Elephantine Papyri: The Book of Nehemiah, 20+ Years Later

Found in the early 1900's on the remains of an island settlement in the Egyptian Nile, a number of documents show us what was happening in the years following Nehemiah's restoration of Jerusalem. Known as the Elephantine Papyri, this group of texts contains letters written by Jews on the Egyptian island settlement of Elephantine to a group of decision making diplomats and higher-ups in Judah and Samaria. They even tell a fascinating story in their own right!

A KIND OF SEQUEL TO NEHEMIAH
More than twenty years (407 BC) after the events of the book of Nehemiah, these documents show us a number of things that either confirm the events of Nehemiah or tell us more about what happened after the close of the book (430?):

• Nehemiah was gone and someone named Bagavahya/Bagohi(?) was serving as Governor of Judah.

• Jerusalem was sending out religious educators to teach Jewish exiles how to serve the Lord.

• Sanballat (Nehemiah's adversary) was still governing Samaria - a confirmation of this detail from Nehemiah. 

• "Delaiah and Shelemiah, sons of Sanballat" were at least helping to run things for their aging father.

• "Jehohanan the High Priest" (Neh. 12:23) had now inherited the role from his father Eliashib (Neh. 3:20).

• In two drafts, "nobles of the Jews" (1st) is changed to "nobles of Judah" (2nd), reflecting that this was the more proper title and agreeing with a detail in the Book of Nehemiah (Neh. 6:17, 13:17).[1]

There are many direct and incidental details that match up with -or expand upon- Nehemiah's account. In some ways reading these letters feels like watching a TV-spinoff to a beloved movie franchise, set a couple of decades after the plot of the main film. Some of the old characters return to complete their stories and add continuity, many of the details of the world are carried over to create a sense of familiarity, some of the plot lines that left off in the original are carried over and taken up again, and a whole new cast of characters with their own flaws and challenges rises up to tell a new story.

WHAT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN ELEPHANTINE WAS LIKE

Jeremiah describes the group of Jews that originally left Judah to flee to Egypt as... well, significantly less than devout  or religiously orthodox (Jer. 43:7, 44:8). This is reflected in the letters from the Egyptian Jewish community that we find in the Elephantine Papyri. They had built their own temple in contradiction to God's establishment of Jerusalem as the proper place of worship and pilgrimage. They had started intermarrying with non-Jews and taking on Persian and Egyptian names. They sometimes took oaths in the name of other gods and seem to have combined their worship of the God of Israel with the local gods: "Anat-YHW" is invoked in one letter, which combined God's name (YHWH) with the goddess Anat.[2]

THE STORY OF THE JEWS AT ELEPHANTINE

So keeping all that in mind, here's the story: In 419 BC, a religious teacher named Hananiah (probably from Jerusalem) sent a letter to the Jews at Elephantine, instructing them on how to observe Passover. Shortly after that he arrived in Egypt. His presence appears to have been divisive: whatever the cause was, shortly after he got there a conflict broke out between the priests of Khnum and the Jewish priests of the Elephantine temple of YHWH. We're not sure how fast things progressed or how much of it Hananiah was there for, but at some point the priests of Khnum "detained" a pair of Jews and started to steal from the Jewish community, leading the priests of the God of Israel to retaliate by breaking into their neighbors' homes to recover the stolen property! Jewish men and women were then seized as prisoners, fined, and forced to return what they had stolen (stolen back?). The priests of Khnum also stopped up a well that the Jewish community was using, and at some point a wall was constructed that cut through the middle of Elephantine ("this half is my half..."), and things progressed for almost a decade until in 410 BC the priests of Khnum and the Governor of Elephantine finally destroyed the Elephantine Temple of YHWH. Although the Governor and the priests were punished (and executed!) for this, the temple remained in ruins and they were not given permission to rebuild. A letter was sent to Jerusalem asking them for diplomatic help to rebuild their temple at Elephantine, but apparently Jerusalem didn't think very highly of that request and they didn't respond--for three years. [3]

Finally, in 407 BC the Jews at Elephantine sent another letter to Bagoas(?), the Persian Governor of Judah, and a similar letter to the sons of Sanballat at Samaria, and intentionally excluded the High Priest at Jerusalem and the nobles of Judah this time around. That letter got a reply. Bagoas and Delaiah the son of Sanballat wrote a shared letter endorsing the rebuilding of the temple at Elephantine, though on the condition that burnt offerings not be offered there, which the Elephantine Jews agreed to. After that a letter was sent offering a bribe to a high official to secure permission to build their temple. (It makes sense; these weren't your average Jews, these were the goddess worshiping, break-and-entering, bribing, neighbor fighting ones.) It seems to have worked: a letter dated five years after this in 402 BC casually mentions "the temple of YHW" as a location across from somebody's house.[4]

WHAT SHOULD WE TAKE FROM THIS?

The records in the Elephantine Papyri help to confirm parts of the Biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah (and possibly a few details in Jeremiah), and show us what life was like for Jews -faithful or otherwise- in the exile. They also give us an important opportunity to stop and examine how faithful we are being to the word of God: it seems like the Jews at Elephantine really felt like they were being faithful, or at least faithful enough. But even though the local population saw them as Jews and had conflicts with them, that didn't mean they weren't losing themselves to the local culture. They were taking on Persian and Egyptian names; they were taking oaths in the name of foreign gods (even though it was just a formality--at least for some of them I'm sure), and their actions did not consistently reflect the God they claimed to believe in. It's easy to look at them and to see how bit by bit we could also lose ourselves in the same way that the Elephantine Jews did: so slowly that they didn't even realize it. That's why it's good to read Christian authors from different places and times than the one we live in, and why it's good to have people who will speak difficult truths into our lives: so that each day, even if we are prone to wander, we have an opportunity to return to the Lord.

-Sean

[PS - For one more Nehemiah-related discovery, you should check out the discovery of Nehemiah's wall. It's incredible - he actually built a wall, and he made the Persians pay for it. https://watchjerusalem.co.il/793-discovered-nehemiahs-wall]

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[1] These examples are all taken from three letters: TAD A4.1, TAD A4.3, and TAD A4.7/8.

[2] From TAD B7.3. The Prophet Jeremiah also mentions (desparagingly) that Jews he interacted with worshiped "the queen of heaven", which could easily have been Anat. So this detail could reflect a bit of religious syncretism that carried over from the group that fled to Egypt in Jeremiah's time.

[3] Taken from TAD A4.1, TAD A4.3, TAD A4.4, TAD A4.7/8.

[4] Taken from TAD A4.7/8, TAD 14.9, TAD 14.10, TAD B3.12.

Skepticism-of-the-Gaps: How the Bible Has Proven Doubters Wrong

If you want to feel exhausted, then make it your goal to research alleged Bible inaccuracies. The effort involved can be compared to engaging in battle with the fabled multi-headed hydra: for every alleged inaccuracy in the Bible that fizzles out upon closer inspection, two more arise to take its place. These range from the ridiculous but popular (every objection that starts with "the Emperor Constantine...") to arguing from silence (most of the ones below) to what I call "undead" allegations against the Biblical record which have already been decisively put to rest, only to improbably arise from their graves again once every few years in order to walk the earth in search of fresh brains or new hosts for infection. Finally, there are the tough-as-nails objections that don't give up once a significant piece of them has been blown to smithereens; they just bandage up and walk back into battle with whatever is left of themselves, half-scorched, declaring that you haven't beaten them yet. This last one is known academically as the minimalist position and is represented best (or worst?) in the discussion of King David. There are also a few genuine head-scratchers that Bible believing Christians have to make peace with or where the answer is at best possible but not assured, and I will take some time to talk about that at the end.

WHY KING DAVID DIDN'T EXIST... UNTIL 1995 (OR SO)

For a long time critical Bible scholars thought that King David was "about as historical as King Arthur". Nothing had been found mentioning King David's name before (the argument from silence). The latest the writing of the Old Testament could be dated was during the fourth or fifth centuries BC so it was assumed that was when it was written (the minimalist argument), too late for there to have been any accurate memory of any King David. Perhaps David was an invented figure created to motivate resistance against the Greeks and Romans (the argument from conspiracy). To a certain type of person, it made a lot of sense. Then in 1993 a monumental stone was discovered from ancient times, written by the foreign biblical king Hazael and bearing an inscription mentioning the "house of David". The whole thing was published in 1995. And since then David has existed. Today the academic consensus about David is one that only conservative Christians and Jews believed in before almost the 2000's. Since then the new, smaller objection is that David's kingdom was probably not as big as the Bible claims and that he was more like a tribal chief. The discussion right now is that the extent of his kingdom is looking to be much larger than had been admitted. Of course there are even more re-interpretations of David that admit much of the Bible's details but then insist on a "real" David lurking behind the Bible's heroic description. These will continue disputing the description in the Bible while at the same time collectively, ever so slowly coming closer and closer to matching what we find written there. The Bible is being shown to be trustworthy where it is being most disputed.

PLACES THAT WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE THERE

1. Nazareth, the Hometown of Jesus

In 2008 Rene Salm published a devastating book that proved Jesus's hometown of Nazareth wasn't even inhabited during the lifetime of Jesus... and it stuck, for a little less than a year. The argument was that Nazareth isn't mentioned in the works of ancient authors like Josephus or Philo where you would expect it to be and no other early source seems to mention it. There was a lack of archaeological proof for settlements at Nazareth during the time of Jesus. If Nazareth didn't really exist, how could the Gospels be true? The public didn't have to wait long to answer the question because in December 2009 archaeologists from the Israeli Antiquities Authority, excavating in the grounds of a former convent, unearthed a house from first century Nazareth with a few items inside. Be careful when you hear objections like this. This was a classic argument from silence--even if there is an argument for why a piece of evidence should exist, saying that its absence disproves Scripture is an argument that is only one discovery away from being proved dead wrong!

2.The Pool of Siloam 

This Jerusalem attraction where people came from all over to be healed is mentioned in John 9. But it was heavily dispututed for a long time. James Charlesworth, a New Testament scholar who comes from Princeton Theological Seminary, sums up this entry pretty well: "Scholars have said that there wasn't a Pool of Siloam and that John was using a religious conceit" to illustrate a point. But the pool was found in 2004. Charlesworth said at the time "Now we have found the Pool of Siloam... exactly where John said it was. A gospel that was thought to be pure theology is now shown to be grounded in history”.

HOW TO LIVE OUT CONFIDENCE IN THE MIDST OF GAPS
We've only had time to do a little bit of work on the many, many times where the Bible's account was doubted before being proved correct. We haven't mentioned anything about how we know the Gospels were written closer to the time of Jesus than many scholars had originally thought. We haven't talked about Belshazzar being the last king of Babylon in the book of Daniel when everyone was sure that was a mistake on Daniel's part. We've touched a little bit on how academic attitudes towards what we can know about Jesus have changed. We haven't said anything at all about Jericho. We are lucky to be alive in a time where King David has been discovered, the historical sites of the Gospels are being dug up, a few other people from the Bible get confirmed archaeologically every year, academic work on the Historical Jesus looks increasingly like what we read in the Gospels, and more. Previous generations had questions about all these things but they never got an answer--we did. It turns out that those who approached the Bible with suspicion were disproven, and those who approached the Bible with trust, based on evaluating what they could, were proven right. That would really be my takeaway for you here: to evaluate what you can, to see where there are gaps in our knowledge and to be okay with waiting for an answer, and to remember that while a lot of what we've found has confirmed what the Bible has told us, none of it has ever disproven Scripture. And don't take my word for it, take associate director of current excavations at Megiddo (Israel) Eric Cline: "In no case has the Biblical account of an event... yet been shown by an extra-biblical inscription to be completely false.” That's a guy with boots on the ground, and he's having to be even-handed. But if you ask him, has a Biblical account been proven false? Anything been just a complete contradiction? His answer is no. And I think that's pretty neat.

The Archaeology of the Bible

Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has brought great feats on the earth.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;

he burns the chariots with fire. “Be still, and know that I am God. 

I will be exalted among the nations,I will be exalted in the earth!” 

The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. -Psalm 46:8-11

In 2014 the magazine Biblical Archaeology put up a feature on its website that keeps a running tally of every person who appears in the Old Testament and has shown up in the archaeological record. It's been updated as more people have been confirmed. The current number is at 53, plus another 11 persons who are "almost" confirmed. That list includes everyone from David and twelve other kings of Israel/Judah, all the way to minor figures who are only mentioned once in the Bible such as scribes and officials like Shaphan (2 Kings 22:3) and Jehucal son of Shelemiah (Jeremiah 37:3). There's also a running tally of 23 New Testament political figures who are also confirmed archaeologically--with one additional person in the "reasonable but uncertain" category. There have been so many discoveries like this recently that even these lists are incomplete: Nathan-Melech might be sad to have not been included in Biblical Archaeology's list except that for one passing reference where King Josiah got rid of some horses that were located "by the chamber of Nathan-Melech" (2 Kings 23:11) he almost didn't make it into the Bible either. Last year his name was found on a seal at a site in Jerusalem.

EVENTS CONFIRMED IN THE BIBLE

If you've read your Bible through a few times, you might remember something about Judah's deportation to Babylon (where Daniel was thrown into a lion's pit). Not only have I read that story too, but I have the personal records of some of the families who were taken to Babylon sitting on my bookshelf. They were only recently discovered and then translated into English, just five or six years ago in 2014. The earliest of those records (dubbed the "Al-Yahudu Tablets" based on the name of one of the settlements mentioned in them) dates to only fifteen years after the deportation mentioned in the Bible. Those records also mention a settlement of Jews in a village around the Chebar River, which  independently explains what Ezekiel was doing there when he had his vision (Ezekiel 1:1-3). The timing of the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem (along with many details of the books of Ezra-Nehemiah) has also been confirmed by the existence of letters between a group of Jews living in Egypt who were trying to get permission to rebuild a place of worship close to home and officials in Jerusalem and Samaria (including two who are mentioned in the Bible, Jehohanan the High Priest and Sanballat).

A MIRACULOUS EVENT CONFIRMED

There are more confirmations of spectacular events in the Bible like this next one, but we'll stop here. The Bible records that in 701 BC the Assyrians came against Jerusalem and began a siege against it. About twenty years previous Assyria had carried off the northern kingdom of Israel into captivity leaving only the southern kingdom of Judah behind as a subject state. Now after rebelling against Assyria, King Hezekiah of Judah was facing down the Assyrian threat. In 2 Kings 18-19 and Isaiah 36-37 we're told that Sennacherib, who was ruler over the most powerful kingdom in that day, along with his large army of experienced city-conquering soldiers, had come from a successful campaign of conquest against many nations and walled cities and now had the city of Jerusalem totally surrounded and ready for the taking. Hezekiah had sent a large offering of gold and other goods to turn away the wrath of Assyria, but after accepting the offering they came against Jerusalem anyway. Kingdoms who lead rebellions against the empire can't be allowed to remain in place. The situation was hopeless. Then, in a desperate time, Hezekiah prayed for deliverance and the prophet Isaiah predicted that God would deliver Jerusalem the next day. That evening an angel killed a large number of the soldiers surrounding Jerusalem and Sennacherib turned tail and went back home. The city and the kingdom had been delivered. Jerusalem was surrounded by the most powerful king and the most powerful army in the world and then was let go after having led a rebellion against them. That's an incredible story, right? It's so incredible that it was bitterly disputed by skeptics of the Bible for years until Sennacherib's Prism was published in 1990, just 30 years ago, in which Sennacherib himself confirms many of the details of the story: "[Hezekiah] himself, like a caged bird I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city. I threw up earthworks against him— the one coming out of the city-gate, I turned back to his misery." He had Hezekiah dead-to-rights and rejected any deal-making by the messenger who came out to meet him from the city's gates (the messenger who Sennacherib describes is named Eliakim [2 Kings 18:26]). And then, nothing. His long campaign of cities and nations conquered ends abruptly, and Sennacherib returns home. (Assyria doesn't record its losses.) While he tries to save face, those who are well-studied in these kinds of records describe this as a tacit admission of his failure to capture the city.

WHAT DO WE DO WITH THIS?

When you are trying to tell whether someone is telling you the truth about themselves or about something that has happened to them, you look at the details of what they're saying and look for little inconsistencies or for lots of little details that line up to confirm their story. That's what good detectives do when they investigate an important case and decide whether to bring a case against someone or when a jury is looking for evidence to acquit someone. The Bible's record has been confirmed in big details, in very small details that you might not even catch after reading the Bible closely for many years, in many of the events it records, and (especially, and this is the subject of tomorrow's post) in details where skeptical historians had long assumed it was definitely wrong or had finally been proven to be incorrect. This should give us greater confidence in what the Bible tells us; not only about different places and names and battles, but in its story about how God has cared for His people and revealed Himself to us. Not only is God part of the story of Israel, but He is the author of your story. You can have confidence in the details of what He has done before, and you can have confidence that he will continue to work "all things for the good of those who love Him" (Romans 8:28) today.

Why Believe in the Historical Jesus?

"Many people have set out to write accounts about the events that have been fulfilled among us [in Jesus]. They used the eyewitness reports circulating among us from the early disciples. Having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I also have decided to write an accurate account for you, most honorable Theophilus, so you can be certain of the truth of everything you were taught." -Luke 1:1-4

In 2006 a famous British scientist and critic of religion published a book against belief in God, calling out religious belief as a "delusion". Although the book embarrassed many in the atheist community at the time with its poor reasoning, inaccurate information, and angry tone, it proved (and still proves) to be an instant classic among the masses. The author's series of one-sided and badly understood attempts to journey beyond his genetics expertise into the fields of cosmology, philosophy, history, statistical analysis, and law, reached a particularly bad point when he decided to also speak for non-religious scholars in the field of Biblical Criticism,[1] telling his readers that "reputable scholars" do not regard the Bible as a reliable record of what happened in history and questioning whether Jesus even existed. A few years later one of the author's main sources on Biblical Criticism, an atheist as well as a critic of Christianity who must have been regarded as "reputable", had enough of the nonsense and wrote Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. It turns out that belief in the historical Jesus and the usefulness of the Bible for history is commonly held even among non-Christian Bible scholars, although that doesn't extend to belief in Jesus as God or His performing of miracles. (If they believed these then they wouldn't be atheist Bible scholars, just Christian ones. There are plenty of those too.)

WHAT NEARLY ALL BIBLICAL SCHOLARS RECOGNIZE ABOUT JESUS
Darrell Bock, a Christian Biblical scholar who has made the Historical Jesus his main area of study, has pointed out that a University course on the life of Jesus would look a lot different today than it would have 30 years ago. Detailed historical study over many decades has shifted the field and led even non-Christian Bible scholarship to affirm details of Jesus's life that only conservative fundamentalists would have agreed with back in the 70's or 80's. Among the details which Biblical scholars from all religious backgrounds affirm today are:

• Jesus was a Galilean Jewish man
• He grew up in Nazareth
• His native tongue was Aramaic
• He was baptized in the Jordan River by John
• He had a traveling ministry through Galilee and surrounding regions
• He was followed by a group of disciples, both men and women
• He taught about the Kingdom of God
• He often spoke in parables
• He had a reputation as a wonder worker who cast out demons and healed
• He showed/preached compassion to those regarded as unclean or wicked
• He engaged in debate over matters related to the Jewish law
• He went to Jerusalem at Passover the week of His death
• He caused a disturbance in the temple a few days before His arrest
• He had a final meal with his inner circle of disciples
• He was arrested at the request of the high priest in Jerusalem
• He was crucified under Pontius Pilate in 30 or 33 AD
• His disciples, and Paul, believed He appeared to them after His crucifixion

With just a few more details added, that list could practically be a statement of faith! At least, these affirmations cover most of the details in Jesus's life that we would read in the Gospels.

BIBLICAL SOURCES FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS

The main source of information about Jesus is the Bible. We're used to thinking of the Bible as one big book, and as a matter of faith that's true. But when we are looking at the Bible historically it's more valuable to see it as a collection of historical biographies and records (and the oral and written material from which they were made) as well as letters, and as windows into the authors and communities that they came from. That's how the letters of Paul, and the material in them, can still be used by even skeptical atheist scholars like Bart Ehrman to reconstruct the life of Jesus and the beliefs of his earliest followers within less than five or six years after the crucifixion (for more on that, see this post on some things I learned about the value of Paul's letters for understanding the historical Jesus after reading Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist?). Then there are the four Gospels, which can now all be dated to about 70-90 AD at the latest, within a few decades after the crucifixion. The Gospels are actually each collections of even earlier material about Jesus, and by comparing them with each other we're able to tease out even more clearly what their sources were and how early they might have been as witnesses to Jesus's life, death, and even resurrection. So our historical sources from the Bible include:

• Paul's letters over the 40-60's
• Even earlier material that Paul references
• The Gospels, written over the 70-90's (at the latest - or as early as 50's)
• Earlier material used by the Gospels

NON-BIBLICAL SOURCES FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS

The two main first-century sources (before the year 100) for Jesus's life that aren't from the writings of Christians are The Antiquities of the Jews by Titus Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian, and The Annals by Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman historian and politician. I've already put together a post on Josephus' words about Jesus entirely using excerpts from Bart Ehrman, so if you want more you can look there. What's important is what one skeptical Bible scholar writes about Josephus and Tacitus: "there is absolutely nothing to suggest that the pagan Tacitus or the Jewish Josephus acquired their information about Jesus by reading the Gospels. They heard information about him. That means the information the gave predated their writings. Indirectly, then, Tacitus and (possibly) Josephus provide independent attestation to Jesus's existence from outside the Gospels". This gives us:

• Josephus, c. 37-100 AD
• Tacitus, c. c. 65-120 AD
• The traditions and material that they used

FROM THE HISTORICAL JESUS TO THE CHRIST OF FAITH

When we talk about the historical Jesus we're talking about the smallest possible picture that we can have of who Jesus is. This is only what's been proven with enough certainty that scholars are forced to acknowledge it. It's what a secular Biblical scholar can still affirm without becoming a Christian. But we should be encouraged that the picture of Jesus they have been forced to come up with looks a lot like what we've come to believe about Him from reading the Bible, except for the resurrection and miracles. And often those doubts about Jesus in the mind of skeptics just comes from a belief that miracles can't exist. I would encourage you to make as much of Jesus as you can, and to have confidence that your belief in who Jesus is has enough evidence behind it that even the most reputable skeptical scholars also find much of that same picture compelling. So now--live for Jesus! Follow His example. I hope this has encouraged you in your faith.

...And Then Bang, It Happened: God the Prime Mover

"Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God."
-Psalm 90:2

There are a lot of firsts in everyday life: The first person in my family to come from Ireland was my Great-Grandmother. The first day of the work week is Monday. Sir John A. Macdonald was the first Prime Minister of Canada. All of us are constantly living a sequence of events all day long. One thing happens first. Then something happens next. We know something came before us. We know something came before that. Scientifically, we also know (from testing cosmic background radiation) that the universe had a beginning. But what came before that? Now how about before the thing that came before the universe? This is what's called the problem of infinite regress. A sequence can't go backwards forever; in the chain of events there had to be a first link. Many philosophers have called this first link a Prime Mover who acts upon other things as the first Cause but itself is not caused by anything. The Bible calls this being God: "Before... you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God." (Psalm 90:2).

Philosophers have been thinking about this problem for thousands of years now, from at least as far back as Aristotle all the way to Thomas Aquinas and down to the present day. Although many have been skeptical of religion, this problem has still caused many of them to believe at least in God as the necessary explanation for how the universe got its beginning. (On its own, this belief is known as Deism, which even critics of religion have held to including Thomas Paine.) Some have tried to argue that infinite regress is possible; these include the Atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell who used the example of how negative numbers can go "backward" infinitely from zero to prove his point. However, -1 doesn't really come "before" 0, it comes after--it's measured as one less than zero, just like -2 is two less than 0, and on and on. Although numbers can go on infinitely, they all have 0 as their starting point. Although this is not necessarily a proof for Christianity but more for the existence of God in general, it is another instance where approaching the universe using reason has given us a picture of God which happens to line up very well with the picture of God that is given to us in Scripture.

Here's what this means for us. Since God is the First Cause, then we know He has a will: He moves and acts on His own, deciding what to do before He does it, and therefore we can trust that God has a reason for everything that He does even if we don't understand that reasoning. Since God is the Prime Mover, He is powerful enough to set the whole universe in motion. That means nothing is impossible for Him. He is also able to do "immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine," (Eph. 3:20). Since God, being the Cause of the universe, is greater than that which is caused, we should acknowledge Him in our lives and serve Him with thankfulness. Since God is eternal and not caused by anything that came before Him, maybe we might approach God, who Daniel calls "the Ancient of Days" (Daniel 7:9), the way that we would approach a very elderly person who has lived lots of experiences: as someone, who owing to their age, has seen it all before and who has important lessons to pass down to us. So we should approach God with an attitude of learning. If God is the designer of a universe which has the appearance of design then we should wonder what His purpose for designing us is, what we're made for, and we should seek God through prayer and through His Word to find out.[3]

Today, take time to look outside in nature (or watch Planet Earth on Netflix) and think about God: he began everything, and everything has Him to thank for our existence. What a gift!

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[3] The descriptions in italics each riff on one the "Five Ways" of Aquinas.

Why Believe in the Resurrection?

"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." -Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8

THE CENTRAL FACT OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

In the Green Dome, where Muhammad is buried in Medina, an empty grave is reserved by Muslims for Jesus. Supposedly this is where Jesus will be buried at a future date after returning from Heaven. Although Muhammad is considered the greater prophet in Islam, it is Jesus (according to Islamic teaching itself) whose life and teachings have been attested by miracles, whose grave is empty and whose body hasn't been claimed by death, while no miracles were attributed to Muhammad during his lifetime and his body lies decaying in a tomb. For many Muslims Jesus' empty grave, contrasted with the status of Muhammad's body buried in Medina, is one of many strange inconsistencies in the Islamic faith that have led large numbers throughout the world to re-examine the facts and put their faith in Jesus as Lord. Simply put: if Jesus' burial site is empty, the Christian faith makes much more sense.

THE RESURRECTION: EVIDENCE FOR FAITH

Many have come to faith just by looking at the evidence for the resurrection. As an atheist during his reporting days in Chicago after graduating from Yale Law School, Lee Strobel focused his search for the evidence of Christianity almost exclusively on whether or not we can know that the resurrection of Jesus happened. As he began to examine the evidence for himself over a long period of study, he came to faith in Christ. Even among those who have looked at the evidence but refused to come to faith, the strength of the reasons to believe in the resurrection still gives them pause. Here's British philosopher Antony Flew, formerly one of the world's best-known Atheists (he came to believe in God later in life, though not Christianity) on the evidence for the resurrection:

“The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity." -Antony Flew, once described as 'the world's most notorious Atheist'.

WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION?

The evidence for the resurrection is the subject of a large number of very thick books that spend pages going into many details, arguments, and counter-arguments. So we're not going to lay down a water-tight case within just the next paragraph or two here. That said, here are just a few pieces of evidence that have helped very educated, very skeptical people put their faith in Jesus:

1. The Apostles Willingly Died for Their Belief in the Resurrection

People die for their beliefs all the time but the Apostles are different for one very important reason: they were in the position to know for certain whether their claims were true. They didn't just claim to believe that Jesus rose from death; they universally claimed, in the face of threats and persecution, to have seen it with their own eyes. To Corinthians who doubted the resurrection, the Apostle Paul directed them (in the passage quoted at the top of this post) to a whole list of witnesses of the resurrection, including 500 people who saw the risen Jesus all at one time. The implication is clear. If any of them continued to doubt, they could send a representative to Judea to ask the literally hundreds of people who saw it for themselves. The Corinthians had financial resources and could afford to send someone to check on Paul's claims. Often this kind of thing was done in the ancient world. If you are Paul, this is not the kind of challenge you would lay down if you couldn't back it up. So here we have:

(a) The Apostles were in a position to know whether or not their claims were true. 

(b) None of them gained wealth or status by teaching that Jesus was risen. All of them were killed horribly for their faith, except the Apostle John, who was boiled in a cauldron of oil and exiled to a barren rock island. 

(c) Incredibly, none of the Apostles broke rank or denied that Jesus rose. Compare that with the shaky -at best- witnesses of the alleged prophet Joseph Smith in the Mormon faith, and you start to get an idea of how incredible it is that none of the Apostles ever left or denied the faith despite persecution.

2. The Jesus Movement Died Out After the Crucifixion, Then Suddenly Exploded

The Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus, writing over the first and second centuries, described the growth of Christianity like this (note that he doesn't seem overly positive toward Christians): 

"[Emperor] Nero fastened guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class... called Christians by the populace. [Christ], from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular." -Tacitus, Annals 15.44

Movements tend to die out after their leader is killed, especially when that movement is centered around their leader being a promised king or prophet who will deliver his people. They don't tend to pick up steam. There were many movements that were centered around supposed Messiahs which died out around Jesus' time, both before and after (for examples, see Judas the Galilean and Simon Bar-Kokhba). Not the Jesus movement. In the case of Christ, the movement started to die after "[Christ]... suffered the extreme penalty... at the hand of Pontius Pilate" which is about what you would expect, and then something happened to cause the movement to suddenly explode and spread everywhere. The resurrection explains how such an unusual thing happened in the case of the Jesus movement: it gave the movement new momentum.

MORE PLACES FOR YOU TO LOOK

I want to keep going, but this post is already much longer than I was expecting it to be. Maybe I'll go into this in more detail over the next few days, or return to it later depending on the response. For now here are two more links for evidence about the resurrection. Take a look, and let's keep the conversation going.

Historical Evidence for the Resurrection at Desiring God

Four Compelling Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection by Lee Strobel

Explanations Offered for the Resurrection by Cold-Case Christianity

HOW TO LIVE THE RESURRECTION

Whatever your other questions are about the Christian faith it comes down to this: if the resurrection is true, then Christianity (at least the core of it) is true. That doesn't mean that you won't still wonder about some things from time to time or have doubts about other issues. But it does mean that Jesus' claims about Himself, His teachings passed down to His followers, and the truth of what He says about the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven are backed up by the most definitive historical mic drop of all time: the Easter miracle of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Let that be an anchor when other doubts or troubles come your way, when the voice of God is distant, or when life does not seem to make sense. A faith that is centered on what you feel can ebb and flow as circumstances come your way, but a faith centered around the reality of Jesus' history-shattering resurrection miracle will not easily be swayed no matter what trials come or how many obstacles you face.

Happy Easter,

-Sean