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The Sean McDowell Show - Jewish Skeptic Tried to Disprove the Resurrection. It Backfired. · KDAV Radio

0:00
Speaker 1: Why would a skeptical Jew become a follower of Jesus
0:02
Speaker 1: after examining the resurrection? What experience and evidence convinced him
0:07
Speaker 1: that Jesus is the risen Lord? And how did this
0:10
Speaker 1: change his life? Our guest today is theology professor Dr.
0:14
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Morrow, who describes himself as a Jewish convert, written
0:19
Speaker 1: a fascinating book called Jesus' Resurrection, A Jewish Convert Examines Jesus.
0:23
Speaker 1: the evidence.
0:24
Speaker 2: I knew that Jesus was, you know, the leader of Christianity,
0:27
Speaker 2: the founder of Christianity, you know, had a beard. That's
0:30
Speaker 2: all I knew. I thought, gosh, I agree with the atheists' conclusions,
0:34
Speaker 2: not the Christians. But the arguments were weak and the Christians'
0:38
Speaker 2: arguments were stronger. I didn't know what to do with this.
0:40
Speaker 2: And December 5th, that December 5th, I accepted Jesus as
0:43
Speaker 2: my Lord and Savior.
0:44
Speaker 1: Dr. Murrow, thanks for coming on the show.
0:46
Speaker 2: Well, it's a pleasure to be here.
0:48
Speaker 1: So I want to jump in because right at the
0:50
Speaker 1: beginning of the book, you describe and kind of qualify
0:53
Speaker 1: what you mean by Jewish and say you grew up
0:56
Speaker 1: nominally Jewish. Explain, please.
1:00
Speaker 2: That's kind of hard. So nominally is, you know, in
1:02
Speaker 2: name only. But so technically I'm not Jewish, right? My
1:05
Speaker 2: mother's not Jewish. And so according to Jewish ritual law,
1:09
Speaker 2: you are Jewish if your mother is. So after my
1:11
Speaker 2: parents split when I was very young and I lived
1:13
Speaker 2: with my father, I would go to Hebrew school after
1:15
Speaker 2: my day school. And I was, you know, bar mitzvahed.
1:18
Speaker 2: But I didn't really believe in the Jewish tradition or
1:22
Speaker 2: the Jewish faith. I enjoyed the celebrations of my bar
1:25
Speaker 2: mitzvah and Passover, et cetera. But I really was more
1:29
Speaker 2: of an agnostic leaning towards atheism than anything else. So
1:32
Speaker 2: that's sort of what I mean by that.
1:34
Speaker 1: That's helpful. Tell me why you're agnostic. Where does that
1:37
Speaker 1: experience and worldview come from?
1:40
Speaker 2: Oh, sure. So the first time the God question came up,
1:42
Speaker 2: I was about 10 years old. And I remember talking
1:45
Speaker 2: to my grandfather once. who was one of the most
1:47
Speaker 2: intellectual people I knew and influences on my life. And
1:50
Speaker 2: I said to him, Grandpa, you know, does God exist?
1:52
Speaker 2: Some of my friends believe in God. And he said, well, Jeffrey, does,
1:55
Speaker 2: you know, can you taste God? Can you see God?
1:57
Speaker 2: Can you smell God, hear God, feel God? Well, no.
2:00
Speaker 2: And he said, well, there's your answer. And so I
2:02
Speaker 2: didn't have the tools at the time to recognize the
2:05
Speaker 2: problems and logical flaws there. So I just thought that
2:07
Speaker 2: sounds like a pretty good answer.
2:09
Speaker 1: My 10-year-old self, if I love my grandpa and I
2:11
Speaker 1: think about my level of intellectual acuity, would have been
2:14
Speaker 1: totally persuaded by that. But of course, I'm sure you
2:17
Speaker 1: look back at that differently now, knowing that God is spirit.
2:20
Speaker 1: We shouldn't expect to taste and see him in that way.
2:24
Speaker 1: But that makes sense. That was your worldview. Like, did
2:28
Speaker 1: you know any Christians at this time? Who did you
2:30
Speaker 1: think Jesus was? Did you think about these questions?
2:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, not a whole lot. I didn't know that many Christians.
2:36
Speaker 2: The people that claimed to be Christians would bully me
2:39
Speaker 2: because I was Jewish from their perspective. So I didn't
2:42
Speaker 2: really know. I didn't know anything about Jesus. I knew
2:45
Speaker 2: about Christmas having to do with his birth. But I
2:48
Speaker 2: didn't know that Easter had anything to do with Jesus
2:50
Speaker 2: or that he rose again from the dead until my
2:53
Speaker 2: freshman year of college. I was 18, almost 19 when
2:56
Speaker 2: I first learned that. So I knew almost nothing about
2:59
Speaker 2: Jesus or Christianity.
3:01
Speaker 1: So I want to go back and just smack those
3:04
Speaker 1: kids who said they were Christians and treated, or a
3:07
Speaker 1: better explanation, is mistreated you that way because you're Jewish.
3:10
Speaker 1: It's just so inexcusable to me on so many levels.
3:14
Speaker 1: So sorry you went through that. Anybody else watching, like,
3:17
Speaker 1: just knock it off. Christians, that's ridiculous. But as we
3:21
Speaker 1: step back, what was your childhood like? You mentioned that 18,
3:24
Speaker 1: 19-year-old moment. But what did you do? What was it like?
3:28
Speaker 1: Who was high school or junior high? Jeff. Jeff.
3:30
Speaker 2: Well, high school or junior high, Jeff was very involved
3:33
Speaker 2: when I wasn't at school in the martial arts. I
3:36
Speaker 2: had to learn how to defend myself early on in
3:37
Speaker 2: middle school. And so I fell in love with the
3:39
Speaker 2: martial arts. And also I was reading. I was an
3:42
Speaker 2: avid reader. I loved nature. And so I read a lot,
3:45
Speaker 2: mostly about evolutionary theory. And so I was reading a
3:48
Speaker 2: tremendous amount about human evolution, biological evolution.
3:52
Speaker 1: Okay. Now, why? I mean, I don't know a lot
3:54
Speaker 1: of junior hires who are like, give me Darwin's Descent
3:56
Speaker 1: of Man of the Origin of Species. Like, what was
3:58
Speaker 1: it that motivated you? And why was that so meaningful
4:01
Speaker 1: to you at that season in your life?
4:03
Speaker 2: Well, I guess actually, you know, he was an important
4:05
Speaker 2: influence in my grandfather as well. And so he had
4:08
Speaker 2: those books on his shelf. So actually, I was in
4:09
Speaker 2: the fifth grade. I was about 11 years old when
4:12
Speaker 2: I began reading Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, the Origin
4:14
Speaker 2: of Species, Descent of Man. And I would just keep
4:16
Speaker 2: reading them. When I was done, I'd reread them. So
4:18
Speaker 2: I read them about three times before I graduated high school.
4:21
Speaker 2: And I just fell in love with evolutionary theory. I mean,
4:24
Speaker 2: as a secular worldview, I thought, this is where we
4:26
Speaker 2: come from. And so I actually entered Miami University, Oxford, Ohio,
4:31
Speaker 2: with the intent of becoming a primatologist and study chimpanzees.
4:36
Speaker 2: I thought if I understood chimpanzee behavior better, I might
4:39
Speaker 2: get some insight into human evolution.
4:42
Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness. So Like this makes this is so
4:45
Speaker 1: interesting to me. You had already figured out at 18
4:48
Speaker 1: years old the direction you were going. It was motivated
4:51
Speaker 1: largely by this agnostic evolutionary worldview. And you wanted to
4:55
Speaker 1: make some contribution to the world about understanding ourselves better.
4:59
Speaker 1: So you went to college pretty ambitious, pretty optimistic. You
5:04
Speaker 1: had a drive and a goal where you were heading towards.
5:07
Speaker 1: Is this kind of sum up? What else would you
5:08
Speaker 1: add to that about kind of your 18 year old self?
5:11
Speaker 2: No, that's very true. I mean, I actually chose part
5:13
Speaker 2: of the, one of the reasons I chose Miami was
5:15
Speaker 2: because Bill McGrew was teaching there. He eventually retired from Cambridge.
5:19
Speaker 2: So I went to work with him. I was part
5:20
Speaker 2: of the primatology club, and that was very involved and
5:22
Speaker 2: interested in that. That was a bit of a bookworm,
5:26
Speaker 2: you might say.
5:27
Speaker 1: Well, I'm guessing you still are a bookworm now, and
5:29
Speaker 1: I am just for the record, by the way. I'm
5:31
Speaker 1: not sure you can be a professor and not be
5:33
Speaker 1: a bookworm. But with that said, so you're 18 years old.
5:37
Speaker 1: Where did you grow up? If you went to University
5:39
Speaker 1: in Ohio, where was home for you?
5:41
Speaker 2: Well, for high school, it was in the Cleveland area
5:43
Speaker 2: in Solon, Ohio. And before that, I was in the
5:45
Speaker 2: Maryland area in Annapolis for two years and Gettysburg, Maryland
5:50
Speaker 2: for about 12 years. So, yeah.
5:52
Speaker 1: So not too far from home. And this is what,
5:53
Speaker 1: late 90s, you're going into college?
5:56
Speaker 2: Is that fair? 1997.
5:58
Speaker 1: 97. Okay. So I started in 94. I won't do
6:00
Speaker 1: the math, but we're roughly the same contemporary, somewhat to
6:03
Speaker 1: a degree. All right, so what happened? You mentioned earlier
6:06
Speaker 1: being 18 or 19 years old, you start to investigate
6:09
Speaker 1: the resurrection of Jesus. Did you have some life crisis?
6:12
Speaker 1: Did you meet somebody? Like what happened to radically shift
6:15
Speaker 1: the trajectory you were on and start investigating this?
6:19
Speaker 2: Well, I started really unexpectedly. So my freshman year RA,
6:22
Speaker 2: Jason Shanks, was an evangelical leader within the movement that
6:25
Speaker 2: was then called Campus Crusade for Christ. Now it's called CRU.
6:29
Speaker 2: And he was leading a Bible study, a freshman Bible
6:31
Speaker 2: study in my dorm. And so the first week of school,
6:34
Speaker 2: he held this debate in the dorm about, you know,
6:38
Speaker 2: is there truth? Does God exist? So I showed up
6:40
Speaker 2: because it's free pizza. And we had a great discussion.
6:43
Speaker 2: And afterwards, he says, Jeff, why don't you come to
6:45
Speaker 2: my Bible study? And I said, well, I don't believe
6:47
Speaker 2: in any of this stuff. He said, that's okay. Just
6:49
Speaker 2: join us anyways. And so I did. And I remember
6:52
Speaker 2: they quoted from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians in
6:56
Speaker 2: chapter 15, where he says, if Christ has not been raised,
6:59
Speaker 2: your faith is in vain. Your preaching is in vain.
7:02
Speaker 2: I thought, wait a second, you Christians believe Jesus rose
7:05
Speaker 2: from the dead? You know, what's this about? So I
7:08
Speaker 2: thought I would investigate this to just show them why
7:10
Speaker 2: they're wrong. You know, I just assumed that if you
7:13
Speaker 2: were a Christian, you were a blind faith Bible quoting idiot.
7:17
Speaker 2: And so I thought this will, you know, they obviously
7:18
Speaker 2: would like it if I became a Christian. Well, I'll
7:20
Speaker 2: just show them this is probably not true. God may
7:22
Speaker 2: or may not exist. Probably not. Bible's a bunch of mythology,
7:26
Speaker 2: fairy tales. And Jesus almost certainly did not rise again
7:30
Speaker 2: from the dead.
7:32
Speaker 1: So if I heard you correctly, the first time you
7:34
Speaker 1: realized that Christians believed Jesus lived and died and rose
7:39
Speaker 1: from the grave is when you're a freshman in college.
7:42
Speaker 1: Did I hear that correctly?
7:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just about to turn 19.
7:46
Speaker 1: Okay, so you'd obviously heard this story before.
7:48
Speaker 2: No, I never heard it.
7:49
Speaker 1: Oh, you hadn't even heard it and put it in
7:51
Speaker 1: the category of myth. You just said never heard it?
7:54
Speaker 2: I knew that Jesus was the leader of Christianity, the
7:57
Speaker 2: founder of Christianity. That's all I knew. I had a beard.
8:01
Speaker 2: This Jewish guy, that's all I knew.
8:03
Speaker 1: Was that kind of your sense of most religions? Like
8:05
Speaker 1: it just wasn't important to you? Didn't have those conversations?
8:07
Speaker 1: We're living a different life?
8:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably. That's probably accurate. I mean, I knew a
8:12
Speaker 2: little bit more about Judaism just because I went to
8:14
Speaker 2: Hebrew school. But no, yeah, that's probably accurate, to be honest.
8:19
Speaker 1: Okay, so my parents are still on crew. And my
8:22
Speaker 1: dad's been on crew over six decades. My mom, I
8:25
Speaker 1: don't know how long it's been. She's younger. And so
8:27
Speaker 1: I grew up. going to all these crew events and
8:31
Speaker 1: people in my life, influential were from crew. Like I know,
8:35
Speaker 1: and I get the world of crew. Well, in fact,
8:38
Speaker 1: I just spoke a couple of weeks ago at a
8:41
Speaker 1: crew event in Wisconsin. So I'm super familiar and I
8:44
Speaker 1: understand exactly what that freshman was doing, going, Hey, let's
8:47
Speaker 1: introduce people, get them thinking about Jesus. Like he was
8:50
Speaker 1: doing what he's supposed to do from his evangelical perspective. Let's,
8:55
Speaker 1: What was the next step? So you show up at
8:57
Speaker 1: this Bible study, and you realize, wait a minute, they
9:00
Speaker 1: think this guy Jesus actually rose from the grave. They
9:04
Speaker 1: don't think it's like mythology, like Osiris or something like that.
9:08
Speaker 1: They think this happened 2,000 years ago. What were those
9:11
Speaker 1: steps you started taking in your journey? Sure.
9:14
Speaker 2: Well, so he was a senior graduating, and he handed me,
9:18
Speaker 2: after we discussed this after the Bible study, he actually
9:21
Speaker 2: handed me your father's book, More Than a Carpenter. And
9:23
Speaker 2: that was my first entry. Yeah, it was. I mean,
9:26
Speaker 2: I read that. I read that in one sitting. And
9:28
Speaker 2: then I read Resurrection Factor, Ready Defense, both volumes of
9:31
Speaker 2: evidence that demands a verdict. And I just thought, at
9:34
Speaker 2: first I thought this is going to be really easy
9:35
Speaker 2: to shoot down and show this is all wrong. And
9:38
Speaker 2: I started to realize from your father's works that I
9:41
Speaker 2: got my work cut out for you. Actually, there's arguments here. Now,
9:44
Speaker 2: they may not be accurate, but I had to do
9:47
Speaker 2: my research to look into this. And so one of
9:50
Speaker 2: the most helpful things for me actually about those works
9:53
Speaker 2: is was he was quoting all of these non-Christians and
9:56
Speaker 2: these skeptics. And so it gave me a sense at
9:58
Speaker 2: least of, you know, who are the big opponents of Christianity?
10:03
Speaker 2: What are the lines of evidence? Who do I need
10:04
Speaker 2: to read to see if Josh McDowell is getting them
10:08
Speaker 2: right or not? And how do I evaluate these arguments?
10:11
Speaker 2: So it started pointing me in this direction. So that
10:12
Speaker 2: may just consumed my consumed my time.
10:16
Speaker 1: So it makes perfect sense that he would cite non-Christians
10:20
Speaker 1: in this book because he first wrote it– evidence was 72,
10:24
Speaker 1: more than Carpenter, 77. And when he started his skeptical research,
10:28
Speaker 1: I think in the 50s, there was no apologetic movement.
10:31
Speaker 1: I mean you know this, Jeff. It was like C.S. Lewis,
10:34
Speaker 1: Francis Schaeffer. That was it. So he had to go
10:37
Speaker 1: out and kind of spearhead some of this movement, figure
10:41
Speaker 1: it out for himself. How long was this investigation? What
10:45
Speaker 1: was it like? You strike me as somebody who gets
10:48
Speaker 1: an idea in his mind and just goes all in
10:51
Speaker 1: until you settle it.
10:53
Speaker 2: That was about right, at least for this. And so
10:55
Speaker 2: that's what I did. It was very intense. It was
10:57
Speaker 2: a very compact journey. I think it was the first
11:01
Speaker 2: week of September. And December 5th, that December 5th, I
11:04
Speaker 2: accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. So it was
11:07
Speaker 2: very compact. but I was, first of all, I was
11:10
Speaker 2: a very rapid reader. I had taken speed reading in
11:14
Speaker 2: high school. And so I was, I was reading very,
11:17
Speaker 2: very quickly. Um, I mean, there were some days where
11:19
Speaker 2: I actually devoured three books in the day plus articles.
11:22
Speaker 2: I was reading, you know, I was reading William Lane Craig's,
11:25
Speaker 2: you know, massive volume by Edwin Mellon press assessing the
11:28
Speaker 2: new Testament evidence for Jesus resurrection. That was actually really
11:31
Speaker 2: important for me. That was a very important book for me. Um,
11:34
Speaker 2: I couldn't read the German or understand the Hebrew at
11:36
Speaker 2: the time or the Greek, but, um, But it was
11:38
Speaker 2: really important. So I was just reading. I was just
11:40
Speaker 2: devouring books. I was talking to professors on campus, going
11:43
Speaker 2: to their office hours, debating with them. There was a
11:46
Speaker 2: local rabbi I spoke with. And so I was spending
11:48
Speaker 2: all of my time. I was skipping classes. I mean,
11:51
Speaker 2: it's not good, but I was skipping classes. I was consumed.
11:55
Speaker 2: At first, it was like, this would be really easy.
11:57
Speaker 2: I read your dad's works. I was like, ooh, it's
11:59
Speaker 2: not so easy. This is pretty persuasive stuff. So then
12:03
Speaker 2: I just kept looking into it. And I remember actually
12:05
Speaker 2: reading I think it was J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, maybe,
12:09
Speaker 2: or it might have been William Lane Craig and Anthony Flew.
12:12
Speaker 2: I was reading all of those. But at one point
12:13
Speaker 2: I was reading and I thought, gosh, I agree with
12:15
Speaker 2: the atheists' conclusions, not the Christians. But the arguments were
12:20
Speaker 2: weak and the Christians' arguments were stronger. I didn't know
12:23
Speaker 2: what to do with this. I thought this was really frustrating.
12:26
Speaker 2: And so it became very quickly I was obsessed. I
12:28
Speaker 2: had to find the smoking gun to shoot Christianity down.
12:32
Speaker 1: People need to realize in the 90s, there was not
12:35
Speaker 1: near as many books as we have today. So that book,
12:38
Speaker 1: Assessing the Evidence for the New Testament, was rooted in Dr.
12:43
Speaker 1: Craig's doctoral work, and it's typed out. He probably typed
12:47
Speaker 1: it himself, and it's a super expensive book. I read that.
12:50
Speaker 1: And I think his doctoral work was maybe in the 80s,
12:53
Speaker 1: but that was one of the few books. You had
12:54
Speaker 1: a debate between Kai Nielsen and J.P. Moreland on the
12:57
Speaker 1: existence of God. And then it was Gary Habermas who
13:00
Speaker 1: debated Antony Flew on the resurrection.
13:03
Speaker 2: Okay, that might have been, yeah.
13:04
Speaker 1: At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. And then a book
13:07
Speaker 1: came out of that. So these are the kind of resource.
13:10
Speaker 1: There's no internet like that you could really get. It
13:13
Speaker 1: was just kind of starting the secular web at that time.
13:16
Speaker 1: And so very, very different world. Do you remember any
13:20
Speaker 1: first moment or first argument that kind of gave you pause?
13:23
Speaker 1: What were some of the first points that made you go, okay,
13:27
Speaker 1: wait a minute?
13:28
Speaker 2: There's a lot. I mean, one was Lord Liar Lunatic,
13:31
Speaker 2: the way that your father popularized C.S. Lewis's trilemma. I
13:36
Speaker 2: remember reading C.S. Lewis. This is hard, but the way
13:39
Speaker 2: that you did the Lord Liar Lunatic, it's not just
13:41
Speaker 2: a cute phrase. These are the options. And that was like,
13:43
Speaker 2: wait a second, is this guy nuts? You know, is
13:46
Speaker 2: he just deceiving people? I just never confronted those issues.
13:49
Speaker 2: That was powerful. And the empty tomb, to this day,
13:53
Speaker 2: I think the empty tomb is the most powerful lines
13:55
Speaker 2: of evidence. In fact, I ended up working with Ed
13:57
Speaker 2: Yamauchi at Miami, and this book came out of a
14:01
Speaker 2: paper I did for him in a senior capsule. Obviously,
14:03
Speaker 2: I was a Christian at that point. I was convinced.
14:06
Speaker 2: But it was about the burial. Did Jesus, was he buried?
14:10
Speaker 2: Was there an empty tomb? And wrestling with that, I realized,
14:13
Speaker 2: you know, the tomb was empty. How do we explain this?
14:15
Speaker 2: None of the arguments make any sense apart from his resurrection.
14:21
Speaker 2: So I was just, that was the empty tomb was
14:23
Speaker 2: huge for me. I'll give you another one. Actually. I
14:24
Speaker 2: remember reading the suffering servant that your dad does this.
14:29
Speaker 2: I think it's in ready defense. I don't remember, but he,
14:31
Speaker 2: you know, he reads it, you know, you know, where
14:33
Speaker 2: is this is from Isaiah from the old Testament. Well,
14:35
Speaker 2: somebody did that to me. They must've been influenced by
14:37
Speaker 2: it before I read it. They read it to me.
14:38
Speaker 2: I said, Oh, this must be from the new Testament.
14:40
Speaker 2: They said, no, this is from the Hebrew Bible. It's
14:42
Speaker 2: the book of Isaiah, the suffering servant. Now, I wasn't
14:46
Speaker 2: aware of all the various Jewish interpretations of that, and
14:49
Speaker 2: I got to learn more even after accepting Jesus and
14:53
Speaker 2: becoming a Christian. I got to understand more of the
14:55
Speaker 2: diversity of Jewish interpretations. I actually remember debating with my rabbi.
14:58
Speaker 2: I had just become a new 19-year-old, accepted Jesus. A
15:02
Speaker 2: couple weeks later, talking to my rabbi at my synagogue
15:06
Speaker 2: at home, and he was rereading and re-narrating some of
15:10
Speaker 2: the prophecies of And I said, okay, I don't know
15:13
Speaker 2: Rashi's interpretation, and I can't read the Hebrew the way
15:16
Speaker 2: that you can. But what happened to the body? What
15:19
Speaker 2: happened to Jesus' body? And here I was, 19-year-old, I
15:23
Speaker 2: knew nothing, nothing. And here's this seasoned rabbi, he reads
15:28
Speaker 2: the Talmud in Aramaic, the Bible in Hebrew, and he
15:32
Speaker 2: couldn't respond. He didn't have a response. He couldn't answer
15:36
Speaker 2: the questions.
15:38
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. Now, there's a lot of different arguments
15:40
Speaker 1: for the empty tomb, and Gary Habermas' new four-volume On
15:45
Speaker 1: the Resurrection Defense, the first volume, I think he gives
15:48
Speaker 1: 21 different arguments for the empty tomb, and he says
15:51
Speaker 1: some are stronger than others. Which ones did or do
15:55
Speaker 1: you find most compelling?
15:58
Speaker 2: Well, I do remember that just the– I mean the
16:01
Speaker 2: first would be the women being the ones at the tomb.
16:05
Speaker 2: That struck me. You have Geza Vermesh and Jesus the Jew. Never,
16:09
Speaker 2: you know, never came back to his any kind of
16:12
Speaker 2: faith in Jesus. If he, you know, I don't, I'm
16:13
Speaker 2: not sure he had faith when he talks about his
16:16
Speaker 2: own autobiography, but he, you know, he mentions the women
16:19
Speaker 2: of the empty tomb. Many scholars mentioned the women of
16:22
Speaker 2: the empty tomb. This just doesn't make any sense at all.
16:25
Speaker 2: They are the last people. If this is fiction, these
16:27
Speaker 2: are the last people that the disciples would invent, right?
16:32
Speaker 2: Seeing the empty tomb and the risen Lord, because they're, they're,
16:37
Speaker 2: Testimony was banned from Jewish and Roman courtrooms. They wouldn't
16:40
Speaker 2: have been allowed. Why would you use the least credible
16:42
Speaker 2: people in their day? To me, that's still one of
16:44
Speaker 2: the most powerful lines of evidence.
16:47
Speaker 1: I agree with you on that. So I teach a
16:48
Speaker 1: full class at Talbot School of Theology where I'm at
16:52
Speaker 1: in Southern California on the resurrection. And when we get
16:55
Speaker 1: towards the end of the semester, I always ask the students, again,
16:58
Speaker 1: graduate students, what do you find the most compelling evidence of?
17:01
Speaker 1: and the women witnesses is consistently one of the top
17:05
Speaker 1: ones because especially in the culture at that time, it
17:09
Speaker 1: would have been counterproductive and encouraged people not to trust
17:13
Speaker 1: the account. Why did they include it? Well, at least minimally,
17:18
Speaker 1: they thought that it was true. They're not making this up,
17:21
Speaker 1: and we have multiple accounts of the women discovering it.
17:24
Speaker 1: So that's one good piece of evidence amongst others that
17:28
Speaker 1: the tomb, in fact– was empty. Were there any, like
17:33
Speaker 1: in that really three to four month period of just investigation,
17:38
Speaker 1: devouring every free moment and non-free moments, it sounds like,
17:42
Speaker 1: were there any experiences, kind of pivotal moments in that
17:45
Speaker 1: investigation that were kind of like aha moments that you recall?
17:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so that was one big one. You know,
17:54
Speaker 2: the other one along those lines, actually, this comes, at
17:57
Speaker 2: least I was I encountered it in Craig's work, is
18:01
Speaker 2: the kind of implied apologetic, the polemic that's going on
18:05
Speaker 2: between the Jews and the Christians in the empty tomb
18:08
Speaker 2: narrative about, you know, Christ is raised. No, he's not.
18:12
Speaker 2: Tomb is empty, right? Disciples stole the body. How could they?
18:16
Speaker 2: There was a guard. Guard fell asleep. It implies a lot.
18:19
Speaker 2: You know, that to me was actually pretty powerful because
18:22
Speaker 2: you have this question of, you know, why would Christians
18:26
Speaker 2: invent what would prove to be one of the most
18:29
Speaker 2: One of the most used arguments against the empty tomb
18:32
Speaker 2: that the disciples stole the body. Why would they give that?
18:35
Speaker 2: Why would they invent that if people weren't actually claiming that?
18:40
Speaker 2: And so as you start to realize this is a
18:42
Speaker 2: real dialogue going on, what's implied in the narrative is real.
18:46
Speaker 2: This is really historical. Then the question becomes, well, why?
18:49
Speaker 2: Look how much they agree on. They agree of the death.
18:51
Speaker 2: They agree in the burial. They agree in the empty tomb.
18:54
Speaker 2: They even agree in the guard. They just disagree in
18:56
Speaker 2: what happened to the body. That's pretty persuasive. I found
18:59
Speaker 2: that pretty persuasive. The other aha moment was, gosh, you know,
19:03
Speaker 2: and again, this is more than a carpenter was my
19:06
Speaker 2: first introduction to this. And even if I would tweak
19:09
Speaker 2: some of the rhetoric in, you know, the discussion of
19:13
Speaker 2: the manuscript tradition, if I might temper it a little
19:15
Speaker 2: bit differently. He's right. Your dad is right that fundamentally
19:21
Speaker 2: this is the most historically reliable collection of documents from antiquity.
19:25
Speaker 2: that just blew me away that there was all sorts
19:27
Speaker 2: of lines of evidence. And I would just say since converting,
19:30
Speaker 2: even more so now than then, there's so much more
19:33
Speaker 2: evidence now than there was when I was looking into this.
19:36
Speaker 2: So the fact that you had so much history supporting
19:40
Speaker 2: what's there in the New Testament as well as the Old,
19:43
Speaker 2: that just kind of blew me away. I didn't know
19:44
Speaker 2: what to do with that.
19:45
Speaker 1: I completely agree with that. Like the fact that my
19:47
Speaker 1: dad was persuaded back in the 50s at the evidence
19:50
Speaker 1: that he had, I think there's so much more evidence
19:53
Speaker 1: we have today. Now, of course, everybody has a platform,
19:56
Speaker 1: Muslims and Mormons and Hindus and Buddhists, whoever it is,
20:01
Speaker 1: to make their case for their books. So it can
20:03
Speaker 1: make it sometimes harder to decipher truth. But, you know,
20:07
Speaker 1: Warren Carpenter first written in 77. We updated it recently,
20:10
Speaker 1: which is cool. And by the way, in 2027 is
20:13
Speaker 1: the 50-year anniversary of that book. So we're trying to
20:16
Speaker 1: just kind of relaunch it in different ways. But 50 years?
20:20
Speaker 1: What do you consider some of the evidence that has
20:22
Speaker 1: come out over the past few decades that also just
20:26
Speaker 1: convinces you Christianity is true?
20:28
Speaker 2: Well, the one for the historical reliability of the New
20:31
Speaker 2: Testament is the work of Peter Williams at Tyndale House.
20:34
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're familiar with this work.
20:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
20:36
Speaker 2: Gosh, what he did, so Tal Elan and others came up,
20:40
Speaker 2: Mor Zivak published these multiple volumes of names, just raw data, right,
20:44
Speaker 2: of names of Jewish men and women in all these
20:47
Speaker 2: regions in Egypt and Palestine and for all these time periods.
20:50
Speaker 2: And Richard Baucom in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses kind of
20:52
Speaker 2: goes through this and how helpful this is. But what
20:54
Speaker 2: Peter Williams did, and it was first it was in
20:56
Speaker 2: a video he did, I stopped him at a conference
20:59
Speaker 2: and said, you've got to put this in a book form.
21:00
Speaker 2: And eventually, I don't think it was because of me,
21:02
Speaker 2: but he did eventually put that in that small volume.
21:05
Speaker 2: what is it called? Is it Can We Trust the Gospels?
21:07
Speaker 2: I think it's called.
21:07
Speaker 1: I think that's right, yeah.
21:08
Speaker 2: It's a great book. You know, it's great. And so
21:10
Speaker 2: the evidence for, and I use this in all my
21:12
Speaker 2: classes that I teach, both when I taught at the seminary,
21:15
Speaker 2: but then here as well at Franciscan University, I tell them,
21:18
Speaker 2: you know, let's look at the little things, the things
21:21
Speaker 2: that are impossible to remember, that you always get wrong, right?
21:25
Speaker 2: That they wouldn't have had data for. And it's the
21:28
Speaker 2: use of names that to me are geographical regions. You know,
21:31
Speaker 2: if we want to know what people were called a
21:33
Speaker 2: hundred years ago in the United States, We can go
21:35
Speaker 2: online to the Social Security Administration and we can find out.
21:39
Speaker 2: I've done it. It's helpful. And so I use this
21:41
Speaker 2: when I compare and contrast this. And they didn't have
21:44
Speaker 2: any access to that. The gospel writers would have no
21:47
Speaker 2: access to that, nor would they have needed to, because
21:50
Speaker 2: nobody would have known that they got it completely wrong
21:53
Speaker 2: for thousands of years. And I always tell them, following
21:56
Speaker 2: Williams as well, I always tell my students and my
21:59
Speaker 2: audiences that we have a test case. the Gnostic Gospels.
22:03
Speaker 2: So we know exactly what it's like if you're making
22:06
Speaker 2: this stuff up hundreds of years later from different parts
22:09
Speaker 2: of the world with no access to the tradition. You
22:11
Speaker 2: get the names wrong the further away you are. And
22:16
Speaker 2: I think that's actually really helpful. So to me, the
22:19
Speaker 2: fact that they got the names right, they know how
22:21
Speaker 2: to disambiguate. If you look at the list of the
22:23
Speaker 2: apostles in Matthew chapter 10, for example, where it's a
22:28
Speaker 2: really popular Jewish name, they tell you which one, which Simon,
22:32
Speaker 2: which Matthew, et cetera. And when it's not very popular
22:37
Speaker 2: like Bartholomew, they don't tell you. You don't need to
22:39
Speaker 2: because you're not going to know a lot of Bartholomews,
22:42
Speaker 2: but you're going to probably know a lot of Simons,
22:44
Speaker 2: a lot of Judases, et cetera. So that's a really
22:46
Speaker 2: powerful one now, I think.
22:48
Speaker 1: I totally agree with you. In fact, we included a
22:50
Speaker 1: small section on that in the updated More Than a
22:52
Speaker 1: Carpenter from both Williams and from Bauckham's work. And for
22:56
Speaker 1: people listening, the key is, We have records of names
23:00
Speaker 1: in tombs. We have inscriptions. We have written documents. And
23:05
Speaker 1: there are certain levels of popularity and let's say unpopularity
23:09
Speaker 1: of names that we can ascertain statistically from the culture
23:14
Speaker 1: at that time. And as a whole, the gospels map
23:19
Speaker 1: onto that. Like there's– Philip is a less popular name.
23:22
Speaker 1: So I believe there's two Philips that are mentioned in
23:25
Speaker 1: the New Testament, which is way less than James. which
23:28
Speaker 1: is a more popular name, Mary. It's like, why are
23:31
Speaker 1: there so many Marys in the story? Well, it was
23:33
Speaker 1: an incredibly popular name. And so to invent that, knowing
23:37
Speaker 1: somebody would test it 2000 years later is just beyond
23:43
Speaker 1: the stretch of imagination. It's not a home run. It's
23:46
Speaker 1: just like a base hit that goes, wait a minute,
23:48
Speaker 1: if this is true, this is what we would expect.
23:50
Speaker 1: And it's true. That's one good example. So if I
23:53
Speaker 1: could step back, it sounds like your research was not, okay,
23:56
Speaker 1: I'm convinced God exists. Okay, I'm convinced maybe the Bible
24:00
Speaker 1: is true. Like what was that process like for you?
24:04
Speaker 2: So I was going through it all at the same time.
24:06
Speaker 2: I was reading these philosophical arguments. I don't know if you're–
24:10
Speaker 2: you must be, obviously. You teach this stuff. You're probably
24:11
Speaker 2: familiar with Peter Crave to Ramos. Of course. Amazing. Of course.
24:15
Speaker 2: So again, arguments, some of them are strong, some of
24:17
Speaker 2: them are not so strong. You know, Anselm's ontological argument
24:20
Speaker 2: didn't do a whole lot for me. But I'm reading this.
24:22
Speaker 2: I'm reading about Aquinas and the first mover. I'm reading
24:25
Speaker 2: these things, and I'm starting to realize, you know what?
24:28
Speaker 2: The idea that God at least started everything off makes
24:33
Speaker 2: a lot more sense than the atheistic assumptions. So that
24:37
Speaker 2: was challenging for me. So as I'm doing this, and
24:40
Speaker 2: I'm finding that both Old and New Testaments are incredibly
24:44
Speaker 2: historically reliable, which is a real shocker for me. I
24:46
Speaker 2: was absolutely stunned. And then I couldn't get out of
24:53
Speaker 2: the resurrection. I realized that this and aliens, maybe aliens
24:59
Speaker 2: would fit. No, I'm serious. I'm serious. I'm like, disciples
25:04
Speaker 2: steal a body that doesn't fit. I just went through
25:05
Speaker 2: all the arguments. They didn't fit. It took too much faith.
25:09
Speaker 2: And I remember at one point in November, Jason and
25:12
Speaker 2: Biff Rocha, who was the other co-leader, he was on
25:13
Speaker 2: staff with Crusade at the time. He was co-leading the
25:15
Speaker 2: Bible study. They said, you know, we want you to
25:18
Speaker 2: lead an open forum defense of Christianity. I was like, well,
25:21
Speaker 2: I don't believe this. They got approval from the staff members.
25:23
Speaker 2: They said, Jeff knows these arguments. Just let him play
25:26
Speaker 2: the game. You know, give the Christian view, share the
25:29
Speaker 2: gospel and defend it. And so, and the way they
25:31
Speaker 2: convinced me was they said, look, we're going to have masters,
25:34
Speaker 2: students in philosophy. We're going to have professors. We'll have
25:37
Speaker 2: people here. Maybe somebody will give you the argument you've
25:40
Speaker 2: been looking for. And so I did, this is the
25:43
Speaker 2: end of, it's right before Thanksgiving. I gave this open
25:45
Speaker 2: forum and I, and I just gave, you know, the
25:48
Speaker 2: basic Christian position and I defended it as best as
25:51
Speaker 2: I could, as if, as if it's true. And I
25:53
Speaker 2: remember at one point, this philosophy master student, also an
25:57
Speaker 2: atheist said, you're only saying this because you're a Christian
25:59
Speaker 2: and you believe it. And I said something probably inappropriate.
26:03
Speaker 2: And I said, no, I don't believe any of this.
26:05
Speaker 2: I'm a Jewish skeptic, but I was hoping you guys
26:08
Speaker 2: could help me shoot this down. And your arguments are
26:10
Speaker 2: worse than mine. I was really angry. I was livid
26:14
Speaker 2: and Jason was pretty happy, but I was livid.
26:18
Speaker 1: That is so interesting. So that, so you start this investigation,
26:22
Speaker 1: I think you said like early September, September, two months
26:25
Speaker 1: later in November, you're angry. And it seems like you're
26:29
Speaker 1: at the point going, there's not the rebuttal to this
26:32
Speaker 1: that I expected. What was next to get you to December?
26:37
Speaker 2: That was hard because I had to really confront myself.
26:39
Speaker 2: I mean, Jason, they had a really honest conversation with me.
26:41
Speaker 2: They said, you know, what more do you need? You
26:43
Speaker 2: can argue this better than anybody on campus. You know,
26:46
Speaker 2: what more evidence do you need? And it made me
26:48
Speaker 2: realize I got the evidence. That's not enough. That's not enough.
26:54
Speaker 2: I was wrestling with this. And I really realized, you know,
26:56
Speaker 2: I had an anti-supernatural bias. I had an anti-Christian bias.
26:59
Speaker 2: You know, if you had said God, I would have thought, well,
27:02
Speaker 2: that's kind of, you know, you're weird. There's something wrong
27:04
Speaker 2: with your thinkings. But when you say Jesus, it's like, ooh,
27:08
Speaker 2: there's an emotional edge there because of my own upbringing
27:11
Speaker 2: and my own interaction with people representing Christianity. So I
27:14
Speaker 2: had to get beyond that somehow. I had to. And
27:19
Speaker 2: it was hard. Actually, you know, the last kind of
27:22
Speaker 2: chink in the armor, the last moment was I just
27:25
Speaker 2: couldn't go to bed. I just couldn't sleep. I just
27:28
Speaker 2: knew I just had to make a decision. This is
27:29
Speaker 2: like if this is true, it's true. And I need
27:32
Speaker 2: to be all in because it has profound implications, not
27:35
Speaker 2: just for heaven. But how I live now, if this
27:38
Speaker 2: is true, I want to give thanks to God. I
27:40
Speaker 2: want a relationship with God if this is true. It's
27:42
Speaker 2: not just getting to heaven, which is important. Obviously, it's
27:44
Speaker 2: the most important thing. But it means I need to
27:47
Speaker 2: do something now. And so I just couldn't go to bed.
27:50
Speaker 2: And I'm walking the hallway after midnight. And one of
27:52
Speaker 2: my buddies, he's since kind of abandoned the faith. I'm
27:56
Speaker 2: not going to name him now. But he just encouraged me.
28:01
Speaker 2: He was one of the Christians that I was getting
28:02
Speaker 2: to know. And he encouraged me to, you know, the
28:06
Speaker 2: things that are most important in life aren't two plus
28:10
Speaker 2: two equals four mathematics, you know, relationships, what you're going
28:14
Speaker 2: to do for a career. All the things we think
28:16
Speaker 2: about that are really weighty in life. They involve trust.
28:20
Speaker 2: They're not irrational, but they involve some sense of I'm
28:24
Speaker 2: going to take a step. I'm going to, you know,
28:26
Speaker 2: and I wrestled. So he left. I just wrestled with
28:28
Speaker 2: that for hours. I stayed up all night. It was
28:31
Speaker 2: between something between five and five 30 in the morning
28:33
Speaker 2: that I just said, you know what, you know, this
28:36
Speaker 2: is true. This is true. And that means God that
28:38
Speaker 2: you are true. And so I asked Jesus to come
28:40
Speaker 2: into my life and I thanked him for dying for
28:42
Speaker 2: my sins. And I said, I want to be in
28:44
Speaker 2: a relationship with you. I didn't have a four spiritual laws,
28:47
Speaker 2: but I knew the gist. I knew that. And I
28:50
Speaker 2: just used my own words. And I said, Lord, I
28:52
Speaker 2: want to be in a relationship with you. And everything changed.
28:55
Speaker 2: It was everything changed. I mean, I didn't even, I
28:58
Speaker 2: remember the next day I told Jason and Biff, I said,
29:01
Speaker 2: I'm a Christian. I accepted Jesus. So how do I pray? Yeah.
29:05
Speaker 2: How do I pray? I didn't know how to talk
29:06
Speaker 2: to God in my own words. I could do my baruchas,
29:08
Speaker 2: you know, but I didn't know how to pray in
29:09
Speaker 2: my own words. And so, you know, and I just,
29:13
Speaker 2: I knew nothing. And I just started from there. And
29:14
Speaker 2: then I began reading the Bible. It was just, and
29:18
Speaker 2: then that day, actually, within hours, that friend who helped me,
29:23
Speaker 2: he almost died in a car accident, lost 75% of
29:25
Speaker 2: his blood into his belly. Renal vein was ripped off
29:28
Speaker 2: his kidney. So we all gathered together. So this is
29:30
Speaker 2: not 24 hours. were gathering together to pray for his life.
29:34
Speaker 2: His body rejected the blood transfusion and he ended up surviving.
29:39
Speaker 2: It was really miraculous. The doctors thought it was a miracle.
29:41
Speaker 2: And we were all gathered to pray. And he survived.
29:44
Speaker 2: So it's painful that he's at the moment abandoned our Lord. But,
29:49
Speaker 2: you know, I have hope. But it's hard. Yeah, but
29:51
Speaker 2: it was a beautiful moving experience for me then to
29:54
Speaker 2: see the answer to prayer so quickly.
29:55
Speaker 1: You said everything changed. So you learned how to pray.
29:59
Speaker 1: You saw an answer to prayer. What else changed for you?
30:03
Speaker 2: Everything. Everything changed. I mean eventually I ended up switching majors.
30:07
Speaker 2: Not that this is necessarily– but I ended up– I
30:10
Speaker 2: just decided that this needs to be the path I'm going.
30:13
Speaker 2: Zoology and psychology, anthropology, chuck that. I eventually became– we
30:18
Speaker 2: had comparative world religions major, studied classical Greek, became a
30:21
Speaker 2: classical Greek major as well, minor in Jewish studies. I
30:24
Speaker 2: wanted to go off to theology. So my career changed.
30:27
Speaker 2: My life changed. I recognized that, you know, I need
30:31
Speaker 2: to follow God, right? So I need to try to
30:34
Speaker 2: live a holy life. I need to try to live
30:36
Speaker 2: more like God. My whole view of reality changed. Initially,
30:41
Speaker 2: this is wrongheaded, but initially I thought, so the temporal
30:45
Speaker 2: things don't matter because, you know, heaven's the only thing
30:47
Speaker 2: that matters. And so I kind of neglected some temporal things.
30:50
Speaker 2: It was later changed. As I'm growing in my walk
30:52
Speaker 2: with the Lord, as I'm growing in my relationship with Jesus,
30:54
Speaker 2: I realized, no, it's true. Heaven's the most important thing. Therefore,
30:58
Speaker 2: these things matter. These things matter because I can do
31:01
Speaker 2: them for love of God. And I want to be
31:02
Speaker 2: the face of Christ to the others. They matter. They
31:05
Speaker 2: have a whole new importance. But everything changed. Now, you know,
31:09
Speaker 2: Christianity is not an idea. It's not just true. It's
31:13
Speaker 2: not just something to study. Really, it's relational. You know,
31:16
Speaker 2: God is. is real. And he, he loved me into
31:20
Speaker 2: existence and he has a plan for me. And so
31:23
Speaker 2: I had to do things with that in mind that
31:25
Speaker 2: I wanted to, and I wanted to.
31:28
Speaker 1: What happened when you told your grandpa, if he was
31:30
Speaker 1: still alive or your parents or your family, how did
31:33
Speaker 1: that go down?
31:34
Speaker 2: My grandfather just died. So my grandfather, yeah, he died
31:38
Speaker 2: during this process. I never got to talk to him.
31:40
Speaker 2: And I was very quiet about the process because it
31:42
Speaker 2: was so fast. I didn't know the, where the end
31:45
Speaker 2: was going to be. I didn't think at all.
31:47
Speaker 1: Of course. Yeah.
31:48
Speaker 2: So I didn't tell anybody cause I, you know, I
31:49
Speaker 2: just thought this would be some easy thing. I ended
31:52
Speaker 2: up writing about a hundred and plus page note to
31:55
Speaker 2: my father, um, summarizing the research I had done handwritten,
32:01
Speaker 2: you know, but I, I basically, I told my mom
32:03
Speaker 2: on the phone that my stepfather was dying of cancer
32:05
Speaker 2: at the time as well. So I didn't get to
32:07
Speaker 2: talk to him much about it. He knew about the journey,
32:09
Speaker 2: but he wasn't, he was an intellectual. He was a
32:11
Speaker 2: psychology professor, but he wouldn't have been in a place
32:14
Speaker 2: to talk, um, because of this, he had been a
32:16
Speaker 2: skeptic as well, but I told my mom and she
32:18
Speaker 2: just thought I had been brainwashed some cult, you know, and, uh,
32:22
Speaker 2: and then I waited to tell my father till I
32:24
Speaker 2: was home and he was, uh, understandably upset and it
32:27
Speaker 2: came out of nowhere for him. He was pretty upset. Um,
32:31
Speaker 2: that's why I wrote the letter to him. I wrote a,
32:34
Speaker 2: so then he realized, um, after Christmas break, he realized
32:36
Speaker 2: I at least didn't just jump into this. I thought
32:39
Speaker 2: about this, but that was pretty rocky. Um, In some
32:42
Speaker 2: of my Jewish family, it was pretty rocky. And that
32:46
Speaker 2: changed a lot after my dad's parents died. So my
32:49
Speaker 2: other grandfather and grandmother died. We sat shiva. We participated
32:54
Speaker 2: in the mourning ritual. I got to share with them.
32:57
Speaker 2: And they saw that I wasn't just chopping at the
33:01
Speaker 2: bit to make converts, but that I was loving and
33:07
Speaker 2: didn't hate them. In a Jewish background in the United States,
33:10
Speaker 2: there's a lot of baggage. And, you know, what do
33:13
Speaker 2: you make of Christians? And I think that was very hard.
33:16
Speaker 2: And they recognized that we could still have normal conversations.
33:19
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just rejecting Judaism. It was embracing Christianity.
33:25
Speaker 1: So it was like a double wound, so to speak.
33:27
Speaker 1: Is that fair?
33:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think that's accurate.
33:32
Speaker 2: You know, most of my family was more on the
33:34
Speaker 2: secular side, not all. And they changed. They moved. Different,
33:38
Speaker 2: you know, individuals moved, became more into the Jewish tradition
33:41
Speaker 2: later in life. Um, it's all very complicated, but, um, yeah.
33:47
Speaker 1: I mean, this is roughly 30 years ago. Have you
33:50
Speaker 1: ever had a point? I mean, we're coming up on 2027, right?
33:55
Speaker 1: You said 97, I think around that time. So if
33:58
Speaker 1: I'm doing the right math, uh, was there any point
34:02
Speaker 1: since then where you're like, what did I get myself into?
34:05
Speaker 1: You went through doubt. Did you ever go through that?
34:07
Speaker 1: Why or why not?
34:09
Speaker 2: No, I, I, there were, there were things that, um,
34:13
Speaker 2: There were definitely things that I said, OK, you know,
34:15
Speaker 2: you know, maybe Isaiah 714. Could this at a primary
34:19
Speaker 2: level have to do with Hezekiah and be more full
34:21
Speaker 2: with Christ? Maybe, you know what I mean? Fine. There
34:23
Speaker 2: were things that I would tweak of my understanding early on.
34:28
Speaker 2: But no, you know, it's just more and more confirmation.
34:31
Speaker 2: You know, first of all, I have a relationship with
34:33
Speaker 2: God and he's been he's proven himself faithful. I mean,
34:36
Speaker 2: I just tell you the first real proof. prayer, my
34:38
Speaker 2: own words I ever did was as an agnostic. I
34:41
Speaker 2: was a volunteer health worker in high school in Honduras
34:44
Speaker 2: in the rural mountains. And I got Giardia and E.
34:46
Speaker 2: coli and I thought I was going to die. I
34:47
Speaker 2: was really sick. And my dad had given me some
34:49
Speaker 2: medicine as a physician just in case. And I said
34:52
Speaker 2: to God, I was sick. I was really sick. And
34:56
Speaker 2: I said, God, if there is a God, help me,
34:59
Speaker 2: you know, and I got better with medicine and I
35:02
Speaker 2: didn't attribute that to God. I kind of forgot about
35:04
Speaker 2: that prayer till later in life. But God has proven
35:07
Speaker 2: himself to me faithful again and again and again. I
35:10
Speaker 2: know God now. So there's not been doubts in that sense.
35:14
Speaker 2: I'm not always clear of what the next step is.
35:15
Speaker 2: What does he want of me? And I ask for clarity.
35:19
Speaker 2: But there's been no doubts in the sense of, I mean,
35:21
Speaker 2: I always come back to what I know. Jesus rose
35:24
Speaker 2: from the dead. I mean, Jesus rose from the dead.
35:27
Speaker 2: And for me, that's rock solid. I can come back
35:29
Speaker 2: to that. God exists. Some of those things You know,
35:32
Speaker 2: if certain arguments I may have used in the past,
35:35
Speaker 2: I would back away from now or I wouldn't have
35:37
Speaker 2: been as firm or I understand it could be different
35:39
Speaker 2: ways of reading it. The basics are more solid now
35:43
Speaker 2: in my mind than they've ever been.
35:45
Speaker 1: One of the exercises I give my students, I used
35:48
Speaker 1: to do this in high school. I taught high school
35:49
Speaker 1: Bible full time for a decade. But now this is
35:52
Speaker 1: with my grad students at Talbot. As I'll say, I
35:54
Speaker 1: want you to steel man the best naturalistic explanation for
35:59
Speaker 1: the resurrection that you can. So if you were forced
36:02
Speaker 1: to argue like what you did when you were in
36:05
Speaker 1: college before you believed, what would you take? Why would
36:08
Speaker 1: you take it? And then I want you to come
36:10
Speaker 1: back to it and respond. If you are going to
36:14
Speaker 1: now argue on the other side, what argument would you take?
36:18
Speaker 1: Then I want to circle back to say ultimately why
36:20
Speaker 1: you're not persuaded by it.
36:21
Speaker 2: It's easy. That's easy, and it's the same it was
36:23
Speaker 2: in 97. It's aliens. Really? It's got to be. I
36:28
Speaker 2: just can't imagine any other– You can't, I just can't
36:31
Speaker 2: imagine any other explanation that explains there's just too much
36:35
Speaker 2: historical stuff to have, you know, the death and burial are,
36:38
Speaker 2: are obvious. You know, we know Jews were given proper burial.
36:41
Speaker 2: We know now we have two, not one, but two
36:44
Speaker 2: crucifixion victims with their, the nail still stuck in the heel. Um, there's,
36:49
Speaker 2: you know, it's gotta be something like, you know, it's
36:51
Speaker 2: an alien except that we already have, right. All of
36:55
Speaker 2: this evidence, you know, um, We already have an explanation.
36:59
Speaker 2: We don't need to jump to the naturalistic alien explanation.
37:03
Speaker 2: And we have the Isaiah scroll from 200 years before
37:06
Speaker 2: he was dead. You start to have to argue that
37:07
Speaker 2: the alien is not just Jesus, but the aliens were
37:11
Speaker 2: all through the Old Testament history. And it just doesn't
37:14
Speaker 2: make sense. It strains credibility for me. But I think
37:17
Speaker 2: that's the only aliens would fit. Some kind of alien
37:20
Speaker 2: superpower would fit. I just don't even think that's very
37:22
Speaker 2: good of an explanation.
37:23
Speaker 1: For a lot of reasons but yeah i gotta admit
37:25
Speaker 1: that is not what i expected you to say i
37:27
Speaker 1: don't think i had a single student go the alien
37:29
Speaker 1: route which is fine the only scholar i remember bringing
37:32
Speaker 1: up is dale allison's 2005 book resurrecting jesus like entertains
37:36
Speaker 1: maybe there's an earthquake the body fell through maybe aliens
37:39
Speaker 1: like he's just trying to think of every conceivable escape
37:42
Speaker 1: route which i appreciate about him he approaches these things
37:46
Speaker 1: very very skeptically uh i've had I had a friendly
37:50
Speaker 1: debate here actually in the studio I'm in maybe a
37:52
Speaker 1: year ago with a young, really sharp Orthodox Jew. So
37:59
Speaker 1: he was on campus, and he said it's the first
38:01
Speaker 1: time people asked him– they're like, are you a Messianic Jew?
38:04
Speaker 1: Because he's wearing the yarmulke, and he's like, no one
38:06
Speaker 1: ever asked me that. But you're on Calvary School of
38:08
Speaker 1: Theology campus? People are going to ask you that. And
38:11
Speaker 1: we had a great conversation back and forth. He went
38:14
Speaker 1: to Harvard like just, again, super smart. And here's an
38:17
Speaker 1: argument that he made, and I'd be curious with your
38:19
Speaker 1: background how you might respond. His objections to Jesus being
38:24
Speaker 1: the risen Lord, he actually said, even if Jesus is
38:27
Speaker 1: risen from the grave, it doesn't matter to me. He goes,
38:30
Speaker 1: that is irrelevant, which I.
38:31
Speaker 2: Thought— Pentecost Lapida.
38:34
Speaker 1: Yes, that's exactly right. I didn't expect him to go
38:37
Speaker 1: that direction. But his objections were that in traditional Jewish belief,
38:40
Speaker 1: the Messiah must fulfill specific core national and global— like
38:45
Speaker 1: requirements such as rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, gathering the
38:49
Speaker 1: Jewish exiles, and bringing about universal peace and the cessation
38:53
Speaker 1: of war. So these are requirements laid out in the
38:57
Speaker 1: Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, and so it doesn't matter
39:00
Speaker 1: who Jesus claimed to be if these aren't fulfilled. Now,
39:03
Speaker 1: I gave my response in that discussion, but I'd be
39:05
Speaker 1: curious what you would say.
39:07
Speaker 2: Probably be very similar. And again, that is exactly what
39:11
Speaker 2: my rabbi gave me back in December of 1997. And
39:14
Speaker 2: that's a very standard Jewish response to Christians. And my
39:19
Speaker 2: response is that, you know, that clearly is what contemporary,
39:25
Speaker 2: you know, post-rabbinic Judaism is expecting. And it will fulfill
39:31
Speaker 2: those things. What's not so clear in the Old Testament,
39:33
Speaker 2: in the Hebrew Bible, right, is that there's going to
39:35
Speaker 2: be a second coming of Christ when that will happen.
39:38
Speaker 2: And I think there's hints of it. Like, so when
39:40
Speaker 2: Jesus reads from Isaiah in Luke chapter 4, he closes
39:44
Speaker 2: the scroll at a certain point. You know, this scripture
39:46
Speaker 2: is fulfilled in your hearing. And so this is where
39:49
Speaker 2: I think it's helpful when you read like the Dead
39:50
Speaker 2: Sea Scrolls. You know, we often talk about the Old Testament,
39:54
Speaker 2: and I don't want to get too far afield, but
39:55
Speaker 2: we often talk about the Old Testament as Jewish religion.
39:58
Speaker 2: And it's not that that's not true. It's incomplete. Modern Judaism,
40:03
Speaker 2: and this is not a critique, but modern Judaism is
40:05
Speaker 2: rabbinic Judaism run through the centuries, which is not bad.
40:09
Speaker 2: It's what it is. And that comes out of the
40:11
Speaker 2: Pharisees who were kind of preaching the universal call to
40:13
Speaker 2: holiness and And so the religion of Pharisaic Judaism is
40:17
Speaker 2: very much memorize scripture, study scripture, pray. That's great. Old
40:21
Speaker 2: Testament Israelite religion is very temple-focused, sacrifice-focused. And that's not
40:26
Speaker 2: modern Judaism. And so if you look in the Second
40:29
Speaker 2: Temple time period, like at the Dead Sea Scrolls, you
40:31
Speaker 2: see with like 11Q Melchizedek and other things what this
40:35
Speaker 2: messianic figure would look like. And there seems to be
40:38
Speaker 2: more diversity than those kind of pat modern Jewish explanations
40:43
Speaker 2: that some– seem to be envisioning possibly a priestly Messiah,
40:47
Speaker 2: a royal Messiah, two Messiahs. There's debate. It's not necessarily clear.
40:51
Speaker 2: And my take is that what Jesus is doing is
40:55
Speaker 2: he is showing for us the true meaning and the
40:59
Speaker 2: fullest meaning of these passages. And this is an area
41:03
Speaker 2: I've moved away from from that first year or two
41:06
Speaker 2: as an early Christian. I would have said early on,
41:09
Speaker 2: and we might disagree on this, and that's okay. Mine's
41:12
Speaker 2: a gentle, soft disagreement in that I'm not sure. I'm
41:14
Speaker 2: not sure. But at the time, I would have said,
41:17
Speaker 2: this is what the Messiah's got to look like. Anybody
41:20
Speaker 2: would be walking around with like a book. Oh, do
41:22
Speaker 2: you fit this detail? I don't think that's so clear.
41:24
Speaker 2: I think there was a much more diversity of what
41:26
Speaker 2: expectations were in the Judaism of Jesus' day. And Jesus
41:31
Speaker 2: fulfills them and then some perfectly, showing the fullest meaning
41:34
Speaker 2: of these and how we're to understand them. And I
41:37
Speaker 2: think what post-Jesus rabbinic Judaism has done is kind of
41:41
Speaker 2: clarified narrow based in part in response to Christians. So
41:46
Speaker 2: Jesus will fulfill those things, but at the end of
41:48
Speaker 2: time in the second coming.
41:50
Speaker 1: That's really an important point. And I didn't respond exactly
41:53
Speaker 1: as you did, but brought out how, in fact, even
41:56
Speaker 1: in this discussion, he said, you know, Orthodox Jews can't
41:59
Speaker 1: agree on almost anything. And I'm like, yeah, that's true,
42:03
Speaker 1: including exactly what the Messiah has to do when he
42:08
Speaker 1: comes or what takes before he comes. There's far more
42:11
Speaker 1: debate about this. Now, some of the predictions I think
42:13
Speaker 1: are pretty clear, and we don't have to go into
42:15
Speaker 1: some of those details. But I think you're right that
42:18
Speaker 1: some of the later literature reveals far more diversity and
42:22
Speaker 1: room in who and what the Messiah could do than
42:26
Speaker 1: is often laid out today. Have you had any Jewish
42:30
Speaker 1: believers reach out to you since you've shared your story,
42:33
Speaker 1: since you've written this book and had those conversations? And
42:35
Speaker 1: if so, how did they go? Oh, yeah.
42:38
Speaker 2: Actually, I have a most interesting one. It's probably– I'm
42:40
Speaker 2: not going to name his name because he's in a
42:42
Speaker 2: transition period. It's kind of difficult for him to make
42:44
Speaker 2: the move, but he believes in Jesus. He is a
42:48
Speaker 2: Hasidic Jew. He still wears everything. And we were at
42:52
Speaker 2: a diner in New Jersey, and he orders– he orders,
42:56
Speaker 2: it was either ham or bacon. I don't remember, but
42:59
Speaker 2: both the waiter and I are like, Whoa. And the
43:02
Speaker 2: waiter says, you know, this has pork. He says, yep.
43:05
Speaker 2: You know? So he, and I said, you have to
43:07
Speaker 2: explain that to me. I don't, I'm also a little shocked.
43:10
Speaker 2: He says, because the Talmud says that when the Messiah comes,
43:14
Speaker 2: pig will no longer be an unclean animal. I believe
43:16
Speaker 2: the Messiah has come. It's Jesus. So he's there, but
43:20
Speaker 2: it's complicated with a family. And he's actually like in
43:22
Speaker 2: the movies. So he's a kind of a complicated, it's
43:24
Speaker 2: kind of complicated thing. life situation, but that's a, and he,
43:28
Speaker 2: his was, you know, he, he didn't know Christianity. This
43:32
Speaker 2: guy didn't, he was born and raised in Brooklyn, didn't
43:35
Speaker 2: learn English till he was in his thirties, all in Yiddish.
43:39
Speaker 2: And so he knew the Talmud really well. And he
43:41
Speaker 2: knows the Hebrew Bible really well. And when he encountered Christianity,
43:46
Speaker 2: what Christians really believe, it made sense to him. It
43:49
Speaker 2: all started to make sense to him. Kind of, kind
43:52
Speaker 2: of amazing.
43:53
Speaker 1: What would you say? I have a number, and I
43:55
Speaker 1: really appreciate this. I have Latter-day Saints. I have Muslims,
43:59
Speaker 1: progressive Christians. I have a lot of people who watch
44:02
Speaker 1: and follow this channel who just disagree with me. And
44:05
Speaker 1: I'd like to think they do so because I'm respectful
44:08
Speaker 1: and charitable to people who see the world differently. I'd
44:10
Speaker 1: like to think that's a piece of it. But for
44:13
Speaker 1: those people who are still watching this and engaging in
44:15
Speaker 1: content but aren't convinced about Jesus, what's your encouragement to them?
44:22
Speaker 2: Well, I would just say keep seeking and don't be afraid.
44:26
Speaker 2: I think keep seeking, don't be afraid. And, you know,
44:29
Speaker 2: if you believe in God, ask God, you know, pray.
44:31
Speaker 2: I think prayer is important. And that's the hidden part
44:34
Speaker 2: of my own journey that I didn't share is that
44:37
Speaker 2: the Bible study leaders, I discovered many years later, were
44:41
Speaker 2: praying that summer for that future freshman Bible study. And
44:46
Speaker 2: we didn't have six to nine people on campus. We
44:47
Speaker 2: have 40 members of the Bible study. Nine of us
44:50
Speaker 2: came to faith in Jesus. for the first time. And
44:53
Speaker 2: so I just think prayer, pray, don't be afraid, don't
44:56
Speaker 2: be afraid, but be careful what you read. If you
44:58
Speaker 2: read really good stuff, um, it's dangerous. It can, it's persuasive. Dangerous.
45:04
Speaker 1: I like that. Now your book is a little bit
45:05
Speaker 1: like a more than a carpenter in the sense that
45:07
Speaker 1: you deal with popular objections. You lay out people who
45:11
Speaker 1: followed my content here would be really familiar with a
45:14
Speaker 1: lot of what's in, in your book. It's not a
45:17
Speaker 1: scholarly treatise. It's a popular one. Now there's an angle
45:19
Speaker 1: here we're not going to get into is that you're
45:20
Speaker 1: Catholic and you talk about kind of what that means
45:22
Speaker 1: to you and that transition in your life. That's a
45:25
Speaker 1: conversation for another time. But maybe tell us just really briefly,
45:29
Speaker 1: and maybe we'll have you back to talk about this
45:31
Speaker 1: because I like you. You're energetic and you're smart and
45:34
Speaker 1: you're interesting. You mentioned another huge topic that we'll just
45:39
Speaker 1: get a couple comments on this is that some of
45:42
Speaker 1: the critique about the Pentateuch, that you wrote a book
45:45
Speaker 1: called Murmuring Against Moses. Just tell us a little bit
45:50
Speaker 1: about what you argue for there and why it's so important.
45:56
Speaker 2: Oh, sure. Yeah. So now you're getting into more of
45:59
Speaker 2: my trade, my wheelhouse. So the bulk of what I
46:02
Speaker 2: do actually is more scholarly work. on the history of
46:05
Speaker 2: modern biblical scholarship. And for me, you brought up that
46:09
Speaker 2: I'm Catholic. I'll just bring up that Pope Benedict XVI,
46:12
Speaker 2: before he was Pope, wrote this essay called Biblical Interpretation
46:15
Speaker 2: in Crisis. And I saw that as my marching orders.
46:17
Speaker 2: And the question became, why is it that if you
46:20
Speaker 2: go to a mainline Protestant school, most Catholic schools, Jewish, secular,
46:25
Speaker 2: they teach the Bible from the same position of doubt
46:27
Speaker 2: and skepticism? How did that happen? So that's the bulk
46:29
Speaker 2: of what I write on, actually, from a scholarly perspective.
46:32
Speaker 2: And so I latched on to the documentary hypothesis in
46:35
Speaker 2: the Pentateuch because that in some ways is where everything
46:38
Speaker 2: gets started in the tense sense of scholars. Before they
46:42
Speaker 2: go to Jesus, they're going to Moses. And I realized that,
46:46
Speaker 2: you know, this is like a common denominator that almost
46:48
Speaker 2: everybody dates the Pentateuch to different sources very late. And
46:53
Speaker 2: so I think it's important to understand that a lot
46:57
Speaker 2: of those arguments are pretty weak, actually increasingly so. And
47:00
Speaker 2: so what we do in this book, what John Bergman
47:02
Speaker 2: and I do is we show, we showcase the first third,
47:05
Speaker 2: about a century's worth of scholars, Jewish, Protestant, a few Catholic,
47:10
Speaker 2: not many, that basically poke holes in the skepticism of
47:14
Speaker 2: the Pentateuchal tradition and show that actually there's good reasons
47:17
Speaker 2: from archaeological and linguistic grounds that this is one author,
47:21
Speaker 2: very early, coming out of Egypt in the second millennium,
47:24
Speaker 2: like Moses. And then we give new arguments. And I'll
47:27
Speaker 2: just give you a couple of them right now. Yeah,
47:28
Speaker 2: do it. You know, if this is all supporting David
47:32
Speaker 2: and Jerusalem or the bulk of this is like Jay,
47:34
Speaker 2: for example, why is there no mention, not a single
47:37
Speaker 2: mention to Jerusalem in the Pentateuch in the first five books?
47:40
Speaker 2: Why is there no Zion theology? We've got lots of
47:43
Speaker 2: prophetic books in the prophets that are pro-Zion. We have
47:46
Speaker 2: Second Temple Jewish books like Jubilees. That's not biblical. That's pro-Zion.
47:50
Speaker 2: We have none of that in the Torah that's supposedly
47:53
Speaker 2: so pro-Zion. why does the Samaritan Pentateuch, these Northerners, these
47:57
Speaker 2: Northern Israelites, descendants of Northern Israel, they have the same
48:00
Speaker 2: Pentateuch with a couple differences. Why do they have all
48:04
Speaker 2: of those passages that were supposedly written after their split
48:08
Speaker 2: with the South that support the South? That doesn't make
48:11
Speaker 2: any sense. So there's a couple of these lines of
48:13
Speaker 2: evidence that, although that last one's not so new, that
48:17
Speaker 2: are really powerful now, actually. And so we include that
48:21
Speaker 2: as well as The history of how this view developed
48:25
Speaker 2: is not scientific and objective. As you might understand, it's biased.
48:30
Speaker 2: It's theological, philosophical, and political in many ways.
48:34
Speaker 1: I am so intrigued by your research on this because,
48:37
Speaker 1: as you know, if you were in 1997, there were
48:39
Speaker 1: the two volumes of Evidence Demands Verdict, I think a
48:41
Speaker 1: blue volume and a red volume. You updated the big
48:45
Speaker 1: gold cover in 1999, and then I helped my father
48:47
Speaker 1: update it in 2017. We're talking about right now a
48:52
Speaker 1: 2030 edition that'll come out. And so I'm going to
48:55
Speaker 1: go back and get your book and take a look
48:57
Speaker 1: at it. And I can't make any promises until I
48:59
Speaker 1: read it, but it'd be cool full circle if that's
49:02
Speaker 1: a book that helped lead you to follow Christ, if
49:05
Speaker 1: some of that scholarship is then included. But folks, if
49:08
Speaker 1: you're watching this, you're like, wait a minute, I want
49:09
Speaker 1: to hear more from Dr. Jeffrey Morrow on the criticisms
49:14
Speaker 1: tied to kind of just the putting together of the
49:17
Speaker 1: Pentateuch and a lot of modern biblical scholarship, what his
49:20
Speaker 1: response would be let us know below and we'll take
49:23
Speaker 1: a look and maybe have that conversation if you'd have
49:25
Speaker 1: the time and willingness to come back uh love it
49:28
Speaker 1: this is so great did i miss anything anything else
49:30
Speaker 1: you want to share about how people can follow you
49:32
Speaker 1: or why you believe in jesus did i miss anything.
49:35
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so. I'm at the St. Paul
49:37
Speaker 2: Center for Biblical Theology. So if you go there, you
49:39
Speaker 2: can find more of my work and what I do.
49:42
Speaker 1: Wonderful. Well, folks, let us know what you think about
49:44
Speaker 1: this conversation. And if you have other guests, I hear
49:48
Speaker 1: about people like Dr. Morrow from, in this case, it
49:50
Speaker 1: was Gary Habermas. But sometimes people with remarkable stories like
49:54
Speaker 1: this are not always on my radar. So if there's
49:56
Speaker 1: other people, please put them in comments here, email it
49:59
Speaker 1: to you through my website. make sure you hit subscribe.
50:01
Speaker 1: We're going to keep coming back to the resurrection, of course,
50:04
Speaker 1: because that's the heart of our faith and defending it.
50:07
Speaker 1: You won't want to miss that, but we'd also love
50:09
Speaker 1: to have you come study with us at Tabasco Theology
50:11
Speaker 1: in person or by distance. We have the top rated,
50:15
Speaker 1: one of the top rated apologetics programs really in the world.
50:19
Speaker 1: And I teach the class on the resurrection and go
50:21
Speaker 1: into depth on the very things that we talked about today.
50:25
Speaker 1: So make sure you hit subscribe.
50:26
Speaker 2: Dr.
50:27
Speaker 1: Morrow, thanks again for coming on. Really enjoyed this.
50:29
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here.