Easter apologetics

[Cormack]

Happy Easter Sunday all!

So it’s officially Easter Sunday here in the UK, and many of the strongest arguments to believe in the Christian faith are taken from the Resurrection of Jesus as an actual historic event.

Historical arguments grounded in solid principles were one of the great building blocks of my faith in the early years, and knowing how strongly they’ve influenced me, I’m more likely to share them with others.

Let’s all share arguments for Jesus that are grounded in history.

1. Lots of people don’t know whether or not they can trust the Gospel writers, one of the common complaints from the Jewish community is that the gospel writers didn’t understand Jewish customs etc.

The claim was that the early Christians were probably just Greeks who lived hundreds of years after the events that they pretend to record. Some atheists even argue that Nazareth didn’t exist in the first century! So the gospels couldn’t have been written as early as that.

Is there any way to debunk those arguments and strengthen each other in the faith? I’ve found one.

Scholars have done an awesome job of rediscovering the occurrence of names in first century Israel, they’ve done this through numbering the named inscriptions on tombs and other surviving death records.

So today we have something like a first century phone book, a long list of the dead and how prolific certain names were at that time in history.

bonus info: The most popular Jewish name from the first century was Simon, the reason why is very interesting.

Simon was of course a Jewish name, but one that had a near exact Roman equivalent, so, rather than blatantly sacrifice their Jewishness by labelling their child with a gentile name, Jewish parents could both retain their culture, while also giving their child a name that appealed to the wider, more powerful gentile culture. It made perfect financial sense.

So how does that relate to Jesus, Easter, dating the gospels and derailing the objections from earlier.

Well, critical scholarship have also done a parallel study of name occurrences in the gospels.

What did they find? They discovered that the occurrence of names in the New Testimony largely matched the naming ratio found on the first century tombs!

Simon and Mary (the most popular woman’s name in the first century) occurred more than any other name in the New Testament too, showing that New Testament names are in perfect harmony with the actual names found within the first century tombs.

So the New Testament gospels were the product of first century writers, people who were in the right place at the right time to be eyewitnesses to the events they recorded.

^^^ Source Jesus and the eyewitnesses (Richard Bauckham.)

Happy Easter indeed. Do you have any historic reasons to celebrate Easter that you’d like to share with lurkers who visit the topic?

Edit: arguments from wider theology are accepted due to the nature of the board.

 

[public hermit]

Both Josephus and Celsus were critical of the claim that women were the first witnesses to the resurrection.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the disciples created a legend concerning the resurrection of Christ. If you were a 1st century Judean, and creating such a legend, the last thing you would do is make women the first witnesses since they weren't considered credible. And yet, that is the account handed down. Of course, if it's true, and you're a big fan of the truth, then you just share the truth and let the Holy Spirit do the rest.

Why It Matters Theologically and Historically That Women Were the First to Discover the Empty Tomb

 

[JulieB67]

Hello
As a Christian I observe Passover since Christ became our Passover and take communion in Christ's name. Easter is actually Pashca and it's translated in most places as the Passover. And the actual Passover - going by the Hebrew calendar is 14 days after Nisan and usually falls around the same time each year.

Not looking for a debate just stating what I observe.

 

[dqhall]

Happy Easter Sunday all!

So it’s officially Easter Sunday here in the UK, and many of the strongest arguments to believe in the Christian faith are taken from the Resurrection of Jesus as an actual historic event.

Historical arguments grounded in solid principles were one of the great building blocks of my faith in the early years, and knowing how strongly they’ve influenced me, I’m more likely to share them with others.

Let’s all share arguments for Jesus that are grounded in history.

1. Lots of people don’t know whether or not they can trust the Gospel writers, one of the common complaints from the Jewish community is that the gospel writers didn’t understand Jewish customs etc.

The claim was that the early Christians were probably just Greeks who lived hundreds of years after the events that they pretend to record. Some atheists even argue that Nazareth didn’t exist in the first century! So the gospels couldn’t have been written as early as that.

Is there any way to debunk those arguments and strengthen each other in the faith? I’ve found one.

Scholars have done an awesome job of rediscovering the occurrence of names in first century Israel, they’ve done this through numbering the named inscriptions on tombs and other surviving death records.

So today we have something like a first century phone book, a long list of the dead and how prolific certain names were at that time in history.

bonus info: The most popular Jewish name from the first century was Simon, the reason why is very interesting.

Simon was of course a Jewish name, but one that had a near exact Roman equivalent, so, rather than blatantly sacrifice their Jewishness by labelling their child with a gentile name, Jewish parents could both retain their culture, while also giving their child a name that appealed to the wider, more powerful gentile culture. It made perfect financial sense.

So how does that relate to Jesus, Easter, dating the gospels and derailing the objections from earlier.

Well, critical scholarship have also done a parallel study of name occurrences in the gospels.

What did they find? They discovered that the occurrence of names in the New Testimony largely matched the naming ratio found on the first century tombs!

Simon and Mary (the most popular woman’s name in the first century) occurred more than any other name in the New Testament too, showing that New Testament names are in perfect harmony with the actual names found within the first century tombs.

So the New Testament gospels were the product of first century writers, people who were in the right place at the right time to be eyewitness to the events they record.

Source Jesus and the eye witnesses (Richard Bauckham.)

Happy Easter indeed. Do you have any historic reasons to celebrate Easter that you’d like to share with lurkers who visit the topic?

Edit: arguments from wider theology are accepted due to the nature of the board.

Simon, Jonathan and Judas Maccabaeus were popular Jewish leaders during the rebellion against Greek rule. Hellenistic influences continued in the Roman empire and in the Decapolis cities near the cities of the Jews. The disciple Philip was from Bethsaida, the town of John and James. Philip is a Greek name, after a Greek emperor. The oldest New Testament is in Greek due to Paul’s work in Corinth.

An advanced reader may find both harmony and disharmony in the Bible. People told me it was necessary to have a personal relationship with Christ in order to be saved. Since God is a living God, one may need knowledge greater than the Bible. Wisdom is much knowledge. There are many testimonies about people being rescued, healed or guided by God.

 

[Hmm]

Happy Easter Sunday

Happy Easter to you too.

The most convincing evidence for the resurrection I know is the historical fact that many of the people who knew Him, particularly His brother James, chose to suffer a horrible death rather than denounce Him. This is an argument put forward in "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel. The argument is that many people from all faiths have died for their beliefs throughout history and still do so today. So what does the fact that the apostles were willing to die for their faith prove? The difference is that modern martyrs or martyrs from a different faith are dying for what they believe to be true whereas the apostles died for what they knew to be true. It's probably easier to see the difference like this: many people are willing to die for their beliefs but no-one will willingly die for what they know to be false. The apostles were in the unique position in that they knew whether Jesus was resurrected or not. We have to take it on faith but they knew because they witnessed it. If they hadn't witnessed it they would have known that the whole thing was a fabrication and so would have been choosing to die for something that they knew was false. And who would do that? James particularly brings this point home because who would die rather than deny that your own brother was God unless you had the absolute assurance that He was from witnessing the resurrection?

 

[Cormack]

And who would do that? James particularly brings this point home because who would die rather than deny that your own brother was God unless you had the absolute assurance that He was from witnessing the resurrection?

So far as my reading goes, James wasn’t a believer in Christ’s claims in the early days of His ministry either, not if we consider him included in the Gospel material that says Christ’s family thought Him mad (Mark 3:21.) Add to that the section where Jesus asks rhetorically “who is my mother, and who is my brother?” While His family are trying to see Him no less.

If we assume James wasn’t a believer in the claims of Christ early on, and considering how cryptic Jesus was that’s not hard to believe, his later mention in 1 Corinthians 15:7 as someone Jesus visited personally after the resurrection sheds a lot more light on the subject.

It was the Resurrection and appearances of Christ that drove James conversion, which later ends in the death we read about in Josephus.

 

[Hmm]

So far as my reading goes, James wasn’t a believer in Christ’s claims in the early days of His ministry either, not if we consider him included in the Gospel material that says Christ’s family thought Him mad (Mark 3:21.) Add to that the section where Jesus asks rhetorically “who is my mother, and who is my brother?” While His family are trying to see Him no less.

If we assume James wasn’t a believer in the claims of Christ early on, and considering how cryptic Jesus was that’s not hard to believe, his later mention in 1 Corinthians 15:7 as someone Jesus visited personally after the resurrection sheds a lot more light on the subject.

It was the Resurrection and appearances of Christ that drove James conversion, which later ends in the death we read about in Josephus.

Yes, I sometimes wonder how the apostles could have doubted Jesus after He was crucified having witnessed the miracles of turning water into wine and so on and even bringing someone back from the dead? Surely this was enough proof but obviously it wasn't because they became fearful, denied that they knew him and went into hiding. It took the resurrection to prove this and this turned this turned them around from fearfully huddling in an upper room to going out in the world proclaiming the ressurected Christ and, for most of them, accepting the most painful deaths.

 

[Cormack]

Yes, I sometimes wonder how the apostles could have doubted Jesus after He was crucified having witnessed the miracles of turning water into wine and so on and even bringing someone back from the dead?

Reading the Gospels, there are lots of strange conflict moments between the apostles Jewish expectations vs. Christ’s intentions.

And although I might see Jesus as sweetness and light, He doesn’t always seem to be the most approachable character in the Bible.

That and the crypticness of Jesus’ sayings adds to the apostles and their confusion, because there are more than a few sections in the Gospels where rather than approaching Jesus for answers to an issue, the 12 move into their own little group and try to collect and form their own ideas about Jesus and His future plans.

The most obvious one that comes to mind is when Jesus says “beware the leaven of the Pharisees,” and because Christ must have said this in a gruff or ominous way, rather than hash the saying out, the 12 go away into a corner to debate whether or not Jesus is angry at them because they’ve forgotten to bring bread for the trip.

Nobody in the group of 12 wanted a dying messiah, so it’s not hard to imagine the apostles going away to figure out what Jesus really meant when He said all that weird talk about dying and rising.

I remember in John 2 Jesus invites people to destroy the temple, and in 3 days He will raise it up again.

Literally everyone listening at the time (the 12 included) think He’s talking about the literal temple, it’s only in verse 22 of that same chapter where it says after Jesus is raised from the dead the apostles recall His sayings about the temple (of His body) and believe in the scripture and His words.

So right after Jesus says these things in His ministry, nobody in the group was reinforcing the death, burial and resurrection narrative.

Even when Christ goes to the sister of Lazarus and asks if she believes her brother will rise again, she replies yes, “at the end of the world,” or something to that effect.

So even though Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and even though He’s fixing to raise up Lazarus right then and there, everything He said was being read through this filter of Jewish presuppositions.

I think that was a big part of the first century doubts.

 

[Cormack]

Thinking over it afresh that seeming fear of Jesus may have been part of the teacher student relationship back in those days. Christ is referred to as Rabbi, that’s an example of the high level clout He carried socially.

 

[Bob Crowley]

Both Josephus and Celsus were critical of the claim that women were the first witnesses to the resurrection.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the disciples created a legend concerning the resurrection of Christ. If you were a 1st century Judean, and creating such a legend, the last thing you would do is make women the first witnesses since they weren't considered credible. And yet, that is the account handed down. Of course, if it's true, and you're a big fan of the truth, then you just share the truth and let the Holy Spirit do the rest.

Why It Matters Theologically and Historically That Women Were the First to Discover the Empty Tomb

It is true that women were second class citizens in ancient Israel, and were not allowed to give testimony in court. Yet the first people recorded to visit the tomb were women.

I can think of a good reason why the women went there first, and it was probably agreed to by the apostles. Had the men turned up first, with a tough and ruthless guard posted specifically to make sure nobody stole the body of Jesus, there would most likely have been bloodshed, with the guards coming out well on top.

But by sending the women first, they were probably hoping to defuse the tension. A bunch of unarmed women would hardly pose a threat to armed, experienced soldiers. According to a sermon I heard yesterday, there were probably about sixteen guards, four on active duty and the rest close by.

So the story is credible.

 

[public hermit]

So the story is credible.

I don't disagree that the story is credible. In fact, what makes it credible is that the first witnesses were women. In biblical scholarship it's called the "criterion of embarrassment."

Criterion of embarrassment - Wikipedia

 

[DragonFox91]

Reading the Gospels, there are lots of strange conflict moments between the apostles Jewish expectations vs. Christ’s intentions.

And although I might see Jesus as sweetness and light, He doesn’t always seem to be the most approachable character in the Bible.

That and the crypticness of Jesus’ sayings adds to the apostles and their confusion, because there are more than a few sections in the Gospels where rather than approaching Jesus for answers to an issue, the 12 move into their own little group and try to collect and form their own ideas about Jesus and His future plans.

The most obvious one that comes to mind is when Jesus says “beware the leaven of the Pharisees,” and because Christ must have said this in a gruff or ominous way, rather than hash the saying out, the 12 go away into a corner to debate whether or not Jesus is angry at them because they’ve forgotten to bring bread for the trip.

Nobody in the group of 12 wanted a dying messiah, so it’s not hard to imagine the apostles going away to figure out what Jesus really meant when He said all that weird talk about dying and rising.

I remember in John 2 Jesus invites people to destroy the temple, and in 3 days He will raise it up again.

Literally everyone listening at the time (the 12 included) think He’s talking about the literal temple, it’s only in verse 22 of that same chapter where it says after Jesus is raised from the dead the apostles recall His sayings about the temple (of His body) and believe in the scripture and His words.

So right after Jesus says these things in His ministry, nobody in the group was reinforcing the death, burial and resurrection narrative.

Even when Christ goes to the sister of Lazarus and asks if she believes her brother will rise again, she replies yes, “at the end of the world,” or something to that effect.

So even though Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and even though He’s fixing to raise up Lazarus right then and there, everything He said was being read through this filter of Jewish presuppositions.

I think that was a big part of the first century doubts.

Great post. I always find it unfair most modern-day interpretations laugh at the disciples for being so confused, lost, dumb, etc. It's easy to say that w/ today's eyes & understanding, but the disciples didn't have that luxury.

I think the biggest reason for their confusion was that the common belief was that the Messiah was going to overthrow Rome. When it became clear he wasn't going to do that, or at minimum was taking his grand old time, I could easily see them not getting his message.

 

[DragonFox91]

It is true that women were second class citizens in ancient Israel, and were not allowed to give testimony in court. Yet the first people recorded to visit the tomb were women.

I can think of a good reason why the women went there first, and it was probably agreed to by the apostles. Had the men turned up first, with a tough and ruthless guard posted specifically to make sure nobody stole the body of Jesus, there would most likely have been bloodshed, with the guards coming out well on top.

But by sending the women first, they were probably hoping to defuse the tension. A bunch of unarmed women would hardly pose a threat to armed, experienced soldiers. According to a sermon I heard yesterday, there were probably about sixteen guards, four on active duty and the rest close by.

So the story is credible.

That's very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
.

 

[ViaCrucis]

I believe there is sufficient evidence that the earliest Christians actually believed the things they were teaching.

Even admitting:

1) A late date of the Four Gospels, including the argument that they were not first-hand, eyewitness accounts;

2) That only seven of the traditional thirteen epistle to Paul are authentically Pauline;

3) And the Q-Hypothesis and Markan Priorty theory are true:

There is still sufficient material here that gives every indication that the earliest Christians--as early as we can possibly get--actually believed these things. The Jesus story they believed, the Jesus they believed in is the same Jesus Paul talks about, the same Jesus the Four Evangelists talk about.

As such, fundamentally, the question becomes: Is it true? Which seems obvious. But the point is that given all that we have, and even allowing for a highly critical approach, we can be confident that these people actually, really, seriously believed this. That is, they didn't just make it up, they believed something--something that was already being believed when they wrote and was the active topic of their conversations. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 says that he delivered what he himself received, he believed the same thing he was preaching, and he didn't originate it, it is from before him. It's what James and Cephas (Peter) also believed.

So is it true?

I don't think that can be answered except by faith. It is not reasonable to tell someone to believe in a Jewish carpenter rising from the dead after three days, demonstrating that He is in fact the very Messiah and Son of God He claimed to be. That is an unreasonable thing to believe that runs contrary to everything we know empirically about the universe and also from all our collective experience of this universe.

So only with faith can we believe in these things. Only by God giving us the sight of faith to see can we believe, and indeed be confident in the truth of these things.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[public hermit]

So only with faith can we believe in these things. Only by God giving us the sight of faith to see can we believe, and indeed be confident in the truth of these things.

Sure, you're absolutely correct. But, are there things that hold up under historical scrutiny? I think there are. There is an intersection between what we are given to hold by faith and what holds up under historical scrutiny. Do those historical bits constitute the great truths of the faith? No. But, they leave a footprint. I think it can be shown, historically speaking, that there was a teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, who did things that people found remarkable, who was crucified, and whose disciples claimed rose from the dead. Does that verify the great truths of our faith? Again, it does not. But it does show that our faith is not, historically speaking, groundless. Because the Incarnation happened in space and time, it matters that there is a footprint, so to speak.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Sure, you're absolutely correct. But, are there things that hold up under historical scrutiny? I think there are. There is an intersection between what we are given to hold by faith and what holds up under historical scrutiny. Do those historical bits constitute the great truths of the faith? No. But, they leave a footprint. I think it can be shown, historically speaking, that there was a teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, who did things that people found remarkable, who was crucified, and whose disciples claimed rose from the dead. Does that verify the great truths of our faith? Again, it does not. But it does show that our faith is not, historically speaking, groundless. Because the Incarnation happened in space and time, it matters that there is a footprint, so to speak.

Right, I think we can definitely say those things. It's the "Did He rise?" "Is He the Christ?" questions that require faith. Did Jesus rise from the dead? That's a question that can only be answered with faith, because we can't travel back in time to witness it ourselves to get first-hand empirical evidence; and the proposition of a man rising from the dead is an unreasonable proposition so pure reason can't get us there either. As such, faith. Faith is how we confess the unconfessable: Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, He is the Son of God, our Lord, born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered and died for the sins of the world, and who rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come again.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Cormack]

It’s always helped me to stress that faith isn’t really how we prove things or know that they’re correct, faith isn’t an answer to the knowledge gap but rather it’s our response to the evidence, arguments and revelation of the Spirit when those things shorten the gap.

Faith can be arbitrary, but that’s not true necessarily, and it’s not the best of the Christian faith when people do believe things in an arbitrary way. Our faith is at its biblical best when it’s in response to something rationally intelligible, like an argument from history.

Lots of people have beliefs to do with history, but not all of those beliefs have rational warrant.

Some beliefs (e.g. 9/11 was an inside job, the Holocaust didn’t happen, Janet Jackson is really Micheal Jackson) aren’t warranted based upon what we do know.

Recently I was writing to @TruthSeek3r about the topic, and he mentioned why believe in Christianity and not other faiths. So I wanted to share an example of rational warrant with everyone.

Christianity is defended by Paul. He was an educated man and wrote his own letters, or at least dictated them to someone. He signs his letters, so whatever he writes is a first hand eyewitness account of what he’s seen.

If we start by presupposing Christianity is true, we have an eyewitness account of someone who seen Jesus alive after His death.

Let’s go this time to Islam, if we presuppose Islam is true, what do we have?

Well, we’ve got....

The Quran preserved in tablets of gold in heaven.

If anyone seen the tablets we’d have a first hand account in Islam, but they didn’t.

Instead....

An angel is sent to Muhammad to tell him about the message on the tablets (second hand testimony.)

Muhammad tells his followers the message, but, because he was illiterate, he writes nothing down himself.

So now we have Muhammad’s friends writing down his words.

That’s not so bad, but there’s an issue here too, the Quran has no chronology or context, the majority of the Quran’s stories have either no middle, beginning or end, it’s a very messy book.

Where does the context come from? How do we know Muhammad’s friends saved the Quran? Because the Quran itself doesn’t teach that they did.

All of that information comes from the compilers writing some 200 years later.

Without them, Islam makes no sense.

So when we take that into account, the message of Islam isn’t first hand testimony, it’s not like Paul.

Rather, at best and if we presuppose Islam is true, it’s 5th hand testimony!

We don’t get....

The gold tablets
The angels testimony
The prophets message
His friends words

Rather we get a long chain of narration, gathered by the compilers, filtered through the political and social climate some 200+ years later (the exact time when historians say legends occur.)

 

[Cormack]

It’s not just a matter of taste when I pick Jesus over Muhammad, it’s not a disagreement based upon race, culture or family ties, it was a choice built upon historic ideas like eyewitness testimony beats 5th hand testimony coming 200+ years later.