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>>Ankerberg: How do we know that Jesus Christ actually lived, was a historical person?
>>Bock: We have pretty good evidence outside anything in the Bible from Josephus in a saying
in the Antiquities. It’s in book 18. And in this excerpt, which is disputed because
there are things that are said in it in the way it’s been passed on to us that a Jewish
person wouldn’t say; things like “he was the Christ.” And it also has a confession
of resurrection in there. Josephus wouldn’t have written that. But most people who look
at this citation say that it does tell us Jesus existed; he had an unusual ministry
in which he performed unusual deeds; that he was crucified during the time of Pilate
at the instigation of the Jewish leadership; and that he created a following as a result
of that death. Now, those are pretty basic core facts. But since there are some people
who argue that Jesus Christ never in fact existed at all, it’s an important piece
of evidence, coming from a Jewish historian, writing about this period of history.
>>Ankerberg: Yeah. Let’s just put up our old buddy Gary Habermas and his book The Historical
Jesus, where he goes back and he looks at at least 17 non-Christian sources about the
life of Christ and comes up with 129 facts, okay, before you get to the New Testament.
And they’re in agreement with the New Testament, or they’re substantiating what the New Testament
says. Then, we need to say you have proof from the historical records. The earliest
historical records are?
>>Bock: Well, the earliest historical records that we have are the materials that we see
in the New Testament. These are your Gospels, this is the book of Acts, things that are
said in the epistles of Paul and the other epistles. So there are several materials that
have come from the first century that are incorporated into our New Testament. And what’s
important in talking about them this way is they are historical documents. They tell us
what people in the first century believe. We’re not talking about these documents
yet at the point of saying these are inspired, these are the word of God, but that their
content is reflective of what first century people who allied themselves to Jesus actually
believed.
>>Ankerberg: Yeah. In fact, when I came to Christianity, the fact is, I did not stop
and say here’s a book that fell out of heaven that’s inspired and inerrant, okay. I came
to these books like I came to Herodotus or Catullus or somebody else in ancient history.
And I said, does this give me solid information about this time period and a person in this
time period? And so I’m saying if you start there, the idea of inspiration and inerrancy
comes a little later down the pike after you accept a couple of other things. But you don’t
start there. You start with, do we have historical information that’s solid?
Okay. All of these sources, plus other sources then, say, from a group of people that follow
Jesus – everybody says people were following Jesus for whatever reason – okay, from that
group he picks 12 apostles, alright? Tell me how we know he picked 12.
>>Bock: Well, we have a pretty clear tradition that 12 were selected. In that group we have
Judas, which means that Jesus selected someone who eventually would betray him. Sometimes
people will say, well, the number 12 is made up. It parallels the 12 tribes of Israel and
it’s just a way of getting a nice literary mix so that the following of Jesus mirrors
the situation in Israel. But if you were making it up, remember that if you say you get to
make it up, that means you get to make the rules. If you’re making the rules, you wouldn’t
pick, you wouldn’t have the son of God pick someone who’s going to betray him. So this
is called, in critical studies, the criteria of embarrassment, that there’s something
that doesn’t quite fit. And because it doesn’t fit, it’s more likely to have happened than
to have been made up.