May 1, 2004, Vol.4, No.9.
Two new articles every two weeks.
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us.
THIS ISSUE: "Will
the Real Jesus Please Rise?" (see
below)
and "Was Cornelius Saved
Before He Was Baptized?"
Will the Real Jesus
Please Rise?
by Keith Sharp
"Jesus was very likely a party animal, somewhat shiftless,
and disrespectful of the fifth commandment: Honor your father
and mother." (Johnson 15)
Such quotations could be multiplied, some perhaps even more
shocking and blasphemous, representative of the currently faddish
"quest for the historical Jesus." We are led to inquire:
Who is the real Jesus?
How Do You Define "Expert"?
For almost two decades newspapers have occasionally carried
articles chiefly notable for their shock value about the "Jesus
Seminar." These self-styled scholars on the "historical
Jesus" hold seminars at various sites chosen for publicity
value, invite only those who agree with them to speak, and give
out flamboyant press releases designed to lead unsuspecting people
to think that modern scholarship has destroyed the evidence for
the existence of the Jesus of the New Testament as an historical
figure.
Dr. Luke Timothy Johnson, a Catholic scholar who himself has
liberal views on the historical value of the gospel accounts,
effectively exposes the humbugery of the Jesus Seminar.
.... the Jesus Seminar, a ten-year exercise in academic
self-promotion has succeeded in drawing an extraordinary amount
of attention to itself. Indeed, it has come to symbolize, for
better or worse, the controversy over the Historical Jesus, ...
it stands as a far better example of media manipulation than
of serious scholarship....
It is a small, self-selected association of academics who
meet twice a year to debate the Historical Jesus. The seminar
was founded in 1985 by Robert Funk...., who has been... the shaper
of the Seminar's agenda.
.... It is, from beginning to end, an entrepreneurial venture
guided by Robert Funk. ... any claim to represent scholarship,
or the academy, is ludicrous.
Like a great deal of Gospel criticism, it began with the
assumption that the Gospels are not accurate histories but are
narratives constructed out of traditional materials with literary
art and theological motives.
The Seminar has drawn so much attention not because of
its innovative science but because of ifs deliberately provocative
style.
First, it is a process biased against the authenticity
of the Gospel traditions.
The Seminar has also been distinctive for its road show
appearances.... The press was invited to observe proceedings,
and Seminar spokespersons were always ready lo be interviewed....
the entire process became a self-generating and self-renewing
media event.
From the start, then, we see that the agenda of the Seminar
is not disinterested scholarship, but a social mission against
the way in which the church controls the Bible, ... a theology
focused both on the literal truth of the Gospels and the literal
return of Jesus -- that Funk finds intolerable.
Funk sees his goal as one of liberating Jesus from the
Gospels, and the public from its thrall to dogma.... The real
Jesus, for Funk, therefore, is different from the one worshipped
by Christians.... Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, "marketed
the Messiah" to make him conform to Christian doctrine that
evolved after the death of Jesus....
In sum, we need a new narrative of Jesus, a new
Gospel, if you will, that places Jesus differently in the grand
scheme....
... any pretense the Seminar has maintained with regard
to scientific discovery was, at least to Funk's view, merely
pretense: the results were already determined ahead of time....
'Our fictions, though deliberately fictive, are nevertheless
not subject to proof or falsification., ... We need a fiction
that we recognize to be fictive.'
Funk's statements reveal a strange combination of grandiosity
and hucksterism.... If we are to survive as scholars of the Humanities,
as well as Theologians, we must quit the academic closet. And
we must begin to sell a product that has some utilitarian value
to someone... or at least appears to have utilitarian value to
someone....' (Johnson 1-8)
So, there you have it. Would you call the Jesus Seminar serious,
unbiased, truth-seeking scholarship? They admit to being purveyors
of a "new Gospel" (cf. Galarians 1:6-9) and perpetrators
of fiction as fact. They are archetypal examples of the cynical,
self-serving leaders of a society that has lost faith in Christ
and, with that loss of faith, any moral compass. And they claim
to know Jesus!
Criticizing the Critics
The word "criticism" just sounds bad. But even the
most ardent believer engages by necessity in biblical criticism
of a constructive sort. When we reject the apocryphal books of
the Catholic translations of the Bible and object to loose or
slanted translations that pervert the Scriptures, we are engaging
in criticism.
Biblical criticism is divided into two categories: Higher
and Lower. These divisions don't mean one is better or more important
than the other.
Lower criticism, deals strictly with the text of Scripture,
endeavoring to ascertain what the real text of each book was
as it came from the hands of its author; higher criticism, concerns
itself with the resultant problems of age, authorship, sources,
simple or composite character, historical worth, relation to
period of origin, etc. (ISBE 2:749)
It should be obvious that "higher criticism" potentially
leads to destructive criticism, where the critic undermines faith
in the inspiration of the Scriptures. This is the case to the
extreme among liberal theologians.
Form criticism, as a kind of higher criticism, arose in Germany
after World War II.
The form critics assume that the Gospels are composed of
small units or episodes. These small units (pericopes) were circulated
independently. The critics teach that the units gradually took
on the form of various types of folk literature, such as legends,
tales, myths and parables.
According to Form Criticism, the formation and preservation
of the units were basically determined by the needs of the Christian
community.... In other words, when the community had a problem,
they either created or preserved a saying or episode of Jesus
to meet the needs of that particular problem. Therefore, these
units are not basically witnesses to the life of Christ but rather
are considered to be the beliefs and practices of the early Church.
This criticism proposes that the evangelists (writers of
the four Gospels - KS) were not so much the writers as the editors
of the four Gospels. They took the small units and put them in
an artificial framework to aid in preaching and teaching. (McDowell
189)
Basically, Form Criticism is the product and tool of infidelity.
It begins with the assumption that the gospel story of Jesus
is legendary. It assigns the gospel a place alongside the myths
of false religions, what in a university would be called the
study of Comparative Religion, assuming a natural and evolutionary
origin to them all.
The conclusions of the form critics run head long into the
facts. First and perhaps most glaring is the comparison of the
gospel to folklore.
Normally, the accumulation of folklore among people of
primitive culture takes many generations: it is a gradual process
spread over centuries of time. But in conformity with the thinking
of the form critic, we must conclude that the gospel stories
were produced and collected within little more than one generation.
(Kistemaker 48-49)
Form criticism fails to account for the existence of eyewitnesses
to the life of Jesus at the time the four gospel accounts began
to circulate, especially of hostile witnesses.
... eyewitnesses of the events in question were still alive
when the tradition had been completely formed; and among these
eyewitnesses were bitter enemies of the new religious movement.
Yet the tradition claimed to narrate a series of well-known deeds
and publicly taught doctrines at a time when false statements
could, and would, be challenged. (McGinley 25)
Other contradictions of the facts are glaring as well. The
destructive critics assume the New Testament writers made no
distinction between what Jesus said and what they themselves
said, whereas the inspired writers were meticulous in distinguishing
between the words of the Lord and their own words (cf. 1 Corinthians
7:10,12,25).
Furthermore, if the teaching the gospel accounts impute to
Jesus was really legend perpetrated by the writers, then the
apostolic teaching ought to have the same forms and terminology
as that ascribed to Christ. Why, then, is the teaching of Jesus
in the synoptic gospels overwhelmingly parabolic (cf. Matthew
13:34-35), whereas parables are absent from the remainder of
the New Testament? Why does Jesus characteristically refer to
Himself as the "Son of man," doing so eighty times
in the gospel accounts, whereas this designation is only used
four other times in the remainder of the New Testament?
In history as well as in a court of law, the most powerful
witnesses are those who, while confirming the testimony in question,
are either disinterested or hostile, The apostle Paul qualifies
as a hostile witness, for, as Saul of Tarsus, he "persecuted
... to the death" the disciples of Christ and, before those
who could refute his testimony if it were false, called upon
the high priest and elders of the Jews as his witnesses to this
fact (Acts 22:4-5). Yet, Paul's own letters confirm the truth
of the gospel story (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:1-8).
Josephus, the great Jewish historian contemporary with Paul,
qualifies as a neutral witness. Leaving out the part of his notice
of Jesus that negative critics claim Christians later added,
Josephus testified:
At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man.... For he
was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive
the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among
many Jews and among many of Greek origin.... And when Pilate,
because of accusation mack by the leading men among us, condemned
him to the cross, those who loved him previously did not cease
to do so.... And up until this very day the tribe of Christians,
named after him, has not died out. (Johnson. 114)
The parts of the quote from Josephus which are omitted confess
Jesus to be more than a man, to be the Messiah, and to have appeared
to the disciples after His death in fulfillment of the Old Testament
prophets. The quote actually reads smoother with those portions
still intact, and there is just as much textual evidence for
them being the words of Josephus as to the portion quoted. But
the quote which even the negative critics allow testifies that
Jesus lived, was a wise teacher who worked great deeds, taught
the truth, gained a wide following, was crucified by Pilate at
the instigation of the Jewish leaders, and still had a wide following
of people named after Him.
Finally, the form critic cannot account for the most important
fact of all concerning the witness of the gospel writers. Why
were they willing to be savagely persecuted and even killed for
their testimony, when they had nothing earthly to gain for telling
it? (cf Acts 4:1-31; 5:17-42; 6:8 - 8:4). Not even one of the
apostles of Christ ever changed or recanted His testimony, although
tradition assigns a violent death at the hands of persecutors
to all but John, who was exiled to a lonely, barren, rocky ancient
Alcatraz (the island of Patmos) for his faith.
Gi'me Your Best Shot
Professor E.P. Sanders, Arts and Sciences Professor of Religion
at Duke University, has been called "America's most distinguished
scholar in the field of Jesus research today." (Professor
John B. Meier, Catholic University, quoted on fly leaf, Sanders).
He has his Th.D. from Union Theological Seminary and formerly
taught at Oxford. He has written two award winning books on Jesus,
and is a fellow of the British Academy. Pretty heady stuff.
Sanders is no friend to believers in the Jesus of the gospel.
While intending to answer the radical nonsense of the Jesus Seminar,
he concludes of Jesus:
... from time to time individuals stood up and claimed
to be the truest representatives of God, In general terms, this
is where Jesus fits. He was an individual who was convinced that
he knew the will of God. (Ibid. 48)
The professor sees nothing unique about Jesus. "There
may have been numerous people who felt as close to God as Jesus
did." (Ibid. 239) Sanders farther claims, "Thus there
is no certainty that Jesus thought of himself as bearer of the
title Messiah., On the contrary, it is unlikely that he did so...."
(Ibid. 242)
Sanders is a form critic. Of the gospel accounts as primary
historical sources, he asserts:
The main sources for our knowledge of Jesus himself, the
gospels in the New Testament, are, from the view of the historian,
tainted by the fact that they were written by people who intended
to glorify their hero. (Ibid. 3)
He further concludes of the gospel narratives, "Moreover,
the early Christians also created new material; they made things
up." (Ibid. 62) He completely discounts the historical value
of the book of John.
... the teaching of the historical Jesus is to be sought
in the synoptic gospels and... John represents an advanced theological
development, in which meditations on the person and work of Christ
are presented in the first person, as if Jesus said them.
(Ibid. 71)
The synoptics gospels - Matthew, Mark, and Luke - fare little
better. The safest conclusion is that the synoptic gospels, especially
Matthew and Luke, are 'mythological elaboration based on fact."
(Ibid. 117) Sanders professes to find numerous glaring contradictions
between the three accounts and historical inaccuracies throughout
the synoptics. Sanders concludes, "There are no sources
that give us the unvarnished truth,; the varnish of faith in
Jesus covers everything." (Ibid. 73)
Achilles' Heel
But Professor Sanders makes an admission which is fatal to
negative criticism. As he assesses the historical value of the
witnesses who claimed they had seen Jesus after He was raised
from the dead, Sanders observes:
I do not regard deliberate fraud as a worthwhile explanation.
Many of the people in these lists (lists of witnesses to the
resurrection - KS) were to spend the rest of their lives proclaiming
that they had seen the risen Lord, and several of them would
die for their cause. (Ibid. 279-80)
If the witnesses were not liars, how do we explain their consistent
testimony that they had seen the risen Lord? Sanders candidly
admits, "That Jesus, followers (and later Paul) had resurrection
experiences is, in my Judgment, a fact. What the reality was
that gave rise to the experience I do not know." (Ibid.
280)
Why, herein is a wonder! Professor E.P. Sanders is heralded
by liberal theologians as the greatest American expert on the
historical Jesus. And yet, when it comes to the central issue
of Jesus, that upon which both Jesus and His apostles were willing
to stake their claims (Matthew 12:39-40; Romans 1:1-4), the professor
is unable to come to grips with the question.
Skepticism thus confesses itself impotent to speak concerning
the historical Jesus. No wonder, as hypercriticism throws away
passage after passage from the New Testament accounts of Jesus,
nothing but doubt is left concerning anything from the Master's
life. No wonder each participant in the radically liberal Jesus
Seminar feels the liberty, with boundless imagination and scanty
facts, to reconstruct Jesus into a teacher suitable to his leftist
agenda.
Christ in Court
Now let us put Jesus of Nazareth on trial. His disciples aver
He is the Christ the Son of God (John 20:30-31). According to
their testimony. He made this claim for Himself (e.g., Matthew
16:13-17). They and He assert that the ultimate proof of this
fact is that God demonstrated His approval of Jesus by raising
Him from the dead. They claim to be witnesses of this fact (Acts
2:32). How shall we account for their testimony?
We shall abbreviate the trial and omit the fact of the empty
tomb, a fact the skeptic cannot explain away, to concentrate
on the testimony of the witnesses.
We have the first hand testimony of Matthew, Peter and John
(Matthew 28:16-17; John 20:1-10, 19-29,21:1-24; I Peter 1:3,20-21;
2 Peter 1:16), all of whom were intimate with the Lord during
His ministry. We have the historical record of Luke, who researched
his subject by interviewing the eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1-4, NASB;
Luke chapter 24; Acts 1:1-11). Luke records sermons by both the
apostle Peter and the apostle Paul, in which they testify to
having seen Jesus after He was risen (e.g.. Acts 2:32; 3:14-15;
22:1-10). Paul records his own eye-witness testimony (e.g., 1
Corinthians 15:1-8).
How shall we explain their testimony? Certainly, the appearance
of Jesus was no illusion. Unlike those who imagine a vision of
Mary, they did not expect to see Him, even after His crucifixion
(e.g., John 20:9). They were still skeptical even after some
had seen Him (Mark 16:14; John 20:24-25). They actually spoke
to Him, ate with Him and touched Him (e.g., John 21:1-14; 20:26-27).
As Sanders acknowledges, they utterly lacked motive to lie.
Why would Peter leave his fishing business to endure a life of
extreme persecution and eventual martyrdom? (John 21:3, 15-19;
Acts 5:17-42; 2 Peter 1:12-16). Why would Paul abandon a life
of prominence in Judaism to be ridiculed and persecuted by his
own people and eventually executed for his testimony? (Acts22:3;
Galatians 1:13-14; 1 Corinthians 4:11-13; 2 Corinthians 11:23-27;
2 Timothy 4:6-8).
So much more could be said, but surely it takes no Sherlock
Holmes to follow the evidence and reach a verdict. Surely, we
must acknowledge that Peter spoke the truth when he claimed,
"For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we
made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,
but were eyewitnesses of His majesty." (2 Peter 1:16)
Then who is the historical Jesus, the real Jesus? Assuredly
Paul was right when he proclaimed that Jesus Christ our Lord
was "declared to be the Son of God with power according
to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead."
(Romans 1:4)
So, Why the Skeptics?
If the case for Christ is so strong (And this study only briefly
touches on the evidence), why do the skeptics reject Jesus Christ
the Son of God as an historical reality? Sanders states it thus:
The view espoused by Cicero has become dominant in the
modern world, and I fully share it. Some reports of miracles,
are fanciful or exaggerated; the miracles, that actually happen
are things that we cannot explain, because of ignorance of the
range of natural causes. (Ibid. 143)
Do the skeptics with unbiased fairness just follow the facts
where they lead? Hardly! Their naturalistic philosophy that denies
even the possibility of a miracle blinds them to the facts.
Is it good history to deny all testimony of miracles because
of philosophical bias against the miraculous? Perhaps no greater
church historian has lived than Philip Schaff. He well described
the historian's craft: "The purpose of the historian is
not to construct history from preconceived notions and to adjust
it to his own liking, but to reproduce it from the best evidence
and to let it speak for itself." (1:175)
So prejudiced is Professor Sanders against miracles that,
although he admits the honesty of the gospel writers, he discounts
their testimony. "We doubt things that agree too much with
the gospels, bias, we credit things that are against their preference."
(Ibid. 94) How can one who refuses to accept the testimony of
the only primary sources for the historical Jesus, even when
he admits their honesty, ever hope to know the real Jesus?
Will the Real Jesus Please
Rise?
The skeptic through prejudice rejects the only primary sources
we have for the historical Jesus and is thus both confused and
ignorant of Christ. He does not accept the facts of Jesus, life,
does not understand their significance, and fails to acknowledge
who the Lord is. His stubborn adherence to unbelief leaves him
incapable of knowing the real Jesus.
The informed Christian accepts the Jesus of the gospels, not
through blind, unreasoning faith, but because of the evidence
from multiple, unimpeachable, primary sources. Thus, Christians
alone truly know the historical Jesus, the real Jesus, the risen
Lord of glory. He is the Christ the Son of the living God, God
who became flesh and dwelt among us.
Skeptics vainly inquire, "Will the real Jesus please
rise?" Christians triumphantly declare, "He is risen!"
_______________________
Works Cited
Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest
for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels.
San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996.
Kistemaker, Simon. The Gospels in Current Study. Grand
Rapids, MI, Baker Book House, 1972. as quoted by McDowell. 210.
McDowell, Josh, More Evidence That Demands a Verdict.
San Bemardino, CA; Here's Life Publishers, Inc., 1975.
McGinley, Lawrence J. Form Criticism of the Synoptic Healing
Narratives. Woodstock, MD., Woodstock College Press, 1944,
as quoted by McDowell. 211.
Orr, James. "Criticism, of the Bible." The International
Standard Bible Encyclopaedia. Ed. James Orr. Grand Rapids,
Mich.: William B. Eerdman's, 1939.
Sanders, E.P. The Historical Figure of Jesus. London:
Penguin, 1993.
Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church.1.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1882. as quoted by McDowell,
11.
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