0:00 Let me introduce my talk this way. The probably the point I try to get across to folks the most, even grad students. I have to say this over and over because it's a really hard point to grasp. I mean to the nuances, but I'll say something like tonight I'm going to use two texts. And those two texts are from two New Testament books. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, the end of Galatians 1, the beginning of Galatians 2. In the originals, there's no chapter and verse uh breaks. So, it's two texts. And people will often say to me, "Ah, no fair. You're using the New Testament." Okay. If you're interested, you could pursue this during the Q&A. And it's one of the sessions for first thing in the morning. I could back most of these
0:46 points up and use nothing but ancient secular writers. So, if you're pleased to go that way and you like those sources, I can give you those, too. secular writers, non-Christian. But let me tell you why I use 1 Corinthians and Galatians. Because these two sources and several others are allowed by virtually everybody in the critical community. Now, if you say, "Wow, my favorite website doesn't allow them." What you're telling me is they're not specialists in the field. Now, there are there are a couple of exceptions, almost none. For example, I just finished a debate with a British New Testament scholar. I think he's an atheist. He's professor of New Testament. We did this for Oxford
1:31 University Press. And I started and and went my argument starts from those same two texts. Now, I've seen him debate. I've seen him talk. He does not even question this move. That's because of how good the data are for 1 Corinthians and Galatians 4. So just to say, well, you're using the New Testament, doesn't address the issue. So does virtually every atheist, agnostic, skeptic, moderate conservative evangelical they all do the same. In fact, here's an example. Michael Martin, the very well-known atheist who wrote a couple books, The Case against Christianity, The Case for atheism, so you know where he's coming from. He says this in one point in his book. He says, "The best source we have for the resurrection, for
2:18 a resurrection appearance, is the Apostle Paul because he's the only eyewitness we have." Now, what's he talking about? Well, you can read the article, but he's talking about 1 Corinthians chapter 15. That's an atheist who's arguing against Christianity and for atheism. Why is it a starting point? Well, let me let me just give a few comments. Paul has 13 books with his name on it. Most skeptics, let's go to the, you know, left side of the spectrum here. They're going to grant six to eight books that Paul wrote. They're going to say, I'll give you six of them as being authoritative. A lot of you know the name Bartman. Barter will concede all six to eight of
3:03 these books. In fact, get his introduction to the New Testament. You can see this for yourself. Why those books? Well, they think analysis of language. uh the reoccurrence of certain terms, when they were written, etc., determines which ones are authentic and which ones aren't. First Corinthians is often said to be the most authoritative New Testament epistle for this reason. It can be dated by archaeological sources. In fact, here's one commentary. It's a critical it's a it's a skeptical critical commentary on my shelf. You pull it out. You look up First Corinthians. You look up author and here's what it says. The authorship of this epistle is so well established. We don't even have to argue it here. The author is Paul. And it moves on.
3:51 That's how well. So, so I'm just saying all this because people will hear me do this and they'll say, "Oh, your whole lecture is suspect because you're using the New Testament." My point is every specialist uses the same text. There's virtually nobody who doesn't if they specialize. There's one or two exceptions, but I mean, I've been compiling a bibliography of the major sources on resurrection since 1975, French, German, and English. My number, my sources now numbered between 33 and 3,400. I can think of maybe that I know of right off the top of my head, one guy who's going to dispute what I just told you. One out of 3,300 sources. That's how much of a given this is. Michael
4:37 Martin's a good example of an atheist Bartman of an agnostic who can see this. Okay, enough. But again, if you're interested in secular sources, you will try this on me and and cite a secular source. If some of you want to do that during the Q&A, we can do that, too. All right. So, what's my method? That was just an introduction. My method is this. If this book, this is a non-escript title worn off New Testament. If this book is as the Christians here tonight say it is, and it's inspired, then guess what? Jesus's raised from the dead. I I think that's a given. What if it's not inspired? And it's um kind of a middle of the road, middle of the road plus. It's just kind of a fairly
5:25 reliable text, but it's not inspired. Jesus is raised from the dead. go. Well, what if it's an unreliable book? Like I believe, you know, some of you who are here. What if it's an unreliable book? Jesus was still raised from the dead. Bottom line, whichever view you have of the text, you can get to the resurrection. Well, that doesn't even make sense. How are you going to do that? What I'm going to do is use skeptical data. I'm not going to use the whole arsenal of arguments that evangelicals will use. That's too conservative for some of you. I will use skeptical data. And the data I use tonight
6:11 will have two characteristics. It will be conceded by the vast majority of scholars who do this research. You say, "What's the vast majority?" 90 to 100%. Many of the things I cite will be 95 97. You go, "Come on, you're being overly specific. How do you know that? Cuz I've done the counting. I've done the head count. So, I can I can count the folks and give you a rundown. If you're interested in most of these questions, I can tell you about how many people lie on each side of the issue just because this is this big bibliography I've done. And uh just lining up where the scholars are on my computer is about 600 pages. Not commenting, not critiquing, not going after, just listing their positions over 600 pages. could be another doctoral
6:57 dissertation. Should have submitted this at Michigan State instead of the one I did. Um, by the way, I did the resurrection at Michigan State and I had people on my committee who did not believe it. And they were very, very fair about it. They said, "You can give good evidence, you get your degree. You know, it's not what we believe, but you give some good arguments, you get out of here. We're not going to judge you by whether we like what you're doing or not." Okay. So, I'm going to use critical data. I'm going to give you an article that is an argument that has rocked a generation of scholars. And this is why. Let me just use an example of a friend of mine, a New Testament scholar who's frequently called a skeptic.
7:42 His name's Dale Allison. He teaches in pit at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. And uh critics love him. He's he's quite a skeptic. Comes up with some really critical views. But get this. You say, "Dale, what do you I He and I had a dialogue and we've gotten to be friends." Dale, what do you believe about the resurrection of Jesus? You're skeptic. Here's a paraphrase from one of the sentences of his book on the resurrection. I have no doubt that Jesus's disciples saw him again after his death. That's a skeptic. How's that a skeptic? That's where new where scholarship is moved being forced by some of this data. Now I'm going to get to a point in the lecture. I'll tell you where when we get
8:30 there. I won't be able to explain it because the point because it'll take way too long. So you can question it or you can come tomorrow morning because I'm doing part of a lecture on this tomorrow morning unpacking one of the points. So all right. So I'm using skeptical data and using their arguments alone. Okay. Let me start like this. If you ask the average Christian, how do you know Jesus was raised from the dead? You get an answer like this for most Christians. Okay, I'm going to call this ground zero. Okay, this is 30 AD. A minority of scholars will say 33 AD, but just because it's a nice round number, let's say 30 AD, this is the date of the crucifixion, and we're going that way. Okay, so
9:16 that's creation. That's 2011. And you say, "How do you know Jesus was raised from the dead?" The average evangelical argues like this on this timeline. Well, have you heard about the Gospel of Mark? I'll use critics dating. Okay, I'll use critical dating. It's only about 65 or 70 AD. Subtract 30. So, it's only 35 to 40 years after the cross. Again, I'm using critical dating. Matthew about 10 years later, Luke about five years later, and John everybody dates about 95 AD. So the average Christian is going to go,
10:02 give me Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. John 95, subtract 30 plus 65 years. Only 65 years later. And every once in a while or actually with with non-speists, a few specialists, you're going to get this complaint. Come on, plus 65. Man, there's a lot of chance to blow it at plus 65. I'm thinking you need to study ancient historioggraphy. Historioggraphy is not modern historioggraphy. Let's take two other persons from the ancient world. Let's ask, what do we know about Alexander the
10:48 Great? Okay, new timeline. Here's Alexander's death. What are earliest sources? We have about five folks who wrote contemporary sources of Alexander. That's fantastic. Every one of them's lost. We have five other sources. And the first one get the point. The two best known sources for Alexander are Aryan and Plutarch.
11:34 Both over 400 years after this point. 400 years later. You go, well, a few of them are earlier than that. Yes, they are by just a little bit and they don't tell anything like the amount of information that Plutarch and Aryan tell. You go, that's not a very good example. Okay, if it's that bad, pick a different example. Let's do that. Back to Jesus 30 or 33. Let's say 30 AD. Tiberius Caesar, who's the Caesar on the throne when Jesus dies. We know that from ancient secular sources. Tiberius Caesar dies 37 AD. So he's contemporary of Jesus's
12:21 and we have about nine sources for Tiberius. Okay, now you're talking nine sources, four major sources for Tiberius. The first one is contemporary. And you skeptics go, beat that. First one's contemporary. Okay, that's good. That's a good source for sure. Unfortunately, this source is the least usable of the four sources. More about that, but it's great source. No putting it down. Good source. Next best source for Tiberius. Tacitus
13:07 about 118 AD plus 80. So John is too late at 65. But Tacitus and the next guy from whom we get the most information about Tiberius Suatonius. They are plus 80 and plus 85. The fourth one Dioius at plus 180. But John's way too late at 65. Now that sounds to me like playing fast and loose with the data. If you say John's too late at 65, you go, "Well, that there's the difference." The gospels record miracles. What about these ancient histories?
13:55 Virtually every one of them record miracles, prophecies portents dreams healings. In fact, Tacitus says he knows a couple people who were healed by one of the Roman emperors. Now, Tacitus is very careful. Sutonius is a lot is a lot more open. I mean, he's writing in 120 AD and he talks about Augustus Caesar Caesar Augustus and he says Caesar Augustus's mother was a virgin. And he was the son of one of the gods. Oh, in his table of contents,
14:41 Suatonius's 12 Caesars. 12 Caesars. And after five of their names, it says these two words, later deified, later deified, later deified, later deified, and later deified. Five out of 12. You say, "Well, okay. All right. So, there's some muddling here. That's why all ancient historians are stupid or something like that. But you can't say that because so much of what we allow depends on our sources. And the latest research for the first time when I went to school back in the early '7s, I was told don't ever say the gospels are biographies. Don't call them Greco Roman bio. That changed about 1990 with the University of London classic scholar who
15:27 argued that if you compare the sources the gospels are they're the they're very very similar to Greo Roman biographies like the ones we've been talking about Plutarch's famous lives or Aryan or these others. And so you say well all right but you're still going to have to convince me. Okay, just on the surface, what I'm saying is the New Testament is is very much comparable, better than almost any other sources. You say, "Yeah, but they're still doing religious propaganda." Well, guess what? What about Suatonius? Five Caesars later deified. What about moralizing? What about people who tell stories or have battles in ancient Rome in order to get a moral point across, which some of them say
16:12 they do? What I'm saying is a lot of writers in the ancient world they have other agendas but you can't say I mean you can say it but it doesn't help to say they all fabricated that doesn't help by the way Thusidities is one of the only ancient writers who doesn't really include the supernatural the Greek historian okay so again the question I was asking is what would the average Christian say about resurrection and I think they would argue for the reliability of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. That's not the argument I'm going to use tonight. I'm showing you an alternate path that some people take to answer this question.
16:58 I'm going to use a path that virtually the one I outlined already for you that virtually all critical scholars will allow you to make if they're specialists, if they know what they're doing, if they know the state of the research. And they're going to say, like Michael Martin said, put your best foot forward. Your best foot is Paul because there's 68 books. They're authoritative. And and and what's authoritative mean? Authoritative means we know the author. He was a scholar. I mean, I would say in today's in today by today's credentials, you'd probably say Paul or Saul of Tarsus had a PhD in Old Testament. I mean, that's the way you talk about him. He was he was person who had risen ahead of his class outdistance his colleagues.
17:44 He was the one who began his career by persecuting the church. He says himself in a few different passages that I took prisoner or worse men women and children who name the name of Christ. And then he says uh in in 1 Corinthians 15 both 91 and 1 Corinthians 15 91 and 158 he says I saw the risen Jesus now so he's a scholar he's at the right place right time you have to take his material seriously and everyone does okay so let's do that I'm going to make this same argument I'm going to start back here this is Jesus in about 30 AD and I'm going to go to all. And now I'm going to from now on
18:30 this timeline is going to be just 25 years. Okay? So I'll I'll stretch it out just a little bit and I'll say this is the writing of First Corinthians. That's 25 years. Well, when do you date First Corinthians? It doesn't make any difference if you're liberal, conservative skeptical evangelical. Makes no difference. Everybody puts 1 Corinthians is about 53 to 58 AD. Some very liberal people put it very early. Some conservatives put it late. But a nice average is 55 minus 30. That's your 25 years. 25 years. Paul starts out 1 Corinthians 15 1-2 like this. He says, "When I came to you Corinthians,
19:15 I preached the gospel to you." Okay, footnote. What's the gospel? Whenever the gospel, now I'm asking about the historical content of the good news Evangelion the good news of the Christian proclamation, whenever you ask what's the the historical content, however else gospel is defined in the New Testament, these three beliefs are always present. Jesus's deity, heard one of the professors say, son of God. Secondly, died literally. It's not hard. We all die. Raised from the dead. That's tough. Okay, that's the minimum gospel data.
20:01 Deity, death, and resurrection. Now, sometimes other things are mentioned. Paul says buried a couple times. He says born of a woman a couple times, but he doesn't mention these. I guess the born of the woman thing, I think he's contrasting human, the classic Christian, born of a woman, son of God, giving the classic shot at the two natures. That's my guess. But once he mentions, well, he implies that the tomb was empty, but he doesn't do that real often. The three that stay there all the time, that's my footnote. When you see gospel, it's at least the belief that Jesus was the son of God, deity, died on the cross by Roman crucifixion, was raised from the dead. Okay, back to first Corinthians 15. Paul said, "When I
20:47 came to you, I preached the gospel, and those of you who trusted it, accepted it, believed it." There's different Greek words. The Greek word by the way that's usually translated believe or faith puo is a very strong term. It means to to trust to cast yourself upon to surrender. Contrary to what a lot of evangelicals say it's not a magical repeating of 20 words and nothing ever changes in your life. It's a life change conditioned upon that kind of a commitment. But it means again to rely upon, to trust, to surrender, to
21:35 walk along with. A couple times New Testament writers say, "Walk in his steps." All right, back to Paul. He says, "This is the gospel I gave you. If you believed it, trusted, committed yourself, you've changed." He says, "You're a Christian. And if you didn't, you're not." Pretty simple. first two verses. Then he says in verse three starts like this he said for I gave you what I was given as of first importance. This is a very important phrase and this is the phrase that I want to talk about tomorrow but I'll outline just a little bit here. I gave you what I was given as a first importance that Jesus he says that Christ Jesus
22:21 isn't mentioned here. He says that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried and rose again from the dead according to the scriptures. And then here comes a list of appearances. He said he appeared to Peter. And in this list, there are three individuals. Peter, James, the brother of Jesus, and then Paul adds his own name to the end of the list. Verse eight, last of all, he appeared to me. And there are three groups in this list. a group called the 12, which is the name for the 12, even though Judas is dead by now. The 12, all the apostles, which scholars say, well, I don't know. It's got to be a group bigger than 12, but exactly who he's talking about is tough. And then he says over 500 of the brothers, over 500 men at one time. So that that should could
23:07 be 800 or a thousand people, who knows? But but a big group. And those are the three groups, three individuals. If there's a unanimous conclusion in the New Testament, close to it, it's that this list Paul is giving is what we might call an early credle statement. There are a lot of synonyms, early credle statement, early tradition, early confession. But in the New Testament, there are dozens of little reports that are in a sense extra biblical. You go, "Well, how so?" They're in the New Testament. Yes, but they circulated orally before there was a single New Testament book. So, let's call them, let's say, pre-New Testament.
23:55 And many of them go back to the 30s AD, but hang on to that one. I'll uh I'll walk you through that one. But there's many of these. And Paul's introductory words tell you that this is one of them. Now, there's a lot of ways to tell. For one, like I said, a couple times in Paul's writings here in 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Corinthians 11, Paul says, "I gave you that which I also received." The Aramaic equivalent, Paul's home language, Jesus's home language. The Aramaic Aramaic equivalent is it's technical. It's a technical phrase for giving and passing on tradition. The ones that were famous for this were the Pharisees having scholars training them and
24:42 passing on tradition and they passed them on it passed it on. Paul, he tells us, was a Pharisee. So he's part of this group that gives and passes on tradition, but we'd all assume that's what teachers do anyway. In part, they talk about sources and people. Okay, so back to verse three. I gave you that which I was given as of first importance. I gave you what I was given. Okay. When does Paul write this? About 55 AD, give or take. But he says, "This is when I came to Corenth." First two verses. This is what I preached to you when I came to Corinth. When did he come to Corenth? This is the date that's very firmly established by an archaeological find in the New Testament. and he came either at the end
25:27 of 51 AD or the beginning of 52. They can narrow it down to a one-year calendar trip. So he says he's writing it here. This is what I gave you. When I was here with you in Corenth. Okay. So when and from whom did Paul receive this material? Right? You want to know that he got this from somebody who's in the, you know, right place, right time, somebody who's authoritative, somebody who can tell the truth, somebody who's hopefully a scholar themselves. All right? So, he's preaching this at Corenth 51 to 52 AD. First, I'll give you the conclusion and
26:12 then I'll give you the argument for it. Most critics believe that Paul received this material about 35 AD when he visited Jerusalem for 15 days and had a talk with Peter and James. James the brother of Jesus now the other James son of Zebedee John's brother is dead. He's martyed. So Paul comes to Jerusalem about 35 AD. Well, this is very very early. You know, when you're doing historioggraphy, two really important things whenever possible in the ancient world, and these are rare, are to have early eyewitness sources, which you almost don't have for
26:58 any of Tiberius and what you don't have for any of Alexander. Early eyewitness sources, and this dates about plus five. You go, how in the world are you going to argue that? Okay, that's the second text that I want to go to. Galatians, end of Galatians 1, beginning of Galatians 2. Again, Paul's the author, not disputed. And Paul says, he says, I was a persecutor of the church. I wasn't a good guy. And then God got a hold of me and showed me Jesus, revealed Jesus to me, he said. And then he said in Galatians 11:17 and 11:18, he said, "I didn't go running up to
27:44 Jerusalem to talk to those who were apostles before me. I went off by myself in Arabia [snorts] for three years and then I went up to Jerusalem." This is very important. I went off to Arabia for three years and then I went up to Jerusalem. Okay. Now remember what's Paul considered authoritative? What's authoritative mean? Good scholar, right? time, right place. He could be wrong according to the skeptics. He could be wrong, but he's an honest source who's in the right place, right time to know what's going on. So, let's use Paul for our math. 30 AD. When is the famous trip to Damascus where Paul says he met the risen Jesus? Some scholars put it at plus one, some at plus two, some at plus
28:30 three, an average plus two. Okay. 30 AD cross. Paul meets Jesus plus two. He says, "I went up I went to Arabia for 3 years and then I went up to Jerusalem." 2 plus three, five. You go, "Well, I think he was converted at plus three." Great. 3+ 3, six. Oh, I think he was converted plus one. Great. 1 plus three four. But we know the range right here. And it's about again it don't make a difference if you're skeptic conservative same dates about plus two first conversion plus three first trip to Jerusalem we're at five we're at plus five Paul said I went up to Jerusalem and I
29:17 spent 15 days with Peter and James the brother of Jesus. Cambridge New Testament professor last generation CH Dodd made a very famous statement. He said Paul spent 15 days with Peter and James and it's safe to say they did more than talk about the weather. Well, what do you think they talked about at plus five? Approximately plus five. Well, where is this told? Galatians 1. What's the theme of the book of Galatians? The gospel. What's the gospel again? Deity, death, resurrection of Jesus. And those who trust are those who are Christians.
30:02 It's a theme of the book. Besides, if I'm Paul who says he's preached nothing but Christ and him crucified, then he says if he's not raised from the dead, crucifixion means nothing. Can you imagine Paul going for 15 days? It's just a human argument. Could you imagine him going for 15 days and not saying hey Peter James you tell me how you saw him and I'll tell you how I saw him got to come up be my first question but again the theme of Galatians is the gospel and in that context Paul says I spent 15 days with them chatting with them now there's a Greek word in Galatians 1:18 very interesting term hysteresi I hysteri the root word is
30:48 histo h i s t o r it's the Greek word from which we get our English word history now you can't jump the gun and say oh well that word means Paul was playing the role of the historian well that would be to put 20th century meaning into first century and what we really need to do is find out how this world word is used in extra biblical papyrie and the other earliest writings There's two word studies that I know of, two extended word studies in this word, neither written by a conservative. And both of them concluded that the best way to define hysteresi in this context is in the sense of playing a an investigative reporter. That hysteresi
31:35 means basically it means this. I checked it out. I was there. You know, we every night 11 o'clock your part of the country might be 10 o'clock eyewitness news. We were there. We were there for you. Heraldo Rivera, you know, we're on we're on the scene. We're in the middle of the hurricane down in Florida. You can't see it, but you can watch our reporter. That's the conclusion that these two studies came to that hysterasi means to check something out firsthand to play the role of investigative reporter. So Paul says Jesus died. I met him. I went to Jerusalem.
32:21 I met Peter the chief apostle. I met James, the brother of Jesus. And in context, I think it's safe to argue they discuss the gospel. Now, how does the gospel define back 1 Corinthians 15? It's at least the deity, death, resurrection of Jesus. Resurrection is certainly part of the definition as you see on your brochures and so on. And in the article that was in the paper, uh Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:12-20, that if Christ has not been raised, twice he says our faith is vain. once verse 18 he says if Christ has not been raised your loved ones who died in Christ don't have any Christian hope maybe the most pessimistic verse in the Bible verse 19 he says if Christ hasn't
33:06 been raised we are of all persons most miserable and then in verse 20 says but Jesus is raised from the dead so just reverse everything I see I mean it what I'm saying is it's that important and he's talking to James and Peter right about here playing the role of an investigator by the way. An ancient piece of papyrie uses his store his terasi this way. It's used of a geographer who's checking out a river. Instead of asking people what's up around that bend, what's up there? He goes himself. This is where I had to portage. This is fast moving water. This is shallow. Had to get out and push. That was the use of hysteresi of being there checking it and giving you a
33:52 report. That's one use of it in papy in the ancient papyrie which is a very select period of time shortly [clears throat] after it it only goes a little bit longer um about 100 years that that the papyrie after this. So so Paul's here and doing this all right now then as I told you no chapter division there James one goes right into James 2. This is one passage in the originals. And in James chap 2, I think it's one of the oddest, strangest, most interesting verses in the entire New Testament. Galatians 2:2, Paul says this. 14 years later,
34:39 I went back up to Jerusalem. Critics like Helmet Caster put this at 48 AD. Still very early. 48 AD. He says, "14 years later, I went up to Jerusalem again, Galatians 2:2, to set before the apostles the gospel message I was preaching to see if I was running or had run in vain." What go? Yeah. I went up there again to set before them the gospel message I was preaching. make sure we're on the same page. Paul, you waited 18 years to check it out. And Paul would
35:26 say, "You're not following my argument very well, are you? Let's do it again. The gospel originates here or even before when Jesus is preaching. I met him here." So, I got it from Jesus himself. Can you beat that source? I didn't think so. All right. I got it from Peter and James. Can you beat those guys? Didn't think so. This is at least my third attempt to verify it, but my other two were much closer. No, this isn't my first attempt to verify it. Been up there before. Checked it out. Now, in Galatians 1, the [clears throat] ones who are present are Peter, James, the brother of Jesus, Paul.
36:11 in in Galatians 2. Now you got Barnabas, you got Titus, you know, people who if they were alive in our day and time would command quite a crowd, you know, ti Titus or Barnabas, but they were small fry in this discussion because Peter was there again, Galatians 2, James the brother of Jesus there again, Paul there again, and one fourth member, John the son of Zebedee. I don't I doubt anybody could make much of a case that these aren't the four most influential names in the early church. Peter had apostle, James the brother of Jesus. Paul the persecutor term believer and John often called the beloved disciple.
36:59 They're all there. Paul, what's he doing? He set before them the gospel he was preaching. And Galatians chapter 2, just a few verses later, these five words, they added nothing to me. Really? Yeah. I went up there and saw the big guys. He calls them pillars. The pillars of the church. Paul went to see Peter, James, John, and they added nothing to me. What does that mean? Well, I think Paul's saying means we're all on the same page. Means we're all preaching the same
37:44 gospel. In fact, Paul says something just like that after the early Christian creed in 1 Corinthians 15 3-7, which is, I would say, is more respected by critics than any other New Testament passage. Just a few verses later, 1 Corinthians 15:11, four verses later, Paul says this about the apostles. He just got done talking about the apostles. Just got done talking about them seeing Jesus. And he says, 1 Corinthians 15:11, "Whether it is I or they, so we teach, and so you believe." And the next few verses, he uses the plural pronoun. I think it's three times. Now, who's the we we we? That's he and the other apostles. But again, verse 11, whether you heard it from me or whether
38:30 you hear it from them, he says, whether it is I or whether it is they, so we preach and so you believe. So we get it first, we get it from them. Galatians 2, they added nothing to me through Paul's eyes there. And then we get it from Paul. 1 Corinthians 15:11. We're all preaching the same message. It's a very early date. Plus, we've got the backup from here and here. You know, I don't need to tell you that that's not a day of instant messaging. It's not a day of emails. These folks in Jerusalem may not have heard that Paul was coming until just shortly before he came. You know, I I appreciate Here's Peter the fisherman, John the fisherman, James the brother of
39:18 Jesus. What was he? Carpenter. It's a good guess. They're there and Peter looks up and says, "Oh no, here comes Paul. This guy is obsessivecompulsive." No, he didn't say that. He says, "This guy just breaks me over the colds every time he comes. I mean, just ask questions every which way from whatever." He goes, "It's tough. James, you're the pastor of this church. You talk to him. No, I'm just a carpenter. John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. Nobody argues with John. John, you go talk to him. And by that time, Paul
40:04 walks through the front door. Hey guys, good to see you. I'm just saying Paul was a very highpowered source. But five words, they added nothing to me. So what happens? They said, Paul, you go out to the Gentiles and take this message. Peter's going to go to the Jews. Message is the same. Now, I won't get into discussions about whether the earliest Jewish Christians still obeyed um you know, part of the law and things like that. It's another issue. But on the nature of the gospel, DD, death, resurrection, they look like they're all on the same page. All right, just a few more moves here. This all happens. The earliest date, not
40:51 Jesus, but the earliest date with the men about 35 AD. But this is when Paul Paul knew his testimony. This is when Paul heard their testimony. You can't say this report is plus five. This is when Paul heard their report. Can we get any further back than plus five? I mean, not that that's you have to you have to study ancient historioggraphy to know what this is like in the ancient world. In fact, by the way, two critical sources, not evangelical non-conservative two sources, a German historian Hans Van Compenhausen says, "This text 1 Corinthians 15:3 and following says, "Gives you everything you could possibly ask for from an ancient historical
41:38 text." And then an American critic. First time I met this guy, he was representing the agnostic viewpoint at a series of debates. Howard Clark Key, he wrote a little book called What Can We Know About Jesus? Published by Cambridge University Press. And Key starts his book like this. He says, "The earliest material that we have for Jesus, including 1 Corinthians 9:1, am I not an apostle? Have I not seen the Lord?" At 1 Corinthians 15 3-7, Key says, and you have to know how rare this is in contemporary research, but Key who was representing the agnostic viewpoint, Key says this material is so tight, so early, so historical, you could take it into a court of law and
42:24 get a positive verdict. I'm just saying the kind of respect that a person who represents an agnostic viewpoint in a in a debate years ago, I met him at the same debate where I met series of debates in Dallas, Texas, where I met Anthony Flu and he said you could take it into court of law. That's how much this is respected. But this is when Paul got it. Now Paul knew his testimony, but this is when he heard theirs. Okay, now watch carefully. If Peter and James gave it to him, then they had it before he had it. Now, a credle statement, as I'll try to explain tomorrow, a credle statement is an oral statement. We now know that up to 90% of Jesus's audiences were
43:12 illiterate. Contrary to other things you've heard, large percentage, 70 90% illiterate. How do you teach an illiterate audience? you largely repeat and repeat so it can be passed on by memory and Jews were very very good at that far better than we are today because they memorize large passages of scripture they did that in synagogue so number one you either repeat repeat repeat those are the creeds and the traditions and so on that I've been defining or you tell stories ah parables you tell stories or you give short pathy statements. It takes a while for these creedle
43:57 statements to be to be published in short pathy. When you read them in the Greek, some of your translations have it set off like this. In the translations, it's set off in verse. It takes a while to get things in that form. Okay? So, when Paul hears it, they had it before Paul, Peter and James. It takes a while to get it into that form and we're already back to the cross. So much so, let me give you the names of three scholars who argue that this material 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 goes all the way back to 30 AD. All right, these are all one of them is an American, but all three of them teach
44:43 or just retired from British universities. Larry Herado, he's the American. uh I think he's head of the religion department at Edinburghough University. Her title specializes on the deity of Christ. He asks the question when and for what reasons was Jesus recognized as deity and he's written some huge works. His big one is called Lord Jesus Christ about 500 pages published a few years ago. It's the most scholarly treatis written on the subject. Second, Richard Balkam retired from St. Andrews University in Scotland. He may be retired even from Cambridge now, but we left St. Andrews. He retired in Cambridge and last time I heard he was distinguished professor at Cambridge University. Richard Balkam. And a third person is as
45:28 well known as any historical Jesus scholar, James DG Dunn, who recently retired from Durham University. And here's what they say together. They say coming out of the gate 30 AD two doctrines had to have been preached from the beginning or there'd be no Christianity today. Two doctrines had to be teach taught from the beginning. The deity of Christ, he's a son of God. And Herertado argues this from early hymns from from writings on pottery from some really early inscriptions from the 30s AD. He says you have to have the deity of Christ. He's perceived to be the son of God and the resurrection. So Herado says right here. Balkam says right here. And James DG
46:16 Dunn who may be the most influential of the of the three. Dun says this material Paul's given us in 1 Corinthians 15 which he gave orally here which he received here and by the way Balkam says this is a consensus New Testament position critics conservatives everybody left right he's Paul got this material 35 AD Balkam says that's consensus Dun says this material had to have been credized. You ready? Within six months after the event, he
47:02 said, "This happened whatever year you make it." 3033. This happened in the spring. By fall, this material was created and diverse. So these fellas Herertado Balkam Dunn say that coming out of the gate we've got deity and resurrection. And so when Balkam says consensus 35 AD again this is an example of how a critical scholar it the point I was trying to make at the beginning. There's none of these specialists who say ah you're using the New Testament that's not allowed. They use the New Testament. Everybody uses the New Testament. They just don't use it the way evangelical
47:48 lay people do. That would take a whole another lecture. But they go after it with a whole different hermeneutic. But they do think it's the best text out there. If you said to them, "Well, Josephus talks about this." They'd say, "Forget Josephus. Paul's way better." That is exactly what they'd say. Yeah, but Josephus is secular. Forget it. Paul's way better. That's what they'd say. In fact, once I was giving this lecture just a few years ago. I was giving it in Cambridge and I had two hours to speak and part of my lecture was to do this timeline. There were only about 35 people there. They were all professors and PhD students. And imagine as I'm doing this and, you
48:33 know, stepping off my timeline, I see somebody walk into the back and I know who he is and I'm thinking, "Oh, for crying out loud, Richard Balkam's here." Everybody in the room, you know, they're looking back going, "Oh, Richard Balkam's here." Everybody wants Dr. Richard Bacham of Cambridge research distinguished researcher, senior researcher at Cambridge. Lecture was over. I gave the whole thing. Students were flocking back around Balkam. Few came up and asked questions. Room cleared out. Richard was there alone. I walked up to him and I said, "Richard, good to see you again. Got a question for you. You've heard my whole spiel for two hours. You've seen my timeline. Here's what I want to ask you.
49:19 What would you correct? He stood there for a minute. He went I think it's pretty good. I just leave it. And I said, "Come on, Richard. You're being kind. I really, really want to know. I want to learn where what did I say wrong? What doesn't represent contemporary scholarship? What could I correct?" He said, "All right, tell you one thing. If I were you and you were talking about the creeds and you were given a little bit of a bibliography, I would have cited Oscar Coleman's book, The Earliest Christian Confessions. He was giving me a biblioraphic note. He left out the main book on the subject. And I kind of laughed a little bit and I said, "I'm not laughing at you." I said, "I gave
50:05 you the same lecture at Oxford three days ago and I spent five minutes on that book." I said, "You're totally right. Coleman's the best book in the field. What else can I add? He said, ' That's it. I quite agree with everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is this is not the state of New Testament scholarship 40 years ago. In fact, when I studied at Michigan State in the mid70s, except for evangelicals, you might be able to find five scholars who believed in the empty tomb. And you know, the empty tomb is not a supernatural event. Things happen to make tombs empty. And they don't have to be supernatural.
50:52 But I could probably count while I was doing my dissertation maybe five non-eangelical scholars who believe in the empty tomb. Today, as nearly as I can tell, between 2/3 and 3/4 of relevant scholars who get in who dig in here and do research, historians, philosophers uh theologians New Testament writers conceived the empty tomb. Dale Ellison, the skeptic with whom I began, who said, "I don't doubt that Jesus's earliest followers saw him again after his death." He says, he just barely concedes it. He says, "By a short margin, but he said, "I'll concede the empty tomb." Skeptic. Here's another one.
51:38 EP Sanders, called Ed by his friends. EP Sanders used to teach at Oxford, retired just a few years ago from Duke. He says in his little book, The Human Figure of Jesus, where he starts off the same way I am by talking about historical facts that believers and unbelievers share, he says several times in the book, he doesn't explain it, but he says this. He said it's a given among New Testament scholars today, critics and not, it's a given that after Jesus's death, his disciples saw him again. He said how he appeared. I'm not prepared to answer that. But I but the disciples s now realize what he's doing. He's just not he's not giving his view. He's giving you
52:24 consensus scholarship. Scholarship has moved over so much that he says it's an equally secure fact to believe that Jesus's earliest followers not thought they saw him. That's usually the way I say it. Sanders said that they saw him. I don't go that I mean I don't I don't go that far. I usually say contemporary scholarship says the earliest disciples had experiences that they believe were appearances of the risen Jesus. Here's Bartman. He says that comment, the one I just made, Jesus's earliest followers had experiences that they believe were appearance of the risen Jesus. Bartman says I have no objection to that. the the well-known skeptic um University of North Carolina. If you're not familiar with him, he's the hot skeptic today in
53:10 the US. He says, "I have no problem with that statement." He says, "Why should I have a problem with it? It's established by recognized historioggraphy." He you can get there by historical principles. kind of remind you of of um uh Keyy's comment, Howard Clark Key saying we could take it to a court of law. He says, "Of course I would concede it." But then here's what Bart Norman's going to say. Well, of course you have people, you have things we can call appearances. That's clear. But then what do skeptics do? They're going to come up with what we call a naturalistic alternative theory. And let me define I just have a few
53:56 minutes here. Let me define a naturalistic alternative theory. This is not a naturalistic alternative theory. You're a loser. It didn't happen. No. What's that? That's not a naturalistic theory. That's just a denial. That counts no more than a believer saying, "Yeah, you got it. it happened. Okay, they're both rather vehement affirmations or denials. Those are not naturalistic theories. Here's a naturalistic theory. Jesus really didn't rise from the dead. What happened was fill in the blank. You got to fill in the blank. I did a survey of naturalistic scholars.
54:43 I mean scholars who take naturalistic theories and going across the whole board specialist and non-speist. In other words, I went to some of the internet type websites with people who don't have the credentials that some of the the most these guys do, but I counted them too. In fact, they're by far the largest margin of what the figure I'm going to give you here. About 25% of scholars writing today think they can fill in that blank. I'll tell you what happened. And the vast majority of that 25% are people who if you look at their credentials, they have a BA no more. They don't work in this field. I'm dead serious. They could be I could give you some examples, but I mean by way of
55:29 their job, they work at um their salesman with a BA in history. I'll count them. Trying to be honest here. They they don't rank with the skeptics with the degrees who are the specialists, but I'll count them. But what I'm saying is they're the vast majority, the 25%. If you ask the guys with the PhDs who state teach in the big universities around the world, how many of you think you could fill in the blank? I haven't counted that. I don't know. But I would imagine it's probably around 10%. Very, very low. And here's what happens. The problem with trying to fill in the blank is that when you do it, you get kind of forced back against the wall by the data I just mentioned. And somebody
56:16 will say, well, using only that data, how would you answer this, this, this, this, this, and this. And they'll come up with three, four, five, six, seven, eight reputations from just the data that skeptics and believers share. So most don't try to go there. Some think that the most popular response today, now I doubt this, but some think that the most popular response today is the guy who just says, "You know something? I don't know what happened, but I really don't believe it." That's not a naturalistic theory. That's again a sort of a quasi denial sort of denial, but they don't fill in the blank. Very few skeptics today use
57:02 those old naturalistic theories. disciples stole the body, you know, or combination theories. Jesus came from Venus. He was a very wise man, you know, but so was Superman. He had strange strange powers like the 1958 black and white television special. He could change rivers and bend steel with his bare hands. Well, see, Jesus visited from Krypton and he I mean, you hear [clears throat] I heard a lecturer doing that one time on a campus. I stood off kind of in the back and listen to this. It's very interesting argument because there are some other presuppositions. They said Jesus had blonde hair and blue eyes because that's all the people from this planet have. Well, you've got an Aryan Jesus. That's
57:49 not the kind of Jesus we have from history. atheist was Middle Eastern. You have to account for that. I'm just the point I'm making is people can say anything. They can fill in the blank with anything. But very few scholars do it because the data go against them. All right. According to my watch, I've only got about three minutes. Let me tell you real briefly. Maybe some of you here know my story about my own family because I just I was just counting recently. And our story is told in at least 11 million pieces of literature by other people. In 1995, my wife died of stomach cancer. Um, I had these makebelieve. Okay, I want to make sure everybody hears me.
58:35 This didn't happen. But I had make these makebelieve discussions with God on my front porch. I mean, I could imagine because my wife was upstairs sleeping. She was sleeping 16, 17 hours a day. She came home with a tube in her stomach, had to feed her, give her medicine, and she would sleep most of the They had a child monitor up there first week of May. I went in the front porch and I pictured myself, I mean, I sat on the front porch, but I pictured myself asking God, which I did many times, why? She's 43 years old. My young youngest child is only nine. What's going on? And I pictured in my mind, I picture God saying, Gary, I know it's rough. Let me ask you a question. What kind of a world is this? Well, if you're one of my students, you know that no matter what
59:21 question you ask me, I'll get back to the resurrection sooner or later. It's my favorite topic. Done 18 of my 35 books on the resurrection. There's no other answer. So, I thought, what kind of a world is it? Lord, I don't know. It's a world where you raised your son from the dead. Okay, good. But Lord, what I want to know is why she Gary, you know, my son crawled called to me from the cross. He thought I'd forsaken him. Yeah, I know. You know something? I answered his prayer. What? I answered his prayer. What do you mean you answered his prayer? I raised him from the dead on Sunday. Lord, he was suffering on the cross and
1:00:08 oh no. Are you telling me she's going to die and I'll only get the answer if I go through it? Gary, I'm just telling you my son was on the cross. I left him there. [clears throat] Should you get a better deal than he gets? Couldn't answer that. And then I pictured his final answer to me to be something like, "Look, relax. You guys will be together someday." A card that somebody gave me. When I put the cards away in the attic, this card is up on top. It's the card that was the most moving. For years, I couldn't repeat the sentence on the card.
1:00:54 I still struggle uh with it sometimes 15 years later. But the card said, "I'll bet you can't wait for that day, when you get to heaven and you get to walk with your wife hand in hand." I said, "Lord, I can't take this." We were best friends, the mother of my four children. Lord, I can't I can't wait that many years. The worst I told my closest friends, the worst possible thing has come upon me. But still, God's good. I believe that. I don't have to figure it out to say God's good. But I'm suggesting that this gets us right back to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 18. Paul said, "If Christ has not been raised from the dead, our loved ones who
1:01:40 died in Christ have died in vain. I don't believe my wife died in vain." I think there's very good evidence for what's going on there. Not just the resurrection, that's a whole another topic, but not just the resurrection. There's no way she died in vain. But what I'm saying is if you have the resurrection, the the straight line resurrection argument is to eternal life. That's what the resurrection is. It's to eternal life. The message of the New Testament is because of the resurrection of Jesus, eternal life is available. And in this makeelieve story about what God would say to me, I pictured him saying, you know, it's all going to work out. You guys are going to be together. It's hard now, but you'll see. And you know, today I still don't know my why my wife died at age 43. I don't know. But I'll tell you something
1:02:27 honestly with all my heart. It's irrelevant. Okay. What good would it do to know why she died? Would that help me? I mean, you know, it might give me a little might answer a couple questions, but you know, where are my kids? What are they going to do? And what about her? H [snorts] how's she doing? I'm just saying folks, Paul says it this way, and I'll end with this. Paul says in First Thessalonians, another one of those 68 books that critics accept. Paul says, he said, "We mourn." Remember Jesus wept at Lazarus's grave. Paul said, "We mourn, but not as those without hope." We mourn, but not as those without hope. My family mourned. I'm going to tell you
1:03:13 something kind of gross, maybe to some of you. The first time I saw my wife laying in the casket when we went to the funeral home, I thought I was going to die. But do you ever think about the difference between mourning with hope and mourning with all without hope? You know the difference? It's only eternity. Morning with hope, morning without hope. Do I know all the answers? Absolutely not. I know where she died. I don't. But it's not a copout. It really isn't. Unless this argument can be disproven. It's not a copout to say I don't know the answer, but I know the one who knows the answer because this argument tells me he went through it to secure that. In fact, almost 20 times in the New Testament, we're told that believers
1:03:59 will be raised like Jesus because of the resurrection. That's just one of many, many imp practical points, you know, kind of a where do we go from here? So, I'll leave you with that.
