Debunking the Movie Zeitgeist

It's time for another edition of Fighting for the

Faith. It is Wednesday, July 22, 2009. I think

I've officially entered the Twilight Zone. Ha! Yeah, I say that because the response

I've gotten from yesterday's program, the Rob Bell's so -called gospel presentation, and comparing

Christianity to Mithra and Attis and stuff like that, the response

I've been getting was not exactly what I expected. More in a second. Thanks for tuning in.

My name is Chris Rosebro. You are listening to Fighting for the Faith, and this is the program that dishes up a daily dose of biblical discernment, the goal of which is to get you to think biblically, to get you to think critically, and compare what people are saying in the name of God to the word of God.

And in today's program, to do some comparative evidential work.

Why? Well, there seems to be this belief about Christianity out there that somehow we just blindly believe the

Bible story. You know, you ask me how I know Jesus lives. Well, he lives within my heart, that kind of stuff.

And yesterday's program, we talked about Rob Bell. In fact, the entire program was dedicated to Rob Bell's, quote, gospel presentation.

And something happened that I did not expect, and kind of showing once again that Rosebro can at times have the tendency to be out of touch with reality or current events or affairs.

There were several people who left comments on my Facebook wall saying, ah, wow, this explains how to refute the claims of the first part of the movie,

Zeitgeist. What movie is

Zeitgeist? I had no idea. There was a movie called Zeitgeist out there. Anyway, as it turns out, people were connecting dots, and more than one, connecting dots between Rob Bell's claims and the claims of a movie that was released in 2007 on the

Internet, basically a web -based movie release, if you would, a documentary of sorts entitled

Zeitgeist. And what was funny is that the claims being made by Rob Bell mirror a lot of the claims being made by the movie

Zeitgeist. Now, what we're going to do today is we're going to spend some time taking a look at the claims of this movie

Zeitgeist. You know, should Christians stick their head in sand and pray that Jesus cover their eyes and cover their ears and we can't handle this kind of attack?

Or is this just a bunch of really poorly put together so -called facts to make a claim that really is not substantiated, can be substantiated whatsoever if you just take the time to look at the evidence?

Believe it or not, there's really, really, really, really, really good compelling evidence that supports the claims of the

New Testament. The primary claim being that Jesus Christ was not only a historical person, but that he was none other than the

God of the Old Testament, the Jewish Old Testament, Jews being fierce monotheists who were not into astrology or wicca or anything like that, witchcraft.

Instead, they were fierce monotheists and Jesus Christ claimed to be none other than the one true

God of the Jews in human flesh. Now, can we substantiate this claim? Well, funny enough, the evidence is all there.

The fact that Jesus Christ was a historical person, lived in Judea, had a ministry in Judea between 30 and 33

A .D., was crucified under the Roman procurator

Pontius Pilate, and was raised from the dead are all historical fact.

The evidence is there to support it. The movie Zeitgeist, oddly enough, makes the claim that Jesus did not exist historically.

He's a pure mythological character, and the origin of this mythology is none other than astrology.

Yeah, Jesus is supposedly the, quote, Sun God, and he's just the same as Mithra and Attis and Horus and these other deities.

Now, we covered that extensively yesterday, but I want you to hear the claims of this movie, and what we're going to focus in on today, for those of you who want to say, well, aren't you going to refute the

Attis and Mithras and all that? Yeah, we did that yesterday. So I'm not going to do the same stuff again, but we're going to attack a different angle on this thing.

And again, I've got news for you all. Christianity has not engaged in some kind of a cover -up or a conspiracy, and tried to suppress the facts about Jesus Christ, and killed people who knew the truth that he didn't really exist.

Nothing could be further from the truth. And just a common -sensed, unbiased look at the evidence will lead you to the conclusion that Jesus Christ, not only did the biographies in the

New Testament give us an accurate picture of him, that they're spot -on, that he was a historical person, and he claimed to be none other than God in human flesh, and that three days after he was crucified, he was raised from the dead.

Yeah, this is not mythology. This is history. And so we'll get into that a little bit today.

So, you know, funny. So this is kind of a follow -up. But then again, here's the question.

You know, this whole Zeitgeist movie, just so you know, the movie itself is rather interesting.

Let me pull my notes up out on this thing. You can view it online. There's nothing to be afraid of, of this movie, really.

If you can think critically and are willing to take a look at the real evidence, you don't have anything to worry about this thing.

But here's basically what this thing does. It starts out with an attack on Christianity.

I have to warn you, there's some bad language in it, because they quote George Carlin uncensored.

And then it moves to an attack on the U .S. government, and then on to capitalism.

So my take on the whole Zeitgeist movie, what we're really dealing with here is this is a propaganda film.

And funny enough, the themes of this really are Marxist. And they're classical

Marxists at that. Remember, Marxism teaches that religion is the opiate of the masses.

And so they're apparently trying to wake everybody up. And so they attack

Christianity with really baseless facts. It's ridiculous.

It's almost embarrassingly bad. And then they make the claim that the

U .S. government is responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center, the 9 -11 attacks back in 2001.

And then they make the claim that capitalism, that's right, that a group of secret evil international bankers are purposely trying to wage wars in order to make profits.

And they want wars to perpetuate unendingly.

And so what's the solution to all of this? You always listen to, OK, what are you trying to sell me?

So here they've deconstructed Christianity, the U .S. Republican principles, and capitalism.

So what are we supposed to replace it with? Well, solidarity, this concept that we are one, the power of love, and losing individual identity and understanding that we are all interconnected in solidarity.

That's the end point of this thing. My conclusion, what we're dealing with here in the movie

Zeitgeist is none other than just Marxist propaganda. So which leads to the question, why does

Rob Bell sound like these guys? But that whole other question. But again, it's just really bad journalism, just wretchedly bad.

And it's such selective cherry -picking of evidence and concepts and stuff that you sit in there going, how would anybody believe this?

The reality, though, is it doesn't surprise me that anybody would believe this thing. And the irony of the whole thing is that they talk about how the media and the

U .S. government have been purposely manipulating the masses using fear.

That's right, fear to control and manipulate you. And I'm watching this thing going, wait a second, aren't the people who put this movie together employing fear in order to manipulate the feelings and thoughts of the people watching this movie?

Again, it's one of those things where the thing I've learned is that people who scream the loudest against somebody else's sins, and don't talk about grace and mercy and the forgiveness of sins, but are pointing a finger at somebody and saying, you are a sinner and you're using fear, that in reality

I think what they're doing is they're engaging in projection. They're projecting their own shortcomings and their own agenda on their supposed enemies.

Anyway, that was the kind of juicy, relishy irony of the whole thing. So with that being said, what we're going to do right now is

I want to play for you the audio from Part 1 of the movie

Zeitgeist. I want you to hear it in context. Again, the claims in here are outrageous, and if you listen to yesterday's program, you already have a foundation for refuting the early claims in here.

But we're going to listen to this all the way through to where they get to the punchline. What's the punchline? Where are they going with this?

Jesus Christ was not a historical person who existed. He's a mythological character of the astrological zodiac, and like I said,

I probably will interrupt this along the way, but I want you to hear this because these attacks on Christianity are not new.

And we don't need to go and get our pitchforks and stab the people to death or pray for the return of the

Inquisition and the Rack so that we can take these blasphemous heretics and torture them like they deserve.

No, that's not even remotely the Christian response. Yet that's their characterization of Christians.

Instead, what do we do? We just soberly, carefully, almost unemotionally, if you would, go and look at the evidence and test the claims.

We have nothing to fear from an examination of the evidence.

But then again, they try to present the evidence in here, and they do such a terrible job.

We'll have to talk about it later. So we'll be playing a little bit, actually, from a chapter of Lee Strobel's book, another book by Lee Strobel called

The Case for Christ. Now you notice I highly praised Lee Strobel's book, The Case for the

Real Jesus, and just a fantastic introductory -level book into the case and the evidence in support of Christ and Christianity is the book

The Case for Christ. You can pick it up as a paperback for like six bucks.

It's a really cheap book, and it's a fantastic piece of journalism.

Lee Strobel was not born and raised as a Christian. He was an atheist -agnostic reporter in Chicago, and his wife became a

Christian, and he decided that he was going to set out to take a look at the evidence, really more or less to disprove

Christianity so that he can free his wife from this stupid religion, and ended up really taking a hard look at the evidence, and as a result of it, became a

Christian. It's funny. The history of Christianity is filled with stories of men like Strobel who have started out to disprove

Christianity, and lo and behold, when they took an honest look at the real evidence, they ended up becoming Christians.

So I recommend that if you haven't read the book. One of the things I love about it is that he interviews a lot of really good scholars, and they handle the scholarly evidence straight up, and it deals with the eyewitness testimony, the corroborating evidence from outside of Christian sources, from historians that are both

Jewish and Greek and Roman, and it also deals with Jesus' fulfilled prophecies.

I mean, there's some really, really good stuff in the book, and if you're looking for just a good layman, easy to understand from a layman's point of view, introduction to the case for defending the

Christian faith, this is a fantastic work, and I can't recommend it more highly enough.

I mean, I've read a lot of apologetic books out there, and this is probably one of the easiest to grasp, and I like the way the story is written around the evidence.

It's just fantastic. Alright, with that being the case, we're going to dive into the movie Zeitgeist, and let's listen to their claims.

You'll recognize some of these from Rob Bell from yesterday, but here we go. This is the sun.

As far back as 10 ,000 B .C., history is abundant with carvings and writings reflecting people's respect and adoration for this object.

And it is simple to understand why, as every morning the sun would rise, bringing vision, warmth, and security, saving man from the cold, blind, predator -filled darkness of night.

Without it, the cultures understood, the crops would not grow, and life on the planet would not survive.

These realities made the sun the most adored object of all time. Likewise, they were also very aware of the stars.

The tracking of the stars allowed them to recognize and anticipate events which occurred over long periods of time, such as eclipses and full moons.

They in turn cataloged celestial groups into what we know today as constellations. This is the cross of the zodiac, one of the oldest conceptual images in human history.

It reflects the sun as it figuratively passes through the 12 major constellations over the course of a year.

It also reflects the 12 months of the year, the four seasons, and the solstices and equinoxes.

The term zodiac relates to the fact that constellations were anthropomorphized, or personified, as figures or animals.

In other words, the early civilizations did not just follow the sun and stars, they personified them with elaborate myths involving their movements and relationships.

Okay, I'm going to point something out here. So far, this is nothing profound or mysterious.

He's just giving an explanation for where we get the signs of the zodiac from.

Now, real quick question. Can you, or any of you listening who are skeptics and you've tuned into Fighting for the

Faith because you want to hear what this raging, raving, obviously one -toothed imbecile has to say about Christianity and disproving the movie

Zeitgeist. Where in the Bible is the zodiac clearly taught?

Where in the Bible is astrology taught in a way that it's basically supported, its tenets are supported?

The answer to the question is, it isn't. There is no teaching in the scriptures that tell us these same stories or tell us anything about the stars and the zodiac or whatever.

There's no direct correlation between the Judeo -Christian scriptures, the

Bible, and the teachings of the zodiac. In fact, astrology is a competing truth claim to both

Judaism and Christianity. And I point this out because throughout all of history, throughout both their histories, astrology and Christianity and astrology and Judaism have not been partners.

They have not been close cousins to each other or anything like that. And nowhere in the Bible is astrology taught.

Now, this is important because what this guy in this movie here is doing, he's going to try to pull a whole bunch of verses out of context, keying in on particular words, and then reading into the biblical text that he's ripped out of context these astrological, astro -theological concepts.

But they're not explicitly taught. In fact, you would have to believe in the

Bible code, the astro -theological quote Bible code, and need to pull out your astro -theological decoder ring and possibly even spy glasses in order to correctly read the scriptures in such a way that you can divine or unlock and decipher the astro -theological meanings in it.

We continue. The sun, with its life -giving and saving qualities, was personified as a representative of the unseen creator or God, God's son, the light of the world, the savior of humankind.

Okay, this is an interesting play on words. Notice that he specifically said God's son.

Now, the funny thing is that this is just a really dumb trick in English.

The reason why is because the two words sun and son phonetically sound the same, but they are spelled differently.

This is a funny little parlor game. Hang on a second here. I'm going to do a little work in the Greek here. Okay. However, for instance, in the

Greek, let me take this to the New Testament, to the Gospels.

Here we go. Okay, in the Greek, the word for son is wios. Okay? However, and son, what

I'm referring to, that would be son as far as my son

Joshua, or I am the son of Raymond. So the term son in the

Greek is wios, yet the term for the sun, that would be that big ball of fire up in the sky, is helios.

Wios and helios don't even remotely sound alike. So here in this movie, The Zeitgeist, this guy is saying the

Zodiac represents the sun, and it's God's son. You see, doesn't that sound a lot like the, quote, son of God?

But it's stupid. It's stupid because son and son are two different words.

They just sound alike. Likewise, the 12 constellations represented places of travel for God's son and were identified by names, usually representing elements of nature that happened during that period of time.

For example, Aquarius, the water bearer who brings the spring rains. This is

Horus. He is the sun god of Egypt of around 3000 B .C. Okay, now we're now going to get into the supposed parallels between Jesus Christ, God's son, get it?

And Horus, the Egyptian sun god, the Egyptian god of the sun. You see, there's...

He is the sun, anthropomorphized, and his life is a series of allegorical myths involving the sun's movement in the sky.

From the ancient hieroglyphics in Egypt, we know much about the solar messiah. For instance,

Horus, being the sun or the light, had an enemy known as Set, and Set was the personification of the darkness or night.

And, metaphorically speaking, every morning Horus would win the battle against Set, while in the evening

Set would conquer Horus and send him into the underworld. It is important to note that dark versus light or good versus evil is one of the most ubiquitous mythological dualities ever known and is still expressed on many levels to this day.

Broadly speaking, the story of Horus is as follows. Horus was born on December 25th of the virgin

Isis, Mary. Okay, got to stop here for a second here. Does the Bible teach that Jesus Christ was born on December 25th?

Answer, no. It doesn't even tell us when Jesus Christ is born.

It does tell us the events surrounding his birth. In fact, when you read the

New Testament biographies, because that's what they are, they're biographies, we find out that Jesus Christ was born when

Caesar Augustus basically took a census. In fact, let me read from the

Gospel of Luke. Let me pull this up here. Here's the difference between the

Christian claims regarding Christ and these mythological deities.

You heard the story of Horus and Set, right? Well, these two gods explain why there's sun during the day and why it's dark at night because it's the battle of light versus darkness.

It's like mythology, if you understand the story of Baal. Baal was claimed to be locked in the underworld and he was the god who brought rain.

And so when there was no rain, he was defeated and swallowed up by a competing god. And then when he was set free, you could tell he was set free because it was raining again.

See? That's the thing in common with all of these old mythologies.

They're not grounded in a specific time in history. It's a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

There was this battle between good and evil, between light and darkness. And you see what I'm saying? Yet the

New Testament documents and the New Testament biographies are very, very different.

And so if we go to Luke's biography—by the way, Luke is kind of like a journalist of his time.

He builds his gospel by interviewing the eyewitnesses to the events.

Rather than it being a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, in order to explain the weather patterns and the different seasons of the year, the summer solstice and that kind of stuff, we read,

In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire

Roman world. This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was the governor of Syria, and everyone went to his own town to register.

You see what's going on here? I just want to point that out. So, big difference.

So, does it say when Jesus was born? No, we don't know when Jesus was born.

In fact, I've seen pretty credible evidence that he wasn't born in December at all, probably born in late

June or early July. Yes, he was born of a virgin, literally.

Hang on a second here. I want to do a little bit of work on Horus here. Okay, let's see what we've got here.

Horus was told by his mother Isis to protect the people of Egypt. He's the sun god, Egyptian deity associated with the sun.

Horus was said to be the sky. I wonder if it says anything about him virgin. Hang on a second here.

Virgin. I'm looking up references that talk about Horus. It doesn't say anything about him being born of a virgin.

Now, that doesn't mean that he wasn't. Who cares? The thing is that, hang on a second.

Watch this little slip here. His birth was accompanied by a star in the east, and upon his birth he was adored by three kings.

By the way, does the Bible say that three kings came from the east?

Three kings. We'll talk about the Magi in a minute. At the age of 12, he was a prodigal child teacher. At the age of 30, he was baptized by a figure known as Anup, and thus began his ministry.

Horus had 12 disciples he traveled about with, performing miracles such as healing the sick and walking on water.

Horus was known by many gestural names such as the truth, the light, God's anointed son, the good shepherd, the

Lamb of God, and many others. Now, this is all fine and dandy. The question I have is, first of all, what's the primary documentation to support these claims or these so -called parallels?

But the other thing is, has anyone ever met Horus? Do we know where...

I'm serious. Where is this Horus guy? I mean, they show a picture of the deity

Horus, and it looks like he's got a falcon head, and then he's got a big sun disk on his head.

This doesn't look like anybody I know. When did he live? When did

Horus actually live? Again, there's a huge difference between a mythology and the claims regarding the parallels here.

By the way, if you want a more extensive rebuttal of this issue, listen to Fighting for the

Faith from yesterday. That would be Fighting for the Faith from July 21st, deconstructing

Rob Bell's false gospel. We go into depth regarding the fact that all these claims regarding the so -called parallels between Christianity and these mystery religions, really, when you hold it up to the light of scrutiny, for instance, the dating on all these is way, way off.

You know, Attis, Mithras, late. They come after Christianity is already formed. This Horus deity, again,

I'd want to see the documentary evidence, but more importantly, I'd like to know who met this guy.

See, Jesus is really different because the claims regarding Jesus is that he was an actual person in time and space history at a specific region in the world during a particular time of the

Roman Empire. This wasn't a long time ago in the mists of foggy history.

This was a very specific time, but we continue. After being betrayed by Typhon, Horus was crucified, buried for three days, and thus resurrected.

Again, where does it say that Horus was crucified? By the way, crucifixion, I don't think it really came around until about 600

B .C. Just, you know, so I would challenge that claim because crucifixion as a form of execution didn't...

I mean, here they're saying Horus, these are attributes of him from 3000 B .C., yet crucifixion didn't exist as a form of capital punishment until the

Romans really perfected it. Well, they perfected it, but really until about, what, 600 B .C.? I think that's the earliest counts we have of it.

These attributes of Horus, whether original or not, seem to permeate many cultures of the world for many other gods are found to have the same general mythological structure.

Attis, Phrygia... Okay, now, pointing this out, he's mentioning Attis, Phrygia. Now, keep in mind, we already went through the evidence on this yesterday.

The Attis cult really doesn't even take root in the Roman Empire until late,

I mean, we're talking late, mid to late 2nd century, and really doesn't even get growing until the 4th century, long after Christianity has taken hold.

Again, who's met Attis? Any of you out there, do you have any eyewitness testimony regarding Attis, Dionysus, Krishna?

Just, you know, again, the Christian biographies take on a completely different element because these took place in actual history.

Okay, we already proved yesterday regarding Mithra. They probably ripped off a lot of their ideas directly from Christianity, but listen...

No, he wasn't. Mithra was born from a rock. Already we've got a problem here.

This guy is just throwing out, quote, facts and claiming all of these parallels, but again, not really doing any true comparative work here between these different mythologies.

This is just a surface treatment of so -called supposed parallels. And already, some of the facts are spurious.

Mithra was never born of a virgin. He was born from a rock, fully grown and naked and wearing a cap.

Okay, again, this is false information because there is no record of the death of Mithras.

None, whatsoever. So, he was not born of a virgin.

He did not die and was dead for three days. This is just patently false information.

Again, listen to yesterday's program. No, he never died and he was never resurrected.

So, you see, already we've got a problem. This guy is being real flippant with these so -called parallel facts and I don't even think he's really doing

Attis, Mithras, Dionysus, Krishna, and Horus even really do justice at all.

And what I would recommend you do, listen to yesterday's program and get a copy of Lee Strobel's The Case for the

Real Jesus and read the chapter on Challenge No.

4 to the Christian Faith, Christianity's Belief about Jesus, where they copied from pagan religions. Again, it's not as if we've never heard of these arguments before.

They've been around for a long, long time and they've been discredited and debunked.

In fact, they were discredited and debunked decades ago. Decades ago.

And yet, this 2007 movie, Zeitgeist, we're already finding factual errors in his, quote, presentation.

We're going to take our first break and when we come back, we're going to continue with the movie Zeitgeist and their really bad claims regarding Christianity which really are not turning out to be very good facts at all.

Bad scholarship. Bad evidence. And if you disagree with me, I don't care. Go and get the evidence.

Let's talk. Let's talk. Read the chapter in Lee Strobel's book The Case for the Real Jesus and bring your scholars to disprove the scholarship that is presented there.

Then we can have a conversation. Anyway, if you'd like to email me, you can. TalkBackAtFightingForTheFaith .com

That's TalkBackAtFightingForTheFaith .com Or you can look me up on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

My name there on Twitter is PirateChristian. We will be right back. You're listening to PirateChristian Radio.

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Fishers, Indiana, zip code 46038. Now we're working our way through the movie, part one of the movie,

Zeitgeist, to see if we should all be rattling in our boots and shaking and quivering and going, oh no,

Christianity isn't true, because they said that Mithra was born of a virgin. See, already the scholarship here is questionable, because Mithra wasn't born of a virgin, born from a rock, was dead for three days.

Really, where does it say that? All the Mithra scholars are pretty much agreed, it doesn't say anything about Mithra dying, let alone rising from the dead.

So here's the deal, they're getting it wrong on the facts regarding Mithras. We already know that the cult of Attis didn't predate

Christianity, in fact it was more than a century and a half after Christianity, so why should we believe then again?

Anyway, we'll continue with the movie here, because their claims, they seem to be so formidable, but they're not.

No! You mean there was a pagan religion that worshipped on Sunday? No! What are the chances of that?

One in seven, by the way. You know what's funny, there were numerous saviors,

Christianity is very unique. Which of the saviors of these dying and rising so -called deities, was their death a sacrifice for the sins of the world, offering forgiveness for free to all of humanity?

None of these so -called dying gods were there propitiating the wrath of God, and nor was their deaths vicarious for their followers.

I just want to point that out. Oh no, there's a question mark on the screen, the question remains, why these attributes?

Again, you're reading way too much into these surface attributes that already we've disproven some of these parallels already.

You know, I'm questioning your scholarship at the point here, Mr. Zeitgeist. Why the virgin birth on December 25th?

Oh no, not the... A dead for three days, the inevitable resurrection. Why 12 disciples or followers?

Notice the intense, dramatic music. But the thing is that he hasn't made his point at all. Showing similarities doesn't prove a connection.

Again, the correct logical fallacy that this is called is post hoc ergo propter hoc.

That would be after this, therefore because of this. It's a logical fallacy. My wife calls that logical fallacy, how does she call it?

She calls it post hoc poppycock. To find out, let's examine the most recent of the solar messiahs.

Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary on December 25th. No, no, no, Jesus Christ was not born of the

Virgin Mary on December 25th. Yes, he was born of the Virgin Mary, and truly she was a virgin.

Bethlehem, his birth was announced by a star in the east, which three kings or magi followed. No, there were not three kings.

I want to talk about the magi here for a second. Just a little bit of biblical work here according to the New Testament biographies.

This guy is making claims about Christianity. He might as well at least get some of...

At least get edumacated regarding some of these. Let's see here. Matthew chapter 2.

Let me pull this up in the ESV. I want to make sure I got this right. Okay, now. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, by the way, very specific location here, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem.

Now, it does not say how many there were. There were wise men. There were magi from the east saying,

Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.

Now, this is a unique phenomenon here. Now, this was a regular occurring event astrologically or astronomy.

Well, if this was a regularly occurring astronomical event, there we go, I said it, then they'd be showing up year after year after year after year, wouldn't they?

But this is something unique. Something different. So, they've seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.

So, this is a unique astronomical event and these wise men who are studying the stars, somehow they've come to the conclusion that the king of the

Jews is to be born. So, when Herod heard this, he was troubled in all Jerusalem with him.

Now, I'm going to point something out here. Herod, what we know historically about this guy, he was not a nice dude.

Just want to point this out. If there were just three bumbling old wise men coming into town, it's highly unlikely that he and all of Jerusalem would be troubled about this.

Troubled about what some three bumbling guys who breezed in out of town were saying.

The reality is that back in those days, traveling in Judea on the roads with the gifts that they had, very expensive gifts by the way, gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Very expensive. The chances of them arriving alive in Bethlehem, it's not like they got in the family

SUV and got on the Judean Autobahn and drove to Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

This was a treacherous journey. So, in reality, there was probably a very large entourage of very well -armed men.

That's one of the reasons why Herod and all of Jerusalem with them are troubled. Who are these guys coming out of the east?

And the assembly of the chief priests and scribes and people, he inquired of them, where is the Christ to be born? They told him, Bethlehem and Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, and you,

O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people.

Now, already here in Matthew, just piecing this together here, not only do we have this event where Herod and these guys are troubled, these guys have come in out of town, obviously with enough strength to not be overthrown by highwaymen, and they're looking for the king of the

Jews, they're following his star, a very specific astronomical event that's not unique, I mean, that is very unique, not common, and then we come across this passage here, they knew that the

Messiah, the Christ, the Messiah was going to be born in Bethlehem. Well, how did they know that?

How did they know that the Messiah was going to be born in Bethlehem? Answer?

It was prophesied. Was it prophesied the day before Jesus was born, or was it prophesied actually quite far back in history?

Well, funny enough, the prophecy here that's quoted is from the prophet Micah, chapter 5, verse 2.

And Micah, we know, was written 400 years before these events occurred.

Fulfilled prophecy is another element to the veracity that provides strong evidence for Jesus being divine.

For how did the prophet Micah know that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem?

What are the chances of that? We continue. By the way, they're much greater than 1 and 7.

"...to locate and adorn the new Savior. He was a child teacher at 12, and at the age of 30 he was baptized by John the

Baptist, and thus began his ministry. Jesus had 12 disciples which he traveled about with, performing miracles such as healing the sick, walking on water, raising the dead.

He was also known as the King of Kings, the Son of God, the Light of the World, the Alpha and Omega, the Lamb of God, and many many others.

After being betrayed by his..." Again, you know, funny enough, he doesn't give any context for these titles, just throws them out.

See, you know, there was another deity that was called the King of Kings. By the way, common title for deities, by the way,

King of Kings. Also, that was a common title for earthly kings too.

Hmm... "...disciple Judas, and sold for 30 pieces of silver. He was crucified, placed in a tomb, and after three days was resurrected and ascended into heaven.

First of all, the birth sequence is completely astrological." Okay, again, no, it really isn't astrological.

This is, now this is where it gets fun. Okay, at this point, he told us a story about astrology.

He told us a story about the origins of astrology. He then tells us a story about these ancient mystery gods.

Right? So he told us a story about astrology, now he tells us a story about these ancient mystery gods, and already we know for a fact that a lot of his facts are, well, not real facts.

They're off the mark. Okay? And now he tells us a quick synopsis of Jesus supposedly showing that there's parallels, these surfacy parallels.

And surfacy is probably the best way to describe it. There's no depth here. We're just going to randomly just pick these things and throw them together and say, see, look, there's parallels.

Okay? And then he's going, now he's going to go back, he's making the claim that the order of events is astrological.

No, it's not. The order of events are historical, and they're recorded for us in the eyewitness biographies.

We continue. The star in the east is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Now, he's just making a claim.

The star in the east is Sirius. Really? I just made the claim, and I pointed out the fact that if this was a common occurrence astronomically regarding the star in the east, then the

Magi would be showing up year after year after year after year after year. Okay, Sirius is there today.

Okay, so on December 24th, Sirius, a star in the east, aligns with the three stars in the belt of Orion.

Guess what those three stars are called? They're called in ancient times the three kings.

No! See? Because there were three kings that came to see Actually, the historical records don't say that there were three kings.

There were three gifts. But where does it say the three wise men were kings?

Yeah, there's a song We three kings of Orion Yeah, but see, that's kind of late, don't you think?

That's not really biblical. Can we continue?

And the three kings and the brightest star, Sirius, all point to the place of the sunrise on December 25th.

Okay, so this is a Okay, we'll just assume this is all correct.

No reason to doubt him at this point. So on December 25th, the three kings, the three stars in the belt of Orion line up with the star of the east,

Sirius and they point towards the birth of God's son.

Notice the play on words that doesn't work because the Greek word for son is Helios. The Greek word for son, like your biological son born from your wife, would be

Hwios. Not Helios. Hwios. This is just ridiculous.

So, see, those four stars all line up and they point towards the birth of God's son.

See? That proves it's astrological. No, it actually just proves that this is just nothing more than an evidential parlor game.

You almost have to be dumb to believe this. This is why the three kings follow the star in the east.

Oh, yeah. They follow the star. In order to locate the sunrise.

The birth of the sun. See, the sunrise is the, quote, birth of the sun. See? I'm just finding this just so ridiculous.

And so now he's showing a picture of the nativity. In the nativity scene, you have the three kings, you have

God's son, S -O -N, and the star, Sirius. The Virgin Mary is the constellation

Virgo, also known as... Okay, now that's quite a claim. The Virgin Mary is the constellation Virgo.

Really, where in the Christian scriptures does it teach that the

Virgin Mary is the constellation Virgo? Anywhere?

See, here's the guy. The guy's just making an unsubstantiated claim. Funny enough, what we know is that the

Virgin Mary was an actual historical person. She was the one who carried the

Messiah in her womb. By the way, she was not a perpetual virgin.

That's a mythology that arose later. But here he just makes this unsubstantiated claim.

See, the Virgin Mary is the constellation Virgo. Really? Can you prove it?

Virgo the Virgin. Virgo in Latin means virgin. See, you know,

Virgo in Latin means virgin, so that proves it's Mary. See? Because post hoc ergo propter hoc.

That means, by the way, after this, therefore, because of this. Virgo was also referred to as the House of Bread. So Virgo is also referred to as the

House of Bread. Now, I'm not familiar with that term about Virgo, but who cares?

And the representation of Virgo is a virgin holding a sheaf of wheat. This house of bread and its symbol of wheat represents

August and September, the time of harvest. In turn, Bethlehem in fact literally translates to House of Bread.

Oh, yeah. See, because he says that Virgo is also the House of Bread, Bethlehem, which in Hebrew means

House of Bread. See that? This is really a stretch.

Bethlehem is thus a reference to the constellation Virgo, a place in the sky. No, Bethlehem is a reference to the city of David, not too far from Jerusalem.

Oh, man. Not on Earth. Oh, not on Earth, yeah.

Wrong. Again, the New Testament biographies read as histories, okay?

We don't have any of this astro -theological stuff being taught even remotely.

There's no shred of any of this astro -theological stuff being taught in the Scriptures. Instead, hang on a second here, let me go back to Luke because it's the

Lukean account. Let me read to you the author's introduction to the Gospel of Luke.

He's writing it to Theophilus, a God -lover.

He says, Luke here, if you read his Gospel, is he talking about stuff happening in the stars?

You know, other earthly events? When we get to Bethlehem, is he referring to the constellation

Virgo? I mean, if what this guy is saying is true, then this is really, really what

Christianity teaches, isn't it? He's claiming an alternative origin and teaching of Christianity.

In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when

Quirinius was the governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee to the town of Nazareth to Judea to the city of David, which is called

Bethlehem because he was of the house of the lineage of David to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

So if we're going to take this guy seriously, I mean, Bethlehem referring to the constellation

Virgo, we must then conclude that maybe Galilee was referring to the constellation

Scorpio. Judea here, well, Nazareth. Nazareth was probably

Taurus. Because it wasn't earthly. I mean, you know. We continue.

There's another very interesting phenomenon that occurs. Very interesting, uh -huh. Around December 25th.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh -huh. By the way, Jesus wasn't born on December 25th. Sorry, he wasn't. Winter solstice.

From the summer solstice to the winter solstice, the days become shorter and colder. And from the perspective of the northern hemisphere, the sun appears to move south and get smaller and more scarce.

The shortening of the days and the expiration of the crops when approaching the winter solstice symbolize the process of death to the ancients.

Yes, actually, he's right. All of these mythologies that spring up are designed to explain the changes in the seasons.

The death of the plants, the resurrection of the plants. It was the death of the sun.

And by December 22nd, the sun's demise was fully realized. For the sun, having moved south continually for six months makes it to its lowest point in the sky.

Here a curious thing occurs. Okay, you ready for this? Yeah, here's the explanation.

The sun stops moving south at least perceivably, for three days. And during this three -day pause, the sun resides in the vicinity of the southern cross.

Right, you see, because there, the sun resides in the vicinity of the southern cross.

From the position of the...this, by the way, he did say that this was a northern hemisphere phenomenon.

By the way, is Israel, Judea in the northern hemisphere?

How far north? I guess it is in the northern hemisphere. It's not south. And we continue.

You know, because it's close to the quote southern cross. Prox constellation. And after this time, on December 25th, the sun moves one degree, this time north, foreshadowing longer days, warmth, and spring.

And thus it was said, the sun died on the cross, was dead for three days, only to be resurrected or born again.

Wow. And where is all this documented as predating Christianity? Just curious.

This is why Jesus and numerous other sun gods share the crucifixion, three -day death, and resurrection concept.

Again, Jesus' stories are historical. The mythological characters are all tied to the cycles of the year.

And no, you're wrong. It is the sun's transition period before it shifts its direction back into the northern hemisphere, bringing spring and thus salvation.

Oh, man. How thinly can you spread that butter there, dude? However, they did not celebrate the resurrection of the sun until the spring equinox.

Now this is all kinds of fun. So we don't celebrate the resurrection of the sun until the spring equinox. And guess what this is?

Or Easter. Uh, by the way, uh, dude, um, really, we

Christians celebrate Easter on the spring equinox. Wrong.

If that were the case, then the Christian celebration of Easter wouldn't be moving all over the calendar.

The Christian celebration of Easter is not tied to any solar cycle. It's tied to the

Jewish Passover. Why? Because Jesus was crucified on the eve of the

Passover. And that date moves because the, uh, Hebrew calendar wasn't a 365 -day calendar.

It was more or less a lunar calendar. This guy's smart by two, by half.

This is because at the spring equinox, the sun officially overpowers the evil darkness, as daytime thereafter becomes longer in duration than the night.

Again, Christians do not celebrate Easter on the equinox. It's not tied to the equinox at all.

And the revitalizing conditions of spring emerge. Now, probably the most obvious of all the astrological symbolism around Jesus...

This is the obvious one, okay, in case you missed it. "...regards the twelve disciples. They are simply the twelve..."

The twelve disciples! There's twelve disciples! "...of constellations of the zodiac." Really, the twelve disciples are the twelve constellations of the zodiac.

So, would Peter be like Taurus? Uh, which one would be Virgo? Um, you know, which of you men wants to be the

Virgo? And, uh, this is ridiculous. Again, he's just making these claims up.

He's making stuff up whole -cloth. Just making an assertion and not backing it up. See, the reason why

Jesus had twelve disciples is because there's, quote, twelve constellations. Can you back any of that up?

With anything substantial? Anyway, we've got to take our second break, and when we come back, we're going to continue with this

Zeitgeist stuff, and then later in the second hour, we're actually going to, um, we're going to spend quite a bit of time listening to portions of the audiobook,

The Case for Christ, on the section regarding the corroborating evidence from outside of the

New Testament that verifies the historicity of Jesus! Believe it or not, the end result of all of this that we're hearing from this movie,

Zeitgeist, is that Jesus Christ isn't a historical person. Well, I got news for them from Zeitgeist, folks.

That's just an outright, patently false lie. And historically, they haven't got a leg to stand on.

And we'll show you how they manipulate the facts to, quote, make this claim. So, you don't want to miss that.

And I know those of you listening on the Christian Worldview Network, hour number two of Fighting for the Faith is not broadcast on that radio network, so if you want to listen to it and hear it, you can do so by visiting fightingforthefaith .com

and clicking on our archives. Alright, if you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard so far, talk back at fightingforthefaith .com.

Talk back at fightingforthefaith .com or ask to be my friend on Facebook or follow me on Twitter. My name there is

PirateChristian. We will be right back. ...

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... ... your servant in Jesus Christ." Hour number two, straight ahead of the program.

This is the program that dishes up a daily dose of biblical discernment. In this particular case, taking on not false doctrine within the church, although it's kind of odd that the darling of Zondervan Publishing, Rob Bell, is picking up on the same themes as this obvious attack against Christianity in the movie

The Zeitgeist, and picking up their false history and passing it along.

Kind of odd that somebody within our camp would do something like that. Maybe it's because he's not within our camp.

Well, you know, I'm just pointing that out. All right, I want to point something else to you here. First Peter chapter one.

I'm sorry, second Peter chapter one. Second Peter chapter one, uno. Okay.

Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth that you now have.

I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body, because I know that I will soon put it aside as our

Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me, and I will make every effort to see that after my departure, you will always be able to remember these things.

For we did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and the coming of our

Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from the

Father when the voice came from the majestic glory saying, this is my son whom I love, with him

I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

And we have the words of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. So, the Apostle Peter, 2 Peter 1 verse 16 says, we did not follow cleverly invented stories, but they were eyewitnesses to the very things that they documented.

And that's exactly, that is exactly what the

Gospels claim to be. There's no astrological, astronomical, anything going on in there.

This is history, not mythology. Anyway, just want to point out, there's a huge difference between if you just listen to the claims of the

New Testament documents. You don't even have to think they're the word of God. Just what do they claim to be?

We've got four biographies, a bunch of letters, and one really bizarre book by the name of the

Apocalypse of John, right? The book of Revelation.

Internally, look at the documents. Is there anything to substantiate the claims within the document?

The answers are yes, absolutely. I would recommend reading a book like Josh MacDowell's Evidence That Demands a

Verdict. Christianity has nothing to fear from the evidence. Nothing, nothing. Or Lee Strobel's book,

The Case for Christ and Its Companion, The Case for the Real Jesus. Fine, outstanding works.

Again, the evidence is all there. This is historical. It's ridiculously strong.

So strong, in fact, that no other documents in antiquity have the strength and the credibility as the

New Testament documents do. Nothing even comes close to the New Testament documents. They are early, they are historical, they are eyewitness accounts.

These are not things that took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Now, coming back to the movie

Zeitgeist, Mr. Zeitgeist here has just made the claim that the twelve disciples equal the twelve constellations and hasn't backed any of that up.

Which Jesus, being the sun, travels about with. Jesus, who being the sun,

S -U -N? No, he's the S -O -N. Again, this is just a play on stupid English words. In fact, the number twelve is replete throughout the

Bible. Coming back to the cross of the zodiac, the figurative life of the sun, this was not just an artistic expression or tool to track the sun's movement.

It was also a pagan spiritual symbol, the shorthand of which looked like this.

This is not a symbol of Christianity. Now, he's showing a cross with a circle around it.

It kind of looks like the cross hairs of a target. He says this is not a Christian symbol. Really? Jesus hanging dead on the cross?

Yeah, the cross is a Christian symbol. Oh boy. It is a pagan adaptation of the cross of the zodiac.

Now, he can make the claim all he wants that it's a, quote, pagan sign of the zodiac, and they're showing pictures of different church steeples with a cross with a circle around it.

The problem is that none of the churches that he's showing there teach anything regarding the zodiac at all.

Period. In fact, Christianity has always been a competitor to and hostile to astrology.

You would think that if this was a truly zodiac astrological symbol and that secretly this is what

Christianity is all about, don't you think Christians would be embracing this stuff? Hmm.

This is why Jesus in early occult art is always shown with his head on the cross, for Jesus is the sun.

Yeah, Jesus is the S -U -N, the Helios. You see, it doesn't work in other languages.

Son of God, the light of the world, the risen savior who will come again as it does every morning.

No, no, for real, Jesus is going to come again. For real. Like, really.

The glory of God who defends against the works of darkness as he is born again every morning.

You see, the whole Jesus story, it's just, just look at the sun every morning when it comes. There's Jesus rising in the, uh, in the east and setting in the west.

It's just like Horus in set. And can be seen coming in the clouds up.

And they shall see the sun coming in the clouds. You see, Jesus is, he turned into the sun, the, the

S -U -N. If it wasn't stupid, it wouldn't be fun. Oh man.

With his crown of thorns, see his crown of thorns. Those are sun rays. You see, and notice he's taking all of these passages completely out of context and just stringing them together like a, uh, like pearls on a string and telling a completely alternate story by doing so.

This is not how you do it. You have to read these things in context. Oh man, this is just ridiculous.

Now of the many astrological astronomical metaphors in the Bible, one of the most important astronomical metaphors in the

Bible. Really? You just made a claim that there's astronomical metaphors in the Bible. Okay.

Here comes some creative, um, storytelling with no backing whatsoever.

By the way, he's just making unfounded assertions. Now, where can you point to any

Christian litany, any of our canonical writings to support these claims that he's about to make, or even any of the

Christian authors and the church fathers in the early Christians, where do they embrace these astrological astronomical interpretations that Jesus is nothing more than just the sun rising.

It has to do with the ages. Throughout the scriptures, there are numerous references to the age.

In order to understand this, we need to be familiar with the phenomenon known as the procession. By the way, did you know that in the

Bible that there are many, many, uh, mentions of pigs? It's true.

You know, Jesus actually cast demons out of pigs. Did you know that? Pigs are mentioned in many places in the

Bible. Wonder what the, uh, wonder what that means. You know, the

Bible also mentions rain a few times too. I wonder if Jesus is a weather

God. You see, here's the deal. He's just, he's just taking these things out of context and then telling you a story about them.

He's not telling you what the Bible teaches or even what Christians teach it. He's just ripped a whole bunch of stuff out of context, found some very shallow parallels and is now telling you a story and making assertions that are not even supported by the quote verses that he's supposedly telling you about.

The Bible, out of all the astronomical mentions of metaphors of things mentioned in the Bible, uh, it mentions the word age and age means something.

Well, the Bible mentions a lot of things. It mentions wine. Did you know that the fruit that Noah drank of the food of the vine, he got drunk.

Jesus turned water into wine. Did you, and not only that, he's, then you've got the whole communion thing with wine.

Oh, I wonder what that means. Maybe just maybe one of the disciples is, is that that Greek God who likes to party all the time and drink wine.

Of the equinoxes, the ancient Egyptians along with cultures long before them recognized that approximately every 2150 years, the sunrise on the morning of the spring equinox would occur at a different sign of the

Zodiac. This has to do with a slow angular wobble that the earth maintains as it rotates on its axis.

It is called a procession because the constellations go backwards rather than through the normal yearly cycle. The amount of time it takes for the procession to go through all 12 signs is roughly 25 ,765 years.

This is also called the great year and ancient societies were very aware of this and they referred to each 2150 year period as an age from 43.

You see, because astrologically we can talk about the ages 300 BC to 2150

BC. It was the age again. He's just, he's just telling a story and not showing any true connection whatsoever.

Taurus the bull from 2150 BC to 1 AD it was the age of Ares the ram and from 1

AD to 2150 AD it is the age of Pisces, the age we are still in to this day.

So apparently we're still in the age of Pisces. I thought we were in the age of Aquarius already. This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius.

Hang on a second here. Doing a google search. Age of Aquarius. Hang on a second.

Are we in the age of Aquarius yet? He says we're still coming up.

Hang on a second here. When does it start? Well, let's continue. I'll look while he's talking. And in and around 2150 we will enter the new age, the age of Aquarius.

Now, the Bible reflects broadly speaking a symbolic movement through three ages.

Okay, he just made the claim that the Bible symbolically refers to three different ages, yet none of them are explicitly taught.

He's just reading in the zodiac ages into the Bible, yet it again isn't explicitly taught.

You have to use your astrological decipher glasses that allow you to see the secret codes written in the

Bible in order to divine this stuff out. Foreshadowing a fourth. In the

Old Testament when Moses comes down Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, he's very upset to see his people worshiping a golden bull calf.

Okay, yeah, listen to his explanation as to why he's upset. In fact, he shattered the stone tablets and instructed his people to kill each other in order to purify themselves.

Most biblical scholars will attribute this anger to the fact that the Israelites were worshiping a false idol or something to that effect.

Yeah, because that's exactly what the text teaches. Why was

Moses upset? Well, because they were worshiping a false god. He's up on Mount Sinai talking to the one true god, and he comes down and they're worshiping a, basically they've created a little

Egyptian god for themselves. That's exactly why he's upset. But let's hear

Mr. Zeitgeist's explanation as to why Moses was upset. The reality is the golden bull is

Taurus the bull, and Moses represents the new age of Ares the ram. Really?

Where does it say that in the Bible? Where does it say that he was upset because they were moving from the age of Taurus to the age of Ares?

Where does it say that? This is why Jews even today still blow the ram's horn.

Oh, give me a break. Again, where does it teach that in the scriptures? You're just making this up. Moses represents the new age of Ares.

Oh yeah, so that's why he was upset. Because, you know, God was teaching him that they're moving into a different age and they've got to get their ages straight.

Don't you find this just a little bit anachronistic? Um, you know, back in Moses' time, was the astrological signs, were they that, were they this well developed all the way back then that Moses would have been able to look into the sky and say, duh, you know, hey, it's, it's, it's, we've switched ages here.

You guys are, you got your calendars wrong. And by the way, if that's really what the problem was, why did they have to purify themselves?

Why did they have to go and murder people? Wouldn't they, wouldn't that just be like an oopsie? Oh, well, we'll check our day planner and get it right next time,

Mo. And upon the new age, everyone must shed the old age.

Other deities marked these transitions as well, such as Mithra, a pre -Christian God who killed...

No, Mithra, it really isn't. The mystery cult of Mithra, as we understand it from the

Roman Empire, again, late development here. The bull in the same symbology. Now Jesus is the figure who ushers in the age following Ares, the age of Pisces.

Okay, where does it say this? So Jesus is going to issue in the age of Pisces, you know, the twin fish.

Okay, here's his evidence for it. Talk about flimsy. Here we go. Or the two fish.

Fish symbolism is very abundant in the New Testament. Jesus feeds 5 ,000 people with bread and two fish.

Maybe, you know what's funny? There's a story. Okay, we all understand, we've all we've all heard of Sigmund Freud.

And, you know, the concept, the sexual concepts that Freud came up with.

And, you know, and there was a time when Sigmund Freud was speaking before a very large group of people.

And get this, he was smoking a cigar. And everyone understanding, you know,

Freud's ideas regarding, you know, symbols like that, were kind of aghast.

And somebody asked him afterwards, this is Roseboro's torturing of the story, you know, Dr. Freud, you know, what's with the cigar?

And Freud said, you know, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. So here, apparently, the story here we have is that see, in Matthew 14, 17, the secret decoder astrotheological message that's really going on here is because it talks about two fish, two fish,

Jesus, there were five loaves of bread and two fish, because Jesus, this is a sign, this is a symbol that Jesus was ushering in the age of Pisces.

See the two fish? Yet it doesn't say anything about Jesus ushering in an age of Pisces, not in the

Christian New Testament, nor does it say any of that in any of the writings of the early church fathers.

But then again, you know what their explanation for that is? Well, we would have those documents today if they hadn't been suppressed and the people who followed that particular early

Christian tradition hadn't been murdered as heretics. The fact that these documents are not there to show this stuff prove, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they've been suppressed.

Notice anything wrong with that argument? We continue. When he begins his ministry walking along Galilee, he befriends two fishermen who follow him.

No. You know what? He also befriended a tax collector. Jesus also befriended prostitutes.

Is there an astrological sign for a tax collector?

Is there an astrological sign for a prostitute? Just asking. I think we have all seen the

Jesus fish on the back of people's cars. Yes, we have! The Jesus fish, by the way, that's called an ichthys.

Do you know where that comes from? What's with the ichthys? Real simple, real simple.

It's an early Christian creed, really, if you would. And it's a symbol that basically was used during a time when

Christians were being persecuted and murdered during the Roman Empire. Basically, ichthys is the

Greek for fish. It's an acronym. It's Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. If you were to take it out and just spell it out, take the letters,

Jesus Christ, Son of God, the

Savior. It's real simple. It had nothing to do with the age of Pisces at all.

Nowhere is this explicitly taught. This guy is just making an unfounded, unsubstantiated allegation.

Little do they know what it actually means. Really? It is a pagan astrological symbolism for the sun's kingdom during the age of Pisces.

You see, you Christians out there, you thought all along, you know, that this little fish symbol was just, all along, this was a pagan astrological symbol.

And you just had no idea. If that's really what it is, don't you think that some

Christians somewhere over the last couple of thousand years would have figured this out? Also, Jesus's assumed birth date is essentially the start of this age.

Gasp. At Luke 2210, when Jesus is asked by his disciples where the last

Passover would be, Jesus replied. Okay, watch this. Eyes.

Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water.

Follow him into the house where he entereth in. See, because there's a man with a pitcher of water.

Now, just a quick question. Back in the early first century city of Jerusalem, did they have indoor plumbing?

How about flush toilets? Hot and cold running water? Anything like that? No. So, if you wanted water inside of your house, how would you get it there?

I know. You would go to a well or a place where there was water being brought in via aquifer or aqueduct and you would bring a jar with you and you would fill it up with water and you would carry it back to your house.

In other words, if you were living in or visited or traveled to first century

Jerusalem, you would probably see as a very common occurrence people carrying a jar of water.

This scripture is by far one of the most revealing of all the astrological references. Really?

Don't you think you're reading all of that astrological stuff into the passage? Because it's not teaching anything astrological.

It's just teaching there was a guy with a pitcher of water. The man bearing the pitcher of water is

Aquarius. Oh, yeah. See, that's Aquarius. All along,

I thought it was just a guy carrying a pitcher of water who happened to have an upper room that Jesus needed. A water bearer who was always pictured as a man pouring out a pitcher of water.

Yeah, but the guy was carrying a pitcher of water in the text that you mentioned. He wasn't pouring it out.

He was carrying it. He represents the age after Pisces and when the sun...

So Jesus, by this astrological character carrying the thing of water, he represents, uh -huh, notice the wild interpretations going on here, the age to come, which by the way hasn't even come yet.

It's not here yet. God's son leaves the age of Pisces, Jesus. It will go into the house of Aquarius as Aquarius follows

Pisces in the procession of the equinoxes. Now, that's a fine story, but again, don't you think just for a second that you're really, really, really stretching the implications of the story just profoundly?

All Jesus is saying is that after the age of Pisces will come the age of Aquarius. So Jesus was saying after the age of Pisces will come the age of Aquarius because he told the disciples to go find a person carrying a pitcher of water.

Anybody, any passages of scripture talking about the age of Aquarius, the age of Pisces, explicitly teaching this for us.

Again, how did you come by this information again? Were you using magic mushrooms?

Have you been using any kind of hard narcotics or hallucinogenic drugs?

Fair question because none of this is in the scripture and you have to be pretty much an idiot to believe any of this stuff.

Now, we have all heard about the end times and the end of the world. Yep, I'm familiar with it.

The cartoonish depictions in the book of Revelation aside, the main source of this idea comes from Matthew 28, 20, where Jesus says,

I will be with you even to the end of the world. However, in the King James Version, world is a mistranslation among many mistranslations.

The actual word being used is eon, which means age. I will be with you even to the end of the age, which is…

Oh, brother. Oh, boy. Again, this is just ridiculous. I mean, talk about flimsy.

This is about as ridiculous as it gets. Ioneos, Ion, into the age of, okay,

I will be with you in, okay, let's see, Ion, a long period of time without reference to beginning or end of time gone by, the past, early,

I will be with you until the end of time. I will be with you until eternity is another way of saying it.

Don't you think it's a little odd that he's just basically saying Jesus is going to be with us until the age of Pisces?

How can Jesus be referring to that when he never taught that? He never talked about the age of Aquarius or the age of Pisces, and all the stuff that you're, quote, reading into the passage is just laughable.

It's never taught anywhere in the Scriptures. You're just reading in astrology into the

Bible. It's true, as Jesus' solar Piscean personification will end when the sun enters the age of Aquarius.

The entire concept of end times and the end of the world is a misinterpreted astrological allegory.

Oh, well, there, you don't have to worry about the end of the world now because all he was talking about is how we're going to go from the age of Pisces to the age of Aquarius.

See, that clears it right up, just like Clearasil on zits. Let's tell that to the approximately 100 million people in America who believe the end of the world is coming.

Maybe, just maybe, you think you've got this wrong there, Mr. Zeitgeist? The reason

I say that is because, again, your case isn't built on any real evidence at all.

Metaphorical, allegorical, symbolical interpretations of bizarre passages ripped from context, you pouring into it this astrological meaning, yet nowhere is this astrological stuff taught at all.

Furthermore, the character of Jesus being a literary and astrological hybrid is most explicitly a plagiarization of the

Egyptian sun god Horus. For example, inscribed about 3 ,500 years ago on the walls at the

Temple of Luxor in Egypt are images of the Annunciation, the Miracle Conception, the

Birth, and the Adoration of Horus. Again, post hoc ergo proctor hoc,

I mean, who's met Horus? Has anyone seen him? Any witnesses to his birth, death, resurrection, any of the so -called events of his life?

I mean, he doesn't look like somebody I'd like to hang out with and have a beer. First of all, how are you supposed to have a beer with somebody who has a beak for a face?

Begin with Thoth announcing to the Virgin Isis that she will conceive Horus, then Neph, the

Holy Ghost impregnating the Virgin, and then the Virgin Birth and the Adoration.

This is exactly the story of Jesus's Miracle Conception. Yeah, with one huge exception, even if you were right about the

Horus story, which already I'm doubting it because you can't even get your facts straight regarding Mithras. Again, the big difference is that the story of Jesus is historical, biographical, at a very specific time and place, testified by eyewitnesses who went to their deaths, being martyred and persecuted, for their testimony that they were witnesses to Christ's death and resurrection.

In fact, the literary similarities between the Egyptian religion and the Christian religion are staggering.

No, they're really not. And the plagiarism is continuous.

Plagiarism, that's quite a claim. Plagiarism. The story of Noah and Noah's Ark is taken directly from tradition.

The concept of great flood. Really, that's quite a claim. The story of Noah and Noah's Ark is taken from tradition.

How do you know it's taken from tradition? And how do you know it's not historical? You just make this assertion, but you don't back it up.

Ubiquitous throughout the ancient world, with over 200 cited claims in different periods and times.

Is it possible that the reason why all these different cultures have a story similar to Noah's is because all of these ancient religions, all these ancient cultures were familiar with the story of the flood because Noah was a historical person?

And it was in recent past that it occurred? However, one need look no further for a pre -Christian source than the

Epic of Gilgamesh, written in 2600 BC. This story talks of a great flood commanded by God, an ark with saved animals upon it, and even the release and return of a dove, all held in common with the biblical story among many other similarities.

And how do you know the source isn't historical? He just claims it's just a traditional mythological.

How do you know it's that? By the way, Jesus Christ himself, attested to the fact that Noah was a historical person and the flood actually happened.

He claimed to be none other than the one true God in human flesh, and proved his claim by raising himself from the dead three days after he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

Hmm. I trust Christ's credentials over this. And then there is the plagiarized story of Moses.

Plagiarized story of Moses. There's apparently Moses isn't even a historical person, yet Jesus Christ said that he was.

Plagiarized story of Moses. Moses apparently didn't exist. Really, how do you know it was lifted from the myth of Sargon?

Similarities in the story do not prove plagiarism, my friend. And again, you just give us these so -called surface parallels, and we've already proven that many of the parallels that you've drawn in the past, in this video, aren't even correct.

raised by a key, a royal midwife. Furthermore, Moses is known as the lawgiver, the giver of the

Ten Commandments, the Mosaic Law. However, the idea of a law being passed from God to a prophet up on a mountain is also a very old motif.

Moses is just another lawgiver and a long line of lawgivers in mythological history. In India, Manu was the great lawgiver.

In Crete, Minos ascended Mount Dikta, where Zeus gave him the sacred laws. While in Egypt, there was

Mises, who carried stone tablets, and upon them the laws of God were written. Minos, Mises, Moses.

They all begin with M's. It must, that proves it. See, it's tradition. It's mythology.

It's not, no, it doesn't at all. Again, this is not how you prove anything. He's not really discussing any evidence whatsoever for a historical

Moses, for a historical Exodus, or anything of the sort. All he's doing is telling you a story about what supposedly other religions teach and say, see, there's similarities.

Those are all mythologies. Therefore, the Christian claims are mythological as well. He hasn't proven anything.

In fact, his case is not proven at all. You're looking in the wrong place.

You need to go actually look at real evidence. And as far as the 10 Commandments, they are taken outright from spell 125 in the

Egyptian Book of the Dead. Really? Okay. The Book of the Dead phrased, I have not stolen became thou shall not steal.

I have not killed became thou shall not kill. I have not told lies became thou shall not bear false witness.

Again, can you prove this claim? You're just making these unfounded assertions and saying that all of this stuff was plagiarized.

Again, you have to prove the assertion. You can't just say, they said thou shalt not kill.

Therefore, that means that they were plagiarized. By the way, in the United States, we have laws against murder.

I bet you we plagiarize those. You see what I'm saying here? We got a problem.

There's lots and lots of human communities that have laws against lying, cheating, stealing, adultery and other things.

Does that mean that they all plagiarize them from a mythological source?

And so forth. In fact, the Egyptian religion is likely the primary foundational basis for the

Judeo -Christian theology. No, really, it isn't. Funny enough, it's not at all.

The Egyptians worshipped many gods and the Judeo -Christian

God is monotheistic. There is only one God. In fact, if you understand the

Old Testament at all, in the Book of Exodus, it's a showdown between the gods of Egypt and the one true

God of Israel. Claiming that one is the source for the other is ludicrous and shows a complete lack of understanding of both religions.

Tism, afterlife, final judgment, virgin birth, death and resurrection, crucifixion, the

Ark of the Covenant, circumcision, saviors, holy communion, great flood,

Easter, Christmas, Passover, and many, many more are all attributes of Egyptian ideas, long predating

Christianity and Judaism. Again, I would say prove it. Again, this shows a complete surface treatment of the two religions.

Absolutely surface treatment of it. Let me give you an example, okay? A lot of people make the claim that Lutherans are nothing more than kind of like warmed over Roman Catholics.

And they point to the fact that Catholics and Lutherans both follow a very similar liturgy.

Catholics and Lutherans both celebrate the Lord's Supper. Catholics and Lutherans also engage in baptism.

By the way, Calvinists engage in baptism too. You see what I'm saying? Just because there's a similarity on the surface doesn't mean that the two are borrowing from each other.

In fact, Lutheranism has a completely different understanding of how a person is saved and made right with God than do

Catholics. Baptists and Catholics both practice baptism, yet Baptists have a very different understanding and teaching regarding what baptism is.

Just saying, hey, listen, all these guys are all in common because they have baptism in common, they have communion in common, and they all have pulpit preachers in common.

No, no, no, no, no. You have to look at what's behind these events and what do they teach and what do they mean and what's the meaning of them.

This guy's just throwing out a whole bunch of quote similarities and saying one ripped off was plagiarizing the other.

That would be true if Judaism and Christianity basically taught the same thing doctrinally as the

Egyptian religions. The surfacy parallel stuff, the crossover, maybe baptism and other stuff, doesn't mean anything.

The question is, what did that baptism mean? Fundamentalist Christianity, fascinating. These people actually believe the world is 12 ,000 years old.

It's 45. I actually asked one of these guys, okay, dinosaur fossils.

He says, dinosaur fossils? God put those here to test our faith.

I think God put you here to test my faith, dude. The Bible is nothing more than an astro -theological literary hybrid, just like nearly all...

Okay, this is where, this is the end of all of this. Where are they going with this? The claim that the

Bible is nothing more than an astro -theological literary hybrid. Again, false.

Listen to these claims. All religious myths before it. In fact, the aspect of transference of one character's attributes to a new character can be found within the book itself.

In the Old Testament, there is the story of Joseph. Joseph was a prototype for Jesus. Joseph was born of a miracle birth.

Jesus was born of a miracle birth. No, Joseph was not born of a miracle birth. What are they talking about? Joseph was born pretty much in the ordinary way.

In fact, Israel, Joseph's father, miracle birth? His wife didn't, well, she wasn't able to conceive.

He prayed and she conceived. But Israel had two wives and two concubines.

Joseph was of 12 brothers. Jesus had 12 disciples. Joseph was sold for 20 pieces of silver.

Jesus was sold for 30 pieces of silver. Brother Judah suggests the sale of Joseph. Disciple Judas suggests the sale of Jesus.

Oh man, what a complete hatchet job here. Joseph began his work at the age of 30.

Jesus began his work at the age of 30. The parallels go on and on. Furthermore, is there any non -biblical historical evidence of any person living with the name

Jesus, the son of Mary, who traveled about with 12 followers, healing people, and the like? There are numerous historians who lived in and around the

Mediterranean. Yeah, this is just patently false. And this is where we're going to focus our attention here, or in just a minute.

During or soon after the assumed life of Jesus, how many of these historians document this figure?

Not one. This is a lie. However, to be fair, that doesn't mean defenders of the historical

Jesus haven't claimed the contrary. Four historians are typically referenced to justify Jesus' existence.

Now watch. He's not going to actually tell you what any of these historians say. He's just going to give a surface treatment of it and then wipe them off the table.

Watch. Many of the younger, Suetonius, and Tacitus are the first three. Each one of their entries consists of only a few sentences at best.

A few sentences at best. We're not going to tell you what those sentences say. Oh, it's just a few sentences.

You can't listen to these guys. This doesn't count. For to Christus or the Christ, which in fact is not a name but a title, it means the anointed one.

Yeah, referring to Jesus, duh. The fourth source is Josephus, and this source has been proven to be a forgery for hundreds of years.

Actually, he's not telling you the truth there. There's a couple of references in Josephus, and current scholarship has pretty much discovered that this is not a forgery.

There may have been a little bit of manipulation of the passage. However, the passage itself is not a forgery.

We'll get into that with Edwin Yamauchi here shortly. Sadly, it is still cited as truth.

You would think that a guy who rose from the dead and ascended into heaven for all eyes to see and performed the wealth of miracles acclaimed to him would have made it into the historical record.

It didn't because once the evidence is weighed, there are very high odds that the figure known as Jesus did not even exist.

So that's the whole point of all of this. What are they doing? They're telling you a story, reading into the scriptures, deconstructing

Jesus, and what happens at the end of it? He didn't even exist, and we don't even need to look at the evidence now because it's nothing more than just some astral theological thing.

We don't want to be unkind, but we want to be factual. We don't want to cause hurt feelings, but we want to be academically correct in what we understand and know to be true.

Christianity just is not based on truth. Okay, now that's the claim.

Christianity is not based on truth. By the way, we Christians have nothing to fear against this kind of claim.

Christianity is based on truth, historical truth, and the evidence for it is ridiculously strong.

We find that Christianity was in fact nothing more than a Roman story developed politically.

Really, if that was the case, then why were Christians persecuted by the Roman Empire? The reality is

Jesus was the solar deity of the Gnostic Christian sect, and like all other pagan gods, he was a mythical figure.

It was the political establishment that sought to hysterize the Jesus figure for social control.

So they put this together for social control. Remember the

Marxist theme, the religion is the opiate of the masses. This is what this is the claim. By 325

AD in Rome, Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea. It was during this meeting that the politically motivated

Christian doctrines were established. So Christian doctrines were established at the

Council of Nicaea. Politically motivated Christian doctrines. By the way, we have all of the records, the notes, the minutes of the

Council of Nicaea. And the claims he just made are patently untrue.

You cannot point to any of the minutes of the Council of Nicaea to make this claim.

You see this stuff in the Da Vinci Code. So for 1600 years, the

Vatican maintained a political stranglehold. You see, this is again a revision of history.

Now what I'm going to do right now, I'm going to switch gears, and we're going to listen to a portion of Lee Strobel's book,

The Case for Christ. Now, this is going to be dealing specifically with the corroborative evidence from outside of the

New Testament. This is Chapter 4 of the book, The Case for Christ. And this is

Lee Strobel interviewing Edwin Yamauchi, who we listened to another interview of his yesterday regarding whether or not

Christianity borrowed from paganism, and the answer is absolutely not. And we're going to listen to Edwin Yamauchi talking about whether or not there is corroborative evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ outside of the

New Testament. And unlike what this guy did, Mr. Zeitgeist Hatchet Job, Yamauchi is going to actually take a look at the evidence itself, and take a look at what the texts say, and not just brush them aside and say, oh this can't be true.

Instead, he's going to tell you what they actually say, and work with the real evidence.

In fact, Yamauchi is very familiar with the claim that the quote from Josephus is a forgery, and he'll deal with that rather directly.

So let me turn this on for you, and here is some audio from the book,

The Case for Christ. In spite of the delays, the

Ailman saga shows how significant corroborative evidence can be. And the same is true in dealing with historical issues.

We've already heard, through Dr. Craig Blomberg's testimony, that in the Gospels there is excellent eyewitness evidence for the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

But is there any other evidence to corroborate that? Are there writings outside the

Gospels that affirm or support any of the essentials about Jesus, or early

Christianity? In other words, is there any additional documentation that can help seal the case for Christ, as Bobby Lowe's testimony sealed the case against Harry Ailman?

The answer, according to our next witness, is yes. And the amount and quality of that evidence may very well surprise you.

The third interview, Edwin M. Yamauchi, Ph .D. As I entered the imposing brick building that houses the office of Edwin Yamauchi at Miami University in picturesque Oxford, Ohio, I walked underneath a stone arch bearing this inscription,

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free. As one of the country's leading experts in ancient history,

Yamauchi has been on a quest for historical truth for much of his life. Born in Hawaii in 1937, the son of immigrants from Okinawa, Yamauchi started from humble beginnings.

His father died just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, leaving his mother to earn a meager living as a maid for wealthy families.

While lacking formal education herself, she encouraged her son to read and study, giving him beautifully illustrated books that instilled in him a lifelong love of learning.

Certainly his academic accomplishments have been impressive. After earning a bachelor's degree in Hebrew and Hellenistics, Yamauchi received master's and doctoral degrees in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University.

He has been awarded eight fellowships, from the Rutgers Research Council, National Endowment for the

Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and others. He has studied twenty -two languages, including

Arabic, Chinese, Egyptian, Russian, Syriac, Ugaritic, and even

Comanche. He has delivered seventy -one papers before learned societies, lectured at more than one hundred seminaries, universities, and colleges, including

Yale, Princeton, and Cornell, served as chairman and then president of the

Institute for Biblical Research and president of the Conference on Faith and History, and published eighty articles in thirty -seven scholarly journals.

In 1968, he participated in the first excavations of the Herodian Temple in Jerusalem, revealing evidence of the temple's destruction in A .D.

70. Archaeology has also been the theme of several of his books, including The Stones and the

Scriptures, The Scriptures and Archaeology, and The World of the First Christians.

Though born into a Buddhist background, Yamauchi has been following Jesus ever since 1952, the year

I was born. I was especially curious to see whether his long -term commitment to Christ would color his assessment of the historical evidence.

In other words, would he scrupulously stick to the facts or be tempted to draw conclusions that went beyond where the evidence warranted?

I found Yamauchi to have a gentle and unassuming demeanor. Although generally soft -spoken, he is intensely focused.

He provides thorough and detailed answers to questions, often pausing to supplement his verbal response by offering photocopies of scholarly articles he has written on the topic.

A good scholar knows you can never have too much data. Inside his book -cluttered office, in the heart of a heavily wooded campus ablaze in autumn colors, we sat down to talk about the topic that still brings a glint to his eyes, even after so many years of research and teaching.

Affirming the Gospels Because of my interview with Blomberg, I didn't want to suggest that we needed to go beyond the

Gospels in order to find reliable evidence concerning Jesus. So I started by asking Yamauchi this question.

As an historian, could you give me your assessment of the historical reliability of the

Gospels themselves? On the whole, the Gospels are excellent sources, he replied.

As a matter of fact, they are the most trustworthy, complete, and reliable sources for Jesus.

The incidental sources really don't add much detailed information. However, they are valuable as corroborative evidence.

Okay, that's what I want to discuss. The corroborative evidence, I said.

Let's be honest, some people scoff at how much there really is. For example, in 1979,

Charles Templeton wrote a novel called Act of God, in which a fictional archaeologist made a statement that reflects the beliefs of a lot of people.

I pulled out the book and read the relevant paragraph. The Christian Church bases its claims mostly on the teachings of an obscure young Jew with messianic pretensions who, let's face it, didn't make much of an impression in his lifetime.

There isn't a single word about him in secular history, not a word. No mention of him by the

Romans, not so much as a reference by Josephus. Now, I said a little pointedly, that doesn't sound as if there's much corroboration of the life of Jesus outside the

Bible. Yamauchi smiled and shook his head. Templeton's archaeologist is simply mistaken, he replied in a dismissive tone, because we do have very, very important references to Jesus in Josephus and Tacitus.

The Gospels themselves say that many who heard him, even members of his own family, did not believe in Jesus during his lifetime.

Yet he made such an impression that today Jesus is remembered everywhere, whereas Herod the

Great, Pontius Pilate, and other ancient rulers are not as widely known. So he certainly did make an impression on those who believed in him.

He paused, then added, he did not, of course, among those who did not believe in him.

Testimony by a traitor. Templeton and Yamauchi had both mentioned

Josephus, a first century historian who's well known among scholars, but whose name is unfamiliar to most people today.

Give me some background about him, I said, and tell me how his testimony provides corroboration concerning Jesus.

Yes, of course, Yamauchi answered as he crossed his legs and settled deeper into his chair.

Josephus was a very important Jewish historian of the first century. He was born in A .D.

37, and he wrote most of his foreworks toward the end of the first century. In his autobiography, he defended his behavior in the

Jewish -Roman war, which took place from A .D. 66 to 74. You see, he had surrendered to the

Roman general Vespasian during the siege of Jotapata, even though many of his colleagues committed suicide rather than give up.

The professor chuckled and said, Josephus decided it wasn't God's will for him to commit suicide.

He then became a defender of the Romans. Josephus sounded like a colorful character.

I wanted more details about him so I could better understand his motivations and prejudices. Paint me a portrait of him,

I said. He was a priest, a Pharisee, and he was somewhat egotistical.

His most ambitious work was called The Antiquities, which was a history of the Jewish people from creation until his time.

He probably completed it in about A .D. 93. As you can imagine from his collaboration with the hated

Romans, Josephus was extremely disliked by his fellow Jews, but he became very popular among Christians because in his writings he refers to James, the brother of Jesus, and to Jesus himself.

Here was our first example of corroboration for Jesus outside the Gospels. Tell me about those references,

I said, replied Yamauchi. In The Antiquities, he describes how a high priest named

Ananias took advantage of the death of the Roman governor Festus, who is also mentioned in the

New Testament, in order to have James killed. He leaned over to his bookshelf, pulled out a thick volume, and flipped to a page whose location he seemed to know by heart.

Ah, here it is. He convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named

James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others.

He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned. I know of no scholar,

Yamauchi asserted confidently, who has successfully disputed this passage. L.

H. Feldman noted that if this had been a later Christian addition to the text, it would have likely been more laudatory of James.

So here you have a reference to the brother of Jesus, who had apparently been converted by the appearance of the risen

Christ, if you compare John 7, 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, 7, and corroboration of the fact that some people considered

Jesus to be the Christ, which means the Anointed One or Messiah. There lived

Jesus. I knew that Josephus had written an even lengthier section about Jesus, which is called the

Testimonium Flavianum. I knew, too, that this passage was among the most hotly disputed in ancient literature, because on its surface it appears to provide sweeping corroboration of Jesus' life, miracles, death, and resurrection.

But is it authentic, or has it been doctored through the years by people favorable to Jesus?

I asked Yamauchi for his opinion, and it was instantly clear I had tapped into an area of high interest for him.

He uncrossed his legs and sat up straight in his chair. This is a fascinating passage, he said with enthusiasm, leaning forward, book in hand.

But yes, it is controversial. With that, he read it to me. About this time there lived

Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats, and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly.

He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him.

On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him.

And a tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.

The wealth of corroboration for Jesus was readily evident. You agreed this was controversial.

What have scholars concluded about this passage, I asked? Scholarship has gone through three trends about it, he said.

For obvious reasons, the early Christians thought it was a wonderful and thoroughly authentic attestation of Jesus and his resurrection.

They loved it. Then the entire passage was questioned by at least some scholars during the

Enlightenment. But today there's a remarkable consensus among both Jewish and Christian scholars that the passage as a whole is authentic, although there may be some interpolations.

I raised an eyebrow. Interpolations. Would you define what you mean by that?

That means early Christian copyists inserted some phrases that a Jewish writer like Josephus would not have written,

Yamauchi said. He pointed to a sentence in the book. For instance, the first line says,

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man. Now, that phrase is not normally used of Jesus by Christians, so it seems authentic for Josephus.

But the next phrase says, If indeed one ought to call him a man. This implies

Jesus was more than human, which appears to be an interpolation. I nodded to let him know

I was following him so far. It goes on to say, For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly.

He went over many Jews and many of the Greeks. That seems to be quite in accord with the vocabulary

Josephus uses elsewhere, and it's generally considered authentic. But then there's this unambiguous statement,

He was the Christ. That seems to be an interpolation because, I interrupted,

Josephus says in his reference to James that Jesus was called the Christ. That's right, said

Yamauchi. It's unlikely Josephus would have flatly said Jesus was the

Messiah here, when elsewhere he merely said he was considered to be the Messiah by his followers.

The next part of the passage, which talks about Jesus' trial and crucifixion and the fact that his followers still loved him, is unexceptional and considered genuine.

Then there's this phrase, On the third day he appeared to them restored to life.

Again, this is a clear declaration of belief in the resurrection, and thus it's unlikely that Josephus wrote it.

So these three elements seem to have been interpolations. What's the bottom line,

I asked. That the passage in Josephus probably was originally written about Jesus, although without those three points

I mentioned. But even so, Josephus corroborates important information about Jesus, that he was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem, and that he was a wise teacher who had established a wide and lasting following, despite the fact that he had been crucified under Pilate at the instigation of some of the

Jewish leaders. The importance of Josephus. While these references did offer some important independent verification about Jesus, I wondered why an historian like Josephus wouldn't have said more about such an important figure of the first century.

I knew that some skeptics, like Boston University philosopher Michael Martin, have made this same critique.

So I asked for Yamauchi's reaction to this statement by Martin, who doesn't believe Jesus ever lived.

If Jesus did exist, one would have expected Josephus to have said more about him.

It is unexpected that Josephus mentioned him in passing, while mentioning other messianic figures and John the

Baptist in greater detail. Yamauchi's response seemed uncharacteristically strong.

From time to time, some people have tried to deny the existence of Jesus, but this is really a lost cause, he said with a tone of exasperation.

There is overwhelming evidence that Jesus did exist, and these hypothetical questions are really very vacuous and fallacious.

But I'd answer by saying this. Josephus was interested in political matters and the struggle against Rome, so for him,

John the Baptist was more important because he seemed to pose a greater political threat than did

Jesus. I jumped in. Hold on a second. Aren't there some scholars who have portrayed

Jesus as a zealot, or at least sympathetic to the zealots, I asked, referring to a first century revolutionary group that opposed

Rome politically. Yamauchi dismissed the objection with a wave of his hand. That is a position the

Gospels themselves do not support, he replied. Because remember, Jesus didn't even object to paying taxes to the

Romans. Therefore, because Jesus and his followers didn't pose an immediate political threat, it's certainly understandable that Josephus isn't more interested in this sect, even though in hindsight it turned out to be very important indeed.

So, in your assessment, how significant are these two references by Josephus?

Highly significant, Yamauchi replied, especially since his accounts of the Jewish war have proved to be very accurate.

For example, they've been corroborated through archaeological excavations at Masada as well as by historians like Tacitus.

He's considered to be a pretty reliable historian, and his mentioning of Jesus is considered extremely important.

A most mischievous superstition. Yamauchi had just mentioned the most important Roman historian of the first century, and I wanted to discuss what

Tacitus had to say about Jesus and Christianity. Could you spell out what he corroborates,

I asked. Yamauchi nodded. Tacitus recorded what is probably the most important reference to Jesus outside the

New Testament, he said. In A .D. 115, he explicitly states that Nero persecuted the

Christians as scapegoats to divert suspicion away from himself for the great fire that had devastated

Rome in A .D. 64. Yamauchi stood and walked over to his shelf, scanning it for a certain book.

Ah, yes, here it is, he said, withdrawing a thick volume and leafing through it until he found the right passage, which he then read to me.

Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called

Christians by the populace. Christus, 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 Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome.

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty. Then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city as of hatred against mankind.

I was already familiar with that passage, and I was wondering how Yamauchi would respond to an observation by a leading scholar named

J. N. D. Anderson. He speculates that when Tacitus says this mischievous superstition was checked for the moment but later again broke out, he was unconsciously bearing testimony to the belief of early

Christians that Jesus had been crucified but then rose from the grave, I said. Do you agree with him?

Yamauchi thought for a moment. This has certainly been the interpretation of some scholars, he replied, seeming to duck my request for his opinion.

But then he made a crucial point. Regardless of whether the passage had this specifically in mind, it does provide us with a very remarkable fact, which is this.

Crucifixion was the most abhorrent fate that anyone could undergo, and the fact that there was a movement based on a crucified man has to be explained.

How can you explain the spread of a religion based on the worship of a man who had suffered the most ignominious death possible?

Of course, the Christian answer is that he was resurrected. Others have to come up with some alternative theory if they don't believe that, but none of the alternative views to my mind are very persuasive.

I asked him to characterize the weight of Tacitus's writings concerning Jesus. This is an important testimony by an unsympathetic witness to the success and spread of Christianity based on an historical figure,

Jesus, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he said, and it's significant that Tacitus reported that an immense multitude held so strongly to their beliefs that they were willing to die rather than recant.

Chanting as if to a god. I knew that another Roman called

Pliny the Younger had also referred to Christianity in his writings. He corroborated some important matters too, didn't he?

I asked. That's right. He was the nephew of Pliny the Elder, the famous encyclopedist who died in the eruption of Vesuvius in A .D.

79. Pliny the Younger became governor of Bithynia in northwestern

Turkey. Much of his correspondence with his friend, Emperor Trajan, has been preserved to the present time.

Yamauchi pulled out a photocopy of a book page, saying, In Book 10 of these letters he specifically refers to the

Christians he has arrested. I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it,

I repeat the question a second and third time with a warning of the punishment awaiting them.

If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution. For whatever the nature of their admission,

I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished.

They also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this.

They had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honor of Christ, as if to a

God, and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose but to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery.

This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave women whom they called deaconesses.

I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths.

How important is this reference? I asked. Very important. It was probably written about A .D.

111, and it attests to the rapid spread of Christianity both in the city and in the rural area among every class of persons, slave women as well as Roman citizens, since he also says that he sends

Christians who are Roman citizens to Rome for trial. And it talks about the worship of Jesus as God, that Christians maintained high ethical standards and that they were not easily swayed from their beliefs.

The day the earth went dark. To me, one of the most problematic references in the

New Testament is where the gospel writers claim that the earth went dark during part of the time that Jesus hung on the cross.

Wasn't this merely a literary device to stress the significance of the crucifixion and not a reference to an actual historical occurrence?

After all, if darkness had fallen over the earth, wouldn't there be at least some mention of this extraordinary event outside the

Bible? However, Dr. Gary Habermas has written about an historian named

Thallus, who in A .D. 52 wrote a history of the eastern Mediterranean world since the

Trojan War. Although Thallus's work has been lost, it was quoted by Julius Africanus in about A .D.

221, and it made reference to the darkness that the gospels had written about.

Could this, I asked, be independent corroboration of this biblical claim? Explained Yamauchi, in this passage

Julius Africanus says, Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away the darkness as an eclipse of the sun, unreasonably as it seems to me.

So Thallus apparently was saying, yes, there had been darkness at the time of the crucifixion, and he speculated it had been caused by an eclipse.

Africanus then argues that it couldn't have been an eclipse, given when the crucifixion occurred. Yamauchi reached over to his desk to retrieve a piece of paper.

Let me quote what scholar Paul Meyer said about the darkness in a footnote in his 1968 book

Pontius Pilate, he said, reading these words. This phenomenon evidently was visible in Rome, Athens, and other

Mediterranean cities. According to Tertullian, it was a cosmic or world event.

Phlegon, a Greek author from Caria writing a chronology soon after 137

A .D., reported that in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad, i .e.,

33 A .D., there was the greatest eclipse of the sun, and that it became night in the sixth hour of the day, i .e.,

noon, so that stars even appeared in the heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea, Yamauchi concluded.

So there is, as Paul Meyer points out, non -biblical attestation of the darkness that occurred at the time of Jesus' crucifixion.

Apparently, some found the need to try to give it a natural explanation by saying it was an eclipse.

A Portrait of Pilate Yamauchi's mentioning of Pilate reminded me of how some critics have questioned the accuracy of the

Gospels because of the way they portray this Roman leader. While the New Testament paints him as being vacillating and willing to yield to the pressures of a

Jewish mob by executing Jesus, other historical accounts picture him as being obstinate and inflexible.

Doesn't this represent a contradiction between the Bible and secular historians, I asked? No, it really doesn't, said

Yamauchi. Meyer's study of Pilate shows that his protector or patron was Sejanus, and that Sejanus fell from power in A .D.

31 because he was plotting against the emperor. I was puzzled. What does that have to do with anything,

I asked? Well, this loss would have made Pilate's position very weak in A .D.

33, which is most likely when Jesus was crucified, the professor responded.

So it would certainly be understandable that Pilate would have been reluctant to offend the Jews at that time and to get into further trouble with the emperor.

That means the biblical description is most likely accurate. Other Jewish Accounts Having talked primarily about Roman corroboration of Jesus, I wanted to turn a corner at this point and discuss whether any other

Jewish accounts besides that of Josephus verify anything about Jesus. I asked

Yamauchi about references to Jesus in the Talmud, an important Jewish work finished about A .D.

500 that incorporates the Mishnah, compiled about A .D. 200.

Jews, as a whole, did not go into great detail about heretics, he replied. There are a few passages in the

Talmud that mention Jesus, calling him a false messiah who practiced magic and was justly condemned to death.

They also repeat the rumor that Jesus was born of a Roman soldier and Mary, suggesting there was something unusual about his birth.

So, I said, in a negative way, these Jewish references do corroborate some things about Jesus.

Yes, that's right. Professor M. Wilcox put it this way in an article that appeared in a scholarly reference work.

The Jewish traditional literature, although it mentions Jesus only quite sparingly, and must in any case be used with caution, supports the gospel claim that he was a healer and miracle worker, even though it ascribes these activities to sorcery.

In addition, it preserves the recollection that he was a teacher and that he had disciples, five of them, and that, at least in the earlier rabbinic period, not all of the sages had finally made up their minds that he was a heretic or a deceiver.

Evidence apart from the Bible. I've got to pause there for a second. You've got to let that sink in.

If Jesus is just an astro -mythological character, then why are his theological enemies, the

Jews of the first century, writing about him in their religious writings?

It wouldn't make any sense that, I mean, they didn't like Jesus. They had him crucified.

If he didn't exist and was just some mythological person, then why are they writing about him?

I mean, it's serious. I mean, the easiest way to get rid of somebody you don't like if they don't exist is to not mention them because you know, because they don't exist.

13. Although we were finding quite a few references to Jesus outside the

Gospels, I was wondering why there were not even more of them. While I knew that few historical documents from the first century have survived,

I asked, overall, shouldn't we have expected to find more about Jesus in ancient writings outside the

Bible? When people begin religious movements, it's often not until many generations later that people record things about them,"

Yamauchi said. But the fact is that we have better historical documentation for Jesus than for the founder of any other ancient religion.

That caught me off guard. Really? Can you elaborate on that? For example, although the

Gathas of Zoroaster, about 1000 B .C., are believed to be authentic, most of the

Zoroastrian scriptures were not put into writing until after the 3rd century A .D. The most popular

Parsi biography of Zoroaster was written in A .D. 1278. The scriptures of Buddha, who lived in the 6th century

B .C., were not put into writing until after the Christian era, and the first biography of Buddha was written in the 1st century

A .D. Although we have the sayings of Muhammad, who lived from A .D. 570 to 632 in the

Quran, his biography was not written until 767, more than a full century after his death.

So the situation with Jesus is unique and quite impressive in terms of how much we can learn about him aside from the

New Testament. I wanted to pick up on that theme and summarize what we had gleaned about Jesus so far from non -biblical sources.

Let's pretend we didn't have any of the New Testament or other Christian writings, I said. Even without them, what would we be able to conclude about Jesus from ancient, non -Christian sources, such as Josephus, the

Talmud, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and others? Yamauchi smiled. We would still have a considerable amount of important historical evidence.

In fact, it would provide a kind of outline for the life of Jesus, he said. This is an important claim.

Listen to what he's saying. I mean, if Jesus didn't exist and was just some astro -theological mythological character, how is it that all of these outside the

New Testament sources are going to provide us with a historical outline of Jesus' life that parallels the claims of the

New Testament? Listen to what he says. Then he went on, raising a finger to emphasize each point.

We would know that first, Jesus was a Jewish teacher. Second, many people believed that he performed healings and exorcisms.

Third, some people believed he was the Messiah. Fourth, he was rejected by the

Jewish leaders. Fifth, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius.

Sixth, despite this shameful death, his followers, who believed that he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by AD 64.

And seventh, all kinds of people from the cities and countryside, men and women, slave and free, worshipped him as God.

This was indeed an impressive amount of independent corroboration. And not only can the contours of Jesus' life be reconstructed apart from the

Bible, but there's even more that can be gleaned about him from materials so old that it actually predates the

Gospels themselves. Alright, he's referring there to the Jewish Old Testament prophecies regarding Christ.

Alright, so there's a scholarly look at the actual evidence that doesn't brush things aside, but instead quotes it, looks at it, analyzes it, and tells you what it claims.

So, this is interesting from a real scholar who's done real work who can tell you what the real evidence really says.

We're able to actually draw a very, a pretty good outline of Jesus' life and the theological importance of his life from outside of the

New Testament. In fact, Jesus, the people who were trying to get rid of Christianity never claimed he didn't exist.

It would have been so easy to get rid of Christianity and say, oh, this is nothing more than just another one of those mythological religions that we follow.

But no, the Christians make claims about Jesus Christ that were corroborated by his arch enemies.

Hard to do if you're not a historical, actual person.

Well, we're going to pause there today for fighting for the faith. Tomorrow I'll give an outline. How do we, what about the

New Testament documents? What do they tell us? Will they be trusted? We'll talk about that on tomorrow's edition of Fighting for the

Faith. But obviously, the movie Zeitgeist and their claims about Jesus not even existing and the

Bible being nothing more than an astro -theological book, I mean, not only does it fall flat on its face, it absolutely is obliterated and all you have to do is apply just a little bit of thinking and the whole thing falls apart.

Sad that people consider that to be an indictment against Christianity, indefinitive proof that Christianity is not true and based upon a lie.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Well, we're sadly at the end of another edition of Fighting for the

Faith and need to remind you that Fighting for the Faith is listener -supported radio. That means we depend on you in order to continue bringing this program to you.

You can support us a couple of ways. First is visiting our website, fightingforthefaith .com, clicking on one of our friendly yellow donate buttons, or you can make your gift payable to Fighting for the

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Now if you'd like to email me, you can, talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com. If you disagree with me and you have some evidence that you'd like to prove the

New Testament is astro -theological, please send the evidence along. We'd love to look at it. Nothing to fear from it.

Until next time, may the Lord richly bless you in God's grace and mercy, one by Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords, and his death for you on the cross.