I've had my feet in and out over the years of really starting my journey into the words of Jesus Christ, but haven't fully accepted it. I finished watching [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ4NTdSK5ac] and my mind is blown. Especially the part he says towards the end that "why should god show himself to me if I won't continue banging on the door over and over?"
It's like I've been waiting for proof, but if I knock once or twice, don't get proof and give up, why should god present himself?
I encourage you all to watch this video. For those of us who were on Voat, it says a lot of what we already knew, but he provided sources, citations, photos. It's quite remarkable the work he put into this video.
Anyways, I would like to get myself a bible and I am curious what the most accurate version is?
I am also curious if the words of the bible today can be trusted? Who is to say the satanists didn't take over publication and tweak words, remove verses, etc? This is a legitimate concern of mine.
This is the most serious post I've ever made and I am genuinely looking forward to responses so I can proceed to the next step of this journey.
What evidence supports the resurrection of Jesus Christ?
This is one of the most important questions you’ll ever ask. If Jesus Christ rose again after dying, then everything changes. It means that death is defeated. It means that this life is not the end. It means that Jesus can do what no mere human could ever do. It means that everything Jesus said about Himself is true — that He is God come in the flesh. But if Jesus did not rise from death, then His message is a lie. Death reigns undefeated. Jesus’ Resurrected life means an open door to eternal existence, never-ending joy, reunion with our loved ones, and the glory of God shining forever more. But a lack of Resurrection life means no existence after death, no lasting joy or happiness, no reunion with our loved ones, and nothing but meaninglessness echoing in the forever emptiness. Everything hangs on the resurrection Jesus. Why, then, should we believe it? Why should we believe something so outrageous as the idea that a human being didn’t stay dead? Where is the evidence for such a thing? Let’s find out. We could examine the evidence from multiple directions. But to find the widest possible appeal, we will focus on evidence that virtually every scholar agrees with: skeptical and religious, conservative and liberal, ancient and modern. After all, if this is the one central truth that everything hangs on, we don’t want to limit ourselves to scholars who already believe it. But if we can verify the Resurrection by the claims even critical scholars believe to be true, then we know this claim is worthy of belief.
The New Testament places Jesus’ death and Resurrection events squarely in the arena of history. These are not secret events witnessed by a select few. Rather, they all happened publicly, with the highest leaders of the land involved in the drama. Given this, the claims of the New Testament can be tested, in the same way any historical document’s claims can. Let’s pull out these central claims and subject them to the judgment of critical scholarship. Five central claims comprise the case for Jesus’ Resurrection: ⦁ After multiple trials, Jesus died on a Roman Cross. ⦁ Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus’ body in a tomb whose location the public knew. ⦁ On the Sunday following Jesus’ crucifixion, this tomb stood empty. ⦁ Immediately following this, Jesus’ disciples claimed to experience Him alive, risen from death. ⦁ These disciples carried the claim of Jesus’ Resurrection throughout the ancient world, gladly sacrificing their lives to attest to its truth. The Apostle Paul did not witness Jesus’ death or empty tomb personally, yet he demonstrates how essential these five claims were to the early church: For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received [Claim 5]: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures [Claim 1], that he was buried[Claim 2], that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures[Claim 3], and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve [Claim 4]. (1 Corinthians 15:3-5, ESV) The Scriptures hang the case for the Resurrection on these five claims. What, then, do the scholars believe about them? How do these claims hold up to scrutiny?
Claim 1: After multiple trials, Jesus died on a Roman Cross. According to the claims set forth in the Bible, Jesus endured multiple trials from both Jewish religious leaders and Roman civil leaders before being formally executed by Crucifixion. Among the sources compiled together in the New Testament, Matthew and John record the events as eye-witnesses, Mark and Luke record the testimony of eye-witnesses they knew personally, and Paul passed on the tradition he received. Tacitus, an early Roman historian, confirms that Roman soldiers executed Jesus by crucifixion under the authority of Pontius Pilate: 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 Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Tacitus despised Christianity, yet his work as a historian confirms the claims of Christianity. The Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a, confirms a multitude of details from the life and death of Jesus. Though they wrote as opponents to Christianity, as did Tacitus, their work confirms the testimony of the Gospels: Jesus was hanged on Passover Eve. Forty days previously the herald had cried, “He is being led out for stoning, because he has practiced sorcery and led Israel astray and enticed them into apostasy. Whosoever has anything to say in his defense, let him come and declare it.” As nothing was brought forward in his defense, he was hanged on Passover Eve. Consider all that this short passage confirms: • Jesus existed as a prominent teacher and public figure in Israel when the Bible says He existed. • Jesus effectively saturated the whole land of Israel with His message, such that His enemies claimed He led all Israel astray. • Jesus performed miracles aplenty, which the Jewish authorities mislabeled “sorcery,” as the Gospels claim (Matt. 9:34, 12:24, John 7:20). Note that this record does not say that Jesus claimed to be able to do supernatural works, but rather that He genuinely practiced supernatural works, which they had to account for by creating an alternate explanation. • Many religious leaders rejected Jesus’ claims. • Jesus’ death sentence was broadcast to the public as the Gospel claims (John 11:53-54), with Jesus bearing the burden of arrest-on-sight orders for the last few months of His life. • Jesus’ died publicly by hanging on a Cross — a Roman execution, not a Jewish execution by stoning. • Jesus died on the day before Passover. • Jesus led a sinless life, such that He could only be charged with teaching ideas that the religious authorities did not approve and working miracles they did not sanction. If Jesus had committed crimes or salacious sins, they would likely have been included among the charges. This confirms Jesus’ sinlessness before the Sanhedrin, as the Gospels report (Matt. 26:59-64). This brief sample of the evidence, yet it represents the testimony of the whole. Luke Timothy Johnson summarizes the evidence by declaring “The support for the mode of his death, its agents, and perhaps its coagents, is overwhelming: Jesus faced a trial before his death, was condemned and executed by crucifixion.” Even the Jesus Seminar, home to some of Christianity’s greatest skeptics, agrees that Jesus’ death on a Roman cross is “one indisputable fact.” When Christianity’s loudest opponents agree with the claims of the Bible, it’s safe to accept those claims as certain. Jesus died on a Roman cross.
But that’s only the first part of the puzzle. Everybody dies. What happened next?
Claim 2: According to the eye-witnesses, Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus’ body in a tomb whose location the public knew. Jesus’ burial in a known tomb may seem inconsequential today, but in the early days after Jesus’ Resurrection it was vital. If Jesus’ body laid in a mass grave or an unknown location, no one could verify that He had indeed been buried or that His body was now missing. To verify these details, the tomb had to be known to friend and enemy alike. Cambridge University’s John A. T. Robinson concludes that Jesus’ burial in a known tomb — rather than a mass grave or unknown pit — is one of “the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.” Every report passed down through history, even those written by Christianity’s opponents, affirm the known location of Jesus’ burial. These first two claims conform to ordinary life. Death and burial are commonplace. The next three leave the ordinary behind.
Claim 3: On the Sunday following Jesus’ crucifixion, this tomb stood empty. This claim is the key to all that follows. If the tomb still contained Jesus’ body, then Christianity could be destroyed simply by producing the body. Any claim of Resurrection dies if Jesus’ body is still dead. But if the tomb lost Jesus’ body, then something happened. If the tomb is empty, then the story doesn’t end at Jesus’ death. On this point, historians of every kind agree overwhelmingly: on Sunday morning, the tomb of Jesus was empty. Jakob Kremer, who specializes in studying the resurrection of Jesus, states clearly: “By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb.” D. H. van Daalen concurs, stating: “It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.” John Warwick Montgomery adds his voice to the chorus: “In 56 A.D. [the apostle] Paul wrote that over 500 people had seen the risen Jesus and that most of them were still alive (1 Corinthians 15:6ff.). It passes the bounds of credibility that the early Christians could have manufactured such a tale and then preached it among those who might easily have refuted it simply by producing the body of Jesus.” Even Jesus’ enemies found no way to deny the empty tomb. In the sixth century, skeptical voices in the Jewish community wrote a treatise called the Toledoth Yeshu, intending to disprove Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. Yet they could not deny the death of Jesus nor the empty tomb. Despite their antagonism to Jesus, their work confirmed that Jesus’ body had disappeared and no one could find it. They wrote: On the first day of the week his bold followers came to Queen Helene with the report that he who was slain was truly the Messiah and that he was not in his grave; he had ascended to heaven as he prophesied. Diligent search was made and he was not found in the grave where he had been buried. The Toledoth Yeshu rejected the possibility of Jesus’ Resurrection, inventing an alternate explanation for the empty tomb. They suggested: A gardener had taken him from the grave and had brought him into his garden and buried him in the sand over which the waters flowed into the garden. At first blush, it sounds plausible. Yet the next two claims expose its inability to explain the situation.
Claim 4: Immediately following this, Jesus’ disciples claimed to experience Him alive, risen from death. Many who doubt the supernatural will scoff, proclaiming that no one can rise from the dead. But even historians who scoff at the supernatural agree that the disciples claimed to experience Jesus alive after His death. Gert Lüdemann, a staunch critic of Jesus’ Resurrection, still must admit: “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’s death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.” Even scholars such as David Friedrich Strauss, who vigorously denied that Jesus could be divine, acknowledge that the disciples experienced visions of Jesus alive after His death. In one of the earliest-written letters collected in the New Testament, Paul delineates a list of eye-witnesses who claimed to see Jesus alive in 1 Corinthians 15: [Jesus] appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Corinthians 15:5–8, ESV) As historian April De Conick reflects, this account originates from the “primitive church” – the first believers. The Resurrection appearances of Jesus formed the key witness of the early Christian community: In this regard, Paul’s own firsthand testimony cannot be emphasized enough, because it demonstrates that the first Christian Jews believed that they were recipients of ecstatic experiences both in the form of rapture events and invasions of heaven. History therefore proves this claim decisively. The earliest Christians – the disciples of Jesus and their immediate followers – experienced what they believed to be the risen Jesus appearing to them alive days after His death. This leads us directly to the final claim.