SATURDAY EDITORIAL

Did the Resurrection really happen?

The quick answer to this question is, as Sarah Palin puts it, “You betya” But let us look at this a bit further. In my humble opinion as a student of Biology I find that it must be a much higher act of faith to believe that Jesus did NOT die and rise on the third day based strictly on the evidence.

First we have 4 Gospels and whether or not you believe them science has already proven that they were written about 2000 years ago.

I have heard many arguments state that these documents were not written when Jesus was alive but they were written after he had been crucified. Now this is true but what is also true and must be realized as a fact is that the 4 Gospels and the New Testament was written within a lifetime of when Jesus Christ died and I believe rose from the dead.

Now many people tell me that after time passes things change. They remind me of the telephone game when a message is passed along from person to person and when you get to the end, the message is often completely different from the original message. But we have to also take into account the time of Jesus. It certainly was not the digital age we have now and people did not have cell phones with cameras and video cameras. It was not even in the print age as they did not have newspaper stands on every corner.

During this time it was an oratory age. The rabbi’s of the day had to memorize entire scriptures before they could ever comment on those passages. So were these documents reliably preserved? By comparing the ancient manuscripts we have to conclude that yes they were. We do know that there was a man named Saul and he was one such student. Scholars have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that oratory cultures have been able to pass things down for generations without changing a thing!

The first century Apostles were very serious about writing these things down as accurately as possible. Now these stories were passed down. Plus we have to remember that there were hundreds of other people who were alive during the time of Jesus and we do NOT have any written evidence that contradicts what has been written in the 4 Gospels and the New Testament. Please also remember that Saul who changed his name to Paul was one of these very educated men who understood the Torah and some scholars believe that he may have even heard Jesus preach when He was alive.

But don’t the Gospels contradict each other? Well in a court of law, if every single witness gives the exact same testimony the court will rule collusion meaning they got together and organized their testimony. It is expected that witnesses of an event to have slightly different recollections. What is important is that the concept be consistent. So where we have one Gospel talk about 1 blind many being healed and another talking about 2 blind men being healed really does not contradict each other. The point was that a man who was blind from birth was healed by the miracle Jesus performed.

But the fact still remains that we do not have an original manuscript but instead we have copies. So how do we know that what we have is real? Well the fact is we have over 5000 manuscripts of the New Testament. We have better records of the New Testament than any other document that has ever been preserved

Again in a court of law the evidence is extremely strong. But what about any evidence other than the Bible

The Jewish scholar Josephus describes the life of Jesus and the Roman historian Tacitus writes about Jesus and Pontius Pilot. Suetonius mentions Jesus and there are numerous other documents written in this time frame that mention Jesus of Nazareth. Just go to Google and type in “other mentions of Jesus than the Bible” and see what you come up with. So again if we were in a court of law we have to come to the conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth did live, he did preach and teach, he did have disciples and he was crucified.

Continued

Pastor Bob

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