Well its really great to be here. What we're
going to be looking at tonight is the question whether the Gospels are based on eye-witness testimony
and I want to be presenting some old and some new evidence
that the Gospels are indeed based on eye-witness testimony
But I want to begin
with a fellow Brit: CS Lewis, the author of the Chrinicles of Narnia
Who made and argument about the person of Jesus.
And he said that when we look at the sort of claims Jesus makes
about who he is, we either have to say that he is the Lord,
that he is Liar or that he is a lunetic.
Because his words can't just be written of as the words of a very
great person. Because a very great person doesn't make such claims.
doesn't attribute so much to himself. But what
we found is that in recent years, people have added to those three possibilities
another one: that Jesus is in fact Legend
So we want to ask the question whether the Gospels are in fact reliable.
I want to go to a sceptic
source: Bart Erhmann, one of the most famous, prominante
sceptics within the US at the moment
very accomplished biblical scolar,
says this about the Gospels:
What do you suppose happend to the stories about Jesus over the years
as the were told and retold, not as disinteresdd news
stories reported by eyewitnesses but as propaganda
meant to convert people to faith,
told by people who had themselves heard them fifth or sixth- or nineteenth-hand?
Did you or you rkids ever play the tlephone game at a party?
well the telephone game
in britain, we call: Chinese wispers
you're probably not allowed to call it that over here
but thats what we call it over there and no one minds!
Now you know the way the telephone game works.
Its a game specially set up to corrupt the message
so you know that you can laugh.
So there are various rules, for instance you have to
wisper, that ensures that the message gets curropted
Your only allowed to say it once, so that ensures that the message gets corrupted
You're only allowed to hear it from one person…
Why should I use that as an analogy for how Christiany spread early one?
I prefer the analogy of Karate. Now have
you ever heard that Karate must be becoming corrupted because
it's being taught from one person to another?
No! Because you know that Karate is full of discipline
and when people teach things, they teach it carefully
there are checks and balances to make sure things get passed on
I think that is a far better analogy.
But we're going to come back to this later, whether Christianity
could have begun through something like the Telephone game.
But the first thing we're going to do is look at
where the Gospels were written.
Now the Gospels, according to earliest Christ tradition there are about
where they were written say generally that they weren't written in the land of origin.
Which is Israel, Palestin. I'm not making a political
point when I'm using either of those words. OK? I'm just talking
about a location, ok?