I’ve been studying the Bible for almost 20 years, and a good deal of people have asked me why I think the Bible is so important over that time. So I made a video about why Christians have historically believed the Bible.
Spoiler alert: it has everything to do with the belief that Jesus was who he said he was, and not all that much to do with what the Bible says about itself.
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Thanks. I have found this useful, but still very curious; Christians believe in the Bible because early Christians believed guys who said they saw this guy Jesus die and rise again and from there this started the chain of events you describe?
If someone came to you now and told you they saw a man die and come back to life, would you believe them?
Good question, Alex. I suppose my answer is the same you’d get from most humans throughout history: “Probably not.” Saying someone came back from the dead is an outlandish claim no matter how you slice it; the original Christians would have faced plenty of skepticism on this front, too. For whatever reason, it wasn’t enough skepticism to stop it from rapidly spreading across the cultures and faith systems of the Roman Empire within a few decades.
That alone (for me, at least) is enough reason to pause and consider what might be different about this case, if anything.
Interesting. Do you think what might be different is that we are talking about a time 2000 years ago in which – in the absence of modern scientific understanding – magic and mysticism was more widely accepted as truth/explanation and therefore a resurrection was readily accepted than it would be today?
Not sure. It’s possible that folks were more ready to accept the idea of resurrection back then—but I don’t know that an understanding of modern science makes it any harder or easier to believe. I don’t need a science textbook to tell me that dead things stay dead. If anything, I suspect modern medicine has made death a more abstract concept to me than it was to first-century Roman citizens.
The concept of humans coming back from the dead was met with enough skepticism for at least one apostle (Paul) to feel like he needed to defend the idea—which is how we get the fifteenth chapter for First Corinthians. Plus, both the author and readers of the Gospel of Matthew seemed to be familiar with a rumor that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body—a far more “scientific” explanation for an empty tomb (Matthew 28:13).
Even if first-century humans were less educated on science and medicine, this would still be a leap of faith for them.
Fair enough. I appreciate your thoughtful explanation so thank you for that.
This is always a big of confusion for me; it seems fundamentally obvious that as you say when something is dead, it stays dead. If the resurrection was meant as a metaphor, then I could see why Christians might give the story as much interest as they do.
But to believe it literally, flies in the face of all reason. Yet plenty of apparently reasonable people seem to believe it or entertain it the idea to a degree – when in contrast they wouldn’t (rightly so) entertain for a second anyone who claimed to have risen from the dead now. Indeed, we’d likely been in the same position as to consider calling the authorities if someone claimed this now – we’d rightly be worried for their mental well-being.
And I appreciate your curiosity. (And for what it’s worth, there are subsets of Christianity that see the physical resurrection of Jesus as metaphorical, or nonessential.)
I think I agree that believing in a literal resurrection “flies in the face of all reason” if we’re equating “reason” is empiricism. I don’t know that Jesus’ resurrection could be “proved” at this point anyway. Plus, the resurrection is just the beginning of the problem: even if we proved that someone could come back from the dead, we’d be dealing with the accounts of the raised Christ appearing in the middle of locked rooms and ascending into the clouds—more problems that run counter to what we observe in the natural world.
My guess is that as the apostles told the stories, enough of their listeners were convinced that:
As far as I know, we don’t have a truly analogous modern situation to compare it to, so I’m not sure how much more or less believable the story would be if it were introduced today.
Jeffrey: Thank you so much for all the work you are doing to bring the wonderful word of the Lord to the world. Your video’s and graphics are great and very helpful towards understanding the gospel. I teach Sunday school and would like to use your graphics in my class. Is it possible for you to take a picture of your work and put it here so I can download it for instructions? I could print it out and take it to Kinko’s to have it made larger for the students to see. Keep up the good work and God bless. Dave <
Thanks for the kind words, Dave! Go right ahead. You should be able to click the image of the whiteboard photo to see the full-size picture.
All I ask is that you tell people where you got it from. ;-)
I believe the Bible because it is truly the undeniable Word of God
I believe you.
Jeff, we started a new men’s group at work with this video as the 60,000 foot overview. Next we want to start to drill down, possibly OT, NT, then perhaps drill down into individual books of the Bible. Everyone is very happy so far with this exploration. My question is whether you have a (linked) directory of all your videos so I can sort of navigate a ‘top-down’ series picking up topics along the way etc. Where can I see a list of all videos in one spot if that’s possible? Best regards,
Great to hear these are useful to you, Rob! I’m building out these Bible videos on YouTube, so I’d recommend subscribing to the OverviewBible YouTube channel. That’s where you’ll find all the videos, and you’ll get notified when new videos go live. =)
Thank you for the video.
I think that we can defend the initial belief that “Jesus died and rose again” better than is laid out here. There were multiple eye-witnesses to Christ’s resurrection and ascension that support that belief.
Sure, according to Paul, Peter, and the gospel writers there were plenty of eyewitnesses of the risen Christ. That’s a component of 3#: enough people in the first century believed that these eyewitnesses were trustworthy.
Making an apologetic for the resurrection would be another video. I don’t have a whiteboard big enough to fit that here. ;-)
The argument is indeed circular and it never succeeded in carrying me from Atheism to Christian faith. I believe the Bible because it describes a way living (Christian) that I have come to know is better than any other I have lived and my experience of life is all I need to come to belief. While the history of the books is interesting, it has little to do with why I believe.
Fair enough. I don’t think it’s possible (nor profitable) to explore the personal reasons every single Christian has for believing the Bible. This video’s just sticking with the high-level reasoning for why the Bible (Old and New Testaments) are considered “believable” by the Christian religion. =)