Expert: Elder Greg Madden - 6/23/2006

Question
Dear mr. Elder Madden,

I hope this message finds you well.

Recently a man called Luigi Casciolli, ex priest and atheist has published a book called "The Fable of Christ" where he claims to have proved that no man called Jesus has ever lived. Therefore there is not such historical person and no son of god.

This has puzzled me.. i always believed that Jesus was at least proved as a histocal character. My questions are:

- Mr. Luigi Cascioli must be taken seriously? Did jesus never existed?

- Do we have scientific proofs supporting the cristian faith, like the ressurection of Chirst? Was the Holy Shroud considered a fraud?

- Finally: Was the bible divine inspirated or just written by ordinary men?

Thank you and very best regards,

Fabio.

Answer
Fabio,
Thank you for your question, and I also hope that you are well.

I have never read the "The Fable of Christ", and frankly I have never heard of Luigi Casciolli. But thought the ages there have been, and still are, people who doubt the validity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is what the Bible calls the "spirit of anti-christ". To deny that Jesus came in the flesh.

1John 4:3 "And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world."

2John 1:7 "For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist."

I did however, do a search on Mr. Casciolli, and found that the latest new on his case is that it was dismissed on 2/9/06. Here is the link...

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2006/02/09/judge_shelves_case_o...

My onion is that he should not be taken seriously by the born-again Believer. Why? Because of the sheer weight of historical documentation. Not only in religious documents (which are everywhere), but by the secular contemporaries that lived during Christ's walk on Earth. Written evidence shows Jesus was mentioned by at least two early second century pagan Roman authors (Tacitus and Pliny), and by Josephus.

Tacitus a Roman historian wrote;
"To dispel the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits, and treated with the most extreme punishments, some people, popularly known as Christians, whose disgraceful activities were notorious. The originator of that name, Christus, had been executed when Tiberius was Emperor, by order of the procurator Pontius Pilatus. But the deadly cult, though checked for a time, was now breaking out again not only in Judea, the birthplace of this evil, but even throughout Rome, where all the nasty and disgusting ideas from all over the world pour in and find a ready following."
Annals 15 : 44.

Pliny a Roman Governor in Bithynia wrote;
"They were in the habit of meeting before dawn on a fixed day. They would recite in alternate verse a hymn to Christ as to a God, and would bind themselves by a solemn oath, not to do any criminal act, but rather that they would not commit any fraud, theft or adultery, nor betray any trust nor refuse to restore a deposit on demand. This done, they would disperse, and then they would meet again later to eat together (but the food was quite ordinary and harmless)."

Josephus, the Roman Emperor's adviser on Jewish affairs wrote;
"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, for he was a performer of wonderful deeds, a teacher of such men as are happy to accept the truth. He won over many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. When Pilate, at the suggestion of the leading men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him at the first did not forsake him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day."
Antiquities, Book 18, 63-64.

As to "scientific proofs supporting the Christian faith" there are many creation scientists that would verify the validity of creationism. Science in and of itself cannot prove anything in history. It can theorize and give conjurer, but that is all. Though secular science would deny it, they too must simply accept things in the past by faith. By that I mean that the theory of evolution must be accepted by faith. It cannot be any more  scientifically proven than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The question is "What will you believe?". It all boils down to faith.

Faith in a loving Creator Who sent His Only Begotten Son to die on the cross for our sin's, Who rose again on the third day, and now sit's at the right hand of the Heavenly Father making intersection for us.
Or...
That something, came from nowhere, and ran into something else, that came from nowhere, and as a result of their collision the universe and all of it's intricacies evolved.
Fabio, I choose to believe in Jesus!

And finally your question "Was the bible divine inspirited or just written by ordinary men?"
I will try to be brief and give you two reasons why we can trust Scripture.

I. THE SCIENTIFIC FOREKNOWLEDGE OF THE BIBLE

1.In the Bible there are scientific truths
a. Unknown by man with all his wisdom and resources
b. Stated as facts hundreds of years in advance of the
discovery of these truths by men
2. The writers of the Bible could have known these facts only through inspiration
a. They could not have known such things on their own
b. They must have had divine help, i.e., inspiration from God
B. A FEW EXAMPLES...
     1. The roundness of the earth - Isa 40:22
     2. The suspension of the earth in space - Job 26:7
     3. The currents in the seas - Psa 8:8
     4. The springs in the seas - Job 38:16
     5. All nations of one blood - Ac 17:26
[Such things were not known or confirmed by man until modern times, with the aid of scientific instruments.  Yet such knowledge reveals the Omniscient Mind that moved the writers of the Bible!]

II. THE FULFILLED PROPHECIES IN THE BIBLE

1. The prophecies foretold events in detail that were beyond the scope of human speculation
2. A FEW EXAMPLES...
1. The fall of Babylon, written two hundred years before it
occurred - Isa 13:17-22
2. The fall of Egypt, that it would be destroyed more by civil war than by outside forces - Isa 19:1-4
3. The fall of Nineveh, with its utter desolation - Zeph 2:13-15
4. The fall of Tyre, with its becoming a place for the spreading of nests - Ezek 26:1-5
5. There are the prophecies concerning Christ - cf. Lk 24:44-45
a. It has been stated there 332 prophecies fulfilled in Christ
b. The mathematical probability that all could be fulfilled in one person by chance alone has been calculated as one in 84 times ten to the 123rd power (84 followed by 123 zeroes)-- Cf. Introduction To Christian Evidences, Ferrell Jenkins, pp. 87-107
6. There are prophecies by Christ, such as the destruction of Jerusalem  
a. Foretold in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21
b. Fulfilled in A.D. 70, when Rome destroyed Jerusalem

I hope this was helpful. Please let me know if you have any further questions.
Elder Greg