Monday, June 22, 2009

Was the divinity of Christ made up centuries after his death?

I touched up on this on my last blog post, but I thought I continue on this specific issue. Is the modern-day Christian belief just a legend that was developed over the centuries after Jesus' death? The Da Vinci Code claims that the divinity of Jesus was made up by Constantine the Great in the 4th century. It's all historically false. The belief that Jesus rose from the dead was believed from the very beginning of the faith. The letters I talked about in my last post show early evidence of what early Christians believed. The entire New Testament was writen in the second half of the first century, still within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses of Jesus and people who were taught by eyewitnesses. Historians agree that 1 Corinthians is an authentic letter by the Apostle Paul, and that the creed he mentions in it is an incredibly early attestation of the Christian belief. It goes like this:

that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:3-5)

1 Corinthians can be dated to the mid-50's A.D. Paul says he passed on the creed to the Corinthians six years ealier and recieved it at his own convertion, which means that it can be dated to the early to mid 30's A.D., very soon after Christs crucifixion, which most believed happened at 33 A.D.

So what we as Christians believe was there from the very beginning. John Dickson has a good video about why historians take the resurrection seriously as a historical puzzle. Here's the video.

http://www.publicchristianity.com/resvid1.html

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