jesus

1. Who wrote the gospels? a. The uniform testimony of the early church was Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If those four men were not the original authors you must explain the early church saying they did. 2. Reason to lie about who wrote the gospels? a. Craig L Blomberg, PH.D. "Probably not. Remember these were unlikely characters. Mark and Luke weren't even in the twelve disciples. Matthew was, but as a former tax collector, he would have been the most infamous character next to Judas Iscariot […] Contrast this with what happened when the fanciful apocryphal gospels were written much later. People chose the names of well-known and exemplary figures to be their fictitious authors-Phillip, Peter, Mary, James […] So to answer your question, there would not have been any reason to attribute the authorship to these three less respected people if it weren't true." (p.23) Now John was an exception, and he is the one most disputed over! 3. More evidence for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John a. In A.D 125 Papias said Mark "made no mistake" and made "no false statement" b. In A.D 180 Irenaeus confirmed authorship. 4. Did Jesus claim to be God? a. One of significance. Jesus refers to Himself as the Son of Man. Son of Man does not refer to Jesus' humanity. It refers to the Son of Man in Daniel 7:13-14 "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, and nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed" Jesus claims to forgive sins, which only God can do. He accepts prayer and worship. 5. Gospels written too far after Jesus died to be accurate? a. Most believe the gospels were written 70-90A.D b. There are two issues i. Even if there was no evidence that the books were written earlier than the dates I previously provided the argument doesn't work because that is still within the lifetimes of hostile eyewitnesses if false teachings began spreading. We can compare biographies of Jesus those of Alexander the Great. ii. "The two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than four hundred years after Alexander's death in 323 B.C., yet historians consider them to be generally trustworthy. Yes, legendary material about Alexander did develop over time, but it was only in the centuries after these two writers. In other words, the first five hundred years kept Alexander's story pretty much intact; legendary material began to emerge over the next five hundred years. So whether the gospels were written sixty years or thirty years after the life of Jesus, the amount of time is negligible by comparison. It's almost a nonissue" (p.33) My second issue is there is evidence that suggest earlier dating of the gospels. If we read Acts, which was written by Luke, Paul is the main character. All of a sudden the book ends when Paul is under house arrest in Rome. So why is that? Well the best answer would be that Paul must have still been alive when Acts was finished. Meaning that Acts could have been written no later than 62 A.D. This also means that Luke had to have been written before that and since Luke incorporates parts of Mark, that must have been even earlier. (p.34) 6. Paul on Jesus a. "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles." I Corinthians 15 b. Crucifixion was as early as 30 A.D. meaning Paul's conversion was 32 A.D. He was sent out and his first meeting with the apostles was about 35 A.D. Somewhere in between that time, he gave this creed. 7. Corroborating Evidence a. Tacitus said, "Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Chrisus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one on our procurators, Pontius Pilatus […] Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind" (p.82) b. Yamauchi (PHD) "Regardless of whether the passage had this specifically in mind, it does provide us with the remarkable fact, which is this: crucifixion was the most abhorrent fate that anyone could undergo, and the fact that there was a movement based on a crucified man has to be explained. How can you explain the spread of a religion based on the worship of a man who had suffered the most ignominious death possible? Of course, the Christian answer is that he was resurrected. Others have to come up with some alternative theory […] but none of the alternative views, to my mind, are very persuasive." (p.82) 8. Death a. Skeptics say when the gospels say Jesus began to sweat blood, it was their imagination. Alexander Metherell, M.D, Ph.D. said "This is a known medical condition called hematidrosis […] it is associated with high degree of psychological stress." (p.195) b. "The spear apparently went through the right lung and into the heart […] some fluid-the pericardial effusion and the pleural effusion-came out. This would have the appearance of a clear fluid, like water, followed by a large volume of blood, as the eyewitness John described in his gospel!" (p.199) c. There was no doubt that Jesus was dead 9. Jesus' Body missing from the tomb? a. William Craig PH.D.,D.TH., "If this burial by Joseph was a legend that developed later, you'd expect to find other competing burial traditions about what happened to Jesus' body. However, you don't find these at all." (p.210) b. "There was a slanted groove that led down to a lower entrance, and a large disk-shaped stone was rolled down this groove and lodged into place across the door. A smaller stone was then used to secure the disk. Although it would be easy to roll this big disk down the groove, it would take several men to roll the stone back up in order to reopen the tomb" (p.211) c. "There's no doubt that the disciples sincerely believed the truth of the Resurrection, which they proclaimed to their deaths. The idea that the empty tomb is the result of some hoax, conspiracy, or theft is simply dismissed today." (p.212) d. From these quotes we se be sure that Jesus was buried in the tomb, the tomb was protected, the disciples believed the resurrection to the point of death, and no one could have stole the body. e. Gospel accounts are too inconsistent? Historian Michael Grant, in a book called Jesus: An historian's review of the Gospels says, "True, the discovery of the empty tomb is differently described by the various gospels, but if we apply the same sort of criteria that we would apply to any other ancient literary sources, then the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was, indeed, found empty." 10. Disciples lie about Resurrection? a. "The apostles were willing to die for something they had seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands. They were in a unique position not to just believe Jesus rose from the dead but to know for sure. And when you've got eleven credible people with no ulterior motives, with nothing to gain and a lot to lose, who all agree they observed something with their own eyes-now you've got some difficulty explaining that away" (p.247) Case for Christ - Lee St