Category Archives: Christianity

Who Selected the Documents That Are Included in the Bible?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianity, , , , , , , ,

The 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament are the only writings Christians consider fully inspired. The books that are in our present Old Testament were universally accepted at the time of Christ and endorsed by Him. In fact, there are nearly 300 quotations from the Old Testament books in the New Testament.

A number of books that are considered valuable but not inspired are found in the Roman Catholic and Anglican Bibles. These books are called the Apocrypha (which means “hidden,” “secret,” or “profound”). The Apocrypha was accepted by the council of Carthage, but was not accepted by many important church leaders, including Melito of Sardis, Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and Jerome. 1

Although the New Testament Canon was officially confirmed in its present and final form by the third council of Carthage in 397, the 27 documents it contains were accepted as authoritative from the very beginning.

The New Testament is solidly rooted in history. It revolves around the death, burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not even the rationalist critics of the 19th century could find reason to question Pauline authorship of 1 Corinthians, and it has been acknowledged as the earliest written testimony of Christ’s resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul declared:

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been rasied, your faith is worthless, you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hope in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied (vv. 16-19).

First-century Christians circulated documents—either written or approved by the apostles—which contained an authoritative explanation of the accounts concerning Jesus’ life and teaching. These documents often quoted from each other and presented the same gospel message from different perspectives and in different styles. Hundreds of other documents were written and circulated, but the church quickly rejected spurious documents and established the authority of those that were genuine.

  1. “Augustine alone of ancient authors, and the councils of Africa which he dominated, present a different picture. Augustine specifically accepted the apocryphal books and gives the total number as forty-four. He is the only ancient author who gives a number different from the twenty-two or twenty-four book reckoning. The list includes Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, 1 Esdras (the book composed of part of 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah), Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus. The Local councils of Carthage and Hippo, dominated by Augustine, included the same books. This listing prob. agreed with the ideas of Pope Damasus who dominated the local council of Rome at 382. It will be remembered that it was Damasus who urged Jerome to translate also the apocryphal books for his Vulgate. Jerome did so with the explicit declaration that they were not canonical.
    “Green (op. cit. 168-174) discusses the witness of Augustine and points out that Augustine seems to vacillate. Green quotes Augustine; ‘What is written in the book of Judith the Jews are truly said not to have received into the canon of Scripture’ (Augustine, City of God xviii, 260). ‘After Malachi, Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra, they had no prophets until the advent of the Savior’ (id. xvii, last ch.). He was well aware that Maccabees were after the cessation of prophecy. Green concludes that Augustine was using ‘canonical’ in the sense of books which may be read in the churches without putting them all on an equal plane.” Excerpted from an article by R.L. Harris (“Canon of the Old Testament”) in the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible. Back To Article
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Does The Fact That Few Ancient Non-Christian Sources Refer To Christ Imply He Is Legendary?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianity, , , , , ,

Why should anyone expect mention of Jesus in surviving Roman and Greek literature? Palestine was a relatively minor province on the periphery of Roman/Hellenistic civilization. Christianity would have been viewed as a minor Jewish sect, greatly overshadowed by the explosive Jewish politics that led to the Jewish uprisings and wars of the late first and early second centuries.

Although there is little reason to expect non-Christian writers to notice and write about Jesus Christ and the church, there were some who did.

The renowned Roman historian, Cornelius Tacitus, included the following passage in his “Annals,” written early in the second century:

Therefore, to stop the rumor [that the burning of Rome had taken place by order], Nero substituted as culprits, and punished in the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue. (Tacitus, Annals, trans. C. H. Moore and J. Jackson, LCL, reprint ed. [Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1962], 283)

The most important Jewish historian of the first century was Flavius Josephus. He wrote:

When, therefore, Ananus [the high priest] was of this [angry] disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road. So he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James. (Antiquities 20.9.1)

There were numerous second- through fifth-century critics of the Christian faith who denied that Jesus was what Christians believed him to be, including Trypho, Pliny, Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian. But none of them questioned Jesus’ historical existence.1

Even Jewish rabbinical tradition, although extremely hostile to Christianity and Jesus, clearly considered Jesus a real person.2

Lee Strobel, a professional journalist who wrote one of the most readable books on the reliability of the scriptural Jesus tradition, The Case for Christ, writes:

“We have better historical documentation for Jesus than for the founder of any other ancient religion,” said Edwin Yamauchi. Sources from outside the Bible corroborate that many people believed Jesus performed healings and was the Messiah, that he was crucified, and that despite this shameful death, his followers, who believed he was still alive, worshiped him as God. (Zondervan, p. 260)

There are other possible ancient references to Jesus as an historic personage, but Christian evidences remain the most significant, and naturally so. The disciples of Christ were obviously the most motivated to write about Him.

There is no significant question about the authorship and dating of most of Paul’s epistles, the first-century dating of the first three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the dating and historical accuracy of the book of Acts, or the dating and authorship of many other Christian writings (all of which quote the Gospels and Paul’s epistles copiously) dating from the end of the first century on.

Even unbelieving and skeptical participants of the “Jesus Seminar” acknowledge that Jesus was a real, historical person. Given the strength of Christian textual and historical evidence, claiming that there isn’t much corroborating evidence about Jesus from non-Christian sources is more of an excuse for ignoring Christian sources than a significant criticism.

  1. Trypho, recorded in Justin Martyr’s “Dialogue with Trypho,” denies that Jesus was Christ, but acknowledges Jesus’ historical existence. Pliny the Younger, a Roman senator and governor, refers to Christians as “reciting a hymn antiphonally to Christus as if to a god.” Celsus made the claim (echoed in the Talmud) that Jesus was a sorcerer and a bastard. Back To Article
  2. “The Talmudic stories make fun of Jesus’ birth from a virgin, fervently contest his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God, and maintain that he was rightfully executed as a blasphemer and idolater. They subvert the Christian idea of Jesus’ resurrection and insist that he got the punishment he deserved in hell—and that a similar fate awaits his followers.
    “Schaefer contends that these stories betray a remarkably high level of familiarity with the Gospels—especially Matthew and John—and represents a deliberate and sophisticated anti-Christian polemic that parodies the New Testament narratives.” (From the jacket summary of the content of Peter Schaefer’s book, Jesus in the Talmud.) Back To Article
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Wasn’t Jesus Merely One of Many Divine Messengers?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christianity, World Religions, , , ,

Even if Jesus was a messenger from God, why shouldn’t I believe He was merely one of many divine messengers, like Rama, Krishna, or Buddha?

As Eastern philosophy and religious ideas become more popular, many people are attracted to the idea that while Jesus may have been a divine being in human form, He was not unique. Nor could He—a divine being—really have died on a Roman cross.

The Hindus have a word for a divine being who appears in human form to bring enlightenment to mankind. This word is avatar, meaning “God-manifestation.”

Probably the closest biblical equivalent to this Hindu concept were the theophanies of the Old Testament, in which God revealed Himself to people in a variety of forms: to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:2); to Jacob as a man with whom he struggled on the night before his reunion with Esau (Genesis 32:24); and to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 3:24-25) as a divine-like figure in the midst of Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. If these were indeed manifestations of God, and not angelic appearances, in such manifestations God never changed His essential nature. He simply assumed a form that allowed Him to communicate directly to people.

It is beyond the purpose of this article to speculate further about the exact nature of the Old Testament theophanies or to evaluate the validity of Hinduism or its avatars.

The point this article is making is that Jesus was not just a divine manifestation. He didn’t come merely to impart knowledge or a special sense of awe or consciousness of God’s presence. Our race needed much more from God than mere knowledge and wonder. As victims of our own fallen natures, knowledge alone could never help us.

The witnesses of His life, death, and resurrection declare that in Jesus Christ, God became a genuine human being. In Christ, God merged His identity with fallen creatures of flesh and accomplished what none of them was capable of doing—living and dying in a way that not only set a flawless example for humanity, but also destroyed the power of Satan and evil.

In Matthew 1:20-21, the angel of the Lord said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” There might be many avatars who, like the angel of God in the Old Testament, come to impart wisdom or strength, but there could be only one incarnation in which God not only “appeared” to us, but fully became one with us in all of our weaknesses and limitations (Hebrews 4:15). Having lived and died on our behalf, Jesus Christ was raised from death triumphantly, His task completed for all time (Romans 6:9; Hebrews 10:10-14). His sacrifice was on behalf of the entire human race (1 John 2:2), and He was proven the “Son of God with power” (Romans 1:4 NKJV). He is the one to whom everyone will some day bow and confess as Lord (Philippians 2:10).

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Why Did Jesus Condemn the Self-Righteousness of the Pharisees?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianity, , , , , , ,

Jesus condemned the Pharisees’ self-righteous hypocrisy because it blinded them from seeing their need for repentance and a Savior.

Many Pharisees prided themselves in their strict avoidance of obvious, outward sin. But they refused to look inside themselves and acknowledge the presence of inner sin that didn’t fall within the boundaries of their man-made rules. Jesus knew that in spite of their obsession with outward perfection, they willfully resisted consciousness of their inner corruption and need for grace:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Matthew 23:25-28 NKJV).

Jesus didn’t associate with “known sinners” like tax collectors because He minimized their sin ( Luke 19:1-10 ). He freely associated with them because He knew that they were more open to repentance.

Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Matthew 9:10-13 NKJV).

“Known sinners” weren’t full of self-righteous pride, deliberately concealing their hidden sins behind a legalistic façade of “righteousness.” Jesus was keenly ironic when He said, “I didn’t come to call the righteous to repentance.” He knew that the Pharisees weren’t righteous, but their pretense of righteousness kept them from accepting the only remedy for their condition — repentance and faith in Him. The obvious sins of “public sinners” made them more likely to repent and look to Jesus for the answers they needed.

We are all sinners, both inwardly and outwardly. Although we may not be notorious “public sinners,” we all share a fallen nature and are often controlled by the “flesh” — the “sin principle” — within us (Romans 8). Jesus’ stern warnings to the hypocritical Pharisees make it clear that sin we ignore and deny is no less serious in its effects than the sin of the public sinner.

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What did Jesus mean when He said not to resist an evildoer, and to instead turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39)?

In Matthew 5:38-41 , Jesus made three radical statements. First, He said that a person should turn the other cheek when someone strikes him. Second, He declared that His followers should give those who sue them more than they are asking. Third, He said that a person conscripted by a Roman officer to carry a load for 1 mile should offer to go 2 miles. Does this mean that we should never resist when somebody attacks us? Should we let everyone take advantage of us?

This can’t be what Jesus meant. After all, Jesus denounced the Pharisees who attacked Him ( Matthew 23 ), and objected when He was struck by one of the officers of the high priest (  John 18:22-23). Further, He advised His disciples to take measures to defend themselves ( Matthew 10:16; Luke 22:36-38 ). He also declared that they shouldn’t worry beforehand about how they should respond to their enemies’ charges, because He would give them the right words to say so that their adversaries wouldn’t be able “to contradict or resist” them ( Luke 21:14-15 ).

Similarly, the apostle Paul aggressively defended himself against his enemies, asserting his rights as a Roman citizen, and making it clear to his attackers that there could be consequences if he were unlawfully harmed ( Acts 23:1-3; 25:14-27 ).

What Jesus asks of His followers is not passivity, but surrender of the right to personal revenge. His three radical examples make His point about the attitude we should have toward those who wrong us. Rather than getting even, we should be willing to go to the opposite extreme. We need to be ready to humble ourselves for the kingdom of God. We need to understand that vengeance isn’t ours, but the Lord’s ( Romans 12:19 ).

The natural human tendency has been to seek the emotional satisfaction of revenge for perceived injury ( Genesis 4:8 ). Our instinctive response to any kind of injury is hatred and desire for vengeance. This is why Jesus made it so clear in His Sermon on the Mount that not only outward murder but also inward hatred is subject to God’s judgment ( Matthew 5:22-23 ).

The Old Testament law placed limitations on vengeance ( Exodus 21:23-25 ). Although, the “eye for an eye” provision of the Mosaic law has often been misunderstood as requiring vengeance, its actual purpose was to place limitations on it. The law prescribed that punishment must fit the crime. The law wouldn’t permit taking a life in revenge for an insult or a minor injury. If an eye were put out, only an eye could be taken; if a tooth, only a tooth.

Jesus went much further than the law, making it clear that He wasn’t merely calling for more limitations on vengeance. In Matthew 5:38-48 , He implied that we must give up personal vengeance altogether. But as illustrated above by both Jesus and Paul, there is a difference between confronting evil and seeking personal revenge. It is possible to confront evil with a desire for the redemption of its perpetrator. We are called to love a sinner while confronting his sin, but when we seek vengeance we are motivated by hatred—a desire to make someone suffer for what they have done to us.

If Matthew 5:38-48 were taken literally at all times, we would have to let everyone take advantage of us. Turning the other cheek would become an encouragement for evil. This isn’t what Jesus had in mind. His vivid examples illustrate His disciples’ need to give up any sense of entitlement to personal revenge, to be purged of the motivation of personal vengeance. By asking them to turn the other cheek, Jesus meant that His disciples should be motivated by love and a desire for the redemption and forgiveness of offenders—even when opposing their actions.