(9) The Bible: Just a collection of myths? Part I

We want to unconfuse you a little bit, and that is that we had Randy jump ahead here, and so he did number 10, just because that happened to fit his schedule, because he was having some comings and goings. So we are on number 09. It's called The Bible? Just a Collection of Myths? And this is an important one to address. How many of you, just out of curiosity, have read or heard, and maybe this I'll include in this something even in a TV program, somebody say, oh, the Bible is just a bunch of myths and legends. Yeah. Yeah, fairly frequent. Yeah. Yeah, the Bible is just a whole bunch of myths and legends.

And a very frequent comment And what we want to take a look at here this morning is, first of all, to get down to some specifics, you know, what is a myth, what's a legend, things of that sort. Because frequently people use words, myth, legend, fairy tale, they use them on almost interchangeably, don't they?

I mean, without any real definition. The truth is that those terms have a specific meaning in cultural anthropology and cultural geography. and that there is a definition to each word, and there's a reason for calling each one what they are. It is possible to have something that crosses over between the two, but even that is within the definition and understood. Let's take a look at it.

Again, you'll have 09, and this is the Bible, just a collection of myths, starting at the top of page 104. The first one is a legend. typically a narrative of human actions, it's rooted either in real history, actual history, or at least something that is conceivably possible, possible history. So it would be rooted in either a real event, and a person connected to that event, or It also could be that it's not a real person, but it's conceivably a real person, as the person could have lived.

This would be a legend. Can you think of some things that have the term legend that we're possibly familiar with? Legends of the Old West, yeah. One of the characteristics of legend is a tendency to have something with a basis in historical reality, but sort of bigger than life.

You know, here are these old West characters and it's like this gunslinger, you know, he's got microseconds from the time, you know, he starts to draw the time the bullet goes out and it's in the other guy, you know, and it doesn't matter what the other guy does. I mean, this guy's gone. Some of them, you know, border on the kind of the Superman type theme. So legends are something that have some basis in reality, but the human being that is portrayed in the legend is typically larger than life.

That's the usual idea of legend. That's in a technical sense. Again, you will hear people use legend, myth, fairy tale, folklore, all interchangeably. In technical terminology, they are not. The second thing is a fable. A fable is is an account or story, oftentimes, but not always, with magical elements.

And the intent of the fable is not to convey something that's historical. The intent of a fable is not to explain something. This is how we do it, or this is why this is this way. It isn't necessarily even to give anything some meaning. The purpose of a fable is to give a moral or illustration. There's not necessarily any intent in a fable to convey this is historically true.

Aesop's fables would be one example of that. If somebody came up to you and said, Aesop's fables, they're not true! You would say, huh? It would not be shocking because the fables are never intended to be true. So when somebody says the Bible is just full of fables, that statement would convey these are things that were never intended to be true, but are just to convey moral ideas or pieces of wisdom. That's what they would mean by that. Now whether that's a fair statement, seriously questionable.

But, alright, now a myth. This is a story that has meaning in a particular culture or subculture and it either explains a practice or a belief or both. Now, let me ask this question. Is it possible for a myth to be something that is historically true? Pardon? Yes, Marilyn says. And why do you say that a myth could be historically true? Yes. In other words, if a myth is to explain a practice or a belief, it is possible that what brought up that about is real. Okay? So, Marilyn's right. It could in fact be something true. Yes? Yes, and we will get into that. We will get into that. And it's interesting because what happens is myths, in a culture that's very uniform, the whole culture embraces the myth. In cultures that are diverse and dispersed, you will have portions of the culture, a subculture, that will hold to the myth.

Now, the last one is a fairy tale. This is a story that intermingles normal life experience with the fantastic and magical. I used to tell my kids fairy tales from the time they were very small. And as soon as they could listen to a story, I'd start telling them fairy tales. And I told them fairy tales even until they got into their teens, they wanted to hear them. I'd just make up stories.

And I had a lot of fun with it, but they were just mixtures of real things and things that were magical. I even throw their names in, you know, because they just tickle them to no end, you know, especially if you get some four-year-old kid and suddenly he's part of the fairy tale. But it's mixtures of what's true and what's magical, and the boundary between the two is not of any particular import. It matters little. So if you look at that, people frequently, you've heard that, you know, the Bible is just myths or fairy tales or fables or folklore or, you know, all these different terms.

And the truth is each of these terms has a meaning. It is possible for something to kind of straddle a couple of meanings, but that doesn't negate the fact that each of these terms has a meaning or significance. So when we approach something in Scripture, we want to Keep these meanings in mind so that when we're using words, we know what they mean. Okay, so how does the New Testament use the word myth? Because people will say, well, I notice I find it several times. Interesting.

Here's 1 Timothy 1.4. This is on page one there of the handout.

First Timothy 1.4, nor pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculations rather than furthering the administration of God, which is by faith. Or second Timothy, verse 2 and twice, will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to myths.

Or Titus 1.14, not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth. Notice that each of those three uses of the word myth is addressed to one of the apostolic delegates. These are writings that are often called the pastoral epistles. But in truth, Timothy and Titus were not pastors. Nonetheless, that's what we often call them. But it's interesting that these guys are the focus of that word myth.

Now, one thing we have to look at is that the word myth in the New Testament has a more definitely negative connotation. It's invented lies. It does not have the technical term that we have above here. It's invented lies. It's things that are just, somebody cooked this up and just made it up.

And what does this tell you about the character of New Testament truth? What did Paul think about what he was teaching? Notice here that as Paul writes to Timothy and Titus, and he's very personally familiar with these guys, he in each case is warning them to steer away from this stuff, steer other people away from this stuff. He says the truth is what matters.

So notice the inclination is away from devising some sort of a myth, away from devising something that is other than historically true. So that's his inclination, not just once or twice, but repeatedly. It's like in each one of those letters to the apostolic delegates, that's what we get. Second Peter is another one. I know the ladies in the Tuesday night study went through this recently. for we did not follow cleverly devised tales, this is the same word, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

What does that tell you? What's the character of Peter's statement here? Notice that he denies that this is anything we cooked up. We didn't sit down like the guys that Paul was warning about, and cook up some story. But instead, we were eyewitnesses, and we're telling you about the things of which we were eyewitnesses, specifically denying the Muthos approach, the approach of, hey, let's cook up a good story. So, we have that now. We've got a really good question here. Yes. I'm trying to think. Yeah, I'd have to look that one up. I don't know from what you're quoting. I recognize it too, but I don't know the exact reference.

Oh yes, and certainly if you look at it, one of the things that Jesus repeatedly chastised the Pharisees about was cooking up, you know, we've got, look, we've got the Mosaic Law, but you guys add six more laws to it just to make sure you don't break it. You know, they said, you know, The seventh day is to be a day of rest. So what did they do? Made all kinds of rules. Well, you can't pick up any more than this. By the way, I mean, in modern Judaism, they got a whole bunch more rules. You know, is it work to push the button on the elevator?

Is it? Does anybody know the answer? It is. It is. Yes, they determined that it is. And so that's why they have the elevators programmed to just stop at every floor. on Sabbath. So if you have Jewish influence on the elevator programming, that's what happens. It is work. Well, yes, but see, they've got that all defined. So this is again where, here is the Sabbath, you're supposed to rest, and now, man, let me tell you, they really work at the laws. So what happens, they've got a gazillion laws. I mean, that's ultimately the point, just adding and adding and adding to this thing. and pretty soon you're making a day of rest, anything but.

Nonetheless, okay, here's, we get to this question, how long does it take for legends and myths to develop? Now, why is that an important question? Why does that question matter? How long does it take for legends and myths to develop? How far broadly does it have to spread?

Somebody has to start a myth, and then I think Art, you started to say something? Could it have anything to do with the theory of evolution? Okay, the theory of evolution is a question. Essentially, what you're looking at is the social evolution of a myth. Any other thoughts on that? Okay, and that's something we'll take a look at here. Here's the difference that it makes. If someone says, the Bible is just full of myths, they may well have an historical problem, a serious one.

If we are well founded, and I think the material we've covered previously points to this conclusion, if we are well founded in saying, that the New Testament documents were all written in the first century, that the mass of them were completed by about the middle of the first century, a few exceptions with some of the writings of John.

If that's the case, then how much time have you got from those writings going backwards to the time of Christ that they testify to? How much time have you got? Yeah, you might have something like a generation, and depending on which writing you're talking about, as little as 15 years and as much as a few decades. That's about the span of much of the New Testament documents.

The book of James is probably one of the earlier ones, probably written a decade and a half after Christ's ascension. Then you're talking about Paul's epistles, probably about 49 AD is a good date. So that'd make it, you know, certainly less than two decades. And then a whole bunch of epistles then began to be written in the 50s and 60s, and the gospels as well. So you have things, you know, written down, real close to the event. So the question then becomes, if I have a mass of documents that evidence having been written within that time frame.

By the way, many of you may recall when the phrase God is dead started coming up. The guy who started that movement, John A.T. Robinson, wrote a book, Redating the New Testament, and he gives those dates to the New Testament documents. And here's the guy that started the God is Dead, you know, theme, if you will.

So if I've got that little amount of time, and I've got a great many of the people who were eyewitnesses to the facts still alive, what opportunity do I have for myth? That's where the question comes up. So someone says, Well, the Bible is just full of myths. Then you say, okay, how long does it take for a myth to develop?

And that's why it becomes an extremely relevant question. If the time frame is not long enough, then that is absolutely not a reasonable statement to make. Okay? Just not a reasonable statement to make. Here we look at him, Herodotus is a Greek historian here, enables us to test the tempo of myth-making. Even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core. Now this would be one test case, okay? So two generations plus would be that particular conclusion based on him.

The Greek myths, All that's left from the ancient Greek religion, we have about 1200 BCE, that's the new, you know, generic terminology, before the common era, because they can't say before Christ, you know, that's sacrilege. I don't know, you figure it out. Okay. The residents of Greek and Asia Minor shared a common belief about a group of deities that came to be known as the Olympians, and this is about, you know, Zeus and all the whole Greek mythology, okay?

Ancient texts we call the Greek myths are mostly from the period known as classical Greece, about 500 BCE again. The stories behind the myths are from a much earlier time, but written versions don't exist before classical times. The oldest myths can be traced to three main sources.

And these are Homer, Hesiod, and the Homeric hymns dated, excuse me, circa 800 BCE. That means that by the time they were written down, these works have survived 400 years of additions, subtractions, mutations, to finally become the versions we now call authentic. Oh boy. So now, given that, you're talking centuries to develop the myths in the form that they were written, right? Centuries of time.

I'm going to supplement what you have in your handout with what's here. Let's take a look at it. I think it's fascinating. These are real myths and legends that have an element of scripture as their origin. I think these are excellent test cases because they're ones that you have some degree of familiarity with and can look at, here's where it got started, and here's how it ended up, and some of them aren't done yet. Some of them are still changing. to make the reference that Art pointed to, they're still evolving.

Let's take a look at it. Mary Magdalene in France. And by the way, this is one of the subjects we're going to come back to with the Da Vinci Code. Da Vinci Code's going to be a major motion picture release this next May. And the idea is, here's Mary Magdalene, who was married to Jesus, according to the Da Vinci Code's claim in this legend.

She was sent off, and actually it said the disciples didn't like her, they were mad at her, jealous, see? And they sent her off in a boat without oars. And the accounts vary as to who was in the boat with her. But anyway, interesting, about 500 years after the New Testament era is the earliest version of these that we can find.

Here's this Mary Magdalene, and she's got a child, Jesus' offspring. And the disciples are really ticked at her. According to the Da Vinci Code's claim, and the claim of some of the myths, she is the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail that went off into being a cup is a ruse to try to distract people from the real Holy Grail, and that's the bloodline of Mary Magdalene and Jesus.

Now, some of you are squinting and wincing and a few things like that, some of you are snickering, but that's the way the legend goes. And there are places in southern France, I mean they've got churches with the whole thing dedicated with plaques about this stuff. It's wild.

One version A legend says she bore Jesus' child. Another legend has her ending up on Ephesus. And another conveyed by Pope Gregory. He was the first one who actually was called a pope and acted in a full papal capacity. 591 has her being the same as Mary of Bethany. So all kinds of little crossover. Now, let me ask this question. Is there any evidence from the Scripture Mary Magdalene and Jesus had something other than a brother-sister kind of relationship. No. She shows up in roughly a dozen passages, and this same Pope also developed the idea that you may have heard that she was a prostitute. He was the one that announced it, but that also was not in Scripture.

A lot of mythology developed. How long did it take from the biblical account to the earliest mythology then? About 500 years to the earliest mythology. There's later mythology that shows up several centuries later, some of it as much as five, six, seven centuries later with different variations.

Variations on who was in the boat, somehow this oarless boat, you know, arrived in southern France. So anyway, you know, you started to ask a question or make comment? Yes, yes. Yeah, the Da Vinci Code takes off on this legend, and we will spend a Sunday on the Da Vinci Code, okay, and I will have plenty of information on it. So we're just touching on it now and I'm mentioning it, but this is one of the legends that the Da Vinci Code goes and claims as fact. There's some other crazy stuff too, but we'll get to that. Yes.

Mark 7-7. Okay. All right. Thank you. Mark 7-7. Yeah. And that would not surprise me because that was a common statement that Jesus had for the Pharisees is, you know, that you're inventing things to add to the Mosaic Law. Okay, let's take another one.

The Holy Grail. I mentioned that one of the contentions is that Mary Magdalene was actually the Holy Grail and the whole thing with the cup was sort of a diversion. Now, scripture makes no big point at all about the cup that Jesus used the night before he was betrayed. It could have been made of glass more than likely based on technology, economic studies, things of that sort, Jewish practices, probably was made out of pottery. Now, here is this container. What has become of that since then? What's that?

Oh, yes, the third Indiana Jones movie. I mean, boy, just all sorts of stuff. And how many of you saw that Indiana Jones movie? If you saw that, what happened? You had this knight in there that was drinking from this cup. And here's what's interesting.

If we trace this thing back, why all of a sudden all this tension on a cup instead of the Lord? Why? Huh? Yeah, it's a spiritual negative because now all of a sudden I'm running all over Europe chasing down this cup instead of beholding the Lord and through His Word. And chasing after some enigma versus something that's well-founded and solid. So here's the strange thing. Now, here's what I think is behind it.

Let me put a little bit more info out here, and then let me chase it a little bit. But a multitude of legends of the Holy Grail, the various searches for it, and the great powers of it are first recorded after about 1100 AD. How about that? A thousand years after the New Testament was completed, then these things started coming out in writing that you had these Grail myths. some variations on that grail myth recorded at different times.

Now, work with me on this one. The cup. Was there anything really big made of the cup that Jesus had? Jesus didn't say, make sure no matter whatever happens, you guys don't understand what I'm about to do here, I'm going to die, but keep hold of this cup. Keep this in remembrance of me and fight over it. Chase all over Europe for this crazy thing, right? That's exactly what he said, right? No, he didn't make one comment at all other than, you know, do this in remembrance of me and probably holding a clay cup just like they'd always had, you know. But here's I think how it got started.

During the second century, so this is the century right after the New Testament, by about 170 AD, the pastors began to be called priests. By 220 AD, they began to see the physical act of taking in the cup as being spiritually effective, and that's what you see carried out in a great many of the Roman Catholic and derived churches these days. Orthodox churches and things of that sort.

So what you see happening is now, all of a sudden, the focus, instead of on Christ, is on the substance. From there, the next simple derivation, since you can't even get to the substances where it's at, and who presents it, Because you can't just take any old cup and any old wafer and do that. You have to have a priest do it, right? Now you start putting some magic into it that Scripture doesn't do. From there, you've already left Scripture. Why not add a little more? See? It's easy to cook up anything once you've started to depart from Scripture. Yes? I'm sorry, Marilyn? Go ahead. Okay, the way it worked out is this.

220 was the pivotal year where both baptism and the Lord's Table were seen as spiritually effective. That it turns into the blood of Christ was something that developed over the next few centuries as accepted. But it wasn't until after the year 1000 that it was officially declared as the doctrine.

Isn't that interesting? So there's this evolution of, first we just start changing this guy from a pastor to a priest, and now he's got some magical thing. Instead of all of us having direct access to God, the thing that we saw in Ephesians 2, now once you're starting to separate people from Scripture, you can add things like this.

Instead of that, now you've got this priest as some magical guy. As a matter of fact, have you ever heard the term hocus pocus? It's a distortion of the Latin. Hic est corpus, this is the body. The priest is looked upon as a magician, and now you begin to get mythical elements real easily, and so it evolves. It took centuries to go from the initial distortion of, now we've got priests, about 170 AD, until after the year 1000, I think it was around 1215, when they declared that this is the body and blood of Christ in this wafer and juice.

Now, let's look at another one, the three wise men. This is one that we see this time of year. According to medieval legend, the three wise men were named Melchior, Balthazar, and Gaspar. Now, where is that in scripture? What aspects of this are mythical? Okay, I see Sue's holding up three fingers, yeah. The fact that there are three is mythical. It's not revealed in Scripture, okay. What else? Their names are also mythical. So now you have a number and now specific names for these guys which there is no historical basis. It's been cooked up. There's one other thing. Where do they arrive?

They are typically shown In Bethlehem at the manger, oftentimes you'll see them in pictures alongside the shepherds. Scripture, however, records that they were at a house by that time. In Bethlehem, but at a house. And so the shepherds came to see them where Jesus was born, which was not at a house. So this is again, here's part of the mythology all mixed up. One legend says that each of them came from a different culture. How about that? So here's more additions to it. Because why would that be a good thing? Why would that be desirable that you add that feature? What's that?

Oh yes, it would be very inclusive. Yes, yes, very good point. Anything else? Diversity, oh yes. You see, this would be just a wonderful story, and by the time you've got not just different names, these people are coming from different places. Well, you go back to it, what's that? Different races, different locations. Oh, it's just a wonderful story. Too bad it's all bunk.

By the time it gets told and put out on Christmas cards and everything else, it has very little correlation with reality. The various legends of the wise men originate from about the fourth century in the medieval times, which extend into about the 1500s. So various legend accounts or mythological accounts, legends, whatever. In other words, here's real guys, but now larger than life. Here's where we say a legend is really probably a more appropriate term. You have legend because these guys, they have a basis in reality. Scripture records that these are real fellows.

We have historical information that points to the particular area that they were from, and it wasn't from three different continents. We don't have any basis to call them the names that they're called, but the various legendary elements are without foundation and sometimes contrary to known fact. The number of the wise men seems to hold throughout most of these legends, even from the earliest of them, likely based on the number of gifts given.

What were the gifts? Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And so naturally, what would we do? We'd have each wise man in the story give one of the gifts, and one gave gold, one gave frankincense, and another gave myrrh. And of course, somebody must have cooked up who gave what, I don't know. But all that, again, just purely invented.

Now, the Apostle Paul in Santa Claus. Those of you who are with us in the Acts class, here's the one that's just lots of fun, because here's a myth that is still developing. That's what's so much fun about this. Here it goes. Here's the Apostle Paul on his third and fourth journeys.

Myra was one of the places he passed by on his way back to Jerusalem on his third journey, and he stopped at, on his way back to Rome, okay? So, and it's actually recorded there in the Book of Acts. Myra is a city that's kind of up on the cliffs there, and so the ships would have pulled into port and gone up into this kind of cliff city. Now, Paul likely passed by on his way, his third journey, and he did stop.

Given that Paul had a direct or indirect part in establishing the churches located in Ephesus, Colossae, Laodicea, and the city in Antioch, Paul indirectly founded the church at Myra as well. It said that all Asia heard the gospel. And so people would have gone to other places, just like Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis in that Lycus Valley, when we studied through the books of Ephesians and Colossians, was founded by not Paul, but by somebody else who was influenced by Paul. Somehow, indirectly, this church got founded at Myra.

Now, more than two centuries later, so we're talking more than 200 years later, there's a man named Nicholas who was appointed as the Bishop of Myra. He was among those imprisoned in the 10th Roman persecution. Remember, there were 10 waves of Roman persecution, so he was in the last one, he was imprisoned during that persecution under Diocletian, which was one of the worst. After Constantine declared Christianity legal and then the official religion of the Roman Empire, Nicholas was among about 300 bishops who took part in the Council of Nicaea. This is where they got together because Constantine said, hey, I'm making Christianity the focal point of, you know, the Roman Empire. So this has got to, we can't have division here. You guys have to decide a few things. And so he was one of the representatives at the Council of Bessia. The records indicate he died on December 6th.

I found that it was real curious, but there was three different years that they seemed to lock on to, even though the date, they're very consistent figures. This is the amphitheater at Myra, just so you get an idea. From this, Bishop St. Nicholas, and by the way, what are some of the other names you hear? Father Christmas, Chris Kringle, Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, any others?

There's other strange nicknames. a jolly old man who lives on the North Pole. I mean, here's a bunch of other really strange stuff. Here's this guy that lives on a town where it never snows. And all of a sudden, you've got the guy living his whole life up at the North Pole.

I mean, this is wild. This is wild stuff, okay? What happened in about the mid-1800s, it developed from this fellow who was known for being fairly generous and being a bishop of Myra. to being this jolly fat man that hangs around reindeer and lives up on the North Pole. Yes, and all the whole elf thing, you know, and flying around.

Oh, it's just crazy. Now, this whole Santa Claus thing is still developing. And here's another interesting thing, is it's a mythology that's built around this guy. to the point that it has no correlation whatsoever to the original man. With one minor possible exception, he was known for generosity. That's about it. We don't know a whole lot of detail about him other than what I gave you. I told you about all we know. So everything else is mythology. Everything else has been built onto it.

What's that? The peace sign. Okay, so real interesting, here's the Santa Claus thing. Now, let's take a look at this. We looked at Mary Magdalene. How long did that myth take to develop? About 500 years, we said. Okay, how about the grail? About a thousand years for that to develop to get down to some recorded history.

Now, what was the third one? Here's the wise men. And we said the fourth century, you started to get some wise men stories. So let's call that 300 years. Okay. And then we get into this Santa Claus thing. How long has it been? Yeah, it's been it's been 1500 plus years for the development of the mythology. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, all this stuff, and of course now we've got all sorts of bizarre movies, and one of them I saw lately, they had, you know, a bunch of computer panels on this thing, and jets, and, you know, so it's still going. It's still going. And, of course, this guy who's the Bishop of Myra would be absolutely flabbergasted to know that he started all this stuff, you know. Probably flabbergasted is an understatement. But look at these.

Here are some instances where you can, if somebody says the Bible's full of myths, you can say, look, let's talk about some myths, you know, and you can go over these and these are ones that people know about. And you say, look, here's the starting point.

And the reality is that, you know, someone says, how long does it take to develop a myth? There is no one size fits all answer. But this makes it abundantly clear that more typical numbers are in the magnitude of centuries, and sometimes 10 centuries, and sometimes even more. That most of the mythology that has developed around Santa Claus that is so far removed from the reality is to be mythology and hardly legend. Most of that has developed in the last century and a half.

So when somebody comes to you and they say, oh, the Bible is just full of myths, you can take them through this and you can say, look, here's some myths that you know about. Here's how long they took to develop. Now, what sense does it make if the documents regarding Jesus were written within two or three decades of the end of his walking on planet Earth What sense does it make that those are called myths too?

There is no pattern for it. Now, if you press it, if you press it and say, yeah, but those may be typical myths, maybe we had some unusual circumstances. And cultural anthropologists, cultural geographers, in looking at this, have been able to come up with about as tight as they can find any example of is about 20 years to begin to develop elements of mythology.

Why would that be? Why would it take 20 years to begin to develop elements of mythology? Yeah, you're starting to get into a different generation, good. What else? Okay, yeah, you can start to get a kind of a social thing going on. Why does the 20 years help? Okay, think about that a little bit more. Yeah, in other words, you begin to distance yourself from the facts a little bit, and so if there was an inclination towards mythology, that would be the case. Now, let's ask the question, do we see in the writings of the apostles an inclination towards mythology?

Here you have Luke, who's writing to Theophilus, by calling him, oh excellent, and not, you know, some other term, didn't say, you know, dear brother or something of that sort. He is probably a Roman legal official and he's writing him saying, I've gone through and looked at all the different accounts and after carefully, you know, checking all the records, this is what I've come up with. John, the beginning of 1 John, says the things that we've heard, the things that we saw, the things, you know, The things that we touched, those are the things we're talking to you about. Here's the 2 Peter reference. We didn't follow things that were cooked up and made up. We were eyewitnesses.

You see, when you look at the manner of writing, it does not fit with developing mythology. There is at every turn a denial of it, not by just one New Testament author, but by almost all of them. an abject denial that this is cooked up. Yeah, and that's one of the things, if you look at legend, myth, you know, fairy tale, fable, if you look at those, those have different character, don't they?

Some of them are just fun. I would tell my kids stories, and occasionally they get some nervous looks on their faces, but it was in general just fun, and they enjoyed it. But that's all it was. The disciples weren't just telling fun stories. This was something that all but John died for.

So this was not just, you're right, this wasn't just something we cooked up because it'd sure be a nice account. It'd sure be nice if he rose from the dead. Wouldn't that be a nice story? Wouldn't that make people feel all warm and fuzzy inside? You don't die for stuff like that.

And we'll talk about that more later. But as you look at these accounts here, if somebody says to you, and you feel like you've got the time and the opportunity to talk it through, take them through some myths. Say, okay, how long did that take to develop? Yes, Marilyn. You'll find skeptics who will look at, for example, the early chapters of Genesis, and we'll approach that later. And one of the ways that we will do that is just like we've done here.

We say, okay, let's take what you know is a myth. How does it compare? Does it stack up? Does it look like this is a myth? We'll take some other popular myths of the early cultures. And we'll take some good examples, and you'll see there is a stark contrast in the character. Gods would battle each other and die, and the dying god would fall to the earth and make a mountain, things like that. This isn't Genesis 1. It does not have the character of ancient myth at all. Anyway, there's other reasons why it doesn't fall into that, but that's a quick statement of the situation. But you are correct. There will be other instances aside from the New Testament documents.

I take that because that's rather pivotal to the claim of Christ died and was buried and raised, and that's focal. to what we believe. And obviously we'll be looking at it this morning and commemorating it. So it is central. And we will take a look at that question more directly.

Yes. Yeah, the reason for concluding that is because Whereas initially he was born at the stable of a Palestinian inn, when the account that describes the Wiseman says that he was at a house, and he uses a different word that's explicitly a house. So some time had passed. How much time we don't know, although it can't have been a great long period of time. That's right. Yeah, they went to Egypt.

And notice that we have a historical pinpoint for both aspects of those accounts. And that is that Herod died in March of 4 BC. I forget the exact date. It's like the 13th or 14th or something. But anyway, March of 4 BC. And Mary and Joseph returned once they were sure that Herod was dead. So that would tend to put a limit on the time.

What you would have to have is, here are the shepherds out in the fields, and then they're told that the Savior is born in Bethlehem, so they go running all over Bethlehem. And by the way, nobody liked shepherds in that culture. I mean, shepherds were like, ugh, you know. So here's some shepherds, where's the Messiah born? They say, get out of here, you stink! You smell like sheep! You know?

And of course they're all excited, and the people that they're asking are all excited for different reasons. And so that scenario, and then the next thing is, here are the wise men coming, there's no mention of shepherds. They didn't say, oh gee, good to meet you, my name's Gaspar, and all that stuff. None of that, they're not even there, and they're in a house.

So that's why some period of time is figured to have transpired. It may even have been a few days, but it could have been some number of months. Yeah, Sue? Yeah, it might have taken them some time. Probably from the place that they were located, it would easily have been a couple of months. You know, from the time they first noticed him to the time they came. So, you know, you have several evidences that some period of time passed. You did not have the wise men and the shepherds at the same time, the same place. None of the evidence points to that as being feasible. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

There are different words for a newborn infant versus, you know, an infant that's a little bit older. So you've got some things in the account that deviate from the mythology. Now, there's some final points on here I want to cover. Real world myths and legends take time to develop, typically a few to many centuries. That would be typical. If you really want to press it, and somebody says, yeah, but couldn't it happen faster? You could say it could start from the tightest time frame the anthropologists have been able to find, about 20 years to begin to develop mythical elements. However, you also have to have the environment for it, and what the apostles wrote denies the environment. They did not have the mindset for writing myth.

Details of the original events and persons are typically distorted in one or more details. What do we mean by that? It's not just an addition of information, it's typically a distortion of the original information. That would be, for example, here's the grail legend. What's the typical grail legend? got some cup and it's got all kinds of fancy jewels and it's made with silver and you know it's some actually medieval European dream and not realistic pottery you know clay cup type scenario. And so what do you have is a distortion of what was originally there not just addition to the original story.

Tom? Yeah, yeah, one of these, you know, they'd have been delighted, right? You think of Mary Magdalene, is there any evidence initially that she and Jesus were married or they had any kind of a relationship that would have produced children or anything of the sort? It doesn't, there's nothing in the original text indicated, zip, nothing, nada.

And yet, What will happen is that the Mary Magdalene account will not just add to the original account, but go to the place of distorting the original account to support the mythology. And then finally, historical document basis for myths and legends does not bear up well under the three historiographic tests.

Remember, this is over a month ago now, we had three tests. The bibliographic test, what's the source? The internal test, what's the internal claim? of the author? And then thirdly, the external test, how does it check with outside information? Those three tests, the myths don't hold up so good. But one of the things in the bibliographic test would be, for example, how close was the author to the original events and facts?

Yeah, Art? The Apocrypha, would that be an example of mythical writing? The Apocrypha is a mixed answer to that because some of them, first and second Maccabees, I think are the ones closest to actual history and written to reflect history. And I don't see them as inspired, but I see as historical documents are valuable. Other parts of it though, you have things like Bell and the Dragon that was supposed to be in addition to the book of Daniel, written like 400 years after Daniel died. That just doesn't make good sense. So that would be an example of something that was mythical, written later.

And so you have a mixed answer if you say the apocrypha. You've got some where there's some historical connection that's fairly reasonable. others where mythology enters into it and there's almost no question about it. Some of the apocryphal documents are as many as eight centuries after the claimed origin. Solomon did not write anything in the Apocrypha and yet you'll have the claim in there that he did.

Other questions? Okay, let's Let's call it good. Believe me. Okay. Lord, we thank you for this time. We thank you that indeed what was written that we count upon here, that the Apostles who, though they initially did not believe that Jesus had in fact resurrected, even his brother, it appears, did not believe that Jesus was indeed the Christ until after that eventful and by your power, a miraculous moment. But Lord, it just does not stack up as a myth. And we thank you for that. We thank you that we can count upon the truth of what you have revealed and had recorded for our benefit because you love us. Thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.