JESUS: WOULD YOU CRUCIFY A MAN ON THIS EVIDENCE?

7 min readAug 14, 2022

We hang other men on less.

Brace yourself! This is a précis of a large assignment so may be even more difficult than usual to read. Please persevere because there is a point to it.

But if you happen to like what you read, there’s more to be found here.

A viable claim?

We have a reliable record of what happened to a man named Jesus but how do we know He is the Messiah spoken of in the Tanakh? Even before that, how do we know the Tanakh is historically reliable and can be believed? After all, it all happened so long ago and we are constantly being told, both inside and outside the Church, that it was written by mere mortals. Libraries are filled with volumes of contradicting interpretations penned by God-fearing people. Can it be checked or is it a case of blind faith?

Zero tolerance in days of yore.

A false prophet is to be put to death, Deuteronomy 18:20.

How did Israel know which prophet to kill?

Simple; the prophecy did not come true.

That’s OK for a short term prophecy, what about the long term which was beyond the life-span of the listener? God uses a “grey-box” approach, as opposed to a “black-box”. His Prophets speak of both near-field and far-field events which have common hinges. The fulfilment of the near-field substantiates the impending far-field as simplistically shown in the Figures 1 and 2.

But what is the confidence of the near-field having been fulfilled?

In this case we are told that the Messiah has come the first time and will come again. If the prophecies about the First coming can be validated, those of His Second can be taken to the bank.

The reliability of the Tanakh must be established before the identity of the man, Jesus, can be confirmed.

The veracity of the Tanakh.

The person we have most to thank for this is Napoleon Bonaparte. When he was marauding through the Middle East he had a special team cataloguing the statues and other treasures he was stealing. This was the beginning of Archaeology, which is surprisingly only about two centuries old. Compare this to the King James Bible which was printed two centuries before that.

This link is to a 20 minute talk, Can The Old Testament Be Trusted Historically, given by Dr Peter J Williams, Principal at Tyndale House, England. It is recommended strongly that you view it.

He discusses a page in an original copy of the King James Bible. It describes events in 2 Kings 18, written two centuries before Napoleon. When you read it you will find that certain Biblical claims are made:-

Sennacherib, king of Assyria, invaded Judea.
Hezekiah was king of Judea.
All fortified cities of Judea were captured except Jerusalem.
Sennacherib demanded a tribute of 300 silver talents and 30 gold talents from Hezekiah.
Hezekiah gave all the silver in the Kings House and the Temple.
Jerusalem survived.

Preceding the advent of Archaeology, the information in the Bible had to be handed down from generation to generation in manually transcribed manuscripts from the time of Hezekiah to Elizabethan (± a few years) times.

Sennacherib’s own account chiselled into a prism in the British Museum parallels the Bible very well. He mentions 30 talents of gold and 800 talents of silver from Hezekiah. Note the tribute demanded of silver was 300 talents and Hezekiah gave ALL the silver, which would have equalled or exceeded the demand or there would have been trouble for Hezekiah. Note, also, that the gold tribute matched. There is also much more evidence from the Assyrian side which matches the Biblical accounts. So, a long series of manually transcribed documents by the Jews matches extremely well the single reference chiselled in stone by their enemy. You should watch the presentation and decide for yourself. I know what I have decided.

After in excess of two centuries we are now in a position where the Bible should be used to confirm Archaeology but, because the World is against the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it is always the Bible that has to prove itself.

But how can we be sure the guy who was crucified in the Gospels was really the Messiah?

A (too clever) lawyer in the USA unintentionally provided methodology to quantify this numerically. He challenged the long-held belief that fingerprints were unique enough to obtain a conviction.

In 2014 there was an embargo on using fingerprints as evidence in some judicial jurisdictions in USA(Reference 1 below) but this was under challenge(ref 2). Eight years later the dispute goes on but the argument is with the factors that could affect the adequacy of the sampling and the interpretation of results(ref 3) not the mathematics of the statistics. It will be seen that that is the aspect for our interest.

Whatever the outcome of the dispute, men have been hung/acquitted on the probabilities associated with fingerprint evidence(ref 4). What about a crucifixion?

A superficial knowledge of fingerprints is well known. There is no universal standard for the number of characteristics for a match. France has the most stringent requirement of a minimum of sixteen points, Australia twelve, both the FBI and Scotland Yard argue for no minimum(ref 5).

So what?

I admit that this has been boring, even to me, but things spark up from here.

It is postulated, by people who are paid to know, that there are, on average, a maximum of about seventy minutiae(ref 6) on a single fingertip(ref 7). Other people who are paid to be clever have conducted a mathematical analysis to determine the uniqueness of a fingerprint based on probability(ref 8). There are about 350 OT Prophecies fulfilled in Yeshua HaMashiach in the NT(ref 9). This meshes well the seventy points — that is, a handful of fingers.

Rather than be satisfied with the stern condition of France, what about putting the acid on God’s Prophets — demand a perfect match. The algorithms developed in the study of print uniqueness(ref 10) show the probability of this to be, near enough, 10⁴⁰ [for the numerically challenged, that is 1 with 41 zeros behind it] for one finger.] Keeping in mind the legal arguments from both sides, the weight of the value of the evidence of multiple fingers is heavier than the single, though there is no definite value that can be assigned(ref 11). However, mathematically, the probability of having a perfect match on all five fingers is compounded to be at least 10²⁰⁰ [201 zeros].

In risk-based design, an arbitrary line has to be drawn somewhere for practical purposes. A probability beyond 10⁵⁰ or 1/10⁵⁰ is classed as ‘absurd’; less than 1/10⁵⁰ it is absurd to consider that it would happen, and greater than 10⁵⁰ absurd to consider that it would not happen.(ref 12)

Your point is?

Evolutionists who say they know these things, estimate that only about 10¹¹ people have ever lived on the Earth(ref 13). Jesus is one in 10²⁰⁰ when the maximum pool for selection is only 10¹¹ — an order of magnitude of about 190 (10¹⁹⁰). Obviously, this exceeds any reasonable error band. Well beyond the absurd limit.

But to rely on this only, without further corroborating evidence, is to fall into the trap of the “Prosecutor’s fallacy”(ref 14). That is, proceed with prosecution without having all the evidence. The miracles performed by Yeshua(ref 15) provide added weight, John 10:37–38, and these are only a selected sample of what He did, John 21:25.

Hypothesis(ref 16) is not in Scripture, only hupostasis(ref 17). I submit that Yeshua is guilty of fulfilling Prophecy — and there’s more to come.

Conclusions

Reliability of the Tanakh: If there is a Great Old Book which has been subjected to review against an original reference, written in stone by an enemy, after numerous manual copies written on sheets of fungible carbon over about four millennia, it seems reasonable to assume we would have heard about it by now. The Written Word of God has been able to tolerate rigorous engineering scrutiny. It has not been a game of telephones. But you decide for yourself.

Was the NT Jesus the Prophesied OT Messiah: Even though I didn’t explain that well, the number of zeros behind the decimal point imply that it absurd for a reasonable person to decide that the Man in the Gospels is not the Messiah Prophesied in the Tanakh. But you come to your own conclusion.

The forgoing evidence has not been presented to convince any reader but to allow a personal decision to be made. There is much more to know about this subject. Perhaps you’ll pay another visit, sometime.

All Glory to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

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References:-

(1) Penn State Eberly College of Science, news-and-events/2012-news/Neumann2–2012

(2) Neumann, C.: Fingerprints at the crime-scene: Statistically certain, or probable?; Significance (2012)

(3) Continuing Dispute; FORENSIC SCIENCE ASSESSMENTS: A QUALITY AND GAP ANALYSIS — LATENT FINGERPRINT EXAMINATION, Published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Report 2, September 2017

(4) Evidence: “How a Davenport murder case turned on a fingerprint.” The Quad-City Times newspaper, Davenport, Iowa. December 24, 2013

(5) Required number of matching points http://defensewiki.ibj.org/index.php/Fingerprints

(6) minutiae http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minutiae

(7) single fingertip http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.16.5548

(8) probability http://www.math.washington.edu/~morrow/mcm/uw28_04.pdf

(9) 350 prophesies http://www.accordingtothescriptures.org/prophecy/353prophecies.html

(10) algorithms http://www.math.washington.edu/~morrow/mcm/uw28_04.pdf

(11) multiple fingers: WA Police Department

(12) Absurdity: That’s my job. (That doesn’t sound right!)

(13) lived on the Earth https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/

(14) Prosecutor’s fallacy http://dna-view.com/profile.htm

(15) miracles performed http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/miracles.htm