This Historian has NEW Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus

hey welcome to capturing christianity i'm cameron bertuzzi today i am joined by dr gary habermas and we're looking at some new evidence for the resurrection of jesus it's gonna be a really exciting episode because i don't even know what he's talking about i don't know what this new evidence is he's actually just gonna reveal here live on the streams my first time hearing it so i'm just super excited and instead of do like a long drawn out intro on dr gary habermas he's a historian he's a philosopher if you'd like to learn more about him check the description of this video but let's just jump i want to jump right in because we've only got about an hour to go over this evidence so let's just jump right in gary where should we start what's this new evidence that you've got well a lot of people know i've been working on a what i call uh magnum opus uh that's a long story but briefly a bunch of my buddies told me 10 years ago or more i should start doing a major work on the resurrection that does not borrow from my 20 something books of my 50 of every what i've written is on the resurrection so they said why don't you do something new and put all this stuff out there and i i i just trashed the whole idea because i told him it would take the rest of my life and i've got things going on and so they said we'll start well i i thought i got working on it well we're getting ready finishing the first volume and it is 1600 pages on just the evidence for christianity the evidence for the resurrection and it is the first of four volumes and in the process it occurred to me that some things were happening and i was realizing some research that hadn't been talked much about before now some of the things i'm talking about will be familiar to people but i think it's the arrangement of them that's really new so let me say it this way uh when you want to do history there are a lot of tools you need i say i say there are tools and rules there are things you use and how you apply them and two of the most important ones are eyewitness testimony and early testimony and a lot of critics think we have neither a lot of critics who deny the four gospels paul they like paul they'll admit about half of paul's books and you're free to use those half of books a lot of people misunderstand they think you can't use the scripture with atheists new testament professors not true but they limit what you can use according to their view and so i started working with their principals and what came out was the argument i called the minimal facts argument and the minimal facts argument says i can take the facts that the critics allow and have enough of a basis to show that jesus has raised the debt well as i'm getting done with this first volume on evidence it occurred to me that there are six actually five a quick one afterwards but there's five lines of evidence that all are manifest before on or before 36 a.d now let me explain that for a second if you ask a question a christian what kind of evidence do we have they'll say well let's start with mark let's move to matthew if you want to go by the year what date critics put him at let's go to luke let's go to john john's probably too late try to stick with mark uh matthew luke and that's kind of the way the conversation proceeds but critics also like paul and when you start unpacking some of this stuff you get further and further and further back uh for example john is about 95 a.d if jesus died in 30 a.d that's plus 65. according to critics dating luke is about plus 55 matthew's about 50. mark's the youngest at about 70 a.d or plus 40. but paul's first epistle is probably first thessalonians in 50 a.d some go as early as 48 for first thessalonians that makes first thessalonians 18 to 20 years after the cross cuts the distance with mark in half and when paul starts talking he doesn't sit there and start explaining the defining things for the thessalonians i mean cameron this is this is new stuff the thessalonians shouldn't paul be telling them now when i mean when i say son of god i mean and give a definition when i say messiah that's a jewish word greek speaker say christ and that means this and when we call jesus lord that means this but doesn't do that he opens first thessalonians with a loaded christology everybody admits this he uses all the heaviest names for jesus and doesn't explain them so that's interesting at plus 18 to plus 20 he's using terms that they probably know a lot about before he writes the letter to them so that's earlier than first thessalonians okay now let me back up from the other end am i making sense so far yep should i slow down any of this no it's good yeah just keep going forward oh yeah i'll i'll uh i'll slow you down if we need to yeah yeah do that because i don't want to just ramble on and assume that you're being a nice guy and not gonna interrupt me uh which i prefer you to do uh okay let's go from the other end we've got i ended up with thessalonians at probably 50 a.d but it could be 48 that's only 18 to 20 years after the cross half the distance of mark now let's go back to the cross moving forward everybody puts the conversion of paul at plus two or three that's 32-33 if you keep the cross at 30 in your mind some people say 33 for the cross but all you're going to do is move your numbers up and at 33 you're going to be even closer to the book of first thessalonians but at 30 paul comes the lord he's taking his trip to damascus at 32-33 here's the big question we start with today what is going on between 30 and 32 or if you prefer 33 what is going on in the christian world before paul comes to know jesus now the normal comment is well paul was a pharisee good he was a scholar yep and he was angry about something he held the coats of those who stoned stephen uh we're told that paul voted against the christians he caught he voted against them the phrases unto their death so he voted i guess if he was a jury member a quote unquote he voted for him to die that's going on between 30 and 33. that's paul's side he didn't like what he was hearing but now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty what was paul hearing what was out there between 30 and 33 and again our point is we want early eyewitnesses there aren't any gospels and paul's written no books now the earliest christian preaching according to skeptics like garrett lunaman the late garrett ludemann the atheist german new testament scholar bart ehrman and many others the preaching of christianity started immediately christians began preaching the gospel immediately so right away if jesus dies in the spring of 30 a.d and christians are preaching the gospel which at the minimum is the deity death and resurrection of jesus what is making paul so angry and i guess that kind of general question kind of sets the stage for this and to take garrett ludeman the atheist new testament scholar he says christians preach the gospel data immediately after he doesn't believe in an ascension so immediately after they didn't see jesus anymore the book of acts says 50 days later pentecost so less than two months later they're all preaching and ludeman says that's true christians were preaching the gospel at about you know what's immediately according to acts is two months later now this is a very exciting time i'll just stop right there for one second the old view among most both liberals and non-liberals both conservatives and liberals is that it a lot of scholars think that it got to the book of john before we totally unpacked it how heavy jesus christology was whether you like john or not john is saying he's developing what they said in the early church but cameron this is surprise number one i'm not putting on the timeline yet but just a point a lot of critics are saying today that what came out of the gates in 30 a.d what came out of the christian's mouths what garrett ludman calls early immediate is the highest christology ever preached now let's just think about that for a second the old view is john unpacked it 60 years later the new view is at least as heavy as what john did was coming out of the gate immediately okay what are some of the things that come immediately let me let me use richard balcom he he's probably very well known with your your well-read uh folks that listen to your broadcast and uh buckham did not invent this phrase but he he quoted it and here's the phrase the and no matter how often i say this i am blown up by this stuff it's incredible here's the phrase the earliest christology is the highest christology go well i don't think that can happen they can't come out of the gate blasting like with a cannon and all this heavy christology how do you know that okay so i want to situate the audience a little bit if they don't know the term high christology what does that mean because that's i think that's important for this first point that's a great question and i love you stopping me like that because i want people to understand this this is a powerful message high christology the way i'm using it is a very lofty christology jesus is not just a galilean preacher who some people misunderstood some people got them right some got them wrong some hated them some loved them he did a lot of miracles he did exorcisms and darn it the romans killed him but he was raised in the dead that that's the way we do it and you would think it took a long time for it to get into christian's heads what this panorama was about does that make sense you think i'm sorry so that i'm following correctly were you just describing low christology yes i'm just gonna say that's great i would say most people would think beginning christology was at least lower and it took up until mark matthew luke and john two packet and john in the beginning was the word the word was god the word was with god thomas says my lord and my god and he worships him wow 60 years in fact raymond brown they're very well known until he passed away in the 90s very well known probably the best known american new testament scholar said something like this if jesus had returned in 100 a.d this is the old view if jesus had returned in 100 a.d and read the gospel of john he would have said yeah that's exactly where i was going thank you john but the idea is it took 60 years to get there and the people coming out of the gate in 30 a.d they were struggling this is the old view they were struggling to know exactly who jesus was i mean after all peter denies him the disciples were told they doubted when they saw him when the women go to the empty tomb and they come back and tell the disciples and luke 24 they thought the women were spreading gossip it says in luke 24 11. that's the old view christians had a good view of jesus but they were struggling to say to themselves who was this guy that's low christology and it took a long time to unpack it high christology is it came shooting out of a cannon who knows where from and everything was at came out at first everything in terms of like jesus was would you say that like the trinity not necessarily like the full-blown trinity but like jesus is god would you say that that's part of high christology let's do a little bit of that um you know what i got a chart right here just let me grab it make sure okay for free let's make sure i'm doing justice in the earliest materials he's called christ son of god and lord he's also said cameron to be of god's nature it's also said that he's going to be sitting on the right hand of god and it says that he's pre-existent before mary bore him he had already been in existence all that stuff comes out of the canon from the get-go messiah son of god lord which a lot of people think is a loftiest of all terms that lord is even loftier than the title god because lord is the well see lord in caps if you have one of those bibles where in the old testament whenever it says the name lord it's all in caption that's jehovah okay so when christians used the old testament concept lord by the four you know caps they were kind of close to calling him jehovah that's bombastic and now wait a minute it's not just like a master it'd be it'd be jehovah wow okay well i'll tell you how they know it's that you'll i'll tell you how they know from the beginning they they called him jehovah and that's richard balcom the very well-known new testament scholar british um well let me welcome go ahead yeah i wanted to bring us back to this piece of evidence that you're looking at right now which is there's this time right after jesus's death between and you say it could range from like 30 to 33 that doesn't really matter but the question is what was happening during that time that paul before his conversion after jesus died what was going on during those three years and that's what you're sort of drawing attention to is like what is it like what was causing such a ruckus basically and so the old view is that you know that you've got this low christology view where jesus was more of just more or less just a galilean guy this rando who was killed because of his you know blasphemous claims or whatever but he wasn't like anything special but now we're it seems like uh you you talked about garrett ludemann earlier and he's leaning toward this high christology view during these few years right after jesus's death because that's going to help explain why there was so much turmoil in the land right after jesus why everything came shot out of a cannon in between the crucifixion and paul's conversion but just a couple of points to make uh garrett ludum doesn't hold these things he doesn't believe jesus was the son of god right but lutheran is unpacking what christians believed about him that's one thing and certainly it's a good decision i'm sure there's some people who had really low views of jesus like you said yeah some galilean preacher i think he's a prophet of some sort he reminds me of this guy or this guy and they name old prophets no even before he died people were thinking he's the son of god he made that claim in fact if you by luke 14 i mean mark 14 61-64 which i think is the highest christology in the gospels the high priests ask him are you the christ the son of the blessed one he says they go on me i am and henceforth you'll see the son of man coming on the clouds and when he says he's the son of man the priest tears his garments because he declares him a blasphemer so there was some high christology there but i don't think in the low stage but i don't think people had unpacked it they're going like remember when he went back to his hometown isn't he the son of mary answer yep didn't he grow up here yep then however lofty is he's a man yep but some people are saying he's the son of god yeah they're crazy and that said he couldn't do miracles in his own town there were some people before he died of course who thought he was the son of god who thought he was lord and they thought of it they had a fairly high chrysology but even there they don't unpack it but we have this odd phenomena that john's got this real high christology way down there plus 65 and then raymond brown jesus had come back jesus would probably say yep john got it right but he's the disciple i loved so i'm not surprised john pulled the rabbit out of the hat but that's not well let's go back go ahead yeah i've got a couple objections to this uh this line of reasoning so first of all why do we need a posit a high christology in order to explain all the turmoil that was going on and why why paul was being or why he was persecuting christians so to speak and sort of getting riled up by them like having to go out and take care of them so to speak like why do we need to posit a high christology during that time couldn't we just pause it we'd have to just maybe think up some reason why the christians were being so rambunctious but that doesn't seem too difficult of a task so that's like that's one response and then the other objection that i've got is well how does this actually support the resurrection of jesus because you know a lot of people believed really crazy things about other false prophets you know islam christianity is true islam's false so that's another case of where you could see that just because someone's got a belief and is very convinced of something that doesn't necessarily support the view in question so those are kind of two objections that popped up in my mind as you were going going there so how would you address those yep well your first question where does this come from and how do we know they were doing this um i haven't given the five things yet i'll give you the five lines which would show you where the i'm only setting the stage and saying what they were proclaiming was the highest stuff but i'm going to answer your question how do we know they were proclaiming this high christology from the very beginning i'm going to give five reasons to know what happened by 36 a.d it was already unpacked what i mean is they knew it from the very beginning but we see five evidences here's another way to say it we don't have to wait for mark at 70 a.d we didn't have to wait for first thessalonians in 50 a.d where it's high christology and it's never explained so they already believed it in in thessalonica first thessalonians how did they get that far that fast so i went all the way back to the cross i said here's what's coming out of the canon all right i've got five indications that tell us here's how it happened but i was setting the stage by saying if the earliest christology is the highest christology like you like your first question just asked i want to know what the data are that they got it back then and did not have to wait until john's gospel does that make sense yeah yeah fair enough i'm excited to hear the five what about the second objection do you want to address that later after we look at the five i'll start it right i could start right now but the main point i want to get across for the opening intro is that there was a very high proclamation of jesus going around from the beginning i'm right now i'm only making a statement then i'll give the evidence for it they called him pre-existent these three things are highly blasphemous he's pre-existent he's of the nature of god and he's seated on god's right hand on the throne some new testament scholars think that was the most blasphemous claim that he was fit that it wasn't heresy for him to share god's throne which he declares in mark 14 61-63 the high priest and he tears his garment and off to the crucifixion we go all right that the claim is all right dude if you can show me that they thought he was pre-existent of the nature of god and shared the throne with god you're going to get my attention and you're going to cause me to realize you're this christology the highest christology but i don't see any evidence of this yet i just hear you talking is that good yeah all right yeah let's uh let's get into it so and we're already about 30 minutes in as well and that was just the intro so hopefully we've only got an hour with you i know i can do the five real fast though i can put the five down in five minutes if i had to but okay yeah dude just take your time i'm just gonna i'm gonna shut up i'ma let you go okay um the the earliest proclamation that garrett ludemann says was there from the beginning that proclamation was of these things they taught the things i just said in this introduction they were saying he's the son of god he's on the right hand of god he's of the nature of god and this was taught right there uh before they even got before it even got to paul's conversion paul paul is upset for some reason paul's got a right to be upset the the christians were proclaiming some things that were highly blasphemous to paul's way of thinking and the first step is the preaching they were doing we know this happened from the very beginning now the greek word it's a new testament word and it's called homologia and it means the word means things which are to be believed among us the center of our faith what we agree on in the new testament that's called homologia greek word in the new testament and that is their preaching okay second step how do we know they were preaching that i can say that how do we know their preachers second step camera we've talked before about the early creeds in the new testament and these are very very early the early creeds these are little snippets of information that are found in our epistles now if you unpack them what do you get this is stage two this is the second one is the early christian preaching they preached it now i haven't answered the question yet what's their evidence but they preached it second but the question is how do we know they preach this heavy heavy christology from the beginning because the early creeds say so and we know they're early critics date these things to the 30s critics do bart ehrman atheist new testament scholar barterman says over and over and over that they're in the 30s sometimes he says they happened and these creeds were out in the first two years after the crucifixion first two years what do they proclaim let's talk about a few of them and the critics agree where these creeds are here's one romans 10 9 if we confess with our mouth that jesus is lord and believe in our heart that god's raised him from the dead we'll be saved if we confess with our mouth that jesus is lord is that the jesuit lord okay that's how you know this is romans 10 9 and ten i think it's three verses later right there in the same context paul says as it was proclaimed by by in the old testament whoever calls upon the name of the lord will be saved and lord there in that context quoted by paul is jehovah so let me say it again romans 10 9 if you confess with your mouth that jesus is lord and believe in your heart that god is raised from the dead you'll be saved and then paul says it's just like it says in the old testament whoever calls upon the name of the lord to be saved and that use of lord that second use of lord is in caps paul defines which lord you said it right lord can mean sir lord can mean master but paul quotes the verse where it's jehovah now i'm not going to let everything rest in romans 10 9 but i think that's pretty instructive if you confess through the mouth of jesus lord it's like paul saying and by the way by lord i mean jehovah so it's right there here's some more philippians chapter 2 which is often called the christological hymn we are told that jesus came from everlasting he's pre-existent and at the beginning of philippians 2 6-11 which is a creed it says this jesus was in the form of god now form doesn't mean much to us in english form might be a roughed in house where the 2x4 the frame is up that's form but i can't live there and when it starts raining i get wet so that's just a form but in greek the primary meaning of form morphe is nature the same nature of and in philippians chapter 2 6-11 it starts out he was in the form of god next verse he was in the form of a servant and that's where we get this god and man you go that's a pretty advanced doctrine isn't it uh it is but why is it in the early creed in philippians chapter 2. so you got romans 10 9 lord philippians 2 pre-existent and uh and he's of the nature of god and guess what every knee will bow and every tongue will confess he's sharing god's throne so you get these verses right from the beginning he's he's lord romans 1 3 and 4 he showed himself by the resurrection to be son of god messiah and lord that's romans 1 3 4 another creed so they're using these terms in these early early creeds now let me this is stage two the first stage is they preached it the second stage is the preaching becomes crystallized and the crystallization is called creeds the the people who whoever has not heard me speak on creeds before any of your folks we do the same thing in school today somebody could be illiterate and you could teach a kindergarten a kindergarten who can't spell their name or a preschooler you can teach them row row row your boat gently down the stream or we can teach them jack and jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water those are little statements that have a da da da da da da da da da da ring to them and we do that so that potentially people who can't sign their name can't read are tracking with you we sing hymns how about here's a christian example of jack and jill or your boat how about um uh we could say on a hill far away was an old rug across we could say um how about just the abc's my my son i think is he was at like two years old when he learned his abcs and that's that's one another one that does when my son was two he was putting together a map of the united states on a little where you put the states in those are great examples those are great examples because they're not row row row your boat and jack and jill they're showing they know what's going on by putting states in or by saying a b c d but he can't read a book so we're giving them the building blocks right the crease it's very formulaic that's that's the way that i think about it is that it's formulaic and i think in like if you have enough repetition you can get someone to remember a formula there you go and you don't have to read to uh sing amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me i once was blind but and there's a dot dot dot so all right before before we move on give me those uh what are the creeds what are all the creeds the exact references i want to i actually want to go look at look at these after those i'll give you a number of them romans 1 3 and 4 romans 4 25 romans 10 9. 1st corinthians 11 on the uh communion passage i i gave you that which i also received from the lord the same night which is betrayed took bread blessed gave thank broker gave thanks that's first corinthians 11. first corinthians 15 is the best known one and probably the earliest and he says there uh i gave you which i was given of christ and he defines the gospel christ died for our sins according to scriptures was buried rose again the third day according to scripture and appeared to peter in the 12 and here comes these five appearances and paul says last of all he appeared to me so first corinthians 15 is the main one philippians chapter 2 is major here's another one versus that one two what which one for philippians two verse what corinthians 15 verses three to seven philippines i'm asking about philippians oh two six two philippians two six through eleven okay we're eleven now a very obscure one but a very heavy one is hebrews one three it said that jesus was the same nature as god but so does philippians so does philippians 2 6 say that but we don't i mean hebrews hebrews was not written by paul unless do you think that that it was no but here's the point it does make a difference these books are going to be later let's let's say hebrews was 75 a.d that's not the point the point is when did hebrews a one-three come because the creeds are away from right so let me go back to rome is everyone's familiar with romans 10 9 romans 1 3 and 4. you go well yeah but romans is probably 54 to 58 a.d yeah but that's by romans by romans 1 3 and 4 you mean roman chapter one verse three through four yeah one verses three to four romans ten nine and you go well that book's written 54-58 you're going backwards because you said fl thessalonians was 50 and this is now 58 not go ho ho timeout time up we're not talking about the books they have to they can't beat you later in the book because they're in the books but the creeds are earlier and we haven't answered the whole early question yet i'll do that right now barterman best known skeptic uh in north america probably in the world uh atheist new testament scholar and he said no you're not gonna get this in one comment he gives us some little tiny half comments and you gotta string them all together but he said all of them here's what he says barterman says the creeds all all or most of them originated in jerusalem that's important because that's the birth of the church or where the apostles were remember we're looking for early eyewitnesses they originated in jerusalem they came out immediately some of them were only one to two years after the cross that's barterman some of them were only one to two years after the cross and you got to be ready for this one cam one to two years after the cross they could have all been in existence before paul took his journey to damascus if you let that sink in you start to see why the earliest christology is the highest christology so yeah i mean i can i can definitely see that especially if we're getting all of these creeds that are they espouse a high christology that's what the creeds do and then if you date them early then it just it seems pretty obvious to say that that's and that's a really obvious catalyst that's a really easy way of saying that like this this would be a very good reason for someone like paul to go out and start trying to you know capture these christians and persecute them whatever terminology you want to use that's not really relevant but the point is that yeah if you've got a high christology during that time it really makes sense of paul's what he was doing the work that he was doing against christians before his conversion right now you're getting it i'm doing five here but i still haven't answered this question where was the fuse that shot this all out all five of these how did they come shooting out of the cannon at one time i gotta still answer that but okay so far we've got homologia this is the earliest message they gave by the way of the of the dozens of early creeds in the epistles of the dozens about 80 percent of them say over and over again deity death resurrection deity death resurrection deity death or maybe is one of them deity next one says resurrection but they're usually all there deity death resurrection that's the message that came out of the cannon in 30 a.d deity death resurrection that's the main thing and i'm and i'm unpacking five ways they did it first one is a homologia and that's what garrett ludeman says is the christians were only telling their story in the marketplace and everywhere else they were preaching that's a homologia and the message is always the same deity death resurrection because homologia means earliest thing we shared and believed among us next if i'm preaching this for a long time and i'm taking the marketplace i'm taking to work i'm taking the school and going everywhere but up to 90 of jesus's crowd it's estimated up to 90 of his crowd was illiterate well they heard him and they heard peter but they wanted to go home with this message and they already forgot it by the time they got to the house that's when the creeds come up that's stage two and people do the dot that dot the dot form jack and joe went up the hill um uh you know row row row your boat they do those things or your son learning the abcs that's great because those are the building blocks for writing so these if you wanted people to remember them you have to put in form they can remember that's the creeds that's number two but let me just say barterman thinks they were they dated from the cross some of them are as early as one to two years many of them are in the 30s and they're flooding the field with these little quoted lines and they were and he says possibly everyone that paul quoted could have been in existence before he said goodbye and took his trip to damascus so they were all there and paul probably knew them this is just a little aside in sight paul probably knew them and it's probably why he was ticked he thought alice was heresy so okay so far we've got earliest preaching they did it in the creeds okay number three somewhere right in here probably let me stop real quick because i'm still having trouble understanding this first one the second one makes a whole lot of sense the creeds are early and everything homologia explain that one more time how is that evidence of the high christology in the early period because the homologia is what the if you were to hear a christian in the marketplace who gets everybody's attention and starts preaching or in an early quote-unquote house church or being witness to at work that's the message you'd hear them say over and over again remember the creeds aren't around yet but 80 of those early messages were about the gospel and of course the new testament says it over and over again the primary christian preaching was the gospel this man that you quilled is the son of god who did all these things it was just plain preaching the word was getting out there just by preaching everywhere it became solidified just a little bit more when the creeds crystallized it crystallized well how do we know that the how do we know that the preaching back then was was of a high christology or is that not the cause am i missing the point well because our earliest recollection of it the preaching of it they tell us what they're preaching and if you need more than that the second stage the creeds that's what the what you call what we're calling high christology is what the creeds are proclaiming let me say yeah see that's kind of what i was getting at was maybe there's like an overlap between those first two well yeah yeah there is the first one is what they said it's not it's not like that you're saying you're saying something in school you're a student and you're saying something to school and you're just talking and you've mesmerized the teacher and the teacher says put it in writing for me and the next day you come with a couple paragraphs and you've written up what you're trying to get across in class it's the same message but now it's formalized first it was preached without a basis second step it's formalized in creeds same message though same message but it's a lot more solid than the second in step two all right somewhere in there probably during the homologia probably in that stage but somewhere in these first two stages james the brother of jesus comes to know jesus according to new testament he was in the upper room with mary and his other brothers you know that john chapter 7 mark 3 and mark 6 all say that jesus brothers were unbelievers in fact john 7 5 says it directly his brothers did not believe in him it's worse than mark three because they thought he was nuts if you go back and look at the greek they thought he was beside himself and they apparently tried to drag him out of the out from front of the crowds because they thought he was giving his their family and their city a bad name so they weren't believers somewhere in here james becomes a christian now you may not have heard this before but from first corinthians 15 we know he appeared to james right he appeared to peter to james we have two individuals and three groups in that creed of first corinthians 15. but all we have is that comet he appeared to james that's all we have in the new testament now some fragments have been discovered they're not new testament they're not inspired but it's a little book that may only be 25 years after the gospel of john it's really early and it's called the gospel of the hebrews and it only exists in a few fragments guess what one of the fragments is jesus appearing to his brother james this is really cool and it's sort of like the two when did we find this i don't know where it was found but it's in existence you can get it online if you look up the gospel of the hebrews you can get the fragments and one of them is like the the disciples at emmaus jesus is breaking bread with his brother it's really cool it's very brief but jesus is standing there with the brothers like a man would i like to be a fly on the wall but the third thing the third step that happens is somewhere in there probably back during the homology i should have said it during the homology and then go on to the creeds so really if i had to do that over i'd say cr the coma legal what they preach is number one james during that same time simultaneous james comes the lord by resurrection appearance third the homo laguia is getting stratified and according to uh bart ehrman it was all there this this part gets it modifies baucom saying the earliest christology is the highest christology well according to baucom according to bart erman those the all the creeds paul cited could possibly have come could possibly have been in existence paul cites him as a christian later but they could have been in existence prior to his leaving home to walk to jerusalem or ride or whatever he did to jerusalem so you got the homologuia simply the marketplace message james is converted during that time according to acts one he's in the upper room with mary and the brothers what's he doing up there and here's another question for you why did jesus give his mother to john at the cross and not to james why did she do what asked that question mary to john to take care of instead of to james his brother it's just a hint but it might be a hint that james wasn't in the fold yet it's going to happen pretty quickly a few days but james isn't the fold yet and so the message is preached james becomes a believer because he meets jesus and these creeds are starting to pour out and before paul even takes his walk to damascus a plus two or plus three paul knows all these creeds and he is ticked because it's heresy but he meets the risen jesus that's step four paul paul meets jesus on the road damascus so now we have four levels the homologia you go all you're doing is preaching great now just keep up with the just keep up just keep coming here preaching secondly james is converted thirdly the creed spring up paul's ticked he leaves for damascus that now we're only plus two or plus three and paul is converted that's the fourth one and the fifth one bart ehrman says this may be the biggest argument in the early church for proving who jesus is paul goes to jerusalem do you remember galatians chapter 1 which critics accept galatians is a book you can preach paul goes to jerusalem and he meets with with peter and james for 15 days galatians 1 15 the following and the little greek word there is hysteracei with the little part of it is the root word h-i-s-t-o-r when you transliterate it's a greek word from which we get our word history it's usually said often said what paul was doing was interviewing that's what the word means he's doing research he's a pharisee he knew how to do research josephus tells us that he's interviewing peter and john now if i if i'm paul here's my first question guys i'll tell you what jesus looked like when i saw him on the road to damascus if you tell me what after black saturday and you all thought your world had ended if you tell me what it looked like when you first saw jesus on resurrection sunday i mean the whole book of galatians about the gospel don't make it too big it's it's heresy don't make it too small it's heresy get it right paul could not have gone there even the critics say this paul could not have gone there for 15 days and not discuss the gospel with the other two eyewitnesses and and bart ehrman asked the question where do we get closer to the eyewitnesses than right here in that meeting it's either 35 or 36 a.d depending on where you put paul's conversion if paul was converted to plus two at that meeting is 35. paul said three years later after my conversion i went to jerusalem if he's converted three years later now it's plus six the only thing that's not and that's step five that's five you put them all together here's what you get again earliest preaching it was just hearsay for the time being but it got started right at the beginning number two james comes to the lord by resurrection appearance number three the creeds begin and they are bombastic jesus was existed before he was born he received uh eat my every knee will bow every time tongue will confess he was worshiped he sat on the right hand of god he shared the nature of god philippians 2 6 hebrews 1 3. he shared the nature of god these things were bombastic paul hated him and that's why he was imprisoning them number three in in response to the creeds paul takes off to jerusalem sorry damascus and he meets the risen jesus that's four and five three years later he confirms this message with peter and james the eyewitnesses so we started by saying in order to do good history you need early and eyewitnesses that's the best possible thing you can have early eyewitnesses and paul's going to jerusalem you've got them all here the homologia james's conversion which is cemented by the way the first corinthians 15 creed so homologia james's conversion the creeds paul's conversion and three years later he spends 15 days with peter and james now he went back there was 14 years later but still before the book of first thessalonians he goes back 14 years later and in galatians 2 2 he laid before the other apostles the gospel he was preaching and to see if he was preaching the right gospel who's there peter john sorry peter james and now john is there the big four and i don't count that second meeting because it was it was 14 years later it gets me outside my 36 my six years later but 14 years later the big four are together and they agreed on the definition of the gospel don't forget 80 of the creeds death burial resurrection of jesus so that's the six now the only thing we haven't done according to my watch we still got seven minutes we'll get there by uh by our hour but here's the cannon what was the wick that they struck that they lit to shoot this stuff out the answer is and it's in the creeds the answer is the resurrection when they jesus is saying all these things you'll know it when i'm raised from the dead uh i'm going to go up to jerusalem i'm going to die i'm going to be raised and peter goes not on my watch or not i'm bringing a sword and he cuts a guy's ear off i mean they didn't get the point but they heard the preaching it's all the resurrection it's all the resurrection it's all the resurrection the the angels of the tomb say you're going to see them tell them women you're going to see them they heard these things before jesus died but they didn't realize them until he was raised from the dead and that's when the wick was lit when he was raised and that's why the christology was so explosive right from the very beginning that's why the earliest christology was the highest christology does that make sense so i think you would still put this in terms of like this is still just evidence right it's not in any kind of like 100 percent proof of the resurrection this is just some evidence in favor of it no none of the sciences either the hard sciences or the soft sciences like history psychology sociology anthropology neither the hard sciences nor the soft scientists they don't produce proof they can only produce probability that's how that's how biology works that's how history works so yes if your comment is this is just a probable argument i'd say uh really just a probable argument what do you do when you tell me another religion another history another anything where there's five backups in the first six years yeah mark's great at plus 40. something's going on in first thessalonians at plus 20 because he's using all this high christological language and everyone's going no one's going uh come again paul we don't even know what these words mean they already knew it so it had been out there in about before 50 a.d so it was out there but that phrase the earliest crystal that we started with the earliest christologies the highest christology it's because it all clicked when the canon of the resurrection went off and they said oh my gosh he's the son of god and somebody else goes he's the lord of the old testament and somebody else goes he should be worshipped and somebody else goes he's seated at the right hand of god he said so himself before the high priest i thought it was just a metaphor but it really happened because he it's all kind of a metaphor until the shot of the cannon which of the resurrection which is utterly unique and it gave shoe leather to all five of these and there's no message like this here i'll i'll tell you this one paul barnett an australian historian said no figure in the ancient world has this much of early evidence in their earliest projected life after they after they lived no other figure in history has this amount of evidence where you got about three minutes left and we had a super chat that was sent in a while ago from cranman photo cinema he says gary can you say da bears the bears what's that mean is that the chicago bears yeah it's the chicago bears but it's uh it's from a snl skit i think from years ago with chris parley oh i don't know i'm a green bay packer fan and i'm embarrassed because we lost that game when we were the favorite team in the nf nfl goodness i know they beat the bear yeah he's a it's your accent he's trying to play off your accent it's uh i just wanted to put that on the screen i saw that earlier yeah but i felt like i have an exit to you uh you got a little bit you got a little one yeah i probably tried uh the answer from detroiters is you know we don't have an accent because when they do the six o'clock national news out of chicago nobody sounds to us like they have accents so that must be the national accent that's that's what they always say the national news sounds like us that's it uh have you been watching any of the olympics this is completely off topic have you been watching any of the olympics the winter olympics i i'm i'm not i don't have any time i'm doing this mo and my first volume is due in march and i'm working my head off i'm working 80 hours a week i haven't stopped for years 80 hours a week what do you think about those five as being shot out of the cannon and i mean you said you've been anticipating this for a long time we didn't unpack as much you could have but uh there are these kind of i mean they're not proof but are they kind of stunning and how they all fit together yes so i i my assessment off the cuff of what i just heard and still processing it obviously i've got to like it's going to take some time to really think about it clearly but the credo part is the is the part that really stands out to me are the highs the high christology that you find in the in the very early creeds and that that's another thing that like a lot of these scholars barter men i don't know who else i mean you would probably know but a lot of these guys date these creeds really really early back to the very early church and that's what really sticks out to me is that high christology that's there in these early creeds and then what have james what about james and paul becoming christians which puts the shoe leather on the creeds yeah and so paul i mean that that is because he was preaching the creeds yeah after they after his conversion so that's interest that's it's very interesting to think about the connection we haven't talked about romans 1 3 and 4. but romans 1 3 and 4 it says he was shown to be messiah son of god and lord by virtue of his resurrection so what i mean is the creed in romans 1 3 and 4 says that the that the impetus the canon was the resurrection there's a creed that says it was all shot out of a cannon and that cannon was the resurrection and that creed is basically your argument okay yeah what we're saying is all this was just a teaching that people didn't know what to do with until he was raised from the dead and then it came together quickly that's why they started preaching the message immediately okay i think that's going to do it on our time you've got other things to do i've got other things to do but this has been really really great i want you to let me know what you think in the comments if this has been interesting to you if it hasn't been interesting if you think that this is all just wrong then let me know in the comments i really do appreciate you taking time to to make comments below so but gary thanks for thanks again for coming on it's always a pleasure and we will see you guys in the next capturing christianity video see you later hey it's me again uh actually don't leave yet i've got something super super important to tell you so first of all you're awesome like you you just watched a really really long video just now and you're still watching it that is actually pretty amazing secondly we have hundreds literally hundreds of other apologetics related videos for you to watch on our channel go check them out i've interviewed exorcist hosted debates between christians and atheists i've even made response videos to atheists all of that is available on our channel go check it out third i rely on people that see value in my work people like you that watch videos to the very end to keep the lights on around here literally

Channel: Capturing Christianity

Views: 114,256

Keywords: capturing christianity, cameron bertuzzi, apologetics, god, atheism, existence of god

Id: YMx1OikHC8U

Length: 56min 11sec (3371 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 03 2022