“The Robe”: How the Gospel Message Spread, You Can Believe It!

In my previous post I wrote that the historical novel, The Robe, was the greatest historical novel ever written. I haven’t read every one, so this may be a bit of hyperbole, but author Lloyd C. Douglas makes a compelling case about how the spread of the gospel message is evidence for its truth. I explained that biblical critics claim that the gospel stories are akin to the telephone game where the initial events are distorted over time to become what we read today in our Bibles. My contention, and what is so expertly conveyed in The Robe, is that this is not at all how the message and events recorded in the gospels spread. In fact, distortion as critics claim was not possible given the events, the culture, and the nature of life lived at the time. Here are some reasons why.

1. Jesus was a big deal! In a time before the mass distractions of popular culture, Jesus, contrary to the assertion of John Lennon, was way bigger than the Beatles. Context is everything in assessing historical claims, and in first century Palestine, Jesus was a topic of intense interest among Jews, not only in what we now know as Israel, but among Jews all throughout the Roman empire. The reason is that Jews had been anticipating the coming of the Messiah for 400(!) years. There had been many false alarms during those years, especially leading up to the time of Christ. You might say the Jewish people were ripe for a Messiah like Jesus, although he went against type in so many ways they could never have predicted, which is itself evidence for the veracity of the gospels. (If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can read, as I am now, the 1,000 plus page tome The Life and Times of Jesus The Messiah by 19th century Jewish Christian writer Alfred Edersheim, who goes through the gospels in great detail showing why they are true and can’t be made up.)
2. One thing, or person, that set Jesus apart from all the false Messiahs, before or after Jesus, was John the Baptist. He was a sensation, a coming of one who would prepare the way for the Messiah that was predicted by the prophets Isaiah and Malachi (700 and 400 years before Christ respectively). Not only that, but the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus writes about John the Baptist, so we’re not just dependent on the Bible to validate the biblical record. And John the Baptist was also bigger than the Beatles! This was an electric time in first century Palestine, which makes it impossible to compare the biblical events to myths and fairy tales, as the critics are wont to do. It is history!
3. As The Robe so wonderfully portrays, the very popularity of Jesus would make it very difficult, if not impossible, to make up the stories of his life and ministry. Multitudes, often thousands, witnessed the events we read about in the gospels and Acts. Most scholars, even the most critical, now agree that the gospels were written in the first century (which is far too short a time for legends and myths to grow), and many argue they were written in the 50s and 60s AD. This means that many people initially reading these accounts were eyewitnesses of the events recorded. Think about it. Are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John just going to make stuff up? Hey, nobody will notice. We’ve got a false messiah to promote! Hardly. In fact, Paul in I Cor. 15 says that after the resurrection, Jesus “appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive . . .” This was written in the early to mid 50s, a bit more than 20 years after the events. Such is not the substance of myths or legends.
4. To solidify these points, much of Jesus’ ministry happened in Jerusalem during the Jewish feasts when the population of the city swelled by tens, or hundreds, of thousands of Jews coming from all over the Roman empire. I read Josephus who estimated it in the millions, which is surely overstatement. But the point is well made by a disciple named Cleopas whom Jesus met on the famous road to Emmaus after the resurrection when he asked Jesus, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
5. First century pious Jews could not and would never make up such a story. God becoming a man? Not for strict Jewish monotheists. God becoming a man and dying shamefully as a criminal on a Roman cross under God’s curse? Never! Such a thing would have not only been inconceivable, it would have been blasphemous. And a single individual rising from the dead in the middle of history was nowhere predicted or even alluded to in Jewish history.

I could make many more such points, over and over again for many blog posts, and innumerable books have been written, and lectures given, and seminary courses taught that make the make the compelling case that we can trust the gospel records as true history. While not beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is surely beyond a reasonable doubt, that we can trust the biblical record for our eternal destiny.