FAHOW Study Notes: The Historicity of HIM | Pastor Trey Townsley

HIM: The Historicity of HIM

The claims of Jesus are grand to say the least. From the claim to hold ultimate authority, to raising Himself from the power of death, to being God incarnate can seem, at a glance, unbelievable to most people.

One of the most foundational elements of belief on Jesus as the Son of God is the belief in Jesus as a real, historical figure.

If fictional:

me to be my own god)

One cannot follow in His footsteps because He never walked our path (This does the same as before and removes the standard of Hebrews 4:15)

Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

2 major thought processes against the historicity of Jesus

Jesus never existed
The Jesus we know of today was mythologized. He was a regular man whose legend grew over time.

Perpetrators say:

He can’t be real because He resembles so many stories of ancient examples of ‘saviors’ who came before Him. (Osiris, Horus, Mithras, etc.)

Prior to his election, he had been a boat captain. He was related to a U.S. Senator, Attorney General, ambassador to Great Britain, and the mayor of Boston.
He was elected to Congress in ’47 and was the vice-presidential runner-up in ’56.
He was elected President in ’60.
He was in his thirties when he was president; his wife was a socially prominent twenty-four year old girl at the time of their marriage. She spoke French fluently.
While living in the White House, his wife suffered the loss of a child. His family consisted of three children.
As president, he was deeply involved in civil rights for African Americans.
He was assassinated and shot in the back of the head, on the Friday before a major holiday, while seated beside his wife (she was not injured).
On the day of his assassination, a staffer told him not to go to the event where he was murdered.

Following the assassination, there were insistent claims that the fatal shot must have come from a different direction.

This assassin was murdered before he could be brought to trial; he was killed by a shooter who used a Colt revolver and fired only one, fatal shot.
After the assassination, he was eventually succeeded by a vice-president who was a southern democrat (and former senator) named Johnson.
Do the similarities of Abraham Lincoln mean John F. Kennedy did not exist? Of course not.

The bible is biased, circular, unreliable as a biographical source and there is no evidence of Jesus outside of it.

Rebuttal

Apostle Paul (c. 5-67 A.D.) Formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, he was a Jewish Pharisee who, by his own admission, wreaked havoc on the church and attempted to dismantle it
Galatians 1:13 For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it.
Flavius Josephus (37-101 A.D.) was a Jewish historian who lived during the lifetime of eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry. He was not a believer of Jesus’ teachings.
“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.” – Antiquities, Book 18, chapter 3

Publius Cornelius Tacitus (c. 56-120 A.D.) was a Roman politician and historian who was not sympathetic followers of Jesus. He called their belief a ‘superstition’ and ‘evil’.
“Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre [sic] and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.” – The Annals, Book 15
Circular reasoning: “I believe the bible is the word of

God because it says it is”

Evidential-based reasoning: “I believe the bible is the word of God because it contains over 2000 prophecies that have already been fulfilled, with over 300 of them related to Jesus as Messiah.”
We must also remember that the bible was not written as one document, but many that were brought together in one binding

Luke 1:1-4 Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.
The New Testament has a wealth of ancient manuscript evidence compared to other classical works, with over 5,800 Greek manuscripts and over 24,000 in all languages, far exceeding the hundreds or few copies for works by Homer, Plato, or Tacitus. NT fragments date as early as AD 125–130, providing a much shorter time gap between composition and the earliest copy than most, which typically range from 500 to 1,000+ years

***Credit to Kevin Simington of smartfaith.net***

***Credit to J. Warner Wallace of coldcasechristianity.com***

FAHOW Study Notes