07/24/2021 – Saturday apologetic series – “The Bible – Myth or History?”
In our last three weeks making the case for Jesus’ divinity, all three of our hypothesis – Lord, liar, or lunatic, it was presumed that Jesus did actually say he was divine as is written in the New Testament. As our authors of “Pocket of Handbook of Christian Apologetics”, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli point out, what if “the liar is not Jesus but the New Testament texts” themselves? This is the “myth” hypothesis. So, let’s logically debunk this hypothesis. From here, I use our authors 10 reasons, quoted verbatim except where I interject with “Jimmy note”. I am in chapter 10, page 83.
“The data itself makes the myth hypothesis impossible.
Here’s how:
- If the same neutral, objective, scientific approach is used on the New Testatment texts as is used on all other ancient documents, then the texts prove remarkably reliable. Complex, clever hypothesis after hypothesis follow one another with bewildering rapidity and complexity in the desparate attempts to debunk, “demythologize” or demean the data — like declawing a lion. No book in history has been so attacked, cut up, reconstituted and stood on its head as the New Testament. Yet it still lives — like Christ himself.
- The state of the manuscripts is very good. Compared with any and all other ancient documents, the New Testament stands up as ten times more sure. For instance, we have five hundred different copies earlier than A.D. 500. The next most reliable ancient text we have is the Illiad, for which we have only fifty copies that date from five hundred years or less after its origin. We have only one very late manuscript of Tacitus’ Annals, but no one is reluctant to treat that as authentic history. If the books of the New Testament did not contain accounts of miracles or make radical, uncomfortable claims on our lives, they would be accepted by every scholar in the world. In other words, it is not objective, neutral science but subjective prejudice or ideology that fuels skeptical Scripture scholarship.
The manuscripts that we have, in addition to being old, are also mutually reinforcing and consistent. There are very few discrepancies and no really important ones. And all later discoveries of manuscripts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls have confirmed rather than refuted previously existing manuscripts in every important case. There is simply no other ancient text in nearly as good a shape.
3. If Jesus divinity is a myth invented by later generations (“the early Christian community,” often code for “the inventors of the myth”), then there must have been at least two or three generations between the original eyewitnesses of the historical Jesus and the universal belief in the new, mythic, divinized Jesus; otherwise, the myth could never have been believed as fact because it would have been refuted by eyewitnesses of the real Jesus. Both disciples and enemies would have had reasons to oppose this new myth.
However, we find no evidence at all of anyone ever opposing the so-called myth of the divine Jesus in the name of an earlier merely human Jesus. The early “demythologizers” explicitly claimed that the New Testament texts had to have been written after A.D. 150 for the myth to have taken hold. But no competent scholar today denies the first-century dating of virtually all of the New Testament — certainly Paul’s letter, which clearly affirm and presuppose Jesus’ divinity and the fact that this doctrine was already universal Christian orthodoxy.
4. If a mythic “layer onto an originally merely human Jesus, we should find some evidence, at least indirectly and secondhand, of this earlier layer. We find instead an absolute and total absence of any such evidence anywhere, either internal (in the New Testament texts themselves) or external, anywhere else, in Christian , anti -Christian or non-Christian sources.
5. The style of the Gospels is not the style of myth but that of real, though unscientific, eyewitness description. Anyone sensitive to literary styles can compare the Gospels to any of the mythic religious literature of the time, and the differences will appear remarkable and unmistakable; for instance, the intertestamental apocalptic literature of the Jews and Gentiles, or pagan mythic fantasies like Ovid’s Metamorphoses or Flavius’ Philostratu’s story of the wonder-worker Apollonius of Tyana (A.D. 220)
If the events recorded in the Gospels did not really happen, then these authors invented modern realistic fantasy nineteen centuries ago. The Gospels are full of little details that are found only in eyewitness descriptions or modern realistic fiction. They also include dozens of details of life in first-century Israel that could not have been known by someone not living in that time and place (See John 12:3, for instance). And there are no second-century anachronisms, either in language or content.
6. The claim of Jesus to be God makes sense of his trial and crucifixion. The Jewish sensitivity to blasphemy was unique; no one else would so fanatically insist on death as punishment for claiming divinity. Throughout the Roman world, the prevailing attitude toward the gods was “the more, the merrier.”
Jesus’ politics cannot explain his crucifixion. He had no political ambitions. The main reason why most Jews rejected his claim to be the Messiah was that he did not liberate them from Roman political oppression. Why then was he crucified? The political excuse that he was Caesar’s rival was a lie trumped up to justify his execution, since Roman law did not recognize blasphemy as grounds for execution and the Jews had no legal power to enforce their own religious laws of capital punishment under Roman rule.
7. There are four Gospels, not one. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by four different writers, at four different times, probably for four different audiences and with four somewhat different purposes and emphases. So a lot of cross-checking is possible. By a textual trigonometry or triangulation, we can fix the facts with far greater assurance here than with any other ancient personage or series of events. The only inconsistencies are in chronology (only Luke’s Gospel claims to be in exact order) and accidentals like numbers (e.g., did the women see one angel or two at the empty tomb?)
8. If the divine Jesus of the Gospels is a myth, who invented it? Whether it was his first disciples or some later generation, no possible motive can account for this invention. For until the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313, Christians were subject to persecution, often tortured and martyred, and hated and oppressed for their beliefs. No one invents an elaborate practical joke in order to be crucified, stoned or beheaded.
9. First-century Jews and Christians were not prone to believe myths. They were already more “demythologized” than any other people. The orthodox were adamantly , even cantankerously and intolerantly, opposed to the polytheistic myths of paganism and to any ecumenical syncretism. Nor would anyone be less likely to confuse myth and fact than a Jew. Peter explicitly makes the point that the Gospel story is historical fact, not ‘cleverly devised myths.’ (2 Peter 1:16).
10. Finally, if you read the Gospels with an open mind and heart, you may well conclude, along with Dostoyevsky and Kierkegaard., that no mere man could possibly have invented this story.
Soli Deo Gloria!