Transcription
You know, from from a Jewish point of view, or we don't believe in the divinity of Christ. I think that there you can make an argument that the the Gospels, which were written, he was just a prophet.
Insignificant. No, no, no. We don't even believe he was a prophet. What do you think he was? What do you guys think? I mean, I, what I, what do I think he was historically? I think he was a Jew who tried to lead a revolt against the Romans and got killed for his trouble, just like a lot of other Jews at that time who were crucified for trying to lead revolts against the Roman and got killed for their trouble.
Ben Shapiro holds an errant and historically inaccurate view of who Jesus is. He claims that Jesus was simply a Jewish man who tried to lead a revolt against the Roman government and was crucified like any other criminal. He doesn't see Jesus as a prophet or the Divine Son of God who came to die for the sins of the world. In this interview, Shapiro hosts Dr. William Lane Craig, a world-renowned Christian apologist with a PhD in philosophy and a doctorate in theology, to discuss Jesus. This is the first time I've seen Ben Shapiro left stunned, and what he says in response is very surprising. I'll play the video now and share my thoughts at the very end.
So, what are, what are, what is the proof that Jesus was who he says he is in, in the Gospel? Well, first, we need to establish who he thought he was. When you look at the religio-historical context, uh, of the life and ministry of Jesus, I think you can show that among the historically authentic words of Jesus were claims that he thought he was the Jewish Messiah, that he believed himself to be the Son of God in a unique sense that set him apart from Jewish Kings and Prophets, and finally, that he thought that he was the Son of Man predicted by the Prophet Daniel, to whom God would give all dominion, power, and authority.
So he had this radical self-understanding of being Messiah, Son of God, and the Son of Man. And at the trial scene before the Sanhedrin in Mark 15, all of these titles come to a head when the high priest asks him, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One, that is, the Son of God?" And Jesus says, "I am." And then, virtually quoting from Daniel, "And you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven and seated at the right hand of the Power." And at that point, the high priest rips his robes and says, "You have heard the blasphemy. What more do we need?" And Mark says they all condemned him as worthy of death. And that enabled them, since they didn't have the ability to carry out capital punishment, to deliver him over to the Roman authorities by slandering him as a pretender to be king of the Jews, and therefore a, a political figure who could be tried for treason and sedition and crucified.
So from the Jewish perspective, this, this narrative has some, some holes in sort of Jewish philosophy. The, the narrative begins with the idea that Jesus appears in front of the Sanhedrin and then claims to be the Messiah. Well, there's nothing actually criminally in, in any of the tractates that say that if you declare yourself the Messiah, this is actually a punishment, a punishable offense. Even that, there are many Jews, including Bar Kochba, who have declared themselves Messianic figures. The real gap here is that in the Gospels, Jesus's vision of himself as the Messiah is completely different from the prevailing vision of what the Jewish Messiah is, and is actually outside the scope of how Jews describe the Messiah or really have ever described the Messiah. The Messiah in Judaism has always been a political figure who is destined to do certain things: restoring the Kingdom of Israel, uh, maintaining control of that Kingdom, uh, bringing more Jews back to Israel. All of these things are considered sort of political things that the Messiah does. But the idea of the Messiah as embodiment of God is something that's foreign to Jewish religious philosophy going all the way back to the beginning. So even the idea that the Sanhedrin would be questioning him in those terms and would get from that that what he means is "I am God," which would be a much more punishable offense, presumably that'd be actual blasphemy, that, that's it's, it's an oddity.
I think you're absolutely right in saying that Jesus' understanding of the Messiah was radically different from the prevailing, um, cultural understanding of the Messiah among the chief priests and the common people, and he didn't meet their expectations. Indeed, that's what helped to get him crucified. Being the Messiah, you're right, in and of itself isn't a blasphemous claim, but to claim to be the Son of God in a unique sense, and then especially the Son of Man prophesied by Daniel, sitting at the right hand of the Power, that is truly blasphemous and is sufficient for his condemnation.
Now, the question I think that is raised by your inter, yeah, your interpretation, Ben, is this: Why should we believe Jesus' reinterpretation of the Messiah rather than the one that the chief priests and the people held? And I think the answer to that is his resurrection from the dead. Jesus' resurrection from the dead is Yahweh's public and unequivocal vindication of the man whom the chief priests had rejected as a blasphemer. It is the divine demonstration that these allegedly blasphemous claims are, in fact, true, that he was who he claimed to be, uh, and that therefore I follow Jesus in his conception of what it means to be the Messiah.
So when it comes to the resurrection, why is resurrection proof of divinity? So Lazarus is, is resurrected. That was why I wanted to emphasize the religio-historical context before we talked about the resurrection. A miracle taken in isolation is inherently ambiguous. The proper interpretation of a miracle is going to be given by the religio-historical context in which it occurs. And the resurrection of Jesus is not just the resurrection of any old body. It's the resurrection of the man who claimed to be Messiah, Son of God, and Son of Man, and who was crucified for those allegedly blasphemous claims. If God has raised this man from the dead, then he has, I think, unequivocally and publicly vindicated those allegedly blasphemous claims.
So one of the counterclaims to some of this is that the Gospels are written significantly after Jesus lives. Even the earliest Gospel is written, what, 70 CE? Uh, some, somewhere in, somewhere 40 years after, after Jesus is crucified. So what's to say? I mean, that, like most historical events, there is some play in the joints here, so that this would be the historical argument against the exact veracity of, of the Gospel revelations. For example.
Now, I think it's important to understand, Ben, that in order for a historical document to be reliable, it isn't required that it be contemporaneous. Of course, of course. Um, what I would argue is that underlying the inference to the resurrection of Jesus are three great independently established facts, which are supported by the historical evidence, uh, and which, surprisingly, I did my doctoral work on this in Germany, are, are recognized as such by the majority of New Testament scholars today who studied the historical Jesus. And these facts would be: that after his crucifixion, um, uh, and burial by a member of the Sanhedrin named Joseph of Arimathea, that Jesus' tomb was discovered empty on the first day of the week by a group of his female followers. Secondly, would be that various individuals and groups of people then witnessed appearances of Jesus alive. And finally, number three, would be that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead, despite having every predisposition to the contrary. The vast majority of scholars have come to accept as convincing the evidence in support of those three facts, not assuming biblical inherency or inspiration, but treating the Gospels as ordinary historical documents. You can show, for example, that the fact of the, the discovery of the empty tomb is attested by at least six independent sources in the New Testament, some of which are extraordinarily early. No scholar denies that individuals and groups saw postmortem appearances of Jesus. The only question is whether you should or could dismiss them as hallucinatory. And again, nobody denies that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead. So these three facts are pretty firmly established, and the only question is then how do you best explain them? And down through history, attempts have been made to explain these facts without recourse to the resurrection, like the conspiracy theory, the apparent death theory, the hallucination theory, and so forth. And I would argue that none of these naturalistic theories meets the criteria for being the best historical explanation of the facts. None of them is as good an explanation as the one that the original disciples gave, that God raised Jesus from the dead. And if that's right, then I think we have good grounds, indeed, are almost compelled to revise our typical understanding of who the Messiah was supposed to be.
So we can have the historical argument back and forth, obviously. And I think that there are arguments that you can make. I think there are arguments that I can make. But I honestly find them relatively uninteresting, is the truth. Shapiro's response to the historical evidence for Jesus Christ was simply that he found it uninteresting. I expected him to push back more or at least argue against it, but I believe this was the first time he was overwhelmed by the scholarly defense Dr. William Lane Craig presented, and he was out of his class. I love that our faith is rooted in the historical evidence for Jesus Christ and what he has done for us in his life, death, and resurrection. The resurrection is true. The tomb is empty, and Jesus has risen. This means all of our guilt, shame, sin, and the punishment of hell have been taken by Jesus on the cross in our place. When we repent of our sins in humility and put our faith in Christ alone, we receive the free gift of eternal life. To Jesus alone be the glory. God bless.
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