In Defense of Easter: Answering Critical Challenges to the Resurrection of Jesus by Tim Chaffey

Author:Tim Chaffey [Chaffey, Tim]
Language: heb
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Midwest Apologetics
Published: 2014-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

Many critical New Testament scholars have pushed the idea that numerous versions of Christianity existed in the earliest years of the church. We are told by these liberal theologians that chauvinistic, power-hungry church leaders developed their own understanding of Christianity, squelching dissenting voices and destroying writings from these “competing Christianities” that did not conform to their narrow-minded dogmas. The books that survived this purge, they say, form what we call the New Testament today.

While these views of the early church and the formation of the canon are false, they have rapidly grown in popularity during the past century. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts in 1945 helped prepare the fertile soil out of which these false views blossomed into the mainstream in the late twentieth century. The Da Vinci Code’s popularity (over 80 million copies sold worldwide) further promoted these lies.

This alternative “Christianity” that supposedly existed is not Christianity at all, but a counterfeit that would make envious the most radical revisionist historian. We are told that Jesus was really married to Mary Magdalene, never said anything offensive to sinners, did not die for the sins of the world, and did not rise bodily from the dead. It is this distorted form of “Christianity” that paved the way for the next alternate theory to the Resurrection that we need to examine.

The Jesus Family Tomb

On Sunday, March 4, 2007, the Discovery Channel aired The Lost Tomb of Jesus, a documentary produced by award-winning film director James Cameron featuring Simcha Jacobovici from the History Channel’s Naked Archaeologist show and James Tabor, chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina–Charlotte. They also released a book titled The Jesus Family Tomb. The program created quite a stir because these people claimed to have solid evidence that they had found the ossuary (bone box) of Jesus in a tomb in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem. One of the ossuaries in this tomb supposedly bore the inscription, “Jesus, son of Joseph.”

Based on this discovery, the filmmakers wove a tale so profound that—were it true—would completely dismantle the Christian faith. Along with the Jesus ossuary, there were originally other bone boxes found, many of them bearing names closely connected with Jesus, such as Matthew, Mary, and Jose (shortened version of Joseph). Jacobovici claimed that the famous James ossuary (purported to be the bone box of the brother of Jesus) was the missing tenth ossuary from the Talpiot tomb. Perhaps even more volatile were claims that would be right at home in The Da Vinci Code. Allegedly, a bone box inscribed with the words “Mary the master” belonged to Mary Magdalene and a box marked “Judah, son of Jesus” belonged to the child of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Although many major media outlets push such radical ideas as representing true Christianity, the beliefs of modern critical scholars are far from biblical truth. A great illustration of how extreme their views are can be found in the comments of the co-founder of the Jesus Seminar.

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