Dear Greg;

Hope everything is going well for you.

Responding to your last e mail:

You Said:..... "Regarding your evidences for the existence of a man named Jesus, I am very interested in whether a man named Jesus actually existed.  I wish I had time to thoroughly research all of the sources you listed.  By the way, what do these authors say about the more incredible accounts found in the New Testament about Jesus, such as....walking on water, raising the dead, turning water into wine and bread into fish, healing the sick, and rising from the dead.  I'm sure that these authors would feel the need to mention these wondrous happenings even if they were not convinced of their truth"

Here is some of the specifics that some of the authors I had mentioned previously wrote:

JOSEPHUS:

• "About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man.  For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly.  He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ.  When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him.  And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."

(Here Josephus is recounting how a high priest named Ananias took advantage of the death of the Roman governor Festus - who is also mentioned in the New Testament - in order to have James killed)

• "He convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned."

Tacitus:

• "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 superstitiution, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome... Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind."

Seutonius:

• "...As the Jews were making constant disturbance at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome." -- Luke makes reference to this same expulsion in Ac 18:1-2

Pliny the Younger:

• "...I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished... They also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately amongst themselves in honor of Christ as if to a god, and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery... This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave-women, whom they called deaconesses. I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths."

Thallus:

(as quoted by Julius Africanus, is discussing the darkness that supposedly occurred when Jesus was crucified.)

• "Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away the darkness as an eclipse of the sun - unreasonably, as it seems to me."

Phlegon:

• He reported that in the fourth year of the 202nd olympiad (33 A.D.) there was "the greatest eclipse of the sun" and that "it became night in the sixth hour of the day so that the stars even appeared in the heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea."

The Talmud:

• In it Jesus is mentioned, calling him a false messiah who practiced magic and who was justly condemned to death.

So, even without any information from the New Testament itself or any other "Christian" writings we still have some VERY interesting statements of a man named Jesus.  We know that:

1. He was a Jewish teacher
2. many people believed that He performed healings and exorcisms
3. some people believed He was the Messiah
4. He was rejected by the Jewish leaders
5. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius
6. all kinds of people worshipped Him as God

There....  Does that cover the issue of "Jesus never existed" well enough for you?

By the way, Greg...

You Said:.... "However, even if a man named Jesus did walk the earth and believe himself to be divine and start his own cult...much like David Koresh....would that prove that everything in the Holy Bible is true?"

You are absolutely correct, Greg.  Proving that Jesus actually existed does not automatically prove the Bible is true.  That is another area all together.  Is that where you want to go next after we finish with this issue "whether Jesus really did or did not exist"?

You Said:.... "You must admit that this statement by Jesus does require a lot of apologizing (apologetics).  I was raised as a Baptist and I'm sure that I never heard a sermon on that verse (re: Mark)

I don't understand.  Didn't you read the interpretation of Mark I gave you?  There is no apologizing for the very true statement made by Jesus.  The only thing we as believers have to apologize about is being of such weak faith, so as to make it appear in your mind (and the mind of the world) that what Jesus said was untrue.  This passage, by the way, has been shared at the pulpit by our Pastor on several occasions. In fact while in a small drama skit at our church, I myself quoted the passage.

In Regards to your "Bible Riddle": "Who made God"

Greg, you know as well as I do that is an unanswerable question that is way beyond both of us.  But let me try to explain why it is not even a question we can really concern ourselves with O.K.?

First, the scientific laws you mention in your riddle (1st law of Thermodynamics), as do all scientific laws, only apply to what is in time and space which is indeed pretty much everything.  However, God is outside of time and space and therefore the same laws do not apply.  So, as difficult as it is for you and I to understand, God has always existed (which is very reasonable and logical when considering He is beyond time and space), whereas the universe and all matter must have an initial beginning and 1st cause (because all matter is in time and space. It would be very illogical and unreasonable to believe matter has always existed because it defies the scientific law it is bound by.  God however, does not defy scientific law as He is outside of it's bounds).   It is also important to remember that: "it is impossible for anything within the confines of time and space to even begin to comprehend that which is outside of time and space" and therefore, "man can never really fully understand God".  So, the only deepest question man can really begin with is "who or what made matter/the universe?" since that is the first thing in time and space.

Well, what do you think of that answer to your riddle?    ;-)

By the way I'm curious... when you use the term "Bible Riddle", it seems almost like your merely approaching this as a game of wits and not real serious.  Is that the case?  I pray I have given you no cause to feel like I think this is just a joke or a game and I thought you felt the same way.

Anyways.  Please, I would appreciate full answers to the questions in my last e mail (I boxed them in this letter ) as well as the questions I've presented here tonight.

Hoping this is enough for you to at least come to the conclusion that Jesus did indeed exist.

Derek