Expert: Todd Tyszka - 3/27/2010

Question
Dear Mr. Tyszka,

I am taking a Philosophy of Religion class at my college. My teacher has demonstrated a pronounced prejudice towards Christianity citing that the Apostles got together looking for other religions to compete with and saying that Christianity created Hinduism. He's also confessed to exaggerating. I have my own ideas about what his agenda really is, but one thing he has repeatedly said is that Christianity plagiarizes Judaism. I know you have said you don't want to speak on other religions, but surely this is an outright lie. Can you verify this?

I'm writing a paper and I hope that if you can debunk his claims that you might cite a source for me to look up for my paper.

Thank you for your time.

Respectfully,

David.

Answer
David,
Thanks for the questions and I encourage you to look at the big picture. Judaism is essentially the early way to worship God but when God (Jesus Christ) came to earth, many things changed. By the way, Jesus Christ was a Jew, although He was also fully God. Christianity simply evolved from Judaism through Jesus Christ and Judaism is the foundation of Christianity. However, it was foretold in the Old Testament that the Messiah would be betrayed by his close friend (Psalms 41:9) and rejected by the Jews (Isaiah 53:3). When Christ died, Scripture says the curtain to the "Holy of Holies" or "Most Holy Place" tore from top to bottom to signify an end to this system, and direct access to the Father. I'm not sure what you or your professor mean by "the Apostles got together looking for other religions to compete with." Do you know what happened to the 12 apostles?

THE TWELVE APOSTLES:
1. Andrew - crucified
2. Bartholomew - beaten then crucified
3. James, son of Alphaeus - stoned to death
4. James, son of Zebedee - beheaded
5. John - exiled for his faith; died of old age
6. Judas (not Iscariot) - stoned to death
7. Matthew - speared to death
8. Peter - crucifed upside down
9. Philip - crucified
10. Simon - crucified
11. Thomas - speared to death
12. Matthias - stoned to death
(source: Fox's Book of Martyrs)

The apostles were in a very unique position to know if Jesus was indeed God as He claimed, or not. They refused to back down, even after His death and resurrection, and all of them but John suffered excruciating deaths in the name of Christianity. It had nothing to do with a "competition." Soon after, the temple was destroyed in the first Jewish-Roman War (66–70), also known as "The Great Revolt," and Jerusalem was taken over by the Romans. Josephus, a famous historian at that time, claims in "War of the Jews VI.9.3" that 1,100,000 people were killed during the siege, a sizable portion of these to illnesses brought about by hunger. He wrote, "A pestilential destruction upon them, and soon afterward such a famine, as destroyed them more suddenly." He also said, "97,000 were captured and enslaved and many others fled to areas around the Mediterranean."

As far as Christianity creating Hinduism, that's just plain ridiculous. Hinduism was MUCH earlier and these two religions are completely different, other than sharing a trinitarian view of God (which isn't much of a similarity). I assume he's referring to the six branches of Hindu philosophy which "evolved" from about the 2nd century BCE to the 6th century CE (i.e. Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa, and Vedanta), which are all radically different from Christianity.

I encourage you to be outspoken in your class as professors love to make ridiculous claims, often to stimulate discussion, but also out of pride. You can bring him right back to earth with a little study and Google. You can even do a search on your laptop in class when he's spouting off ridiculous concepts like Hinduism coming from Christianity.

As far as sources, make him provide sources for his claims. The Bible stands on it's own as a historical source with tens of thousands of scrolls and fragments which essentially all say the same thing. There are also a lot of secular and religious sources (e.g. Josephus who I referred to earlier). This is all common knowledge and you might want to get a book like "The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict" by Josh McDowell which cites these sources.

I hope this helps,
Todd