The Real Jesus (DVD) Myth #2 (4 of 10)

http://forerunner.com/realjesus/part1.html

Read the whole script at the above link!

Myth #2: The New Testament was written 100 years after Jesus

Jennings: "There is no reliable evidence about who the authors actually were. It is pretty much agreed that they were not eyewitnesses. In fact, the Gospels were probably written 40 to 100 years after Jesus' death."

Jennings is simply echoing a popular myth: some of the theologians of the Jesus Seminar have suggested that writers pretending to be Matthew, Mark, Luke and John took a historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, and invented a genealogy and added historical references as time went by thus "improving" the authenticity of their story.

There is no evidence that the earliest manuscripts of the Bible were altered to be more "historic." In fact, there is proof that little of the New Testament has been altered.

And what of the charge that the Gospel accounts were written many years after Christ? The higher critics face a huge problem with credibility here. In dating the New Testament in the second century rather than the first, they must ignore the fact that there were a number of late first century and early second century writers who quoted extensively from the New Testament. The Christians of that era already thought of what we know today as the New Testament — as being authoritative — as scripture.

We have already seen that Christian writers named Clement, Barnabas, and Polycarp wrote about Jesus in the first century. There are other documents as well.

• The Didache, a late first century catechism, quotes extensively from the New Testament.

• Ignatius (A.D. 35-110), the Bishop of Antioch, quotes from 16 New Testament books.

• Irenaeus (A.D. 130 -200), the second century Bishop of Lyons, makes 1,819 references to New Testament scriptures.

• Tertullian (A.D. 160 -220) quotes from the New Testament 7,258 times.

The problem for the higher critics and those searching for a "historical Jesus" is that these people were writing in the late first and second centuries. Since they quote from the New Testament books extensively, we can know that the church in many areas of the Roman Empire had access to all of the New Testament scriptures. So the Gospels must have been written sometime in the first century, during the time of the Apostles.

William Foxwell Albright, one of the world's foremost biblical archaeologists, said: "In my opinion, every book in the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew between the 40s and 80s of the first century A.D. (very probably sometime between about A.D. 50 to 75)."

In the 19th and 20th centuries, there have been thousands of archaeological discoveries of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament that are hundreds of years older than the manuscripts available prior to modern times. There are now more than 5,300 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and 24,000 manuscript portions available for study. In other words, there are more reliable New Testament manuscripts in the original Greek language available for direct translation into modern English today than ever before.

Sir Frederic Kenyon, who was the director and principal librarian of the British Museum, states, "The last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and general integrity of the books in the New Testament may be regarded as finally established."

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[dortyhoor]

Apart from the added parts to Josephus account of Jesus, what of other parts in the book, wouldn't it of been harder to forge the part about Jesus brother James for example, to add him into the book (for the purpose of supporting Jesus) would of mean't changing his account of Jewish history just prior to the revolt wouldn't it?

Just asking.

[jcr4runner]

@dortyhoor Good point. James appears at exactly the right time and fits into the history prior to that. For that mattter, so does Jesus fit into the list a grievances against Pilate.

[Chrilsama]

Thanks for posting the series! I´m a student of theology and I have to wrestle every day with the liberal garbage which is taught in every seminary! I never doubted the authenticity of the Bible, but its very hard to stand almost alone.

[kunzx037]

liberal scholars at 9 minutes

[Dchellberg]

This totally contradicts all the books I read by Bart Ehrman. Given all the mutually contradictory information in the NT and all the other books we have discovered I must reject this video as crap.

[dortyhoor]

@jcr4runner Thanks, people like to ignore glaring points, glad to know someone else reads books and Im not alone.

Peace

[lizazoon]

@jcr4runner :Are you aware sir/lady, that even christian authorities admit the forgery ?

Not all the writings of Josephus of course not. But if ONE is falsified, to fit the bible, how much can you trust the rest ?

[jcr4runner]

@lizazoon There are three quotations of the passage from the fourth century with small variations -- out of these three versions a consensus version can be drawn.

My view is that Josephus wrote "He was the so-called Christ" and that the words in Greek for "so-called" got dropped due to a scribal error because the the word in Greek had a similar look to two other words on the same line. When you add the "so-called (as in Jerome's and Ambrose's version) then the rest of the passage makes sense.

[jcr4runner]

@lizazoon

I actually think I know more about it than you do. Watch our video: "Is Josephus' account of Jesus a forgery?"

[lizazoon]

@jcr4runner You should know as well as I do, that the writings of Josuphus have been tempered with. As our pastor said in his homily a few months ago. The bible is no science book, no history book, but a book of faith