theironhorse
05-27-2007, 08:48 PM
Sunday Dispatch #341
So I did this investigation for almost 2 years of my life: looking at evidence inside the Bible, outside the Bible. One of my favorite things: I found 110 facts outside the Bible recorded in ancient history that confirmed (and again these are many things some are higher quality than others, most are somewhat questionable) that form together a very powerful corroborative aspect.
One of them, my favorite, is a guy named Thalus, who was a Greek historian in the first century, who wrote a history of the Eastern Mediterranean world in 52AD. So this is right after Jesus' life. Thalus was not a believer and Thalus' works have actually been lost; but in the year 221, a guy named Julius Africanus quotes Thalus, and Thalus had written about the darkness that fell over the Earth during the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Now when I had seen that Bible verse, I remember thinking, "Don't you think someone other than Mathew, Mark, Luke or John would have noticed this." And Thalus not only recorded it, but he tried to explain it away as being an eclipse of the sun. Which, given the timing of the Crucifixion, it could not have been.
And I thought Thalus' was a weak historical claim; but the more you investigate Thalus you find that's a very powerful bit of corroborative evidence and it's not the only bit. There's other references to the darkness outside the Bible.
I just had a great time as a journalist investigating all this stuff. On the plus side, journalists respond to evidence; the negative side is I tended to be an observer, I was never a participant, I was the critical observer. I didn't join anything; I kept things at arms length.
So the idea of making a commitment to God was alien to me; and yet the evidence was so powerful that on November 8, 1981 (after spending two years of checking this out) I just realized that in light of this torrent of evidence that points so powerfully towards Christianity, it would have required more faith to retain my atheism than to become a Christian. Because to maintain my atheism I would have had to defy the evidence. To become a Christian, I just had to make a step of faith in the same direction that the evidence was pointing. That's logical, that's rational, and that's what I did.
~Lee Strobel
So I did this investigation for almost 2 years of my life: looking at evidence inside the Bible, outside the Bible. One of my favorite things: I found 110 facts outside the Bible recorded in ancient history that confirmed (and again these are many things some are higher quality than others, most are somewhat questionable) that form together a very powerful corroborative aspect.
One of them, my favorite, is a guy named Thalus, who was a Greek historian in the first century, who wrote a history of the Eastern Mediterranean world in 52AD. So this is right after Jesus' life. Thalus was not a believer and Thalus' works have actually been lost; but in the year 221, a guy named Julius Africanus quotes Thalus, and Thalus had written about the darkness that fell over the Earth during the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Now when I had seen that Bible verse, I remember thinking, "Don't you think someone other than Mathew, Mark, Luke or John would have noticed this." And Thalus not only recorded it, but he tried to explain it away as being an eclipse of the sun. Which, given the timing of the Crucifixion, it could not have been.
And I thought Thalus' was a weak historical claim; but the more you investigate Thalus you find that's a very powerful bit of corroborative evidence and it's not the only bit. There's other references to the darkness outside the Bible.
I just had a great time as a journalist investigating all this stuff. On the plus side, journalists respond to evidence; the negative side is I tended to be an observer, I was never a participant, I was the critical observer. I didn't join anything; I kept things at arms length.
So the idea of making a commitment to God was alien to me; and yet the evidence was so powerful that on November 8, 1981 (after spending two years of checking this out) I just realized that in light of this torrent of evidence that points so powerfully towards Christianity, it would have required more faith to retain my atheism than to become a Christian. Because to maintain my atheism I would have had to defy the evidence. To become a Christian, I just had to make a step of faith in the same direction that the evidence was pointing. That's logical, that's rational, and that's what I did.
~Lee Strobel