Jesus' Fate: Resurrection or Rescue? Michael Licona vs Ali Ataie

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Jesus' Fate: Resurrection or Rescue? Michael Licona vs Ali Ataie

April 9, 2025

Muslim professor Dr. Ali Ataie, a scholar of biblical hermeneutics, asserts that before the formation of the biblical canon, Christians did not believe that Jesus was killed. He argues that this claim was not, as held by some, originally a Muslim idea found in the Quran. In this episode, he debates Dr. Michael Licona, who refutes Ataie’s claim while contending that four solid historical facts provide sufficient evidence for Jesus’ death by crucifixion and later resurrection.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Risen Jesus podcast with Dr. Mike Licona. This is Dr. Kurt Jairus, your host. In today's episode, we hear Dr. Mike Licona take on the contention that many Christians, before the formulation of the canon, did not believe that Jesus was crucified and later rose back to life.

Dr. Ali Ataie joins Dr. Licona at the University of California, Davis, to argue this claim as the two debate the first century fate of Jesus. Was he resurrected or did God rescue him from death by crucifixion? Thanks for joining us. We're about to start the program, so if you can, try to find a seat.

If you do so, I know it's kind of hard. I just want to introduce myself. My name is Shahzam Khadab, and I'm a representative of the Muslim Student Association.

And this event is actually a cooperative effort between the Muslim Student Association, the campus who saved for Christ and college life of UC Davis. So I'm not the moderator or anything for this event. I'm just going to do a quick intro, sort of give you a background on how this event came about and how this idea was sort of conceived.

So the first thing I sort of want to touch on is the fact that I think that this sort of interfaith, the dialogue is extremely beneficial. And it seems that a lot of times when people use the phrase interfaith, they sort of misconstrue it to mean that it only refers to focusing on our religious similarities. Oftentimes it has this connotation that interfaith is focusing on our similarities, but I think an integral ingredient of interfaith work is understanding our differences.

You know, understanding our differences. This is a key component of interfaith work. And so I know a lot of people, when they hear this word debate, it sort of conjures up images of animosity, right? And distrust animosity, hostility between organizations and individuals.

But the fact of the matter is that it doesn't really have to be that. In fact, I think if we understand our differences, it can have the opposite effect. It can have the opposite effect on people.

Because imagine what is the alternative? What is the alternative of not having a dialogue like this? People would remain ignorant, right? I mean granted we have differences, and that's something we accept. And I think the best thing we can do having said that we have differences is trying to understand our differences. I think this is the key to building bridges and having an understanding.

So like I said, I know a lot of people have this debate, you know, what's that going to do? It's just going to increase hostility between organizations and groups and things like that. But I ask you like, what is the alternative? And I think we should have more dialogues like these. Because if you ask me, there's not enough dialogues or discourses in which we discuss things which are significant to people.

You know, we live in an age in which the trivial is emphasized and the significant is relegated to the periphery, right? We're talking about the fate of Jesus. This is an issue which affects so many people, right? It's an issue which affects so many people, Muslims and Christians and non-Muslims and non-Christians alike. It affects so many people.

So I think it's healthy and it's good to talk about these things and understand our differences rather than just focusing strictly on our similarities. And I said that, you know, a lot of times people think that it's just going to create hostility and things like that. So I just want to give you an example.

When I started bringing up envisioning the idea, and the reason I'm sort of doing this introduction is because MSA is the organization that initiated this event. So like we approached college life and the campus crusade for Christ and we said, you know, would you guys be interested in doing this sort of event? And when I first met with one of the director of college life at UC Davis, Bronwyn Lee, I sort of outlined our vision, what do you want to do, what do you want to accomplish, right? And it was interesting because one of the first things that she told me was, you know, I have a friend and this friend told me that before you make any sort of commitment in participating in this thing, make sure you're not dealing with the radicals, right? Make sure you're not dealing with an extremist group here. So I was sort of struck by an astronaut, what do you think? And she said, the very fact that you guys are coming to us, I don't even have to ask you that question, right? So this is just an illustration of the fact that this sort of event doesn't create feelings of distress rather, it has the opposite effect.

So that's just my short little intro and I will hand off the mic over to our moderator for tonight, Jay Khan Mathieu, who is a representative of college life. I want to start off by introducing tonight's speakers, but before I do that, I'm going to ask, if you turn off any cell phones, we don't want those going off in the middle and disrupting speakers. So I'm going to introduce the speakers.

Invited by the Muslim Student Association is Ali Attai. Mr. Attai was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to California in 1979. He attended Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in accounting.

He also served as the president of the Muslim Student Association in Cal Poly. Since graduating 2000, Mr. Attai has taught religious studies and apologetics at Cal Poly and at the World Alliance for Humanity in Fremont, and is the founder and president of the Muslim Interfaith Council. He has authored books titled, In Defense of Islam, Confronting the Christians with their own scripture, and in Geohawk, the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Invited by campus crusade and college life is Mike Lacona. Mr. Lacona serves as director of apologetics and interfaith evangelism at the North American Mission Board in Atlanta, Georgia. He received his MA in religious studies from Liberty University and is a PhD candidate in New Testament at the University of Pretoria.

He co-authored the case for the resurrection of Jesus, as well as Paul meets Muhammad, which is a fictional debate between the Apostle Paul and the Prophet Muhammad on the resurrection of Jesus. I'm going to go over the rules of the debate, just so you are aware of this. It's already been gone over with both speakers.

The debate will consist of three rounds. You can follow along on the yellow card that you receive as you walked in. In the first round, each speaker will get 20 minutes to present their side to view on the issue.

In the second round, each speaker will have 15 minutes to respond to the first speaker's presentation. In the third round, each speaker will have 8 minutes to conclude. These three rounds will be followed by a question and answer session because I'm sure we have questions that we want to ask.

We need to receive each one of you will find a note card and a pencil. You'll have a chance to write questions on that and we will collect the questions after the second round. I want to encourage you not to write the question down until the second round because your question may be addressed in the rebuttal.

At the top of the note card, this is imperative. At the top of the note card, you must write down the name of the person to which the question is addressed because we will be going through the note cards. Both the MSA and Campus Society of College Life will select the top three or four questions and we'll present them to the speakers.

So it's important that you write the speaker's name on the top of that card. As a reminder to the audience, what was said by Suzanne tonight was the purpose of tonight was to create an awareness of different perspectives. And you may have already come tonight with a perspective and a subsequent bias, but I want to ask that you would leave that and not bring that into tonight's debate as we respect people with different views around us.

This is not intended to be hostile in any way, but rather to be a civil and orderly debate. We will strictly adhere to the debate rules and ask that you as the audience would respect that and would also abide by the rules. And in that spirit, I'm asked to refrain from any outbursts, any applause, or any agreement or disagreement with the speakers.

We'll have a chance at the end where you can all applaud. But I would ask the audience to not make any noises or interactions with the speakers while they have given their presentations. And I'd like to remind the speakers that you will see visual cues at the preset times in your presentation letting you know how much time you have left.

At the five and one minute mark, I will announce a time left, and once the stop card is held up, you will have ten seconds to stop, upon which I will take the floor. As was previously agreed upon by both groups hosting this event, Mr. Lacona will begin following my Mr. Atai. Mr. Lacona, you have the floor for 20 minutes.

Well, thank you, and good evening. It's great to be with you all. I'd like to thank Campus Crusade for inviting me to participate in tonight's debate.

Asalamo, I like them. Tonight's debate concerns the first century fate of Jesus. Did Jesus die and rise from the dead shortly thereafter as the early Christians taught? Or did God rescue him from death by crucifixion as the Quran teaches? Well, our question must be answered historically.

And fortunately, Muslims have relied on historical investigation for centuries. Most of what we know from Muhammad comes from the Hadith. And the Hadith contains a huge amount of legendary literature in it.

And historians for years, Muslim historians have developed criteria for weeding out that which is false from the genuine material about the life of Muhammad. For example, Sahih al Bukhari found that there were about 600,000 traditions about Muhammad in his day, which was a little more than 200 years after Muhammad died. And so by applying criteria for historicity, Bukhari was able to weed a lot of that down and came to about 7,400 traditions, or about 1.2% of what existed out there.

Now, that's not really a problem. Christians have the same kind of problem because we have the, there is the Gnostic Gospels and the non-canonical literature through which historians have to weed through tons of coal before they can find just a few historical nuggets of any in any of these. So the thing is that we have to look for criteria.

My point is that although I hold that the New Testament is the inspired and an errant word of God, it does not need to be so in order for us to mine through it in order to find historical nuggets. And in fact historical Jesus scholars, even very skeptical ones, that's precisely what they do, even though they don't believe it's the word of God or an errant in any respect. They still believe that they can find historical truths within it.

Now, what's nice, Ali himself acknowledges this in his book, In Defense of Islam. He writes, although the present day Bible is not the word of God, elements of truth still exist within its text. So, whether even though Ali and I disagree on the Bible being inspired and an errant, we both agree that the Bible contains truth.

The question is, what criteria is Ali and what are we going to use? What criteria are we going to use for identifying that truth? Now again, I want to say, I want to hasten to say, without apology, I believe the Bible is the inspired and an errant word of God. However, I'm not going to be approaching it that way this evening because that is not tonight's debate. And so I can't ask you to give the Bible a privileged position.

And I'm not going to grant a privileged position to the Quran either. So, if Ali were to say, well, the reason that we should believe this is because, well, the Quran says that I believe it and that settles it for me. Or the Quran is God's holy word.

That's not going to fly for debate. You've got to show evidence for what your position is. And thus, I'm going to do that as well for the Bible or for what I'm establishing.

So, I'm not out to establish that the Bible is inspired and errant, but I'm out to establish the points that I'm going to make in order to build a historical case using the criteria historians, professional historians would use for establishing the death and resurrection of Jesus. Because in the end, I would just hope that, as the moderator said, that we would try both Christians and Muslims for the next half hour and a half to shed our biases and to try to look at things as objectively as possible. Because even as Tom Cruise said in the movie, A Few Good Men, it doesn't matter what I believe, it only matters what I can prove.

Now, I want to make one further observation before proceeding. This debate concerns the first century fate of Jesus. It is not a debate on the character of Muhammad.

It is not on the question, Islam or religion of peace. It is not on does the atonement make sense, theologically, and it's not on the inerrancy or inspiration of the New Testament. These are all important issues, but they are not the subject of tonight's debate, and if we're not careful, we will get off topic and not be able to cover our topic adequately.

So let's start by looking at our four facts for which there is strong historical evidence. In fact, it's so strong that the majority of today's scholars regard them as historical facts, including skeptical ones. Fact number one is Jesus' death by crucifixion.

Let me provide two reasons why we can be confident that Jesus died as a result of being crucified. First, it is reported by a number of sources, both Christian and non-Christian, and that are ancient. Josephus, Tacitus, Lucian, Marbar, Seropian, all mentioned in the event.

Second, the chances of surviving crucifixion were very, very bleak. A number of ancient sources describe the ancient practices of scourging and crucifixion. For example, Josephus tells of a man who had been whipped so severely that he was filleted to the bone.

He also mentions a group of Jewish men who were whipped until their intestines were laid bare. A second-century text named the Martyrnum of Polykart tells of how the Roman whip was said to expose a person's veins and arteries. The person was then forced to carry their crossbeam outside the city walls, where soldiers using nails, much like the one I'm holding in my hand.

This is a replica of the nail discovered in the remains of the only crucified victim ever found. In Jerusalem, a guy named Yahohannen, and so using nails like this, they would impale a man to a cross or a tree. And then the victim was left hanging and excruciating pain.

In fact, the word excruciating comes from the Latin out of the cross. Seneca, a first-century lawyer and Roman philosopher, described crucified victims as having battered and ineffective carcasses, maimed, misshapen, deformed, nailed, and drawing the breath of life amid long, drawn-out agony. Only one account exists of a person surviving crucifixion and antiquity.

Josephus reported seeing three of his friends crucified. So he appealed to his friend, the Roman commander Titus, who ordered that all three be removed immediately and provided the best medical care Rome had to offer. In spite of this, two of the three still died.

Thus, even if Jesus had been removed prematurely and medically assisted, his chances of survival, at least by natural causes, are very bleak. So taking the theistic equation out of the theistic component out of the equation for a moment, we can see that there is fantastic evidence for Jesus' death by crucifixion. In fact, even the atheist New Testament critic, Gert Lutemann, writes, Jesus' death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable.

Now I realize that Muslims believe that God can do anything and that he made it only appear that Jesus died according to Surah 4 verses 157 and 58. Well, Christians have always believed that God can do anything. But the question isn't what God can do.

The question is what God did. And as far as the historical evidence is concerned, unless we have sufficient, adequate historical evidence to the contrary, well the historian must conclude that Jesus was crucified and that the process killed him. Fact number two is the empty tomb.

Let me provide three reasons why we can be why we can be confident that Jesus' tomb was empty. First is the Jerusalem factor. Jesus was publicly executed and buried in Jerusalem and then his resurrection was proclaimed there publicly.

So it would have been impossible for Christianity to get off the ground in Jerusalem if his body was still in the tomb. The Roman and Jewish authorities would have only had to visit the tomb and view the corpse and the misunderstanding was over. There is no evidence that this occurred.

In fact, the response of the Jewish leadership was quite different. And that leads us to my second reason. The Jewish leaders were reporting that the disciples of Jesus had stolen the body.

This is reported by Justin Martyr and Tertullian and corroborating, these are outside reports corroborating a similar report by Matthew and seems to be an attempt to account for a missing corpse. It was just like the ten-year-old who tells his teacher that the dog ate his homework. You wouldn't say this if you had it to turn in.

And likewise, you wouldn't claim that the disciples of Jesus had stolen his body if it was still in the tomb. This information from unsympathetic reports is very powerful in eyes of historians. Paul Meyer, distinguished professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, states to following.

Jewish polemics shared with Christians the conviction that the sepulcher was empty but gave natural explanations for it. And such positive evidence within a hostile source is the strongest kind of evidence. The third reason we can be confident about the empty tomb is because the claim of resurrection infers an empty tomb.

Oh, what did I do there? Okay, infers an empty tomb. The first Christians were Jews, and Jews held a variety of Jews regarding the afterlife. There were the sad you sees who didn't believe in life after death.

Rather, they held that when you died, that was it, no heaven. So they were sad, you see. Other Jews, like Josephus and Herod, held to a form of reincarnation.

But the majority of Jews held that the body that dies is the same body that is raised and transformed into an immortal body. They called this resurrection. We see this in Isaiah who writes, your dead will come back to life.

Your corpses will rise up. Wake up and shout joyfully, you who live in the ground. Now this is all important because it helps us understand what the early Christians met when they claimed that Jesus had been resurrected.

They meant that the body that dies is the same body that is raised and transformed into an immortal, glorious and powerful body that will never break down. And so, of course, this infers an empty tomb when they're saying that Jesus was resurrected. And you see, if he wasn't resurrected and yet they still saw him in some sort of a spiritual or ethereal ghostly kind of state, they could have said that Jesus was somehow still alive.

As Jesus himself had said, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still living. But they would not have said resurrection, a term that referred to bringing the corpse back to life. So we discovered that there's good evidence for the empty tomb, the Jerusalem factor, it's witnessed by Jesus' enemies, and the claim of resurrection infers an empty tomb.

The historical Jesus scholar, Geza Vermesch, who rejects the resurrection, writes the following, When every argument has been considered and weighed, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb. Fact number three, Jesus' friends believed that he had resurrected and had appeared to them. Now, I'd like to focus on a major passage which is an early creed found in 1 Corinthians 15.

It reads, Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than 500 at one time, most of whom are still alive, but some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

There's a consensus among scholars that Paul did not create this creed. Not only does he say that he was delivering to them what he himself had received from others, which are two technical terms, later used by the rabbis for the imparting of oral tradition, there were also a number of non-Pauline terms, that is, terms that Paul just did not use as we look through all his letters. Now, of course, one could propose that Paul was sat on the first century committee for the misleading of future historians, but most thinking people would not find this too convincing.

Now, scholars date this creed as very early, usually within five years of the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus' death, burial, resurrection, and five post-resurrection appearances are reported. Paul also adds that the disciples were teaching this and refers to it as karegma, a term used to identify the official and formal teaching of the early Christian leaders.

Of a special interest are the writings of two leaders in the early church who were actually mentored by two of the leading apostles, the apostle Peter and the apostle John, and those are Clement of Rome and Polycarp. Now, Clement of Rome, who mentored by the apostle Peter, reported that the disciples had taught the resurrection of Jesus, he writes, therefore, having received orders and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and full of faith in the Word of God, the disciples went forth. In fact, Clement mentions Jesus' death and resurrection twice, and a disciple of John named Polycarp mentions the death of Jesus six times and his resurrection five times, so they were getting this from the original apostles whom they knew.

Now, all of these fill the criterion of early reports, the criterion of eyewitness reports, and the criterion of multiple independent reports. We have what amounts to be a certifiably official proclamation of the disciples on the resurrection of Jesus. Simply put, the earliest followers of Jesus were proclaiming his death and resurrection even before Paul's conversion.

Now, we can go further though. A number of ancient sources report that these disciples were willing to suffer continuously and even die for their beliefs that Jesus had been resurrected. Now, of course, this doesn't prove that their beliefs were true.

We're all too aware that others of people of all different sorts of religious beliefs are willing to die and suffer for their... they were willing to die for it. What I am saying though, is they were willing to die for it because they sincerely regarded their beliefs as being true. Liars make poor martyrs.

So we can establish that the original disciples of Jesus not only claimed that he rose from the dead, they really believed it. Paula Fredrickson, a skeptical scholar from Boston University writes, The disciples conviction that they had seen the risen Christ is historical bedrock. Facts known, past doubting.

Fact number four, Jesus foes believe that he had resurrected and appeared to them. Paul terrorized the early church. He arrested Christians, beat, imprisoned them and consented to their executions for being Christians.

And then he became one because he believed the risen Jesus appeared to him. What evidence do we have for this? Well, Paul himself testifies to it. Luke confirms it in Acts.

And there appears to be an early oral tradition that predates the writing of the New Testament and says, he who persecutes the church or he who persecuted the church now proclaims the faith he once sought to destroy. So we have early eyewitness and multiple testimonies to Paul's conversion. Folks, this is the kind of evidence historians drool over.

Moreover, we can establish that Paul was willing to suffer and die for these beliefs because he really believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. Again, liars make poor martyrs. In addition to Paul, we can add that the skeptic James, the brother Jesus likewise, converted to Christianity when he too believed that the risen Jesus appeared to him.

The gospels report the embarrassing fact that none of Jesus brothers believed in him during his ministry. Now, most historians regard this as authentic because this would have been extremely embarrassing and potentially damaging to the early church. And so the criterion of embarrassment applies here.

And thus, it's very interesting. When later on, it's reported that James became a leader in the Jerusalem church after Jesus' death. And then later on, we have three reports, even from Josephus, a non-Christian, and also Hegiscipus and Clement of Alexandria, that James believed his brother was a Messiah and died as a martyr for it.

Now, what on earth would create such a radical change? Most believe that the answer is in the creed. Imagine a few moments ago that says, then Jesus appeared to James. Now, with this in mind, in my final two minutes, I'd like to pull all of this together and make two major contentions.

First, there is sufficient evidence to support the conclusion that Jesus died by crucifixion and rose from the dead. Second, there are no sufficient reasons for preferring the Muslim view that God rescued Jesus from death. In support of my first major contention, I provided three major historical facts.

I arrived at these not by appealing to the divine inspiration of the New Testament, but by numerous criteria for establishing historical facts employed by professional historians. Because these four facts are so strongly evidenced, any reasonable hypothesis is going to have to account for all of them and do so without strain. As though you can't do it, as though trying to force a piece of a puzzle to fit where it doesn't go.

That's not a good historical hypothesis. Now, the position that Jesus died and rose from the dead, that hypothesis explains all of the facts and does so very easily without straining. So, in the absence of any equally plausible explanation, Jesus' resurrection is the best explanation of the historical facts.

So, what about alternate theories? Well, tomorrow at one o'clock, I don't know where it is here at UC Davis, but I'm going to be given a lecture and dealing with a lot of the objections that... One minute, many. ...secular folks deal with secular objections. But tonight I'm just concerned about the Muslim view.

And in a moment, we're going to hear an alternate theory from Ali. Will it be based on sound historical principles used by historians in that kind of a manner? Or will it be more of a Quran says that I believe it and that settles it? Or, well, it just doesn't agree with my theological presupposition, so I can't be bothered by the historical facts? Well, we'll see in a moment. And I'll be interested to see how he does provide evidence, because honestly, I don't think he has any.

So, I'd like to encourage all of us to look for two things in Ali's presentation that he'll give in a moment. First, does he present any historical evidence to support his rescue theory? And second, does he have any method for determining what happened in the past rather than just because it agrees with his rhetoric? We'll have a spirit had debated to be fun, but when all the dust settles and you're able to sort through the rhetoric, you'll see that there's only one explanation, and that is that Jesus rose from the dead. Thank you.

And those who differ therein are full of doubts with no certain gnosis but follow only conjecture, guesswork, hearsay. For surety they killed him not. Then what happened to him? Bar-ra-vah-ul-la-hile.

God raised him up unto himself. He ascended unto God. Wakan-al-lahu-aziz-an-hakimah.

And God is great and wise. Now, the question that we Muslims get all the time is, why don't you Muslims just read the New Testament? Right? Just read the New Testament. All four canonical gospels are essentially four extended passion narratives, and the crucifixion of Christ is central.

And even if the gospels were written at the end of the 1st century, they still predate the Quran by over 500 years. Who does the Holy Prophet Muhammad to peace be upon him? Think he is expounding this apparent Gnostic Christology. He's an unleaded man, a shepherd from Mecca.

What does he know? I can imagine a Pharisee saying the very same thing to Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. Who do you think you are telling us that we've overlooked the weightier demands of the law, calling us blind guides in white its supplicers and vipers and hypocrites? Our traditions date back 1500 years to Moses. You're just a peasant carpenter from Nazareth, right? Now, certainly in general terms, the closer to the source, the more accurate.

This is true. But God is outside of time. God is the creator of time.

The past, present and future are all the same to him. Our duty is to recognize truth whenever it comes to us and submit to it. We hear and we affirm.

And you know what? Sometimes the truth hurts. Who spoke the truth? Moses or Jesus? Both. But at the time of Jesus, peace be upon him.

Who spoke the truth? Jesus, or the so-called heirs of the Mosaic tradition, describes in the Pharisees. Jesus, peace be upon him. Who taught the Jews the true spirit of the law in light of the gospel.

But never abrogated the law for as long as heaven and earth endure. Not a jot or a tittle shall pass by the law. Paul is the abrogator of the law, who in 14 letters and epistles fails to accurately quote Jesus one time.

He never quotes from oral tradition. John 3 16, the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, or even a single parable given by Christ according to the canonical Gospels. Can you imagine a Christian missionary going into Pakistan today and evangelizing Pakistan and never teaching them the Lord's Prayer? Never quoting his master one time? Then what's he saying? And who is telling him to say it? Mr. Lacona has written a book.

Paul meets Mohammed, right? Paul meets Mohammed. Why didn't he call it Jesus meets Mohammed, right? Isn't that sound more logical? Jesus meets Mohammed. The reason is because Jesus Christ, peace be upon him.

And the Holy Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, are in perfect agreement. I agree with him. Paul is problematic.

And the alleged crucifixion and resurrection of the Jewish Messiah is the essence, the crux, the foundation of Pauline Christianity, a stumbling block for the Jews and utter foolishness to the Greeks. He says in 1 Corinthians 15, 17, if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain. You are yet in your sins.

In other words, if no crucifixion, no resurrection, no Christianity. He says in 2 Timothy 2, 8, remember Jesus Christ of the seed of David and he was not from the seed of David, but that's a different debate. Was raised from the dead according to my gospel.

That's the gospel of Paul and the Hellenizers. That's not the gospel that was in Galatia when Paul wrote his epistle to them. Isn't it amazing? Just 20 years after the ascension of Christ, there was another gospel in Galatia and apparently in Corinth also free of Pauline dogmatism.

A gospel that predated Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Did that gospel say Jesus was killed and resurrected from the dead? Allahu alaam. Allah knows.

We don't have access to that. Who spoke the truth? Jesus or Mohammed, peace be upon them. Both, but at the time of the Holy Prophet Mohammed, who spoke the truth? Mohammed, peace be upon him or the so-called followers of Jesus.

We say Mohammed, Salallahu Alaihi Wasallam, the spirit of truth, the apocalyptic son of man, the universal messenger and seal of the prophets. He glorified and honored Jesus by telling the world the truth about him. Womma Tatarluhu, Womma Salabhuhu, God saved Jesus from crucifixion and death.

In fact, according to most Christians, the historical name of Jesus of Nazareth was Yeshua. Look up the name Yeshua in any Bible concordance. Yeshua, like the lexicon strong's concordance.

What does his name mean? He is saved. That's what his name literally means. Now Christians believe that before the foundation of the world, God the Father and God the Son entered into a metaphor.

He had a physical covenant stipulating that the latter would enter into human flesh in the year 4000 after Adam and commit an act of self-immolation, suicide essentially, to vicariously atone for the sins of mankind. But look how he's acting. Let's analyze this.

In the garden of Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives, begging for his life with sweat like blood, remove this cup away from me, yet not his eye will, but his dowel. And according to his own teaching, God must answer him. He says, God will grant you whatever you ask him.

Would any father among you give his son a serpent? When he asks for a fish? Would any father among you do that? I wouldn't do that to my son. But we're supposed to believe that God did it to his son in quotes. And we're supposed to believe that rather than answering his beloved son's request, he was arrested, mocked, spat upon, beaten beyond recognition, flogged down to his bowels, nailed to a cross between two thieves.

And sent to hell for three days? My respected brothers and sisters. This is not love. This is not love.

This is first degree murder. In fact, the rejection is so severe that while he's literally hanging on the cross, he wails. Elahi, Elahi, Lamasabarfani.

Are these the words of a willing sacrifice? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why did you allow this to happen to me? Why did you ignore me when I called upon you? The real question is, why does God need to sacrifice himself in order to save people he created from his own wrath? It's a paradox. The Christian answer is, because blood must be shed. There must be sacrifice.

And who better to shed his blood than God himself? This idea of dying and rising Savior man-gods, called soters. Very, very prevalent in ancient Greco-Roman mystery religion. Jesus tells of Pharisees in Matthew 9, quoting the Hebrew Bible, the Tanach.

He says, go and learn what this text means in Hebrew. I require mercy, not sacrifice, mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. It's not about blood and sacrifice anymore.

That doesn't affect the heart. It's about believing in a merciful God and having knowledge of him. That's Islam.

A scribe tells Jesus in Mark 12 that the oneness of God, the love of God, and the love of neighbors means far more than any and all whole offerings and sacrifices. You understand what the word all implies? Whether it's an ox, a sheep, a goat, a lamb, or a man. Now if Jesus were sent to die for our sins, he would have said not more than my sacrifice.

How does he respond to this Pharisee? His so-called enemy. He says, ye are not far from the malakutha d'alaha, which is Syriac for the kingdom of God. Yet Paul in Ephesians calls Jesus an offering and a sacrifice.

Besides, how can a crucified God be justified? Through prophecy, the disparity between Christian theology and Judaism is so wide that many early Christians actually believed that the God of the Old Testament was a different God, an inferior God. They called him the demi-erge, Yaldah Bo'ath, the illegitimate son of Sophia, the twelfth eon of the Pluroma. There are two gods, they said.

This is what the Marcianites believed. Well you might say that was just a small splinter group of Gnostic heretics who faded out of history. No, probably the greatest pre-nice scene.

A Christian apologist and heresy hunter of all time, Tertolian of Carthage. He wrote a five volume refutation of Marcianism. This was a major Christian movement.

Yet, Tertolian was denied a sainthood because he died as a Montanist. He believed that the periclete of the Gospel of John was this man, Montanist of Phrygia. In other words, he died a heretic.

Origin of Alexandria, also a famous proto-orthodox theologian who wrote over a thousand books. He believed that Jesus was equal to the father by the transference of his being and ultimately subordinate to and created by the father. On first principles, book one, section three.

In other words, he died a heretic. What's my point? My point is, who's to say that the orthodox Christian position during the first three centuries was not the belief that Christ was never crucified or that he wasn't God. And especially in light of what was found at Nagamadi in 1945, and I'll get to that little doozy in a minute, God willing.

The Abutites didn't believe that he was God, nor did the Nazarenes. And these were first century Syriac-speaking Palestinian Christians. In fact, they also believed Paul was an apostate, the Abutites.

It was only after the Synod at Nicaea in 325 of the common era that these terms, orthodox, and heresy came to mean what they mean today. And it's anachronistic to use them before that time. It's like saying Jesus and his apostles had cell phones.

It's just like saying that. My belief is that Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, was the penultimate messenger of God, meaning second to last, who confirmed the theology of the Torah. Musaad dikalimabena yadayimina Torah, which is what the Quran says, and also gave his people glad tidings.

That's what the gospel is. Bushra, glad tidings, good news of a messenger to come after him. Ismuhu Ahmad, his name shall be Ahmad, which is the superlative form of the name Muhammad.

In the Syriac electionary, he's called Munachma. In the movie, The Passion of the Christ, he says, Al-Tid-Halon-Hifu Munachma, Beho-de-Kashtebi Allah. That's from the movie, The Passion of the Christ in Syriac.

Do not be afraid. Munachma is coming, who speaks the truth about Allah, but back to my point. The Torah says, thou shalt not commit murder.

The Torah says, whoever is hanged on a tree is accursed by God. The Torah says, drinking blood is forbidden, a perpetual statute, blood and kosher. The Torah says, in the book of Deuteronomy, every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

The Torah says, in Numbers 23, 19, Loish Elivir Khazev ouven Adam, God is not a man. Yet Christians believe that God became a man, who sacrificed his son essentially himself by hanging him on a tree, thus accursing him, to vicariously atone for the sins of mankind and how was he celebrated by drinking his blood and eating his flesh. So ultimately, I don't agree with them.

There's only one God. The Marcianites had a point regarding the Bible. They had a point.

You have to keep it real. They had a point. Now let's look at these four gospels.

These are four theologically motivated, in other words, subjective accounts of Jesus' passion in reality, so-called passion, that were written many decades after his ascension, in a foreign language to Jesus and his apostles. None of the evangelists ever identified themselves, and none of them ever claimed to be writing while inspired by the Holy Ghost. There's food anonymous, which is an antiseptic way of saying, their forgeries.

They weren't even named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, until the end of the second century. Now back to my original question. Why don't you Muslims just read the New Testament? Did you know that there were several Christian denominations in the first three centuries that did not believe Jesus was crucified? A fraction of their scriptures have been found at Nakamadi in 1945.

Why were they buried there? Because shortly after the church synods at Nicaea and Constantinople in 325 and 381 of the common era respectively, any Christian community that did not dance to the Trinitarian tune was subsequently exterminated, and their scriptures burned. Many of these communities went underground and buried their scriptures in the sands. Hence the Nakamadi Library, hence the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, which many scholars believe predates the synoptic tradition, right? Why was it not included into the final New Testament canon? Because it lacks a passion narrative.

Jesus must die and be raised, or else Christianity is in vain, according to Paul. They found the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, which actually states a semblance, a look-alike, was killed in Jesus' place. Well, that can should be a la whom, which is almost what the Quran says.

They found the second treatise of the Great Seth, which says, Simon of Cyrene was killed in Jesus' place. You know, the man who bore the cross, according to the synoptic tradition, he was killed. Other recent discoveries, Papyrus Eagerton, number two, also called the unknown Gospel, no passion narrative.

The Gospel of Peter, which was extremely popular in the first four centuries, a docetous gospel. It says that when they were nailing Jesus to the cross, he was silent, as if he felt no pain. That wasn't good enough for the proto-orthodox, and it was deemed heretical.

The Gospel of Barnabas, which is on the fifth-century papal list of forbidden books, it says that it was Judas Iscariot, but that's in a 14th century manuscript, so I don't give it a lot of weight. There's too big of a gap there. In the Acts of John, the son of Zebedee, written in the second century, Jesus is quoted as saying, you heard that I suffered, yet I suffered not, that I was pierced and hanged, but I was not hanged.

That blood flowed from me, yet it did not flow. Therefore, I have suffered none of the things they will say of me. And finally, you have the saying's Gospel, also called Q, a source document that Matthew and Luke had access to.

Most scholars believe was written in the 50s, which makes it pre-Pauline. Q contained the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, a sign of Jonah, the ministry of John the Baptist, and many parables. But where is Q now? Lost, burned, and probably buried.

Why? No passion narrative. That's why. Say the docetae, Basilidians, Marcia Unites, Corinthians, Carpentians, all of these communities.

So don't ask us, let's resurrect these extinct Christian communities, and let's ask them, why didn't you just read the New Testament? Why didn't you just read the New Testament? What's the answer? Because there was no new Testament. Athanasius was the first to propose the present 27 books as authoritative and final. That was in 367 of the common era, 340 years after the ascension of Jesus Christ, peace be upon him.

And it wasn't until 393 of the common era at Hippo that an ecumenical council was undertaken to canonize the present 27 books. That's why the oldest versions, complete versions of the New Testament in Greek date to this period, 375 of the common era, the Codex Vaticanus, the Codex Sinaiticus. Five minutes left to respond.

So this belief that Christ wasn't killed is not a novel Muslim idea created by the Quran. This is a fact. It was a Christian belief that predated the formation of the New Testament canon, possibly an Orthodox belief.

A belief that perfectly agrees to established Jewish messianic expectations. And I'll talk about that when I come back God willing. In closing, crucifying Jesus would make him accursed according to the law of God.

Make him accursed. And that's what Paul says in the book of Galatians. He was a curse.

No, sir. The Quran says exactly the opposite. That he was a blessed man.

He was a blessed man. That's why I tell Christians all the time. I love Jesus Christ.

Pisa ibn Mariam. Peace and blessings of God be upon him. The son of Mary.

Peace be upon him. I love him too much to become a Christian. He's not a curse.

Again, it's not with Jesus Christ. Peace be upon him that we have issues with. Our issues are with the canon of the New Testament and Christian theology.

We love Jesus Christ. Peace be upon him. He's honored in the Quran as Al-Rasul, a messenger of God and Nabi, a prophet of God.

Al-Maseer, the Christ of God. The true Jewish Messiah, Minas Al-Aheen amongst the company of the most righteous Minan Mokarra Bean in the company of those nearest to God. The Quran confirms his miracles such as healing the blind and the lepers and raising the dead.

By the permission of God, he is considered Ulul Azim, one of the five most exalted human beings to ever walk the planet Earth. But the Quran also corrects as well as confirms. And inshaAllah, God willing, I'll come back and after hearing from my colleague Mr. Lacona and we'll talk more about prophecies and things of that nature.

God willing, thank you very much. Asunamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatuh. Good.

Mr. Lacona, you have the floor for 15 minutes. Thank you, Ali. If you recall in my opening statement, I said that I was going to approach this as a historian because you have to look at this question historically speaking.

This is how we're going to establish the first century fate of Jesus. And recall that what I did was I provided four historical facts that were grounded in criteria commonly used by professional historians such as the criterion for early reports, the criterion for eyewitness reports, the criterion for multiple independent reports, the criterion of embarrassing reports, and a number of others. And based on this we established four facts and then we argued for the best explanation and we said the resurrection of Jesus fits all of those facts and does so without straining any.

So in the absence of any plausible natural explanation, natural or even supernatural, Jesus' death and resurrection is the best explanation for the facts. What's interesting is even though I presented these four facts and gave all these reasons to it, Ali didn't respond with a single argument against these. And so for all practical purposes, this debate is over and Ali has lost.

But we have a lot of time left and so I'd like to have fun with some of the things that he did mention within his opening statement. He first mentioned that Paul never quotes Jesus, he says, and so he must not be even following his teachings. Well he does quote Jesus in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and he quotes his sayings from the Last Supper.

The reason Paul doesn't talk a lot about the historical Jesus is that is not his reason for writing. If you picked up Ali's book in defense of Islam, it doesn't give a historical account of the historical Muhammad and why we should believe certain things about him. That's because that's not his purpose in writing.

And Paul wasn't writing a history of Jesus. He wasn't there when Jesus was doing his ministry. He was writing to address various issues that was going on in a church in his day.

Now he says he wasn't even preaching the same gospel because he says he calls it my gospel. This is a different gospel than what the apostles were teaching he says. But this is mistaken.

He said, let me say this too. This is from his book in defense of Islam page 324. He says you will notice that when cornered Christians often resort to slander and ridicule.

Make sure that if you plan on debating a Christian in a public forum you let him know during a preliminary meeting that you have zero tolerance for such tactics. Remind him that he must stay on the topic as you will do the same. Have a strong moderator who will not agree with this.

I wish he had followed his own advice though. What does Paul's gospel have to do with the historical facts that I've provided? The thing is with Paul he's not preaching a gospel that is different from what went to the Gentiles. He is preaching a gospel and if you just read the commentaries the gospel that he's talking about is one that says that the gospel is now available not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles.

Because even though Jesus on a number of occasions talked about how the gospel would need to be preached to all nations and to the world at the end after he had risen from the dead and ascended. It seemed like it was Israel-centric, Jew-centric and Paul was saying no we've got to go out and talk to the Gentiles as well. It's not limited.

That's what he means by my gospel. And if you look at Galatians chapter 2, if you look at Acts 15, you'll find that the Jerusalem apostles, Peter, James and John, the pillars of the church shook on this with Paul. They shook hands and said we certify your teachers as being in accordance with their own.

And proof of this is if you go to the Apostolic Fathers, this will be Clement of Rome and Polycard, who I mentioned in my opening statement, disciples of the apostles themselves, of these Jerusalem apostles, they say the same thing about the death, the resurrection of Jesus, in fact they speak in glowing terms of Paul, calling him the blessed and glorious disciple. Blessed and glorious Paul, in fact they quote his writings and refer to it as part of the sacred scriptures. You're not going to be doing this if Paul is teaching essentially different doctrines than what your mentors were.

He says well I'm, you see, find Jesus begging for his life having second thoughts in the garden and on the cross he's crying why have you forsaken me God? Folks, this is precisely why historians regard these as historical. These are embarrassing statements. I've read through all the Jewish martyrdom literature which are souped up with embellished details about how the Jewish heroes died, courageous deaths.

I'm not doubting that they died courageous deaths, but it's very easy to tell where legend separates from history within these. And yet they're not doing these within the gospel accounts. They're even reporting the embarrassing facts and this bespeaks of their historicity.

He says well, God would have heard his prayer. Well, Jesus did pray. He said never the second half of that prayer after saying Lord if it be your will let this cup pass.

He says nevertheless not as I will but as you will. That is Jesus prayer, the whole prayer. So don't just, Ollie, just don't select half of the verse.

You've got to look at the other half too. This is a selective criticism and we find this throughout his writings as well through Ollie's writings that is. He says well, why would God need a sacrifice? Folks, this is theological.

This is a theological topic. It is not the topic or the reasonable this of atonement within a Muslim frame of reference is not our debate this evening. And I would say to Ollie, we got to put history first and look at what history tells us.

And then we try to work out the theology. And if history points to the death and resurrection of Jesus, it may be time for Ollie to change his theology. He says that Jesus said mercy not sacrifice but Jesus also said that he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

We have to look at the totality of what Jesus says. Not just select what we want to hear and avoid the rest. This is a criterion of convenience, folks.

This isn't a criterion of early reports or a criterion of eyewitness reports. This is what Ollie is using is a criterion of convenience. In other words, if it's convenient with my own views, well then it must be historical.

But if it isn't, wow, this must have been something just rejected. We can't trust it. Well, this is, folks, this is a cafeteria criticism.

It's no different than you going through the school cafeteria and picking what you like for dinner and leaving what you don't like. Well, that may work at the school cafeteria when you're going to eat, but it doesn't work in academic discussion. And if Ollie were to use this in a history 101 class, he would flunk.

He also mentioned he says that the one guy was talking and Jesus said, folks, or he said to the guy, you're not far from the kingdom of God. Well, the last time I checked in Aramaic, Greek, and English, not far does not mean that you're there. Jesus says you're not far.

He says you're on the right track, but you still have to go further. You have to give yourself for my name. Tertullian in origin, he mentioned, and these were early church fathers, and he says many regarded them as heretics.

Again, that's irrelevant to our discussion this evening. That has to do with theology, not with the historical events we're talking about, on the first century fate of Jesus. Again, I encourage Ollie to get back on the topic.

I've come to debate the first century fate of Jesus, not the theological differences between Christians and Muslims. He says, how now it's Orthodox? We've got the Nakamadi manuscripts, we've got the treaties of Seth, and all these other ones. So how do we know what's Orthodox? Folks, this is why historical investigation, what sound historical methods is so important, and that's how we can weave through this stuff.

All these other things, the Gnostic gospels and everything, are much later. The earliest Gnostic gospel is probably the gospel of Judas, which was written around 150. The next one would be the gospel of Thomas.

Someone I've debated on a couple of occasions, Elaine Pagels at Princeton, thinks it's back in 90, but hardly anyone thinks that. They place it around, in fact, Nicholas Perrin, who did his PhD dissertation on this and now has a book out on the subject, has put together a very cogent argument on dating of Thomas and showed that it's originally not in Greek, but in Syriac, because certain catch words make sense, and the whole gospel makes sense in that context. In Syriac, it doesn't make sense in Greek or Coptic, what it's found in.

And because of that, he says, he even ties it and says, Thomas was familiar with the Deatesseron, which was written by Tayshen around the year 170, which post-dates Thomas to 170. So it's not as early as many scholars, I shouldn't even say many, because not only a few, I thought it was very early, those on the theological, fringe of the theological left. He said Muhammad is coming, and it's predicted in the Passion of the Christ.

Okay. I'll grant that maybe. I mean, I don't know Syriac somewhat.

Mel Gibson is predicting Muhammad's coming. What does that have to do with anything? Folks, let me conclude with just a little bit of a, he's going to rely on the Quran. So let's talk about that for a moment.

How much time do I have left? Five minutes. Five minutes? Okay. I want to talk about the Quran, and let me grab something.

Should we believe the Quran? And I think we shouldn't. I don't think it's worthy of our trust. And here's why.

The Quran, well, there's a couple reasons. Let me go back to this. Jesus predicts his violent and independent death.

We can prove this historically. Let me give you six historical reports very quickly. These, Jesus predictions about his imminent and violent death are in early reports.

There are multiple independent reports, embarrassing reports. They meet the criterion of dissimilarity. I wish I had time to go over this.

The criterion of plausibility and the lack signs of theology. Notice that none of them do. They talk about the atonement or the significance of Jesus death.

There is no reason to question that Jesus predicted his imminent and violent death. But that creates a problem for Muslims because of what we would call the Islamic Catch-22. You see, if Jesus did not die as he predicted, that makes him a false prophet.

And the Quran calls him a true prophet. And so if he died an imminent and violent death, imminent being in the first century, that means the Quran is wrong. The other option is that Jesus died as he predicted.

Which means the Quran is wrong, too. Because the Quran in surah 4157, as Ali quoted, said he did not die. It only appeared that way.

Folks either way, the Quran is wrong. You can't get out of it by saying that he made these predictions while not acting in the capacity of a prophet because he did. For example, in Mark 831-32, he began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders.

Chief priests scribes be killed and after three days rise again. And he was stating the matter plainly. Also, in John 1224-32, he says, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone.

But if it dies, it bears much fruit. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself. Here, Jesus is teaching about bearing fruit and predicting his death and resurrection or his death there.

He's predicting his forthcoming death in order to do that. So, again, we've got the Islamic Catch-22. Either way, the Quran is wrong.

And we can establish that Jesus did predict these. His imminent and violent death. I think even just his damaging is the Quran's test for divine authorship.

The Quran says in Surah 10-37-38, this Quran is not such as can be produced by other than Allah. On the contrary, it is confirmation of revelations that went before it and a fuller explanation of the book, wherein there is no doubt. From the Lord of the Worlds, or do they say, he forged it, meaning Muhammad.

Say, bring then a surah like unto it, and call to your aid anyone you can besides Allah if it be ye speak the truth. Now, what's interesting is many times Muslims won't even appeal to this. They like to appeal to bogus scientific evidence, which is only accepted by a few scientists outside of the Islamic community.

Most scientists have not found it persuasive. And I want to ask Muslim apologists who do this, why do you feel that you have a superior test to validate the Quran than what Allah gave? He only gave one test, and it's this test that I've just given you here. Muslims curse and threaten imprisonment and death to those who want to take the test of the Quran and invites others to take.

Again, instead they focus on dubious scientific evidence that has convinced few. But folks, this is like a used car lot that invites people over the radio to come test drive their cars because they're better than anyone else, any other cards. And when you get there, the used car salesman doesn't let you test drive the car, but instead points you to the new tires.

Folks, don't buy it. Allah at least says you may marvel at the words of words worth and or Coleridge more than Shakespeare, but you will never make the mistake of comparing the Quran's eloquence to anything. Well, take the test.

Read Surah 1 and then turn and read Psalm 19. You'll find Psalm 19 is a whole lot more pregnant with thought and meaning and beauty in its words. You can't argue that well, it's not written in Arabic.

Arabic has this flow to it. Well, Hebrew has this flow to it in the Psalms because it's a song. So it all comes down to what you like better.

Arabic or Hebrew. It's an arbitrary choice, arbitrary choice like choosing between McDonald's and Burger King. The True for Khan is a book that came out a couple of years ago that was translated in Arabic and then was translated into English.

And one of the guys on the committee said that he read it to a guy who understand classical Arabic and he thought it was the Quran and he said no, it's the new holy Quran and he jumped out of a seat and screamed and he said well, you've just said it yourself. My self contacted a guy who has a PhD in Arabic dialects at an Ivy League school. I'm not going to give his name for obvious reasons.

And he said it seems to me he read the True for Khan. He hadn't read it and I asked him to read it and he read it and he got back to me and he says it seems to me that the Arabic and the True for Khan is good. It does not have any obscure terms like the Quran and in some places it seems more beautiful to me than anything I've seen in the Quran.

There it is folk. The only thing that Ali has to stand was the Quran. It's flunked its own test.

It was not from God. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lakona.

I would like to hand over the floor to Mr. Attai. I'd like to remind you that after Mr. Attai is finished in 15 minutes we will be collecting the cards that you have questions on if you haven't already. Write the name of the person to which the question is addressed.

I'd like to remind the audience one more time to refrain from any applause or any interaction with the speakers. The resurrection cannot be proved historically. It is the least plausible explanation for the empty tomb and is outright rejected by objective historians.

It is not historical fact. It is a faith conviction. It is a faith conviction.

This is a theological debate. This is at the heart of the issue. Let's talk about prophecy.

Christians ask me, what about Psalm 22 or Psalm 34? The dogs haven't circled me. They divide up my garments. He keepeth all his bones.

Aren't these prophecies of the crucifixion? What about Isaiah chapter 53? The golden egg of passion predictions. The first frame of the movie, the Passion of the Christ, was a passage from Isaiah chapter 53. The suffering servant.

He is spitting and afflicted. A man of sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions.

Bruce for our iniquities. He was as a dumb lamb led to the slaughter. He was cut off out of the land of the living.

So if this isn't Jesus, then who is it then? I'll tell you who it is. It's Jeremiah. God sent Jeremiah to the Bani Israelite, the Israelites, the chief priests, to warn them about the impending Babylonian doom on the horizon.

And he was rejected, beaten, mocked, whipped, and finally killed for his troubles. He says in Jeremiah 1119, I was as a dumb lamb led to the slaughter. I was ignorant of the snares I had laid for me.

I was cut off out of the land of the living. He uses the same verbiage chapter 53 and applies it to himself. Scholars believe that either Isaiah chapter 53 was written by Isaiah or another prophet, prophesizing what prophesizing Jeremiah.

Or it was written in retrospect in Babylon by someone, a scribe, who was remembering what had happened to Jeremiah. Either way, it has nothing to do with the Jewish Messiah. Let's look at the real messianic prophecies.

Isaiah chapter 53, Psalm 22, the word Messiah, Hamesheach in Hebrew, does not appear anywhere in the text of these passages, yet Christians qualify them as messianic predictions. But when it does appear, like in Psalm 20 verse 6, it's suddenly ignored. Why? Because of what it says.

This is what it says. And I quote it to you in the language of David himself. He says, I know God saves his Messiah.

He shall hear him from his holy heaven with the saving power of his right hand. Or Psalm 91, which was believed by 1st century Jews to be a messianic prophecy. As evidence in the New Testament, no disaster shall befall you.

No calamity will come near you, for he has given his angels charge over you to keep you in your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands lest he dash your foot against the stone. The Jewish Messiah will not even stub his toe because he has set his love upon me.

Therefore I will deliver him on high because he has known my name. He shall call upon me, and I shall answer him. Remember, my father removed this cup away from me, yet not as I will, but as thou will, which is how a Muslim speaks.

He says, inshallah, God willing, if it is your will, I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him with long life. I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.

Or Psalm 18 He delivers me for my enemies. Thou liftest me up above those who rise against me. Bar-ra-fa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a, and says, I will be with him in trouble.

I will deliver him and honor him with long life. I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. I'm sorry, great deliverance gives he to his king and show with mercy unto his anointed, his Messiah, his Christ.

Now by one ten of the common era, the so-called anostic elements within Christianity had recruited far too many people. So the Johannine community turned out the Gospel of John, basically the tie up the loose ends. This Gospel was written primarily to resolve two main issues.

To prove the deity of Jesus, number one, how does it do this? By employing these I Am statements, right? I am the way the truth and the life. Before Abraham was I Am, I am the resurrection and the life. I am the true vine.

I am the bread of life. I am this and I am that. These are not found in the Synoptic Gospels.

You know, all four evangelists mentioned that Jesus wrote a donkey into Jerusalem. He wrote a donkey into Jerusalem. All four evangelists.

Is it really binding on my faith? Is it really binding on my salvation that Jesus wrote a donkey into Jerusalem? Is it really that important? No. But the essential divine claims are missing from three quarters of the Gospels. Also, it was written to prove his death and resurrection.

How does it do this? By contradicting the Synoptics. We were told in a Synoptic tradition that when Jesus was being led to be crucified, the Romans pulled a man out of the crowd, a Simon of Cyrene, and compelled him to bear the cross. There were many Christians in the first and second century who believed it was Simon who was killed, like the Basilidians.

So what does John do? He completely omits this entire episode and says, Jesus bore his own cross to Golgotha, thus contradicting the Synoptics. We are told in the Synoptic Gospels that at the most crucial juncture in the life of Christ, all of his disciples forsook him and fled. Now, a single one of them was witness to the crucifixion.

Yet in the Gospel of John, the beloved disciple, the son of Zebedee, was at the crucifixion, in fact, standing at the foot of the cross, thus contradicting the Synoptics. We are told in the Synoptics, the Gospel of Luke, that after just three hours on the cross, three hours on the cross, Jesus died. Now, when this news was brought to Pilate, he marveled.

This man is dead already. This is a man who made a career of crucifying Jews. And he was there to see the beat down and the flogging and this and that.

Yet he marveled. This man is already dead. You see? Many Christians in the first and second century believe Jesus swooned that he survived the cross, right? Thus fulfilling the sign of Jonah, which is from the Q Source document, which predates Paul, an evil and adulterous generation, seeketh after science.

No sign shall be given unto it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, he was alive, so shall the son of man. Man, referring to himself, be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

So what John does is, he invents the story that Jesus was impaled on the cross. He was impaled to ensure non-survival. And finally, the Gospel of John says that he was impaled by the secret disciples, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, thus contradicting the synoptics.

So there's a definite theological agenda at work here. It's a polemical tractate. He didn't swoon.

He wasn't substituted. And it wasn't an illusion. He died.

Now what's interesting is, all four Gospels differ as to who went to the tomb, what they saw when they got there, and what they did next. It's different in all four. And there is no post resurrection narrative in the earliest Gospel, in the Gospel of Mark.

Most scholars believe that the best and oldest versions of the Gospel of Mark end at Mark 16, 8. Therefore no one saw a resurrected Jesus according to the oldest canonical gospel. There are 5,500 versions of the New Testament in Greek that date from the third century to the Middle Ages. But no two are identical.

Scholars estimate that there are between 200,000 and 300,000 differences in those 5,500 manuscripts. In other words, there are more differences in those manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. These are not reliable as history.

Okay, let's look at the historical records. How are they? Are they strong? No, they're weak. The great Hellenized Jewish philosopher, Philo, a contemporary of Jesus Christ, never mentioned the crucifixion or resurrection.

In the annals of Tacitus, the Roman historian simply repeated what Christians were saying in Rome at the time during the burning of Rome in the end of the first century. This doesn't prove that it's history. This is what the Christians were saying at the time.

And what about the celebrated passage in the antiquities of Josephus that Jesus was condemned to the cross and he appeared alive on the third day. Every single reputable scholar today, Christian or otherwise, read the book The Case for Christ. He has admitted that this is a forgery, a fabrication.

The first person ever to quote this was Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century, a mandatoryus for advocating fraud and deception in order to catch fish for Christ. The Encyclopedia Britannica, which used to be gospel truth before the internet, it says that Josephus wrote the passage as it now stands, no sane critic can believe. The Chambers Encyclopedia says, the famous passage of Josephus, it's generally conceded to be an interpolation, a fabrication, a forgery of fraud.

Finally, you might say, well, if Christ was never killed, why would the disciples be willing to die for a lie? The very question is faulty. They didn't. They died defending the truth against other Christians.

This is very important. The original Christians were not Christians. They were practicing Jews.

They were practicing Jews who did not believe that Jesus was Adonai Elohim, the Lord God, or that the Hebrew God was killed by Gentiles. Bart Ehrman says, from a historical point of view, from a historical point of view, it appears that the Ebunites did indeed teach an understanding of the faith that would have been close to that of Jesus's original disciples, Aramaic speaking Jews, who remained faithful to the Jewish law and who kept Jewish customs even after coming to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. End quote.

They didn't go around teaching the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, begotten sonship, divining carnation, belief in a triune God. That would insult the very fabric of their religion. When the proto-orthodox positions eventually won following the conversion of Constantine, the entire history of the internal conflicts of early Christianity were rewritten to make it seem as if there had been very little conflict.

But today we know that's not true. And only books that demonstrated a relatively congenial relationship between the Judasizers and the Hellenizers, in other words between Peter and Paul or James and Paul, they were accepted as canonical. And everything else and everyone else was completely marginalized.

If you read the book of Acts, read a sermon of Paul in the book of Acts, sermon of Paul, and compare it to a sermon of Peter in the book of Acts. They were virtually identical. It's like the same speaker.

But in Galatians, there is a hint of this deep conflict when Paul accuses Peter and Barnabas of hypocrisy and brags about withstanding Peter to his face. They were literally standing toe-to-toe ready to throw down, as they say. In the homilies of Clement, Paul says, Peter says to Paul, how can we believe you, even if he has appeared to you, but if you were visited by him for the space of an hour and were instructed by him and thereby have become an apostle, then expound what he has taught, be a friend to his apostles, and do not contend with me who am is confidant, for you have in hostility withstood me, a reference to what happened in Antioch that Paul describes in Galatians, for I am a firm rock, the foundation stone of the church, a reference to Jesus telling him, and to Kefa that art Peter the Rock.

So, history is written by those who hang heroes. History is written by those who hang heroes. And the Romans thinking they had killed Jesus eventually became Christian and then rewrote the entire history of the conflict.

Where are all the Jewish Christian writings? Where are all the Jewish Christian writings? These were the original Christians. Where are their books, their polemics, their apologies? Gone. Gone with the wind.

The Gospel of the Ebionites lost. The Gospel of the Nazarenes lost. The Gospel of the Hebrews lost.

How convenient. How convenient. We only know about them because proto-orthodox apologists and polemicists used to quote them in the refutations of them.

But that's only one side of the story. What about the other side of the story? But God sent his final messenger. His holy Apostle, Muhammad, Salallahu Alayhi Wasallam, to restore that which was lost.

You see, to restore the true theology of the prophets. To give us back the true Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. God says in the Quran, after explaining the true position of Jesus, this is a statement of truth about which they are vainly disputing.

Thank you very much. May all praise, honor, and glory be to God the Father and to His Son Jesus Christ. In His online book In Defense of Islam, Ali writes the following.

I hope you can see the differences between the logical lucid Muslim argument and the ignorant Christian ramblings. That's on page 325. My friends, I think it's been crystal clear this evening that precisely the opposite is true.

Ali continued to go off topic. I mean, look at his last, he focused only on the theological discussion. He said, this isn't historical.

This is a theological debate. Folks, this is a historical debate on what was the first century fate of Jesus. Was he, did he die by crucifixion and rise from the dead? Or was he rescued by death by crucifixion by God? This is a historical case.

And again, I'd say, you got to deal with the history first, and then after that you figure out where the theology fits. And if the history, evidence points, historical evidence points to the death and resurrection of Jesus, it's high time that Ali changes theology. Ali believes that the Bible contains truths.

Remember, he said, although the present day Bible is not the word of God, elements of truth still exist within its text. Remember, I said we got to look at what criteria each of us use for identifying that truth. Now, my two major contentions, my first major contention is that there are sufficient reasons to believe the death and resurrection of Jesus.

I gave four facts. I provided criteria used by professional historians to establish those as facts. And I showed that the death and resurrection of Jesus is the best historical explanation for this.

Well, Ali came back in his rebuttal and he said the resurrection is the least plausible explanation. But notice, that's just an assertion. He did not provide a single shred of evidence to support his view.

Not one argument to show that it was the least plausible. He just dropped it like a ton of bricks and moved on. He said it is a theological debate.

Again, it's not. Now, his response, he said, the dogs surround me, bones, visible, Isaiah 53. See, it's theology.

Yes, it is, but it was a theological interpretation of historical events. Events that I provided, lots of criteria for establishing the historicity of these things. He talked about Simon of Cyrene being substituted for Jesus, that this is what's happened.

But then he quoted the sign of Jonah that Jesus would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth and then come forth and he wasn't there for three days and three nights. Folks, there's a contradiction of these two views here. See, if Simon Cyrene was substituted for Jesus, then what's Jesus doing in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights? You can't have it both ways.

We're back to the criterion of convenience where you go through the buffet line and you take whatever you want, you leave what you don't. That doesn't work outside of the cafeteria. No resurrection in Mark.

Almost all commentators say that Mark knew of it. It was a rhetorical device that he left it out and the reason he doesn't, that we know he's aware of it is because in Mark 1428 he says, after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee and meet you there. The angel in Mark 16 7 tells the women, he is going ahead of you into Galilee and there you will see him just as he told you.

It's very clear that he knows about it. He talked about 300,000 differences within the manuscripts, but he gets that from Airmen. In fact, he almost quoted Airmen with that.

But Airmen himself says, he said on National Public Radio that even so, we can still look at all these and come back to a text which is virtually pure to what the original said. And he forgets that there are a lot of variations in the Quranic manuscripts. The oldest manuscripts we have are the Yemeni manuscripts and they contain thousands, not tens of thousands of variations.

In fact, there are no manuscripts that within 300 years of when the Quran was written, 300 years, none of them agree with the Quran that you hold in your hand today, the 1924 Cairo edition. He talks about Airmen saying the Avianites teachings were close to Jesus. Airmen is an agnostic, probably even an atheist who also rechecks the Quran.

Is this really who he wants to appeal to? Besides, Airmen himself says it's indisputable fact that the original disciples of Jesus believed that he had risen from the dead and appeared to them. This is the same Airmen, he quotes. He says Paul posed Peter face to face yes, because Peter refused to eat with the Gentiles, read the text in Galatians chapter 2. Something that the Jerusalem apostles already shook on, and remember Clement of Rome and Polycarp.

They agreed with Paul on this and yet they were disciples of Peter and John. Where are all these Jewish and Christian writings? He talks about the Gospel of Hebrews lost. Where are the four surahs that were talked about? That one got eaten up and they weren't included in the Quran.

The four witnesses to which Muhammad gave the four primary witnesses from which they were supposed to get the Quran. And yet they testify for these surahs are gone. Where are they lost? There's a double standard here.

So in summary, there are no good reasons for believing that God rescued Jesus and very strong reasons for believing that Jesus died by crucifixion and was resurrected shortly thereafter. Now Ollie says this in his writings, the purpose of debate is to convince. The goal of a debate is to make your non-Muslim friends agree with Islam and the Muslims.

In the same spirit I offered the following. Tonight you've seen that the historical evidence points only to Jesus's death and resurrection and away from the truth of the Quran. But you don't have to be a scholar in order to take a personal step to seek truth in these matters.

Jesus said asking it shall be given seeking you will find knock and the door will be open to you. And so many Muslims around the world have been fed up with what they've been seeing in the last several years coming out of Islam and have been seeking God on the matter. In fact, Al Jazeera reported December 12, 2000 that 6 million Muslims every year in Africa are leaving Islam and becoming followers of Jesus.

Last year in Iran where Ollie was born 250,000 Muslims left Islam and followed Isha, Jesus. And in the last two to three years a million Arab Muslims in Arab countries have become followers of Isha. And there would have probably been a lot more had they not been threatened with their lives.

Many of them aren't responding to the intellectual arguments because they're not getting them over there. But they are praying and Jesus is wonderfully appearing to them in dreams and visions and telling them that they've got to follow him and leave Islam. In fact, three of these have been reenacted on a high quality DVD and I'd like to give one as a gift to every Muslim in here that will be available on the table outside.

I have a personal friend named De Bill Kureshi and he was a very pious Muslim and he was disenchanted by the arguments by Muslims and he went and talked to scholars in the UK and Toronto still disenchanted and actually he ended up becoming a Christian just a year ago and this is his baptism. He's a medical student and now he's planning to go into ministry full time. He's already baited his first Muslim.

I'd like to challenge all of you this evening, especially the Muslims. Jesus is out there and he wants you to come to him and if you will seek the truth you will find in him. He said I'm the way the truth in a life and no one comes to the Father but by me and I'd encourage you to seek the truth.

You can never be hurt by the truth. You can bury it, bend it, burn it, but it's still the truth and it can't hurt us. Thank you very much for your attention and I appreciate your coming here.

Thank you Mr. Lacona, Mr. Atai. You'll have a full for 8 minutes and you can begin when you'd like. Please refrain from applause and any outbursts not so disrespect to the other people in the room.

Referring to the Quran that there's a 300-year gap. You can go to a museum in Turkey right now and you can pick up the Quran of Uthman Radiolahu Anhu, one of the chief companions of the Holy Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. His Quran, which was probably promulgated 20 or so years after the death of the Prophet exactly word for word the same as any Quran in the world right now.

And you say how do you know it's Uthman's Quran? Because while he was reading it he was martyred and his blood is so splattered on the pages. This is the Uthmani Musahf. This is his Quran.

It's in Turkey. You can check it out. Within 20, 30 years of the Prophet and the whole Quran was written during the time of the Prophet.

This is in all of our sources. The entire Quran was written by the Prophet down during the Prophet's life. It's on different pieces of material.

There were thousands of people who had the entire Quran even put to memory so they didn't even need to promulgate it into one codex until after the death of the Prophet about two or three years after the death of the Prophet you see. Islam people are converting away from Islam according to many consensus. Islam is the fastest growing religion in America.

Among American born people. I'm not talking about immigration or anything like that. Now the explanation is Islam allows more than one wife.

So this is why. The men want more than one wife. I don't know a single American Muslim that has more than one wife.

Oh Islam is spread by the sword. This is why it's going so fast in America. You see a sword on me? Maybe I left it outside next to my camel.

Well like Indonesia, right? How did Indonesia become Muslim? Do you know the story of Indonesia? There's no record of any Muslim soldier ever stepping foot on the soil of Indonesia. Today there's 200 million Muslims in Indonesia more than the entire Arab world put together. Why? Because eight traders, eight businessmen, they went to Indonesia and the people were so smitten by their honesty that they just started converting to Islam by the truck loads.

Why are people leaving Islam today because they don't realize what Islam has to offer them. Even these Muslims in these so-called Muslim countries. Are these really Muslim countries? That's what we have to do.

Do they inform Islamic law? Do people pray? I went to downtown Tehran in the year 2000 during the middle of the day. They made avant. There's a handful of people in the mosque.

So we need to present Islam to these people because this is a post-colonial world and whatnot and there's a lot of influences coming from different nations. So it's very foggy. Dr. Albert Schweitzer, I'm going to quote him.

In search of the historical Jesus, Mr. Lacona likes to talk about history and historicity of things and whatnot, in search of the historical Jesus, page 22, he says, no miracle would prove that two and two makes five or that a circle has four angles and no miracles, however numerous, could remove a contradiction which lies on the surface of the teachings and records of Christianity. Dr. H. Ramirez, who is a trailblazer in biblical criticism, he wrote a series of writings called the fragments. There were seven of them.

From 1774 to 1778 he wrote him in German. Over these five years. Over 4,000 pages.

4,000 pages over five years. What was his conclusion? A complete rejection of the historical reliability of the gospel accounts of Jesus' resurrection. A complete rejection.

So again, the resurrection cannot be proved historically. This is a faith conviction. It is the least plausible explanation for the empty tomb.

Now let's look at this from a naturalistic point of view. And I'm not a naturalist. I believe in miracles.

I believe the prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, raised dead by the permission of God. I believe the holy prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him one night, split the moon and Mecca and then put it back together again. I believe these things happen.

Can I prove it historically? No. This is a faith conviction. Which, you know, Occam's razor as they say.

The simplest explanation, all things being equal, is probably the correct one. Which is more plausible. Which is more plausible.

That Jesus survived the cross. And Mr. Lakona pointed out erroneously however in the Jewish war. Josephus goes to Tachoa.

He sees three of his friends crucified. They brought down from the cross. One of them survived.

I believe he said all three died. One of them survived. So it's possible to survive the crucifixion.

Which is more plausible. That Jesus survived the cross. Or that Jesus as a God resurrected himself from the dead.

Which is more plausible. Which one sounds more like history. And which one sounds more like a faith conviction? You see.

Which is more plausible. That Jesus was substituted and then seen alive by people after they thought he had been crucified. That's also a miracle.

He escaped the clutches of death. People thought he had been crucified. Well, that can should be of the home.

It was made to appear so unto them that he had died. And now here he is alive. And that would have, you know, changed the heart of the apostles.

And we've gone out and preached this message that Jesus is alive. He's alive. The word used in the New Testament is alive.

He's alive. Why do you seek the living amongst the dead? Mary Magdalene came. He is alive.

But they believe not. The Word is always alive. Would you say resurrected? Resurrected.

Resurrected. Resurrected. Resurrected.

Resurrected. Which is more plausible. That he was substituted and seen alive by people who thought he had been crucified.

Or that as God in the flesh he died and then resurrected himself as a man God. You know these Muslim theories we hear a lot from Christians. You know these Muslim theories you know the swoon theory.

The substitution theory. This theory that it was Judas Iscariate. Or this theory that it's Jesus Barabbas.

Because the first name of Jesus Barabbas was actually Jesus in the Codex Coradethae which is a Syriac manuscript. It says his first name was Jesus. So it actually says that Pilate released Jesus Barabba Jesus the son of the father.

And crucified Jesus the son of the father. That sounds a little confusing. Which one did he crucify? So in the later editions of Matthew they took out the name Jesus.

This is called Barabbas. That's weak. Simon of Cyrene.

That's also weak. You know the Thomas because Thomas might have been a twin brother of Jesus and they could have those are weak. These are untenable and contrived.

Right? It says what we hear all the time. This idea that Jesus was swooned or he was substituted is untenable and contrived. You know what sounds untenable and contrived to me? The belief that God essentially killed himself on a cross and then asks himself why he has forsaken himself and then commends his own spirit into his own hands and the resurrects himself from the dead.

That's a faith conviction. This is not history. This is rejected by objective historians.

Malma sihopdumariyam illa Rasul. Christ the son of Mary was only a messenger. Vadakhalat min kobalehir Rasul.

Many were the messengers that passed away before him. Wur om mohusid diaqah. And his mother was a woman of truth.

Kana yakonan eta am. They both had to eat of their daily food. Om purkai fa yubayinulahumul ayati.

See how clearly we make our signs for them. Fu manna yo fakun. Yet see in what ways they are deluded away from the truth.

In the Qur'an it actually challenges the Jews and the Christians. Through the Prophet Qor al-Sai ha'tu borha nakum. Produce your proof if you speak the truth.

You say these are eyewitness accounts. Most scholars have abandoned that Matthew wrote Matthew. That Luke wrote Luke.

That Mark and that John wrote John. Most scholars have abandoned these identifications. Most scholars have abandoned these identifications.

You see, no one believes this is what the lay people believe. JP Phillips in his gospel commentary, the gospel of Matthew, he says quote, J.B. Phillips. The gospel's in modern English.

Early tradition has ascribed this gospel to the Apostle Matthew. But now a day's almost all scholars reject his view. The scholar whom we can still conveniently call Matthew has drawn upon the mysterious Q source document and has borrowed from Mark's gospel freely.

In other words he's plagiarizing from Mark. Matthew's an eyewitness, yet he's plagiarizing 90% of Mark's gospel. Who's not even there? Does it make sense? Did Matthew write his gospel? Why did John wait 70 years to write his gospel in a foreign language? It doesn't make sense.

He's rejected his historical records and solemnly. Thank you, Mr. A Thai. That concludes the debate portion of the evening.

The second portion now is going to be a question and answer time where your questions will be asked to the speakers. All right, I will begin with you, Mr. Thai. Can you give a brief account of the story of Jesus' rescue? What were the events of that day? Where can this account be found in the Quran and or historical documents? You have two minutes.

The Quran does not go into specifics as to exactly what happened. You see, the Quran says he was saved, that he wasn't killed, he wasn't crucified, and based on the reliability of the text of the Quran and also on the life example of a Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, who is the most universal messenger. He's the most historical messenger.

You see, we take these statements as true until they are proven false. Now, what exactly happened to him? There are theories. Muslims have devised, like I was saying, the substitution theory, and these aren't some things that we invented by ourselves.

You see, these have some background in Gnostic gospels. As he says, they're Gnostic gospels. They're heretical gospels and whatnot.

And these things were found just recently. You know, prior to 1945 when they found a Gnostic gospels, it was common knowledge that only the Christology of the Quran says Jesus wasn't crucified. But now we know, based on recent discoveries, like the second treatise of the great Seth, you know, where's the first treatise of the great Seth? Maybe we'll find that in another 20 years.

That'll be very, very close to the time of Jesus. And they'll say, no, he wasn't crucified. You see, these things, the Christian beliefs are evolving over time.

When these things start to come out over time, these discoveries, it only proves the Quran more and only disproves the Quran, the Bible more, as well, at the same time. Well, in terms of what actually happened there, he's right, the Quran doesn't give any details. But as I mentioned, when you talk about Simon of Cyrene and the sign of Jonah, they contradict each other.

And what I'm saying here is his views of what happened contradict one another. And he said that they believe these statements until true, until proven false. Well, I have proven them false.

I've shown that God is not the author of the Quran. It flunks its own test. Again, he mentions the Nākamādi library, and that we didn't know about any of these gospels before then.

Well, sure we did. The early church fathers speak of these, of most of these gospels. It mentions the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of the Hebrews.

All of these have been mentioned long before, I mean, over a thousand years before the Nākamādi manuscripts. It's just now we could read these gospels in their entirety. Would you like one minute to respond? Again, these views that are postulated by Muslim scholars, these predate Islam.

These are what Christian denominations believed. These are what Christian denominations believed. Islam did not make this up.

The reason why these other gospels were not admitted into the canon is because there's no passion narrative. Again, this is very essential. There's no passion narrative.

That's the reason why they were rejected. Because this is what the church wanted the masses to believe that Jesus died, because the Gospel of Paul and the Hellenizers, this is the Gospel that dominated the landscape at the time. So Thomas actually says, what does he say? He says that he doesn't even mention the crucifixion.

He says that that sacred gnosis, that gnosis of Jesus is teaching, this will grant you salvation. In the Gospel of Marcus it says that secretly Jesus explained everything to his disciples. What did he explain secretly? It's not mentioned in the canonical Gospels.

Why? Because it compromises Paul's message. Thank you, Mr. Atai. The next question is addressed to Mr. Lacona.

Why do you consider this debate between two monotheistic religious individuals about issues concerning salvation untheological when the term theological means logic of divinity? Well, theological means the study of God. It comes from true Greek words, Theos from for God and Logos, which has several meanings, but it's generally used as the study of, that's like psychology to study the mind, soul and things like that. Geology, the study of the earth and rocks.

And I do think it's important in order to look at the history first, because if you allow your theology to guide your history, you're going to come up with skewed and biased results here. You've got to look at where the historical evidence leads. You go where the history leads and adapt your theology.

And that's why I love being a Christian, because it's supported by the facts. Everything I've given tonight, I've based it upon sound methods of historiography. You can't do that with Islam.

They've got nothing. In fact, when it comes to the rescue theory, instead of presenting facts, it's more like, well, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a camel in disguise. That's the only thing that you can say with that.

I mean, look at what Ollie's quoting here. He's got appeal to the secret gospel of Mark, which within the last two years was exposed as a forgery of total fraud by Morton Smith, who discovered it. They analyzed his handwriting and they traced it to his hand and he wrote it in the year 1962.

That's long after the other gospels here. So you need to stay current on this literature. The reason no passion, narrative, and cue is because it's saying it's literature.

It's only talking about Jesus' teachings. And of course he wasn't teaching after his death. Again, it's very, very clear that the resurrection, belief in the resurrection, is a theological statement.

It's a theological statement. And I believe that Christians actually took this belief from preexisting elements that were around Palestine at the time, Greco-Roman elements. Like there was a legend from a man named Apollonius of Tyana, who was a contemporary of Jesus Christ.

In his biography of states, now Mike is probably going to say, well, his biographies was written much later. Well, there was oral traditions at the time that stated that he was resurrected and appeared to his disciples. And one of them is a doubter, you see.

So the Prophet Mohammed Peace be upon him is the most historical profit. I can go to Jerusalem right now and ask different Christians, where's the garden tomb? Well, some of us believe it's here, others believe it's over there, and some believe it's over here. It's all conjecture.

Where do you think Jesus was crucified? Well, the dominant opinion is here. You can go to Mecca. This is where the Prophet made his ablutions.

This is where he's buried. This is where his house was. He's the most historical prophet.

You see, the Quran is the most historical scripture. And there's no two versions of the Quran. He says that it's clear that belief in the resurrection is a theological statement.

I don't think that's clear. Now, in terms of the full theological impact of everything that goes with resurrection, I would agree that there is a theological leap in part of that. But you can show that Jesus died, and you can show after that he was raised, that they saw him again alive after his death.

And what's interesting is all there and what we have in the early reports is that it was the type of body that they viewed as being resurrection, something that was completely powerful. Pre-existing Greco-Roman accounts, Apollonius of Tyana, Apollonius was a first late first century figure. His biography was written 225 years later.

It wasn't a resurrection. The disciple he's talking about saw Apollonius in a dream. In fact, the Greek word Daimanioi is used later on by a philosopher at the end, which means a disembodied type spirit there.

And in fact, Apollonius himself taught that people would become disembodied. Thank you, Mr. and Mr. Atai. There may be Muslims here tonight who are convinced regarding the evidence for the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

With that in mind, do you agree with the law of apostasy as it is commonly practiced in the Muslim world where anyone who leaves Islam must be killed? I really don't see the relevance of the question, and I don't know why you even choose that question. But as far as apostasy goes, you see, the Bible says the very same thing. Now, let me clarify.

In the book of Second Chronicles, or maybe its first chronicles, it says, whoever doesn't worship the God of Israel must be murdered, man, woman, child, whatever. Why? Because they made a covenant with God, and they rescinded their covenant by worshiping idols. Now, as far as killing the apostate, this is an anomaly.

How many times has it happened? Really, and how many times has the Muslim government really executed an apostate? All of Islamic law must be instituted before the Houdud, or these HUD punishments. These capital offenses can be practiced. So, you know, it's really easy to isolate one part of, you know, Islam with the law and say, well, you know, it doesn't make sense to me, and it's barbaric, and this and that.

I can do the very same thing with the Bible. Jesus says, you know, think not that I've come to bring peace on Earth. I've not come to bring peace, but a sword.

If I take that out of context and say, oh, look, you know, Jesus is advocating violence. Is that really fair to do that? No Muslim country, so-called Muslim country in the world right now, is implementing the Islamic law, you see, and there is a difference of opinion as to what to do with an apostate. I'm not an expert on Islamic law, and, again, I don't know why that question was, we're talking about the resurrection and theology, whether it's history or theology, and then you pick this question about sacred Islamic law.

I'm not an expert on Islamic law, you see. Well, Afghanistan, they are employing this law of apostasy right now, and that's why one Christian last year, a guy who converted from Islam to Christianity, had to be declared insane so that he wouldn't be executed. I would just say, I personally know someone who goes over into Iran and Afghanistan frequently and talks to the underground churches there and finds that there is severe persecution of Christians in those countries, and I would challenge, I would just name a single Muslim country, just one, just one, where there was religious freedom, where a Christian could go to church there without fear of persecution or losing their job, or telling others or having a debate like we're having right here.

I would be killed in a Muslim country for saying the things I'm saying here tonight. God bless the United States of America for offering this type of freedom so that we can have these kind of discussions because you certainly can't do it in a Muslim country. Again, as I said to my book, when a Christian is cornered, he turns to politics.

Egypt, Cairo, Cairo. There were this part of respect for the speakers. Coptic Christians in Cairo for 2000 years, or whatever, hundreds of years.

They're still there. Coptic Christians in Egypt. There's a country.

Look at Muslim Spain. When the Muslims ruled Spain, it's the golden age of Judaism. Spain was a Muslim country for 800 years.

Then what happened? The Christians came slaughtered everyone indiscriminately. Is that religious freedom? Afghanistan is not a Muslim country. Do they have a Muslim government? Do they have a Muslim Khalifa or someone who's implementing this Islamic law? No.

Who's doing these things? Rogue, little tiny factions of people who claim to be doing things in the name of Islam. They don't have any legalized state authority. You see, what's going on in Iraq right now? Somebody said, this is a crusade.

I heard that. This is a crusade. What's a crusade? Campus crusade for Christ.

Don't you think I take offense to that? What if I called the MSA campus jihad for Allah? What would you do? You crucify me upside down naked. I'd like to remind the audience that you showed disrespect for the other people when you have outbursts. And so I'd ask both sides to please refrain.

Thank you. Mr. Lacono, this next question is for you. How do you respond to the many quotes from the Bible that Ali uses that assert that Jesus was saved by God? You accuse Ali of selective evidence, but you yourself have disregarded the many statements in the gospel that contradict Jesus' resurrection and support his rescue? Well, there aren't many questions.

There aren't many texts that do this. You've got the sign of Jonah. And the way I would explain that is you've got to, I mean, look at this.

There's two issues here. One is the three days, three nights issue. And if you look at 1 Samuel 20 as well as Ezra 4, you'll find that the term three days and three nights is a figure speech to me in a short period of time.

In fact, we find this all throughout the New Testament. You look at Matthew 28 or 27 when they bury Jesus, they go, the Jewish leadership go to pilot and they said, hey, you know, this fellow said he was going to raise three days and three nights afterwards. So how about we place a guard until the third day so that they don't come and steal his body? Well, that would mean they'd be pulling the guard away at the very time that this guy was playing on, they were playing on stealing the body and giving them time to do that.

So that wouldn't make sense. The three-day theme is just something like we'd say, hey, wait a minute. Just give me a second here.

Or when Jesus says, my hour has come. Things like that. So the figure speech, the other has to do with it didn't say he died.

But you've got to use a solid sound hermeneutical method here which interprets not the multiple clear passages that talk about Jesus predicting his death and resurrection and reinterpret them or discard them or do this criterion of convenience based on an ambiguous meaning right here. You've got to interpret the ambiguous according to the multiple clear. Otherwise, I could quote three passages in the Quran that seem to imply that Jesus was killed, that he died already.

And say, well, based on that, I'll use my criteria of convenience. After all, if he does it, I can do it too. We can both eat it the same cafeteria.

And by doing that, I could say, well, we'll just throw out surah 4157 because it just must have been put in layer because it doesn't suit my needs right there. So that's how I would do that. And regarding the crucifixion, we don't crucify people in this country.

I was referring to a spiritual crucifixion. Mr. Kona has quoted a verse from the The Gospels. Jesus says, how is it written of the son of man? The apocalyptic son of man, the barnasha, that he will be rejected by the chief priests.

They will kill him and he will rise again. How is it written? Where is it written? The son of man? The son of man? The apocalyptic son of man will be killed in resurrected? It's written nowhere. Or when Matthew says, you know, the Gospels are full of embellishments.

This is just another example of embellishments. The passion narratives are full of embellishments. Misapplication is very common in the New Testament, especially in Matthew who overzealously tries to convince his Jewish audience that every single prophecy of the Old Testament is fulfilled by Jesus Christ and no one else.

According to the Jesus Seminar, those are idiots. The Jesus Seminar, Christian scholars, 82% of what Jesus says in the Gospels, false, 16% doubtful, 2% accurate, 2%, Christian scholars, the Jesus Seminar. Most of the Jesus Seminar scholars would not claim to be Christians.

And in fact, Marcus Borg, who's one of the leading members in there wrote in the five Gospels or the Acts of Jesus that the reason that they came to such a consensus like that, only 82% that they rejected was of his words, is because they reject the miraculous. They all embrace a metaphysical naturalism. So, of course, if there's no such thing as miracles, if you can't do that, well then you've got to reject any type of predictive prophecies that Jesus gave, a resurrection, any miracles he did.

But that's because they're metaphysical naturalists. They reject the possibility of miracles and then, of course, they are priority do that and then, of course, your conclusions are going to reflect that and reject miracles. Thank you, Mr. Lacona.

The next question is for Mr. Attai. Mr. Attai, you said God sent Muhammad to restore what had been corrupted, yet Mormonism, along with many other religion, make the same claim. How is Islam any different from Mormonism and why should I believe Muhammad and not Joseph Smith? Why should I believe the message Muhammad received was actually from God? Well, according to Justin Martyr, one of the best ways to prove the authenticity of a prophet or the way he tried to prove the authenticity of Jesus was appealing to Old Testament prophecy.

So I've asked my Mormon brethren all the time, can you show me prophecies of Joseph Smith in the Old Testament? It's a hundred percent failure. Now I tell them to look at Song of Solomon, chapter 5 verse 16. Song of Solomon, look at the Song of Solomon, starts at verse chapter 5 verses 10 through 16.

A perfect description of the Holy Prophet, Muhammad, peace be upon him. A perfect description. It begins verse 10.

My beloved is white and ruddy, meaning red, chief among 10,000. His head is like gold, his locks are wavy and black is a raven. It continues to describe him, his eyes, his hands, his countenance, the fragrance of musk that exuded from his body.

Verse 16 is a culmination of the passage. It says in English, his mouth is most sweet, he is all together lovely, such is my beloved, and he is my friend, O E-daughters of Jerusalem. In the original Hebrew, it sounds like this prekomom takim vikol lo mohamadim zaidudi visarayi binathirushalam.

His mouth is most sweet, he is Muhammad, a prophecy by name. Where is the name Jesus in the Old Testament? I believe he's of the Messiah, but can you show me a prophecy by name? Does it say the name of the Messiah will be Yeshua, or Jeshua, or Esau, or Esau, whatever the name was at the time? There's no prophecy by name, you see. This is what I would start with, the Mormon.

And there's many other things, like the Prophet, peace be upon him, is his biography is the most comprehensive of any human being to ever live. The most comprehensive biography, here in Armstrong, says that we know more about the life of the Prophet Muhammad than about any other person in history. Any other religious figure, the Encyclopedia Britannica, again, 11th edition, again, used to be gospel truth before the internet.

He says, Muhammad was the most successful of all religious personalities. You see, his biography has been specially guarded by God, and there's a reason for that. You should check it out.

There's more than meets the item to this man. Don't, you know, I'm sorry, I'm out of time. Well, I would reject both Islam and Mormonism, and I would do it because of the historical criteria.

If I look at Mormonism, I look at it and I say, okay, what evidence is there for it? When I check it out against the claims of the Book of Mormon that there was a civilization of millions of people over here, and that hundreds of thousands died at the Hill Camara around the year 400 AD. All we have to do is go to the Hill Camara and look, and I've talked to archaeologists who work in that area, and they say we should still have a lot of skeletal remains, but they haven't even found a button on Hill Camara, not as much as a button there. And so the historical evidence, I think, militates against it.

When you look at the Book of Abraham thing, I think that's the death now of Mormonism. It's the most easily refuted religion in the world. The next one, I think, is Islam on that list.

And the reason being is because when you look at the test, given by the Qur'an, it fails its own test, and I've shown how that happens. Just go ahead and compare on your own Psalm 19 with Surah 1, and for those of you who read Arabic here, go ahead and check out the truth for Khan. As far as a comparison between the Qur'an and the Book of Psalms, I guess he quoted one scholar that said, you know, the Book of Psalms is this and that, and it's better than the Qur'an.

I mean, this is a standing challenge to Arab Christians, right? The Qur'an is 114 chapters long. The smallest, the shortest chapter in the Qur'an is three verses. The Qur'an says, produce one Surah like unto this.

One chapter like unto this Qur'an. One chapter, and people have failed for 1400 years. This is a standard.

They've failed, and this is an unlettered man. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, cannot read or write. He's an unlettered man, yet he can produce 114 chapters like this.

I mean, think about that for a second. He is the unlettered prophet of Isaiah chapter 29-12. Read the biography of the prophet, of how he became a prophet, the night in the cave.

When Gabriel came to him, he said, He said, He said, Hekra, He said, Ma'ana bikari, read, I cannot read, Isaiah 29-12. And the book shall be given to one who knoweth no letters. In the shall be said to him, read.

In the Hebrew, saffa-lamor-kara, initial anso-lo-ya-tas-is-a-ferris. Ma'ana bikari, I cannot read. Thank you, Mr. Attai.

The next question is addressed to Mr. Lakona. The historical evidence that you provided could support the alternate hypothesis that it was only made to appear that Jesus was raised. How do you respond to this? Would you repeat that question? The historical evidence that you provided could support the alternate hypothesis that it was only made to appear that Jesus was raised.

How do you respond to this? Again, the question is, let me see if I can repeat it fine. The historical evidence I gave could be made to support the hypothesis that got only made it appear that way. Is that what the question is? And how would I explain that? Let me try to rephrase this.

Is it your question? It's not my question. No. It's his question? Who's question is this? All right, I'll try to explain this a little bit better.

The historical evidence that you provided could support another hypothesis, one that would say that it was only made to appear that Jesus rose from the dead. And how do you respond to that? I don't know how it could support it. Certainly, the evidence I gave for his death could be used that way.

That just shows that Allah was successful in making it appear that way. But then like I showed, there are a number of problems with that. You've got the Islamic Catch-22, the fact that we can prove that Jesus predicted his imminent and violent death.

Historically, six arguments I gave for that. So if he didn't die that imminent and violent death, he's a false prophet, the Quran is wrong. If he did die that imminent and violent death, then the Quran is wrong because it says he would, so either way the Quran is wrong.

So I think that militates against it. And also, as I mentioned, it makes God out to be a deceiver. Actually, I didn't mention this before, but it does.

Not only did he deceive the enemies, which we would expect him to do something like that, no problem with that. But the Quran refers to the early followers of Jesus as Muslims. And that means that he deceived them as well because we can establish historically, even airmen, the agnostic, says that it's indisputable that these earliest followers of Jesus, the disciples, actually believe that he died and rose from the dead.

So what that means is if not only did God deceive the original enemies of Jesus, he deceived the original Muslims in the first century. And if he deceived them now, how do you know he's not deceiving you as well? In fact, I just think that this is a real problem within Islam. There's no way for you to prove that God is not deceiving you now.

And in fact, according to early reports, Abu Bakr on his deathbed, he was just afraid. I mean, here's Abu Bakr, and he was afraid that he wasn't going to have eternal life in heaven because God had deceived him. So if the earliest, closest companion of Muhammad thought this, what hope do you guys have? So I think there's some serious problems with this.

And I think it all militates all the evidence and the logical arguments militate against the Islamic interpretation that Jesus survived death by crucifixion. Well, there's a difference between being deceived by God and allowing yourself to be deceived by God. In the Gospels, I see a very apparent evolution of Christology.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is presented as a suffering prophet, and Matthew is suddenly the open Messiah. Luke calls him Soter, which means Savior. In the Gospel of John, he's finally the logos, the divine word that initiates creation.

So in a span of less than 50 years, you go from Jesus being a prophet to God in the flesh, you see. So these four Gospels were written after the fact. So these people have theological agendas.

Matthew has a theological agenda. They believe Jesus was crucified. So he went back and said that Jesus said this.

He put the words into the mouth of the master. It's called Vaticanium exit ventu, prophecy after the event. And this is what they believe, do you see? Now, that's it.

Well, again, he's appealing to the Quran, which I think is just simply demonstrably false. But the evolution of Christology, what does that have to do with tonight's debate? He doesn't like the question about Islam and apostasy laws. What does Christology have to do with the historicity of what happened with the fate of Jesus in the first century? It's irrelevant.

But he's also wrong about the Christology question. If all you have to do is read about this apocalyptic son of man that he's mentioned. It's all throughout Mark.

It's all throughout the synoptics. Matthew, Mark, Luke, it's even mentioned in John in two places. In this apocalyptic son of man, you do a little study and you find Daniel 7. It says that all nations will serve him.

And that word serve. Latruo. You look all throughout the Old Testament Septuagint and the New Testament.

You'll find that with only one exception where it says that Israel will serve her enemies. Every other occurrence of more than 130 times is something that refers to a deity. And that's why when Jesus claimed that he would return on the clouds of heaven and sit at the right hand of power.

They ripped their clothes and said, blasphemy. And the reason being because he was claiming to be equal with God. Thank you, Mr. Lakona.

The next question is addressed, Mr. Atai. Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice and had to die to complete the sacrificial cycle of the Jews. If Jesus did not die, then why did the temple veil rip at the time Jesus died? And why do Jews no longer sacrifice to atone for their sins? Let me read a quote from Ahmad Dida, the shaykh who passed away from him Allah.

He says in his book, a thunderstorm, an eclipse of the sun, an earthquake, rocks being rent, the veil of the temple being torn from top to bottom, graves being open and sleeping corpses marching through the streets of Jerusalem as narrated by the Christian witnesses. What a scenario for a billion dollar record-breaking film production. He wrote this 10 years before the movie The Passion of the Christ came out.

This is entertainment. These are embellishments. It's very apparent that these are embellishments.

What was the first part of the question? I'm sorry. If Jesus did not die, then why did the temple veil rip at the time Jesus died, and why do Jews no longer sacrifice to atone for their sins? Well, I believe that Jesus came to abolish all sacrifices. That's what he says.

And to say that he was a sacrifice, I believe is a belief that infiltrated the Hellenistic Church, which came from Greco-Roman elements. This idea of human beings being sacrificed, I don't find evidence of this in the Old Testament at all. Okay, in terms of why the Jews no longer sacrifice, I'm no expert on the Jewish faith today, but my understanding is, of course, they don't have a temple any longer, and the reason they don't, so they've reinterpreted things, and they've, in terms of the sacrifices, good deeds, but I'll defer to any Jewish friend here this evening.

In terms of these phenomena that he refers to at the dot, I'm totally open to the possibility that these are literary devices that are put in here. We find this in a number like Virgil. He mentions many of the same things, but the reason that they would do it with these literary devices is because they're emphasizing what's going on.

Like Cicero and many of these mentioned similar devices with Julius Caesar, but it's emphasizing the death of a great king, and that's why they put him in the text. But there are some historical evidence for several of these, like the eclipse and for the earthquake, and even some of the quadratus mentions how some of the dead who had come at that time and went into Jerusalem were still alive in his day. Just to follow up on the embellishments of the Passion narratives, like exactly the sleeping corpses coming up, you know, what happened to them? Did they die again? If they die twice? And there's a contradiction in the New Testament because Paul says, according to Hebrews, although most people don't believe Paul wrote Hebrews, a point in it that every man is to die once and then judgment.

What happened to these corpses? Did they ascend with Jesus as well? Well, we look at like the Passion narrative here. For example, just really quick in the Gospel of Mark, we are told that when they came to seize Jesus, there was a man there who was in a linen cloth, and he ran away naked from the scene. I don't remember seeing this in the movie, The Passion of the Christ.

The reason is because, if this was shown in the movie, this would have exploded the audience in laughter. You know, can you imagine a tense scene, slow motion, you know, dramatic music, and then you see this guy streaking across the screen? Why don't you stay true to the Gospel tradition and present it as it was said in the Gospels? This young man ran away naked. Why are you picking and choosing? What is this, the buffet line? Thank you, Mr. Atai.

Next question is addressed to Mr. Lacona. You say that Mr. Atai's evidence was biased based on the Quran, however, was your historical evidence biased based on biased historians who believed in the Bible? That's a great question. I thank you for asking it.

I'm doing my doctoral dissertation on the historiography and the resurrection of Jesus, and this is a serious problem that I realize that I have, but so does everybody else in terms of bias. We can't get away from our own bias. When I'm talking about scholars, you know, he said the majority of scholars don't believe the resurrection.

Well, he hasn't read the literature. I have read the literature. I've tried to read and familiarize myself with everything written on the resurrection since 1985 in a number of different languages, and in doing that, I can see where scholars stand on us, and I can tell you that the majority of scholars, these are what we would call historical bedrock, these facts that I've presented this evening.

Now, many scholars may not agree with the conclusion that Jesus rose from the debt, but they agree on these facts, and a lot of times when you, and many of these other scholars, they don't apply solid methodology, and you look at them, and you go through these, and this is something which even professional historians admit is a serious problem within the community of professional historians, that they don't have any criteria that they lay out and say, this is what I'm going to follow. They talk about it, but a lot of times they just go off and they just wing it on these things, and they allow their biases to guide them. In fact, the deist, historical Jesus scholar, who named Dale Allison, says that this is a serious problem, and in fact, Michael Grant, who is a professional historian, says it's impossible for anyone to be objective.

But here's the thing. In my dissertation, I lay out six different speed bumps that a historian has to go over, slow down, in order to keep him from going unchecked in his bias, or her bias, and I laid those out, and one of the things is you've got to account for the minimal facts, and other things you try your best as possible to detach yourself for bias. So I have, in my investigation, I have looked at these things and done my best to minimize my bias, and laid out specific criteria for doing that.

So I would like to know from Ali what he has done to minimize his bias. I have five versions of the Bible at home, and I immerse myself in reading Christian literature. That's how I try to unbiased myself.

Now, when we say, you know, many scholars say this, and many scholars say this, and anyone can say, many scholars say this and that. That's the trick of Fox News. That's what they say.

Well, many people believe this. Who believes that? Many people believe that. Just don't worry about it.

Many scholars say this, right? And we've both done that. And that's, it really, it's my, the word of my scholar against the word of his scholar. Now, what's the claim here? The Christian claim is that the core of the story is the same.

There was an empty tomb. Okay, never mind for now the conflicting genealogies of Jesus. Never mind for now, only the IM statements found in John.

Never mind for now the cleansing of the temple. Was it done one or twice? Never mind for now whether Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem or Nazareth. You would at least expect the details of the empty tomb discovery to agree.

Alas, they don't. The greatest miracle of Christendom, and there's four versions of it. What's more, all four are believed to be the word of God, but all four cannot be true.

If these stories were authenticated and scrutinized with the same standards of the hadith, they would all be rejected. They don't have a son that. There's no, it's not.

There's no sound chain of manipulation to anyone. I got caught off. I'm sorry, I didn't see it.

Reading five translations. I mean, I read the Quran too. I don't read it in five translations, but I have, I haven't in three translations at home.

So I mean, I do those kind of things too, but that's not what you do to minimize your bias. And my guess is that when you're reading the Bible, you're just looking for arguments to use against Christians. In terms of most biblical scholars that they're just supporting my view or they're Christian, that's not the case.

If you read the literature, you'd find that the majority of biblical scholars are skeptics. They reject the possibility of miracles. Now, but what they do acknowledge are these facts and irrespective of how you may account for the empty tomb, I think the empty tomb could be accounted for a rescue.

Say Jesus was crucified. God made it a period. He was dead, took him, put him, resuscitate him or healed him in the tomb.

But the problem is is the early, we can establish historically that the earliest disciples of Jesus, those who he walked with him sincerely believe that he had died and risen from the dead. And this is the death knelt, any kind of theory like that. Nothing destroys an interesting theory that supports your religious views, like the facts.

Thank you. Next question we'll address the mystery of time. Having a little trouble reading this, but it says, if Q source was lost, how can you claim that there was no passion story included in it? Because according to most scholars again, Matthew and Luke have nothing new to tell us about the passion narrative that they didn't take from Mark.

There's nothing new, you see. The Q source document according to most scholars is a material that Matthew and Luke took that is not in Mark, you see. So that's how we can tell that it's not in the Q source document.

There's nothing in Matthew and Luke that is not in Mark. According to most scholars, there's no passion narrative in the Q source document. And that's why it's not anywhere to be found.

You know, where is it? Some people said, well, the gospel of Thomas could be. Well, it's not a good candidate because it doesn't, there's not enough word for word agreements. Where is the Q source document? Where is this hypothetical source document? Where is it buried? Are we going to find it one day? Maybe some Muslim Bedouin, like, you know, how he found the Dead Sea Scrolls.

He was kicking back with his flock. He's throwing some stones into a cave. And then he hears this jar break and next thing you know, this poor, God knows what happened to this poor Bedouin and next thing you know, the Israeli government and the Roman Catholic Church.

They're the only ones that can see the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it was like that for 40 years. For 40, what did they find? Who knows? God knows. In terms of the Q source, for those of you who aren't familiar with Q, it's a hypothetical source that scholars assigned where Matthew and Luke agree with each other, almost word for word, but Mark doesn't report it.

That's what Q is. And so it seems like Matthew and Luke have a common source there. But that's okay, because Luke even says he got his information from the eyewitnesses.

And in that day, there was something called autopsy. A little bit different than what a pathologist might regard as autopsy. But it's looking for eyewitness testimonies.

And so, and they would look for that even in written sources. Q is thought maybe even to be an oral source, so it wouldn't be in writing. In terms of a passion narrative against the teachings of Jesus, but some scholars have gone and said, you know, all these redacted levels of Q. And that's why NT Wright, I think, is right when he says, these scholars are just building castles in the air, so we need not feel obligated to rent a room.

He mentioned it was funny in the Gospel of Luke. He actually mentioned this that Luke actually gives his reason why he wrote his Gospel. He admits he's not an eyewitness, that he's going off tradition.

And he says, it seems good to me also. It seems like a good idea for me to do this. Is this constitute divine inspiration? Is this a divine revelation? It seems good because, you know, this is what people are saying.

And I can do things better than a bunch of fishermen and tax collectors, so I'm going to go ahead and write an orderly account unto thee, oh, excellency theophilus. He's writing a letter to theophilus, and this constitutes holy scripture, right? So, what was the Gospel of the Galatians at the time? Paul opposed the Galatians. He said they believe in another Gospel in another Christ.

Where's their Gospel? Is it the Q source document? No one knows. He says there was another Gospel in Corinth. Where's that Gospel? No one knows.

It was only the, after the Porta Orthodox one, you know, with the conversion of Constantine, and all these groups were marginalized. Again, there were no Jewish Christian writings on earth that are extended. Where are they? They're lost.

They're completely lost. They're buried. Maybe one day we'll find them.

And they'll tell a different story. Sorry. This will be the last question of the evening to Mr. Lacona.

You quote John and other biblical sources in your discussion of the Quran. You didn't mention that historically the Bible has been changed, but historically the Quran has remained unchanged. Well, I don't think the Bible has been changed over time.

I mean, sure, there's discrepancies and manuscripts just like there is in the Quran. But the Jewish, in terms of the changes within there, and let's say the resurrection narratives that he was mentioning, Richard Burch has so showed very cogently in his book What are the Gospels? The Gospels are Greco and Roman biographies. And then so you have to judge them according to the genre in which they're written.

You wouldn't say a parable is wrong because if you found out that the good Samaritan wasn't a historical person. Because the parables are meant to be word pictures and lessons, narrative stories in that way. Now, the Gospels contain, or Jesus taught in parables, the Gospels and Greco-Roman biographies trying to report an actual biography of what happened with Jesus here.

And so when you look at this and you say, okay, well, why might they be discrepancies here? Because of the same conventions we do in everyday conversations. And that's why you apply historical methodology. Luke, as you go there, you see, like in the trial scene, Matthew and Mark, they're written to Jews, says, are you the Messiah, the Son of God? And he answers, he says, well, yes, I am.

And you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of him, blah, blah, blah. And they say, blasphemy, terror is closed. This guy's worthy of death.

That's probably what it was like. Luke, a little bit different. He's writing to a Gentile audience, probably in Rome.

They don't understand the Son of Man imagery. They don't understand what blasphemy is. So after going through all of that, are you the Messiah, the Son of God? Jesus says, I certainly am.

You'll see the Son of Man, blah, blah, blah. And he says, well, then the High Priest says, well, then are you the Son of God? I am. Oh, well, we don't need witnesses anymore to pilot you go.

So he may be adding this in so in order to clarify to his Gentile audience of what Son of Man meant, because they understand it in the same terms as Son of God. This isn't a contradiction. This is just simply communicating in the same way that we do every day with one another, the kind of messages we don't call these errors.

You just have to understand the genre of the Gospels. And they are very historical. You cannot graft your theology upon the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Jews do not believe in the Trinity. They don't believe that the Messiah was to be a divine incarnation. So why would the High Priest ask Jesus? Hallelujah.

Bar Elahaha. Are you the Christ, the Son of the Living God? Did he really meant that? Did he mean that to be? You are the second person of the Trinity? No, Son of God is a messianic title. They didn't believe that Jesus was a divine incarnation.

That was not the conception of the Messiah. This is a Jewish concept. The Jews have torrid.

Adonai Elohainu. Adonai Echad. Hero, Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.

An absolute unity. You cannot graft your theology upon the Hebrew Scriptures. They don't believe in a Trinity.

The apocalyptic Son of Man is not believed by Jews to be a divine figure. That's blasphemy according to them. Lo ish el vihazev uven adom.

God is not a man, you see. How much time do I have? Ten seconds? Thank you very much. I agree that Jews didn't believe that Christ the Messiah, the Son of God here, that that was a claim to divinity.

So I would agree with Ali there that the High Priest wouldn't have interpreted that as being divine. It's Jesus following Satan to say, and you, we'll see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven seated at the right hand of power. Again, you go back to Daniel 7 and it's very clear he is thinking of himself as being divine because all nations will serve him.

And Jesus said, when he's tempted in the wilderness, tell Satan you will shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Same Greek word is used there. So, in essence, what we have with Jesus saying that is, hey, yes, I'm the Messiah, I'm the Son of God, and you know what you guys sitting in these seats right here judging me? Well, guess what? You're going to see my father and I coming on the clouds of heaven descending, and we're going to judge you.

Don't get used to those seats. We're going to cast you off those seats, and you're going to be made a foot still for my feet. And you will serve me with the same honor and respects that are due only to God because my father and I were made of the same stuff.

And they understood that it's blasphemy, and that's why they put him to death. Thank you. And that concludes the question and answer time.

I want to thank you for coming, and let's give them a round of applause. Thanks for joining us today. If you'd like to learn more about the work in the ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona, visit RisenJesus.com, where you can find authentic answers to genuine questions about the reliability of the Gospels and the resurrection of Jesus.

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