There's no evidence to prove that Jesus really existed
Wouldn't it be amazing? If this Jesus - the figure countless millions have worshipped for two thousand years, the hero lovingly portrayed in pictures and paintings by generations of skilled artists - never existed at all? If a quarter of the human race were followers of a fantasy figure?
Well, could it be true? Many daring thinkers have made the suggestion.
Paul's letters in the Bible contain enough data to allow you to reconstruct a pretty thorough life of Jesus - that he was a real human being, born a Jew descended from David, who primarily worked among Jews, set an example of self-sacrifice and courage under persecution, instituted the Lord's Supper just before he died, was arrested by treachery, died on a cross, rose from the dead after three days and appeared to over 500 people!
Actually very few people would seriously claim Jesus never existed. There is just too much evidence that he did. he is mentioned for example, by all sorts of Christian writers and other great Roman historians and writers.
Inscriptions have been found on walls in places just a few decades after Jesus' death, which show quite clearly that the stories about Jesus were already known and believed there.
And consider this. Something pretty big had to happen to explain the impact of Christianity made in its earliest days. We know that just a few weeks after this 'mythical' hero's death there were over five thousand people in the city where he had died who already believed in his claims. Now could you really invent an imaginary person, set his adventures in your own locality, and then expect sane local people (who well knew the story was fabrication) to start joining your organisation in large numbers?
You can't believe in the miracles of Jesus today
It's interesting, when you read the four Gospels, to see how unexcited they are about the miracles. Sure, they happened. But the Gospel writers take them in their stride, and make nothing much of them. They are not interested in recounting wonder stories; John even ends his Gospel by saying dismissively, 'Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.'
Jesus himself made it clear that miracles by themselves proved nothing. He forecast that people would come after him who would be able to do signs and wonders (Mt. 24:24) but would not be speaking the truth. His miracles weren't Superman-style feats intended to stun the credulous public;they were just visual aids, 'signs' which pointed to what his mission was about.
The miracles were written about in the very earliest accounts of Jesus, not long after his death, when enemies could easily have denied any story which wasn't exactly true. But in fact you don't find contemporary writers claiming that the miracles never happened! Some Jewish opponents tried to explain them away as magic and sorcery. Another historian claimed that the darkness which covered the land at the crucifixion was actually a solar eclipse. But no-one denied the miraculous events had taken place. It isn't until two hundred years later that you first find someone advancing the theory, 'Perhaps they were just legends.' People at the time knew better.
It has been suggested that the miracles weren't actually supernatural, but just employed physical properties which science has not yet discovered. Well, possibly. But how come a Galilean carpenter knew more about applied science than the greatest minds of our century?
There is no evidence that Jesus rose from the dead
Now that's a brave statement to make. Because the evidence for the ressurection is actually one of the strongest cards in Christianity's pack. Hundreds of investigators have set out to debunk the resurrection claim - and have ended by becoming convinced that it actually happened. In any good bookshop you'll find a copy of Frank Morison's Who Moved the Stone?, a classic written in 1930 by a young lawyer and journalist who felt sure he could explain away the Bible story. The second chapter is called 'The book that refused to be written'. Guess what happened to Frank Morison?
Another biblical scholar was sure, before he began investigating, that there was no way in which the varying accounts in the different Gospels could be made to agree with one another. To his surprise, there was. They were telling one consistent story. It all had the ring of truth.
And that's why the resurrection has been called - with only a little exaggeration - 'the best attested fact in ancient history'. Because we know so much of the circumstances surrounding the death and ressurection of Jesus Christ, that if the idea of someone rising from the dead wasn't so bizarre, every historian in the world would accept is as probable.
Why is this? We have no space in here to examine all the evidence. You could read Michael Green's The Day Death Died should you wish to look at it in detail. Let me make four points to get you started.
First, Jesus really died. There was a claim, first made in the eighteenth century, that Jesus had simply fainted on the cross, then revived in the cool air of the tomb. This is impossible. First, even if there were a flicker of life left in him, the cold of a rock tomb would immediately have induced a catatonic seizure and brought death. Second, with his hands and feet shattered my nails he was in no condition to climb out of his bindings, push away a heavy stone, and escape down the road into the city - then convince his followers he had risen again in power and strength! He'd have been a pretty pathetic sight.
When Jesus' body was taken down from the cross it was examined (twice) by a Roman officer who must have seen literally hundreds of Jews die by crucifixion. He would not have let such a controversial corpse out of his safe keeping without being sure the man was dead.
Second, we know Jesus' body disappeared. There was a real mystery about it. When disciples began proclaiming that Jesus had risen and the tomb was empty, the authorities tried to hush them up, but were unable to produce the body to show the claim was untrue. It was thoroughly embarrassing, but they just didn't know where the body had gone! And so thousands of people became Christians in the very city where Jesus had died, just six weeks after his burial.
Third, there was no way for anyone to steal the body. The grave was guarded by a body of soldiers - most like a Roman century, which would would mean up to thirty men on duty at once for a three-hour period of watch. It isn't likely that they would all fall asleep simultaneously and so allow the disciples to steal the body! If they did, the disciples couldn't have got it away into the city again - the road was lined with houses; and at this hot time of the year people slept outside by the roadside. In any case, this was the one weekend in the year when no Jew was allowed to touch a dead body. A bunch of Jews carrying a corpse in the middle of the night would have been spotted by someone. And remembered.
Fourth, if the disciples stole the body, what explains their sudden change of character? From being timid, fearful and panicky, they suddenly became fearless proclaimers of the resurrection story - all over the world. They gave their lives declaring it was true. But why, if it was a hoax they had organised? It seems a bit far to take a practical joke...
Their behaviour makes sense only if you accept one hypothesis. That their story was actually true.
Jesus himself never claimed to be God
Did Jesus claim that for himself? Or was it a legend which gradually grew about him? Many people think of Jesus as just a kind prophet who was wildly misrepresented and built into a super-hero after his death. Is this true?
Well, first, the belief that Jesus was God began very early in the Christian church. You can never find a stage - no matter how far back you look - when people revered Jesus as a leader, but nothing more. If he really did not make this claim, his teaching must have been distorted remarkably quickly. Some people blame the Apostle Paul for embroidering the story, and turning a Jewish Rabbi into a mythological figure. But Paul's ideas abut Jesus simply reflected what everyone else in the church believed a long time before he came along (see 1 Corinthians 15:3, written just thirty yers after Jesus' death, when plenty of people could have denied his claim); and although he had plenty of disputes with other church leaders, no-one ever quibbled about his views on Jesus. Right from the start, the early church agreed: Jesus was God.
Did Jesus ever make the claim himself? He implied it more often than he stated it directly. His aim was to get people thinking, 'Who is he, really?' until they had worked it out for themselves. He claimed to have a relationship with God which no-one else enjoyed in the same way; he claimed to be the fulfilment of all prophecy; he claimed authority to judge all men. And every so often you do find a direct statement. Once, for example, he stated 'Before Abraham was, I AM.' This wasnt just bad grammar. 'I Am' was the sacred, unspeakable name of God - so holy tha you weren't even allowed to say it - and here was Jesus, not only saying it, but applying it to himself. His hearers got the message all right. Immediately, we read, they started to pick up stones to throw at him. This was blasphemy...
How could Jesus be both 'God' and 'Son of God'? It doesn't make sense to many peple. But what we need to remember is that a word like 'son', when applied to God, is picture language. You can't press the picture too far. (It doesn't, for example, mean that there has to be a 'mother' God somewhere, or that Jesus was born in some celestial maternity hospital.) The phrase 'Son of God' simply tells us how Jesus related to God the Father - with the obedience and family spirit of a perfect son - but it doesn't diminish his status. In Jesus Christ, God came to earth in human form.
Sometimes it is objected that there were other people alive in Jesus' day whose followers thought they were 'sons of God'. Well first, these other 'divine men' seem to have come after Jesus, not before - so that their followers were probably simply copying the claim the Christians were already making! And, secondly, even if claims of being a 'son of God' might have impressed Greeks and Romans, remember that the Christian church began among Jews. Every Jew was taught from his mother's knee that there was only one God, with no rivals. For people to say, 'Yes - but there's also his son...' would not be the best way to start a recruiting driv for a new religion! Christians would never have invented such a controversial story unless they believed it. Jesus was God!
Well, yes, lunatics often make grandiose claims for themselves. And if Jesus really claimed to be God, the chances are that he was suffering from kingsize delusion of the most dangerous type. Even Adolf Hitler, even Genghis Khan never made a claim so huge! And wouldn't it be ironic if millions of people over two thousand years had been building their lives around the ravings of a madman?
However, few people have seriously maintained the theory that Jesus was mad. And you can see why, as soon as you look at the Gospels. The teaching of Jesus, as recorded for us there, was clearly original, ethically profound and logically self-consistent. It isn't a matter of isolated flashes of brilliance, such as an unbalanced mind might occasionally be capable of; the whole thing is so carefully developed, so thoughtful and rational, tht it is at once apparent that we are in the presence of one of the greatest minds of the ages.
(And it's no use saying that the Gospels may not reflect Jesus' teaching very accurately. Even if the Gospel writers had got ninety per cent of it wrong - which I don't believe they did, enough remains to give us a clear picture of a strikingly intelligent, totally original thinker who couldn't possibly have been 'invented' by the people who happened to write down his sayings. The real Jesus stands out clearly from the pages of the historical record.)
If Jesus had been mad, his disciples would have known. They spent three years in the closest possible contact with him - travelling around the countryside, sleeping rough on many occasions, sharing their food and talking for hours. Often they saw Jesus under pressure, hemmed in by hostile opponents, pursued by sensation-seekers in search of a miracle, hungry, thirsty and tired. But he never cracked under the strain - not once. Had he shown any signs of insanity, they'd have left him straight away. They were good Jews, and in those days Jews believed that anyone who was mad had been accursed by God. You gave lunatics a wide berth.
But obviously the disciples never suspected that their leader was mad. What is more interesting, nor did anyone else. On one occasion only did Jesus' enemies try to make this claim - and immediately they were laughed to scorn (John 10:20-1). Writers who were hostile to Jesus accused him of blasphemy, sorcery, all sorts of things - but never of madness, although it would have been a devastating charge to lay. Why did they fail to accuse him of lunacy? Perhaps because they knew it wouldn't sound convincing. People who had met Jesus knew he wasn't mad.
If Jesus was not mad, and if he was not a fraud, that leaves us with a problem. Because Jesus claimed quite clearly to be God! And 'good men' don't do that sort of thing - so you can't dismiess Jesus by saying, 'Oh, he was just a good man.' He could either be a madman, deluded about his own importance. Or he could be a bad man, fooling the public in order to make money. But if you dismiss those two possibilities, there is only one option left.
Not madman, nor bad man, but God-man...