Shalom, and welcome to the Yeshua of History.
I'm Andrew Gabriel Roth, and I'm privileged to take you on this journey to
discover the historical Yeshua, that is to say, the extra biblical
references regarding our Savior as a real person, or as I like to call it here,
a survey of the available evidence.
So, where do we begin?
Well, I think with any good story, we need to start with the official record.
Let's look at what we know, and then we can go into what may not be so clear.
So basically, Markipha, or St. Peter, sketched out this challenge very,
very well when he said, For we have not gone after fables cleverly crafted in
making known to you the power and advent of our Master Yeshua the Mashiach,
but it was after we had been spectators of his majesty, for when he received from
Elohim the Father honor and glory, and after the splendid glory of his
majesty, a voice came to him thus, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased.
Now, for those of us who believe this quote is nothing less than a confirmation
of the gospel record, a direct quote from Matthew, from one of his leading Talmudim,
or disciples, and history tells us Kepha, or Peter, was dead by the year 64.
But for some extreme skeptics, it is simply, and we'll be using this word
a lot, phrase a lot, faith literature.
And they can't wait to toss faith literature out the window and claim there
isn't any supporting documentation outside the New Testament.
Our task here is a simple one to explain, but a hard one to do.
Basically, what I'm going to try to do is to see if, like Thomas depicted here,
Yeshua himself can prove them wrong with witnesses from Jewish and pagan sources.
So, it's important to note that even in the gospels themselves, again,
starting with the official record, there is an understanding that many folks
will have trouble believing.
But the outright denial of Yeshua, that he was never really a human being,
this is something the renewed covenant writers would never have had to deal with.
It's simply too extreme.
And Yeshua was a real person that was very well known.
So, why would they have to deal with it?
In other words, this is a modern artifice that requires a modern wrecking ball.
So, over the years, many skeptics have asked me, Andrew, why do you believe?
They'll go, there's no evidence outside of the gospels from the time in question that
Yeshua ever existed.
And some go a step further, as if that is even possible, to suggest that Yeshua is
simply a reworking of paganism, like Osiris and Hercules.
Essentially, the argument goes like this.
Let's take a look.
This is an email from a friend of mine, or someone who I used to be fairly close
to.
I'm going to call him Thomas, because like the Apostle Thomas, he doubted,
and I have hope that, like the Apostle Thomas, he will recover his faith and not
doubt anymore.
Thomas was a great supporter of my ministry as well.
So, it really shook me to the core when, some time ago, he sent an email,
and you can see it here, as to explaining why he doubts the historical Yeshua.
He writes, historical records of Yeshua's birth, death, resurrection, miracles,
and, quote, rabble rousing, none.
First-hand eyewitness accounts written down during Yeshua's lifetime,
none.
Fraudulent documents and passages like that of Josephus' testimonium,
I'll explain what that is a little later.
Fraudulent relics like the James ossuary, accounts of Yeshua's followers,
is that even evidence?
What of the Krishna followers?
Did Krishna then also exist?
Which savior god-man should we follow?
Love, Thomas.
In addition, Thomas wanted answers for three main... I have questions here.
It's really more fields of inquiry, to be more precise.
He writes, amazingly, we have not one word written down during the supposed life of
Yeshua.
We rely on hearsay and fraud, penned down decades.
Oh, and that's Thomas's writing.
He really mastered the caps lock key.
I'm so proud.
And even centuries after the supposed events.
How can we trust these?
Number two, there are an incredible amount of similarities between Yeshua's story and
the stories of gods who supposedly lived thousands of years earlier, with no
evidence of Yeshua's existence.
I'm like, well, that's a good place to start.
Really?
No evidence of Yeshua's existence?
We'll see.
Why reject the pagan god stories as false and accept the Yeshua story as true?
Well, that's what we're going to find out.
Third area that Thomas wanted me to get into, he says, the earliest believers in
Yeshua believed in a mythical Yeshua, not a historical one.
Literalist Yeshua believers arrived on the scene later and won the battle by
persecuting the non-literalist Yeshua followers.
Well, I got news for you, Thomas.
If you read the history, it was the Jewish followers of Yeshua who were persecuted,
not these mythical pagan Yeshua people.
Because if that persecution happened, history has left absolutely no trace of
them.
So they did a really, really good job.
But on the other hand, I do know, Thomas, what you are talking about in
terms of people who held a radically different vision of Yeshua.
But this doesn't give you the evidence that you think it does.
And we're going to see why.
But continuing from what Thomas says, just to go back to what he wrote here,
he says, with no actual evidence of Yeshua's existence, what reason is there
to believe that the literalists, I guess he means me, I'll take that.
I'll take that literalist title any day of the week, Thomas.
Literalists were correct in their belief of Yeshua and in the persecution of other
Yeshua believers and pagans.
You know, don't mince words, Thomas.
Please say what you really feel.
So while I will be dealing comprehensively with the issues Thomas raises,
because again, the names have been changed to protect the guilty, my order of
evidence is going to be tailored and reordered for better understanding of my
answer.
Because this is a very important question that requires very careful historical
analysis.
So this is going to be the order of the issues that we will be discussing.
The reality of ancient documentation, the true and false testimony of Josephus,
I will explain.
Does Philo, who was a Jewish historian who lived just before Josephus, lived in
Alexandria, does Philo matter in the sense that Philo doesn't directly mention Yeshua
or his followers and Josephus does?
Then we'll look into the importance of Roman historians like Tacitus and
Suetonius.
We'll look then at the real knowledge of the Gnostics, Jewish and rabbinic sources,
and then we're going to take a very interesting journey into how the Renewed
Covenant was formed, based on its own information, believe it or not.
And then we'll wrap up.
So that's my plan.
So let's start with the reality of ancient documentation.
I want you all to imagine a time before any mass media.
No internet, TV, radio, or newspapers.
In fact, you don't even have a printing press.
And unless you're rich, you don't have books at all.
Paper is expensive, animal skin is expensive, and clay and other things
likewise are either scarce or, you guessed it, expensive.
And so 99% of the world's population in antiquity cannot read or write.
And into this mix, we have to add a surprising fact, which I have right here.
Let's take a look at this.
Most scholars agree that 99% of all ancient documents have not survived.
Of the 1% that have, this is what they look like.
This is the oldest surviving religious book in the world.
It's not really a codex per se, it's paintings on a tomb wall,
stone inscriptions from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
And here's another common class of surviving documents.
These are clay tablets, the Amarna tablets.
Next best thing to writing or painting on stone.
They also last many thousands of years.
But here's the issue.
If you're not a king or a pharaoh, and we're talking about, as I said,
vellum, papyrus, similar paper materials, the situation is quite different.
You might be able to get your hands on some papyrus, but paper is the easiest to
destroy.
And in particular, with respect to the Bible, there were two Jewish revolts
against Rome, where one of the chief targets were books by their enemies.
Jewish books, Nazarene books, sacred books.
But you see, the Tanakh, or the Old Testament, had a really good head start,
so more of those documents survived.
But that's another story.
But even when this is not the case, we need to look at the track record.
Going back to Thomas, he goes, historical records of Yeshua's birth,
death, and resurrection, miracles, and rabble rousing, none.
Firsthand eyewitness accounts written down during Yeshua's lifetime, none.
Leaving aside the Gospels as history, let's compare Yeshua to other famous
people of antiquity.
Pliny the Younger wrote a book called Natural History.
The distance between the manuscript record from when he wrote it, 750 years.
Julius Caesar's The Gaelic Wars, great reading.
You see Julius Caesar in a guerrilla warfare with a very determined foe.
Definitely a suspense novel for the time.
Distance from the manuscript record, 1,000 years.
Herodotus' histories, distance from the manuscript record, almost 1,400 years.
But what about Yeshua?
Let's see.
As we read here, going from the writings of Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a
Verdict, absolute classic Christian apologetic work, he writes, The Renewed
Covenant has nearly 25,000 ancient manuscripts discovered and archived so
far, at least 5,600 of which are copies and fragments in Greek, almost 1,000 in
Aramaic.
Some manuscript texts date to the early second and third centuries, with the time
between the original manuscripts, which is to say the autographs,
and our earliest existing fragment being a remarkably short 40 to 60 years.
Also bear in mind, this is my spin on what Josh says, the Aramaic is even older than
the Greek.
So we're looking at a very narrow window of time.
The reality is, if we deny the historicity in some form of Yeshua of Nazareth,
we must then apply that test across the board to all these other ancient figures I
mentioned, and deny the history of every major person prior to the invention of the
printing press in the Middle Ages, late Middle Ages, and into the Renaissance
even.
So considering what's been preserved, we get this conclusion.
This is from the eminent Bible scholar F.
F.
Bruce, who wrote, in real terms, the New Testament is easily the best
attested ancient writing in terms of the sheer number of documents, the time span
between the events in the document, and the variety of documents available to
sustain or contradict it.
There is nothing in ancient manuscript evidence to match such textual
availability and integrity.
I agree.
I totally agree with that statement.
So even some of our non-biblical sources, though, are within 60 years.
60 years.
Not 750, not a thousand, not 1,300 or more.
60 years, almost unheard of in the ancient world.
So to expect documents from Yeshua's lifetime, like he had a Facebook page or a
blog or something, is unrealistic.
Let's compare the renewed covenant, though, with the only other body of
literature that has been so well preserved.
And it's this, the works of Homer.
Homer's Iliad has 643 copies that we have so far, and in those copies we have 764
disputed lines of text.
Imagine that.
764 disputed lines.
Josh McDowell would say there are 40 lines of disputed text in the Greek.
I am, of course, a bit of a stronger critic on the Greek New Testament,
but even in my, shall we say, most tough moment, I would never dispute more than
250 lines in the Greek New Testament.
250 is a lot less than 764.
And by the way, just want to show you guys something.
I think we should point out, as we see here, we found Troy from instructions in a
faith document.
Those things that Thomas tells us we can't rely on.
Which brings me to the trashing of faith documents.
Let's see what Thomas says.
He writes, we are left with faith documents such as the New Testament books,
the writings of the early church fathers, and even the Jewish Talmud.
These documents contradict each other and history.
Right, so Thomas, ancient writers in different faith traditions, they never
would argue with one another, would they?
But you've got a great comeback because you actually say here, consider also,
and we got a caps and a bold and underlining thing happening here,
consider these are faith documents which were written decades and centuries after
the supposed events.
If we take that as evidence, why not also take the Muslim Quran and the Hadith or
the Egyptian Book of the Dead as evidence for other religious beliefs?
Well, I got news for you, Thomas.
I do.
Does the Quran accurately record the beliefs of the first generation of Muslims
who wrote it down?
Of course it does.
Does the Egyptian Book of the Dead accurately record what the Egyptian people
believed happened to their pharaoh in the afterlife?
Oh, you better believe it.
So, it's a distinction without a difference, Thomas.
You're going to have to do better than that.
So, as I said, I do take these things as evidence, and of course, faith documents
contradict one another, as do historical documents.
But here's the thing, Thomas.
What about places where the ancient sources agree?
If we're honestly going to say that you're going to put uncertainty on a historical
event because two groups disagree, what about when they come together and
say, yes, this happened?
Because we need to get real and be consistent with our definitions,
and I'll tell you exactly why.
This is a faith document, but these are real people with real names carved on
these walls.
And you know what?
So is this.
And guess what?
These are, as well, real people, real historical events on faith documents.
This, too.
So, as historians, we draw real history out of almost nothing but faith documents.
So, Thomas, if we follow your advice, I'd really like to see a non-faith
document, you know, that podcast of the Sermon on the Mount would be nice,
you know.
Show me something where historians draw history out of that is not a faith
document.
Because if you find something about a battle that happened, the Battle of
Kadesh, the Battle of Megiddo, I guarantee you, you'll find references to
the gods of those armies.
And whoever wins, they're going to say their gods won that battle for them.
So the question is, not if we draw history out of faith documents, but how.
What's the process?
And if we can do that for a whole bunch of things that are in the ancient world that
have a lot more problems than what we're talking about here, why can't we do it
with a renewed covenant?
Which, as we just saw from FF Bruce and other authorities, has the best track
record of them all.
And we who believe, we who are in the community of faith, we're the ones who
can't be objective.
Thomas, your faith is greater than mine, my friend.
I have evidence on my side.
So, Thomas, when you ask, am I being unreasonable?
Well, here's your answer.
You are.
You are being unreasonable, Thomas.
I want you to think about what you are saying.
So, since faith documents are an inevitable source for at least some of our
history, again, the question becomes what history we can draw, and not just to
discard them totally.
Nevertheless, I think a good place to start with is, what can we draw from other
sources?
Let's begin with this, the true and false testimony of Josephus.
Josephus is a critical witness, as I've been saying for quite some time
now.
A first century witness to everything that happened in Israel and the Middle East.
Very often our only source of information.
But Josephus comes under attack occasionally.
And this is what people get upset about.
I'm going to show what I'm talking about right now.
As we go to this analysis here, the most important extra-biblical mention
of Yeshua, bar none, are two places in the writings of Josephus.
Because of Josephus' prominence and overall high reputation, no reference is
more hotly debated by proponents and critics of Yeshua.
But there's also a lot of misinformation, quite honestly, a lot of noise regarding
these passages, which I hope to be able to correct.
Now, for a very balanced and detailed discussion on the majority of Josephus'
opinion, I would recommend reading A Marginal Jew by John Meyer, who is a great
Catholic scholar.
This is the first book of, I believe, three that he wrote on the topic.
An excellent job in synthesizing the sources for a balanced analysis.
Highly recommend it.
But moving on, I want to define the problem.
In the AENT, I put forth my reasoning for believing that Josephus was actually a
secret Nazarene, a follower of Yeshua, like Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea,
perhaps.
However, that's another story.
I share the skepticism of Thomas and many others on at least some portions of one of
Josephus' references, which we in the scholarly community call the Testimonium
or the Testimony.
But that doesn't mean all of Josephus' references are suspect.
So here is the text in question.
What you see in white is the disputed text.
So I'm just going to read this through.
Now, there was about this time Yeshua, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a
man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men, has received the
truth with pleasure.
He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles.
He was the Mashiach.
And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned
him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him.
For he appeared to them alive again on the third day, as the divine prophets had
foretold, and 10,000 other wonderful things concerning him.
And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct to this day.
Now, there are several problems with this passage as it is written.
I actually agree with you, Thomas, that this can be problematic.
The first problem with this text is that it basically breaks into the narrative.
It's a sign of really, really bad editing.
When you have history jumbled up and it appears in the wrong place or the wrong
order, that's when, you know, you've basically got a sloppy hand of revision.
And so I'm going to show you exactly what I'm talking about.
Let's look at this another way.
This testimonium was sandwiched between two calamities, as Josephus calls it.
And these calamities are regarding a name of somebody that I think you're familiar
with, Pontius Pilate, when he took over as governor of procurator Judea in the year
26.
And basically what you see in white is where they sandwich the text.
So you can see, and thus there was put an end to this sedition.
Now there was about this time Yeshua a wise man.
And then the black text below, about this same time, another sad calamity
put the Jews into disorder.
And Josephus only gets to Yochanan the Immerser two chapters after talking about
Yeshua living and dying.
Doesn't Josephus, as the careful historian, know that the forerunner comes
first?
So this is a sign of bad editing.
However, we should also compare the flow of the testimonium to a non-disputed
passage.
Let's see what good editing looks like, shall we?
And here it is.
So Aretas made this the first occasion of his enmity between him and Herod,
who had also some quarrel with him about their limits at the country of Gamalatis.
And when they had joined the battle, all of Herod's army was destroyed by the
treachery of some fugitives.
Why?
Let's see.
Some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from
Elohim, and very justly, as punishment of what he did against Yochanan that was
called the immerser, John the Baptist.
For Herod slew him.
Herod, who once feared lest the great influence of Yochanan had over the people,
might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion.
Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a
punishment upon Herod and a mark of Elohim's displeasure to him.
So here's what I'd like to ask.
Don't you think criticism should work both ways if we're being fair?
So if bad editing or bad flow, whatever you want to call it, sheds doubt
on a package, on a passage of history, shouldn't good editing, like we just saw,
do the opposite?
Or are we simply going to say to people who believe in Yeshua, you know,
as if we could flip a coin and say, heads, I win.
Tails, I also win.
Go home, you believers in Yeshua.
Because that's what it seems to me some folks are doing.
You see, let's also see what it's like to look at a non-disputed report about the
immerser to show how horrible Thomas's faith-based documents and accounts of the
renewed covenant are.
Because if it agrees with history, shouldn't we look at it?
Let's see.
As we read here, and I'll just start at the beginning here.
Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from
Elohim.
This is partly what we went over before.
And that very justly as a punishment of what he did against Yochanan, that was
called the immerser.
For Herod slew him who was a good man and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue,
both as righteousness towards one another and piety towards Elohim.
And so come to baptism, for that the washing with water would be acceptable to
him if they made use of it.
Not in order to the putting away for the remission of some sins only, but for the
purification of the body, supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified
beforehand by righteousness.
So let's ask some really important questions here.
Why would Josephus the Pharisee, the Orthodox Jew of his day, endorse
Yochanan if he were, as Thomas might think, a pagan?
Why would the immerser also be popular among other Orthodox Jews of their days if
he were a pagan or a gnostic?
Does that make sense?
Would there be crowds protesting the imprisonment of some rabble-rouser pagan
in Israel?
I don't think so.
Question number two, why don't these same critics of Yeshua admit there isn't a
single discrepancy, not one, regarding the immerser between Josephus and the renewed
covenant?
And question number three, how could the New Testament be truthful about the
immerser as a real guy and totally lying about the existence of his master,
the star of the whole show?
How does that work, Thomas?
Finally, must we visit all the places in the Gospels where we get agreement from
Josephus?
We'll be here all day.
Or is the point sufficiently made, Thomas?
So let's look at the rest of this non-disputed passage together.
As we read, now when many others came in, crowds about him, for they were very
greatly moved, pleased, by hearing his words.
Herod, who feared lest the great influence of Yochanan had over the people,
might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion,
for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise, thought it best by putting
him to death to prevent any mischief he might cause and not bring himself into
difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it would be too
late.
Accordingly, he was sent a prisoner out of Herod's suspicious temper to Machairus,
the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death.
Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a
punishment upon Herod and a mark of Elohim's displeasure to him.
So ladies and gentlemen, I respectfully submit to you that Josephus has just
validated a key person in the Gospels as a historical fact.
And Josephus did this in the first century.
But as they say in the commercials, wait, there's more.
Now as we read, this is another letter from, you know, this is another quote from
Josephus, rather.
We read, Festus was now dead and Albinus was but on the road, so he assembled the
Sanhedrin, the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high council, spiritual supreme court of
Israel, and brought before them, here it is, the brother of Yeshua,
who was called Mashiach, whose name was Yaakov, and some of his companions.
And when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law,
he delivered them to be stoned.
But as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and as such as
were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done.
So Thomas is so busy giving us grief about the one place Yeshua is mentioned in
Josephus, it looks like you totally forgot about the other one, didn't you?
How many men named Yeshua were called Mashiach with brothers named Yaakov,
who were popular in that part of the first century?
Tell me.
I'll tell all of you.
Only one.
Don't forget that, Thomas.
So, moving on, just so that we could summarize here, what I have written here,
once again, Josephus and the Gospels are in perfect agreement regarding the overall
history.
And as we just saw, Josephus mentions the brother of Yeshua, who was called
Mashiach, whose name was Yaakov, indicating Yeshua was well known as a real
person to have claimed being who he was.
And I got more bad news for you, Thomas.
Maybe I should call you Tom, because you're going to get real upset over this
one.
No scholar has ever disputed this passage, not even you, Thomas.
It has none of the editing problems of the Testimonium, and it adds to the other
evidence about the Immerser.
And by the way, Josephus is writing this, as I said, in the first century,
regarding the year 62.
Not bad.
But, to be fair, let's return to these three problematic lines in the
Testimonium.
Number one, if it be lawful to call him a man, as if to suggest we're ready to bow
down to him, and, you know, let's put a golden calf behind him, as long as we're
doing this, and forget about the one Elohim.
Number two, he was the Mashiach.
Well, thank you, Joe.
That's really big of you, considering if you did believe in Yeshua, you did a
really good job at keeping that secret.
But, hey, just because you like us for you, we're going to say it outright.
He's the Mashiach.
And we might as well just organize a church social with this next line.
For he appeared to them alive on the third day, as divine prophets had foretold these
and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him.
Okay, I'm done.
Pass the bacon.
So, the logical conclusion, and the only one, I believe.
A Christian redactor, a very Christian redactor, encouraged by the brief
mentioning of Yaakov and Yeshua elsewhere, he decided to be a little creative.
But when we take these statements out of the testimonium, take those three
problematic lines, all of a sudden it agrees with everything else Josephus said
elsewhere, and also the earliest Greek manuscripts of his work.
And as John Meyer pointed out, the original Christology of the original
text of the testimonium is quite low.
Let's see how low it goes.
Now there was about this time Yeshua a wise man, for he was a doer of wonderful
works, and a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure.
He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles, and when Pilate,
at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the
cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him.
And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
So let's break this down.
Josephus and the New Testament agree that, number one, Yeshua was a miracle worker
around the same time as the immersers ministry.
Two, Yeshua was popularly known as the Mashiach, Messiah.
Three, Yeshua was killed under Pilate while Yochanan was killed by Herod
Antipas.
Number four, Yeshua's followers were persecuted, accused by some of being
lawbreakers.
This sounds a little familiar.
But in Yaakov's case, most Jews thought he was a righteous man.
And that brings us to our next topic.
Does Philo matter?
Now, as I was mentioning before, Philo is the other major Jewish historian
of the first century.
He's actually writing about 50 years earlier.
Philo was born around 20 BCE and he died around 50 BCE.
Josephus actually mentions Philo in his writings as an old man leading a Jewish
entourage to protest something that the Romans were planning to defile the temple
about.
And Philo's writings are just as fascinating, though much less read,
than Josephus.
But here is what I mean by, does Philo matter?
So, as I have it here, this may seem a really odd question regarding this only
other first century Jewish historian that we know of.
But here is how Thomas puts it.
Philo mentions Pontius Pilate, but doesn't mention the far more
significant Yeshua of Nazareth.
Love, Thomas.
How nice.
Well, here's what I say to that, Tom.
Philo lived all his life in Alexandria, Egypt.
He says so.
Read it in his biography.
That's point one.
Point two, Philo died no later than the year 50, probably before even Raphshaw's
letters began to be circulated.
That's pretty early time for the faith.
So, here's the thing, Thomas, this is what I don't understand.
Josephus, eyewitness, reliable as anyone else, lives in Israel, says there was a
man named Yeshua with a brother named Yaakov.
What do we know?
But Philo, who lives in Alexandria, who is away from this drama, doesn't
mention the historical Yeshua, and that's evidence.
Really?
As I said, Thomas, your faith is greater than mine.
I would think it's more important that Josephus, who is in Israel, mentions
Yeshua, than Philo, who is out of Israel, doesn't mention him.
And there are other reasons why Philo doesn't mention Yeshua, as we're going to
get to.
So, for example, my next point, Philo's writings are almost exclusively
focused on scripture and comparative philosophy, or what we sometimes call
syncretism.
While Philo is clearly a conservative Pharisee, he doesn't like to get into
recent Jewish history and politics.
He doesn't have Josephus' focus, so he doesn't have Josephus' details.
And those details by Josephus are scant on the subject as it is.
As I said, it only gets mentioned twice.
So it's at this point we must turn to the renewed covenant writings for a very basic
non-theological question.
Just how important was Yeshua's movement in the 20 years since the resurrection?
So, while we know there was a controversy and a lot of Pharisees came to the faith,
this is what we also know.
Most of the apostles were running for their lives while they were trying to
minister.
Even the Apostle Paul, Rav Shaul, he hides out in Saudi Arabia, of all
places, for nine years.
He doesn't start his ministry until the year 45.
Philo is dead in the year 50, at the latest.
Not a lot of time for Rav Shaul to reach Philo.
And Alexandria itself is hardly a success story.
Let's see what we can glean from the actual record here.
As we read, and men from the assembly, which is called the Libertines and the
Cyrenians and the Alexandrians, there they are, and those from Cilicia and
from Asia, rose up and were disputing with Estophanos.
And they were not able to stand against the wisdom and the spirit which he spoke
by him.
Then they sent men and instructed them to say that we have heard him speak words of
blasphemy against Moshe and against Elohim.
And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes and came and stood
against him and seized him and brought him into the midst of the assembly.
That's from the book of Acts.
Notice these men were from Alexandria, but the gospel doesn't get preached in
Alexandria while Philo lived there.
And this is how men from Alexandria behave on the road when they're in Jerusalem,
when they're supposed to behave themselves.
What's going to happen when the show comes to their hometown?
How will that go?
And finally, we know there were many false messiahs and pretend prophets in Israel at
the time.
If Philo had heard of Yeshua, he might have just thought, hmm, just another
rebel.
It's almost certain that not even Pontius Pilate would have given the execution of
Yeshua a second thought, given the thousands of others he crucified.
So if Pilate, who is there, doesn't care about the death, why should Philo,
who wasn't there, care about his life?
And now we're going to move on to the importance of Tacitus and Suetonius.
The reason that the Romans are important here is, and I'm going to say this quite
often, you can learn a lot about the real history when two groups of people who hate
one another end up having to agree that something actually happened.
So in the case of Tacitus and Suetonius, they could not have hated the followers of
Yeshua with greater passion.
And yet they were forced to admit that Yeshua was a real guy.
And very, very quickly after the crucifixion, too.
So let's take a look, shall we?
As we read here, both Tacitus and Suetonius, as I said, are well-respected
Roman historians.
They authored definitive histories within 90 years of the crucifixion.
And like Josephus, no serious modern historian questions these men on the
details of their comprehensive surveys of the previous century.
You know what Tacitus and Suetonius are writing about?
They're writing the official biographies of the emperors of Rome.
Kind of important for their culture, wouldn't you think?
So, but I understand that for some you will view with skepticism the writings of
people who are in favor of a controversy.
But again, what about the details that even the enemies of the Gospels admit to
be true?
Imagine that an extreme liberal and an extreme conservative politician agree on
how to solve a problem.
How often does that happen?
And how significant must that agreement therefore be?
So as I said, these men hated both the Jews and the Nazarenes.
They ridiculed followers and encouraged their persecution.
And yet, with all that going on, here's what they said.
This is Tacitus writing in the year 116.
He sure was crucified in the year 30.
Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the
most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations called Christians,
or as it's actually spelled, Crestians, by the populace.
Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty
during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius
Pilatus.
And a most mischievous superstition, very interesting, thus checked for the
moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in
Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find
their center and become popular.
Now Tacitus, perhaps like Philo, views the Nazarene Crestian movement with
disdain, just another rebel group.
But while Tacitus doesn't directly mention what the Nazarene Crestians believed,
he does call it a most mischievous superstition from Judea, hideous,
shameful.
And so he continues, this is actually Suetonius speaking now, as the Jews were
making constant disturbances at the instigation of Crestus.
There it is again, Crestus, Crestus.
He, Claudius, expelled them from Rome.
Punishment by Nero was inflicted on the Crestians, again the Crestians,
a class of men.
Now we get a different detail, now they are given to a new and
mischievous superstition.
So, mischievous, new superstition.
Hmm, I wonder what that could possibly be from Judea.
Very curious.
I mean, I wonder what they could possibly be talking about.
Nothing really happened, it could be about anything, right?
Again, I can't emphasize this enough.
These men hated the early believers.
There's no reason to promote the movement if it did not exist.
In fact, the more they eliminate that movement, the more money they are likely
to make.
So, why would they do this if Christus or Crestus, which in Greek becomes Christos,
and in Hebrew, Mashiach, why would they do this if he wasn't a real person?
Why would they lie?
And so, moving on now from that point, we're going to get into another very
interesting and perhaps controversial topic.
I call it, as you see it here, there's a picture of these books from the
Nag Hammadi library, the real knowledge of the Gnostics, or what did the Gnostics
know, and when did they know it?
There is no doubt that the Gnostics were an ancient mystical Jewish sect that
co-opted certain beliefs from the growing Nazarene movement.
There is also no doubt that the Gnostics were attacked by name in scripture.
For example, here's Titus, therefore rebuke them sharply that they may be sound
in the faith and do not throw themselves into Jewish fables and the precepts of men
who hate the truth for to the pure everything is pure but to them who are
defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure but their understanding is defiled and
their conscience and they profess that they know Elohim but in their works they
deny him and they are odious and disobedient and to every good work
reprobates.
Now, this is from Dr. Charles Reary, one of the greatest Greek New Testament
scholars on the planet, who wrote the Reary Study Bible for the NASB,
and he says, Jewish myths, speculations of a Gnostic sort supposedly based on Old
Testament scripture.
For Gnosticism, see the introduction to 1 John.
Well, okay, fair deal.
Let's go to that page in 1 John.
Dr. Reary writes, The heresy of Gnosticism had begun to make inroads among the
churches in John's day.
Among its teachings were, knowledge is superior to virtue, the non-literal sense
of scripture is correct and can only be understood by a select view.
Number three, evil in the world precludes God's being the only creator.
Number four, the incarnation is incredible, unbelievable, because deity
cannot unite itself with anything material.
We call this heresy Gnosticism.
And five, there is no resurrection of the flesh as in ever.
Not then, not now.
Not surprisingly, as Dr. Reary writes, the ethical standards of many Gnostics
were low.
But while the doctrine of the Gnostics is trash, there's no other word for it.
They can still provide very important confirmations to us, because they have a
very ancient source in common with the Gospels.
And this was used by a group of controversial scholars in the 1990s,
where they would throw out a lot of the Gospel record, and they would cling to
this Gnostic tradition.
These liberal scholars were known as the Jesus Seminar.
There you see their logo right there.
That's one of the books of the founders, Robert Funk.
Five Gospels.
The fifth Gospel is the Gospel according to Thomas, ironically.
And this is neither ancient Thomas nor is it my Thomas either.
So, let's take a look at what these gentlemen had to say.
Many conservative and religious leaders, including myself, were very upset when the
Jesus Seminar said, and by the way, I'm not converting this Jesus,
this J, to the Yeshua Seminar, because I don't like these people very
much.
And yet, it's pretty useful what they're going to say once we get through it.
So, here we go.
Among other things, 78% of the Gospels were unreliable.
That's the bad news.
Here's the good news.
What that means is, the flip side has a relevant echo with the ancient critics.
Namely, that just because they don't take the faith doesn't mean they deny the
existence of the man.
Because now, 22%, the remainder that didn't get tossed out by our buddies at
the JS Group, have come from the mouth of a physical man named Yeshua of Nazareth.
That's the good news about the good news.
So, but these were some of the other conclusions of the Jesus Seminar.
This is what they said, and we'll compare it with your learned opinion, Thomas.
And I mean, my Thomas.
They said, Yeshua was, survey said, was born during the reign of Herod the
Great, an itinerant sage, shared meals with social outcasts.
He practiced healing without the use of ancient medicine or magic.
Now that's a very interesting concession, I think.
He was arrested in Jerusalem and crucified by the Romans.
My question is, doesn't this sound just a little familiar?
The same type of facts arranged a little differently, because I think we've gone
over this set of facts before.
Perhaps here.
When we take out the problematic words of Josephus' Testimonium, the controversial
statements, this is what we're left with, that it was about this time Yeshua,
a wise man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men, has received
the truth with pleasure.
He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles, and went pilot
at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us.
Had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not
forsake him.
And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.
Sounds like a good match.
It's also interesting to note that while the Jesus Seminar denied the resurrection,
they didn't deny that the earliest followers believed a resurrection had
happened.
It's really interesting.
They'll say, yeah, you know, Peter did think this.
Mary Magdalene did think that.
But they must have been drunk.
Maybe they gathered the wrong kind of grass or something, and that spice wasn't
what they thought it was that they were buying.
And next thing you know, it's like, did you see him?
Yeah, man.
Hey, he's like over there.
But let's dig a little deeper, shall we, with some ancient quotes rather
than modern reconstructions.
Here's a quote.
Yeshua said, the kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep.
One of them, the largest, went astray.
He left the 99 and looked for the one until he found it.
And after he toiled, he said to the sheep, I love you more than the 99.
Not exact, but familiar.
Here's another one.
And Yeshua said, person is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea
and drew it up from among the sea full of little fish.
Among them, the wise fisherman discovered a fine large fish.
He threw all the little fish back into the sea and easily chose the large fish.
Anyone here with two good ears had better listen.
I mean, it sounds like they're reading from perhaps the same type of oral sources
before they got written down.
Here's another one.
Yeshua said, the Pharisees and the scholars have taken the keys of knowledge.
Now, that is in one of the Gospels, the keys of knowledge, but then you kind
of get the keys to heaven.
But they would rather talk about the keys of knowledge because that's their spin.
And they have hidden them.
They have not entered, nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so.
And in saying 16, Yeshua said, perhaps people think I have come to cast
peace upon the world.
They do not know I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth.
Fire, sword, war.
I did not come to bring peace, but division.
Now, I could keep doing this all day, honestly.
But instead, let me just tell you, every single thing that I have read,
while similar to the Gospels, is from the Gnostic Gospel according to Thomas.
Now, I want you to brace yourself for what I'm about to tell you, especially you,
my friend Thomas, because, as I said, when opponents agree on something,
maybe that's significant.
Are the Jesus Seminar my opponents?
Oh, you better believe it.
They haven't backed down one bit since they made this statement in the 1990s.
And yeah, if I were to meet one of them, I'd let them know how I felt about it.
But here's where we agree, and you are left out in the cold, my friend,
because they, not me, the Radical Jesus Seminar and many other scholars have dated
the Gospel of Thomas.
Are you ready for this?
We're going to put this up right now for everyone to see.
They have dated this to, here it is, the middle of the first century.
So, are you being unreasonable, Thomas?
According to your buddies over at the Jesus Seminar, they don't want to have
anything to do with you.
But let's look at some other facts that Thomas relates.
He says, these are the secret sayings that the living Yeshua spoke and Didymus Judas
Thomas recorded.
So, yes, I know that in their writings, the Gnostics would say that Yeshua wasn't
really flesh, that he was an ascended spirit and only looked like flesh.
But they also admit that to the rest of the unenlightened world, he would have
looked just like you and me.
And so, they are not really denying that he appeared to be human and therefore that
others would have perceived him as a real guy.
That's your non-literalist followers of Yeshua, your pagan-influenced followers of
Yeshua, right there.
And he said, this is saying number one, whoever discovers the interpretation of
these sayings will not taste death.
So, Yeshua's first words are about eternal life.
Saying 51, this is one of my favorites.
His disciples said to him, when will the rest for the dead take place and when will
the new world come?
What we call the Ulam Haba in Hebrew.
He said to them, what you are looking forward to has come, but you don't know
it.
His disciples said to him, 24 prophets have spoken in Israel and they all spoke
of you.
So, let me ask you something, Thomas.
How many Old Testament Tanakh books did the rabbis accept in the first century?
I'll give you a hint, 24.
All right?
So, if you're looking for paganism, I'd like you to find some paganism here,
because I don't see any pagan influence in this early movement dated to the first
century at all.
Not in Josephus and not here.
So, let's continue.
As we read, Yeshua said, and this is one of my favorites, I am the light that is
over all things.
I am all, from me all came forth, and to me all attained.
Split a piece of wood and I am there.
Lift up the stone and you will find me there.
That's beautiful.
But I thought the light of the world was only in John's gospel.
And this sounds a little bit like Hebrews 1, 1 through 5, doesn't it?
That he is the reflection of the nature of Elohim.
Very similar language.
So, take it all together, while the gospel of Thomas and these other non-biblical
sources clearly reject our theology, and therefore we reject them, there is a
lot of agreement on the historical Yeshua, who he was, and some of what he preached.
And this brings us to Jewish and rabbinic sources, i.e.
Talmud.
As I said before, it's often been observed that when enemies agree, the source of the
agreement must be credible.
With that thought in mind, let me pose this question.
If the rabbis of the Talmud, Thomas, could prove Yeshua never existed as you
believe, wouldn't they have done it?
Didn't they kind of have a head start on you, Thomas?
I mean, why not, considering what happened over the past 2,000 years?
But instead, the Talmud shows something very, very different.
They don't deny they can't, so they do the next best thing.
Spin control.
I'm going to show you how they spin.
From Talmud Sanhedrin 43a, it is taught, on the eve of Passover, they hung Yeshu,
and the crier, or the gaver, went forth for 40 days beforehand, declaring that
Yeshu is going to be stoned for practicing witchcraft, for enticing and leading
Israel astray.
Anyone who knows something to clear him should come forth and exonerate him.
But no one had anything exonerating for him, and they hung him on the eve of
Passover.
Ullah said, would one think that we should look for exonerating evidence for him?
He was an enticer, and God said in Deuteronomy 13, verse 9, show him no pity
or compassion, and do not shield him.
Yeshu was different because he was close to the government.
Oh, we'll be getting into this.
So, point one, the Talmud deliberately leaves off the final ion in Yeshua's name,
so they call him Yeshu rather than Yeshua.
And that is to change his meaning of the name from Yah is salvation to may his name
be blotted out.
Rabbinic literature is full of these incidents where letters, or lack thereof,
result in false power or losing power.
Let me give you an example.
Medieval legend talks about a creature called a golem, clay avenger, about seven
or eight feet tall.
He could not be stopped no matter what anyone did.
Bullets, knives, arrows.
If he's been called to get you, you will be God.
This was a tool of the rabbis to get even with their crusader oppressors.
And the golem could not be stopped as long as the word amit, alef-mim-tav,
was on his palm, or on his wrist rather.
So he goes, they try to kill him, night after night, nothing works.
And when the golem's work is done, they obliterate the alef.
And now it's just mim-tav, met, dead, and he dies.
So this is the same idea.
In later rabbinic polemics, such as the Toledoth Yeshu, we will see, as we do,
you know, in the actual record, that Yeshua gets to heal, but he heals
through false means, by getting the 72-letter name of creation, or Yahweh's
name, off of the foundation stone.
And when he is defiled, the letters escape him and he is able, he is powerless,
he's able to be killed.
Again, spin control.
You cannot deny what he did, so you put a new reason behind why he did, or how he
did.
So let's continue into our analysis here about the rabbinic tradition.
Point number two.
Some have attacked this passage's authenticity on the basis that Yeshua died
on Pesach.
Well, actually, the 15th.
We'll get to that.
Not the evening before.
However, they forget that in the first century, the Passover lamb was slaughtered
over two days, the Galileans went on the 14th, and the Judeans on the 15th.
How do I know?
In addition to the Mishnah telling us this was the case, we know that Yeshua and his
disciples have their last supper in the first three Gospels.
It is a Passover Seder.
He blesses bread, he blesses wine.
And what bread do you think is more resembling of the trauma he's about to go
through?
Some spongy wonder challah that he brings home from the market, or white bone-like
matzah that snaps?
I ask you.
And that's why the next morning, the Pharisees haven't eaten their Passover
yet, because they were going to eat it a day later.
So the Mishnah and Yolkanon agree here.
And, you know, I think that that's also a significant historical point.
But obviously, Passion Week is a much more detailed discussion than just that one
little point.
So continuing, point number three.
You gotta love this.
Yeshua was different because he was with the government.
Really?
Well, maybe you thought he was with the government because, what, the Romans just
basically dressed up a bunch of themselves as Jews, pretending to support him and
crowd around him and boo you when you tried to take him into custody?
Or maybe his message was better than yours, but oh, we wouldn't want to admit
that now, would we?
Popular with the government.
His interaction with the government didn't exactly end well, Tom.
Point number four.
They also admit that they tried to stone him and that Yeshua worked miracles so
well that he led Israel astray.
Okay, but in so doing, they verify the miracles that are in the Gospels.
Here's what happened.
Well, maybe not exactly 40 days.
It's probably a bit more than 40 days, but I'm thinking that this may be their
inspiration for something that happened 40 days, roughly, before the crucifixion.
Yeshua said to the Pharisees, I and the Father are one.
And again, the Yehudians took up rocks to stone him.
Yeshua said to them, many pleasing works from the presence of my Father I have
shown you.
For which of them do you stone me?
The Yehudians said to him, it is not because of the pleasing works that we
stone you, rather because you do blaspheme and that while you are a son of man,
you make yourself Elohim.
Yeshua said to them, is it not written in your Torah that I have told you that you
are Elohim?
If those people who was called Elohim, because the miltha, which is Aramaic for
word, most of the time, because the word of Elohim, miltha of Elohim was with them,
and the scripture is not able to be broken.
So, to wrap up here, the Talmud, of course, began to be compiled in the
last years of the first century.
It took major shape by the year 200.
With centuries of later opinions being added throughout the Middle Ages.
Nevertheless, these stories and ideas have been in the picture.
They've been circulating for a very long time.
How long?
Let me show you.
And they said to him, say that his disciples came and stole him in the middle
of the night while we were sleeping.
And if this is heard before the governor, we will persuade him, we will not to make
trouble for you.
And when they took the money, they did as they had instructed them.
And this word has gone out among the Yehudians to this very day.
Guess what?
It has.
I can testify to that as a fact from my background in doing anti-missionary work
for a little while.
Okay?
The whole idea here, look at this.
Look at what they say.
They say that they came in the middle of the night and, you know, to steal the body
and just tell the governor that you were sleeping when they stole the body.
But if you were sleeping, how do you know they stole the body?
I mean, do we need a CSI episode to unravel this evidence?
I don't think so.
Thomas, you will have to do better than that.
Let's move on.
The following appeared in this newspaper that we've got right here, the Kansas City
Star, January 7, 2004.
Quote, in an essay written for the book Passover and Easter, Origin and History to
Modern Times, Israel J.
Yuval of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, that's no lightweight, that's an Orthodox
Jewish scholar, Tom, reported a find in the Talmud that appears to show Matthew
could have been written earlier than some scholars contend.
Yuval wrote that a leading rabbinical scholar of the time was, quote,
considered to have authored a sophisticated parody of the gospel
according to Matthew.
The parody was written by a rabbi known as Gamaliel, believed to be by some
well-respected liberal Christian scholars to have been written about A.D.
73 or earlier.
Yes, Thomas, that Gamaliel, the one who taught the Apostle Paul, that Gamaliel.
So, not only does the Talmud verify a historical Yeshua, a popular healer,
with a compelling oratory, it also comments on his disciples, on his
Talmudim.
Surprising?
Maybe.
Let's see.
This is from Talmud Sanhedrin 43a.
It is taught that Yeshua, again, they leave off that final lion to turn
power out of his name, had five disciples, Mattai, Nechai, Netzer, Buni, and Todah.
They brought Mattai before the judges and he said to them, will Mattai be killed?
It is written, Psalm 42.2, when Mattai shall come and appear before God.
They said to him, yes, Mattai will be killed as it is written, when Mattai
shall, he die and his name perish.
This is a very clever rabbinic trick.
And they do this with Yeshua's name, as I just mentioned, with the Golem
legend, as we also saw.
And the idea is this.
They say, we really don't want to kill this guy.
His name means something nice.
Never mind if he's a criminal or not.
We like his name.
It's a cute name.
Okay, dismissing that fallacy for a second and just going with the rest of this,
they will then go, but you know, in another place, that name is not so
nice.
So let's pick up some stones and have some fun.
Well, that's their logic.
Let's see how this continues.
So the question is asked, I showed that Mattai is mentioned in the Talmud.
What about four of the other names, Nekei, Netzer, Buni, and Todah?
First of all, I think it's pretty important that Matthew has been verified
in the Talmud.
I mean, here's a guy who wrote the first gospel, and there he is in the Talmud.
So I think that's pretty important, you know.
And he was following a teacher, a miracle worker named Yeshua,
who was hung on a Passover.
Not bad, huh?
Nevertheless, okay, I try to earn my keep here, and I will try to answer at least
two of these four, in my opinion.
The rabbis associate the name Buni with B 'nai, sons.
Two of Yeshua's Talmudim, Yaakov and Yochanan, which is to say James and John,
were nicknamed sons of thunder.
So it could be one of them.
B'nai, Buni, sons of whatever, we don't care, we've got them,
we're going to kill them.
Maybe Barnabas, perhaps?
But the one for Todah is a lock, because Todah is exactly how the Apostle
Thaddeus' name appears in Aramaic.
Word for word, letter for letter, there it is.
Now, as for Nekei and Netzer, well, we should bear in mind we don't have the
Hebrew names for all of the Apostles.
In terms of those 72, those second-tier Apostles that Yeshua sent out in the
Gospel of Luke, not even the tradition has all of their names.
So it could be one of them.
Again, are the Rabbis keeping track as to who's important or who isn't?
Or are they just saying, huh, here's another one, folks, let's bring him in.
I think the latter is more true.
But going further, it once happened, as the Talmud, Tosef Tachulim 223,
once happened that Rabbi Eleazar ben Dama was bitten by a snake, and Yaakov of the
village of Seconiah came to heal him in the name of Yeshu ben Pandera.
Yeah, but Rabbi Ishmael did not allow him.
Okay, this does take a little background to explain.
Pandera is the name of a Roman soldier, a mythical Roman soldier.
In a very nasty slander, the Rabbis decided to sort of throw a stink bomb at
the Christian community and say, oh, he was virgin birth.
Really?
Well, maybe that's because Joe never was able to make progress for whatever reason.
So we're going to say Joseph is not Yeshua's father.
So he's half Roman, because this Roman soldier raped his mother.
And if he's half Roman, he can't be a son of David, and he's a pagan, and he's a
Roman.
What an effective thing to do, if it's to be believed, to deny his
heritage from the kings of Israel, which is, by the way, the order of the
Matthew's agenda, the first thing he gets to in his first chapter.
But again, let's look at the flip side.
They still are telling us that people thought they could heal in the name of
Yeshua.
Well, they're leaving off that final on ion, and I'm not going to say Gesundheit,
whatever.
But my point is, they had to have heard these stories about Yeshua that his very
name was a healing force.
And so, spin, spin, spin.
So, this last point is absolutely critical, because some have suggested the
Talmud shows a wide variety of people under the umbrella name of Yeshua.
But again, how many perform miracles like this and had others heal in their name?
How many?
Again, only one.
Now, in another place, talking further about Ben Pandera, he originally brought
witchcraft from Egypt.
But we still know his mother, Mariam.
Now, talk about out of Egypt I called my son.
Out of Egypt I called, what, Harry Potter?
I mean, come on.
So, now some of these sites are later than others, and they continue to be debated.
But again, in the Talmud, some form of Yeshua must be dealt with because he was a
real man.
And finally, regardless of the details of all rabbinic opinion, they certainly
co-opted a lot of Yeshua's teachings, but they broke one of their cardinal
rules.
They didn't give him credit.
Here we go.
Rabbi Yochanan Bar-Yosef said, the Sabbath is committed into your hands,
not you into its hands.
Really?
Thanks.
You're about 200 years late on that one, Rabbi Yochanan, so I guess your Yochanan
bent come lately.
And Rabbi Simeon says, be meticulous in the recitation of the Shema and the
prayer, and when you pray, don't treat your prayer as a matter of routine.
In other words, don't go babbling endlessly like the pagans do.
Oh, we got that memo a little late too.
That's from Pirkei Avot, 213.
And from whoever accepts upon himself the yoke of Torah, removes the yoke of the
state of our labor.
Well, I don't know, maybe my burden is light.
And while we're at it, Judah Hanasi, Judah the prince, lifted Yeshua's parable
of the great banquet almost verbatim 150 years after the crucifixion.
I actually line up the statements of the Talmud and the Gospels, they are almost
verbatim, line by line, paragraph by paragraph.
Not bad for a guy who, according to Thomas, wasn't supposed to exist at all.
Neat trick, maybe a greater one than the resurrection itself that you can't even
believe in.
Finally, how was the renewed covenant formed or refuting modern fables about
ancient texts?
There are two huge hypocrisies to some, not all, his higher textual criticism
paradigms.
First is the blindness of ignoring faith documents, when as we see, that simply
means ignoring faith documents we disagree with.
And second, to categorically ditch ancient testimony that is perfectly consistent
with modern fables that vary from scholar to scholar.
So here's what we're going to do.
We will focus on the most ancient and best attested to eastern and western traditions
of the renewed covenant.
We will give particular emphasis to traditions that have not been disputed
among the assemblies who disagree about almost everything else.
What have we seen?
Again, when two warring factions agree, there is credibility.
But the most important thing we can do is look at what we know biographically about
the renewed covenant writers and simply apply that to our overall analysis.
What do they say about themselves and their contemporaries who wrote this book
that we call, oh, I don't know, the New Testament?
We begin with the Gospels.
Ancient tradition is unanimous that Matthew, not Mark, wrote the first Gospel.
The Church of the East, the COE as I call it, they're the ones who have preserved
the text from when the Apostle Peter founded them.
The assembly in Babylon in 1 Peter 5 chapter 12 to 13.
These people say that Matthew circulated in Israel as early as the 40s.
Matthew himself, an eyewitness to these events, was murdered in the early 60s.
Around that same time, Rav Shaal in 1 Corinthians and Yaakov or James in his
epistle quote verbatim from Matthew.
Number two, it is clear that Matthew had large agreements with the general oral
sources of Yeshua's sayings that most certainly were circulating in Aramaic
during the first 10 years of the faith.
While the final form of Thomas added its own Gnostic touches later, such as saying
1.14, it is clear that Thomas and Matthew drew from the same collection.
But here's the difference.
The Gospel writers appealed to the testimony of each other to cross check
their facts.
In some cases, multiple versions of an event circulated with the Gospels
collectively deciding, such as with the feeding of the 5,000, on a basic
complementary vision.
Whereas others went off onto wild tangents.
But Luke 1 verses 1 through 4 talks about compiling eyewitness accounts.
And John 21-25 adds the phrase that in addition to his own witness, we know his
testimony to be true.
Who is the we?
Is it anyone other than the other apostles who were there checking his work?
So it's very likely that the Jesus Seminar folks are generally correct in the sense
that sayings Gospels might have circulated first, possibly.
But within Thomas, this could simply be a matter of a Spartan writing style.
Thomas gives a couple of hints in some places about a narrative other than the
saying.
A little bit about the setting, in other words.
So he might simply like to leave a lot of those details out, focus on what Yeshua
said, but that doesn't mean he isn't recording historical events.
The idea that none of the Gospels are eyewitness accounts is a lie.
All of them are.
That's right, all four of them.
Matthew and Yolkanon are disciples.
They were there.
According to the best testimony we have, Eastern and Western, Mark is taking
dictation from Kepha, Peter, who was also there.
And again, Luke is compiling eyewitness accounts from people who were there.
People whose testimony to Luke could be checked by the disciples.
So, because many, as Luke says, have desired to write history,
which I say may be sayings collections, of those works we are familiar with,
according to what they delivered to us, those who from the beginning were
eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word, it seemed good also to me, because I have
attended carefully to all of them, that everything I should write down in its
order for you, Noble Taupila, that's Aramaic for Theophilus, that you may know
the truth of the words that you were taught.
So, when dealing with the letters of Rav Shal and others, we need to be careful.
Liberal scholars decry this method that I'm using because they claim it's a
circular argument to use one part of the Renewed Covenant to prove the historicity
of another.
To answer that charge, I will again focus on these things that are agreed on in
extra-biblical sources.
The general historicity of the Renewed Covenant has been confirmed to the
greatest extent that archaeology can provide.
So, go back to my friend the modern Thomas, he says, fraudulent relics like
the James ossuary.
Oh boy, here's a question.
What does this statement have to do with the real fairy tale of the Wizard of Oz?
And the answer is, they both feature a straw man as the main character,
if they only had a brain.
But I'm going to deal with another accusation that Thomas gives, the
fraudulent James ossuary.
Uh-oh, we've got a graphics problem here.
This is not the fraudulent James ossuary.
What was I thinking?
This is the ossuary of Caiaphas, a real guy in the New Testament,
the high priest who condemned Yeshua.
Found in his family plot, exactly where it was supposed to be in 1990.
There's the Hebrew to prove it, Yosef Bar Kaffa, right there.
So, why, Thomas, do you mention the frauds and ignore the facts?
Continuing, in terms of the written record of wider history, Josephus and the renewed
covenant are also in agreement.
So, why would the renewed covenant be wrong about Yeshua, the star of the show,
when it agrees with Josephus on these basics as well?
Number three, the idea that the gospel is developed after the rest of the New
Testament, with traditions not known to Raphael and others, is ridiculous.
The epistles don't come first, they come last.
Let me show you, from Romans 1, 1 through 4.
Paul, a servant of Yeshua, the Mashiach called and sent, separated the good news
of Elohim, that he, Elohim, had before promised by his prophets, and set apart
scriptures concerning his son, who was born in the flesh of the seed and
the house of Dawid, was made known as the son of Elohim by power, and by the rule of
Kakadesh, who arose from the dead, Yeshua the Mashiach, our master.
This is a gospel account.
This is a summary of Yeshua's ministry, dated to the year 60.
And then we have these other quotes, written of a written form of Matthew,
or other gospels, that come out of the mouths of people who are dead by the year
67.
All I'm doing here is saying that Paul wrote Paul's letters, and so on and so
forth.
It's not that radical.
When you do that, look at this.
For I deliver to you from the first as I had received it, that the Mashiach died on
account of our sins, as it is written.
Not as it was spoken, as it was written.
And that he was buried and arose on the third day, as it is written.
What written account can he be talking about, other than the gospels?
And here's another one.
For I have received from our master that which I delivered to you, that our master
Yeshua, on the night he was betrayed, took bread and blessed it and broke it and
said, take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for your sakes,
do this in remembrance of me.
So after they had dined, he also gave the cup and said, this is the cup of the
renewed covenant in my blood.
Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.
Matthew the Mashiach, Matthew 26, 1 Corinthians 11.
Verbatim quote, had to be Matthew circulating within the lifetime of the
Apostle Paul.
And here's another one.
But above all things, my brothers, do not swear, neither by heaven nor by
earth, nor by any other oath, but let your language be yes, yes and no, no,
or else you become subject to judgment.
Yaakov, James 512 and Matthew 537.
So it's clear that the second section of the renewed covenant uses the written
source of the first section, the one that came before it, the Gospels, to justify
their beliefs.
And I'm just getting warmed up on these.
I could go all day on the rest of them, but I hope this makes the point.
So let's move on to the conclusion.
So here's where we start.
We're going to finish the remainder of Thomas's points, where he says,
accounts of Yeshua's followers, is that even evidence?
What of the Krishna followers?
Did Krishna then also exist?
Which Savior God-man should we follow?
Love, Thomas.
Yes, Thomas, you're right.
This is evidence different from these others you mentioned, and here's why.
No follower of Krishna, Osiris, Hercules, Mithras, any of them has ever
appealed to the history that they were directly a part of.
In other words, the Shechim, the Apostles, tell us plainly, we were there,
these things happened before our eyes.
But for these others, they only report about legendary accounts, and you said it
yourself, that happened thousands of years ago, centuries or millennia before they
actually lived.
And also, Thomas, there isn't a single bit of historical evidence that the people
around these gods and heroes ever existed.
Show me, Thomas, because I've read them all.
Show me an eyewitness to Jason and the Argonauts, or Odysseus, or any of this
other stuff that you read about Osiris or whatever.
No, it's always, I'm telling you a story from a long time ago and a galaxy far,
far away.
But Caiaphas, Pilate, the Apostles, Yeshua, they have all been verified
directly in the records, biblical and extra-biblical alike.
And no enemy of the faiths of these false gods ever had to begrudgingly go,
well, I hate those people.
I hate what they believe in, but I admit that they existed.
I admit that these things happened.
But the rabbinic and the Roman sources have basically been dragged, kicking and
screaming, to admit that Yeshua was a real person.
So my final answer to Thomas on this point is, there's an email.
Again, the main point I want to stress is that every claim Yeshua made about
himself, every claim the original and real followers did in his name, not what got
corrupted later into Christianity, was derived from Tanakh, from the Old
Testament.
From my point of view then, I believe that the enemy wants to confuse people then and
now, so he makes counterfeits that look like the truth, but have just enough lie
in them to lead people astray.
Satan is the father of lies, the prince and the power of the world, and he has
lied to us from the very beginning while appearing as a being of light.
That's why, Thomas, the word Lucifer means light bearer, in case you were wondering.
But then Thomas writes me back, and while he's not British, I seem to be
feeling or channeling a British accent with this highfalutin language,
as we like to say.
And he says, you seem to be alluding to the defense of diabolical mimicry,
a pathetic and desperate defense that I once came up with also.
The idea that Satan knew what Yeshua would do outsmarted Yahweh, and so was smart
enough to ensure that his evil followers would copy Yeshua's story thousands of
years before they would happen for real, that is an utterly pathetic and
disgraceful offense.
Pip pip cheerio.
Well, yes, Thomas, there's something very pathetic going on, and it isn't me.
You saw the truth yourself, and through the eyes of faith, and then you closed
your eyes, and you discarded it.
Think about it, Thomas.
Just imagine, if there was a being like Satan, isn't this exactly the kind of
thing he would do to confuse you?
So, Thomas, and each of us needs to seek that path of truth, no question.
So we are confident we found the way.
So, until such time, let us review where we've been together.
We've seen that the test asked for by skeptics to prove a historical Yeshua
don't apply to any other ancient figure.
Not fair.
That even if we throw out Josephus' testimonium, the controversial passage
about Yeshua completely, other parts of Josephus mention a historical Yeshua and
have never been disputed by any scholar.
Number three, that the lack of a mention about Yeshua by Philo neither adds nor
detracts from the overall discussion.
Number four, that the Roman historians writing only 90 years later, again,
not 750, not 1,000, not 1,300, have no reason to lie about a historical
Yeshua.
Why bother?
That Talmudic and Gnostic sources, while clearly rejecting the theology of
the Renewed Covenant, nevertheless retain a basic historical memory of both the man
and his teachings.
And number six, that the Renewed Covenant itself is the most ancient and reliable
witness.
The most ancient and reliable witnesses, East and West combined here, have much to
say on how this corpus of literature came into existence.
And number seven, that the historical record can prove the earliest believers
consistently proclaimed Yeshua as a miracle worker who, by the way,
rose from the dead.
But as for proving the resurrection itself, proving the eyewitnesses
themselves correct, I need to defer to one more modern source.
The Gospel according to the Matrix.
Remember, I'm offering the truth.
I can only show you the door, but you have to walk through it.
Why the Matrix?
Well, the forerunner is named Morpheus, which means change.
The Messiah figure is named Neo, which means new.
And by the way, the character named Trinity dies twice.
What's not to like?
And so, as we get ready to close, I'd like to pose a very important question
to all of you.
And the question is this, will you walk through the door, the path that leads to
life?
As Yeshua said in the book of Revelation, Behold, I have been standing at the door
and I will knock.
And if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and he will
dine with me and I will dine with him.
And as we wait for that particular day, I just wanted to say thank you so much for
taking time to hear me out.
And I encourage you to write to me at theyeshuaofhistory.com, where we can
discuss all the historical facts together in civility and mutual respect.
Let's plumb the mysteries of the word together and let's reason together as this
is pleasing to our father Yahweh in all respect and truth.
And I look forward to getting that correspondence and going over that
information with you.
And until that time, I wish you all Shalom.
Thank you.