There are three tests historians use to determine the credibility and trustworthiness of any ancient document. The Honesty Test, the Telephone Test and the Corroboration Test.
The Corroboration Test asks: Is there any evidence for Jesus’ existence outside the Bible?
If Jesus is for real, and the Bible is true, we shouldn’t have to take just the Bible’s word on it. We ought to be able to find some corroborating evidence for the claim that Jesus is God. That is - If Jesus really lived and wasn’t some fictional character, we should find records of him outside the Bible. Well, do we? Yes!!
Archaeology can do three things with respect to the Bible.
John 5:1-15 records how Jesus healed an invalid by the Pool of Bethesda. John provides the detail that the pool had five porticoes (or columns that supported the roof). For a long time people cited this an an example of John being inaccurate, because no such place had been found. Until the 19th century, there was no evidence outside of John’s Gospel for the existence of this pool. But then archaeologists found and excavated the pool. It was about 40 feet below ground - and guess how many porticoes it had? Five! Exactly as John had described! And today if you have the money, you can take a tour of Jerusalem and visit the Pool of Bethesda.
Here’s another example...Dr. Hewett wrote in the Harvard Theological Review that there’s astonishingly little evidence that the feet of a crucified person were ever pierced by nails. Every person they’ve found who was crucified had ropes around them. He was trying to show that the archaeological evidence contradicted the gospels of John and Luke which say Jesus was crucified with nails. But then in 1967 in a dig in Palestine they found a man they dubbed Joannan with seven inch nails going through his hand, wrist and foot. When they dug a little further they realized his legs were broken confirming John 19:12 which says they broke the legs of the criminals next to Jesus to speed up death. That’s obviously not the body of Jesus but what does it tell us? The way the Bible records crucifixion is consistent with what the archeological record shows to be true.
Here’s another true story I think you’ll find interesting...Sir William Mitchell Ramsay of Oxford University in England, was one of history’s greatest archaeologists and an atheist. He spent 25 years doing archaeological digs to try and disprove the book of Acts, which was written by the historian Luke. Instead of discrediting Luke’s account, Ramsay’s discoveries kept supporting it. Finally, he concluded that Luke was one of the most accurate historians who had ever written. Luke references 54 cities, 32 countries and 9 islands without making a single mistake in what he wrote. Influenced by the archaeological evidence, Ramsay became a Christian and by the time of his death in 1939 he had become a leading scholar in the study of the New Testament.
Scholars have concluded that no archaeological evidence found to date flat-out contradicts the Bible. What confidence we can have when we read the accounts of Jesus’ life and the Bible as a whole! Not only do non-Christian external sources confirm what the Bible says, but so does the archaeological evidence!
The Corroboration Test asks: Is there any evidence for Jesus’ existence outside the Bible?
If Jesus is for real, and the Bible is true, we shouldn’t have to take just the Bible’s word on it. We ought to be able to find some corroborating evidence for the claim that Jesus is God. That is - If Jesus really lived and wasn’t some fictional character, we should find records of him outside the Bible. Well, do we? Yes!!
- The ancient Jewish work called the Talmud includes writings about Jesus.
- And ancient historical writers such as Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger all wrote about Jesus.
- Jesus was a Jewish teacher.
- Many people believed her performed healings and other miracles.
- Some people believed he was the long-awaited Messiah.
- He was rejected by the Jewish leaders.
- He was crucified under the authority of Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius.
- Despite this shameful death, his followers, who believed that he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were large numbers of them in Rome by A.D. 64.
- All kinds of people from the cities and the countryside - men and women, slave and free - worshiped him as God.
Archaeology can do three things with respect to the Bible.
- It can uncover evidence that contradicts the Bible.
- It can uncover no evidence relating to the Bible one way or the other.
- It can uncover evidence that confirms what the Bible says.
John 5:1-15 records how Jesus healed an invalid by the Pool of Bethesda. John provides the detail that the pool had five porticoes (or columns that supported the roof). For a long time people cited this an an example of John being inaccurate, because no such place had been found. Until the 19th century, there was no evidence outside of John’s Gospel for the existence of this pool. But then archaeologists found and excavated the pool. It was about 40 feet below ground - and guess how many porticoes it had? Five! Exactly as John had described! And today if you have the money, you can take a tour of Jerusalem and visit the Pool of Bethesda.
Here’s another example...Dr. Hewett wrote in the Harvard Theological Review that there’s astonishingly little evidence that the feet of a crucified person were ever pierced by nails. Every person they’ve found who was crucified had ropes around them. He was trying to show that the archaeological evidence contradicted the gospels of John and Luke which say Jesus was crucified with nails. But then in 1967 in a dig in Palestine they found a man they dubbed Joannan with seven inch nails going through his hand, wrist and foot. When they dug a little further they realized his legs were broken confirming John 19:12 which says they broke the legs of the criminals next to Jesus to speed up death. That’s obviously not the body of Jesus but what does it tell us? The way the Bible records crucifixion is consistent with what the archeological record shows to be true.
Here’s another true story I think you’ll find interesting...Sir William Mitchell Ramsay of Oxford University in England, was one of history’s greatest archaeologists and an atheist. He spent 25 years doing archaeological digs to try and disprove the book of Acts, which was written by the historian Luke. Instead of discrediting Luke’s account, Ramsay’s discoveries kept supporting it. Finally, he concluded that Luke was one of the most accurate historians who had ever written. Luke references 54 cities, 32 countries and 9 islands without making a single mistake in what he wrote. Influenced by the archaeological evidence, Ramsay became a Christian and by the time of his death in 1939 he had become a leading scholar in the study of the New Testament.
Scholars have concluded that no archaeological evidence found to date flat-out contradicts the Bible. What confidence we can have when we read the accounts of Jesus’ life and the Bible as a whole! Not only do non-Christian external sources confirm what the Bible says, but so does the archaeological evidence!
No comments:
Post a Comment