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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (17087)	4/15/2004 2:28:33 PM
From: Greg or e	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

8. We need to be realistic about the kind of physical evidence you should expect to find from someone who lived 2,000 years ago. Ankerberg: Jennings stated, "All but the most skeptical historians believed Jesus was a real person even though when you come here"—talking about coming to the Holy Land—"you do not find any physical evidence." They’re talking about the rock that Mary sat on and stuff like this. My question is, What kind of evidence should people expect to find in the Holy Land today regarding Jesus? Evans: Well, of course, I mean, a question like that would exclude 99.99 percent of the population that had ever lived in Palestine in late antiquity. I mean, what kind of evidence is he talking about? Pieces of property with your name inscribed on it? I guess. In which case we have precious little evidence. About the only time anybody’s name shows up on something is on an epitaph; it’s on his grave; it’s on a tomb; it’s on a bone box. That’s about it. And so I don’t know what evidence we can talk about. Ankerberg: Yeah, talk about the other way of the archaeological evidence, some of the archaeological evidence that we have found in the Holy Land that substantiates the New Testament record. It’s not every piece of the New Testament record, but you’ve got enough that it makes it credible. In other words, if there are some things that show up like the stuff that Luke said in Acts and in Luke, what are the things that stand out in your mind that have been found, say, in the last 20 years archaeologically that substantiate we’ve got a solid historical account? Evans: Yeah. Well, there are several things that come to mind. One of the things that’s very interesting is the way Jesus replies to John the Baptist and he wants to know, "Are you really the one who is coming or do we look for somebody else?" And Jesus, in an almost indirect way, says, "Well, go back and tell John what you see and hear: the blind regain their sight, etc." and we read that and we think, early Christians didn’t make that up because they’re not going to make up a story about John expressing doubt about Jesus. And they’re not going to make up a story where Jesus indirectly replies. And so that was accepted as authentic but people were left wondering, how come Jesus doesn’t come right out and say, "Well, I’m the Messiah. Go back and tell him, ‘Of course I am.’" Well, then we find a scroll from Qumran and we realize the way He replied was indeed messianic. The passages of Isaiah He was alluding to — it’s clearly messianic. It’s discoveries like that long the way, and we realize, "Huh! the reason we didn’t understand it before is we just didn’t know any better. We just lacked the information." The culture, the background, things that anybody living in Palestine in the first century just took for granted we don’t know. You get a Ph.D. basically. You get a Ph.D. today to know some of what the average illiterate person knew back then. And it really is funny when you think about it. And so there are things we find and we realize, "Ah! now we understand the Gospels better," or we realize, "Yeah, they’re telling the truth all along but we just didn’t know because we lacked the information. There are examples like that.