Examining Historical Evidences

• My parents are christians ?
• My friends are christians ?
• It's Comforting ?
• I don't want to go to hell ?
• Because you believe that it is true ?
• Because you know that it is true ?

What's your reason ?

If your reason that you believe that Jesus is the Messiah is something other than because you know that it is true, your faith would hold NOT up when you meet and talk with some liberal-minded theology scholar who can easily persuade you that the Bible is "just a fairy tale" and that "it is full of errors".

I can tell you right now that the Christian faith is based on Historical FACTS. (You may even be surprised to heard that the Christian faith is solidly based in Historical FACTS, but in the next few webpages, I will expose it systematically).

When you pick up the Bible, you are not picking up a "story book".... and I am always surprised that people call the events in the Bible "stories". Peter Pan is a story. The Lord of the Rings is a story. But the Bible contains HISTORICAL FACTS, not "stories".

In this first part of the website, I have lay out carefully the evidences that show that the Bible is a Historical Document, NOT a novel - The Bible is just as historical as the works by renouned ancient historians like Plutarch, Suetonius and Tacitus.

The basis of the Christian faith is:

• Jesus died, was buried and and was resurrected after 3 days.

There are ironclad historical evidence that support this fact. But we must be clear that evidence, no matter how strong, do not constitute a proof. The only thing that would constitute a proof is when you are eyewitness to the actual event; any second or third hand information is evidence that cannot be used as proof.

I do not (and cannot) provide proof for Jesus' resurrection. That is consistent with Jesus' teaching that you need faith. But faith need not be blind (blind faith is dangerous and can lead to disaster). The goal of these webpages is to provide you with reasonable faith, not proof.

• No, it's too late. As I mentioned before, only if you are an eye-witness to the crucifixion and the resurrection, you have no proof that it ever occured.

  In other words, unless we invent time-travel, there is no way to go back and observe the events

• But it is comforting to know that - unless we invent time-travel - that we cannot disprove this same fact.

• Let me ask you some questions first:
  • Do you believe that Julius Caesar and Octavius (Augustus) ever lived ?
  • Do you believe that Julius and Octavius were Roman emperors ?
  • Do you believe that the "Holocaust" ever happened - that Jews were systematically killed in concentration camps ?
  • Do you believe that the "Nanjin Massacre" ever happened - that Japanes soldiers brutally murdered countless innocent civilians ?

• If you do, why do you believe that ?

  (If you don't, you are wired seriously wrong and are probably beyond any help....)

• Well, you can also believe that Jesus did die, that Jesus was buried and that Jesus was resurrected, for the same reasons that you can believe all of the above:
  There are mountains of historical evidences preserved that show that the events recorded in the Bible are true.

  Particularly, the documentation for the most important event (which is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus) is so reliable, that you can bet your life on it .

• Personally, I believe, God Himself would NEVER ask you to commit your life to Him if He did not PROVIDE and PRESERVE ironclad assurances to the fact that His Son Jesus was the Messiah.

  Because He said that He is a righteous God and it would NOT be FAIR to accuse a person for not believing in Jesus if God did not PROVIDE and PRESERVE ironclad assurances.

  The historical evidences are there - you just have to go out and find it. It does not take much effort nowadays with the Internet.

  I did the legwork and compiled (almost) all of the evidences in these webpages....

• As I mentioned above, historical events that are far enough in the past (so that all eyewitnesses are dead....) can never be proved or disproved with absolute certainty.

• But we can "ascertain" (not prove) that some event has occured with a high degree of certainty through many different ways.

• Way to assertain historical events:
  • Artifacts: for example, having found Roman coins with Caesar's face on them makes the fact that "Caesar was a Roman emperor" very likely (but does not prove it with absolute certainty because it could be faked).

  • Archeological digs: when an ancient document mentions a place and you can't find it anyweher, it makes the document suspect. If you do find the places exactly as the ancient document says, it increases the reliability (because it did not lie about secondary facts)

    It's like you having a friend and you know he tells you a lie before. You would suspect everything else he tells you.

    (BTW, pay attention to some guy named Crossan on TV and see how many lies you can uncover in his statements.)

  • Ancient writing: facts on important events are often preserved in ancient writing (e.g., the Bible). The accuracy of these writing depends on many factors:
    • The time between the happening of the event and the recording of the event on paper - the short, the more accurate

    • How well are the contents of these documents preserved through time.

      There are no printing press or CD roms in ancient days, and the writing is recorded on paparus - very think paper that is rolled up. These papari are unrolled and roll up many times and they wear out. New copies of the scriptures are made when the old papari are worn. How well did the copiers did the copying will afftec the content that gets passed on to us.

• Most (if not all) significant historical events are disputed heavily by at least two opposing point of views

• Example 1: Holocaust

  The Nasi's in WWII were very racist and systematically killed handicapped and retarded people to "improve" the Arian race. They especially hated the Jews and developed "the Final Solution" plan to systematically kill the Jewish population in Europe.

  • Nowadays, there are those that say that there was no systematic killing of Jews going on: click here , and click here with a news article to show that it even happened as recently as in September 2002: click here

  • And there are those that want to preserve a piece of their history with the Holocaust History Project click here , preserving every artifact and story about this tragedy to disprove the Holocaust Deniers, for a picture: click here ( WARNING: this picture shows a mass killing, so it may not be suitable for younger people !)

• Example 2: Nanjing Massacre

  During WWII, the Japanese army has committed a cruel act on the population of the city of Nanjing in China which is now known as the "Nanjing Massacre".

  • There are those (mainly Japanese) that deny that the Nanjing Massacre ever happened: click here , with a new article to prove they did deny it: click here ,

  • And there are those (mainly Chinese) that want to preserve the historical fact that the Nanjing Massacre did happen: click here , by preserving artifacts and stories about that event. Here are some pictures that they preserved as evidence that the Nanjing massacre did happen: click here ( WARNING: this picture shows a mass killing, so it may not be suitable for younger people !)

• These are just two of the most controversial events that happened in recent history - there may be more, but all I want to do is use them to illustrate what's going on in Jesus' time.

  What is happening now (around 2000) is very much like what is happening 40-50 years after Jesus died, was buried and resurrected:

  • The Gospels are being written to record the eyewitness accounts of the events.... why ?

  • Many of the eyewitnesses are dead and cannot testify for the events

  • The time is right to preach a "different truth" about Jesus

  In case you wonder why there was no need to write the Gospel right after Jesus' death: there is a multitude of eyewitnesses and they were convinced they saw Jesus died, was buried and talked to Him later.

  The Gospels were written when the time is now ripe for the opposing side to change the truth of history !!!

• Because significant historical events will almost always be denied or distorted, the people that have an interest that the historical event be preserved will always follow following single most important principle:
  • Always record the actual factual events as accurately as possible

  • In other words: the truth, only the truth and nothing but the truth

• It is not in the interest to even exagerate any outcome or event, because if many (thousands of) years later it is discovered that even some small detail is in error, the whole account of the event will be become doubtful - in other words, unbelievable. Then your message will be lost - so it does NOT help to lie or exagerate.

  In fact, there has been many examples where ancient exagerated tales have been "relegated" to legends:

  • Homer's Iliad
  • King Arthur

  Myths are legends that involve god figures, and I'm sure you know plenty of those from Greek Mythology.

• The basis of Christianity is the Bible where it teaches that
  1. Jesus was crucified on the cross
  2. Jesus died
  3. Jesus was buried (in someone else's tomb - Josoph of Arimatheas)
  4. and then Jesus was resurrected after 3 days.

• Obviously, we cannot prove that this historical event is true - it is TOO LATE for that

  All we can get are stories now (in fact, that's why you need faith to believe that Jesus is the Son of God because there is no way on earth you can know this for sure (you can'y be an eyewitness))

• But that must not stop us from ask ourselves:
  • Are there any evidence to support these historical events on which the Christian faith is based on ?

    I mean: we can be very sure that the holocaust and the Nanjing Massacre did happen - just look at the numerous pictures and stories of the Holocaust and Nanjing Massacre.... Sure, there are those that deny that these events did happen, but look at their motives and their arguments (arguments like: "pictures don't prove anything, show use those famous gas chambers used in the Holocaust (they have been torned down already)"). Their arguments don't hold water...

• Clearly, we cannot ask for pictures of the crucifixion.... (it would be nice....)

  We do have account of the life of Jesus and his crucifixion and resurrection in the Bible.

• But... are they true/reliable ??? or are these myths ???

• Lee Strobel - who is an investigating reporter and legal editor of the Chicago Tribune - set out to find answer to this (and other) question by interviewing prominent scholars of the New Testament which will lead to many more questions (and answers)

  I was inspired by his quest and did one of my own. Instead of traveling by airplane, I used the Information Super-highway - the Internet