In this three-minute video, I just reminisce on a time of God’s provision when I was unemployed, not yet reemployed, and had nothing. God sent provision through someone who did not know my need.
(P.S., in the video I mention that I’ve continued sponsoring a child through decades. It’s not all the same child. The first one grew up 🙂 )
Paul does his best to transcend others’ prejudices and cultural barriers to share good news in Athens.
On a popular level, some writers dismiss all evidence for Jesus as inconsequential and view him as a pure creation of his followers. Even apart from the dismissal of many lines of evidence, this skeptical approach, if followed consistently, would make much of history unknowable.[1] As in the case of other new movements, whether from disciples of Socrates, Muhammad, Buddha, or Joseph Smith, the life of the founder was initially of little interest beyond the circle of his own followers. The Dead Sea Scrolls revere the founder of their community, the Teacher of Righteousness, yet he appears nowhere outside their own literature.
Likewise, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus claims to have been a Pharisee, yet he nowhere mentions the Pharisaic sage Hillel, whom most subsequent Pharisaic traditions name as one of their central figures.[2] Meanwhile, the Judean king Agrippa I, whom Josephus depicts as prominent even in Rome, merits only the barest passing mention in a Roman historian covering the period.[3] Another major Roman historian devotes little space even to Herod the Great.[4]
By the same criterion of relevance, the earlier Greek historian Herodotus neglected not only Judea but Rome.[5] And Josephus himself, despite his prominent role in the Judean war and as an interpreter of Judea for the gentile Greco-Roman world, merits no interest in later rabbis (who in fact show greater interest in Jesus).
This is not to imply that non-Christian reports about Jesus are altogether absent. Most scholars today recognize that the first-century Judean writer Josephus, who wrote about John the Baptist and Jesus’s brother James, also wrote about Jesus himself.[6] Josephus treats Jesus as a sage and wonder-worker executed by the governor, probably with the complicity of some of Jerusalem’s elite.[7] Many scholars argue that an early Arabic version also confirms the key points about Jesus that scholars have reconstructed as original (before scribal tampering) in Josephus’s account.[8] Possibly as early as 45 years after Jesus’s crucifixion, a Syrian philosopher named Mara bar Sarapion speaks of Jews executing their wise king, bringing judgment on Judea. (He probably heard this report from Syrian Christians.)[9]
By the early second century, one historian includes a report, from just two decades after the crucifixion, about Jewish debates in Rome, apparently concerning the Christ.[10] Another, reporting the slaughter of vast numbers of Jesus followers in Rome roughly 34 years after the crucifixion, mentions that Jesus himself was earlier crucified under Pontius Pilate.[11] Rome itself had finally taken notice, because subsequent events had made Jesus’s movement a matter of local significance. In fact, the movement had become more significant in Rome than was the governor who executed Jesus. Although Jewish sources and an inscription mention Pilate,[12] this passage marks his only appearance in surviving Roman literature.
Most importantly and most early, we have considerable information about Jesus in Paul’s letters to his congregations, beginning perhaps eighteen to twenty years after Jesus’s execution. Paul was certainly a Christian, but by his own admission he began his involvement with the sect as one of its persecutors rather than as one of its friends. While focusing on Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, Paul also mentions other information about Jesus, including the Twelve, Jesus’s brothers, Jesus’s being mocked and abused, his burial, his teaching about divorce, his words at the last supper, and so forth. Paul also attests what seems to be a widespread early Christian consensus about Jesus’s role as Christ and exalted Lord. Nevertheless, Paul’s situation-occasioned letters do not supply anything like a biography of Jesus or even narrate any episodes from his life before the passion.
If you want to keep reading, consider purchasing my book, Christobiography.
This content is by Craig Keener, but edited and posted by Defenders Media, 501(c)(3).
[1] Against this approach, see e.g., Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?. Detractors cannot complain FFF: (as those who wish to avoid ad hominem arguments should not, in any case) that Ehrman, an agnostic, is motivated in this argument by religious bias. FFF: See also Casey, Evidence (from a non-Christian perspective; although sometimes polarizing and attributing more than appropriate to individuals’ psychological backgrounds, he is probably right to observe that British academia tend to show a greater commitment to fairness than do some polarized U.S. contexts); Elliott, “Pseudo-Scholarship” (focusing on T. Freke and P. Gandy, and on 10 noting “factual errors, misstatements, and methodological misunderstandings on nearly every page”).
[2] See the comments by Israeli historian Flusser, Sage, 1; Flusser, “Ancestry,” 154; Flusser, “Love,” 154, compares the case of the Jesus movement with the followers of Simon Kimbangu or Joseph Smith. The analogies are of course inexact: for example, unlike Smith, Jesus left no written record; and unlike Jesus, Kimbangu did not train disciples (in the ancient Mediterranean sense). But the examples are sufficient for Flusser’s point.for Socrates, see Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 130; for the principle that it is those who care about a figure who preserve his or her memories, see Schwartz, “Smoke,” 11.
[3] Tacitus Ann. 12.23.
[4] Dio Cassius 49.22.6; 54.9.3.
[5] Josephus Apion 1.60-66, esp. 66.
[6] On Josephus’s genuine mention of Jesus, see Meier, “Jesus in Josephus”; idem, “Testimonium”; Whealey, “Josephus”; idem, “Testimonium”; Gramaglia, “Testimonium”; Paget, “Observations”; Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 79; Charlesworth, Jesus within Judaism, 90-98; idem, “Jesus, Literature, and Archaeology,” 189-92; Dubarle, “Témoignage”; Ehrman, Prophet, 59-62; Theissen and Merz, Guide, 64-74; Van Voorst, Jesus, 81-104; Niemand, “Testimonium.”
[7] Josephus Ant. 18.63-64.
[8] See Agapius in Charlesworth, Jesus within Judaism, 95-96; Hilarion, Beginning, 11-refs (noting Pines, Version, 16); but see Whealey, “Testimonium,” esp. 587-88.
[9] Theissen and Merz, Guide, 76-80.
[10] Suetonius Claud. 25.4; see Keener, Acts, 3:2697-2711, esp. 2708-11; Keener, “Edict.”
[11] Tacitus Ann. 15.44. FFF: Second-century authors also lampoon or criticize the Christian movement and its founder; see e.g., Lucian Peregrinus 11; cf. Celsus in Origen Cels.
[12] See e.g., Philo Embassy 299, 304; Josephus Ant. 18.35, 55-64, 87-89, 177; War 2.169-75.
My wife MĂ©dine shares her own direct experience as a Congolese woman and her observations about the experiences of other Congolese women.
Recently I heard that, because some Christians in a particular nation have died from COVID-19, their fellow believers there have worried that God is judging them. Although God in the Bible uses plagues and other natural disasters as wake-up calls, we should not suppose that every case represents this. In fact, Jesus, in whom we Christians behold the face of God, healed those oppressed by the devil (Acts 10:38; cf. Luke 13:16).
Although the Bible speaks of God sometimes using sickness as discipline (Rev 2:22), or some of God’s blessing for healing being withheld due to corporate disobedience (1 Cor 11:29-31), it is far from true that godly persons never suffer from sickness. Elisha died from sickness (1 Kgs 13:14), yet remained so full of God’s power that a corpse thrown on top his bones revived (13:21). Paul and his associates faced illnesses or physical weaknesses in the course of their ministry travels (Gal 4:14; Phil 2:26-27; 2 Tim 4:20)
Viruses might serve a natural purpose in controlling bacteria populations, and it is natural for viruses to mutate. But we might also envision a demonic purpose behind the form of this particular virus and its effects. The virus now ravaging the world, mutated into its present harmful forms, is evil. Also terrible is the plight of day-laborers in many countries who, because of the virus, currently lack access to food. It’s very important for us to pray for the front-line health care workers and for the scientists working on treatments and cures.
Plagues are terrible. Bubonic plague may have killed more than a third of Europe’s population centuries ago. AIDS has killed millions in recent decades.
In his Plague, Albert Camus may question whether it is logical for believers to seek to work against a plague that they envision as God’s judgment. Most monotheists (including myself) do affirm that God is also at work even above and beyond the level of evil in the world. The giver of life has the right to execute judgments and is compassionate to give us wake-up calls to turn us from greater judgments (for judgments as wakeup opportunities, see e.g., Amos 4:8-11; Rev 9:20-21).
But it’s important, when affirming such points, not to leave the wrong impression regarding what we should believe about those who suffer. Jesus’s ministry shows us God’s heart. Again, Jesus compassionately healed the sick, and his ministry shows us the importance of caring for those who are suffering and investing our resources in alleviating those sufferings.
In the application section on Revelation 6, which lists pestilence as among the judgments on humanity, I wrote this in my NIVAC Revelation (Zondervan) commentary some two decades ago:
“Such plagues are wakeup calls to humanity, but we must remember that they are judgments against societies [or the world], not usually against individuals. Because innocent sufferers often hear our blanket statements about judgment as personal condemnations, we should always make clear what we already know, that not everyone who suffers is experiencing personal judgment. … We must hear in the world’s suffering not condemnation of suffering individuals but, on a larger scale, God calling for the world’s attention.”
We tend to think in very narrow terms: is the cause of what I am writing a computer? My hands? Muscles moving my hands? Neurons firing in my brain? My social context? Or all of the above and more? In the same way, the Bible sees multiple levels of causation. Some things can be evils that, for greater good for the world overall, God has not stopped from taking their course, and chooses to use for good. In Christ, however, God provides us an ideal model of working against these evils.
Just as rain falls on the just and unjust alike (a blessing for Jesus’s largely agrarian audience in Matt 5:45), so viruses are no respecter of persons, and it is wise to boost our immune responses with healthy living insofar as possible. Viruses, like sin and death, remain part of this fallen world, and remain part of what we who follow our Lord’s model must work against.
The Bible shows us that we can look to God for protection, for healing, and for God to give wisdom for cures, and we can trust God to answer. Let’s pray for all these things. But we dare not treat those who suffer as worse than those who do not; Jesus reached out especially to the hurting. Sometimes those who suffer or have suffered even have special credibility with the suffering.
Alisa Childers interviews me regarding the historical reliability of Acts here.
Today’s post will be of interest mainly to academics who allow for the possibility of spirits. I try to address it from a somewhat neutral academic standpoint, though neither those who know my biblical convictions nor my African experience will be surprised at my conclusions.
