Should Christians Speak With Authority?

Ken Ham writes:

Should Christians speak with authority?

“And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28–29).

Over the 40 years I’ve been involved in the Answers in Genesis ministry, I’ve had many Christians/Christian leaders accuse me of saying a person had to believe in six literal days of creation and a young earth to be saved.

Such an accusation is simply not true and can be documented as false from my many talks and articles I’ve written over the years showing clearly I have never equated salvation with believing in a young earth and literal creation days. What my accusers don’t like is the fact I speak with authority on what Genesis clearly says. They want me to allow other views. But there’s only one view: God’s Word as written.

Now, salvation is conditioned upon faith in Christ, not what a person believes about the age of the earth or days of creation. People then respond saying it’s not an important issue.

But, even though it’s not a salvation issue, it’s a very important matter indeed, as it’s one of authority.

The following examples represent the types of conversations I’ve had over the years with various Christians and Christian leaders as I’ve discussed this topic with me asking questions.

Question: “Do you believe Jesus bodily rose from the dead?”

Answer: “Of course, yes.”

Question: “Did you see it happen? Do you have a movie of the event? How do you know?”

Answer: “Because the Bible says so?”

Question: “Do you really believe Jesus fed thousands as a miracle?”

Answer: “Yes.”

Question: “Did you see this event? How do you know?”

Answer: “Because the Bible says so.”

Question: “Do you believe Jesus healed the blind, lame, and deaf and even raised people from the dead?”

Answer: “Yes.”

Question: “How do you know?”

Answer: “I know because the Bible says so.”

Question: “Do you believe the Israelites crossed the Red Sea as a miracle, and when wandering in the desert their clothes and shoes didn’t wear out?”

Answer: “Yes.”

Question: “How do you know?”

Answer: “Because the Bible teaches this.”

Question: “Do you believe a man was swallowed by a fish for three days and survived?”

Answer: “Yes, God’s Word says so.”

I then move to the book of Genesis and ask, “Do you believe God created in six literal days, death came after sin, Noah’s Flood was a global event, and we must take Genesis 1–11 as literal history?”

I often get answers like, “Well, no because of what the scientists tell us about millions of years, the big bang, and evolution. The days must be long periods of time. Noah’s flood might have been a local event. God used evolution.”

And here is my point! For other events in the Bible, Christians usually accept the accounts as written. But when it comes to Genesis, so many Christians and Christian leaders will go outside of Scripture and use what secular scientists are saying to then claim we can’t take Genesis as written on these matters.

And therein lies a major problem. They are putting man’s word over God’s Word and making man the authority, not God. Sadly, many pastors and Christian academics have taught generations of young people this. In doing so, they’ve unlocked a door that one can take man’s word over God’s Word. So if you can take millions of years and reinterpret God’s Word, why not take man’s word on marriage and gender and reinterpret God’s Word to allow gay “marriage,” etc. And this is happening in the church.

Over the years because so many Christian leaders have compromised God’s Word in Genesis, many people have been led to doubt God’s Word, and that leads to compromise and unbelief.

We can and should speak with authority on Genesis, just as we can with the rest of Scripture because it is the infallible Word of God!

I am saying compromise on Genesis is wrong, as there’s only one view—God’s! And I’ll continue speaking with authority (God’s) on this.

Are you taking God at his Word? Or putting man’s word over God’s Word? That’s the issue.

Did Christianity Borrow From Pagan Religions

Article from probe.org

Dr. Pat Zukeran examines the myths from mystery religions which are sometimes argued to be the source of our Gospel accounts of Jesus. He finds that any such connection is extremely weak and does not detract from the reliability of the gospel message.

One of the popular ideas being promoted today especially on the internet is the idea that the miracle stories of Jesus were borrowed from ancient pagan myths. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy write in their book The Laughing Jesus, “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 became 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.”{1}

Proponents of this idea point out that there are several parallels between these pagan myths and the story of Jesus Christ. Parallels including a virgin birth, a divine Son of God, the god dying for mankind, resurrection from the dead, and others are cited. Skeptics allege that Christianity did not present any unique teaching, but borrowed the majority of its tenets from the mystery religions.

Indeed, some of the alleged parallels appear to be quite striking. One example is the god Mithras. This myth teaches that Mithras was born of a virgin in a cave, that he was a traveling teacher with twelve disciples, promised his disciples eternal life, and sacrificed himself for the world. The god Dionysius miraculously turns water into wine. The Egyptian god Osiris is killed and then resurrects from the dead.

This position was taught in the nineteenth century by the History of Religions School, but by the mid-twentieth century this view was shown to be false and it was abandoned even by those who believed Christianity was purely a natural religion.{2} Ron Nash wrote, “During a period of time running roughly from about 1890 to 1940, scholars often alleged that primitive Christianity had been heavily influenced by Platonism, Stoicism, the pagan religions, or other movements in the Hellenistic world. Largely as a result of a series of scholarly books and articles written in rebuttal, allegations of early Christianity’s dependence on its Hellenistic environment began to appear much less frequently in the publications of Bible scholars and classical scholars. Today most Bible scholars regard the question as a dead issue.”{3}

Despite the fact that many of the arguments were rejected, this theory has once again emerged through the popular writings of skeptics.

What makes Christianity unique among the world religions is that it is a historical faith based on the historical person of Christ who lived a miraculous life. In what follows, we will examine Christianity to see if it teaches a unique Savior or if it is simply a copy of these pagan myths.

Fallacies of the Theory

There are several flaws with the theory that Christianity isn’t unique. New Testament scholars Ed Komoszewski, James Sawyer, and Dan Wallace point out several fallacies. The first is the composite fallacy. Proponents of this view lump together pagan religions as if they are one religion when making comparisons to Christianity. An attempt is made to show strong parallels by combining features from various religions.{4} However, when the individual myths themselves are studied, the reader soon finds major differences and very little commonality.

A second fallacy is a fallacy of terminology. Christian terms are used to describe pagan beliefs, and then it is concluded that there are parallel origins and meanings. Although the terms used are the same, however, there are big differences between Christian and pagan practices and definitions.{5}

A third fallacy is the chronological fallacy. Supporters of the theory incorrectly assume that Christianity borrowed many of its ideas from the mystery religions, but the evidence reveals it was actually the other way around. There is no archaeological evidence that mystery religions were in Palestine in the first century A.D. Jews and early Christians loathed syncretism with other religions. They were uncompromisingly monotheistic while Greeks were polytheistic. Christians also strongly defended the uniqueness of Christ (Acts 4:12). Although Christians encountered pagan religions, they opposed any adopting of foreign beliefs.{6} Ron Nash stated, “The uncompromising monotheism and the exclusiveness that the early church preached and practiced make the possibility of any pagan inroads . . . unlikely if not impossible.”{7}

Fourth is the intentional fallacy. Christianity has a linear view of history. History is moving in a purposeful direction. There is a purpose for mankind’s existence; history is moving in a direction to fulfill God’s plan for the ages. The mystery religions have a cyclical view of history. History continues in a never ending cycle or repetition often linked with the vegetation cycle.{8}

Christianity gains its source from Judaism, not Greek mythology. Jesus, Paul, and the apostles appeal to the Old Testament, and you find direct teachings and fulfillments in the New Testament. Teachings such as one God, blood atonement for sin, salvation by grace, sinfulness of mankind, bodily resurrection, are sourced in Judaism and foreign to Greek mythology. The idea of resurrection was not taught in any Greek mythological work prior to the late second century A.D.{9}

Legends of the Mystery Religions

As noted above, critics of Christianity point to several parallels between Christianity and the myths of the mystery religions. However, a brief study of the legends reveals that there are few if any parallels to the life of Jesus Christ. Historians acknowledge that there are several variations to many of these myths and that they also evolved and changed under the influence of Roman culture and, later, Christianity. Historical research indicates that it was not until the third century A.D. that Christianity and the mystery religions came into real contact with one another.{10} A brief overview of some of the most popular myths reveals the lack of resemblance with Christianity.

In the matter of death and resurrection, major differences are seen between Christianity and pagan myths. First, none of the resurrections in these myths involve the God of the universe dying a voluntary death for His creation. Only Jesus died for sins; the death of other gods was due to hunting accidents, emasculation, and other calamities. The gods in these stories die by compulsion, not by choice, sometimes in bitterness and despair, never in self-giving love.{11}

Second, Jesus died once for all (Heb. 7:27, 9:25-28), while pagan gods repeat the death and rebirth cycle yearly with the seasons.

Third, Jesus’ death was not a defeat but a triumph. The New Testament’s mood of victory and joy (1 Cor. 15:50-57 and Col. 2:13-15) stands in contrast to the mood of pagan myths which is dark and sorrowful over the fate of their gods.

Finally, Jesus’ death was an actual event in history. Christianity insists on and defends the historical credibility of the Gospel accounts while the pagan cults make no such attempt.{12}

A popular myth that some believe parallels the resurrection of Christ is the story of Osiris. The cult of the gods Osiris and his wife Isis originated in Egypt. According to the legend, Osiris’ wicked brother Set murdered him and sank his coffin to the bottom of the Nile. Isis recovered the coffin and returned it to Egypt. However, Set discovered the body, cut it into fourteen pieces, and threw the pieces into the Nile. Isis collected thirteen of the body parts and bandaged the body, making the first mummy. Osiris was transformed and became the ruler of the underworld, and exists in a state of semi-consciousness.

This legend hardly parallels the resurrection of Christ. Osiris is not resurrected from death to life. Instead he is changed into another form and lives in the underworld in a zombie state. Christ rose physically from the grave, conquering sin and death. The body that was on the cross was raised in glory.

Resurrection Parallels

Two other popular myths compared to Christianity are those of Mithras and Attis.

There is a belief that the story of Mithras contains a death and resurrection. However, there is no teaching in early Mithraism of neither his death nor his resurrection. Ron Nash stated, “Mithraism had no concept of the death and resurrection of its god and no place for any concept of rebirth — at least during its early stages. . . . Moreover, Mithraism was basically a military cult. Therefore, one must be skeptical about suggestions that it appealed to nonmilitary people like the early Christians.”{13}

Moreover, Mithraism flowered after Christianity, not before, so Christianity could not have copied from it. The timing is incorrect to have influenced the development of first-century Christianity. It is most likely the reverse: Christianity influenced Mithraism. Edwin Yamauchi, one of the foremost scholars on ancient Persia and Mithraism states, “The earnest mithraea are dated to the early second century. There are a handful of inscriptions that date to the early second century, but the vast majority of texts are dated after A.D. 140. Most of what we have as evidence of Mithraism comes in the second, third, and fourth centuries AD. That’s basically what’s wrong with the theories about Mithraism influencing the beginnings of Christianity.”{14}

The legend of Attis was popular in the Hellenistic world. According to this legend, Cybele, also known as the mother goddess, fell in love with a young Phrygian shepherd named Attis. However, he was unfaithful to her so she caused him to go mad. In his insanity, he castrated himself and died. Cybele mourned greatly (which caused death to enter into the world). She preserved Attis’ dead body, allowing his hair to grow and little finger to move. In some versions, Attis returns to life in the form of an evergreen tree. However, there is no bodily resurrection to life. All versions teach that Attis remained dead. Any account of a resurrection of Attis does not appear till a hundred and fifty years after Christ.{15}

To sum up, the claim that Christianity adopted its resurrection account from the pagan mystery religions is false. There are very few parallels to the resurrection of Christ. The idea of a physical resurrection to glory is foreign to these religions, and the stories of dying a rising gods do not appear till well after Christianity.

Myths of a Virgin Birth

Let us now look-at the alleged parallels between virgin births in the mystery religions and the virgin birth of Christ. Parallels quickly break down when the facts are analyzed. In the pagan myths, the gods lust after women, take on human form, and enter into physical relationships. Also, the offspring that are produced are half human and half divine beings in contrast to Christ who is fully human and fully divine, the creator of the universe who existed from eternity past.

The alleged parallels to the virgin birth are found in the legends of Dionysus and Mithras. Dionysus is the god of wine. In this story, Zeus disguised as a man had relations with Semele and she became pregnant. In a jealous rage, Hera, Zeus’ wife, attempted to burn Semele. Zeus rescued the fetus and sewed it into his thigh until the offspring, Dionysus, was born. The birth of Dionysus was the result of a sexual union of Zeus, in the form of a man, and Semele. This cannot be considered a virgin birth.

One of the popular cults of the later Roman Empire was the cult of Mithra which originated in Persia. Mithra was supposedly born when he emerged from a rock; he was carrying a knife and torch and wearing a Phrygian cap. He battled first with the sun and then with a primeval bull, thought to be the first act of creation. Mithra slew the bull, which then became the ground of life for the human race.{16} The birth of Mithra from a rock, born fully grown, hardly parallels the virgin birth of Christ.

New Testament scholar. Raymond Brown states that alleged virgin parallels “consistently involve a type of hieros gamos where a divine male, in human or other form, impregnates a woman, either through normal sexual intercourse or through some substitute form of penetration. They are not really similar to non-sexual virginal conception that is at the core of the infancy narratives, a conception where there is no male deity or element to impregnate Mary.”{17}

The Gospel of Luke teaches that the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and through the power of the Most High she became pregnant. Mary had no physical relationship with a man or a deity who became a man.

Our study of the mystery religions reveals very few parallels with Christianity. For this reason, the theory that Christianity copied its major tenets from the mystery religions should be rejected.

Notes

1. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Laughing Jesus (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005), 55-56.
2. Ed Komoszewski, James Sawyer, and Daniel Wallace, Reinventing Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications: 2006), 221.
3. Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 2007), 167.
4. Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, 223-4.
5. Ibid., 224-6.
6. Ibid., 231-234.

7. Ronald Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks (Dallas: Word Books, 1992), 168.
8. Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, 221.
9. Gary Habermas, The Historical Jesus (Joplin, MO.: College Press Publishing, 1997), 34.
10. Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 129.
11. Norman Anderson, Christianity and World Religions (Downers Grove, IL :InterVarsity Press, 1984),53.
12. Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 171-172.
13. Ibid., 144.
14. Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 169.
15. Ibid., 177.
16. Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 144.
17. Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 182.

Origins

Dr. Jason Lisle conducts a number of lectures on the theme of origins at Indian Hills Community Church, Lincoln, NE (2019):

Understanding Genesis

Secrets of the Cosmos that Confirm the Bible

The Solar System Declares the Glory of God

The Ultimate Proof of Creation

Science Confirms Biblical Creation

The Secret Code of Creation

Questions and Answers

The Two Clocks

According to U.K. law, each Post Office has to have the right time displayed in its clock. Inspectors regularly visit each Post Office to make sure all is in compliance.

An inspector visited a certain Post Office in the south west of England and while everything else on his list seemed to be ok, he determined that the clock was slow.

He went in to see the head Postmaster informing him, “your clock is slow!”

The Postmaster said, “That’s impossible! It can’t be slow. I correct it every day.”

The inspector said, “It’s definitely slow.”

The Postmaster said, “it can’t be” and took him outside the Post office and pointed across the street and said, “now do you see that house there? If you look into the window, there is a ship’s chronometer on the mantel piece, and you know, don’t you, that ship chronometers are never wrong. Now I adjust the Post office clock by that ship chronometer.”

The inspector then knocked on the door of the house and an old Sea Captain answered the door. The inspector introduced himself and said, “Excuse me, but is that a ship’s chronometer I see on the mantel piece?”

The Captain said, “oh yes!”

“May I see it? asked the inspector.

The Captain showed him inside and showed him the clock.

“Oh, its a lovely clock!” said the inspector.

“Yes, it is,” the Sea Captain said, “the only trouble is that it got salt water in it some time ago and its never really kept very good time since then.”

The inspector then asked, “so how do you keep it right?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” the Captain said, “I adjust it by the Post Office clock over the road, because by law, the Post Office has to display the correct time, so I know its right.”

(These two clocks, neither of which was authoritative, were trying to correct one another and because of that, both of them were incorrect.)

Application: Many do this with the Bible. They set themselves up as ‘the’ authority as to what is true or not, or else look to something other than God’s word for truth, they then judge the Bible by that standard, making themselves prone to error and deception. The Bible alone is the word of God and therefore the sole, inerrant, infallible source for truth.

How We Got the Bible

Article by Dirk Jongkind, academic vice principal and senior research fellow in New Testament text and language at Tyndale House, Cambridge. He is also the author of An Introduction to the Greek New Testament. (source: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-we-got-the-bible)

Countless lives are changed by the preaching of the word of God. Since human beings tend to look at the outside and not at the inside, we often attribute the power of this transformative teaching to the preacher. We all know on reflection, though, that the real power does not rest in humans but in God’s word itself.

Reading Scripture is the most immediate exposure to the word of God. In practice, this means picking up a physical book and opening it to a specific page, or opening up an app on our phones and scrolling to a specific location. In either case, we trust that the word has not been corrupted and that the message of the Bible we hold in our hands was not changed or lost altogether. We believe that we are reading the actual words that God spoke.

In what follows, we will think about what has gone before that moment when we open Scripture and read it. What happened to the Bible between the earliest times and the twenty-first century? How did God bring his word to us? The reverse of this question — how he brought us to his word — is part of our individual testimony. But the way in which God brought about the Bible is the story of his providence in history, played out over thousands of years. And by understanding what God had done over the ages, we will see that it is reasonable and justified to trust that the Bible in our hands is a translation of the trustworthy words of Scripture. We could talk about ten reasons why to trust the Bible. But it may be more effective if we understand the larger narrative of the history of the Bible.

From God’s Breath to Israel’s Books

Because the Bible is the word of God, it naturally starts with God speaking, both in practice, as in Genesis 1:3 (“And God said, let there be light”), as well as logically, as in John 1:1 (“In the beginning was the Word”). And since we are talking about an infinite God, it should not surprise us that he uses an array of ways to communicate with his creatures.

God spoke directly to Moses from a burning bush (Exodus 3:2), and immediately after the exodus to the whole people from a burning mountain (Exodus 19:18). God speaks through the inspired recording of the history of his people, and through his prophets who heard his word — sometimes directly, but also through visions and dreams. We find personal reflections on the futility of life under the sun (Ecclesiastes), which is also part of God speaking to his people. And this in addition to the book of Proverbs, a collection of divinely crafted wisdom. In the New Testament, we have the records of how the apostles taught about Jesus and about what Jesus himself taught (the four Gospels). And we find the responses by the apostles to various situations within the churches, as well as positive teaching about the salvation that Jesus brought about.

There are many ways in which God spoke his word, and there are many ways in which it was written down. God shows his character even in the diverse ways that he used to form the Scriptures. And the Scriptures themselves testify to their formation.

‘Write This in a Book’

Of all the named authors in the Bible, Moses is the first. Immediately after the exodus, and still before the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, God tells Moses to start writing God’s words down (Exodus 17:14). Amalek had come out to fight Israel, and Moses commanded Joshua to lead the army while Moses would lift up the staff of God. It is after this fight that God speaks to Moses (the text does not tell us how) and commands him to write down what God’s ultimate judgment over Amalek will be as a memorial. The first command to record God’s words in a book comes in order that this book would become a memorial, a testimony, to the acts of God and the fulfilment of his promises. An interesting detail is that already this first Scripture is to be recited to Joshua. The future leader is to be formed by the word of God from its very beginning.

Soon after the fight with Amalek, Israel arrives at Mount Sinai. Here God speaks directly from the mountain, but the people cannot bear it (Exodus 20:19–21). Therefore, Moses goes up the mountain alone and receives the two tablets (Exodus 31:1832:15–16). The first set is made and written by God himself, but Moses breaks them in anger because of the idolatry of the people (Exodus 32:19). Moses then brings up a second set so that these can be inscribed with the same words of the covenant (Exodus 34:128Deuteronomy 10:4). It is also at this occasion that Moses is commanded to write down all the words, “for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel” (Exodus 34:27).

Numbers 33:2 teaches that Moses did not just write down the laws God gave to the people, but also the historical account of the journey of Israel.

In the book of Deuteronomy, at the end of Israel’s time in the wilderness and just before the entrance into the Promised Land, Moses addresses the people and reminds them of what had happened, what God had told them, and what it meant to be the covenant people of God. As expected, the written basis of the covenant is again mentioned. In Deuteronomy 10:5 we learn that the two tablets are kept in the ark. Deuteronomy 31:9 adds that the whole law is given to the Levites who carry the ark, but that it is also given to the elders of the people. The actual book that Moses wrote is to be kept near the ark “for a witness against you” (Deuteronomy 31:26). This is the beginning of the tabernacle, later replaced by the temple, as the place where the word of God is kept and preserved.

Deuteronomy gives us one unexpected insight into the actual practice of copying the law. We read about the stipulations for the future kings in Deuteronomy 17. Once the king sits on his throne, he has to write for himself a copy of the law “from before” the Levitical priests in order that he may read in it all the days of his life (Deuteronomy 17:18–19). The expression “from before” has been interpreted as meaning “approved by,” which is certainly possible. However, there is a more direct interpretation. It seems likely to me that the king is allowed to make his personal copy from the master scroll that Moses deposited with the Levites. This was a true privilege for the king, but also a serious responsibility. The king is supposed to be a faithful scribe. And as with Joshua, the leader of the people is supposed to be formed by the written word of God.

Authors and Compilers

Many of the books in the Old Testament remain without a named author, which is significant in itself. Apparently, the circumstances of their production are not necessary for their interpretation. We also read about books that were in existence but have not been preserved — for example, the book of the rights and duties of the king, written by Samuel and “laid . . . up before the Lord” (1 Samuel 10:25) — that is, put in the tabernacle together with the Scriptures.

We know David mainly as king, yet he was also the author of many psalms. He is called a “prophet” (Acts 2:30), and he calls himself “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1). Other authors of Psalms are named too — Moses, Solomon, Asaph, Heman, and Ethan. When considering the book of Psalms as a whole, however, we hit another boundary to our knowledge. Who collected all the individual psalms into their canonical order? Was this a gradual process that happened over time? When did this book gets its final shape?

The same questions are raised by the book of Proverbs. Solomon is presented as the source for the wisdom tradition in the book (Proverbs 1:1), but the final two chapters name two other persons, Agur and Lemuel (Proverbs 30:1 and 31:1). In addition, Proverbs 25:1 adds a fascinating detail, as it says that the men of Hezekiah brought together the content of the following chapters — several hundred years after Solomon! Like the book of Psalms, we do not know who gave the book of Proverbs its final shape. But in this case, Scripture tells us that it was centuries after the oldest parts were produced.

Books such as Proverbs seem to be the exception, though. Most books do not give us explicit information about how they came into being. Scripture tells us, however, that later authors were often very much aware of what had been written before. Psalm 119 assumes the presence of the law, the prophet Hosea refers back to Genesis (Hosea 12:3–5), Zechariah alludes to prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, and Daniel reads the prophet Jeremiah (Daniel 9:2). Throughout most of this period, the tabernacle or the temple would be the central location for the preservation of Scripture. It is not without reason that when Josiah restored the proper worship of the true God, it was the temple where the Book of the Law was rediscovered (2 Kings 22:8–11). But as would be expected, it was not just the temple that was active in the preservation of Scripture, but also faithful kings such as Hezekiah, and possibly the schools of prophets, which were not necessarily connected closely to the central sanctuary, played a role in the transmission of God’s word.

Israel’s Book Culture

If, however, the temple is of such great importance, what happened when the temple was destroyed and the people went into exile? Interestingly, around this time we see more and more signs of the book culture that we know must have existed. Jeremiah writes a letter to the Babylonian exiles (Jeremiah 29), and dictates his prophecies again to Baruch the scribe after the king burnt the first copy (Jeremiah 36:1–4). Only a little later, Daniel had a copy of Jeremiah’s prophecy in exile (Daniel 9:2). The prophet Ezekiel is ordered to eat a scroll (Ezekiel 3:1–3), and just after the exile Zechariah sees a flying scroll (Zechariah 5:1–2). Texts, scrolls, and scribes are part of the religious world and religious imagery.

Perhaps the capstone of this development is found in Ezra and Nehemiah. Here we find the scribe Ezra repeatedly expounding the Law that Moses had written. (See the expression “as it is written” in Ezra 3:246:18Neh. 8:1410:343613:1.) Nehemiah 8 especially is a glorious description how the people of Israel have now become a people gathered around the written word of God.

The biblical history is by and large silent about the period between Ezra and the New Testament. But when the New Testament tells us about the birth of Jesus, it mentions faithful believers who were expecting the salvation of Israel (Luke 1–2). The only story about the growing up of Jesus tells us about him questioning and answering the teachers of the law in the temple (Luke 2:41–51). Later, Jesus would say of these teachers that “they sit on the seat of Moses” and that the people were to do what they said, but not do as they do (Matthew 23:2–3). Throughout Jesus’s ministry, not only does he teach from the Scriptures (Luke 4:16–30), which were available in the synagogues, but he also fulfills prophecy by his actions (Matthew 21:4). Even when the evangelists record what Jesus had done, they use language directly derived from the Old Testament (compare, e.g., Luke 2:52 with Proverbs 3:4). Yet now we have arrived at the finale phase in writing God’s word, because all of the New Testament was written after the death and resurrection of Jesus, even though it extensively deals with the ministry of Jesus before the arrival of the new covenant.

Stewards of the Gospel Story

The four Gospels teach us about Jesus: what he said, what he did, what he taught. Each of the Gospels helps us also to see the significance of the One who died and rose again. Matthew does this openly by explaining how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament. John teaches the eternal and divine truth about the Word who came down from heaven and returned to the Father. Mark shows the depth of Jesus’s obedience by not even mentioning the name Jesus as he is mocked, stripped, spit upon, and crucified (Mark 15:16–33), until his final moments and last words (Mark 15:34). The Gospels teach us about Jesus, but told from after the resurrection (John 2:22), from after the moment that the witnesses had received the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who enabled the apostles to be his witnesses (Acts 1:8), and who reminded them of everything Jesus had said (John 14:26). The apostles had two powerful impulses at their disposal: the Spirit-sharpened memory of Jesus’s teaching and the Spirit-taught understanding of the existing Scriptures (Luke 24:44–45).

In the time immediately after Pentecost, the apostles started their teaching ministry (see Acts 4:25:214211:2615:3518:1128:31). There are some differences but also some similarities with how the old covenant started. At Pentecost, there was a loud sound (Acts 2:2), as in Exodus 19, but this time it did not strike fear into the hearts of the listeners. There were also flames, not on top of the mountain but on the gathered believers. The words of the law, the first covenant, were inscribed on stone tablets. But, just as Jeremiah 31:33 foretold, the new covenant was written directly on the hearts of people. The primary place of God’s word was now internal, written on hearts by the Spirit.

So what was happening to the teachings and events recorded in the Gospels between Pentecost and their writing down? When were the Gospels written? Scripture is not silent about this time, but we have to read carefully. In short, the apostles taught the content of the Gospels, the life and ministry of Jesus. And this teaching was remembered and shared among the churches. Therefore, initially the main source for knowledge of Jesus was found in the oral teaching of the apostles, rather than in a written record of this teaching.

We find a good example of this in 1 Corinthians 11. At the beginning of this chapter, Paul commends the church in Corinth for maintaining “the traditions just as I delivered them to you” (1 Corinthians 11:2). Both the words tradition and to deliver have the same root in Greek, having everything to do with handing down. Paul comes back to this language a little later: “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you” (1 Corinthians 11:23). The words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper are a “tradition” that Paul received and had taught to the Corinthians. Later, these words would be written down almost word for word in Luke’s Gospel.

In fact, Luke at the beginning of his Gospel tells Theophilus that his book is “just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us” (Luke 1:2). The resemblance to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11:2 is striking.

There are other references to the teaching of Jesus in 1 Corinthians. That Greeks seek wisdom and Jews seek signs goes at least partly back to Jesus’s words later written down in Mark 8:12. Jesus’s teaching about divorce is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 7:10–11, distinguished from the apostolic teaching in the next verse. That is, there was no explicit teaching of Jesus on the situation described in 1 Corinthians 7:12, and the Corinthians should not think that there was some saying they had missed somehow. And elsewhere in the New Testament, it pays off to read the letter of James side by side with the Sermon on the Mount. The similarities are clear, and it is not difficult to see how James’s teaching has started out from the words of Jesus himself.

Tradition Becomes Scripture

The apostles had a special ministry and authority. The traditions they had taught and the letters they had written, combined with their physical presence, contained all the guidance the churches needed. However, apostles would not be around forever (John 21:22–23), and they were faced with the question of whether the traditions they had taught would be remembered “just as they had delivered them.” In 2 Peter 1:15, Peter shares that this consideration was a real concern. This brings us to the closing stages of the formation of the New Testament, the writing down of the Gospels.

Luke knew about many others who had attempted to write a Gospel (Luke 1:1). Likewise, John wrote his testimony down after having preached its content for a long time. He had the benefit of looking back and being able to select those parts of the story that are sufficient for a saving knowledge of Jesus (John 20:30–31). For each of the four Gospels, the church retained the tradition of how they were linked to apostolic authority, directly (Matthew, John) or indirectly (Mark to Peter, Luke to Paul).

Entry into the new covenant remained an inward work, the word of God written on hearts by the Holy Spirit, yet the written accounts of Jesus’s life and ministry, and the teaching of how his salvation shapes the life of his people, were now entrusted to paper and ink — sometimes almost reluctantly (2 John 12), yet ultimately in the expectation that the apostolic writings were sufficient to make our joy complete (1 John 1:4).

This transition from remembered traditions to written accounts is reflected in Paul’s letters. As we have seen, Paul praises the Corinthians for keeping the traditions as he had delivered them. Later, however, in 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul introduces a double citation with the phrase “for the Scripture says.” The first of these, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” comes from Deuteronomy 25:4. The second citation from Scripture is “the laborer deserves his wages.” These exact words are found only in Luke 10:7, with a less exact parallel in Matthew 10:10. Therefore, by the time 1 Timothy was written, the Gospel tradition as written down by Luke was used — and approved — by Paul as being Scripture. (Alternatively, it is possible to read “for the Scripture says” as covering only the first of the two citations. But this reading is somewhat forced; the most natural reading is to apply the phrase to both citations.)

The implications of 1 Timothy 5:18 and its use of Luke are considerable. Just as in 1 Corinthians 11, again we have a link between the preaching of Paul and Luke’s Gospel. Moreover, though Paul must have taught the content of Luke 10:7 as part of the “Jesus tradition,” he decides to appeal to the written form, the Gospel, and by doing so Paul signals that there has been a transition from the remembered tradition to the written form. Scripture now includes the gospel and is part of all Scripture that is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). Also, the use of Luke in 1 Timothy seems to indicate that the Gospels were written earlier rather than later, and mostly before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Scripture Copied and Translated

When the time of the apostles was over, scriptural revelation was also complete. Because of the wide acknowledgement that the apostles, brothers of Jesus (James, Jude; see also 1 Corinthians 9:4), and those who recorded their teaching were a special gift to the church, their writings were rightly accepted as the word of God, in the same way the Old Testament was. There are some indications that certain memories from the time of the preaching of the first generation lasted well into the second half of the second century, but more and more the writings of the New Testament became the sole authoritative link to the apostles. In the absence of special revelation, our knowledge of what happened in the transmission of the New Testament text after its completion can only be inferred from the surviving manuscript evidence and from what is said by church fathers.

Some things had changed in comparison to the situation under the old covenant. No longer was there a central sanctuary. The apostles may have formed the figurative pillars of the spiritual temple that is the church, yet after their passing away there was no authoritative central location that could function in the way the temple in Jerusalem did. Jerusalem functioned as the center where approved copies of the Scriptures could be obtained (compare Acts 7:27–28). Yet the early church was spread out all over the Roman Empire and beyond, and everywhere the Scripture was copied. It is telling that in these early centuries no church claimed to have an original letter or Gospel in their possession, even though it is clear such originals must have been sent at some point.

Comparing Manuscripts

Printed Bibles have been in existence for a little over five hundred years. For the preceding centuries (1,400 years for the New Testament, and much longer for the Old), the original Hebrew and Greek were copied by hand. For those who are used to a printing culture, the idea that a copy is not necessarily identical to the original is somewhat disturbing. Yet for the early church, this was part of everyday reality. We have examples from every century of church fathers who discussed the difference in wording that existed between manuscripts.

It is important to distinguish between the transmission of the text of the Hebrew Old Testament and that of the Greek New Testament. Quite early on in church history, the main text used for the Old Testament was a Greek or Latin translation (or further translations made from these versions). The transmission of the Hebrew text was carried out in rabbinic circles. The Masoretic text of the Middle Ages reflects the text preserved in the temple in great detail and accurately records not only how the text was pronounced but also differences that existed between the major scrolls kept in the temple before its destruction.

As we have seen, the Greek New Testament does not go back to a temple text or to a single, central location. And manuscripts of the New Testament differ in their wording of the text. Sometimes these are big differences, sometimes small. Already in the late second century, the church father Irenaeus discussed the issue of some manuscripts of Revelation giving the number of the beast as 616 instead of 666. These discussions give us insight into how the problem of differences in wording was dealt with at the time. One important argument for Irenaeus was that 666 was used in the “oldest and approved” manuscripts (even though “oldest” could not mean more than 100–120 years or so). The term “approved” suggests that, already by the end of the second century, some places or some churches were in possession of manuscripts that functioned as normative. But most of these normative manuscripts have perished, either because of age or violent destruction. So what sort of manuscript do we have left?

There are about four hundred manuscripts that come from before the big transition in Greek writing from individual capital letters to a joined-up cursive script in the ninth century (majuscule script and minuscule script, respectively). The majority of these manuscripts are incomplete or even fragmentary. The three manuscripts that are often dated to the second century are all single fragments from a single page from one of the Gospels. We would need hundreds of these to form one complete book. However, we do have manuscripts that are more extensive, and from the fourth and fifth century we even have manuscripts that have a near-complete New Testament in Greek. What we learn from these manuscripts is that in the early centuries the copies were not always made very carefully, to the extent that sometimes one wonders if some of these were written from memory rather than copied from an existing master copy. What we also learn is that the vast majority of differences are easily resolved because they are obvious errors. The more difficult problems require deeper consideration.

Here it helps that we have so many manuscripts, because now we can look for the type of thing that can go wrong (and likewise the type of error that is rarely made). So it is much more common to make the wording of one Gospel similar to that of another, than to do the reverse. For example, Luke tends to abbreviate citations from the Old Testament, while Matthew gives the longer version. As a result, later manuscripts of Luke often have expanded citations that resemble the longer versions found in Matthew. The King James Version is based on such later manuscripts, so its longer wording in Luke 4:45, and 8 (compared to, for example, the ESV) is all due to influence from Matthew.

The discussions of church fathers of some of textual differences shows that most of the important differences have been talked about over the last sixteen or seventeen centuries. It also shows that the existence of such differences was never a reason to give up trust in the Scriptures.

Evaluating Variants

There seems to be a tension between God preserving his word and the existence of differences between manuscripts. How can we trust our English Bibles if they are the result of comparing the manuscripts that have, in places, a different wording of Scripture?

First, the existence of textual variants often makes little or no difference to the wider meaning of the text. For example, in Romans 1:1, there is a question whether Paul wrote “a servant of Jesus Christ” or “a servant of Christ Jesus.” If someone specializes in particular details of Paul’s language, he or she may be very much interested in solving the problem. Yet on a wider scale, say if we look at Romans 1:1–7 as a whole, the issue has no effect on our understanding of what is going on. In general, this is true of all communication. We can cope with noise in the room and still understand perfectly well what our conversation partner is saying.

Second, of all the textual variants in existence, the vast majority can be resolved with relative ease. It is clear how the error came into being and also why it managed to survive in the textual transmission.

Translating the Word of God

The final step in that long journey from the moment that God inspired his word to us reading his word is that of translation. Translation is not easy. One language (English, for example) tends to use grammar and syntax differently than Hebrew or Greek, which are also quite different languages from one another. It is good to realize that any translation has made choices as to which features of the original to represent and which to leave out. For example, it is traditional to represent the Greek name Iakobos (the Greek form of the Old Testament name Jacob) with James, and as a result we lose something of the feel of this name (Iakobos writes his letter “to the 12 tribes” [James 1:1]!).

Also on a sentence level a translator needs to make difficult choices. How we do present the focus of a sentence in Greek into English, which uses different techniques to show which part of the sentence is prominent? How do we represent the repetition of the same word but used in different shades of meaning? To what extent is the translation intended to be understood the first time of hearing, and to what extent do we expect the reader to make considerable effort to dig deeper into the text? And how do we present some of the bigger issues in the different manuscripts? Do we simply ignore them and choose one text to translate, or do we add the occasional footnote? Translations have to make difficult choices, and different translations make different choices.

How can we trust our translations if a single translation cannot give us the full glory of the original? We may fall into the trap of thinking that because we do not have all the knowledge and insight into what God exactly said, we have nothing at all.

Yet we should not be sucked into such a false opposition. It is important to distinguish carefully between two different words: being accurate and being exhaustive. For example, if we look at a map that gives us only the capital cities of each state, we can learn a lot. This map can be of great benefit in learning the lay of the land. It is accurate, but not exhaustive; there is more to tell. We need a map with more information when we are planning a car journey, also accurate but with more information. And think also of the different map we need when preparing for a long hike; a road map will not get us very far. Each of these maps is accurate, but each also gives a different level of detail.

A good translation will render the Scriptures in the original language accurately into English, and will therefore be the word of God, able to teach, to rebuke, to correct, to build the church up. But the level of detail will be different from translation to translation, and will again be different when we read Scripture in the original languages.

For almost all purposes, our translations give us all that we need to study God’s words and to meet him in his word. Yet it is good to know that many of our pastors and other scholars are also reading Scripture in Greek and Hebrew, as it helps them to understand God’s word more precisely. It is as if they are zooming in with a higher magnification and resolution. As we have seen, sometimes the circumstances prevent us from zooming in as far as we would like. This happens when there are some remaining problems in the wording of the Greek and Hebrew originals. We can see the lay of the land, but the fine detail is less clear. But again, these textual problems are mostly small, and none of them influences what Scripture teaches as a whole.

The Word About the Word

The story of how the Bible came into being is largely told in the Bible itself. Perhaps we would like to know things that are not revealed. There are limitations to our knowledge. Yet the Bible is God’s revelation that tells us in great detail about the whole of salvation history, about the coming of the Messiah and his death and resurrection, and about the great hope of glory that is revealed in the Word who became flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ. And this word is fully trustworthy.

Two Choices

You have two choices here.

1) This is a random creature, created by random processes, over vast amounts of time, requiring 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 chance genetic mutations millions of times in a row that just happen to produce systems and structures that allow this kind of air-to-water attack posture (just the mutations required for the eyesight are utterly staggering) and all for no purpose or reason—pure random chance, or,

2) This is an intelligently designed creature (eyes, wings, bone structure, feathers, talons) that is part of a greater system of life that has a transcendent purpose and meaning.

This is why secularists have to take your children from the cradle to age 20 and indoctrinate them. We were made to see the truth, and the glory of God, in the world around us.

  • Dr. James White

Is the Bible True?

By Tim Chaffey – (original source – https://answersingenesis.org/is-the-bible-true/can-we-trust-bible-true/)

Tim Chaffey holds a master of divinity degree specializing in apologetics and theology and a ThM in church history and theology from Liberty University School of Divinity. He is content manager for Answers in Genesis’ attractions division.

From archaeology to astronomy, evidence from many fields points to the veracity of God’s Word.

Though written in several genres and three languages by approximately 40 authors with various backgrounds, writing styles, and purposes, the Bible maintains a consistent message without contradicting itself. At Answers in Genesis—the parent ministry of Answers magazine—our statement of faith declares, “The 66 books of the Bible are the written Word of God. The Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout. Its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs.” Those are bold claims, but how can we be so confident?

Some people claim that the Bible is riddled with errors. Their charges against Scripture generally center on scientific and historical matters, such as the age of the earth, the origin of man, and the evidence for the flood and other major events described in the Bible.

We cannot use the scientific method to prove whether certain conversations took place, such as God instructing Noah to build an ark. Nor can we use it to demonstrate whether a historical event resulted in a spiritual truth, such as Jesus’ death on the cross paying for our sins.

But while we can’t examine all the Bible’s details by scientific or historical inquiry, we can investigate plenty of evidence that corroborates biblical details.

Evidence for Biblical Veracity

Archaeologists have located scores of buried cities located precisely where the Bible describes. Excavations have also uncovered an abundance of evidence for events and individuals mentioned in the Bible. For example, several seals (or bullae) belonging to King Hezekiah have been found, and in the past decade, another one was unearthed just 10 feet (3 cm) from a seal that may well have belonged to the prophet Isaiah, one of the king’s advisors. Furthermore, consistent with the biblical accounts, ancient war records from Assyria detail Sennacherib’s conquest of Judean cities and cryptically imply his unsuccessful siege of Jerusalem. Critics challenge the historicity of certain biblical accounts, but their arguments are often silenced by new finds.

Scientific evidence for the Genesis creation and flood accounts abound within other disciplines as well. Astronomical research on short-period comets in the solar system yields data consistent with the biblical timeline. Because they break down relatively fast, these comets cannot survive for millions, let alone billions, of years, as evolutionists imagine.

The biblical flood account is corroborated by geological evidence around the globe. The violently eroded rock surface called the “Great Unconformity,” caused by the initial rising of the floodwaters to cover the pre-flood land, is found across every continent. And only above this “Great Unconformity” do we find all the rapidly buried and preserved graveyards of megascopic fossilized animals and plants, representing the destruction of all pre-flood animals and plants outside the ark, as described in the biblical account. We find also the same rock layers spanning several continents, indicating that they were deposited on a global scale at the same time.

Anthropological investigations among ancient cultures have revealed hundreds of flood legends sharing an uncanny number of details with the biblical record. Similar legends correspond with the Bible’s account of man’s creation and fall and of Babel.

Biological research, particularly in the field of genetics, has shown that one “kind” of animal (such as the dog kind or cat kind) can never be transformed into another kind of animal over time because it does not possess any mechanism to acquire the necessary new genetic information to evolve into another kind. This observation that one kind does not change into a different kind and that variation is only produced within a kind matches Genesis 1, which repeatedly states that God made the animals as distinct kinds, to reproduce “after their kind.”

Paleontologists have uncovered dinosaur remains containing soft tissue and blood cells, which could not exist in fossils that are millions of years old, as evolutionists assume. But these finds are consistent with the biblical account of those bones being buried thousands of years ago during the flood.

Divinely Inspired

In addition to evidence from scientific disciplines, the Bible is filled with unique proofs of being inspired by the Holy Spirit. Hundreds of detailed prophecies were written centuries before the events they accurately described. For example, just as the Old Testament foretold, the Messiah Jesus was born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14) in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), as a descendant of Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3), Isaac (Genesis 17:19), and Jacob (Genesis 28:14). He was betrayed by a friend (Psalm 41:9) for 30 pieces of silver that were used to purchase the potter’s field (Zechariah 11:13). Then he was mocked and ridiculed, pierced in his hands and feet, and lots were cast for his clothing (Psalm 22:71618). He died (Daniel 9:26) as a sacrifice for our sins and was buried in a rich man’s tomb (Isaiah 53:8–10). After a short time in the grave, he lived again (Psalm 16:10Isaiah 53:10).

In addition, the central events described in Scripture—the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ—have as strong historical support as any event in ancient history.

God Cannot Lie

All these reasons and many others provide compelling evidence that the Bible is true. However, even without these supporting evidences, we should believe the Bible primarily because it is the Word of God. Since it is impossible for God to lie (Titus 1:2), the Bible must be true in all that it affirms. In fact, it is the Bible that reveals to us the proper grounding for knowledge: God made us in his image with the ability to learn about him and his world. And unless we base our thinking on the truths revealed by God, we couldn’t prove anything at all.

Significantly, the Lord Jesus Christ treated Scripture as being authoritative and without error, stating that it cannot be broken (John 10:35) and citing it frequently to correct those in error and respond to their questions (Matthew 12:1–8). Since he is the Son of God, we must follow his example.

Though historical and scientific investigations offer strong evidence of the Bible’s authenticity and reliability, they cannot prove the Bible to be true in its entirety. But the Holy Spirit, given to all believers (2 Corinthians 5:5), grants us the ability to recognize his Word (1 Corinthians 2:10–14), instilling in us a steadfast confidence that the Scriptures he inspired are true.

Is Christianity based on Pagan Mythology?

Article: Do the Gospels Borrow from Pagan Myths? by Timothy Paul Jones – original source here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/gospels-borrow-pagan-myths/

Timothy Paul Jones (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is associate vice president and C. Edwin Gheens professor of Christian family ministry at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books and serves as one of the teaching pastors at the Midtown congregation of Sojourn Community Church.

It’s an accusation that’s been around a long time. Even in ancient times, critics of Christianity noticed some parallels between Christian beliefs and pre-Christian myths. In the late second century, a pagan philosopher named Celsus charged, “The Christians have used the myths of Danae and the Melanippe, of the Auge and Antiope in fabricating this story of virgin birth!” In more recent times, skeptical scholars such as Marvin Meyer and Robert Price have claimed close connections between the resurrection of Jesus and the myths of dying and rising deities that marked many pagan myths.

In the simplest possible terms, here’s what these critics contend: The most marvelous claims in the Gospels—a miraculous birth, for example, as well as the idea of a deity who dies and rises again—are paralleled in pagan religions that predate Christianity; therefore, early Christians must have fabricated these miracles based on their knowledge of pre-Christian religions.

To be sure, there are some surface-level similarities between ancient myths and certain events in the Gospels. Long before the first century AD, the myths of Egyptians deities such as Osiris, Adonis, Attis, and Horus included tales of death and rebirth. The Persians venerated Mithras, a deity who (according to some claims) was born of a virgin and who died and then rose from the dead. Sacramental bread and the fruit of the vine make appearances in a few mystery cults as well.

So why should anyone see Jesus as being distinct from the pagan gods? Could it be that the New Testament stories of Jesus represent the fictive myth of an ancient mystery cult that’s survived for 2,000 years? Or is there something different about the accounts of Jesus’s time on earth?

When these claims are compared carefully with the New Testament Gospels, the distinction between Jesus and the supposed pagan parallels becomes quite distinct, for at least two reasons: first, the pagan parallels aren’t as parallel as the proponents claims; and second, many of the supposed parallels confuse later Christian practices with the actual affirmations in the New Testament Gospels

1. The Parallels Aren’t So Parallel

First, it’s important to be aware that most of these supposed pagan parallels aren’t nearly so parallel as the skeptics suppose. When the actual sources behind the myths are closely examined, the supposed parallels have little in common with New Testament narratives.

For example, there are dying and rising gods in some pagan myths—but these deities died and arose each year, certainly not the same pattern as Jesus’s substitutionary once-for-all sacrifice. And the pagan myths of miraculous births are closer to divine impregnation—a mortal woman conceives a child as a result of sexual relations with a god—than to the virgin conception described in Matthew and Luke.

Example: Jesus vs. Mithras

To exemplify how these supposed parallels aren’t nearly as parallel as the critics claim, let’s look at the myth of Mithras, which is often presented as a predecessor to the New Testament.

So what about Mithras’s miraculous birth?

According to some reconstructions of the ancient sources describing the Mithras’s birth, Mithras was born from solid stone, and he got stuck on the way out. Some nearby persons in a field pulled him from the stone, which left a cave behind him. Some skeptics connect this birth to the birth of Jesus in a stable with shepherds arriving soon afterward. A few even refer to Mithras’s birth as a “virgin birth.”

But referring to the rescue of Mithras from stone as a “virgin birth” seems to me a stretch.

I mean, I guess that birth from a rock is sort of a virgin birth. But how can you tell if a rock is a virgin, anyway? And how do rocks lose their virginity? Parallels of this sort are too vague and too dissimilar to support the claim that Christians borrowed their beliefs from pagans of previous generations.

James Tabor, a professor at University of North Carolina, doesn’t believe in the virgin conception of Jesus, and he denies that Jesus rose from the dead. Yet even he is able to see how radically Jesus’s birth in the Gospels differs from any supposed pagan parallels:

When you read the accounts of Mary’s unsuspected pregnancy, what is particularly notable . . . is an underlying tone of realism that runs through the narratives. These seem to be real people, living in real times and places. In contrast the birth stories in Greco-Roman literature have a decidedly legendary flavor to them. For example, in Plutarch’s account of the birth of Alexander the Great, mother Olympias got pregnant from a snake; it was announced by a bolt of lightning that sealed her womb so that her husband Philip could not have sex with her. Granted, both Matthew and Luke include dreams and visions of angels but the core story itself—that of a man who discovers that his bride-to-be is pregnant and knows he is not the father—has a realistic and thoroughly human quality to it. The narrative, despite its miraculous elements, rings true.

Let’s take a quick look at a few of the supposed parallels between Jesus and Mithras:

Supposed parallel: Mithras had 12 followers.

Significant problem: One piece of ancient artwork depicts Mithras surrounded by 12 faces, but there is no evidence these were his “disciples.” In fact, Mithras had only two companions, Aldebaran and Antares.

Supposed parallel: Mithras was identified as a lion and a lamb.

Significant problem: There is no surviving evidence for connecting Mithras to a lamb. Yes, Mithras was identified as a lion. However, that imagery for a royal ruler existed among the Israelites (Gen. 49:9) several centuries prior to the emergence of any Mithraic myth; the New Testament writers were using familiar Jewish imagery when they depicted Jesus as a lion.

Supposed parallel: Mithras initiated a meal in which the terminology of “body and blood” were used.

Significant problem: The earliest evidence of such terminology in the context of Mithraism is from the mid-second century—nearly 100 years after the Gospels were written. In this instance, it is far more likely that Mithraism borrowed from Christian practice.

Supposed parallel: Mithras sacrificed himself for the sake of others.

Significant problem: Mithras is frequently depicted in the act of sacrificing a bull—but Mithras himself never becomes the sacrifice.

Supposed parallel: Mithras rose from the dead on the third day; his followers celebrated his resurrection each year.

Significant problem: There is no surviving evidence from the pre-Christian era for a resurrection of Mithras on the third day. Because of his association with the sun, it’s possible that his followers celebrated a renewal or rebirth each year.

Supposed parallel: The resurrection of Mithras was celebrated on Sunday.

Significant problem: There is no surviving evidence from the pre-Christian era for a celebration of a resurrection on the first day of the week, though the followers of Mithras—and of other sun-related deities—did worship their gods on Sunday. The reason for the emphasis on the first day of the week in the New Testament Gospels was, however, more closely tied to the fact that, in Genesis 1, God’s work of creation began on the first day. The implication was that, through the resurrection of Jesus, God was initiating a new beginning, a re-creation of his world.

2. Claims of Parallels Confuse the NT’s Historical Claims with Later Christian Practices

What’s more, proponents of these parallels consistently conflate later Christian traditions with what’s found in the Gospels. It’s true, for example, that pagan festivals occurred around the time when Christians later celebrated Christmas—but the New Testament documents never suggest a date for Jesus’s birth.

Identifying a date to celebrate Christmas occurred centuries after the time of Jesus; Christians probably arrived at a date near the winter solstice because of an early tradition that Jesus was conceived on the same date that he died, and nine months after Passover landed the birthdate in late December. In any case, since the New Testament makes no claims regarding the date of Jesus’s birth, the celebration of Christmas is irrelevant when it comes to discussing whether the New Testament description of Jesus’s birth is rooted in real historical events.

The same holds true when it comes to connections between pagan fertility festivals and later Easter celebrations. The term “Easter” comes from “Ishtar,” a Sumerian goddess who died, rose, and ascended, and several familiar Easter motifs originated in pagan fertility cults. Yet, except for a King James Version mistranslation in Acts 12:4, no New Testament text even mentions Easter. The pagan roots of later Easter imagery have nothing to do with the historicity of the Gospels.

Likewise, later Christian art incorporated both Egyptian and Mithraic motifs, especially when depicting Jesus and his mother. Yet later depictions of pagan myths in Christian art has nothing to do with whether New Testament events actually occurred. It simply means that Christian artists could be a bit more creative when choosing sources for their inspiration.

What If Pagan Parallels Do Exist?

Let’s suppose for a moment, though, that some patterns present in the life of Jesus couldbe pinpointed in some previous religion. Would this weaken the historical foundations of the Christian faith?

Not necessarily.

The real question isn’t, Are there similarities between the New Testament’s descriptions of Jesus and some previous pagan myths? Perhaps there are—although I must admit that every ancient parallel I’ve examined has turned out to be vague and weak when seen in its original context.

Every ancient parallel I’ve examined has turned out to be vague and weak when seen in its original context.

The crucial question is, Did the events described in the New Testament actually occur? The answer doesn’t depend on parallels in pagan practices.

Parallels in other ancient religions neither prove nor disprove the authenticity of the New Testament documents. They simply demonstrate the common expectations of people in the first century AD. Even if some clear parallel did exist between the story of Jesus and previous religious expectations, this wouldn’t warrant the belief that the apostle Paul or the Gospel authors “borrowed” the tenets from other faiths.

It would mean that, when God dropped in on the human race, he chose to reveal himself in ways the people in that particular culture could comprehend. If that’s indeed the case, it would merely mean that the myths of dying gods and miraculous births are rooted in longings that run deeper than human imagination; although the pagan religions twisted and distorted these motifs, they’re rooted in a God-given yearning for redemption through sacrifice that makes the world right and new. C. S. Lewis addressed this possibility:

In the New Testament, the thing really happens. The Dying God really appears—as a historical Person, living in a definite place and time. . . . The old myth of the Dying God . . . comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We must not be nervous about “parallels” [in other religions] . . . They ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.

Not a Borrowed Religion

When it comes to parallels between the New Testament story of Jesus and the myths of pagan gods, the supposed connections aren’t sufficiently parallel to claim that Christian faith is borrowed. Even if some parallels were indisputable, that would merely mean God worked out his plan in a manner that matched the context within which “the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us” (John 1:18).

So what should you do the next time someone pulls out a pagan parallel?

1. Locate the primary source.

With the rarest of exceptions, the primary sources—that is to say, the actual ancient texts that describe the pagan practices—don’t include any real parallels to the New Testament.

2. Determine whether the supposed parallel precedes or succeeds the New Testament.

Every text in the New Testament was in circulation no later than the late first century AD. If the pagan parallel is from a text written later than the first century AD, the New Testament writers obviously couldn’t have borrowed from it.

3. Determine whether the supposed parallel connects to the New Testament—or to later Christian traditions.

Connections between pagan practices and later patterns in Christian worship or holiday celebrations may be interesting—but these links have nothing to do with whether New Testament accounts of the life of Jesus are historically accurate.