(Photo: Dominic Buettner for The New York Times)

According to a NY Times story, several Israeli scholars contend that an ancient tablet found near the Dead Sea, dated from the 1st century B.C., talks about a Messiah who would die and 3 days later be resurrected.

This is probably the first evidence from an ancient Jewish source that the idea a dying and rising messiah figure may not have been all that foreign in ancient Jewish traditions.

Some are already framing this as a problem for Christianity. However the sword in this case probably cuts in a number of unforeseen directions.

First of all, Jewish scholars and religious leaders have maintain for over 1,900 years that a Messiah who dies and is resurrected is foreign to Judaism. Now this may not entirely be the case.

Second, liberal Christian scholars over the last generation or so have discounted the gospel resurrection narratives as myths invented later by 2nd and 3rd generation Christians.  Many have contended that 1st century Jews like Jesus and the Apostles could never have originated the idea of a Messiah who dies and is resurrected. It would have been quite foreign to their religious culture, but quite in keeping with some Greek and Roman religious traditions and ideas which were in circulation during the last half of the 1st century and the beginning of the 2nd. The tablets could very well challenge these unfortunate assumptions.

It will be interesting to see how different scholars respond to the discovery. Here is Dr. Ben Witherington’s initial posting.             *Top

Cases of Islamic polygamy are beginning to surface all across the Western world where there are Muslim immigrants.

Even though polygamy is against the law in most Western countries, authorities are either in denial or ignore it entirely since the marriages were not performed in their country, or were not ‘officially’ registered, and there isn’t any actual paper trail.           <<Read the complete article about a Canadian case of polygamy on my main blog>>

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Attorney Generals from Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and Texas met together to address concerns over the FLDS Church and other polygamous sects. The participants declined to be specific over what was discussed. However, all 4 states have major FLDS communities which have been known to be involved in polygamy and child bride marriage.             <<Read the complete article on the Main Page>>            *Top

Here is an article on the Baptist Press which lists a number of ways that the National Geographic distorted the truth in their portrayal of Judas as a ‘hero’ in the supposed "Gospel of Judas". Apparently, the translation which was done by their ‘dream team’ of experts was not entirely accurate. <Read also the complete article and my response on my main blog>

Also, take a look at the four articles I wrote evaluating the ‘Gospel of Judas’.

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I recently moved this blog to a new host and now it has a new location and a change of address. You used to be able to get to the front page by using answersforthefaith.com/apologetica or apologetica.us ; now the only the official address is:

http://apologetica.us/

If you have linked to some of my articles or pages in the past and wish to maintain the links, drop ‘answersforthefaith.com/apologetica’ from the permalink and insert ‘apologetica.us’  in its place and it should still work.

Blessings, Dr.D

There seems to be a dispute among the clergy within the Church of England over whether the church should seek to convert British Muslims to Christianity.

  The Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, who was born is Pakistan, claims that the church is not really seeking to convert British Muslims to Christianity and should be; other Church of England leaders disagree.

I believe that those who teach that there is an equivalence among religions are entirely wrong and have no business being in the leadership of a Christian church, particularly those who imply that other religions should be respected as ‘another’ path to God.

We can respect and champion the rights of others to worship as they see fit and still continue to maintain that Christianity exclusively teaches that Jesus Christ alone is ‘the way the truth and the light’ and that ‘no one comes to the Father except through him’. 

<Read also the complete article and my response on my main blog>             *Top

I have just spent over a month dealing with a major hacker/spammer problem in my websites and databases, that’s the reason I haven’t been posting much in April and May. One data base that I ran 7 blogs out of was taken over and the hacker had changed the root passcodes so that I no longer had the necessary permission to change my own database nor did my hosting co.

The database that I ran my Charismatica blog out of had a entire ‘PMA’ book store running off of a subdomain that a hacker had created. Didn’t really give me much of a ‘positive mental attitude’.

The feed for Answers For The Faith blog was redirected so many times (20+) that Feedburner couldn’t track them all. Still don’t know how that happened and still trying to get it back to normal.

The only help and suggestion my host gave me was that I needed to flush the database and start over. The problem was that the backup programs were infected somehow and not working properly on 3 of my blogs.

At that juncture I decided if I had to start over it might as well be somewhere else with another host since my host had been no help at all and very unresponsive in the midst of my attack. The move created other problems and I ended up getting some help in the process.

Well finally my 9 blogs are up and running again though each one still needs some major tweeking here and there. I should be able to get it finally done and behind me over Memorial Day weekend.

Dr. D

While Muslims in the USA have felt increasingly isolated from mainstream America since 9/11, they have found one group, the Mormons, who have reached out with understanding and friendship according to a recent LA Times article.

According to Maher Hathout, a senior advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles:

"We are very aware of the history of Mormons as a group that was chastised in America. They can be a good model for any group that feels alienated."

Muslims and Mormons seem to have a growing relationship on a number of different levels, often they are co-hosts of a number of educational and social programs.

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Here’s a great article by William Lane Craig, professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.

He looks at the facts concerning the resurrection of Jesus–a timely pursuit for the Easter season:

"To answer the question of Jesus’ resurrection from a historical standpoint, we must first determine what facts concerning the fate of Jesus of Nazareth can be credibly established on the basis of the evidence and second consider what the best explanation of those facts is. At least four facts about the fate of the historical Jesus are widely accepted by New Testament historians today."

<Read the Whole Article>            *Top

This is the 3nd post evaluating the  FOXNews.com list of 21 questions submitted to the LDS and the answers received back from the church. In this article, we’ll look at Question number 7:

Q: Does the Mormon Church believe that God and Mary had physical sex to conceive Jesus?

A: The Church does not claim to know how Jesus was conceived but believes the Bible and Book of Mormon references to Jesus being born of the Virgin Mary.

Response: There are many references in the Bible and numerous references in the Book of Mormon also which refer to Mary as a ‘Virgin’. This would not be the case if Jesus was conceived in the ‘natural’ way. The whole issue is problematic for the Mormon Church:

1. Some of their early Prophets and leaders (including: Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, Heber C. Kimball and others) made statements in the 19th century, printed in official church literature, which indicated that Jesus was conceived in a natural/physical way. This is why so many ‘anti-Mormon’ and Christian apologetic websites make the claim that the Mormons believe that Mary and God the Father had sexual relations.

2. The current leaders of the LDS Church now realize that those early 19th century teachings contradict clear teaching in the Bible and their own Book of Mormon. They now refer to those early teachings as ’speculation’.

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