THIS WAY, THAT WAY, OR YAHWEH?
Why should you believe in the "Christian" God? - Part 2
If you haven't read Part 1 in this series of articles, go back and read that now. Otherwise you will likely be lost when trying to work your way through this second part without reading what has gotten us to this point. The point of this article is to explore whether the Biblical authors accurately recorded the historical events of their time. So without further adieu...
Confirmation of Biblical details
OK. So we know that the words on the pages of the Bible are the same as the words that were written there long ago. But that doesn't mean that those words are true. In other words, people 2,000 years ago were just as capable of lying as people today. So how do we know anything the Bible says is the truth? For example, the Bible says that Pontius Pilate was the Prefect sent by Rome to govern Judea. But how do we really know that such a man ever existed? Isn't it possible that the Bible is nothing more than a bunch of elaborate myths made up by people to make them feel better about being social outcasts in ancient society? How is the Bible any different from the ancient Greek myths; stories that make good reading, and occasionally a good movie (or even a bad one like Clash of the Titans1), but that have no basis in reality?
Fortunately, the Bible provides us with countless confirmable details. It gives us the names of people, places, things, and events. A lot of this can be confirmed through outside sources. One type of outside source is archaeology. Not only has archaeology confirmed countless Biblical details, no archaeological finding has ever contradicted anything in the Bible.2 Another source of corroboration comes from other ancient writings. Many non-Biblical writings confirm some of the most essential details of the Bible. First, we'll take a look at archaeology.
Since I've been talking so much about Pontius Pilate, let's start by examining the evidence for his existence. Even those of you who have never cracked open a Bible may be familiar with the name Pontius Pilate. He was appointed by the Roman Empire to govern Judea, the part of the Holy Land where Jerusalem is located. When the Jewish court (called the Sanhedrin) brought Jesus before Pilate, he didn't really seem to want to kill Jesus. In fact, Pilate gave the people the chance to free Him. He offered them the chance to free one prisoner, Jesus, or a murderer named Barabbas. At the urging of the chief priests (and probably in part fearful that if they didn't go along with the priests they may wind up in the same boat as Jesus), the crowd asked for Barabbas instead. At this, Pilate washed his hands and said, "I am innocent of this man's blood. It is your responsibility."
The story of Pontius Pilate is one of the more dramatic tales in the Bible (despite my extremely poor rendering of it here). But did he even exist? For a long time that question was in doubt. But then archaeologists made a startling discovery while excavating a Roman theater in the town of Caesarea. They found a stone in a flight of steps with an inscription. That inscription read, "To the people of Caesarea Tiberium Pontius Pilate Prefect of Judea." Another line on the inscription seemed to have the word for "dedication". It seems this may have been a stone originally placed to commemorate the theater's construction. Regardless of what purpose it served for the theater, for archaeologists it confirmed the reality of Pontius Pilate and his appointment as Prefect of Judea.
The city of Jericho seemed to cause a lot of problems for the Bible. For example, Luke 18:35 says that Jesus was "approaching" Jericho when He healed a blind beggar. But Matthew 20:29 said that event happened while Jesus was "leaving" Jericho. Of course, He couldn't have been "approaching" and "leaving" Jericho at the same time (I guess he technically could have been spinning around in circles, unsure which way to go, but lets assume that's not what was really going on). Believe it or not, archaeology resolved this apparent contradiction. It turns out that in Jesus' time there were two cities of Jericho, an old city and a new city, and they were right next to each other. It seems that Jesus was leaving the old city and on His way to the new city when he healed the beggar.
Another problem with Jericho was that supposedly Zacchaeus, a short tax collector, climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus (Luke 9:1-10). Archaeologists knew about "old" Jericho long before they knew about "new" Jericho. In old Jericho, there wasn't nearly enough room for sycamore trees to grow. It was too packed with buildings. However, once new Jericho was discovered, archaeologists saw that it had plenty of room for sycamore trees. In fact, sycamores still grow there today. Zacchaeus simply climbed a tree in new Jericho.
The Book of Acts records an incident in which the apostle Philip met up with an Ethiopian eunuch and converted him to Christianity (Acts 8:26-40). The Bible describes this man as "as important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians." So did Candace exist? Yes she did. Excavations in the city of Nubia have revealed that a series of queens all went by the name "Candace", all the way up through the first century.
What about the story in Mark 2:1-12 in which Jesus healed a paralytic? Supposedly, Jesus was preaching in Peter's house in Capernaum, but the crowd was so great that the two men carrying the paralytic could not get close enough to get Jesus' attention. So they climbed up on top of the house, dug a hole in the roof, and lowered the paralyzed man right in front of Jesus. Obviously, all it would take to disprove this story would be to show that houses in Capernaum at that time had masonry roofs.
Long ago, Pilgrims in the holy land taught that there was an octagonal church built on top of Peter's house to commemorate the spot of this miracle. In 1968, archaeologist Virgilio Corbo found evidence of an octagonal structure in Capernaum. As he dug, he found that the octagonal structure was a fifth century church, just like the pilgrims claimed. He kept on digging and discovered that beneath the octagonal church was a fourth century "house church", and below that was a simple first century home. Now here's the important part. The walls of that first century home were not strong enough to support a second story or a masonry roof. However, they could have supported the kind of thatched roof described in Mark. This may or may not have really been the home of Peter (although it certainly seems that people in the fourth and fifth century thought it was his home). That really is not the point. The point is that archaeologists found a house in Capernaum that could only support a thatched roof, the exact type of roof that would be necessary for the story in Mark to be plausible. Does it prove that Mark's story is true? No. But it does show that Mark was no dummy, and he was very careful with his details when he wrote his gospel.
Finally, there is very little doubt about the existence of Biblical cities. So many of them have been found and excavated that it seems ridiculous to believe that the Biblical authors were not being accurate in their geographical details. A small sampling of the cities that have been unearthed include Arad, Bethel, Capernaum, Chorazin, Dan, Ephesus, Gaza, Gezer, Hazor, Hesbon, Jericho, Joppa, Ninevah, Shechem and Susa. This may seem like a small detail, but when you compare Christianity to other religions, it becomes vastly important. For example, both Mormonism and Christianity make detailed claims about historical events and places. The difference is that the Bible has been confirmed time and time again, whereas not one city named in the Book of Mormon (other than those also mentioned in the Bible) has been found. Clearly, some old religious leaders would not hesitate to make up stories about ancient cities, especially when they did not appreciate that advances in archaeology would eventually prove their teachings to be false.
We could write an entire book detailing all the archaeological findings that have (at least in part) confirmed fine Biblical accounts. The attention to detail exhibited in Luke's gospel alone has led to admiration by theist and atheist scholars alike. Other significant archaeological finds have included potential sites for the city of Cana (the site of Jesus' first miracle), a well in the Samarian city of Sychar that fits the description in John 4:1-41, the tomb of Joseph (son of Jacob), the location where Jesus cast a legion of demons out of a man and sent them into a group of pigs (Matthew 8:28-34), a fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee that is consistent with Biblical descriptions, the tomb of Lazarus, the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:2), the skeletal remains of a crucified man, and the cities of Bethany and Bethpage. We could go on and on.
But archeology is not the only evidence that confirms Biblical people, places and events. A number of other authors, many of them outwardly hostile toward Christianity, nevertheless confirm Biblical details.
Extra-Biblical writings throughout history have confirmed an enormous number of details both in the Old and New Testaments. For example, the Old Testament books from 1 Samuel through 2 Chronicles are largely historical accounts of the era when Israel (and later Judah) were ruled by Kings, up to the time that both kingdoms were exiled. Israel and Judah were not the only kingdoms at this time. Other rulers surrounded them, and many of those rulers kept their own "annals". Obviously, when the Bible describes a major event involving another king, we should expect at least some of the time to find a parallel account in that king's annals. And that is precisely what we find. Not only that, various historians of the time, both Jewish and non-Jewish, wrote detailed histories of all the major events in the region. These included Biblical events.
One of the most dramatic examples of this comes from 2 Kings 18:17 - 19:37. Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, sent a large army to Jerusalem. There, the Assyrians called out to the residents of Jerusalem, telling them not to trust their own king, but instead to come out and surrender. The people stuck by their king and did not surrender. The army remained camped outside the city, ready to attack. Jerusalem was far outnumbered and had little hope of winning any battle. But the prophet Isaiah sent a message to Hezekiah, king of Judah, and told him that God would defend the city. Sure enough, that night one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian army dropped dead.
This sounds like a preposterous story, right? That many people do not simply drop dead over night. This may be a good plotline in a fantasy novel, but you can't reasonably expect me to believe it actually happened. Guess again. This story is confirmed by an outside source. Herodotus was a Greek historian. He lived from approximately 484 - 430 B.C. He was not a Jew, and obviously not a Christian, so he had no personal "stake" in validating anything in the Jewish texts. In fact, Herodotus lived in the Greek city of Halicarnassus. He worshipped the Greek gods. Yet he confirms that the dramatic incident described in 2 Kings did, indeed, happen. Herodotus chalks it up to bubonic plague, but that is some remarkably convenient timing for a plague to hit so many people so quickly.
Herodotus' reaction is typical. If there was any doubt about so many Assyrians dying suddenly, the easiest thing in the world for Herodotus to say is simply, "It didn't happen", or else say nothing about it at all. But that's not what he did. It seems that the incident itself was undeniable. When faced with overwhelming evidence of such an obviously miraculous act, Herodotus did what most skeptics today would do: he tried to explain it away. Keep in mind that if the Hebrew God were the one true God as He claimed, that would challenge Herodotus' own belief system. People don't like to have their belief system challenged. So when they are faced with evidence that goes against what they believe to be true, they try to come up with some explanation for it, no matter how preposterous. This helps them sleep better at night, but it doesn't make their skeptical position any more tenable.
There are plenty of similar examples in regard to the New Testament too. Many people dispute whether Jesus ever even existed in the first place. Anyone who is at all familiar with historical research would quickly discard any such position. The evidence of his existence is simply too overwhelming, largely from hostile sources. Take for example, the following passage from Tacitus, a Roman historian who lived from 55 - 117 A.D.:
Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.
Tacitus, Annuals, book XV.
I don't think anyone would mistake Tacitus for a friend of the Christians. But look at everything he confirms. He tells us that Christianity began through a man called "Christus" (Christ). Pontius Pilatus (Pontius Pilate) executed this man "Christus" during the reign of Tiberius Caesar (14 -37 A.D.). Finally, Tacitus confirms that Christianity started in Judea and spread even as far as Rome, just as the Book of Acts and the Epistles tell us.
Josephus, a Jewish (non-Christian) historian who lived from 37 - 101 A.D. also confirms Jesus' existence. In his Antiquities, he wrote,
Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was 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: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done.
Josephus, Antiquities, 20:9:1.
Now some of you reading this may be somewhat familiar with Biblical history, and maybe you've heard of Josephus. You may even think you just caught me in a lie of omission. After all, there is a passage from Josephus' Antiquities that Christians have latched onto for years, but most respectable scholars nowadays agree was probably altered by early Christians somewhere along the line. Well, if you think you've caught me, I'm sorry to disappoint you. The passage I quoted above is not the one that is in dispute. This passage about James, the brother of Jesus (who was called Christ) is legitimate.
The disputed passage is a different matter. It is overwhelmingly favorable to Christianity. This has led many people to dispute its validity. It's not really a matter of whether the entire passage is forged. The general consensus is that Josephus wrote something about Jesus. Rather, the accusation is that later Christians inserted key phrases into the text to make it look more favorable to them from a theological standpoint. The full passage, as it currently appears, is as follows:
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.
Josephus, Antiquities, 18:3:3.
Before jumping to any conclusions about text being inserted, you should note a few things. First of all, Josephus died in 101 A.D., so he had to have finished writing before then. When the Christian church first started, it was heavily persecuted (as you can probably tell by the tone of some of the writings I have quoted). The officially sanctioned persecution by the Roman Empire did not stop until 311 A.D. under Emperor Constantine. Christians were certainly not in a position to seize and alter any widely circulated documents until that time. They were essentially an underground movement struggling for their very lives. That means that for 210 years, any copies of Antiquities that were circulating would have been unaltered. Yet every single copy of Antiquities that has been found has the text exactly as printed above. Also, a tenth century Arabic version of Josephus is virtually identical to the current text. However, after the Christians were no longer persecuted, they admittedly were the ones who kept and made copies of the Josephus documents throughout history.
While there is no proof that Josephus' original words were altered in any way, it is certainly possible. This led Edwin Yamauchi and John P. Meier to try to construct a version of this passage without the "obviously" biased comments. They came up with the following:
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.
Josephus, Antiquities, 18:3:3.
Notice that even if Yamauchi and Meier are correct in omitting these passages, Josephus still confirms that Jesus performed "surprising feats" and was crucified under Pontius Pilate. In the end, there is just too much doubt about this passage. It makes for an interesting intellectual exercise, but we are probably better off getting our information from elsewhere.
So is there any other external evidence that confirms Christian events? Yes, there is plenty. But again, we could write a whole book covering it all (as some people have done). But there is one more that is definitely worth mentioning. Several different writings have mentioned a historian named "Thallus". We don't really know too much about Thallus, because whatever he wrote has never been found. The only bits and pieces of his writings that we have are from when other historians have quoted him or referred to something he supposedly said.
Various dates for Thallus' writings have been proposed, generally including 109 B.C., 52 A.D. and 92 A.D. The problem with the B.C. date comes from a reference to Thallus found in the writings of Julius Africanus, a third century Christian historian.3 Africanus wrote,
This event followed each of his deeds, and healings of body and soul, and knowledge of hidden things, and his resurrection from the dead, all sufficiently proven to the disciples before us and to his apostles; after the most dreadful darkness fell over the whole world, the rocks were torn apart by an earthquake and much of Judaea and the rest of the land was torn down. Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse of the sun in the third book of his Histories, without reason it seems to me. For...how are we to believe that an eclipse happened when the moon was diametrically opposite the sun?
The portion of this that is attributed to Thallus is simply that he allegedly confirmed the "darkness" that occurred when Christ died on the cross. This comes from Luke 23:44-46 which says,
It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.
Obviously, it is extremely significant if a non-Christian historian confirmed this darkness. In order to fully understand this significance, you have to know something about the Jewish Passover. You see Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Passover feast when He was crucified. The Passover was always held at the full moon. Basic astronomy tells you why a solar eclipse could never happen during the full moon. The moon "lights" up because the sun's light reflects off of it. Whether you only see a small sliver or the full moon depends on the angle that the sun's light hits the moon and how much of the earth is blocking the sun's rays. In order for a solar eclipse to happen, the moon has to be between the earth and the sun. This means that the sun's light would be shining on the side of the moon that is facing away from the earth. The entire side of the moon that faces the earth must be in shadow. But during a full moon, the sun completely lights up the side of the moon that is facing the earth. It was impossible for there to be a solar eclipse on the day Jesus was crucified. So whatever caused this mysterious darkness, it wasn't an eclipse.
As usual, the typical skeptic's response has been to come up with any possible explanation to refute this extra-Biblical account of the miraculous darkness, even if the responses make no sense. For starters, look at Thallus himself. He claimed that the darkness was merely an ordinary eclipse. Based on this response, its unlikely Thallus was a Jew considering any Jew would have known that the Passover is always held during a full moon, and realized just how ridiculous the claim was.
But it doesn't stop with Thallus. Richard Carrier wrote an article criticizing the way Christian apologists treat Thallus in an article on www.infidels.org (Thallus: an Analysis, 1999). He spends most of his article criticizing other passages that are attributed to Thallus and the general claim that Thallus was the earliest witness to the Christian gospel. However, when it comes to his analysis of the above reference to Thallus, Carrier completely misses the point.
In response to this passage, Carrier writes, "Although this implies that Thallus mentioned the death of Christ in some way, it does not entail it. For Thallus may have simply recorded an eclipse that occurred around the time that Christ was believed to have died, with Africanus connecting the events on his own." Carrier fails to realize that he has just conceded the important point of this reference to Thallus. Nobody cares if Thallus ever mentioned Jesus in conjunction with the so-called eclipse. The important part is that he mentioned the "eclipse" at all!
Carrier insinuates that Thallus may have just mentioned some random eclipse at some other place in the world, but Africanus connected it to Jerusalem without any reason. This, of course, would require Africanus to be the stupidest person ever born. Essentially, what Carrier is attributing to Africanus is a statement such as, "There was an eclipse somewhere in the world, so the eclipse must have been in Jerusalem." Obviously, it is ridiculous to think Africanus would have mentioned Thallus' account of the "eclipse" unless Thallus conceded that it happened in Jerusalem. The only logical conclusion is that Thallus recorded that Jerusalem was caught in darkness around the time of Jesus' death, and he claimed it was due to an eclipse. Obviously, Thallus' explanation was just as empty as Carrier's response. A natural eclipse was impossible. Does this mean it must have been supernatural? I guess technically there could be some "natural" explanation that we just don't know about yet. If you want to waste your time trying think up some new ridiculous explanation, go ahead. As for me, I'm going to take the simple path and follow where the evidence leads. In Jerusalem, around the time Christ died on the cross, there was a period of utter darkness that cannot be explained away as an eclipse. The evidence from Thallus doesn't show us any more than that, but so what? That's a pretty big chunk of Biblical confirmation.
Of course, none of this proves that the theology (as opposed to the history) of the Bible is true. However, it does prove that at least the Biblical authors were truthful about the "little things". What remains to be seen is whether the Bible can also be trusted about the "big things". That final point of this argument for the Christian God is what we will examine in Part 3.
Footnotes
1 But admit it, you actually enjoyed Clash of the Titans even though you'd never fess up to that in public. Go on, I promise not to tell anyone.
2 This is a serious problem for the Book of Mormon, which makes some very sweeping claims about ancient civilizations here in North America. But not one shred of archaeological evidence has ever been found to corroborate any of the claims.
3 In fact, the following quote from Africanus actually comes from a world chronicle by 9th century monk George Syncellus in which he quoted Africanus directly.
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