[This material is excerpted from our television series, “The Battle to Dethrone Jesus,” with Dr. Darrell Bock and Dr. Daniel Wallace. The entire series is available in our online store.]
Introduction
In our world today, we are being fed different ideas about Jesus. Many non-Christian groups may acknowledge that Jesus existed, but they differ significantly when it comes to establishing who and what He actually was. In this series of articles, Dethroning Jesus, we will concentrate on the ideas that are being fed to the American public by way of media, popular books, movies, and television specials, including The Da Vinci Code, The Jesus Papers, The Jesus Dynasty, and the so-called Family Tomb of Jesus.
Dr. John Ankerberg invited two guests to come into our studio to discuss this topic, based upon their book, Dethroning Jesus we will concentrate on the ideas that are being fed to the American public by way of media, popular books, movies, and television specials, including The Da Vinci Code, The Jesus Papers, The Jesus Dynasty, and the so-called Family Tomb of Jesus.
Dr. John Ankerberg invited two guests to come into our studio to discuss this topic, based upon their book, Dethroning Jesus. These two well-known and respected scholars are: first, Dr. Darrell Bock, currently the executive director of Cultural Engagement at The Hendricks Center and Senior Research Professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas. He has appeared on numerous television programs as an authority on the historical Jesus. Second, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. He is considered one of the world’s leading scholars on textual criticism and the Greek manuscript copies of the New Testament.
How are modern skeptics trying to undermine our faith in the Jesus revealed in the Bible? In their book, Dethroning Jesus, Bock and Wallace reveal several areas where modern scholars present alternative explanation to what the Christian church has traditionally taught about Jesus and about His teachings. For example, skeptics assert that:
While we will be unable to fully cover any of these assertions in this series, we do want to look at least briefly at the following questions:
It is important for you to understand how this new information about Jesus is being disseminated to the public. Dr. Darrell Bock explains:
“Well, the way in which information is changing is that it’s coming direct to the public. It’s coming not through university channels and not just among scholars, but there actually is an effort by scholars to inform the public on what’s going on in the university campuses with this different portrait of Jesus. When you pull that into the public square, you have two stories of Jesus in the public square, both of which are called Christianity, but are very different. And so I’ve given them the names of Christianity on the one hand—where the person of Jesus is at the center of the story, it’s His work as well as His message that’s important; and then there’s Jesusanity, which refers to Jesus of Nazareth, and there it is His teaching that is important, but His person is not.
“So, in one Jesus is the Christ, the chosen one of God, the anointed one around whom the entire program of God rotates. In the other, Jesus is just a messenger. He’s a prophet, which means He’s respected, but He’s not regarded as anything special in terms of the work that He does, other than to deliver a message.”
Now, we begin by asking, Is there evidence that Jesus Christ actually lived, that He was an actual historical person?
Dr. Darrell Bock: We have pretty good evidence outside anything in the Bible from Josephus in a saying in the Antiquities. It’s in Book 18. And in this excerpt—which is disputed because there are things in it that a Jewish person wouldn’t say; things like “He was the Christ,” and it also has a confession of resurrection in there. Josephus wouldn’t have written that—but most people who look at this citation say that it does tell us Jesus existed; that He had an unusual ministry in which He performed unusual deeds; that He was crucified during the time of Pilate at the instigation of the Jewish leadership; and that He created a following as a result of that death.
Now, those are pretty basic core facts. But since there are some people who argue that Jesus Christ never in fact existed at all, it’s an important piece of evidence, coming from a Jewish historian, writing about this period of history.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Let’s just put up our friend Gary Habermas and his book The Historical Jesus, where he goes back and he looks at 17 non-Christian sources about the life of Christ and comes up with 129 facts before you get to the New Testament. And they’re in agreement with the New Testament, or they substantiate what the New Testament says. Then, we need to say you have proof from the historical records. What are the earliest historical records?
Dr. Darrell Bock: Well, the earliest historical records that we have are the materials that we see in the New Testament. These are your Gospels; this is the book of Acts; things that are said in the epistles of Paul and the other epistles. So, there are several materials that have come from the first century that are incorporated into our New Testament.
And what’s important in talking about them this way is they are historical documents. They tell us what people in the first century believed. We’re not talking about these documents yet at the point of saying these are inspired, that these are the word of God. What we are saying is that their content is reflective of what first century people who allied themselves to Jesus actually believed.
Next up: Part 2 – How was Jesus’ teaching passed to the earliest Christians?