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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Lee Strobel
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October 24 - November 4, 2017
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things
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He pointed to a sentence in the book. “For instance, the first line says, ‘About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man.’ That phrase is not normally used of Jesus by Christians, so it seems authentic for Josephus. But the next phrase says, ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man.’ This implies Jesus was more than human, which appears to be an interpolation.”
“It goes on to say, ‘For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks.’ That seems to be quite in accord with the vocabulary Josephus uses elsewhere, and it’s generally considered authentic.
So Paul’s letters are an important witness to the deity of Christ—he calls Jesus ‘the Son of God’ and ‘the image of God.’ ”
“I have to say that all this corroboration by Paul is of the utmost importance. And we have other early letters by the eyewitnesses James and Peter, too. James, for instance, has recollections of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.”
Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch in Syria, was martyred during the reign of Trajan before A.D. 117. “What is significant about Ignatius,” said Yamauchi, “is that he emphasized both the deity of Jesus and the humanity of Jesus, as against the docetic heresy, which denied that Jesus was really human. He also stressed the historical underpinnings of Christianity; he wrote in one letter, on his way to being executed, that Jesus was truly persecuted under Pilate, was truly crucified, was truly raised from the dead, and that those who believe in him would be raised, too.”14 Put all this
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“Archaeology has made some important contributions,” he began, speaking in a drawl he picked up as a child in southeastern Oklahoma, “but it certainly can’t prove whether the New Testament is the Word of God. If we dig in Israel and find ancient sites that are consistent with where the Bible said we’d find them, that shows that its history and geography are accurate. However, it doesn’t confirm that what Jesus Christ said is right. Spiritual truths cannot be proved or disproved by archaeological discoveries.”
As an analogy, he offered the story of Heinrich Schliemann, who searched for Troy in an effort to prove the historical accuracy of Homer’s Iliad. “He did find Troy,” McRay observed with a gentle smile, “but that didn’t prove the Iliad was true. It was merely accurate in a particular geographical reference.”
“The general consensus of both liberal and conservative scholars is that Luke is very accurate as a historian,”
“He’s erudite, he’s eloquent, his Greek approaches classical quality, he writes as an educated man, and archaeological discoveries are showing over and over again that
Luke is accurate in what he h...
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“For example, John 5:1–15 records how Jesus healed an invalid by the Pool of Bethesda. John provides the detail that the pool had five porticoes. For a long time people cited this as an example of John being inaccurate, because no such place had been found. “But more recently the Pool of Bethesda has been excavated—it lies maybe forty feet below ground—and sure enough, there were five porticoes, which means colonnaded porches or walkways, exactly as John had described.
Mary and Joseph were required by a census to return to Joseph’s hometown of Bethlehem. “Let me be blunt: this seems absurd on the face of it,” I said. “How could the government possibly force all its citizens to return to their birthplace? Is there any archaeological evidence whatsoever that this kind of census ever took place?” McRay calmly pulled out a copy of his book. “Actually, the discovery of ancient census forms has shed quite a bit of light on this practice,” he said as he leafed through the pages. Finding the reference he was searching for, he quoted from an official governmental
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Seeing that the time has come for the house to house census, it is necessary to compel all those who for any cause whatsoever are residing out of their provinces to return to their own homes, that they may both carry out the regular order of the census and may also attend diligently to the cultivation of their allotments.
“As you can see,” he said as he closed the book, “that practice is confirmed by this document, even though this particular manner of counting people might seem odd to you. And another papyrus, this one from A.D. 48, indicates that the entire family was involved in the census.”
Archaeologists have found a list in Aramaic describing the twenty-four ‘courses,’ or families, of priests who were relocated, and one of them was registered as having been moved to Nazareth. That shows that this tiny village must have been there at the time.”
“From the tombs . . . it can be concluded that Nazareth was a strongly Jewish settlement in the Roman period.”
McRay looked up at me. “There has been discussion about the location of some sites from the first century, such as exactly where Jesus’ tomb is situated, but among archaeologists there has never really been a big doubt about the location of Nazareth. The burden of proof ought to be on those who dispute its existence.”
citing pre-Christian remains found in 1955 under the Church of the Annunciation in present-day Nazareth, has managed to concede, “Such findings suggest that Nazareth may have existed in Jesus’ time, but there is no doubt that it must have been a very small and insignificant place.”
So insignificant that Nathanael’s musings in John 1:46 now make more sense: “Nazareth!” he said. “Can anything good come from there?”
The gospel of Matthew paints a grisly scene: Herod the Great, the king of Judea, feeling threatened by the birth of a baby who he feared would eventually seize his throne, dispatches his troops to murder all the children under the age of two in Bethlehem.
Warned by an angel, however, Joseph escapes to Egypt with Mary and Jesus. Only after Herod dies do they return to settle in Nazareth, the entire episode having fulfilled three ancient prophecies about the Messiah.
“you have to put yourself back in the first century and keep a few things in mind. First, Bethlehem was probably no bigger than Nazareth, so how many babies of that age would there be in a village of five hundred or six hundred people? Not thousands, not hundreds, although certainly a few. “Second, Herod the Great was a bloodthirsty king: he killed members of his own family; he executed lots of people who he thought might challenge him. So the fact that he killed some babies in Bethlehem is not going to captivate the attention of people in the Roman world.
“A madman killing everybody who seems to be a potential threat to him—that was business as usual for Herod. Later, of course, as Christianity developed, this incident became more important, but I would have been surprised if this had made a big splash back then.”
Jesus has twelve disciples, yet notice that he’s not one of the Twelve.”
“If the Twelve represent a renewed Israel, where does Jesus fit in?” he asked. “He’s not just part of Israel, not merely part of the redeemed group, he’s forming the group—just as God in the Old Testament formed his people and set up the twelve tribes of Israel. That’s a clue about what Jesus thought of himself.”
Witherington went on to describe a clue that can be found in Jesus’ relationship with John the Baptist. “Jesus says, ‘Of all people born of woman, John is the greatest man on earth.’ Having said that, he then goes even further in his ministry than the Baptist did—by doing miracles, for example.
“Jesus says, ‘If I, by the finger of God, cast out demons, then you will know that the kingdom of God has come upon you.’ He’s not like other miracle workers who do amazing things and then life proceeds as it always has. No—to Jesus, his miracles are a sign indicating the coming of the kingdom of God. They are a foretaste of what the kingdom is going to be like. And that sets Jesus apart.”
“Jesus sees his miracles as bringing about something unprecedented—the coming of God’s dominion,” replied Witherington. “He doesn’t merely see himself as a worker of miracles; he sees himself as the one in whom and through whom the promises of God come to pass. And that’s a not-too-thinly-veiled claim of transcendence.”
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. . . . The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
“Who do you say I am?” Peter replied with clarity, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus affirmed Peter for his observation. “Blessed are you,” he said, “for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.” (See Matt. 16:15–17.)
“For instance, I don’t think it’s accidental that his ministry does not begin in earnest until after his baptism, when he hears the voice saying, ‘You are my Son, with whom I am well pleased.’
“What did he think his mission was?” “He saw his job as coming to free the people of God, so his mission was directed to Israel.”
“Did Jesus believe he was the Son of God, the anointed one of God? The answer is yes. Did he see himself as the Son of Man? The answer is yes. Did he see himself as the final Messiah? Yes, that’s the way he viewed himself. Did he believe that anybody less than God could save the world? No, I don’t believe he did.
“Jesus said in Mark 10:45, ‘I did not come to be served but to serve and give my life as a ransom in place of the many.’
‘I and the Father are one.’ In other words, ‘I have the authority to speak for the Father; I have the power to act for the Father; if you reject me, you’ve rejected the Father.’
“We have to ask, Why is there no other first-century Jew who has millions of followers today? Why isn’t there a John the Baptist movement? Why, of all first-century figures, including the Roman emperors, is Jesus still worshiped today, while the others have crumbled into the dust of history? “It’s because this Jesus—the historical Jesus—is also the living Lord. That’s why. It’s because he’s still around, while the others are long gone.”
With a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Toronto and a doctorate in clinical psychology from Purdue University, Collins has been studying, teaching, and writing about human behavior for thirty-five years. He was a professor of psychology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for two decades, most of that time as chairman of its psychology division.
A live wire with boundless energy and enthusiasm, Collins is a prolific author. He has written nearly 150 articles for journals and other periodicals and currently is editor of Christian Counseling Today and contributing editor of the Journal of Psychology and Theology.
“All in all, I just don’t see signs that Jesus was suffering from any known mental illness,”
D. A. Carson, a research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, has written or edited more than forty books, including The Sermon on the Mount; Exegetical Fallacies; The Gospel According to John;
and his award-winning The Gagging of God.
“So along comes Jesus and says to sinners, ‘I forgive you.’ The Jews immediately recognize the blasphemy of this. They react by saying, ‘Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ To my mind, that is one of the most striking things Jesus did.”
“Not only did Jesus forgive sin,” I observed, “but he asserted that he himself was without sin. And certainly sinlessness is an attribute of deity.”
First, I asked Lapides whether it’s possible that Jesus merely fulfilled the prophecies by accident. Maybe he’s just one of many throughout history who have coincidentally fit the prophetic fingerprint. “Not a chance,” came his response. “The odds are so astronomical that they rule that out. Someone did the math and figured out that the probability of just eight prophecies being fulfilled is one chance in one hundred million billion. That number is millions of times greater than the total number of people who’ve ever walked the planet!
“The odds alone say it would be impossible for anyone to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies,” Lapides concluded. “Yet Jesus—and only Jesus throughout all of history—managed to do it.”
Besides, he added, why would Matthew have fabricated fulfilled prophecies and then willingly allowed himself to be put to death for following someone who he secretly knew was really not the Messiah? That wouldn’t make any sense.
He leaned forward to deliver the clincher: “That puts the anticipated appearance of the Messiah at the exact moment in history when Jesus showed up,” he said. “Certainly that’s nothing he could have prearranged.”
The idea that Jesus never really died on the cross can be found in the Koran,
