Defendant name: Jesus of Nazareth.

Tonight I hope to tackle the evidence for the historical Jesus....why, you might ask, am I starting there? I believe the Faith-belief I adhere to puts alot of emphasis on the life, death, burial and resurrection of this man, Jesus. It is because of this man that we have many of our practices and I think it is safe to assume that Christians today should look to Jesus as their example of how to live considering that we have him to thank for our title. The term Christ comes from the Greek Christos or Χρίστος in the original type. This term was a Greek term and title for a Hebrew word Ha-mashiach. I won't bring up the Hebrew type because, unlike Greek or English, it is read completely differently, including not originally having any vowels. I tell you this to explain to you what this word means. In Hebrew, the term Ha-mashiach meant a ruler or a king. Many rulers and kings were given the title. Both the Greek and the Hebrew go back to this idea of "the annointed one". Back in those times (and we even see a variant of it later in history) it was customary for the newly appointed ruler or king to be publicly annointed with oils and such to signify that he was THE KING....so how does this play into Jesus The Christ and why we are called Christians today? well, God had made a covenant with king David that his line would have a king (annointed one) on the throne forever (some would throw in here "as long as he kept his side of the bargain") well, David's people didn't much keep to their end and around 590 BC the Babylonian Empire comes in and captures the jews and keeps them in captivity for 70 years! when they get out of captivity and return to Jerusalem, their temple has been destroyed....they end up rebuilding their temple, but they never establish another king on the throne...so what about the covenant?! Well, flash forward several hundreds of years....now the Jewish community is under the governance of the Roman Empire. The Romans control many aspects of the modern world at this time...but allow the jews to continue practicing their religion as long as they are good citizens and do as they are told. throughout this entire time the jews remembered Gods covenant with David and wanted so badly to get back into Gods good graces and they believe that God would raise up a king to deliver them from the oppression of the Roman Empire. Jesus is called this by his followers to make the point that he is the Ha-Mashiach...the Christos the jews have been looking for..and that is why he is often refered to as "Jesus The Christ" or, simply "Jesus Christ" for short...and why we now call ourselves Christians......so, back to my point....Christians believe this man, Jesus, to be the messiah....the king...the deliverer...and we often use him as our example of how to live and we believe that it is thru him that we can gain eternal salvation and life with God....so he is pretty important! and it is because of his importance that I believe we should start there. As I understand it, many Christians put their faith in what the bible claims Jesus and his followers claimed AND DID....and I believe that a look into the evidence to support those claims will only serve to explain to us if Jesus really was who he says he was...I truly believe that I can kill two birds with one stone here as well...I believe that if there is enough evidence to suggest that the life, claims, and rumored actions of this man Jesus are true...then I believe that is a very strong case for a God as well!. So...let us look into the evidence....but first....we must ask ourselves "What kind of evidence should we expect to document this man, Jesus?" That is what this post is all about. I will discuss what sort of evidence we should expect to find to support a claim that there was a man named Jesus who lived in the first decade of "modern time" and who claimed he was the Messiah....the Christ....and that he performed certain acts/miracles to support his claims. let's get started....


What about reports from Pontius pilate?
Many of you should know that pontius pilate was the Roman prefect over the area of Judea. As far as I understand it, a Prefect was very similar to a mayor of a town, and its judicial branch. There were many duties of a Prefect..keeping the peace, making sure people were paying their taxes, and presiding over trials in his locale. If I have my history correct, Jesus actually appears before Pilate TWO TIMES before he is crucified...so wouldn't Pilate have some mention of this man, Jesus, whom claimed he was the Messiah? I mean...Pilate is a ROMAN OFFICIAL!
truth be told...there is no surviving documentation we have today from Pontius Pilate to support the evidence for Jesus' trial.....
So how many surviving documents do we have from Pilate from his trials in Judea?(Especially those that ended up in death)
 none....not a one....but that isn't unheard of. The truth is that even the Roman Empire didn't do much in the way of recordings. A writer by the name of Justin alludes to "the writings of Pontius Pilate" and we found a document with that title, but later found that to be a faked document made in the 4th century.  We actually have very little surviving documentation AT ALL for ANYTHING around the 30's AD.
Velleius Paterculus was a retired army officer of Tiberius. He published an amateur history of Rome in AD 30....we only have bits and pieces of his work. A Roman Official...a retired army officer....writing a history of Rome!...and we only have bits and pieces. This is a common occurance during this time. Julius Caesar claims to have made a failed recon campaign over the English Channel...what evidence do we have of this event? We have one...yes one document mentioning this event WRITTEN BY JULIUS HIMSELF written in a book designed to secure his political reputation, A shield found at a crossing in the Thames, a small mention in Ciceros works, and the occasional mention in later references.
So.. We do not have any documents from pilate documenting any trials while he was Prefect of Judea...but we know that he WAS prefect of Judea and we know he DID preside over trials...so we cannot simply use this argument to disqualify Jesus' historical place on this earth. We must, then, make the conclusion that there will be very little evidence to support a jewish man living under Roman rule in the first few modern decades. The world within the first century was not a well educated one..many were completely illiterate and those who were educated were few and far between and usually used to some degree by the Roman Empire at the time, so any positive mention of this man, Jesus, would probably not be a good idea. This is not looking good. Especially if you understand that to the Roman Empire, Jesus was very close to nothing more than an agitator....Festus even has the misconception that this Jesus guy, and Paul, and others...are still jews, just with minor disagreements...

I believe we...Modern American WE...go into this attempt to support this historicity with a few common misconceptions..
I think we first want to believe that first century issues were the same as they are today...we want to believe that the first century populace wanted as much documentation to support the historicity of Jesus just as much as we do...the truth is...in the first century, the debate was rarely on the hisoricity of Jesus and more on theological/doctrinal debate....They already were past the point of historicity of Jesus..the knew him to be a real man...and, I argue, they knew him to be who he said he was and knew his actions to be real events. I also think we expect communication back then to be to the same level as we have today....and I think that is unfortunate as well. The average man within the first century was illiterate....We are a modern society, with modern convenciences that make it so easy for us to learn and to grow in knowledge and I think we take that for granted...The average, first century man didn't have these conveniences/luxuries and I believe we should remember that.....

It is, unfortunately, true...many just believed Jesus to be a small-town jewish rabbi who occasionally would raise a ruckus, but wasn't too much to worry about...the Roman Empire had other pressing matters to deal with at the time....they didn't care much about this little man from Galilee. Jesus really didn't make much of a splash to the people in his day....but...he did make one. writers like Tacitus and Flavius Josephus do mention a man named Jesus in some of their texts...but keep in mind that many of these writers worked with the Roman Empire and had their own Faith-belief views that surely effected HOW they mentioned this man....we will look next week into what IS mentioned of him in these extrabiblical texts. Thanks for reading.

Where are you coming from?

 

 

"You can never change where you come from, you can only change where you are going..."

 

 

Thank you all for returning for my second post of this blog. Last week I kind of gave you a rough idea of why I am making this blog and what sorts of topics/discussions will be had on this blog. I believe my core purpose is to love God and love my fellow man....but I also believe we are called to study The Bible and do our best to understand its principles because it is thru practicing those principles that, I believe, we show God our love. That is, hopefully, going to be the focus of this blog. To study Gods word and try my best to express it in broken down ideas to better explain it, and hopefully grow personally in relationship with my God...but this week is a bit different...I believe that even though we cannot CHANGE where we come from, like the quote above says, I believe we should always remember and understand where we come from...it is thru our understanding of our journey thus far that we can continue to move forward...otherwise, I believe, we run the risk of being repeat offenders of the same old stuff. so to kick this post off I simply wanted to give you all a rough idea of where I am coming from....

 

 

Hello, My name is Joshua. I am 25 years old. I live in Reno, Nevada with my wife of 3 1/2 yrs, Bethany. I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. I was raised in a religious home. My parents both were raised in the church...and both attended a christian college. I was raised in the Church of Christ faith-belief. The Churches of Christ come out of the reformation movement mostly influenced by two men, Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell. One was a Presbyterian and the other a Baptist, They both got fed up with the teachings of those churches, believe they were obviously non-biblical. They started separately and later joined forces to start a "Bible only" movement where people would get serious about reading their Bibles and using it ONLY to figure out church doctrine....Ever since I could remember I was in the Church of Christ faith-belief (or, C of C, for short). Most of my growing up years have been spent with one single congregation. We used to identify ourselves as the Wedekind Road Church of Christ (simply because of the street we were located on) until a few years ago when we had the opportunity to build in another location. due to the nicknames and neighborhood names of the area, and thru congregational voting we now call ourselves the Foothills Church of Christ. Our name has changed, but many things have not. Many of the same people still attend, we still have a similar schedule of events, and we even hold to a very similar approach to our "pursuit of The Truth" as our mission statement says...You see, many would call our particular congregation a "liberal" congregation. We still have many traditional aspects of a C of C congregation like A Capella singing for our services and such....but we do have some differences. First, is our minister....Dr. Gary Cage has been the minister of this congregation for 30+ years...even before I was a twinkle in my mothers eye. Gary takes a very logical, reasonable, very "philosophical" approach to his study of the Bible. I put philosophical in quotations only because people do not always like the term. Sometimes people hear that term and think of old grecian men in white robes discussing the wonders of the earth but with no talk of a deity (at least that is what I used to always imagine :) ). Make no mistake, Gary Cage is very much a theologian....but I believe he takes an approach to the bible that demands reason, logic, consistancy, and in that we are pursuing truth. If something is true, it HAS to be reasonable, logical, and consistant. That, I believe, is his approach to the Bible. I believe he truly is a man who takes more concern with the truth than being right. It is this man who has taught me thru the years to take the same approach when studying the bible. I believe our open pursuit of the truth is an amazing aspect of our congregation....I also believe that what goes along with that is our stance that we may have evidence to support our understandings, but we are always open to discussion and we, ultimately, are open to the possiblity that we could be wrong in our understanding of the evidence. That is also what brings me to another way in which I believe the Foothills congregation to be different....it is true that some members of our congregation actually DISAGREE on certain matters. I will not go into specifics, but I can say that on some matters, we actually disagree. I believe what makes us different is that our disagreements do not separate us. We agree to disagree and continue to study with each other and believe that it is only thru sincere study that we may know the truth...and I would even say that our congregation would say it is okay if we come to a different understanding of the evidence....as long as we are constantly studying in an attempt to know the truth. Here is where I may have already lost a few of you, and some of you still reading might be getting upset over what I have written so far...just hear me out. I believe the Foothills congregation deeply believes that we can disagree on many things and still be one with each other....because we might not all be at the same point in understanding. I think back to the passage where it states that it is wrong of a person to eat meat sacrificed to idols if he believe it to be wrong, but it is alright for another man to eat of meat sacrificed to idols who does not believe it to be wrong...that, and other passages, have lead me to believe that it is alright to be at two different points of understanding and still be one with each other in Christ. I believe that my upbringing in this congregation has lead me to rethink some traditional christian views...even some c of c tradition even though I was never even raised in a "fundamental c of c". It is my attempt to take what I have learned here from this congregation while I was growing up and use that knowledge to further understand God, his kingdom, and his desires for his people. I may not be able to change where I came from...but where I came from, where I am, and where I hope to go seems to all be a great blessing from God and I would NEVER want to change that. Thank you for reading...May God Bless you and keep you.

Seeking the truth.

 

 

Then you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

John 8:32

 

 

 

You may ask why I chose to title this blog "Truth Investigator". First I would say my first few options were taken already and I was running out of ideas. I wanted to use the passage above as a guide and maybe title the blog "seeking the truth" or something similar, but all URLs were used. So, I had to settle on something similar, yet different. Then I looked at the definition of "investigation. look what I found...

 

 

  Investigation:

 

A systematic or formal inquiry or examination of the facts to establish the truth.

 

 

Notice that part in bold text. "to establish the truth". That is my goal for this blog. I will be examining the facts, the texts, the evidences for what I believe, especially that which partains to my religious beliefs. This blog will be for my religious "musings" as a friend put it. This will be my place to present the evidence I have to support my understandings, and to hopefully discuss that evidence with you all, my readers, in an ongoing pursuit of the truth.

 

But what truth, Josh? well, mostly I would like to discuss the truth of the Gospel...that which is related to Jesus, and what I believe is the pathway to eternal salvation thru following Christs example. I will be making arguments for what I understand to be doctrine and what I believe is tradition, and I might even go into why I believe some have accepted tradition AS doctrine. I also will have other posts thruout this ongoing investigation of the gospel truth that deal with how I understand that we should conduct ourselves...in relationship with this world, our relationship with each other...even with those we do not agree with. I believe that it is very clear that the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor, and so I believe we are to conduct ourselves in a manner becoming of love...but more on that later...

 

I will begin this blog by giving you a short break down of where I am coming from religiously. How I was raised, how I have reacted to lifes twists and turns, and how I have now come to regard my christianity as the single most important aspect of my life. I hope you all enjoy this blog. I hope we can discuss things together in a loving manner so that we can grow in truth and come together as citizens of the Kingdom of God. I pray that you feel comfortable commenting on my posts, even if you think I might not agree with you....that is how, I believe, we grow to find the truth. Thank you for reading, and may God bless you all.