"JESUS LOVES ME" - FAKE NEWS

Those words flowed through my head again, but didn’t reach my heart. I’d heard the song the first time when I was five years old, sitting in a Sunday School class – “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Yet thirteen years later, that refrain was as useful in my life as The Allman Brothers Eat a Peach record album without a turntable (or trying to stream Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia without wifi or 4G, for those of you who are younger). I couldn’t hear the music. The church, the Bible, and Jesus were an irrelevant trinity for the world I inhabited. Hell, fire, brimstone, and black-robed representatives of God weren’t huge draws for me. It’s not that I had investigated the Bible and found it lacking. Rather, the lives of Christians I knew and the message they preached didn’t give me any reason to consider if Jesus was worth my time – until I met the Reverend Vic Pentz, and my hearing improved ever so slowly (more about Vic in future posts). For the time being, I opted to follow this philosophy: “Real love is hard to come by so you learn to live without it.”[1] It was only later that I would wonder whether what the Bible said could possibly be accurate or true.

What about you? Have you investigated whether the Bible’s claims about Jesus’ love for you can be trusted? Is it worth your time and effort to even bother reading? Is it possible to be sure that what is written about Jesus in the Bible is historically accurate and not just a forerunner of today’s ‘fake news’ – “false news stories, often of a sensational nature, created to be widely shared or distributed for the purpose of generating revenue, or promoting or discrediting a public figure, political movement, company?”[2] For many people, the headline that screams “The Face of Jesus Has Been Found in a Tortilla in Tijuana” is just as easy to swallow as “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”[3] Is either line worthy of your time, or are they both just clickbait?

Video: What is Fake News? 

 

Video: Jesus Loves Me 

 

Let’s put the Bible stories about Jesus to a type of C.R.A.P. test (if you don’t know what that is, you didn’t watch the “Fake News” video above). Here’s how Luke’s book about Jesus begins:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.[4] 

At the time of Luke’s writing, there were many religions competing for the hearts and minds of people in the Roman Empire. These people were searching for trustworthy knowledge to guide them in their journeys through life. The need then and the need now is the same. “But we want to hear what your views are, for we know that people everywhere are talking against this sect [Christianity].”[5] Into this fray came Dr. Luke, author of the self-named gospel and traditionally thought to be a medical physician, seeking to dispel some of the rumors swirling around Christianity. Many people today similarly need clear guidance to help find the truth.

Consider the following claim from The Da Vinci Code: “The Bible is a product of man…Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.”[6] While this is a line from a work of fiction by Dan Brown, it reflects a very real, modern sentiment about the Bible’s composition and truth. This brings us to a tipping point; either the Bible is merely a manmade compilation of stories, interesting, but not particularly authoritative, or the Bible is trustworthy and divinely inspired.

The trustworthiness of information across all disciplines is an ever-increasing challenge we all must face. As future generations look back upon the twenty-first century, will ‘ancient’ websites lead them to the conclusion that no good historical reporting existed during our lifetime?

Video: Denzel Blasts the Media

 

So, can Dan Brown’s claims be accurately countered? In other words, what makes the Bible stories about Jesus reliable – not fake news?

First, Luke showed the extreme care he took, as an historian, in researching his work. He carefully investigated everything from the beginning so he might write an orderly account. Orderly was a term used throughout Greek literature by writers who sought to convince their hearers of the meticulous research and careful organization of their material. Luke examined all the data available to him in order to give an accurate, detailed picture to those seeking the truth.

“Come on,” some of you may be thinking, “was there really such a thing as solid historical research 2,000 years ago?”

While it is true that some historians of antiquity were not as careful as others [just as we see today], it is overstating the case to deny that good history existed. The Hellenistic historian Polybius [200-118 B.C.] criticizes other writers for making up dramatic scenes and calls on them to ‘simply record what really happened and what really was said…’ Other ancient historians make similar comments. This confirms that intelligent writers and readers of the first century were concerned with distinguishing fact from fiction.[7]

Luke spent time carefully investigating the multiple manuscripts and eyewitness accounts that told of the things that have been fulfilled among us regarding the life and teachings of Jesus. He was not in a hurry to get something to press so he could be published before anyone else. Luke desired to examine all the data available to him so he could give as detailed a picture as possible to those seeking the truth. Luke’s work as an historian led him to learn firsthand from eyewitnesses regarding the words and works of Jesus. Throughout his travels, Luke sought to investigate all the eyewitness accounts and written works about Jesus that he could find so that others might know the true story of Jesus from the beginning.

Furthermore, this is Dr. Luke, a medical physician who understood the need for careful analysis. How many times in his career was he called upon to investigate a patient’s medical history and sift through the facts to come up with a proper diagnosis? People depended on the good doctor to pay careful attention to the details to provide healing for their physical bodies. He practiced that same thoroughness in his research, invested in preserving accurate historical material about Jesus.

Second, Luke makes it clear that he is writing this Gospel so that Theophilus, his reader, would know the certainty of what he had been taught regarding Jesus. The word certainty comes from a root word meaning ‘not tripped up.’  Luke’s goal was that “Theophilus shall know that the faith which he has embraced has an impregnable historical foundation.”[8] Luke was writing at a time in history when eyewitnesses were still orally transmitting the Gospel traditions. Because of these eyewitnesses and his readers’ knowledge of the oral traditions, Luke could not radically restructure the truth without his veracity being challenged.  His account is based upon the word of those who walked side by side with Jesus, those who proclaimed, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”[9]

Third, Luke seeks in his prologue to assure his reader about the certainty of what he had been taught by pointing to Jesus’ life as fulfilling the teachings of Scripture – things that had been fulfilled in the midst of these eyewitnesses. 

In the Old Testament there are sixty major messianic prophecies and approximately 270 ramifications that were fulfilled in one person, Jesus Christ. Using the science of probability, we find the chances of just forty-eight of these prophecies being fulfilled in one person to be right at one in ten to the 157th power. Furthermore, the task of matching up God’s address with one man is further complicated by the fact that all the prophecies of the Messiah were made at least 400 years before He was to appear.[10]

Many of Luke’s readers would be intimately familiar with these prophecies, having heard them all their lives at their local synagogues. They would understand, reading Luke’s account, that Christ was the fulfillment of these prophecies.

Video: Jesus' Fulfillment of Prophecy

If you are still uncertain whether it is worth your time to investigate the Bible’s claims, consider the following facts about the New Testament as a whole:

There are more than 5,300 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Add over 10,000 Latin Vulgate and at least 9,300 other early versions and we have more than 24,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament in existence. No other document of antiquity even begins to approach such numbers and attestation. In comparison, the Illiad by Homer is second with only 643 manuscripts that still survive [and yet few question the authenticity of Homer’s work]. [Furthermore,] in no other case is the interval of time between composition of the book and the date of the earliest extant [existing] manuscripts so short as in that of the New Testament. We have scraps dated within 25 years of composition, whole sections within 250 years; compared to the Illiad - next closest at 500 years![11]

Now, I’m not directly comparing the Iliad to the Bible. Homer’s epic does not make the kind of truth claims that the Bible does, and, despite the frequent use of the phrase “Trojan horse” in our modern dialect, very few take the Iliad as any sort of strictly historical document detailing with factual accuracy something that actually happened in ancient Greece. Nevertheless, the sheer number of early Biblical manuscripts, their consistency, and their creation within such short historical distance from the events they claim to chronicle are strong circumstantial evidence that the Bible we have today accurately resembles the original manuscripts and the events as they occurred.

None of this is hard, incontrovertible proof that the Bible is what it claims to be. But the circumstantial evidence is compelling. Now I understand if certain individuals or organizations have soured you on who Jesus is and have turned you off from investigating the Bible’s claims. But I invite you to examine whether that is the sole reason keeping you from investigating what the Bible actually teaches about God’s love for you. I hope that this reflection has helped clear doubts for you about the Bible’s truth, accuracy, or reliability.

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[1] Elton John in Rocketman, 2019.

[2] The Definition of Fake News, https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fake-news, Accessed 7/24/2020

[3] Luke 24:46-48

[4] Luke 1:1-4

[5] Acts 28:22

[6] Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code. New York: Doubleday, 2001, p. 231.

[7] Arnold, Clinton E. (General Editor). Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, Vol. 1. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2002, p. 322.

[8] Earle, Ralph. Word Meanings in the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1986, p. 51.

[9] 2 Peter 1:16

[10] McDowell, Josh. A Ready Defense. San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Publishers, 1991, pgs. 209-214

[11] Ibid, pgs. 43-47