How We Know Jesus is not a Legend - Jesus Christ is Lord

Myth-or-Legend - Jesus Christ is Lord — <em>The trustworthiness of Scripture points to its authority as well Scripture is far more than a history book as good and trustworthy as that history is It is a book that calls us to examine our lives and relationship to God<em> Darrell Bock

We know Jesus is not a legend. His life and ministry, as recorded in the gospels, are substantially rooted in history. There would be no basis at all for Christianity if Jesus never existed, or His life was embellished by legend. Our faith depends on believing the biblical assertions about Jesus and His atoning work for us on the cross.

The importance of having a reliable record of Jesus

Belief in the historical record about Jesus assures us that Jesus is Lord

The Christian faith is based upon placing our trust in the Person and the work of the true Son of God as God has revealed Him in Holy Scripture. Therefore, we must have confidence that Scripture accurately portrays the life and work of Jesus. He is man, but He is not mere man. The apostle Paul writes, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:19).

Once we believe Jesus is both fully man and fully God, having two natures in one Person, we can understand how He can be our substitutionary sacrifice for sin. Since God cannot lie, Jesus cannot lie. He knew that all Scripture is divinely inspired of God, with no exceptions. If He lied or was mistaken, He would no longer be sinless, and that would disqualify Him to be the Savior of sinners. He said, “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of the pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17-18).

Jesus believed that He was the climax and focus of all of Scripture. He told the Jews, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39-40). Therefore, If we dismiss the story of Jesus as being a legend, we too are refusing to come to Him to have life.

Belief in the myth or legend theory about Jesus prevents us from having saving faith

As we have previously seen in the trilemma argument, either Jesus is a liar, a lunatic, or he must by Lord. So, there are no other logical choices if we believe the Biblical record to be reliably accurate. However, if we assume the myth or legend theory about Jesus is true, then we have lost any hope of finding and knowing the truth. Consequently, we won’t have a Savior and we will be condemned by God and die in our sins.

Does the legend theory explain the facts?

The legend theory makes no sense of Jesus’ death by crucifixion or His burial¹

The Bible says that the story of Jesus, who claimed to be equal with God but who was put to death by crucifixion and buried, was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. So, who would consider such a person worthy of devotion? Such a story would never make Jesus out to be worthy as a legendary figure.

The events occurred in an unnatural place for a legend to begin

The general religious environment of first-century Jewish Palestine would not have provided a natural environment for birthing a legend/myth centered around a recent, Torah-trumping, cruciform-messianic God-man.²

The gospels do not omit embarrassing features of Jesus’ story

Fundamental countercultural and embarrassing features of the Jesus story provide further evidence against the Synoptic portrait(s) being significantly legendary. The claims that Jesus’s identity was inextricably bound up with that of Yahweh-God and that he should receive worship, the notion of a crucified messiah, the concept of an individual resurrection, the dullness of the disciples, the unsavory crowd Jesus attracted, and a number of other embarrassing aspects of the Jesus tradition are difficult to explain on the assumption that this story is substantially legendary.³

The legend theory doesn’t explain the change in the disciples

Legend doesn’t explain the change in the disciples of why they began preaching resurrection. If the disciples were preaching a risen Jesus where none existed, the movement would have died out quickly.⁴

And why would Jesus’ disciples have been willing martyrs for what they recognized as mere legend?⁵

The conversion of Paul and James makes no sense of Jesus never existed

The conversion of Paul and James, the brother of Jesus, following the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, makes no sense if Jesus never existed or His resurrection never occurred. They would not have deserted their beliefs for a know legend.⁶

The story originated and was accepted while eye witnesses were still alive

The fact that this story originated and was accepted while Jesus’s mother, brothers, and original disciples (to say nothing of Jesus’s opponents) were still alive renders the legendary explanation all the more implausible.⁷

No historians or 1st century contemporaries of Christ (except Jewish religious leaders) apparently disputed the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ supernatural claims and feats, although such accounts were being widely circulated during their lifetime.⁸

The early church wouldn’t have grown in Jerusalem where the events could be proven true of false⁹

The religious leaders in Jerusalem led Jesus to be crucified. Therefore, they would have been quick to dispel any false report about Jesus rising victoriously from the grave if they had any proof that He didn’t. Instead, Peter preached about the risen Lord soon after Pentecost and multitudes began to believe in Jesus and were filled with the Holy Spirit.

On another occasion, Peter healed a crippled beggar and when the crowds saw what happened they were filled with wonder and amazement. Peter took this opportunity to attribute the miracle to Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through Him. The leaders were deeply disturbed because the apostles were proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead, so they seized Peter and John and put them into prison until the next day. “But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand” (Acts 4:4). If the leaders could have shown that the apostles were wrong, they could have prevented this so called disturbance.

It’s very unlikely a non-historical story could come about in a short span of time

In our view, it is hard to understand how this story came about in this environment, in such a short span of time, unless it is substantially rooted in history.¹⁰

Legends typically require a significant period of time to develop and gain credibility. In this case, within 20 years of Jesus’ death, Christian doctrine, conviction, churches, creeds, martyrs, and sermons–every one unequivocally confessing Jesus as Lord–can all be documented.¹¹

A legend takes time to develop. Buddah lived in 500 B.C., his sayings were written in 900 A.D. But with Jesus, the letter to the Galatians circulated in 48 A.D., 19 years after Jesus died.¹²

The alleged silence of Paul and ancient secular writers is inaccurate

Moreover, attempts to argue against the historicity of the Jesus tradition on the basis of the alleged silence of Paul or ancient secular writers have not been forceful. Paul’s letters reveal that Paul and his audience believed Jesus lived in the recent past and that they knew a good deal about the events of Jesus’s life, as well as his teachings. And while there is little found in ancient secular writings that pertain to the early Christian movement, there is more than we might expect, and what does emerge tends to confirm aspects of the Jesus tradition.¹³

Oral traditions support the view the writers wrote with historical intent & competency

Much of what we have learned about oral traditions in orally dominant cultures over the last several decades gives us compelling reasons to accept the earliest traditions about Jesus as having been transmitted in a historically reliable fashion.¹⁴

The biblical Synoptic Gospel writers wrote with historic intent and competency

Considerations from studies on ancient historically oriented traditions support the view that these authors wrote with historic intent and, by ancient standards, historic competency.¹⁵

A legend cannot account for the tremendous ongoing impact for good of a single individual

Can one realistically attribute mear legend to the historic, worldwide, ongoing impact of the life of this one individual, including the faith profession of many of the world’s most respected and wise people?¹⁶

In their book, What if Jesus had never been born?, D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe quoted a passage entitled One Solitary Life.¹⁷

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn’t go to college. He never visited a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself.

He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies and went through a mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.

While He way dying, His executioners gambled for His garments, the only property He had on earth. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure of the human race.

All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life.
Some have attributed this to Philips Brooks, the writer of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

Evidence for the reliability of the gospels

How the experts judge the reliability of history in ancient documents

There are several criteria at the disposal of literary experts as they assess the historical reliability of ancient documents. According to Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd, coauthors of the book, The Jesus Legend,¹⁸ they include the following:

Did the author write with historical intent?
Was the author in a position to report reliable history?
To what extent did the author’s bias affect the reliability of the report?
Is there self-damaging details included in the document?
Does the document include incidental details and/or casual information characteristic of historical reminiscences?
Is there evidence of a broad internal consistency within the document?
Are there inherently improbable events contained in the document?
Is there external literary evidence that corroborate the document?
Does external archeological evidence corroborate the document?

Eddy’s and Boyd’s assessment of the historic reliability of the Synoptic Gospels.

“…the Synoptics themselves give us plausible grounds for accepting that the basic portrait(s) of Jesus they communicate is substantially rooted in history. Yes, they are “biased”, but no more so than many other ancient or modern historical writers whom we typically trust. They include a wealth of self-damaging detail, as we have noted. They also contain the sorts of non-ideologically driven incidental details and casual information historians typically look for as evidence of historical interest. They are seen to be reasonably consistent once we understand them as texts operating with an oral rather than a literate conception/register, and when assessed within the constraints of the precision standards of ancient orally oriented cultures. The claims they make are not implausible, unless, of course, one rules out the possibility of the supernatural from the beginning. And while… there is relative little literary or archaeological evidence that unambiguously supports the reliability of these works, there is some, which is more than we might reasonably have expected for texts of their date and sociocultural provenance.
Eddy, Paul Rhodes; Boyd, Gregory A.. The Jesus Legend (p. 453). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Where does the evidence lead?

After making a thorough analysis of the Biblical records, Rhodes and Boyd reach their conclusion:

Where does this leave us? We suggest that these lines of evidence, viewed from the standpoint of an “open” historical-critical method, provide reasonable grounds for the conviction that the portrait(s) of Jesus in the Synoptic gospels substantially is rooted in history. At the very least, this probability is greater than the probability of any competing hypothesis, which leads us, at minimum, to the conclusion that the posteriori burden of proof should be born by those who claim the Synoptic Gospels are unreliable vis-à-vis their essential representations of Jesus.
Eddy, Paul Rhodes; Boyd, Gregory A.. The Jesus Legend (p. 453). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Their final point is also worth remembering.

Our historiographical conclusions, of course, do not yet come close to the surrendered, trusting relationship to the living Christ that lies at the heart of the Christian faith. But no amount of strictly historical reasoning or evidence can take one to that point. At best, historical reasoning can point in a more or less probable direction. To speak now as Christian theologians: The Holy Spirit, personal commitment, and covenant trust must carry one the rest of the way.
Eddy, Paul Rhodes; Boyd, Gregory A.. The Jesus Legend (p. 453). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Come to the wellspring of life

Scripture must go from your head to your heart in order to be saved. So, if you believe He came to save you, settle your eternal destiny right now. You can be reconciled to the One who created you and who has the power to place you in heaven or hell. Therefore, take the next step and cry out for His mercy on you, a sinner. Visit my post, How to Begin Your Life Over Again and you’ll know where and how you’ll spend eternity.

And for crystal clear YouTube presentations of the gospel message from several trusted sources, click here.

Share on Facebook

Post on X

References

1
tentmakingchristianity.com/was-jesus-a-legend/
2
Eddy, Paul Rhodes; Boyd, Gregory. The Jesus Legend (p. 452). Baker Publishing Group. 2007.
3
Eddy & Boyd
4
tentmakingchristianity.com/was-jesus-a-legend/
5
aiiainstitute.org/2001/12/01/is-jesus-only-a-legend/
6
tentmakingchristianity.com/was-jesus-a-legend/
7
Eddy & Boyd, p.453.
8
aiiainstitute.org/2001/12/01/is-jesus-only-a-legend/
9
tentmakingchristianity.com/was-jesus-a-legend/
10
Eddy & Boyd
11
aiiainstitute.org/2001/12/01/is-jesus-only-a-legend/
12
seekinggoddaily.com/was-jesus-legend-apol0778vc3/
13
Eddy & Boyd
14
Eddy & Boyd
15
Eddy & Boyd
16
aiiainstitute.org/2001/12/01/is-jesus-only-a-legend/
17
Kennedy, D. James and Newcombe, Jerry. What if Jesus Had Never Been Born? Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1994. pp. 7-8.
18
Eddy & Boyd, Chapters 9-10.