Defense of the Faith - Evidence for Christianity outside of the Bible

The topic here is evidence of Christianity outside the Bible. And there are two things that are of note before we dig into it. One is this is a topic that was instrumental in Craig Kay's coming from being an atheist to becoming a believer. So when we talk about the defense of the faith, it's not just simply an academic thing. For the Kays family it was pivotal, and particularly this specific topic. It was interesting, some years ago when I taught on this, he said this specific information that I'll be passing along to you today was one of the things that was instrumental in him turning around from being an atheist to becoming a believer. So I think it's key for that.

The other thing that I pointed out just a few weeks ago, I found a post on Pinterest that had a statement, you know, how come there's no mention of Jesus outside the New Testament for the first like 300 years after the supposed time of his life? And I posted on here some of the pieces of information that you see there, and within minutes my post had been deleted and I was blocked. So very interesting. It was a don't confuse me with the facts situation.

So anyway, those points I think bring some focus on This is valuable information So what we're going to do first we're going to look at non-christian authors who write about Jesus Christ and or Christianity in the first or second centuries and I say brace yourself because some of those are You know satirical comments and things of that sort then we'll look at Christian quotes of secular authors from the first or second centuries and that are otherwise not available now. Sometimes what will happen in history is we'll have somebody quoting another person and all we have left is the quote, not the document of the original person. And it's interesting, over the centuries that happens fairly often. where there's reference to somebody, so-and-so said this, so-and-so wrote this, we don't have the original person's document that they quoted from. Sometimes the quote we have of the person is the only document we have left.

So we'll take a look at those, and then we'll look at some extra-biblical Christian writings from the first and second centuries. So anyway, those three. We have as the next slide the nature of the news, which is valuable to take a look at. Here you think about it. Here is Jesus. He lived a life of poverty. He lived in a kind of a podunk, no-name town of Nazareth for most of his life. And there is little written about Nazareth outside of the New Testament. He had no political standing at all.

He stood before an obscure Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. Interesting, Pontius Pilate ruled for about ten years and he otherwise there's not a lot written about him but he became the most famous Roman governor having been the one who judged Christ and sentenced him to crucifixion Christ was executed by the means then fitting only erring slaves and the worst of criminals. Only the worst of the worst and errant slaves got this crucifixion treatment. But that's how Christ was crucified. That there is any record of Him outside of the New Testament is an extraordinary occurrence. an extraordinary occurrence.

A lot of records end up getting lost, a great many of them end up getting lost, and by the time you look at, here's an obscure Roman governor who ruled for maybe a decade, and often the far corners of the Roman Empire, that there's any record of Christ at all is rather surprising. but it turns out that there is quite a bit of record, as we'll be looking at here this morning.

One of those is the Pontius Pilate inscription, and we've got a picture of it in your handout. Let's see, there we go. And interesting, some Italian archaeologists were excavating in Caesarea on the coast of Israel, Caesarea was a harbor that was built at the instigation of Herod the Not-So-Great. As the archaeologists were excavating the amphitheater and wanting to make it into something that was useful and worth looking at, they turned over a stone, and that's this one you have here. Pontius Pilate, that's the inscription. So it has a part of his name remaining. They had actually chipped up the stone and used it for something else in the amphitheater. So that's why part of it is there and part of it is not. But nonetheless, it has most of Pontius Pilate's name in the Latin, Pontius Pilatus.

Pontius Pilate is also mentioned in the writings of Josephus and also the Jewish scholar from Alexandria, and that's Philo. So anyway, there have been entire books collecting what's known about him. from scripture, from Josephus, from Philo. This inscription is just one of the pieces of evidence. We also have Pontius Pilate coins, coins issued under his time of governorship.

So those are some things that are kind of major connections. Next to that, we also have something else. In addition to having Jesus be someone who is of an area and a time where he was obscure, there's also a lot of destruction of information. In other words, we have information about Christ. A lot of it was likely destroyed over the centuries. What we have here is in the nature of the news, part two.

You had two times of Roman assault on the nation of Israel. One of the things we picked up on in visiting Jerusalem is Jerusalem has been attacked and rebuilt 40 times. And a number of those times have been since Christ was here on the earth. So you had two major Roman assaults. and actually more than that if you break it down. You also have two major times of assaults by Islam.

The Muslims came in shortly after Muhammad's death in 632 AD and attacked Israel and Jerusalem. And then again during the time of the Crusades back and forth. And so we have that blocked out here with multiple red lines. And then another time during the 1400s coming in. So multiple times records and evidence was destroyed in these various military attacks. And the Muslims were not inclined to preserve things that were Christian. So the fact that you have any information at all is really surprising.

So did the Muslims specifically go after Jerusalem because of the Jews? No, no, it's really interesting. Muhammad had contact with Jews because remember where were the Jews taken when they were exiled from Israel and Jerusalem, they were taken to Babylon and Persia, right? A great many of them remained there, and so Muhammad had contact with Jews quite a bit. And, in addition to that, he had contact with some weird Christians. Kind of a Christian cult group.

So what Muhammad did is he established a whole bunch of conflicted traditions. about things in Israel. For example, the rock where the Dome of the Rock is, that is the rock where Abraham offered up Isaac. But Muhammad's tradition is that's the rock where Abraham offered up Ishmael. Muhammad also had it recorded that he ascended from that rock to heaven. Yes, which is weird. There's no evidence that he was ever in Jerusalem, but that's how he got it recorded.

And so you go to Joppa, right? And the place where Peter stayed at the house of Simon the Tanner, the Muslims also have a tradition and it's conflicted with the Christian tradition. So what the Muslims, what Muhammad did is leave a bunch of, a number of, conflicted traditions that put the Muslims at odds with the Jews and the Christians. And so shortly after Muhammad's death, just a few years later, is when the Muslims attacked Israel and Jerusalem to take it over. Yeah? I'm just curious, do you happen to know which tribe Muhammad came from?

I don't off the top of my head. I do have a couple of family trees. Yeah, I do have a couple of family trees that show all the different relationships. You see, Jacob had 12 sons, right? And so did Ishmael. So you've got that whole connection. And of course, Genesis tells us that Ishmael will be a donkey of a man, right?

And essentially, there is rooted in Islam the conflict. It will never end until Christ comes back. Muhammad left conflicted traditions. Think about it, Christianity in the first hundred years, we don't have any record that a sword was lifted in the name of Christianity. It was later that Christianity developed into something else. Christendom, I would call it.

Developed into something else but with Islam 632 was the year of Muhammad's death and within a hundred years The sword had been raised for Islam in three different continents It went from the Middle East up into Europe. So that's 732 the Battle of Tours France were You know They finally turned around the Muslim invasion into Europe and then into North Africa and then going on into Asia. And that's why you'll find parts of Asia all the way to the Philippines will have long-standing Muslim patches. uh... in into asia so uh... conflicted uh... i'd i'd have to check that but i believe yes i have to double check that uh... what all do is all get the uh... what i have on record is uh... family tree and we'll check that Okay, so first the non-Christian sources, and so we'll take a look at those.

So Festus' reaction is recorded in Acts 25.19 as typical of the early Roman officials.

And what it has there is they simply had some points of disagreement with him about their own religion, about the dead man Jesus whom Paul asserted to be alive. Now, the dead man Jesus, where would they get that information? Pilate had sentenced Jesus to death, right? So he got records of another Roman governor and had sentenced him to death and put that down in the record, in the Roman records.

Alright, one is the Nazareth inscription. And something I think I need to point out here, with all of these things, there are varying degrees of how reliable is this, how clear is this, that sort of thing. And I think it's valid to make kind of an estimation of how good an evidence this is. Not everything is perfect, not everything is perfectly clear.

With a Nazareth inscription, we have either Emperor Tiberius or Claudius issued an edict against grave robbing. The inscription of that edict was found in Nazareth, interestingly enough. It may, however, result from events surrounding Jesus' resurrection.

And basically what it says, the translation of it is over in the next slide, the last slide on the first page. Ordinances of Caesar, it is my pleasure that graves and tombs remain undisturbed in perpetuity. for those who have made them for the cult of their ancestors or children or members of their house if however any man lay information that another has either demolished them or has in any other way extracted the buried or has maliciously transferred them to other places in order to wrong them or has displaced the ceiling of other stones against Such one I order that a trial be instituted as in respect of the gods, so in regard to the cult of the mortals. For it shall be much more obligatory to honor the buried, let them be absolutely forbidden for anyone to disturb them. In case of contravention, I desire that the offender be sentenced to capital punishment on the charge of violation of sepulcher.

Alright, so this was found in Nazareth, which is a curious place to find it, and nowhere else. So here is this order coming from a Caesar of the time. Now, is it abundantly clear that this is referring to Christ and dealing, you know, trying to Stop things like you know rumors of his resurrection and that kind of thing is it abundantly clear in this inscription Yeah, Stan Now in other words if you look at the evidence this by itself you'd look at and say I'm not so sure right Not sure One it doesn't identify which Caesar it's possibly even a produced before Christ was resurrected. And it may have been from some other cause.

So when you look at it, I think to be objective on all these things, rather than just swallowing it hook, line, and sinker, to be objective, you have to look at these things and say, okay, this is possibly evidence. It's not strong evidence. But it's one that I'll bring forward. There may be some subsequent discovery that will clarify what this is pointing to, at least right now. It's evidence. It's not strong evidence.

All right, so let's take a look at the next page here. Suetonius. And by the way, if you are interested, I have some PDF files and other files where these quotes are extracted from, and if you're interested in having those, let me know. I can email those to you. Here is Suetonius, a court official under Emperor Hadrian, writing about 120 AD.

Lives of the Twelve Caesars, this is one I have in a PDF file, wrote of an event that evidently occurred in 49 or 50 AD, possibly reflecting the record of Acts 18.2, and quote, because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Crustos, he, Emperor Claudius, expelled them from the city. expelled the Jews.

So that would reflect Acts 18.2.

Now what that tells you, that matches up well with Acts 18.2 where it records that Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome. So that part is pretty clear and pretty good evidence.

The other part, Krestos, is that a mistaken spelling of the name for Christ. That is less clear. It could be. One of the problems is the name Krestos is an actual fairly common name. And it may well be that the person was actually Krestos, but not having anything to do with Christ. Or it may be that someone not being familiar with the details wrote down Krestos when it was actually because of Christians. among the Jews and the disturbances there. So again, we have to evaluate how good is the evidence. It may be evidence, we may get subsequent discoveries that clarify this more.

At present, we'd have to say it's good evidence for lining up with Acts 18.2, the Jews being expelled. it may or may not be good evidence regarding Christ. Here is another thing, however, that Suetonius wrote. Punishment by Nero was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition. So he's referring to the Christians there. Next is Josephus.

Josephus wrote quite a bit of material, living from AD 37 to the year 100. Josephus records, he wrote in the generation immediately after Jesus' incarnation. So to give it some sense of perspective, it would be like me telling you about World War II. I wasn't alive during World War II, so I'm one generation removed from that. But I can tell you various things, and I can tell you my father did this, and that sort of thing.

So he makes several references to people well-known to New Testament readers, including the Herods. He makes a lot of records about Herod. By the way, just recently, in recent years, It was recorded in Josephus that Herod, the not-so-great, was buried at Herodium, which is a mountain just to the east of Bethlehem, where the top was cut off. And so based on that, an archaeologist by the last name of Netzer excavated and kept looking around and found what he believes is Herod's tomb, based on what Josephus wrote. So we have also the emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, also the procurators of Judea, the high priestly families, Annas, Caiaphas, Ananias, the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

So he provides information about those different people and groups. A lot of the details about even things like The Sea of Galilee had about 230 boats working that sea during his time. So, a lot of particular insights. The next slide over. Okay, so the next slide over.

At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die, and those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, that he was alive. Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders."

So this is one of the great many records that Josephus had. Josephus also, by the way, mentions John the Baptist. He talks about James, the brother of Jesus, and how he was killed. So here's another quote. It's the one that has this picture there. Ananias assembled the Sanhedrin of the judges and brought before them the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ, whose name was James, and some others.

And when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned." Hmm. Okay. Now, how good an evidence is that? What's wrong with this? Well, not all of them were stoned. Yeah. To be stoned? Wait a minute. Something's mixed up about that, right? Yeah. So it's some evidence. It specifically names Christ. It's got something a little mixed up. And that stone thing is a part of it. In that previous slide you were talking about the disciples did not abandon his discipleship.

And that's interesting because there's that quote that Jesus had, which hardly anyone would die for a good man. I can't remember where that's at right now, but that kind of is a precursor to what actually happened as far as the disciples were concerned. the fact that they all died for a man who actually was crucified for the greatest, you know, a guilty death. Who would do that? Would all 12 of them do it? Probably not. Yeah, likely not.

Alright, now we have the next one. And this is interesting, boy, the name pronunciation has got a spectrum of pronunciations. I have it here, it's in the Latin, more correctly, it's Plinius, but you'll hear Pliny and different, you know, Anglicized pronunciations. They've even made a beer named after this guy.

So at any rate, writing to Emperor Trajan about his achievements as governor of Bithynia, wrote how he had killed multitudes of Christian men. And by the way, this is about the end of his life too. Christian men, women, and children. So he claims to have killed multitudes of them.

And quoted as 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 and your, the Emperor's, image. They curse Christ which genuine Christians cannot be induced to do.

Interesting, huh? So here is evidence of people being Christians. Here he is writing less than a century after the time of Christ's ministry. And by this time, which as I mentioned is towards the end of his life, by this time when he is writing, he says, I've killed multitudes of Christians. Men, women, and children. who wouldn't, you know, deny the faith. And so it's interesting. Genuine Christians cannot be induced to deny the faith. Interesting.

Yeah, Stan? once before that it's a practice where they had to go into the temple and they did the incense, they had a certificate that said that Caesar was the number one God. Ultimately, Rome's cure was, if you go in and get this certificate that you've done your worship of the Caesar, and the way the Roman emperors looked at it, this was a statement that you are patriotic and loyal to Rome. That was their view. And so you could get a certificate and some of the Christians would get out of being in trouble by faking a certificate that they had done this. And then those who did that were looked upon by the other Christians as, you know, that's not a good thing.

So there's one. In the same letter to the emperor, 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 and not to do any wicked deeds and never to deny a truth when they should be called upon to deliver it up. So that's his record again. This is about Christians. writing less than a century after the time of Christ. Alright, so let's take a look at page 3.

So it's Cornelius Tacitus. So Tacitus was a senator under the Emperor Vespasian. Later he held the offices of consul and then proconsul. He was a friend of Pliny Uss, as we pronounce it there, Secundus, the governor of Bithynia, writing of Nero's attempt to relieve himself of the guilt of burning Rome.

So here's Cornelius Tacitus, birth about 55 AD and then after 117 AD would be the time of his death. Quote, hence to suppress the rumor he falsely charged with the guilt and punished with the most exquisite tortures the persons commonly called Christians who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius. But the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also. So that's a tacitus record of Christians and their being persecuted under Nero.

The next one, Marabar Serapion, writing after 70 AD. So a letter that now resides in the British Museum was written by Marabar Serapion, a Syrian Stoic philosopher, to his son who was in prison. Curious the documents that remain after time, huh? 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." Now, how good an evidence is that? What does that mean, he did not die for good? Yeah, did not die for good means he didn't die so as to end completely. So he didn't die a martyr, is that what you're trying to say? he wasn't completely truncated and ended. So it's a funny way to say to die for good. In other words, Socrates died, he did die, but he continued on in the writings of Plato.

So is this a foolproof evidence for Christianity? One thing is, what's the closest reference to have that this is Jesus? The wise king, you know. And where would you get the king idea? The plaque was on the cross, right? King of the Jews, right? So there would be a connection there. Jesus is not named, so you don't have Jesus, you don't have Christians, per se, included in this. So you have perhaps not the best evidence here, right? It is interestingly connected to the kingdom, just before the kingdom.

Yeah, so one of the things that would put some kind of a time frame on it is 70 AD was when the Romans came in and wiped out Jerusalem. The Romans actually came in in waves. They first attacked other parts of Israel in 66 and 67. That's when they came up into Galilee and took on parts of Galilee. The last holdout was Magdala. in Galilee, and that was 66-67 when they attacked at Galilee. It was 70 AD when they finally came in and took out Jerusalem and completely wiped the temple off the Temple Mount.

So it does have a timing factor here that helps in some degree, but the identification as the wise king is perhaps not as specific as you might want. Alright, so here's the Jewish Talmud. This is a portion compiled between 70 and 200 AD. Okay, so it says, on the eve of the Passover, Yeshu was hanged. For 40 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 since nothing was brought forward to his favor, he was hanged on the eve of Passover."

So the word translated hanged is used for both crucifixion and other means of capital punishment. That's one thing is you find reference again to being stoned. And rather than being specific about this is the means by which he died, the term stoning was sometimes used in a more general way of, you know, giving capital punishment, kind of as a euphemism.

Now, so how good an evidence is that? Isn't it 40 days a problem? Yeah, 40 days before the execution took place, does that match up with biblical record? That seems odd, right? Besides that, according to the Scripture, there was no hero that went forth to make this prediction. Jesus couldn't even convince his disciples that this was going to happen. Yeah, yeah. So, 40 days. So, some of it doesn't match up very well. Yes? Yeah, do you think of it?

We say Jesus, right? That's the anglicized form. 1611 King James actually has Jesus. But the original name, Hebrew, would have been Yeshua. So this actually is closer from that standpoint. But it's the Jewish Talmud, so they would have connected it up with that and done a closer job.

And also, one other thing, on the eve of Passover, And what's the eve of Passover? The night before. So the timing is a little funny, right? Because this would have been the day after, right? Yeah, but the eve of Passover So, a little funny. Now, the next one we have there is Lucian. Lucian of Samosata. Second century Greek satirist. Now here's something I think to think about.

Somebody's writing a satire. What's that going to do to the way things are written, even if it's real history and they're writing satirically? What is that form of writing going to do to the historical record? Yeah, Randy? It's going to exaggerate and to present a If you think about satirical writing today, about events and things of that sort, there's going to be some distortion in the satire.

So that's something, just as we approach it, realizing, and by the way, this guy wrote quite a bit of material. I was amazed when I started looking at all the different things, and this is a quote from one on the death of Peregrinus, and that's in various ways translated. But, here's the quote.

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 of another, after they have transgressed once for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshiping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws."

Okay, how good an evidence is this? Does it sound like Christ? Does it sound like we've got the right person and the right group? Yeah, there is a lot that's parallel there. Living under his laws, let's ask this question. Are we under Christ's laws? No. So that's something that's misunderstood, but you can easily understand that someone else would misperceive things. And I would also tell you that Lucian wrote quite a bit of material teasing and poking fun at Christians. A lot of what he wrote was satirical about Christians. This is the most particular one where he writes about Christ himself. So it's some evidence, it's perhaps not as good as we would like because satire by itself is already going to kind of distort things. Yes?

What's a sophist? You know, sophos is wisdom. So, you know, someone, a sophist would be someone who communicates or, you know, expresses wisdom. So yeah, that's in the term we use for high school and college sophomore. Kind of a wise moron. Also from the same work by Lucian, history dot dot dot abhors the intrusion of any least scruple of falsehood. It is like the windpipe which the doctors tell us will not tolerate a morsel of stray food.

The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened. And then the historian, inserted there, must sacrifice to no God but truth. He must neglect all else. His sole rule and unerring guide is this, to think not of those who are listening to him now, but of the yet unborn who shall seek his converse.

So that tells you not about Christ, but about his perception of recording history. here's another one uh... julius africanus so this is quoting christian authors quoting non-christians julius africanus writing about eighty two twenty one writing about first century author thallus now as it turns out this quote of thallus we're quoting this guy writing about him because we don't have any writings by Thallus, but we have only quotes. So that's why we're using this as a reference.

Thallus in the third book of his histories explains away this darkness at the time of the crucifixion as an eclipse of the sun unreasonably, as it seems to me. So here's Thales, who was a Samaritan-born historian. Africana said that Thales' proposition was unreasonable, of course, because a solar eclipse could not take place at the time of the full moon. It's astronomically not possible, right? And it was the time of the paschal full moon, that is having to do with the Passover, when Christ died. So he's critiquing Thallus there regarding the time of Christ's death.

And by the way, if you think about it, what were the miraculous events related to Christ's crucifixion? One was an earthquake, and by the way, geologists investigating that have timed that earthquake to April 3rd, 33 AD. That was published just last year. So April 3rd, 33 AD is when the geologists have said that they've timed that particular earthquake. Okay, what else besides the earthquake?

Pardon? The tearing of the curtain. Interesting, most of the priests, a great many of them were Sadducees and didn't believe there was a Messiah. They were rather skeptical, didn't hold to a lot of the Old Testament. But we have recorded early in Acts that a great number of the priests became believers in Christ. Why? It doesn't say so, but I think it has to do with the tearing of the curtain. They looked at that and said, there's no way this curtain could be... Who could do that? Nobody could do that, and it was torn from where?

From top to bottom. Who's going to get up? That's 15 stories high. That building is 15 stories high. This is one tall, thick, several inches thick, curtain. And I think that fact got their attention. They're saying, wait a minute, when did this happen? Same day Jesus was crucified. Yes. Yes, that's recorded in Matthew. Yes. That would have gotten a lot of people's attention.

What else happened that day that was miraculous? Prophecies were fulfilled, and that's true. No broken bone. What else happened that was miraculous? The graves were open, and then the darkness. the darkness that set in. So what Thallus was trying to do was give a natural explanation for why things would have gotten dark.

But Julius Africanus' comment is that, no, you can't have this. It's astronomically not possible for there to be an eclipse of the sun for three hours right after Passover, which would have been you know, a lunar event. That Passover is timed using the lunar calendar. So you can't have a full moon and a solar eclipse at the same time. So he's just saying that's not valid.

What Thallus came up with is not valid. Which also tells you that Thallus, the skeptic, recognized that there was darkness. There was a miraculous darkness, and he was trying to explain it away. And the explanation that Thales came up with doesn't work.

Okay, so let's take a look at page four. We have another one. Celsus, writing about 175, is quoted by Origen. So here's another instance where we don't have the writing, but we have somebody else quoting, and that's what we have. So this is the writing of Celsus.

So here's Celsus, who was a Neoplatonic philosopher. He was skeptical of Christianity and openly critiqued it. He wrote his broad-based critique of Christianity about 175 AD, entitled True Discourse. None of his document remains to modern times, but some 60-90% of it is quoted in the point-by-point refutation by Christian author Origen of Alexandria in his Against Celsus, about 250-80. So here's the quote in the next slide.

So he accuses him of having invented his birth from a virgin and upbraids him with being born in a certain Jewish village of a poor woman of the country who gained her subsistence by spinning and who was turned out of doors by her husband, a carpenter by trade, because she was convicted of adultery. After being driven away by her husband and wandering about for a time, she disgracefully gave birth to Jesus, an illegitimate child, who having hired himself out as a servant in Egypt on account of his poverty, and having there acquired some miraculous powers on which the Egyptians greatly pride themselves, returned to his own country highly elated on account of them, and by means of these, proclaimed himself a god.

So what do you think about that? Well, and that's the thing. If you look at this, this particular quote by itself, does it give Jesus' name? What do you notice about the character of this quote? How well does it match up with the New Testament? Not so much. And one of the things that it looks like is he takes everything in the most negative light possible. Takes everything in the most negative light possible.

Here she claims to have had Jesus' virgin birth. He turns that into, no, she committed adultery. And we don't have any evidence from the New Testament that Joseph pitched Mary out except briefly when he was contemplating divorcing her. So no evidence of that, but what he records is that her husband put her away for adultery.

So everything is taken in the most negative way possible. And he had these miraculous powers and he got that from time in Egypt. What the New Testament records is that he spent a short period of time as an infant in Egypt. and not as an adult. We have no record outside of that brief time as an infant that Christ ever went to Egypt again. So He's got some things distorted again in the most negative light possible.

Okay, we're running out of time, so I'll let you work through the rest of it. I'm going to jump to page 6 here. There is a quote there of Dr. Edwin Yamauchi, an historian. He taught for a number of years at Miami University, which by the way is not in Miami, but in Ohio. He has spoken down at Colorado Springs on at least one occasion that I'm aware of. But anyway, he wrote this.

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 what's called Pliny, but should be more Plinius, the Younger, that 1. Jesus was a Jewish teacher.

2. Many people believe that he performed healings and exorcisms.

3. He was rejected by the Jewish leaders. Four, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. And five, despite this 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. Six, all kinds of people from the cities and countryside, men and women, slave and free, worshiped him as God by the beginning of the second century. One more thing that I added to this, and that is the James Ossuary.

Interestingly enough, a little over a decade ago, the owners of this ossuary were charged by the Israel Antiquities Authority with fraud, archaeological fraud. They said that you went in and inscribed the words that you have recorded here, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus, James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus, on the side of this old ossuary. Well, the thing went to court for about a decade, almost a decade, went to court, had all kinds of different experts look at this thing. and ultimately the owners were acquitted. That is, they couldn't produce proof sufficient for charging these guys that the inscription was fake.

Something else that I'll point out here, the names James, which actually in the Hebrew is Yaakov, Yaakov and Yeshua, that's what we get as Jesus, and Joseph, Yosef, those names were common names, but to have the combination of those names here would be unusual, and it was also unusual to mention a brother. So increasingly, and especially after an article was published just last year, increasingly the evidence is leaning towards this was indeed the bone box, the ossuary of James, the author of the book of James, and the half-brother of Jesus. So, real interesting that there are still a few archaeologists that are riding the fence, but increasingly the experts are coming forth and saying that, no, this is the real thing. This really was James, the author of the book of James in the Bible, and the half-brother of Jesus, who himself, he did not believe until he saw Christ resurrected. So, real interesting, and that would be another evidence outside the Bible, just in that inscription, which has been vindicated only in recent years.

Alright, we're way out of time, so let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for the things, really many amazing things that point to evidence that you came, that you taught the disciples, that you died and were buried and resurrected on our behalf. And we do just give you thanks for that, and thank you for our time together. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.