Reviews by Hubie Goode: Historicity of the New Testament Part 7

Historicity of 

the New Testament

part 7

Other amazing demonstrations of validity of the New Testament rendering of Christ are also revealed in the historical vindication of statements made by Christ himself.

In John 18, Jesus identifies himself as the “light of the world.” This seems on the surface as megalomania gone awry. If someone said that today, they would be ushered to the funny farm post haste, especially if they were a world leader or someone with position and power. Jesus, however, was nothing at the time except a lowly carpenter with a rag tag crew of followers.

Yet this insane assertion, made either by the carpenter’s son himself or perhaps by the writer for the fictional character he was creating, has been remarkably fulfilled for two thousand years as  directed prophesy. The world’s greatest paintings, most beautiful music and literature have all been influenced by the person of Jesus Christ.

Think about the man who lived by the pool for 38 years while people came and went for healing of their bodies. Every time the waters would stir, someone would beat him to it. He believed he could not get himself there to be healed. Where was the Peace Corps? Where was the Christian Children’s fund? Can you think of ANY historically recorded charity from the past, even in the Roman Empire, who made an impact for the poor and down trodden? Where is the “Mother Teresa” of the past? They don’t exist.

Most of the world’s Hospitals, great educational institutions and charitable organizations have been created in His name. This is also true of social reforms such as the abolition of slavery. There have been millions over the last two centuries who have found that following Jesus affords them the opportunity to receive the light of life.

Realistically, instead of the ravings of some ego maniac, or philosophizing fictional character, the words of Christ have been proven, by historical revelation, to have been the sanest and truest words ever spoken.

Christ also says, “Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but not one word, not one stroke of a pen of my word shall ever pass away.” Who would he be to think that an obscure carpenter’s son, from some despised nation with only a few close allies who really knew him, would have anything to say that wold interest the entire world? We’d tell him to get a life.

And yet, for two thousand years, his words have NOT passed away. They have been heard and read and loved by more people in more nations all over the world than any other person who has ever lived.

As I have said, the Romans had no charities, and condemned criminals where slowly tortured to death on a cross for crimes against the state. Jesus told his followers that he too would be killed in this way. This certainly doesn’t bring anyone a vision of something to be looked forward to. In fact just the opposite is true, this kind of death was best not to be witnessed at all and quickly forgotten.

Christ told his followers that if he be lifted up on the cross, that he would draw all men to himself. Sure enough, grave yards are full of crosses over tombs all over the world. People from every walk of life, every nation, every level of education, every age, every level of wealth, have been drawn to the cross. Who could have predicted such a thing within human reason??? But there it is, littered across the landscape of history all over the world.

Jesus also said; “Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” This is an impossible claim that also has been fulfilled in history. That a group of followers lead by an ignorant and impulsive fisherman (Peter), would be perpetuated and multiplied despite opposition and intense persecution  from all sides, is a pipe dream at best. Even more ridiculous is the notion that this church would be built upon Peter’s belief the Jesus was the Son of God.  But the dream continues even to this day.

Jesus also predicted that knowledge of him would reach the “ends of the Earth”. This too would seem a lunatic’s rhetoric given the times and impossibility of the notion during that time. But today, tech developments have seen to it that this same Word from an obscure carpenter are heard all over the known world, and still this continues.

Amazingly, there is nothing that has been said in Christ’s name that has NOT come true. Some things have yet to manifest, but there is NO record of something having failed.

Ezekiel 11:19
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

One need only read of the outlandish human rights tragedies that are common place in the Old Testament to see that indeed something else has happened to mankind since the life of Christ  graced the Earth.

Just a few outrageous examples, or at least ones WE would call outrageous: Samson has a first wife whom he at first likes, then she gives him trouble. He has her burned as a result, or set on fire, if you will. Jezebel is a woman who seeks power where there is none for her, she is killed, and her body thrown to the dogs. All they find left of her is her hands and her head. A king has 70 sons, or  princes, and when he is disposed, all the sons are killed, then beheaded, and the skulls are separated into two bags and brought to the gates of the city and placed into two piles at the doors. These were probably kids, too. When Joshua was told to invade the land of Canaan, he was told to slaughter even the women and children, and then burn everything.

Ask yourself a question: If God the Father told YOU to run down helpless women and children with a sword and slaughter them, could you do it? Joshua was obedient of course, but had no problem with it. This is the way the world was. People back then knew no human rights, no social reforms, no charity. Yet today, our answer to God would probably be “No, I won’t slaughter children, even for greater reasons God may have.” Because, you know, Jesus would never ask you to do that. The world of that day also did not have the Holy Spirit raining down on them. Today you have a heart of flesh that those people did not know of, they only knew a heart of stone and had to be dealt with accordingly.

Ezekiel 11:19
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

Where did you get that heart of flesh?

All these things we have reviewed have no rational explanation if Jesus was not who He said he was, God come in the Flesh. You can’t get away with the assertion that the writers exaggerated his claims or miss quoted him. The writers were not idiots, they would have been shocked by the lunatic fringe rhetoric they were hearing, and they would have softened things up a bit to make Jesus’ words more acceptable. The claims have been fulfilled, whether Jesus said them or not. You can’t charge the now dead writer’s with manufacturing the fulfillments. If Christianity were false, and incorrectly represented as is claimed by many all over the world, then this is a greater miracle than if we were just reviewing the Words of Christ and the resulting truths of reality that follow, all on thier own.

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Historicity of the New Testament Part 2

Historicity of 

the New Testament

Part 2

When something big happens, something that has lasting consequences over a long period of time, through many generations, it must have adequate causes. If one takes a look at the span of almost 2,000 years that the history of Christianity has had its effect on mankind, this itself is proof of some major event that had a big impact on the continuing history of mankind.

It matters little what one thinks of the New Testament itself when you also consider that the history of Christianity itself is intricately linked with it. Its very beginnings are the stuff of the New Testament, and the reality of both the existence of Christians and also Jewish peoples and their origins can only be understood in light of the ancient text. No one alive today has ever seen Jesus or the Apostles, and understanding of their existence must come from the information contained within the ancient writings. The same is also true of ANY other figures of history. Who among us has actually witnessed the presence of Aristotle, Ghengis Kahn or even George Washington?

Once we realize this point, we can now see how incredibly strong the evidence is for persons and events referred to in the ancient writings. The amount of available texts that exist for the seminal existence of scripture far out weighs the writings about any other figures of history, before the invention of printing. No one ever casts any doubt on the past historical reality of Julius Caesar, but the written evidence of his existence is dwarfed by the volume of manuscript evidence of Biblical scripture. 

Before the printing press, manuscripts had to be copied by hand. Those that were used frequently wore out and had to be re-copied again and again. The copies of the New Testament that are still around today from those ancient times, are quite numerous, and conspicuously consistent. Some of these copies are on papyrus fragments that date all the way back to the second century. We have today about 5,000 copies of manuscripts of the New Testament in Greek and around 15,000 more in other languages. Nothing in any other historical writing even compares to this. These writings were also done by those who had a deep respect  for and deep belief in the concept that they were handling the actual Word of God. If we can dump the “aliens from outer space built the pyramids“ idea, and give credit to the  development of the human ability, even in ancient Egypt, why not have the same respect for those who were professional scripture copiers, much like the professional pyramid builders.

Sir Frederick G. Kenyon, Director of the British museum, was one of the greatest New Testament scholars of our generation. He did not believe in the infallibility of scripture and its inspired transmission, but after reviewing the manuscripts over a number of years he was quoted as saying:

“...it is reassuring at the end to find the general result of all these discoveries and all this study  is to strengthen the proof of the authenticity of the scriptures, and our conviction that we have in our hands, in substantial integrity, the veritable Word of God.”1

1 The Story of the Bible, (Special U. S. Edition, Grand Rapids: Eardmans company, 1967, p. 133)

True enough there are many individual differences in these 20,000 manuscripts, however the very number of them provides a powerful means of checking and tracing the origin of the variant readings and therefore coming to a conclusion as to the original text. Furthermore, any discrepancies, whether the result of careless copying or by direct manipulation, are usually quite trivial and effect no major points of doctrine. Amazingly, the work of Christ has no existing variation in the available texts, and that includes all 20,000 manuscripts collected from the beginning. Not only do we have a store house of historical writings of the biblical text, but we have several times that number of Christian writings by those of the early church who quoted much of the scriptures we know today. These Apostalic Fathers, who wrote from around 90 AD to 160 AD, had an amazing grasp of the New Testament and its content. In fact, had the New Testament been lost completely, it would have been possible to reconstruct the books merely from the writings of these men. 

Since these men lived in the time just following the era of the original Apostles, and some even over lap, having lived during those times, there can be no doubt that the New Testament that we have today is a strong representative of the books that those men had in their own day. The interval then, between original composition, and the earliest extant evidence becomes practically negligible. The origin point of scriptural writing and its preservation for future mankind becomes an unbroken cord of continual existence, by those with respect and honor towards the initial purpose of scripture. Those without that paradigm, would have to be immensely filled with an unusual kind of hate and revenge for God to place as much energy as would be needed into the falsifying of scripture and still get away with it under the nose of the caretaker throng of history. 

But lets say, for the sake of argument, that considerable changes HAVE taken place within the written text since the original writings. This still does not manage to change the person of Christ himself. The Roman world of the first century was one of education, philosophy and modern civilization, heavily influenced by the Greeks and those whom had been absorbed by Alexander’s conquests. This was not a world of cave men types who lived in a stone age. To believe that the acts and words of Christ himself is a tale of collected myths and editorial additions, as is often stated by so called progressive liberals, is actually naive at best.

Believing that scripture is today in essentially the same form it was from the beginning can be backed by research and investigation, not merely by wishing on a star that it was so. As Biblical archaeologist, William F. Albright states: “ ...every book of the New Testament was written by a Baptized Jew between the forties and eighties of the first century.”2 

2 William F. Albright, Christianity Today, January 18, 1963

But, what about indirect confirmations, you might ask. More on this next time in part 3. 

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Historicity of the New Testament

Historicity of 

the New Testament

Recently I read a letter to an advice column about a person who had a Jewish friend who believed themselves to be an agnostic Jew. Knowing what we know about genetics and the DNA stamp that the Jewish people have that sets them apart as a people rather than a religion, we know that there is no such thing as an agnostic Jew. The letter went on to say that this person was convinced that nothing that happens in the Bible is real and ever really happened and Christians are stupid for believing so. Well, I just had to answer that  comment with this next series.

The Importance of Historicity

An important aspect of the uniqueness of Christianity is the fact that it is founded on the basis of historical events rather than merely on ethical teaching. If the events surrounding the life of Christ, i.e. the virgin birth, the resurrection, the miracles are in fact not true events, then the whole thing is just one big lie. As it says in Corinthians, if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then your faith is in vain.

The same can be said of the early church and its development, as related to in the book of Acts and the epistles. Critics have tried for some time now to convince the public that the New Testament was written long after any actual events delineated and therefore contain lots of “fairy tale” type writing, especially when writing about those things involved with miracles. So much of this destructive criticism has been successful enough that major schools of learning which teach Bible “history and truth” have actually eroded the faith of many a borderline Christian.

However, if it can be shown that the New Testament documents are authentic, written by the traditional authors, then the evidence for the truth of Christianity is overwhelming. This is because the writings, when examined carefully, give indisputable evidence of sincerity and accuracy in such high degree that there is no reasonable doubt that all the actions and words of Christ and the apostles, really and truly happened.

This concept and its inevitable conclusions are not dependent upon the inquiry of whether or not the documents are divinely inspired or verbally without error. I do believe in the importance of plenary verbal inspiration, however, the genuineness of the work and the infallibility of Christ can be established without the need to fall back on divine inspiration as ultimate proof. We must then, of course, accept that the New Testament writings are as valid as any other historical writings.

Therefore,we must first establish the historicity of the New Testament documents as is required by all historical documents. Once this takes place, then the genuineness of the portrait of Christ revealed in the writings can be established. When he is acknowledged as true God and only Savior, then he himself becomes sufficient proof for authenticity. 

Next time we’ll look at the authenticity of the documents.