Evidence Regarding Christianity Outside of the Bible in the 1st & 2nd Centuries

Let's go through it here. Is there any evidence of Christianity outside of just what you read in the New Testament in the first and second centuries? The idea being, is what we have in the New Testament just sort of standing all by itself, not connected to anything else? Or are there other evidences from history that connect up and support what Scripture says actually took place? Well, except that that's in the scripture itself. It certainly would be, and in fact, we will briefly address at the end things within the scripture that are ring true, if you will. These are things that are completely outside the Bible.

Yes? Yes, either a written document or an inscription, something that would confirm the historicity. There must have been a seed. Yes, and I think this is really what's the point. Was this stuff just invented out of thin air or did it actually take place in history? At the moment you're tied to Christianity. Yes. Yes. Think about this. Does it make a difference whether Jesus actually lived? Okay, yes.

The answer is yes, because Christianity is historical. The truth is, it doesn't matter to me whether Buddha actually lived or not. About 600 BC, you know, round numbers. It doesn't matter to me whether he lived or not. As a matter of fact, it doesn't even matter to the Buddhist. Because there's nothing that Buddha did that is historically critical. He said, here's the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, and you can follow that and follow Buddha, what he taught, but it really wouldn't matter whether he lived or not. Jesus is different. Because if his cross If all that did not take place, if His crucifixion did not come to pass in history, then this is just bunk.

When the Apostle John writes in 1 John, he says, I'm writing to you about what we have seen and heard and touched. It is very much an historical, I'll use the word, empirical faith. And so it is essential that Christianity be tied with history. It's not just hanging out in space. That also makes it unique in that it's verifiable. Do you know if the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment from Buddha is really the truth? No, you can just try it and experience it, but there's nothing verifiable and objective about it. It's different with Jesus Christ.

If everything is based on what took place in history, If the cross was real, such that you could walk up and get, if you were there, you could have gotten splinters off it. That kind of real. If it's that kind of real, then what's in the New Testament is true. If it's just made up spiritual stuff, that's sort of inspiring, then Christianity as written in the New Testament is a bunch of bunk. So it is essential that Christianity is historical. And that's one of the reasons for investigating this issue. And as Craig can testify, it's a big one. It's an important one for someone asking the question, is this real? Is this true? Let's take a look here.

One of the things we'll do is look at non-Christian authors who write about Jesus Christ during these first and second centuries. I put in here, brace yourself, because some of the quotes are very satirical. Some of them are sarcastic. Some of them are written antagonistically. So just prepare yourself for that.

Then we'll look at Christian quotes of secular authors from that same time period. The reason we would quote Christians on that, because there are a few cases where the Christians quote authors for whom we have no other writing. We'll quote an author, we have that quote, we don't have the author's original work. So that's why we would quote Christians in a few cases. And in the third case, we'll look at some extra-biblical. Now, when I say extra-biblical, I don't mean really, really biblical. What I mean is they're outside the Bible. So, that's the difference there. One of the things we need to square ourselves with is the nature of the news here.

One thing to put in the context here is how important was this to Rome? The people in the Roman government, How important was it to, you know, this event was, here's Jesus off on the way eastern end of the Roman Empire, okay? Way far away from Rome. This was the backwater.

This was the, you know, kind of the armpit, if you will, so far as the Romans were concerned, okay? To them it was just distant, we got to deal with it, but it wasn't their favorite place. It was sort of when people would get started off you know, in some political stance. This was a place to kind of test them and start them off. If you were aspiring to climb the Roman Empire's political ladder, you might start there and hope to go somewhere else. Oh, please, somewhere else, right? That kind of thing. One of the other things, too, is here's Jesus, who is... Does he own a lot of property? Does he have a lot of money? Is he from a big city? None of those things, see?

And so from the standpoint of the Roman Empire and the government there, they're not really interested in this guy. Furthermore, he was finally crucified. It was a slave's crucifixion. That's the way they got rid of slaves, and the worst of criminals. So Jesus is not going to be real high on their radar screen to begin with.

Now, even to kind of get us geared on what's the nature of the evidence, until this find in 1961, there were people who actually disputed whether Pontius Pilate ever lived, realizing that that's kind of a skeptical view, but there were those that came out and said, nah, I doubt that Pontius Pilate ever lived, and this was found, this inscription was found at Caesarea Philippi, and what I've done here is, this is the full inscription, and then these portions are inserted because it's been chiseled off. The reason it was chiseled off is they took this stone, which was probably full-on and very conspicuous originally, and they chiseled it up to turn it into something else and build it into the Colosseum. So that's why it got chipped up. But here's Caesarea Philippi.

That's where it was found. It was a military base for Pilate, home of Philip, the evangelist. You read about him in Acts. Acts 10, where the Gentiles first became Christians, and it was where Paul was in prison for two years. There it is. You can see it's being thoroughly and carefully excavated. About 2,000 to 3,000 Roman soldiers were housed there. The other is the nature of the news.

Not only would Jesus be one that you would find unlikely to be recorded in prominent documents during the Roman Empire, but think of the destructions that have happened since then. One of the places where you would expect to find genealogical records would be in Jerusalem. What happened in Jerusalem in 70 AD? The Romans came in, what did they do?

They burned things. So here's this first red mark. Hadrian came in in 132 and what did he do? He did it again. So you have a couple of Roman destructions in that area. Islam came in just within a few years after Muhammad's death. And what did they do? They took over Jerusalem. And here's another attack. Do they care about the records of the Jews? Not in the least.

Here's the Crusades. Remember we talked about this pendulum swing? Now, here's the Crusades. We will later on go into detail one Sunday morning on just the Crusades. But the point to be made here is there was a wave after wave, approximately seven major waves, in these crusades. And what did the crusaders do? They thought, well, we've got to take back the land, right?

Because they didn't understand. So what did they do? They went in and burned some more. Damaged some more. And because a lot of them, especially when they first came in, they couldn't tell the difference between a Moslem and a Jew and an Eastern Christian. So what did they do? Kill them all. And they went and destroyed a lot of records too. Next, you have Islam coming back again just before the period of the Reformation. What do they do? They go back into Jerusalem again. And so what do they do with the records if there's anything left? Destroy them. One of the things to just recognize is that even though records may well have been kept, a great many of them are destroyed. It is remarkable what we do have, but that's something to keep in mind.

Okay, we're first going to take a look at these non-Christian sources. This is to give us an idea of the kind of reaction. Here is a Roman official, right? Festus, recorded in Acts 25, 19. The reason I bring this up is it's typical of the kind of reaction you'd expect of a Roman official. Here's what it looks like.

They simply had some points of disagreement with him about their own religion and about a dead man, Jesus, whom Paul asserted to be alive. Does he care about this whole thing? No. The bottom line, if he could say so, is I don't really give a hoot, okay? But he's saying here, he's just kind of stating the facts in a sort of skeptical kind of way, really rather disinterested.

And that's, I think, what you find typical. Okay. One of the things that have been found is what's called the Nazareth inscription. Real interesting. This has only been found in Nazareth, which is curious because Nazareth is a small town. But this inscription is an edict against grave robbing, issued shortly after the time when Christianity was just getting started. So anyway, the text of that is here. I won't read through it, but one of the things it makes particular attention about is worried about extracting the buried. And so one question is, why is this a Nazareth? since Jesus was from Nazareth.

Why is that the only place we find this? And why is it particularly concerned about this case of taking the bodies out of the graves? Pardon? Yeah, and trying to get this thing settled. One thing is, the Jews were kind of troublesome people, so one strategy is, let's try to do something official to quell this thing. I'll let you read the details on that on your own.

Suetonius was another one. He was a court official under Emperor Hadrian. He wrote about the lives of the 12 Caesars. Basically, he went back through the Caesars all the way back into the time of Christ. He went through the official Roman records and wrote this history.

Interestingly enough, he wrote of an event that evidently occurred in 49 or 50 it seems to tie in fairly well with Acts 18.2.

What happened in Acts 18.2 was it records there the Jews were booted out of Rome, right? So here he says, because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbance at the instigation of Crestus, he, Emperor Claudius, expelled them from the city. You say, Crestus? Okay, that's not Christ.

What is instigation? Instigation. He started it. He got it going. First of all, the Greek word for Christ is Christos. So this is very similar. Actually the name Christos was a common name. And so it may well have been, there's two possibilities here. One is that this really is some guy named Krestos and it's not Christ at all. Pardon? Came through Ellis Island. Yes. And the name got changed. There you go.

That certainly explains it. The other possibility is that he simply picked a common name that sounded like, you know, what he was hearing. and recorded that and actually was referring back to Christ and stirring up of the Jews there. So let me ask you this question.

Is this a real valuable reference in this regard? Reliability of one being really up there in say a three, let's call it, you know, being fairly unreliable. What would you call this? What would you rank it? Would this be really highly reliable, fairly reliable, or not so? What's that? Yeah, it is somewhat questionable, isn't it? It could be, but there isn't enough to nail it down. But we've got other information. Let's take a look at it.

Something interesting to note, too, He writes in that same work, punishment by Nero is inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition. There's that skepticism again. But one of the things that's clear, here in Rome, within a couple decades, after the time of Christ, you've got Christians. Enough to be notable by a Roman official. Real interesting. Enough to be picked out, singled out, for persecution. Here's Josephus. Josephus is a Jewish historian. We've mentioned him before in weeks past. He wrote in a generation immediately after the time of Christ.

He makes reference to several people that are well known in the New Testament. Some of those are, of course, Roman officials, some of those names, the high priestly families, and the Pharisees and the Sadducees. So he makes note of those, and a lot of his references are very valuable in terms of having insight and understanding in that first century. I have this quote, and by the way, this is a highly debated text. Highly debated. What I've done, there's been very recent work.

This is a copy of it that some of the words, and it's been found in the original, not doctored up, but found in an original. It's an Arabic text. that lacks the character that's highly debated. So that's why I've used this one. You may see other ones. You may, if you read earlier writings, get that debate and pick up on it. The point is this is a reliable text that doesn't have the disputed words in it.

And the bottom line is you see things like, they reported that he appeared to that. You see that? Not a, he did. But they reported that kind of, from his part, more of a distance, objective type viewpoint, as opposed to claiming that it's true. And that's what's made this particular text debatable. There are multiple other texts. We won't have time to go into them. He refers to other people in the New Testament. Specific names are given. One of them, for example, here is the persecution against James. is brought out, specifically in his text. So he writes that down.

Okay, what do you think? Is that pretty valuable? Okay, yeah, it actually is. It's pretty valuable. There's good copies of it. He makes references, not sneering, but it's also, it doesn't sound like he just swallowed hook, line, and sinker. He made a statement as he saw it. So it looks pretty valuable.

Now, here's Pliny of Segundus, you may also hear him called Pliny the Younger, some pronounce it Pliny, I won't, anyway, Pliny of Segundus, and he's writing to Emperor Trajan, and he's the governor of Bithynia, Bithynia was one of the regions that is mentioned in the beginning of 1 Peter, so it's northern Turkey is what we would look at it now, he writes this, All who denied that they were or had been Christians I consider should be discharged, because they called upon the gods at my dictation and did reverence with incense and wine, your, that is, the Emperor's, image. They cursed Christ, which a genuine Christian cannot be induced to do. What's discharge mean? Get rid of him. Isn't that interesting? A genuine Christian can't be induced to do that.

He says that's the test, as far as he's concerned. In the same letter to the emperor, these Christians were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light when they sang an alternate verse of a hymn to Christ as to a God and bound themselves to a solemn oath not to do any wicked deeds and never to deny a truth when they should be called upon to deliver it up. Now, how reliable is this? Is this a good one? It's pretty good, isn't it?

This is an official document. By the way, we have this letter and the answer back from the emperor. So that's an interesting case where we have it both ways. And the emperor says, yeah, you're handling it right. I'm generalizing, of course. But he's looking for support from the emperor for how he's carrying this thing out. Cornelius Tacitus. He was a senator under Emperor Vespasian, we know that. Later held the office of consul and then proconsul. Proconsul was a larger area. He was a friend of Plinius Segundus, the one we just quoted from. So now here's a historical connect.

Writing of Nero's attempt to relieve himself of the guilt of burning Rome, so he's writing back historically over some prior decades, It is hence to suppress the rumor he falsely charged with the guilt and punished with the most exquisite tortures the persons commonly called Christians who are hated for their enormities. Christus, you see that again here, that kind of thing, and this is very close to the Greek Christos, so it's a good connection there. The founder of the name was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius, but the pernicious superstition is an Interesting way to characterize what we're doing and believing here. Anyway, repressed for a time, broke out again. Oh gosh, I thought we'd gotten rid of that. Out again, not only through Judea where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also.

What do you think about that? Is that a pretty good quote? Now I think that by the time you hook up this guy, Tacitus, Pliny of Secundus, you've got a good connection, knowing that they know each other, they're officials, they have no interest in trying to make any false claims about this thing. You don't get that impression from what they're writing.

And the guy is very reliable, he writes this, we've got good copies of it. Yeah, it's a good source. It's a good source and it stands up well. Mara Barth Serapion, writing after 70, some will say 73, By the way, these years, if I don't put a date, I'm assuming AD, because we're talking about the 1st and 2nd centuries. You're now on the top of page 4, just so that you're in sync with me here. This letter now resides in the British Museum. It was written by this Mara Sarapian. Mara just means son of. Mara, son of Sarapian. A Syrian Stoic philosopher to his son in prison. Letters to son in prison.

What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. But Socrates did not die for good. He lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good. He lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise king die for good. He lived on in the teaching which he had given." Is this a good quote? Is this helpful or not? What do you think? Yes? No? It's okay. Now, here are some objections that you'll hear from skeptics.

Could that wise king be somebody else? Is that a specific enough statement? It would have to be somebody who was considered a king in some way, it would have to be somebody considered wise, it would have to be somebody who was executed, and it would have to have been done prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Those would be the criteria. Norm?

And that's part of the issue is that in fact we have various records and in some cases we can assume events that weren't necessarily recorded. But we have records of various ones who had followings and people who stirred up rebellions and things of that sort. someone could claim, well, they're talking about somebody else.

This is, I mean, it's well attested, there's the letter, you know, it's within, it's obviously after 70 A.D. because that's the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. So he's writing after 70 A.D. and making reference to this wise king. The wise king must have been somebody who was considered wise and executed and called king. Certainly Jesus, you know, fits those things. It's a good possibility is about what you'd have to say, isn't it?

It would be difficult to nail it down because he doesn't use something more specific. Yeah, probably. If you were to rank the one from Plinius Secundus and from Tacitus, those would be on the top of the reliability list because they got some specifics you can deal with. This one would be less so in my estimation. The advantage being that it's a little closer in time, but the terminology is a little more vague. All right, let's take a look at some more.

The Jewish Talmud. Now, this is interesting. The Jewish Talmud, you think, boy, they're antagonistic. Something real interesting, that as time went on and the Jews found the derogatory statements about Jesus got them in trouble in later centuries, the Jewish leaders said, hey, just Don't mention this stuff. Don't write this stuff down or if you write it down, cover it a little bit with some other words because if you get too specific or derogatory then it sounds bad and we get in trouble for it and there's just no sense in it.

Now, nonetheless, between about 70 and 200 was the time when the Talmud was initially compiled. We know the names and the dates of the rabbis that it was compiled under. It was a collection of of Jewish commentary of different kinds during that period. So here's the way this one reads, and by the way this is one of probably a dozen, but this is probably one of the better ones and I didn't include the other ones.

On the eve of the Passover, Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. anyone who can say anything in his favor, let him come forward and plead on his behalf. But nothing was brought forward in his favor. Since nothing was brought forward in his favor, he was hanged on the eve of Passover.

One clarification is that word hanged is used earlier in scripture in reference to crucifixion. Galatians. Cursed is he who is hanged. Same word. And so you'll find it also in the Book of Acts, that term is used for crucifixion. So it's a larger term that includes crucifixion as the proper way to understand it.

Now, does this seem like a pretty good reference? Really up there, down at the bottom, or somewhere in the middle? It's pretty good. One of the things that is interesting On the eve of Passover, now that's pretty tight, isn't it? That's pretty close. That's the right time. Yeshu, what would Jesus' name have been in the original tongue? Yeshua. So that's pretty good. Looks like a good match there.

Was hanged. Hanged meaning it included crucifixion. So that first sentence fits pretty well. Some parts of this are a little strange. What does that have to do with being stoned, a little strange, but then finally it concludes at the end, he was hanged on the eve of Passover.

So that matches up with the first statement. What you'll find in other statements in the Jewish Talmud is less clear than this. This is probably the best one and most lengthy one. Some of the others are less clear and more brief. But real interesting that there would be some reference at all. Here's another one. Lucian of Samosara. We have about 83 of his writings. Isn't that interesting?

83. A bunch. He wrote a bunch of works. He was a very popular writer. He wrote satire. It was interesting. He was like a satirical historical novelist. He had great respect for historical detail. Not just because of this, but just looking through 83 works that we've got, which is phenomenal for some ancient work, he has tremendous respect for historical detail, but he wrote satirically.

In other words, I want to get it right before I satirize it. So here's what he says on the death of Peregrinus, or the passing, as some translations will call it, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world, Furthermore, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they were all brothers one to another after they have transgressed once for all by denying the Greek gods. To them, that was a transgression. And by worshipping that crucified Sophist himself and living under his laws. Does that sound like a pretty good one? Antagonistic? Yes. But a pretty good match, doesn't it?

Here's Samosada, modern Samsa, there's the hometown city. What you see off in the distance there is they flooded a part of old Samosada with a lake there. But here's from the same work. Look at some of this, and I won't read through it all, but the middle one, the historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.

You get the impression he is quite concerned about historical truth. Therefore, you would anticipate, with that degree of respect for historical truth, that when he says something, he's not throwing around distortions. Other than his satire, of course. Make sense? Okay. Now, let's look at...

Oh, by the way, there's a couple others out there that people sometimes quote. I kind of left them out because I thought that they were so vague and disputable that not worth considering. But nonetheless, there are some who quote some others. Here's some from Christian authors quoting non-Christians. Again, the reason for that being, we have the quote, the quote is antagonistic. So it's a negative quote, but the Christians are quoting it with the intent of disputing it or making some kind of reference to it. And we only have the Christian authors writing, therefore that's what we quote.

Alright, Julius Africanus, writing AD 221. Africanus was a not a theologian or even a church leader, but he was a chronographer. He wrote a history from the beginning of time up to his time, and went through gathering ancient documents, checked things out with astronomical clocks of different times, and was very extensive and thorough in his work. He quoted a fellow by the name of Thallus. Thallus wrote five volumes on history, we have none of them.

All of those destroyed. But we do have this quote here. Thallus in the third book of his histories explains away this darkness, that is, the darkness of the time of the crucifixion, as an eclipse of the sun, unreasonably as it seems to me. That's astronomically not possible. So Thallus just said, well it must be this. Astronomically it doesn't happen. You don't have an eclipse of the sun happen at the same time you've got a full moon, because the full moon is the timing of the Passover, right? So, at any rate, can't happen. Just can't come to pass. So his doubting that was correct, and as a chronographer, that's what you'd expect.

How good a quote is this? Okay, probably not bad. Probably not bad. We've got the title of Thallus' work elsewhere, so that's known. He was apparently well-regarded, but this particular thing Africanus questioned or doubted. Someone might be skeptical of this, saying, well, this is a believer writing. Yeah, you could, but he seems to make good sense, and he does question it on the basis of something astronomically true.

Celsus, here's another one, writing about 175, is quoted by Origen some decades later, into the 3rd century. So here's Celsus, who's a Neoplatonic philosopher. He wrote a book called Alesis Lagos, True Discourse, or some translation of that sort. We don't have any of the document. Again, that's why we quote Origen, the Christian writer. Scholars look at it and he quoted so much of Celsus, however, that we feel like we've got somewhere between 60 and 90% of what Celsus wrote and what Origen quoted. So a substantial amount. Now, so he wrote a work against Celsus and quoted Celsus extensively.

We certainly have more than half, possibly almost all. Okay, so basically, and I won't go through all the detail, Celsus describes it as this, Jesus went down to Egypt, he got a bunch of magical arts, he came back to Israel, performed his magic, and people were impressed. That's Celsus' size-up of the whole thing. Here's Celsus writing, he doesn't question the historicity or existence of Jesus at all, although he's of a mind to have done so if he wanted. What he does question is how he did his miracles. He thinks it's Egyptian magic.

How reliable a quote do you think this is? Yeah? Not a bad quote. Yeah, it's pretty good. Not bad at all. Yes? Yes, yes. Yeah, great skepticism. Yes, yeah. Boy, this virgin birth stuff, I can't swallow that, yeah. And these miracles, he must have used some kind of Egyptian magic, yeah. Can't be just a real miracle from God. Yeah, it's interesting. He didn't dispute the events. He disputed the origin of them. Okay.

Here's Eusebius. Eusebius was an author, and by the way, what happened is when Constantine took over as emperor and then said, okay, Christianity is now legal and then the next year it's now the official religion, and then about a little more than a decade later now it's the only religion allowed. He had Eusebius write a history of Christianity. It was finished around the year 325. It's completely available now, you can see it on the internet, you can buy it in paperback, hardback, it's widely available.

Real interesting, Eusebius was able to access a lot of the documents that we otherwise saw as destroyed, in earlier centuries. So Eusebius makes quotes of people for whom we have no other record. And that's one of the reasons for quoting this here. Eusebius makes reference here. He quoted a letter from Emperor Hadrian, Minucius Fundanus.

Now I know you're just eager to name one of your kids Minucius Fundanus, but maybe hold off on that. He was the pro-consul of Asia, and he says, I do not wish, therefore, that the matter should be passed by without examination. He doesn't want some blanket, unexamined edict to be carried out. So that these men may neither be harassed nor opportunity of malicious proceedings be offered to informers. If, therefore, the provincials can clearly evince their charges against the Christians so as to answer before the tribunal, let them pursue this course only. but not by mere petitions and mere outcries against the Christians, for it is far more proper, if anyone would bring an accusation, that you should examine it."

Is this a reliable quote? What do you think? It's a quote of an official record. Eusebius had access to the documents at that point in time. He was authorized by the Roman Emperor to put this together. I think it's probably a reasonable and reliable quote. someone could dispute it and say, yeah, but Eusebius was a Christian. Yes, he was, but this still seems on good grounds. Let's look at some extra biblical sources on the 1st and 2nd centuries. Writings of the early church fathers and writings that were used as common resources were written as if they were real New Testament-era documents.

We're going to go over that second category next week. you know, books that didn't make it into the New Testament or tried to make it into the New Testament. So we'll look at that in more detail here. Now we're going to give kind of a quick passing over just to touch on it. One of the things that we put out the second week that we met, there was this special handout. You had a one pager that looked like this.

And what I'd like us to have us do is focus in on this because what this shows is here's the Apostle John and the records indicate that he directly discipled Polycarp. Polycarp directly discipled Ignatius and had contact with Papias, and then there was Irenaeus, and those are really well-established connections. Fairly well-established is probable are these others with Justin Martyr, Melito, and Apollinaris, and then least established is a connection between John and Ignatius. So I think that connection is a good, solid connection, and we've got lots of documents to go between those. to confirm that contact between those various people.

So here we have a living apostle with direct or second-generation contact. And we've got documents from these people. Writings of the early church fathers. Here is another instance. Here's Clement of Rome. He was the Bishop of Rome from 92 to 101. He quoted Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, 1 Corinthians, Titus, Hebrews, 1 Peter in one letter to the church at Corinth. He wrote around 95. He addressed every subject that Paul wrote in his first letter, except tongues. Interesting.

Clement may be the Clement of Philippians 4.3. We don't know. There's no way to finally establish the information that we have. He wrote, the apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, is that a good reference? That's pretty good. There's some real tight connections there. That's a good reference. Yes, it's written by a Christian, but he's got good connections and qualifications, and he's right within that same century. Give it some connection. If I was writing in 1995, could I be expected to testify reliably about something that happened around 1930? That's the historical context that you could put it in. Yes, I would say so. There would be plenty around, even some people still living, to verify what you said. And if it was all a bunch of bunk, all horse feathers and nonsense, there would be people to say exactly that. Okay, here's another one.

Ignatius died 117. He wrote six letters to churches and one to his friend Polycarp. Remember, there was a direct connection between these guys. Polycarp had been discipled by John. So Ignatius writing here was kind of a spiritual grandson, if you will. He quotes from Matthew, John, Acts, several of Paul's letters, James and 1 Peter. Here's what he says, Jesus Christ, who was of the race of David, who was the son of Mary, who was truly born and ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died.

Is that a good reference? I would say so. Here's a guy very well connected. Is he concerned about what's true? Yeah, very much. And he points out the key details in this thing. Which was what? Ah, yes. Yeah, he fell short there. But this is a pretty good one. In terms of the historicity, it's a pretty good one. There are others and we frankly just don't have time to go through them all. There are just gobs and gobs that we could write from here.

Different ones had degrees of connection. Obviously this one from Polycarp is one of the being a direct disciple of John, those quotes would be very substantial. Polycarp, by the way, was one. He was crucified by being burned. And they were initially going to tie him up to the post. He says, you don't need to tie me. And he just stood there.

So, amazing. And then Tertullian, writing about 200 quotes of the New Testament 7,000 times, the Gospels 3,800 times. Lots. We have lots of it. Huge quotes. As a matter of fact, it's really interesting. If you took the commentaries from the early Church Fathers and ignored all the New Testament documents you had, you could compile the New Testament back together from those, except for 11 verses. The entire New Testament is quoted so thoroughly by them. They often repeatedly claim the basic points of the Gospel as historical fact. You just saw one from Ignatius, truly this, truly that.

They appealed to their readers and listeners to verify the facts for themselves. If you don't believe me, check it out. If you don't believe me, find out for yourself. It didn't happen. The Roman records and some Jewish records were still available for inspection. You can go check it out yourself.

Some of them had direct contact with one or more of the apostles or with those who had spoken with the apostles. There were others. Clement, for example, may well have had contact with Paul directly. Then there are the extra-biblical writings. We're going to go through them in more detail next week, but just to introduce them.

The Didache, written about the end of the first century, was a church manual which quotes repeatedly from the Gospels. The Epistle of Barnabas, between 70 and 135, is another one that makes historical references to Jesus. The Egerton Papyrus, that's a copy of it up there at the top. Gospel of Truth, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel according to Hebrews, Gospel of Peter, Treatise on Resurrection.

There are now 19 post-New Testament Gospels of. They keep finding them, additional ones. We'll see next week why they're not in the New Testament. But nonetheless, some of them have a ring of truth, at least portions of it. Some of them simply look like they copied portions of the Gospels themselves. But remember what Luke said when he started off the Gospel of Luke, where he said, many have undertaken to record these things.

We have lots of documents. That's one reason why I'm not trying to cover everything this morning. This is the first page of the list of documents that we have from the first and second centuries that make reference to Christianity and to Jesus. That's the first page. There's the second. Lots and lots of documents. This goes on into the early part of the 3rd century, so I don't want to overstate it, but forget those even, you're talking about a lot of documents that make reference to Jesus within the 1st and 2nd centuries.

Yes, that includes the New Testament. One of the things we've set aside is documents and findings that simply confirm the reliability. We haven't even addressed that at all. If I were to do that, we would be here every Sunday for a year and not scratch the surface. That amount is massive. Let me give you a for instance.

Jesus was asked about a divorce issue that disappeared after the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem in Matthew 19. Well, should we dismiss our wives for anything that's unclean or simply for adultery? That question disappeared by 70 A.D. because there were two different schools of thought. And basically what happened was the more conservative school of thought disappeared at the Roman attack on Jerusalem. It was basically wiped out. So the question that was asked there in Matthew 19 was one that was historical only to the context prior to 70 AD. Later decades and centuries, the question would have been lost. Pardon? What's that?

What happened is it The issue died off because there were two sides, and the side that was more liberal in view was the one that won out. The more conservative view, that is, that it is strictly for adultery, that view died out after 70 AD. So the whole issue of should divorce be on any grounds or only for adultery died out in Judaism after 70 AD. It just didn't exist.

To give you something comparable, it would be, for example, slide rules. There might be a few people here wondering what I'm talking about. Slide rules. They died out with the invention of the calculator. If somebody in this era comes up and they say, boy, I can't figure out how to use a slide rule, somebody else would say, why do you need to? It would be an irrelevant question now. That would be an example. If it was something that passed, and it has now become to a point where nobody would even ask the question.

So anyway, the fact that it shows up is evidence of an earlier date and closer to the historical context. Here's another one. The interaction recorded in Matthew 8, 21 and 22. This is where the man comes to Jesus and says, let me first go bury my father. It's based on this idea of these ossuaries. They would take a body and do what they did with Jesus. They'd wrap it, put it on basically a shelf in a tomb, and then at the end of a year, one year later, after all the flesh is all gone, they would unwrap it, take the bones out, and put them in a box. They put them in an ossuary box.

There's nothing about that second stage that is in the Old Testament. It wasn't a part of something that was commanded under Moses. It was just a tradition. It got started, it was only in existence from 10 to about 60 A.D. during that period of time.

It's obviously, you know, this includes the New Testament era and shortly thereafter. So here is an issue that is within New Testament times and shortly thereafter and the decades and centuries after that time would have been an irrelevant issue. What became a common saying in Jesus' time was, let me bury my father means I got to bury my father and I might have to wait for him to die. And then when he dies, we'll go ahead and go through this burial process and it'll be a year after that that I got the ossuary thing to go through and after that I might think about it. It was an expression for saying, forget it. Not a chance, okay? And so you could politely say, let me go bury my father instead of saying, hey, go fly a kite, okay?

But this is an example. The Caiaphas ossuary is an interesting one. This ossuary was found in 1990. It was found, obviously, it fits the time frame of the New Testament. That's the name that fits the high priest that told Jesus that this guy deserves to die. And, what's interesting, the bones found inside and a physical anthropologist examined them, said those were the bones of a 60-year-old man, so the age is about right, the time is about right.

Pardon? The DNA? Well, now that's a tough one, because I don't know if we've got anything to compare with. The one thing we do, there's a couple of other things that did have his name on it, and the other thing is because he is a high priest, he would be well off financially, and look at the ornate carving.

The middle and lower class people did not have the ornate carving on the side of the ossuary box. It was just a simple straight box. So the ornate carving fits too. There is nothing that was found about this that does not fit the identification of the Caiaphas in the New Testament.

So here's a case in point. And we could just go on and on and on with different coins. The coin Jesus asked for. when they asked him, should we pay taxes to Caesar? And we've got copies of the coin and the discussion of why that went on and all. We could just go on and on and on and on with different archeological facts and historical details. We haven't touched on that at all here.

So now here's another, for instance, here's an early first century census document, okay? Remember Luke two, one through five, what happened? Why did Joseph and Mary have to go down to Bethlehem? because they had to go down and that was the place their forefathers were from, so they had to go down there. And this one was found in Philadelphia. This is early first century, so it was like probably the next census or census after that, after the one that Mary and Joseph went down for.

It fits. We have subsequent documents that say you have to go to the place of your forefathers. We have subsequent documents, numerous ones, that are census declarations. And that's what this one is right here. And by the way, this one's available on the net in such detail that you can zoom in and see fine detail of the fibers and the letters and everything else. They've done a really good job with it.

And so here's the census that you find in Luke. It's from Philadelphia, which as you might recall, was one of the cities, the seven cities of Revelation. So lots of historical connection there. Now, does that prove the New Testament? No. But does it fit very well with it? Yes. And those are the kinds of details. We could look at just hundreds and hundreds of those. Here's Edwin Yamalke. Here's his kind of summary assessment there.

Even if we did not have the New Testament or Christian writings, we would be able to conclude from such non-Christian writings as Josephus, the Talmud, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger, or Pliny the Younger, however you wish to pronounce it. that Jesus was a Jewish teacher, that many people believe that he performed healings and exorcisms.

He was rejected by the Jewish leaders. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. Despite the shameful death, his followers, who believed that he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by 64 AD. All kinds of people from the cities and countryside, men and women, slave and free, worshipped him as God by the beginning of the second century.

Isn't that interesting? You could set aside the entire New Testament and all the early church fathers' writings and derive that. How about that? There's lots of evidence to work with. Next week we'll look at the books that didn't make it into the New Testament and why. You may well hear of things like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Barnabas, the Gospel of Peter, things like that. Have you ever heard of the lost books of the Bible? Have you ever heard of that one? The truth is we've got a whole bunch of these books they call lost. and dozens of them. And so we'll go over why those were not accepted. There are some good reasons why not, but it's good for us to take a look at them. By the way, just one final thought.

If you're talking with somebody and they're having questions about things, there's all kinds of good material to work with and lots of good answers. Never be afraid to investigate this stuff. Lots of really good answers. The New Testament documents are very well founded in history. You can stand on it. Okay?

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for all that you have provided for us in the way of evidence. We thank you that even though the faith that we have is historically founded, that indeed it's ultimately confirmed by relationship with you. We thank you for that relationship. In Jesus' name, amen.