by Lee Strobel
As someone whose road to faith was paved with painstakingly researched facts and logic, I simply could not gloss over these allegations after repeatedly encountering them the last several years. They are too central to the identity of Jesus. I had no choice but to grant them their full weight and open myself to the possibility that they could legitimately undermine the traditional understanding of Christ. For the sake of my own intellectual integrity, I needed answers.
CHALLENGE #1
Scholars Are Uncovering a Radically Different Jesus in Ancient Documents Just as Credible as the Four Gospels
Several gospels unearthed in the twentieth century, which some experts date back to the dawning of Christianity, portray Jesus far differently than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Gospel of Thomas, discovered sixty years ago but only now becoming widely popular, and the Gospel of Judas, whose discovery was announced with much fanfare in 2006, are among the ancient manuscripts fueling a widespread interest in Gnosticism, a movement that its proponents claim is just as valid as mainstream Christianity.
Although Gnosticism is diverse, New Testament scholar N. T. Wright says Gnostics historically have held four basic ideas in common: the world is evil, it was the product of an evil creator, salvation consists of being rescued from it, and the rescue comes through secret knowledge, or gnosis in Greek.11 Said Wright:
This special gnosis is arrived at through attaining knowledge about the true god, about the true origin of the wicked world, and not least about one’s own true identity…. What is needed, in other words, is a “revealer” who will come from the realms beyond, from the pure upper spiritual world, to reveal to the chosen few that they have within themselves the spark of light, the divine identity hidden deep within.12
For many Gnostics, that revealer is Jesus of Nazareth, who in their view isn’t the savior who died for the sins of the world but, rather, was the imparter of secret wisdom who divulged the truth about the divine nature within each of us. Thus, Gnostics aren’t as interested in historical claims about Jesus as they are in the private teachings that he supposedly passed along to his most trustworthy followers.
“Gnostic writers tend to view the virgin birth, the resurrection, and other elements of the Jesus story not as literal, historical events but as symbolic keys to a ‘higher’ understanding,” said journalist Jay Tolson in his U.S. News and World Report cover story, “In Search of the Real Jesus.”13
Tolson says that in Princeton religion professor Elaine Pagels’ portrayal of them,
the Gnostics come across as forerunners of modern spiritual seekers wary of institutional religion, literalism, and hidebound traditions. Free of sexism and paternalism and unburdened by an emphasis on guilt and sin, the Gnostics’ highly esoteric and intellectual approach to the sacred was one that even enlightened skeptics could embrace.14
Canada has already seen the birth of its first Gnostic church.15 In the United States, “there is a growing, if disconnected and unorganized, Gnostic movement,” said Richard Cimino and Don Lattin in their survey of American spirituality.16 Even if people don’t identify themselves as Gnostic, many are freely grafting certain aspects of Gnosticism into their own spirituality. The reason is these elements fit well with the American values of independence and individuality. Said Cimino and Lattin:
Today’s experiential spirituality shares with Gnosticism a need to know God personally without the intermediaries of church, congregation, priests, and scripture. The Gnostic factor can be found in the growth of occult and esoteric teachings and movements, where access to supernatural secrets are available through individual initiation and experience rather than through publicly revealed texts or doctrine.17
So which picture of Jesus is true: Is he the one-and-only Son of God who won salvation for humankind through his atoning death on the cross, or is he “an avatar or voice of the oversoul sent to teach humans to find the sacred spark within”? 18 This isn’t a matter of merely adding some new brushstrokes or shading to the traditional portrait of Jesus; instead, it’s an entirely different canvas and a whole new likeness.
At the heart of this controversy is the reliability of the Gnostic gospels that have been uncovered over the past six decades, many of which were republished in 2007 as a new collection called The Nag Hammadi Scriptures.19 Do they tell a more accurate story about Jesus than the church’s official collection of documents that make up the New Testament? Do they support the claims that Gnosticism flourished in the first century when Christianity was being formed? More insidiously, has the church tried to suppress the inconvenient truths contained in the Gnostic texts? If I wanted to discover the “real” Jesus, I simply couldn’t avoid this potentially explosive minefield of interrelated issues.
CHALLENGE #2
The Bible’s Portrait of Jesus Can’t Be Trusted Because the Church Tampered with the Text
While popular books point to the Gnostic gospels as revealing the “real” Jesus who has been suppressed by the church, the New Testament’s portrayal of him has come under a withering assault by an evangelical-turned-agnostic who is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on the transmission of the New Testament.
Bart D. Ehrman’s surprise bestseller, the provocatively titled Misquoting Jesus, has shaken the faith of many Christians and planted seeds of skepticism in spiritual seekers by charging that the scribes who copied the New Testament through the centuries accidentally—and many times, intentionally—altered the manuscripts. “In some cases,” Ehrman says, “the very meaning of the text is at stake.”20
How can the New Testament’s accounts about Jesus be trusted if the manuscripts are pocked with 200,000 to perhaps 400,000 variants? Are essential teachings about Jesus in jeopardy—for instance, the Trinity and the resurrection? If the Bible contains even a single error, can any of it be trusted at all? What about the inauthentic passages that Ehrman says should never have been included in the Bible in the first place?
I knew that if I were to maintain confidence in the Jesus of the New Testament, these weren’t matters that could be blithely swept aside. I would have to face Ehrman’s masterfully written critique head-on.
CHALLENGE #3
New Explanations Have Refuted Jesus’ Resurrection
Two recent New York Times bestselling books are only the latest in an escalating battle over the historicity of the resurrection—the pivotal event that, according to Christians, authenticated the divinity of Jesus.
A new generation of aggressive atheists has fashioned fresh and potent objections to the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. At the same time, Muslim apologists, who know that undermining the resurrection casts doubt on all of Christianity, have been more and more outspoken about their belief that Jesus never died on the cross and therefore could not have conquered the grave as the New Testament claims.
In 2007, questions concerning the resurrection received widespread attention when an astounding 57 percent of Americans either saw or heard about a Discovery Channel documentary in which Titanic movie director James Cameron and film documentarian Simcha Jacobovici said archaeologists had discovered the tomb of Jesus and his family just south of the old city of Jerusalem.21 If they really had unearthed his “bone box,” or ossuary, then Jesus could not have returned bodily from the dead.
Nothing cuts to the core of Jesus’ identity like critiques of his resurrection. If the belief that he rose from the dead is a legend, a misunderstanding, or a deliberate falsehood perpetrated by his followers, then Jesus is quickly demoted from the Son of God to a failed prophet—or worse.
I could not claim to love truth and at the same time turn a blind eye toward the most serious charges against the resurrection. How strong—really—is the affirmative case that Jesus returned from the dead? Can the resurrection be established by using historical evidence that the vast majority of scholars in the field—including fair-minded skeptics—would accept as being true? And do any of the most current alternative theories finally succeed in putting Je
sus back in his grave?
CHALLENGE #4
Christianity’s Beliefs about Jesus Were Copied from Pagan Religions
The argument is simple but powerful: a whole bevy of mythological characters were born of virgins, died violently, and were resurrected from the dead in antiquity, but nobody takes them seriously. So why should anyone give any credence to similar claims about Jesus that were obviously copied from these earlier pagan mystery religions?
This critique, popularized a century ago by German historians, has now returned with a vengeance, becoming one of the most ubiquitous objections to the historical understanding about Jesus. It has spread around the World Wide Web like a computer virus and been forcefully presented in numerous bestselling books, including one that received a prestigious award from a British newspaper.
The “parallels” appear stunning. According to proponents of this “copycat” theory, the pre-Christian god Mithras was born of a virgin in a cave on December 25, had twelve disciples, promised his followers immortality, initiated a communionlike meal, was hailed as the way, the truth, and the life, sacrificed himself for world peace, was buried in a tomb, and was resurrected on the third day.22 How could Christians possibly explain away such apparent plagiarism?
Were the supernatural qualities of Jesus merely ideas borrowed from ancient mythology and attached to the story of the Nazarene by his overzealous followers in the decades after his ignominious death? Is Jesus no more divine than Zeus? Are the reports of his resurrection no more credible than the fantastical tales of Osiris or Baal? No honest examination of the evidence for Jesus could avoid addressing the alarming theory that the followers of Jesus were nothing more than spiritual plagiarists.
CHALLENGE #5
Jesus Was an Imposter Who Failed to Fulfill the Messianic Prophecies
With its multimillion-dollar evangelistic campaign that targeted New York City, the organization Jews for Jesus put the issue squarely on the front burner of public debate in 2006: Is Jesus—or is he not—the Messiah whose coming was foretold in scores of ancient Jewish prophecies?
Counter-missionary organizations in the Jewish community quickly responded by claiming that Jesus never fulfilled those predictions and therefore cannot be the “anointed one” awaited by the Jewish people for millennia. He is, they charge, nothing less than a messianic failure because he never ushered in the world peace foretold by the prophets.
What are the real facts? What’s the best case that can be made for Jesus—and Jesus alone—matching the “fingerprint” of the long-anticipated Messiah? And are there any satisfying answers to the sharp critiques that are being passionately argued by contemporary rabbis who reject Jesus as the Jewish Messiah? Without a doubt, these issues call the fundamental mission and credibility of Jesus and the Bible into question, and therefore they cannot in good conscience simply be glossed over.
CHALLENGE #6
People Should Be Free to Pick and Choose What to Believe about Jesus
We live in a circus-mirror culture of rampant relativism in which the very concept of truth has become pliable, history is treated with extreme skepticism, and Christianity’s claim to being the only way to God is vehemently branded as the height of religious intolerance. For many postmodern people, the “real” Jesus has become whatever each individual wants him to be. Who is to say that anyone’s concept of Christ is more valid than someone else’s? Wouldn’t that smack of the very kind of judgmentalism that Jesus himself deplored?
An increasing number of people are bypassing the dogma of traditional Christianity and creating their own belief system, rejecting tenets that seem hopelessly outdated, and accepting those that they feel are appropriate. The Jesus who emerges is generally kinder and gentler—or at least a lot more broadminded and tolerant—than the rigid and demanding version frequently found in the church. Most often, this customized Christ doesn’t use the threat of hell to scare people into submission; rather, he’s an affirming and loving companion who sees the good—and even the divine—in each of us.
Is the Jesus I discovered in my initial investigation merely the Jesus for me personally? Or are there objective truths about him that are binding on all people in all cultures? If history is only a matter of subjective interpretation, then can I know anything about him for sure? Is Christianity just one among many equally legitimate pathways to the divine? These questions are more than a product of idle curiosity: their answers could determine whether Jesus of Nazareth is still relevant to this and future generations.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
I sat down for lunch with my wife at a restaurant in Irvine, California, and slid a yellow legal pad over for her to see. The six challenges to Jesus were scrawled across the front page. Leslie glanced over them, squinting at times to make out my nearly illegible handwriting, and then looked up at me. She knew what this meant.
“You’re hitting the road again, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I have to,” I said. “I can’t ignore these objections. If any of them is true, it changes everything.”
Leslie wasn’t surprised. She was aware that I had been wrestling with some of these issues for a while. And after nearly thirty-five years of marriage, she knew that I was someone who had to pursue answers, regardless of the consequences.
My itinerary was already taking shape in my mind: for starters, I would need to book flights to Nova Scotia and Texas. I resolved to put the most probing questions to the most credible scholars I could find. At the conclusion, I was determined to reach whatever verdict was warranted by the hard evidence of history and the cool demands of reason.
Yes, I was looking for opinions, but they had to be backed up with convincing data and airtight logic—no rank speculation, no flights of faith. Like the investigations I undertook at the Chicago Tribune, I would have no patience for half-baked claims or unsupported assertions. There was too much hanging in the balance. As the Jonestown victims had chillingly reminded me, my faith is only as good as the one in whom it’s invested.
So why don’t you come along with me on this investigative adventure? After all, as Jesus himself cautioned, what you believe about him has very real consequences.23 Let’s resolve at the outset to keep an open mind and follow the facts wherever they take us—even if it’s to a conclusion that challenges us on the very deepest levels.
In the end, we’ll discover together whether the Jesus of historic Christianity manages to emerge intact from the crucible of twenty-first-century skepticism.
CHALLENGE #1
“SCHOLARS ARE UNCOVERING A RADICALLY DIFFERENT JESUS IN ANCIENT DOCUMENTS JUST AS CREDIBLE AS THE FOUR GOSPELS”
For nineteen hundred years or so the canonical texts of the New Testament were the sole source of historically reliable knowledge concerning Jesus of Nazareth. In 1945, this circumstance changed.
Religion professor Stevan L. Davies1
There’s a very important historical point here, which is that in the last thirty years we have discovered real Gospels—hundreds of them—that are not the official Gospels, [but] that were part of the discussions in the early church.
Commentator Andrew Sullivan2
The rumor mill was churning. A political operative called one of my reporters with a tip that a candidate for Illinois governor had recently been detained by police after allegations that he had abused his wife. If this was true, the irony would be devastating: one of his responsibilities as the state’s chief executive would be to oversee a network of shelters for battered women.
Since other news media had been alerted as well, I knew we had only a short period of time to nail down the story. I immediately assigned five reporters to pursue various angles of the investigation. We needed indisputable confirmation—preferably, a written document—before we could publish the story.
The reporters milked their sources. One of them came up with a time frame for the incident. Another got the name of the Chicago suburb where it allegedly took place in a public parking lot. Still, we didn’
t have enough. The information was too vague and uncorroborated.
Finally, another reporter was able to obtain the key piece of evidence: a police report that described exactly what had happened. But there was a snag. Because no criminal charges had been filed, privacy laws dictated that all names on the report be blacked out. At first glance, it looked like there would be no way to link the candidate to the incident.
As the reporter studied the report more carefully, though, she discovered that the police had inadvertently failed to delete one reference to the person involved. Sure enough, it was the candidate’s name. Still, his name was rather common. How could we be sure it was really him? Digging deeper in the report yielded the final clue: the suspect had bragged about being the mayor of a certain suburb—the same position held by the gubernatorial candidate. Bingo! A match.
In a dramatic confrontation in the newspaper’s conference room, I peppered the candidate with questions about the incident. He steadfastly denied it ever occurred—until I handed him a copy of the police report. Faced with the indisputable evidence, he finally admitted the encounter with police. Within seventy-two hours he had withdrawn from the gubernatorial race.3
For both journalists and historians, documents can be invaluable in helping confirm what has transpired. Even so, detective work needs to be done to establish the authenticity and credibility of any written record. Who wrote it? Was this person in a position to know what happened? Was he or she motivated by prejudice or bias? Has the document been kept safe from tampering? How legible is it? Is it corroborated by other external facts? And are there competing documents that might be even more reliable or which might shed a whole new light on the matter?
That last question has come to the forefront in the quest to understand the historical Jesus in recent years. For centuries, scholars investigating what happened in the life of Jesus largely relied on the New Testament, especially Mark, Matthew, and Luke—which are the oldest of the four Gospels and are called the “Synoptics” because of their interrelationship—as well as the Gospel of John.