Tag: Christianity
Luke’s Nativity Story, Critically Examined (Video)
A Worthy Religious Practice
- Practice daily prayer or meditation focused on God’s goodness, kindness, mercy, and provision, fostering awe and humility.
- Live ethically, making decisions based on reason and moral principles (eg. forgiveness, caring for the poor, honesty, courage, being responsible, avoiding harm).
- Seek forgiveness for moral failings through repentance, trusting in God’s omnibenevolence.
- Avoid too strong attachments to material things–they distract from the eternal divine.
Who Cares About the Resurrection?
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.
Jesus Christ
The New Testament gospel is quite straight forward:
- The kingdom of God is at hand.
- God’s anointed one, the flesh-and-blood-man Jesus, has defeated death by his own death and resurrection. This is an event that happened in history.
- This resurrection is available to all who put their faith (trust and loyalty) in Jesus.
- There is a coming judgment where the wicked will be cast out of the kingdom of God.
- All of this will happen within the first generation of Jesus followers.
The linchpin of this gospel is the resurrection of Jesus. Without that, there is no gospel.
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
1 Corinthians 15:12-19 (NRSV)
It would seem, then, that the best way to convince someone to embrace Jesus would be to convince them of the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is an event that happened in real history; therefore, it is falsifiable.
For now, let’s ignore the New Testament’s eschatological expectations (No. 5 above) and assume the kingdom is still at hand, and that there is still a future resurrection and judgment. The role of the evangelist remains valid and important. What is the message of evangelists most heard today?
In my own experience, I usually hear two messages (or a combination thereof):
- If you don’t put your faith in Jesus, you will die in your sins and go to hell. If you do trust Jesus, you will go to heaven.
- If you give your life to Jesus, you will have purpose and meaning in your life.
But never do I hear: “Jesus Christ, a flesh-and-blood man, rose from the dead, and I can prove it (or at least sufficiently convince you of it).”
Again, it would seem that convincing people of Jesus’s resurrection would be a far more effective method of converting people to Christianity than the other two messages provide. Why don’t modern evangelists focus on Jesus’s resurrection then?
Many evangelists assume the resurrection rather than argue for it. Especially in Western societies, the resurrection of Jesus is an already familiar idea. It sits in the corner and is almost ignored. The evangelist often skips over it and jumps directly to the more familiar message—forgiveness of sins, salvation, heaven, purpose, escape from hell, etc. The resurrection remains a foundational background rather than the subject in the foreground.
I am currently reading Dale C. Allison’s The Resurrection of Jesus. It is clear from the book that convincing someone that a first-century man literally rose from the dead is a demanding intellectual task. To do so requires a deep dive into ancient sources, the dating of texts, eyewitness testimony, empty tomb traditions, Paul’s experiences, historical methodology, and the probability of miracles. Most evangelists are not trained historians, and many in their audiences are not interested in detailed historical discussions. It is easier to ask, “Do you feel empty?” or “Do you need forgiveness?” than to spend hours examining historical texts—which, in the end, will probably not be that convincing. Allison admits that the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is insufficient on its own.
A shift occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Whereas early Christianity focused on Christ’s victory over death, his resurrection, and the kingdom of God, modern revivalists shifted the focus toward a personal relationship with Jesus, inner transformation, individual salvation, and personal testimony. The modern new believer is more likely to exclaim, “Jesus changed my life,” rather than, “God raised Jesus from the dead and the age to come has begun!”
Many Christians have only a vague understanding of resurrection. If you ask the average churchgoer, “What happens when you die?” they will most likely respond, “Believers go to heaven when they die. Non-believers don’t.” Resurrection is not prominent in modern Christian thought, and therefore is not prominent in evangelism.
Finally, fear and personal benefit are more persuasive. A modern person can be more easily convinced to fear judgment and hell, and to hope for meaning and purpose, than to be convinced of a 2,000-year-old historical claim, which is extremely difficult to believe.
The simple fact is that the Christian gospel evolves to match its time and place—it is a cultural artifact.
Maybe then it is not so surprising that most who believe in Jesus’ resurrection, however exactly they understand it, have as little need for modern historical criticism as birds have for ornithology. When Christians, on Easter Sunday, greet each other with the acclamation, “Christ is risen,” the expected answer, “Christ is risen, indeed!” is not a statement about investigative results. … Although ignorance should not be the mother of devotion, true religion nevertheless involves realms of human experience and conviction that cannot depend upon or be undone by … historical doubts, probabilities, and conjectures…
Dale C. Allison, The Resurrection of Jesus, page 365
Related reading: Dale Allison’s Provocative Thoughts on the Resurrection
The Birth of Monotheism in Israel
In Isaiah we first see the language of monotheism…
Before me no god was formed,
Isaiah 43:10b
nor shall there be any after me.
And there are more examples in Isaiah 44:6; 45:5-7, 14, 18, 21-22; 46:9; 48:12-13. Before this we mainly see monolatry (the religious belief that multiple deities exist, but only one is chosen to be exclusively worshiped) — Ex. 15:11; 20:3; Deut. 32:8-9; Jdg. 11:24; 1 Sam. 26:19; Ps. 82; 95:3; 96:4-5; 97:7-9.
Look at what is said about Cyrus in Isaiah 44&45…
24 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,
who formed you in the womb:
I am the Lord, who made all things,
who alone stretched out the heavens,
who by myself spread out the earth;
25 who frustrates the omens of soothsayers
and makes fools of diviners;
who turns back the wise
and makes their knowledge foolish;
26 who confirms the word of his servant
and fulfills the prediction of his messengers;
who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be inhabited,”
and of the cities of Judah, “They shall be rebuilt,
and I will raise up their ruins”;
27 who says to the deep, “Be dry—
I will dry up your rivers”;
28 who says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd,
and he shall carry out all my purpose”;
and who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be rebuilt,”
and of the temple, “Your foundation shall be laid.”
Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,
Isaiah 44:24-45:7 (NRSV)
whose right hand I have grasped
to subdue nations before him
and to strip kings of their robes,
to open doors before him—
and the gates shall not be closed:
2 I will go before you
and level the mountains;
I will break in pieces the doors of bronze
and cut through the bars of iron;
3 I will give you the treasures of darkness
and riches hidden in secret places,
so that you may know that it is I, the Lord,
the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
4 For the sake of my servant Jacob
and Israel my chosen,
I call you by your name;
I give you a title, though you do not know me.
5 I am the Lord, and there is no other;
besides me there is no god.
I arm you, though you do not know me,
6 so that they may know, from the rising of the sun
and from the west, that there is no one besides me;
I am the Lord, and there is no other.
7 I form light and create darkness,
I make weal and create woe;
I the Lord do all these things.
We know from the Cyrus Cylinder that Cyrus, after conquering Babylon in 539 BC, claimed the Babylonian god Marduk had become angry with the previous king, searched for a righteous ruler, and selected Cyrus to take Babylon peacefully. In essence, the message was:
Marduk chose me to liberate Babylon and restore proper worship.
Cyrus employed a form of imperial propaganda that emphasized the support of local gods and portrayed himself as restoring proper worship. Normally when one nation conquered another they would credit their success to their own god being stronger than the conquered people’s god. Cyrus, however, would say, “Your own god allowed me to conquer you because you have failed your own god. I’m here to make things right.” It’s a fascinating strategy.
It would seem to be no coincidence then that it was around this time, the exilic time, that the Judahite prophets began to write monotheistically. It was YHWH who was in control of Cyrus, and it was YHWH who allowed Israel to be conquered by their enemies. Monolatry didn’t work anymore. No god could defeat YHWH. Cyrus himself said that he was empowered by the conquered people’s god, and although for Cyrus that was the Babylonian god Marduk, for the Judahite prophet it could only be YHWH.
Thus we encounter the clearest and most explicit expression of monotheism in the Hebrew Bible. No more was YHWH in competition with other gods. Rather, YHWH was in control of all nations, including those he used to discipline his own chosen people.
***
The Cylinder of Cyrus
The Cyrus Cylinder was discovered in 1879 by the Assyrian-British archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam during excavations in the ruins of Babylon. It is now housed in the British Museum.
The cylinder is a clay foundation inscription written in Akkadian cuneiform shortly after Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 BCE. It was buried in a building foundation, so it was not intended as a public proclamation in the modern sense. Rather, it was royal propaganda and a dedication text.
What does it say?
The text can be summarized in several major sections.
1. Nabonidus is condemned
The cylinder attacks the previous Babylonian king, Nabonidus.
It accuses him of:
- Neglecting the worship of Babylon’s chief god.
- Disrupting traditional religious practices.
- Oppressing the people.
This is a standard ancient Near Eastern royal trope: the previous king is portrayed as wicked and incompetent.
2. Marduk searches for a new ruler
The chief Babylonian god, Marduk, becomes angry with Nabonidus.
The cylinder says Marduk looked throughout the lands for a righteous king and chose Cyrus.
A representative passage reads approximately:
He searched through all the countries, looking for a righteous ruler. He took Cyrus by the hand and called him by name to rule all the world.
This is the section most relevant to Isaiah 44–45.
3. Cyrus enters Babylon peacefully
The cylinder claims that Cyrus entered Babylon without battle and was welcomed by the population.
Modern historians think Babylon probably surrendered with little resistance, though the inscription certainly presents events in the most favorable way.
4. Cyrus restores temples and cults
This is the section that made the cylinder famous.
Cyrus says he:
- Restored sanctuaries.
- Returned divine statues to their home cities.
- Reestablished traditional worship.
A representative summary is:
I returned the gods to their sacred cities and restored their shrines.
This policy fits what we know from other evidence about Persian rule.
5. The gods bless Cyrus
The restored deities are then portrayed as praying for Cyrus and his son.
The message is:
The local gods are grateful for my actions and support my kingship.
What it does not say
Popular accounts sometimes exaggerate the cylinder.
For example, it does not:
- Mention human rights.
- Declare freedom of religion in a modern sense.
- Mention the Jews specifically.
- Mention Jerusalem.
- Mention YHWH.
The claim that it is the world’s first “human rights charter” is a modern interpretation and is generally rejected by historians.
Why biblical scholars care about it
The cylinder provides a fascinating parallel to Isaiah 44–45.
The cylinder says:
Marduk chose Cyrus.
Isaiah says:
YHWH chose Cyrus.
The cylinder says:
Marduk took Cyrus by the hand.
Isaiah 45:1 says:
“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped…”
Many scholars think the Judean prophet may be consciously reinterpreting Persian imperial ideology. The Babylonian inscription credits Marduk; Isaiah insists that the true power behind Cyrus’s victories was YHWH.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Isaiah knew the cylinder itself. Rather, both texts reflect the same historical moment: Cyrus’s astonishing rise and the competing explanations for why it happened. For the Babylonians, Marduk had chosen him. For the prophet of Isaiah 40–55, it was YHWH who had called him by name and directed world events.
Pursuit of Percipience 