Finding the Real Jesus: A Guide for Curious Christians and Skeptical Seekers by Lee Strobel

Author:Lee Strobel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Array
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2009-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 4

PORTRAIT #4:

THE UNCRUCIFIED JESUS

Did He Ever Really Die on the Cross?

Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh is a fan of Mel Gibson’s 2004 blockbuster The Passion of the Christ. The movie, he said, is superbly crafted. There is only one problem: “The story,” he insists, “is wrong.”

So Talebzadeh produced his own documentary to set the record straight. In Jesus, the Spirit of God, it’s Judas who is actually crucified after God rescues Jesus at the last moment and takes him directly to heaven. And since Jesus was never put to death, he was never resurrected.1

Christians consider the resurrection of Jesus to be a pivotal doctrine, since they believe it confirms his identity as the unique Son of God. But Muslims like Talebzadeh, who consider Jesus to be a mortal prophet, are at the forefront of the most recent challenges to the resurrection. They base their beliefs on the Qur’an, which says that Jesus never died on the cross, much less returned from the dead.2

A leading Muslim apologist, Shabir Ally, said the Messiah was expected to be victorious, and therefore “a crucified Messiah is as self-refuting as a square circle.”3 In a 2006 videotape, Ayman al-Zawahri, the deputy leader of Al Qaeda, urged all Christians to convert to Islam, which, he said, correctly believes that Jesus was never put to death, never rose from the dead, and was not divine.4

Muslims aren’t alone. A Hindu leader in India declared in 2007 that Jesus never died on the cross. “He was only injured and after treatment returned to India where he actually died,” insisted K. S. Sudarshan.5

Another claim that Jesus wasn’t killed by crucifixion came in the 2006 New York Times best-seller The Jesus Papers, in which Michael Baigent said Pontius Pilate didn’t want to kill Jesus because Jesus had been urging people to pay their taxes.6 That’s when Pilate hatched a plot, Baigent said. He ordered Jesus crucified to placate the religious authorities who wanted him dead, but he conspired to ensure that Jesus secretly came down from the cross alive.7

Critics know that discrediting the resurrection means nothing less than disproving the truth of Christianity. “If Christ has not been raised,” said the apostle Paul, “your faith is futile.”8 The cross either unmasked Jesus as a pretender or opened the door to a supernatural resurrection that has irrevocably confirmed his divinity. But where does the evidence point?

I invited prominent resurrection expert Michael Licona to my home to discuss these issues. Licona’s dissertation toward his doctorate in New Testament from the University of Pretoria in South Africa uses historical methodologies to assess the evidence for Jesus returning from the dead.

Licona has debated numerous skeptics, including Muslims, about the resurrection and written extensively on the topic. In 2004, he joined resurrection scholar Gary Habermas in writing the award-winning book The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. Using his impressive knowledge of Islam, Licona later authored Paul Meets Muhammad: a Christian-Muslim Debate on the Resurrection.

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