The Historical Reliability of the Gospels - Lesson 26

This is a course on the historical reliability of the New Testament Gospels. Session 26. Continuing from our last segment on the unique problem of miracles. We left off having left unaddressed in any detail, the biggest challenge in the 21st century, at least among New Testament scholars or biblical scholars more generally to the miracles in the Bible. Not nearly so much historical or philosophical or scientific questions. Those, though those do continue to come up. But very much the question of parallels outside of the New Testament. We want, therefore, in this segment to compare and contrast in a bit more detail the miracles that one finds in other ancient literature that potentially impinged on the New Testament world and see what we see. If. You've been with us since early in this series when we talked about the apocryphal gospels. You will recall that these miracles were of a much more fanciful or frivolous nature. Sometimes one can see what inspired the the later writer, what gave them the idea? Jesus withering up a playmate that had been taunting him, reminiscent of that miracle in the Gospels about withering the fig tree. A symbol for the coming destruction of Israel. But it's one thing to cause a tree to shrivel up. It's another to do it to a human being. There are no direct parallels to fashioning birds out of clay and making them fly away. But one could imagine that as Jesus was believed to be the giver of life, that this kind of a story could come to someone's imagination. Accounts of Jesus going to hell, the realm of the dead and bringing God's people out of there between his death and resurrection reflects one segment of ancient Jewish belief. But nothing in the Gospels themselves would demand that this topic ever be addressed.

 And then in the Gnostic texts, we tend not to find miracles at all, but simply extended teachings or extended catalogs of Jesus teaching. So yes, there are some superficial similarities, but they are only that nothing corresponding to the consistent gospel testimony of the New Testament that miracles are a sign of the in breaking Kingdom of God, uniquely arriving in a new stage of power in the Ministry of Jesus, and yet to be completed in all of its fullness with His coming future return. In the area of Greek and Roman heroes or gods. There are again, especially in recent years, many who have resurrected older, 20th and even 19th century works that claim that there were all kinds of similarities between Jesus and other individuals, as we noticed in our last segment. Most of these are exaggerated. There may only be one or two parallels in a given individual, not the whole package as is sometimes claimed, and even then they may be fairly distant parallels unless they are post-New Testament too late to have influenced any accounts about Jesus. Undoubtedly, the most striking set of parallels comes in a third century work by a man named Filer Stratos, who wrote about a late first century individual from Tianna in part of what today would be Northwestern Turkey. Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius does. According to File, a Stratus biography works several miracles of healing that have some similarity to stories in the Gospels. Exercises daemons, which by definition bears some similarity to stories in the Gospels. And on one occasion apparently raises a young man from death by approaching his beer or coffin as part of the very funeral procession containing it is going past and on the spot awakens him. Thereby creating some striking parallels to the account in Luke seven versus 11 and following of the resurrection of the son of the widow at nine.

The question here, however, is again, one of chronology. Apollonius lived a half century after Jesus. Even if we accept all of follow Stratos accounts as accurate. And interestingly, there are some fragmentary sources about this individual from an earlier date that do not nearly emphasize a miracle working dimension to his ministry as much. It may be that over the centuries his life has been embellished. But for the sake of argument, let's assume every detail and file of Stratos is accurate. It all happens too late. It all is recorded too late to have had any influence on Jesus or the gospel writers. If there was. A dependance It would have had to have been. Apollonius on Jesus. Follow Stratos on the Gospel Writers. And it may be that the parallels simply come out of a similar milieu, and we are not to draw lines of dependance either way. That is as close as we ever get. In the Greek and Roman world. Someone who was known to be a man, known to be a philosopher, known to be a teacher with the reputation of working miracles. That is as close a parallel as we ever get to the figure of Jesus. Now, one will hear frequent references to the religion of Mithras. Mithras was a Greek and Roman sect that grew in significance and number so that by the third century, by the two hundreds A.D., some estimate that there may have been close to the same number of devotees of myth heroism as there were to Christianity. Recognizing that we're still only talking even about perhaps less than 10% of the Roman Empire being Christian by this time. But Ms.. Ross was. Possibly. And centuries, millennia before the New Testament. A human being may be never more than one of the gods of the pantheons of Greece and Rome.

It's hard to be sure, but he was not a figure in recent memory that people knew was a human being. Mithras was said to be a bull slayer, slaying an enemy of. The Greek and Roman people and their gods. And making him into a sacrificial victim. There have been allegations of parallels between initiation rites into myth, racism, baptism with the blood of sacrificial bull flowing down across. An initiates person. But that is a far cry from Christian baptism in water directly coming out of Jewish practices of water baptism for proselytize. It's true. There is mention of blood in the accounts of the Eucharist. This is my body. This is my blood shed for you that the bread and the wine symbolize them. But. Metaphorically not literal, blood dripping, and that two emerged much more clearly out of a Jewish ritual, Passover. The problem with those who would see these kinds of parallels as suggesting Christian dependance on the Greco-Roman world is that they ignore the demonstrable genealogical connection between the beginning of Christianity and Judaism and the much closer. Parallelism within Jewish rituals and rites of initiation sacraments to use the later Christian term. Ah, but Mithras was born of a virgin. Ms.. Rice sprang from Iraq. According to the mythology. Now, I suppose it's unlikely that the Rock had had sexual relations with anything or anyone. But that is stretching. Dramatically the concept of a virgin birth. It is true that in the second and third centuries A.D.. More parallels began to be drawn between myth, heroism and Christianity, the most famous of which was the establishment of. A holy day. In honor of the birth of the God. On December 25th. But this is a second or third century a development never attested in earlier.

 Mithras. So if it's not simply that Christians chose a day that the pagans around them already had off so that they could worship and be left relatively alone. The only lines of dependance that can be drawn are from Christianity to myth, realism and not the other way around. What's more, this was an all male sect, and it was a militaristic group. Made up of those who reveled in commemorating Rome's victories and looking forward to future battles. Neither of which has any parallel in the Gospels. Is this the best people can do? Who want to find parallels? Well, someone will say, What about Horace? And there are books and blogs saying here is where the inspiration for the gospel writers came from. Horace. Born of a virgin. Horace. Dying a sacrificial death. Horace resurrected from the dead. Horace was never a man. Horace was never alleged to have ever been a man. Horus was the son of ISIS and Cyrus, Egyptian goddess and God, respectively. And the virgin birth was not birth of a from a virgin at all. Merely ISIS firstborn. The sacrificial death was not about Horace. It was about his father, Osiris. And the only sacrifice was that ISIS was so upset with him that when he died, she cut his body up into multiple pieces. And yes, there was a miracle. According to the mythology, they were reassembled in the underworld and Horus came back to life. And he said, Scuse me. Oh, Cyrus came back to life and he stayed in the underworld. Beware of people who talk vaguely about mythological parallels. Ask them for the details. All of this for Horus was pre-Christian, but half of it involved his father. And the parallels upon closer inspection. Are pretty slim. So maybe we are to look to the realm of magic or the occult.

In the ancient world. Maybe we are to look to exorcists for the closest parallel to Jesus. There are accounts in Jewish, Greek and Roman circles alike of other people besides Jesus casting out demons. We don't always know their historical value, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that they have some. One of the striking differences between the accounts of Jesus and all other known exorcists from the ancient Mediterranean world. Is that they used extensive formula, incantations, paraphernalia, magical objects, and in Jewish circles, at the very least, prayed to God of Israel, invoking his name and his presence and power. Whereas the accounts in the Gospels, without exception. Have Jesus simply speaking a word without any introductory formula, without any prayers to God, without any incantations, without any objects or paraphernalia. And the parallels don't extend beyond that one kind of miracle. Jewish backgrounds probably should be turned to. For the closest parallels. To Christian miracles, but not from Second Temple Judaism, not from the inner testimonial period, from the Old Testament itself. The ministries of Elijah and Elijah. Contain the closest parallels. Two healings, two resurrection from the dead to power over nature. But for the Christian believer. For the Orthodox Jew. Those things really happened. So they would support. The testimony of the gospels. Of course, one can doubt them as well. But then one quickly engages in circular reasoning. Why do you doubt the New Testament Miracles? Because their closest parallels are in the Old Testament. Why do you doubt those miracles? Because if I accept them, then I'll have to believe the miracles of Jesus. That's not logic. That's just irrationality. More positively. How can we support the New Testament? Miracles? They are multiplied. Tested. A tested. They are in. MA They are in John.

Even though Q is almost entirely sayings of Jesus, the healing of the centurion servant is in queue if Q existed. They appear. I'll buy it with some distortion. In non-Christian sources they appear attested to by Josephus, by the Jewish Talmud, by Acts and the Epistle writers in the New Testament. They appear as well in multiple literary forms. A full fledged story. A command. Go, Peter. Catch a fish from the Sea of Galilee. Open its mouth. You'll find two coins used to pay the temple tax for you and me. You'll find a coin to pay for two people. I should have said. Did Peter go and do it? We don't know. It's not even a narrative describing something that happened. It's simply a command. Christians have assumed he did and that it happened. But it's a different literary form. It appears in passing references in the book of acts, in shamanic preaching, alluding back to what Jesus did during his lifetime. Multiple literary forms. Support appears by the double dissimilarity and double similarity criterion that we talked about in earlier lecture miracles coming right out of Jewish backgrounds. And yet with a directness. The one never found in the Old Testament or in Second Temple Judaism. Miracles continued in the Book of Acts and beyond. Sometimes Christian claim claims include the notion that miracles ceased at the end of the first century. They didn't. They continued in abundance well into the third century before the increasingly institutionalized Roman Catholic Church left very little room for them. But even then, there have been well attested accounts of the miraculous throughout Christian history, and now in today's world have proliferated again. But the early Christians always prayed in the name of Jesus rather than simply commanding a healing or an exorcism.

The miracles cohere. With that. Bedrock core of authentic Jesus tradition that even most of the most skeptical scholars acknowledges his teaching on the Kingdom of God. And on parables, he says. If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you. The two are very closely intertwined. In fact, some of the most spectacular miracles of Jesus are best understood when one recalls some of the imagery from Jesus parables. We've mentioned how the turning of water into wine recalls Jesus teaching in the Synaptics about new wine for new wine skins. Judgment on the fig tree. The end of his ministry. Recalls the parable in Luke 13 of a barren fig tree standing for Israel, soon to be cut down. If they do not repent the feeding of the 5000 very similar to. Of feeding 100. With 20 handheld sized loaves of bread, not nearly this spectacular miracle, recalling Moses with manna in the wilderness. But what about. Two particular. Difficult miracles, bracketing Jesus life. What about the virgin birth, or more specifically, the virginal conception? There are no parallels to that in pre-Christian Judaism. There is Baron, Sarah and Hannah and able to give birth much like Elizabeth. Mary's cousin, mother of John the Baptist. But there are no virginal conceptions. What about the resurrection? At the other end of Jesus life. Once we realize that apart from the resurrections in the Jewish and Christian tradition of people who then died again later. There are no close parallels at all. There are stories of gods. Dying and rising every year corresponding to the seasons of summer and winter. Harvest times. Rebirth in spring. But that's a far cry from Jesus. The more that we stress the difference between.

Jesus miracles and other supposed parallels. The more a different kind of question is raised. Can we believe them because they are so different? Our next segments will turn to those to bracketing key events. In closing the life of Christ.