Dethroning Jesus: What Popular Culture Says About Jesus – Part 2

[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.]

How Was Jesus’ Teaching Passed to the Earliest Christians?

The Reliability of Apostolic Memory

Dr. Daniel Wallace: On the day of Pentecost, you have the disciples proclaiming the gospel, speaking in tongues, in Jerusalem. And not only that, but they have been empowered by the Holy Spirit. Jesus has ascended 10 days before the Pentecost, and He says not many days from now the Spirit’s going to come on you and you’re going to be empowered by Him. And then they speak in tongues to all these people who’ve gathered from around the Mediterranean world, all the Jews from the Diaspora, or the dispersion. And on that day, that’s when the gospel goes out everywhere.

And so, what you have is—this is what the Jesus Seminar says—the possibility of a loss of memory on the part of these apostles. Well, that loss of memory so that they could reconstruct what Jesus would have been about would have to happen before the day of Pentecost.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yes, you’ve got to ask the question: are you telling me that they were with Him for three years, and in 50 days they forgot everything they had heard Him teach and everything that they saw?

Dr. Daniel Wallace: I know! Well, not only would they have forgotten everything about Him, but they would have replaced it with a consistent myth. And on top of that, they’ve got more than these 11 or 12 apostles; they’ve got another 100 people or so that are with them that would say, “Wait a minute! It wasn’t like that; it wasn’t like this. This is what Jesus said.” They’ve got a memory in community, if you will, that’s going to reinforce the things they heard from Jesus and the way they thought about it.

The Testimony of the Living Apostles

Dr. John Ankerberg: Not only that, but they’re talking to the crowd in Jerusalem that just watched Jesus get crucified! And further, what about the people that are standing there listening to them? Peter addresses those people in that sermon that’s recorded in Acts.

Dr. Darrell Bock: Basically what he says is that what God promised would happen when the Messiah came and when the new age was arriving is what is taking place; that the Messiah has come; that the Spirit has gone out into God’s people, and that through that there is the testimony of God doing a work inside someone. And he stresses the fact, Peter does, that “we were witnesses of these things” (2 Peter 1:16).

In fact, the reason Jesus had apostles was to gather around Him, in effect, students; students who would sit at His feet and learn what He was teaching, and then take out the message to different parts of what ended up being the world with the hope of what that message represented, and that is that God was in the business of restoring broken relationships with people.

Early Christian Creedal Statements and "Schooling"

Dr. John Ankerberg: Three thousand Jews convert to the message. They take that and they go back across the Roman Empire. And starting from 50 days out, when they got back to their spots, they started establishing churches. The question is, what was the message that they were preaching to establish those churches?

Dr. Daniel Wallace: Well, the interesting thing is that after you have this alleged loss of memory—which couldn’t have happened—now you do have a loss of control by the apostles on the day of Pentecost, the day the church is born. Now the message spreads throughout the whole Mediterranean region. And yet we have a consistency in terms of the core of what these people believed everywhere!

Dr. John Ankerberg: How did the early Christians, when they didn’t have the New Testament—it wasn’t written yet—know what was orthodox and what was not? Well, you’ve got the living apostles that are right there, the authoritative ones. But, besides that, when they’re not there, the churches had what you call the creedal statements, or the statements of belief.

Dr. Darrell Bock: What I call schooling. These are little, short, crisp, concentrated pockets of doctrinal statement. They are doctrinal summaries. Romans 1:2–4 talks about Jesus both being human and divine in the same sentence; 1 Corinthians 8:4–6 equates the Father and the Son. You’ve got statements like 1 Corinthians 15 about the resurrection, that talks about the bodily nature of the resurrection, the resurrection in three days: that Christ died according to the Scriptures; that He was buried; and on the third day He was raised according to the Scriptures.

Worship Through Hymns: Theology in Song

Dr. John Ankerberg: The second thing, besides these creedal statements or doctrinal beliefs that were passed along, is you had the people singing.

Dr. Darrell Bock: That’s right. You have hymns in the New Testament. Two of the most famous are Philippians 2:5–11 and Colossians 1:15–20, both of which are terrific summaries of the life and career of Jesus. In one case He empties Himself, takes on the form of flesh, and then God exalts Him. That’s Philippians 2.

Dr. Daniel Wallace: Colossians speaks about Jesus as the firstborn of God, the firstborn from the dead. The basic theme of Colossians 1:15–20 really focuses on two things, that He is the creator and He is the redeemer, because we are saved by His blood.

Dr. Darrell Bock: You’ve got schooling and singing. And remember, when people are singing things, they remember the words. That’s teaching taking place while worship is taking place.

Next up: Part 3 – Does the Gospel of Judas reveal the existence of an early alternate Christianity?