Christian Publishing House Blog
Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity
Pontius Pilate was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from the year 26/27 to 36/37. He is best known today for being the official who presided over the trial of Jesus and ordered his crucifixion.
Colin. H Roberts tells us that there was a notable 'degree of organization, of conscious planning, and uniformity of practice' in the early church. (Roberts, Manuscripts, 41) Do not let someone offer some exception as a means to undermine the organization of early Christianity.
The records of this year which we possess are extremely meager, comprising only two or three incidents, which may be here enumerated, especially as they form a kind of program of His future work.
Little could the Jewish people know that He about whom they were speculating, and praying was growing up in a carpenter’s home away in despised Nazareth. Yet so it was. There He was preparing Himself for His life, ministry, and death.
It might have been expected that He would find a nation saturated with the ideas and inspired with the visions of His predecessors, the prophets, at whose head He might place Himself, and from which He might receive an enthusiastic and effective cooperation. But it was not so.
Flavius Josephus, (c. 37–c. 100 C.E.) A Jewish historian from a priestly family. Josephus became a Pharisee and was later appointed by the Sanhedrin as a commander during the Jewish revolt against Rome. As a Jewish historian, we must then ask, what about the authenticity of what Josephus had to say about Jesus, James, and John the Baptist?
The records which we possess up to this point are, as we have seen, comparatively full. But with the settlement at Nazareth, after the return from Egypt, our information comes to a sudden stop, and over the rest of the life of Jesus, till His public ministry begins, a thick covering is drawn, which is only lifted once.
Jesus made his entry on the stage of life so humbly and silently; the citizens of Bethlehem dreamed not what had happened in their midst; the emperor of Rome knew not that his decree had influenced the nativity of a king who was yet to bear rule.
The whole land was set in motion; for, in accordance with ancient Jewish custom, the census was taken, not at the places where the inhabitants were at the time residing, but at the places to which they belonged as members of the original twelve tribes.
The book PAUL AND LUKE ON TRIAL deals with their reputations, the authenticity, and the trustworthiness of their New Testament books (Acts and Galatians), which Bible critics have sought to undermine for centuries. Sadly, this attack also comes from “the new generation of evangelical scholars [who are] far more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty than previous generations.” (Wallace forward, Page xii) Herein the Bible critics and modern evangelical scholars are the prosecutors in this trial, and Andrews is serving as the Christian apologist in defense of the Apostle Paul and the disciple Luke. Andrews will take on the Bible critics who have dissected the Word of God until it has become the word of man and a very jumbled word at that.