William Lane Craig lectures on the historical Jesus at Columbia University

One of the other software engineers at work is always finding interesting sermons and lectures to listen to. On Friday afternoon, things were a bit slow, so she messaged me a lecture featuring Dr. William Lane Craig, talking on “Who Was Jesus?” at Columbia University. I wanted to encourage her, so I put it on to listen as well. I liked it so much, I wrote out a summary below to go with it.

Here is the lecture:

Description:

Dr. William Lane Craig unpacks questions surrounding Jesus’ resurrection and the historical accuracy of the biblical claims.  Columbia University, 2009.

And my outline:

Different views of Jesus:

• Jewish view of Jesus
• Muslim view of Jesus
• skeptical historian view of Jesus
• what did Jesus think about himself?
• Jesus didn’t write anything of his own
• best sources are the records of Jesus followers
• problem: how do we know these records are accurate
• maybe stories of Jesus’ divinity emerged over time

New tools from the Renaissance:

• historiography
• textual criticism
• investigate Jesus as a historical figure
• same tools are used for other historical figures

Sources:

• Christian
• Jewish
• Roman
• Many more sources than other figures of antiquity

External sources:

• confirm what the gospels say, but don’t say anything new

Treating the Bible as a collection of ancient documents

• not using the Bible to prove the Bible is divine
• just treating the books as historical documents

New Testament

• a collection of the earliest documents
• much later documents about Jesus not included
• later documents not written by eyewitnesses

Skeptical scholars:

• ignore the earliest sources
• focus on the later sources
• result is a more radical left-friendly Jesus

Burden of proof

• are the gospels assumed reliable until proven unreliable?
• are the gospels assumed unreliable until proven reliable?

Five reasons to assume the New Testament is reliable

1. Insufficient time for legendary influences to erase the historical core

• the gap between the events and the sources is much shorter than other comparable sources
• Greek and Roman sources are at least 1-2 generations from the events they record
• Gospels written down and circulated within first generation after the events they record
• the eyewitnesses were alive at the time they were written down

2. Gospels are not the same genre as folk tales or urban legends

• Gospels talk about real people who actually lived
• Gospels talk about real places excavated by archaeologists

3. Oral tradition in first century Jewish society

• Jewish culture valued reliable transmission of religious tradition
• Memorization of long passages and entire books

4. Restraints on the embellishment of traditions about Jesus

• The apostles and other eyewitnesses could correct embellishments

5. Gospel writers make testable statements that are found to be true

• Luke is the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts
• In Acts, Luke accompanies with the eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus
• Acts contains many historical details accurate to the times and places he writes about
• Luke’s gospel is in accord with archaeological discoveries made since

It’s reasonable to accept the general reliability of the Gospels, unless they are found unreliable

Historical basis for facets of Jesus

1. Unique Son of God

• historical critics claim that the divinity of Jesus developed over time
• why would monotheistic Jews contradict their monotheism by inventing a divine Jesus?
• the only reasonsable answer is that Jesus claimed divinity for himself
• His followers accepted it because Jesus provided reasons to believe
• Mark 12:1-8
  Earliest gospel reveals Jesus’ self-understanding as God’s “only beloved son”
• Matthew 11:27
  “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” This story is also in Luke. Source is “Q”, an early set of traditions common to Matthew and Luke
• Mark 13:32
  Jesus sees himself as above humans and angels, but subordinate to God the Father

Why would anyone take Jesus seriously, unless he was able to provide evidence?

2. Jesus’ miracles

• Jesus’ miracle stories are in all four sources
• The only reason to reject them is because of a philosophical bias against the supernatural

3. Trial and crucifixion

• Crucifixion narrative is in the Gospels, Paul’s letters, Acts
• Also confirmed by Josephus and Roman historians
• Historians across the ideological spectrum affirm the crucifixion

Why was Jesus crucified?

• Doesn’t fit with the skeptical view that Jesus was uncontroversial and had few followers

4. Jesus’ resurrection

• Jesus resurrection is the best explanation for historical facts accepted by diverse majority of historians

1. Burial location known to friends and enemies, and corpse would refute the resurrection
2. Tomb was found empty by a group of Jesus’ women followers
3. Post-mortem appearances to individuals and groups, friends, skeptics and enemies
4. Original disciples became convinced that Jesus rose from dead counter to their own interests

• The facts are accepted by a majority of scholars across the ideological spectrum
• Dr. Craig’s debate with a scholar who invented an unknown, identical twin brother who was separated from Jesus at birth
• Jewish historian Pinchas Lapide affirms the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event

Then there is a period of question and answer, which I did not find useful, because the questions seemed to be more about the needs and feelings of Christians, rather than about the facts presented by Dr. Craig, or about how these facts survive in debates on university campuses. Facts don’t care about your feelings.

It never hurts to listen to William Lane Craig. If you listen enough, you can remember his points when you get the opportunity. In college, all of my friends at Crusade could do his opening speech from his debates on God’s existence from memory.