After giving my recent lectures on the topic of The Historical Reliability of the New Testament at my church I added one new short section to my free ebook.

In the section arguing in favor of the New Testament being eyewitness testimony:

The New Testament includes certain incidental details that would be hard to comprehend unless they are the result of eyewitness testimony. One example is recorded in John 19:34. After Jesus dies on the cross, John notes that “one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.” Death by crucifixion occurred due to two primary causes: hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia (asphyxiation).  One consequence of the person going into hypovolemic shock and also being asphyxiated (unable to draw in breath) was that water would collect around the pericardium, the sac surrounding the heart. Thus when the Roman soldier stabbed Jesus’ side with the spear (which was not common procedure for crucifixions) the wall of the pericardium was pierced, resulting in a flow of both blood from the heart itself and water from the surrounding sac.

Even though he would have no idea why he saw blood and water pour out, John’s description of the scene is entirely consistent with modern medical conclusions about what would have happened. How could John have known that if a person who had just been crucified were stabbed in the chest that blood and water would run out unless he (or someone else who was there) witnessed it? John would have had none of this modern medical knowledge; he merely recorded what he saw. Details of this sort strongly indicate that the New Testament is a result of eyewitness testimony regarding the events it describes.

Main source: William D. Edwards, Wesley J. Gabel, and Floyd E. Hosmer, “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 255, No. 11, 21 March 1986, 1461-1463.

See also: Lee Strobel, Case for Christ, 198-200, and Gary Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 74.

Sometimes you've heard a song many times before, but suddenly actually hear the lyrics. That happened to me just now with MxPx's song "Foolish". Listen to the song using the widget, the lyrics are posted below:

Some people say that I threw my brain away
That I'm illogical and don't have much to say
Some people say that it's foolish to believe
In what we cannot see, so we're deceived

All that I can do is listen to you
All that you can be is out there, you'll see
Every single time that I
Explain to you my reasons why
You turn away; you close your eyes
And then you cut me down to size

Some people say that I threw my vote away
The moment I decided to live life this way
Some people say that it's foolish to believe
In what we cannot see, so we're deceived
I'm not here to make you all agree
But have you truly studied this historically?

Every single time that I
Explain to you my reasons why
You turn away; you close your eyes
And then you cut me down to size

Every single time that I
Explain to you my reasons why
You turn away; you close your mind
Your heart's just not prepared to find
Some meaning, some meaning

Just wait, and listen to that voice
It calls so quietly, for you to make a choice
What will it be? What will it be?

The line that caught my attention was "But have you truly studied this historically?" I gave a talk recently at my church based on my ebook, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, which I'll be reprising later this month. I encourage you to check it out. The ebook, I mean. I may record a video of my talk this time, and if it turns out well, I may decide to post it online.

Just wanted to note that tonight I finally completed my updates & additions on my free eBook, titled The Historical Reliability of the New Testament. It is still a work in progress, but having completed the one new chapter and the epilogue, I figured I'd release it again and dub it "Second Edition" since this is a fairly major update.

So, download it now!

See Stephen Colbert dialogue with Bart Ehrman about Ehrman's "new" book, Jesus Interrupted. (Click here instead if you're in Canada.) It's a pretty funny interview, as is usual for Mr Colbert. Although Colbert plays a character on his show, in real life he is a practicing Catholic and Sunday School teacher, so it's not too surprising that he would want to invite Ehrman on his show to give him an intellectual leg-drop. He actually does make some valid points against Mr Ehrman, who clearly isn't prepared for such a sarcastic assault.

One of Ehrman's main points goes unchallenged on the show, however. That being that the earliest Christians didn't think Jesus was divine. Ehrman's argument seems to be that even though Jesus is clearly portrayed as being divine in the Gospel of John (which he admits), in the (ostensibly earlier) synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, & Luke) he is not portrayed as being God. So, Ehrman is saying, since the synoptics are earlier and don't portray Jesus as God, John can be dismissed as a later invention (or evolution) of the Jesus story.

At the outset, this black-and-white distinction is false, since reading the synoptics should not result in anyone thinking that the authors intended to portray Jesus as "just a guy". Even if someone wants to claim Jesus is not divine in the synoptics, it would be ridiculous to say that Jesus is not seen as being utterly unique and far above and beyond all other people who have ever lived.

But when Ehrman's claim that Jesus' divinity is absent from the synoptic gospels is studied more carefully, there are at least two huge problems. First, I think it's false that Jesus' divinity is not found in the synoptics. There are in fact many ways the authors speak of Jesus' divinity in the synoptics. I've explained one of these ways in depth in my post "Jesus Never Claimed to be God?". I think we can see in the early synoptic gospel writings how the authors are struggling to comprehend this god-man, this real human being who lived and ate and walked with them, but who at the same time was nevertheless "God in the flesh". (See also Glenn Miller on the subject of Jesus' self-understanding in the synoptics.)

The second problem is that the synoptic gospels are not the earliest documents in the New Testament. The earliest documents are generally agreed to be Paul's letters, which contain some of the strongest statements of Jesus' divinity, such as Colossians 2:9: "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" and Philippians 2:5-7: "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness." Therefore, going by Ehrman's method, since Paul's writings are earlier than the synoptics, the should be trusted instead, and these statements regarding Jesus' divinity should be believed ahead of the later synoptic gospels' descriptions.

A featured article series currently on TheLife.com, written by Canadian philosopher Michael Horner, investigates Jesus' resurrection as final proof of Jesus' divinity; ie, that not only did Jesus claim to be divine, but that the resurrection validated His claim. Please take a moment today to read "Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?"

Oh, and happy Easter! Because of Christ's death and resurrection, it is truly the greatest and happiest of all holidays.