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First of all, let me thank you very sincerely for your kindness, who wrote, may God bless your work, a marvelous talk indeed. It is rarely that I get so flattered after a lecture. Question, how do they scientifically date the manuscripts? Yes, that's a very interesting question. They have tried carbon fourteen dating, for instance, but carbon fourteen dating is not accurate enough in the plus or minus range of possibility, uh, not enough to compete with the method of dating them according to the style of the handwriting.
Now, if you are not an expert in these matters, eh, judging dating by handwriting might seem a very hazardous process. But of course, we have large collections of manuscripts from the ancient world in different languages. We have some in Greek going back to times BC, biblical manuscripts indeed, eh, in Greek, and with them we can compare writing in ordinary secular writing. We can then compare it with writing on monuments that does, of course, tend to be much more formal.
And if you lay out a series of manuscripts, uh, side by side, you will see, uh, how writing styles change. You could do it with writing in English. In my father's day, children were taught copper plate handwriting in school, and to my father's last days he wrote in his letters in ordinary ways, copper plate handwriting. Beautiful stuff it was. Uh, I, I, I cannot attain to that glory, and a lot of my, uh, contemporaries don't either, you'll see. The change in style of English writing is obvious. And given enough manuscripts, you can therefore, uh, allocate manuscripts not only to their century, but very often to within ten or twenty years.
That is therefore how they date, uh, uh, the ancient manuscripts. That is the, uh, uh, most way, of course. There are other ways of, of dating, uh, when manuscripts are dug up, uh, do you see, and are found in a certain layer of material that can be dated, uh, Josie, they know at least that the manuscript was not younger than the rubbish that was eventually placed on top of it, whatever dating that is. As second, uh, question, after some movies, recent movies, are there no archaeological searches, uh, from the body of the Christ?
Well, the most recent thing that comes to my mind is the ossuary that was discovered just outside the walls of Jerusalem. An ossuary is a polite name in Latin for a bone box, and it was a way of burial in the ancient world in which people, uh, guarded their dead and buried them slightly, eh, not in earth maybe, but in a pot of some kind, until the flesh had gone from the bones. Then they were left just with the bones, and they would put the bones into a small pot that didn't need such a large pot as a full body would, you'll see.
And these put the bo- uh, pots, little uh boxes, so to speak, made of stone, in which the bones were put, are therefore called ossuaries. This one turned up, and it was, uh, the ossuary, so the inscription said, of James, the brother of Jesus, son of Jo- uh, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. Of course, the archaeologists have disputed this hotly. Eh, Lemaitre of France, well-known Aramaic epigraphist expert, declared them to be that to be genuine.
You'll see. This was James, the brother of Jesus. Um, more recently, some of the Israeli scholars have contended, no, the, uh, inscription on the front had been tampered with and was not original. The most recent thing I've read on it is, I think, a Scandinavian scholar or a German, who likewise is a profound expert in these matters. And in his tests of the micro, micro, micro bits of dust inside in the letters and so forth.
He sh- he argues very strongly that the inscription was genuine, belongs to the first century. It was the brother of Jesus. As far as I'm aware, there is no, uh, record, of course, of the body of the Christ. From my position as a Christian, I would say they will never find it anyway, because the biblical account is that on the third day he left the tomb. You'll see. It is not for me in this lecture tonight to talk about the evidence that the resurrection of Christ was an historical af- affair, do you see?
But, so I'm not allowed to say this, do you see? But if I were going to say it, what I would say is, uh, amongst all the other evidence, is the way the women, the Christian women, treated the sepulcher. They came, of course, on the first day of the week, further to embalm the body. They were obviously not expecting him to rise from the dead, in spite of what Jesus had told the apostles. But they were going to embalm the body as best they could to preserve it, to turn his grave into a shrine where they might come and pray.
When Mary Magdalene came, she found the sepulcher, the stone rolled away, the tomb empty. She went and called James and John, James and, uh, John and Peter, who ran to the sepulcher and eventually went inside. They saw that the body wasn't there, but what caught their eye were the grave clothes. They were still lying out there, the rags that had gone round the body. The rag that had gone round the head and round the jaw to keep the jaw from u- u- u- uh opening, were there still whirled round, as they had been round round the head, but on that ledge upon which the head rested apart from the other part of the body.
It was the evidence of the grave clothes that first brought them the conviction that Jesus had risen. For he must have come through the grave clothes. Unless he was an utter for- fraud and had risen up and, uh, took off the grave clothes and then folded them up to make it look as if they hadn't been disturbed. It was that evidence that first convicted John and Peter that Christ must have risen.
They went home, Mary didn't. She couldn't face life without Jesus. And she asked the angels, if you've taken them away, tell me where you've put him. And then she heard a voice behind her. She thought it was the gardener and said, sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you've put him, and I will take him. He said one word, Mary. And in that instant, she realized it was the Lord. And she went to cling to him.
He said, Mary, stop clinging hold onto me, on me. I've not yet risen and not yet ascended. But go and tell my brothers, I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. At which he ran to tell the other disciples. Why I find that evidence so compelling is precisely what the women did. But the men worked out like a detective novel that the body must have come through the clothes and then went home to breakfast. That was one thing.
What stopped the Christian women from turning the grave of Jesus into a shrine? So contrary to the instincts of most women, and particularly Middle Eastern women. So much so did they abandon it that for some century and more, the place of the tomb remained undiscovered and lost. How do we account for the behavior of the Christian women then, in thus abandoning the grave? And the answer must be, of course, you don't make a shrine to the memory of someone who's still living.
They have found in Christ what Christ said to Mary, this new relationship. I send to my Father and your Father, my God and your God. And Christians will tell you the same sins. Of this personal relationship that the living Christ creates between God and those who trust the Savior. My last question is, must you be born again? Uh, the plain straightforward answer is, yes, you certainly must, because the imperative comes from the lips of Christ himself.
You must be born again. It was given to the man who at that stage was the leading theologian in Judaism. He was what we would call a systematic theologian, though after the Jewish rabbinic fashion. It was to him our Lord said, you must be born again. Why? Well, really, the Greek word, uh, uh, uh, uh, in that phrase again is anothen, which can mean again, but means literally from above.
And that, you see, is what our Lord intended by the analogy he gave. What is born of the flesh, he said, is flesh. Understandably so. What is born of the spirit is spirit. They belong to two different realms. You can improve the flesh. You'll never turn it into spirit. Anymore, to use a crude illustration, if you take a growing cabbage and you manure it and feed it and till the ground and spray it and all the things you should do to encourage cabbages to grow big.
You'll never turn into a dog. Cabbage and dogs are two different categories. What is born of the flesh, says Christ, is flesh. You may do what you like with it, make it religious if you like, remains flesh. The great imperative is you must be born from above, born of God's spirit. So yes, uh, the answer to the question is, must you be born again? The answer is yes.
Though on reading the question, I'm a little bit uncertain as to where the questioner intended the, uh, emphasis to lie, ladies and gentlemen. Because you could read it, couldn't you? Must you be born again, as though the questioner were addressing me. Well, I think I can, in all modesty and humility, Kane. Yes, by God's grace, I have been born again. Now, this was not meant to be a sermon, but a lecture. Thank you for your questions, and there I gather we must leave them. Thank you very much again, and thank you, Doctor kidding Keating, for that.
