Daryl E. Witmera <\/b><\/p>\n
It is the moment before sundown in Jerusalem. On the hill of Golgotha three bodies are suspended on crosses. Two, the thieves, are dead. The third appears so. This is the drugged body of Jesus of Nazareth, the man who planned his own crucifixion, who contrived to be given a soporific potion to put him into a deathlike trance. Now Joseph of Arimathea, bearing clean linen and spices, approaches and recovers the still form of Jesus. All seems to be proceeding according to plan.. .. it was a nightmarish undertaking, the outcome of the frightening logic of a genius, and it worked out.\u201d<\/i> from The Passover Plot,<\/i> Bernard Geis Associates, 1965.<\/p>\n
Twenty-eight years ago Hugh J. Schonfield published The Passover Plot<\/i>. Controversial, provocative, and sensational, the book was instantly very big news. In sum, it alleged that although Christ was the Son of Man, He certainly was not the Son of God. The author laid out in elaborate detail just how Jesus contrived to be arrested the night before the Passover, how He had arranged to be given a drug that would render Him unconscious, and how His accomplices would then nurse Him back to health and stage a \u201cresurrection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schonfield claimed that his book was the result of forty years of research. 275 pages long, it was carefully footnoted and included a five-page index as well as an extensive, detailed, bibliography. It was billed as a scholarly work. The author himself, a Jewish man educated at the University of Glasgow, insisted <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 7:1 (Winter 1994) p. 17<\/p>\n
that the book should by no means be regarded as a \u201cfar-fetched. .. fictitious\u201d attack on Jesus. No, this was \u201chigh scholarship.\u201d And so, when it was released, The Passover Plot<\/i> was accorded great credibility. It received many notable reviews from the likes of Time<\/i> magazine, The London Sunday Times<\/i>, and Publisher\u2019s Weekly<\/i>. It shook the faithful like a megabomb exploding at the heart of the Christian faith. In the end, however, it turned out to be more of a firecracker.<\/p>\n
Hugh Schonfield, in the spotlight of international acclaim, was temporarily regarded as the man who may have fired a deadly shot at the risen Christ. In the light of history he has come to appear more like a little boy shooting a cap gun at the Rock of Gibraltar.<\/p>\n
This is 1993. Schonfield has disappeared. The Bible stands. Easter survives. Christianity marches on. The risen Christ lives!<\/p>\n
The Garden Tomb<\/b><\/p>\n
Twenty-eight years after all the hurrah, the book today is out of print<\/i> and out of stock<\/i>. My original copy sits high on a shelf, gathering dust, its pages yellowing. Bernard Geis Associates, the original publisher, once thriving in the hot glow of rave reviews, is now out of business<\/i>. Random House, the USA distributor, told me this month that they no longer even have a record<\/i> of the book in their files. The Commonwealth of World Citizens, an organization Schonfield once founded, is now kaput<\/i>. And Hugh Schonfield himself. .. is dead<\/i>. Sources in England informed me in late March that he had died in January of 1988, his aspirations unfulfilled.<\/p>\n
Schonfield\u2019s attacks on the credibility of the Biblical account of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth were never simply dismissed out of hand. Intelligent and reasonable men considered them all (and many others like them). But in every case, an intelligent and convincing rebuttal was forthcoming. The Swoon Theory, The Resuscitation Theory, The Hallucination Theory, The Wrong Tomb Theory\u2014every one has been methodically treated and solidly refuted in book after book, e.g. Josh McDowell\u2019s The Resurrection Factor<\/i>, Here\u2019s Life, 1981.<\/p>\n
Of course, Hugh Schonfield is just one lone figure in the long parade of those who have marched against Scripture. King Jehoiakim tried his hand at directly doing away with <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 7:1 (Winter 1994) p. 18<\/p>\n
God\u2019s Word back in 600 BC (Jer 36). He failed. In 303 AD Diocletian ordered all Bibles destroyed. But in 313 AD Diocletian died, not the Bible. The Frenchman Voltaire once predicted that within 100 years the Bible would be gone. Fifty years after his death, however, men were printing Bibles on the very press that he once owned, and distributing them from his own former house!<\/p>\n
ROMAN NAILS FROM ABR DIG AT KHIRBET NISYA<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Still, the parade persists. In 1982 Holy Blood, Holy Grail<\/i> was published. In 1991 Robert Schaeffer wrote The Making of the Messiah<\/i>. The Jesus Seminar, a panel of about 50 liberal \u201cscholars,\u201d today periodically convenes for their wildly speculative \u2018bead toss\u2019 on what Jesus did or didn\u2019t say. Last December (1992) U.S. News & World Report<\/i> featured a cover story, \u201cThe First Noel,\u201d in which readers were advised that modern research, \u2018new\u2019 insights, and recent \u2018scholarship\u2019 have now led many to \u201creject the historical veracity\u201d of much of the traditional Christmas story.<\/p>\n
But something very interesting, and perhaps unexpected, has occurred. In spite of all the attacks, the jury of time and history has consistently, repeatedly, returned the same verdict: let God be true and every man a liar. The long parade of skeptics and critics, in a sort of an ironic twist, has in fact come to be one of the most powerful testimonies of all for the invincible truth of Scripture. The Bible has stood all attacks essentially unscathed\u2014just about what you\u2019d expect to be the case if it really was God\u2019s Word and God Himself really was sovereignly protecting and preserving His revelation to humankind.<\/p>\n
Few have summed it all up better than the venerable old Bible scholar, Henry Halley (circa 1925), in his best-selling Halley\u2019s Bible Handbook<\/i>: \u201cThe dear Old Book has worn out many anvils,\u201d he wrote, \u201cand long after the critics have been forgotten, will go marching on, loved and honored by unnumbered millions. Precious Book!\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, 28 years too late, Hugh J. Schonfield no doubt believes in the Resurrection.<\/p>\n
Reprinted by permission from Areopagus Proclamation<\/i>, Vol. 3, No. 7, 4\/93.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Daryl E. Witmera It is the moment before sundown in Jerusalem. On the hill of Golgotha three bodies are suspended on crosses. Two, the thieves, are dead. The third appears so. This is the drugged body of Jesus of Nazareth, the man who planned his own crucifixion, who contrived to be given a soporific potion … Continue reading “SCHONFIELD
\nVS. EASTER AND THE INVINCIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}