"Jesus, um..." "I would say no doubt lived as a person, but to the extent of what he did, I'm not sure." "If he comes Walking in to Where I work, shows me the signs of the Stigmata and tells me he's the Son of God," "I might start believing." "I don't believe in God, first of all." "Maybe because I grew up in, like, an age of science." "I have a lot of different thoughts and theories on Jesus, but I don't think coming back from the dead is really-- really possible." "[sirens]" "I just thought the idea of an all-powerful, all-loving creator of the universe was just an absurd idea on the surface of it." "It wasn't even worth my time to check out" "As far as Jesus was concerned, I thought that if he existed, and I wasn't sure whether or not he ever did, he was probably a nice guy." "He was probably an excellent teacher, but he certainly wasn't the Messiah and he certainly wasn't the Son of God." "Now, my wife was more in spiritual neutral." "She was more of an agnostic, whereas I was more antagonistic toward Christians." "[Women] I just didn't?" "know where eff the pieces fit together." "I didn't?" "know who Jesus was or how he fit into the picture." "Lee was antagonistic towards God." "I was simply confused." "There really was no room for God in my relationship with Leslie when We were dating and when We got married." "But you know What?" "We were happy." "We didn't have any problem with that." "[Leslie] When I first started going to church," "Lee responded very negatively." "He basically told me that this is not what he had signed up for, that when We had gotten married, he had life planned in a way that did not involve church." "My biggest fear with Leslie was that she was going to turn into some religious prude or something, and I thought nothing good I can possibly come out of this" "But even though I had all these negative ideas of things that were going to happen, in the ensuing months, I began to see positive changes in her character and in her values and the way she related to me and the children." "It was Winsome and it was attractive." "So, when she invited me to go to church with her on January 20, 1980," "I thought, "You know what?" "I'm going to go." "Get her out of this cult that she's gotten involved in."" "He did go in with his reporters' notebook so he could take notes and try to find the scandal." "[Lee J Well, the pastor gave a talk that day called "Basic Christianity, "" "and he just systematically laid out what it is that Christians believe." "My mind was blown because I had all these misconceptions, and he really did straighten me out on a lot of things" "And I remember walking out that day saying two things." "First of all, I was still an atheist." "He didn't convince me that day that God exists." "But secondly, I realized if this is true, this has huge implications for my life." "Lee's approach was very different from mine." "Mine was mostly a heart issue." "I wanted to Know that God was real, and the way that was real for me was experientially." "And for Lee, it was more about documentation." "about being able to have facts that proved it true." "[Lee] I was a journalist, so there was really no problem with me picking up the phone and calling a scholar and saying," ""Hey, I'm Lee Strobel I'm with the Chicago Tribune." "I'd like some background information about the New Testament."" "And so, I would do that." "And I thought it was going to be so easy to expose the fallacious thinking behind Christianity." "But as it turned out, it took me almost two years of my life to investigate these issues." "If really was, in a sense, the most exciting story" "I had ever pursued as a journalist." "I think, unfortunately, because the documents, the New Testament specifically, were Written so far after Jesus' death that it's really hard to say." "I don't Know myself that it was real." "I was not there, but people were there at that time." "So their account of things that happened back 2,000 years ago has been passed down." "As an attorney, I rely on evidence." "And so, you know, it would be tough to get evidence at this late date." "Well, I began my investigation by looking at the Gospel accounts." "How did I know that the New Testament was telling me the truth when it talked about Jesus?" "Now, obviously, I didn't accept the New Testament as being the inspired word of God." "I certainly didn't accept it as being inerrant" "But what I had to accept ff as being, which it undeniably is, is a set of ancient historical documents." "And I knew that historians had criteria that they could apply to determine Whether or not these documents are trustworthy." "So those were the Kind of people who I pursued." "I Went after the heavy-hitters." "I Went after the expert Witnesses who could help me sort through these issues." "[Wright] Over the last 250 years, it's been common coin in Western culture that "Oh, you can't believe what's said in the Gospels."" "You know, it's even made into musicals," ""The things that you're liable to read in the Bible, they ain't necessarily so."" "And that skepticism has wormed its way into much modern culture and indeed into many Christian circles, many church circles, where they'll say, "Well, Matthew probably made this bit up,"" "or, "Luke just added this bit on the end of the parable,"" "or Whatever it is." "I and others have spent some of the best years of our lives researching what was actually going on in Palestine in the first third of the 1st century A.D." "And trying to get inside the minds of 1st-century Jews, 1 st-century Romans, different Jewish parties and movements, etcetera, etcetera." "And the more that I have tried to do that, the more I've found that what you find in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John comes up in three dimensions and says," ""My goodness, this actually belongs." ""It makes sense." "it fits." ""It gives us very vivid portraits of who these people were and what they were doing."" "[Narrator] The New Testament Gospels are biographies of Jesus." "While the authors do not identify themselves in the text, from very early in the Christian era, the Gospels have been attributed to Matthew, a disciple, or follower, of Jesus;" "Mark, a colleague of Peter, also a disciple;" "Luke, a historian and confidante of the apostle Paul;" "and John, a disciple of Jesus." "Both Matthew and John were among the Twelve," "Jesus' closest followers and constant companions throughout his ministry." "They would have personally observed most of the events they described in their Gospels." "Mark and Luke were also contemporaries of Jesus and wrote their biographies based upon information provided by many eyewitnesses." "I knew from my years as a legal journalist the importance of eyewitness testimony." "In fact, the first question that anybody asks is "How many eyeballs are there?" "How many eyewitnesses do you actually have?"" "And I needed to determine Whether or not contemporary scholars have ascertained Whether or not the Gospels are rooted in eyewitness testimony." "It's become evident to scholars of the 1st century that the Gospels were actually attempts to Write biographies of Jesus." "But not in the modern sense, because the Gospels are not particularly interested in his early years." "But when it comes to Jesus' adult life and his activities, these are biographies." "They are very clearly attempts by eyewitnesses to describe exactly what Jesus said and did, and the consensus of New Testament scholarship has moved in that direction." "[Woman] Luke 1:1-2." "Luke's Gospel begins with a prologue." "It's actually one of the finest Greek sections in the whole New Testament." "Luke was clearly a literary artist." "But in that prologue, he points out that he has carefully investigated the material that he presents in the Gospels, that he's checked with eyewitness accounts, those who were actually present." "If you read that prologue, then you see this is the work of a historian." "This was someone who has done his research." "[ Woman ] Luke 1 $3-4." "You have to understand that people in the 1st century valued eyewitness testimony." "And this is why, from the 2nd century on, it was important to the early church fathers that the people who were alleged to have Written the Gospels actually wrote them and that they were eyewitnesses of the things they wrote." "We have actually very early attestation of the authorship of the Gospels." "The early church father, Papias, for example, as recorded by the church historian Eusebius identifies Mark's Gospel as essentially the eyewitness account of Peter." "Well, Papias was a disciple of the apostle John, so we are only one generation removed from Jesus himself." "That's a pretty close testimony and strongly suggesting that, in fact, the Gospels are based on eyewitness accounts." "Of course, it's not what you would have seen if you had a video camera there, because after all, if you put a video camera on a street corner, even in Washington, you'd get politicians coming to and fro." "You wouldn't actually have a story that would make sense." "You'd have a string of random, unsorted events." "That doesn't mean that none of it happened, that it's all made up." "It's just to acknowledge what is blindingly obvious, that it has been edited and no doubt shaped by the needs of the community, because people tell the sort of stories that they want to tell because this matters to us urgently here and now." "[Narrator] Most historians date Jesus' birth between the years 7 and 4 B. C., and his death no later than AD. 33." "Jesus' public ministry began with the choosing of his disciples and lasted approximately three years, culminating in the Passion Week and his trial and death." "Scholars generally agree that the Gospel of Mark was written first, sometime between the years 60 and 75 in the 151 century." "Matthew and Luke were probably authored shortly after, followed by the Gospel of John." "The New Testament Gospels are by far our earliest and most reliable records of Jesus of Nazareth." "All of the New Testament Gospels were Written in the 151 century." "Not only are they remarkably close to the events themselves." "but in fact, eyewitnesses are still around." "If they were passing on untruths, if there were not passing on reliable history, then we would expect eyewitnesses to say," ""Wait a minute." "This isn't what happened. "" "But eyewitnesses are around, eyewitnesses could confirm what they said." "All of the Gospel writers either were eyewitnesses or interviewed eyewitnesses to gain the information that they gained about Jesus Christ." "[Lee] As I scrutinized the Gospel accounts even further," "I realized that it was important to find out not just whether or not the information was rooted in direct and indirect eyewitness testimony, but I needed to Know was this information reliably preserved during the time period before it was finally written down?" "[Blomberg] We have to put ourselves into the ancient World" "Without modern media, Without even a print-based culture in which the only and the standard way of preserving information was through oral tradition, most of which was memorized." "[Narrator] Young rabbis were often forbidden to comment on a passage of scripture until they had memorized it perfectly." "In fact, it was not uncommon for rabbis of Jesus' time to commit the entire Torah to memory." "I've sometimes heard people say "Look, I've been in a situation" ""Where I Whisper something to someone," ""they Whisper it to someone else," ""and it goes through 10 or 11 people," ""and by the time the last person tells what was said" ""it's totally different from what I told the first person." ""And We can't trust the Gospels for the same reason because it was transmitted over a long period of time."" "That illustration is really a bad analogy." "And you have to understand that the 151-century apostles who passed on information about Jesus were deeply concerned to get this information correct because they sew ft es seared holy tradition." "It wasn't about what Joe was eating for dinner last Wednesday night." "In our day of instant media and everything has to be on film or tape recorded," "We are more skeptical of oral tradition, but We don't really understand the nature of oral tradition." "Oral tradition is a community event." "A story is passed down by individuals within that community." "Well, if they get it wrong, you've got an entire community that's going to correct them." "So it is self-correcting all the way." "These stories were passed on reliably because they were passed on by the community of disciples." "In fact, We now have scholarly studies that have been done of oral cultures, and We know that through several generations, oral tradition can be preserved and passed on Without changing a thing." "Even though I became convinced that ancient cultures could pass along oral tradition reliably over time," "I still had an obvious objection to the New Testament, and that was, "Isn't it really filled with contradictions?"" "[Strauss] One of the issues people often raise is the question of apparent contradictions between the Synoptic Gospels, Where there's a parallel story." "For example, Matthew tells the story of two blind men being needed, whereas in Mark's account, there's only one blind man." "How can we get this contradiction?" "The vast majority of these apparent contradictions, however, are quite easily resolved." "Mark describes only one of the two blind men, the one who is most prominent, obviously, or perhaps even the one who became a disciple of Jesus and became prominent in the later church." "So most of these apparent contradictions are quite easily resolved." "[Blomberg] Had every single account given us exactly the same detail," "WE might have accused them of some form of collusion, of having gotten together and carefully planned out how they were always going to tell the story with the exact number of details." "But then one doesn't have independent testimony at all." "It's natural when you have multiple eyewitnesses to the same event, you're going to get different perspectives." "And that's okay You want that." "What you're looking for is a core to the testimony that's the same, that's consistent, even though there may be some variation in the incidental details." "If you're in a court of law and you have multiple Witnesses come in and testify to the exact same thing, the first objection that's brought up is to say, "Collusion." ""They got together." ""They orchestrated their testimony,"" "and their credibility is shot." "[Narrator] The earliest known copies of the Gospels were Written on sheets of papyrus and scrolls made of animal skins." "They are among the oldest existing manuscripts of antiquity." "The Codex Sinaiticus was authored between A.D.330 and 350." "It contains almost all of the New Testament and a significant portion of the Old," "While the Codex Vaticanus from the same era is a nearly complete Greek copy of the entire Bible." "A papyrus fragment from the 18th chapter of John dates to AD. 125, less than a single generation after the Gospel was originally written." "When I found out that We have no original survivors of the manuscripts of the New Testament." "I became very skeptical, because if all WE have are copies of copies of copies of copies of copies, then how do We know that what We possess today bares any resemblance to what the originals said?" "We have better manuscript attestation for the New Testament than any other ancient document." "For example, the Bible of the Greeks," "Homer's Iliad, is preserved in maybe 600 manuscripts, the oldest of them a thousand years after the document was actually Written." "The New Testament, we have something like 5,000 Greek manuscripts." "So everyone agrees, Whether liberal or conservative, that WE have an incredibly reliable New Testament." "[Moreland] We have thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament." "We also have virtually the entire New Testament preserved fr; the quotations of the church fathers fr; the first four centuries, so that if WE had no copies of the New Testament," "WE could reconstruct the New Testament from quotations from the early church fathers." "[Lee] Following the pattern of my investigation, my next step was to determine whether or not there was any evidence outside the New Testament that corroborates what the New Testament tells us." "[Evans] wasn't the emperor the emperor of the Roman Empire." "He wasn't some autocrat that had conquered half of the world." "But he did leave an impact in his own environment and created a movement that grew from there, and there is a remarkable amount of documents and corroboration" "Josephus refers to him." "The Roman historian Tacitus refers to him." "Suetonius, the political writer, refers to him." "Critics refer to him." "And so, HS like a stone thrown into a pond." "The ripples go out and out, and everywhere are felt." "It's a very impressive record taken as a whole." "[Narrator] In AD. 93, the Jewish historian Josephus published his Work, Antiquities of the Jews." "Scholars generally agree that the following text accurately records Josephus' record of Jesus." "[Josephus dramatized] He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles." "When Pilate, at the suggestion of the principle men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him first did hot forsake him." "And the tribe of Christians, so named for him, are not extinct to this day." "[Lee] In a court of few, the rebuttal case is an opportunity for the other side to present their evidence." "In recent years, there's been a proliferation of books and articles about the so-called Gnostic Gospels, and I Wanted to figure out does this represent the mainstream of academic scholarship?" "[Narrator] The Gnostic Gospels are a collection of religious Writings from the 2nd and 3rd centuries." "They blend the teachings of Jesus with a variety of ancient philosophical beliefs." "According to the tenets of Gnosticism, the universe was the creation of a flawed and Wicked God." "Therefore, all matter was evil." "Salvation from this World could only be attained through secret knowledge about the spiritual nature of man." "[Strauss] There's been a lot of talk about the Gnostic Gospels" "The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas." "These documents are almost universally recognized to be much later than the New Testament Gospels and not to record historically reliable material related to Jesus." "[Evans] Well, the New Testament Gospels give us a portrait of an early 1st-century Palestinian Jesus of Nazareth." "The gospels from the 2nd century, which are mostly Gnostic Gospels, such as the Gospel of Judas, or the Gospel of Thomas, or the Gospel of Philip, or the Gospel of Mary, they give us a very different Jesus." "Now, you can pick and choose if you want." "You can say, "Well, I like the 2nd-century Gnostic Jesus better."" "Others might want the early 1st-century Palestinian Jesus." "But ff you're going to be a scholar about ft, and you're going to talk about, well, which Gospels really do give us earlier traditions that more reliably reflect the actual historical Jesus, you got to go with the New Testament Gospels every time." "[Strauss] There is a view among some that there were all of these different competing views of Jesus Christ, and that the one that won out became the orthodox perspective of Christ reflected in the Gospels." "All the evidence runs contrary to that." "Jesus was a 1st-century Jewish teacher who revealed and demonstrated himself to be the Messiah." "That's the presentation we get in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the New Testament Gospels." "These later gospels, these Gnostic Gospels, present a very different Jesus, almost a Greek philosopher, an esoteric." "The Gnostic Jesus is clearly not the authentic historical Jesus." "What I've come to discover is that the gospels in the New Testament," "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are our best sources for Jesus." "And I've also found that they are reliable, and that from these sources, WE can form a picture that I believe is very accurate, that tells us about Jesus, what he taught, how he was perceived by his contemporaries," "and what his life was really all about." "[Wright] Everything, from Jesus' parables to his healings, to his controversies, to his warnings and all of that,I the reason they were telling this stuff is that not just it was good advice for them in their own day," "but that it actually mattered, that it actually happened" "And if it hadn't happened, you're into a totally different world-view." "A world-view which is about ideas, which is about self-realization, hugely popular in our culture just now, discovering who I really am." "For goodness sake, Jesus didn't come to help me discover who I really am." "He came to tell me who he knew I really was and to do something about it." "And that's much better news." "[Lee] After a while, as the evidence would accumulate more and more, it was like there were these scales, and they began to tip increasingly, and I began to go from a hard-hearted, cynical atheist" "to someone who was still skeptical but who was more open-minded, maybe more of a spiritual seeker, someone who was willing to follow the evidence wherever it took me." "This whole time I was on this investigative journey," "Leslie and her friends behind the scenes were praying because they Knew that I was checking into the evidence." "I was looking into these issues for myself, and they just Wanted me to be open-minded about the evidence that I found." "I was feeling like my whole world was opening up into something new and way more exciting and fulfilling than what We had been on." "And it was that frustration of trying to help him to recognize that that was the case." "[Lee] Leslie tried several things during this period to try to spur me on in my investigation." "They didn't help very much." "For instance, she would leave Bible tracts around the house or she would take a Christian book and highlight certain passages and leave it open on a coffee table, things like that." "It really didn't help, and I told her it was not helping." "She understood that." "But I think sort of the whole time, she was holding her breath because this was not a very smooth investigation." "He would take two steps forward, three steps back." "Sometimes it looked like he was really getting it, and other times he would just turn into an angry, frustrated person again." "So it was a very frustrating time for both of us." "I believe Jesus was a real person." "I believe he did live." "I guess there are some exaggerations in the Bible, I'd have to say." "I don't believe we'll ever Know if Jesus was really what everyone thinks he is." "I think it's a lot of folklore." "I think it's a lot of historical misrepresentations." "I think it's a lot of wishful thinking." "But I don't think We know, and I don't think we'll ever Know, and I don't think there's any way to prove what has been claimed about Jesus for all these years." "The biographies of Jesus in the New Testament gave me a lot of information about him." "But Christians were saying that he is the Son of God." "That's a huge step to take to believe that." "And so, I sought out more scholars so I could pose to them this question:" "who was Jesus?" "Now, this is one of the things I love about Jesus, and it says something to us." "His identity is complex." "He can't be pigeonholed" "He fits no one formula." "There's a lot of aspects to who he is." "But always he presents himself as the challenge to the status quo, to p re-conditioned thinking about what Son of God, what Messiah must be." "He's carving out his own niche" "He's doing his own thing like a great and creative artist." "He is not simply replicating anything from the past." "He is taking bits and pieces of prophecies and ideas, and wisdom literature and law, and you name it, and he's made a whole new gumbo." "He's serving it up, and people don't know what to think." "He goes into synagogue and says some of this stuff and they go, "Wow!" "A new teaching."" "And with authority." ""Shazam"" "Amazingly, people say no one teaches like him, because he spoke with his own authority." "Our sages, our rabbis, always taught that you have to teach in the name of someone else." "'Rabbi so-and-so says, in the name of Rabbi so-and-so. "" "That's the way rabbis were taught to teach." "Yeshua came and said," ""You've heard it said, but not what my rabbi taught me, but I say unto you."" "And he would clarify, even overrule in some Ways, the Old Testament law." "Well, this law was given by God himself." "For Jesus to say," ""I am the authoritative interpreter of the law." "I am the one who has come to fulfill the law." "That's an extraordinary claim, a claim to essentially the authority of God." "[Woman] Isaiah 61:1." "[Rydelnik] It's interesting, because when Yeshua want into the synagogue, that was the passage he read." "And he says, "This day, this verse is fulfilled in your hearing."" "And basically, he's saying," ""I am the servant that's described here." "I am the one who fulfills this."" "[Strauss] Philip comes to Jesus and asks him to show us the Father, and Jesus says, "The one who has seen me has seen the Father. "" "Jesus clearly presents himself as the self-revelation of God." "Those who meet Jesus are in fact meeting God." "When Jesus is brought before Caipahas, the high priest, and some of the Sanhedrin members that have gathered the evening that Jesus is arrested, they're trying to find incriminating evidence." "They're trying to find incriminating testimony, and they're not doing real well, and finally, the high priest asks Jesus directly, "Tell us plainly, are you the Messiah, the Son of God?"" "And Jesus says, "I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand, coming with the clouds of heaven."" "And there, Jesus has combined phrases from Daniel 7 and Psalm 110." "Jesus sees himself as this heavenly figure." "[Narrator] More than 80 times in the New Testament Gospels," "Jesus is identified as the Son of Man." "While the human connotations of the phrase are obvious, a broader interpretation is found in an Old Testament scripture" "Written by the Jewish prophet Daniel." "[Woman] Daniel 7.43." "[Strauss] Many Christians and non-Christians alike hear the phrase "Son of Man," they think, "Son of God"" "refers to his deity, and "Son of Man"" "refers to his humanity." "That's in part true, but in fact, "Son of Man"" "has a much greater significance than that as well." "The title "Son of Man," Jesus draws that title from Daniel chapter 7, Where a glorious, messianic figure comes before "the ancient of days, " a reference to God, and he is given all glory and power and majesty." "That portrait of this glorious Messiah is the one that Jesus identifies himself with." "He is the Son of Man- so "Son of Man" doesn't just mean a human being." "[Woman] Daniel 7:14." "Actually, the phrase "Son of Man" refers to his humanness and his more than humanness" "Because no human being can rule forever, unless he's a forever person in some kind of way." "[Lee] In addition to the claims that Jesus makes about himself in the New Testament, there are also reports that he performed the miraculous- that he Walked on Water, and healed the sick, and turned water into wine," "and raised the dead, and did exorcisms." "So, I had to know, is there evidence that these miracles are a result of his divine nature?" "Jesus' contemporaries, that is, people who liked him, people who were indifferent, neutral, and people who opposed him, all acknowledged he did extraordinary things." "Now, of course, the people who liked Jesus and believed in him and followed him, said Jesus did these powerful works because of the Spirit of God." "People who opposed him would say," ""Well, I admit he does these amazing things, but it's because the devil is helping him."" "[Rydelnik] The Talmud actually speaks of some of these things." "In some of the passages that deal with Yeshua, it has him as a mir-- well, a magician." "Now, why do they describe him as a magician?" "It's not flattering." "There is a historical recognition here that when Yeshua came, he did miracles, just as Isaiah 35 indicates" "In the messianic age, when the Messiah comes, he'll be able to make the blind see and the lame Walk." "[Narrator] The New Testament Gospels record at least 40 separate miracles performed by Jesus during the course of his ministry." "They include healings, exorcisms, mastery over nature, and even raising of the dead." "Christian theology has always held that these miracles are part of a total picture that displays the attributes of God himself' unlimited power, total knowledge, ever-present, unchanging, eternal." "There's no question that the biographies of Jesus describe him as "a Worker of mighty deeds."" "But I Wanted to know, does this make him any different than the other miracle workers and magicians cf the ancient world?" "Miracle Workers that We find occasionally in the 1st century are magicians-- they use incantations, they use spells, they try to coerce gods or divine figures to work on their behalf." "That's very different than Jesus' miracles." "Jesus' miracles were to demonstrate the power of the kingdom of God." "When he healed the sick, he pointed back to Isaiah S prophecies, that when God's kingdom would come, when God's salvation would come, the lame would Walk, the blind would see." "This was the demonstration that God S kingdom was arriving." "[Witherington] He's an exorcist" "You don't find any of those in the Old Testament." "People were not looking for messianic exorcists" "He carves out his own niche." "He reveals his identity in his own way." "It becomes clear that he is somebody who can take on the powers of darkness himself, and win." "What kind of person is that?" "And he doesn't have to use recipes and formulas, like other ancient exorcists" "He can just call the demon by name, and that boy's out of there." "One of the most astonishing things that Jesus did was when he claimed to forgive sins." "In Mark's Gospel, chapter 2, a man is brought to him, a paralyzed man." "And the crowds around him are expecting Jesus to heal him." "But instead, the first thing Jesus said is, "Your sins are forgiven."" "Only God forgives sins." "Now, some might say, Jesus may have been forgiving sins on behalf of God." "But in fact, that's not the way his listeners understood him." "Because immediately, the religious leaders responded that, "Who is this that forgives sins?" "Only God forgives sins," they claim." "But Jesus claims the ability to forgive sins." "And then to confirm that he has that authority, he then heals the man." "[Lee] And so, a very obvious question arises." "That is, is Jesus the Messiah," "The Christ, The Anointed One, the one sent by God to be the savior of Israel and the World?" "Christians told me that there are dozens and dozens of ancient prophecies contained in the Old Testament of the Bible, and that they predict the coming of this Messiah." "And that Jesus, against all mathematical odds, fulfilled those prophecies." "And I thought, you Know, this is a little bit like the fingerprint evidence you see in a court of law." "I remember covering one particular case where the murderer went through the purse of the victim and he left one thumb print on the cellophane wrapper of a package of cigarettes." "And it was that thumb print that led to his conviction for murder." "And I thought, in an analogous way, could it be that these ancient prophecies are sort of like that thumbprint on the cellophane?" "Do they create a thumbprint that only Jesus Christ, in all of history, manages to match?" "[Rydelnik] This is Yeshayahu 53:6 or, Isaiah 53:6." "[Speaking in Hebrew]" ""All of us, like sheep, have gone astray." ""Each of us has turned to his own way." "But the Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all."" "I had a friend who wrote this out on a piece of paper." "He typed it up on his computer Without any verse notations." "And he took it around to everyone in his office." "He Worked in a big office for a motor vehicle bureau in one of the big states in our country." "And he showed it to everyone in the motor vehicle bureau in the state capital." "And he said, "Just tell me who this is and where ff comes from. "" "And every single person that looked at it" "Jew or Gentile alike, it didn't matter." "Everyone that looked at it, read it, and he said," ""Who is this?" They said, it's obviously Jesus of Nazareth." "That's who it is, and it's from the New Testament." "And then my friend would say, "But no!" "It's not from the New Testament." ""It's from the Hebrew Bible." "It was written eight centuries before Jesus came." "Can you believe this?" And he showed it to them from Isaiah." "And people really had a hard time, because if you read this passage" "Without any kind of presuppositions or bias, you will read it, and it will be really clear that this is the life of Yeshua." "Now, could he have fabricated this, or is this just a big coincidence?" "[Strauss] In the Old Testament, you really have two kinds of prophecies-- we have prophecies that are fulfilled uniquely in Christ, and prophecies that are fulfilled typologically in Christ." "And I do think WE need to distinguish between the two." "Those that are fulfilled uniquely in Christ were once and for all fulfilled by Jesus." "And those are the ones that We can really point to that have apologetic value-- that is, to demonstrate that Jesus was the only person who could have possibly fulfilled this." "His birth in Bethlehem is one of those prophecies." "His role as the "suffering servant" of Isaiah 53 is one of those prophecies." "His entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey from Zechariah, chapter 9." "These are clear evidence that Jesus is fulfilling the Old Testament." "The most amazing part of Isaiah's prophecies is in Isaiah 9, when it speaks about the son of David coming to be the king, to sit on the throne of David, and to have an eternal, righteous kingdom" "And everyone knows it from Handel's Messiah." ""Unto us a son is born." "Unto us a child is given. "" "And the idea of this verse is that the Messiah will actually be born." "Physically born." "And then it says, "And His name shall be called, 'Wonderful Counselor," "Mighty God, Father of Eternity." "In other words, he's the creator, the author of time." "[Strauss] Some skeptics have said that" "Jesus could have engineered the fulfillment of these prophecies." "Of course, Jesus could not have determined where he was going to be born, so to be born in Bethlehem, obviously he could not have engineered that." "Also, as the suffering servant, it would have been difficult for him to engineer such a specific fulfillment of Isaiah 53." "But on the other hand, the fact that Jesus performed certain actions that in fact fulfilled prophecies only demonstrates that he was indeed the Messiah." "Anyone who enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey in obvious fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9 is saying," ""Yes, I am the Messiah. "" "So WE certainly have a glimpse, in that fulfilled prophecy, of the self-consciousness of Jesus" that he truly believed that he was the Messiah." "[Narrator] Scholars have determined that Jesus fulfilled at least four dozen major prophecies, each Written a minimum of three centuries before his birth." "Their content ranged from specific details about his life to the symbolic implications of his death." "[Rydelnik] Psalm 22 gives a poetic picture by David, written in the first person, of what the Messiah will be like in his suffering." "And one of the things he says is that," ""They will pierce my hands and my feet. "" "Now, David wrote before crucifixion was known, probably by about 300 years." "Isaiah 53 says, "He was pierced through."" "It gives us the reason for death." "He was pierced through for our iniquities." "So there's a purpose." "He dies, not just because he's a martyr, but because he's a substitution for sin." "A college professor of mathematics and science, named Dr. Peter Stoner, wanted to determine what the odds were that any human being throughout history could fulfill the messianic prophecies." "So he had his students come up with very conservative estimates of the likelihood of any human being fulfilling certain of these predictions, and then they just ran the numbers." "And what they determined is that the odds of any human being fulfilling 48 of these ancient prophecies would be one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion," "trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion." "It is mathematically virtually impossible." "To me, just as significant as all of those unique prophecies that were fulfilled in Christ, is the complete drama of the Old Testament-- the fact that the Old Testament is the story, the narrative, of God's redemptive movement" "his movement to deliver and save humanity." "And Jesus is the climax of that movement." "He is the climax of salvation history, the one who brings it off to fulfillment." "You read the Old Testament, it's building, building, building." "Jesus arrives on the scene, and he is the fulfillment." "And he recognizes himself, clearly, as the climax of God's plan of salvation for all humanity." "This whole case was sort of like one of those jigsaw puzzles, where you don't Know what the ultimate picture is going to be." "You just put together the pieces." "And as I was putting together all of the evidence, ff started to fake shape, and I sort of stepped back, and I could see that ft was a portrait of Jesus Christ." "[typing] [typing]" "This was not just an intellectual journey." "There was a very real emotional component to this, because I would find things along the way that would challenge me and my World-View on a very deep level." "And I would recoil from it, and I wouldn't want to believe it, and um" "I mean, there were so many" " There were so many reasons why" "I didn't want there to be a God, because I did not want to be held accountable for my life." "[Leslie] I didn't know at the time why Lee was so angry." "I thought ft was just being stubborn." "He says, after coming through it, that it was conviction." "[Lee] It seemed that the more Leslie's values were changing, and her character was being transformed, and the way she related to me and the children was changing, it would highlight the contrast with my life." "I was feeling fearful and angry as well that he was being affected by it in the way that he was." "[Lee] I mean, the truth is, I felt like I was losing Leslie." "She was being pulled away from me into this Christian subculture." "I didn't fit in there." "I'm the atheist." "I'm the skeptic." "And yet, I felt like she was being pulled away, and I loved her." "I didn't want to lose her." "And it got to the point where I was so angry over the whole thing, one day I just reared back and I kicked a hole in our living room Wall just out of rage over the situation." "It was a very ugly scene right in front of Leslie, right in front of our little girl." "They were crying and I just I didn't want to lose her." "Jesus' body was never found." "And so they predicted it." "Oh, you know, he talked about it and it was predicted and it happened." "I mean it's-- it's easy." "It's as simple as that." "We just tend to complicate it, man." "No, not physically, not his physical body." "So when they came the following morning and rolled back the great stone in front of the tomb and he wasn't there" "No." "No." "It must have been dark-- I don't know." "They must have missed him." "I don't think physically, a physical body can rise." "I don't think that he was yanked out of that or physically Walked out and Walked down the street and met with them." "It just doesn't make any sense to me." "For more than a year I'd investigated the historical record for the reliability of the New Testament." "I'd looked at the identity of Jesus, but now it was time to look at the ultimate evidence for who he really was-- the purported resurrection of Jesus from the dead." "And for that, I Went to the best scholars that I could track down." "[Licona] See, While Jesus was on earth, he made some really radical claims." "He claimed to be the uniquely divine servant of God, and he claimed that the only way that We could get to God would be through him." "Now, I submit to you that if one of your professors made some claims like that, you would think that he or she was a few French fries short of a Happy Meal." "Those are some really audacious claims." "Well, a lot of Jesus' critics responded to him the same way that you or I would respond to someone making those claims today." ""Oh, yeah, pal?" "You really think that's who you are?" ""Well, tell you what." "Why don't you show it to us?" ""Why don't you give us a sign?" "Show us a miracle or something."" "And Jesus said, "Well, I'll give you one miracle, one sign." "My resurrection from the dead."" "The resurrection of Jesus really is the pivotal event of history." "Anybody can claim to be the Son of God, as Jesus clearly did." "The question is can you back it up?" "What evidence is there to support your claim?" "What credentials do you have?" "And if Jesus really did return from the dead, that's excellent evidence that he is who he claimed to be:" "the one and only Son of God." "[Narrator] To Weigh the validity of Jesus' resurrection, we must first consider his death." "Many skeptics have proposed that Jesus merely fainted on the cross or was drugged, and later escaped as part of a conspiracy." "By contrast, the four gospel narratives, collectively describe the events of his public beating, death by crucifixion, and burial." "[Woman] Mark 15:15," "[Licona] The chances of surviving crucifixion were extremely bleak." "Crucifixion and the tortures that normally preceded it was the worst way to die in antiquity." "A person was scourged to the point usually that their intestines, arteries, and veins were laid bare." "And then after that, a person was dragged out where they were impaled to a cross or a tree, and then left hanging there in excruciating pain." "In fact, the word "excruciating"" "comes from the Latin, "out of the cross."" "[Wright] Jesus was being tried and executed as a rebel leader." "Now, in the Roman army, if you were responsible for looking after one prisoner of war even if he was a rather insignificant prisoner of war, if you let him get away, your life would be forfeit" "in place of his, and life was very cheap." "If you were looking after the execution of a rebel leader and you let him get away, you're in deep trouble." "You're not going back home to your Wife and kids." "No way." "Game over." "The Romans were very, very good at killing people." "They specialized in it." "They prided themselves on it." "[Narrator] Perhaps the most definitive statement of Jesus' death at the hands of the Romans is recorded in the Gospel of John." "[Woman] "One of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with his spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and wafer. "" "John 19534." "[Narrator] Medical experts have concluded that this account from John, en eyewitness of the crucifixion, is evidence that as he suffocated on the cross," "Jesus' heart had ruptured." "[ Woman ] Matthew 27:57-60." "All four Gospels tell us that Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea." "That's a remarkable statement and certainly a historical statement." "The evidence for that is first of eff," "Joseph of Arimathea is identified es e member of the counsel, the Sanhedrin, that condemned Jesus." "The presence of Joseph of Arimathea in the empty tomb narrative indicates that this is a historically reliable account of what really happened." "His name would have been known to people in those days, very much like a United States Senator would be known today." "It would have been very clear where his tomb wee, so that there would have been no question about the location of Jesus' burial." "If also, I think, indicates that the burial account of Jesus could not have been made up." "It is highly unusual to find that the person who alone has the courage to go to Pilate and give Jesus an honorable burial is not members of his family, faithful disciples who followed him to the end." "Instead, it is a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, the very high court all of whom, Mark says, had condemned Jesus of Nazareth to the cross." "The fact that it is Joseph of Arimathea who is the person responsible for giving Jesus an honorable burial is an awkward and embarrassing fact for the early church, and yet this tradition is faithfully preserved in almost all of the traditions" "that We have about the burial of Jesus." "[Lee] If Jesus really was killed by the Romans, if his body really was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, then the next focus of my investigation became obvious." "On the first Sunday after the crucifixion, was the tomb of Jesus Christ really empty?" "[ Woman ] Luke 24: 1." "The empty tomb story also has a very embarrassing feature of it that is preserved in the memory of the early church." "Namely, the discovery of the empty tomb by women." "Now, in order to appreciate this, you have to understand something of the status of Women in Palestinian Jewish society." "In that society, which was a patriarchal society, women were, frankly, second-class citizens." "If you were going to invent an account about an empty tomb, then why on earth would you invent witnesses, primary witnesses, whom no one would believe?" "In fact, they would scoff at that later on." "Supposing you were inventing the story of the resurrection of Jesus." "Many people have said, "Oh, this was all just dreamed up later on."" "Well, how would you have done that?" "The one thing you wouldn't have done would have been to have not only a Woman, but a woman who's got, nobody quite knows what, but a fairly shady past as your prime Witness." "And yet, there she is, Mary Magdalene in Matthew, Mark, Luke and particularly in John." "And already by the middle of the 2nd century the pagans are sneering," ""Oh, this is just based on the testimony of hysterical Women." "You can't believe that."" "But the early Christians stuck to their story." "They stuck to their guns." "They stuck to the women." "They said, "This is how ff was. "" "Now, they just would never have made that up, and that actually has enormous ramifications." "If this is how the story was, and they didn't change it to airbrush Mary out, then this really must have been what happened on that first Easter day." "[Woman] Matthew 28:12-13." "Matthew reports that the Jewish authorities were claiming that the disciples of Jesus had stolen his corpse." "And this is verified by Justin and Tertullian a little bit later on, saying that the Jewish leaders were still saying the same thing in their day." "Now, here's the question:" "ff the body is SUN in the tomb, why are you saying that I the disciples had stolen it?" "Well, if you think about that, the claim that the body was stolen confirms that Jesus' enemies acknowledged that the tomb was empty." "If you've got a stolen body, you must have an empty tomb." "If the tomb was not empty," "Jesus' opponents would surely have gone and got the body and shown it as soon as the disciples began proclaiming the resurrection." "I found the evidence for the empty tomb very convincing but, you Know what?" "That didn't tell me what happened to Jesus." "Is it true that hundreds of people really saw him alive after the crucifixion?" "My research took me to a letter that the apostle Paul Wrote to the church of Corinth" "And it contains the earliest passage of all about what happened to the resurrected Jesus." "[Woman] I Corinthians 1' 5:4-8." "Paul, who is a first-generation Christian having met and seen the resurrected Jesus, describes resurrection appearances to Peter, to the apostles, to James, and finally to himself." "And he also mentions 500 people who saw Jesus alive." "So WE have eyewitness first-hand account of someone who himself saw Jesus alive and Knows of 500 people or so who saw Jesus alive." "That's extraordinarily strong evidence." "These people, Paul tells us, were still alive at the time that he was telling the Corinthians about it." "And his implication is WE have hundreds of people who actually saw Jesus risen from the dead." "If you don't believe me, you can ask them about it because they're still alive." "[Strauss] In 1 Corinthians 15," "Paul tells the Corinthian church that he passed on what he received." "He uses the language, actually, of a formal transfer of tradition, "What he received."" "And then he describes the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the resurrection appearances." "This confirms for us that the accounts of the resurrection were creedal tradition that were passed on to Paul" "So if 1 Corinthians was Written in the early to mid-50s of the 1st century, these traditions were much earlier than that, going back to the period of Paul's conversion in the 30s." "So that pushes the accounts of the resurrection to a very, very early date." "Paul seems to think that the best argument for this text is that he received it from trustworthy persons." ""I gave you what I was given." "The answer is right." "I Went to the right people."" "And critics believe that Paul got this material, generally they say he received it in Jerusalem about 35 AD." "[Licona] First of all, he's early." "He's writing within 20 to 35 years of the purported event itself because he's quoting from a creed, an oral formula tradition that predates the Writing of the New Testament for which most scholars date to between three to five years" "of the crucifixion itself." "1 Corinthians 15:3-7 provides evidence that belief in the resurrection was already present among Jews within two to three years after Jesus was Killed." "That means that the resurrection stories aren't something that evolved over 30, 40, 50 years after the crucifixion of Jesus." "[Lee] So we have the empty tomb, we have the eyewitnesses," "We have the early accounts." "The question is, are there any other additional facts, circumstantial evidence, to support the resurrection?" "[Narrator] While the apostle Paul described hundreds of eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus, the full impact of the event s perhaps best measured by the subsequent growth of the early Christian church in the face of intense persecution." "In the 2nd century, the Roman historian Tacitus Wrote:" ""Christus, from whom the name had its origin," ""suffered the extreme penalty at the hands 'bf one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus," "'End a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for moment, again broke out not only in Judea, but even in Rome. "" "Even the most critical, skeptical scholars recognize that the earliest disciples at least believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead." "In fact, they pinned nearly everything on it." "Without belief in Jesus' resurrection, the early Christian movement could never have come into being." "[Evans] They recognized in Jesus something special, but they wondered if they were mistaken when he died." "They didn't anticipate that." "Suffer, maybe, but die at the hands of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor?" "In feet, ever; when the first reports of his resurrection reached their ears, they were SUN doubtful and skeptical." "But when they met the risen Lord, their skepticism was transformed into a very confident faith, a great joy and a determination to preach the good news to everyone else." "And I think that's the part that's awfully hard to refute because WE have this turnabout, this transformation of a discouraged and bewildered following on the basis of the good news." "Somehow you have to explain the explosion from soared followers who run away to, "Let's worship him." "Let's sing to him." "Let's pray to him."" "[Witherington] If there was no resurrection, and more to the point, if there was no resurrection appearances of Jesus to those who doubted and were discouraged and denied and betrayed Jesus," "We would not be sitting here talking about this today." "Other messianic figures had risen in the past, had claimed to be somebody, and had been suppressed and killed by the Romans." "Yet, no movement arose around those dead messiahs" "But these disciples of Jesus were willing to go to the ends of the earth proclaiming the gospel message, were willing to suffer and die for that." "The transformation from a bunch of defeated cowards to boldly, fearlessly proclaiming the Gospel even to the point of death to me confirms that something happened on that first Easter morning." "[Woman] II Corinthians 11:23." "After Jesus' crucifixion, the disciples lived lives of hardship for 20, 30, 40 years, suffered greatly in their ministries, and eventually suffered martyrdom and execution Without recanting for their belief that they had seen Jesus risen from the dead." "[Habermas] I mean, what were they gaining?" "Were they becoming rich?" "They're running around the countryside, they're in some cases abandoning their families for periods of time so they could preach." "What they got for their efforts is death, in many cases." "You also have to remember that the disciples died not just for something they believed was true." "They died for something they actually saw with their own eyes." "It's much more difficult to explain that away than it is for someone who dies for a belief and they're sincerely wrong." "I came across a bit of evidence I really found fascinating." "James was a half-brother of Jesus." "And he was not a believer in Jesus during Jesus' lifetime, but he later died the death of a martyr as a leader of the local church." "In a similar way, Saul of Tarsus was a persecutor of Christians and yet, he later becomes the apostle Paul, this incredible missionary." "So I had to ask myself, what led to this radical transformation of these skeptics?" "Sometimes people will come to believe something they wish to be true." "If you believe hard enough that a person is loving and kind, you can talk yourself into believing that even though the person is not loving and kind." "It's very, very difficult, however, to explain people coming to believe something that they're actually standing against." "Now, in the case of James and Paul, they did not believe in Jesus be fore his crucifixion." "In fact, they thought he was deranged and they did not accept what he said and what he taught." "James, the brother of Jesus, is a skeptic who doesn't come to Jesus until he meets the risen Lord." "Critics allow that." "Paul's a persecutor till he meets the risen Jesus." "That's not the kind of testimony of someone who all gets together and say, 'Hey, let's just cook this thing up."" "[Strauss] One of the certainties, it seems to me, related to the testimony of the apostles is that they truly believed that Jesus was who he claimed he was." "And they truly believed that he had risen from the dead because they were willing to die for that." "Very few people are willing to die for something they don't really believe in or something, even Worse, that they know to be a lie." "[Moreland] When Jesus was executed, his disciples were rightly afraid." "They scattered." "They were fearful for their own life." "Their hopes had been dashed because they had believed" "Jesus was the promised one who was going to usher a new day in for Israel." "It turned out he wasn't because he was murdered by crucifixion under the authority of the Roman Empire." "And yet, shortly thereafter," "We find them taking a stand in Jerusalem, proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah, the very Son of God." "How do we explain that?" "How do we explain the fact that they were even willing to propagate this the rest of their lives and go to martyrs' deaths for their belief?" "The only rational explanation is that something happened to them between the death of Jesus and three days later." "And according to their own words, it was that they saw Jesus risen from the dead for themselves." "People have often said, and I think it's a perfectly fair position, that," ""Okay, there aren't actually any good alternative hypotheses" ""for how you explain the rise of early Christianity," ""but because WE know as an absolute fact," ""which we're not prepared to let go of," ""that nobody ever rises from the dead, then there must in fact be some other alternative hypothesis."" "And I want to say, "Okay, if you want to make" ""the absoluteness of bodily death" ""the cornerstone of your entire world-view," "I actually can't stop you. "" "If you choose to say, "No, here I stand." "'Death is the end and nobody ever comes back from it, and that's just the way it is."" "Welt that's where a lot of people were in the ancient world." "It's where a lot of people are in the modern world." "I think that that World-View is radically challenged by the strong evidence which points to the resurrection of Jesus." "But it's up to somebody what they do with that challenge." "The evidence accumulated over time until Nov. 8, 1981, which is sort of when I reached a critical mass." "I remember going alone in my room and I took a yellow legal pad and put a line down the middle, and on one side I started to list all evidence" "I had encountered for Jesus Christ being the Son of God." "And on the other side, all the negative evidence against that." "And I Wrote and I Wrote page after page, and finally, I put my pen down, I said, "Wait a minute." ""In light of this avalanche of evidence" ""pointing toward the truth of Christianity," ""it would require more faith for me to maintain my atheism than to become a follower of Jesus Christ."" "And so that's the moment that I decided, consistent with the evidence, the most logical, the most rational step I could take was a step of faith in the same direction the evidence was pointing and put my trust in Jesus." "After I did that, I thought, you know, maybe Leslie would like to hear about this." "I thought it was too good to be true." "My heart was pounding." "I was in tears." "I was so excited." "I just threw my arms around him and kissed him and hugged him and told him how I'd been praying and how lots of people had been praying that this day would come." "She threw her arms around me and she said," ""You hard-hearted son of a Baptist." ""I've been telling you this for two years." "I mean, come on. "" "And that began a transformational process for me where, over time, my philosophy and my attitudes, relationships, parenting, world-view, all of that began to change over time for good." "Really for good." "When Lee became a Christian, his whole life started to change to the extent that our five-year-old daughter, who also saw those changes," "Went to her Sunday school teacher and told her that she Wanted Jesus to do in her life what he had done in her daddy's life." "[Lee] Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. "" "And you know, that's my story." "Here was someone who said," ""I'm going to investigate this stuff with an open mind." "Let it take me wherever the evidence will take me."" "And what I discovered in the end is," "Jesus made the claim that he is the truth, that everything hinges on his identity." "In fact, everything hinges on the resurrection because anybody can claim to be the Son of God." "If Jesus really did return from the dead, then he is who he claimed to be and that changes everything." "What about your own journey?" "I'd really encourage you, if you've never done it, I to investigate the evidence for yourself but make three resolutions up front." "Number one, make it a front burner issue in your life." "Number two, resolve to have an open mind, to go Wherever the evidence takes you, even if it takes you to the very uncomfortable conclusion that Jesus is who he claimed to be." "And then finally, resolve that, once the evidence is in, you will reach a verdict in the case for Christ." "Closed-Captioned By J.R. Media Services, Inc." "Burbank, CA"