Uncovered: The Bible as Historical Document

Conclusion Means the Search Starts Now

We arrive at the end of our journey of investigating the Bible as a Historical document, as a Historian would any other set of evidence. In our concluding episode, we take a look back at our episodes, offering insights that each of us gleaned. We also answer a couple of listener comments, hopefully satisfactorily. We even talk about zombies!! If you enjoy the King Arthur story (legend?, history?, myth?), we spend time considering its historical strength. In particular I use this historical personage as a way to consider the strength or weakness of evidence for biographies, for the people we know of from history. There are many movies and plays centered on the Arthurian legend, and during the episode, I mentioned a movie that stars Clive Owen and Kiera Knightley, along with the wonderful Mads Mikkelsen. I called it "Arthur" but its actually "King Arthur." [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349683/] I told about these two songs and love for you to hear them: U2 "40" [https://youtu.be/rt0TTa9R09k?si=K4D0V48itT-uzsV9] DCTalk's "What If I Stumble" [https://youtu.be/JOnokwbFH4s?si=cjMgMkqDA1LNE96v] song starts with the quote Matthew read from Brennan Manning where he says "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." We read this quote to help us seque into our last section, where we close out the entire series. In a sense, that last section was me desperately calling out to any Christian listening to realize that often the reason why some do not believe Christianity or will not follow Jesus because of what they see lived out in front of them. I do believe, and I think we have demonstrated, that the historical evidence is overwhelming in support of the historicity of the Bible. And that historical evidence proves, to me beyond a doubt, that there is this Maker, this Creator Being who wants a relationship with us humans that He created. Episode 8 showed the depth of evidence to prove the resurrection. So for my non-Christian listeners, I desperately want you to see the beauty and life available. And yet, to my Christian listeners, there is a desperate need for each believer of Jesus to live out what Psalm 1 says is a delight in walking in God's ways, in following what is written in this Bible.

Historical Investigation of the Resurrection

The Resurrection of Jesus, the man from Nazereth, stands at the center of the Christian faith. It is the core historical event, either in support of the claim or in denial of the claim. From the earliest evidence, we see all of the supporters of Jesus and the story around the resurrection, place that Resurrection at the center of their claim that this person Jesus was also the "Son of God." Through this podcast series, we have examined the Bible historically and discovered that the New Testament in particular is the most historically secure set of documents from antiquity. That then leads us to this moment to investigate this central claim. It should be obvious, but if Jesus or His followers never claimed that He was the Son of God, and that He had come back to life after his death, no one would quibble about the historicity of these documents. We know His death by crucifixion is one of the most highly attested events from antiquity. Some scholars will attempt to question "the how" but the vast majority understand there was this person Jesus, and he was killed by crucifixion. But then we then are confronted with the fact that there was an empty tomb. The followers of Jesus made the audacious claim that he was back, that he was alive. Why we must examine it in light of history is that the world was transformed by the followers of Jesus. We are "stuck with" examining Christianity whether we like it or not. By 150 AD, citizens from across the Empire, including many non-Jews, had adopted "the Way," this Christian faith that centers on a story that this man Jesus rose from the grave, and is now alive. By 300 AD, the faith was throughout the Empire, with some estimates suggesting as many as 25%, maybe 30% citizens had converted. During the episode, we include research by Sean McDowell in his second edition work The Fate of the Apostles. You can find it available on Amazon [https://a.co/d/397hkRW] or elsewhere books may be ordered.

Variants and Contradictions in the Evidence

A fair question to ask about writings from antiquity is about the many variants within all the various copies of the one document in question, or to notice that the evidence that we have about an event can seem to present contradictions to said historical event or narrative. So this episode will examine both issues, starting with the work of textual scholars. Those scholars spend their lives becoming deeply comfortable with the original languages, materials used for writing, and other contextual information useful to determining how to deal with the variants. We will consider some of the rules used by textual experts. As an example of the work of textual scholarship, we again reference new scholarship about Josephus. For the new research about Josephus, that book is called Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. At least at the time of the writing of these show notes, you can download a free PDF [https://josephusandjesus.com] here. We mention the specific text in question and you can read it here. [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0146%3Abook%3D18%3Awhiston+chapter%3D3%3Awhiston+section%3D3] For the issue of contradictions, we bring back the story of the assassination of Julius Caesar and then spend time examining an historical event from the Second Punic Wars, when the Carthagian General Hannibal took an army from modern-day Spain to the Italian peninsula. To do that, his army had to cross both the Pyrenees mountains and the Alps. With war elephants!! We know both of these things happened, but within the evidence apparent contradictions occur. The Bible has those moments as well. One core answer for those comes in the reality of how ancient biographies were consistently focused on telling something of value or import of the historical figure. They were not as focused on the precise detail of how the story is presented. In the end, what we try to present is that the overarching narrative is secure. We may have some details for which we may not be able to discern which set of details is correct, but no historian doubts the veracity of the narrative.

Investigating the Canon Process for the New Testament, pt 2

In episode six, we dig even deeper into the process, or the concerns about, the canon of the New Testament. We saw in episode five that Christian leaders in the 2nd-4th century affirmed a specific list of writings that were consistently in use by the first Christian followers of the 1st century. It is fair, though, for us to challenge the fact that those leaders said "these are in the canon." Did they have any criteria? Were they just picking their favorites? Was there any effort to specifically exclude other writings? We spend the back half of this episode looking at those other writings, specifically writings that are also given the title term "Gospel." Finally I end the episode with a list of reasons why I think the decision of these early Christian followers is authoritative, holds up to scrutiny. Writings of the Church Fathers [https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/early-church-fathers/.] (there are many, so this links to a decent holding site of the many writings). You could also purchase a variety of books for the writings of the Church Fathers. Here's a link to Amazon's [https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Church+Fathers&ref=cs_503_search] list. The Gospel of Thomas [https://www.marquette.edu/maqom/Gospel%20of%20Thomas%20Lambdin.pdf] The Gospel of Philip [http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/GPhilip-Barnstone.html] The Gospel of Peter [http://www.gnosis.org/library/gospete.htm] ("Gospel of the Cross") The Gospel of Mary [http://gospel-thomas.net/MaryInterlinear.pdf] Infancy Gospel of Thomas [https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0846.htm] The Gospel of Judas [https://www.gospels.net/judas]

Investigating the Canon Process for the New Testament, pt 1

Episode 5 continues the study of the Canon of the Bible. That concept "canon" is a term to describe what is and what is not officially part of X thing, such as "the Shakespeare canon" or "the Star Wars canon." Others may write or contribute things if they wish (so, like fan fiction), but those works are not usually part of the canon. So last episode we examined the concept of "canon" for the Jewish Scripture (what Christians talk about the Old Testament). This episode we turn around attention to the writings about Jesus, the central figure of the Christian faith. There are 27 official ancient manuscripts contained in that collection, what they called "the New Testament," but are those the correct writings? Should there be less? Should there be more? On what criteria did the decision get made? Was that decision made early (say within the lifetimes of Jesus' disciples) or was it made later, worse 100s of years later? We talk through the history of the composition of these writings, and consider the early ideas of the second generation of "Jesus-followers" who started to quote from these first writings. Then we discuss the crucial moment of the man Marcion who did first comprise a list, his thoughts about the canon. His list was smaller than the traditional 27, but why? And what did other Christians think about his list? Ultimately, the Christian leaders of the 2nd and 3rd century will describe the official canonical list of writings that were created in the first century, during the life of the original disciples.