Historical Jesus

What Did Jesus Say About Himself?

September 21, 2012 by ddunn

God’s Perfect Solution

During his three years of public ministry, Jesus taught us how to live and performed many miracles, even raising the dead. But he stated that his primary mission was to save us from our sins.

Jesus proclaimed that he was the promised Messiah who would take our iniquity upon himself. The prophet Isaiah had written about the Messiah 700 years earlier, giving us several clues regarding his identity. But the clue most difficult to grasp is that the Messiah would be both man and God! [Read more…]

Is There Any Evidence that Jesus Existed?

August 9, 2012 by ddunn

Skeptics like Ellen Johnson [former President of American Atheists] cite the “lack of secular history” for Jesus as evidence that he didn’t exist.

Yet there is very little documentation for any person from the time of Christ. Most ancient historical documents have been destroyed through the centuries, by wars, fires, and pillaging, or simply through weathering and deterioration.

According to E. M. Blaiklock, who has catalogued most of the non-Christian writings of the Roman Empire, “practically nothing exists from the time of Christ”, even for great secular leaders such as Julius Caesar.¹ Yet no historian questions Caesar’s existence.

And since he wasn’t a great political or military leader, Darrell Bock notes, “It is amazing and significant that Jesus shows up at all in the sources we have.”²

So, who are these sources Bock mentions? Which early historians who wrote of Jesus did not have a Christian agenda? First of all, let’s look to Jesus’ enemies. [Read more…]

Prophetic Scrolls Altered?

July 27, 2012 by helmut

What if the Christian scribes who copied scrolls of Isaiah and the other Old Testament prophetic books altered them to make them correspond to Jesus’ life?

This is a question many scholars and skeptics have asked. And it seems possible, even plausible at first glance. [Read more…]

Is Christianity “too Jesus focused?”

July 12, 2012 by ddunn

The early Christians were accused by the Romans of stealing glory from Caesar, and by the Jews of robbing glory from God (Yahweh). Christianity is criticized by some as being “too Jesus focused.” But is that what the apostles thought? [Read more…]

Is the Designer an Absentee Parent?

June 28, 2012 by ddunn

The big bang theory has reopened scientists’ minds to the possibility that the universe was created by an intelligent designer. But if so, has that designer remained involved with the universe? Two discoveries, quantum mechanics and string theory, suggest the answer could be yes.

In 1925, Werner Heisenberg shocked the scientific community by showing that the subatomic world is unpredictable. In fact, it behaves unlike anything scientists had ever imagined and seems to betray common sense. This marked the start of the branch of physics known as quantum mechanics, which is the study of the behavior of microscopic particles. (A “quantum,” in physicspeak, is the smallest amount of any quantity, such as particles like electrons, quarks, and photons.)

What has fascinated scientists is that particles such as electrons, quarks, and photons can appear from nowhere and disappear just as quickly. No one knows why. [Read more…]