• Who Do You Say Jesus Is?

Billions of people around the world put their trust in Jesus. Why put so much emphasis on a man who lived two thousand years ago? Is there a rational reason for trusting Jesus?

What if Jesus never said or did most of the things the New Testament reports? What if the stories and teachings are just a myth grown up over the last two thousand years? We do have reliable sources outside the Bible that verify the impact of Jesus.

Some of the best of these were written by people who hated Christianity, and tried to smother it. For example, the city of Rome burned while Nero was emperor. It was a catastrophic event:

During the night of July 18, 64 AD, fire broke out in the merchant area of the city of Rome. Fanned by summer winds, the flames quickly spread through the dry, wooden structures of the Imperial City. Soon the fire took on a life of its own consuming all in its path for six days and seven nights. When the conflagration finally ran its course it left seventy percent of the city in smoldering ruins.

The Burning of Rome, 64 AD, at EyeWitnessToHistory.com/rome.htm ^<1>

Publius Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 56—117) recorded the events of the fire and its political aftermath. Nero was blamed for the fire. Like all politicians, Nero needed to blame someone. He chose to blame the Christians in the city:

Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for the abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus ... an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination.

Pages 61–62 of [HostileWitnesses]HostileWitnesses by Gary Michuta, 2016 publisher: Catholic Answers, Inc.

Estimates of the year Jesus was crucified range from A.D. 30 to 37. Rome burned between 27 and 34 years later. That leaves little time for legends to grow. In A.D. 64 everything said about Jesus could be checked by interviewing people who knew Him during His earthly ministry. Both followers and hostile observers left records. Saint Peter, one of His closest friends, was killed by Nero sometime between A.D. 64 and 68. According to researcher Margherita Guarducci,^<2> Peter was crucified by Nero on 13^th October, A.D.64. ^[1]

Would you, could you, submit to extreme torture and death for what you believe? Hundreds of Christians did under Nero. According to Tacitus, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty. In other words, those people, under threat of death by torture, still claimed to be Christians. These persecutions were not only in Rome, and not only under Nero. In about A.D. 112 Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, wrote to emperor Trajan:

in the case of those who have been brought before me in the character of Christians, my course has been as follows: I put it to themselves whether they were or were not Christians. To such as professed that they were, I put the inquiry a second and a third time, threatening them with the supreme penalty. Those who persisted, I ordered executed. For, indeed, I could not doubt, whatever might be the nature of that which they professed, that their pertinacity, at any rate, and inflexible obstinacy, ought to be punished.

Pages 71–72 of [HostileWitnesses]HostileWitnesses by Gary Michuta, 2016 publisher: Catholic Answers, Inc.

What motivated those people to accept death by torture instead of turning away from Christianity? Saint Paul's letter to the church in Philippi explains:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:5–11 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

Paul wrote this letter in A.D. 50.Estimates of the date range from A.D. 49 to 51.^[2] These words Paul shared sound like a worship song common to the early church, and composed even earlier. Even if this was first composed by Paul, it is still less than twenty years after Jesus was crucified.

The one claim on which all of Christianity depends is the bodily resurrection of Jesus after His crucifixion. Saint Peter delivered the first Christian message in Jerusalem to a crowd of hundreds, just a few weeks after Jesus was crucified:

You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know—this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.

Acts 2:22–24

Peter did not say, just believe me. He appealed to the crowd in Jerusalem, as you yourselves know. Saint Paul also explicitly tells people to talk to other witnesses for confirmation:

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

First Corinthians 15:4–8 [NRSV]New Revised Standard Version Bible by National Council of Churches USA, 1989

Paul appealed to eye witnesses of the resurrection, Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.

These testimonies do not start with, Once upon a time. They are grounded in real history, which was easily checked by consulting eye witnesses at that time. Today we must depend on ancient documents and archeology. We know from hostile witnesses like Tacitus and Pliny the younger, that early Christians confessed Jesus as Christ even in the face of certain death by torture.

As I've discussed in previous posts, the Bible is trustworthy and has not changed over the last two thousand years:

• Is the Bible Trustworthy?^<3>
• Trustworthiness of the New Testament^<4>

Lee Strobel's book, The case for Christ, examines the abundance of early copies of the New Testament writings. There are 5,664 manuscripts in Greek, the original language of the New Testament. There are also translations:

In addition to the Greek documents, he said, there are thousands of other ancient New Testament manuscripts in other languages. There are 8,000 to 10,000 Latin Vulgate manuscripts, plus a total of 8,000 in Ethiopic, Slavic, and Armenian. In all, there are about 24,000 manuscripts in existence.
...
His [Bruce M. Metzger] New Testament scholar, 1914—2007^{<5> [3]} conclusion: The last foundation for any doubt that the scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.

Page 63 of [CaseForChrist]The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel, 1998 publisher: ZondervanPublishingHouse

Considering all the evidence, inside and outside the Bible, I think we are forced to decide between two opinions about Jesus as proposed by C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.

C. S. Lewis on page 51 of [MereChristianity]Mere Christianity by Clive Staple Lewis, 1952 publisher: Harper Collins

What do you think? Do you accept Jesus as God with us? If you do, are you willing to suffer and die for that faith, as many early Christians did, and as others are doing now around the world? Do you think He was a madman or something worse. Maybe you see another way out of this choice. Please let me know in the comments.