CCV Montrose CO Blog: Rome

Monday, March 25, 2019

Spiritual Formation and Christ's Resurrection pt3

A skeptic may say of my blogs so far, “You’re using the Bible and we don’t know that what we have today is what was written back then. The Bible has been manipulated and changed over the years.”

How did we get the Bible?

How do you imagine we got the Bible? Does it involve a room with monks and one big book? Perhaps one monk is at the front of the room dictating from the big book to all the other monks who are writing what the first monk is reading? Is that how we got our Bible? If it was, then you can see how the church could have manipulated the text. They could have changed it here or there and made it say whatever they wanted it to say, right?

Well, if there was one ancient Bible, controlled by the church, then this would be possible; however, this is a very inaccurate picture of the Bible’s origins. You must know that in the first century, the Jesus movement moved from a Jewish sect, and began to include Samaritans and Gentiles. It also stopped requiring Jewish observances such as circumcision and kosher dietary laws. During Jesus’s life, some synagogues could put you out if they discovered you were a Jesus follower. During the first century in Antioch, Jesus followers were first called Christians and eventually the Jesus movement becomes Christianity.

If you remember from the first blog in this series, Rome is in control and under Rome, second-temple Judaism was tolerated, and Jews did not have to participate in Emperor worship. However, at some point both Judaism and Rome realized that the Jesus movement was no longer Judaism. The first official Roman persecution of Christians was under Emperor Nero (c. AD 37-68) who ruled from AD 54-68. Prior to that, any persecutions were only local and not state ordered. With Christianity diverging from Judaism, they lost any toleration that Judaism enjoyed and eventually became an illegal religion in the Roman empire. It remained an illegal religion until the Edict of Milan in 313. Therefore, you can’t think of Christians as having political power or influence during that first 280 odd years of its existence.

An anachronism is something that belongs to one time period being attributed to a time period where it didn’t exist. So, if I told you that my great grandpa loved to play Nintendo when he was a kid, you could know that statement was demonstratively false. Nintendo wasn’t available in the US until the 1980s and my great grandpa was a kid in the 1850s. In the same way, during that 280 years and even afterwards, to think of monks copying the Bible inside of church buildings and controlling what the text says is an example of anachronistic thinking.

No church controlled all the texts.

Sometime prior to AD 200 there were Latin copies of most of our New Testament (NT) texts and those copies were used in the western part of the Roman Empire; however, in the eastern part, the church, used Syriac copies. The Latin copies did not contain Hebrews, James and 1& 2 Peter, whereas the Syriac copies did. Why? Because those books were written to churches on the eastern side of the Empire.

Perhaps you’re confused, wasn’t the NT written in Greek? So why are these collections of the NT in Latin and Syriac? Yes, as far as we know, the original NT writings were all in Greek with a few Aramaic words. As Christianity spread through the Roman world, there was need to translate the NT texts into other languages and these are helpful today as secondary sources in demonstrating the integrity of the NT text.

So, think about this: I have written these blogs on a computer, the originals are saved on my computer. I have copied and pasted them to the blog and you are reading them there. You can copy and paste them, and we know they will still be the same (exceptions being spacing and font sizes). However, that’s not how a book in the ancient world could be copied. They were copied by hand, which took time and effort, but once they were copied, if you wanted to change the text, then you’d need to control the original and the copies. But as I pointed out above, the western churches didn’t have copies of certain books. In order to change things, you are going to need to have control of all the books and all the copies of those books. But you’re also going to need to control all the translations of all those copies as well.

Let’s think of a more recent document, the Declaration of Independence. If I wanted to change the wording of the Declaration of Independence, what would I need to do? I need to have access to the original, I’d also need to have access to all the copies and today, all the photographs, digital copies, translations and quotations. So, would it be possible to change the wording of the Declaration of Independence?

Let me give you one last example. What are the sources for translating the Old Testament? The Septuagint (LLX), Greek copies of the Hebrew texts translated in the 2^nd century BC. The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), collections of Hebrew texts found in caves near the Dead Sea beginning in 1946, many dating to before the time of Christ. The Masoretic texts (MT), Hebrew and Aramaic texts that come down to us from the Masoretes, most dating from between AD 600-900. Finally, the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP), which existed in at least the 3^rd-century BC but was not available to western Christianity until 1616. As well as Latin copies. Note that the Christian church has had access to all these sources only within the last century. Had the church wanted to manipulate the documents within its control, those differences would be evident today by comparing the LXX and Latin texts with the DSS, MT and SP. The bottom line is, no one in church history controlled all the NT texts or their copies. If there were manipulations, those would be evident today by comparing them to the older texts.

Next week, we’ll explore when the NT was written. Please join us.

Written by Pastor Ozzy

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Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Spiritual Formation and Christ's Resurrection pt1

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Many people have asked the question, “What makes Christianity different from other world religions?” Meaning, what makes that belief system different from other belief systems? People in this part of the world believe this and people in that part of the world believe that and it has been that way for thousands of years. So what makes Christianity any truer than other religions? The answer is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Other religions have their supernatural events, their legends, and their stories, so why would the resurrection of Jesus be any different? Moreover, since the release of movies like Zeitgeist in 2007, it’s been proven that Jesus’ resurrection is a myth created by borrowing from other ancient religions, right? Yet, I still answer the question, “What makes Christianity different from other world religions” with Jesus’ resurrection. Why?

We are going to start a series concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and this series is going to take us through the season of lent and end the day after Easter Sunday 2019. The reason for this is because Spiritual Formation is the process of us being shaped into the image of Christ (Gal. 4:19). This process relies on us having a relationship with the resurrected Christ, and in fact, the whole Christian religion is predicated on His resurrection.

Easter Sunday has a special meaning for me because it was on Easter Sunday 2001 at a small church in Great Falls, Montana that I first understood the Gospel message. And it was from there that I began to look at the question, ‘did Jesus of Nazareth rise from the dead?’ For several years I had considered myself an atheist or an agnostic, but I clearly remember going to church when I was young and hearing the preacher say, “If Jesus is found still in the grave, then that is the end of Christianity.” I think he was right, because if He didn’t rise from the dead, then all the New Testament (NT) texts that talk about his resurrection are at best myths and at worst lies. If they are lies, then they are not worth believing or telling others about, and if they’re myths, then they are on par with other stories from world religions. Therefore, throughout this series, we’ll explore this very topic. Did the gospel writers invent hopeful myths? Did they develop lies to gain power and wealth? Did they borrow the legend from older stories? What is the context of Jesus’ resurrection and does it fit into history? Who was Jesus of Nazareth and are there other sources of His life outside of the New Testament? Join me.

The Stage is set:

Some 330 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Alexander the Great sought to conquer the world. Part of that included capturing the Levant and Jerusalem, but before Alexander could rule over his kingdom, he died. Consequently, his generals fought for control of the occupied lands and this resulted in Judea being ruled over by both the Seleucids and the Ptolemaic. When the Seleucid king Antiochus IV (c. 215-164 BC) outlawed Judaism and desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem in about 167 BC, an old priest named Mattathias and his sons began what is known as the Maccabean Revolt (c. 167-160 BC). Their successes were short-lived when in 63 BC, Roman General Pompey conquered Jerusalem and captured the Temple Mount. Rome now controlled Judea and maintained its control through military force.

That is the world that Jesus of Nazareth was born into. When His story begins, the Gospel writers also mention rulers like Herod, who is identified as the King of Judea (Luke 1:5). This would be Herod the Great (c. 47-4 BC), who under Caesar Octavius was appointed to this position. This is attested to in both Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish Wars, by the Jewish and Roman historian Flavius Josephus. Before Jesus was born, the NT tells us that Augustus (c. 63 BC – 14 AD) was Caesar. He was the first to rule during Imperial Rome, from 27 BC until his death. None of this information is religious history, it’s part of Roman and world history, all of which can be verified from secular sources.

Before Jesus’ ministry, the NT again identifies several political and religious rulers:

“Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…” (Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible, Luke 3:1-2).

Something notable about this reference is the fact that the Passion narratives of all four Biblical Gospels indicate that Pontius Pilate, Herod the tetrarch, and the high priests Annas and Caiaphas all played significant roles in Jesus’ death. Tiberius Caesar (c. 42 BC-AD 37) began his rule as co-regent in AD 13 and succeeded his step-father the following year. Pontius Pilate (c. 12 BC-AD 38) was the fifth prefect of Judea, appointed by Tiberius in AD 26/7, where he served as governor until 36/7. Herod, the tetrarch, is also known as Herod Antipas (c. 4 BC-AD 39), and his dynastic title Herod, as he is referred to by in the NT, is attested to in the works of Josephus. The Jewish high priest Annas was appointed by the Roman governor Quirinius in AD 7 but was removed from office by the Judea procurator Gratus in 15. The Jews didn’t like pagan Romans interfering with their religion, primarily since the high priest was to be in office for the rest of his life; therefore, it is likely that among the Jews, Annas was still seen as the high priest. Lastly Caiaphas, who held the office from AD 18 – 36. Therefore, these political and religious historical figures were in place before and during the lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth. His life, ministry, execution, and resurrection are set within the rules or influences of these figures. This is important because it grounds Jesus in history. The Gospels and the rest of the NT do not present Jesus as a figure from ‘once upon a time’ or ‘a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.’ This will be shown to be important as we continue this look into the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection.