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IS CHRISTIANITY A FRAUD?

WAS JESUS A FALSE PAGAN MESSIAH? DID PAGAN RELIGIONS INFLUENCE THE NEW TESTAMENT’S TEACHINGS? IS JUDAISM TRUE AND CHRISTIANITY FALSE?

A Preliminary Assessment of the Conder Thesis

third edition

                                                   By Eric V. Snow

                                    AUTHOR'S PREFACE/ABSTRACT

         This essay defends the New Testament as historically accurate, as not being dependent for its doctrinal content on pagan religions and philosophy, and as having properly used the messianic texts of the Old Testament. It attacks Darrell Conder's Mystery Babylon and the Ten Lost Tribes in the End Time, which advocates conversion to some type of Judaism. This document was originally in WordPerfect 5.1 format for Windows 3.1, with elite (12 point) type and six lines of text per vertical inch, with footnotes. I wish to thank John Wheeler, a Global Church of God laymember who can read Hebrew, for his assistance on interpreting the messianic prophecies.

                                             TABLE OF CONTENTS

         Using the Ideas of Higher Critics and Jews, Conder's Ideas

              Aren't New........................................................................................2

         Conder's Views of the Old Testament Opens the Doors to Deism or

              Agnosticism......................................................................................2

         The Book of Daniel Attacked?!..............................................................3

         1. THE HISTORICITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT DEFENDED........5

         The Bibliographical Test as Applied to the New Testament..................6

         How Can You Know If the New Testament is a First-Century

              Document.........................................................................................7

         Scholars Move Away from a Second-Century Date for the NT..............8

         How People in Cultures More Dependent on Oral Tradition Have

              Better Memories...............................................................................8

         How the Book of Acts Implies the NT was written before c. 63 A.D......9

         The NT Wasn't Subject to a Long Period of Oral Tradition..................10 

         The NT Has a Shorter Gap Between Its Original Writing and

              Oldest Extant Copies......................................................................11

         Some Problems with Form Criticism, which Conder Implicitly Uses....12

         The NT's Eyewitness Testimony Undermines Form Criticism.............13

         Why Should This Eyewitness Evidence Be Believed...........................14 

         Ancient People Knew the Difference Between Truth and Fables........15 

         The Battle Between the Received and Critical Texts of the NT..........16          Textual Criticism Can Eliminate Most NT Variants..............................18

         The Average People of Judea Could Have Know Greek.....................19

         The New Testament Was Not Written in a Highly Scholarly Greek.....22

         How Can Anyone Be Certain that the Right Books Are in the NT?.....23 

         Was the Canon Determined from the Top-Down by the Catholic

              Church's Hierarchy?.......................................................................25

         The Nature of the Sunday-Keeping Church Before C. 313 A.D.

              Reconsidered..................................................................................26

         How Other Historical Information Confirms the New Testament.........29

         The Reliability of Luke as a Historian..................................................30

         The Date of Christ's Birth and the Census by Quirinius.......................31

         Such Roman Censuses Not Absurd....................................................33

         Early Pagan Sources Which Refer to Jesus........................................33

         Josephus as Independent Testimony for the NT and Jesus's Life.......35 

         Conder's Reconstruction of Jesus' Trial Reconsidered.......................37

         The Romans' Indifference to Doctrinal Disputes Among the Jews......38

         Conder's Use of the Argument from Silence........................................40

         Conder's Use of an Ancient Jewish Slander: Jesus Ben Panthera....42

         The Internal Evidence Test: Does the NT Contradict Itself?...............43

         Does an Addition or Subtraction of Detail Create a

              "Contradiction"?..............................................................................43

         Supposed New Testament "Contradictions" Briefly Examined............45

         Conder V. Stephen: What Is the Verdict?...........................................46

         Did Matthew Misquote Zechariah?......................................................49

         Do Certain Messianic Prophecies Contradict the New Testament?....50

         How Does God Reconcile Justice and Mercy Concerning His Law?..51

         How Did Judas Iscariot Die?................................................................52

         Are the Genealogies of Christ in Luke and Matthew Contradictory

              or False?.........................................................................................54

         Was God's Curse Against Jeconiah Lifted?.........................................56

         The Great Trilemma--Jesus Christ: Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?.................57

         The Problems of the Empty Tomb and the Resurrection.....................59

         Why Denying the Tomb Was Empty Is Implausible.............................61

         Were the Resurrection Appearances Hallucinations?.........................63

         Did the Disciples Steal the Body?........................................................64

         The Swoon Theory Weighed and Found Wanting...............................66

         How Is the Transformed Behavior of the Disciples to be

              Explained Otherwise?.....................................................................67

         Conder's Attacks on the NT's Reliability Faulty...................................68

         2. CHARGES THAT PAGANISM INFLUENCED EARLY CHRISTIANITY MADE BY

              UNINFORMED...............................................................................69

         Ignoring Chronology in Order to Say Mithraism Influenced Early

              Christianity......................................................................................70

         Ignoring Chronology to "Prove" Christianity's Dependence on

              the Mysteries..................................................................................72

         The Need to be Specific When Comparing Between Christianity

              and Paganism.................................................................................73

         Was the Taurobolium, a Pagan Rite, a Source of Christian

              Doctrine?........................................................................................74

         Surface Similarities Do Not Prove Dependence..................................76

         Some Standard Differences Between Most Mystery Religions and

              Christianity......................................................................................77

         The Fundamental Differences Between Pagan and Christian Miracle

              Accounts.........................................................................................78

         The Unreliable Nature of the Miracles Attributed to Buddha...............80

         Is the Christian Passover Pagan?.......................................................81

         Were Mithraism or Dionystic Rituals the Source of the

              Christian Passover?........................................................................83

         Did the Pagans Have Savior-Gods Who Died as Jesus Did?..............84

         How the Death of Dionysus Was Different from Jesus'.......................85

         How Prometheus's Sufferings Were Different from Jesus' Death........87

         Specifically How Jesus' Death Differed from the Pagan

              Gods' Deaths Summarized.............................................................88

         Frazer's Thesis Ties the Vegetation Cycle to the Pagan Gods'

              Deaths and "Resurrections"...........................................................90

         Did the Dying Savior/Sun-Gods Really Rise from the Dead?..............91

         Reasons for Faith: Are the Parallels to Paganism Necessarily

              So Problematic?.............................................................................93

         Did Platonism or Hellenistic Philosophy Influence First-

              Century Christianity?......................................................................96

         Did Gnosticism Influence First-Century Christianity?...........................99

         Christianity Did Not Depend on Pagan Religions for Its

              Doctrines: A Summary.................................................................101

         3. THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT AS QUOTED IN THE

              NEW: WERE THEY TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT?.....................102

         What Is the Foundation of Our Faith in the New Testament?............102

         What Types Are, and How They Differ from Direct Predictive

              Prophecy.......................................................................................104

         The Suggestive Type Found in Abraham's Near Sacrifice of

              Isaac on the Altar..........................................................................105

         Conder on Micah 5:2--OT Prophets Can Suddenly Change Subjects

              and Times Without Warning.........................................................106

         Does Micah 5:2 Have to Refer to a Family/Clan Instead of a

              Specific Place?.............................................................................107

         David as a Type (Forerunner) of Christ in Psalm 22.........................108

         Was "They Pierced My Hands and My Feet" in the Original

              Hebrew?.......................................................................................110

         Zechariah 12:10--Will End-Time Jews Look Upon the God They

              Pierced?.......................................................................................111

         Isaiah 7:14--Does It Refer to Jesus' Birth?........................................112

         Isaiah 9:6--The Messiah is Born and Called "Mighty God"................114

         Just Who Is the "Servant" In Isaiah? Jesus or Israel?......................116

         The Suffering Servant of Isaiah 52-53 Points to an Individual,

              Not Israel......................................................................................118

         The Mournful and Conquering Messiahs: Is the OT Self-

              Contradictory?..............................................................................120

         When Was the Messiah to Come? The Potential Implications of

              Genesis 49:10...............................................................................121

         Was the Second Temple to Be Standing When the Messiah Came?124

         The Seventy Weeks Prophecy Shows the Messiah Came by the

              First Century.................................................................................125

         The Inserted Punctuation in Biased Jewish Translations of

              Dan. 9:25......................................................................................126

         The Battle Between Two Schools of Prophetic Interpretation over

              Dan. 9:24-27.................................................................................127

         The Case for Jesus Being the Messiah Summarized........................128

         Is the New Testament Anti-Semitic?..................................................129

         The Problems with the Conder Thesis Summarized.........................131

         For Further Reading..........................................................................132

                                        IS CHRISTIANITY A FRAUD?

                          A Preliminary Assessment of the Conder Thesis

                                                       third edition

                                                    by Eric V. Snow

         The New Testament's descriptions of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem and his ancestry being from the House of David "were clearly fabulous tales, contrived solely to connect Jesus to that place and family because of a simple misunderstanding by the Gentile forgers of the Gospels." It is claimed that "history clearly tells us is that the Babylonian Mystery Religion is almost identical to Christianity" (MB, p. 47). The old Worldwide Church of God was "not much different from the first century Samaritans whose religion consisted of about one-third 'Judaism,' and two-thirds Mithraism" (MB, p. 47). Taking the wine and bread during the Passover service as symbolic of personally accepting Jesus' sacrifice is as pagan as Easter and Christmas. It should be abandoned as "an abomination before your Creator!" (MB, p. 48). The New Testament writers are guilty of anti-Semitism: "It is an indisputable fact that the two thousand years of Christian persecution against the Tribe of Judah can be laid right at the door step of the Gospels" (MB, p. 59). Jesus is said not to be the promised Messiah, to save the world from its sin:

         TO BE BLUNT, THE REASON THE TRUE PROPHECIES OF ISRAEL'S MESSIAH ARE NOT USED IN REFERENCE TO JESUS IS THAT THE NEW TESTAMENT WAS NEVER WRITTEN ABOUT ISRAEL'S MESSIAH. IT WAS WRITTEN ABOUT THE GOD-SAVIOR OF BABYLONIAN MYTHOLOGY! THEREFORE, THE SATAN-INSPIRED NT WRITERS HAD TO LOOK FOR EXCUSES IN OUT-OF-CONTEXT VERSES TO DECEIVE THE LATTER DAY TEN TRIBES OF ISRAEL IN THEIR CONTINUING BAAL WORSHIP! THE GOD OF THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE MESSIAH OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES ARE NOT ONE AND THE SAME, AND THERE IS SIMPLY NO WAY TO MAKE THE TWO RECONCILABLE! (MB, p. 80).

As these statements show, Darrell Conder has converted to some type of Judaism, and he castigates the New Testament (NT) as anti-Semitic, pagan-influenced, historically inaccurate, and full of misused Old Testament (OT) quotes about the Messiah. Below, it shall be maintained that the Conder thesis is false, that the New Testament is historically accurate, that it is not a product of pagan thought but of Messianic Jewish thinking, and that the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament did point to Jesus of Nazareth, crucified in A.D. 31 as the promised Savior of mankind.

USING THE IDEAS OF HIGHER CRITICS AND JEWS, CONDER'S IDEAS AREN'T NEW

         Conder launches his attack in three broad areas, which are considered each in turn: (1) Is the NT historically reliable? (2) Was the NT was influenced by pagan thought, especially the mystery religions of the Roman Empire such as Mithraism? (3) Did the NT misuse the OT's messianic prophecies? It is very important to realize that most of Conder's ideas are hardly new. Agnostics, atheists, liberal higher critics, and various assorted infidels in the fields of theology and Biblical criticism have long attacked the NT as historically unreliable and (mostly earlier in this century) as influenced by the Mystery Religions and Gnosticism. Conder's originality mainly consists in harnessing various liberal, higher critic works (such as commentaries, encyclopedias, etc.) to the service of Judaism instead of agnosticism or Deism (i.e., unbelief, plain and simple). His attacks on the NT's use of the messianic prophecies largely appear to reflect how Jews in the centuries since the crucifixion have worked hard to evade the fulfillment of the OT Scriptures in Jesus of Nazareth. Because it isn't really new, many traditional Christian works of apologetics deal with the subjects Conder raises. The closest thing to a refutation of Conder written in advance that I know of, and it's highly recommended, is Josh McDowell and Bill Wilson's He Walked Among Us: Evidence for the Historical Jesus (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1993). After reading Mystery Babylon, those afraid Conder may be right should read books by traditional Christians who defend their faith rationally. It is criminally foolish to commit yourself to fundamentally new religious beliefs (not just a mere change in fellowship groups) after listening to just one side that would cost you your eternal life. Jesus made it plain that those who deny Him cannot be saved (Matt. 11:33): "But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven." John made it clear that: "Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? . . . Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also" (I John 2:22-23). Conder raises fundamental questions which need answering--his book strikes at the core of Christianity. Unlike the marginalia of church government and the sacred calendar that have distracted the Church of God in recent months, he challenges our deepest held beliefs.

CONDER'S VIEWS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT OPENS THE DOORS TO DEISM OR AGNOSTICISM

         Before turning to consider historical accuracy of the New Testament, let's investigate the implications of Conder's treatment of the Old Testament. He evidently doesn't fully realize that the way he repudiates the New Testament by citing higher critic scholarship on it means the same can be done with the Old. Right now, the train Conder and his followers are on is (arguably) marked "Judaism." But it would not be surprising to see a few years down the road that locomotive Conder pulling into a station labeled "deism," "agnosticism," or "atheism." What would his followers do then? (Although I have read somewhere in Masada that he has denied this, this suspicion does have a solid foundation, as shown below). In MB he uncritically uses commentaries that employ higher critic theories about the OT without rebuking them. For example, he quotes through another work Olmstead's History of the Persian Empire that says Ezra edited the OT. He then states himself: "Ezra, a descendant of the last high priest of the family Aaron (before the captivity), and a man who had the authority of God to restore the faith of Israel, edited the 'Old' Testament" (MB, p. 9). This claim smacks of standard higher critic theory, in which various anonymous "redactors" (i.e., editors) supposedly assembled in slipshod fashion the Pentateuch and other OT books after the return from the Babylonian Captivity (586 b.c. to 539 b.c.). Scholar Julius Wellhausen, in books published in 1876 and 1878, maintained that the different names used for God ("Elohim" and "Jehovah") showed that different authors wrote different parts of the Pentateuch. The priestly legislation of the "Elohist" document was largely the work of Ezra. Later editor(s) revised and edited the Pentateuch until it took final shape by about 200 b.c. This whole theory maintains Moses had nothing to do with the first five books of the Old Testament. Called the documentary hypothesis or J E D P theory, it still has enormous influence in the scholarly world as a habit of mind and frame of reference, even with its often-admitted major problems. Then, was the book of Isaiah was written by one man (the traditional view) or two or more (the higher critic view)? Conder cites a liberal Catholic work, The Collegeville Bible Commentary, to deny the traditional Christian interpretation of Isaiah 52-53. "Second Isaiah" is mentioned, yet this draws no criticism from him. (See MB, pp. 98-99). Being liberals in theology, they naturally tend to deny a priori (before further investigation of the facts) the very possibility of successful predictive prophecy in Scripture. Hence, predictions about the Messiah, like predictions about much else, have to be "explained away," in order to fit a naturalistic paradigm (i.e., a world without God, or without One who intervenes). Conder doesn't realize he is implicitly relying on their fundamentally agnostic or deistic premises when using their arguments against the messianic prophecies being fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.

THE BOOK OF DANIEL ATTACKED?!

         Conder assaults the book of Daniel almost as harshly as any part of the NT. Undeniably, Conder takes comfort from the supposed "overwhelming evidence about Daniel's composition [such] that many biblical scholars have ceased to try and make any of it [the seventy weeks prophecy] fit a prophecy of Jesus" (MB, p. 128). Evidently because the Seventy Weeks prophecy points to the Messiah's arrival by A.D. 100, he virtually attempts to read Daniel out of the Hebrew canon. To undermine faith in it, he cites a slew of works influenced by higher critic theories of its late date and authorship. He uses the Catholic Encyclopedia and Asimov--a science/science fiction writer and outright atheist--who willingly place a second century (c. 165 b.c.) completion date on it. He says Daniel "was not holding up to historical scrutiny" and contains an "unhistorical mention of Darius the Mede." (MB, pp. 124-125). Conder somehow thinks that because the Jews put the book of Daniel in the Writings instead of the Prophets that it need not be regarded as the infallible, inerrant Word of God. This is simply false. If it's in the Hebrew canon, which is the same for Protestant Christians as it is for the Jews, then it is infallible and without error (in the original writing, or autograph) regardless of the order the Jews (or anybody else) arranged their Bibles (the Tanakh) in. The book of Daniel is clearly prophetic: "But as for you, Daniel, conceal these words and seal up the book until the end of time; many will go back and forth; and knowledge will increase. . . . And he [the angel] said, 'Go your way, Daniel, for these words are concealed and sealed up until the end time" (Dan. 12:4, 9). Daniel is one of the best proofs of the Bible's inspiration, due to its detailed predictions of Middle East history. Consider, for example, the long prophecy of Dan. 11, which is an overview of the struggles between the Greek Seleucid (Syria/Mesopotamia) and Ptolemaic (Egypt) dynasties after Alexander the Great's death caused his generals to divide up his empire four ways. As a result, since various liberal higher critics cannot believe in successful predictive prophecy, because it would prove the Bible was inspired by an Almighty God, they "backdate" books such as Daniel to avoid the ominous implications of fulfilled prophecy. Hence, higher critics say Daniel "had" to be written by or around 165 b.c., not by about 530 b.c., when Daniel himself was alive. However, this book's vocabulary and language decisively refutes such a late date. Since languages change over time, this allows scholars roughly to date the book, especially by comparing it with the Dead Sea Scrolls. It lacks Greek loan words (outside of ones universally used for musical instruments), which points to a time before the Greek conquest of Persia under Alexander the Great (c. 336 to 324 b.c.) It also places the verb late in clauses, unlike the Jewish Targumic and Talmudic literature written around during the second century b.c. or later. Based on linguistic reasons alone, the book of Daniel could not have been written later than the fifth or late sixth century b.c. Conder's basic error here, similar to what he does with the NT, is to cite uncritically the ideas of liberal higher critics about the Bible, discount conservative Christian scholarship, and also (presumably) ignore what these same higher critics have to say about the Old Testament, which would destroy whatever faith someone would have in the Holy Scriptures. So now--why pick and choose? Suppose I cited Asimov or the Collegeville Bible Commentary when (presumably) they said something critical about the OT as being uninspired, unhistorical, etc. Should that destroy someone else's faith in the OT? Yet Conder routinely cites works which are (presumably) as skeptical of the OT as of the NT, yet he only uses the parts that attack the NT (including the NT's use of the OT). He cites the parts suited to his thesis of converting to some type of Judaism ("the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"), while ignoring the material detrimental to his purposes. His treatment of the book of Daniel is ominous--it means he may well be on the road to deism or agnosticism, with Judaism being a mere pit stop.

1. THE HISTORICITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT DEFENDED

         To survey Conder's charges more systematically, first let's consider his arguments against the New Testament being inspired by God, historically reliable, and accurately preserved by scribes through the centuries. Suppose we are raised knowing nothing about the Bible, OT or NT, like some tribe in the jungles of New Guinea or in Brazil near the Amazon. One day, a missionary comes along, and drops on us a copy of the Bible in our own language, and we are literate enough to read it. How could we judge whether its contents are reliable? Suppose some other missionary left a Quran (Koran) behind. How could we judge whether that book was reliable? To be rational in our religious beliefs, instead of just blindly following what our parents believe, we need to take the same approach HWA himself did, and prove God to exist, and the Bible to be the word of God. Fulfilled prophecy, in which the Bible predicts something and it occurs before God judges humanity, is one of the strongest proofs of the Bible's inspiration. Christ's predictions of the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple are in this category (Matt. 24:2-3; Luke 21:5-6, 20-24). Concerning the trustworthiness of the New Testament in particular, how can its claims be analyzed, especially in comparison with (say) the Quran? The military historian C. Sanders developed three ways of evaluating the trustworthiness of any document historically: (1) the bibliographical test (2) the internal evidence test (3) the external evidence test. The bibliographical test maintains that the more handwritten manuscript copies there are of an ancient historical document, the more reliable it is. Also, the closer in time the oldest presently existing manuscript that has survived is the to the original first copy (autograph) of the author, the more reliable that document is. There is less time for distortions to creep into the text by scribes down through the generations copying by hand (before Gutenberg's perfection of printing using moveable type by c. 1440). The internal evidence test involves analyzing the document itself for contradictions and self-evident absurdities. How close in time and place the writer of the document was to the events and people he describes is examined: The bigger the gap, the less likely it is reliable. The external evidence test checks the document's reliability by comparing it to other documents on the same subjects, seeing whether its claims are different from theirs. Archeological evidence also figures into this test, since many Biblical sites and people can be confirmed by what archeologists have dug up in the Middle East. How does the New Testament stack up under these tests? Let's check it out, referring to some of Conder's attacks on it in the process.

THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL TEST AS APPLIED TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

         By the two parts of the bibliographical test, the NT is the best attested ancient historical writing. Some 24,633 known copies (including fragments, lectionaries, etc.) exist of it, with 5309 of these being in Greek. By contrast, the document with the next highest number of copies outside the Hebrew Old Testament [OT] (which has over 1700 copies) is Homer's Illiad, with 643. Other historical writings by prominent ancient historians have far fewer copies: Thucycides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 8; Herodotus, The Histories, 8; Julius Caesar, Gallic Wars, 10; Livy, History from the Founding of the City, 20; Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, 8. Conder is fond of citing Tacitus's statement about Jesus Christ being crucified (for example, MB, p. 53). For the Annals of Tacitus, there are, at the most, 20 surviving manuscript (ms) copies of it, while only one (!) endured of his minor works. Conder mistakenly implies the large number of manuscripts is a reason for disbelief in the NT by citing the 1908-12 Catholic Encyclopedia, which says "the greatest difficulty confronting the editor of the New Testament is the endless variety of the documents at his disposal." Conder then comments, after it cites a figure of 2,328 [Greek?] manuscripts (mss) and 30 more recent discoveries: "This article was written about 1908, which should tell the reader how many more mss. have been brought to light in the eighty-five plus year interval!" He goes on to say that "there were thousands of these manuscripts and they were by no means consistent with each other. In other words, the texts had tens of thousands of errors in them. The only solution was to 'reconstruct' a new Greek version of the Christian Bible" (MB, p. 15, fn. 34; p. 16). Conder's charge ignores how more manuscript evidence there is, the easier it becomes to catch any errors that occurred by comparing them with one another. As F.F. Bruce observed:

         Fortunately, if the great number of mss increases the number of scribal errors, it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors, so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is not so large as might be feared. The variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the New Testament affect no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice.

Having over 5300 Greek mss. to work with, it becomes much easier to detect scribal errors in the NT than by comparing with one another the (say) ten copies of Caesar's Gallic Wars, long a standard work of Latin teachers to use with beginning students. The science of textual criticism has an embarrassment--of riches--when it comes to the NT.

HOW CAN YOU KNOW WHETHER THE NEW TESTAMENT IS A FIRST-CENTURY DOCUMENT?

         Conder argues that the New Testament is not primarily a first-century document:

         This is not to say that some details of Jesus' life and those of his disciples weren't written down in the first century. . . . What such independent testimony tells us is that scraps of original writings were collected, placed with the sayings of Jesus (which will be discussed later) and this formed the first 'New Testament.' It is now generally agreed upon [by higher critics!--EVS] that there was no Gospel account such as we know it today in the first century C.E. . . . Prior to the Gospel of Mark, it is agreed by the [higher critic!--EVS] experts . . . that the only Christian writings circulating in the first few centuries were the sayings of Jesus. . . . Many encyclopedias will point out that after a few generations the sayings of Jesus, which were devoid of any details of his life, were not sufficient to satisfy the curiosity of the increasing membership of the Christian Church. (MB, pp. 14, 21).

He maintains the Gnostic Nag Hammadi manuscripts (found in 1947) is a translation of a second-century original in Greek, which makes it "in certain respects . . . the oldest known ms. of the NT in existence." (MB, p. 22). Later he says that gentile converts later rewrote and added to the Gospels during the first two or three centuries after Jesus' death, so that the NT was nothing like what exists today until many, many decades after 100 A.D. Oral traditions about the life of Jesus were passed down over several generations before being written down, causing many inaccuracies from what really happened to be found in the Gospels. The descriptions surrounding Jesus' birth were "never a part of the earliest writings of the Christian Church" (MB, pp. 21-22, 26, 29). So now--if the NT wasn't written down fully until one or more centuries after Jesus died, then belief in its historical accuracy is logically undermined.

SCHOLARS MOVE AWAY FROM A SECOND-CENTURY DATE FOR THE NEW TESTAMENT

         Recently among scholars there has been a move away from a second-century composition date for the New Testament. For example, Biblical archeologist William Foxwell Albright once remarked: "In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew [Luke presumably would be an exception--EVS] between the forties and eighties of the first century A.D. (very probably sometime between about A.D. 50 and 75)." Elsewhere he stated: "Thanks to the Qumran discoveries [meaning, the Dead Sea Scrolls], the New Testament proves to be in fact what it was formerly believed to be: the teaching of Christ and his immediate followers between cir. 25 and cir. 80 A.D." Scholar John A.T. Robertson (in Redating the New Testament) maintains that every New Testament book was written before 70 A.D., including even John and Revelation. He argues that no New Testament book mentions the actual destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by Rome, it must have been all written before that date. If the New Testament is a product of the first century, within one or two generations of Jesus' crucifixion, worries about the possible inaccuracies of oral transmission (people telling each other stories about Jesus between generations) are unjustified. As scholar Simon Kistemaker writes:

         Normally, the accumulation of folklore among people of primitive culture takes many generations: it is a gradual process spread over centuries of time. But in conformity with the thinking of the form critic [a school of higher criticism that studies how oral transmission shaped the present organization of the New Testament], we must conclude that the Gospel stories were produced and collected within little more than one generation.

HOW PEOPLE IN CULTURES MORE DEPENDENT ON ORAL TRADITION HAVE BETTER MEMORIES

         In cultures where the written word and literacy are scarce commodities, where very few people able to read or afford to own any books, they develop much better memories about what they are told, unlike people in America and other Western countries today. For example, Alex Haley (the author of Roots) was able to travel to Africa, and hear a man in his ancestor's African tribe, whose job was to memorize his people's past, mention his ancestor Kunta Kinte's disappearance. In the Jewish culture in which Jesus and His disciples moved, the students of a rabbi had to memorize his words. Hence, Mishna, Aboth, ii, 8 reads: "A good pupil was like a plastered cistern that loses not a drop." The present-day Uppsala school of Harald Riesenfeld and Birger Gerhardsson analyzes Jesus' relationship with His disciples in the context of Jewish rabbinical practices of c. 200 A.D. Jesus, in the role of the authoritative teacher or rabbi, trained his disciples to believe in and remember His teachings. Because their culture was so strongly oriented towards oral transmission of knowledge, they could memorize amazing amounts of material by today's standards. The values of this culture emphasized the need to remember their teacher's teachings and deeds accurately, then to pass on this (now) tradition faithfully and as unaltered as possible to disciples made in the future. Paul's language in I Cor. 15:3-8 reflects this ethos, especially in verse 3: "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures . . ." Correspondingly, the apostles were seen as having authority due to being eyewitness guardians of the tradition since they knew their Teacher well (cf. the criterion for choosing an apostle listed in Acts 1:21-22; cf. I Cor. 9:1). Furthermore, the words of Jesus were recorded within a few decades of His death while eyewitnesses, both friendly and hostile, still lived. These could easily publicly challenge any inaccuracies in circulation. Scholar Laurence McGinley writes that: "The fact that the whole process took less than thirty years, and that its essential part was accomplished in a decade and a half, finds no parallel in any [oral] tradition to which the Synoptic Gospels [Mark, Luke, and Matthew] have been compared."

HOW THE BOOK OF ACTS IMPLIES THE NEW TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN BEFORE C. 63 A.D.

         A very straightforward argument for the date of the New Testament can be derived from the contents of the book of the Acts of the Apostles (Acts). The Gospel of Luke and Acts were originally one book, later divided into two. As a result, Luke was necessarily written a bit earlier than Acts. In turn, Luke is traditionally seen as having depended upon Mark over and above his own sources, so Mark was necessarily written still earlier. Furthermore, Matthew is normally seen as having been written after Mark but before Luke. Hence, if a firm date can be given to Acts, all of the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Luke, and Matthew) had to have been composed still earlier. There are six good reasons to date Acts as being written by c. 63 A.D. First, Acts doesn't mention the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., despite much of its action focuses in and around that city. Only if it was written earlier does the omission of this incredibly disruptive event in the Holy Land make sense. Second, Nero's persecutions of the mid-60's aren't covered. Luke's general tone towards the Roman government was peaceful and calm, which wouldn't fit if Rome had just launched a major persecution campaign against the church. (The later Book of Revelation has a very different spirit on this score, even if it is in symbolic prophetic code, since the Beast was Rome). Third, the martyrdoms of James (61 A.D.) as well as Paul and Peter (mid-60s A.D.) aren't mentioned in Acts. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus does record the death of James, so this event can be easily dated. Since these three men are leading figures in the Book of Acts, it would be curious to omit how they died, yet include the martyrdoms of other Christians like Stephen and James the brother of John. Fourth, the key conflicts and issues raised in the church it records make sense in the context of a mainly Jewish Messianic Church centered on Jerusalem before 70 A.D. It describes disputes over circumcision and admitting the gentiles into the church as having God's favor, the division between Palestinian and Hellenistic Jews (Acts 6:1), and the Holy Spirit falling on different ethnic groups (Jews followed by gentiles). These issues had a much lower priority after 70 A.D. than before. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. basically wiped out Jewish Christianity as a strong organized movement. Fifth, some of the phrases used in Acts are primitive and very early, such as "the Son of man," "the Servant of God" (to refer to Jesus), "the first day of the week," and "the people" (to refer to Jews). After 70 A.D., these expressions would need explanation, but before then they didn't in the Messianic Jewish Christian community. Finally, of course, the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. isn't referred to in Acts despite its apocryphal effects on the Christian community. Since in his Gospel Luke himself relates Jesus' predictions of Jerusalem's destruction in the Mount Olivet Prophecy (chapter 21), it's hard to believe he would overlook its fulfillment if he had written Acts after 70 A.D. Hence, judging from what the author included as important historically, if Acts was written about c. 63 A.D., the Gospel of Luke would be slightly older, and correspondingly Matthew and Mark probably should be dated to the mid-40s to mid-50s A.D. Paul's letters have to be older than Acts as well.

THE NEW TESTAMENT WASN'T SUBJECT TO A LONG PERIOD OF ORAL TRADITION

         Several reasons indicate that the New Testament wasn't subject to a long period of oral tradition, of people retelling each other stories over the generations. Let's assume the document scholars call "Q" did exist, which they say Matthew and Luke relied upon to write their Gospels. If "Q" can be dated to around 50 A.D. after Jesus's death in 31 A.D., little time remains in between for distortions to creep in due to failed memory. Furthermore, the sayings of Jesus found in the Gospels were in an easily memorizable, often poetic form in the original Aramaic. Since Paul was taken captive about 58 A.D., the way he wrote to the Romans, Corinthians, Thessalonians, and Galatians indicates that he assumed they already had a detailed knowledge of Jesus. He almost never quotes Jesus' words in them (besides in I Cor. 11:24-25). Hence, as James Martin commented:

         As a matter of fact, there was no time for the Gospel story of Jesus to have been produced by legendary accretion. The growth of legend is always a slow and gradual thing. But in this instance the story of Jesus was being proclaimed, substantially as the Gospels now record it, simultaneously with the beginning of the Church.

J. Warwick Montgomery remarked that form criticism [a school of higher criticism] fails because "the time interval between the writing of the New Testament documents as we have them and the events of Jesus' life which they record is too brief to allow for communal redaction [editing] by the Church." Anderson adds, in a statement that must be reckoned with by Conder and his followers:

         What is beyond dispute is that every attempt to date the Gospels late in the first century has now definitely failed, crushed under the weight of convincing evidence. If the majority of the five hundred witnesses to the resurrection were still alive around AD 55 . . . then our Gospels must have begun to appear when many who had seen and heard the earthly Jesus--including some of the apostles--were still available to confirm or question the traditions.

Claims that the NT wasn't finished being written by c. 100 A.D. are simply untenable.

THE NT HAS A SHORTER GAP BETWEEN ITS ORIGINAL WRITING AND OLDEST EXTANT COPIES

         Dates that turn the NT into a second-century document have been increasingly discredited by scholars in recent decades. This development makes the time gap between the earliest preserved copies and the autograph, or first manuscript, much smaller for the NT than the pagan historical works cited above. William Foxwell Albright has commented: "We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about A.D. 80, two full generations before the date[s] between 130 and 150 given by the more radical New Testament critics of today." For the NT, the gap between its original copies (autographs) and the first preserved mss. is about 90 years or less, since most of it was first written before 70 A.D., and fragments show up shortly thereafter. One fragment of John, dated to 125 A.D., was in the past cited as the earliest copy known of any part of the NT. But in 1972, nine fragments of the NT were found in a cave by the Dead Sea. Among these fragments, part of Mark was dated to around 50 A.D., Luke 57 A.D., and Acts from 66 A.D. Hence, Conder is relying on outdated scholarship when he writes that "the earliest known fragments of the NT . . . date from the second century C.E. [A.D.]" (MB, p. 11). The earliest major manuscripts, such as Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are dated to 325-50 A.D. and 350 A.D. respectively. By contrast, the time gap is much larger for the pagan works mentioned above. For Homer, the gap is 500 years (900 b.c. for the original writing, 400 b.c. for the first copy), Caesar, it's 900-1000 years (c. 100-44 b.c. to 900 A.D.), Herodotus, 1300 years (c. 480-425 b.c. to 900 A.D.) and Thucycides, 1300 years (c. 400 b.c. to 900 A.D.). For the OT, even with the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries, the gap for the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) is still around 1300 years or more. (These discoveries still demonstrate faith in its accurate transmission is rational, since few mistakes crept in between about 100 b.c. and c. 900 A.D. for the book of Isaiah). Hence, the NT can be objectively judged more reliable than these pagan historical works both by having a much smaller time gap between when it was written and the first preserved copies, and in the number of ancient handwritten copies. While the earliest mss. have a different text type from the bulk of later ones that have been preserved, their witness is still powerful for the NT's preservation since these variations compose a relatively small percent of its text.

SOME PROBLEMS WITH FORM CRITICISM, WHICH CONDER IMPLICITLY USES

         Form Critics maintain the early church had little or no biographical interest in recording the details of Jesus' life, but was interested mainly in his sayings for the purposes of preaching, a view Conder harnesses for his purposes. First, in reply, these critics are evidently using a limited definition of "biography." Analyses by Stanton and Gundry show the Gospels were similar enough to Hellenistic (the ancient Greek world's) biographies so they can be included in that category. The manner in which Mark, for example, recorded the names of many individuals and specific geographical locations shows he wasn't creating a legend, myth, or literary piece, but "drew from a living tradition." Mark didn't note that Pilate was the Procurator of Judea, which was a particular matter of historical knowledge. Instead, he emphasized Pilate's belief that Jesus was innocent while on trial before him--a point of biographical interest, not general historical interest.

         But the Christian tradition which St. Mark followed had a vivid biographical memory. It told that Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, had borne the cross of Jesus, and it recorded the names of three of the women who saw Jesus die--Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the less, and Salome.

Furthermore, why did supposedly the Church after the first generation suddenly develop such an interest in biographical details about Jesus' life, but lacked this earlier on? After all, if they had the typical pagan mentality, in which myths were fine, and actual historical events were unimportant in religious affairs, why did this abruptly change later on? As Manson noted:

         But if the outline [the basic chronology of Jesus' life as found in the Gospels] had then to be created ad hoc [by improvisation], it can only be that for the thirty years between the end of the Ministry and the production of Mark, Christians in general were not interested in the story of the Ministry and allowed it to be forgotten. One would like to know why the first generation were not interested while the second generation demanded a continuous narrative [my emphasis here--EVS]. More than that, we need some explanation why it was possible for the details of the story [which would include what He said] to be remembered and the general outline forgotten. It is not the normal way of remembering important periods in our experience.

Human nature is more consistent than this, which makes the notion that later Christians would be more interested in details of Jesus' life than earlier ones patently absurd.

THE NEW TESTAMENT'S EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY UNDERMINES THE FORM CRITICS' ARGUMENTS

         Form Critics and other skeptics whom Conder relies upon also ignore how Jesus' followers were eyewitnesses of His life. After his death, they could easily record what they remembered. Some clearly mentioned being eyewitnesses and desiring to accurately preserve what they saw (John 21:24; Heb. 2:3-4; II Pet. 1:16). What attitude could be more contrary to a mythmaker's and more of a historian's than Luke's?

         Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word have handed them down to us, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you might know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. (Acts 1:1-4)

Eyewitness evidence is one of the best reasons for belief in the New Testament's inspiration. As Barnes notes:

         When critics deny the preservation of an 'historical' (or, better, a 'biographical') tradition of the ministry of Jesus, they forget that Jesus had a mother who survived Him, and also devoted followers both women and men. Are we to believe that these stored up no memories of the words (and acts also) of the Master? And the Twelve--though they often misunderstood Him, would they not preserve among themselves either by happy recollection or by eager discussion many of his startling sayings and of His unexpected deeds?

Not only did friendly disciples bear witness to Jesus' doings. Many hostile witnesses lived among the Jews who surely wished to pounce on anything that could possibly be used against Christianity or its Founder. Then were the details added as oral transmission about Jesus' life proceeded down the generations? This claim against studies that show that stories when continually retold they become simpler, shorter, and increasingly omit specific details such as place names. For example, E.L. Abel observes: "Contrary to the conclusions derived from Form Criticism, studies of rumor transmission indicate that as information is transmitted, the general form or outline of a story remains intact, but fewer words and fewer original details are preserved." Once the NT is seen as a document by eyewitnesses, or could be easily critiqued by such, Conder's attack on its reliability takes a major nose dive.

WHY SHOULD THIS EYEWITNESS EVIDENCE BE BELIEVED?

         There are special reasons for believing in the reliability of the New Testament authors. A document is more apt to be reliable when it is a personal letter, was intended for a small audience, was written in a rough, unpolished literary style, and contains rather irrelevant information such as lists of details such as the names of individuals. Although a document can lack these characteristics and still be sound historically, they still remain prima facie powerful points in favor of a document being accurate when its origin is unclear. When something is written for propagandistic efforts among a vast audience, it's more likely to shade the truth or omit inconvenient, embarrassing facts. Now much of the New Testament is made up of letters intended for small churches or individuals, especially Paul's, which sometimes reflect rather hurried writing (consider I Corinthians and Galatians, both of which are pervaded by a crisis atmosphere). Mostly written in the rough koine Greek of average people, it contains inconsequential details even in the Gospels which were intended for a broad audience (see John 21:2, 11; Mark 14:51-52). The Letter (epistle) to the Romans's sixteenth chapter is largely taken up with Paul's greetings and instructions to various individuals. Furthermore, eyewitnesses who have much to lose and little to gain from telling what they saw are reliable. The Jewish Christians of the first century, persecuted by their kinsmen, often paid for their beliefs with their lives. Eleven of the twelve apostles died martyrs' deaths, according to reasonable reliable tradition: How did they benefit materially from proclaiming Jesus as the Jewish Messiah? Paul mentioned the many trials he endured for proclaiming the gospel (II Cor. 11:23-28). If the goal was to make lots of converts to gain lots of money, the apostles could have found easier and safer messages to preach, by changing their beliefs. This Paul refused to do: "But I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision [he didn't], why am I still persecuted? Then the stumbling block of the cross has been abolished" (Gal. 5:11). Being Jews, if they proclaimed falsehoods about God, they had every reason to fear their God's wrath in the hereafter, so they had strong motives for telling the truth about the God they worshiped. Christianity emerged from Judaism's capital, Jerusalem and its vicinity: If the Gospels' portrait of Jesus was seriously wrong, then-living hostile witnesses (which were hardly few in number) could have easily shot it down. Peter and company didn't pack up and go to (say) Athens and start proclaiming the Gospel far away from where anybody could easily check up on their assertions, but started in Jerusalem within weeks of Jesus' death on Pentecost. All in all, these eyewitnesses proclaimed the truth as they knew it, having strong reasons for doing so: Who dies for a lie, knowing that it is a lie?

ANCIENT PEOPLE KNEW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUTH AND FABLES

         Some today may believe that the educated people of the ancient world didn't have a real grasp of the difference between the fact of what really happened and telling moral stories to make points. In fact, ancient pagan historians of the West clearly knew the difference, even if they weren't always sufficiently critical of their sources. Herodotus didn't always just believe his sources, and did emphasize the role of eyewitnesses. Although Thucydides presumably did invent most of the speeches found in his history of the Peloponnesian War, he still attempted to have them express the views of the speakers. He never felt free to invent any of the narrative. Lucian believed the historian's only task was to tell the story as it really happened, and Cicero thought similarly. Polybius advocated judging eyewitnesses and analyzing sources. More careful than most, Tacitus did attempt to test his sources and to avoid intentionally distorting what information he had received. The Jewish rabbinical tradition had a similar respect for what had really happened: The duty of the disciples of a rabbi was to pass on accurately what they had learned from their teacher, as described above. Josephus stated his commitment to being accurate and truthful, trying to correct mistaken sources.

         A standard higher critic view of the New Testament says the church made up stories about Jesus' live and teachings over the decades after His death because of later controversies it suffered. In fact, much indicates that the words of Jesus were distinct from how His later disciples expressed themselves. Jesus used questions and the Aramaic words "amen" and "abba" in unique ways. Sixty-four times Jesus uses threefold expressions (such as ask, seek, knock). He uses passive verbs when referring to God, such as in this case: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father" (Matt. 11:27). Paul, Peter, etc. did not copy His use of "how much more," "which of you," and "disciple." Often when Jesus' words, as written in Greek, are translated back into Aramaic, literary qualities such as parallelism, alliteration, and assonance appear. Greek-speaking gentile disciples could not have fabricated His speeches whole cloth since their poetic quality in Aramaic can't be accidental. Also, if the church had created Jesus' ideas decades later, why is it that "Jesus" never was made to comment on major controversies that struck the church? The Jesus of the Gospels says little or nothing about circumcision, gifts of the Holy Spirit, food laws, baptism, evangelizing the gentiles, rules controlling church meetings, and relations between the church and state. Paul almost never quotes Jesus directly: If he felt free to make up stories about Jesus, he could have easily and directly justified what he did by manufacturing sayings supposedly by Jesus. (Some Muslims through the centuries evidently didn't hesitate to do this for the hadiths (sayings) of Muhammad!, "discovering" quotes convenient for the doctrinal or political controversies of the moment!)

         Jesus' life and ideas also had aspects that were problematic, even embarrassing, starting with the deep shame of being executed by crucifixion. (Roman citizens had the right of being beheaded instead!) Facing opposition from within His own family, Jesus was a carpenter, not someone materially rich or powerful. Jesus had views about legalism, divorce, fasting, women, and sinners that certainly presented stumbling blocks to mainstream Jews. Similar to the Old Testament's portrayal of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David, and Elijah, the New Testament repeatedly and plainly describes the sins and personal flaws of the disciples, such as Peter denying Christ three times and their arguments over who was to be the greatest in the kingdom of God. Surely, if the church concocted the New Testament to spread its message about Jesus, it should have edited out such embarrassing facts about its founders! The New Testament contains too much not fitting a late date for its origination and much of its contents weren't always favorable for promoting the best image of the church's founders and leaders. If you created a historical document to promote your beliefs, you could come up with something more favorable to your cause's leaders than this! These unfavorable aspects found in the New Testament show early Christianity's leaders didn't feel free to rewrite history or ignore historical facts.

THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE RECEIVED AND CRITICAL TEXTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

         Conder also seizes upon the long running dispute between the advocates of the Westcott-Hort/"Critical" (Alexandrine and Western) text and the Received (Byzantine) text in order to undermine general faith in the New Testament, judging from his citations of Robin Fox's The Unauthorized Version and D.A. Waite's Defending the King James Bible (see generally MB, pp. 10-17). By citing those on each extreme of this debate, Conder makes the differences in the NT's Greek manuscripts seem worse than they really are. The "Critical" text basically underlies almost all modern Bible translations, while the Received text underlies the King James Version (KJV) and the New King James Version (NKJV). The basic dispute involves a trade-off of two competing, conflicting claims. On the one hand, there are far more Greek manuscripts that reflect the Received text--approximately 80-90% has this text type, but they are mostly later manuscripts. On the other hand, the earliest major manuscripts, such as Vaticanus and Sinaiticus from the fourth century, reflect the Critical text type, but they are much fewer in number. The biggest differences between the two concern the last twelve verses of Mark (16:9-20) and the episode of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-11), which the Critical text omits, but the Received text contains. The dispute overall concerns (by McDowell and Stewart's account) 10% of the text, a figure that seems high, judging from some of the statements found below. Furthermore, the evidence for the omission of the last twelve verses of Mark is actually undermined by the Vaticanus manuscript itself, which is one of the foundational texts for the Critical (Alexandrine) text. It (called "B" by scholars) has a blank column of the right size where the last twelve verses of Mark would have been, which means the original scribe knew something was missing. Catholic Church Fathers before these two manuscripts were copied (c. 350 A.D.) also cited from these last twelve verses, such as Papias, Justin Martyr, Ireneus, and Tertullian, and the early Old Latin and Syriac translations contain them. Altogether, this makes for excellent evidence that Mark originally wrote them since these sources were originally written in the second century, before Vaticanus or Sinaiticus were copied in the fourth. Importantly, the disputed territory (the 10%) can be reduced further when considering the arguments for the Received text's reliability (such as for the last twelve verses of Mark). Argument about 10% of the NT's text should not be a cause for doubting all of it, especially when no major doctrines depend on this controversy's outcome.

TEXTUAL CRITICISM CAN ELIMINATE MOST NEW TESTAMENT VARIATIONS

         Conder cites Forlong's Encyclopedia of Religion, which mentions that 150,000 variations have been computed to exist among the Greek mss. of the NT (MB, p. 12). Should such a large number of variations make us doubt the reliability of the NT's text? True, since the NT has such a vast number of handwritten copies, a large number of scribal errors are inevitable between all the mss. But this cost is produced from the blessing of having more mss. for it than any other anciently preserved document before the invention of printing and moveable type. As C.F. Sitterly and J.H. Greenlee commented:

         Such a wealth of evidence makes it all the more certain that the original words of the NT have been preserved somewhere within the MSS. Conjectural emendation (suggesting a reading that is not found in any MS), to which editors have restored in the restoration of other ancient writings, has almost no place in the textual criticism of the NT. The materials are so abundant that at times the difficulty is to select the correct rendering from a number of variant readings in the MSS.

It is rational to have faith that the scribes preserved the NT accurately because by using the principles of the science of textual criticism most of the variations between manuscripts can be ruled out. Such a flawed text as the Trinitarian interpolation found in I John 5:7 sticks out like a sore thumb because so few Greek mss. contain it (exactly one, from the sixteenth century), and even the earliest copies of the Latin Vulgate don't have it. Furthermore, most of the "200,000 variations" (by another, more recent count) are spelling mistakes, homophones (such as in English, "two," "too," "to"), words accidently repeated twice by scribes, etc. For example, if the same word is misspelled 3000 times, that counts for 3000 variations. The number of variations that are significant is relatively low. Scholar Ezra Abbott maintained 19/20ths of NT variations have so little support that they can be automatically ruled out. Scholars Geisler and Nix, building upon the work of F.J.A. Hort, said only about 1/8 have weight, with 1/60 being "substantial variations." So ironically, the high number of copies allows more scribal errors to exist, yet provides the antidote for eliminating them: These create a much greater ability to detect and eliminate mistakes, unlike the case for (say) Caesar's Gallic Wars, with its mere 10 copies. Scholar Philip Schaff maintained only 400 of all the 150,000 variations he knew of caused doubt on textual meaning, with 50 being of great significance. Even then, he said no variation altered "an article of faith or a precept of duty which is not abundantly sustained by other and undoubted passages, or by the whole tenor of scripture teaching." A citation of Sir Robert Anderson's found in The Bible and Modern Criticism shows why worries about textual difficulties in the NT are groundless:

         All of them face that formidable phantom of textual criticism,

         with its 120,000 various readings in the New Testament alone, and will enable us to march up to it, and discover that it is empty air; that still we may say with the boldest and acutest of English [textual] critics, Bentley, 'choose (out of the whole MSS) as awkwardly as you will, choose the worst by design out of the whole lump of readings, and not one article of faith or moral precept is either perverted or lost in them. Put them [the different readings] into the hands of a knave or a fool [to choose], and even with the most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not extinguish the light of any one chapter, or so disguise Christianity but that every feature of it will still be the same.'

Conder mistakenly claims that:

         This fact notwithstanding, wars have been fought over the meaning of just one particular word in the New Testament [such as which ones?--EVS]. Religious doctrines have been founded on such insignificant words as 'it,' 'a,' or 'the,' which simply means that throughout history men and wom[e]n have died for beliefs that literally have hinged on just a few words in the 'infallible' NT Word of God." (MB, p. 25, see also pp. 17, 18).

Simply put, nothing major is at risk in the debate between the Critical and Received texts. (I think the Received text decisively wins this dispute, which means the real number of variations is far lower than 10%, but that's another story).

THE AVERAGE PEOPLE OF JUDEA COULD HAVE KNOWN GREEK

         Conder maintains that Jesus' followers during His ministry, the disciples and apostles, were simple folk who couldn't possibly have known Greek:

         How were the original apostles able to write in Greek given their background? We are asked to believe, only because the oldest surviving New Testament mss. were written in Greek, that first century Judean fishermen and other such tradesmen could read, write, and speak Greek. In fact, in the case of specific NT books, the Greek is that of someone extremely learned in the language. Needless to say, this assertion doesn't square with the facts and there is a unanimous consensus among most scholars of every denomination that the language of Jesus and his followers was Aramaic. (MB, p. 14)

This argument is a major prop for Conder's contention that those who really wrote the Gospels as we have them today were scholarly Catholic monks and/or church fathers of later centuries (see MB, pp. 23-24, 57, 62, fn. 3; 66). However, this claim is simply fallacious. First, it ignores how even though it was written in the Greek, the NT reflects Semitic language patterns, over and above the many scattered Aramaic and Hebrew words found in it. As William Most notes concerning Luke's Gospel:

         All scholars know and admit that the Greek of Luke's Gospel shows far more Semitisms than do the Gospels written by Semites. A Semitism consists in bringing some features of Semitic speech or structure into Greek, where it does not really belong. For example, in the parable of the wicked husbandmen, Mark's Gospel is content to merely say that after the first servant was mistreated, the master "sent another," and later again, "he sent another." But Luke 20:9-12 reads oddly, "And he added to send another servant"; and later, he added to send a third." The language sounds stilted in English, and so did it in Greek. The reason is evident. Hebrew, in such a sentence, would use the root ysf, to add. So we can see Luke, who is not a Semite, is taking care to reproduce the precise structure of his source, a Hebrew source, although Mark, who was a Semite, did not do it.

Another example of Luke employing Semitic language patterns was to use "the Hebrew (not Aramaic) construction called apodotic wau (which becomes apodotic kai in Greek, if used." For example, in Luke 5:1, in Most's literal translation, this construction appears: "It happened, when the crowd pressed on Him to hear the word of God, AND He stood by the lake." Inserting that "and" between an opening subordinate clause to connect it with the main clause sounds funny in Greek, as well as English. Luke does this about 20-25% of the time when this could occur, which evidently means he depended on a Hebrew-speaking source that often. He was so careful in using his Hebrew sources, he choose to reproduce literally what are rather clumsy grammatical patterns in Greek! Further proof that the Gospels have a Semitic flavor is found in words that definitely or are likely Aramaic that occur in the Gospels. These include "abba" (father), "talitha cum," (maid arise), "Bar" (son), "perisha" (separated one), "hakel dema" (bloody ground), "shiloha" (Siloam), "reka" ("raca"--silly fool), "kepha" (rock), "toma" (Thomas), and "rabbuni" (rabboni). Even more Hebrew words than Aramaic ones appear in the Gospels. These include "levonah," frankincense, "mammon," money, "moreh," rebel, "bath," a unit of wet measure, "mor," myrrh, "cammon," cummin, "zuneem," tares, "sheekmah," sycamore, "Wai," "Woe!," "amen," "rabbi," "corban," and "Satan." While the routine, everyday language of Jesus and His disciples was most likely Aramaic, this doesn't mean they couldn't have known other languages as well. Increased evidence has come to light in recent years that Hebrew still was a language in common, everyday use in Judea in the time of Roman rule. This has led McDowell and Wilson to say there are "good indications" that Jesus and his disciples were trilingual. Hellenistic influences had penetrated deeply into ancient Judea, and Greek was the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean during Roman rule. Much like English has increasingly become late in this century, it was the language of "default" for educated people of different nationalities. They used it to communicate in when encountering each other abroad or in their home territories, when neither knows the native mother tongue of the other. (English is the language for air traffic controllers at major international airports, regardless of their location or where the jet airliners land or take off). Consider the witness of the ancient Jewish historian Josephus (c. 37-100 A.D.):

         I have also taken a great deal of pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks, and understand the elements of the Greek language . . . for our nation does not encourage those who learnt the languages of other nations, and so adorn their discourses with the smoothness of their periods; because they look upon this sort of accomplishment [mastering Greek] as common, not only to all sorts of freemen, but to as many of the servants [slaves?] as pleased to learn them.

Josephus isn't saying that Jews felt learning Greek was confined to the scholarly, but that there was no incentive to learn it as a mark of educational distinction, since many common people could speak it in Judea. Another scholar confirms Josephus's account: "Although the main body of the Jewish people rejected Hellenism and its ways, intercourse with the Greek peoples and the use of the Greek language was by no means eschewed." There is evidence that Jesus himself spoke Greek. For example, in John 21, Jesus used two different words for love, and two different ones for know. Neither of these pairs can be replicated in Aramaic or Hebrew. Nor can the word play on the word for "rock" or "stone" (petros/petra) in Matt. 16:18 be reproduced in these two Semitic languages. He used a diminutive word in the Greek for dogs that were household pets, not strays or wild dogs, when conversing with the gentile Greek-speaking Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7:24-28. (This obviously softened His use of a traditional Jewish term of contempt, "dogs," for gentiles). Since it was perfectly plausible that average Jews such as fishermen could speak Greek, then it's no surprise the disciples used it in the NT in order to communicate with others in the wider community of the eastern Mediterranean about Jesus and His teachings.

THE NEW TESTAMENT WAS NOT WRITTEN IN A HIGHLY SCHOLARLY GREEK

         Conder also misstates how fluent and well done the Greek of the NT was. The NT was basically written in the koine Greek of the average people of the Roman empire, not the classical Greek of the philosophers Plato (c. 428-348 b.c.) and Aristotle (384-322 b.c.), or of Pericles's (c. 495-427 b.c.) Athens. Conder maintains Luke did not write the Gospel named after him, but

         it was written much later by another hand. . . . the Greek of this Gospel tells us in no uncertain terms that whoever wrote Luke was very likely a Gentile and not a Jew--which is of no small importance considering that all of the early church fathers wrote and used the kind of polished Greek for which the Gospel of Luke is specifically noted! (MB, p. 14).

Fox, no friend of Christianity, pours cold water on this assertion:

         [Paul's] companion, the author of Acts, has also been mistaken for a Hellenistic historian and a man of considerable literary culture; in fact, he has no great acquaintance with literary style, and when he tries to give a speech to a trained pagan orator, he falls away into clumsiness after a few good phrases. His literary gifts lay, rather, with the Greek translation of Scripture, the Septuagint, which he knew in depth and exploited freely: to pagans, its style was impossibly barbarous.

While Luke was humanly capable of writing in a high literary vein at times, such as in the parable of the prodigal son, this didn't mean this was the only way he wrote, or that he could do so consistently. The Holy Spirit allows the different literary styles of different writers to shine through, even as it protects them from writing errors or contradictions. The NT was written so average people could hear the Good News ("Gospel") of Jesus Christ, hence, it was written in the everyday, semi-universal language of the Roman empire, koine Greek, not something highly scholarly or highly literary.

HOW CAN ANYONE BE CERTAIN THAT THE RIGHT BOOKS ARE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT?

         Conder pours launches a major attack on how much faith Christians can have in New Testament's canon, which concerns which books should and shouldn't be in it: "At any rate, among the dozens of Gospels circulating in the first three hundred years of this era, the Catholic Church lighted upon and canonized only four. . . . As to the Gospels themselves, at one time there were 200 different ones circulating in the Christian Church!" (MB, p. 20; cf. p. 149). These statements ignores certain crucial facts. Since the quality of the apocryphal (so-called "missing") books, such as "The Gospel of Peter," "The Gospel of Thomas," and "The Shepherd of Hermas," is so much lower and/or their teachings at such variance with the canonical books, they can be easily dismissed from serious consideration. The Christian community followed implicitly (at least) the procedure of Deut. 13:1-5. This text says that future revelations--here specifically one about following false gods--which contradict earlier revelations are automatically invalid, even when the false prophet in question made some accurate predictions. Those gospels which supported the Gnostic cause, which denied Jesus had a body of flesh and blood before His crucifixion and that the God of the OT was evil and totally different from the NT God, could automatically be eliminated from consideration as heretical. As F.F. Bruce notes:

         The gnostic schools lost because they deserved to lose. A comparison of the New Testament writings with the contents of The Nag Hammadi Library [a collection of ancient Gnostic books discovered in 1945 in Egypt] should be instructive, once the novelty of the latter is not allowed to weigh in its favour against the familiarity of the former.

Similarly, James comments: "There is no question of any one's having excluded them from the New Testament: They have done that for themselves." Scholar Milligan remarks: "We have only to compare our New Testament books as a whole with other literature of the kind to realise how wide is the gulf which separates them from it. The uncanonical gospels, it is often said, are in reality the best evidence for the canonical." And Aland maintains: "It cannot be said of a single writing preserved to us from the early period of the church outside the New Testament that it could properly be added today to the Canon." For these reasons it's absurd for Conder to claim that the Gospel of Peter's account of Jesus being resurrected on the Last Day of Unleavened Bread "renders the entire canonized four Gospels void" (MB, p. 149). Instead, the Gospel of Peter is simply false: It is just one document written later than the canonical Gospels, and it contains the false Gnostic/docetic teaching that Jesus did not come in the flesh. The earlier written four Gospels, including Luke whose reliability as a historian has been repeatedly sustained by archeological discoveries, are far more likely to be historically reliable. Their collective witness against this claim should be seen as decisive. Then, in evident reaction against the heretic (and Gnostic) Marcion's (c. 140 A.D.) attempt to edit the canon, lists of the canonical books were made from the late second century onwards. These lists, even from the beginning, contain most of the books found in the NT today. The author of the Muratorian fragment (c. 170 A.D.), Irenaeus (c. 180 A.D.), Clement (c. 190 A.D.), Tertullian (c. 200 A.D.), Origen (c. 230 A.D.), Eusebius (c. 310 A.D.), and Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 348 A.D.) all compiled such lists. Furthermore, Conder labors under a fundamentally false skeptical assumption: The Gospels are not canonical because the church decreed them to be authoritative, but because they are inspired, the church saw them as having authority. So whether a book was written by an apostle (Paul, John, Matthew, James) or someone associated with an apostle (traditionally, Mark was seen as associated with Peter, and Luke with Paul), was a very heavy weight in indicating what was to be considered Scripture, and what wasn't. Nothing written after c. 100 A.D. made it into the canon--only those books written within a generation or two of Jesus' death were deemed proper to include in the canon. What mattered was apostolic authority, not just authorship. Thus, N.B. Stonehouse has said: "In the Epistles there is consistent recognition that in the church there is only one absolute authority, the authority of the Lord himself. Wherever the apostles speak with authority, they do so as exercising the Lord's authority." The level of skepticism Conder shows about the New Testament canon simply isn't justified.

WAS THE CANON DETERMINED FROM THE TOP-DOWN BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH'S HIERARCHY?

         Conder builds upon the claims of Roman Catholicism that it chose the canon: "The New Testament books found in the present translations were the result of their acceptance by the Roman Catholic Church and its various councils. This is a fact pure and simple, and is easily proven by any biblical encyclopedia or dictionary" (MB, p. 18). In actuality, the Roman Catholic Church's leadership did not choose the canon, and then impose it from the top down. Depending on how "Roman Catholicism" is defined by Conder, this may discount the Greek-speaking eastern churches, many of which (at least in Asia Minor) held onto Sabbatarianism for many years after 100 A.D. It also discounts how God can move men who are not true believers to make the right decisions. (Would God be so careless to let ultimately His holy word become perverted by those with false doctrines? After all, how did He preserve the OT and/or have the right books placed in it when Israel so often had fallen into idolatry as a nation?) Furthermore, the Sunday-observing Church before the time of emperor Constantine and the Edict of Milan (313 A.D.) was hardly a tightly controlled, highly organized, monolithic group. It had suffered terrible persecution itself during the rule of Diocletian (284-305) and earlier emperors. Consider this statement by Jerome (c. 374-419 A.D.), the translator of the Latin Vulgate (at least for the Gospels), as he wrote to Dardanus, the prefect of Gaul. It clearly reflects the lack of top-down uniformity in the Catholic Church on the canon, even in the year 414 A.D., long after the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.):

         This must be said to our people, that the epistle which is entitled 'To the Hebrews' is accepted as the apostle Paul's not only by the churches of the east but by all church writers in the Greek language of earlier times [note that he doesn't consider papal authority or synods of bishops as determinates of the canon's contents!--EVS], although many judge it to be by Barnabas. It is of no great moment who the author is, since it is the work of a churchman and received recognition day by day in the churches' public reading [again, this clearly denies a top-down approach--EVS]. If the custom of the Latins does not receive it among the canonical scriptures, neither, by the same liberty, do the churches of the Greeks accept John's Apocalypse. Yet we accept them both, not following the custom of the present time [which would deny the binding authority of recent council decisions, such as that of Hippo Regius in 393 and Carthage in 397, or the papal decree of 405--EVS] but the precedent of early writers [notice!], who generally make free use of testimonies from both works.

This statement shows the canon came from the traditional practices of average members and elders--from the bottom up. As scholar Kurt Aland noted: "It goes without saying that the Church, understood as the entire body of believers, created the canon . . . it was not the reverse; it was not imposed from the top, be it by bishops or synods." One major factor in forming the canon was persecution, especially the one unleashed by the Roman emperor Diocletian, which lasted for ten years starting in 303 A.D. (cf. Rev. 2:10). The Roman government for the first time then specifically targeted for destruction all copies of the NT. Believers in the scattered congregations in the Roman empire had to know which religious documents they had they could hand over and which ones they should resist strongly against giving them up, even to death. As Bruce notes, it might be permissible to hand over "a copy of the Shepherd of Hermas or a manual of church order," but not sacred Scripture, if that would satisfy the Roman police for a time. "But for Christians who were ordered to hand over books it must have become important to know which books must on no account be surrendered and those which might reasonably be regarded as 'not worth dying for.'" These practices point to decentralized decision-making for each congregation, or a group of congregations under one bishop, when attacked by the Roman government. This shows papal decrees or synods of bishops did not create the canon when they proclaimed its contents in the mid to late fourth century and early fifth centuries. Instead, they merely ratified already existing practice over the centuries and decades by multitudes of laymembers, elders, and church writers scattered within the confines of a vast empire.

THE NATURE OF THE SUNDAY-KEEPING CHURCH BEFORE C. 313 A.D. RECONSIDERED

         One of Conder's great fallacies, often repeated in various forms and taken for granted, is the belief that the Catholic Church before the time of Emperor Constantine's proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. (which

granted Christianity toleration by the Roman government and relief from persecution) was completely apostate, fully uniform, and monolithic.

         It was the Roman Catholic Church that had retained possession of the New Testament Scriptures for the first three hundred years of the Common Era. . . . Now, the fact of the matter is that the Catholic Church, headquartered in Rome, was the supreme ruler of the known Christian world at the time of these councils [that supposedly determined the canon in 382, 393, 397--EVS]" (MB, pp. 9, 20; cf. p. 59).

In fact, the Sunday-keeping church before the Edict of Milan was off and on persecuted by the Roman government, sometimes terribly. The list of persecutions found in Foxe's Book of Martyrs occurring during the years of Roman rule primarily records attacks on Sunday keepers, especially since Sabbatarianism was from the early second century on was mainly concentrated within the Greek-speaking areas of Asia Minor and Greece itself. Ignatius, for example, a staunch Sunday observer of the early second century, was condemned to be eaten by lions. He replied to this sentence: "I am the wheat of Christ: I am going to be ground with the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found pure bread." True, by denying the Sabbath and the festivals such as the Passover these Christians may have sought to avoid being attacked along with the Jews who were victims of Roman anti-Semitism (a type born of paganism, not Christianity). But they still refused to offer pinches of incense to the Roman emperor or to worship any other gods besides the one true God. As a result, the Roman government still sought their lives off and on before 313 A.D. The long-running debate over the nature of Christ as God or being like God shows the Sunday-observing church was hardly uniform in belief. This debate had begun even before Trinitarianism was first proclaimed at the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.), and it hardly ended then. Furthermore, the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, still had competition from the Patriarch of Constantinople (the capital of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine empire) for supremacy within Christendom for many centuries. The Catholic (meaning "universal") Church was hardly tightly united and controlled from the top by a single man, especially when earlier on the patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria had their own spheres of influence as well.

         It must realized that the Catholic church evolved over the centuries, including in its administrative practices. In regard to the Papacy, "The first pope, in the real sense of the word, was Leo I (440-461 A.D.)." Why? Because of the system of church government he set up, or at least systematized by copying the subdivisions and organization of the Roman Empire, during his reign made him so. As Myers saw it: "During the reign of Leo I, the Church set up, within the Roman Empire, an ecclesiastical state [i.e., government] which, in its constitution and its administrative system, was shaping itself upon the imperial model." Furthermore, its degree of apostasy grew as the centuries passed, especially after the pre-313 A.D. persecutions ceased, and compromise with paganism became rampant. For example, the Catholic Church fathers Tertullian (c. 155-after 220 A.D.) and Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-between 211 and 215 A.D.) believed the Second Commandment totally prohibited religious art. Even the church historian Eusebius (c. 327 A.D.) condemned the emperor's sister for asking him to get her a picture of Christ. But what these men believed on this subject was sooner or later rejected. As Ellen White observed:

         Now [post-313 A.D.] the church was in fearful peril. Prison, torture, fire, and sword were blessings in comparison with this. Some of the Christians stood firm, declaring that they could make no compromise. . . . Under a cloak of pretended Christianity, Satan was insinuating himself into the church, to corrupt their faith and turn their minds from the word of truth. Most of the Christians at last consented to lower their standard, and a union was formed between Christianity and paganism.

She later gives a list of doctrines that were changed, reflecting the influence of pagan thought and religion. These include the exaltation of the Pope, restrictions on the circulation of the Bible among common people, the changeover to Sunday worship, the immortality of the soul and consciousness while dead, the invocation of saints and the Virgin Mary, purgatory, eternal torment, indulgences, and the replacement of the Lord's Supper by the "idolatrous sacrifice of the mass." These changes did not occur overnight, but reflected a progressive development, as did those that converted pagan celebrations into the holidays of Christmas and Easter. While some changes mainly occurred before 313 A.D., such as the abandonment of the Sabbath for

Sunday, and Passover for Easter communion, others clearly occurred later. It is patently absurd to project back the Roman Catholicism of Pope Innocent III (1160-1216), who manhandled European monarchs and nations in the name of God, and its possession of a highly intricate theology in the high Middle Ages, to the first centuries after Christ. Sunday-keeping Christianity before the Edict of Milan in the Roman Empire should never be seen as monolithic, uniform, fully apostate, or tightly controlled from the top, yet Conder repeatedly implicitly relies on such a characterization of it, especially when attacking it as bloodthirsty, dishonest, deceitful, highly pagan, etc.

HOW OTHER HISTORICAL INFORMATION CONFIRMS THE NEW TESTAMENT

         Now let's turn to the external evidence test for the reliability of the New Testament. Being the second of Sanders's approaches to analyzing historical documents, it consists of seeing whether verifiable statements made in some text from the past correlate with other evidence, such as that found by archeology or in other historical writings. Conder claims doing this for the Gospels is difficult: "Perhaps the first thing to notice about the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John is that outside the New Testament itself there is no way to corroborate most of their facts from secular history" (MB, p. 22). This comment ignores how the general cultural background of the Gospel narratives could still be checked, such as place names, customs, governmental procedures, religious rituals, the names of prominent persons, etc. Hence, the Roman government did issue coins with Caesar's head on it called denarii (Matt. 22:17-21), Tiberius was an emperor of Rome (Luke 3:1), the Sanhedrin was the supreme ruling body of the Jews in Judea (Matt. 26:59), footwashing was a lowly task normally done by servants (John 13:12-14), crucifixion was a punishment routinely meted out by the Roman government against non-citizens (Mark 15:24), etc. Archeologists have discovered the pool of Bethesda with five porticoes (John 5:2-4) and the pool of Siloam (John 9:7, 11). The Nazareth stone, discovered in 1878, demonstrates that the place of Christ's childhood did exist. For many centuries no record of the place where Jesus was tried before being crucified, "the Pavement," had been discovered. But Albright found that this court was the court of the Tower of Antonia. It had been the Roman military headquarters in Jerusalem, but was buried when the Emperor Hadrian (76-138, ruled 117-138 A.D.) rebuilt the city. So while most of the specific events recorded in the Gospels can't be directly checked in pagan or Jewish historical works, the general cultural background certainly can be.

         More specifically, consider the implications of this evidence for the trustworthiness of the NT. Some doubted Pontius Pilate had ever lived, who had had Jesus crucified in 31 A.D.. He was mentioned only in the NT and by a few other Roman and Jewish sources. But in 1961, an archeological expedition from Italy was digging in the ruins of Caesarea's ancient Roman theater. One workman turned over a stone stairway--and found an inscription to Pontius Pilate on the bottom. This case illustrates and refutes an argument that disbelievers in the Bible use time and time again, which Conder is certainly not above using himself. They argue from silence, and say that because something mentioned in the NT (or OT--what's good for the goose is good for the gander!) is mentioned nowhere else, it can't be true (or certainly true). Archeological discoveries have repeatedly refuted such claims after they were made. The NT (and OT) have shown themselves trustworthy so often in what can be checked, it's proper to infer or extrapolate that the rest of what can't be checked is also reliable. This is not a procedure of blind faith.

THE RELIABILITY OF LUKE AS A HISTORIAN

         What archeological evidence is there for the NT's reliability generally, and Luke's in particular? The English archeologist Sir William Ramsay (professor of humanity at Aberdeen University in Scotland, 1886-1911) had been totally skeptical about the accuracy of the NT, especially the writings of Luke. After going to what is now Turkey, and doing a topographical study, he totally changed his mind. Later, he wrote that Luke "should be placed along with the very greatest of historians." He had believed, as per nineteenth-century German higher criticism, that Acts was written in the second century. But he found it must have been written earlier, because it reflected conditions typical of the second half of the first century. He explained changing his mind thus:

         I may fairly claim to have entered on this investigation without prejudice in favour of the conclusion which I shall now seek to justify to the reader. On the contrary, I began with a mind unfavourable to it, for the ingenuity and apparent completeness of the Tubingen [higher critic] theory had at one time quite convinced me. It did not then lie in my line of life to investigate the subject minutely; but more recently I found myself brought into contact with the Book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne upon me that in various details the narrative [of Luke in Acts] showed marvelous truth. In fact, beginning with a fixed idea that the work was essentially a second century composition, and never relying on its evidence as trustworthy for first century conditions, I gradually came to find it a useful ally in some obscure and difficult investigations.

For example, it was said that Luke was wrong to imply the cities of Lystra and Derbe were in Lycaonia and that Iconium wasn't (Luke 14:6), based upon what the Roman politician and orator Cicero (106-43 b.c.) and others had written anciently. But in 1910, Ramsay found a monument that showed Iconium was in Phyrgia, not Lycaonia--a discovery since corroborated by further evidence. When Luke said Lysanias was the Tetrarch of Abilene (Luke 3:1), it was said this was incorrect, since the only Lysanias known to ancient historians had died in 36 b.c. But later an inscription found near Damascus, Syria says "Freedman of Lysanias the Tetrarch," and has been dated between 14 and 29 A.D. The textual critic F.J.A. Fort maintained Luke was wrong to use the Greek word meris to mean "district" when referring to Philippi as part of Macedonia. Later archeological discoveries have found that Luke was right--this very word meris was employed to describe this district's divisions. Luke called Publius of Malta the "first man of the island" (Acts 28:7); inscriptions have been found that refer to him as "first man." Luke wrote of a riot in Ephesus that took place in its theater. This theater has been excavated, and had room for 25,000 people. The riot had been provoked by the fear that Paul's preaching threatened the silversmiths' trade in objects related to the Temple of Artemis (one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world) . . . One inscription that has been found mentioned that silver statues of Artemis were to be placed in the "theater during a full session of the Ecclesia [assembly]." Luke described once how Paul was nearly killed by a riot provoked by the rumor he had brought a gentile into the Temple (Acts 21:27-31). Helping confirm this account are inscriptions that have been found that read in Latin and Greek: "No foreigner may enter within the barrier which surrounds the temple and enclosure. Anyone who is caught doing so will be personally responsible for his ensuing death." Evidence favoring the reliability of Luke as a historian, and thus the New Testament, could be easily extended.

THE DATE OF CHRIST'S BIRTH AND THE CENSUS BY QUIRINIUS

         Conder, like many before him, attacks Luke's chronology surrounding the birth of Jesus (MB, p. 36):

         Luke 1:5 dates the birth of Jesus in the 'days of Herod, king of Judea,' who died in 4 B.C. Yet, we find the taxation and journey from Galilee to Bethlehem to have occurred in response to census in the time Quirinius was governor of Syria. History plainly records that the one and only census conducted while Quirinius was governor of Syria affected only Judea, not Galilee, and it took place in 6-7 C.E., which was ten years after the death of Herod the Great!

Without acknowledgement, Conder is employing an argument from silence, which states that since the Jewish historian Josephus (etc.) didn't mention an earlier census under Quirinius, therefore, it didn't exist, and Luke was wrong. Such arguments in the past have been repeatedly exploded by further archeological discoveries, such as "Moses couldn't have written the Pentateuch since writing hadn't been yet invented in his day," or "Belshazzar couldn't have been the last king of Babylon because Herodotus mentions only Nabonidus." A wait in faith could well solve this problem for us, especially since Luke has been proven right in the past and his critics wrong on various points in the past. In fact, two inscriptions have been discovered that potentially indicate that Quirinius did have an earlier governorship in Syria. The Lapis Venetus describes a census ordered by Quirinius for the Syrian city of Apamea which some evidence says was made sometime between 10-6 b.c., although a number of others maintain it refers to the 6 A.D. census. Another inscription, called the Lapis Tiburtinus mentions someone who had earlier been the proconsul of Cyrene (in modern Libya), who later subdued the Homonadensians, and then "again" received the legateship of Syria and Phoenicia (in modern Lebanon). Since Quirinius is known to have suppressed the Homonadensian tribes for Rome, to have fought in the Gaetulian war in North Africa, and was the governor of Syria (or "the one leading" it), it's sensible to refer this inscription to him. But, alas!, his name is missing from it due to its ill-preserved condition. Admittedly, the word "again" could mean he merely received a legateship a second time, not necessarily in the same locale. Interestingly, scholar E.J. Vardaman maintains he has "micrographic" evidence that conclusively proves this inscription refers to Quirinius which had yet to be published and checked over. Note the potential implication of Luke 2:2 concerning the census it mentions: "This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria." His use of the word "first" may imply there was a second done under his command (compare Acts 5:37, when Luke mentions the census, occurring in 6 A.D., in connection with Judas of Galilee's revolt). Furthermore, Quirinius may have been given some kind of "extraordinary command" or official position in Syria while battling the Homonadensians in Cilcia and elsewhere, but under the authority of Saturninus (the proconsul of Syria from 9 b.c. to 6 b.c.), or Varus, the governor from 7 or 6 b.c. to 4 b.c. Varus was inexperienced and not especially competent (as later shown by the disastrous loss of three legions under his leadership in 9 A.D. in Teutoburger forest in Germany). Augustus Caesar (ruled 27 b.c. to 14 A.D.) may have given Quirinius (who had much experience in the region as a general) an ad hoc commission to conduct the census over the Jews because these encouraged them to revolt, and Herod may have been dragging his feet about doing it. (In such a sensitive position, an experienced Mideast hand would be of value). Archer maintains that the Greek of Luke 2:2 doesn't actually say Quirinius was the governor, but that he "was leading--in charge of--Syria." This would fit the notion that while he was battling the Homonadensian tribes in the mountains of Pisidia between 12 b.c. and 2 b.c. he may have been put in charge of the earlier census (c. 4 b.c.) under the man who officially was the legate or governor. Interestingly, one scholar took a stronger stand on the inscriptions found at Rome and Antioch on this issue: "The scholarly researches of Zumpt (Commentat. epitgraph., II, 86-104: De Syria romana provincia, 97-98) and of Mommesen (Res gestae divi Augusti) place beyond doubt that Quirinius was twice governor of Syria." Ramsay, based on inscriptional evidence, believed Quirinius was a co-governor of Syria 8-6 b.c. The dictum of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 b.c.) was that the benefit of the doubt should give given to the author, and not arrogated to the critic himself, a procedure Conder rarely respects concerning the NT. This approach is justifiable because the ancient document being read was written much closer in time to the events in question than the critic's life. The ancient document's author is much more likely to have known what was going on than the critic removed by vast gaps in time, space, and/or culture from him. It is the purest poppycock to stamp Luke "WRONG!" just because Josephus (in particular) doesn't mention a census that could have occurred earlier under Quirinius when Luke has shown himself reliable in what can be checked.

SUCH ROMAN CENSUSES NOT ABSURD

         Conder maintains Luke 2:1 commits an absurdity by saying Augustus ordered an census to be taken throughout the Roman Empire (MB, p. 36):

         Can you imagine the efficient Romans requiring millions of people to suddenly become dislocated and to start traveling back to their ancestral homes to register for a simple tax? Think of the disruption of commerce--which could have hardly been compensated by the few pennies per person such a tax would have brought.

This analysis is flatly wrong historically. The Romans routinely conducted in censuses similar to what Luke describes. Davis states that: "Every five years the Romans enumerated citizens and their property to determine their liabilities. This practice was extended to include the entire Roman Empire in 5 B.C." The enumeration wasn't done to make them to pay a specified small amount in tax, but to assess their ability to pay taxes in the years to come before the next census, and also for drafting men into the Roman legions. Archeological discoveries have found the Romans enrolled taxpayers and every fourteen years held censuses. The emperor Augustus began this practice, with the first taking place in either 23-22 b.c. or 9-8 b.c. An Egyptian papyrus dated to 104 A.D. indicates that the Roman census in Egypt required Egyptians to return to their home city. As Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary relates: "This [the census of Luke 2:1-3] was probably a census required of all nations under the rule of Rome. All citizens were required to return to their places of birth for an official registration of their property for tax purposes." Conder has mistakenly placed too much credence in a certain atheistic science fiction writer's historical knowledge of the ancient world--"the Romans couldn't possibly have conducted so queer a census"!

EARLY PAGAN SOURCES WHICH REFER TO JESUS BESIDES THE NEW TESTAMENT

         Conder maintains that the Roman historian Tacitus's (c. 56-120 A.D.) statement about Jesus is the only evidence external to the NT for Jesus' life (MB, p. 53). Tacitus wrote skeptically of Jesus and Christianity thus:

         Hence to suppress the rumor, he [Nero (r. 54-68 A.D.), who was blamed for the great fire that broke out in Rome under his rule--EVS] falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius: but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also.

However, this is not the only early incidental mention of Jesus and/or the Christians by non-Christian writers. The Greek writer and satirist, Lucian of Samosata (c. 120-190 A.D.) once wrote of Jesus as:

         the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world. . . . Furthermore, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they were all brothers one of another after they have transgressed once for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws.

The Roman historian and biographer Suetonius (c. 69-after 122 A.D.) remarked: "As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he [the Emperor Claudius--cf. Acts 18:2, where Luke mentions this event independently] expelled them from Rome." This statement was somewhat inaccurate, since he seems to be placing Christ personally in Rome, instead of saying teaching about Christ was agitating the Jews into riots. Pliny the Younger, the governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor (112 A.D.), wrote to the Emperor Trajan about how to treat the Christians. He had been putting many to death, and was asking if all of them should be, or just certain ones. He says of them:

         They affirmed, however, that the whole of their guilt, or their error, was, that they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verse a hymn to Christ as to a god, and bound themselves to a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft, adultery, never to falsify their word, not to deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up.

Some other ancient writers, such as Thallus, Phlegon, and Mara Bar-Serapion also wrote of Christ, but their mentions are preserved only as fragments in the writings of Christians, making their testimony more problematic as independent evidence.

JOSEPHUS AS INDEPENDENT TESTIMONY FOR THE NEW TESTAMENT AND JESUS' LIFE

         The ancient Jewish historian Josephus (c. 37-100 A.D.) mentions Jesus twice. He also describes John the Baptist, his ministry, and his execution by Herod, which provides independent support for the NT's account of him. Once he makes a brief allusion to Jesus in a noncommittal or even hostile manner, which heavily supports its authenticity since a committed Christian would not write such an interpolation about his savior. Ananus, the high priest, "convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned." Especially interestingly, Josephus, being a Jew, shows his awareness of this term's origin by using "Christ" as a title, not a surname, which had increasingly become standard Christian practice. More problematic is this famous passage also found in Josephus:

         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 Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had 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 about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.

Clearly, Josephus could not have written all of this, or else he would have been a Christian, since he calls Jesus the Messiah and asserts belief in His resurrection. On the other hand, it shouldn't be seen as an interpolation created whole cloth (cf. MB, p. 145), since serious evidence does exist for its (partial) authenticity as well. The textual evidence for it is good, since it is found in all the handwritten manuscript copies of Josephus, and Eusebius (c. 260-339 A.D.), the Catholic Church historian, cites it as well. As for internal evidence, when Josephus called Jesus a "wise man," it's not what a Christian would say, but is like what Josephus said of Solomon and Daniel. Calling His miracles "surprising feats" or "astonishing deeds" again isn't what a Christian would say, but Josephus uses the same language to describe the miracles of Elisha. Labeling Christians a "tribe" is something never done in early Christian literature, but fits Josephus's tendency to use this term for the Jews and other national and communal groups. This passage places the blame for the crucifixion mainly upon Pontius Pilate, which certainly was against the prevailing Christian tendency of the second and third centuries (something about which Conder is hardly silent about!) The Catholic Church father Origen (c. 185-254? A.D.) said that Josephus denied Jesus was the Messiah, so he couldn't have known this text in this form. Hence, this passage is a curious mixture of Josephus's literary style and some unknown Christian scribe's doctoring up of it. Instead of tossing it out completely, reconstructing an original text conjecturally is more justifiable. Consider F.F. Bruce's stab at this, which assumes Josephus took a hostile tone towards Christianity:

         Now there arose about this time a source of further trouble in one Jesus, a wise man who performed surprising works, a teacher of men who gladly welcome strange things. He led away many Jews, and also many of the Gentiles. He was the so-called Christ. When Pilate, acting on information supplied by the chief men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had attached themselves to him at first did not cease to cause trouble, and the tribe of Christians, which has taken this name from him, is not extinct even today.

Even with the self-evident Christian changes to this passage removed, it's clear from this passage we can know Jesus did miracles, that some called him the Messiah, that he was executed by Pontius Pilate, and that a religious movement began as a result of his teachings. So we can know more about Jesus outside the NT than just about his bare existence and crucifixion. Some independent testimony for His life appears in non-Christian sources within a century and a half of his death. Conder is simply wrong to claim that "there is no other record of him [Christ] in any authoritative work [than in Tacitus]" (MB, p. 70).

CONDER'S RECONSTRUCTION OF JESUS' TRIAL RECONSIDERED

         Conder castigates the Gospels' record of the trial of Christ: "These Gospels are notorious for their inaccurate details" (MB, p. 54). He assumes that the Jews would always obey their own laws. He then concludes the large number of ways in which the trial was illegal--12 by Herman Hoeh's count--prove the Gospels are historically inaccurate, and the concoction of some gentile Catholic Church father (see MB, pp. 56-57). But, is this logical? Granted the reality of an evil human nature, and sufficient fear that Jesus was a threat to their position of authority, the powers-that-were in Jewish society could have easily bent and broke every law in the book to accomplish their ends. Once again Conder violates Aristotle's dictum, and assumes 19 centuries after the fact he really knew what went on in the first century, instead of the first-century writers of the NT. He then assumes he can ignore whatever they record at will whenever it conflicts with his thesis of savaging the New Testament. The fundamental reason why Jesus was put to death from the Jewish viewpoint was not just blasphemy, but because His miracles constituted a threat to their political and religious authority and their control over doctrine. Note John 10:48-50, 53, which describes the results of the sensation caused by Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead: "Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, 'What are we doing? For this man [Jesus] is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place [position of authority] and our nation." After Caiaphas, the high priest, explained that "'it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.'" they "from that day on . . . planned together to kill Him." The Jewish leadership even wanted to kill Lazarus "because on account of him many of the Jews were going away, and were believing in Jesus" (John 12:11). They were infuriated by His ability to perform miracles while teaching doctrines that they disagreed with, which demonstrated God was on His side, not theirs. Hence, after saying it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath, and healing a man's withered hand, "the Pharisees went out, and they counseled together against Him, as to how they might destroy Him" (Matt. 12:14; cf. Luke 6:11). Plainly, the Pharisees saw the threat to their religious authority when after miraculously healing a woman bent over double by a spirit, He replied to their accusations that He broke the Sabbath thus (Luke 13:15-17):

         'You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall, and lead him away to water him? And this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day?' And as He said this, all His opponents were being humiliated; and the entire multitude was rejoicing over all the glorious things being done by Him.

Plainly, Jesus subverted their religious authority, and the multitudes were beginning to increasingly turn to Him to interpret the Torah for them, instead of the established religious leadership of the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, etc. They also feared that if the people believed in him, it might spark Roman intervention. With their power threatened by Him, their desire to strike back should not seem remarkable or unusual.

         Jesus also was accused of blasphemy. After healing a man on the Sabbath, and telling him to pick up his pallet and walk,

         the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was going these things on the Sabbath. But He answered them, 'My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.' For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God (John 5:16-18).

Similarly, after Jesus forgave the sins of a paralytic he was about to heal, some of the scribes hearing Him reasoned in their hearts: "Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?" (Mark 2:7). Jesus' ability to perform miracles was especially threatening to the Jewish establishment. That power, along with His perfect character and the support of the multitudes, surely made them envious, indeed "haters of the good for being the good," which even the pagan Pontius Pilate perceived. He asked the crowd while Jesus was on trial: "'Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?' For he was aware that the chief priests had delivered Him up because of envy" (Mark 15:10; cf. Matt. 27:18). The Jewish religious establishment, or part of it, knew that Jesus was sent by God (note the use of "we" in John 3:1-2). Nevertheless, they felt so threaten by Him they hurriedly sought to kill Him just before the Days of Unleavened Bread began (which answers Conder's question about why He was put "to death in the space of just a few hours" (MB, p. 61). This desire for speed, to beat the first Holy Day of the year (Nisan 15), was one of the main reasons so much of Jesus' trial was illegal, over and above the problems of finding something to accuse Him of when He had lived a perfectly sinless life (Matthew 26:3-5): "Then the chief priests and the elder of the people were gathered together in the court of the high priest, named Caiaphas; and they plotted together to seize Jesus by stealth, and kill Him. But they were saying, 'Not during the festival, lest a riot occur among the people.'" So between their envy of Jesus, such as over His ability to do miracles, their fear of how He threatened their positions of religious authority over the Jewish people, and their desires for a speedy trial to condemn Jesus before the first spring Holy Day began, it should not seem remarkable that they broke a lot of their own laws to convict Him under such extreme circumstances (cf. Paul's illegal mistreatment before the Sanhedrin by being struck (Acts 23:3)).

THE ROMANS' INDIFFERENCE TO DOCTRINAL DISPUTES AMONG THE JEWS

         What undermines Conder's reconstruction of Jesus' trial was that Jesus was put to death for violating Jewish law, not Roman. When the Jewish leadership charged Jesus with violating Roman law, they were lying through their teeth (Luke 23:2): "'We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is Christ, a King.'" Pilate himself said to "the chief priests and the rulers and the people" that "You brought this man to me as one who incites the people to rebellion, and behold, having examined Him before you, I have found no guilt in this man regarding the charges which you make against Him. No, nor has Herod, for he sent Him back to us . . ." (Luke 23:13-15). After all, Jesus said taxes should be paid to the Roman authorities, following His principle of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's (Matt. 22:17-22). Jesus was not in the business of getting involved in the world's politics, nor, following His example, did the early Christians, who refused to serve in the military or in political office. He refused to let the crowd He had fed miraculously to make Him king (John 6:15): "Jesus therefore perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force, to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone." Jesus, although He was a king, made it clear before Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36-37). Jesus simply was not going to set up the kingdom of God on earth at that time, so charging Him with political subversion against the Roman state was simply false. He corrected the common expectation of many Jews that He was the Conquering Messiah who was going to set up God's kingdom at that time with His parable of the minas (v. 11): "He was near Jerusalem, and they supposed that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately." (This fact undercuts Conder's analysis on p. 88 of MB). The Jewish leadership really wanted Jesus executed for saying He was God, the Son of God, and/or the Messiah (John 8:58-59; 5:18; 10:30-33; 19:7; Mark 14:61-64; Matt. 26:63-66; Luke 22:70-71). Later on, during the proceedings before Pilate, they even admitted to their real motive for wanting Him dead (John 19:7): "The Jews answered him, 'We have a law, and by that law He ought to die because He made Himself out to be the Son of God.'" Had this been the initial official charge, it might have been dismissed. Pilate's response might have been similar to Gallio's, proconsul of Achaia, when the Jews hauled Paul before him. He dismissed them from his court with these words (Acts 18:14-15): "If it were a matter of wrong or of vicious crime, O Jews, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you; but if there are questions about words and names and your own law, look after it yourselves; I am unwilling to be a judge of these matters." Similarly, consider Festus's characterization of the charges against the apostle Paul when on trial (Acts 25:18-19, 25, 27):

         And when the accusers stood up, they began bringing charges against him not of such crimes as I was expecting; but they simply had some points of disagreement with him about their own religion and about a certain dead man, Jesus, whom Paul asserted to be alive. . . . But I found that he had committed nothing worthy of death; and since he himself appealed to the Emperor, I decided to send him. Yet I have nothing definite about him to write to my lord. . . . For it seems absurd to me in sending a prisoner, not to indicate also the charges against him.

The pagan Romans simply were not concerned about what they perceived as intramural doctrinal disputes between different factions within some recently conquered subject race's alien religion. Threats against their continued ability to tax and rule over some province of their empire were what mattered to them. The Roman commander who had Paul delivered over to Felix under a large armed guard had a similar attitude (Acts 23:28-29). The Romans simply couldn't have cared less if Jesus called himself God or the Son of God, especially when they sometimes worshipped emperors who called themselves gods, or who allowed themselves to be called such, like Augustus, Caligula, Tiberius, etc. So long as Jesus did not lead some group in revolt against Roman rule, like Theudas or Judas of Galilee (Acts 5:36-37), they wouldn't have been interested if He called Himself the Messiah. Furthermore, they had a typically polytheistic attitude of live and let live about others worshiping other gods. Saying Jesus was hauled up before Pilate on charges of political subversion is an old higher critic viewpoint, but it lacks any solid foundation when considering the words and actions of Jesus himself.

CONDER'S USE OF THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE

         Conder repeatedly makes the mistake of reasoning that if only the New Testament refers to some event, and no other pagan or Jewish source does, then whatever is mentioned is automatically suspect. For example, he reasons concerning Pilate's power to pardon at the Passover, "it is interesting that, outside the New Testament, no such custom is known in Jewish history" (MB, p. 58). Similarly, he argues concerning the resurrection of the saints mentioned in Matt. 27:52: "This event, needless to say, isn't known by the other three gospels. Nor is it known by Josephus or any other historian of the time--and given such a spectacle, it certainly wouldn't have been overlooked" (MB, p. 68). He cites Kersey Graves' criticism that Matthew's record of the murder of innocent children in Bethlehem was an event not mentioned by Josephus, thereby making it suspect (MB, p. 37). In all of these cases he is arguing from silence, which is a logical fallacy, and denies Aristotle's dictum, which maintains the benefit of the doubt is given to the document, and not the critic. The Old Testament mentions many events not described elsewhere--does that make them historically false or invalid? No reference to the Exodus has been found among ancient Egyptian records at the time it occurred. Does that mean it never happened? Rather, this means the Egyptian priests (remember--they wrote the hieroglyphics and kept the basic records) wouldn't want to record any events that humbled them and their gods, so this spectacular event just gets conveniently overlooked. The idea of writing unbiased history only arose among the Greeks (arguably with Thucycides's history of the Peloponnesian War of 431-404 b.c.), and, as an ideal and actual practice, always has had an uphill battle ever since in the world. Similarly, would Josephus or some pagan historian record events that prove their worldview wrong? It was hardly likely! To say a historical document is invalid because its contents aren't replicated elsewhere is an argument from a lack of evidence. In a sound argument, there are correct premises with a valid form (organization), which means there is some positive evidence for the assertion. An argument from silence is based on non-existent (a lack of) evidence. True, it can sometimes have force in some contexts, such as for dating a document concerning BIG events hard to overlook. For example, if a modern European history textbook had its copyright page missing, but was otherwise complete, and it covered the Great Depression, but nothing about WWII or anything afterwards, it's safe to conclude it was written in the 1930s. Still, it's fundamentally invalid; nobody should place his faith in such arguments as a basis for his salvation! So when Conder complains that the Catholic Church supposedly destroyed "the truth of Christian origins from the world by burning pagan libraries," he is arguing from silence. But as discussed above, since the Gospels (and Acts) have proven themselves reliable in what can be checked by archeological data and/or ancient non-Christian sources, what can't be checked should be assumed to be true, which is a process of inference, and not blind faith.

CONDER'S USE OF AN ANCIENT JEWISH SLANDER: JESUS BEN PANTHERA

         Further proof of Conder's uncritical methodology is his use of the ancient Jewish slander that Jesus was born illegitimately (cf. John 8:41), having for a father a Roman soldier by the name of Pandera or Panthera. Supposedly there was another man by the name of Jesus ben Pandera, the story of whose life was uncritically absorbed by Christianity (see MB, pp. 134-35, 145-46). Conder absurdly calls Celsus, the ancient pagan critic of Christianity who wrote a harsh polemic against Christianity, a "historian" (which implies some level of objectivity) (MB, p. 145). Instead, what Celsus did was take up the Jews' slander of Jesus, and use it for his own purposes. Historian Robin Lane Fox describes Celsus's work that attacked Christianity by noting it put a Jew in its forefront. He reels off the claim that Jesus had been born of an adulterous relationship between this Roman soldier and Mary, and later practiced sorcery and magical arts [which admits obliquely to His ability to perform miracles by the power of God] while begging for a living with His worthless disciples. "Much of this abuse matches the allusions to Jesus which occur in later, written versions of the Jews' 'anti-Gospels.' In the 170s Celsus the Platonist had clearly picked up the Jews' own slanders." How did the name "Panthera" become associated with Jesus? A highly plausible reconstruction is to say it was a corruption of the Greek word for virgin, "parthenos," [which appears in the Greek Septuagint translation of the OT for Isa. 7:14, always a battleground messianic text between Christians and Jews]. It also has been suggested it came from "pentheros," meaning "son-in-law." As Klausner states: "The Jews constantly heard that the Christians (the majority of whom spoke Greek from the earliest times) called Jesus by the name 'Son of the Virgin,' . . . and so, in mockery, they called him Ben ha-Pantera, i.e., 'son of the leopard.'" But Jesus could have gained this epithet by another means. This name, as verified by first-century inscriptions, was fairly frequent. After saying it was as common as the names Fox or Wolf today, Rabbi and Professor Morris Goldstein commented:

         It is noteworthy that Orig[e]n himself is credited with the tradition that Panther was the appellation of James (Jacob), the father of Joseph, the father of Jesus. . . . So, too, Andrew of Crete, John of Damascus, Epiphanius the Monk, and the author of Andronicus of Constantinople's Dialogue Against the News, name Panther as an ancestor of Jesus.

Since one statement in the Babylonian Talmud (Yebamoth 62b) authorizes someone to be called by his grandfather's name, this may explain how Jesus received this name, which the Jews totally twisted into a lurid slander against His virgin birth. Conder very dubiously takes an ancient pagan polemic's claims at face value. (Would he accept what Celsus, an Epicurean philosopher, believed about Judaism?) Conder's uncritical use of sources marks him as a poor would-be historian.

THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE TEST: DOES THE NEW TESTAMENT CONTRADICT ITSELF?

         Now, let's apply the third of Sanders's tests for evaluating historical documents, the internal evidence test, to the New Testament. Claiming the Old Testament or New Testament contains contradictions is an old assertion of unbelievers. Conder, when he charges the NT has contradictions, merely recycles what various atheists, agnostics, deists, liberal higher critics, infidels, etc. have said down through the decades and centuries. Most of the issues he raises, such as the two genealogies of Christ found in Matthew and Luke being contradictory between themselves and/or the Old Testament, are hardly anything "new." Conder's work is scarcely a new revelation of religious truth, but an old retread of standard unbelievers' assertions. His originality chiefly lies in placing them in the service of Judaism instead of unbelief plain and simple. The same crowd of scholars, etc. Conder refers to have refuted the Old Testament to their satisfaction as much as the New, yet he uncritically uses them just to go after the latter. He ignores how the problems found in Old from their viewpoint are surely worse. For example, a straight reading of Genesis 1 contradicts the theory of evolution, and the Deluge contradicts uniformitarian geology (which maintains all the processes the affect the earth's crust are slow and gradual in nature). Those interested in many of the solutions to the puzzles Conder raises about the NT should turn to Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, John W. Haley's Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, which is an older work, or any solid conservative commentary that accepts the Bible as the inspired word of God. It's simply absurd to read only what Conder says, and think that's the end of the story, when standard replies to these alleged contradictions are readily available, and when similar arguments have long been used against various parts of the OT by the same set of unbelieving scholars, which sure doesn't seem to worry Conder any!

DOES AN ADDITION OR SUBTRACTION OF DETAIL CREATE A "CONTRADICTION"?

         Conder, when deducing various NT contradictions, assumes that an addition or omission of detail creates a contradiction. (He also may be implicitly assuming that a Gospel's narrative always proceeds in chronological order). For example, he attacks the resurrection accounts thus (MB, pp. 67-68): "Luke, who asserts that the only [?] resurrection appearances took place in and around Jerusalem, contradicts John who states that these took place in both Jerusalem and Galilee." How is it that if Luke describes certain appearances of the resurrected Christ occurring in one place, but doesn't mention other appearances, such as when Jesus appeared to the disciples in Galilee, this is a "contradiction"? Where does Luke say, "I have recorded every appearance of the resurrected Christ, and they were . . .", i.e., that he made an exhaustive and complete list. The contradiction would only then exist if John records appearances not found in Luke. Similarly, consider this analysis:

         Again I ask, which is it? Does John's account have it right: no angels; no earthquake; and none of the disciples or the women knowing what had happened: does the angel appear to Mary after which Jesus himself appears? Or does Matthew's account have it right: an angel of the "Lord" descended from heaven, an earthquake occurs, and the stone is rolled away, after which this angel informs the women what happened to Jesus and asks them to go and tell the disciples. (MB, p. 68)

Since Matthew mentioned an earthquake had occurred earlier during the night, during which the guards became like dead men, but John doesn't, this additional information found in one Gospel is supposed to "contradict" the other. Anyway, John's account actually does mention the two angels (John 20:12-13): "She beheld two angels in white sitting, one at the head, and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying," one of whom asks, "'Woman, why are you weeping?'" Similarly, when Conder notes that the Gospel writers mention one or more women were at Christ's tomb early in the morning, the fact that the different Gospels add or omit referring to the other women who were with her does not make this into a "contradiction." WE SHOULD NOT ASSUME THAT EACH GOSPEL ACCOUNT GIVES ALL OF THE DETAILS DESCRIBING THE SITUATION. In a modern court of law a contradiction wouldn't be proven because one witness failed to see, state, or remember all the details of a crime he or she saw committed differs from another who remembered a somewhat different list of details about the same event, so long as the differences concern additions and omissions of detail. A description that a bank robber wore a hat is NOT contradicted by another witness saying nothing about a hat, but saw him wearing an overcoat. The contradiction only would occur if (in this example) the second witness also explicitly said that the criminal had not worn a hat. This is why is it wrong for Conder to imply Luke and John contradict one another concerning the length of Christ's ministry (MB, p. 52). You have to put all the data together first from all four Gospels, and then draw general conclusions from them like this. Taking this general approach makes it superfluous for me to go through his long list of supposed contradictions in the resurrection accounts: Armed with this principle, you can see how weak Conder's arguments in this regard really are when rereading them. Furthermore, there are places in the OT where, if this principle is denied, that make it "contradictory," such as the "two creation accounts" (Gen. 1:1-2:4 and Gen. 2:5-25) or in the parallel histories in I and II Kings and I and II Chronicles, such as the omission of evil king Manasseh's repentance by the writer of II Kings (compare II Chron. 33:9-18 with II Kings 21:1-17).

SUPPOSED NEW TESTAMENT "CONTRADICTIONS" BRIEFLY EXAMINED

         Conder argues the NT has a number of contradictions (see MB, pp. 58, 153-54). Is he right? For example, was Zechariah the son of Jehoiada, not Berechiah, as Christ said in Matt. 23:35? Here the problem is to identify correctly the right "Zechariah." Since Zechariah of Jehoiada died 800 b.c., saying he was the last of the OT martyrs (as Christ's words imply, since Abel certainly was the first) is not likely. Since about 30 separate individuals in the OT have this name, it shouldn't be surprising that two of them suffered a similar fate. Christ is presumably referring to the minor prophet Zechariah (see Zech. 1:1), who prophesied from about 520-475 b.c. This man, who lived much closer to the time the OT canon closed than Zechariah the son of Jehoiada, is certainly a more plausible candidate for the last OT martyr. Since so little is known about Zechariah the son of Berechiah's life from the OT, there is nothing to deny that he died exactly as Christ said here. As Archer noted: "If we take Matthew 23:35 just as it stands, it makes perfectly sense in its context; and it offers no contradiction to any known and established facts of history." Was Christ wrong to say in Mark 2:25-26 "in the time of Abiathar the high priest" David and his companions were given the showbread to eat? I Sam. 21:1-6 says it was Ahimelech who gave David the consecrated bread. For this text it's necessary to note very carefully the literal wording "in the time of Abiathar the high priest," for Christ didn't say "Abiathar gave David the showbread." After Saul commanded Doeg the Edomite to kill all the priests at Nob except Abiathar (I Sam. 22:9, 16-22), the latter was made high priest by King David. The Greek reads "Epi Abiathar archiereos," and "epi" combined with the genitive means "in the time of." (Compare Acts 11:28; Heb. 1:2 for similar constructions). As Archer explains:

         Under these circumstances it was perfectly proper to refer to Abiathar as the high priest--even though his appointment as such came somewhat later, after the incident at Nob--just as it would be proper to introduce an anecdote by saying, "Now when King David was a shepherd boy," even though David was not actually a king at the time he was a shepherd boy. . . . The episode did happen "in the time of" Abiathar; he was not only alive but actually present when the event took place, and he very shortly afterward became high priest as a result of Saul's murdering his father, Ahimelech.

Saying Luke was wrong to call Bethlehem "the city of David" (Luke 2:4-5) instead of Jerusalem ignores how Bethlehem was the city of David concerning ancestry, while Jerusalem became his city by conquest (II Sam. 5:6-7). Note I Sam. 17:12: "Now David was the son of the Ephrathite of Bethlehem in Judah, whose name was Jesse, and he had eight sons . . ." The events of the book of Ruth took place largely in or around this city, with Ruth and Boaz being two of David's ancestors (see Ruth 4:11, 21-22). Hence, as a place for registering for their ancestry during the Roman census, a descendant of David such as Joseph logically came to this city, not Jerusalem, to register, thus making it "the city of David" on this basis.

CONDER V. STEPHEN: WHAT IS THE VERDICT?

         Conder also directs his fire against Stephen's speech that summarized OT history before the infuriated Jews martyred him. Stephen said that Abraham left Haran after his father died (Acts 7:4). If Abraham was 75 when he left Haran (Gen. 12:4), and his father Terah was 70 when Abraham was born (Gen. 11:26), and Terah was 205 years old before he died (Gen. 11:32), then Terah lived 60 years after Abraham left Haran. This argument, as good as it looks on its surface, assumes something problematic in this context. On genealogical lists, is the first name listed always the first one born? Note carefully Gen. 11:26: "And Terah lived seventy years, and became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran." Terah's sons surely were not triplets all born on the same day in the same year, but gaps had to occur between them. Since Abram, later Abraham, was by far the most prominent in biblical history, it makes sense his name would be listed first, before that of one or two older brothers. Similarly, when Adam had Seth, he was not his oldest son. Cain and Abel were older, yet in Gen. 5:3-4 they were lumped together as part of his "other sons and daughters." Then Stephen says 75 entered Egypt under Jacob, while the Old Testament in the Hebrew text says 70 (see Acts 7:14; Gen. 46:27; Ex. 1:5; Deut. 10:22). Is Stephen wrong? Archer notes that Stephen follows the enumeration found in the Septuagint, which reads 75 in Gen. 46:27 and Ex. 1:5. Two approaches can be taken to reconcile this discrepancy. One is to say both totals are right--by adding the sons of Manasseh and Ephraim born to them in Egypt before Jacob died, the 75 figure is easily reached (note I Chron. 7:14-15, 20-23). After all, since Joseph and his two sons were already in Egypt, they didn't have to migrate to live there. The other approach builds upon the somewhat differing wording found in Acts 7:14 compared to Gen. 46:26, which excludes the wives of Jacob's children in the latter text, but not in the former. It also implicitly excludes those who didn't have to migrate to go to Egypt (i.e., Joseph and his sons). Read Acts 7:14 carefully: "And Joseph sent word and invited Jacob his father and his relatives to come to him, seventy-five persons in all." (Note that "in all" is in italics in the NASB, and so isn't in the original text). "Relatives" can include wives here, who were specifically excluded in the Gen. 46:26 count. Haley explains his reasoning thus: "If to the sixty-six we add the nine wives of Jacob's sons (Judah's and Simeon's wives were dead; Joseph could not be said to call himself, his own wife, or his two sons into Egypt; and Jacob is specified separately by Stephen), we have seventy-five persons, as in Acts." Hence, since these two numbers could have been reached by different means, the Septuagint shouldn't be automatically ruled wrong textually (the Hebrew Masoretic text is to be preferred, but not always).

         Does Acts 7:16, which says Abraham bought land for a tomb from the sons of Hamor, contradict Josh. 24:32 and Gen. 33:19, which say Jacob conducted this purchase? The solution here is to say the same piece of land was bought twice, once by Abraham and once by Jacob. Absurd you say? Consider a remarkable parallel in which Abraham and Isaac may have bought the same land for a well twice at Beersheba. Abraham offered seven ewe lambs to Abimelech as a witness he dug a well at Beersheba (Gen. 21:27-33). Isaac later had a feast, and made a covenant with Abimelech (presumably a son or grandson of the one Abraham dealt with) to gain peace. Isaac's servants dug a well, and got water on the same day of Abimelech's departure after the feast was over (Gen. 26:26-33). This could have involved the same piece of land, but due to Abraham and Isaac's nomadic lifestyle, it had reverted back to the original owners. The same could have happened concerning the tomb bought from the sons of Hamor because too much time may have passed between the time Abraham bought this land for a tomb, thus requiring Jacob had to buy it again. Compare it to how a modern American city eventually takes abandoned housing for back taxes, requiring the past owners basically to buy it again (such as by paying all the accrued property taxes) if they want to possess it again. This could explain how the sons (family) of Hamor repossessed it after an evident abandonment lasting for decades (185 years by Haley's count). Furthermore, it is known that Abraham had been at Shechem during his lifetime, which was where God appeared to him and he in turn built an altar to Yahweh (Gen. 12:6-7). He could have possibly chosen to buy the land he put his altar on. Stephen's mention of others being buried there doesn't contradict the text in Joshua, which merely mentions Joseph being buried there. An addition or omission of detail is not a contradiction, so long as the word "only" or some equivalent doesn't appear in that same passage. Joshua 24:32 does not deny that others were buried there. Furthermore, Jerome said in his eighty-sixth epistle that at Shechem the tombs for the 12 patriarchs were on display at the time he lived, which goes along with a Samaritan tradition that has been preserved for many centuries. (Josephus said the bodies of the patriarchs were carried out of Egypt, but that they were buried at Hebron). So Stephen's account of the purchase and burials at Shechem shouldn't be written off as a fable, especially when even today abandonment is a prima facie way for land to change hands after an extended period of neglect by one owner. Conder's assault on Stephen's speech really falls rather flat--if it was written by some rather ignorant gentile "church father" decades or centuries later, you'd think many more and much more serious problems would be in his recapitulation of OT history than this (judging from the low quality of the apocryphal gospels, etc.)

         Let's examine some of the other "contradictions" Conder deduces. First of all, does I Cor. 10:8 contradict Num. 25:9? (MB, pp. 58, 154). Numbers says 24,000 Israelites died in a plague, while in I Cor. Paul says 23,000 died after acting immorally. Conder's mistakenly assumes I Cor. 10:8 refers to when Israel played the harlot with the daughters of Moab, instead of when Israel worshipped the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai. Since the preceding verse, I Cor. 10:7, cites Ex. 32:6, Paul could have had a different incident in mind than that found in Num. 25:9. True, the golden calf incident mentions specifically only 3,000 as being slain by the Levites (Ex. 32:28). But then, God also sent a plague against Israel that day for its sins (v. 35): "Then the Lord smote ['plagued'--NKJV] the people, because of what they did with the calf which Aaron had made." While Exodus records no specific figure on how many this plague killed, it appears Paul may have gotten the 23,000 figure by direct revelation from God centuries after the golden calf incident. Another possibility also exists--transmissional error. There are about 18 or 20 cases in which the numbers as found in I and II Chron. do not line up with the parallel figures in I and II Kings and/or I and II Samuel. For example, II Chron. 9:25 says Solomon built 4,000 stalls for horses and chariots, while I Kings 4:26 lists 40,000. Proof this is a transmissional error is shown by how the number of horsemen in both verses is the same: 12,000. Now, do such discrepancies prove we should have no faith in the Old Testament? Of course not. Because of the writing system used before the Jewish scribes called the Soperim imposed copied the numbers in words, a scribe could easily mistake the number of dots standing for thousands over the letters that stood for each number in an ageing, increasingly brittle manuscript. When considering the hundreds of cases the numbers do line up between the parallel sources in the OT, the cases in which they don't are hardly cause for doubt. It could be the difference between Paul's 23,000 figure and Numbers 25's 24,000 figure lies in some scribal error that occurred centuries before Paul even lived--assuming that Paul was referring to the incident in Num. 25, which hardly has been proven.

         Are Gen. 47:31 and Heb. 11:21 contradictory? The former text has Jacob worshipping at the head of his bed, while the latter has him worshipping while leaning on a staff. This discrepancy can be easily reconciled: The Hebrew word for "bed" and "staff" have the same consonants, but different vowel points--"mittah" versus "mattah." Since the vowel points were added to the Hebrew text in the ninth century A.D. or earlier, the Jewish scribes of that time had to determine what word "MTTH" stood for in Gen. 47:31. They opted for "bed." However, the Greek Septuagint (remember, it was translated before the NT was written) reads "staff," as well as the Syriac Peshitta (Aramaic translation). Furthermore, since Joseph placed his hand under Jacob's (Israel's) thigh in Gen. 47:29, it's more sensible to see Jacob, before his condition evidently worsened in the next chapter, as sitting at the side of his bed (instead of on/at its head), perhaps while he did lean on a staff. There's good reason to maintain that the Hebrew vowel points are in error here, and to side with the NT/Septuagint reading ("staff"). Do Hebrews 9:19-20 and Ex. 24:6-8 contradict each other? Moses sprinkled both the book of the covenant and the people in the former text, but not in the latter. This can be easily disposed by the principle mentioned in connection with the resurrection accounts: An addition or omission of detail is not a contradiction. Conder implies one is in Col. 1:15's description of Jesus, for which he proffers an interpretation Jehovah's Witnesses would be comfortable with (MB, p. 90). Actually, "first-born" cannot be read to mean "first created." First, at least according to the Catholic Greek language scholar Erasmus (1466?-1536), "prototokos" can mean "original bringer forth." It also could mean "first begetter." Then, remember that Jesus was the first born from the dead (Rev. 1:5; Col. 1:18)--i.e., the first to be born again. In the past, the first born son was considered preeminent over his siblings, and had a high position (Gen. 49:3). Note how Ephraim is called the "first-born" in Jer. 31:9, yet actually he was younger than Manasseh (Gen. 48:17-19). So this was a title given to Christ meant to exalt Him, not to reveal that He was a creature. As already seen above, Conder's quick take on the New Testament's contradictions are hardly persuasive: Some can be very easily disposed of, which betrays a bias that sees contradictions when none exist.

DID MATTHEW MISQUOTE ZECHARIAH?

         Does a contradiction occur between Matt. 27:9-10 and Zech. 11:12-13? Matthew cites Jeremiah as speaking this prophecy, while the actual citation is found in Zechariah alone. Or is it? First, one possible source of this discrepancy should briefly be considered--if the names for Jeremiah and Zechariah were written at one time in short form, they are remarkably similar--"Iriou" and "Zriou." A scribal error changing the first letter alone would change the quote's reference. But now let's examine the evidence more closely. The text in Zechariah doesn't actually mention a field as being bought or sold by anyone, which was the main point of the citation. But Jeremiah does purchase a field as a type of the buying and selling that will occur during the millennium in Judea. Note Jer. 32:6-9. Here two quotes were combined together into one, with the less prominent author omitted in favor of the more famous. Mark 1:2-3 presents a similar situation, in which quotes from Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1 are placed together, yet only Isaiah is mentioned. Since such citations were routine in first-century writings, we should be wary of imposing our modern standards upon the past, and claiming them errant when they don't conform to our expectations. Incidently, Conder elsewhere (MB, pp. 116-17) cites Asimov, who maintains that a mistranslation occurred in the KJV when "potter" appears in Zech. 11:13. Unfortunately, an ancient mistranslation found in the Syriac (Aramaic) cloud the situation, in which the translator put "treasury" for "potter" evidently. The word here is "yasar" (3335), which means, according to Nelson's Expository Dictionary of the Old Testament, p. 86: "to form, mold, fashion." . . . Yasar is a technical potter's word, and it is often used in connection with the potter at work (Isa. 29:16; Jer. 18:4,6)." When looking up the word listed for 3335 ("yasar"--"to form") in Gesenius' (p. 343), a reference to 3136a appears. At that place Gesenius's translator from German into English attacks Gesenius's belief the word "treasury" appears in Zechariah: "[This is wrong altogether; the word certainly means a potter in this place [Zechariah]; the Syriac translator made a mistake, and this mistake is taken as a sufficient ground for contradicting the New Test.!]" Brown-Driver-Brigg's (p. 427) mentions a dispute over this word, but still lists it under the word for "potter," saying other scholars, including Gesenius, believe its appearance in Zech. 11:13 and Lamentations 4:2 is an error for another word. John Wheeler, a Global Church of God laymember who can read Hebrew, explains the situation thus:

         How can the same "mistake" be made twice in two verses ["potter" is mentioned twice in v. 13--EVS]--and toward a direction which is contrary to the negative cast of the prophecy? There is a principle of classical textual criticism that the more "difficult" reading is always preferable. "Treasury" is the "easier" reading; but why would Zechariah cast there the money he (and God) regarded as worthless?

Evidently, Gesenius, etc. thought the Hebrew text was defective at this point, so in order to reconstruct it they adopted this ancient Syriac translator's interpretation of this verse when he rendered the Hebrew into Aramaic. Then Asimov and, in turn, Conder (ironically perhaps for someone who exalts the Hebrew Masoretic text so far above other versions) lean upon this very doubtful textual reconstruction. Conder's critique of Matthew's citation of Zechariah has been led astray by Asimov's analysis, and by assuming that the NT's citations of the OT should abide by contemporary and not first-century human standards of scholarship.

DO CERTAIN MESSIANIC PROPHECIES CONTRADICT THE NEW TESTAMENT?

         Conder maintains that Jesus did not keep silent, which contradicts two messianic prophecies (Isa. 42:2; 53:7) that said He would be (MB, pp. 95, 99). Here Conder's mistake is quite simple: Did they mean Christ would be that way all the time, or just at one point in His life? Obviously during His ministry, as He witnessed to His fellow Jews, He was not silent. Rather, they just refer to the main part of His trials before Caiaphas and Pilate. It was only at the last extremity that Christ answered either concerning the charges made against Him, when the natural human reaction when your life is at stake is to loudly deny them as much as possible from the beginning. For example, in Matthew 26:62, despite all the false charges made against Him, the high priest declared, "Do You make no answer?" Then in Matt. 26:63-64 occurs the final exchange that led directly to Jesus' conviction:

         But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest said to Him, 'I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God.' Jesus said to him, 'You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.'

Similarly, Jesus was silent before Pilate much of the time, and said the barest minimum (Matt. 27:11-15; Mark 15:5), despite all the charges His accusers hurled at Him. It's absurd to take these texts to mean Jesus would say nothing during His entire ministry. Instead, the issue is at what specific points in time would these texts apply, and they clearly did not apply to His entire ministry, but just to part of His dramatic trial. (Let's be wary of taking Jesus' minimalistic replies and saying this isn't complete "silence," since hyperbolic figures of speech shouldn't be taken totally literally).

         Does Isa. 53:3, which mentions the Suffering Servant of the Eternal being rejected contradict Jesus being praised in Luke 4:15? (MB, p. 99). This claim overlooks how immediately after Jesus read from Isaiah in the synagogue the crowd there sought to kill Him since He exalted God's dealings with the gentiles (see Luke 4:22-29). Jesus was forsaken in the end, since even His disciples fled when their Shepherd was struck down by being arrested (Matt. 26:31). He died as one of the rejected ones of Israel, crucified as a common criminal. Conder creates a contradiction by quoting out of context Jesus' words to His twelve disciples "not to enter any city of the Samaritans" (Matt. 10:5) as if they applied to all places at all times (MB, p. 133). The truth of the matter is that this was for a special limited mission, not for all time! Incidently, if the author of John was so anti-Semitic, why did he write (John 4:22) in the account that's criticized as contradictory to the mission of the twelve: "You [Samaritans] worship that which you do not know; we [Jews] worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews"? But we'll have to return to that point at a later time.

HOW DOES GOD RECONCILE JUSTICE AND MERCY CONCERNING HIS LAW?

         Conder sometimes appears to operate under the misconception that all we need to know on one subject is fully revealed in one spot of scripture. Hence, after citing Eze. 37:14 and 33:16, he comments that Jesus' blood isn't mentioned as what forgives someone in either place (MB, pp. 109, 111). But neither is so much else concerning gaining the Spirit and being forgiven--we can't expect Scripture to explain everything on one subject at every point it comes up! Again, an omission of detail (Jesus' blood as saving us from death due to our sins) does not create a contradiction. The Old Testament's prophets and believing patriarchs were saved by Jesus' death after they themselves had died. Note Hebrews 11:13, 39-40:

         All these [Old Testament believers listed earlier] died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on earth. . . . And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us [Christians at the resurrection] they should not be made perfect.

Here Conder faces a major problem: How are he and those who accept his beliefs going to be saved? The OT, taken alone, certainly requires animal sacrifices for sins to be forgiven. Is Conder & Co. going to start making burnt offerings of bulls, goats, and sheep? He doesn't seem to recognize the problems in God just forgiving us while still maintaining the justice of upholding His law, and punishing its breakers. Mercy and justice were reconciled in the body of Jesus, so that God could enforce His law perfectly, yet forgive us. Is God arbitrary, enforcing His laws sometimes, and remitting violations of them at whim other times? This kind of reasoning lightly passes over a deep issue about God's character. If Conder doesn't believe Christ's blood forgives him, and doesn't practice animal sacrifices, then how (according to the OT alone) is he forgiven? He makes a point of denying that animal sacrifices are required to forgive humans of their sins: "The Elohim of Israel is Mercy, and in Him is the SALVATION OF ISRAEL! He does not require blood, be it the blood of an animal, or the blood of a man to make His children clean"(MB, p. 129). Yet he says the animal sacrifices are still part of God's law, for he criticizes the NT for saying they are abolished since they will again be done in the millennium (MB, p. 127). However, unless he still can't quite let go of some Christian theology, he ought to still believe sacrificing animals is necessary right now. After all, if God's law is totally unchanging, and if He didn't remit the commands in Leviticus, etc. requiring burnt offerings, peace offerings, and sin offerings in the later prophets, then the animal sacrifices are still required today, so far as the OT alone reveals. Conder says that God "did want the sacrifice of blood--this was never necessary for salvation" (MB, p. 129). Yet the Old Testament counters him (Lev. 17:11): "For the life of the flesh is the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement." See also Lev. 4:13-31. Under the Old Covenant, animal sacrifices were necessary for God and men to be reconciled, or made at-one. So, if you really believe the Old Testament alone is sacred Scripture, you should be sacrificing animals today, instead of ignoring God's law to perform them, or thinking some substitute action will do when God doesn't want anything added or taken away from His law (Deut. 4:2; 12:32). Conder's theology on p. 129 of Mystery Babylon sounds suspiciously like he still accepts the argumentation of the writer of Hebrews! He cites the fortieth Psalm, just as Heb. 10:5-7 does. Has he totally thought through the implications of his new faith?

HOW DID JUDAS ISCARIOT DIE?

         Conder maintains that the descriptions of Judas Iscariot's death contradict one another. Do they? Matthew 27:3-5 states:

         Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, 'I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.' . . . And he threw the pieces of silver into the sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself.

Then Acts 1:18-19 describes Judas's fate thus:

         (Now this man acquired a field with the price of his wickedness; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all who were living in Jerusalem; so that in their own language that field was called Hakeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)

Obviously, someone falling down while just walking along certainly isn't enough to cause his or her guts to spill out. An added factor must be involved. It makes perfect sense to see the situation as Judas had hanged himself by a ravine, and when (perhaps) some storm's gust of wind blew on the already weakened branch from which his body hanged, it fell down and split open, perhaps after having rotted some. The area near Jerusalem that by tradition is identified as where this incident occurred even today has many trees with dead and dry branches that could break under a heavy weight in time. If this event happened in the valley of Hinnom, it has depths of around 25 to 40 feet, and some jagged rock on the valley's side could have been what caused Judas' guts to spill out. This incident again illustrates Conder's procedure of labeling the addition or omission of detail a "contradiction." Neither Matthew nor Peter's speech explicitly denies the details found in the other's account. Neither says it has the whole story by itself. In this context, I'm reminded of one incident in the church in which I asked two people separately from one another in the same family what caused another member to be sick. The daughter very briefly said merely her mother had diabetes (which was inaccurate--later I found out it was hypoglycemia, i.e., the opposite problem of having low blood sugar levels, not high blood sugar levels). The husband gave a much longer explanation--but mentioned nothing about diabetes or any blood sugar problem. Do these two accounts contradict one another? No--it turned out each had omitted part of the picture of all the problems this poor lady had been struggling with, who really seemed to be cursed with bad health. Now--how did the "field of blood" receive its name? Notice it makes sense to see Peter's (or Luke's) statement in Acts as ironical. To paraphrase in slang English, "Judas sure did 'purchase' a piece of land--the 'burial plot' his dead body fell on." The Greek word here, "chorion," can cover the meaning of either "plot of land" or "burial plot." The "Field of Blood" (Hakeldama) may have acquired its name for both reasons, because it came at the cost of Jesus' innocent life and because of Judas's grisly end, by which he "purchased" a "plot" of land, all right, as his dead body fell on the earth. Where Judas actually died was almost certainly not where this field was located, but it could well be where he was buried. As the SDA Bible Commentary commented: "Judas' money, ill-gotten, bought the field, and his burial in it was a reward of his iniquity. . . . The difference between the accounts of Matthew and Luke is rhetorical, not factual: all Judas received as his reward was disgraceful burial in a barren piece of ground [land used by potters would become worn out--EVS]." Bible commentator Albert Barnes said the statement about Judas in Acts 1:18 didn't mean he had made a contract and paid for the land. Instead, it meant that he supplied the means, or the occasion (reason why) the field changed hands to begin with. Simply put, it became common knowledge (Acts 1:19) that this plot of land while changing owners indirectly had cost two men their lives, including Judas'. By paying Judas to betray Christ, the Jewish leadership eventually cost both men their lives.

ARE THE GENEALOGIES OF CHRIST IN LUKE AND MATTHEW CONTRADICTORY OR FALSE?

         Conder attacks Luke as well as Matthew over their respective genealogies of Christ (MB, pp. 26-29), saying they are "spurious" and contradictory. The basic solution to the supposed contradiction between Luke 3 and Matt. 1 is to see Matthew's tracing of Jesus' family tree as that of Joseph, who was Jesus' adoptive father, while Luke's certainly appears to point to Mary's ancestral line. Since Luke 3:23 says Jesus was "supposedly the son of Joseph" (i.e., not his real father), it points to the mother. Eli (or Heli) is actually then Joseph's father-in-law. Matthew, as befitting a Gospel intended for evangelizing the Jews in particular, traces Jesus' line back to King David. By contrast, Luke, being a gentile, wrote a "universal history" about Jesus' acts, sayings, and life. It traces Jesus' line back to Adam, the first man, the progenitor of all men, whether Jew or gentile. The wording of Matt. 1:16 obliquely points to the virgin conception and birth, because its wording is quite different from the rest of the chapter's "begats": "and to Jacob was born Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ." It inserts Mary in between Joseph and the mention of Jesus, calling Joseph her husband, but not saying he begat Jesus. Conder complains that such a patriarchal people as the Jews would trace the father's line, and not the mother's in genealogies, but this analysis ignores the unique circumstances of the virgin birth. By necessity, since no human father was actually involved, a different approach was required. Furthermore, in the case of Ruth, Sarah, and Jacob's wives, the woman's role did get attention in the OT in a general genealogical context (see Ruth 4:13-22; Gen. 11:28-31; 35:22-26). When Zelophehad had no sons, but only daughters, all their names were recorded as well, and they gained inheritances from him (Num. 26:33; 27:1-9). This leads to an interesting speculation of Wheeler's about how the royal line could be traced through a woman: "Apparently Mary was the only child of her father, and thus his rights of inheritance passed on to her--provided she married within her tribe (Numbers 36:1-9). Through Mary, that inheritance passed to Jesus." The genealogy listed in I Chron. 2:16 says Joab's mother is Zeruiah, who was the sister of David, and his father is simply omitted. For other cases of women being mentioned in genealogical lists, see I Chron. 2:35, 48; 3:1-3. Citing John 6:42 and John 1:45 doesn't prove Joseph was Jesus' physical father because in both cases (especially the former) the NT is merely reporting the supposition of those speaking, even if they are inaccurate. Similarly, the NT reports the Pharisees' accusation that Jesus cast out demons by the power of Satan in Matt. 9:34: "But the Pharisees were saying, 'He casts out the demons by the ruler of demons.'" When the NT correctly reports a falsehood that was stated by Jesus' enemies, it shouldn't be accepted as actually being true!

         Conder cites I Chron. 17:11-12 to argue that Jesus had to be a physical descendant of Solomon. First, this ignores the adoptive relationship in question between Joseph and Jesus, wherein legally an adoptive son becomes a son as much as a physical one. Also, v. 11 certainly points to Solomon directly, not Christ: "I will set up one of your descendants after you, who shall be of your sons; and I will establish his kingdom." Solomon, one of David's actual sons, was the one who built the "house" or temple. When God says, "I will establish his throne forever," this can't refer to Solomon alone, but to David's line of descent as having someone occupying this throne, without specifying whether some descendant is of the literal descent of someone else in David's line, so long as the throne continues to be occupied. (Remember, God is speaking to David here, not Solomon). To have an everlasting throne, an immortal king is required, which will be fulfilled when he returns as king of kings and lord of lords (I Tim. 6:14-16). Saying that the genealogy of Christ found in Luke was an interpolation is simply a higher critic theory without any textual support I'm aware of. (Luke 3 is not a major focus of controversy between the partisans of the Received and Critical texts). Ferrar Fenton simply said this genealogy was contradictory to the one in Matthew, etc., and so omitted it from his translation, using interpretative presuppositions to justify a conjectural emendation in the NT's text. (Would Conder accept Fenton's rendering of Gen. 1, which is similarly motivated by a higher critic bias? It attempts to lend support to the theory of evolution by allowing the days of Genesis to be taken as long periods of time). Conder also complains that some generations are left out in Matthew's account compared to Luke's, since Luke has 27 between David and Jesus, but Luke 41. This argument ignores how the OT also contains shortened forms of genealogies that omit some ancestors in between. For example, a shortened form of Moses' pedigree is traced in Ex. 6:16-20 and Num. 26:58-59. It omits most of the generations between Moses and Levi. Jochebed, Moses' mother, is called "the daughter of Levi," which wasn't literally true, since about 350 years elapsed between when Levi the son of Jacob first arrived in Egypt and the Exodus. Rather, this lists her tribe by its eponymous ancestor after whom it was named. And in Ex. 6, the genealogy goes from Levi to Kohath to Amram to Moses, which is absurdly few for the 430 years Israel was in Egypt (see Ex. 12:40-41; Gen. 15:13). As Archer explains, this lists "a person's family tree by tribe, clan, and family group." One Chron. 7:22-27 shows that eight generations elapsed between Ephraim and Joshua, who were the respective contemporaries of Levi and Moses. A similar truncated genealogy appears in I Chron. 2:9, 18 concerning Caleb as the "son" (i.e., descendant) of Herzon. Nebuchadnezzar wasn't the "father" of Belshazzar, the last king of Babylon, since Nabonidus was, but he was his forefather (see Dan. 5:2, 11, 18). Sometimes "father" means "ancestor" in Scripture, such as where King David was called King Asa's "father" (I Kings 15:11, 24; cf. II Kings 15:38, Deut. 26:5). Some 400 years are mentioned in just three generations in I Chron. 26:24: "Shebuel the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, was officer over the treasures." Similarly, several ancestors of Ezra were omitted from the list in Ezra 7:1-5 when compared with I Chron. 6:3-15. Seraiah had to have been Ezra's great-grandfather at least, not father, since Seraiah was killed by Nebuchadnezzar, and his son Jehozadak was taken into exile (II Kings 25:18-21; I Chron. 6:14-15). Since Jeshua the high priest, Seriah's grandson, returned with Zerubbabel after seventy years of exile in Babylon, Ezra had to be of the next generation at least (Hag. 1:1; Ezra 5:2). Could the OT contradict itself about who Ezra's father was? Ezra is called "the son of Shealtiel" in Ezra 5:2, but "the son of Seraiah" in Ezra 7:1. Don't worry--this simply is a family tree out of which some ancestor(s) have been dropped. Similarly, Maacah, the mother of king Abijam, was the "daughter of Abishalom" and "the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah" (I Kings 15:2; II Chron. 13:2), which likely means one of these men was actually her grandfather. The patriarch named Cainan in Luke 3:36 is missing from the Hebrew text of the OT, but is found in the Septuagint for Gen. 10:24, 11:12-13, and I Chron. 1:18. Since shortened genealogies are found in the OT, it's unwise to attack that feature of Christ's in Matt. 1 in the NT, which omits kings Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah from His family tree. Otherwise, Conder is hoisted by his own petard, since the OT contains foreshortened genealogies as well. The general principle to be drawn here is clear: We should not impose our own standards of accuracy upon the God's word, whether in the OT or NT, when in the culture in which it was written omitting ancestors from a family tree was understood and acceptable, not "an error" by our definitions of the words "father," "son," etc.

WAS GOD'S CURSE AGAINST JECONIAH LIFTED?

         Does the curse against Jeconiah (or Jehoiachin) prevent Jesus of Nazareth from being the Messiah since one of his descendants couldn't sit on the throne of David? (See Jer. 22:30). Rachmiel Frydland proposes one interesting approach to this question. He maintains that the curse against Jeconiah was rescinded. For example, Jer. 22:30 said to "write this man down childless," yet he did have seven sons later on (I Chron. 3:17-18). It was said he would be "a man who will not prosper in his days," yet after being imprisoned, he was released and placed in a position over the other kings under Evil-merodach, king of Babylon. He was allowed to be in Evil-merodach's presence and given a regular daily allowance of food for the rest of his life (II Kings 25:27-30). As a result, it could be argued that this curse was at least partially lifted. So then, could the third part also have been rescinded, about no descendant ever being on the throne of David? Sometimes God did threaten punishment against someone, but after they repent at least some, it is delayed or eliminated (Jonah 3:4, 10; I Kings 21:21, 27, 29). Could this have happened here? The Yalkut, a medieval Jewish anthology, portrays the Jewish religious Council as being concerned scripture couldn't be fulfilled (re: Ps. 82:36) in continuing the Davidic line. So they influenced the governess, who pleaded with the queen, who then implored the king to repent. So then "Rabbi Shabatai said that [Jeconiah] did not leave prison until he repented fully and God forgave his sins and . . . his wife got pregnant as it is written, 'Shealtiel his son, Asir his son.'" While this account likely just reflects Jewish tradition, and isn't historically true, it shows even some Jews believed the curse against Jeconiah may have been lifted. Zerubbabel, one of the leaders of the Jews returning from exile from Babylon, was a direct descendant of Jeconiah, yet he doesn't appear to have a special curse against him (see Zech. 4:7, 9-10). HWA would not have agreed with this interpretation. When Jer. 22:30 says Jeconiah would be "childless," he took this to mean none of his children would ever sit on the throne of David, not that he would never become a father. Wheeler plausibly argues that: "Zerubbabel was only governor, not king (and the curse applies to kingship on David's throne, nothing more)." While this all could be explained away by saying the curse was inapplicable because Jesus wasn't the physical descendant of Jeconiah since Joseph wasn't his literal father, Frydland's approach at least deserves a hearing before rejection.

THE GREAT TRILEMMA--JESUS CHRIST: LORD, LIAR, OR LUNATIC?

         Many people, including intellectuals, hold the view that Jesus was a good man, a wise teacher, but deny that He was the God in the flesh and the Savior of humanity. Actually, He did not leave this option open to us. Jesus made claims about Himself, or allowed others to without rebuke, that implied or amounted to Deity (see John 5:18; 8:12, 58-59; 10:30-33; 11:25; 14:6; 20:28-29; Matt. 14:31-33; 23:37; 28:17-20; Mark 2:5-10). While Jesus came to bring a message from God about the kingdom of God, He also came to reveal His identity. His personal claims were far higher than any other prophet's. For example, what prophet of Jehovah ever said (John 14:6), "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me"? Is this claim false? What good is the rest of His moral teaching as found in (say) the Sermon on the Mount, when He is either a pathological liar who claims to be God when He wasn't, or a lunatic so totally divorced from reality that He believes He is Yahweh? As C.S. Lewis comments:

         A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.

Similarly, historian Philip Schaff remarks:

         This testimony, if not true, must be downright blasphemy or madness. The former hypothesis cannot stand a moment before the moral purity and dignity of Jesus, revealed in his every word and work, and acknowledged by universal consent. [Contrast this with the crude struggles of polytheistic gods in the Greek and Babylonian myths. Could they possibly be the sources for Christ's life?--EVS] Self-deception in a matter so momentous, and with an intellect in all respects so clear and sound, is equally out of the question. How could he be an enthusiast or a madman who never lost the even balance of his mind, who sailed serenely over all the troubles and persecutions, as the sun above the clouds, who always returned the wisest answer to tempting questions, who calmly and deliberately predicted his death on the cross, his resurrection on the third day, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the founding of his Church, the destruction of Jerusalem--predictions which have been literally fulfilled? A character so original, so complete, so uniformly consistent, so perfect, so human and yet so high above all human greatness, can be neither a fraud nor a fiction. The poet, as has been well said, would in this case be greater than the hero. It would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus.

So then, when stepping back and considering the contents of the Gospels as a whole, can you honestly say the historical facts point to Jesus being either a pathological liar or an deluded lunatic? You can't, as Conder evidently does, totally evade this question, and claim the Gospels are "totally mythological in origin!" (MB, p. 148). Conder spends much more time plumbing the psyche of Simon the Sorcerer than saying anything about Christ's own motivation. Calling the Gospels "myths" doesn't make them so--they hardly read like Homer's Illiad or Odyssey. They are set in a very specific time and place--Judea under Roman rule in the late first century b.c. and the early first century A.D. If you are tempted to believe Conder is right, sit back some and try to gain some perspective on the Gospels by simply fairly rapidly reading them through in a modern translation, not pausing for long at any one place, while asking this question: "If Jesus isn't the Lord, then what evidence points to Him being either crazy or a con man?" If you can't find any such evidence, you should reconsider Conder's fundamental premises. Could someone speak the Sermon on the Mount, rebuke the ones about to stone the woman caught in adultery, praise Peter for recognizing Him as the Messiah and then immediately condemn him for saying He wouldn't be crucified, and so forth--yet either be totally deluded about His own identity or attempting to deceive others about it? The majesty of Christ's ethics and teachings get no attention from Conder, but actually should be placed front and center for inspection. By contrast, most mystery religions were very weak in the ethics department due to focusing on immediate experience of ritual. The question then becomes, when someone like Christ was watched by so many so long during His ministry, was why His disciples' admiration never flagged, but grew, despite all the trials and opposition they encountered. Wouldn't a madman or a liar break down at some point, such as after being arrested and being put on trial for a capital offense? After all, if Christ wasn't who He said He was, what personal gain was there in being put to death? Wouldn't a con artist then beg for his very life? If he was insane--could he have put this such a facade of even-mindedness that it remained undetectable by his accusers? Christ calmly stood silent throughout much of the proceedings before Caiaphas and Pilate, which hardly fits someone who's crazy. It's time for Conder to make his choice concerning the great trilemma, and to publicly defend it since he has rejected Jesus as Lord: Is Christ a madman or a con artist? Can you reconcile either with the text of the Gospels?

THE PROBLEMS OF THE EMPTY TOMB AND THE RESURRECTION

         The resurrection was central bedrock miracle of Christianity. Upon it Christianity rises or falls. Whether Jesus rose from the dead at the specific point and time in history determines whether Christianity is true. As Paul himself commented (I Cor. 15:13-15):

         But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we witnessed against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised.

Unlike the legends of Hinduism or myths about Greek gods, Christianity is a religion of history. Certain empirical facts of history have to be true, or else Christianity is a delusion. This historical approach makes it radically different from most other religions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, animism, witchcraft, etc., or philosophies such as Confucianism or Taoism. To them, history is fundamentally irrelevant to whether they have the Truth or not. They are based on theological dictums or philosophical speculations, not historical events. One well-educated Hindu, a Rama-krishna Mission teacher, thought it "seemed axiomatic that such vital matters of religious truth could not be allowed to depend upon the accidents of history. If the truths which Jesus exemplified and taught are true, then they are true always and everywhere, whether a person called Jesus ever lived or not." Hence, Christianity can be subjected to historical investigation, verification, and falsification in ways most other religions aren't (though Islam and Judaism are similar in this regard). Conder assumes a fundamentally false premise when he compares the Gospels to pagan myths, plainly disregarding how they simply do not read like myths. He wastes a lot of effort to dredge up pagan myths to compare their events with, ultimately to no avail (see MB, pp. 32-49, 62-69). The Gospels read like truncated biographies or histories that focus on the life and teachings of one Jesus of Nazareth, who died at a specific place (Judea) and time (31 A.D.) These accounts are placed in the (then) here and now during the authors' lives and the culture out of which they came, instead of some dim past time (creation, etc.) and spiritualized place (Mount Olympus, etc.) If this aspect of the Conder thesis tempts you, it would well be worth some time and effort to read a couple hundred pages of mythology by the Greeks, Romans, Scandinavians, etc. Then compare how it "feels" compared to the Gospels. The difference should be obvious--but it may not be to those who haven't done so. So if the resurrection happened, and Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true, but if He didn't, Christianity is false.

         Remarkably, Conder really spends very little time in debunking the resurrection. He apparently thinks that by writing off the Gospels as myths, and claiming the resurrection accounts are full of contradictions, he needn't pay them any serious heed to the historical facts found therein and attempt to explain them (note carefully MB, pp. 68-69). But, as shown above, his claims that the resurrection accounts are full of "contradictions" are based upon using the omission or addition of details to manufacture them. (I could, just as easily, create "contradictions" in the OT by pitting such books as I and II Chronicles, I and II Samuel, and I and II Kings against one another, or the "two creation accounts," which have parallel accounts of the same events. It is positively false to believe the problem of harmonizing different inspired books on the same events or people is merely limited to the NT). Claiming the Gospels are myths places them in a literary genre that's inconceivable to the informed mind. Calling them "legends" accomplishes little either, when much of the NT, perhaps all of it, was written within one generation (40 years) of Jesus' death. Anderson concluded that it is "almost meaningless to talk about legends when you're dealing with the eyewitnesses themselves." So now, it's time for the rubber to meet the road: Which one of the standard "explanations" by the higher critics for the resurrection should Conder believe in? Each one of them has serious flaws, and cannot be sustained against objections--which means the miraculous is the only sensible explanation for the empty tomb come Sunday morning. (A fundamental premise throughout this essay is that an almighty God exists, God is actively involved in His creation, miracles can happen, and the natural cannot always explain the natural, which makes the inference that the supernatural can and will occur rational and sensible when reliable historical witnesses say it has. Since Conder is a believer in God and miracles generically, unlike the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-76), I'm not going to address the issues raised by "God of the gaps" objectors, agnostics, atheists, etc. here). McDowell has done much work in this area, and so I'm going to freely and briefly draw from his material on the subject. If Conder's thesis is a live question for you, consider seriously reading McDowell's material on this point, and see if Mystery Babylon, pp. 65-69, can really withstand such an assault.

WHY DENYING THE TOMB WAS EMPTY IS IMPLAUSIBLE

         Confronting the skeptic is the basic problem of explaining the fact of an empty tomb come one Sunday morning during the Days of Unleavened Bread in (most likely) 31 A.D. Apparent archeological evidence for this comes in a mangled form from the Nazareth stone the Roman government set up in Jesus' hometown. It contains an imperial edict that warns its readers against messing around with graves and tombs, with heavy punishments to match! Evidently, word about stir created by the resurrection got back to Rome in a garbled form from Pilate or someone else, resulting in this off-key response! Attempts to deny the tomb's emptiness simply aren't believable, judging especially from the actions of the enemies of Christianity alone. Supposed you argue like Lake, that the women went to the wrong tomb, or Guignebert, that the disciples didn't know which tomb Jesus was placed in. Such claims are shot down by the reactions of the authorities themselves amidst the commotion created by the disciples' preaching from Pentecost on in Judea and elsewhere. They would have done some elementary investigation, such as by asking Joseph of Arimathea (a member of the Sanhedrin himself) where his tomb was, and the matter would have been quickly disposed of. Anyway, would have the Romans guarded the wrong tomb? Simply producing the body of Jesus, perhaps presenting it on an ox cart by rolling it down the main streets of Jerusalem, would have strangled Christianity in the cradle. Who could believe that Jesus had risen just after seeing His dead body? The preaching about Christianity's claims did not begin in some place far from where Jesus Himself had lived, such as Athens, where checking up on the claims of His followers would have been difficult. Furthermore, statements by hostile or unsympathetic witnesses in the NT (which is the strongest kind of historical evidence there is--concessions to the enemy) show the Jewish leadership knew the tomb was empty, and that they didn't know where the body of Jesus was. Why else would have they have bribed the guards at the tomb to spread the story that (Matt. 28:11): "His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep"? Instead, they would have said, "We know where the body is, and we'll show it to you now." Consider the implications of Gamaliel's fence-straddling statement that we can't be certain if this movement is of God or of men, so we should be careful about punishing these men for preaching about Jesus (Acts 5:34-40). It would be inconceivable to say this if the body of Jesus could be shown to people and/or was in the possession of the Jewish leadership. Obviously, Gamaliel simply didn't know where it was, nor his friends on the Sanhedrin, so he counseled caution. Anyway, could have the women or the disciples have all gone to the wrong tomb? Would have they forgotten where their loved one lay?

WERE THE RESURRECTION APPEARANCES HALLUCINATIONS?

         Were the resurrection appearances mere hallucinations? This is another way to contend the tomb was occupied by Jesus' body, while still trying to explain what transformed the behavior of the disciples from cowards cowering in hiding into men who could only be silenced by death. This theory suffers from numerous deadly flaws, the biggest of which is those who suffer from hallucinations imagine what they expect to see and desire to see. However, the disciples plainly were NOT anticipating Jesus to rise from the dead, and even afterwards, according to the NT itself, still had doubts. They had expected Jesus to be the Conquering Messiah who would overthrow the Romans, and then install them as His top lieutenants under His rule (Matt. 18:1; 20:20-28; Mark 9:33-35; Luke 22:24-30). The disciples had a long, hard time unlearning the prevailing Jewish view of what the Messiah would do when He appeared. (However, they had at least some glimmer that Jesus would come again, judging from their question in Matt. 24:3). It took the crucifixion and the resurrection to pound it out of them. Indeed, even then there was a delayed response, for they did not understand the truth that the Messiah came the first time to suffer and die for humanity's sins, not the rule the earth then, under some time after Jesus' resurrection (note Acts 1:6-8). They repeatedly refused to believe or even understand His prophecies of His own impending crucifixion and resurrection. Christ praised Peter for saying He was the Messiah, but then blasted him for refusing to believe that: "He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day" (Matt. 16:21; cf. Mark 9:31; Luke 9:22-26; Luke 17:25; Matt. 17:12, 19, 22-23; 20:17-19). Jesus on another occasion told His disciples (Mark 9:31): "The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and when He has been killed, He will rise three days later." The NT then witnesses that the disciples didn't understand this. (This incident illustrates how it again and again reveals the imperfections and flaws of the founders of Christianity under Jesus, showing it was hardly a mindlessly partisan document). "And they understood none of these things, and this saying was hidden from them, and they did not comprehend the things that were said" (Luke 18:34). The NT repeatedly notes the lack of faith the disciples had about Jesus' resurrection, including even after it happened! (See Matt. 28:17; Mark 16:11, 13; Luke 24:11, 41; John 20:25). The resurrected Christ rebuked them for their unbelief (Mark 16:14): "And after He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen." The disciples were not going to hallucinate about something--the resurrected Christ--that they didn't really believe would happen to begin with. When the women carried the spices to the tomb early Sunday morning, they obviously expected to find Jesus dead, not alive!

         Other problems abound with the hallucination theory. Normally hallucinations only afflict the paranoid and (especially) the schizophrenic. These psychological labels hardly describe the disciples, with hard-headed fishermen and a former tax collector among them. Such men, including the rather cynical and skeptical Philip, the initially disbelieving Thomas who demanded decisive empirical evidence that he could not only just see, but touch, are not the types prone to hallucinations. They also are highly individualized occurrences--it's absurd to posit that two people, let alone groups of them, would have the same hallucination. Paul maintained some 500 saw the resurrected Jesus (I Cor. 15:6). Did they all hallucinate the same thing? Neurobiologist Raoul Mourgue maintained that hallucinating "is not a static phenomenon but essentially a dynamic process, the instability of which reflects the very instability of the factors and conditions associated with its origin." The appearances of the resurrected Christ were sustained close encounters, which included Him eating dinner with the disciples, His invitations for the disciples to touch him, His speaking with them, and appearing under difference circumstances before different people (Luke 24:39-43; Matt. 28:9-10; John 20:25-27). If they were only hallucinations, wouldn't some have suddenly realized that they were only seeing things part way through the encounter? When normal people are uncertain of what one sense tells them--when they suspect they are hallucinating--they examine what their other senses are telling them as a check. Psychiatrists Hinsie and Shatsky have noted that "in a normal individual this false belief usually brings the desire to check often another sense or other senses may come to the rescue and satisfy him that it is merely an illusion." Jesus' resurrection appearances involved all three major cognitive senses, not just sight. All these factors decisively militate against believing hallucinations could explain how the disciples' behavior was so utterly transformed almost literally overnight.

DID THE DISCIPLES STEAL THE BODY?

         Once the truth of an empty tomb is established, how can it be explained? One standard explanation, which Matthew himself alludes to (Matt. 28:13; 27:63), claims that the disciples stole the body, concealed it, and proclaimed Jesus was alive. What problems does this face? First, consider the Roman guard the Jewish authorities so thoughtfully placed around the tomb, complete with the imperial seal (Matt. 27:62-66). The Roman guards were extremely capable soldiers. The death penalties threatened upon those slept while on watch produced discipline and, according to the historian Dr. George Currie, a "faultless attention to duty, especially during the night watch." One of these trained professional soldiers, let alone two or three, could have easily dispatched all eleven disciples if they approached the tomb with the intent of stealing the body. Second, as alluded to above, the disciples had fled and hid when Jesus was arrested (Matt. 26:56). Later, even impetuous Peter, fearful of being recognized as one of Jesus' followers, he denied Him three times. Could have such frightened, disorganized men, who did not expect or really believe Jesus was to rise to begin with, be able to even plan such a heist, let alone pull off such a would-be brilliant coup? With their Messiah dead on the cross, they obviously thought their grand hopes for a future of ruling the world under Him were equally defunct. Third, the testimony of their lives morally points to the impossibility of them being such intentional deceivers. They had their moral flaws, as the NT makes plain (showing its objectivity, just as the OT reveals the flaws of such men as David, Jacob, and Abraham), especially before conversion, but pulling off such a vast intentional deceit would be totally out of character for them. Fourth, there's always this issue: Would these men die for a lie that they knew was a lie? Wouldn't one or more of them, when given the chance, deny Jesus rose from the dead when put on trial for their lives? (In Pliny the Younger's message to the Emperor Trajan, as well as when Polycarp was martyred, the Christians in question were given the chance to save their lives, if they would deny Christ. The Romans generally were not out to kill Christians for the sake of killing them, but sought to bring them back into civic loyalty and paganism through repenting enough to sacrifice to the emperor and/or deny Jesus). By tradition, eleven of the twelve apostles died martyrs. What good is dying for some cause you know is false, when no personal gain is possible from continuing to uphold it, and by abandoning it, you could save your life? (This whole point has ominous implications for Conder's fanciful reconstruction of Simon the Sorceror's life and fate--see MB, pp. 131-39). Fifth, even if the guards did fall asleep, could have they have remained so when the disciples had to tiptoe past them and move the tomb's covering stone? It likely weighed between one and a half to two tons! Such commotion would require total deafness on part of the guards--who may have been 16 in number. All these objections make the ancient Jewish claim that the disciples stole the body insufferably implausible.

THE SWOON THEORY WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING

         Another attempted naturalistic (non-supernatural) explanation for the resurrection is to maintain Jesus did NOT actually die on the cross, but merely fainted. Then after being entombed, he revived in its cool air. This theory ignores the masses of evidence that point to Jesus' death which makes it impossible to believe He was actually still alive. First, Jesus was scourged. This was not a mere whipping with (say) a standard horse or bull whip, but likely involved one or more leather cords or thongs attached to a handle, sometimes with pieces of metal or bones being weighted or knotted in to make it more effective in cutting the flesh. The standard scourging, according to the early church historian Eusebius, laid bare the victim's veins and "the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure." So Jesus was already greatly weakened when He was nailed onto the cross, which His evident inability to carry the beam of His cross (or stake?) to His place of execution indicates (Luke 23:26). Crucifixion victims, even when rescued from the cross before death overtook them, seldom lived. The Romans crucified three of Josephus's friends during their quelling of the 66-70 A.D. revolt in Judea. Josephus appealed to Titus, the Roman general in charge (and future emperor) to have them taken down. Although his request was granted, two of them still died shortly thereafter. The Roman soldiers serving as executioners were presumably experienced in knowing what dead men looked like. They found Jesus was dead already, but, by contrast, the two thieves crucified with Him weren't (John 19:32-33): "The soldiers therefore came, and broke the legs of the first man, and of the other man who was crucified with Him; but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs." They broke the legs of the thieves to bring a sudden end to their lives. Since crucifixion victims needs the support of their legs, otherwise asphyxiation soon followed because by their arm strength alone they couldn't keep lifting themselves up to breathe for long. But this treatment wasn't necessary for Jesus. Why? Because in a statement that should be seen as a parenthetical comment by John in v. 34: "but one of the soldiers [had] pierced His side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water." Then, compare it to Matt. 27:49-50 in the Moffatt translation: "(Seizing a lance, another pricked [pierced] his side, and out came water and blood.) Jesus again uttered a loud scream, and gave up his spirit." Part of verse 49 is missing in most major translations (though it is in Moffatt's and Fenton's). But actually it has reasonable manuscript support: It's found in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, as well as Codex Ephraemi, L, 5, 48, 67, 115, 127, 1010, five good copies of the Latin Vulgate, the Jerusalem Syriac (Aramaic), and the Ethiopic. Normally, this manuscript support would be enough to earn it a place in the critical text (of Westcott-Hort, etc.). But translators evidently omit it because John appears to contradict Matthew about whether the spear was thrown into Jesus' back before or after His death. The "contradiction" can easily be resolved by noting John was using an aorist past tense (which in the Greek language refers to something having occurred at one point in time in the past, or at widely separated points in time) in a parenthetical comment. Therefore, Jesus was dramatically slain by a spear while still alive, which quickly ended His sufferings after being on the cross for about six hours, while the soldiers instead simply broke the legs of the thieves to hasten their untimely ends.

         There's still more evidence that Jesus was dead. Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for Jesus' body. Pilate summoned the centurion who presided over the crucifixion and after asking "whether He [Jesus] was already dead," handed over Jesus' corpse to Joseph (Mark 15:43-45). Along with Nicodemus's help, who supplied some hundred pounds of spices to be wrapped underneath the body's burial linen, Joseph laid it in a new tomb he owned (John 19:38-42). Not only the Roman common soldiers had determined that Jesus was dead, but their officer along with Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus did as well. Even IF Jesus hadn't died from being scourged, crucified, and speared, the traditional Jewish practice of tightly wrapping dead bodies with linen, placing spices underneath, with a sticky, gummy substance holding it all together, surely would have finished the job via suffocation. He would have had no food or water, or medical help for His wounds, for three days and three nights. Then, with the boulder having been rolled against the tomb's entrance, He would have received no fresh air, for the tomb was soon filled with the odor of the spices. The swoon theory also faces further problems: Could have a bloody, wounded, weakened man not only unwrap himself, but push open the tomb's boulder? The women who arrived at the tomb Sunday morning "saw that the stone had been rolled away, although it was extremely large" (Mark 16:4). Anyway, could have Jesus gotten by and/or overcome the soldiers guarding the tomb? Then, could have a battered, wounded man appearing before His disciples have transformed them from cowering in fright to men no one could silence without killing them? As Keim said, cited by Thorburn:

         Then there is the most impossible thing of all; the poor, weak Jesus, with difficulty holding Himself erect, in hiding, disguised, and finally dying--this Jesus an object of faith, of exalted emotion, of the triumph of His adherents, a risen conqueror, and Son of God! Here, in fact, the theory begins to grow paltry, absurd, worthy only of rejection.

The accounts of the risen Jesus passing through walls and suddenly appearing and disappearing (Luke 24:36-37; Mark 16:4; John 19:4; 20:1), able to conceal His identity at will (Luke 24:31), etc., hardly fits with the Swoon theory's view of Jesus undergoing a mere resuscitation. David Strauss, a higher critic who sharply attacked the Gospels' supernatural aspects, still saw the Swoon theory as absurd. He trashed it with these words:

         It is impossible that a being who has been stolen half-dead out of the sepulchre, who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment; who required bandaging, strengthening and indulgence, and who still at last yielded to his sufferings, could have given to the disciples the impression that he was a Conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of Life, an impression which lay at the bottom of their future ministry. Such a resuscitation could only have weakened the impression which He had made upon them in life and in death, at the most could only have given it an elegiac voice, but could by no possibility have changed their sorrow into enthusiasm, have elevated their reverence into worship.

The theory that Jesus merely spontaneously recovered physically in the tomb is the sheerest nonsense. It's amazing that it once was a major way eighteenth-century Enlightenment scholars attempted to explain away the resurrection naturalistically, without evoking miracles. Conder's ideas concerning Simon the Sorceror trying to reenact the crucifixion before the emperor Nero becomes the worst kind of poppycock when considering such objections. Would anybody allow nails to be driven into their hands (wrists) and feet in order to engage in some elaborate stunt? (see MB, pp. 138-39)

HOW IS THE TRANSFORMED BEHAVIOR OF THE DISCIPLES TO BE EXPLAINED OTHERWISE?

         In any attempt to explain away the resurrection, the transformed behavior of the disciples must always be reckoned with. These men fled when Jesus was arrested. The leading disciple, Simon Peter, denied Jesus three times upon the mere casual questioning by others around him. They hid away, afraid that the Jewish leadership would claim their lives, just as it had Jesus'. But then, suddenly, within fifty-four days of Jesus' death, they went into Jerusalem's streets preaching Jesus as the Messiah, repeatedly publicly accusing their fellow Jews of killing the Messiah (Acts 2:23, 36; 3:13-15; 4:10). These simple men, fishermen, etc., even withstood the commands of their nation's top leaders on the Sanhedrin to stop preaching in Jesus' name. Peter defiantly replied to them: "We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross." THIS--from the man who some weeks earlier was so frightened he denied Jesus to a mere servant girl? (Luke 22:56) Why the change? The disciples, if they were lying, knew it was a lie. Could have a lie that they knew was a lie, have so utterly transformed their lives? Furthermore, being (post-Pentecost at least) fundamentally upright men upholding a religion that prohibited lying have engaged in such deceit? Would you die for a lie, knowing that admitting it would save your life? For the Romans often offered Christians their lives on the condition of denying Jesus and/or offer the pinch of incense to the emperor as a god. It's hard to believe that none of them would break down under pressure if they had concocted such a gigantic lie. By tradition, eleven of the twelve apostles paid for their beliefs with their lives, with only John dying naturally. SOMETHING happened to so utterly change these men's psychology so quickly. What was it, if not the miracle of their leader, the Messiah, coming to back to life?

CONDER'S ATTACKS ON THE NT'S RELIABILITY FAULTY

         Now having considered Conder's criticisms of the New Testament as a contradictory, ahistorical document, what has survived? Above, the NT has been shown to be historically reliable, and that its supposed "contradictions" within in are nothing of the kind. The discoveries of archeology and the preserved writings of various pagan historians generally do accord with the text. Any remaining discrepancies are something apt even by secular criteria to be resolved in the NT's favor in the future, similar to how for the OT in more recent years at least some archeologists have reconsidered the dates of Jericho's fall that had conflicted with its chronology. The canon was shown to be not formed by papal decrees or choices by synods of bishops, but came from the everyday practice of the churches as a whole. The NT's text can be determined to be reliable, and what disputed variations that do exist between the critical and received texts do not place any significant teachings of Christianity at risk. The idea the NT was written entirely by pagan Greeks, not Jews, simply doesn't reckon with this document's Semitic flavor in its language and background, even though Greek was used in its composition. Conder anachronistically reads back the medieval Christian church's teachings and corruption to the pre-313 A.D. Sunday-keeping church, which is hardly good history. Does anyone honestly believe, given the above documentation, that we should place our faith in Conder's higher critic scholarship, when conservative Christian criticisms undermine it badly? Furthermore, the same means of argumentation he uses against the NT which he picked up from these scholars can also be used against the OT, such as the argument from silence and the assumption nothing supernatural (from God) could have led to its writing. He also fails to reckon with the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the majesty of Christian ethics, so different from the run of pagan mystery religions! It's time for Conder to explain how he thinks the resurrection accounts came to be, for calling them "myths" will not succeed with anyone who has read any significant amount of mythological writings, and so knows the difference from historical writing. It's time for Conder also to make a choice out of the great trilemma. He has to explain who and what Jesus was--if He wasn't the Lord, He had to be a deceiver or a madman--and give the evidence from the pages of the NT for his choice. He should also reply to standard conservative/fundamentalist Christian scholarship--his footnotes hardly refer to any of it, even in reply. Conder writes that he has "just counted 47 books on Christian defense here in my private library." Their contents sure don't seem to have much effect on Mystery Babylon, since he rarely states their arguments (except perhaps when dealing with alleged contradictions in the NT), and they almost never appear in his footnotes. Those tempted by Conder to believe the NT is historically inaccurate, contradictory, etc. need to be open minded and to research the other side of the question, and avoid assuming he has the final word.

2. CHARGES THAT PAGANISM INFLUENCED EARLY CHRISTIANITY MADE BY UNINFORMED

         A centerpiece of Conder's claims against early Christianity is that it got its ideas directly from the Roman Empire's pagan thought, especially from its mystery religions, but also from Gnosticism and pagan philosophy. In the quoted extract below, Conder concocts some scenario in which Simon Magus was supposedly the originator of Christianity, and so writes he preached to Romans ideas like these:

         Simon presented his theology in a package known as Gnosticism, which was a combination of different religious thought--including platonic philosophy. . . . the title of Logos was directly from the theological philosophy of Plato, and Christus had a disgusting phallic meaning that was intrinsic to the Mysteries" (MB, p. 137).

He sensationally claims:

         Snared in what? The jumble of Christian theology, which is one and the same as the traditions of Baal: the savior-god who was born of a virgin, whose flesh must be eaten and whose blood must be tasted to obtain salvation, and who was crucified at the spring equinox and rose on the day of the Venerable Sun! (MB, p. 94)

So then, was first-century Christianity influenced by paganism? It's important to realize that such charges are dead issues among contemporary scholars in the fields of classics and Biblical studies. Seeing parallels between the ideas of (say) Gnosticism or Mithraism and Christianity were common from about 1890 to 1940, but are rarely circulated today except by the uninformed. The Swedish scholar H. Riesenfeld labeled appealing to the mystery religions as having influenced early Christianity as outdated even in 1956. William Craig, a professor of philosophy at Westmont College, who has earned two doctorates in studies related to the pagan mystery religions and Hellenistic/Greek myths, recently stated: "I know of no reputable New Testament scholar or historian today who would any longer defend the view that the Christian ideas of the resurrection were derived from parallels of pagan religions." So when H.G. Wells saw parallels between Mithraism and the language used by Paul about the crucifixion in his history of the world, The Outline of History, originally published just after WWI, his book reflected its day and age. This section will examine Conder's claims in this order: First, three standard ways by which Christianity is illegitimately charged with being directly influenced by the mystery religions are described, which involve ignoring chronology, making superficial comparisons that fail to really probe the symbolic meanings of the pagans' rituals, and trying to say all pagan practices are ultimately traceable to a common source. Also some of the standard differences between Christianity and the mystery religions are summarized. Then, many of Conder's charges that Christianity was directly dependent on the mystery religions' beliefs are examined in the time order of Jesus' ministry, from the miracles, to the Passover ceremony being instituted, and finally His death and resurrection.

IGNORING CHRONOLOGY IN ORDER TO SAY MITHRAISM INFLUENCED EARLY CHRISTIANITY

         To press home the charge first-century Christianity was influenced by ancient pagan religions, normally chronology is ignored. For example, Conder asserts: "It is very significant that in first century Rome the worship of Mithra was the most popular of all the versions of the Mysteries" (MB, p. 32; cf. pp. 73, 110). But this is simply false! Mithraism had little presence within the Roman Empire in the first century, especially in its first half, and so for that reason alone simply could not have been a major influence on early Christianity's development. This fact at one blow destroys much of Conder's thesis that early Christianity was influenced by the mystery religions, such as how the birth narratives about Jesus were supposedly lifted from Mithraism (MB, pp. 32-33, 37, 136). Scholar M.J. Vermaseren has stated: "No Mithraic monument can be dated earlier than the end of the first century A.D., and even the more extensive investigations at Pompeii, buried beneath the ashes of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, have not produced a single image of the god." Historian Edwin Yamauchi maintained after extensive investigation: "Apart from the visit of the Armenian King, who was a worshiper of Mithra, to Nero, there is no evidence of the penetration of Mithra to the west until the end of the first century A.D." Even Fox, no friend of Christianity, states that: "The last new pagan god, Mithras, was introduced to the Latin West by the late first century A.D." Widengren has argued that a Mithraeum uncovered by archeologists in Dura-Europos on the Euphrates River (in the east!) was built c. 80-85 A.D. But even he admits the evidence for this date is "very uncertain;" Vermaseren and others suggest 168 A.D. based on excavation reports. Mithraism's origins lay in Persia, an area never conquered by Rome, and it spread due to Roman soldiers carrying back this faith from campaigns in the east. And Rome only held Mesopotamia and Armenia very briefly (respectively, 115-17 A.D. and 114-17 A.D.) The cult's greatest strength always was in the Roman army. The military ethos of those who propagated Mithraism made it an unlikely source of influence on Christianity, since the early Christians were pacifists who refused to wage war. So, unless Conder has access to historical or archeological evidence these contemporary scholars are unaware of, claiming Mithraism had major influence on Rome--and therefore, on Christianity--in the first century is simply a historical falsehood.

         Conder asserts that Mithraism was assimilated by the Catholic church with

         its savior-god simply be[coming] a virgin-born deity renamed Jesus the Christ. . . . By relating other deeds of Mithra before his death and resurrection and comparing them to Jesus' deeds [the extent of assimilation can be understood]. They included healing the sick, raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, and making the lame walk. (MB, p. 33)

These claims face an enormous problem. According to Nash, "Mithraism had no concept of the death and resurrection of its god." Unless Conder can produce citations from the original myths describing Mithra directly that prove this, he evidently has been misled by Walker, Doane, etc. or perhaps by late developments in Mithraism in later centuries in which it began to pick up ideas from the Christians. Conder asserts that Mithra was "a deity, who was a 'messiah,' was born of a virgin, had a king trying to kill him (who then slaughtered innocent babies), fled to Egypt, had three wise men visit him, had twelve disciples, ate a 'last supper' with these disciples." I challenge him to him to prove, by quoting and citing the legends directly themselves, not from potentially biased secondary sources such as Walker, Doane, et al., that indeed Mithra did all these things, according to the legends as circulated in or before the second century, not in later centuries. From the third century on, as Christianity became a more formidable competitor, the pagans may have begun to lift ideas out of it in order to win more recruits or to avoid the loss of current ones. This possibility makes it rather hazardous to read the later versions of any myths about Mithra, etc. back into the first century and earlier.

IGNORING CHRONOLOGY TO "PROVE" CHRISTIANITY'S DEPENDENCE ON THE MYSTERIES

         When drawing parallels between Christianity and the mystery religions, skeptics have one standard technique that ignores the crude basic of historical reasoning, that something has to occur before something else in order to cause a later thing to happen. They read back from something done by a pagan religion in a later century to the first century and say it influenced the first-century church, such as saying communion (the Passover ceremony) was similar to Mithraism's ceremonial meals. Actually, as Nash observes, no one knowledgeably can draw any solid parallels because so little is known about the sacred meals of the pagan cults and the meanings they themselves applied to them. This point deals a deadly blow to Conder's analysis of the Christian Passover (MB, pp. 44-49). It's much more sensible to see the origin of the Passover ceremony (communion) in the Old Testament, in its symbol of the lamb being sacrificed (cf. John 1:36; Ex. 12:4-7, 12-13), and its blood protecting Israel during the slaying of the Egyptians' firstborn. The NT clearly refers back to the OT's Passover when Jesus instituted the Christian Passover ceremony since this it was instituted on this day (Matt. 26:17-19; John 13:1, 29). Another example of this technique evidently appears in one quote by Conder of Walker (note MB, p. 110, "'born again for eternity.'") There is an inscription dated from 376 A.D. that says in Latin, "reborn for eternity in the taurobolium and criobolium." Skeptics somehow think this fourth-century expression of pagan thinking proves first-century Christianity was influenced in its idea of spiritual begettal by these two pagan rituals that sacrificed bulls and sheep. But by the late fourth century, with Christianity on the sharp rise following the Edict of Milan (313 A.D.) by Emperor Constantine, pagans easily could have gotten this idea from Christianity instead! After all, since they had a non-exclusive view of the truth (versus John 14:6 and Acts 4:12), they were not be averse to swiping ideas from their competition, and using them for their own ends to stem the loss of recruits! Similarly, (as implied in MB, pp. 110-1) saying the Christian idea of baptism came from the taurobolium (which is explained more below) ignores how the earliest records of this ceremony come from the second century. Even Laing, who is quite willing to draw parallels between Christianity and the mystery religions, admits: "The earliest known taurobolic inscription is dated A.D. 133, but Paul had preached the doctrine that men must be born again long before." According to Wagner, "the taurobolium in the Attis cult is first attested in the time of Antoninus Pius for A.D. 160." The taurobolium, which was developed by the cult of Attis and Cybele (the Great Mother), apparently was first practiced about a century after Paul wrote his epistles by the latter reckoning. Hence, saying Christianity got the idea of a "blood baptism" or spiritual begettal from a pagan ceremony that sacrificed bulls ignores chronology, and reads something from the second and later centuries back into the first century, when the NT was written. And there's no way something that developed among pagan religions after 100 A.D. could have influenced the contents of the New Testament, which was written before that date, as shown above.

THE NEED TO BE SPECIFIC WHEN COMPARING BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM

         Conder's case fundamentally is based upon drawing superficial similarities between various pagan religions and Christianity. Normally, the more specific about the legends in question about (say) a dying god or rites of a mystery religion anyone is, the less apparent are likenesses to Christianity. Then when the meanings of the myth or ceremony in question are analyzed, Conder's case largely evaporates. For example (see MB, p. 66 for Conder's use of this), in the mystery religion of Cybele and Attis, Attis became alive after dying, but to call this a "resurrection" artificially applies Christian terminology to force an parallel. In the legend, Attis's body was preserved, his hair would grow, and a finger would move--and that was it. In another version of the myth, he just became an evergreen tree. His death was very different from Christ's: In one version of the legend, he was killed by a boar, and in the other he bled to death after mutilating himself under a pine tree. He certainly didn't die for humanity's sins! Furthermore, initially, the followers of the cult of Attis and Cybele rehearsed the myth's events in order to ensure a good crop, and only later this developed into a means by which cult's devotees sought to share in Attis's immortality. Gunter Wagner, who maintained the myth of Attis was exclusively an initiation-myth, says it had nothing to do with resurrection or death: "In its various forms, from the oldest traditions right down to the versions received in the fourth century A.D., the Attis myth knows nothing of a resurrection of Attis. The Attis of the myt