Introduction
Tonight we begin a
series on “the essential Jesus.” We will skip over his
birth, early years and most of his passion and focus on the approximately three-year
period (late 20’s to early 30’s AD) of his public
ministry when he taught, performed miracles, called and trained
disciples, made unique claims for himself, and experienced escalating
conflict with Israel’s religious leaders because of those
claims.
But before we
start, I need to clarify which Jesus we’re going to study. I
want to be absolutely clear on my answer to this question. I regard
the portrait of Jesus from the four (canonical) gospels of the New
Testament to be the real one, and I will teach every
teaching in this series from this assumption. Specifically, this
Jesus claims to be the unique and sole Savior and Messiah for all
humanity who was predicted by the Old Testament prophets.
Why not the Jesus of The
DiVinci Code?
But why the Jesus of the canonical gospels? Why
not the Jesus advanced by Dan Brown in his runaway best-seller, The
DaVinci Code? Although Brown’s novel is fictional, this
theory is presented as a well-established fact which debunks the
“traditional” view. It is rooted in the views of Elaine
Pagels (author of The Gnostic Gospels), and includes the
following assertions:
Jesus never
claimed to be the divine Son of God. The church invented this
version of Jesus 3 centuries later. The real Jesus claimed only to
be an enlightened mortal who espoused a Gnostic (New Age)
spirituality that celebrated enlightenment through sexual
intercourse.
Jesus was
romantically involved with Mary Magdalene. He later married her,
sired a daughter by her, and intended for her to lead the church
after his departure. The church later covered this up and invented a
“bachelor” Jesus to promote its male chauvinism views.
The New Testament
was a thoroughly human product--specifically the invention of the
“winners” (those who assumed power in the 4th
century). They rejected 70+ other “gospels,” many of
which gave a more accurate portrait of Jesus (including the Gospel of
Thomas), and selected the 4 that agreed with their views.
Since then, the
New Testament has further evolved through countless translations,
additions and revisions--to such an extent that an accurate portrait
of the historical Jesus may be lost forever.
Judging my conversations with many since its
publication, Americans are gobbling up Brown’s view. There is
a mounting cynicism about the canonical Jesus and general agnosticism
about having reliable knowledge about him. American culture prides
itself in being cynical (“nobody’s fool”)--but it
is gullible about cynical theories (especially theories that
spiritually justify sexual immorality)! But despite what The
DaVinci Code says, the actual evidence overwhelmingly points to
the Jesus of the canonical gospels as the correct portrait.
Why the Jesus of the
canonical gospels?
There is an enormous amount of evidence supporting
the canonical Jesus--I am only going to give a brief survey of the
highlights of this evidence. Recommend Moreland, Jesus Under Fire
for further study.
First, the
canonical gospels are the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life.
Virtually all scholars agree that they are first-century
documents—while all of the above portraits are
mid-second-century (“Thomas”) or later. The canonical
gospels were written between the mid-50’s (Mark) and 90 AD
(John). This is important, because the closer in time a historical
document is to the events it reports, the more reliable it is likely
to be. And because eyewitness opponents were still alive when these
documents were written, they could have refuted this testimony. Yet
there is no record of this!
Second, the
canonical gospels are based on eyewitness accounts. Eye-witness
testimony is the most reliable testimony possible for historical
accounts. Matthew was one of Jesus’ disciples, as was John.
Mark was a follower of Jesus, and his account is mainly Peter’s
eye-witness description of Jesus. Luke states expressly that his
account is a compilation of eye-witness testimony. By contrast, the
“Gospel of Thomas” is a pseudonymous work because its
author wrote around 150 AD—long after the death of Jesus’
generation. The narrative bears the “feel” of eyewitness
testimony.
Historical fiction was not invented until over 1800 years later. C.
S. Lewis, a literary critic, read the gospels as a non-Christian and
knew they were history, not myth or legend. The authors are often
very uncomplimentary about their own roles (PETER’S DENIAL),
unlike “sanitized” history. They were persecuted
horribly (most of them were killed) for their accounts—so there
is no reason to suspect their honesty.
Third, the
canonical gospels reliably report other known historical events.
Unlike the “Gospel of Thomas” (which contains no
historical narrative) or other apocryphal gospels (which are
obviously mythical), the canonical gospels make themselves vulnerable
to falsification by reporting hundreds of people and events in space
and time. They have survived 20 centuries of
unprecedented scholarly attack and are now considered to be among the
most reliable first-century historical documents ever written. Sir
William Ramsay, who began his excavations to prove Luke’s
fraudulence, concluded after years of study that "Luke's history
is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness . . ."
and "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are
his statements of fact trustworthy . . . This
author should be placed along with the very greatest historians."
Ramsay’s response was not simply academic; he committed his
life to follow Jesus and defend the New Testament he formerly tried
to destroy.
Fourth, the
preservation of the canonical gospels (contra their corruption by
copyist errors or intentional changes) is an established fact.
The closer to the originals the copies are, and the more copies we
have, the more certain we can be what the originals said. We have
only a few copies of these pseudo-gospels, and most of these copies
are hundreds of years after the originals. By contrast, we have over
5000 copies of the canonical gospels—dating back to within 250
years of the originals (and fragments going back to the early second
century). The New Testament is by far the best attested ancient
document in the world!
Fifth, the fact
that the canonical gospels’ authors “have an agenda”
does not impeach the accuracy of their accounts. Commenting
earlier this year on “The Passion,” a local minister
said: “The story of Jesus is historical, but the way it is
captured in the (canonical) Gospels, which is basically where Gibson
gets his stuff, is religious history, not pure history, and there is
a difference. Religious history is there to try to evangelize . . .
to try to teach a particular faith belief. It's not to tell you what
happened.”
This position—so popular today—is wrong-headed. “Simply
because a writer is passionately committed to promoting a particular
cause does not at all mean he or she will falsify the facts. Often,
such a person will work all the harder to tell the story
straight . . . After all, often the truthfulness of
something is (often) what produced the personal commitment in the
first place.”
Do we reject Jewish historians’ accounts of the Holocaust
because they have an agenda (i.e., to prevent it from happening
again)? Accounts claiming to be historical should be evaluated along
the above four lines—and they attest to canonical gospels’
reliability. (Ironically, it is the other portraits of Jesus that
are guilty of letting their agendas distort their accounts!)
In summary, we don’t have to guess which
portrait is the real Jesus and which are the imposters. Even
non-Christian scholars, such as Jewish scholars Geza Vermes and David
Flusser, declare that (because of the canonical gospels) “. . .
we know more about Jesus than about almost any other first-century
Jew.”
God went out of his way to preserve this record, because he wants us
to be able to know about his Son . . .
What is the canonical
Jesus like?
That’s what
the rest of this series will seek to answer. What a fascinating
Person the canonical Jesus is! If you study the real Jesus, you will
discover a person who breaks every preconceived mold. In him,
characteristics that are normally mutually exclusive come together in
a way that defies human experience. For example:
His moral demands
were disturbingly high (Matt. 5)—yet his mercy was
shockingly wide (Jn. 8:11; Levi). This is what infuriated the
religious leaders. Jesus convicted them as sinners, and he welcomed
“sinners” as forgivable and redeemable.
He claimed to be
from another world (Jn. 13:1,3)—yet he was not at all
“other-worldly.” He is intensely familiar with and
involved in the issues of this life. This is one reason
why the common people loved him so much.
He was a “larger
than life” public figure who drew massive crowds—yet he
was not remote and detached, but rather intensely interested in
individuals of all kinds (woman at well; Zaccheus).
He is utterly
realistic about human depravity (Jn. 2)—yet without a trace of
cynicism because he trusted in God’s redemptive power (Jn 1:
“You are . . . but you shall be”). Contra
America’s pendulum swing from naïve optimistic humanism to
Simpson’s/Seinfeld cynicism.
His was
single-mindedly focused on his goals (Lk. 9)—yet he never
ran over people to accomplish them. He was unfailingly sensitive,
even to those “in the way”. This
is because his goals came from a God who is personal and redemptive.
His claims about
himself were so outlandish that they sound psychotic (Jn. 5,8,10;
Mk. 2; Matt 24:14,31)—yet both his demeanor
(humility, stability, and unflappable reaction to adversity) and his
teachings are the personification of sanity and mental health
(paraphrase J. T. FISHER QUOTE).
In short, Jesus is
a person so unique that no one could have invented him! But the
canonical authors wrote their accounts not just because Jesus was a
historical oddity, but because knowing him transformed their lives.
And they wrote their accounts not just so his readers could learn
about him and admire him nostalgically from a distance (“I wish
had been there!”)—but so that they (and we) could also
know him personally and be transformed by him.
That why John ends
his gospel by saying Jn. 20:31 (read). His goal is not just to
inform his readers about his dead hero, but that they would
personally entrust themselves to Jesus as their Messiah and
experience his spiritual life.
Why not commit to
this series and begin reading the gospels on your own? And as you do
this, why not call out to Jesus and tell him you want to meet him if
he’s real?
Footnotes
Copyright 2005 Gary DeLashmutt