welcome to the Veritas forum engaging University students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life I'm trying to figure out why everybody came here this evening I'm sure it was for the iPad or your professors made it a matter of faith and morals and passing the course to be here I'm sure that's it in any case Jesus will bring out anybody I suppose and everybody and that's the one I guess we should attribute this splendiferous attendance to believe me it's a fun topic because Jesus the character of Jesus has been manipulated changed caricature denied more than that of any other figure in history eleven Rehim evidently and so there are so many caricatures out there they'd like to begin by the the unreal Jesus people playing what I like to call the Jesus game here's a I play it you read the New Testament quickly and not very carefully then you put it away for a year or two and then you let the facts mellow in your brain and then you be very creative about it and you draw another picture of Jesus mostly not grown from the Bible and if the resulting image of Jesus is anything like you see in the New Testament you lose the Jesus game but if you get something really off-the-wall something over-the-top something that could not simply not possibly have been Jesus then you win it's sensational everybody will talk about it they'll be the path to the bookstore and get your latest your latest to put down on Jesus and really it's kind of unfair the way this historical figure has been treated most recently in the last a century and a half I guess there's been the most of the critical attacks on Jesus the debate by the way is changing the debate used to be between those who thought Jesus was indeed what he claimed to be the Son of God and those who thought he was only a man now the debate has shifted to well we know he couldn't be son of God but was he even a man and you get the other school coming along and says no he wouldn't even historical figure so it kind of shows the directions in which this thing is lurching in terms of the historical Jesus and so I think it's high time that maybe we ought to step back a little bit from the battle over the figure of Jesus and check out and see what some of these other caricatures may be now it was really the first part of the 20th century to much serious stuff was going along World War one the Great Depression dust storm World War two pretty serious stuff and so they weren't engaging in the luxury of putting down the figure of Jesus but after World War two when things settled down then we find one book after another coming out with another portrait of Jesus first of all we have jesus the passover plotter now you guys the younger people won't remember that but your parents will tell you about it a hugh scone fielder british author came across with this book the Passover plot in which he has Jesus now plotting to finish off all the prophecies in Matthew and the other Gospels made about him and then he then designed his own fulfillment of those passages and he was supposed to evidently be given some kind of a narcotic on the cross and it didn't do the job and so he survived that's how the resurrection happened okay that's one view and the guy had the audacity to publish this as fact and not fiction but anyway we go on to Jesus the radical revolutionary now you recall the Vietnam era you older people and you recall how everybody was getting the campus rioting except at Iowa State of course but then you think of Berkeley California and so forth you know and they still getting together deciding shall we burn down the dean's house tonight or tomorrow night and so forth a very radicalized year well we have then the new authors coming along and drawing a caricature of Christ as the radical revolutionary what do they base that on by cutting little snips of scripture apart and Jesus had 12 disciples one of them was named Simon the zealot okay there you have it the zealot Ori was one of the radical political parties at the time so Jesus was a radical revolutionary from the start and he therefore would approve of burning American flags evidently and so forth that didn't work too well sgf Brandon was a British author with that idea and before his death he said I think maybe I overdid it no kidding no kidding then let's see oh yeah John Allegro comes along is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls scholars and a decent scholar before he wandered into lala land wrote a book giving us the image of Jesus the mushroom cultist yeah hear me out you won't believe us he wrote a he wrote a book called the sacred mushroom in the cross and in this 700 page book published by doubleday and responsible and otherwise responsible publisher until it came to the da vinci code of course we have him seriously arguing that the Gospels were written by a group of mushroom eating freaks who got high on the helis energetic properties of the red top white stock mushroom con you see in fairytale books and then he wrote the Gospels is kind of a code for their particular group and they try to prove it by a wonderful methods for example the raising of Lazarus now proves this image of Jesus how is this possible well raising a Lazarus one of Jesus big miracles Lazarus sounds like lapis lazuli it does but let's say it does that's the rich Mesopotamian blue but if you add red to blue you get purple royal purple and that's the red top of the mushroom I kid you not did this passes for for reliable prose unbelievable and envy and the mummy like wrappings that res Lazarus had on that's indicated by the white flecks on top of the red top mushroom this is madness of course uh and yet double they published it because half the book is scholarly notes in twenty different languages none of them made anything their word salad but but did they ever hood whitey editors at Doubleday uh and yet people were buying this book and made it something of a best-seller at the time and then there was Jesus the master magician oh that's a popular yeah Jesus did miracles like David Copperfield as miracles and so again the secret gospel written by professor of ancient history at in City College in New York and this of course Martin Smith his name was and if this of course now has proven to be the secret gospel Lamarck some of you specialists will understand what I'm talking about has proven to be a forgery by Martin Smith himself unfortunately then we have Jesus the senescent Savior Jesus didn't die at age 33 or so no he lived on somebody took this place this is of course what Muslims also believe he lived on didn't die at Calvary and lived on to a jolly old age at a mansion overlooking the Dead Sea or something like that sorry folks no evidence for that either then there's Jesus Jesus the happy husband oh yeah that one's of course repopulate and brown Jesus of course was a Jewish rabbi and teacher they had to get married in those days so Jesus also had to get married even though his wife isn't named in the Bible well I'm so why didn't they have Jewish bachelors in those days some guys probably do ugly to find a wife I'm sure they did uh-uh and yet there's no evidence of that whatever despite what dan Brown and others may say I don't know why it's Mary Magdalene all the time why is she always mrs. Jesus you know even in Jesus Christ Superstar no I don't know what I love him I don't know why I did that that's the last solo you'll get this evening folks yeah that's the only one but they have tried to get him married off and and it doesn't work simply because there is no evidence like whatever and every tool that Dan Brown uses in The Da Vinci Code to try to get Jesus buried off and there are many scholars like them they're like a bunch of worried mamas with a 55 year old son who hadn't found his bride yet gotta get married off you know it doesn't work and in this case any argument that Dan Brown uses in The Da Vinci Code it's like trying to get an us tea a rusty nut off of a bolt with a paper mache wrench use it the first time it falls apart and numbers alone will do it what is the da vinci code name for Leonardo's great portrait of Jesus and the 12 disciples right how many head should there be in the painting 12 plus 1 otherwise known as 13 okay now Mary Magdalene comes along and Jesus wants to sit next to his wife of course so he tells John to go to the end of the table right how many head should there be in the famous painting 14 now the next time you see Leonardo's great painting count the number of heads 13 well maybe John was drunken the wine and fell under the table that's been suggested - well sorry when Nardo's tablecloths does not go down to the floor there are only 26 legs that are folks count them not going to work and so it goes one after another the caricature show up John Dominic Crossan you've seen him probably a lot of TV shows in Jesus the wonderful Irish States the author who has all these put downs on Christianity for instance he loves the rattle Christian cages Jesus body wasn't buried in Joseph's Tomb dogs ate his bones you know this kind of thing always his little bombshell well he wrote the light Jesus the life of a Mediterranean peasant and he has pictured Jesus as a wandering sage telling jokes against the government kind of a corrosive character with a good sense of humor I don't know what image we can give Jesus on that one Seinfeld the Savior maybe I don't know what it would be but you have these again and again and again and the latest is the Gnostic Gospels oh I tell you now we have all kinds of portraits of Jesus showing up from this apocryphal literature that shows up from the second century on third and fourth century everybody making a big fuss about the Gnostic Gospels never mind that nearly all of them are word salad and where they do have serious content you have nothing there which is anything but derivative material from the four Gospels that were familiar with little gilding zuv the lily little additions to the bible we had biblical novelists 2,000 years ago or twenty at least nineteen hundred years ago and so again they're giving us different images which are supposed to be sensational and indeed the public very often runs with them let me tell you the selection of the canonical Gospels were not some kind of a March Madness situation where you came down to the sweet 16 and then the Elite Eight and the big four finally made it not the way it happened and so all these other views you get of the portraits of Jesus they're really all caricature and well let's take one in the Gospel of Philip now Dan Brown uses that to prove that Jesus got married now let me show you the paper maché wrench that he uses Gospel of Philip claims that Jesus was married no doesn't it doesn't gospel Philip don't even say that but I don't care if it did say that I don't care if the gospel Philip said Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and John was his best man I don't care who was a ring bearer or whatever else but it's a late third century derivative gospel nobody would give it the time of day but again those who want to see Jesus getting hurried off go with Dan Brown's argument okay here's the argument the disciples come to Jesus and they say Lord why do you prefer Mary Magdalene over us think of it folks if Jesus were married to the woman would that question make any sense whatever Jesus would have answered because she's my wife via dunderheads if I didn't prefer her I'd never hear the end of it they just don't work they just don't work so enough of that enough at at yes you didn't come for that this evening what do we know about the portrait of Jesus which is more accurate now natural you heard from the introduction that I'm going to be kind of in favor of the Gospel views but not just on that basis not just because it's in the Bible or anything else but I liked it as an ancient historian as a matter of fact I was for fifty years a professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University and I finally hung it up last year because the students were switching the adjective no longer professor of ancient history but ancient professor of history that wasn't build enough close enough it was enough but no what I like to do and I think we all of us should if you've chose to react with the image of Jesus or so use your specialty whether it's art or law or whatever else use specialty and approach this time-honored greatest story ever told and in my case of historian so I tried to use the tools of the historical discipline to pry apart all these wild images of Jesus and try to go back to what he really was in terms of the eyewitness testimony of contemporaries and in terms of the new evidence that we can get if we use all of the material which has come down to us from that all-important first century well don't we have it all no we're getting more every month every year there are more evidence coming there's more evidence coming in from the archeological finds that are being made there are more interesting research into the documentation of the time we have 2,000 years of good biblical scholarship most of it has been good you don't hear about the good material always hear about the sensationalist radical revisionist views they're the ones that make all the the press and whatever else but the solid scholarship which has been devoted to this so-called greatest life ever lived is copious and it's getting better every year you also have the new evidence of archeology coming along making spectacular discoveries most of which you don't even hear about I just amazed it that and by the way everybody thinks that archaeology is an old discipline we even have sympathy for the poor archaeologists his career is in ruins not too hot a joke I realize so if you ever try to dump on on the audience that way do have a good chaser here's a chaser especially to our beautiful young coeds here at Iowa State ladies try to marry an archaeologist because the older you get the greater interest your husband will take in you but it's young discipline it's only 125 years old scientific archaeology began the 1870s and look at the hundreds of thousands of artifacts that have been discovered that beautifully 90% of them rather immediately confirm the biblical record you can argue about 210 percent if you want you don't hear that you always hear about the radical over the wall archaeologists who have a totally different time grid from anybody else in the archaeological discipline and therefore their evidence is going to come up differently right computer people have a word for it garbage in garbage out when you depart from the recognized international standard for archaeology and have your grid 150 years off like some of them do are you sure you're going to get different results but by and large 85 to 90 percent of the discoveries being made in any land of the biblical world today almost immediately agrees with the biblical record you quarrel over the ten or fifteen seven fifteen percent if you want but most of the archaeological discoveries affirm the biblical record and some of the finds taking place are sensational in a good sense for example last century the German critics were coming along I can attack the German critics who saved German background myself Maya you can tell that but anyway they were saying again like some of the people today are saying there never was a Jesus a historical Jesus you can see it in your computer blog Jesus never existed com some claims are made that he never existed even as historical personality the man whom we have more primary evidence probably than anybody else in the ancient world yeah he never existed well anyway one of the critics was named Bruno Bauer now he had originally been a good Christian but he made shipwreck of his faith and then decided not only was Jesus not son of God he wasn't even a human being he never lived well then even Bruno's colleagues in Germany said yeah a bird is it wait a minute Jesus does interact with historical characters like Kalfas the high priest or Pontius Pilate the governor who condemned him yeah Bruno's answer was those or interpolations somebody wrote those into the manuscripts to make the New Testament look good well now too bad old Bruno wasn't around in 1962 when an Italian archaeological expedition was digging away at the waterfront theater it says areia and they came across a strangely shaped stone in a stair landing they pried the stone out of the matrix and they found an inscription on the other side the inscription was in 2-inch Latin lettering and it reads as follows to the people of Caesarea Pontius Pilate the governor of Judea has presented this building in honor of the emperor Tiberius you know I just wish Oh Bruno had hung around and not gone on to his reward or whatever direction that was I shouldn't be judgmental okay I would have loved to gotten Bruno's head in armlock and gently rubbed that unbelieving those of his in the inscription he could learn by the Braille method alone that there was a Pontius Pilate yeah here he shows up in stone okay this has happened repeatedly in history all kinds of archaeological evidence has come along most of it immediately confirming a biblical record so du historian this says we better take a look a second look at his biblical material and not decide that it's all a collection of early mythology now here's another one yeah 1947 the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered and of course is stupendous archaeological discovery I'll give you another one that I think is right up there with the Dead Sea Scrolls and nobody seems to know about it I don't know why but listen the bones of the first biblical personality ever to come to life were discovered in November of 1990 kind of fresh discovery I'm talking biblical bones I'm talking the bones of a gentleman there I've given you a 50% chance right there a gentleman who is well known in New Testament history and you would think that everybody even non-christians should know his name here's a story November in 1990 a bulldozer was excavating south of the temple area in the old city of Jerusalem I should immediately point out a bulldozer is not your average archaeological tool try brush well the dozer wasn't intending archaeology the dozer was building the base of a water park blue plastic slides and all and it starts sinking into the ground so they back it off turn off the diesels called in the archaeologists they shined their flashlights down in the hole there and without even going inside these Israeli archaeologists could identify it as a first century AD burial site how could they know that because there was a collection of ten azu Ares inside those are limestone chests for burying bones it's called the second burial method they they're running out of space in the Mount of Olives you know like the last scene in Schindler's List remember the movie you can see how grave about great too many graves so they were designing a space-saving way of burying people so they now the idea putting the bodies in the Sepulcher let him decompose for a year to get the bones that remained and put him in one of these limestone bone chests Jesus himself was in the second burial system hadn't been for the resurrection as Christians claim well they together in his bones a year or two later and done this same thing anyway now one of these ASSA worries was magnificently carved beautiful fluting around the edges two giant rosettes with sub corals inside I've never seen an ossuary so magnificently carved unlike anything I've ever seen so there's a VIP inside there obviously and on the other side is the name of the VIP gives you an Aramaic and I'll bet quite a few you'll be able to translate the name of the occupant was your safe bark alpha you're safe bark I ephah' who is that sound like Karis the high priest who was the chief prosecutor against Jesus on Good Friday before the tribunal upon his Pilate very important person how come nobody seems to know about that including Christian pastors I can be talking to a pastoral conference 300 pastors and I'll ask about the biblical bones about one or two percent we'll know I don't know how to get the story out it is a lead-pipe cinch it's correct they've done carbon 14 tests on the bones they are from 20 centuries ago they've done other tests to see the age of the bone at death and we're talking about a 70 75 year-old person it works out perfectly only for this particular Kay of us the only one with that name and it is we might say a lead-pipe cinch that is the case of the bones of the high priest even the Israel Museum which is not Christian has taken the question Markel wave when they first brought it into the Israel Museum had a question mark whether this is the one they taken the question mark away I think it's rather important to understand that the new archaeology taking place and the new finds being made are very very friendly to the biblical version of what happens in the case of Jesus then we've got another test we can level to see if we're going to get reliable fresh information on Jesus what about the geographical tests we over look that one all the time who it is geography anymore we got a Garmin Global Positioning device and you know can't even read them don't need any map anymore well the bible is chuck full of geographical names so it's very important to see if we're getting a con job when it comes to the geography or are these real places now unlike the holy books of any other world religious system the geographical locations inside of the old and new testament are absolutely authentic can't tell you all of them first ten chapters of Genesis cut me some slack can't tell you where Eden is located alright but after that we find it's been estimated that 93 percent of the place names are known know where they are and some have been excavated archaeologically now that's important because so many other holy books begin like an english fantasy novel at a time long long ago at a place called middle-earth or something like that I'm not trying to make fun of other systems I know terribly politically incorrect and I'd be stoned off the platform here but but I'm only trying to show that when you do talk about Bible lands they are real there is a real Jerusalem real Bethlehem a real Nazareth and places like that we're not kidding anybody these are real places so one very important clue when you're checking out your holy book is are these real places or is a stage solid on which these things happen and again you find the Gospels passing that test beautifully you got a travel record as st. Paul taken three mission journeys at least Luke faithfully recording wherever they went from place to place that are all traceable today yet Luke's got the order right is not screwing up the itinerary so it's very very reliable the geography is then there's a final test the words that have come down to us across 20 centuries what about the other records what about the inscriptions what about the coinage what about the history which is being written by others 2,000 plus years ago now that's very important information archaeologists dream of finding not only stones but inscriptions the words are so very important we have indeed so much loss that I can't even begin to talk about it from the first century library fires didn't help oh man the big member the biggest library in the ancient world seven or fifty thousand book Scrolls library at Alexandria and I tell my students in my ancient history courses I used to that if we'd have had the detail from those books that were burned up the book scrolls in the great library at Alexandria every course in ancient history would be six times as long as it is for which the students get their matches and are ready to burn down another library I know yeah yeah yeah I certainly know that but there's been quite an amazing amount of secular outside material which has come down from the ancient greco-roman world especially in that all-important first century it's not only beautifully confirming every Roman official that shows up and then the Gospels in the New Testament or the Jewish rulers like Herod the Great my goodness Flavius Josephus gives us two whole books on Herod the Great he has only a cameo role in Matthew chapter 2 but Josephus gives us two whole books on Herod alone same kind of character that shows up in the massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem that's the kind of guy who could do that because after all he married ten wives all of them producing Prince's forum and all the princes are scheming to succeed if they didn't have two or three collateral plots in the palace before they had cornflakes in the morning something was wrong and so Herod finally executed three of his own sons on suspicion of treason he put his face favorite wife to death the beautiful Maccabee in Princess Mary ami killed his mother-in-law alright sorry ladies should have said killed one of his many mothers in law okay yeah killed several uncles couple cousins you might say Herod was a family man uh invites the high priest down to a swimming party at Jericho drowns him you know it's a kind of a guy who could have killed a dozen babies in Bethlehem for easily but then we have additional evidence on other personalities in the Bible like John the Baptist now you recall of course his story but so does Josephus the first century Jewish historian never turn Christian but he writes super history as he sees it he also reports John the Baptist's execution exactly like the Gospels do he even adds precious detail to the gospel record yeah I'm telling you these outside sources from the secular world are very valuable because they not only coordinate with the biblical record but they add neat detail in some cases threads that have been left hanging in the Bible are tied down by Josephus incredible character he was a genius no fact escaped him he wrote this enormous history the Jewish people 28 book scrolls hero 28 times the size of material in one gospel so here we get all the delicious detail that beautifully completes our picture of Jesus in his times in the New Testament now case of John the Baptist where did he get executed and don't some wiseguy say at the neck yeah we understand that where it was the place where it happened geographically well Josephus tells us it happened at mock iris which was the fortress palace a Herod the Great at the northeastern corner of the Dead Sea now its import to know where things happen right and the Gospels don't tell us where it happened Josephus does I'm not knocking the Gospels I'm trying to point out they're dealing in historical fact here so much so that a non-christian will report the same thing about what you find in the gospel hey Josephus even even in fact I'm going to prove that all of you have used Josephus you've probably never heard of them before he came to this evening Joe who people usually respond when I talk about Josephus first century Jewish historian born the city Jerusalem four years after Jesus crucifixion he is a box outside seat to the events reported in the gospels if I were going to ask you who what's the name of the little gal daughter of Herodias who did her dance of how women even many veils or whatever that is that caused the death of John the Baptist altogether now what's the name of the gal salomi you say correctly that's right and now you'll be shocked you can't find her name in the New Testament all you get for the beheading of John the Baptist is daughter of Herodias how do we know her name salomi Thank You Josephus see how beautifully the evidence coordinates who was the first Bishop of the Christian Church anywhere on earth and don't give me Simon Peter he was not the first bishop of the church according the Bible itself was James the just of Jerusalem Jesus half brother or cousin we're not going to get in that argument right now but Eusebius the earliest Christian Church historian says it was James and indeed we wish the New Testament would finish off his history but it doesn't guess who does Josephus he says that 29 years after the crucifixion of Jesus James the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ was stoned to death by the Senate Rijn in the absence of the Roman governor Guyot and gotten her yet who tried to do exactly what Pontius Pilate tried to do and that is get Jesus off the hook but albinism was he arrived too late by that time they had done a kangaroo court execution on James they half-brother of Jesus and here you have Good Friday - you have a perfect parallel to Good Friday Good Friday one you have Kalfas the whose bones just been discovered who is the prosecutor in 62 AD 29 years later you have KF Issa's brother-in-law Ananas who again seeing saw that this stoning to death was kinda railroaded but here you have again a perfect confirmation a perfect mirror what happened in Good Friday and by the way the second one was by a Jew who never converted to Christianity so he's not some sweet gospel writer trying to make the New Testament look good this authenticates the evidence even more strongly and of course in a famous passage antiquities book 1863 section 63 Josephus gives us the longest reference to Jesus in first century sources outside of Christian literature is in the middle of the rain upon chest Pilate and by the way Josephus gives us about five major episodes in the life upon chess Pilate which are not in the Bible and they're real they happened they explain why Pilate is acting so strangely on for Good Friday why seems under pressure here is the answer Josephus gives us this guy has not been mined enough for all the gold nuggets there inside so anyway right in the middle of pilots administration he gave this wonderful testimony to Jesus almost in Christian language in fact it was too good to be true yeah my colleagues in the ministry or in the rabbinate will know that everybody agrees that passage had been interpolated somebody thinking to do God a favor took a perfectly decent passage on Jesus and baptized it made a to Christian forwards the passage read something like this about this time there was a wonderful man if indeed were not to call him only a man he was the Messiah who rose from the dead now look a good Jew would never have written that and stayed a good Jew he would have been a Jewish Christian like Paul of Tarsus so we were told never to use that in the center at the seminary so wine o'clock back to 1955 I just graduated from community seminary st. Louis young pup of a grad student I was so ticked off at this largest reference that Jesus had been screwed up that I wrote the world's ranking authority and flavia's Josephus a Jewish scholar in London named Paul winter and I asked dr. winter two questions one do you think that Josephus ever referred to Jesus because the critics were saying throw the whole passage out second question if you think he really fer to Jesus how do you think the passage read three weeks later got an airmail letter this does nothing for you people either instant messaging I know I know it cut me some slack fifty five years ago okay answer the first question yes he was quite sure that Josephus was referring to our Jesus second question using his good textual critical skills he prized away what he thought was a Christian an addenda by some stupid monk on the second century or something and gave me a version that I thought was very convincing tragedy Paul winter died before he ever learned how close he had come because the great good news is that another great Jewish scholar Shalom Alpine's of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem discovered a manuscript tradition of Josephus that was not interpolated at that point it reads almost word-for-word like what Paul Winter predicted it would read if they ever got the accurate manuscript so in my translation of Josephus that goes back in the text and it's only at the end of the chapter that we the rather sunny schoolish laundered version that we can't accept and that is a very fair outside view of Jesus by someone who didn't necessarily believe in him but he's trying to write fair history goes something like this about this time there was a wise man called Jesus and his conduct was good and he was known to be virtuous many people among the Jews and the other nations the the Gentiles the other nations became his disciples Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die but those who had become his disciples did not abandon their discipleship they reported that three days later he emerged from the tomb alive now notice he doesn't say he rose from the dead he said they reported that he rose from the dead see that's a New Testament says the same thing he's trying to be fair that's something a good Jew could have written that he ends up by saying accordingly you could possibly have been the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have reported wondrous and the tribe of the Christians so named after him has not disappeared to the present day so this is what he actually wrote and so this brilliant outside testimony for like the historicity of Jesus and there are five other major reffered but twelve and all but five other major references in secular literature but Jesus so how somebody can come along and claim that Jesus was only a myth I shall never know uh just quickly to tick them off Cornelius Tacitus first century historian he writes from the second sending the first gives us a year-by-year account what happened in ancient Rome and for the year 64 he reports the Great Fire of Rome happened on her Nero's administration and Nero's throne is tottering because it happened on his watch so to keep from being overthrown Nero then has to search for other scapegoats and he lands on the Christians first time they show up in secular history he says the Christians are named careful scholar ease is the Christians are named for a Christ who was crucified by one of our governors Pontius Pilate and the pernicious superstition was almost eradicated but suddenly it gained new vigor again you want an outside proof the resurrection Pentecost there it is suddenly gained new vigor and even flowed as far away as Rome that common cesspool into which garbage flows from all over the Mediterranean so there's a hostile source doesn't like Christianity so much garbage but that very fact alone proves that his concession that there was it Jesus crucified by pilot and had followers is absolutely authentic historically because it satisfies the great criterion of embarrassment hey I'll get over these sidebars in a second but listen I got to give you a couple sidebars here on how does a professor of ancient history figure out if something claimed 2,000 years later really happened that guy maybe patting a story may be telling a fairy tale we know the ancients loved to pad their numbers the historians so how do we know that a fact claimed by an ancient historian is true there are 12 tests but two of the biggest first is the criterion of multiple attestation meaning are there a lot of different sources not copying from one another that agree that this happened then that's a pretty firm and may a lot of people say Julius Caesar assassinated Ides of March Julius Caesar said and it keeps going around and yeah probably happened the other one is a criterion of embarrassment you're arguing in a given direction and yet you come across evidence that contradicts your thesis but you got to admit it because everybody knows is true but you build a wall around it trying to explain it away right then 2,000 years later that problematical counter-evidence is absolutely authentic see it see otherwise they wouldn't have had bothered to defeat the argument so here in a hostile source it would have been in their interest to shut up about Jesus entirely Tesla sinks are so much sewage but he was an honest historian trying to figure out where this crazy sect started okay this is pretty overpowering evidence Tacitus alone would prove the historicity of Jesus but we have more suet Onias another famous Roman historian writes lives of the twelve Caesars gives quite a bedroom history of them and so forth uh it was a best-seller in the Middle Ages by the way its weight usually goes but he says that reign of Claudius there was a big demonstration riot in the trans Tiber area and Rome over the claims of Christ yeah plenty of the younger governor of Asia Minor he was a cross from the Bosporus and the Asiatic side in Istanbul that's where Bethany is located north western Turkey he writes the emperor trajan bout year 110 and he says dear Emperor what do I do about these Christians they get up get up early Sunday morning and they say hymns to Christ as if you were a God you know so much for Dan Brown's claim this happened at the Council of Nicaea 225 years later uh uh early on what do I do about in there against the law aren't they we got Trajan's answer he said they're plenty yes the Christians are against the law and so if you can make a perfect case against them I guess the laws got to be followed but don't go hunting them out and don't take any unsigned accusations which are inconsistent with the liberality of our age see there is a case where the Roman Empire is moderating see the persecutions were not one long horror story they were on-again off-again on-again off-again but again Jesus as God mentioned Christ and so forth the Jewish rabbinic traditions mentioned Jesus they're hostile also but they admit there was a yeshua ha-nozri Jesus of Nazareth they even give us the arrest notice published by the San Andreas goes something like this wanted yeshua ha-nozri he shall be stoned because he's practiced sorcery and he lured israel into apostasy now again you might hip quick shoot reaction might say wait a minute there's no good jesus was crucified he wasn't stoned and isn't it terrible to call the lord's miracles sorcery no for those two reasons it's authentic future tense is used in this Aramaic inscription future tests haven't arrested Jesus yet no Jew would ever written he's going to be crucified that's a Roman punishment if they'd had caught Jesus anywhere but Jerusalem any time except for when the Romans were there how would they have terminated him stoning penalty for blasphemy rabbis have this wonderful account about how God's creating angels went across the world to create the world angel in charge of the forest dot dot dot dot dot studded in all the trees angel in charge of the Seas poured out the oceans angel in charge of the rock so ever hits some headwinds flying over the Holy Land had to drop them all there it's the weapon of choice anybody's been at the Holy Land is that right limestone outcroppings all over the place it's a rocky spot on earth so this is realistic and folks did you notice the criterion of embarrassment showing up in that in that statement sometimes I'm asked can we prove the miraculous well obviously not to everyone's satisfaction this one comes close he's practiced sorcery now wait a minute wouldn't have been simpler for that hostile source not to mention that because sorcery and miracle are the same thing if you're not talking cause a miracle is something extraordinary supernatural help from above sorcery is the same thing with help from below but in conceding that Jesus is doing something extraordinary supernatural from a hostile source this becomes very very important testimony so not only the rabbinical traditions mentioned him the two references in Josephus you cannot say both were interpolated not at all second time he talks about Jesus half-brother James being stoned to death it doesn't work to say that Jesus was not a historical figure just doesn't work at all you know even some of the big critics of Christianity will concede finally that yeah there was at least a historical Jesus we don't believe it any more about it but at least there was a historical Jesus and I think the critics who try to dismantle Jesus by using the approach they never even lived are using a false shortcut it doesn't work it just doesn't work intellectually in fact anyone making that statement should probably be embarrassed for having made it okay those are the sources we use in trying to bring out some new information on Jesus and I want to tell you those are the sources that are looking for the surrounding evidence the geographical evidence the archeological evidence and the documents have come down to us I do not get this additional information by direct revelation okay you know if this were the Bible Belt I'd have to make that very clear because all your television evangelist and the tube in the Bible Belt you know are talking about the wonderful two-way conversations have with God you know I told God and God told me and I told God you got told me I don't like those claims I don't mind a person saying I told God is called prayer but God told me better give that a rest huh how subjective can you get no no these are the sources we use in terms of real quickly now to finish my presentation so you have a little hope up going real quickly through the life of Jesus here are some of the new items that we can talk about again remember the nativity account begins with a very unchristian see figure you know not Mary or Joseph or baby Jesus or mage I or Shepherd's Caesar Augustus how unchristian figure can you find has anyone ever gotten a Christmas card with a marble bust of Caesar Augustus on the front you know little slogan inside caesar's greetings do not think it would fly but this is Luke's method I'm using Luke's method Luke is the one especially the author in the Bible was always throwing an anchor out into the mainstream of greco-roman history to orient the people properly so Luke begins with somebody everybody knew the great Augustus one of the best emperors Rome ever had to bet he was first one and no more but well there were a few more but but nevertheless this is the Orient everybody looks very concerned about the political background and indeed Augustus did take censuses when he died and he was put inside his urn was put inside the mausoleum earned his place in history I guess you might say anyway uh the alright I should have said that I won't use it again I promise we have him having arranged that 36 major items that he accomplished for the Empire point number eight I took a census three times a very very important document there I can show you a census document from neighboring Egypt it's at the University of Michigan graduate library a guy registers himself at his own ancestral village for the house by house census of somebody for enduring Hadrian's time which was about a hundred years after the first Christmas neighboring Egypt that took a Roman census every fourteen years the neat thing about that document is it's not a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy it's the original papyrus in which a guy named Horace registers himself and his family boy they love that name I'm Horace a cultivator of state land 48 years old I'm the son of Horace who is the son of Horace and I herewith register my wife tappa kosis daughter of Horace oh I hope that's at different Horace ah and I register my firstborn son Horace and his brother who was 7 years old no identification marks and our second son Orion that means Horace like yeah 1 years old with no identification marks and so on that scar he says he has he's 48 years old with a scar on his left eyebrow see that's in place of a social security number I guess whatever it might be so we have the census documents we have we have some archaeological evidence believe it or not and that is the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem let me explain why now I used to be skeptical the first six times I was in Bethlehem us convinced out come on we know Jesus born here but we don't know where and so forth well wait a minute I did a study on the paper trail going back to that spot for 19 centuries the church knew that that was the cavern or grotto or cave where Jesus was born Constantine's engineers when they're building that first Church of the Nativity interviewed Macarius the Christian Bishop of Jerusalem do you know where Jesus was born of course we do you know church picnics or whatever us at whatever is liked it or Christmas parties who knows anyway so so he could point out where and that's why constant I'm told at that site over the grotto that was hallowed since time immemorial now let's go back a century more let's go to the church father Origen who tells us whenever he went to Bethlehem even the pagans there we're willing to tell anyone who would listen where the great Jesus was born whom the Christians worship now we're talking 220 ad what I didn't tell you is it origin means son of Horus but but anyway in Greek yeah okay now let's go back to Justin Martyr we're talking now within two or three generations of Jesus he talks about that grotto where Jesus was born finally I had to bury some of my doubts because folks the place where Jesus was born was a tourist magnet a pilgrim magnet this was their Eiffel Tower this was their Tower of London their Colosseum their Acropolis their Parthenon this brought the tourists and their money why would they ever forget something like that so maybe I'm getting senile as I'm getting older but on the other hand I'm starting to doubt some of my doubts about some of those sites so even archeology comes along in terms of Jesus youth of a synagogue at Nazareth where he gave his first public presentation has been discovered he then changes his address to Capernaum as you well know that's his main post office address during his Galilean ministry well the synagogue where Jesus taught is it's a later two or three centuries later structure but it's built on the foundation stones of a very synagogue where Jesus taught just one block further south toward the Sea of Galilee we have the house of Peter discovered which is where Jesus hung his hat during his three years of ministry memory state of the house of Peter the authentication there might take 15 minutes I'm not going to take it but nevertheless wherever Constantine wanted to consecrate a sacred location he built a double octagon around the place he had a double octagon around the cave he had double octagon around the house of Peter in Capernaum we have the notation of a pilgrim none in 380 ad her name was a Gary she writes today we worshiped in the very house of Peter where Jesus lived which the emperor has turned into a Christian Church and indeed the tool room house had the middle partition taken away and made a nave of a church out of it and there are other clues that are with graffiti on the walls Jesus names the disciples Peter Andrew and so forth pretty exciting a boat has been discovered that Jesus could have used yeah did this is they called the Jesus boat that's too much we can't call it that called the Galilee boat 1986 no rain had come for weeks on end it was a dry a spring in memory and the waters of the Sea of Galilee starts dropping dropping dropping is so big wide halo a beach shows up for the first time two brothers from kibbutz Ginosar you see how ganas are it shows up today the one of the four names Sea of Galilee anyway these two brothers discover a buried ship's hull and they were convinced it was a medieval Arab craft of some kind until they called in the world's ranking marine archaeologist he flew in from Texas by the way and he identified it as a 1st century AD or 1st century BC biblical horizon hull how'd he know mortise and tenon construction used only at that time then they did a c14 test on it obviously and by the way carbon-14 is getting better and better not worse and worse don't confuse carbon-14 with uranium lead or potassium argon no no that this is pretty reliable stuff and it dated back 20 centuries exactly right so this craft alone gives us a neat commentary on mark's gospel when he talks about the stilling of the tempest in Sunday school I was a terror I didn't mean to be but I was always asking Sunday school teacher crazy questions I was pleased for example at a Peters house they opened the roof and let Jesus down for the paralytic healing member that one you Christians okay uh but my question please that Jesus could heal a but what do they do about the roof afterwards that's what I drew from the lesson hey roofs are hard enough to keep dry without up all you know get lost cilia The Tempest I was pleased that Jesus could turn off the wind but how could Jesus sleep through a storm in the first place Paul asked your father me and so forth hey now we know because that galilee boat that was discovered the only protected spot would be under the rear decking where the helmsman would stand to guide the craft and the only protected spot is under that decking out of a cold wind wet Jesus can take a snooze now mark says he's also sleeping on the pillow the cushion what kind of a throwaway detail is that and why does mark say tha he implies as part of the boats rigging he should have said a pillow a cushion no you wouldn't say a rudder would you you see the rudder okay so mark is trying to tell us as part of the boats rigging now we know what it is that crazy boat could be either rode or sailed because there's the remains of a mass block for the the the what am I trying to say the mast but now a storm I said so what are you going to do with with a note with no keel to hold the boat up well there's one way to do it ballast sack put your ballast sack on the windward side however far out you have to take it from the center of the hull to account for the wind and that will pick it pretty stable but a storm is coming up what do you do with the ballast sack you don't want an eccentric boat going through the water you stow it a center of midships out of your way Jesus is sleeping on the ballast sack that's what that crazy pillow was in cushion these are little fine details you can add a biblical record when you tell the whole story when it comes to the passion story of course there the needle goes off the scale John gives us almost an hour by hour day by day account what happened during Holy Week and it's I'm glad he did because Jesus didn't take a move during Holy Week that hasn't been doubted or denied by some critic somewhere and yet every last detail in Holy Week rings out perfectly according to the canons of Roman jurisprudence this is how a governor would have conducted a Roman trial at that time the whole thing opens up when again you hear the politics behind the Good Friday episode really it's the last aspect of the greatest story ever told that hasn't been told yet except in a wonderful historical novel called Pontius Pilate the author's name escapes me although it is available on the table and back ok I wasn't going to mention that commercial but did anyway sorry about that ok when you get Pilate story you do get the whole biblical background for what's happening on Good Friday why Pilate is acting defensively why he cannot cross the crowd when push comes to shove and they play out the trump card about if you release this man you're not Caesars friend whoever speaks treason against whoever whoever calls this man a king is speaking treason against Caesar the next line in John's Gospel Greek verb staal ratha to-- let him eat crucified it was the end of the trial as far as Pilate was concerned they played out the trump card what does that trump card yeah the untold story a Good Friday resurrection boy you know I'm here I am making Mel Gibson's mistake number Mel Gibson back when he had a reputation does The Passion of the Christ you know two and a half hours of agony in 30 seconds for the resurrection you know it's a little unequal I'll tell you one thing though make a long story short we are able categorically to prove that the tomb was empty now that doesn't prove a resurrection I'll be the first to say that but the two phenomenal things happen in good Friday Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead and again I think we have 90 percent proof for that or 85 percent or 80 percent but there is a little item there called faith which God the greatest psychiatrist of all wants people to respond to because otherwise God is only a puppet master he's only a marionette controller and then where we have no free will to oppose his thinking or whatever and you know again the God we have well we can prove the empty tomb it's one of the byproducts of the resurrection two chapters in one of my books prove that and so generally to wrap it all up the real Jesus shows up pretty well in the Gospels and I think in subsequent decades he'll show up even better with more information coming in of an archaeological nature all right very good you have a voice it carries very well did most of you hear it he's talking about a professor Karen king of Harvard Divinity School and the Jesus wife document one of the Coptic Gospels supposedly remember the Smithsonian got all excited about it take big ads or going to a television special on it trying to show that Jesus refers to his wife it's a fraud total forgery the Smithsonian prop show never happened why duh because it was proven to be a fake because they had some of the same mistakes copied in a Coptic inscription in this little fragment they only had a fragment because you can't really do much more in fraud by the way of adjusting a little fragment see and so it's a fraud and that has happened before believe me including the famous Judas gospel a lot of spooky things about that one that are not hunky-dory at all these people who commit our illogical fraud and they do that also I just hope there's a special cell in the warm place for these people who try to defraud trustworthiness but it's a good question glad you asked it it's totally worthless that claim I don't think they've caught the forgery yet I would highly suspect the guy that brought that document to Karen King I really would simply because he kind of innocently says I hear you people are interested Gnostic Gospels on officing has any worth you may check it out and of course she immediately bought it hook line and sinker and no further word about it mum's the word ever since because it's a fraud yep you bet okay in the absence all those with loud voices please use microphone stay where you are for that matter Oh Noi I can hear you pretty well but why can't we get the electronics working or they're working on it okay good okay go on should be ah I could yeah good question uh I have used that already that's called misusing the Bible because it was a case of palms on the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and the Pharisees rebuked him look how they're praising you and he says listen if these kids didn't sing the stones themselves would cry out that is the context that's what Jesus meant by it but let me tell you a lot of Christians have used that for archaeology because the stones do in that sense continue to cry out yes yeah nice point okay thank you you bet um yeah so we heard a lot about um you know people misrepresenting Jesus right like um you know authors were high on mushrooms or Jesus a happy husband or etc right yeah um but for me I can't really think of a West likely story about Jesus then that you know he was born from a virgin or no son of a jealous God whom we haven't really heard from since raised from the dead etc so I guess my question is you know why do you think that this story which seems so horribly unlikely is true whereas you know all these other seemingly comparatively sensible stories yeah aren't thank you okay so it's a very good a very good question we have extraordinary things that are happening as claimed in the New Testament and I'm not trying by any means save it I've proven all this of course I haven't have you seen anybody resurrected from the dead lately I haven't you know and so the many things that happened which a are beyond our normal experience and so I can understand why somebody would ask a question like that sure it's unlikely to have anybody born of a virgin though incarnation is unlikely the whole resurrection is unlikely but maybe that is what proves it true if you had a story that was perfectly coherent in many ways then you might say that was invented by humankind but when you have a story which is larger than normal life God does things differently you might say and so that objection alone that you have extraordinary stuff happening here an unlikely combination of elements wouldn't necessarily negate anything because we'd expect to God to do something differently now I admit if there were no contextual evidence and we'd only heard about this divine being being born of a virgin and suffered died and rose again in the clips of the Creed alone and there were no context be difficult to believe but when you have this whole thing preceded by a mess of Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament some of them absolutely uncanny I just did a book on an Advent and I guess I was reminded again about the spectacular prophecies made by a Jewish prophet named Isaiah this guy acts like he was at Golgotha 700 years before Christ he's giving predictions about what's going to happen to Jesus at Calvary and other prophets like them you don't find any book written over thirteen hundred year period where you have prophecy in the one and fulfillment on the other so that's part of the context and then you have all this other context in which you can test out any of the political authorities that Jesus was involved with and get part of their biography for Roman history secular history so you have something totally here that absolutely has magnificent confirmation on the outside that's why I'd love these outside sources they are so neat not only in affirming the scriptural thing but in giving us new additional detail this is why it was so turned on by these accounts ever since Sunday school always wanted to know more good we got others standing up or going to microphone coach up now we got another I got another micro guess oh good thank you oh yes we got sound of what would you say is that I would be curious to hear what your reasons are proof of the empty tomb okay I'll give you the the three-minute version not the 20-minute version okay we have two forms of argumentation which we use one would be an argument that the church is used for 20 centuries and as still as good as new and has never been contradicted goes like this it's the answer to the question and here's the question where did Christianity first begin in terms of the organized proclamation that Jesus was a messiah who rose from the dead I want one spot on earth and the answer is not the Holy Land Galilee not Judea one place on earth the City of Jerusalem is where the proclamation began that Jesus defeated death on Easter nowhere else now the point is in Jerusalem least of all could the organized proclamation of Jesus as the resurrected Lord ever have been promulgated if the moldering body of Jesus of Nazareth were still in the tomb available for view there would have been no debate between the disciples of the Sanitary they wouldn't been in and out of prison as they were in the early chapters of the book of Acts that have been the end of it kfs would simply have said you poor bill denuded deluded I should say fishermen you believe in this dead criminal is look let me show you his body he couldn't do that the body was not available now I'm not telling you saying that an empty tomb proves a resurrection of course it does not but if you reverse you can't have a resurrection at least a decent one without the tomb being empty as its first sim symptom now the second argument that I add to that traditional argument is the criterion of embarrassment number that one okay I searched out Jewish forbidding traditions all of them agree the tomb was empty they don't say the two was empty they say Jesus body was stolen same thing you know you can say either was money in the bank or was robbed well that means the money's not there anymore okay same deal so because of those two particularly I challenge really any scholar to disprove my historical methodology on that one it got interesting responses to that New York Times Book Review gave me a rave review and so did Billy Graham I couldn't believe satisfying both Billy Graham and the New York Times Book Review most interesting letter I got was from a Jewish scholar in Tel Aviv dr. Gallo Cornfeld he was writing a book on the Jewish Jesus rather than the Christian Christ we knew which way you would take it but he came across that argument and he was convinced by it didn't become a Christian no but he had agreed that tomb was empty and then I asked him of course how do you explain the empty tomb and he responded by saying he thought that Jesus never really died and in the cool of the to be revived well back in some days we learned that was the old swoon theory you know the resurrection and then I had to explain to dr. Korn felt the batting every for patty average for death by crucifixion was about a thousand among the Romans they didn't let guys escape by feigning death even in these human demolition derbies called gladiatorial combat they had a little guy dressed like Pluto with a red-hot poker and he would touch all the bodies that were on the ground and if they flinched Pike went right through the heart and in fact that's kind of what happened on Good Friday they didn't have read out Pope there but they had somebody with the Lance piercing Jesus pericardium and so on so then dr. Cornfeld said I understand that and I will indeed let you provide a response to my version of it I couldn't believe you would do this he was as good as his word you know he give this explanation for the empty tomb I nailed him to the wall with it in a nice way of course it was his book but he gave me the less word see this is Christian Jewish cooperation of first water so the evidence is really very strong hmm Paul would you would you repeat the question well of course I'd plan to the question was about the Roman seal Roman guards around the tomb would there be any archaeological evidence for that no we don't happen to have particular archaeological evidence there but we do know that we're rolling stone tombs I can show you 15 of them in and around Jerusalem for example one of these would have had a Roman seal on not that it was sealed caulked cemented no like the seals you see in your electric meters you know little wires then that was the seal that nobody's tampered with your your meter box and so that's the kind of seal they would have probably even a string or something with a seal and so that you wouldn't expect something like that to survive now I must however debate with you on the Roman guard around the tomb we're not sure it was a Roman guard I think it was a Jewish temple guard why would I say that well it all depends on what Pontius Pilate said that that evening when members of the Senate ring came and said look this deceiver claimed that he's going to rise from the dead it was Saturday morning yeah this deceiver was going to rise from the dead make sure the tomb is sealed so guarded I should say now what is Pilate say he says either yeah okay take a guard or you already have a guard make the tomb as safe as you can greek is usually very specific so help me both of those interpretations are decent translations of what Pilate said and to this day we don't know whether that was a Roman guard or Jewish temple guard I personally go to Jewish temple guard because where do these guys report they don't report to their commander they don't report to Pilate they report to the Jewish temple authorities there's no way on God's green earth they would have gone a Roman force still a Jewish temple Authority no so I think the evidence pretty overpowering there was a Jewish humble guard and so does Tertullian a few of the church fathers but again good question I'm in trying to knock your question believing yes it's easy again how did Judas get to cashmere Jesus I don't know that I ever went to Kashmir oh yeah that there is a claim grave of Jesus somewhere in Asia I guess in Kashmir India yeah yeah I'm fine hello I'm not going to grant any authenticity to that one at all they do try to get Jesus traveling all over the world as a kid yeah everybody wants a piece of the action Christians are no exception Our Lady of Fatima Our Lady of aims or whatever you know it you all want to have something to do with the biblical account very interesting it shouldn't it find questions any others yeah so I like to thank you for coming out and so in dialoguing with some of my friends about these issues and some more on the radical fringe of these ideas would question the underlying assumption that we have the text of the New Testament without interpolation or they would say we have a gap between the writings of the documents and when we have the manuscripts even though they would grant yes this is the best evidence out of any work in antiquity they would still be so skeptical as to say there's a gap there and so how do you think the process of textual criticism comes in to that and couldn't help us out okay very good question you have to remember that the critics of the Bible well first of all try to deny the evidence as plainly presented but if they can't do that then they will criticize the manuscript transmission saying that you have a late manuscript here and therefore it's not reliable fact is we have late manuscripts for all the characters from antiquity so it's not really much of an argument but again you have to remember that Islam and Mormonism both claim that our biblical documents have been somehow miscopied and they use the illustration of course of the children's game called telephone I whispers secretin euros down and so forth and by the welker you wouldn't have 800 but but in a group of at least ten or twelve you'd have a model than a biblical transmission that argument was all but destroyed by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls why two complete Scrolls of the prophet Isaiah founded Qumran the earliest scroll we had of Isaiah before that was from 1000 6 AD now these scrolls were two hundred years old in Jesus day do you see a twelve hundred year gap here yeah the Qumran scrolls read 99.3% the same way as they do today and as they did 2,000 years ago generally these are very carefully transmitted now to be sure any pastor will show you a great New Testament where the bottom of the page is 20% critical apparatus showing other various documents may disagree in tiny Spelling's or punctuation and then will make a big fuss about it Bart Ehrman a case in point University of North Carolina has made a whole cottage industry out of those terrible variations well the variations aren't terrible they're really minor differences in spelling sometimes a little bit not one variation of anything in the older New Testament as in any way changed any meaning or any doctrinal point in Judaism or Christianity so really that argument fails I get no more questions I don't want question one coke yeah alright um you said the 90% correspondent with Josephus Jeff um I thought I feel like the other 10% might become important though just one quick question um the events around Jesus's death are listed in the Bible like the massive earthquake and eclipses and saints rising from the dead and walking around Jerusalem I feel like I mean I've heard this before it seems like those are the sort of things that would definitely be recorded by the historian of that caliber and the fact that they weren't I'm just curious what would you say about it just try to bring up a small point you know I just wish I had stopped with the previous question you have asked the most difficult question you can ask of anybody interest in the Bible I find that passage in Matthew very very difficult I must say and I'll be honest I do not have a good answer for that one I really don't not that I'm necessarily good answers anyway what I'm trying to say is that one especially is quite difficult it really is I'll be honest about it but the other details like the darkness and the earthquake and that kind of stuff and it's in that context member yeah that we can show evidence for phlegon pH le gon is a Greek author of wonders like Ripley believe it or not by Ripley again your parents will know all about that most of what Ripley reported is true you know biggest tomato in the world ever grown in Iowa or something like that you know well flag on his name was was also a Ripley 2,000 years ago and he reported these strange things that had happened you know what he said he said in the fourth year of the 200 second Olympiad there was a great darkness at noon so much so that at Nicaea in Asia Minor you could see stars in the daytime and an earthquake took place which demolished many of the buildings in Nicaea days writing only about what he experienced now what is the fourth month of the fourth year the two hundred second Olympiad just for the heck of it I figured it out it April of AD 33 that is the date for Good Friday and that's now how I arrived at that date believe it was only after we have the date and concrete that suddenly I realized hold it flagons talking about the same thing and just two months ago they announced also in Jordan River excavations that the strata from 33 AD do show an earthquake disruption so science is coming through for us in many ways but again as I realize I have not answered your search in question that's right but again I I see dr. Don here ready to sweep me off the platform he's a hero he's shutting me up so let's start it for Don for more information about the veritas forum including additional recordings and a calendar of upcoming events please visit our website at Veritas org
