• Historical Criteria applied to the Gospels to test authenticity
• The Jesus Seminar – goals and outcomes
• Evaluating the Extra-Biblical attestation to Jesus (Joseph, Suetonius and Tacitus – special attention to Josephus)
• The Crucifixion story and its historicity
Visit Apologetics Review to get the Powerpoint slides in PDF.
Full MP3 Audio here. (72 min)
Enjoy.
5 comments :
Great! Contrary to secular opinion I believe scriptual authority is our strongest tool against the flood of biblical cynicism out there.
I praise God that God's Word is true! Thanks for this resource that helps believers defend the faith.
Hi Noel, in my personal experience it been enormously more practical to have a metaphysical interpretation of the bible for it gets pass all this need to make a literal event in history, and gives a much more practical application to my daily life.
I often find that the more a literal interpretation is hard-pressed that goes beyond the command natural laws that we are observe in our universe the more skeptics are born.
I hope that with a metaphysical understanding of the bible these skeptics will truly recognize its authority to the truth that goes beyond the parables or representational stories.
I'm just shaking my head. I've tried this sort of "reductionist apologetics before" and 13 year olds see through it. Forget the details and try to punch through with the "main idea".
Darrel suggests that if enough people are telling the story of who Jesus is with credibility, then you can establish who Jesus is and push that issue (hopefully to belief). Using that methodology, you'll always get caught in the same trap. Everyone, educated or not, always goes straight to the same rebuttal: if the components of the story are unreliable, how can the sum of the components be reliable?
I don't think Bock addressed that rebuttal sufficiently.
Beyond that, since when can anyone establish a historical case that convinces a sinful heart about spiritual truth?
I've argued those in unbelief into agreeing that Jesus existed, or that their specific accusation of "contradiction" was not accurate, or successfully against whatever their complaint/argument was. I've spent hours arguing with people and defeated all their arguments, only to have them shake their fist at the sky and yell at God and then literally run away.
Bock's historical methodology is as theologically inconsistent as his apologetic.
Jesus had the same problem with skeptics raging at him, but it did not stop him from providing evidence through his miracles (as he explicitly states in the Gospel of John) or the "many convincing proofs" of his resurrection over a 40 day period (Acts 1). And apparently Luke also thought it was of utmost importance to do a thorough historical investigation and for Theophilus to receive it, which is why we have his Gospel (Luke 1:1-4).
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