Tag Archives: Frank Turek

New Testament Reliability

Is Luke’s Account of the Journey to Malta in Acts 27 Historically Accurate?

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One way we can have confidence that the documents of the New Testament are historically accurate is to check any factual claims against the historical and archaeological evidence we have from the same period of time. This is exactly what classical scholar and historian Colin Hemer did in his [amazon_textlink asin=’1575063964′ text=’The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History‘ template=’ProductLink’ store=’toughquest_plugin-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’f7a2cac9-8cf0-11e7-b743-93ebb6904ebc’]. Hemer was able to confirm 84 facts in the last sixteen chapters of the Book of Acts.

Below I will only document the sixteen facts he confirmed from Acts 27. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, in [amazon_textlink asin=’1581345615′ text=’I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist‘ template=’ProductLink’ store=’toughquest_plugin-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’0c9e7e24-8cf1-11e7-a09d-154cacbd206f’], remind us that “Luke did not have access to modern-day maps or nautical charts,” which makes his accuracy all the more impressive. The sixteen facts below are taken from Geisler and Turek’s book, where they cite Colin Hemer. Luke knew about and accurately recorded:

Fact 1: the best shipping lanes at the time (27:5).

Fact 2: the common bonding of Cilicia and Pamphylia (27:5).

Fact 3: the principal port to find a ship sailing to Italy (27:5-6).

Fact 4: the slow passage to Cnidus, in the face of the typical northwest wind (27:7).

Fact 5:  the right route to sail, in view of the winds (27:7)

Fact 6: the locations of Fair Havens and the neighboring site of Lasea (27:8).

Fact 7: Fair Havens as a poorly sheltered roadstead (27:12).

Fact 8: a noted tendency of a south wind in these climes to back suddenly to a violent northeaster, the well-known gregale (27:13-14).

Fact 9: the nature of a square-rigged ancient ship, having no option but to be driven before a gale (27:15).

Fact 10: the precise place and name of this island (27:16).

Fact 11: the appropriate maneuvers for the safety of the ship in its particular plight (27:16-18).

Fact 12: the fourteenth night—a remarkable calculation, based inevitably on a compounding of estimates and probabilities, confirmed in the judgment of experienced Mediterranean navigators (27:27).

Fact 13: the proper term of the time for the Adriatic (27:27).

Fact 14: the precise term (Bolisantes) for taking soundings, and the correct depth of the water near Malta (27:28).

Fact 15: a position that suits the probable line of approach of a ship released to run before an easterly wind (27:39).

Fact 16: the severe liability on guards who permitted a prisoner to escape (27:42).

These facts seem to strongly indicate that the author of Acts is an eyewitness to the events of chapter 27. If we have an eyewitness, we have much greater confidence in the reliability of the events recorded in chapter 27 and also the rest of the book.

Atheism, General Apologetics, Top Ten Posts of 2014

#2 Post of 2014 – What Is a Step by Step Argument Showing that Christianity is True?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt


Anyone who has read my blog for the last several years knows that I am a big fan of the book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. I have quoted from the book many times and pointed my readers to it again and again.

One thing that I haven’t done, though, is given an outline of what the book is actually trying to accomplish. What Geisler and Turek attempt to do in the book is lay out a methodical, step by step process for arguing that Christianity is true. Here is the 12-step argument:

  1. Truth about reality is knowable.
  2. The opposite of true is false.
  3. It is true that the theistic God exists.
    1. Beginning of the Universe (cosmological argument)
    2. Design of the universe (teleological argument/anthropic principle)
    3. Design of life (teleological argument)
    4. Moral law (moral argument)
  4. If God exists, then miracles are possible.
  5. Miracles can be used to confirm a message from God.
  6. The New Testament is historically reliable.
    1. Early testimony
    2. Eyewitness testimony
    3. Uninvented testimony
    4. Eyewitnesses who were not deceived
  7. The New Testament says Jesus claimed to be God.
  8. Jesus’ claim to be God was miraculously confirmed by:
    1. His fulfillment of many prophecies about Himself
    2. His sinless and miraculous life
    3. His prediction and accomplishment of His resurrection
  9. Therefore, Jesus is God.
  10. Whatever Jesus (who is God) teaches is true.
  11. Jesus taught that the Bible is the Word of God.
  12. Therefore, it is true that the Bible is the Word of God (and anything opposed to it is false).

Notice that these 12 steps marshal evidence from philosophy, science, and history, and they all work together to build a logical argument which leads to the conclusion that the Bible is the Word of God. I am always bewildered when skeptics claim that Christian beliefs are based on nothing but wish fulfillment when books like this fill Christian bookshelves.

I have used this basic 12-point framework for many years and it has served me well. Most everything you learn about apologetics fits into this 12-point argument. In fact, at Southern Evangelical Seminary, where I received my Master’s degree, you had to take a class on these 12 points and your final exam was to write down the 12 points and briefly defend and explain each point.

If you have never purchased and read this book, do it today. You won’t be sorry.

Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

Did the New Testament Writers Merely Copy Pagan Myths?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

If it could be conclusively shown that the gospel accounts of Jesus were literally cribbed from pre-existing pagan sources, it would be quite damaging to the credibility of the gospels. As I was re-reading Geisler and Turek’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist the other day, I was impressed by their succinct treatment of this issue, so I will share it with you.

First they summarize the skeptic’s charge:

This theory asserts that the New Testament is not historical because New Testament writers merely copied pagan resurrection myths. Skeptics are quick to cite supposed resurrections of mythical characters like Marduk, Adonis, and Osiris. Is the New Testament just another myth? Could this theory be true?

They answer this question in the negative and start to present several reasons why this skeptical theory fails:

First, as we have seen, the New Testament is anything but mythological. Unlike pagan myths, the New Testament is loaded with eyewitness evidence and real historical figures, and it is corroborated by several outside sources. . . .

Second, the pagan-myth theory can’t explain the empty tomb, the martyrdom of the eyewitnesses, or the testimony of the non-Christian writings. . . .

Third, ancient non-Christian sources knew that the New Testament writers were not offering mythical accounts. As Craig Blomberg observes, “The earliest Jewish and pagan critics of the resurrection understood the Gospel writers to be making historical claims, not writing myth or legend. They merely disputed the plausibility of those claims.”

Fourth, no Greek or Roman myth spoke of the literal incarnation of a monotheistic God into human form (cf. John 1:1-3, 14), by way of a literal virgin birth (Matt. 1:18-25), followed by his death and physical resurrection. The Greeks were polytheists, not monotheists as New Testament Christians were. Moreover, the Greeks believed in reincarnation into a different mortal body; New Testament Christians believed in resurrection into the same physical body made immortal (cf. Luke 24:37; John 9:2; Heb. 9:27).

Fifth, the first real parallel of a dying and rising god does not appear until A.D. 150, more than 100 years after the origin of Christianity. So if there was any influence of one on the other, it was the influence of the historical event of the New Testament on mythology, not the reverse.

Were there any accounts of a god surviving death that existed before Jesus lived? According to Geisler and Turek,

the only known account of a god surviving death that predates Christianity is the Egyptian cult god Osiris. In this myth, Osiris is cut into fourteen pieces, scattered around Egypt, then reassembled and brought back to life by the goddess Isis. However, Osiris does not actually come back to physical life but becomes a member of a shadowy underworld. As Habermas and Licona observe, “This is far different than Jesus’ resurrection account where he was the gloriously risen Prince of life who was seen by others on earth before his ascension into heaven.”

But what if there were myths about dying and rising gods that existed before Jesus lived? What follows from that?

Finally, even if there are myths about dying and rising gods prior to Christianity, that doesn’t mean the New Testament writers copied from them. The fictional TV show Star Trek preceded the U.S. Space Shuttle program, but that doesn’t mean that newspaper reports of space shuttle missions are influenced by Star Trek episodes!

One has to look at the evidence of each account to see whether it is historical or mythical. There’s no eyewitness or corroborating evidence for the historicity of Osiris’s resurrection or for that of any other pagan god. No one believes they are true historical figures. But, as we have seen, there is strong eyewitness and corroborating evidence to support the historicity of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This final point is important. Numerous skeptics have come on my blog and pointed to mythical stories from antiquity and made the following argument: “We know that ancient people wrote mythical stories, so the stories about Jesus must also be mythical.” But how does that follow?

Numerous people today make up stories, and numerous people have made up stories throughout human history! But, on the other hand, the opposite is also true. Numerous people today give accurate accounts, and numerous people have given accurate accounts throughout human history. The only way to distinguish an accurate account from a fictional account is to look at the evidence for each account.

When we look at the New Testament accounts of Jesus’s life, we find more than enough evidence that they were attempting to accurately record real historical events. The evidence that the New Testament accounts are purely fictional just isn’t there.

Jesus as God, Jesus Christ

Was Jesus Just a Good Moral Teacher?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

There are people who take the Gospels to be more or less reporting history, but who claim, nevertheless, that Jesus was merely a good man, and nothing more. I am not here talking about skeptics who question virtually everything in the Gospels, who believe that almost all of the material is legendary.

The people I am referring to generally have a cursory knowledge of the New Testament and are turned off by traditional religion. They are fans of Jesus in a shallow way. If you stopped them on the street and asked them what they thought about Jesus, they would say he was a great teacher of peace and love, an exemplary moral figure. Jesus is still popular, even nowadays.

What is frustrating about these shallow-Jesus-fans is that they have completely missed what Jesus stood for. The only group that would be more frustrating would be the Jesus-is-a-great-carpenter club. C. S. Lewis gives voice to this frustration in Mere Christianity by pointing out the absurdity of the shallow-Jesus-fans:

Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

Norm Geisler and Frank Turek, in I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, ask us to imagine our neighbor making these kinds of claims:

“I am the first and the last—the self-existing One. Do you need your sins forgiven? I can do it. Do you want to know how to live? I am the light of the world—whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Do you want to know whom you can trust? All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Do you have any worries or requests? Pray in my name. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. Do you need access to God the Father? No one comes to the Father except through me. The Father and I are one.”

What would you think about your neighbor if he seriously said those things? You certainly wouldn’t say, “Gee, I think he’s a great moral teacher!” No, you’d say this guy is nuts, because he’s definitely claiming to be God.

Shallow-Jesus-fans, don’t be ridiculous. Jesus did not come to teach moral platitudes in a long line of religious moralizers. No, he came to demand your allegiance to him, for he is King.

New Testament Reliability

Did the New Testament Writers Record Fact or Fiction? Part 5

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Continuing from part 4, we will now ask further questions of the writers of the New Testament (NT ) documents.

Question 2:  Do we have multiple witnesses or just one?  The more witnesses, the better, because one person could make a mistake, but if several people are saying the same thing, it’s more convincing.

In the NT, we have 27 books written by 9 eyewitnesses or contemporaries of eyewitnesses.  Five of these books contain eyewitness accounts of the resurrected Jesus: Matthew, Mark, John, 1 Corinthians (written by Paul), and 1 Peter.  Additionally, Luke based his writings (Gospel of Luke and Acts) on eyewitness testimony.

So, we have at least 6 individuals all telling the same story about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  As Dr. Norman Geisler and Dr. Frank Turek state in their book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, “Six sane, sober eyewitnesses, who refuse to recant their testimony even under threat of death, would convict anyone of anything in a court of law. . . . Such eyewitness testimony yields a verdict that is beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Question 3: Are the eyewitnesses trustworthy?  Can we believe what they are reporting?  There are several ways to check this out.  First, did the witnesses include embarrassing details about themselves in their accounts?

If I was making a story up about myself and my friends, I certainly wouldn’t include embarrassing details about us.  Remember, the alleged goal of the apostles was to gain power and wealth by starting a new religion.  Making themselves look bad in their written documents would not have been an effective way to get this done, but that is exactly what happened.

The apostles provide plenty of embarrassment.  They often seem dimwitted  or ignorant (Mark 9:32, Luke 18:34, John 12:16).

They are uncaring when they fall asleep while Jesus is praying in the garden of Gethsemane.

Peter is rebuked by Jesus and even called “Satan” in Mark 8:33.

They are cowards who hide during Jesus’ crucifixion; Peter even denies him three times right after saying he wouldn’t!

They are doubters who, after being taught many times that Jesus would be resurrected, still didn’t believe it when it occurred.

They allowed Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin (the very group that sent Jesus to his death), to bury him instead of burying him themselves.  This list could go on and on.  Needless to say, the writers of the NT pass this test with flying colors.  There are several more points on which we can test the trustworthiness of the NT writers.  We will discuss those next!

Morality, Philosophy

What Do We Know About Morality? Part 1

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First, when one reflects on morality, there are certain objective moral facts that seem to be obvious; these facts can be known by intuition.  According to ethicist Greg Koukl, “Philosophers call this kind of knowing a priori knowledge (literally, ‘from what is prior’), that which one knows prior to sense experience.”   There are clear-cut actions that we know are wrong, such as murder, the torture of babies for fun, and rape. 

The great apologist, C. S. Lewis, argued forcefully that all men are aware of basic moral facts and that these moral facts do not vary from civilization to civilization or from time to time.  To prove his point he asked the reader to think of a “country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all of the people who had been kindest to him.  You might as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.”  

Philosopher William Lane Craig has argued that people who can not see clear-cut cases of moral truth are morally handicapped and can be safely ignored when debating ethics.   Greg Koukl summarizes by claiming “all moral reasoning must start with foundational concepts that can only be known by intuition, which is why one doesn’t carry the burden of proof in clear-cut examples of moral truth.”

Clear-cut moral cases are then seen to be objectively true by intuition, by a priori knowledge.  A person may want to reject the existence of objective moral truth by arguing that people often vehemently disagree about particular difficult moral situations, and that this fact, therefore, demonstrates that morality cannot be objectively known.  Christian apologists Norman Geisler and Frank Turek respond to this argument by stating that “the fact that there are difficult problems in morality doesn’t disprove the existence of objective natural laws.  Scientists don’t deny that an objective world exists when they encounter a difficult problem in the natural world (i.e., when they have trouble knowing the answer).”  

In other words, the fact that there are disagreements over complex moral issues fails to prove that objective moral truth cannot be discerned by moral intuition.  The point to be understood is that there are straightforward instances of moral judgments – killing innocent humans is wrong, acting unselfishly is a virtue, and so on – that can be known by virtually all people.

Given the existence of objective moral laws, there are other attributes of morality that can be grasped upon further reflection.  According to ethicist Francis Beckwith there are at least seven aspects of morality that appear to be true, based on mankind’s common moral experience.  

We will review these seven aspects of morality in future posts, so stay tuned.

[quotation references can be provided on request]