Category Archives: Historical Christ

Atheism, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability, Skeptics

Did Jesus Really Exist? Bart Ehrman Thinks So

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some of the atheists that have commented on the blog have expressed skepticism at the existence of Jesus, claiming that there is very little or even no good evidence for him being a real historical figure.  My response has been to point out that Jesus is the most well attested historical figure of ancient history and that no reputable historian doubts his existence.  Uninterested in what historians have to say, these skeptics continue to hold their position.

What is especially ironic is that many of the skeptics who doubt the historical scholars are also the same people who chide me for doubting Darwin’s historical account of the origins of species over the past 4.5 billion years of earth’s history.  I guess it’s OK to doubt professional historians, but not professional paleontologists.

In any case, this week I came across a fascinating radio interview that bears on this issue of the existence of Jesus.  The interviewer is an atheist named Infidel Guy and he is questioning New Testament (NT) scholar and agnostic Bart Ehrman.  Ehrman has written several books pointing out discrepancies and errors that exist in the Greek NT manuscripts.  He is not a Christian and he believes that some of the things recorded about Jesus in the NT are legendary.

What is fascinating about this interview is that Ehrman finds himself arguing with the Infidel Guy that Jesus actually exists!  Ehrman, as a scholar, knows that the idea that Jesus never existed is ridiculous and that no serious scholar holds this position.  For 16 minutes he tries to convince the Infidel Guy, but to no avail.

Maybe the fact that Bart Ehrman, hero for skeptics of Christianity, has attempted to put this silly notion to rest will influence some atheists who continue to cling to this idea.  We’ll see!  In the mean time, please take a listen to the interview below which is broken into 2 parts.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRx0N4GF0AY&feature=related

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SIhX4BWCPU&feature=related

Historical Christ, Resurrection

How Did the Apostles Die?

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William Hole's interpretation of the Beloved D...
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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most compelling apologetic arguments for the truth of the resurrection of Jesus is the fact that most of his closest followers were martyred for their beliefs.  Since these followers would have had first-hand knowledge of whether he actually did come back from the dead, their willingness to be persecuted and eventually die for this belief is hard to explain if the resurrection never did occur.

One of the challenges with making this argument is that the quality of the historical evidence for these martyr deaths varies greatly.  C. Michael Patton, of the Parchment and Pen blog, attempted to sort out the historical evidence for the deaths of 12 apostles in this blog post.  In his post, he grades the quality of the historical sources based on his own research.  He assigns a grade of “A” to the deaths with the best historical evidence (highest probability) all the way down to a grade of “D” for deaths where he considers the historical evidence to be weak (lowest probability).

For reference, here are each of the disciples along with their alleged year of martyrdom and the grade Patton assigned to their martyrdom accounts:

The Apostle James: year of death – 44-45 A.D.; grade of A

The Apostle Peter: year of death – 64 A.D.; grade of A

The Apostle Andrew: year of death – 70 A.D.; grade of B

The Apostle Thomas: year of death – 70 A.D.; grade of B

The Apostle Philip: year of death – 54 A.D.; grade of C

The Apostle Matthew: year of death – 60-70 A.D.; grade of B

The Apostle Nathaneal: year of death – 70 A.D.; grade of C

James the Brother of Jesus: year of death – 63 A.D.; grade of B

The Apostle Simon the Zealot: year of death – 74 A.D.; grade of B

The Apostle Judas Thaddeus: year of death – 72 A.D.; grade of C

The Apostle Matthias: year of death – 70 A.D.; grade of D

The Apostle Paul: year of death – 67 A.D.; grade of A

Out of the 12 martyrdom accounts he grades, 3 merited an “A,” 5 merited a “B,” 3 merited a “C,” and 1 merited a “D.”  In my opinion, the three accounts that garnered “A”s are enough evidence to uphold the apologetic argument.  What Patton demonstrates is that there is even more evidence than just these three.

Historical research can be very tricky, and these kinds of analyses are somewhat subjective.  I’m sure skeptics of Christianity might grade harder than Patton did, but I commend him for his attempt.  Please read the rest of his blog post if you want to know more of the details surrounding the deaths.

Church History, Historical Christ, Jesus Christ, Skeptics

Did Ancient Non-Christians Write about Jesus? Part 4

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In parts one, two, and three of this series of posts, we discussed the writings of Josephus and Tacitus, who are both non-Christians.  They each provide historical confirmation of key components of the history recorded in the New Testament.  Before ending this series, I want to look at one more writer from the ancient world who gave us a window into what Roman officials thought of Christianity.

Pliny the Younger was a Roman author and administrator.   He wrote a letter, as governor of Bithynia in northwestern Turkey, to the Roman Emperor Trajan in about A.D. 112 where he describes early Christian worship practices:

They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to do any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food—but food of an ordinary and innocent kind. [Letters 10:96]

Pliny’s letter to Emperor Trajan identifies several historical facts about early Christianity:

  1. Christians were meeting on a fixed day of the week.
  2. They worshiped Christ as God (this one sentence destroys the claim that the deity of Jesus was a late fourth century addition to Christianity).
  3. They maintained high ethical standards.
  4. They gathered to eat meals together.

Pliny’s letter also provides further evidence that Christianity had spread far and wide around the Roman Empire, and that government administrators were having to deal with them.

There are certainly other ancient non-Christian sources which speak of Jesus and early Christianity.  If you would like to do more research, there are several excellent introductory works to this topic.  Two that I used for this series of blog posts are The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel and The Historical Jesus by Gary Habermas.

If we circle back around to the skeptic that I introduced in the first post of the series, we can see that his view that the existence of Jesus is not supported by early non-Christian writers is simply mistaken.  There are certainly a small number of historians who cast doubt on the authenticity and interpretation of the writings we’ve analyzed, but I must stress that they are in a tiny minority, as far as I can tell.  The overwhelming consensus of history is that Jesus did indeed exist.

Historical Christ, Jesus Christ, Skeptics

Did Ancient Non-Christians Write about Jesus? Part 3

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In parts one and two of this series of posts, we discussed the writings of Josephus and we saw that most historians agree that Josephus did indeed write about Jesus, even if Christians may have added a few phrases later on (this is still debatable, but possible).

There are, however, others who wrote about Jesus at a very early date.  The next of these we’ll mention is the Roman historian Tacitus.  Edwin Yamauchi, the historian we’ve been quoting, has this to say about Tacitus: “Tacitus recorded what is probably the most important reference to Jesus outside the New Testament.  In A.D. 115 he explicitly states that Nero persecuted the Christians as scapegoats to divert suspicion away from himself for the great fire that had devastated Rome in A.D. 64.”

So what exactly did Tacitus say about Christians and Jesus?

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures of a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. [Annals 15.44]

Tacitus, as can be seen, is no fan of Christianity, but he provides several details about Jesus and early Christians.  Here they are:

  1. Christians were named for their founder, Christus (Latin for Christ).
  2. Christus was put to death by a Roman procurator, Pontius Pilatus (again Latin).
  3. Christus was executed while Tiberius was emperor (AD 14-37) .
  4. His death ended a “superstition” for a time but it broke out again in Judea (where the teaching originated), and made its way to Rome.
  5. Christians were hated and tortured during Nero’s reign.

Again, we see that this data lines up well with the New Testament documents, and again we see that those who deny that Jesus ever existed are swimming upstream against the current of scholarship.

One additional note about Tacitus.  There has been much speculation that the “superstition” to which Tacitus refers is the resurrection of Jesus.  We can’t be sure about this, but Tacitus may be indirectly referring to it.

Tacitus’ testimony about Jesus raises an important question.  How did a swelling religious movement, which started at the far reaches of the Roman empire (in Judea) but reached Rome by the mid 60’s A.D., get started when its leader was subjected to one of the most humiliating and public deaths possible at this time?  Jesus was crucified as a common criminal, but people were following him.  If he was resurrected, then there would be an easy explanation, but if he stayed in the tomb, then how did this movement even get off the ground?  I have never heard a satisfactory answer to that question from those who deny the resurrection.

There is one more non-Christian I want to introduce to you, and I’ll do that in the next post.  Thank you for sticking with this series, which has gone on longer than I originally thought!

Historical Christ, Jesus Christ, Skeptics

Did Ancient Non-Christians Write about Jesus? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1, we introduced the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus and demonstrated that he mentioned Jesus and his brother James in one section of his work, The Antiquities.

But there is an even more famous passage that talks about Jesus in The Antiquities.  This longer section is referred to as the Testimonium Flavianum.  Historian Edwin Yamauchi explains that this passage is more controversial among historians because there may be later Christian additions to the original text.  Historians refer to these possible additions as interpolations.  Below I will include the entire text and highlight in bold the most disputed phrases.

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man.  For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly.  He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks.  He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him, did not give up their affection for him.  On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him.  And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.

Yamauchi claims that “today there is a remarkable consensus among both Jewish and Christian scholars that the passage as a whole is authentic.”  But what about the possible interpolations (the bold text above)?  Why do some scholars think Josephus would not have said these things?

The first bold phrase appears to indicate Jesus is more than human, which seems unlikely coming from Josephus.  The second bold phrase flatly says that Jesus is the Messiah, instead of saying Jesus was called the Messiah.  Again, this seems unlikely.  Finally, the third alleged interpolation proclaims the resurrection of Jesus, not something that Josephus would likely report.  We can’t be sure about any of these phrases, and maybe Josephus did write them, but the current scholarly opinion is mixed on the subject.

What is left of the passage, though, is still a powerful corroboration of key facts about Jesus.  Yamauchi summarizes: “He was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem and . . . he was a wise teacher who had established a wide and lasting following, despite the fact that he had been crucified under Pilate at the instigation of some of the Jewish leaders.”  Those facts line up exactly with what the New Testament records about Jesus.

Given these two passages from Josephus, how significant are they?  Yamauchi explains: “Highly significant, especially since his accounts of the Jewish War have proved to be very accurate; for example, they’ve been corroborated through archaeological excavations at Masada as well as by historians like Tacitus.  He’s considered to be a pretty reliable historian, and his mentioning of Jesus is considered extremely important.”

So, we do have at least one non-Christian source that talks about Jesus from the first century in Josephus.  But there are additional sources that should be mentioned before we leave this topic.  Find out in the next post….

General Apologetics, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability, Skeptics

A Law Professor’s Analysis of the Gospels – Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 of this post, we discussed Simon Greenleaf’s conclusion that the Gospel writers’ testimony about Jesus Christ should be considered true, based on the canons of legal evidence, an area in which he was an undisputed expert.  Some skeptics, however, have argued that the standards for judging the credibility of the Gospels should be much higher than what Greenleaf has proposed.  It is to this question we now turn.

Greenleaf makes a strong case for the kind of evidence that skeptics should be requesting, with regard to the Gospel narratives.  Here I provide his detailed thoughts:

It should be observed that the subject of inquiry is a matter of fact, and not of abstract mathematical truth.  The latter alone is susceptible of that high degree of proof, usually termed demonstration, which excludes the possibility of error, and which therefore may reasonably be required in support of every mathematical deduction. . . . In the ordinary affairs of life we do not require nor expect demonstrative evidence, because it is inconsistent with the nature of matters of fact, and to insist on its production would be unreasonable and absurd. . . . The error of the skeptic consists in . . . demanding demonstrative evidence concerning things which are not susceptible of any other than moral evidence alone, and of which the utmost that can be said is that there is no reasonable doubt about their truth.

In the case of the Gospel narratives, “A proposition of fact is proved, when its truth is established by competent and satisfactory evidence.”  What is competent and satisfactory evidence?

By competent evidence is meant such as the nature of the thing to be proved it requires; and by satisfactory evidence is meant that amount of proof, which ordinarily satisfies an unprejudiced mind, beyond any reasonable doubt.  The circumstances which will amount to this degree of proof can never be previously defined; the only legal test to which they can be subjected is their sufficiency to satisfy the mind and conscience of a man of common prudence and discretion, and so to convince him, that he could venture to act upon that conviction in matters of the highest concern and importance to his own interests. . . . When we have this degree of evidence, it is unreasonable to require more.  A juror would violate his oath, if he should refuse to acquit or condemn a person charged with an offense, where this measure of proof was adduced.

Greenleaf rejects the call for apodictic proof in the case of the Gospel testimonies because nobody ever requires this kind of evidence when it comes to the affairs of human history.  We only require enough evidence to show that the events were probable.  Even in courts of law, where the jury must determine whether a defendant is to die for his alleged crimes, the bar for conviction is no reasonable doubt.

When the accounts of Jesus’ life are subjected to the rigors of legal analysis, they fare quite well.  Greenleaf urges his readers to set aside their prejudices and take a look at the evidence.  If they do so, they will be left with no reasonable doubt.

General Apologetics, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

A Law Professor’s Analysis of the Gospels – Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I recently read a short book entitled The Testimony of the Evangelists by Simon Greenleaf.  Greenleaf was one of the most respected American jurists of the nineteenth century.  He taught law at Harvard University and wrote a judicial classic, Treatise on the Law of Evidence. This work was used as a standard textbook for the latter half of the nineteenth century in American law schools.

The Testimony of the Evangelists is Greenleaf’s analysis of the four Gospels using the principles of legal evidence, an area in which he was an undisputed expert.  Put simply, Greenleaf treated the Gospel writers’ testimonies as if they were being presented in a courtroom.  How would they stand up?

In Greenleaf’s own words, “His business is that of a lawyer examining the testimony of witnesses by the rules of his profession, in order to ascertain whether, if they had thus testified on oath, in a court of justice, they would be entitled to credit and whether their narratives, as we now have them, would be received as ancient documents, coming from the proper custody.”

Greenleaf systematically applied the rules of evidence to the Gospel writers and found them to be entirely credible.  How did he do so?  He first argued that the documents themselves, as originally composed 2,000 years ago and reproduced from that time down to the present day, met the legal standards of admission in a court of law.  He then explained the kind of evidence needed to show that the authors of the documents were trustworthy in their testimony.

It is universally admitted that the credit to be given to witnesses depends chiefly on their ability to discern and comprehend what was before them, their opportunities for observation, the degree of accuracy with which they are accustomed to mark passing events and their integrity in relating them.

After careful historical analysis, Greenleaf finds that each Gospel writer meets these criteria, and thus their testimony about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus should be judged true, based on the canons of legal evidence.

Some skeptics have charged that the standards for judging the truthfulness of the Gospel accounts should be much higher than the canons of legal evidence.  We will examine Greenleaf’s response to this challenge in part 2 of this post.

General Apologetics, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability, Religion, Skeptics

Are Religious People Unable to Get History Right?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In my frequent conversations with non-Christians, I hear the following kinds of statements: “I can’t believe what the Bible authors wrote because they were religiously motivated.”

The idea seems to be that if you are religious, you will not be able to tell the truth about historical events.  You will twist history to fit your agenda.

This may surprise some of you, but I can see where this viewpoint comes from.  I run into various religious groups who do monkey around with history and fail to get the facts right.  In fact, the very reason I could never be a Mormon is because Joseph Smith manufactured an entire history of the Americas that has absolutely no external evidence to support it.

But, just because some religious groups manufacture history does not mean that all religious groups manufacture history.  As I’ve written before on this blog, the writers of the Bible get their history right whenever archaeology can confirm it (see Did the New Testament Writers Record Fact or Fiction? Part 7).

At the very least, a skeptic should acknowledge this truth about Christianity and not lump it in with religions who do not accurately portray history.  The Bible deserves the benefit of the doubt as it has proven itself many times to be historically accurate.

The well-known scholar N. T. Wright explains that the New Testament writers were clearly trying to record accurate history alongside their theological teachings.  It is only modern man who struggles with the juxtaposition of the two.  Watch this brief video clip below posted by The John Ankerberg Show.

Historical Christ, Resurrection

Is Extraordinary Evidence Needed to Prove the Resurrection?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I sometimes hear skeptics say that they need extraordinary evidence to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.  The reason they need extraordinary evidence, they claim, is that the resurrection is an extraordinary claim.

It is true that the resurrection is an extraordinary claim, but there are many extraordinary claims made about the past that we accept based on historical testimony.  For example, how do you get more extraordinary than the conquests of Alexander the Great?  His accomplishments are virtually unparalleled in history, yet we believe they really happened.

Or take a look at the Guinness Book of World Records some time.  Most of us have no trouble accepting the things recorded in there, but none of us were there to see all of them.  We have to rely on the testimony of those who were there.

The point is that multitudes of bizarre and outlandish marvels have transpired in the past, but for some reason skeptics are quite willing to accept these marvels as real, but not the resurrection of Jesus.

The standard for proving the resurrection should be trustworthy testimony from those who saw what happened, just like any other historical event.  In fact, all we need is eyewitness testimony that Jesus was alive, that he died, and that he was alive again.  If we know from history that these three things occurred, then we know Jesus rose from the dead.

There is nothing difficult about understanding this line of thinking.  If you are a skeptic, go study the historical testimony that shows Jesus lived, that he was then killed by crucifixion, and that he was then seen again by over 500 people.  There are libraries of both scholarly and popular level books that delve into these historical evidences.  Why not go read some of them, with an open mind to the evidence?

If the historical evidence is there, as I claim it is, you have some serious thinking to do.