Jesus is the pivotal point between Christianity and Islam.
Stop.
Let's think about this for a second.
Islam teaches monotheism.
Islam teaches following God, worshiping God.
Islam teaches a lot.
There's a lot of violence there, but again, a lot of violence looks similar
somewhat to the Old Testament.
What is the pivotal point as far as we're concerned?
Well, when we talk about Jesus' life in Islam, what does Islam deny?
Well, first, we've seen that Islam denies Jesus' crucifixion.
Chapter 4, verse 157, mamakathaluhu wamasalabuhu, he was not killed,
nor was he crucified, but so it was made to appear to them.
So Jesus did not die on the cross, according to Islam.
If he did not die on the cross, he could not have been raised from the
dead.
So Jesus' resurrection is denied by Islam.
And then of course we have chapter 5, verse 72 of the Qur'an, where if you
believe Jesus is God, then you will go to hell.
Chapter 5, verse 116 of the Qur'an, where Jesus denies ever claiming to be
divine.
So what do we have?
In the Qur'an, chapter 3, you can believe Jesus cleansed the lepers, that he healed
the blind, he healed the deaf, he raised the dead, he is the virgin-born
Messiah, Son of Mary, he is the one who's going to come back at the end of times.
You can believe all that, but don't you believe that he died on the cross,
or that he rose from the dead, or that he is God?
What does Romans chapter 10, verse 9 tell us?
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
The exact three things that Islam denies about Jesus are the exact three things we
have to believe in order to be saved.
Death, deity, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That's not a coincidence in my book.
So the polemic then hinges, the Islamic polemic against Christianity hinges on
Christology.
Who was Jesus?
Did he die on the cross?
Did he claim to be God?
The issue of the resurrection is usually presented in a secondary fashion,
and that makes sense.
It's secondary to the crucifixion.
But did he rise from the dead?
That matters.
These are important issues, and so what we're going to go through right now is
what some of you would term Christian apologetics, but it's intimately related
to Islamic apologetics, and we're going to be looking at this from an Islamic lens,
but the same issues you would see elsewhere.
The first one we want to talk about is, did Jesus die by crucifixion?
Here's the verse in chapter 4, verse 157.
And because of their saying, we slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's
messenger, they slew him not, nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto
them.
And lo, those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof.
They have no knowledge thereof, save pursuit of a conjecture.
They certainly slew him not.
I call this the Islamic litmus test.
I believe that if you're dealing with a Muslim who is providing an apologetic
against Christianity, you can test whether that Muslim is sincere or not through this
issue, and that's why I call it the litmus test.
This issue is so starkly in favor of the Christian position, that if a Muslim
argues against it after having seen the evidence, I have to conclude that they're
not being genuine.
There's nothing you could say to them that could convince them of the strength of the
Christian claim.
Let's take a look at the reasons why.
There's two lines of evidence that I use.
The evidence I'm providing here is basically a recap of a debate I had in
2009, I believe, might have been 2010, with a man named Osama Abdullah on the
issue of the resurrection of Jesus.
Two lines of evidence, historical evidence and supporting evidence, that we're going
to provide.
First, the historical evidence.
Did Jesus die by crucifixion?
Well first, it is the unanimous written testimony concerning what happened to
Jesus.
When we look at Jewish references, we have multiple Jewish references.
We've got the Talmud, we've got Mara Bar-Serapion, who's writing a letter,
we've got Josephus, the Jewish historian, who's writing for the Romans.
All of these Jewish sources say Jesus died by crucifixion, as it were.
We have Gentile sources, we've got Tacitus and Lucian, both of whom say that Jesus
died.
Of course, you've got first-generation Christians, and by that I mean Matthew,
Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter.
These folk all say Jesus died on the cross.
It is the unanimous testimony of early Christianity, and it's the unanimous
testimony of second-generation Christianity, folks like Papias,
Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius, that this is what people say happened to Jesus
mattered.
It does matter.
On the flip side, the fact that there's no reference to the fact that Jesus may have
survived crucifixion also matters.
Nobody even dares to say Jesus survived crucifixion.
And the reason why is because people knew what crucifixion was back then.
Today, when we'll say perhaps Jesus survived the crucifixion, we are basically
showing ignorance of what the crucifixion process was.
For those of you who have not, I would highly suggest you get acquainted
with Martin Hengel's book, Crucifixion.
Martin Hengel, great European scholar, what was really great about him is that he
wrote a really tiny book.
It was called Crucifixion.
Easy to read, gives you a whole new perspective on how ghastly the crucifixion
was, how difficult the process was.
As it turns out, people used to say, let no Roman citizen even hear the word
crucifixion.
It is so horrendous.
The word crucifixion is where we get our word excruciating from.
Excruce, off the cross.
You had to invent a word to describe how bad the crucifixion is.
The process of crucifixion starts with flogging.
It is called the pre-death in some works, because people were flogged, not with just
a stick, but with a Roman whip called the cat-o'-nine-tails.
This whip often had about six leather cords that came off of it, and at the end
of these leather cords were leather balls which had shards of bone and metal
dumbbells attached to them.
Well, what was the point of these shards of bone and these metal dumbbells?
When striking a victim, the metal dumbbells would cause vasodilation.
It would cause pain receptors to become acute.
It would cause blood vessels to dilate, thereby weakening people even more when
those shards of bone were grabbed into the skin and pull it off.
So the skin was literally pulled off and blood was profuse because of those metal
dumbbells.
It was very intelligently designed for the purpose of weakening a victim.
In the process of flogging, it has been said that intestines were spilt because
the abdominal wall was weakened so much the intestines came out.
This happened on a few occasions.
People sometimes died during the flogging process.
The whole body was flogged.
It was horrific to say the least.
The point of the flogging was so that people would not be able to kick and fight
when they would be nailed to the cross.
They would be on the verge of death as it were already.
Now, what we know about flogging is that Jews were not allowed to flog more than 40
times.
According to Old Testament law, you could flog 40 and no more.
And what the Jews would do is they would stop at 39 just to make sure that they
didn't accidentally miscount while they're flogging.
They didn't want to break God's law.
The Romans, in spite of the Jews, would therefore flog more than 40 times to
show them, hey, we're not bound by our silly little laws.
We're gonna flog as much as we want.
And so the flogging was often very protracted.
It is at this point that the victim would then be made to sometimes carry the cross
beam to the point of the cross.
Not the entire cross, just the cross beam.
And they would walk to that place.
By the way, they're being flogged while naked and they're being crucified while
naked.
Cheers.
So all those wonderful paintings we have of Christ with the loincloth on are
lessening the humiliation that our Lord suffered.
He was naked on the cross.
When being placed on the cross, nails were driven through the arms,
not the hands, as is often depicted in medieval statements.
The reason why is because back in those days when someone said hand, they pictured
this whole area, not just this area.
So it was okay to say hands and still mean here.
This is the only place the weight of a person could be supported, here between
the radius and the ulna.
And guess what runs right through there?
The median nerve.
So if you've ever hit your elbow on your funny bone, imagine piercing it with a
nail.
It destroys your hands.
The median nerve is the main sensory motor nerve of the hand and it destroys your
hands.
As you're nailed there, your feet or your knees are bent slightly and one ankle is
placed over the other and a nine-inch nail is driven through your feet.
This is for more than just torture though.
This is to give you a means to push yourself off of the nail.
When you are hanging in this position, if you hang, if you're just hanging,
you will not be able to breathe out.
You'll breathe in and then to breathe out you have to have some room.
You have to have some positive pressure develop and so your ribcage needs to
collapse.
In order to do that, you have to push out.
That is what the nail in your feet was for.
So you'd push up to be able to breathe out, otherwise the victim would die very
quickly.
And so that nail was actually an additional torture device to make sure
that your death was protracted, it was long.
And by the way, every time you're pushing up to breathe out, you're scraping a back
that has no skin against splintered wood.
This is not a fun process and when you are at the point of death, all the Roman
soldiers have to do is see that you're not moving anymore.
If you're not moving, you're not breathing, you're dead.
But they didn't stop there because if they weren't sure that you were dead,
the Roman soldier could lose their job, be killed if they weren't sure you were
dead.
So what they'd often do is they'd administer death blows.
This is why the knees of the robbers alongside Jesus were broken.
By breaking their knees, they were not able to push up, they would stop breathing
and they would die.
Jesus had already given up his spirit and so they pierced his heart with a spear.
Other forms of death blows included crushing the skull with a sledgehammer,
it included lighting people on fire, all kinds of horrific ways to crucify
people.
Anyone who knows the process knows that you will die by crucifixion.
There is no account of anybody in history surviving a full Roman crucifixion.
There is an account of Josephus seeing three friends being crucified.
They weren't done being crucified, they were on the cross but they weren't
given a death blow or anything of that sort, their knees hadn't been broken,
and he asked for them to be taken down immediately.
They were taken down and two of the three of them died anyway even though they were
given the best Roman medical treatment.
One of them survived but guess what?
He didn't have a full crucifixion, he didn't have a death blow.
There is no account of anyone surviving a full Roman crucifixion.
So to argue that Jesus survived the cross or that he did not die on the cross is to
argue against the facts, strongly against the facts.
And this is why no one says that Jesus survived crucifixion, it's unthinkable.
It's unthinkable that someone would survive crucifixion.
That's the historical evidence that we have but there's also supporting evidence.
Scholarship has repeatedly affirmed today that Jesus' death on the cross is the one
thing we can be most certain about concerning his life.
Paula Fredrickson has said that, Bart Ehrman has said that, Gert Ludemann
has said that.
So many people have said that it's silly to even think that scholarship might think
otherwise.
It's the unanimous testimony of scholarship.
If we can know anything about Jesus' life is that he died on the cross.
That's what they'll say.
So the scholarly consensus is quite strong.
In addition, the centrality of Jesus' death on the cross to the Christian
message kind of mandates that Jesus have died on the cross in order for
Christianity to have spread the way it did.
That he died on the cross and rose is central to the Christian propagation of
the message.
Had he not died on the cross then it wouldn't have been possible for
Christianity to have spread the way it did.
Again, this is supporting evidence.
It's not as strong as the historical evidence was.
We also have the issue of prophecies in the Old Testament.
In the Old Testament it seems that the righteous one would be crushed for the
sins of many.
You have Isaiah 53, you have an image in Psalm 22 where Jesus himself quotes on the
cross when he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
He's quoting Psalm 22, the righteous servant that is suffering, that is
pierced.
So you have prophecies in the Old Testament that support this as well.
Again, supporting evidence.
The primary evidence is the historical evidence.
Historically speaking, there is not one shred of evidence that Jesus survived
crucifixion, not one.
When people began to propose that theory, it was lovingly titled by Josh McDowell,
the swoon theory.
When people began proposing the swoon theory back in the 18th century,
an atheist by the name of David Strauss wrote a critique.
It's called the Strauss Critique.
And he said that the swoon theory, he didn't call it the swoon theory,
but the idea that Jesus did not die on the cross is untenable because not only would
Jesus then have had to break out of the tomb with broken hands and feet and go
through and fight these guards and move out of there, that's virtually impossible
for a man who had just survived crucifixion.
But he would also have to convince the disciples that he was the risen Lord.
Well, if you've got a man who barely survived crucifixion, he doesn't look like
the risen Lord.
The disciples might say, we got to get you to the hospital or whatever they had,
you know, we got to get you to medical care.
That's how they would respond if Jesus had just survived crucifixion.
The fact that he was considered the risen Lord precludes the option that he had just
survived crucifixion.
That's called the Strauss Critique.
And in Western scholarship, that ended the swoon theory.
And David Strauss was not a Christian.
He wrote one of the most inflammatory works against Christianity for the time.
But the Strauss Critique remains the strongest critique of the swoon theory,
or the apparent death theory, as it's often called.
So the Islamic explanations for 4157, how do they respond to all this?
What is their case?
The primary one that's used, and the one that was used initially by Muslim
scholars, is the substitution theory.
It says that Jesus was not killed, nor was he crucified.
So Muslims will often say, Jesus was never even put on the cross.
And the next part of the verse says, but so it was made to appear to them.
They say, Allah made it look like Jesus was put on the cross.
How did he do that?
The earliest Muslim explanations for this is that Allah put Jesus' face on somebody
else, and somebody else was crucified in his place.
Whom, you might ask?
Judas is one example that Muslims use in a case of cosmic justice.
Judas was put on the cross in place of Jesus.
Another is Simon of Cyrene.
Some of the more apologetically minded folk will say, ah look, Simon of Cyrene
had to carry Jesus' cross.
At that time, they confused Simon with Jesus.
Never mind the bloody mess that Jesus was.
They confused Simon of Cyrene with Jesus, and he was placed on the cross instead.
These are the substitution arguments that are used.
And Muslims, by the way, have the advantage over atheists and agnostics to
say that God made it look like that.
And certainly God has the potential to do that.
The next most common theory, and I see this being espoused more and more by
Muslim apologists, is the theistic swoon theory.
It's a swoon theory with theistic bent on it.
That Allah allowed for Jesus' survival on the cross.
If Allah can raise him from the dead, as you Christians say he can, why could he
not save him from dying in the first place?
A legitimate argument, but it yields a dilemma.
And the dilemma is, and I think it's a dilemma for both of these positions,
it stems from chapter 3 verse 55 of the Quran.
Now chapter 3 verse 55 of the Quran says that Jesus' disciples would be uppermost
until the day of resurrection.
Jesus' disciples would be uppermost until the day of resurrection.
In other words, Christians, especially those who immediately came from him,
would be on top.
They would be superior in whatever way.
To say that Jesus did not die on the cross, but it looked like he died on the
cross, would explain why the alive.
Now they're preaching the risen Jesus.
That makes sense, okay, that fits.
But they're doing that because Allah tricked them.
You have a deceptive God at this point.
In other words, the Christian faith was started because Allah deceived the
disciples.
If Allah put somebody else's face on Jesus, or if Allah miraculously kept Jesus
alive, the disciples who then went out and preached the risen Jesus, they were
tricked by Allah.
They were deceived.
Are they to be blamed?
Is it their fault?
Maybe the blame should be on them and not on Allah.
No, the Quran says 3.55 that they were uppermost.
The disciples weren't bad, they were good guys according to 3.55.
So deception has to be on Allah in this case.
Or perhaps, perhaps, Allah left that up to Jesus.
Jesus explained to them that you didn't die on the cross, and Jesus didn't do it.
Then we're left with an incompetent Messiah.
Would Jesus really have done that?
In fact, we're left with an incompetent Messiah anyway, because Jesus wasn't able
to adequately explain to his disciples, no, I'm not God.
No, I didn't die on the cross for your sins.
He wasn't adequately able to explain that.
So the dilemma we're left with here, by the Islamic position, is we're either
given an incompetent God, I'm sorry, a deceptive God, or an incompetent
Messiah.
Regardless, in either case, Allah is responsible for Christianity.
And if Christianity is shirk, is the unforgivable sin, then Allah is
responsible for creating the religion which led the most people to hell in all
of history.
Call this the Islamic dilemma.
Yes, sir?
How would they have responded to that if you brought it up today?
Poorly.
You can watch it in debates.
Whenever we've debated the issue of Jesus' death on the cross, or his resurrection,
this issue comes up.
And a common Muslim tactic, and this is why I had so much respect for Bassam
Zawadi.
He didn't do this.
A common Muslim tactic in debates is to simply ignore what you said.
Just ignore it.
Pretend it wasn't said.
And Islamic rhetoric is so good, because you have...
Muslims are still... a lot of them are coming from oral societies.
Not necessarily that they don't know how to read, that's not what I'm saying,
but oral prowess is highly revered.
And so they have good rhetorical skill.
And you're in the middle of this debate, and they just won't respond, and they'll,
you know, dazzle you with smoke and mirrors over here.
And a lot of people won't notice the lack of response.
But if you watch the debates, you'll see that they have not been able to respond to
this well.
It's a great question.
It is one of the 99 names.
The question was that, isn't one of the 99 names of Allah that he is a deceiver?
In the Quran, there's a verse, I forget where, which says that they
planned to deceive you.
Talking about the enemies of Muhammad.
And then it says, but Allah planned to deceive them.
And Allah is the best of deceivers.
So from that, you get the name for Allah.
The idea is, you know, I think from that kind of social context, the idea is,
look, they're trying to be resourceful in this way against you, and Allah is more
resourceful against them.
But it's still deceptive.
But deception wasn't as negative back then as it is to us now.
So now, what Muslims are often doing is they're changing that word from deceiver
to schemer.
Schemer is not quite as bad as deceiver.
And then people are going a step further, and they're going from schemer to planner.
And they planned against you, and Allah planned against them, and Allah is the
best of planners.
So that's kind of how they're taking it.
And they'll try to defend that translation.
So that's how they respond to that.
Any other questions here?
Extremely important to be well-versed with this.
Now, when you... the reason I bring this up and spend so much time on it is,
if you read, for example, the case for the resurrection of Jesus back there,
that Mike Lacona and Gary Habermas' book, they don't spend as much time on the death
of Jesus on the cross.
Most Christian apologetic works just simply don't, because they assume you
already believe it.
Everyone already believes Jesus died on the cross, right?
So here you go, let's move on.
Let's talk about the fact that he rose.
Even in the the four-point response that Mike gives, you know, fact number two.
You know, fact number one.
No, it's fact number one.
Fact number one, Jesus died on the cross.
He just gives it as a fact.
It's like, here's a basis that we're starting with.
Okay, this is a fact that everyone agrees with.
Let's move on.
It's like he doesn't spend too much time on it, and he really ought not to.
It's so obvious.
But when you're debating Muslims, or when you're dialoguing with Muslims,
this is an important point to bring up.
That's a great question.
So the question was, could their view of God's divine determination affect whether
or not Allah is a planner, or a schemer, or a deceiver?
And I would say indirectly, yes.
They never feel like they have to defend God's character, because God can be
whoever he wants to be.
There's a lot more of a, a lot more of an arbitrary nature to Allah in Islam than
there is in Christianity.
Now some, some Islamic philosophy has dealt with that, but a lot of the
beautiful Islamic philosophy was undertaken by Muslims called the Mutazili.
The Mutazili were around early in Islamic history, and they, they imported a lot of
Greek philosophy, Aristotle especially, and they were putting together some
coherent thoughts.
They were, they were introducing reason into the faith, and the Ash'aris who
fought against them said, you're doing this all wrong, you're bringing foreign
thought in, that's not what Islam is about.
There was a big battle between the Ash 'aris and the Mutazili, and the Ash'aris
won.
So some of the really good philosophy that tried to reconcile this stuff was early
on, and no one pays any attention to it.
Yes sir?
Yeah,
the virgin birth definitely.
I mean, you see that the virgin, the question was, does, do Muslims believe
in the virgin birth and in some kind of ascension of Jesus?
And the answer is yes.
The Quran says Jesus was virgin born, clear as day.
He was born a virgin.
No purpose is given.
It was just God demonstrating his power.
He could, he could have a, you know, he could have Jesus born without a father
if he wanted to.
So yeah, no necessary purpose for that.
And I'm not gonna get into that.
Yeah, and it also says in the Quran, and we lifted him up to ourselves.
And Muslims believe that means that Jesus ascended into heaven.
And that is why he will return at the end of times.
Again, from that tower in Damascus, to start the latter days.
So Muslims believe Jesus is gonna start the latter days initiated by his return.
So Muslims and Christians are waiting for the return of Jesus.
Yeah, that's, it's in the Quran that we lifted him up to ourselves.
Now some Muslims argue that that means in status.
We raised Jesus up to ourselves.
They'll say that means in status.
Because there's another verse which kind of implies that Jesus did die here on this
earth, that he wasn't raised.
So some Muslims will say that meant God lifted him up in status.
Other Muslims will say the verse that says Jesus died, that's talking about in the
future.
Jesus is gonna come back and then he'll die.
So you have some disagreement there.
Again, I'm not big on Islamic eschatology.
So if you want to look into this a bit more, read the work of David Cook out of
Rice University.
I focus more on the historical aspects.
Is that Joel Richardson?
Yeah, I haven't read it.
Okay, yeah, there's a lot of parallels in eschatology, but there's a lot a lot of
disparity, not much unity in Islamic eschatology.
I asked my friend, the same friend who said he couldn't be my friend anymore,
I asked him what he thought about the afterlife.
He sent me a 33 CD lecture series on al-akhirah.
I tried to listen to him, I just I couldn't bear it after a while.
I don't know much about Islamic eschatology, so I apologize.
Now I know what I was taught, which is not too indicative of what everyone else was
taught, because our sect of Islam believed different things about eschatology than
others did.
Our sect was pacifist, and so we didn't have an image of Jesus coming and killing
all kinds of people, and fighting.
That wasn't what ours was taught, but ours was idiosyncratic.
The Mahdi and the Messiah, yeah.
Thanks, appreciate the consideration.
Yeah, I saw another question a moment ago.
Okay, so we have covered the issue of Jesus' crucifixion.
Extremely important, don't overlook it when dealing with Islamic apologetics,
but even more important than that in Muslims' eyes is the claim to Jesus'
deity.
Now I would say the case for Jesus' deity is very strong, very strong.
I would say the case for Jesus' death on the cross is airtight.
You see the difference there?
There's no room to say Jesus did not die on the cross when coming from a historical
perspective.
So that's why I call the issue of Jesus' crucifixion the litmus test, the Islamic
litmus test.
If you have a friend who's arguing various issues with you, Islamic issues with you,
and he is willing to say that Jesus did not die on the cross, you present all the
evidence to him.
When he comes back and he says, I don't think Jesus died on the cross,
you ask him why.
And if he says, well the evidence is just not strong enough.
Like I said before, you cannot show him anything from that point forward.
There's nothing he will agree with if you didn't agree with that.
But if he comes back and says, I don't agree that he died on the cross,
and you say why, he says, I admit the historical evidence is in your favor,
but it just doesn't fit my image of Jesus.
I would have to be convinced of a lot more in order to think that he died on the
cross.
So I'll concede that the evidence is in your favor.
If he says that, then you've got someone you can start reasoning with.
So a question is often asked to me, when I share the gospel with Muslims,
it's so difficult I don't get any headway.
You know, should I be talking about these things?
Should I be discussing these things?
I never, by the way, suggest stop being friends with that person, stop witnessing.
I say stop discussing these issues with them if they're not showing a willingness
to hear you out.
Still share the love of Christ with them, still walk with them, still be friends
with them, but the issue of discussion might need to come to a close,
at least for a while, until they can be a little bit more intellectually honest.
Does that make sense?
That's because it's airtight.
There's no two ways about it.
History is absolutely clear about Jesus' death on the cross.
If a Muslim wants to believe he did not die, he has to concede that it's a
theological presupposition, not a conclusion of the evidence.
The argument for Jesus' deity, though, it's still very strong.
Though not airtight, it's still very strong.
Chapter 5, verse 72 of the Quran, we talked about it earlier.
This is where you find out that if you believe Jesus is God, you will go to hell.
They surely disbelieve who say, lo, Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary.
The Messiah himself said, O children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your
Lord.
Lo, whoso ascribes partners unto Allah, for him has Allah forbidden paradise.
His abode is the fire.
For evildoers there will be no helpers.
What is this saying?
They are the disbelievers who say Jesus is God.
For them is hell, paradise has been forbidden.
So shirk here, those who disbelieve here, that's the word there is mushrik,
those who commit shirk.
Shirk, the unforgivable sin, is here defined as believing Jesus is God.
Chapter 5, verse 116, I mentioned it earlier.
And when Allah says, O Jesus, son of Mary, did you say unto mankind, take me and my
mother for two gods beside Allah?
He said, be glorified.
It was not mine to utter that, to which I had no right.
If I used to say it, then you would have known it.
You know what was in my mind and what is not in my mind.
So Jesus essentially is asked, are you saying, did you say, to worship
you and your mother Mary alongside me?
So the image of Trinity here is one where it's father, mother, and son.
Very interesting.
So that's what the Quran says, that's how the Quran depicts the deity of
Jesus Christ.
That he denied it and that he would never have said it and this was something that
they said after him.
Now I don't use this approach when I argue the deity of Christ with non-Muslims.
I use a different approach.
But when I'm talking about the deity of Christ with Muslims, I focus on a holistic
gospel message.
I think the case for the deity of Christ is made far stronger when we involve Paul.
I think it approaches airtight when we involve Paul.
When we're just looking at the Gospels, I say it's very strong.
But Muslims will often want to go to the Gospels and they distrust Paul.
They think Paul hijacked the religion.
They've got to pin the blame on someone, right?
They can't pin it on the disciples.
We saw in chapter 3, verse 55, the disciples are uppermost.
So they can't pin the blame on the disciples.
They can't pin the blame on Jesus.
Someone corrupted Christianity and corrupted it early on.
Who could it be?
Ah, here's a man who's persecuting Christians.
He never saw Jesus.
All of a sudden he accepts Christ and he's preaching his gospel and other people are
preaching Gospels against him.
This man must have hijacked Christianity.
He's untrustworthy.
Paul.
So Muslims, especially Muslim polemicists, hate Paul.
And to try to quote 1st Corinthians or Philippians 2 or anything like that to
show the deity of Christ would be moot with them.
On the flip side, they're generally okay with the Gospels.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
You've got some Muslim scholars who are beginning to move away from that.
Shabir Ali, for example, has espoused Bart Ehrman's approach.
Bart Ehrman argues that the Gospels have an evolution of Christology.
Mark being the lowest in Christology, John being the highest in Christology,
that they were evolving.
Shabir Ali has kind of embraced that approach and so he won't take all the
Gospels.
He won't take John when discussing the deity of Christ.
Generally speaking, though, Muslims will take all four.
I'll address that in a moment.
Shabir Ali's approach.
So when I discuss with Muslims, I will say when you're talking about the
Gospels, it's easy to see that Jesus claims to be God from four different
angles.
So we take a four-pronged approach here.
What Jesus said and what Jesus did, what others said about Jesus and what
others did about Jesus.
These things only make sense if Jesus is claiming to be God.
What are we talking about?
Well, first and foremost, what matters most to Muslims is what Jesus said.
They want to hear Jesus say, I am God.
And you will hear that objection a lot.
Where does Jesus say, I am God, worship me?
As a Muslim, when I was looking into these issues, the thing that convinced me was
Mark chapter 14, verse 62.
I wanted to see it in the earliest of the Gospels.
And here's Mark showing Jesus being interrogated by the high priest.
The high priest says, are you the Christ, son of the Blessed One?
And Jesus' response is, I am.
And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming
with the clouds of heaven.
Here you have at least two, if not three, divine references all at once.
The questionable one is the I am response.
Here in Mark, it's questionable, but we've seen Jesus say, I am,
in John especially, where it's not questionable at all.
Jesus' response in John chapter 8 to the Jews.
The Jews are saying to him, you are not yet even 50 years old, yet you claim to
have seen Abraham.
Jesus' response is not, hey, I'm just talking figuratively.
That's not his response.
It's not, no, no, no, no, no, you didn't cast me right.
He says, I tell you the truth.
Before Abraham was born, I am.
There is no way to interpret that verse apart from a divine I am statement.
What are these divine I am statements?
They're found in Exodus chapter 3 verse 14.
To begin with, Moses is talking to God in the burning bush, and he doesn't want to
call God Bush.
So he says to him, who shall I say has sent me?
What's your name?
And understand, in those days, especially preliterate dynamics,
you gotta keep these in mind.
In those days, names really mattered.
There was power in a name.
You would pray in a name.
You would do rituals in a name.
Your deity's power was often shown through their name.
And so he wanted to know God's name.
He said, who shall I say has sent me?
When I go talk to the Hebrews.
And God's response, I am that I am, or I am who I am.
Tell them I am has sent you.
God's like, my name doesn't matter.
What matters is that I am God.
I'm eternal.
I am self-subsisting.
I am that I am.
And from that point forward in the Old Testament, God uses the I am to propound
his sovereignty multiple times.
Especially Isaiah 40 through 55.
God says over and over again, I am, I am.
That's how he propounds his sovereignty.
Moses asks God, who are you?
And he responds with I am.
Here in Mark, the high priest asked Jesus, who are you?
And Jesus responds with the I am.
I wouldn't think that that was an I am statement, by the way.
Because the question was, are you the Christ?
And Jesus responds, I am.
But I hesitate, because Mark chapter 6 verse 50 has another I am statement.
Here Jesus is walking on the water, something that the Old Testament says only
Yahweh can do.
Job chapter 9.
And the disciples are afraid, and Jesus comes up to the disciples and he says,
take courage, ego eimi.
Take courage, I am.
So here's Jesus doing something that only God can do, and he's giving courage to the
disciples by saying the words, I am.
A very divine context, a very divine statement.
By the way, we have a similar statement in Psalms, I believe, where God, Yahweh,
passes over the waters and gives courage to Israel by saying, I am.
Strong parallel, or at least a parallel.
If you want to be careful in our scholarship here, it's at least a
parallel.
And so the I am statement in Mark 14, 62, if it stood alone, I would say
probably not an I am statement.
He's just responding to the question.
But you've got Mark 6, 50 here.
Plus a scholar by the name of Raymond Brown, in his Death of the Messiah,
volume two or one, I don't remember which one it was.
It was Death of the Messiah.
He says that John, in using the I am statements, probably has a historical
basis because Mark has something reminiscent of that.
So even some scholars are saying there's something here.
There's something here.
And we would hesitate to say it's a legit I am statement, but there is something
there.
Let's say it's not an I am statement.
What's the rest of the verse say?
Jesus says, you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and
coming with the clouds of heaven.
All right, now we have definitely two references to the Old Testament.
There's no question that these are references.
One's almost a quotation, the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven.
What's the reference here?
Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14.
Here in Daniel, Jesus is looking in, Daniel is looking in the sky and he has
just seen a vision of the Ancient of Days.
There's the Ancient of Days sitting on the throne being worshipped by angels.
The Ancient of Days, the God, the Father, he's sitting there on the throne being
worshipped.
And then Daniel says, and I looked in my night visions and behold, one like a Son
of Man approached the Ancient of Days.
Okay, so it's one who looks like a Son of Man approaching the Father.
And to him, not the Father, and to the Son of Man, the one who looked like a Son of
Man, was given glory, power, and a kingdom.
People of every nation and language will serve him.
This kingdom is one that will not pass away and be destroyed.
Wait a minute, so there's a father sitting on the throne, you've got someone who
looks like a human, that's what it means, the one who looked like a Son of Man,
who's given glory and the kingdom of heaven for all eternity.
And in that kingdom, people of every nation and language are going to serve
him?
What kind of service of this is this?
You look at the word service in the Hebrew there, it's pelah, I guess it would be in
the Aramaic.
And in the Greek, the Septuagint, the word is letruo.
Every single time the word letruo is used in the Septuagint and in the New
Testament, it's used of a service due only to God.
This service is due only to God.
Same with the the word pelah, it's due only to God.
There's one instance in the book of Romans where it was given to someone other than
God and God became furious because it was due to him.
But here, we have that service being given to one who looks like a Son of Man.
He's gonna be worshipped, served as it were, by all people of all nations in his
own kingdom for all eternity.
By the way, he's coming on the clouds, the Son of Man, and only God is introduced
in the Old Testament as coming on the clouds.
So the entrance is a divine entrance.
Jesus, when he calls himself the Son of Man throughout the Gospels, he calls
himself the Son of Man over 80 times if you count all four Gospels.
Nobody else ever calls Jesus the Son of Man, not once.
There's one occasion in the book of John where people say, who is this Son of Man?
That's it.
I mean, that's as close as they get to calling him the Son of Man.
So the term Son of Man here is used explicitly by Jesus.
It doesn't exist before... let me put it this way.
They weren't expecting the Messiah to call himself the Son of Man.
No one was expecting the Messiah to call himself the Son of Man.
And after Jesus, no one no one refers to him as the Son of Man afterwards.
They're not going around calling the Son of Man, they're calling the Christ.
Why does that matter?
That Jesus called himself the Son of Man passes the criterion of double
dissimilarity, or the criterion of dissimilarity as it were.
This criterion is the most stringent criterion used by historians to determine
whether Jesus actually said something.
The most stringent one there is.
There's nothing more stringent than that.
So that Jesus called himself the Son of Man is virtually certain.
Bart Ehrman disagrees with it.
He's Bart.
And then we got the statement that you're sitting at the right hand of God.
What does that mean?
Well this is a reference to Psalm 110 verse 1.
Psalm 110 verse 1, David's writing the psalm, it says the Lord said to my Lord,
sit at my right hand and I shall make the enemies a footstool for your feet.
What's the big deal here?
No one in the Second Temple Period was ever portrayed as sitting at the right
hand of God.
No one.
The reason why is to say that you're sitting at the right hand of God
essentially means you're sitting on his throne alongside him, which means you're
co-sovereign, you're co-heir, you are in charge with God.
If you're sitting on his right hand, that means you are entitled to the same
things God is entitled to.
You might not have the same office, he's first, you're second, but his
substance is shared with you.
You're a co-heir.
And people recognized that at that time and that's why they never depicted anyone
sitting with God.
Now they had people standing, some people had Moses standing at the right hand of
God, some people had Ezra standing at the right hand of God, but no one ever put
anyone sitting at the right hand of God in the Second Temple Period.
This is probably the most convincing of the statements here to show exactly what
Jesus was saying.
At first I found the Son of Man stuff more convincing.
The more I look into this, the more I realized that sitting at the right hand of
power is even stronger, which is why by the way, Christians quoted this verse of
the Old Testament, Psalm 110 verse 1, they quoted this more than anything else
in the New Testament.
24 times this verse is quoted in the New Testament.
It meant a lot to them at a very early phase in Christian history.
We see it in Matthew as well, when Jesus is asking them, he's asking the people,
who do you think is superior, David or the Messiah?
And then he quotes this.
So we find it throughout the Gospels.
So right here, by the way, when Jesus says that he can sit at the right hand of God,
do you understand the image that's being drawn here?
You've got the Holy of Holies, which is kind of the inner sanctum,
it's a reflection of God in heaven, correct?
You guys with me?
Am I losing you?
Do we need to take lunch?
Okay, so you got the you got the Holy of Holies.
This is kind of the reflection of God's place in heaven.
What is the throne?
What is the reflection of the throne in the Holy of Holies?
The mercy seat, the Ark of the Covenant.
Jesus is saying that he can go into the Holy of Holies and sit on the Ark of the
Covenant.
Yeah, yeah, that's where Hebrews gets a lot of its Christology from.
Hebrews does quote Psalm 110 verse 1.
Now let's stop and think about this for a second.
He's talking to the high priest.
Who's the high priest?
This is the guy who can only go into the Holy of Holies once a year, on the Day of
Atonement.
And when he does that, he wears a rope around his leg in case he accidentally
does something blasphemous and they have to drag his dead body out.
That is the guy he's talking to.
He says, I can march in there right now and sit down right on that throne.
He's not saying anything light here.
He is going all out.
So in Jesus' words then, Mark 14, 62, he claims to be the I Am, if you think
that's strong enough.
Definitely claims to be the Son of Man coming on the clouds and definitely claims
to be sitting at the right hand of the power.
Potentially a threefold claim to deity.
I am the God of Moses, I am the God of Daniel, and I am the God of David.
Which is why they rip open their robes and they say, what more reason is there to
question this man?
He's committed blasphemy before all of you.
Let's crucify him.
Abundantly clear that Jesus here claims to be divine.
People who argue with that, for example, Bart Ehrman.
I keep bringing up Ehrman, not because he's, you know, my punching bag,
but because he was my professor at UNC, and so I got to interact with him a lot.
I asked him, I said, what do you think of Mark 14, 62?
He says, it doesn't make sense.
And I said, what do you mean it doesn't make sense?
He said, in order for this verse to make sense, Mark would have to think Jesus
claimed to be God.
Yes, yes.
And he says it doesn't make sense.
Mark doesn't know what he's talking about, is what Ehrman says.
Ehrman, in order to get around that, Ehrman says that Mark said that,
or Mark had an improper view of blasphemy.
He says Mark had an improper view of blasphemy.
This wasn't actually blasphemous.
Mark was actually thinking that claiming to be the Messiah was blasphemous,
and therefore he was crucified for blasphemy.
Whereas claiming to be the Messiah was not blasphemous in that time, we know that.
There are all kinds of people who claim to be the Messiah, and they were beaten
often, they were considered stupid, and they were let go, but they weren't
crucified for blasphemy.
You're only crucified for blasphemy for either uttering the divine name,
or according to Philo, for according divine prerogatives for yourself.
So Ehrman says he thought that claiming to be the Messiah was blasphemy.
No, no, Mark knew that claiming divine prerogatives for yourself is blasphemy,
and that's what he's showing Jesus doing.
Okay, anyhow.
So that's what Jesus said, and there's a lot more that we could put in there,
but I focus on Mark 14, 62.
What did Jesus do to this end?
Well, according to the Gospels, he forgave sins.
Mark chapter 2, so that you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to
forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, I say to you, arise.
Chapter 2, verse 10 of Mark.
He heals a paralytic, forgiving him his sins.
What did everyone respond at that time?
What did the scribes and Pharisees, I think it was, in that event,
what did they respond by saying?
This man blasphemes.
Why are they saying that?
Because Jesus is according a divine prerogative for himself, the forgiveness
of sins.
In addition, Jesus does miracles in his own name.
He will, lepers will come to him, and they will say, can you cleanse us?
Two lepers come to him in Matthew, I think it's chapter 8, and they say,
can you cleanse us?
And he says, do you believe that I can do this?
And they say, yes.
And he says, by your faith it shall be done.
Faith in whom?
In him.
He said, do you believe I can do this?
He's doing this miracle in his own name.
And that's extremely important.
You don't see anyone doing that in the Old Testament.
You don't see Elijah doing a miracle in his own name.
You don't see Elisha doing a miracle in his own name.
They're doing it in Yahweh's name.
Jesus does it in his own name.
What do others say about Jesus?
Okay, what do you have John saying about Jesus?
You have John saying that Jesus is the Word of God, and that he is God.
John chapter 1.
And that nothing came into being except through him.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
He makes it abundantly clear that he's talking about Jesus.
And then in verse 18, he says that Jesus is the only begotten God.
John 1.18.
So John makes it very clear that Jesus is God.
And so does Thomas.
At the end of John's Gospel, Thomas bows down.
I believe it's 2028.
He bows down and says to Jesus, my Lord and my God.
Kuriasmu kaitheasmu.
The same construction is used in Psalms.
It's inverted, but it's referring to Yahweh, my Lord and my God.
My God and my Lord in Psalms.
Here it's made really clear.
In fact, some people believe that this is the climax of John's Gospel.
The proclamation from Thomas that Jesus is God.
And what is it others did about Jesus?
Okay, well this only makes sense if Jesus claimed to be God.
You have some people who worshipped him.
We see the disciples worshipping him in the boat, proskuneo.
You see... well there are plenty who bow down to Jesus and the word proskuneo can
be translated worship.
Muslims will often respond to that, by the way.
They'll say, look in the Old Testament, people are bowing down before others.
Proskuneo means just bow down.
They didn't actually worship him, they just bowed down.
Well, not necessarily, because what does Matthew and Luke say?
They say, you must worship the Lord your God and serve him only.
I believe that's 410.
Jesus says, you must worship the Lord your God and serve him only.
Well, the word worship there, you must worship the Lord your God only,
that's proskuneo.
So Jesus says, don't bow down to anyone, which is exactly why in Acts you see,
when people start bowing down to Paul and Barnabas, that they rip their clothes and
they say, we are not gods, don't do that.
When Cornelius bows down before Peter, he says, don't do that, I'm just like you.
And John, in the book of Revelation, when he bows down to the angel,
the angel says, no, no, no, I'm just a servant, don't bow down to me,
don't proskuneo, because Jesus said, you must proskuneo to God alone.
And yet, people bow down to Jesus in the Gospels, and he was fine with that.
In fact, in 2028, in John, when Thomas does that, he says, it's about time.
On the other hand, those who were against Jesus, what did they do?
They crucified him for blasphemy.
Well, what was blasphemy at the time?
You can read Daryl Bach's work on blasphemy, it's probably the most
comprehensive, I think it's called Blasphemy and Exaltation in Judaism.
I think that's the name of his book.
A shorter work is by Adela Yarborough Collins, called The Blasphemy in Mark
1462.
Both very good works.
What was blasphemy at the time?
It was either uttering the divine name, Yahweh, that would be blasphemy at that
time, or it was according divine prerogatives to yourself.
And we get that through Philo.
Philo's writing, in his writings, he indicated that simply saying that you
have things that belong only to God is considered blasphemy.
P-H-I-L-O.
One of my favorite scholars on this issue is Richard Bauckham, and if you can,
he has a small book called God Crucified.
Small book, quick to read.
What he points out is that Jesus is claiming for himself, and the early
Christians claim for Jesus, those attributes, specifically those attributes
which distinguish Yahweh from everything else.
So he says there are two things which distinguish Yahweh from everything else.
Creator and sovereign.
And he says in early Christianity, both titles were ascribed to Jesus.
Creator and sovereign.
And his work, I think, is pretty convincing.
He has a parallel, slightly different, but Larry Hurtado.
So Richard Bauckham is the first guy.
B-A-U-C-K-H-A-M.
Richard Bauckham, just retired out of Edinburgh.
God Crucified.
Actually, it was Larry Hurtado, just retired out of Edinburgh.
And Larry Hurtado.
Read Larry Hurtado as well.
The one I would read, probably the shortest and most concise, is How on Earth
Did Jesus Become God?
It's a tongue-in-cheek title.
Larry Hurtado, H-U-R-T-A-D-O.
Larry Hurtado argues that the titles accorded to Jesus... wait, I'm sorry,
that was Bauckham.
Larry Hurtado argues that the rituals performed in Jesus' name, the actions that
were performed, those are something that were only for God.
So for example, baptism, communion.
These were actions that were done for God alone.
And the fact that we see them in 1 Corinthians 11, and we see it in pre-New
Testament writings, I'll explain that in a moment, shows that they did it extremely
early on.
So Hurtado and Bauckham, two extremely well-respected scholars, Hurtado and
Bauckham both, very well-respected, argued early deity of Jesus Christ,
early high Christology, and they do so very convincingly.
Both just retired, though, it's kind of sad.
Any questions on that?
I saw some hands and some confusion.
General aura of confusion emanating.
One last thing I want to look at, though, is the early history of the New
Testament.
Why did I put this here?
Oh, I shouldn't put this here.
Oh well, I'll do it anyway.
Let's take a look and stop for a second at some of the earliest stuff.
So what I just gave you was an argument from the Gospels for Muslims.
Okay, so we think about it for a second.
Muslims are okay with the Gospels, generally speaking.
Some of them are not okay with John, like Shabir Ali, but they're okay with the
Gospels in general.
That's why I gave you that case.
But let's stop and let's take a look at the case holistically, not just from a
Muslim perspective.
Let's look at the case for the deity of Jesus Christ.
We have in our possession, and this is extremely critical for you to know,
if you're interested in New Testament studies and apologetics in the least,
you need to know this.
In the New Testament, there are references to hymns and creeds that were written
before the New Testament was written.
What do I mean by that?
Certain things are found in the New Testament that are quotes that had been
composed earlier.
One of the most famous of those is 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 to 8,
where Paul says, for what I received, I deliver to you as a first importance,
that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, according to the Scriptures, etc.
And he says that he was raised and he appeared to Peter and to the disciples,
and then to the 500, and then last of all to me as one untimely born.
What is Paul doing?
Well according to the Jesus Seminar, so these aren't folks who are evangelicals
to say the least, according to the Jesus Seminar, what Jesus is doing, I'm sorry,
what Paul is doing is he's quoting something that he received from the
disciples early on.
So early in fact, that it probably comes from the first 10 years of Christian
history, and that's a very conservative statement.
John, I'm sorry, James D.G.
Dunn, in his book Jesus Remembered, says that this section of the New
Testament, so this creed from 1 Corinthians 15, 3 through 8, is no later
than a few months after Jesus' crucifixion.
And James D.G.
Dunn is no one to mess with either.
Very highly respected New Testament scholar.
So months after the crucifixion, how many months?
One year?
18 months?
I don't think he would have said the word months if he meant more than two years.
So I asked Michael Kona what he thought and he thinks that it couldn't be any
later than 18 months.
Then again we could just email Dr. Dunn, see what he says.
So we have this creed which mentions the death of Jesus on the cross and his
resurrection within 18 months of Jesus' death, according to Dunn, and no one says
any later than 40 A.D.
No one I've read, and O'Connell also says he doesn't know, and he's a scholar,
he doesn't know anyone who puts it later than 40 A.D.
And you can get a lot of this from Habermas' book in the back.
We also have a creed in Philippians 2, verses 6 through 11.
Here Paul is quoting a hymn.
If you read Philippians carefully, Paul's going through and he's saying,
be humble, stop trying to put yourselves above one another, start serving each
other.
And then he says, your attitude should be like that of Christ who, although he
existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be
grasped.
And so he emptied himself.
And so you have this picture of the kenosis, the divine emptying of God,
to the point of becoming a human and dying on the cross.
And then because of this, God raises him up, and he exalts him, and at the name of
Jesus, every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every
tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Well, what's going on here?
Paul's writing to the Philippians, and in the middle of writing to them,
he quotes a hymn.
How can he quote it unless he knows that they already know it?
Which means he's either said it to them before, or he told it to them when he
established the church.
Well, if he said it to them when he established the church, that means it was
composed even before that.
So this hymn, in Philippians 2, 6 through 11, is extremely early.
How early?
Some people have argued that you can retrovert this hymn into Aramaic.
If you put it in Aramaic, it forms a hymn of five stanzas, three lines each,
with meter.
There's one intrusion in there, even death on a cross doesn't fit the
scheme.
Other than that, the rest of it fits perfectly, according to some scholars.
If that is the case, if this hymn was actually composed in Aramaic, we probably
have the earliest teaching of the Christian church.
Jesus was in very nature God, and he lowered himself to the point of a man,
died on the cross, and then was raised.
He was exalted, is what it says.
And at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the
earth, and every tongue confess.
That's a quotation from Isaiah, which describes Yahweh.
In Isaiah, it says every knee will bow and every tongue will confess to Yahweh.
Here, it's saying it will happen to Jesus in a creed, which may have come from the
Aramaic-speaking church, as early as it gets.
It doesn't get any earlier.
There are also arguments that Mark's passion narrative is extremely early.
I plan on covering this later, but I'll cover it now.
In Mark's passion narrative, you can get this, by the way, from Gerd Theisen,
G-E-R-D, Gerd Theisen, T-H-E-I, T-H-E-I-S-S-E-N, Gerd Theisen,
he's a German scholar.
Gerd Theisen argues that in Mark's passion narrative, you have names that are
conspicuously missing.
For example, in the Garden of Gethsemane, somebody strikes the ear of the High
Priest.
I'm sorry, the ear of a servant of the High Priest.
Who is it?
It's kind of important.
It would be good to know.
We find out in one of the later Gospels that it's Peter.
Why isn't it said in Mark's time?
Okay, why don't we get the name of the servant in Mark's Gospel, in Mark's
passion narrative?
And who is this boy who runs away naked?
What's that about?
You know, who is this guy?
Why don't we get his name?
You really want to know his name.
You want to know who he is.
You know, and so why don't we know who it is?
Why is the name not given?
Gerd Theisen argues that Mark didn't provide these names for protective
anonymity.
If he were to say Peter was the person who struck the ear, guess what?
They would go get Peter, because they were still looking for him.
They still wanted to know who did it.
If they say this was the boy who evaded police arrest, they would go get him,
because he was still wanted.
If they said Malchus was the name of the servant, they would go ask him,
who cut off your ear?
And he'd be able to point to the right person.
So according to Gerd Theisen, the reason why the names are not mentioned is because
this is so early that it could be not mentioned for reasons of protective
anonymity.
Richard Bauckham takes the argument further, and I think convincingly so,
in his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
He says that you have names that are present that are rather stark.
We take a look at, for example, Bartimaeus.
Why in the world is blind Bartimaeus's name mentioned?
There's a ton of blind people who are healed.
Why was Bartimaeus's name mentioned?
You also have, in the passion narrative, you've got Simon of Cyrene mentioned,
and he's mentioned in the other Gospels too, but here it says, whose sons are
Rufus and Alexander, in Mark 15.
Why mention Rufus and Alexander?
I mean, the other Gospels didn't mention him.
Matthew, Luke, they don't mention Rufus and Alexander.
Why does Mark mention Rufus and Alexander?
Any ideas?
Go talk to him.
Mark is saying, hey, you guys know Rufus and Alexander?
Their dad was Simon of Cyrene.
Go ask him about this.
That's what Richard Bauckham is saying.
Simon of Alexander's sons are still around to verify the claim that's being made.
Bartimaeus is still around to verify that he was healed, therefore their names are
mentioned.
That's what Richard Bauckham argues.
Richard Bauckham is very interested in onomastics, the study of names.
So you can read his work on that.
It's in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
Very interesting.
So what are we saying here?
We're saying the Passion Narrative is so early that some people are still wanted,
and some people who are there are still around.
There are other reasons to think Mark's Passion Narrative is extremely early.
Many of the elements of Mark's Passion Narrative are found in Paul's works.
For example, 1 Corinthians 11 talks about the Last Supper, which is in Mark 14.
You have, on the night he was handed over in 1 Corinthians.
That kind of assumes that the people Paul is talking to have already heard this
story of a night that Jesus was handed over.
Right?
He says on the night he was handed over to the Corinthians, he thinks that they
already know what he's talking about.
And that's what Mark talks about.
There was a night in which Jesus was betrayed.
Jesus' suffering in Paul.
Paul makes it very clear that Jesus suffered.
Mark talks a lot about Jesus' suffering.
So you've got a lot of parallels between Paul's writings and Mark's Passion
Narrative, which make you think that Mark's Passion Narrative was extremely
early.
For all these reasons, Mark's Passion Narrative can be dated, potentially,
not with a lot of confidence, but with some confidence, to an early, early date.
Perhaps even in the 40s or 50s.
Maybe even in the 30s.
There's one argument that it was in the 30s.
I don't know about this, but the argument is who mentions Caiaphas' name?
Matthew.
Who doesn't mention it?
Mark.
When Mark says the High Priest, why doesn't he say the High Priest
Caiaphas?
The argument goes, because Caiaphas was still the High Priest.
So all he had to say was the High Priest.
And they knew who he was talking about.
Well, Caiaphas stopped being the High Priest in 37 AD.
So if that argument is sound, then Mark's Passion Narrative is before 37 AD.
How early?
Who knows?
But it's really early according to these arguments.
And definitely predates the actual writing of Mark.
So what do we have?
We have the earliest layer of Christian history in the New Testament.
And what do those layers proclaim?
1 Corinthians 15, 3-8 proclaims the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Philippians 2, 6-11 proclaims the death, deity, and resurrection of Jesus.
And Mark?
Death, deity, and resurrection of Jesus.
The earliest layer of Christian history in the New Testament proclaims exactly those
things we ought to believe in order to be saved, according to Romans 10-9.
Coincidence?
I don't think so.
This is good to know for your own personal edification.
This is also good to know for Islamic apologetics.
If you're going to converse with Muslims, it's good to be able to say with
confidence the earliest level of Christian history is that which proclaims the deity
of Christ, his death on the cross, and his resurrection from the grave.
That is precisely the things that Muslims don't want early Christianity to proclaim.
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