How Do we Know the Gospels are Historical?

Please present your case.

Indeed. Luke was a master historian. We did not realize this until the archeological finds of Sir William Ramsay. He went on a quest to prove Luke wrong and ended up confirming Luke’s history.

Two posts with assertions and no evidence presented.

Amazing isn’t it? There is an atheist challenging his article but he chooses to square off with someone defending his piece.

“Two posts with assertions and no evidence presented.”

When he gets to 12 & 12, he’ll be a “biblical scholar”...

Post of the week so far.

The Scriptures are either true or the greatest conspiracy theory spanning 4,000 years. I think that is the problem with our post-modern FRiends. Everything is a conspiracy these days.

How many witnesses were around for the writing of the BOM? The Qur’an? The visions associated? A whopping one witness. How many witnessed Christ’s miracles? Thousands.

LOL. Two posters so far with bold assertions and not a stitch of evidence. I am sure we will see some wiki links soon along with atheist website quotes on shellfish.

I totally agree! Man couldn't have written the Bible even if he wanted to and wouldn't have even if he could.

The Bible holds back nothing about the failings of mankind through the centuries and exposes every one of our weaknesses and inferiorities. We are too proud to enscripturate all the history of that fallibility. The following link The Impossible Faith gives a brilliant exposition on why Christianity would not have been something crafty men concocted out of their own imaginations in order to start a new religion. I hope you will take the time to read it through. A few points from the section called "How Not to Start an Ancient Religion":

We have subtitled our piece, How Not to Start an Ancient Religion. The background here is certain Skeptical claims that Christianity was a movement born of the adage that a sucker is born every minute, and Christianity collected about a year's worth of suckers to start with.

As proof we are pointed to various figures and/or movements in history -- Sabbatai Sevi, Zalmoxis, or Alexander. We have shown why each of these parallels is inadequate, but now it is time to put together a comprehensive list of issues that we assert that critics must deal with in explaining why Christianity succeeded where it should have clearly failed or died out as did these others.

Merely saying it was "lucky" where Sevi, et al. were not will not be an adequate answer -- and in fact, is the least likely answer of all as we shall see.

Below I offer a list of 17 factors to be considered -- places where Christianity "did the wrong thing" in order to be a successful religion. It is my contention that the only way Christianity did succeed is because it was a truly revealed faith -- and because it had the irrefutable witness of the Resurrection. Veteran readers will note that there is little new actually reported in this article that is not found elsewhere on this site; indeed much of what is below is taken verbatim from other articles -- it is only the application that is new.

Factor #1 -- Who Would Buy One Crucified?

1 Cor. 1:18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

1 Cor. 15:12-19 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

With the exception of the Christ-mythers and conspiracy theorists (and I put Muslims in this rank, where this issue is concerned), few would deny the historical reality of the crucifixion and the death of Jesus. But once that door is opened, it brings about the first of our problems: Who on earth would believe a religion centered on a crucified man?

As Martin Hengel has amply shown us in his monograph, Crucifixion, the shame of the cross was the result of a fundamental norm of the Greco-Roman Empire. Hengel observes that "crucifixion was an utterly offensive affair, 'obscene' in the original sense of the word." (22) As Malina and Rohrbaugh note in their Social-Science Commentary on John [263-4], crucifixion was a "status degradation ritual" designed to humiliate in every way, including the symbolic pinioning of hands and legs signifying a loss of power, and loss of ability to control the body in various ways, including befouling one's self with excrement.

The process was so offensive that the Gospels turn out to be our most detailed description of a crucifixion from ancient times - the pagan authors were too revolted by the subject to give equally comprehensive descriptions - in spite of the fact that thousands of crucifixions were done at a time on some occasions. "(T)he cultured literary world wanted to have nothing to do with [crucifixion], and as a rule kept silent about it." (38)

It was recognized as early as Paul (1 Cor. 1:18; see also Heb. 12:2) that preaching a savior who underwent this disgraceful treatment was folly. This was so for Jews (Gal. 3;13; cf. Deut. 21:23) as well as Gentiles. Justin Martyr later writes in his first Apology 13:4 --

They say that our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God...

Celsus describes Jesus as one who was "bound in the most ignominious fashion" and "executed in a shameful way." Josephus describes crucifixion as "the most wretched of deaths." An oracle of Apollo preserved by Augustine described Jesus as "a god who died in delusions...executed in the prime of life by the worst of deaths, a death bound with iron." (4)

And so the opinions go: Seneca, Lucian, Pseudo-Manetho, Plautus. Even the lower classes joined the charade, as demonstrated by a bit of graffiti depicting a man supplicating before a crucified figure with an asses' head - sub-titled, "Alexamenos worships god." (The asses' head being a recognition of Christianity's Jewish roots: A convention of anti-Jewish polemic was that the Jews worshipped an ass in their temple. - 19)

Though in error in other matters, Walter Bauer rightly said (ibid.):

No member of the Jewish community or the Greco-Roman society would have come to faith or joined the Christian movement without first accepting that God's perspective on what kind of behavior merits honor differs exceedingly from the perspective of human beings, since the message about Jesus is that both the Jewish and Gentile leaders of Jerusalem evaluated Jesus, his convictions and his deeds as meriting a shameful death, but God overturned their evaluation of Jesus by raising him from the dead and seating him at God's own right hand as Lord.

N. T. Wright makes these points in Resurrection of the Son of God [543, 559, 563]:

Jewish beliefs about a coming Messiah, and about the deeds such a figure would be expected to accomplish, came in various shapes and sizes, but they did not include a shameful death which left the Roman empire celebrating its usual victory.

Something has happened to belief in a coming Messiah...It has neither been abandoned or simply reaffirmed wholesale. It has been redefined around Jesus. Why? To this question, of course, the early Christians reply with one voice: we believe that Jesus was and is the Messiah because he was raised bodily from the dead. Nothing else will do. The message of the cross was an abhorrence, a vulgarity in its social context. Discussing crucifixion was the worst sort of social faux pas; it was akin, in only the thinnest sense, to discussing sewage reclamation techniques over a fine meal - but even worse when associated with an alleged god come to earth. Hengel adds: "A crucified messiah...must have seemed a contradiction in terms to anyone, Jew, Greek, Roman or barbarian, asked to believe such a claim, and it will certainly have been thought offensive and foolish."

That a god would descend to the realm of matter and suffer in this ignominious fashion "ran counter not only to Roman political thinking, but to the whole ethos of religion in ancient times and in particular to the ideas of God held by educated people." (10, 4) Announcing a crucified god would be akin to the Southern Baptist Convention announcing that they endorsed pedophilia. If Jesus had truly been a god, then by Roman thinking, the Crucifixion should never have happened. Celsus, an ancient pagan critic of Christianity, writes:

But if (Jesus) was really so great, he ought, in order to display his divinity, to have disappeared suddenly from the cross.

This comment represents not just some skeptical challenge, but is a reflection of an ingrained socio-theological consciousness. The Romans could not envision a god dying like Jesus - period. Just as well to argue that the sky is green, or that pigs fly, only those arguments, at least, would not offend sensibilities to the maximum. We need to emphasize this (for the first but not the last time) from a social perspective because our own society is not as attuned as ancient society to the process of honor.

We found it strange to watch Shogun and conceive of men committing suicide for the sake of honor. The Jews, Greeks and Romans would not have found this strange at all. As David DeSilva shows in Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity, that which was honorable was, to the ancients, of primary importance. Honor was placed above one's personal safety and was the key element in deciding courses of action. Isocrates gives behavioral advice based not on what was "right or wrong", but on what was "noble or disgraceful". "The promise of honor and threat of disgrace [were] prominent goads to pursue a certain kind of life and to avoid many alternatives." [24]

Christianity, of course, argued in reply that Jesus' death was an honorable act of sacrifice for the good of others -- but that sort of logic only works if you are already convinced by other means.

This being the case, we may fairly ask, for the first time in this essay, why Christianity succeeded at all. The ignominy of a crucified savior was as much a deterrent to Christian belief as it is today - indeed, it was far, far more so! Why, then, were there any Christians at all? At best this should have been a movement that had only a few strange followers, then died out within decades as a footnote, if it was mentioned at all.

The historical reality of the crucifixion could not of course be denied. To survive Christianity should have either turned Gnostic (as indeed happened in some offshoots), or else not bothered with Jesus at all, and merely made him into the movement's first martyr for a higher moral ideal within Judaism. It would have been absurd to suggest, to either Jew or Gentile, that a crucified being was worthy of worship or died for our sins.

There can be only one good explanation: Christianity succeeded because from the cross came victory, and after death came resurrection. The shame of the cross turns out to be one of Christianity's most incontrovertible proofs!

Factor #2 -- Neither Here Nor There: Or, A Man from Galilee??

John 1:46 And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Acts 21:39 But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city... What advantage has religion and geography? To the ancients, "much in every way". Political correctness was 2000 years in the future, and the Greco-Roman world was rife with what we would call prejudices and stereotypes -- which were accepted as "Gospel truth". Say today that "X are always brutes, gluttons, etc." and you will have half a dozen civil rights groups ringing your doorbell. Say it in Rome and you'll have everyone agreeing with you -- sometimes including the group itself.

Jesus' Jewishness could hardly have been denied by the early Christians, but it was also a major impediment to spreading the Gospel beyond the Jews themselves. Judaism was regarded by the Romans and Gentiles as a superstition. Roman writers like Tacitus willingly reported (not as true, but in the frame of "some say...") all manner of calumnies against Jews as a whole, regarding them as a spiteful and hateful race.

Bringing a Jewish savior to the door of the average Roman would have been only less successful bringing one to the door of a Nazi -- though the Roman may not have wanted to kill you; he would certainly have laughed in your face and slammed the door.

This is made quite clear by Judaism's own limited inroads in terms of Gentile converts. To be sure, this is partly attributable to Judaism not being much of a missionary religion. And yet if Christianity didn't have some cards close to the vest, the Jewishness of Jesus even by itself means that it never should have expanded in the Gentile world much beyond the circle of those Gentiles who were already God-fearers (i.e., Gentile proselytes to Judaism).

Let us stress again the points made by Robert Wilken in The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. The Romans naturally considered their own belief systems to be superior to all others. (57) They also believed that superstitions (such as Judaism and Christianity) undermined the social system established by their religion - and of course they were right.

However, the point is that anyone who followed or adopted one of their foreign superstitions would be looked on not only as a religious rebel, but as a social rebel as well. They were breaking with the status quo, upsetting the apple cart, taking part in a 60s style rebellion against the establishment. They upset the Roman concept of piety and were thought to be incapable of it.

In those days, things were not pluralistic or "politically correct" and there were no champions of diversity on the college campuses: Today, atheists and theists can debate in a free forum, but back then one of the camps would have the state (and the sword) on their side - and in the time we're talking about, that wasn't the Christians.

Those who adhered to superstitio therefore found themselves, as a matter of course, associated with bizarre and extreme behaviors - as the Christians did, and as Tacitus also reports of the Jews in his Histories. And it went further: "(B)ecause superstition leads to irrational ideas about the gods, the inevitable consequence is atheism." (61) Since "superstitionists" bucked the established cosmic order, their view of the universe was regarded as capricious and irrational, and this eventually led to the charge by critics like Crescens that Christians were actually atheists (68).

That's just a problem within the Gentile mission, of course. But both there, and even within Judaism, Christianity had to overcome another stigma, exemplified in our comparative quotes above. When Paul mentioned that he was from Tarsus, he didn't do it so he could compare notes about hometowns with the centurion. Being from a major polis like Tarsus signified a high honor rating for the person who laid claim to it -- only marginally matched today in our concepts of "being from the right side of the tracks".

Christianity had a serious handicap in this regard, the stigma of a savior who undeniably hailed from Galilee -- for the Romans and Gentiles, not only a Jewish land, but a hotbed of political sedition; for the Jews, not as bad as Samaria of course, but a land of yokels and farmers without much respect for the Torah, and worst of all, a savior from a puny village of no account. Not even a birth in Bethlehem, or Matthew's suggestion that an origin in Galilee was prophetically ordained, would have unattached such a stigma: Indeed, Jews would not be convinced of this, even as today, unless something else first convinced them that Jesus was divine or the Messiah. The ancients were no less sensitive to the possibility of "spin doctoring" than we are.

There are other minor extensions to this business of stereotyping. Assigning Jesus the work of a carpenter was the wrong thing to do; Cicero noted that such occupations were "vulgar" and compared the work to slavery. Placing Jesus' birth story in a suspicious context where a charge of illegitimacy would be all too obvious to make would compound the problems as well. If the Gospels were making up these things, how hard would it have been to put Jesus in Sepphoris or even Capernaum (and still take advantage of the prophetic "Galilee" connection) -- and as Skeptics are wont to say, wrongly, this would be no easier or harder to check out than Nazareth. How hard would it have been to take an "adoptionist" Christology and give Jesus an indisputably honorable birth (rather than claiming honor by the dubious, on the surface, claim that God was Jesus' Father)? Maybe harder, since more people are less likely to notice one man than in a small town with strong community ties.

What it boils down to is that everything about Jesus as a person was all wrong to get people to believe he was deity -- and there must have been something powerful to overcome all the stigmas.

Factor #3 -- Getting Physical! The Wrong "Resurrection"

As we have shown here, the resurrection of Jesus, within the context of Judaism, was thought by Gentiles to be what can be described as "grossly" physical. This in itself raises a certain problem for Christianity beyond a basic Jewish mission. We have regularly quoted the dictum of Pheme Perkins: "Christianity's pagan critics generally viewed resurrection as misunderstood metempsychosis at best. At worst, it seemed ridiculous."

It may further be noted that the pagan world was awash with points of view associated with those who thought matter was evil and at the root of all of man's problems. Platonic thought, as Murray Harris puts it, supposed that "man's highest good consisted of emancipation from corporeal defilement. The nakedness of disembodiment was the ideal state." Physical resurrection was the last sort of endgame for mankind that you wanted to preach.

Indeed, among the pagans, resurrection was deemed impossible. Wright in Resurrection of the Son of God quotes Homer's King Priam: "Lamenting for your dead son will do no good at all. You will be dead before you bring him back to life." And Aeschylus Eumenides: "Once a man has died, and the dust has soaked up his blood, there is no resurrection." And so on, with several other quotes denying the possibility of resurrection. [32-3]

Wright even notes that belief in resurrection was a ground for perseuction: "We should not forget that when Irenaeus became bishop of Lyons he was replacing the bishop who had died in a fierce persecution; and that one of the themes of that persecution was the Christians' tenacious hold on the belief in bodily resurrection. Details of the martyrdom are found in the letter from the churches of Vienne and Lyons to those of Asia and Phrygia. The letter describes how in some cases the torturers burnt the bodies and scattered the ashes into Rhone, so that no relic of the martyrs might still be seen on earth. This they did, says the writer, 'as though they were capable of conquering god, and taking away their rebirth [palingenesia]'."

Judaism itself would have had its own, lesser difficulty, albeit not insurmountable: there was no perception of the resurrection of an individual before the general resurrection at judgment. But again, this, though weird, could have been overcome -- as long as there was evidence.

Not so easily in the pagan world. We can see well enough that Paul had to fight the Gnostics, the Platonists, and the ascetics on these counts. But what makes this especially telling is that a physical resurrection was completely unnecessary for merely starting a religion. It would have been enough to say that Jesus' body had been taken up to heaven, like Moses' or like Elijah's. Indeed this would have fit (see here) what was expected, and would have been much easier to "sell" to the Greeks and Romans, for whom the best "evidence" of elevation to divine rank was apotheosis -- the transport of the soul to the heavenly realms after death; or else translation while still alive.

So why bother making the road harder? There is only one plausible answer -- they really had a resurrection to preach.

Sorry...should have pinged TBP, not TBD. Hope you find this informative.

We have “history”...what can I say? ;o)

If you will read it, I will buy you a copy of “Evidence That Demands a Verdict”, a book written for laymen, which deals with every one of your criticisms.

It has ample reverences if you wish to check the documentation of the author’s assertions.

If you will read it, I will buy you a copy of “Evidence That Demands a Verdict” ...

Available online here...

Excerpted: ...The Christian Faith Is an Objective Faith

The Christian faith is an objective faith; therefore, it must have an object. The Christian concept of "saving" faith is a faith that establishes one's relationship with Jesus Christ (the object), and is diametrically opposed to the average "philosophical" use of the term faith in the classroom today. One cliche that is to be rejected is, "It doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you believe it enough".

Let me illustrate.

I had a debate with the head of the philosophy department of a midwestern university. In answering a question, I happened to mention the importance of the resurrection. At this point, my opponent interrupted and rather sarcastically said, "Come on, McDowell, the key issue is not whether the resurrection took place or not; it is 'do you believe it took place?'" What he was hinting at (actually boldly asserting) is that my believing was the most important thing. I retorted immediately, "Sir, it doesn't matter what I as a Christian believe, because the value of Christian faith is not in the one believing, but in the one who is believed in, its object". I continued that "if anyone can demonstrate to me that Christ was not raised from the dead, I would not have the right to my Christian faith" (I Corinthians 15:14).

The Christian faith is faith in Christ. Its value or worth is not in the one believing, but in the one believed - not in the one trusting, but in the one trusted.

Immediately after the above debate a Moslem fellow approached me and, during our most edifying conversations, he said very sincerely, "I know many Moslems who have more faith in Mohammed than some Christians have in Christ". I said, "That may well be true, but the Christian is 'saved'. You see, it doesn't matter how much faith you have, but rather who is the object of your faith; that is important from the Christian perspective of faith". ...

Source?
Phillip Jenkins has a book about this you should read...

"Everyone can admit that they are not written as purely historical documents,"

The Apostle Luke would disagree with regard to his Gospel. He specifically states that his book is a meticulously researched historical account.

Everything you said, I am in 100% agreement except for one small detail.. “ it(word of God) judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

God knows the thoughts and attitudes of the heart, but does not judge them. We create our own judgement between us and our environment. Allow me to say that our environment includes existing within our Father.

Our judgement is created directly by the response between us and our environment. For example, if we hold onto a big bag of gold and try to swim, the additional weight that pulls us under water and drowns us is similar to how sin kills us. The water does not judge us, it is merely impossible for us to walk on water while holding onto sin.

God’s Love for us is unconditional and freeing. It is non judgmental. However sin cannot exist in the presence of His perfect Love. When we hold onto sin it prohibits us from experiencing God’s Love, just as holding onto the gold may prohibit us from breathing above the water.

In order to know thy Father you must be like a child. That means that your soul needs to have the purity of a child. The eyes are the window of the soul. You can see the purity in a young child. But as soon as they do something wrong, they cannot look at you or God with their eyes. They feel judged and unworthy of Love. We are that same way with God.

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Nor is it hidden from you if you become one with our Father by following Jesus’ teachings. It is real and experiential, not just theory. Remember what Jesus said, “I and my Father are one. My Father exists in Me and I in My Father. If you exist in Me then My Father that exists in Me also exists within you.”

The existence of the Gosples is irrelevant — it’s only Faith that matters. And whether or not one’s Faith is consistent with the Gospels is something only the individual can understand, and not be refuted by another that claims to know what the individual understands, not to be true.

Reading the Bible can be like reading any other book for some people. For others it is like reading a book in a language they do not understand.

The key to understanding the Bible is to allow the Holy Spirit act as the interpreter within us. That is why prayer and meditation on the meaning of the scriptures is so important. Without the interpreter, our individual logic will prohibit us from having ears and hearing His word.

When I read the Bible, I feel Jesus in my heart. It is more addicting than potato chips. It’s wisdom is beyond the words. Just as a stop sign has no power over you, but merely directs your thoughts to perform an action that guides you safely along your journey, the Bible does the same.

The Bible has many meanings at many levels. While all are the truth, the meanings are different based upon our limited level of understanding. That is why we read and study the comments of those who have grown closer to God in their lives. Follow success. Jesus was the most successful, .. and thus His words are the best for me to follow for guidance. He blazed the trail for me to follow.

The best way to describe the experience one encounters when the Holy Spirit moves in and you connect experientially to our Father is that it is like connecting to the internet.

Suddenly all knowledge is available to you. However, you must know enough to ask the questions before you can get an answers. If you have unlimited knowledge at your fingertips, there are no better questions to ask than “Why did Jesus say......?”