Monthly Archives: June 2012

Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

Why Should We Not Believe Those Who Claim Jesus Never Existed?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Bart Ehrman, the agnostic New Testament scholar, who is no friend to Christianity, is back again with a new book called Did Jesus Exist?  I have not read the book yet, but I came across an article written by Ehrman a couple months ago in the Huffington Post that is worth quoting at length.

Ehrman starts out the article by acknowledging that there is a small, but vocal group of skeptics who deny that Jesus ever existed.

That is the claim made by a small but growing cadre of (published ) writers, bloggers and Internet junkies who call themselves mythicists.  This unusually vociferous group of nay-sayers maintains that Jesus is a myth invented for nefarious (or altruistic) purposes by the early Christians who modeled their savior along the lines of pagan divine men who, it is alleged, were also born of a virgin on Dec. 25, who also did miracles, who also died as an atonement for sin and were then raised from the dead.

There are several mythicists who have written comments on my blog in the past, so I am quite familiar with them.  So what credence should we give the mythicists?  Here is Ehrman’s take:

Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine.  There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds — thousands? — of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. 

But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world.  And it is no wonder why.  These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.

Ehrman, who certainly doesn’t accept everything in the New Testament as historical, nevertheless argues that historical kernels about Jesus are there:

With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) — sources that originated in Jesus’ native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the religion moved to convert pagans in droves).  Historical sources like that are pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind.  Moreover, we have relatively extensive writings from one first-century author, Paul, who acquired his information within a couple of years of Jesus’ life and who actually knew, first hand, Jesus’ closest disciple Peter and his own brother James.  If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it.

Ehrman adds:

Moreover, the claim that Jesus was simply made up falters on every ground. The alleged parallels between Jesus and the “pagan” savior-gods in most instances reside in the modern imagination: We do not have accounts of others who were born to virgin mothers and who died as an atonement for sin and then were raised from the dead (despite what the sensationalists claim ad nauseum in their propagandized versions).

Why bother quoting Ehrman about Jesus?  Because, when you have someone who is clearly not a Christian, who has written several books attacking the reliability of the New Testament, standing up and agreeing with Christians about something, we should pay attention.  I don’t agree with much that Ehrman writes, but I can at least agree with him on this: Jesus really existed and we can know about him from the New Testament documents.

Historical Christ, Islam, Resurrection

How Does Paul’s Testimony Compare to Muhammad’s Testimony?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In a previous blog post, I was quoting from historical scholar Mike Licona on the importance of the apostle Paul’s testimony about Jesus’ resurrection.  There are skeptics, however, who want to discount Paul.  One such skeptic is atheist Michael Martin, who questions why Christians accept Paul’s testimony, but not Muhammad’s testimony about the angel Gabriel.

Mike Licona picks up the challenge in his book The Resurrection of Jesus:

Martin cites as a primary source of revelation the conversion of Muhammad from polytheism to monotheism based on an appearance to him of the angel Gabriel.  According to Muhammad, Gabriel directly communicated revelation from heaven: the Qur’an.  So why accept Paul’s testimony while rejecting Muhammad’s?

Martin’s point has some weight.  Muhammad’s testimony that Gabriel revealed the Quran to him appears four times in the Qur’an. Accordingly, both the Qur’an and Paul may qualify as providing eyewitness testimony.  However, Martin overlooks some very important differences.

What are the differences between Paul and Muhammad?  There are several that need to be examined:

First, the overall sources for the event are far from equal in quality.  Outside of the Quranic texts, the appearance of Gabriel to Muhammad is found in the early biographies and hadith, all of which were written more than two hundred years after Muhammad’s death.  These are secondary sources that are, in a sense, similar to Luke’s accounts of Paul s conversion.  However, Luke’s accounts are much closer to the time of the events they purport to describe and may even be provided by a traveling companion of Paul, whereas the Muslim sources are more than two hundred years removed from Muhammad.

For example, Luke is reporting events in Acts that allegedly occurred between A.D. 30-62 and is writing between A.D. 61-90.  He is writing 31-60 years after the events and may have personally known some of the subjects.  In the case of the biographies and hadith, the earliest sources are more than two hundred years removed from the subjects and could not have had any first-, second-, third- or fourth-hand acquaintance with them. Accordingly, although the biographies and hadith probably contain some traditions that go back to Muhammad, those traditions are not of the same historical quality of the traditions preserved in the New Testament literature.

Second, Paul’s experience is in a sense corroborated by other eyewitnesses who claimed that the risen Jesus had appeared to them.  Friend and foe alike reported that the resurrected Jesus had appeared to them in both individual and group settings.  On the other hand, Muhammad is the only one who claimed to have been visited by Gabriel in connection with the rise of Islam.

Third, Muhammad’s dissatisfaction with the paganism and idolatry in his society existed prior to his alleged revelations.  Thus no conversion from polytheism occurred as a result of his religious experience, even according to Muslim sources.  On the other hand, Paul seems to have been quite content with and extremely sold out to his strict sect within Judaism.  Indeed, he was on his way to arresting Christians on his own initiative when his experience occurred.  Muhammad’s experience confirmed his views, while Paul’s opposed his.

Perhaps most important of all, however, is that historians need not deny that Muhammad had an experience that he interpreted as a supernatural being appearing to him.  They are at liberty to support an alternate explanation to Muhammad’s for the experience just as they do for the experiences of Jesus’ disciples.

There you have it: a quick and concise summary of some key differences between the testimony of Paul and the testimony of Muhammad.  I consider Martin’s challenge answered.