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[0:00] Good morning, everybody.

[0:16] Happy Easter. Does everybody have an outline? And if they don't, I'll put them on this chair over here. So, thanks for coming to the Bible study this morning.

[0:41] Especially with the new format, I know that it's kind of difficult to figure out first and second and in the middle. So, we're going to be discussing the resurrection this morning. The historicity of the resurrection.

[0:52] The historical reliability of the resurrection. The theological importance of the resurrection. Why we believe what we believe.

[1:06] And so, this is going to be eight weeks where different teachers are going to be exploring the resurrection. Some will be focused on individual gospel. Some will be focused on some of Paul's letters.

[1:20] I'm kind of privileged and excited to do the first installment. We are going to look at Mark briefly. I'm going to cover Mark a little bit. But the real focus of my talk is going to be on why do we believe that this is a real historical event.

[1:38] And how do we defend that position in the face of so much scrutiny. And you're going to get, I mean, the scrutiny is going to come from all angles. Just within the world of biblical scholarship, there's probably more antagonistic, sort of anti-resurrection theological scholarship out there than there is to support it.

[2:05] I mean, there's people, probably more professors and scholars out there who've made a career out of studying the Bible who don't actually believe the Bible. And then there are professors who study the Bible and believe the Bible.

[2:18] But if you kind of study, and this has been true in the 19th century and in the 20th century and in the 21st century. But what's really cool is that God has faithfully in each of those kind of centuries raised up incredible biblical scholars who have usually one or two voices go into a sea of voices and say, no, wait a minute.

[2:41] You don't have this. You're not treating this material correctly. You're not interpreting this material correctly. And this is how we're going to sort of faithfully reconstruct this historical narrative, both and understand the history of it and the theological significance of it.

[2:56] So the outline is very in-depth. I sat down with Matt and thought about, you know, how am I going to teach this well? Because this subject is very complex.

[3:06] I brought some of the books that I've read, some of them more than once. And the subject of the historicity of the resurrection brings inevitably, brings into it lots of different disciplines, philosophy, archaeology, history, theology, linguistics.

[3:27] And you can't really, and I said, okay, well, I'm not going to get into all that. I'm going to make this really user-friendly, right? So let me, you know, here's some points. I'm going to give them these like four or five kind of apologetic points and make it simple.

[3:40] And then I started writing out. I'm like, I can't really do that. I can't simply say, hey, guess what, guys? The Gospels are dated early rather than late. You know, that's it. And let's move on. Like, you know, kind of have to talk about that a little bit.

[3:52] So that's why there's a lot of information in here. I'm going to use it as a guide. And obviously you can follow along with it. But I'm not going to kind of spend ten minutes on trying to get through each one of these points, you know, in an in-depth way.

[4:05] Some of them I'll kind of mention and then skirt over. Some of them I'll spend more time on. And so the bold areas kind of outline the little subsections that we're going to focus on.

[4:16] The first is the resurrection. The Gospel is literature. The Gospels is a literary form. And then the Gospel of Mark itself. So then we're going to consider Messiah figures in first century Israel or more broadly the second temple period.

[4:31] So it does that. You're going to hear me. I'm going to kind of give you a little bit of a word key here. Second temple period. The first temple built by Solomon is destroyed.

[4:41] There's an exile. And then out of exile, the Israelis come out of exile, build the second temple. And so when you talk about the second temple period, you're talking about that time in Israel's history after the second temple was built.

[4:57] And sometimes you use interchangeably the first century, the second temple period. Obviously the second temple period is longer than just simply 100 years. But we're going to look at Messiah figures in that time period and then the nature of oral history and hopefully give you an understanding of what oral histories are.

[5:16] And to understand that oral histories are integral and important to biblical history. The Bible didn't just appear. Like Jesus didn't, you know, was raised from the dead, ascended, and then here's the Bible.

[5:27] That, of course, didn't happen. Then we're going to look at eyewitness testimony focusing on Richard Baucom. There's three scholars I'm going to talk a little about today. I think that they're all first rate.

[5:38] I think that they're doing some of the best scholarship not only of today but maybe of all time. Richard Baucom and eyewitness testimony and how that relates to understanding the resurrection and the historicity of it.

[5:51] N.T. Wright, who N.T. Wright really covers everything. And then we're Bauckham and then the third scholar kind of have more focused areas of inquiry. N.T. Wright just says, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to give you everything.

[6:04] And so N.T. Wright, we're going to talk about mutation of core Jewish beliefs after the resurrection. How do we explain that? What does it have to do with is the resurrection real or not?

[6:15] And then finally Larry Hurtado, which is a lesser known scholar but I think it's first rate. And his work has to do with high Christology, and I'll get into what that means, and bi-theism.

[6:28] So bi-2 as opposed to monotheism-1, bi-theism in early Christianity. You're going to hear me say, I'm going to use the term conservative and liberal usually in regard to scholarship.

[6:40] Just because as Americans those words are loaded words, but they're catchphrases that I think we understand. So when I say liberal scholar, I'm not talking about the person's core beliefs or morality, their political leanings.

[6:56] I'm saying that their scholarship is not in line with conservative, orthodox, Christian thought. Liberal scholars, by and large, don't believe in miracles.

[7:07] Don't believe Jesus was the son of God. Don't believe he was raised from the dead. And when I say conservative scholars, I'm meaning scholars who do believe that. Just so there's a confusion when I start throwing out liberal this, liberal that.

[7:21] I'm not really talking about pop culture and politics and things like that. So opening it up with a very famous group of verses from 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verses 12 through 19.

[7:35] I'm not going to spend too much time on this because there will be later lessons where they focus almost exclusively on this verse. But I can't think of a better place in the Bible that centers this study. And Paul writes, Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?

[7:52] But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised.

[8:11] And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have no hope, in this life only we are of all people most to be pitied.

[8:27] Paul does an excellent job of letting the believer know what the stakes are in regard to the resurrection. You really can't say it any better than that. This building exists because of the resurrection.

[8:39] We're here because of the resurrection. Not because of even more than the virgin birth, more than the life of Jesus, more than the early church fathers, more than anything.

[8:50] The resurrection is a reason why we are here, gathered together, why this building even exists in the first place. It was a different church before. It was an evangelical church. It has to be.

[9:01] Everything hinges on the resurrection. If Christ is raised from the dead, then we are who we say we are and we believe who we say we believe in. And we're worshiping a God who has condescended to us and saved us.

[9:14] And if the resurrection is not real, then we are all wasting our time. And Paul goes even further and says people should pity us. We've wasted our life. We're wasting our time. We're wasting our lives.

[9:25] We may even be teaching something that is borderline immoral if this isn't true. So Paul understands that Jesus is not just somebody who is a really kind man, a wise teacher, sagacious.

[9:43] And again, I'm alluding to some of that liberal scholarship now that says, well, it's okay. Of course there is no resurrection. There are no miracles. That's okay.

[9:54] I'm still a Christian. I still go to a church. I think that there's a lot to be gained from studying the man of Jesus. There's a lot to be gained with fellowshipping with other people who also look to Jesus, the man, as an example.

[10:09] Paul's saying, no, that's baloney. No, there isn't anything to be gained from that. It doesn't really matter. If he has not been raised from the dead, then the whole thing is a sham.

[10:20] So those are the stakes. And that is hopefully going to frame why it's important for us to understand why do we believe this? Why is it historically reliable? And then there's a little quote here from, this is a secular historian, not a theologian, but is somebody who in his studies of both history and archaeology has come across dealing with the Bible.

[10:43] And you'll find that if you start to study these things, the Bible for almost all historians, certainly are all archaeologists who go anywhere near the Near East. The Bible is a major source for them, believing or not.

[10:56] The Bible is viewed as a strong, reliable historical source for all sorts of things. And he writes, And that is true, whether you're talking about Plato, whether you're talking about Sophocles, Virgil.

[11:22] And these are names that in the world, they're never questioned. Everyone believes that these people existed, that they wrote what they wrote, that they said what they said.

[11:34] And if you were to study this, you would find that the historical evidence for the manuscript support for these individual works and these individuals doesn't come close.

[11:46] It doesn't even come into the same league for Jesus, for the Bible, for the resurrection, for so on and so forth. So the first section, the resurrection, Gospels of Literature and the Gospel of Mark.

[11:59] The Gospels are unique in literary history and represent a completely novel form at the time of their writing. So this is, again, something that we should be thinking about. Look at ancient history.

[12:10] Look at the rest of the Bible. Gospels are unique. They're different from Paul's letters. They're different from anything in the Old Testament. And if we ask ourselves, well, why did men sit down to write these?

[12:24] What is it that they're trying to tell us? How are they written? We find that, again, in ancient history, they're unique. And they are resurrection narratives.

[12:35] So these are men who believe that Jesus was God incarnate. Theoretically, if God comes to earth, his birth, his childhood, his adolescence, his adult life, everything should really be of the utmost importance.

[12:52] You wouldn't say, God is here, but none of that other stuff matters. Only this one thing matters. That really wouldn't make sense. And yet, that is kind of what the Gospels say. They say, no, Jesus was God, but I'm not going to tell you really anything much about his birth, a chapter or so.

[13:07] Nothing about his childhood, teenage years. We're going to talk. There will be a nice chunk about his ministry. And then the main event in all four Gospels, which is the three synoptics and John, is the death, the crucifixion, and the resurrection.

[13:22] That's not by coincidence. That's because the men who are writing these Gospels understood this is Jesus' purpose for coming.

[13:33] This is our, now becomes our purpose in proclaiming him as Lord, as following him, as calling others in to follow him, to create a community, to create a church, and then to go out into the world and spread that message.

[13:47] We're preaching the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and not the birth and the life and the childhood. Because it all matters because it's all God, right? That's not what the Gospels are.

[14:00] And it's important for us to take note of that when we're thinking about, is the resurrection important? Was it important to the people at that time? And certainly it was just look at what they felt they should sit down and write.

[14:15] They're both historical and theological documents. Focus primarily on the resurrection, as I've just said. And they give minimal treatment to other areas of his life. The early acceptance of an empty tomb and resurrection is the true catalyst for the unique literary form taking shape over and above the birth and life of Jesus.

[14:32] So these aren't, the Gospels are not, some scholars usually say, well, they're historical biographies. They're not biographies because they don't care so much about a huge chunk of Jesus' life.

[14:44] They are resurrection story, resurrection narrative, resurrection histories, resurrection biographies even. And by the way, this is really going to be sort of a lecture format.

[14:57] Normally I don't do that. I like having back and forth on a lot of questions. I really know where to do that and get all this information in. But nevertheless, if you say, I have a question about that, I'm confused, raise your hand.

[15:08] It's a small enough group. That would be fine. So accurate dating of the Gospels is paramount in reliable historical Jesus analysis. This is one of those areas I didn't want to spend too much time on, and yet I realize you can't really talk about defending the resurrection.

[15:24] Somebody says to you, well, how do you believe this stuff? How do you believe it? Someone was raised from the dead. You're going to find, if you purport to give that person an answer, that you're going to start bringing in, well, let's look at what the Bible says.

[15:37] You're going to have to grapple with, when was this written, and is that important? And the answer is yes. So I'm not going to spend too much time on it, but I will tell you that conservative scholarship dates the Gospel of Mark around AD 60.

[15:54] We believe that Jesus died somewhere around AD 33. So you do the math. It's 27 years after his death. This is within the lifetime of people who were there, who saw this, who experienced it.

[16:04] Matthew and Luke, maybe 15, 20 years later. John, maybe much later, AD 90. John was, of course, very, very young when the other apostles were older.

[16:14] So that is accepted by all of conservative scholarship, and I would say the vast majority of moderate scholarship, too. And nowadays, we've gotten so good at dating these things that even liberal scholars will say, okay, you know, that dating may be accurate, but here are all the reasons why I still think that people aren't raised from the dead and things like that.

[16:38] So Paul's letters, and we're going to talk a little bit about Paul today. Paul's first letter, earliest letter that we can date, 1 Thessalonians, probably AD 50, 51, 52 at the latest.

[16:51] So now you're talking, thanks, you're talking 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. And what's important, not just is that it happened 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, but that in Paul's letters, we already have established what is called a high Christology.

[17:11] A high view and an accepted widespread view of who Jesus was, what he did, that he died, and that he rose again. Historians have to account for that early widespread acceptance.

[17:29] So, why then is dating the Gospels accurately so important? And it comes down to Jewish versus, this is the next bullet point, Jewish versus Hellenistic traditions.

[17:45] I'm going to use the word Hellenist, Hellenist or Hellenistic, because that's the correct scholarly term. What that is referring to is the Greek culture. So, Alexander the Great, the Greek Empire, the first major empire in Western civilization, leads into the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire, culturally speaking, politically speaking, is Hellenistic in nature.

[18:08] It's not very distinct. The Roman Empire and the Greek Empire is not distinct culturally, philosophically. They mirror one another very closely. Very different, however, from Judaism, from the Jewish way of living and thinking about God, and interacting with each other as a community, expectation, life and death, family, festivals, so on and so forth.

[18:32] It's radically, Judaism radically different from the Hellenistic world that came to kind of engulf it and surround it. So, what liberal scholarship wants to do is say, you know, they start with the presupposition of, well, we know the resurrection didn't happen.

[18:48] We're all reasonable, rational, well, people aren't raised from the dead. So, their starting point is, whether they would say it or not, sometimes this is even on a subconscious level, the starting point is, well, he wasn't really raised from the dead.

[19:01] So, given that, how do I explain what I'm seeing here? Because clearly, these people thought that he did. They're speaking as though they did. They thought that he did. So, how do we explain that?

[19:13] So, one of the things that was very popular in the 19th century biblical scholarship was this idea that the early church was overwhelmingly Greek.

[19:25] That very quickly, after Jesus' death, Paul takes up the mantle of chief evangelist, focuses on Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, and founding, you know, whether it's a church in Ephesus, the church in Thessalonica, the church in Corinth, that the early church was Greek in culture.

[19:45] And what do we find in Greek culture? We find things like hero, worship, legend, building. This flows right out of earliest Greek mythology.

[19:59] And so, in Greek cultures, there is a tradition of an oral history, and within that oral history, over time, almost think of it as like an evolutionary process, as stories are told and retold, legend is built, hero status is built.

[20:14] And so, well, how do we explain this sort of very high Christology, and what that means is a high view of Jesus as God and not simply as a man? How do we explain that?

[20:25] Well, we explain that two ways. One, the Gospels were very late. We'll say that the Gospels are dated at the earliest 150 to 180 A.D.

[20:39] You know, the latest Gospel, maybe 200 A.D. Now you're talking about centuries, more than a century removed from any eyewitnesses. And not only are they dated at that time, the church, the people who were telling each other these stories were culturally Greek.

[20:55] So, that's why we have this very, this sort of defined Jesus as God, Jesus as legendary, almost hero-like status, very easily explained.

[21:09] It took on an evolutionary process, 100, 150 years of storytelling, and that's why we get the stories that we do. Now, again, that is a book unto itself.

[21:24] Suffice it to say, conservative, solid biblical scholarship over many years has slowly eroded that view. The most liberal Bible scholars might still hold to that, but people who take the field very seriously really no longer do.

[21:40] But that is, you know, that sort of spawned a century's worth of biblical scholarship, mostly in Europe and Germany. If you've ever heard the term form critics, this is what they sort of built their theology on.

[21:55] And so that's why, for us, if we want to be Christians in the world today, we want to say, hey, I hold to the resurrection. I think it's real. I think it really happened. I think it's historical. You want to be able to talk a little bit about the stories about the resurrection, so the Gospels, but also Paul, and why do we think they were written, when they were written, and who were they written for.

[22:17] And we'll talk a little bit about that later, but that the earliest believers, that the early church was predominantly Jewish. That early Christianity was a Jewish Christianity as opposed to a Greek Christianity.

[22:30] That is an important point to try to remember. So let me just talk really briefly about the Gospel of Mark so that you do have a little bit of an understanding about our first Gospel.

[22:41] So Mark is the earliest Gospel, and as I said, probably A.D. 60 when it was written. It's the shortest Gospel, and it's the simplest. And by simple, I mean that it is without much literary embellishment.

[22:54] Yes? I don't really catch. You said earlier, early church, the Greek culture. Yes. Right. Now you said earlier, Krishna, the Jewish culture. Yes. So if you can recall in Paul's letters, there's an axe.

[23:10] Paul has some interactions with Peter, where Peter was wanting to go minister with Greek Christian believers who were culturally Greek, and then he caught some flack from the Jewish believers.

[23:25] There was battles over circumcision. Paul talks about Peter, deals with that. Paul talks about that in Galatians. So the earliest church was a mix, well, the early church was a mix of Jewish believers and Greek believers, meaning culturally.

[23:39] Culturally Jewish, culturally Greek. How they were raised, their cultural norms, the way that they ate meals together, the way that they related to their elders.

[23:51] Different. Different. And what the good, solid, conservative scholarship has found, and this is going to be mostly Hurtado's work, is that the earliest church, that first generation of believers, was almost exclusively Jewish in culture.

[24:10] And this is going to be hugely important. That is going to kind of feed into all the different apologetics, if you will, that we talk about in defending the resurrection. Because the way in which kind of liberal scholarship is able to stifle this belief in a real resurrection, it all begins with, it all hinges on having earliest Christianity be a Greek, culturally Greek Christianity.

[24:34] They sort of need that to be true, in order for their hypotheses as to why people said all this stuff to be true. Do you understand?

[24:45] Good. Yes. There's a comment. You talked about Jesus' life and how, I mean, the crux of his resurrection, that he raised people from the dead in public, like Lazarus.

[24:56] Yes. It was public. Yes. He went in and raised a little girl. Yes. So he already proved that he could conquer death. You know, of course, the disciples didn't get it and all that, but he constantly said, who do you say I am?

[25:11] Jews want to stone him because he said, I am. Just like Moses said, who sent me? Who should I say sent me? I am. It was a word they couldn't even say.

[25:22] Right. And he's proclaiming all this time to be God. Yes. And who do you say? Asking them questions. Right. So to me, for him to do these things was setting up for some to believe.

[25:36] Yes. Of course, they still doubted because it was such a mammoth thing. Correct. And you're right. But what we're discussing right now is, so it's not the validity of those individual stories.

[25:48] It's the story itself. When was that story told? Somebody had to tell the story about Lazarus. It wasn't written. Again, we don't have a written, either a letter from Paul or a part of a gospel from AD 34 or AD 35.

[26:05] Like I said, Paul's earliest gospel is maybe 50, 51, 52. The earliest gospel is 60. So what was going on with that story about Lazarus for 20 years? That's what scholars are trying to figure out. That's, that's kind of what we're talking about.

[26:18] Somebody, people had to orally say, let me tell you a little bit about Jesus. Do you know that he raised a man from the dead once, Lazarus, so on and so forth. That story, before it was ever written down, was told and told and told and told.

[26:30] So like Romans, Paul said, maybe the writing, he didn't write, he had something else, right? So a lot of those were written down. Correct. Later on. Correct. Correct.

[26:41] And what we'll find with, even within, within, within, so the whole gospel of Mark, and we're about to get, yet he. Well, no, we don't have an original manuscript, so we do, there is, anyway. We'll get, we'll get to it.

[26:53] So Mark's gospel is simple. It's without a lot of literary embellishment. I'm not going to take the time to kind of show you, because I don't have the time to do it, but if I pulled up a section of Mark, any section of Mark, not just the resurrection narrative, any section of Mark, compared to, say, a section of Luke or John, there's a lot more information, Luke and John.

[27:14] Mark is, it's sort of a very rapid sort of a pace. Jesus showed up, Jesus said this, and then Jesus left. Where in John, you might find, Jesus showed up, and he said this, because people were thinking this at the time.

[27:24] And so, when somebody said, and then Jesus responded, Jesus responded in that way. We don't find that in Mark. And, well, let me read a little bit. Mark's simplicity aligns easily with an accurate historical retelling, and goes against a Hellenistic tradition of hero worship, in which fantastical embellishments were commonplace.

[27:44] I have a little note here, see the apocryphal Gnostic text, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Thomas. Don't have time to really get into what that means, apocryphal Gnostic. Know that there were other Gospels, other than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

[27:57] They existed. They were written much later. We can't accurately date them. They were not written in and around either Rome or the Near East. Almost, most of them were written in Egypt.

[28:08] They were written late. And they have what, so we were talking about these liberal scholars, they have the characteristics that the liberal scholars are so hard to try to find in the canonical Gospels.

[28:21] They have overwhelmingly Greek look and feel and sound to them. And if you, so if you took the time to look at the Gospel of Peter, look at the Gospel of Thomas, you would, they don't sound or look or feel anything like our Gospels.

[28:38] And so Mark, even more than the other Gospels, is the sort of polar opposite of that. So Mark's Gospel is based on the testimony of Peter.

[28:49] Again, an important point that you want to kind of have at the ready to understand. That Peter, obviously, was arguably Jesus' closest confidant, with the exception of maybe one or two other of his apostles.

[29:06] He traveled with Jesus throughout the whole ministry. He was there for everything. He saw everything. And he traveled with John Mark. He told John Mark, again, what's going on during this 17, 20 year period before anything was written down.

[29:18] Peter is going out and preaching and building up the church and teaching people these stories and telling his closest supporters and people that are with him, John Mark being one of them, this Gospel story, this story of Jesus.

[29:36] And so this, and scholars believe that this helps explain Mark's sort of seemingly non-chronological, structural structure. Certain, like Luke's Gospel has a very sort of a set structure to it that follows a solid chronological pattern.

[29:49] Mark's doesn't seem to do that. Scholars feel that is congruent with, rather than, so Mark didn't see it himself. He's not coming into it with his own memories and saying, I remember exactly how this played out.

[30:00] He is recounting Peter's story and the way that Peter gave it to him. Again, this is their hypothesis. And that's sort of one of the strongest pieces of evidence for both the authorship of Mark.

[30:14] Mark really did write the Gospel of Mark and not someone else. Again, don't have too much time to get into it, but that's another whole field of saying, well, they didn't, Mark didn't write Mark. Matthew didn't write Matthew. They were, you know, scholars to focus just on that.

[30:27] Papias of Hierapolis, early church father, Bishop of Hierapolis, 8060, it was lifespan 8060 to 130. So, as a young man, Papias would know, have been in contact with people who, when they were very young, either maybe saw Jesus himself, or certainly interacted with people who traveled with Jesus.

[30:48] So, we say that Papias is one generation removed from eyewitness testimony. Papias of Hierapolis confirms both the authorship of Mark, that Mark wrote Mark, and his using of Peter's testimony as the foundation of his Gospel.

[31:02] And, um, the ancient historian Eusebius writes, uh, this, and the elder, who he believed to be John, the elder, John said this, Mark became an interpreter of Peter. As many things as he remembered, he wrote down accurately, most certainly not in order.

[31:16] The things said or done by the Lord, for he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but he came later, as he said, with reference to Peter who taught whenever the need arose. But he did not teach according to the, arrangement of the oracles of the Lord, with the result that Mark did not err, when he thus wrote certain things as he recalled them.

[31:33] For he planned out one goal ahead of time, namely to leave out nothing which he heard, and not to falsify any of the words of Peter. So, why do we think, you know, why do we say, okay, we have a sort of a reliable reason to believe that Mark was written by Mark, and that Mark, uh, is Peter's Gospel?

[31:50] This would be one solid piece of evidence for why we say that. So, I want to transition out of Mark for a minute, out of sort of the, the introductory kind of remarks.

[32:04] Talk a little bit about Messiah figures in the first century, because this is an important, again, an important piece of the apologetic puzzle that we're building. The point of this class is really to get you to walk away today saying, I can go into a conversation with somebody who says, the resurrection is bunk, and hopefully have a couple things to say.

[32:21] I mean, obviously, there's a lot here. I've spent, you know, 10 years studying this stuff, and I'm really only just scratching the surface. But still, I do think that we can accomplish this morning, having a couple solid bullet points to say, here's a couple, here's some food for thought.

[32:35] Here's some things to think about, why we believe what we believe. And so, understanding that Jesus was not the first Messiah figure, during the second temple period, very important. So, the first stories of Jesus transmitted, committed to memory, were oral histories.

[32:51] Jesus was spoken about by the apostles, by the early church, orally, long before anything was written down. AD 33 to 50, so Jesus' death to about AD 50, the church of Jesus is thriving, in Jerusalem, and then surrounding territories, into Samaria, eventually spreading to Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey, and even Europe later, parts of Italy, Spain, the islands, and the Mediterranean.

[33:16] However, the first canonical, written words about Jesus, and I already covered this, arrived with Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians, probably AD 50, in the Gospel of Mark, and AD 60. A majority of ancient historians, liberal historians, agree that cultures featuring orally transmitted history, are ripe settings for slow, gradual changes to those oral histories, often allowing for hero legend traditions, to be established and perpetuated.

[33:38] Different stories about Jesus are told, and retold so much, that eventually, each individual story begins to fall into a distinct form. Again, just sort of rehashing a little bit, of what I already covered. And again, that process is dependent on time.

[33:50] They need the Gospels to be, you need a late date for Paul's letters, for the Gospels, to explain that. Jesus was not the first Messianic figure, recognized in first century, second temple Jewish history.

[34:05] Judas, son of Hezekiah, 4 BC, led an insurrection against Roman authority. He was heralded as a Messiah, meaning, the Israelites saw him as, the figure that they had been waiting for, that, and again, this is a, sort of a discipline unto itself, but studying the hopes and expectations, of the Jewish people, after the exile.

[34:28] They leave Babylon, they come back to Israel, they build the temple, and now they're sort of waiting. They're in this mode of waiting, they're waiting for a Messiah to come, they're waiting for someone to come, and put down Roman rule, for God to be exalted.

[34:41] And it's in this waiting, and it's in this expectation, that some other figures arose, and they said, you know, maybe this is the person we've been waiting for. And Judas was the first, John the Baptist, a lot of people think, what are we talking about?

[34:54] John the Baptist, he's sort of like, pals with Jesus. This is not, it's something we're thinking about, because it doesn't jump right off the page. But John and Jesus are, there's a connection, when they're in the womb together, Jesus comes to John, and is baptized.

[35:09] But you should remember, that John's ministry, was distinct from Jesus. He had his own followers, he had his own location, and he had a very, very strong following.

[35:19] They knew about Jesus, maybe they even thought, oh Jesus, these guys are connected, they're buddies, they're pals. I can kind of like Jesus too, but John's my guy. You know, I'm going to stick with John, I'm not going to leave John now, and they'll follow Jesus.

[35:30] John was seen as a prophetic, messianic figure to his followers. And then finally, after, some years after, a man named Simon, Ben Kosiba, later known as Simon Bar Kokhba, son of Kosiba or Kokhba, was proclaimed to be God's anointed Messiah, by Rabbi Akiva, and led a four year rebellion, against Roman rule, until his movements crushing defeat, under Hadrian, in AD 136.

[35:57] Again, Rome came and crushed him. Why is it important to know, that these men, were roughly contemporaries, of Jesus? Well, that's because, after they died, their individual movements, died with them.

[36:10] There was no lasting, cult worship. Cult here, again, is a word, lowercase c, I don't mean modern day cult, so when you think of them, cult worship, it's just a way of saying, that a sort of, almost like a religion, formed around, an individual, the fastest growing, cult worship, in the first century, was the Roman, the emperor, the Caesar cult, worship of Caesar, as God.

[36:40] So, that's what I mean there, by cult worship. So, there was no lasting, cult worship, of these other individuals, no claims of resurrection, nor even spiritual visions, or visitations, and certainly, no lasting exaltation.

[36:52] So, here's the point, right? Here's the question, that we should ask ourselves. Here's where this, sort of, the defense, the defense of the resurrection, comes in. If, as liberal scholarship, wants to believe, Jesus' stories, developed slowly, over time, through oral tradition, and no element, of a fundamental truth, is needed, to kick the, you know, they're saying, you know, obviously, he didn't really, he wasn't really raised, from the dead, you don't need that, to get this, tradition started.

[37:20] The truth is not needed, to kick the stories off, into a cycle, of change and embellishment. Why didn't similar, fictional, oral traditions, arise, around the other, Messiah figures, of the first century, second temple period.

[37:32] Scholars don't have, a good explanation for this. What was it about Jesus? Because again, they're starting, with the assumption, that Jesus was, the same as these other, fellows. They don't believe, that Jesus was the son of God.

[37:44] They don't believe, that Jesus rose from the dead. To them, Jesus, and Judas, and John the Baptist, and Simon, then, Kosiba, are all, charismatic, cultural, slash political leaders, who had strong followings, who challenged, Roman rule, some militarily, some philosophically.

[38:10] What, is it about Jesus, that caused, not only for his, sort of story, not to die out, but, to quite, to do the opposite, to have an immediate, acknowledgement, of him as Lord.

[38:25] Again, we call this, high Christology. Not just, he was a great guy, we remember him. We have not, no, he was God's son. He was the Lord, very early on, and then have that, take over, not just their local population, but then to explode, across the near east, across the Roman Empire.

[38:44] What, went on, with Jesus, that didn't go on, with these other figures. That when they died, that was it. People packed their bags, and went home. We say, obviously, something different, did happen with Jesus, and that is, that Jesus rose from the dead, that people saw him, raised from the dead, that they talked to people, who saw him, and that this was something, that people believed, they knew that this, wasn't just a hoax.

[39:10] And so that's why, it's important, to familiarize yourself, with the Messiah figure, if you will, in the first century, to understand that, there were, a number of them, and that none of them, had any sort of following, after they died, and yet Jesus' following, explodes, and transforms the entire, Roman Empire, transforms the entire world.

[39:29] Peter. Yeah. Isn't it true also, that when he rose from the dead, he just didn't reveal himself, to a couple of people? Wasn't he seen, by four or five hundred people? Yes. During that time? Yes.

[39:40] Correct. Yes. Does the dating of the epistles, and the gospels, suggest that, the stories about Jesus, weren't changing over time, or that not enough time, had passed for them to have changed?

[39:53] Correct. Yeah. Liberal scholars, liberal scholars, who are intellectually honest, would say, like they would say, yes I can see to you, that if this letter, was really written, at this time, or if this gospel, was really written, at this time, no there was not enough time, to have this, sort of hero, legendary, kind of development, takes place, they concede that point, they would simply say, I just don't think, it was written that early, and they stick to that, you know, they hold to that.

[40:19] So now I'll just talk, a little bit about, Richard Baucom, and an eyewitness testimony, again this is an important, sort of apologetical point, to understanding, well you know, we believe in the resurrection, why do we believe in it, why do we think it's historical?

[40:34] Baucom, teaches at St. Andrews, he's, excellent biblical scholar, Old Testament, New Testament, he has his hands, in a lot of areas, but you know, he maybe perhaps, found his calling, focusing specifically on, the eyewitness testimony, in the gospels, and so, I can maybe, lean a little bit more, on the bullet points, because I was able to write it out, in somewhat of a concise way, Baucom suggests, that the gospels, are a kind of historiography, known as testimony, remember I was saying before, what are the gospels, we have to first establish, what are these things, as literary works, and why is that important, to understanding the resurrection, he feels more than anything, that we should think of them, as testimonies, and I'm talking almost, in a forensic, kind of a law court sense, that these are the official, recordings, of things that people saw, and the things that Jesus did, he feels that, that is the most historically, accurate way, of treating those documents, testimony, he feels enables us, to read the gospels, in both historical, and theological, ways, that they were written, so that we would, infer both historical fact, from them, and theological significance, from them,

[41:43] Baucom's views, are much different, from the views, of those who have been, influenced by form, criticism, those influenced, by form criticism, assume that there was, a long anonymous, transmission of traditions, from the time, of the eyewitnesses, to the time, the gospels were written, those who hold this view, may disagree, about whether the traditions, were carefully preserved, or heavily adapted, but they agree, that eyewitness testimony, had little direct connection, with what was written down, in the gospels, obviously, Baucom, strongly disagrees with this, and feels that, the gospel writers, received, not just, fish stories, if you will, that sort of classic, like oh I caught a, it was five, the thing was 50 pounds, that's not what the gospel writers, were receiving, and saying oh, that's interesting, let me write that down, that they received, eyewitness, official testimony, that was, that was transmitted orally, for almost 20 years, faithfully, for the purpose of, of, of, of faithfully, maintaining, the truth about Jesus, the truth about, the work of his church, and, and sort of the expansion, of that church, and, in, in regard to this assumption, that the liberal, liberal scholarship takes,

[42:55] Baucom says, that there's a simple, and obvious problem, with that assumption, it assumes, that I would, the eyewitnesses, vanished immediately, after Jesus's ministry, accepting, the commonly held dates, of the gospels, however, means the evangelists, were writing about events, within living memory, again, an important point, if a 10 year old, or a 12 year old, was there, and saw the risen Jesus, and that individual, lived to 60, or 70, or 80 years old, and told people, about what he saw, the window, in which we say, this is the window, where we have, reliable eyewitness testimony, is much bigger, than liberal scholarship, kind of want, they want to say, it's just very little tiny, basically Jesus, was seen by like, three 90 year olds, and then they died, like the next day, you know, no, no, that's not what happened, you see by many people, some very young, and they lived their whole lives, saying yeah, I saw him, I see he was, he was dead on a cross, and then I saw him alive later, some characters, and again,

[43:56] I'm going to touch a little bit, on some of his more specific, kind of the specific points, he makes, so some characters, in the gospels, are named, while others are not, so Bauckham, as a scholar, would put forth the argument, that that is significant, that some characters, in the gospels, are named, while others are not, Bauckham proposes, that that, that those characters, who are named, were eyewitnesses, who originated the traditions, to which their names are attached, and continue to tell, their stories, as authoritative guarantors, of their traditions, the evangelists, may have known, these eyewitnesses, in some cases, so again, if you're presupposing, that the gospels are, made up, and you're thinking, somebody sat down, and wrote a lie, this is, this is their assumption, and this is what we're, sort of arguing against, why, does it take the literary form, but why is he saying, oh, so I went there, and a random man did this, and a random man did that, but then Paul, who was the son of Mark, said this, it doesn't make sense, if the whole thing is made up, you would either invent names, for everybody, or you would invent names, for nobody, for nobody, but that's not what we find, we find, and it crossed, now of course, there is some variation, between Mark, and Matthew, and Luke, but there is, there is a lot of agreement, where you would have, sort of unnamed person, unnamed person, and a very specific, named person, and women, so on and so forth, and Richard Baucom, is saying, that's not by accident, that's because, when these stories were told, the people, the eyewitnesses, who are faithfully, retelling these stories, said, yeah, we don't remember, who that person's name was, and Jesus healed somebody, we don't remember that name, but then, when he went and talked to so and so, we know that it was this person, and so on and so forth, so names, why they are there, versus not there, becomes hugely important, in saying, this is really eyewitness testimony, or it isn't, public figures,

[45:50] John the Baptist, Herod, Herodias, Caiaphas, Pilate, and the disciples of Jesus, are usually named, those who are healed by Jesus, or encounter Jesus, on only one occasion, are usually unnamed, and that's because, that again, this rings as true historically, they weren't super humans, they were normal people, so they maybe, did forget some things, they maybe forgot, I don't remember exactly, the name of that person, that was there, when Jesus was walking that day, and healed that person, but I certainly remember, these other things, again, it is, it, it, it kind of falls in line, with things that ring, as historically accurate, and true, and fly against, this idea of, well this was, this was manufactured, if things were manufactured, Bauckham is arguing, they should look different, they shouldn't look like this then, I also think it's, it's good to think about that too, because I feel like, a lot of times, we think about, the Bible, as like, these men sat down, and then the Holy Spirit, came and like, sprinkled, sprinkled something, over their head, and then they like, just, vigorously were writing, with their eyes closed, and the Holy Spirit, like, that's not what happened, obviously we know that, the Holy Spirit and God, they were involved in, in making, what happened, happened on paper, happened, but it was also actually, really something, that was happening, it's not like a fairy tale,

[47:07] I feel like sometimes, we even as Christians, think about it as like, this fairy tale thing, that happened, like oh, and then the Bible, like fell down from heaven, and now we read it, like no, it actually was real stuff, that was happening, right, and the last bullet point, the synoptics, and this is something, that Greg hit on, Greg did a good job, of incorporating this, into his sermon, but it is a big part, of resurrection, apologetics, the women at the tomb, is hugely problematic, as Greg adequately pointed out, hugely problematic, for liberal, Bible scholarship, that wants to say, well these are stories, that developed, over a long period of time, they were made up, whole cloth, Jesus certainly didn't rise, from the dead, he was either, maybe somebody stole his body, or maybe that whole thing, about the tomb being empty, that's just a hoax, and the tomb is still there, and there's some body, that's still in it, there's a huge problem, with having, the women at the tomb, be the only, eyewitnesses, to Jesus's actual resurrection, yes, yes, what's that, they appeared on the road, yes, so how can you say, it's just the women, they were the first, because, at the tomb, oh sorry, right, so if you are, as Greg said, so if you're making this story up, and you want people, to take this story seriously, and guess what, people did take the story seriously, because Christianity, again, exploded across the Roman Empire, by 83, or 300, it's become the official religion, of the Roman Empire, there, so not only, were they, if then really, you know, these were probably, the smartest men that ever existed, if somebody made this up, you know, they weren't the first though, the women came back, and told them, and then they ran, and then they ran, to the empty tomb, no he's saying, the women, were the first, to see the risen Jesus, so let's, so here's the argument, let's assume, that this is a lie, that Jesus didn't raise from the dead, because people aren't raised from the dead, and I'm, but I want people to believe this lie, and I'm going to now, try to sell this lie to people,

[49:20] I'm not going to make, the only eyewitnesses, to Jesus in the tomb, women, because women didn't have, any legal status, women, again, as Greg pointed out, were just, legally, culturally, at every level, were seen as inferior, were seen as unimportant, you wouldn't use them, you wouldn't use them, they were not credible witnesses, correct, so, and yet, that's, what we have, in all the gospel accounts, is, that it was the women, who followed Jesus, who saw them first, there is no logical reason, to make up that point, it makes no, it is hurting, their argument, it is even damning, their argument, in the ancient world, and, again, scholarship, that would, that would, that would assume, that this is a hoax, cannot grapple, with this point well, they cannot grapple, with this point well, they, they of course, think that they are, and they, they carry themselves, as if they are, but this is, this is a problematic point, for them, and I, and I won't, the bullet point, will give you some, some more, actual verses, look at all, and all of the, the reason I put that in there, is because there are certain stories, in the gospels, that don't agree, among all the other gospels, and then other stories, that do, and all four gospels, support, and attest to, the women being the only people, to see Jesus in the tomb, again, that's important, and don't really have time, to get into that, but if we were doing, studying for example, variation in the synoptics, or something like that, we would say, well here are the stories, that exist in all three, of the synoptic gospels, and John, and here are some stories, that don't, and then of course, scholars jump with that, and say, oh that didn't, you know that couldn't have happened, because there's not an agreement, well guess what, there's an agreement on that, yes, so, we're going to, jump out of Bauckham for a minute, talk about N.T. Wright, real quickly, so as I said,

[51:14] N.T. Wright, really doesn't focus, on one area, of, of, of second temple history, of the history, of the resurrection, of the historicity of Jesus, he really, this is, you know, the font is very small, and this is, and in the previous volume, it was fatter than this, and he was talking about, again, Jesus's ministry, so, Wright does an unbelievable job, treating, treating, the historicity, the historical accuracy, and reliability, of the resurrection, and there are a couple, kind of key points, that he makes, that I think, I think is good for us, to know about, so Christian theology, of the afterlife, mutates from multiple views, in Judaism, so this is, I wrote this a little bit differently, it's sort of, N.T. Wright basically says, after Jesus died, let's just assume for a minute, that he wasn't raised from the dead, we know that he lived, we know that he died, now we're asking the question, did he really rise from the dead, let's look at, where this happens, or that happened in Israel, his followers were Israelites, let's look at the things, that they believed, before Jesus's death, and then what, we know that they believed, after Jesus's death, because we have, the Bible, we have these written works, we have these traditions, that were preserved, and they represent, what people were saying, and believing, and so what right now, is going to be a little bit, of a laundry list of, radical, a radical, radically different, understanding of, of, of themselves, of what they believe, of what they think about life, so, the theology of the afterlife, completely different, before, before Jesus's death, and after, where in Jewish thought, the Pharisees, thought something very different, from the Sadducees, which thought something very different, from the Essenes, which thought something different, from the average Jewish person, and you have, of course, those that didn't follow Jesus, continued in that, those variations, but yet, after the resurrection, there's now this large contingent, which has this very focused, and defined, view of the afterlife, which is very different, from what it was before, right, is asking the question, how do you explain that, if there is no resurrection, the importance of the resurrection, as a whole, completely changes, again, so, for example,

[53:26] Jesus often, talks to the Pharisees, sometimes to the Sadducees, a lot of people don't know this, Pharisees, even though they're, painted as the bad guys, in the gospels, really, theologically, fell, fell, closer to, to what we, to what we would understand, theologically, the Pharisees believed, in a bodily resurrection, were looking forward, to a bodily resurrection, the Sadducees, did not, for example, the timing of the resurrection, changes from judgment, so the expectation, of when this resurrection, will occur, changes, radically, to where we think, that there will be one resurrection, at the end, all of a sudden, people are, start talking about, Paul talks about, first Corinthians, Jesus already being raised, and us being raised with him, and he being the first fruits, why was he saying this, this is very different, this is not, this is radically different, from anything, that in Jewish literature, you can find, in the Old Testament, this is different, if the early Christian church, wanted to communicate, that Jesus was special, despite his shameful death, on the cross, they would have made up, a story using existing,

[54:30] Jewish concepts, of exaltation, so, and T. Wright points out, that there was already, a tradition, of, of, of, of exalting, and honoring, figures, who had, had died, and passed, and were gone, but, that's not, what goes on with Jesus, they're speaking about him, differently, they're speaking about him, as though he is alive, he's been raised, he's reigning, he's our Lord, this is novel, this is new, this is not something, that, this is not something, that has existed, with Elijah, or with any of these, other figures, the early church, became extremely reckless, about sickness, and death, and the way, that they do ministry, they were taking care of people, with communicable diseases, and testifying about their faith, in the face of torture, and execution, most Christians, are familiar, with the, persecution, that the early church, went through, in both the local area, and in all the Roman provinces, if the resurrection, never happened, if this is just a hoax, why were people dying, for a hoax, why were people, ministering to leper colonies, why were people, risking disease, and death, and torture, if this was just, a made up story, what could cause people, within a few years, to be willing to, to die for their faith, because we know, that the Roman empire, almost always offered them,

[55:51] I actually have water, thank you, we know that they offered them, a way out, there wasn't a zero sum game, they almost were always offered, the, the, the opportunity, to recant, their faith in Jesus, and that's something, that's carried through, through the centuries, but it started back then, they didn't recant, you know, they didn't, and why didn't they do that, think about it, if you're in that position, even if you're a follower, I mean, I think about it today, I love Jesus, I think he knows that, if somebody had a gun, to my family's head, I might say, you know what, I'm just gonna recant to them, but, in my heart, I don't really mean it, God knows that, right, they didn't do that, they didn't do that, why didn't they do that, because it was, yes, did you have a question, I'm sorry, okay, they didn't do that, because they believed it to be real, how do you get a group of people, to believe, that that is real, if it's not true, yes, it's true, it's true, but,

[56:56] Peter was martyred, James was martyred, John spent his life in prison, if it was a hoax, it was a hoax that they created, so it wasn't possible, but then, I always draw that distinction, between the martyrdom of the eyewitnesses, and the martyrdom of everybody else, because everybody else is at least theoretically possible, if they were deceived, those guys saw it, it was a hoax, it was their hoax, correct, and, you know, you say, you know, we have some examples of people, Jonestown, and, certain cults, you say, well, that's possible, again, when you're comparing the scale, of those instances, it's minuscule, to, a faith, that, that, that, that, that explodes, across a community, that has, as we're going to see in the last section, that's why I'm ending on it, a very defined, faith, so this isn't a group of 20 or 30 people, that, you know, a cult of 20 or 30, or even 100 or 200, a few hundred like Jonestown was, this is a widespread faith, that is growing, among people, in a joyous way, that they're going out into the communities, that they're affecting their communities, they're ministering to people, they're feeding people, they're loving people, again, this wasn't a, the early church wasn't cloistered, so much as it is today, that this was a movement, that, and I don't talk about it, but,

[58:13] Tacitus, and, and different, we have written, recollections from certain Roman officials, emperors, historians, oh, you know, those gosh darn Christians, are such an annoyance, and no matter what we seem to do to them, you know, they don't stop, and, I could have spent some time talking about that, it's not that pertinent to the resurrection, which is why I didn't include it, but again, that's just more historical evidence, where you have a Roman, you know, prefect writing a letter, to the emperor saying, I don't know what to do with these, you know, these gosh darn Christians, you know, and so, again, all, this is all, it's all evidence, um, uh, the gospels, especially, and, I mention this because, even though I talked about it earlier, right, uh, definitely gives Mark a lot of treatment, talking about the simplicity of Mark, and how that aligns with an historically accurate account, no embellishment, no time for, you know, sort of, a literary, uh, um, tradition of, of, of embellishment, and fantastical kind of, uh, details to emerge, um, and Wright does, again, spend a lot of time on the story of the women who were the first witnesses to the empty tomb, cannot have been invented because the testimony of women was inadmissible under all those, almost all, uh, circumstances.

[59:25] So Wright does an excellent job of painting a picture of, uh, of a culture, of an entire culture, that looked a certain way, believed a certain thing, uh, and then within a span of a few years, looks radically different, believes something radically different, and then he raises a question, how do you get a culture to do this?

[59:44] How do you get something like this to transform if there isn't an empty tomb? If there weren't people who are saying, I saw him alive, and I really believe it, I really mean what I say, uh, right, like Bauckham argues, you, you can't get there, we, I cannot, as, as, as a historian, I cannot tell you in good faith that I can explain this to you, uh, if the, if the, if the, if the resurrection didn't really happen, if people didn't really believe this.

[60:12] And we are running out of time, but I do want to tell you about Larry Hurtado, because I think his scholarship is excellent, and I think that this is a really important point, uh, in your ability to kind of understand the resurrection, and understand why we believe it to be true.

[60:24] Um, so, Hurtado, uh, scholarship focuses on, uh, Christ, the Christ, uh, Christology, and early Christology, and a high Christology.

[60:35] So again, I explained to you earlier that Christology, high Christology means that there was an early, and, and, and, and significant belief that Jesus was divine, that Jesus was Lord, that he was worshiped as Lord, that he wasn't seen as, uh, just a, a nice guy, uh, uh, a traveling sage, uh, that, that he wasn't talked about that way.

[61:00] Early, high Christology, early, high acknowledgement of Jesus as Messiah, Jesus as Lord, and of this idea of by theism. And I'll talk a little bit about that really quickly, and then we'll end.

[61:11] So, uh, there's a thing in, in Judaism called the Shema, and I won't read that to you, but this is the Shema in Hebrew, and what it translates to is, hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.

[61:24] The Shema forms the backbone of Jewish identity for a thousand years. Judaism is fiercely, fiercely monotheistic.

[61:37] This is what you see when you look at the Exodus, when you read through the Old Testament, Exodus, exile, so on and so forth, the entire identity of a people who went through a thousand years of trial and tribulation, their entire identity is built on this idea that God is one.

[61:53] There is one God. And, and, and that is sort of amplified by the fact that Israel was for all that time surrounded by nations. It didn't have, uh, uh, uh, another, uh, form of monotheism.

[62:06] Overwhelmingly pagan. This is Samaritans a little bit. The Samaritans had something very close to monotheism, but for the most part, it's overwhelmingly pagan. The monotheism of Israel is fiercely held, regionally unique and defining and historically untarnished.

[62:18] There wasn't a point in Israel's history where they ever compromised on this point. For a thousand years, it did not compromise on this point, obviously. I mean, you could go back to, you know, where they chose to, uh, worship the calf, right after Moses, you know, takes him out of Egypt.

[62:32] But in between those two points, this is, this is, this is one thing that holds true. Um, and the earliest Christian communities arising primarily after, so Peter gives a sermon on the Pentecost.

[62:46] Um, these earliest Christian communities are Jewish in composition. This is something I mentioned earlier, and this is hugely important. They're Jewish in composition, being made up of mostly native Israelites in and around Jerusalem, as well as diaspora Jews, diaspora Hebrews.

[63:01] Diaspora means, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the out gathering. It means that the Jewish people, who were culturally Jewish, uh, that were living in places other than in and around Jerusalem and Israel itself, they had traveled out and were living in other places, but they observed Torah.

[63:17] They observed the laws, they observed, observed the eating laws, they observed, observed the festivals. They would be traveling back. That's how they would have heard Peter's sermon. They travel back to the temple.

[63:28] They travel back to Jerusalem for the, their, their, their, their main, uh, festivals and feasts. Um, and this truth, that the earliest church is overwhelmingly, uh, Jewish as opposed to Greek.

[63:41] And I talked about this earlier. It lies in stark opposition to, again, this liberal scholarship that says that it wasn't that way, that when the Christian church started to form, it was basically Greek. It was Paul, and it was Paul going out to, to Thessalonica and to Corinth and to Ephesus.

[63:55] And that's where the church really took form. And what was going on in Jerusalem early on was muddled and not defined and, uh, and not a solid base of the, the, the solid foundation of the church that spread out from there.

[64:08] Paul is the base. The Hellenistic Greek Christian is the base. And then Christianity explodes into the Roman Empire from that base, not from Jerusalem. Her tata does an excellent job of saying, no, not the case.

[64:20] The earliest Christian believers, the earliest church are overwhelmingly Jewish. And it's from that, that Paul says, all right, here's James. Here is Peter. They've done great work here at the Jewish church. I'm going to go now and reach these Greek communities.

[64:34] Um, her tata establishes primarily through Paul's letters, Pauline scholarship, a very early, very high Christology or acknowledgement and worshiping of Jesus as Lord and Messiah. Indeed, this early Jewish Christianity almost instantly adopts a by theistic, so two gods tradition of recognizing both, God and Jesus as Lord.

[64:54] So obviously we have a very defined Trinitarian Christ. Today we talk about father, son, and Holy spirit. This has been something that has existed for a long time, but in the earliest church, not a whole lot of talk about the Holy spirit, but what her tata finds is that the earliest believers were saying there is God.

[65:09] He's God. He's been the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And there is his son, Jesus. He is Lord. He lived, he died, he rose from the dead. He's God's son. He is our Lord. Our faith is in him. And you have that by, that acknowledgement of God and Jesus, her tata argues, very, almost, very early, a couple of years after Jesus's resurrection.

[65:31] Now this suggestion, that truth, is a complete defilement of that shema that I read to you earlier. It is a complete and utter abandonment and defilement of, of, of, of Jewish, uh, uh, core identity.

[65:48] Um, it's a defilement of the shema, the defining Jewish statement and identity spanning over a thousand years. Yes. Would you, would you, would you, would you, would you, would you be something to be, I thought that the point was that Jesus and the Father are one, and that by theism would be more of an invitation to say, there's this God here and this other God over here.

[66:08] So it seems like it's conceptually different. Yeah, no, they, they weren't, they, you know, you are correct. Um, and again, if I had more time, I would focus a little bit more on that, but no, they were not, it wasn't that they were separate gods, but that they were acknowledging two separate persons.

[66:22] That the, the, the sort of the, the earliest traces of a Trinitarian understanding of God, of God as being one in three persons happens very early with G and, and, and scholarship focuses on, um, within Paul's letters or see, Paul seems to be transporting, uh, hymns that people had sung into his letters, uh, refrains or phrases that were repeated back to one another.

[66:47] And within those hymns and within those refrains that Paul incorporates into his letters, it's this high, call it high Christology. And so Hurtado is saying, the fact that Paul is comfortably including these hymns, including these refrains in a letter written in 50 AD, suggests to me that this Christology, this high Christology, this high view of Jesus had to have already been formed prior to AD 50.

[67:11] So if it's prior to AD 50 and Jesus doesn't die until the AD 33, now you have within the lifetime of these eyewitnesses, a very high Christology. How do you get that?

[67:22] And this is sort of the main point that Hurtado makes. Hurtado is basically arguing, historians cannot explain how you get a Jewish people to abandon their core belief, almost instantaneously, if this is a hoax.

[67:39] If there, if Jesus didn't, was not raised from the dead, if people didn't see him raised from the dead, there is no way that you get Jewish people to abandon the thing that defined them as a people for a thousand years.

[67:50] They would have rejected it. They would have rejected it outright. It would have been a fringe movement. With a few followers, it would have died out, like the followers of these other Messianic figures in the first century. It would not have exploded through Jerusalem, and exploded through Asia Minor, and eventually into all of the Roman Empire.

[68:07] It just wouldn't have done it. It would not have been able to withstand that scrutiny, if it's not true. So that's Hurtado. I feel like you did an okay job of kind of touching on these three scholars.

[68:19] I brought the books, and you can see them for yourself. They're definitely worth picking up and reading. I think these two, specifically, are anybody could pick them up and read them. Hurtado's and Bauckham's, anybody could read it.

[68:30] I think you'd do okay with it. Right? I'm not going to lie to you. I think you should still read it, but you're going to struggle through big chunks of it. But this particular work, Wright is really writing for other scholars.

[68:42] He's in conversation with other scholars. He doesn't really have the average lay person in mind. There's going to be a lot of Greek in it, a lot of Hebrew, and a lot of stuff that might be over your head. But it's still a great resource, and it's still worth reading. So I hope, now if there are any questions, I mean, yes, go ahead.

[68:56] I have a question. Yeah. First of all, I want this question, and someone know later on. what would be the exactly period, because we are talking about period historically, right?

[69:14] To make sure there is a person. But what would be for this kind of period in Bauckham? This is perfect. This is what I can figure out.

[69:27] Because when we bring gospel in like the United States, historically it's different from here, like in other countries. This is the first question I want to figure out.

[69:40] Because all this stuff, this seminary like the world, it's one thing. The second thing is that the resilient resurrection is the core of gospel, right?

[69:52] And this is one fundamental thing in Muslim country, in Israel, from the century, the resurrection for Muslim Islamic people.

[70:07] They don't believe this. They don't believe. And when you turn around, they say, Jesus didn't die. Right? Right. And it's what Pontius said.

[70:18] Because this isn't just a diet that means, this is a rose. But they believe, this was a famous prophet like Muhammad. Right. Yeah.

[70:28] But they didn't recognize that this is a diet. Right. This is one thing. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Because the way we are going to then prosper in in all the countries like Animes, like in our own country, all the people are believers.

[70:46] But one fundamental thing they don't know after death. That's it. This is where most of Christians are from Animes. But for Muslim, when after death, what they say, they say, okay, what we'll see.

[71:03] Yeah. And don't you find it curious that I spent a lot of time talking about how the resurrection really is the most important point that when you look at the life of Jesus or the life of Isa as a Muslim might have recognized him, they would be interested in that life, in that teaching, in his childhood, and in his youth, and in his ministry.

[71:24] But then, you're right, the crucifixion, the resurrection, they deny that. And it's just not part of Islam. Isn't it curious that the one area that they leave out is the one area that I've hopefully put forth a good argument today to say that it is the founding, that without it, you have nothing.

[71:42] And your first question is what, you're asking when? When? When? When? Muhammad and Jesus Christ, it's very, it's very, it's very, it's very, it's very, it's very, because the way we are going to present Oxford in here, the Syria is something very different.

[71:57] Yeah. In all the countries to this one, I want to make sure you have the work. Muhammad arises, and I don't remember the exact date, but I know for sure that it's after 300 and before 500. After 300 AD and before 500, I can't remember if it's 350 or if it's 425, that is something I have to look up again, I forgot the exact one, but I know for sure that it's after 300 and before 500 AD.

[72:17] So there is at least 300 years of Christian church history that passes before Muhammad is born and is seen as a prophet and, well, there's a lot to be said about Muhammad and Islam.

[72:36] I don't have the time to do that, but it is an interesting topic. Sixth century. Sixth century, so 500. 500. Is there any other questions? Again, I hope, I really hope that, again, this was a lot of information.

[72:51] I did want it to be a little bit more dumbed down than that. I wanted to have less bullet points and so on and so forth. And as I was writing it out, I really felt like, I feel like I'm doing more harm than good if I just say, here's a little snippet to throw at somebody who's an unbeliever and I didn't give you all those other things.

[73:06] I didn't give you the context to it. It really would have just been an empty point. You might, hey, what do you think? Take this, buddy. Here's a little factoid for you and if they pressed you on it, there would be nothing behind it for you to really flesh it out.

[73:19] Thank you. Great. Thanks. Thanks. Did you have something up for?

[73:30] Somebody's walking away? Yes. I didn't see a hand. Yes. Would you mind writing down the three books? Sure. Sure. Someone read them? Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.

[73:41] Sure. People. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.

[73:52] Sure. Sure. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Sure.

[74:03]  Sure.