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Books reviewed:
The Indwelling by Tim LaHaye & Jerry B. Jenkins
So Great Salvation by Dr. Charles C. Ryrie
The Prayer Of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
The Jesus Family Tomb by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino
The Passover Plot by New Testament scholar H. J. Schonfield
Don't Know Much About the Bible by Kenneth Davis
Junia: The First Woman Apostle by Eldon Jay Epp
Other books reviewed by The Christian Research Institute
Book Review: The Indwelling by Tim LaHaye & Jerry B. Jenkins
Personally I have quite a few problems with the series. But in this particular book they go a little over board. From pages 364-67, they present a resurrected Antichrist (Nicolae). On page 366 the resurrected Antichrist (Nicolae) says the following: “Peace be unto you,” he said. “My peace I give you. Please stand.” He paused while everyone rose, eyes still locked on him, bodies rigid with fear. “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in me.” In a Christian worldview, only God has the power to raise the dead. If Antichrist could “raise (himself) from the dead” and control “the earth and sky,” Christianity would lose the basis for believing that Christ’s resurrection vindicates His claim to deity. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3 NIV). Further, if Satan possesses the creative power of God, this would subvert the post-resurrection appearances of Christ in that Satan could have masqueraded as the resurrected Christ. Not to mention, the notion that Satan can perform acts that are indistinguishable from genuine miracles suggests a dualistic worldview in which God and Satan is equal powers competing for dominance. Did you also notice that the resurrected Antichrist’s first words are in a King James Version style of language? Where did that come from?
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Book Review: So Great Salvation by Dr. Charles C. Ryrie
Let’s first look at Warren Wiersbe's "Foreword" in Ryrie's book:
"This book is not only important, but it is also dependable. To begin with, the author is a theologian who has two earned doctorates in his field of study. He has served effectively on the faculty of one of America's leading evangelical seminaries and is widely recognized and respected as a teacher, preacher, and writer. As you read these pages, you will appreciate Dr. Ryrie's accurate exegesis and his clear explanations of biblical texts. An experienced and mature scholar, Dr. Ryrie quotes carefully and accurately from a wide range of writers; but his final authority is the Word of God. The cynic Ambrose Bierce once defined 'quoting' as 'the act of repeating erroneously the words of another.' Dr. Ryrie is too seasoned a scholar to make that mistake. You can read these pages with confidence; they are not written by an amateur" (p. 9, SGS).
(Nice forward don't you think?)
In his attempt to refute John F. MacArthur, Jr.'s The Gospel According to Jesus (GATJ), Ryrie selects certain passages, then implies that MacArthur's statements are ambiguous and give the impression that MacArthur is saying that works must precede salvation:
"Those who hold to a lordship/discipleship/mastery salvation viewpoint do not (perhaps it would be more accurate to say 'cannot') send an unambiguous message about this matter. On the one hand, they say that the essence of saving faith is 'unconditional surrender, a complete resignation of self and absolute submission.' True faith, we are told, 'starts with humility and reaches fruition in obedience.' 'Salvation is for those who are willing to forsake everything.' 'Saving faith is a commitment to leave sin and follow Jesus Christ at all costs. Jesus takes no one unwilling to come on those terms.' 'Eternal life brings immediate death to self.' 'Forsaking oneself for Christ's sake is not an optional step of discipleship subsequent to conversion; it is the sine qua non of saving faith.'
"But what if I do not follow Christ at all costs? What if later on in life I become unwilling to forsake something? Suppose I lack full obedience? What if I take something back that earlier in my experience I had given to Him? How do I quantify the amount of fruit necessary to be sure I truly 'believed' in the lordship/mastery sense of the term? Or how do I quantify the amount of defection that can be tolerated without wondering if I have saving faith or if I in fact lost what I formerly had?" (p. 29, SGS)
But MacArthur does allow for Christians to be in various stages of growth in their walk. The point is that, if someone's conversion is genuine, he will exhibit growth, however meager and however faltering, during his lifetime.
Quoting MacArthur as Ryrie did, and his subsequent remark, demonstrate an inaccurate assessment of what MacArthur was saying. In fact, every single quote by Ryrie has been taken out of context in order to create a straw man (salvation by works) to attack, a tactic which Ryrie himself denigrates (p. 29, SGS).
To demonstrate, we'll take a few quotes, the same ones Ryrie took (and out of context), then put it in the proper context by quoting MacArthur or referring to the total context of MacArthur's remarks:
(1) Saving faith is "unconditional surrender, a complete resignation of self and absolute submission" (p. 153, GATJ).
Actually, MacArthur was explaining the lesson of the prodigal son. It is not an ambiguous message, if taken in context. Nor does it say that the prodigal son never again failed his father. What MacArthur was saying is that a change of heart attitude, not perfection in works, is necessary for salvation.
(2) "True faith, we are told, 'starts with humility and reaches fruition in obedience'" (pp. 176-177, GATJ).
MacArthur was explaining the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12.
(3) "Salvation is for those who are willing to forsake everything"(p. 78, GATJ).
Here MacArthur is referring to the rich young ruler who asked Jesus, "Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?" (Matt. 19:16-22).
(4) "Saving faith is a commitment to leave sin and follow Jesus Christ at all costs. Jesus takes no one unwilling to come on those terms" (p 87, GATJ).
Here's the same statement in context:
"Salvation is by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8). That is the consistent and unambiguous teaching of Scripture. But people with genuine faith do not refuse to acknowledge their sinfulness. They sense that they have offended the holiness of God, and do not reject the lordship of Christ. They do not cling to the things of the world. Real faith lacks none of these attributes. Saving faith is a commitment to leave sin and follow Jesus Christ at all costs. Jesus takes no one unwilling to come on those terms."
What he is saying is quite clear: "Faith without works is dead, being alone" (James 2:17).
5) "Eternal life brings immediate death to self" (p. 140, GATJ).
According to Ryrie, MacArthur states that there is no cost for salvation, but there is a definite cost in terms of salvation's impact. Here's the same statement in context:
"Eternal life is indeed a free gift (Rom. 6:23). Salvation cannot be earned with good deeds or purchased with money. It has already been bought by Christ, who paid the ransom with His blood. But that does not mean there is not cost in terms of salvation's impact on the sinner's life. This paradox may be difficult but it is nevertheless true: salvation is both free and costly. Eternal life brings immediate death to self. 'Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin' (Rom 6:6).
"Thus in a sense we pay the ultimate price for salvation when our sinful self is nailed to a cross. It is a total abandonment of self-will, like the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies so that it can bear much fruit (cf. John 12:24). It is an exchange of all that we are for all that Christ is. And it denotes implicit obedience, full surrender to the lordship of Christ. Nothing less can qualify as saving faith.
"Death to self does not mean immediate sanctification and glorification. But just as Adam died on the day he disobeyed God (yet did not see the completion of the death for many years), so we die on the day that we truly believe on the Son of Man (though the completion of that death will not be realized until we go to be with the Lord). And in dying we live unto eternal life."
I am not questioning Dr. Ryrie's credentials, just concerned that he would take MacArthur's comments out of context to prove a point that, in full circle, comes to the same conclusion as MacArthur:
"Every Christian will bear spiritual fruit. Somewhere, sometime, somehow. Otherwise that person is not a believer. Every born-again individual will be fruitful. Not to be fruitful is to be faithless, without faith, and therefore without salvation"(p 45, SGS).
For more information about the Lordship debate check out the section on Lordship.
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Book Review: The Prayer of Jezebel
Readers can learn how to tap into God’s limitless supply of blessings by praying The Prayer of Jezebel each day. And by memorizing the six Points of Jezebel (tried and tested both on Wall Street and at Robert Tilton Ministries), readers will learn how to appear humble while they are living in million dollar homes, how to look religious by giving a few dollars to the poor and drawing media attention to it, and how to ask for even more prosperity while millions are hungry and dying.
The Six Points of Jezebel:
1. God wants to prosper YOU by giving YOU other people’s property (1 Kings 21:7)
2. It’s okay to lie if you get a blessing of God in return (1 Kings 21:13)
3. Stoning is the best way to take a blessing from someone else (1 Kings 21:14)
4. Take possession of your blessing as soon as you can (1 Kings 21:15)
5. You know God is on your side if you are prosperous (1 Kings 21:16)
6. Call for a fast when you REALLY want something like real bad (1 Kings 21:9)
Book Review: Don't know much about the Bible
The title of the book says it all. Kenneth Davis does NOT know much about the Bible!
(Makes me wonder about his other books.)
Save your money.
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Byrne
"The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, 'I am my own god.' This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis - my claim to my right to myself." ~ Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest (Entry for October 5 - written between 1911 & 1915!) So what is secret or new about the Secret? Absolutely nothing! These are the exact same views I read and learned about for many years starting in the mid 1970’s. They derive most recently from a movement called New Thought, which has roots back to Emmanuel Swedenborg in the 18 century. Swedenborg and his successors like Anton Mesmer and Phineas Qumiby taught that Jesus was a way-shower, not the Way, that illness is a result of incorrect thinking; that heaven and hell are states of mind, that throughout history there has been a Christ spirit descends on various individuals, and that there is an energy we can “manipulate” to heal like Jesus did. These ideas eventually became the basis for the Church of Christ Scientist (Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this church studied Qumiby), the Church of Religious Sceince, and the Unity School of Christianity.
Although the names of two of these churches contain the word "Christian," these churches depart from the historic faith and from the Bible in proposing that man is not in sin, that God does not have wrath on sin, and that man does not need redemption. According to New Thought, man needs liberation from his illusions and incorrect thinking. Of course, if our perceptions are incorrect, wouldn’t the perception that our perceptions are erroneous be incorrect as well? These notions, however, go back to something even older than New Thought. Believing that a technique using inner powers of the mind or will can bring about a change in the material world is also the basis of sorcery, known today in Western culture as magick. To materialize non-matter into matter, and to effect causal change through the power of thought is a hallmark of sorcery/magick. In essence, this is an attempt to be one’s own god, deciding for one’s self what is best and what is needed, and then endeavoring to create that desired reality. It proposes that according to the ‘Law of Attraction’ our thoughts tend to become our realities, so in order to create good conditions in our lives we should visualize the conditions that we want to experience so that they can manifest.
Books that promise health and wealth for their practitioners are published every day. But few associate such promises with Byrne's breathtaking audacity. She proclaims to her readers, "You are God in a physical body. You are Spirit in the flesh. You are Eternal Life expressing itself as You. You are a cosmic being. You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are perfection. You are magnificence. You are the creator, and you are creating the creation of You on this planet" (p. 164).
If that weren't blasphemous enough, realize that the book your neighbors and co-workers are reading more than any other also tells them, "The earth turns on its orbit for You. The oceans ebb and flow for You. The birds sing for You. The sun rises and it sets for You. The stars come out for You. Every beautiful thing you see, every wondrous thing you experience, is all there for You. Take a look around. None of it can exist, without You. No matter who you thought you were, now you know the Truth of Who You Really Are. You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life. And now you know The Secret" (p. 183).
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9 Facts That Disprove the Claims About
The Lost Tomb of Jesus
1. Jesus Family Tomb Would Not Have Been in Jerusalem, but Nazareth.
Dr. Darrell Bock, research professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, asks, "How did his family have the time in the aftermath of his death to buy the tomb space, while also pulling off a stealing of the body and continue to preach that Jesus was raised BODILY, not merely spiritually?
"The bodily part of this resurrection is key because in Judaism when there was a belief in resurrection it was a belief in a bodily resurrection, a redemption that redeemed the full scope of what God had created. If one reads 2 Maccabees 7, one will see the martyrdom of the third son of seven executed who declares that they can mutilate his tongue and hands for defending the law, because God will give them back to him one day.
"To lack a bodily resurrection teaching is to teach in distinction from what the earliest church had received as a key element of the hope that Jesus left his followers, a hope that itself was rooted in Jewish precedent. Paul, our earliest witness to testify to this in writings we possess, was a former Pharisee who held to a physical resurrection as 1 Corinthians 15 also makes clear. Paul matches the Maccabean picture noted above. He explicitly denies an approach that accepts only a spiritual resurrection." 1
2. If This Is the Family Tomb of Jesus, Why Does It Contain so Many Non-Family Members?
Jesus was born in Bethlehem and his family lived in Nazareth. It would be strange enough for his family to be buried together in Jerusalem. Even stranger, why would the family tomb include several non-family members? There is not a shred of historical evidence to account for this inconsistency. For example, Matthew and Judah are not mentioned in the four Gospels as members of Jesus' family. The word "Jesus" in the inscription is unclear and may read, "Hanun" according to Stephen Pfann, President of Jerusalem's University of the Holy Land, who appeared in the movie. "Also, Jesus' ossuary was very plain compared to the others found in the cave. The idea that the originator of a religion would end up in such a plain ossuary as compared to the others found in the cave is kind of telling as to whether this is really potentially the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth or not." Further only 6 of the 10 ossuaries in the Talpiot tomb were inscribed - 4 were not. In addition, Mariamne is not part of Jesus' family in the New Testament, and we shall see there is no historical evidence equating Mariamne with Mary Magdalene. There is also not a shred of historical evidence that Jesus and Mary were married or had a son by the name of Judah. Finally, Jose is probably not Jesus' brother because then his ossuary would have read, "Jose, son of Joseph" just like Jesus'. 2
On the contrary, the Israeli archeologist who actually discovered the ancient burial caves 27 years ago says there is absolutely no proof to Cameron’s outlandish claims. What’s more, the archeologist says that Cameron and his team are merely trying to profit by attacking a central tenet of the Christian faith that Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day and that his body has never been discovered.
"The claim that the burial site [of Jesus] has been found is not based on any proof, and is only an attempt to sell," says Israeli archeologist Professor Amos Kloner." A similar film was released 11 years ago, and Kloner said that this current film was merely a renewed effort to create controversy in the Christian world in order to make a bigger profit. He added, "I refute all their claims and efforts to waken a renewed interest in the findings. With all due respect, they are not archeologists." 3
3. The Statistical Analysis Concerning Jesus Is Highly Exaggerated. The Name "Jesus" Was a Popular Name in the First Century. It Has Been Found in 99 Other Tombs and on 22 Other Ossuaries.
The name Jesus was a popular first century name, discovered on 121 other tombs and ossuaries during this time period. According to the details in a famous catalogue of ossuary names that has been out since 2002 with the information known about this locale since c. 1980, we find:
Out of a total number of 2,625 males, these are the figures for the ten most popular male names among Palestinian Jews. The first figure is the total number of occurrences, while the second is the number of occurrences specifically on ossuraries.
Simon/Simeon....243....59
Joseph..........218....45
Eleazar.........166....29
Judah...........164....44
John/Yohanan....122....25
Jesus............99....22
Hananiah.........82....18
Jonathan.........71....14
Matthew..........62....17
Manaen/Menahem...42.....44
This indicates that of all existing tombs and ossuaries of the period, that there is nearly a 1 in 20 (4.6%) chance that any male tomb would have the name Jesus on it. Yet according to the film’s statistics, the evidence is 600 to 1 in favor of their story being true. |
This is one of the most exaggerated portions of the program. The individual compiling the statistics, Andrey Feuerverger, has gone on record to state:It is not in the purview of statistics to conclude whether or not this tombsite is that of the New Testament family. Any such conclusion much more rightfully belongs to the purview of biblical historical scholars who are in a much better position to assess the assumptions entering into the computations. The role of statistics here is primarily to attempt to assess the odds of an equally (or more) `compelling' cluster of names arising purely by chance under certain random sampling assumptions and under certain historical assumptions. In this respect I now believe that I should not assert any conclusions connecting this tomb with any hypothetical one of the NT family. The interpretation of the computation should be that it is estimating the probability of there having been another family at the time whose tomb this might be, under certain specified assumptions. 5 But in order to begin any true calculation, we need to know for sure the names mentioned are truly members of Jesus' family as described in the Gospels. In the end, the stats are only as good as the assumptions used to construct them.
4. The Statistics Are Also Distorted regarding Mary of Magdalene.
This inscription on this ossuary in the tomb is written in Greek and literally says "Mariamene e Mara." The film wrongly claims this should be translated, "Mary, known as the Master." But Mariamene should be translated "Mary", but Mara in Greek is translated "Martha" as the Discovery Channel's own expert, L.Y. Rahmani explains on their own website. So where did they come up with the translation, "Mary, known as the Master" which they linked later to Mary Magdalene? You get that only if the words are in Aramaic. But remember, the inscription is in Greek, not Aramaic and cannot be translated that way. Therefore, this ossuary probably contains the remains of two women, named Mary and Martha. It was a common Jewish practice for multiple generations to be placed in one bone box. 6
The name Mariamne, a variation of Maria, was one of the most common names of the time. According to the details on names provided by Prof Richard Bauckham of St. Andrews and sourced in a famous catalogue of ossuary names that has been out since 2002 with the information known about this locale since c. 1980, we find:
For women, we have a total of 328 occurrences (women’s names are much less often recorded than men’s), and figures for the 4 most popular names are thus:
Mary/Mariamne....70....42
Salome...........58....41
Shelamzion.......24....19
Martha...........20... 177
The true statistics reveal that Mary was the most common name on tombs during this time period. 21% of Jewish women were called Mariamne (Mary). This is hardly strong evidence suggesting Mary as the Mary Magdalene of the New Testament.
5. The DNA Evidence Is Irrelevant and Untrustworthy.
First, why was DNA testing not done on all the ossuaries in the cave but just on two? If the DNA of three or four of the bone boxes did not match, then this would destroy the whole theory.
Second, in the film, there is a DNA test showing that Mariamne and Jesus’ DNA residues do not match. Based on that one shred of evidence, the researchers claim the couple was married and that this couple must be Jesus and Mary Magdalene. With how many women in Judea would Jesus’ DNA not match? Even women named Mariamne? This proves nothing. It only states the obvious, that the two were not related, nothing more. Even this DNA evidence is scientifically shaky.
Dr. Jim Tabor, a professor involved in the special, answered in an interview, "No one had ever contacted a statistician or a DNA person. There’s a sense in which one reason he did this is that I wasn’t thinking of doing this, and the DNA guy wasn’t thinking about it—it almost needed a single person to say ‘This is what I want to do.’ Then it just began to skyrocket because Cameron came in and it became high profile and that gave us the budget. If we were just talking about one subject, the names, then I think it would be correct that we would not say let’s have a documentary on that—we’d publish first.
The publicity of it all was then picked up by Discovery, but that’s their decision—they’ve taken a lot of heat for it. I don’t want to be critical of that—I’m not paid by them in any way. I and about four other people were brought in as consultants—Shimon Gibson for archaeolgoy, me for history, etc. Nobody was paid—they paid our expenses, but no stipends and we have no stake in the film." 8
There is no independent DNA control sample to compare to what was garnered from the bones in this tomb. The most the DNA evidence can show is that several of these folks are inter-related. Big deal. We would need an independent control sample from some member of Jesus’ family to confirm that these were members of Jesus’ family. We do not have that at all. In addition mitochondrial DNA does not reveal genetic coding or XY chromosome make up anyway. They would need nuclear DNA for that in any case. So the DNA stuff is probably thrown in to make this look more like a real scientific fact.
6. There Is No Historical Evidence That Jesus Was Ever Married or Had a Child.
The argument that Jesus was married or had a child comes solely from silence. No New Testament document speaks of such relationships, nor do Christian or secular writings from the early centuries of Christianity. The closest document is the apocryphal Gospel of Philip, written approximately 275 A.D., written neither by the apostle nor in the time period of the New Testament. Even the passage used to suggest a married Jesus is used grossly out of context.
7. There Is No Historical Evidence That Connects Mariamne and Mary Magdalene.
To get Mariamne to match Mary Magdalene rather than one of numerous other Mary’s, a researcher would be required to find historical information that notes such a connection. But there is none. The movie's assumption was based on the unhistorical assumption of François Bovon concerning the Acts of Philip written in the fourth century.
François Bovon of Harvard was brought in to make the critical link between the name Mariamne and Mary Magdalene. This link is made possible by the Acts of Philip and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, as this is a variant Greek name for Mary.
Now, in fact, things are more complicated. The inscription actually reads Mariaamnou, a diminutive of Mariamnon. It is the only inscription in Greek out of the six found in the cave. All he did was to verify that such a link exists between the fourth century text and Mary Magdalene. The way the special used experts was to ask them to verify points of fact to lay the ground work for the speculation but did not follow up to ask them what they thought of the actual hypothesis. This was done with Frank Moore Cross of Harvard, who simply confirms the inscriptions read the now well publicized names on the ossuaries. 11
In the end, there is not a shred of historical evidence in the first four centuries to prove that Mary Magdalene should be equated with the Mariamne found in the Talpiot tomb. This is a major blow to the entire theory of the film.
8. The Trouble with James, the Brother of Jesus, Is History Says He Was Buried Alone in Another Tomb.
Eusebius, Christianity’s earliest historian (fourth century), recorded that there had been a tomb of James the Just, the brother of Jesus, known in Jerusalem since New Testament times. Its location was near the Temple mount and had an honoric stele next to it. The spot was known as a pilgrimage site for many Christians.
"It was apparently a single tomb, with no other holy family members mentioned nor any other ossuaries in that place," states Dr. Witherington. "The locality and singularity of this tradition rules out a family tomb in Talpiot. Christians would not have been making pilgrimage to the tomb if they believed Jesus’ bones were in it—that would have contradicted and violated their faith, but the bones of holy James were another matter. They were consider sacred relics."
This is clearly not in Talpiot, and remember to claim there is a Talpiot family tomb means that Jesus would have been buried there long before James was martyred in A.D. 62. In other words, the James tradition contradicts the Talpiot tomb both in locale and in substance. James is buried alone, in a completely different place.
Further, the supposed missing ossuary - assumed to be the James ossuary - couldn't have been found in the Talpiot Tomb in 1980 because it was photographed in the home Oded Golan in the 1970's. The film makers were also told that the tenth ossuary found in the Talpiot tomb was never missing when it was discovered it was a blank ossuary having neither ornamentation nor inscription. Therefore it was not cataloged with the other nine, but stored in Israel. So there never was a mystery about the tenth ossuary, however one concocted for the show but this was false. In addition, the tenth ossuary does not measure the same dimensions as the James bone box, proving that the James ossuary did not come from, and should not be placed in the Talpiot tomb. |
9. There Is Multiple Historical Attestation That Both Christians and Non-Christians Knew Where the Tomb of Jesus Was, and That It Was Found Empty on the Third Day.
The evidence for Jesus' bodily resurrection has never been refuted.
Dr. Ben Witherington, professor of New Testament at Asbury Seminary and author of What Have They Done with Jesus?, notes: "By all ancient accounts, the tomb of Jesus was empty--even the Jewish and Roman authorities acknowledged this. Now it takes a year for the flesh to desiccate, and then you put the man’s bones in an ossuary. But Jesus’ body was long gone from Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb well before then. Are we really to believe it was moved to another tomb, decayed, and then was put in an ossuary? Its not likely.
"Implicitly you must accuse James, Peter and John (mentioned in Galatians 1-2 in our earliest New Testament document from 49 A.D.) of fraud and cover-up. Are we really to believe that they knew Jesus didn’t rise bodily from the dead but perpetrated a fraudulent religion, for which they and others were prepared to die? Did they really hide the body of Jesus in another tomb? We need to remember that the James in question is Jesus’ brother, who certainly would have known about a family tomb. This frankly is impossible for me to believe." 13
"Although we are only at an early point in the research, the consensus so far has been that this tomb is not Jesus' burial site," says Dr. Gary Habermas, Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Dept. of Philosophy and Theology at Liberty University. 14
Dr. Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, said the film’s hypothesis holds little weight.
"I don’t think that Christians are going to buy into this," he said. "But skeptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear."
Dr. Pfann is even unsure that the name "Jesus" on the caskets was read correctly. He thinks it’s more likely the name "Hanun." Ancient Semitic script is notoriously difficult to decipher. 15
William Dever, an expert on near eastern archaeology and anthropology, who has worked with Israeli archeologists for five decades, said specialists have known about the ossuaries for years. "The fact that it’s been ignored tells you something…. It [the film] would be amusing if it didn’t mislead so many people." 16
Should we be concerned about The Lost Tomb of Jesus? Yes. As Christians, we should be bothered that others would speak of the Jesus we worship as anything less than God’s divine Son. But should we be worried? No. The evidence fails to prove anything other than the fact that controversy about Jesus continues to draw attention.
Our challenge should be to know the truth of God’s Word and to continue to communicate it to others through our actions and words. As Dr. Bock noted, "Hopefully our times have not slid to the point where we can no longer tell the difference between Jerusalem and Hollywood." 17
ENDNOTES
[1] Darrell Bock, “Hollywood Hype: The Oscars and Jesus’ Family Tomb, What Do They Share?” February, 26, 2007. Accessed at http://dev.bible.org/bock/.
[2] Mati Milstein, "Jesus' Tomb Claim Slammed By Scholars" February 28, 2007. Accessed at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-jesus-tomb_2.html
[3] From Joel Rosenberg, “New Film Claims Jesus Didn’t Rise from the Dead, Body Has Been Found,” February 25, 2007. Accessed at http://joelrosenberg.blogspot.com/.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Darrell Bock, “Is Special’s Stat Man Backing Off?” March 4, 2007. Accessed at http://dev.bible.org/bock/.
[6] L.Y. Rahmani, “A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries: In the Collections of the State of Israel, 1994” Accessed at http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/explore/media/tomb_evidence.pdf.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Darrell Bock, “Reaction of Tal Ilan and Others,” March 4, 2007. Accessed at http://dev.bible.org/bock/.
[11] Darrell Bock, “How the Experts Were Used in the Special,” March 3, 2007. Accessed at http://dev.bible.org/bock/.
[13] Ben Witherington, "The Jesus Tomb Show--Bibilical Archaeologists Reject Discovery Channel Show's Claims" March 5, 2007. Accessed at http://benwitherington.blogspot.com.
[14] Gary Habermas, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus: A Response to the Discovery-Channel Documentary Directed by James Cameron" Accessed at http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/The_Lost_Tomb_of_Jesus
/losttombofjesus_response.htm.
[15] Karen Matthews, “Documentary Shows Possible Jesus Tomb,” AP News, February 26, 2007. Accessed at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070226/ap_on_re_us/jesus_s_burial.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Darrell Bock, “Hollywood Hype: The Oscars and Jesus’ Family Tomb, What Do They Share?” February, 26, 2007. Accessed at http://dev.bible.org/bock/.
 
The Passover Plot Hypothesis The Passover Plot is a book by radical New Testament scholar, H. J. Schonfield, who proposed that Jesus was an innocent messianic pretender who connived to "fulfill" prophecy in order to substantiate his claims (Schonfield, 35-38). According to the plot, Jesus secretly "schemed in faith" (ibid., 173), connived with a young man, Lazarus, and Joseph of Arimathea, to feign death on the cross, revive in the tomb, and demonstrate to his disciples (who were ignorant of the plot) that he was the Messiah. However, the plan went awry when the Roman soldiers pierced Jesus’ side and he died. Nonetheless, the disciples mistook others as Christ some days later and believed he had risen from the dead (Schonfield, 170-72).
At least three basic dimensions of traditional apologetics are called in question by this alleged plot: the character of Christ, the supernatural nature of messianic predictions, and the resurrection of Christ. Each will be addressed in order.
The Character of Christ If the alleged plot is correct, then Jesus was anything but "innocent." He was a conniving, cunning, and deceptive messianic pretender. He intended to deceive his closest disciples into believing he was the Messiah when he was not. But this thesis is contrary to the character of Christ known from the Gospel records, which have been demonstrated to be reliable. The Jesus of the Gospels is the perfect exemplar of honesty and integrity.
The Nature of Supernatural Prophecy Contrary to the "Passover Plot," messianic prophecy is supernatural. And in the case of Christ there are many reasons that he could not have manipulated events to make it look like he fulfilled all the predictions about the Old Testament Messiah.
First of all, this was contrary to his honest character as noted above. It assumes he was one of the greatest deceivers of all time. It presupposes that he was not even a good person, to say nothing of the perfect man the Gospels affirm him to be. There are several lines of evidence that combine to demonstrate that this is a completely implausible thesis.
Second, there is no way Jesus could have controlled many events necessary for the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. For example, he had no control over where he would be born (Mic. 5:2), how he would be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14), when he would die (Dan. 9:25), what tribe (Gen. 49:10) and lineage he would be from (2 Sam. 7:12), and numerous other things.
Third, there is no way short of being supernatural that Jesus could have manipulated the events and people in his life to respond in exactly the way necessary for it to appear that he was fulfilling all these prophecies, including John’s heralding him (Matt. 3), his accuser’s reactions (Matt. 27:12), how the soldiers cast lots for his garments (John 19:23, 24), and how they would pierce his side with a spear (John 19:34). Indeed even Schonfield admits that the plot failed when the Romans actually pierced Christ. The fact is that anyone with all this manipulative power would have to be divine—the very thing the Passover Plot hypothesis is attempting to avoid. In short, it takes a bigger miracle to believe the Passover Plot than to accept these prophecies as supernatural.
The Resurrection of Christ. The Passover Plot offers an implausible scenario as an alternative to the resurrection of Christ. This is true for many reasons. First, it is contrary to the Gospel records, which are demonstrably reliable, having been written by eyewitnesses and contemporaries of the events. Second, it totally overlooks the powerful testimony of the resurrection of Christ, including: (1) a permanently empty tomb; (2) over five hundred eyewitnesses (1 Cor. 15:5-7); (3) some twelve physical appearances of Christ in the same nail-scarred body (John 20:27); (4) which were spread over a period of forty days (Acts 1:3); (5) during which time Jesus ate with them on at least four occasions and taught them concerning the kingdom of God; (6) and transformed them from scared, skeptical, scattered disciples into the greatest missionary society the world has ever known overnight!
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Conclusion The Passover Plot is in fact an implausible scenario that is based on unjustified presuppositions and is contrary to many known facts. For example, it supposes: (1) unjustified late dates for the Gospels; (2) an antisupernatural bias, (3) a flawed character of Christ; (4) the incredible naiveté of his disciples; (5) mass cases of mistaken identity after his death; (6) a miraculous transformation based on a total mistake.
To put it positively, the alleged plot is contrary to (1) the early dates of the Gospels; (2) the multiplicity of the eyewitnesses’ accounts; (3) the verification of history and archaeology; (4) the known character of Jesus’ disciples; (5) the permanently empty tomb; (6) the nature of the resurrection appearances; and (7) the incredible number of eyewitnesses of the resurrected Christ—over five hundred. In short,The Passover Plot is just another beautiful theory ruined by a brutal gang of facts.
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Honest To Jesus by Robert Funk
The Jesus Mysteries:Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy
The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus J. Borg
Junia: The First Woman Apostle by Eldon Jay Epp
It would seem to be a straightforward work of science to sort, date, and judge each of the texts, and in many ways it is. There are rules for comparing scraps of majuscules and scraped palimpsests. The scriptural scholars of bygone eras help contemporary ones through their own questions scrawled in the margins of their Bibles. And it's not too hard to recognize and correct the ever-so-slightly incorrect transcriptions of some sleepy monk in a tomb-cold scriptorium. But the letter is not copied alone; so is the spirit and the meaning. Text critics are inevitably exegetes, and aspiring exegetes must also be text critics. This is Eldon Jay Epp's basic principle for biblical studies.
Which brings us to Romans 16:7, embedded in the oft-overlooked collection of greetings to various Christian luminaries at Rome. Here Paul hails his "relatives who were in prison" with him, "prominent among the apostles" and "in Christ before" he was. This impressive pair is Andronicus and his coworker. The latter is sometimes called Junia—thus the KJV, every other English translation up till the 1830s, and nowadays the NRSV. The lion's share of recent English Bibles, though, give the name Junias, with the –s on the end. The RSV specifies Andronicus and Junias as "my kinsmen" and "men of note among the apostles"; the Good News generously adds a footnote after Junias suggesting the name "June"; the NIV—most widely read of all contemporary versions—offers no footnoted alternative to Junias at all. The matter at stake in the choice of names is the simple question asked of everyone upon entry into this world: Is it a boy or a girl?
Until about a hundred years ago, the consensus was universal. Junia was a woman. Every church father, without exception, thought so. Even John Chrysostom, not exactly famous for positive thoughts about the female sex, commented, "How great the wisdom of this woman must have been that she was even deemed worthy of the title of apostle." However, in a curious twist of fate, the church a millennium and a half later concluded not that her wisdom was so great, but that, if she was indeed worthy of the title of apostle, then she wasn't a she at all. The very liberal vanguard that exalted the historical-critical study of the Bible found the leadership of a woman unthinkable, and so made Junia into Junias, a man—even though there is not a single record of the name Junias anywhere in ancient Rome.
The switcheroo from female to male was possible, in the first place, because the apostle's name appears only once, in the accusative form "Junian." (Exegetes need to be not only text critics, but first-rate grammarians as well.) The suffix –n is found on both masculine and feminine nouns. The one textual clue to help choose between them, in this case, is an accent mark. A with a circumflex accent mark could come from masculine Junias, while a with an acute accent mark would derive from feminine Junia. But there are no accent marks in the oldest extant scriptural texts. There are no punctuation marks or spaces between words, either; such niceties are later developments. It is of no small significance, though, that as soon as scribes do start inserting accent marks in their fresh copies, they always choose the acute and never the circumflex. The only variant that they display is to the name Julia. Even this mistake is telling: Julia is another woman's name (in fact, the most popular Roman name for women), and probably first appeared when one of those notoriously sleepy scribes skipped ahead to Romans 16:15 and borrowed the name from there. The grammatical and even accidental choices of the medieval copyists reveal the whole interpretive tradition behind them.
And yet—masculine constructions of still appear in modern textual commentaries and handbooks all over the place. It turns out that the awkward absence of the name Junias in Latin literature, and the conviction that an apostle simply must be a man, together begat great scholarly ingenuity. Sometimes Roman surnames were contracted to shorter forms; an example is Patrobas in Romans 16:14, which is short for Patrobios. Junias, then, was proposed as a contraction of the attested Roman surname Junianus. There isn't the slighest shred of evidence that this is what happened, yet somewhere along the way the contracted-Junianus theory turned into a sure thing. Epp documents how the idea grew from conjecture to certainty in its own kind of scribal-transmission error. It culminated in the 1927 Nestle Greek New Testament, where the distinctly masculine version of the name, complete with circumflex, was offered as the definitive and undisputed reading—even claiming the oldest unaccented texts in its defense! Only in 1998 did the standard Nestle-Aland and United Bible Society editions replace the masculine with the feminine name. Accordingly, few English translations reflect the correction.
Is it really possible that plain textual evidence could be so obscured by plain bias? If John Chrysostom, of all people, allowed that Junia could be a woman and an apostle at the same time, could the progressive leaders of the twentieth century be guilty of such blatant prejudice? Epp cites the report of Bruce Metzger's Textual Commentary to the UBS (2nd. ed.), from as recently as 1994, explaining the dispute about the name:
Some members, considering it unlikely that a woman would be among those styled "apostles," understood the name to be masculine ("Junias"), thought to be a shortened form of Junianus (see Bauer-Aland, Wörterbuch, pp. 70f.). Others, however, were impressed by the facts that (1) the female Latin name Junia occurs more than 250 times in Greek and Latin inscriptions found in Rome alone, whereas the male name Junias is unattested anywhere, and (2) when Greek manuscripts began to be accented, scribes wrote the feminine ("Junia").
In other words, the Junia reading had textual evidence on its side; the Junias reading had none; yet until less than a decade ago, the latter still won the day.
Could Paul have called a woman an apostle? He certainly did not use the term lightly. He was compelled to defend his own apostolicity, as the last and untimely born, to the disciples of Jesus, whose friendship with the Lord automatically granted them apostolic status. It can only be the highest of Pauline praise to call Andronicus and Junia prominent among the apostles.
That he was capable of applying this praise to a woman is suggested not only by the textual evidence but by the context of Romans 16 as well. A woman and deacon by the name of Phoebe is entrusted with the letter itself. Seventeen men are greeted along with eight women (omitting Junia), but of the twenty-five, seven of the women are described as contributing the most to the churches, while only five men receive that distinction. Prisca is listed ahead of her husband Aquila, and in two places (vv. 6 and 12) four |
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