The Real Jesus was but one of several parts of a series aired on the History Channel; this one was broadcast on December 4, 2013. One can either get angry while watching it or laugh. Giggles became frequent as the “experts” who made comments also made fools out of themselves. The phrase, great swelling words of vanity, from 2 Peter 2:18, KJV, readily springs to mind. They speak with such great confidence even when it is clear that they have no idea of what they are speaking. They try to sound certain even when they are admitting they are unsure.
Last week’s article dealt with things presented in only the first ten minutes. The viewer wonders if the producers of the series have as a goal seeing how many errors they can cram into just one segment. The problem is that many who watch might actually be taken in by their high-sounding, erudite tones. Those who participated in the series were obviously full of themselves (along with a great deal of hot air). Consider the following quote concerning the Bible:
It is one of the most important books ever written. Its contents have been studied, debated, and fought over for thousands of years. But does the Bible also contain secrets? Secret prophecies? Secret characters? Secret texts? Now for the first time, an extraordinary series will challenge everything we think, everything we know, and everything we believe about the Bible.
If that was their goal, they failed gigantically. They presented the same predictable modernist fare. If they included some new thoughts, insights, or evidence, none of it surfaced in a recognizable form. They told us what we already know about Jesus being born in 4-7 B.C. Perhaps some might yet be unaware of the fact that the calendar devised in the Middle Ages is off a few years in estimating the time of Jesus’ birth. But this error belongs to man; the Bible did not report a year.
Born in Bethlehem?
The Bible is not at all ambiguous about where Jesus was born, which was in Bethlehem (Luke 2:1-20, esp. v. 15; cf. Matt. 2:1). However, this fact “has been recently questioned by historians and theologians.” Is the audience supposed to doubt the inspired Word of God because some now question the fact? This tells us that the historians and theologians being consulted for this series do not respect the Bible as the Word of God.
Someone may ask, “But if they had proof that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem, wouldn’t you consider it?” Sure. If they had a signed statement written by Jesus, saying, “I was not born in Bethlehem,“ that would certainly be worth looking at. Of course, it would mean that He could not be the Messiah or our Savior and that His whole ministry and all His teachings are fraudulent. If Matthew and Luke left behind signed confessions that they “fibbed” in their accounts of Jesus’ life, none of us could ignore that. But what is their evidence?
“In fact, historians today widely think that during that period Jesus was not born in Bethelem….” Okay, we are still waiting. The “only likely census was the census of Quirinius around the year 6 A.D.” A census of Quirinius was taken and is mentioned in Luke 2:2. The Bible does not, however, give a year. The viewer is told that “scholars” know a lot about the Roman census; they were given for purposes of taxation (a fact we also get from the Bible).
…the Romans were quite adept at keeping documentations when it came to taxation. There is not a single scrap of evidence that these people were to be counted…in the place of their father’s birth.
So, there is nothing that disproves what the Bible teaches; “scholars” simply cannot find any corroborating evidence. And this lack of evidence is supposed to prove that the Bible is wrong—and that Matthew and Luke wrote what they did to make their account of Jesus fit with Micah 5:2? Really?
One cannot help but be reminded of the boast of historians and scholars over 100 years ago when they claimed that no such nation as the Hittites existed because THEY could not find any evidence of it. When the capital city of the Hittites was discovered, the scholars and historians had to wipe the egg off their collective faces. Just because we have not found verification of something recorded in the Scriptures at any given time does NOT mean that it did not occur; such is only an assumption—not evidence.
Matthew and Luke were written about 30 years after the resurrection. If these two writers made a claim that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, when in fact there had been no census for taxation required there, would it not be the case that the enemies of Christianity, living right at the time, would have pointed out the inaccuracy of such a claim? Rome itself carried on a severe persecution of Christians by the end of the first century. Do modern historians think that the Romans would have failed to expose this so-called inaccuracy? They surely would have known from their own documentation that Luke must have been misinformed, yet they never challenged the gospel writer on that point. It should amaze all of us that scholars living 2,000 years removed from the facts recorded somehow think they know more than those who lived at or shortly after the time written about.
The Gnostic Gospels
Since the Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in 1945, it scarcely qualifies as something new that “will challenge everything we think.” Christians have heard something of these documents before now. In one of them Jesus, as a boy, loses his temper, and a fellow child dies. And somehow we are supposed to give credence to such an absurd event? This infancy Gospel claims to have been written by Thomas, a brother of Jesus—even though no such brother of the Lord possesses that name in the Scriptures.
The Real Jesus puts its own spin on this matter. First, they say of the gnostic gospels: “They are believed to be older than the oldest known copies of the New Testament,” which may be true, but no one explained that they might be well-preserved because no one thought them to be legitimate—unlike copies of the New Testament, which were so worn out from use that they continually needed additional copies. A second assessment is that the gnostic gospels are described as “conflicting versions of Jesus’ life and teaching.” Right! That is another reason that no one regarded them as valuable. Their third comment was:
Probably 85% of what was available in the ancient world got destroyed. What we have…even though there are four gospels, is a very small slice of the traditions that were available.
What this series does not tell the audience is that the New Testament books were imitated by writers for two or three centuries. The church, therefore, did not regard them as legitimate—first, because they were new and no one knew anything of their origin, and second, because of their often silly and often contradictory contents to the books all regarded as genuine. Imagine a great artist whose four paintings were known and recognized by all. Suddenly 100 years after his death 50 more paintings surfaced, but they were not the same quality as the four. Would art lovers readily embrace these or dismiss them as forgeries? The same happened with those who tried to imitate the gospel narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The program does not do itself any favors when it makes statements such as, “Some scholars say Jesus could neither read nor write.” Proclamations such as these can only be worthy of derision. Jesus is called “the Word” in John 1:1. Now will one of those scholars who made such a foolish statement about the Lord please explain how it is that the Word does not know how to read or write? Furthermore, have they not read Luke 4:16-21? Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah.
John the Baptizer
After the first commercial break, The Real Jesus begins a discussion of the forerunner of Jesus, John. They introduce him with the following words:
A half-starved, nearly naked man storms along the river’s edge predicting the end of days and practicing baptism rituals.
In only twenty words, they have managed to cram together five errors. Common people would have to work exceedingly hard to average one error for every four words, but these are scholars after all who may be very adept at such things.
First, what verse of the Bible says that John was half-starved? We read that his food was “locusts and wild honey” (Matt. 3:4). Second, where does the concept about being nearly naked come from? The same verse said that he was clothed (not half-clothed) in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. How many people wear a belt when they lack sufficient clothing? These two things are totally made up or come from some artist’s impression of John; certainly the Scriptures do not portray him this way.
Third, Matthew 3:1 says that John “came preaching in the wilderness of Judea”; where is the verse that describes him as storming along the river’s edge? Fourth, what was John’s message? “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). What does The Real Jesus mean when it says John was teaching about “the end of days”? This phrase is in no way similar to what he actually said. John never taught anything about “the end of days.” Both he and Jesus preached about the kingdom of heaven which was about to come (Matt. 4:17). All that this means is that Jesus was about to establish the church.
Fifth, the Bible says that Jerusalem, Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to John “and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins” (Matt. 3:5-6). Matthew made no mention of “rituals.” As Mark describes it, “John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins” (1:4). In other words, being baptized had a real purpose—having one’s sins forgiven. It was not something symbolic or ritualistic. In fact, neither ritual nor rituals appears in the entire Bible. Certainly, describing John’s work as “practicing baptism rituals” is designed to minimize the importance of what he was doing. When someone confesses his sins and then is baptized to obtain forgiveness of his sins, such is a profound action—not some ritualistic practice. To have avoided all five of these academic blunders, all that the writers of The Real Jesus would have to have done is read Matthew 3:1-6.
The next sentence is one of the few in the series that is accurate. One person said that John the Baptist literally means “John the Dipper” because to baptize means “to immerse or dip in water.” How did this guy end up on the program? He did not cite a Greek lexicon to establish the claim, but he could have referred to any one of dozens. At the same time he is explaining, however, what baptism means, the program is showing artists’ conceptions of John holding a bowl with water in it and pouring it over the head of Jesus! No one can accuse the producers of being consistent with either themselves or the truth.
John is next described as being a “charismatic preacher.” And they know that—how? The Bible does not describe him in those terms. They also say that it is believed that John was Jesus’ first cousin. The King James uses cousin in Luke 1:36, but most translations have relative or kinsmen, which is the usual translation for the Greek word. Although Mary and Elizabeth could have been cousins, it is more likely that the relationship was less substantial, since Elizabeth was “well advanced in years” and Mary was a young virgin (Luke 1:7, 27).
The “scholar’s” next comment that one of the little-known secrets of the New Testament is that Jesus and John were rivals. This statement contradicts the New Testament, also. Some of John’s disciples had a problem with Jesus; John never did. The passage that should have been referenced (but was not) is John 3:25-30. A dispute had risen between some of John’s disciples and the Jews about purification. They came to John and said, “Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified—behold, He is baptizing, and all are coming to Him!”
John had born witness that Jesus is the Son of God (John 1:29-34). And now John defends Jesus by saying that what He had was given to Him from Heaven. He is content to be the friend of the bridegroom, and John’s role as His friend filled him with joy. He humbly stated: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” No rivalry existed between the two men.
The Cause of John’s Death
Between the rivals’ comment and the next subject, the script says that John the Baptizer elicited “a sense of apocalyptic yearning among the Jews.” No Scripture is quoted; they return to this idea later. So, what did the producers of the program say about John’s death? Did they cite John telling Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife” (Mark 6:18)? No, it is not even mentioned. Instead they summarize John’s imprisonment and death by alleging something that the Bible never says. Speaking of John, they claim:
Fearing riots from his growing crowds of followers, the Romans had John the Baptist arrested, sent to prison, and eventually beheaded.”
The reader should not bother to look for this in the Bible; it is not there—any more than John and Jesus being rivals is. The only truth that is stated above is that John had crowds following him, as cited previously from Matthew 3:1-6. Rome and the idea that John was somehow a threat to it had nothing to do, however, with the arrest of John. Matthew explains:
For Herod had laid hold of John and bound him, and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife. For John had said to him, “It is not lawful for you to have her.” And although he wanted to put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet (Matt. 14:3-5).
Herod did not imprison John for a political reason—because he feared John would turn his followers into troops and march on Herod—but for a spiritual and moral reason. Herod had left his marriage; Herodias had walked away from her husband, Phillip, and the two deserters now were “married” to each other. But what they had done was not lawful in the eyes of God, who regards marriage as a loftier institution than men do. Later, Jesus would be asked a question about marriage, and His answer would be that God designed it to be permanent from its inception and that people should not separate once they become husband and wife (Matt. 19:3-9). What John told Herod was correct. Neither he nor Herodias had the right to dissolve their marriages in order to have each other.
Herod arrested John because he did not like the morality of God which John preached! At Herod’s birthday celebration, Herodias’ daughter (by her previous marriage) danced before Herod and his guests. Being especially pleased by the performance, Herod swore with an oath to give the woman whatever she wanted. Her mother (the evil Herodias) told her to ask for the head of John, which Herod gave to her (Matt. 14:6-11). Thus, the death of John was not due to political unrest; his imprisonment had nothing to do with shadow armies, and his beheading did not occur because John had proven himself to be a powerful enemy of Rome. His death and execution came at the hands of a vile couple who detested being labeled as morally guilty of sin.