Today’s show is now posted for you! As I guest hosted The Patrick Madrid Show on Relevant Radio (I’m here all week, folks!), we talked about everything from exploring evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection, to the relative merits of the Beatles, to the Minnesota bishops’ decision to re-start public Masses.
What an epic Thursday it was! Listen to (or download) today’s show (and all this week’s episodes) here:
All this week I’ll be guest hosting The Patrick Madrid Show on Relevant Radio (9AM—Noon Eastern, Mon-Fri). Join us! you can listen live on RelevantRadio.com, or via the Relevant Radio App. Shows will also be archived for later listening at RelevantRadio.com/Patrick.
On today’s show, we celebrated the centenary of the birth of St John Paul II. I was joined live on this program by Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, as well as Fr Rocky Hoffman, CEO of Relevant Radio, who shared their thoughts on the life and legacy of Pope St John Paul “The Great”. You can listen to (or download) today’s show here:
In the aftermath of Judas’ betrayal, Jesus explains what true discipleship looks like, and what he has to do first in order to make it possible. We can share the light of Christ during the dark Coronavirus crisis, too.
Did you know that Jesus wasn’t the first Jewish king to ride in triumph into Jerusalem on a donkey? Jesus knew it — and that’s why he did what he did! Check out this quick Palm Sunday video (be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel), and share it with your friends. Welcome to Holy Week 2020 on TheFaithExplained.com!
Happy Feast of the Visitation! In this teaching, recorded live at on pilgrimage at the Church of the Visitation in Israel, Cale Clarke, Director of The Faith Explained Institute, explains the significance of the site. Learn how the Gospel writers show how Mary fits into salvation history using typology.
Interested in joining us on our 2019 Faith Explained Holy Land Pilgrimage? Drop us a line at TheFaithExplained.com/contact and we’ll send you the info!
(My latest for Catholic Ansers Magazine. Enjoy! — Cale)
A few weeks ago, while leading a pilgrimage tour to Israel, I couldn’t wait to bring the group to one of the greatest museums in the world: the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Packed with artifacts from the biblical period, it’s a treasure trove for anyone interested in the material remains of salvation history.
The museum also houses one of the more important archaeological finds of recent years: an artifact that has bolstered our confidence in the veracity of the Old Testament accounts of the kingdom of David, his son Solomon, and their successors.
Biblical “minimalists” had long contended that King David did not actually preside over a kingdom that originated circa the tenth century B.C., as the Bible states. Indeed, these scholars alleged that David, Solomon, and in fact the entire line of Davidic kings chronicled in the Old Testament, are nothing more than fictional characters invented by the writers of the Hebrew scriptures.
In favor of the “minimalist” argument was the lack of any evidence of David’s existence outside the Bible.
But here’s where archaeology came to the rescue. During the 1993-94 excavations at Tel Dan, in northern Israel, a stele (a stone slab bearing an inscription) was unearthed. Made from basalt, a volcanic rock plentiful in the region, it bears an account of a military victory. Scholars have postulated that the inscription commemorates an Aramean king’s defeat of Israelite forces. It may have been commissioned by Hazael or Ben-Hadad III, his son (cf. 2 Kings 10:32, 13:3, 22; 2 Chron. 22:5).
The key line on the monument, the stunning find, is the mention of the “House of David.” There it was, written in stone—independent confirmation of David’s existence and of a line of kings so powerful that defeating armies from this “House” warranted a public brag of sorts on this stele, for all passersby to read and marvel at.
Analysis of the stele dates it to the mid-ninth century BC, right around the time when, according to Scripture, David’s dynasty would have been flourishing. It appears that the stele was broken by the Israelites after they recaptured the area some time later, and was eventually repurposed into building blocks for the city wall.
After this discovery, as chronicled by Craig Evans, the minimalists changed their approach. “Okay, okay,” they admitted, “maybe David existed after all. But he was a nobody. A local tribal chief, at best, certainly not the originator of the vast, Iron-Age kingdom described in the Old Testament.”
At this point, faced with what seems like special pleading, one is tempted to respond like Jerry Seinfeld: “Really? Really?”
But don’t despair—again, archaeology is our friend here.
First of all, if David had been merely a small-time local yokel, what on earth were his descendants doing fighting battles all the way up north, near the modern-day border that separates Israel and Syria, far from his allegedly tiny operation in Jerusalem?
Also, a vast, centralized complex of buildings—in all likelihood, a government compound—has been unearthed in the Old City of Jerusalem, and can be seen on tours today. It’s located in what’s known as the “City of David” and dates to approximately the tenth century B.C.; once more, the time when Scripture says that David and Solomon were establishing their empire. Again, this seems fairly excessive if we’re talking about an insignificant tribal chieftain, but it does fit the biblical narrative of David’s expansive realm.
To this our minimalist might say, “I’ll grant you that David existed, and perhaps he did preside over a significantly large kingdom, but we still can’t trust what the Bible says about him. The people of David’s time would not have been significantly literate enough to record his exploits or those of his descendants”.
This last objection is at least partially answered by—you guessed it—yet another archaeological discovery. In 2008, an ostracon (an inscribed piece of pottery) dating to the tenth century B.C. was disinterred at the ancient fortress city of Khirbet Qeiyafa, which was the only fortified Judahite city during the reigns of David and his predecessor, King Saul (in fact, the Qeiyafa ostracon is the only extant relic that mentions Saul).
The famed French epigrapher Émile Puech regards the inscription as the earliest writing narrating the transition of Israel from a people ruled by judges into a kingdom. It shows that the people living around David’s time were literate, and in fact, more than capable of recording (and passing on) the annals of David’s dynasty, such as we see in the biblical books of Kings and Chronicles.
The Tel Dan stele and the Qeiyafa ostracon are just two examples from the multitude of archaeological discoveries in Israel that have bolstered our understanding of, and in many cases substantiated the reliability of, biblical records of history. Since only roughly five percent of all biblical sites have been excavated to date (which is unbelievable considering how much has already been found), It’s truly exciting to think of how many more such finds may be unearthed in the years to come.
Here’s my December article for Catholic Answers Magazine. Merry Christmas!
“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).
The Gospel of Mark doesn’t have an “infancy narrative” about the events surrounding Jesus’ conception and birth as do Matthew and Luke. Rather, Mark begins in a deceptively simple manner with these opening words, known as an incipit.
Almost 2,000 years after these words were originally inscribed on parchment, we tend to read this line and think nothing much of it—perhaps even yawn—because it’s something we’ve heard many times before. And yet with this simple sentence, Mark would have absolutely shocked the entire world, arresting the attention of pious Jews and pagan Romans alike.
With respect to a Jewish audience, it’s easy to see why: in calling Jesus the Christ, Mark signals that he the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. But it’s the term Son of God that would have raised many a Roman eyebrow (remember—Mark’s Gospel was written to the Church at Rome, where he served as the chronicler of Peter’s memoirs of the Lord). Why is that?
Mark has a big problem as he tries to convince Romans that they should commit their lives to Jesus—and the crux of the matter is the cross itself. Who was the most powerful person in the Roman Empire? Why, the emperor himself, obviously. The Roman Caesars were crowned in an elaborate ceremony in which they were draped in a royal purple robe, with great pomp, amidst shouts of “Hail, Caesar!” When a new emperor ascended to the throne, or when Rome scored a great military victory, it was published throughout the empire as “Good News.”
In contrast, the most powerless person in the empire was the victim of crucifixion. This was an ordeal so brutal, so violent, so humiliating, that it was almost never administered to Rome’s own citizens (for whom the comparatively humane act of beheading was the preferred method of execution, as in St. Paul’s case). The contrast between the mighty Caesar and the seemingly defeated Jesus couldn’t have been more stark. This is why one major commentator on Mark calls that Gospel an “apology for the cross.”
We could add to this the many public inscriptions that have been unearthed from Rome’s ruins. These served as a civic catechism of sorts, proclaiming what one was supposed to know and believe as a citizen. And one thing all Romans were expected to assent to was this: not only was the emperor extremely powerful, he was to be considered the divine “son of god.” Here are just a few examples from a much longer list compiled by Craig Evans:
An inscription from Ephesus describes him as “the manifest god from Ares and Aphrodite, and universal savior of human life.” Also, from Carthaea: “The Carthaean people honor the god and emperor and savior of the inhabited world, Gaius Julius Caesar, son of Gaius Caesar” (there are many more such inscriptions from the period).
“Emperor Caesar Augustus, son of god”; “Emperor Caesar (Augustus), god from god”; “Emperor Caesar Augustus, savior and benefactor.” An inscription from Priene celebrates Augustus’s birthday as “the birthday of the god.”
“Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus, son of god”; and “Emperor Tiberius Caesar, new Augustus, son of god, Zeus the liberator”.
“Nero Caesar, the lord”; “Nero Claudius Caesar… the savior and benefactor of the inhabited world”; “The good god of the inhabited world, the beginning and existence of all good things”; “the son of the greatest of the gods”; and “Nero, the lord of the whole world”.
So, in light of this exalted view of their emperor, why should citizens of Rome choose to pledge their allegiance to Jesus and not Caesar? Readers or hearers of Mark would no doubt be asking this question as they experienced this Gospel. Well, its account of Jesus’ authoritative teaching about the Kingdom, backed up with powerful exorcisms and healings, would no doubt have made an impression.
But so too would the presence in Mark’s Passion narrative of someone whom we might easily overlook: the figure of the Roman centurion who sees Jesus die.
The centurion, whose ultimate superior is Caesar, the alleged “son of god,” may have been aware of how his fellows had humiliated Jesus in a mock “coronation” replete with purple robe and a crown of thorns, and shouts not of “Hail Caesar” but, “Hail, King of the Jews!” as they beat him mercilessly (Mark 15:16-20). Yet somehow, as he watches Jesus die on the throne of the cross, and witnesses the powerful release of Jesus’ spirit, which tears the temple curtain in two, the centurion is granted the grace to recognize that one far greater than Caesar is here: “Surely this man” — and not Caesar — “is the Son of God” (15:37-39).
This was the very statement—politically perilous and subversive—that Roman Christians had to make their own. A statement about who truly possessed a sovereign claim over the world. Many of them were to stare down the absolute claims and power of the state and pay for it with their lives, as Jesus did. Peter himself, the source behind Mark’s Gospel, would also meet the horrific cross.
As we prepare to celebrate the true “birthday of the God” this Christmas, let us reflect on the kingship Jesus claims over our lives. Having conquered the grave, a foe no earthly ruler, however exalted, has ever defeated, he is worthy of it.
My latest for Catholic Answers Magazine.
Once, in Jerusalem, I was privileged to attend Mass with a group of Catholics who had converted from Judaism and celebrated the Mass in Hebrew. None of those present who had come to believe in Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus the Messiah) would have said they had “changed religions.” They didn’t view the Catholic Church as a new religion that had replaced Judaism—rather, it was Judaism, but with the Messiah having come.
For these converts, many facets of New Covenant worship evoked elements of the Old: features such as the tabernacle, the ambo, and the altar made sense to them in a way that they may not for those who convert to Catholicism from non-Christian or Protestant Christian backgrounds. And the similarities didn’t end with liturgy. They didn’t see Catholicism’s doctrines as something foreign, either. Rather, they saw the continuity, the inner logic, of Jesus’ teachings vis-a-vis the Old Testament.
Considering that Jesus of Nazareth was a faithful Jew, this really shouldn’t be a surprise. Yet throughout the centuries until now, many theologians and scholars have believed the opposite: that Jesus broke clean with the Old Covenant religion of his day, railing against its “legalism” and focusing instead entirely on God’s mercy and love.
Without a doubt, Jesus delighted in dispensing God’s mercy to those who repented of sin. But there is no opposition between mercy and law. In fact, in so many ways, God’s law is an expression of his mercy. A careful reading of the New Testament shows that Jesus was in no way opposed the law given to Moses.
Open your Bible and let’s take a look together.
For example: in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus gives five major discourses that represent the crucial emphases of his teaching that the evangelist wished to impart to his audience. The first is the Sermon on the Mount, in chapters 5-7. The second is the Missionary Discourse in chapter 10, followed by the Parabolic Discourse in chapter 13 and the Community Discourse in chapter 18. The fifth and final speech is the Eschatological Discourse in chapters 24-25.
We have several reasons to believe that Matthew intentionally arranged this material into five “teaching blocks.” First, there are literary clues. Each discourse concludes with the verb telein (“to finish”—cf. Matt. 7:28, 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, 26:1). This corresponds to verbiage from the Pentateuch: “When Moses finished (suntelein) speaking all these words” (Deut. 31:1; cf. Num. 16:31; Deut. 31:24, 32:45).
I’ve discussed elsewhere how Jesus is presented in Matthew as a new Moses. Matthew’s arrangement of Christ’s teaching into five narrative segments is meant to allude to the five books of Moses, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Why? In large measure to deal with the allegations of some Jews that Jesus and his followers intended to abolish the Law of Moses. This is an important theme in Matthew’s Gospel, intended as it is for a primarily Hebrew audience.
The number five (are you sensing a theme here?) comes into play most clearly in the material following Matthew 5:17-20, which is the key passage, in many ways, to understanding the Sermon on the Mount. In these verses, Jesus explains that he has “not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill” (v. 17), and that “until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (v. 18). Jesus also states that lawbreakers (such as he is accused of being) “will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them (the commandments of the law) will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (v. 19).
Then Jesus states that, in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, one’s “righteousness” must be greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees (v. 20). This is truly a remarkable statement, because in Jesus’ day those very scribes and Pharisees were considered theauthority on the interpretation of the Law of Moses.
This highlights the main issue: who has the true interpretation of the law? Jesus and his followers? The Pharisees and scribes? Some other group?
Jesus goes on to show, by means of a series of five “antitheses” (“You have heard it said . . . but I say to you”), that his interpretation of the law, as practiced by himself and his followers, is the true interpretation—and indeed, the fulfillment—of the law given to Moses. These five antitheses correspond to the five fulfilments of Old Testament prophecy given in the infancy narrative of Matthew (1:22-23, fulfilling Isaiah 7:14; 2:5-6, fulfilling Micah 5:2; 2:15, fulfilling Hosea 11:1; 2:17-18, fulfilling Jeremiah 31:15; and 2:23, which summarizes Judges 13:5 and Isaiah 11:1). Together, they make a powerful case that Jesus has come to fulfill the law and the prophets.
Specifically, the five antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount fulfill five aspects of the books of Moses: Deuteronomy 5:17 is fulfilled in Matthew 5:21; Exodus 20:14 is fulfilled in Matthew 5:27; Leviticus 19:12 is fulfilled in Matthew 5:33; Exodus 21:23-25 is fulfilled in Matthew 5:38; and Leviticus 19:17-18 is fulfilled in Matthew 5:43.
Many “historical Jesus” scholars, when assessing whether Jesus could have plausibly taught what the Gospels claim he did, are fond of employing something called the criterion of double dissimilarity. “If something sounds too much like the teaching of Judaism,” the thinking goes, “or too much like later Church teaching, Jesus probably didn’t say it.” That has always sounded ridiculous to me, considering that Jesus was Jewish and that he founded the Church! We should expect to find an abundance of continuity between the Old Testament, the teaching of Jesus, and that of the Church. And this is exactly what we do find.
And here’s one final, commonsense fact: if Jesus, as many caricatures of him suggest, really represented a radical break with Jewish teaching, there is simply no plausible way he would have garnered such a massive following among his fellow Israelites. No one would have believed that he was the promised Messiah if he had rejected the Law of Moses!
It seems reasonable, then, to believe the opposite, which is exactly what Jesus set out to do: not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17).
Here’s my latest piece for Catholic Answers. Hope you enjoy it. — Cale
Every Easter season we encounter articles, documentaries, books, and news reports suggesting that the canonical Gospels got the Resurrection wrong. Scholars with impressive credentials appear in the media to tell us that, if we want the full story about Easter, we must turn to what are known as the apocryphal Gospels.
It often comes as a surprise to Christians to learn that there were many other “Gospels” that circulated in the decades and centuries after the composition of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but never made it into the New Testament. Some of these have survived to our day, to the fascination of scholar and layman alike. But do these works indeed provide credible information about Jesus that isn’t in the Bible?
A professor of mine always gave this advice to students who were curious about these writings: “Just read them,” he said, “and ask yourself this question: do you really think they smack of authenticity?” Some of the scholars who champion the apocryphal Gospels imply that the Church hid these documents from the people because they contain the “real” story about Jesus. But reading them, as Dr. Evans knew, shows that the Church had very good reasons for not canonizing these works. Far from radiating authenticity, they come across as quite strange and not reliable historically.
Let’s take one example of these texts, the Gospel of Peter, and compare its Easter narrative to that in the Gospel of Matthew.
Matthew’s account of the Resurrection, written in the first century, is sober and rather restrained—especially compared with the account in the Gospel of Peter, a highly embellished collection of legends likely written in the second century. (No, it wasn’t actually written by Peter, don’t worry—later writers would attribute their works to apostles in an attempt to gain credibility).
Far from being an early, original source of material on the life of Jesus, the Gospel of Peter is actually dependent on the canonical Gospel of Matthew for much of its content. Its unbelievable reworking of the Resurrection account in Matthew includes—get this—a talking cross that emerges from Jesus’ tomb along with the risen Jesus and two angels, all of whom are so tall that their heads are, quite literally, in the clouds (39-43). It also mentions many other elements that a Jewish audience would find implausible and ahistorical, such as members of the Jerusalem religious elite pitching tents and sleeping among the tombs with Roman soldiers, making sure Jesus stays dead (33, 38). Ever heard of uncleanness and ritual impurity? Hello!
The Gospel of Peter therefore lacks what is called verisimilitude. Its miraculous details seem purposely fantastic. It doesn’t cohere with the way things actually were in Jesus’ time and place. Readers of Matthew’s Easter account, especially those of a Jewish background, would have found its Easter account much more credible and persuasive. Let’s look at some of its details.
Facets of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ burial later become important proofs for Jesus’ resurrection. The mention of Joseph of Arimathea’s donation of a new tomb for Jesus burial (Matt. 27:57-61) is significant. Joseph, who is mentioned in all four Gospels and undoubtedly a historical personage, was a member of the Sanhedrin, and thus a known public figure. This means that the location of Jesus’ tomb was also known to friend and foe alike. If Jesus’ remains were still entombed following Easter, it would have been easy to prove this by searching Joseph’s tomb. However, even the enemies of the nascent Christian movement do not dispute the empty tomb (Matt. 28:11-15). Matthew also notes that many of Jesus’ women followers saw the place where Jesus was buried (27:56; 27:61; 28:1-8), discrediting any theory that the women went to the wrong tomb on Sunday morning.
Among the canonical Gospels, only Matthew’s mentions the presence of Roman guards at the tomb, a point that many critics of the Gospel dispute. The Gospel of Peter also mentions the guards, though again with legendary accretions. Even so, this demonstrates that the guard account was an enduring aspect of the apologetic for the Resurrection. Therefore it is more certain, from a historical perspective, that guards were in fact present.
The chief priests, after hearing “everything that had happened” from the guards, bribed the soldiers to propagate the story that the disciples of Jesus stole his body from the tomb while they slept (a first-century edition of “fake news,” one might say). Matthew reports that, at the time of the writing of his Gospel, this version of events was still being told among the Jews (Matt. 28:11-15). In fact, this story became a well-entrenched facet of an anti-Christian Jewish apologetic, for Justin Martyr, writing in the second century A.D.,states that it was still being circulated in his time.
The guards’ probable historicity is even further bolstered by the edict of Caesar, possibly enacted in Galilee in the first century, decreeing capital punishment for grave robbers. The fact that tampering with Jesus’ tomb would have been punishable by both Jewish and Roman authorities, and that the tomb, according to Matthew, was sealed (Matt. 27:66), make any potential moving of Jesus’ body from the tomb highly unlikely in this case.
Add to that the fact that liars usually make terrible martyrs (why would the disciples later die for their belief in the Resurrection, if they had in fact stolen the body?), and one has a very solid case for the empty tomb. Again, even the enemies of the Christian movement admit the tomb is empty, and enemy attestation is excellent evidence.
But, of course, an empty tomb alone does not a resurrection make. This is why Matthew’s accounts of the appearances of the risen Jesus are so important. That Mary Magdalene and the other women “took hold of his feet” (Matt. 28:9) affirms the corporeal (bodily) nature of Jesus’ resurrection, making the same point as Luke 24:36-43 and John 20:24-29.
Matthew’s very mention of women as the first to discover the empty tomb on Sunday morning, encounter the resurrected Jesus, and inform the male disciples of the event is, in all likelihood, historical. Given the (unfortunately) very biased and low view of the testimony of women in both Jewish and Greco-Roman settings of the time, Matthew (and the other Gospel writers) would never have mentioned this unless it was factual. Consider these quotes from Jewish sources of the general period:
Sooner let the words of the Law be burnt than delivered to women (Talmud, Sotah 19a).
But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex…since it is probable that they may not speak truth, either out of hope of gain, or fear of punishment (Josephus, Antiquities 4.8.15).
Any evidence which a woman (gives) is not valid (to offer)…This is equivalent to saying that one who is rabbinically accounted a robber is qualified to give the same evidence as a woman (Talmud, Rosh Hashannah 1.8).
The bizarre Gospel of Peter instead describes many prominent maleenemies of Jesus as witnesses to his resurrection. What a stark contrast to Matthew, who not only presents women as the first eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, but does not claim that anyonewitnessed the resurrection event itself. This striking omission, perhaps above all the other differences, testifies to the sober realism of Matthew and the other Gospels over the fantasies of apocryphal texts.