If there is a God who created the universe we should expect to find historical evidence of his ongoing intervention in our world. This episode examines literary and archaeological evidence which substantiates the testimony of the Bible’s historical account.
VIDEO & AUDIO LINKS
VIDEO: EPISODE 16, HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
AUDIO PODCAST: EPISODE 16, HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Episode 16 of Evidence For Belief, a series which examines the evidence for the existence of God. We are now going to investigate the historical evidence that supports the teaching of the Christian Bible about God and about Jesus in particular.
Let me start by asking, is there any historical evidence of the intervention of the Christian God in human history? After all, if God exists you would hope and expect that he hasn’t just created our world, set it in motion like a wind-up clock, then departed for an extended holiday, leaving us to our own devices. One would hope that the God who went to the trouble of creating our world isn’t some absentee landlord who doesn’t care what goes on here after he has opened the front door and given us the keys. So, is there any historical evidence of God’s intervention in the world?
Yes! Absolutely! The Christian Bible is replete with accounts of God’s regular intervention throughout human history, often involving extraordinary miracles. These range from miracles at the personal level such as healings of various diseases, to spectacular miracles at the national and global level; the parting of the red sea, the great flood, city walls miraculously collapsing, a river turning to blood, pillars of cloud and fire that led a nation through the desert, voices from thunderstorms, and dozens more examples. In fact, the Bible is positively brimming with accounts of God’s extraordinary interventions in human history.
“But that doesn’t count!” I hear you say. “The Bible is a religious book!” Of course it’s a religious book! That’s because it provides accounts of God’s intervention in the world, which is EXACTLY what sceptics are asking for.
Can you see the circular contradiction that is operating here? Sceptics ask for historical, documented evidence of God’s intervention in the world, but when it is presented to them in the Bible, they dismiss it because it is written by people who have come to believe in God because of his intervention in the world!
In other words, the problem with these accounts in the Bible is that they are in the Bible. What I mean is that many people immediately dismiss the Bible as a fanciful fairy story written by religious fanatics and tend not to regard it as a reliable historical record.
In this episode, therefore, I’ll present some evidence as to why the Bible should, at the very least, be regarded as a reliable historical document.
THE BIBLE AS A RELIABLE HISTORICAL DOCUMENT
I am going to examine 3 key points:
- The Bible Was Largely Written By Converted Unbelievers
- It Has Significant Archaeological Corroboration
- There Is Significant Extra-Biblical Literary Corroboration, particularly for the Life of Jesus.
So Let’s look at the first of those…
The Bible Was Written By Converted Unbelievers
What I find utterly compelling about the Bible is that it is almost entirely written by people who started out not knowing God or not believing in him, but who became convinced of his existence because of their dramatic encounters with God. So, to the sceptic, I would say, “the Bible is written by people who started out just like you, and that’s what makes it so convincing.”
The first part of the Bible, the Old Testament, is the story of an ancient nation (Israelites) whose founders and Patriarchs were called out of a highly paganistic world of idol worship, human sacrifice and superstitious worship of a plethora of gods. And gradually, over time, they were taught to trust and follow the true God.
It’s not a very successful story, however, because each new generation of Israelites tended to drift away from God and even stop believing in him and return to their previous pagan practices, needing to be convinced all over again of God’s reality.
It is a continual story of God repeatedly revealing himself in dramatic, sometimes miraculous ways, in order to convince a new generation of sceptics and apostates. It is this brutal honesty of the Old Testament that makes it so convincing. If you were making up a story about God, you would surely be much more likely to craft a story that depicted people who followed their God devotedly and were rewarded for their faithfulness.
The New Testament is even more impressive. Many of the writers of the New Testament wrote from a position of having once been sceptics (particularly of the resurrection of Christ) but eventually became utterly convinced.
The Apostle Paul, for example, started out arresting the followers of Christ and putting them to death but was eventually converted when he had a dramatic encounter with the risen Jesus for himself. Paul’s scepticism was so radically overturned by this encounter with Jesus that he became arguably the most prolific church planter in Christian history and ended up writing 14 of the 27 books of the New Testament.
Even the Apostles Matthew, Peter and John, who between them wrote two of the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus and six other New Testament books, were originally sceptical about the resurrection of Jesus and had to be convinced before they acknowledged its truth and came to believe in his divinity.
That amounts to a total of 22 out 27 books of the New Testament that were written by people who were quite slow to be convinced. So my point is that the Bible is a book largely written by sceptics who eventually had their scepticism overturned by their dramatic personal encounters with God.
Let’s now look at the second point …
The Bible Has Significant Archaeological Corroboration
And I’ll deal with the OLD TESTAMENT first.
The Old Testament is the part of the Bible that describes the thousands of years prior to Jesus; so we are talking about the very distant past. The corroborating evidence for the Old Testament is therefore fairly limited, and that’s simply because it’s so long ago that very few literary works and artifacts have survived through to the present day. And this is true for ANY historical events from way back then.
Occasionally, however, historians and archaeologists uncover a document or an artefact that confirms a part of the Bible’s story.
For example, the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, mentions a group of people called the Hittites several times, a nation of people who lived in cities near Canaan. But for a long time the Hittites were unknown outside of the Bible; there were no references to them in any other literature from antiquity. So secular historians claimed that this was an example of the Bible’s fanciful nature. The writers of the Bible were just making stuff up!
However, in 1906, a Hittite city was uncovered east of Ankara, Turkey, along with manuscripts that provided detailed descriptions of Hittite culture. And the city was dated to the time period that fitted perfectly with the biblical narrative. So, with that one discovery, decades of scepticism was overturned and the Biblical account was verified.
Also earlier last century, secular historians were adamant that Moses could not have written the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Old Testament – because Moses lived around 1500 BC and the earliest recorded written language was 1100 BC. This was a big criticism of the Bible by secular historians who claimed that the writing of these books by Moses in 1500 BC and the recording of the events of that time was just another example of the completely fanciful nature of the Bible – because there simply was no written language back then.
Historians also stated that the city of Ebla, mentioned in the Old Testament, didn’t exist because no reference to it had ever been found in other ancient writings.
But then in 1964, the ancient city of Ebla was discovered by archaeologists at an excavation site in modern day Syria and it was dated at 2300 BC – 800 years earlier than Moses.
Even more extraordinary was that they uncovered 11,000 clay tablets showing a completely developed written language! Furthermore, the writings in this pagan city – and this is important, bear in mind that this is a pagan city – they contained references to the miracles of the Hebrew God, as well as references to Ishmael, to Jerusalem and Sodom and Gomorrah.
Moving from the Old Testament to the New Testament, which is the story of Jesus and the early church, there is also significant archaeological corroboration.
Places frequented by Jesus, where he preached and supposedly worked miracles, have been uncovered by archaeological digs and verified by other historical documents.
For instance, The Pool of Siloam is mentioned in the Gospels as a place in Jerusalem where Jesus healed a man. But the pool had never been found by any archaeological dig and there was NO reference to it in any other writings from history. So for a very long time, sceptics claimed that this was evidence that the New Testament is simply a collection of myths – that the events described in it didn’t really happen.
But then in 2004 the pool of Siloam was discovered by archaeologists right where the Bible said it was supposed to be. The archaeologists just had to dig a bit deeper. And once again the narrative of the Bible was confirmed and the sceptics were silenced.
Now these few examples are just the tip of the iceberg – There are literally hundreds of similar examples – where secular critics claimed that something in the Bible was fanciful, only to have their criticism overturned by subsequent archaeological discoveries which validated the Biblical account.
In his work, Biblical Archaeology: Factual Evidence to Support the Historicity of the Bible, Dr Paul L. Maier writes,
“Ever since scientific archaeology started a century and a half ago, the consistent pattern has been this: the hard evidence from the ground has borne out the biblical record again and again — and again. The Bible has nothing to fear from the spade.” [1]
Dr Maier goes on to cite hundreds more examples of archaeological discoveries which have verified the historical claims of the Bible: references to people, places or things which were once regarded as fictitious by sceptics, have since been verified by archaeological digs or the discovery of corroborating historical documents.
In fact there has never been an archaeological discovery that has CONTRADICTED something in the Bible. NEVER!
But I want to now move on to the third and most important point:
There Is Significant Extra-Biblical Literary Corroboration for the Life of Jesus.
I occasionally encounter someone who believes that Jesus never existed. Indeed, among the sceptic community there is a strong push to discredit the biblical narrative about Jesus as merely superstitious ancient myth. For example, the noted atheist, Richard Dawkins, argued this for a period of time, until he was corrected by historians.
The claim that Jesus never existed is an absurd position to hold that completely overlooks the considerable weight of historical evidence. In my experience, the only people who hold this view are those who have no historical training and have not bothered to examine the evidence.
The life of Jesus as a real person in history is substantiated by an impressive array of documents and writers from antiquity, quite separate from the Bible. These were people who wrote about Jesus and were NOT Christians; they were Greeks, Romans, Syrians and Jews who lived at the time of Jesus or very soon after and who referred to him as a real person.
Flavius Josephus (37 – 100 AD) in his book, Antiquities of the Jews mentions Jesus twice, and although several statements in one of these passages are believed to be later interpolations by Christian copyists, the scholarly reconstruction of this quote, removing those possible interpolations, is nonetheless significant:
“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise 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. 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. And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.” (Antiquities 18.3.3)
A second passage by Josephus in the same book refers to “Jesus who was called Christ” and also mentions James, the brother of Jesus.
Cornelius Tacitus (56 – 120 AD) was a Roman Senator and a highly regarded historian. In his work, The Annals of Imperial Rome, he refers to Jesus and the persecution of Christians under Emperor Nero (Annals 15.44).
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (69 – 122 AD), another prominent Roman historian, mentions Jesus and the early Christians in his work “The Twelve Caesars” (Claudius 25.4)
Pliny the Younger (61 – 113 AD) a Roman governor and writer, mentions the followers of Jesus in a letter to Emperor Trajan (Letters 10.96).
Mara Bar-Serapion (1st Century AD) was a Syrian philosopher who wrote a letter to his son, which includes a reference to Jesus.
The Babylonian Talmud, which began to be written at the time of Jesus, mentions him in several places, including this passage describing his crucifixion:
“On the eve of the Passover Yeshu (that’s the Hebrew names for Jesus) was hanged (which was the colloquial expression for crucifixion, because the victims literally hung from the nails in their hands and feet). Before the execution took place, a herald cried, ‘He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy…’ (Sanhedrin 43a)
I’ll talk more about that reference in the next Episode, but the reference to Jesus practising sorcery is a clear reference to his miracles.
Thallus (1st Century AD) was a Greek historian who wrote a history of the Eastern Mediterranean world after the Trojan War. He described the crucifixion of Jesus and the supernatural darkness that covered the whole land as the event unfolded (quoted by Julis Africanus).
Phlegon of Tralles (2nd Century AD), a Greek historian, also references the supernatural darkness at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion (via Origen’s Contra Celsum and Julius Africanus).
Despite the fact that these writers were not followers of Jesus – in fact most of them were openly hostile toward him – they are united in their affirmation that Jesus was a real historical figure who attracted a large following and who was ultimately crucified.
And those are just a few examples. Historian, Dr Gary Habermas, cites a total of 39 sources outside the Bible that verify the life of Jesus!
However, despite such clear and overwhelming historical corroboration, the uninformed view that Jesus never even existed persists among some sceptics.
It’s in response to this naive position that respected historian and professed atheist, Dr Neil Carter, wrote in a blog:
“I can’t believe I’m feeling the need to do this, but today I’d like to write a brief defence of the historicity of Jesus. When people in the sceptic community argue that Jesus never existed, they are dismissing a large body of work for which they have insufficient appreciation, most often due to the fact that they themselves have never formally studied the subject.”
Dr. Bart Ehrman is another respected historian and a professed agnostic (uncertain whether God exists). Several years ago he was interviewed by “The Atheist Guy” on “Atheist Radio” (an internet radio station whose sole aim is to discredit Christianity)[i]. Here is a transcript of part of that interview:
Atheist Guy: Do you believe that Jesus actually existed?
Dr. Ehrman: Yes. There is no serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus. There are a lot of people who want to write sensational books claiming that Jesus didn’t exist, but I don’t know any serious scholar who doubts the existence of Jesus.
Atheist Guy: But there are historians who disagree with you, aren’t there?
Dr. Ehrman: None that I’ve ever heard of. Not serious historians. I know thousands of scholars of the ancient world and I don’t know any one of these scholars who disagree.
So, in summary, in this Episode we have seen that archaeology has consistently shown the Bible to be a reliable historical document and, more particularly, 1st century literary evidence has corroborated Jesus as a real person in history. I hope you are now convinced of that, if you weren’t already. You simply can’t dismiss Jesus as a mythological figure.
Of course, it is one thing to concede that Jesus existed as a real person in history, it is quite another to accept the accounts of his miracles. And it’s the miracles of Jesus, and his resurrection in particular, which are the sticking point for many people. Examining the evidence for his miracles and for the resurrection is the topic of the next Episode.
For more information, you can check out my books which are available from my website, smartfaith.net, where you can also subscribe to my weekly blog.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Paul L. Maier, “Biblical Archaeology: Factual Evidence to Support the Historicity of the Bible”, Christian Research Journal, volume 27, number 2 (2004)
[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9CC7qNZkOE