The Case for the Real Jesus

by Lee Strobel

The five minimal facts—themselves just a skeleton of an even more robust case that could have been made for the resurrection by using the broader Gospel accounts—remained intact. “The rational man,” said Craig, “can hardly now be blamed if he infers that at the tomb of Jesus on that early Easter morning a divine miracle has occurred.”35

  I drained the remainder of my glass of water and settled deeper into the couch. Licona and I had talked for a long time; the sun had shifted so it was no longer flooding the room. He had answered the historical questions well, but there were still a couple of other issues I wanted to cover.

  “How would you respond to Carrier when he makes this observation: ‘Why on earth would a God, who wanted to save all mankind, only appear to a few hundred, most unnamed, people and then give up? Wouldn’t it be much more efficient and effective…to bypass the apostolate and just appear to everyone?’”36

  Licona’s eyes narrowed as he thought. “That’s not really a historical issue,” he said.

  “I know—but what do you think?”

  Licona deliberated a little longer. “Whatever reason God had for doing it that way, it worked,” he said finally. “Nearly a third of the world today claims to be Christian. And I think it’s just like the Christian God to use the weak to trump the strong, and the fools to shame the wise. It would be just like that God to take the few and the obscure to influence the masses. Now, because of that, the world has been turned upside down.”

  “What about you personally?” I asked. “Are you at the point where you never doubt anymore?”

  Licona’s reply was candid. “Yeah, I still have periods when I experience some doubt—in a way, that’s my personality,” he said. “Sometimes I still wonder, ‘Am I looking at these arguments as objectively as I can?’ I’m always trying to neutralize my biases. When someone raises an objection, most of the time I’m not trying to think of a refutation. I’m trying to understand and internalize the argument—to grant its full weight. I try to feel it as the person who holds it feels it. And that will cause some doubts, because I’m sort of experiencing what they’re experiencing.”

  “What do you do then?”

  “I look at the data. I try to apply responsible historical methodology,” he said. “And I always come back to the resurrection.”

  Over and over, Michael Licona ultimately finds it convincing: a very real event of history that validates the divinity of the real Jesus.

  BRIDGING THE GAP

  “Nonsense.”

  More than any other word, that sums up Lüdemann’s assessment of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. To this spiritually skeptical professor at the University of Göttingen in Germany, it’s outside the realm of possibility. “If you say that Jesus rose from the dead biologically, you would have to presuppose that a decaying corpse—which is already cold and without blood in its brain—could be made alive again,” he said. “I think that is nonsense.”37

  Surely it’s not something an elite scientist could embrace—especially one who’s also a physician and thoroughly acquainted with human anatomy. Yet the reality of the resurrection, which transformed skeptics like Paul and James in the first century, continues to radically redirect lives today—even of tough-minded scientists.

  For example, few researchers in America have achieved the professional acclaim of Francis S. Collins. As a medical doctor with a doctorate in chemistry, he was appointed by President Clinton to head the Human Genome Project, which successfully decoded the three billion genes of human DNA. He also has helped discover the genetic anomalies that lead to cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, and Huntington’s disease. I’ve had the pleasure of exchanging emails with him from time to time.

  For much of his early life, Collins was an atheist, looking at Jesus as “a myth, a fairy tale, a superhero in a ‘just-so’ bedtime story.” Then the faith of some of his desperately ill patients prompted him to investigate spiritual issues. Eventually, it was the universal existence of right and wrong—the Moral Law—that led him to believe in an ”infinitely good and holy” God—and which, in contrast, brought him face-to-face with his own failings, selfishness, and pride.

  Turning to history, he was amazed at the evidence for Jesus of Nazareth. The four Gospels, he found, were written within decades of Jesus’ death. They were clearly rooted in the testimony of eyewitnesses. They had been passed through the centuries with great fidelity. And, of course, they describe Jesus rising bodily from the dead.

  Can a rational scientist believe in such “nonsense”? This was, conceded Collins, “difficult stuff.” In the end, though, came this epiphany: “If Christ really was the Son of God, as He explicitly claimed, then surely of all those who had ever walked the earth, He could suspend the laws of nature if He needed to do so to achieve a more important purpose.”

  For Collins, this was more than just a historical curiosity. “The crucifixion and resurrection also provided something else,” he said in his 2006 bestseller The Language of God.

  “My desire to draw close to God was blocked by my own pride and sinfulness, which in turn was an inevitable consequence of my own selfish desire to be in control,” he said. “Now the crucifixion and resurrection emerged as the compelling solution to the gap that yawned between God and myself, a gap that could now be bridged by the person of Jesus Christ.”38

  That is what the real—and resurrected—Jesus does.

  FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION

  More Resources on This Topic

  Bowman, Robert M. Jr., and J. Ed Komoszewsi. Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel, 2007.

  Copan, Paul, and Ronald K. Tacelli, eds. Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment? Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2000.

  Habermas, Gary R., and Antony G. N. Flew. Resurrected? An Atheist and Theist Dialogue. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

  Habermas, Gary R., and Michael R. Licona. The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel, 2004.

  Licona, Michael R. Paul Meets Muhammad: A Christian-Muslim Debate on the Resurrection. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2006.

  Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1998.

  Swinburne, Richard. The Resurrection of God Incarnate. Oxford: Oxford Press, 2003.

  Wright, N. T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.

  CHALLENGE #4

  “CHRISTIANITY’S BELIEFS ABOUT JESUS WERE COPIED FROM PAGAN RELIGIONS”

  Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Mithras, and the other Pagan Mystery saviors as fables, yet come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem?

  Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries1

  There is nothing the Jesus of the Gospels either said or did…that cannot be shown to have originated thousands of years before, in Egyptian Mystery rites and other sacred liturgies.

  Tom Harpur, The Pagan Christ2

  As a young reporter at the Chicago Tribune, I watched in sympathy as a heartbreaking spectacle unfolded in the newsroom. The editor received an anonymous envelope containing a recent column by an up-and-coming Tribune writer, as well as a photocopy of an article written eight years earlier by Pete Hamill of the New York Post and reprinted in a collection of his works.

  The theme and substantial parts of the language were virtually identical, resulting in a charge of plagiarism—a humiliating and career-stunting allegation that led to the reporter’s suspension for a month without pay. Subsequent disclosure of another impropriety resulted in the writer’s resignation. It was painful to see a colleague’s promising career derailed, but as the Tribune’s editor said at the time, “We condemn deception in others; we cannot accept it among our own without penalty.”

  Through the years, allegations of plagiarism have vexed lots of journalists, scholars, politicians, and students—even a young Helen Keller.3 It’s a ser
ious and escalating problem at universities. Today’s ready access to the Internet has made cut-and-paste plagiarism much easier for students who are facing imminent deadlines for term papers, prompting entrepreneurs to create Web-based resources that help professors detect previously published passages.

  Technically, it’s not a crime to commit plagiarism, but it can be a serious civil offense to claim another person’s words or literary concepts as his or her own.4 Most of the time, though, the penalties are informal but nevertheless devastating: an embarrassing loss of credibility.

  In an analogous way, a wave of recent books has claimed that Christianity’s key tenets about Jesus—including his virgin birth and resurrection—are not historical but rather were plagiarized from earlier “mystery religions” that flourished in the Mediterranean world. The allegation that Christianity is merely a “copycat” religion, recycling elements from ancient mythology, has decimated its credibility to many people.

  “Nothing in Christianity is original” is among the most famous lines in one of publishing’s greatest success stories, The Da Vinci Code. The book charges that everything of importance in Christianity, from communion to Jesus’ birthday to Sunday worship, was “taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions.”5

  Indeed, even those claims aren’t original. More than a century ago, scholars published books and articles pointing out similarities between the life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels and mythological gods like Mithras, Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus. Popular books and Internet sites have elaborated on these themes in recent years, making this issue one of the most damaging current objections to the historicity of Jesus.

  “Christianity began as a cult with almost wholly Pagan origins and motivations in the first century,” said former Anglican priest Tom Harpur.6 “Christianity in its final orthodoxy was simply a reissuing of an ancient wisdom in a literalized and highly exclusivist form. The result was a kind of plagiarism, but in a badly warped and weakened edition.”7

  A book called The Jesus Mysteries, which promoted similar themes, was named Book of the Year by London’s Daily Telegraph in 1999. “The story of Jesus and the teachings he gives in the New Testament are prefigured by the myths and teachings of the ancient Pagan mysteries,” said the authors, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.8 They added:

  Each mystery religion taught its own version of the myth of the dying and resurrecting Godman, who was known by different names in different places. In Egypt, where the mysteries began, he was Osiris. In Greece he becomes Dionysus, in Asia Minor he is known as Attis, in Syria he is Adonis, in Persia he is Mithras, in Alexandria he is Serapis, to name a few.9

  In his book Those Incredible Christians, Hugh J. Schonfield said, “Christians remained related under the skin to the devotees of Adonis and Osiris, Dionysus and Mithras.”10 Philosopher John H. Randall maintained that, thanks to the apostle Paul, Christianity “became a mystical system of redemption, much like the cult of Isis, and the other sacramental or mystery religions of the day.”11

  At first blush, the parallels between the story of Jesus and the myths of ancient gods appear to be striking. For instance, writers have said that the pre-Christian god Mithras was born of a virgin in a cave on December 25, was considered a great traveling teacher, had twelve disciples, promised his followers immortality, sacrificed himself for world peace, was buried in a tomb and rose again three days later, instituted a Eucharist or “Lord’s Supper,” and was considered the Logos, redeemer, Messiah, and “the way, the truth, and the life.”12 Sound familiar?

  “The traditional history of Christianity cannot convincingly explain why the Jesus story is so similar to ancient Pagan myths,” Freke and Gandy said.13 They believe, however, that they have the answer. “Christianity,” they declared, “was a heretical product of Paganism!”14

  Said Harpur: “Not one single doctrine, rite, tenet, or usage in Christianity was in reality a fresh contribution to the world.”15 He went on to say:

  The only difference—and it was quite radical—between the Jesus story of the New Testament and the many ancient myths…is that nobody among the ancients, prior to the full-fledged Christian movement, believed for one moment that any of the events in their dramas were in any way historical…. In Christianity, however, the myth was eventually literalized. Jesus was historicized…. The Church converted a whole mass of romantic legends or myths into so-called history, a multiplication of “fictitious stories.” What emerged was in many ways a cult of ignorance.16

  If these allegations are true, then the so-called “real Jesus” has no more authority than an imaginary “sun god” worshiped by primitive tribes millennia ago. If his life, teachings, and resurrection are merely echoes of mythological characters, then there would be no good reason to follow, worship, or rely on him. He becomes as impotent as the make-believe Zeus, as irrelevant as the long-forgotten Mithras.

  But are these charges accurate? I decided to focus initially on the allegation that Jesus’ resurrection—the pivotal event that Christians say confirmed his deity—was essentially plagiarized from earlier pagan stories. Among those giving credence to that theory is Skeptic magazine religion editor Tim Callahan. “The possible influences on the Jews that might have produced a belief in resurrection are the myriad fertility cults among all the peoples of the ancient world,” he said.17

  My first step was to raise the issue with historian and resurrection expert Michael Licona, coauthor of the award-winning book The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus and the authority I questioned earlier on challenges to Jesus rising from the dead.

  A NEARLY UNIVERSAL CONSENSUS

  “Why,” I asked Licona, “should the story of Jesus’ resurrection have any more credibility than pagan stories of dying and rising gods—such as Osiris, Adonis, Attis, and Marduk—that are so obviously mythological?”

  Licona was well-versed on this controversy. “First of all, it’s important to understand that these claims don’t in any way negate the good historical evidence we have for Jesus’ resurrection, which I spelled out in our earlier discussion,” he pointed out. “You can’t dismiss the resurrection unless you can refute its solid core of supporting evidence.”18 I agreed that was an important caveat to keep in mind—and one which “copycat” theorists typically forget.

  “Second, T. N. D. Mettinger—a senior Swedish scholar, professor at Lund University, and member of the Royal Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities of Stockholm—wrote one of the most recent academic treatments of dying and rising gods in antiquity. He admits in his book The Riddle of Resurrection that the consensus among modern scholars—nearly universal—is that there were no dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity. They all post-dated the first century.”

  Obviously, that timing is absolutely crucial: Christianity couldn’t have borrowed the idea of the resurrection if myths about dying and rising gods weren’t even circulating when Christianity was birthed in the first century AD.

  “Then Mettinger said he was going to take exception to that nearly universal scholarly conviction,” Licona continued. “He takes a decidedly minority position and claims that there are at least three and possibly as many as five dying and rising gods that predate Christianity. But the key question is this: Are there any actual parallels between these myths and Jesus’ resurrection?”

  “What did Mettinger conclude?” I asked.

  “In the end, after combing through all these accounts and critically analyzing them, Mettinger adds that none of these serve as parallels to Jesus. None of them,” Licona emphasized.

  “They are far different from the reports of Jesus rising from the dead. They occurred in the unspecified and distant past and were usually related to the seasonal life-and-death cycle of vegetation. In contrast, Jesus’ resurrection isn’t repeated, isn’t related to changes in the seasons, and was sincerely believed to be an actual event by those who lived in the same generation of the historical Jesus. In addition, Mettinger concludes that ‘there is no evide
nce for the death of the dying and rising gods as vicarious suffering for sins.’”19

  I later obtained Mettinger’s book to double-check Licona’s account of his research. Sure enough, Mettinger caps his study with this stunning statement: “There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world.”20

  In short, this leading scholar’s analysis is a sharp rebuke to popular-level authors and Internet bloggers who make grand claims about the pagan origins of Jesus’ return from the dead. Ultimately, Mettinger affirmed, “The death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions.”21

  BOWLING IN HEAVEN

  Mettinger’s assessment was extremely significant, but I wanted to dig deeper into the mythology. “Do I understand correctly that these ancient myths were used to try to explain why things died in the fall and came back in the spring?” I asked.

  “Yes, things like that,” Licona replied. “When I was a kid, I asked my mom, ‘What’s thunder?’ She said, ‘It’s angels bowling in heaven.’ Obviously, that’s just a story. Similarly, in ancient Canaan, a kid would ask his mom, ‘Why does the rain stop in the summer?’ And his mom would tell him the story of Baal.”

  “Is this one of the myths that Mettinger thinks predates Christianity?” I asked.

  “That’s right. In one of the more popular stories, Baal is the storm god in heaven. He’s responsible for the rain. His nemesis is Mot, who’s in the netherworld. One day Mot and Baal are trash-talking each other. Mot says, ‘You think you’re so tough, Baal? You leave behind your clouds and lightning bolts and wind and rain and come on down here—I’ll show you who your daddy is.’ So Baal leaves everything behind and goes to the underworld—where Mot swallows him. How do we know this? It stopped raining!

  “Later, Baal’s mother goes down and tells Mot, ‘Let my son go!’ Mot says, ‘No!’ So she brutalizes him until he finally says, ‘Okay, mercy! Go away and I’ll let him go!’ She leaves the netherworld, and a couple of months later, Baal’s dad says, ‘Our son’s alive.’ How does he know? It’s raining again!