Transcript: What are the sources regarding Christianity? Some of you might be even asking, why should I believe Jesus is real? Why should I believe that he’s a man who existed? It is incontrovertible, according to the historical principles of investigation, that a man named Jesus existed in the first century. We have over 40 records of Jesus’s life from ancient times describing this man, who was essentially a carpenter in Palestine. He didn’t have much of anything and wasn’t a centrally important figure at the time, yet we have 40 sources that refer to him. Do you know who the Emperor was at Jesus’s time? Someone shouted out Tiberius. Good. Tiberius was the emperor of Rome at that time. Now, this is a man we should have a lot written about; we can expect tons and tons of records about this man, can’t we? The historical records contain Tiberius’s name by 10 different individuals—that’s it, 10 for Tiberius, the emperor of Rome, and 40 for Jesus. You can see we have excellent reasons to believe that this man Jesus of Nazareth lived and existed in the 1st century. That’s why very, very few— in fact, I could probably count on one hand—actually, I’d know of two scholars who study the historical Jesus who claim that Jesus never existed. One of them is Bob Price, who most other scholars say is just not even possible, so we can dismiss this due to the reasoning and lack of scholastic support that this is actually the case. So Jesus certainly exists. What can we know about him? Of the scholars that study him, and keep in mind, there is an entire area of historical studies called historical Jesus studies. We have scholars who have been studying this on all sides; these aren’t all Christians by any means. Actually, the most influential ones wouldn’t align themselves with Orthodox Christianity. You have people like Paula Frederickson, Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman, and John Dominic Crossan, who would say that of Jesus, we can know for a fact that he died on the cross. Now, keep in mind, that’s one of our three points that we’re proving for Christianity or attempting to show to determine its reliability: did Jesus die on the cross? The scholars who study his life, regardless of whether they’re atheist, Buddhist, agnostic, Hindu, or Christian—it doesn’t matter—they all conclude that Jesus died on the cross. If I left it there, it would be an appeal to authority, and we’re trying to be academically rigorous tonight, so I’m not going to do that. I’m going to give you some of their reasons why they believe Jesus died on the cross, but we’re going to keep it brief because scholars are unanimous on this issue. By the way, it’s not just them; even Muslim scholars will argue that Jesus did die on the cross. How many of you have heard of Reza Aslan’s book recently, “Zealot,” that came out this year? A few of you. Reza Aslan is a scholar who has studied the historical Jesus, and as a Muslim, he says, “Yes, Islam denies Jesus’s death on the cross, and I am a Muslim, but I confirm that Jesus’s death on the cross is historically certain.” In fact, he builds his whole book on the fact that Jesus died, so even as a Muslim, he says Jesus died on the cross. Why do they say this? Well, because of all the evidence that we have, all the records of Jesus’s life that talk about his death indicate that he did die. If they say anything, it says that he did die on the cross under Pontius Pilate, which is why Paula Frederickson says, “If there’s anything we can know about Jesus, anything at all, it’s this: that he died on the cross under Pontius Pilate.” If you go away from Christian records and look at Jewish records like Josephus, we can also see in the first century that non-Christians are saying Jesus died on the cross. If we go to Gentile scholars, they are also agreeing that Jesus died on the cross. In fact, we also have some of them saying that these people believe he has risen from the dead. We’ll get to that in just a moment. So we have excellent reasons to believe Jesus died on the cross because all the records point to that. Plus, if you study the historical process of crucifixion, nobody ever, in the entire history of the Roman process of crucifixion, survived a full Roman crucifixion. So we have excellent reasons to believe Jesus died on the cross. Did he rise from the dead? This is an important matter, and lots of historians say we cannot investigate the resurrection because that’s not a historical matter; that’s a supernatural matter, and you can’t study supernatural matters. Well, that’s jumping the gun just a bit. If every naturalistic explanation falls short and falls very short of explaining what happened, then we have reason to believe that something supernatural may have happened. If there simply is no good explanation, naturalistically speaking, we can use a historical process of investigation to conclude that quite likely something supernatural happened here. So what happened when Jesus died? Shortly after his death, we take a look at what happened, and those historical scholars we’ve already referred to generally agree with three facts that are considered relatively incontrovertible. I’m giving you what’s called the minimal facts argument. If you want to look into this, it’s called the minimal facts argument, primarily promoted by a man named Gary Habermas, who’s written a book called “The Historical Jesus,” also by his protege Michael Licona, who’s written a book called “The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus.” He wrote it alongside Gary Habermas, and he’s also written his manifesto, a rather large book that serves well for curing insomnia—sorry, Mike—he’s written that as well. If you want to look at a very thorough investigation of the historical method on whether or not Jesus died, I suggest you take a look at this book published by Edmunds. Michael Licona is the author. The argument runs as follows: pretty much all scholars who study this—at least a vast majority, if not virtually all—conclude three things happened after Jesus died. Number one: Jesus did die on the cross, which we just looked at. Number two: the disciples, Jesus’s disciples, all believed he had risen from the dead. The disciples truly believed that Jesus had risen from the dead, and according to most historical Jesus scholarship, Christianity wouldn’t have gotten off the ground if it weren’t for that fact. Fact number three: people who were enemies of Jesus or not his disciples also believed he had risen from the dead. Who are we talking about? We’re talking specifically about two people: James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul (or Saul of Tarsus, as it were). James, the brother of Jesus, did not follow Jesus during his lifetime. We see in the book of Mark that Jesus’s family comes up and says to people around Jesus that he is out of his mind—basically, that he’s crazy, which leads Jesus to say, “Who is my mother and brother and sister? It’s those who do the will of God.” So Jesus’s family is not on his side. It wasn’t until after the resurrection, or supposedly the resurrection, when all of a sudden the brother of Jesus, James, becomes a leader of the Christian Church. And also Saul of Tarsus, who is Saul? Saul was the student of Gamaliel, one of the chief leaders of the Jews at the time. This man was primed and groomed to be a leader of the Jews, a leader of Pharisees. He was going to have all kinds of power in the temple. He already had all kinds of power because he was able to deliver people to prison. He was given special permission to hunt Christians down, yet this man was willing to go to his death over and over again. For what? He claims it was because he had seen the risen Jesus. The earliest records of Jesus’s resurrection say that five hundred people saw him risen at the same time.

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