Man Myth Messiah
Answering History's Greatest Question
The search for the historical Jesus continues to be headline news. Any speculative theory seems to get instant attention as the debate rages about His real identity and the claims made in His name.
- Did Jesus really exist?
- Is there real historical evidence that demonstrates that He lived and actually said and did the things the Gospels record?
- Is there any validity to the speculative claims that the Jesus story was a myth, borrowed from a variety of pagan cultures of the ancient world?
In this follow-up to the book God’s Not Dead (that inspired the movie), Man Myth Messiah looks at the evidence for the historical Jesus and exposes the notions of skeptics that Jesus was a contrived figure of ancient mythology. It also looks at the reliability of the Gospel records as well as the evidence for the resurrection that validates His identity as the promised Messiah.
The Man Myth Messiah book is featured in the movie God’s Not Dead 2, which addresses the same questions about Jesus Christ and his resurrection.
Excerpts…
Can We Trust The Gospels?
Another category of evidence that supports the Gospels’ reliability is the inclusion of embarrassing testimony. Writers would not make up events that intentionally made themselves look bad. The Gospels are filled with this kind of evidence. For instance, the disciples who would eventually become the leaders of the church are described in all of the gospel accounts as abandoning or denying Jesus after He was arrested (e.g., Mark 14: 50; Matthew 26: 56; Luke 22: 57; John 18: 17).
I have said in countless settings on university campuses around the world, if men were the sole authors of the Gospels, they would have made themselves look a whole lot better. Mark Roberts concludes the same thing in his book Can We Trust the Gospels: “If you read through the four biblical Gospels, you’ll find that the disciples are almost never pictured as paragons of faith or wisdom. Time and again they’re portrayed negatively. This fact, all by itself, seems to me to disprove the power-grab thesis. If writers, editors, and collectors of the Gospels had been motivated by a desire for power, surely they would have cleaned up the Gospel record.”
Rice Broocks - Man Myth Messiah; pp. 59-60
Is Christianity Grounded In History?
The fact of Jesus’ existence brings the discussion about Him out of the realm of just religious faith into the arena of historical investigation.
If someone is intellectually honest, he should at least examine the evidence for His life as he would any other person who lived, such as Socrates, Caesar Augustus, or Napoleon. The evidence for His life shouldn’t be dismissed ahead of time because of the awareness of an extraordinary conclusion, one that might be ominously waiting at the end of the search.
When it comes to Jesus Christ, there has definitely been a higher standard, unreasonably high at times, for establishing the facts surrounding His life, works, and words. The specific criteria used by many modern scholars to verify the authenticity of Jesus have been so demanding that if they were applied to ancient history, most of what is currently accepted would dissolve into oblivion. For instance, imagine asserting, as skeptics do for the biblical records, that we could only know about ancient Rome from what we learn from non-Roman sources. In contrast, scholars who use trusted approaches fairly and consistently recognize that Christian beliefs about Jesus are solidly guarded in historical fact. As stated in Reinventing Jesus, “If you are skeptical of the Jesus of the Bible, we hope you’ll discover that a step toward him doesn't require leaving your brain behind. If you embrace the biblical Christ but think faith isn’t concerned with matters of the mind, we want you to see that belief in the Incarnation—God entering the time-space world as a man two millennia ago— compels you to take history seriously.”
Rice Broocks - Man Myth Messiah; pp. 8-9
Is Faith Blind?
... Something so precious and amazing [life of Jesus] is rejected as an impossibility by skeptics who readily accept absurd and irrational explanations of our existence, especially if they are devoid of any moral implications. They frame all religious beliefs in a one-size-fits-all framework and dismiss it with the charge that faith is blind, or, as they love to say, “faith is believing what you know isn’t true.”
As atheist writer Michael Shermer states, “Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence and logic.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. While there are many who believe in God without being aware of all the evidence and logic attesting to its truth, this doesn’t mean that the evidence and logic don’t exist. If you believe in God and are a follower of Christ, that faith is well grounded in history and reason— real faith isn’t blind. Yet the Scripture warns, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4: 6 NKJV).
If we desire to not be engulfed by a tsunami of digital absurdity, we must find the solid foundation of something that is true and trustworthy. It’s much easier to sit back and flow with what the culture is saying about something rather than sincerely and objectively searching for the truth, regardless of where the evidence may lead.
Every person has the right to know the truth (facts) and make his own decision. With that said, there are definitely pitfalls and dangerous, dark alleys in which you can get mugged and stripped of your faith. It’s worth repeating: the voices you listen to in this journey of faith and discovery are critical.
Rice Broocks - Man Myth Messiah; pp. 3-4
Was Jesus Copied from Pagan Myths?
One of the central claims of his movie is that the story of Jesus was borrowed from ancient pagan mythology. Maher interviews an assortment of people and asks whether they know a long list of pagan gods and personalities that had stories prior to, as well as similar to, the Jesus story. Afterward comes a montage of images from various Jesus films. The captions read as follows:
- Written in 1280 BC, the Egyptian book of the dead describes a god, Horus
- Horus is the son of the god Osiris
- Born of a virgin mother
- Was baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer, who was later beheaded
- Like Jesus, Horus was tempted while alone in the desert
- Healed the sick
- Healed the blind
- Cast out demons
- And walked on water
- He raised Asar from the dead
- Asar translates to Lazarus
- Oh yeah, he also had twelve disciples
- Yes, Horus was crucified first
- After three days two women announced
- Horus the savior of humanity had been resurrected
At first glance this list of similarities between Horus, an ancient Egyptian god, and Jesus seems incredible. Maher presents all this information as fact and with the air of how it is common knowledge to all intelligent people. I have been to Egypt and worked with Christian leaders, and their response to such claims has been complete disbelief. “If you made this kind of claim in Egypt, people would think you’re crazy,” said Egyptian pastor Shaddy Soliman.
First, there is no validity to these claims. None have any real historical basis. They are the academic equivalent to a drive-by shooting— something said to quickly kill someone’s faith. I have had conversations on university campuses with students who have bought into this idea that the Jesus story was fabricated or simply plagiarized from other earlier religions. Unfortunately, there is rarely enough time to sit with them and look at the evidence in any objective sense. They assume it must be true because somebody said it was true.
Rice Broocks - Man Myth Messiah; pp. 118-120
What About Contradictions In The Gospels?
…He goes a long way in his own mind to convince his listeners that the evidence is overwhelming that the [gospel] accounts are irreconcilable. He concludes that the testimony must, therefore, be dismissed in its entirety. It is simply unreasonable to dismiss an event as historical because the eyewitness accounts appear to differ. A classic example is the sinking of the Titanic. Some eyewitnesses said the ship broke into two pieces before it sank, other eyewitnesses said it sunk in one piece. While the accounts may have differed, no one concludes that the Titanic didn’t sink.
When you look closer at the Gospels, many of these so-called discrepancies can be resolved when the distinction is made between a real contradiction and a variant account. For instance, when events are reported by journalists, there are a variety of ways the moment can be recounted without claiming these various stories are contradictory. If one report mentions only a specific person and the other refers to several, it simply means that the writers had different reasons for why they mentioned them. The same holds true for the Gospels (e.g., Matthew 20: 30 versus Luke 18: 35).
Ironically, the differences in the Gospels’ accounts actually support their historical reliability. For they highlight the fact that the same story is being told by separate witnesses, so the overlapping details are almost certainly authentic. In fact, a detective named J. Warner Wallace carefully examined the gospel accounts as if he were examining the testimonies of witnesses in an investigation of a crime that had taken place decades in the past. He determined that the number of similarities and differences perfectly matched what would be expected if the basic story were true. In addition, the facts made no sense if the stories were fabricated. He started his investigation as an agnostic, but the evidence convinced him to become a Christian.
As an example of one type of evidence, events in one gospel “interlock” with parallel descriptions in other gospels. For instance, Jesus asked Philip where they could buy food in John’s account of a miraculous feeding (6: 5), but no explanation is given as to why Philip was asked. In Luke we learn that this miracle occurred near Bethsaida (9: 10), which was hometown (John 12: 21). Jesus asking Philip, as described in John, makes sense with the additional information from Luke. These connections and other similar examples show that the gospel stories were based on actual historical events.
Rice Broocks - Man Myth Messiah; pp. 62-63
What Evidence Exists for the Resurrection?
In chapter 2, we examined the minimal facts surrounding the death of Jesus accepted by most scholars, even skeptical ones. Again, these are facts that even skeptical scholars accept as true. Let’s quickly review the primary ones:
- Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor.
- Three days later the tomb was found empty by a few of His female followers.
- His disciples believed Jesus appeared to them following His death.
- The message of His resurrection was proclaimed immediately after this reappearance to the disciples.
- Saul of Tarsus, the chief persecutor of His followers, became a believer.
Because these facts are accepted as part of the historical bedrock, we can use them to demonstrate that the only plausible explanation for the events at the end of His ministry is that Jesus actually rose from the dead. N. T. Wright, one of the foremost experts on the resurrection, agreed that an actual resurrection was the best explanation of the facts. “The only possible reason why early Christianity began and took the shape it did is that the tomb really was empty and that people really did meet Jesus, alive again, and . . . though admitting it involves accepting a challenge at the level of worldview itself, the best historical explanation for all these phenomena is that Jesus was indeed bodily raised from the dead.”
Rice Broocks - Man Myth Messiah; pp. 94-95
Why Are There Only Four Gospels?
The Gospels of the New Testament are the only ones accepted by early church leaders as part of the official collection of writings known as the New Testament canon. These canonical writings were chosen based on a very stringent set of criteria. First, the writers had to be eyewitnesses of Jesus or close associates of those who were. The writings also had to be recognized very early as authoritative in all regions of the Christian world. And they had to conform to the teaching that went directly back to the apostles. (p. 53)
Other gospels also existed, such as the Gospel of Truth, Gospel of Mary, and Gospel of Peter. However, none of these noncanonical ones meet any of the previously mentioned criteria. They were typically composed more than a century after the New Testament was completed. They were not written by anyone even closely associated with the apostles, and they were not widely known. Their teaching also dramatically differed from that of the apostles. As such, their reliability and significance pale in comparison to the authentic four. Despite these facts, one particular writing known as the Gospel of Thomas has gained greater popularity thanks to the extremely skeptical collection of New Testament scholars mentioned early in the book, known as the Jesus Seminar. They promoted Thomas alongside the canonical ones. Although their opinion did not represent the scholarly consensus, they did have the attention of the media. One of many of the members’ main goals was to undermine trust of the New Testament, and they were successful in sowing the seeds of doubts in Christians who were not familiar with the actual evidence.
In truth, Thomas is simply a collection of sayings that were partially derived from the canonical gospels. None of its other content can be verified historically or archaeologically, and it was likely written in the mid second century. Most striking is that much of its teaching is completely at odds with everything we know about the historical Jesus. Despite the seminar’s accolades, comparing the authentic Gospels to the Gospel of Thomas is much like comparing biographies of Abraham Lincoln written by distinguished Ivy League Lincoln scholars to the book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
Rice Broocks - Man Myth Messiah; pp. 53-54