Breaking News: Jesus Did Not Exist (Part II)

Christ and the Rich Young Ruler, by Heinrich Hofmann, 1889. Courtesy Wikipedia.

Paragraph 5

Even if Mark did indeed omit the account of Christ’s resurrection, virtually every book of the New Testament claims this fact. Omission is not disagreement, nor is it relevant to Mr. Sosa’s thesis.

Paragraph 6

Again, the article’s author is merely grasping at straws now. Among the people that discovered Jesus’ empty tomb, Mary Magdalene is mentioned in all four Gospels, and Mary the mother of James was mentioned in three of the four. Since these four accounts were written by four different authors, it’s reasonable to expect different attentions to details. But again, omission is not contradiction.

Paragraph 7

Poor debaters like to throw the dogs off their trail by claiming that their arguments are already “established,” irrefutable facts, regardless the number of holes. This paragraph could have easily been omitted, not that it would have saved the rest of the article’s downward spiral.

Paragraph 8

How many days after His resurrection did Jesus ascend into Heaven? Mr. Sosa is right that, on the surface at least, Luke and Mark claim that Jesus ascended the same day that He rose from the dead (their accounts are nearly identical; Matthew makes no mention of the ascension). But what the article fails to mention is that while the Book of Acts claims that Jesus ascended into Heaven after 40 days, it is widely believed that its author is Luke himself. If that is the case, then I would be more likely to believe that the seemingly rushed endings of the two Gospels were not meant to be taken as a literal timeline of events. This might warrant some more research.

Paragraph 9

In this paragraph, the author again states his opinion that the issues he has brought up are “problematic” to the existence of Jesus. I hope I have shown that that is not necessarily the case. The rest is a side-swipe at Jesus’ moral character and teaching, for which he only refers to a list of Jesus’ supposed self-contradictions, written by “a new convert to Islam.” Most of the items in this list are taken out of context and are easily explained, without any hand-waving or fudging of the text. If you have studied the Bible enough to reconcile God’s commandment to not kill, with His commands to destroy various nations in and around the land of Canaan, you would see right through this list. Perhaps that’s a topic for another post.

Paragraph 10

Unnecessary paragraph, strictly expressing the author’s opinion, without any further . Moving on....

Paragraphs 11 and 12

Dr. Erhman is an avowed agnostic, who is against organized religion, particularly the Big Three monotheistic ones, so he is naturally biased (as are Mr. Sosa and myself). Consider this: Ancient Babylon’s Hanging Gardens are considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, despite the lack of documentation on when and where they existed. Jesus has far more supporting evidence, from multiple authors, most of whom happen to be found in a collection of work that we call The Bible.

Paragraph 13

As I quoted at the beginning of my rebuttal, most scholars agree that there is more than enough evidence to prove that Jesus did indeed live and was crucified, in the timeframe described in the Bible. I have not researched the reliability of documents by Justin Martyr, but my reading into Tacitus' and Josephus’ accounts of the one called Jesus confirms that most experts agree that at least some measure of their writing concerning Jesus is genuine.

I will not attempt to read Dan Barker’s books, going under the assumption that if he indeed managed to prove that God and Jesus never existed, I would have read about it on Yahoo News.

Paragraph 14

I was taught in school to always end my persuasive essays with an excellent clinching paragraph. This is not it. Instead, we are presented with more opinion and a reference to an article about Jesus-like copy-cats, none of whom (1) fulfilled dozens of verifiable Old Testament prophecies and (2) influenced an entire globe for nearly two millennia... and still counting.

Like Mr. Sosa, there is so much more that I could write, but my rebuttal is already longer than the original article. If you need more of a convincer, please also see Wikipedia’s “Jesus of Nazareth” article. In the meantime, I will humbly allow the Apostle Paul to conclude my rebuttal and will continue to pray that the Lord will move the hearts of Chris Sosa and atheists/agnostics like him, as He did my own heart.

“Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will: The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds: But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel. What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice” (Philippians 1:15-18).

Breaking News: Jesus Did Not Exist (Part I)

Christ and the Rich Young Ruler, by Heinrich Hofmann, 1889. Courtesy Wikipedia.

Apparently, Jesus never existed... ... or at least that’s what Huffington Post blogger Chris Sosa claims. This is interesting to me, because even as an atheist, I took the historical existence of the man called Jesus of Nazareth as a foregone conclusion. In fact, here is an excerpt from the introduction to Wikipedia’s “Historicity of Jesus” article (copied on 9/4/2014):

“The majority viewpoint among scholars is that Jesus existed, but scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the parts of his life that have been recorded in the Gospels. Scholars who believe that Jesus existed differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the Biblical accounts, but most scholars agree that Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was born between 7-4BC and died 30–36 AD, that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, that he was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate and that he lived in Galilee and Judea and did not preach or study elsewhere. The theory that Jesus never existed at all has very little scholarly support.”

What I find even more interesting is that Mr. Sosa chose not to attack Jesus’ divinity, which may be easier fodder for an atheist than Jesus’ mere existence. At any rate, for the sake of some who may actually believe his arguments, and as an exercise in apologetics, I would like to spend a little time analyzing the article.

Paragraph 1

Sosa first tries to dismiss the teaching of Jesus by implying that (1) they originate only from Him (yes, my use of capitalization betrays my bias), and (2) their application in moral discussions is a recent development. However, Jesus and His followers made it very clear that the Gospel is really just an extension of the Mosaic Law, found in the Old Testament. Jesus said:

“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment...” (Matthew 5:21-22).

“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28).

“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40).

And His moral teachings are the basis for our own laws, as evidenced by the writings of our nation’s founding fathers. See William Federer’s “America’s God and Country” for details. In fact, until the last 50 years, there wasn’t really much of a need to invoke Christian morality, because the vast majority of Americans already subscribed to it, even if they weren’t Christian.

Paragraph 2

I assume this is Sosa’s disclaimer that he could be wrong, and that Jesus actually existed? I’m not really sure what he’s trying to say here. Is the difference between a Jesus and the Jesus rooted in the number of followers He garnered?

Paragraph 3

This is a thesis paragraph of sorts. While subsequent paragraphs will be discussed in greater detail below, I wish to address the generalizations that Sosa makes here. He claims that the four Gospels and Paul’s letter’s (others wrote letters, too, so are they included in this generic statement?) depict contradicting portraits of Jesus. But the only contradictions provided regard relatively minor details surrounding His birth, death, and resurrection. None of the New Testament books disagree about the most basic facts: that Jesus was born of a virgin, was crucified and died, that He physically rose from the dead, and that He ascended back into Heaven. His recorded teachings also contain no contradictions worthy of Mr. Sosa’s explicit mention.

Paragraph 4

The Gospels of Luke and Matthew clearly disagree about key events surrounding Jesus’ birth. Timing issues aside, the two don’t directly contradict one another. Luke records the taxing and the manger scene, but omits any references to the famous Wise Men, Herod’s infamous slaying of children, or the young family’s flight to Egypt. Matthew, on the other hand, recounts the latter three, but does not mention the taxing, the manger scene, or even the Star of Bethlehem. Interesting how popular culture mashed all these elements together, into one seemingly cohesive account.

Reading the Wikipedia article on Quirinius (Cyrenius), I concede that the timing of Herod’s reign and Cyrenius’ taxing appear incompatible, but I think this is the only valid point Mr. Sosa manages to make; hardly a smoking gun for the non-existence of history’s arguably most influential person.
While the Gospels of Mark and John begin at the start of Jesus’ ministry, Luke and Matthew both agree on the essentials of Jesus’ birth, many of which were prophesied in the Old Testament: born in Bethlehem, to a virgin named Mary, who was married to Joseph, both of whom were of the tribe of Judah and descendants of King David.

By the way, there are plenty of historical figures whose exact birthdates (or birth-years, even) are unknown. The ancient world wasn’t nearly as into record-keeping as we are today. Unless you were born into a ruling family, your existence typically went undocumented and unnoticed. Jesus was born the son of a Jewish carpenter, shunned political office and fame, and had followers who were zealously persecuted both by the Jews and the occupying Romans. It’s no wonder that there are few records of Him, outside of the Bible, during the first couple centuries AD (in case you were wondering, AD is short for Anno Domini, which is Latin for Year of Our Lord).

To be concluded...

Creation vs. Evolution (Part 1)

This post was written on the occasion of the recent debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, which my wife has just blogged about and which you may view here, for a limited time (forward past the 13-minute countdown at the beginning). The image above was captured during Ken Ham's presentation.

As a born-again Christian with a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, I firmly believe that science and God’s Creation go hand-in-hand. And although Christians disagree about how literally to interpret the first two chapters of Genesis, at the core of our faith is the undeniable fact that we are all the result of God’s design, not the product of random natural processes.

We know and respect two organizations that promote this worldview: The Discovery Institute in Seattle and Answers In Genesis in Kentucky. The former is a leader in the field of Intelligent Design (ID), which holds that the Laws of Nature are too perfect and the intricacies of life too complex to be the result of random chance. I think that, for the most part, the group agrees with the generally accepted age of the Earth and the universe.

Answers In Genesis, headed by Ken Ham, a former science teacher and devout Christian, goes a step further to claim that God created everything about 6000 years ago, in six literal, 24-hour days. Many find this ludicrous, but until my wife and I read some of their literature, we did not know that there is actually quite a bit of evidence that agrees with that premise, and there are many respected scientists in a diverse range of fields, who also hold to this belief.

 “What’s the big deal?” you ask. “Aren’t science and religion incompatible anyway? You can’t prove or disprove the existence of God using scientific methods, so why even argue about it?” The fact is that there are many staunch atheists in the scientific community, who believe that God is merely a man-made notion, created to explain the unexplainable. They believe that if they can prove that we all came to be here through purely natural processes, then there would no longer be a need for anyone to believe in God.

Rainbows, for example, seem so magical that it’s easy to believe they’re put there by our Creator, to reassure us that the Great Flood will never again be repeated. Oh, but what they really are is light passing through tiny water droplets, resulting in a prism-like effect. Ah, since we now know how rainbows work, then "clearly" the Genesis account of Noah’s Flood must be baloney. Yeah, sure.

Likewise, the Theory of Evolution is man’s attempt at providing a Godless alternative to how we got here. And since the process would require great spans of time to take life from an amoeba to an intelligent human being, a young earth would blow the whole thing out of the water.

Why are atheists so against anyone believing in God? I’m not sure. I was once one myself (not a god, but an atheist), and although I thought religious people were wrong to believe in anything supernatural, I still respected their beliefs and did not try to dissuade them. Yet, I did not realize at the time that if God did indeed exist and if He did create me, then I also had the responsibility to obey and follow Him. His moral law would also apply to me, and I would indeed suffer the consequences if I did not accept His gift of Salvation. But if atheists can prove that God did not create us, then we have no obligation to Him (were He even to exist), and there is no moral standard by which we need to live. I think that at their core, atheists do not want to be held accountable for what they do.

Potter's Comeuppance

One of our favorite movies to watch at Christmastime is, of course, It's a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart. He plays every-day good-guy George Bailey, who lives in a small town but has big dreams of seeing the world (and changing it for the better, while he's at it). But his plans are consistently derailed by external circumstances and his admirable drive to put others' needs above his own.

It's interesting to note that George is also deeply frustrated that his endearing, Christ-like quality is keeping him from following his (somewhat selfish) dreams. How far better off would he had been if he had come to grips with the fact that a man cannot do everything he wants, and it is often the case that doing the right thing requires personal sacrifice? George sacrifices, but he does so while kicking and screaming. But by the end of the movie, he learns that putting others first is far more rewarding than his own aspirations.

The film's antagonist is Mr. Potter, a greedy, grumpy old man who owns the entire town. Well, not quite all of it. The Bailey Building and Loan, which George takes over after his father's death, remains a thorn in Potter's side. But when George's bumbling uncle unwittingly hands the Building and Loan's $8000 bank deposit to Potter, Potter sees a delicious opportunity to ruin George's reputation and destroy his only competition. He nearly succeeds, but for the intervention of a "second-class" angel and the generosity of the countless people that George had helped over the years.

It makes for a very satisfyingly happy ending, that warms our hearts with the spirit of giving that has been so commercialized in recent decades....

...except for one small thing....

Potter never gets what's coming to him! He gets to keep the $8000, he undergoes no change of heart, and no one suspects him of any wrongdoing. In movies, we're used to seeing the bad guys get what they deserve (insert most any Disney feature cartoon here), or at least see them turn to the good side, just in time to make the ultimate sacrifice and save the day (Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, anyone?).

So why did director Frank Capra and the script writers leave that loose end untied? I don't have the definitive answer, but I have a plausible theory.

(Please read Psalm 37, Psalm 73, and Psalm 94, for some encouragement regarding the wicked prospering in our fallen world.)

Unlike most other movies, there is indeed a God in this one. Ok, so He looks like a little blinky light, but nevertheless, He is there, and He is all-knowing and all-powerful. We can rest in His promises that unless Potter finds his way to Him and repents of his sins, he will one day face Judgment, and it's not going to go well for him. Instead of feeling dissatisfaction, we should pity Potter not only for not having anyone to share Christmas with, but also for what awaits him, unless he comes to the Lord. For his part, George doesn't need to know who was behind his near-demise, because he has already taken his first step toward knowing the all-powerful, all-loving Creator and Savior, Who has his back and has prepared a place for him in Heaven.

Likewise, we may not see everyone who has wronged us get their just desserts, and we shouldn't even seek such things. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay." Our part is to continue to witness to others and put their needs ahead of our own. After all, isn't that what Christmas is all about?

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Frequently Asked Friday

Does God Exist?

What a weird question to ask, and on a Christian blog, no less! But it's one that I asked myself many times, before Jesus revealed Himself to me, through His Living Word. I also do not expect to adequately answer it in this, or even a million, posts. Philosophers, theologians, and lay-people smarter than myself have already debated this question, without reaching a unanimous conclusion. Besides, I've already answered it for myself, so the question is fairly rhetorical, from my perspective. But, for those of you who are either asking yourselves the same question or who seek to help lead others to its inevitable conclusion, please allow me to address this issue with an analogy.

Where Do Babies Come From?

Growing up, you probably had a mom and dad who claimed to be your parents. And you probably believed them, on faith. You didn't ask for your birth certificate, their Social Security cards, DNA evidence, or the testimony of witnesses under oath. It was enough that you resembled them, that they were part of your life for as long as you could remember, and that others also called them your parents.

But what made them your "parents?" You probably didn't think of it that way, but you probably asked instead, "Where did I come from?" or "Where do babies come from?" If your parents didn't think you were old enough to hear the exact truth, they probably gave you a watered-down version, the stork story, or avoided the question altogether.

At some point, you learned about "the birds and the bees," and you believed it, even though you had no real proof. In fact, if you think about it, the miracle of life is such a wonderful mystery, that even pictures and scientific evidence don't do it justice. You can't fully appreciate it until you get married and experience it for yourself. You feel the tiny kicks inside your wife's belly (or feel them yourself, if you happen to actually be the wife!). You witness the beautiful, precious, little life be brought forth into the world (and maybe get tired of being told to "breathe" and "push"). And then you understand. You've begun to experience parenthood yourself, and your blind faith, from so long ago, has reached its realization.

Back to God

Likewise, all the evidence in the world may not be enough (or necessary) to convince you that God is real. The evidence is certainly there, from the unlikely conditions that support life on this planet, to the complex structures and processes that make up a living thing, to the spiritual experiences that so many testify of.

Ultimately, that question is answered by faith and personal experience. And just as the new parent wants to show everyone their baby (or baby pictures), you will want to tell the world of your own rebirth in Christ.

Just as many doubted God, many will doubt you. But there will be some who will believe, and then experience the salvation of Jesus Christ and the rebirth, for themselves. And then they will want to tell the world!