About Christianity
and Jesus
Part Two

How does the number of transcripts Christians have compare to some of the other ancient writings like Plato or Homer?

This is very interesting! The copies of other ancient manuscripts are often many hundreds of years later than the originals. Sir Fredric Kenyon, one of the greatest authorities in the field of New Testament textual criticism, adds: "Scholars are satisfied that they possess substantially the true text of the principle Greek and Roman writers whose works have come down to us of Sophocles, of Thucydides, or Cicero, or Virgil; yet our knowledge of their writings depends on a mere handful of manuscripts (in some of the Greek & Roman writings, we have only a few copies), whereas the manuscripts of the New Testament are counted by hundreds, and even thousands." The New Testament has 5,300 known Greek manuscripts available.

• Over 10,000 Latin Vulgate and at least 9,300 other early versions.
• We have 24,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today—Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, p. 39.

• The implication is, Christianity is not a secret religion, reserved only for the insider who has somehow learned to jump through an endless set of religious hoops to discover the truth.
• All we believe is found in one book—the Bible.
• Scholars can also date the books of the New Testament quite accurately.
• Scholarship reveals that the books reporting Jesus' words and works were genuinely written within the lifetime of Jesus' friends and followers.
• In the last 150 years, this was affirmed further because earlier manuscripts of the Bible were found.
• Thus we have a better understanding of the original languages, so that modern translations are even more precise than ever.

But do we get all our information about Jesus' existence just from the Bible?

No! Both Jewish and Roman writers, including Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny refer to Jesus as well. None of these men were Jesus' followers, and they mention Him only in passing, but they had no doubt about His existence or impact. Some people have relegated Jesus to the level of Peter Pan, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy.

• But today, 2,000 years later, the only real way to keep believing that He belongs to the land of Fairy Tales is to close our minds to hard historical facts.
• No serious scholar doubts the existence of Jesus as an historical figure.

The real question is not, "Did Jesus exist?" but "Who was He?"

A recent survey by the Barna Research Group of Glendale, California, reveals how confused people are about who Jesus was. According to the survey, traditional Christian beliefs are in decline:

• While 88% believe Jesus Christ was a real person, what they believe about Him differs sharply from Scriptural teaching.
• 42% of those surveyed believe that while He lived on earth, Jesus committed sins, just like other people.
• Even among born-again Christians, one-quarter believe Jesus sinned during His time on earth. (From a news release by the Barna Research Group, Ltd., Nov. 2, 1994.)

1. a good man,
2. a great teacher, or
3. a moral leader

• In different places and in different ways in the New Testament, Jesus actually identified Himself with none other than God. John 14:8-9—"Philip said, 'Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.' 9] Jesus answered: 'Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father: How can you say, show us the Father'?"
• In John's gospel Jesus said, "Before Abraham was born, I am"—John 8:58. Not only was Jesus claiming to be around before Abraham, who lived about 1,900 years earlier, but "I Am" was the special Jewish name for God.
• Later on Jesus said, "I and the Father are one"—Jn. 10:30. As a result, the Jews around Him picked up stones to stone him saying, "We are not stoning you for any of these [i.e., miracles]... but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God"—John 10:33.

• Jesus allowed His followers to worship Him—Jn. 19:34-40. This would have been the ultimate blasphemy for a Jew, because it breaks the first and second commandments which state that only God should be worshiped. That Jesus allowed this to happen at all points directly and unmistakably to His belief that He was God.
• When Jesus was put to death by crucifixion, it was for blasphemy, because the Jewish religious leaders were convinced that His behavior amounted to a claim to be God. At His trial, they specifically asked Him, "Are you the Son of God?" And Jesus went on record as saying, "You are right in saying that I am"—Luke 22:70.

• Jesus had to be very much less, or very much more than good, because a mere man who claimed the sorts of things Jesus did about Himself could never be regarded as good.
• He would either be a lunatic with delusions of grandeur on a galactic scale, or a very bold con man.

• If Jesus was a lunatic, why do the rest of His actions seem so consistent and sane?
• If He was a con man, why is the rest of His teaching so morally powerful and He so commonly acknowledged as an honest and great teacher?

• Jesus claimed He was God, and if He was lying about this, He was hardly good at all.
• To trivialize Jesus as just a good man might be more comfortable for us, but it does not fit with the facts.

• When we reach the conclusion that Jesus is God, then we should realize there are huge implications for the way we should live.
• We need not only to pay attention to His teachings, but to worship and follow Him as well.

Many people cannot worship and follow Jesus because the state of the world bothers them.

1. "Why is the world in such a mess?"

2. "Why doesn't God do something about it?"

3. "If God really was there, He'd stop people from fighting."

4. "Why doesn't He just make people do what is right?"

5. "What about earthquakes and floods...God could stop those if He wanted to."

6. "God loves the world?... you must be joking."

There is no getting away from it. The world is not what we would like it to be. In fact, it is in a real mess, and lots of people blame God. Perhaps you have heard people ask some of the following questions:

"If God is so good, why doesn't He wipe out suffering?"

This is a question we cannot completely answer, because we don't know all God's purposes and plans.

• But from my human perspective as a Christian, I find this kind of question somewhat lacking in self-awareness, because so much of the suffering in the world is caused by us.
• Imagine what it would be like if God did choose to wipe out all causes of suffering and wrong in the world. What would He do with us?
• Which of us could stand up and say we have never contributed to the very things we most dislike about life?

Can anyone actually say they have never knowingly hurt someone else?

For instance, how can we blame God for starving babies around the world, when many of our bestselling books in the United States are on dieting, i.e., the overconsumption of food?

• It is not God's fault that people are starving today.
• The earth's population has enough food to give every person 3,000 calories a day.
• The problem is, some of us hoard food for ourselves, therefore, others go to bed hungry.
• It is a cop-out to blame God when the vast majority of human evil and suffering is a direct result of human irresponsibility.
• The truth is, none of us are what we want to be, nor what we ought to be.
• If God did wipe out all evil, I would end up as nothing more than a pile of ash.

"If God is so good, why doesn't He wipe out all the causes of wrong?"

The truth is, it is because He is so good that He has not done so.

Some might say, "Okay, then, why doesn't God make us good?"

"If He made us do the right things, then all our problems would be over."

But when you think about it, life without freedom to choose the way we want to live is not really much of a life at all.

• God made a decision to create freedom, even though it would lead to pain and suffering.
• This constitutes a value judgment: freedom was more important than the avoidance of evil.