Quest for Truth 156 Woke to the Legend of Jesus

Quest for Truth – HPN

Back in the studio together, Keith and Nathan experience some audio reversals, when the Retrobots play with the mixing board. At least that’s our story behind the mix up.

With things set straight, we take a quiz found on the Babylon Bee. Nathan looks up the definition of “woke” on dictionary.com, then we get started with the quiz. How Woke Are You? Take The Quiz! Take the quiz yourself, and tell us how you did.

Meet the Hosts

Nathan tells about his beginnings at outreach, and growth at his church in the tiny town of Houston,Arkansas. Keith has had funerals to go to. We talk about the passing of Billy Graham just this morning, and other recent news tragedies in the nation

Main Topic

Liar, Lunatic, Lord… or Legend

The concept is that of Jesus being neither a Liar, or lunatic, means the only claim left to believe about him is that he is lord. The teaching was introduced, or at least made popular, by C.S. Lewis. A professor later added legend as a possible 4th option. Today we are going to examine the arguments that try to support this claim.

Most critics allow for arguments sake that Jesus was neither a liar, or lunatic. They don’t acceppt the option of lord, claiming that most of what we really know about Jesus is legend that has been created to add to who he was.

Legend. Means that Jesus could have been a real person, but added later teaching makes him bigger than life. To support this, the critic says we have no writings tht date earlier than around 150AD to 250AD. Plenty of time for legend to creep in.

The problem is that those writings are copies of widely circulated documents. Writings that are accurate copies of the original autographs of the authors.

The argument allows that at best, Paul’s earliest writing was around 50AD, still 20 years after the crucifixion. A similar event as if we were only now writing about an obscure pop star of the 1990’s.

The challenge continues. Paul’s writing is vague about Jesus life. Paul speaks encourgement to a persecuted people, he refers to Jesus as Lord and savior. But he doesn’t go into details of the events in Jesus life. say No virgin birth, no miracles cited, no details of his crucifixion.

The answer is that just because no wrtings existed didn’t mean a widespread movement wasn’t already taking place. By Paul’s own words in the opening chapters of his first book, he was in contact with at least 2 well placed disciples of Jesus. Peter, and John. A timeline is established that gets Paul’s teaching back to within 5 years of the crucifixion, and in contact of eye witnesses. People who lived with, and experienced Jesus first hand.

The claim is that all the details in the Gospels only came along later. They are anonymous, and therefore unauthentic. Plus, one writer copied from the other, expanding on the legend of Jesus with each step.

The answer. The oldest Gospel is Mark, also written around 50AD, and some scholars claim it actually predates Paul’s letter to the Galations. Not a book written many years later. No chance for legends to have sprung up at that early of a date. Though authrship is never claimed in the writings themselves, the earliest church fathers, who studied directly under the apostles, knew and attributed the books and letters to the people whose names are on them. There’s no reason to think otherwise.

Though the early claim to not challenge that Jesus was a liar is made, critics still hold that deception may have been taking place. That Jesus misled his disciples somehow, and didn’t correct their belief he worked miracles, or was the son of God. No outside sources back up the claim of any supernatural activities.

Clearly, critics haven’t researched ancient documents. There are writings claiming Jesus learned magic during his stay in Egypt. The claim is to support the supernatural healing, and other signs he was known to have done. Naturally the outside source points to magic, not God for supernatural ability, but the point is there is indeed outside sources. And that they support that Jesus did amazing, unexplainable things.

Another claim is that eye witnesses are unreliable. Gospel accounts match too well in parts, and not well at all in other parts.

The answer is that of course eye witnesses see the same event, but may differ in how they relate to what happened. They use different words to describe things, they notice and prioritize things differently. Differences are to be expected, but through the differences, a more robust picture of what happened can be arrived at. Some strong similarities in the account is to be expected. The definition of an eye witness doesn’t seem to be grasped by the critic.

Another criticism deals with other mythic stories. Christ story is too similar to other god legends. He must be myth too. Mythros, Hercules, etc.

The answer is that documentation on other mythic figures, namely Mythros, come at extremely late dates. nothing exist other than an old painting of Mythros created well after the Christian era, and highly suspected of drawing from Christian enfluences. Writings only appear in the mid 1800’s, written by an author raised Catholic, and his intrepretations of the painting are heavily influenced by christian traditions.

There seems to be no doubts in the validity of Gospel writings. They hold enough authority that archaeologists routinely use the writings in their digs. Mysteries of people, places, and social life continue to be proved true. None have been proved false. If the events of the bible keep being supported by the evidence of archaeology, they can be trusted as being historically accurate. There is simply no room for legend to have sprung up.