Eyewitness to Jesus

For Christmas my Mom gave me my own copy of a book I had borrowed from the library more than once. Last week I finished going through the book, Eyewitness to Jesus, with my pen in hand. I'm sharing my basic notes with you now, and will try to turn it into a flowing article later. These are the things that stood out to me.

The book is written by a scholar, Carsten Thiede, and a reporter, Matthew D'Ancona. Cartsen Thiede is a papyrologist who has redated a number of fragments of various Gospels much earlier than ever before. In the midst of his discussion, I learned a lot about the Gospel writers.

1. Matthew 10:23 points to a early date for Matthew. Matthew describes the Jesus fleeing from Jerusalem, but does not mention Pella which was a major destination for fleeing Jews in AD 66. If the Gospel was written later than that year, Pella would probably have been mentioned. [I think this has some flaws since Matthew is quoting Jesus and couldn't change the quote just because history added to his understanding of what would happen. However, he could have added a parenthetical note about Pella -- authors often did something like that.

2. I Corinthians is one of the oldest books of the Bible everyone agrees. I Corinthians 8:6 is a quote of an even older doctrine which states that Jesus is God. Jesus' divinity was not added after decades when the eyewitnesses had died.

3. Scrolls came with tags indicating what was inside the scroll -- like the title on the spine of a book. The first Gospel would have been called "The Gospel". When the second one was written, both Gospels would need labelled. If the church had been unclear who the authors were, there would have been a variety of labels on the Gospels. Instead, "Mark's Gospel" and "Matthew's Gospel" have always only been called that. Thus, the church, from the beginning, identified the four Gospel authors just as they do now.

4. Matthew was no just a "tax collector" he was a telones who was an official in charge of a customs station. Capernaum's customs station was a major border crossing, charging taxes on jisherman and good traveling along the Via Maris from Damascus to the Mediteranean and back. This indicates a man of high position, lots of money, fluency in language, and competent at shorthand.

5. Qumran scrap 7Q5 has twenty letters in five lines. One set of letters is nu/nu/eta/sigma. This is a strange combination of letters. Jose O'Callaghan noticed that the only Septuagint book that has that combination is I Macabees 11:67 in the word Gennesar which refers to the Sea of Galilee. Elsewhere it is always referred to as Chenereth or Chenara. The only other Greek work with that word is Mark 6:52-53. Of course, Mark wasn't written yet in AD 68 or at least it couldn't have been in Qumran. That was the conventional wisdom. O'Callaghan ignored the conventional wisdom and identified as these verses from Mark 52

For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened. 53 And when they had passed over, they came into the land of Gennesaret, and drew to the shore.

6. There are three problems with identifying 7Q5 as Mark 6:52-53 but Carsten Thiede responds to all three, making the identification more likely. That makes the date of the writing of Mark at least before AD 68 but possibly as early as AD 50.

7. Now to the Magdalen fragments. Here are the words from that manuscript

...poured it on his head, as he sat at meat. But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying,...Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought...Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, And said unto them, What will ye give me,...And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I? And he answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish,...saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written,...I will go before you into Galilee. Peter answered and said unto him,

These are all from Matthew 26.

8. Some have suggested Magdalen is from Q, the alleged collection of quotations that supposedly preceded the Gospels. However, this is a story, not just quotations.

9. Others have suggested Magdalen only describes the passion week. However, Barcelona has sister fragments from the same book with verses from Matthew 3 and 5.

10. Variants in a document from the accepted text of the New Testament can indicate a misidentification, a problem with the fragment, or evidence that it is even older than our accepted texts. Traditionally 26:22 ends with legein auto heis hekastos or

And very saddened every single one of them said to him

. Magdalen ends with hekastos auton which reads

And very saddened, each of them said.

The difference isn't obvious in English but the traditional reading implies that the disciples took turns asking if it was them. The Magdalen reading says that they were all asking simultaneously. The Magdalen version sounds more original actually.


I'll continue this tomorrow night, Lord willing. Stay tuned.

Evolution Sunday

Happy Evolution Sunday! Or Happy Darwin Sunday! Over 1,000 churches around the country are celebrating Darwin today. Organized by a professor from Butler University, Michael Zimmerman, Evolution Sunday is growing every year. This is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and his Origin of Species was published 150 years ago. Check out the Clergy Letter Project on Google if you want to see who is celebrating and some of the sermons being preached to bridge the gap between the Bible and Darwin.

My question is how many churches dedicate one Sunday a year to Creation? Not just a sermon in praise of the great Creator (that should happen much more than once a year) but a sermon that explains that "In the beginning, in six days, God created the heavens and the earth and all that in them is (Gen 1:1, and Exodus 20:11)" are still the most scientific explanation of where we came from.

I was reading a book called Counterknowledge yesterday. He is blasting Americans for buying and believing things that are demonstrably not true. He attacks the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, the daVinci Code, the Chinese discovered America in 1491, Alternative medicine, the Book of Mormon, Afrocentric history books, and Creation. He views the world through a modernist view that science can determine absolute truth, challenging the post-modern "believe what you want" and the pre-modern "believe what God said."

But what bothers me is that most Christians really can't defend their beliefs intelligently. We are told to be "ready to give a reason for the hope that is within us." But our hope is based on the reliability of God's Word, the omnipotence of the Creator, the fallenness of man, and the redemption of God. If we can't defend God's Word and the Creation, than we have sidelined ourselves in the modern world. And if we can't defend the existence of an absolute truth, we have sidelined ourselves in a postmodern world. Either way, we will not be storming the gates of hell.

This isn't very cohesive, just some frustrated thoughts.

Just some diversionary thoughts

I had an idea for a story a while back, and now it sounds like I am imitating life. I think this could make a great novel, but I don't think I could do it. Here are the Cliff's Notes for my first novel.

The revival started because of the election of '08. Christians had their choice of an extremely liberal politician, a moderately liberal politician, and a bevy of politicians who couldn't win. Frustration led to low turnouts and the election of the most liberal choice. In despair, someone suggested prayer. Emails started going out suggesting that every American pray for their country at the same time. Soon the country had been blanketed with the idea, and people started doing it. Wherever you were, whatever you were doing, when the time came to pray, you stopped and prayed for just 5 minutes for the country with every (well with a large number of) Christians in America.

Prayer worked! Non-Christians became curious about all this praying, and asked questions -- some got saved. Christians prayed more and became more enthusiastic about being a Christian. And God heard, and began to "heal their land."

As the revival spread, two things changed about America. The first was the church. Churches grew. Their members were more on fire. Those were the kinds of things to be expected. But this revival started with an email and grew on the Internet. Churches found that many of their members were attending from around the world with live streaming. Podcasts of the services were being downloaded by the tens of thousands.

Something else that hadn't been expected was the reaction of professionals who were finding Christ and the Bible for the first time. They were asking "How does being a Christian change how I do my job? Does God talk about being a doctor? a lawyer? a teacher? a soldier? a stock broker? a salesman? a scholar? a psychologist or counselor? a computer programmer? a scientist?" And the church didn't have the answer. But they did have the solution. Small groups of Christians from various professions gathered to study the Bible and find answers to the challenges they were facing. Many of them gathered in fast food restaurants or Starbucks. Others noticed what was happening and joined. They soon found Christ as well. Other groups used online conference software and met from around the country to study. Soon Christians were changing their professional world and becoming an intellectual force to be reckoned with for the first time since the Reformation.

The other thing that changed was America's political scene. It began in 2010 during the congressional races. A number of politicians ran as Christians. Some were Republicans, some were Democrats, and some were Independents. During the 2012 Presidential race, the Christians were faced with a very liberal politician, a fairly liberal politician, and a very conservative politician who couldn't win. They finally voted their convictions and the politician who couldn't win gained 10% of the vote. The very liberal politician won the Presidency and then discovered that the world had changed. Congress was made up of about 1/3 traditional Democrats, 1/3 traditional Republicans, and 1/3 Christians from both parties who refused to voted party when Biblical principles were at stake. The Democrats and Republicans joined into the Democratic Republicans (and Jefferson rolled over in his grave). The Christians united into the Biblical Party.

During the Presidential race, the revival hit talk radio. With talent on loan from God now dedicated to God, talk radio no longer had one half of it brain tied behind its back. The discussion that had gone on in small group Bible studies were now on the radio three hours a day and more.

By 2014, the Bible Party controlled both houses of Congress. The government almost came to a standstill, as the President vetoed almost every bill from Congress and Congress ignored his liberal agenda.

Finally in 2016, an openly Biblical candidate took office as President, narrowly defeating the Democratic-Republican. The Biblical candidate, President HDH, backed by a majority in both houses, began to remodel America using a Biblical worldview.
1. Dismantled the Department of Education, returning education to the States and local communities. The Secretary of Education was just an information disseminator.
2. Over 8 years replaced the entire tax structure with a 10% sales tax on everything but food and used items. No business taxes, estate taxes, etc.
3. Over 8 years welfare was eliminated and HDH put the pressure on the churches and individual Christians to support the poor or help them overcome their problems
4. Held a public debate on Creation- Evolution on prime time TV/radio using the best minds on both sides so the whole country had a chance to determine the truth
5. Proposed an eleven amendment for the bill of rights -- the Right to Life
6. Etc.

Noah's Ark: A Big Topic

One of my pet peeves is the failure of most Christian publishers to get Noah's Ark right. I'm not talking about the shape, because we really don't know what shape it was. I'm talking about the size that the Bible clearly tells us. Here are the verses from the KJV.

Genesis 6:14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. 15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of : The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. 16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.

The Bible tells us that the ark was 300 x 50 x 30 cubits. A cubit is the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. Of course it varies from person to person, but Bible scholars believe that it is between 17.5 and 24 inches. I use 18 inches which is on the small side. That means the ark was 450x75x45 feet. With three floors, there is a total floor space of 101,000 square feet. That means you could fit 50 houses with 2,000 sq. ft. each into the ark. According to various authors there was enough volume for between 500 and 550 railroad stock cars. A walk around the perimeter of the ark would be about 1.5 mile.

Let's design a model ark to help us picture it. If Noah was six foot tall and our model Noah is just 2 inches tall, how big is our model ark? (By the way, this is a 1/36 scale model.) Our model will be 12.5 feet long, 2 ft 1 in wide, and 1 ft 3 in tall. An adult giraffe would be just 5.6 inches high at this scale. A mouse would be .1-.2 inches long. Snakes would range from .1 inch to 8.3 inches. I hope these comparisons help.

To really get the feel for the ark, go to a large parking lot and measure off the full size ark. Then walk around it a few times. You'll become more sympathetic for Noah.

So the ark was big. Was it big enough for all the animals? Stay tuned.

Whose breaking all those plates?

As I study the Flood in Creation Science literature, I realize that we (meaning the church) have a diminished view of the Genesis Flood. I may write more about that later, but for now I want to present one theory that describes what the Flood may have been like.

The Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Theory was published about 18 years ago by a group of excellent creationists -- Steve Austin, Larry Vardiman, John Baumgardner, Russ Humphreys, Kurt Wise and Andrew Snelling. These are good men as well as qualified geologists and physicists. Other creationists who are also good men and qualified scientists disagree with this proposed mechanism for the Flood. True or not, it will give you a new perspective on a familiar story.

Genesis 7:11 describes all the fountains of the deep breaking up in one day. The Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Theory is one way of trying to understand this verse.

The earth is made up of three layers -- a crust, the mantle, and the core. The crust is just a few miles deep. That is the part of the earth we walk on. Under that is the mantle which extends about half way to the center of the earth. It is made of liquid rock which is very, very hot. The center part of the earth is the core.

The crust is made of plates. Under the ocean the crust is fairly thin, while under the continents it is thicker. Before the Flood, so the theory goes, there was just one continent (Pangaea) and one ocean (see Genesis 1:8). As the flood began, the crust at the boundary between the ocean and the continents began to sink into the mantle. (Currently, the crust floats on the liquid mantle, but just a slight change in the density of the crust or the viscosity of the mantle and the crust would sink.) As it sank, it caused frictional heat, making the mantle less viscous and accelerating the sinking.

This caused stress on both the mantle and the crust. The mantle began to flow as the crust sank into it. Meanwhile the crustal plates were being pulled toward the sinking crust. This split the one continent into pieces. The ocean rushed sideways into the new openings and the mantle rushed upwards. When the mantle met the ocean -- STEAM!! The ocean was vaporized, sending steam jets high into the atmosphere, providing the moisture for forty days of rain.

During the same time, (and I don't exactly understand this) the crust under the ocean floated higher, dumping the ocean across the continent.

Thus the beginning of the Flood was not a calm, gentle, gradual rain with slowly rising flood waters. The earth was moving, steam was shooting up into the atmosphere, water was crossing the continents in walls of water, rain was falling in torrents, and the waters rose to cover the mountains.

During the Flood, as the plates of the crust moved at speeds of miles per hour, earthquakes racked the earth, volcanoes formed as the mantle pushed up through weak spots in the crust, the waters would have rushed back and forth over the earth, eroding the land that had been there (destroying all evidence of man's civilization) and redepositing sediments into vast layers of sedimentary rock.

The Flood was a violent judgment of God on sin. Let us never diminish the awesomeness of God's holiness or justice.

PS I have explained this to the best of my ability and understanding. If any of you understand it better than I, please comment so I can improve this explanation. If something doesn't make sense, don't blame the good scientists who formulated this theory; blame your poor translator.

Hammer Head

One of my favorite examples of design is the woodpecker. I would like to thank Gary Parker for the original inspiration for this story.

Woodpeckers are famous for slamming their heads into trees. According to my sources, woodpeckers hit a tree with their head 10 times per second. For homework, you go slam your head into a tree 10 times in a second. On second thought - Don't! You're not designed for it. The woodpecker is.

What do you need to be able to slam your head into trees for a living? First of all you need a hard beak. If you don't have a hard beak you will fold up your beak like an accordion the first time you hit a tree. With a folded beak, you are facing a slow lingering death of starvation.

You also need a hard head. I know some of you do, but not like the woodpecker. The deceleration on the woodpecker's head is 1,000 g's or 250x the acceleration astronauts feel on take-off. You need a really hard head to withstand that kind of impact.

Okay, so you have a hard beak and a hard head. Are you ready to slam your head into trees? Not quite. You also need to protect your brain. Without protection, the impact on the head is enough to rip your brain loose. To protect it, there is a layer of fat that surrounds the brain. In addition, there are muscles that pull on the brain the moment the woodpecker hits the tree. That acts as a shock absorber for the brain.

Now you have a hard beak, a hard head, and your brain is protected. Are you ready to slam your head into trees? No, not yet. The woodpecker has feathers that cover his nose. Without those feathers, he'd breathe in wood chips and that wouldn't be healthy.

Now you have a hard beak, a hard head, and your brain and your nose are protected. Are you ready to slam your head into trees? Of course not! High speed photography has shown that a woodpecker closes his eyes every time he hits the tree. Their are two theories why. One theory is that it keeps wood chips out of his eyes. The other theory is that it keeps the eyeballs in the head.

Now you have a hard beak, a hard head, and your brain, your nose, and your eyes are protected. Are you ready to slam your head into trees? You guessed it. It is very important that you hit the tree with your beak perpendicular to the tangent of the trunk of tree. In other words, you want to hit the tree so all the force goes straight back through the head and not so the force spins your head sideways and snaps your neck.

Now you have a hard beak, a hard head, the right neck muscles, and your brain, your nose, and your eyes are protected. Are you ready to slam your head into trees? Just one more thing. The woodpecker feet and tail are specially designed to hold the woodpecker on the tree. Otherwise, the woodpecker would bounce off every time it hit the tree. While not life threatening, that would really reduce the woodpecker's efficiency.

So now, you are ready to slam your head into trees. But why would you do that? You're hungry of course. Would any self-respecting bug come answer the door when a woodpecker comes knocking? Of course not. So the woodpecker has a long, skinny, sticky, hairy tongue. The woodpecker's tongue is long and skinny enough to go down the bug's little tunnels. The hairs on the tongue send messages back to the woodpecker's brain -- "wood, wood, wood, wood, bug!" When the brain gets the message, "bug" , the woodpecker pull in his tongue -- with a bug stuck to the end.

But where do you put a long tongue in a short beak? A human tongue starts at the back of the mouth. A frog tongue starts at the front of the mouth. A woodpecker tongue starts in the nose, winds around the skull, and then goes out the mouth. That gives the woodpecker all the space he needs for his tongue.

The woodpecker is a good example of irreducible complexity. Unless all the pieces are there, the woodpecker is a failure. A step-by-step natural selection scenario doesn't work. The woodpecker point to a designer.

5-Minute Creationist

At ACSI I picked up a book called The Five Minute Church Historian. It has 100 readings stretching from the church of Acts to the 21st century. Each reading focuses on an important person or event of church history and should take about five minutes to read. Dr. Rick Cornish divided history into ten sections with about ten readings in each section. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it to any of you.

For Christmas, I received The Five Minute Theologian. Now I am anticipating getting The Five Minute Apologist. I can't recommend the Theologian completely since Dr. Cornish is a Five-Point Calvinist. ( I wonder why most of the intellectuals in Christianity are Calvinists?)

I like the idea. I'm thinking that I need to write The Five Minute Creationist. Of course I'll have to change the name since Dr. Cornish probably has the rights to that particular title. I'm hoping to write the 100 essays on this blog during this year. We'll see what happens.