It’s Real | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff

[TBC; Along with "The DaVinci Code," the adversary has mounted a multi-front assault on the truth of the Scriptures. Another assault comes with the "Jesus Myth" story, the idea that Jesus never really existed. Satan's kingdom, however, is an unruly one, and subject to upset by non-Christian scholars who cannot deny the truth of "the substance," while quibbling about some details.

Will Durant, a former Catholic who embraced humanism as his philosophy (read "religion") of life, while misunderstanding many things in Scripture, nevertheless dismissed the "Jesus Myth" idea in "Caesar and Christ" (volume 3 of his "Story of Civilisation").]

"The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. Some of these are of uncertain authorship; several, antedating A.D. 64, are almost universally accounted as substantially genuine. No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in his flesh. The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion.... The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ. In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies, for example Hammurabi, David, Socrates would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so loft an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature of the history of Western man."