It never happened!
Article author: Jay Zeke Malakai
Article editor: Jay Zeke Malakai
Introduction
Bible critics often claim that the events described in the Bible are fictitious. They claim they never happened, often insisting there is a complete lack of evidence. In other articles, we will look at evidence for various events in the Bible. In this article, however, we will examine the Bible itself and explain why the Bible is evidence for the events it describes.
Whenever I hear someone say something like "This event described in the Bible never happened, there's no evidence!", I just can't help but wonder, would it be so bad if I facepalmed? Being a consistent Christian, I regrettably answer that yes, to mock them would be wrong, as I must treat the unbeliever with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience (1 Peter 3:15). To give a rational answer, however, is nothing short of my duty (2 Corinthians 10:3-5; 1 Peter 3:15-16).
So, we'll ignore the fact that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We'll ignore the countless amounts of times there has genuinely been no evidence of someone/something from the Bible, then the evidence for those things have just suddenly appeared out of the blue, vindicating the Bible against the opposition, who silently slink back under their rocks to plan their next deceit. We can even ignore the fact that, 90% of the time, the critic is ignoring the vast amount of historical evidence that the thing they are claiming never happened actually did happen. My simple question to these people is, how do you convince such a gigantic amount of people that they saw what they didn't see?
The interesting thing about the Bible is that, unlike most works of antiquity, it was usually written very close to the time the events actually happened, usually even written directly to the people who saw these events take place, and possibly even to those who took part in those events.
The earliest obvious example I can think of would be in Joshua 6:25, which says: But Rahab the prostitute and her father's household and all who belonged to her, Joshua saved alive. And she has lived in Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.
Let's just zoom in a bit there: And she has lived in Israel to this day. I'm sorry, perhaps I'm confused: You're telling me that this woman, whose family are the sole survivors from when the Israelites attacked Jericho (an event which, supposedly never happened and has no evidence for) was still alive at the time Joshua wrote this book? So Joshua not only has to convince Rahab and her family that they are the sole survivors of a mass invasion, but he also has to convince the entire population of Israel that they took part in the invasion that Rahab's family survived in the first place!
The Israelites obviously remembered how they got to Israel. So how do you trick so many people into believing they spent so long wondering in the desert before finally, after their rebellious parents who had been freed from Egypt had died, went on to invade the promised land? If any one man has the power to perform such a massive deception, he could end near enough all world conflicts. He could say to the Jews "look, you have every right to Israel, so I'll let you keep it." and to everyone else he could simply decieve them into thinking their own home land is the land God promised them. It would be so simple, but such a deception is impossible. You can trick people into believing some of their experiences are real when they are not. Perhaps you can convince them they have seen a ghost. Maybe you can make them think they've travelled a few hours into the future. But you cannot convince an entire nation of people that the past 40 years of their lives were spent wandering aimlessly in the desert before they finally took out a whole city, even with today's technology, so there's no possible way Joshua would have the power to convince so many people that they had done the same thing.
Next, we'll zoom ahead 1000 years to 1 Corinthians 15:6. This clearly wasn't written too long after Jesus' death and resurrection because it says Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
So, of the well over 500 people who saw Jesus at exactly the same time, most of them were still alive at the time Paul wrote this to the Corinthians. 500 people! All at once! Paul practically said "they saw him, each and every one of them. I mean, some of them are dead now, but go ask the survivors. They'll confirm it."
As you can probably see, the Bible itself is evidence of the events it describes, as its intended audience is usually the group who were involved. See, the Biblical writers, particularly the New Testament Biblical writers, did not know we would ever exist in the modern day. They did not think it would be more than a few decades before Jesus finally returned. That being the case, they weren't trying to convince us of events that happened during their lifetime. They were writing to people who knew, or at least had heard of, the events they were describing. That being the case, the very existence of the Bible should be evidence of its target audience, and the truth behind the events of which it speaks. Whether or not you believe these events truly were acts of God or not, to claim they never happened is nothing short of denial.