus’ birth 2) the Jewish supreme council meeting on Passover eve to get rid of Jesus and 3) Pontius Pilate releasing “a known killer of Romans” and turning Jesus over to be killed after trying to let him off the hook.
Price’s only argument about the “slaughter of innocents” is that it is mythological and derived from the book of Exodus. This is like arguing that given any two similar events, the second one must be mythical and derived from the first. So, for example, the assassination of John F. Kennedy must be a mythical story derived from an earlier Presidential assassination!
Of course, Price would say this is nonsense, but so is his dismissal of the killing of the babies as mythical simply because the book of Exodus has a story about the death of the firstborn. The fact is that there is nothing unhistorical about the possibility that Herod the Great—who even had members of his own family killed—killed a few babies to eliminate one who might one day threaten his throne. This is entirely in keeping with everything historians know of Herod’s character.
Another “outrageous improbability” Price provides is the Jewish supreme council meeting on Passover eve to get rid of Jesus. Passover was a time in which hundreds of thousands of people descended on Jerusalem to celebrate the feast. Given the “hell-on-earth” Jews had suffered in the previous two hundred years, they were desperate for a “Messiah” to come and liberate them from oppressive, pagan Roman rule. Jesus had entered Jerusalem on Passover to the cheers of huge crowds who had heard of his mighty works. Perhaps he was that Messiah. Perhaps this Passover would be when he would “make his move.”
The Jewish authorities were well aware of the enormous potential for disaster that could be caused by a Messiah, or Messiah wannabee during a feast like Passover. If things got out of hand, the Romans would come in—as they had done before—and slaughter people by the thousands. It may well be that the Jewish Council believed this was a matter of national security that couldn’t wait. When viewed in historical context, not only is this not improbable, but may even be likely.
Another scholar, not mentioned in the DVD, argued that it was very improbable that Jesus entered Jerusalem to cheering crowds (triumphal entry), but a few days later the crowds were yelling, “crucify him.” But to Jewish people the idea of “Messiah” was a king who was going to kick out the pagans. The idea that pagans would gain control of the Messiah was absolutely unthinkable. So when Jesus came to Jerusalem there was high expectation that this miracle-working Messiah might make his move against Rome. When the people later saw him beaten, bloody and chained to Roman soldiers, they became furious at being deceived by what the now saw as an imposter. Far from being improbable, these stories are very probable.
The other outrageous improbability Price provides is the story of how Pontius Pilate released Barabbas, “a killer of Romans,” and turned Jesus over to the crowds after trying to get him released.
First, Price is right that the idea that Pilate would show any kind of concessions to the Jews is unusual, but Pilate’s career depended on keeping peace in Judea, and even military men often make political concessions when it is to their advantage.
Second, we don’t know who instituted this custom of releasing a prisoner on Passover. It may be that Pilate was just carrying out a custom begun by a previous governor and that to drop the custom now could cause more unrest than it was worth.
Third, Pilate’s attempt to release Jesus was probably not because he felt any compassion toward Jesus, but simply because the religious leaders wanted Jesus killed and because Pilate hated them, his knee jerk reaction was to deny their wishes.
The fact is that all we have is what was written in our ancient sources. The more we start re-writing history based on what seems improbable to us, the greater the risk that we are not really recovering history, but re-writing history and creating our own myths.
Sixth, since allegorical literature was extremely common back then, and since the story of Jesus fits the pattern of ancient mythical heroes, it is clear that the Gospels take Paul’s myth and make it appear historical, just like many stories on the internet which start out as fiction and are eventually believed as actual, historical events. The Gospels, therefore, are myth or symbolic narratives, not historical accounts.
First, histories and biographies were common back then also. Just because allegorical literature was common says nothing about the genre of the Gospels.
Second, scholars have shown that the Gospels simply do not fit the genre of myth. When Luke, for example, writes
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene—during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiphas…”
...he is obviously trying to place his story in a concrete historical place and time. This is no story about Zeus on Mt. Olympas! The emphasis on history is even more pronounced in the sequel to Luke’s gospel (the book of Acts) in which dozens of places and events find historical verification.
The Oxford scholar, C.S. Lewis, who was an expert in myth, once wrote that he knows myth and the Gospels are just not myth. For a more recent study see, Burridge, Richard. What are the Gospels; A comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography. New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Third, the DVD then tries to argue that Jesus is just a myth like Romulus, Hercules or Zeus. It does this by listing 22 supposed characteristics of the “hero tradition.” The DVD argues that the story of Jesus follows this tradition closely.
The 22 characteristics are listed below with an asterisk (*) next to the ones the DVD says are true of Jesus and an X next to those in which the story of Jesus does not fit the pattern.
1) The hero’s mother is a royal virgin*, 2) The hero’s father is a king*, 3) The hero is often a near relative of his mother*, 4) The circumstances of his conception are unusual*, 5) He is reputed to be the son of a god*, 6) At birth an attempt is made often by his father to kill him*, 7) He is spirited away*, 8) And reared by foster parents in a far country X, 9) We are told nothing of his childhood *, 10) On return he goes to his future kingdom*, 11) After victory over a king or Jinn or dragon X, 12) Marries a princes X, 13) He becomes king*, 14), King reigns uneventfully* 15) The king prescribes laws* 16) He later looses favor with his subjects* 17) He is driven from the throne of the city* 18) He has a mysterious death* 19) Often at the top of a hill* 20) His children if any do not succeed him* 21) His body is not buried* 22) He has one or more sepulchers*
When Jesus is compared to other mythological heroes we find that Oedipus and Thesius meet 22 of the characteristics, Jesus meets 19, Romulus and Hercules meet 17, Perseus meets 16, Zeus and Jason meet 15, Robin Hood meets 13 and Apollo meets 11.
A closer look at these characteristics, however, will show that the whole thing is contrived. While Jesus' mother was a descendant of David, she was a poor peasant, hardly a "royal" virgin. Jesus’ adopted father was not a king, he was also a peasant—unless you count God as his father but that is counted under his reputation as son of God. To count this twice is stacking the deck.
To say that the hero is often a near relative of his mother is also contrived. Most people are near relatives of their mothers! Jesus adopted father made no attempt to kill him as the fathers of heroes in other hero stories. It is true that we are told almost nothing of his childhood, but that is a characteristic on ancient bios, or biography, not just of heroes.
Jesus’ future kingdom is not just Galilee or Judea, but the world. The whole story of the Gospels is how Jesus will one day be the king, but he was never an earthly king and never ruled, eventfully or uneventfully.
Jesus certainly taught the crowds, but not in the sense of an earthly king prescribing laws. He did not loose favor with his subjects, but with those who never were his subjects to begin with (unless you count Judas). He couldn’t be driven from the throne of the city because he never sat on the throne.
There was nothing mysterious about his death and his body was in fact buried. The whole thing was contrived to make it look like Jesus was just like ancient mythological heroes, but when you count up the actual similarities, Jesus doesn’t even make the list of “heros.” If you actually read the Gospels and then read the stories of these mythological characters, you will find that they are as different as night and day!
But on the other hand, even if the Gospel writers had written their stories in such a way as to make them conform to some accepted pattern, that does not mean they are necessarily unhistorical. For example, someone once showed that Abraham Lincoln fits the hero pattern better than Oedipus, who is at the top of the list! Others have shown that stories about Napoleon, Churchill, Kennedy also fit the myth patterns!
Finally, Barbara and David Mikkelson (from Snopes.com) were interviewed in the DVD to show that fictional stories can take on a life of their own and become believed as actual history. The difference is that stories about Jesus were being told at a time when both the eyewitnesses and enemies of Jesus were still alive and could debunk false rumors going around (just like Snoops.com debunks false internet rumors).
Few of those who spread internet rumors would be willing to put their life on the line for the rumors they spread. Everything we know about early Christians supports the fact that they were so convinced that what they believed about Jesus was true, they were willing to face beating, prison and even death.
Seventh, since there were ancient Jews and Jewish Christians who thought Jesus had been killed a century earlier under Alexander Jennaeus or Herod, this diversity of opinion about Jesus supports the idea that Jesus of the Gospels was a myth based on earlier stories circulated before the time Jesus was supposed to have existed. The Jesus of the Gospels, therefore, never existed.
First, the idea that early Christians had any significant disagreement about when Jesus lived is simply not true. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts and First Timothy all agree that Jesus was executed during the rule of Pontius Pilate who ruled Judea from AD 26-36.
That Jesus was crucified during the rule of Pontius Pilate is confirmed by Ignatius, an ancient Christian leader whose letters are not in the New Testament. It is also confirmed by the Jewish historian, Josephus and the Roman historian, Tacitus. Both Luke and Tacitus also place Jesus during the time of Emperor Tiberius (AD 14-37).
Contrary to Price, the Gospel of Peter is no exception to this. The Gospel of Peter says that Jesus was tried under Herod. Far from being a disagreement about when Jesus lived, this fact is confirmed by the Gospel of Luke (23) which affirms that Jesus was sent to Herod by Pontius Pilate, who then sent Jesus back to Pilate. This Herod is Herod Antipas, a contemporary of Pontius Pilate and the son of Herod the Great.
In the DVD, Price doesn’t say where he gets the idea that Jesus lived during the rule of Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BC), but in his book entitled Jesus, he says that “it is attested in both the Talmud and in the Toledoth Jeschu.” Price doesn’t bother to mention that the “Toledoth Jeschu wasn’t compiled until the fifth century AD, and the Talmud wasn’t compiled until AD 400 (Palestinian Talmud) or AD 600 (Babylonian Talmud).
So essentially, what Price is doing is throwing out the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, First Timothy, Josephus and Tacitus—all written from about 20 to 100 years after Jesus death—in favor of two documents written about 400 or more years after Jesus’ death! Some might say that something other than objective scholarship is going on here.
Conclusion
Finally, nearing the end, the DVD then moves on to blood sacrifice, mockingly saying, "of course Christians today aren’t obsessed with blood sacrifice" anymore. What follows are some of the most graphic clips from Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ and an extended list of every instance of violence in the film. The DVD emphasizes how this film was so overwhelmingly accepted by Christians. The point seems to be to portray Christians as violent, bloodthirsty, animals.
Of course the narrator didn’t bother to mention all the slasher films that many non-Christians (and sometimes even Christians!) attend regularly—Films that show people being brutally terrorized, tortured and slaughtered for the shear bloodthirsty pleasure of the audience.
Christians did not go to Gibson’s Passion film to satisfy some blood-thirsty pleasure any more than they would want to watch a film of any other close loved one being tortured! But the historical fact is that Jesus was crucified, and crucifixion could be every bit as brutal as Mel Gibson portrayed it to be.
The value of The Passion lies in the fact that modern Christians let the words “Jesus died for your sins” roll of their tongues without so much as a moment’s thought about what that means. Indeed, most Christians had no idea about the brutality of crucifixion before Gibson showed them. Gibson’s film was so powerful to Christians, not because we enjoyed the brutality—we didn’t, not at all—but because it dramatically demonstrated the amazing extent to which God would go to save us from judgment.
Of course any talk of saving us from the penalty of our sin leads to the other side of this coin—hell. The DVD emphasizes the horribleness—not only of hell itself—but of the doctrine of hell and the very idea that people would go to hell.
It is important to note that whether there is a hell or not has absolutely nothing to do with whether God exists. The narrator’s argument is something like saying, “I don’t like the idea of hell so I refuse to believe in God.” This is absurd. You may not like the horror of the Iraq war either, but it would be rather ridiculous to therefore, to conclude that George Bush doesn’t exist! Serious scientists have, for years, been looking for extra-terrestrial life in the SETI project. If they ever found evidence for such life, it would be rather ridiculous for them to deny its existence just because they found that it was malevolent!
What many people want to do is to create a God in their own image—a God who fits their view of what a god should be. Of course this is usually a god who will look with fondness on them even when they lie, steel, cheat, envy, slander, lust, maliciously gossip, cause strife or heartbreak, or live arrogant, uncompassionate self-absorbed lives. They simply deny the existence of any god who does not fit their own personal desires and either make up a god to suit them, or deny that God exists at all.
But we should consider the alternative. No final judgment means that for the billions of people throughout history who have been brutally oppressed, tortured, starved or slaughtered, there is no justice. Ever! The Hitler’s, the Stalin’s, the Saddam’s of this world—or even many of those who have misused or abused you—all get away with it.
More and more people who are raised in the public education system are now understanding that no final judgment means that there is no right or wrong and that whatever you can get away with is perfectly OK. Of course this doesn’t prove the existence of a final judgment any more than the doctrine of hell proves the non-existence of God. The point is only that there is a downside to the idea of no final judgment.
The video ends with the narrator interviewing the head of a Christian school he once attended. It is clear that this school principal was completely unprepared for this interview. Eventually it also becomes clear the school principal had been duped into the interview on false pretenses. The principal says he thought the discussion was going to be about the narrator’s behaviors that got him kicked out of the school in the first place. We began to wonder if the whole video project was an act of hateful vengeance against a Christian school that disciplined him for bad behavior.
I’ve only scratched the surface of arguments that can be marshaled against this DVD and against the Jesus’ myth theory. Anyone who wants an in-depth discussion of the issues should read the outstanding book, The Jesus Legend by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory Boyd, Baker, 2007.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The Crucifixion of Jesus
Yesterday was “Good Friday,” a rather strange name for the celebration of the crucifixion of Jesus. The crucifixion of Jesus is one of the most well attested historical facts in all of ancient history.
It is found not only in first century AD New Testament sources like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Paul’s letters, Hebrews, and First Peter, but also in other ancient Christian sources not found in the Bible, like Ignatius, Polycarp, Epistle of Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, Mileto of Sardis, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origin, and the Diatessaron. In fact, Jesus’ crucifixion is even attested by early non-Christian (even anti-Christian) sources like Josephus and Lucian, and in a round-about way by Tacitus.
The crucifixion of Jesus is an accepted fact in the scholarly world. In fact, almost the only ones who reject this fact are Muslims. According to the Qur'an, Jesus only appearned to be crucified. The Qur’an refers to Jews boasting about killing Christ:
The Qur’an contains the words of Muhammad as remembered by his earliest followers. The sources I cited above which affirm the crucifixion of Jesus were written from 400 to almost 600 years before the time of Muhammad.
So why does Muhammad deny something as historically solid as the crucifixion of Jesus?
Muhammad was hoodwinked by a group of people we often call "Gnostics", who believed that Jesus was divine but not truly human. As a result, they didn’t believe Jesus could really die. So about 200 to 300 years after Jesus’ death, they argued that Jesus was not really crucified and that he died only in appearance. For example, one of the Gnostic writings, says,
So supposedly, while “the living Jesus” was being crucified—one of the most brutal tortures imaginable—he was laughing because the nails had been driven into the hands of a substitute?! This is the pool of ideas from which Muhammad got his idea that Jesus was never crucified.
While Muhammad accepted the Gnostic idea that Jesus was not crucified, he rejected their idea that Jesus was a divine being. That is interesting because their reason for thinking Jesus was not crucified in the first place was because, in their view, Jesus was divine, but not not really human!
So if you think it is historically plausible that Jesus was not human at all, and that he was some kind of shape-shifter ("I was altering my shapes"), and was laughing on the cross because it was not really him on the cross but a substitute, then maybe Muhammad’s view of Jesus not being crucified might make sense to you.
But if, like virtually all scholars, you dismiss such nonsense as unhistorical, then you should also recognize that Muhammad was not a prophet of God at all, but was merely an ordinary man who was duped into believing this, and the numerous other historical errors he relates in the Qur’an.
It is found not only in first century AD New Testament sources like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Paul’s letters, Hebrews, and First Peter, but also in other ancient Christian sources not found in the Bible, like Ignatius, Polycarp, Epistle of Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, Mileto of Sardis, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origin, and the Diatessaron. In fact, Jesus’ crucifixion is even attested by early non-Christian (even anti-Christian) sources like Josephus and Lucian, and in a round-about way by Tacitus.
The crucifixion of Jesus is an accepted fact in the scholarly world. In fact, almost the only ones who reject this fact are Muslims. According to the Qur'an, Jesus only appearned to be crucified. The Qur’an refers to Jews boasting about killing Christ:
“That they said (in boast), ‘We killed Christ Jesus The son of Mary, The Apostle
of God’’—But they killed him not, Nor crucified him, But so it was made to
appear to them (Sura 4:157).
The Qur’an contains the words of Muhammad as remembered by his earliest followers. The sources I cited above which affirm the crucifixion of Jesus were written from 400 to almost 600 years before the time of Muhammad.
So why does Muhammad deny something as historically solid as the crucifixion of Jesus?
Muhammad was hoodwinked by a group of people we often call "Gnostics", who believed that Jesus was divine but not truly human. As a result, they didn’t believe Jesus could really die. So about 200 to 300 years after Jesus’ death, they argued that Jesus was not really crucified and that he died only in appearance. For example, one of the Gnostic writings, says,
“I did not succumb to them as they had planned. But I was not afflicted at all. Those who were there punished me. And I did not die in reality but in appearance…They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. It was another upon whom they placed the crown of thorns. But I was rejoicing in the height over all the wealth of the archons…and I was laughing at their ignorance…for I was altering my shapes…” (Second treatise of the Great Seth 55-56).A similar document says, “The Savior said to me, ‘He whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hand and feet they drive the nails in his fleshly part, which is the substitute…” (Apocalypse of Peter 81)
So supposedly, while “the living Jesus” was being crucified—one of the most brutal tortures imaginable—he was laughing because the nails had been driven into the hands of a substitute?! This is the pool of ideas from which Muhammad got his idea that Jesus was never crucified.
While Muhammad accepted the Gnostic idea that Jesus was not crucified, he rejected their idea that Jesus was a divine being. That is interesting because their reason for thinking Jesus was not crucified in the first place was because, in their view, Jesus was divine, but not not really human!
So if you think it is historically plausible that Jesus was not human at all, and that he was some kind of shape-shifter ("I was altering my shapes"), and was laughing on the cross because it was not really him on the cross but a substitute, then maybe Muhammad’s view of Jesus not being crucified might make sense to you.
But if, like virtually all scholars, you dismiss such nonsense as unhistorical, then you should also recognize that Muhammad was not a prophet of God at all, but was merely an ordinary man who was duped into believing this, and the numerous other historical errors he relates in the Qur’an.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
A Common Word for Muslims and Christians
Several months ago, some Muslims issued a document called "A Common word between you and us." Recliner Commentaries expressed serious concern over the wording of this document and concluded
"So, Christians, all you have to do in order to sign this “Common Word” is toI have been appalled by the number of prominent Christian leaders who have signed this document! Fortunately, the Wheaton College leadership has seen the light and have retracted their support (Christian Today).
deny one of the fundamentals of the Christian faith—the deity of Jesus and the
Triune nature of God. Of course, it is hard to understand how those who deny
this can call themselves Christians at all."
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Christian extremism
In response to some idiot who said that "we typically think of terrorism groups strictly as Islamic and Muslim, but Christian extremist groups actually commit just as many acts," Robert Spencer responds:
Let's see. 10,380 violent attacks since 9/11 by Islamic jihadists who
justify their actions on the basis of Islamic texts and teachings.
How many violent attacks since 9/11 by Christian zealots who justify
their actions on the basis of Christian texts and teachings? Uh, none.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Shooting at YWAM
After my last post on the shooting at New Life Church, I received an e-mail a woman named Rebecca Schmidt who wrote:
I knew Tiffany Johnson, the girl who was killed at YWAM. My husband went on a
mission trip that she was on and we've been in her prayer group. This is what I
wrote about her in my Christmas Card:
On December 9th one of our Christian sisters, Tiffany Johnson, was shot and killed in Colorado at YWAM. Tiffany was on the Ghana mission trip my husband Bob went on in 2002. Since that time we’ve had the privilege to see this young Christian grow in her faith and trust in Christ. She sold everything and followed Christ. She was shot eight times. At first there wasn’t pulse but one of the staff was a paramedic and she revived her. Tiff asked her boyfriend to tell her a funny story. Before she was taken in the ambulance, she told her friend: "It is okay. We do this for Jesus!" The last
entry she had in her journal was Gen 50:20: "You intended to harm me, but God
intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many
lives." Chris Murray, the shooter’s brother is quoted as saying: "Even though
satan attacked my brother, I truly feel God is going to save a whole generation
of people through this." We pray that through her death, many will come out of
darkness into the light of God’s dear Son, Jesus Christ. (Posted by permission)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
