{"id":33248,"date":"2016-05-06T02:44:38","date_gmt":"2016-05-06T08:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=33248"},"modified":"2016-05-06T02:44:38","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T08:44:38","slug":"the-evidence-for-jesus-is-early-and-powerful-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2016\/05\/the-evidence-for-jesus-is-early-and-powerful-2.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The evidence for Jesus is early and powerful&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_33249\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-33249\" style=\"width: 596px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/05\/800px-Sea_of_Galilee_2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-33249\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-33249\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/05\/800px-Sea_of_Galilee_2.jpg\" alt=\"Kinnereth from above and to the West\" width=\"596\" height=\"392\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-33249\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Sea of Galilee from above its western shore \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I confess that I just don\u2019t see much point to the notion \u2014 increasingly popular, it seems, on the web \u2014 that there was no historical person corresponding to Jesus of Nazareth.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Although I obviously don\u2019t, it\u2019s quite easy enough to reject claims of his deity without feeling any obligation whatever to flatly deny his existence altogether.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Moreover \u2014 and I freely grant that this is a subjective matter \u2014 the historicity of Jesus seems to me to make perfectly good sense when I travel here in Palestine. \u00a0The geography, archaeology, and topography fit the story. \u00a0I feel no more urge to deny his historical reality than I\u2019ve had, when visiting Gettysburg or Hastings, to deny that legendary\u00a0battles actually occurred there or to claim, while walking the streets of Wittenberg, that there wasn\u2019t any genuine historical figure named Martin Luther. \u00a0I\u2019m confident, when I visit Athens, that Socrates once lived there. \u00a0In Florence, I feel no inner compulsion\u00a0to reject the reality of \u201cthe Michelangelo of history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, here\u2019s a column that I wrote some time ago on the topic:<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.deseretnews.com\/article\/865619115\/The-evidence-for-Jesus-is-early-and-powerful.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/www.deseretnews.com\/article\/865619115\/The-evidence-for-Jesus-is-early-and-powerful.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Posted from Tel Aviv, Israel<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 I confess that I just don\u2019t see much point to the notion \u2014 increasingly popular, it seems, on the web \u2014 that there was no historical person corresponding to Jesus of Nazareth. \u00a0 Although I obviously don\u2019t, it\u2019s quite easy enough to reject claims of his deity without feeling any obligation whatever to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;The evidence for Jesus is early and powerful&quot;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&nbsp; 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