Here are a few sources from the quotes and different things we cited in the Faithmap. Please let us know if you have any questions.
Question #2
William Kingdon Clifford, a British philosopher, once wrote, “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence.”[1]
[1]William Kingdom Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief,” Contemporary Review 29 (December 1876-May 1877).
Take a few minutes to read these passages and think about what they tell us about creation.[1]
[1]All scriptures are from the English Standard Version.
Question #3
1. Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Eerdmans, 1987): 472.
2. Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Eerdmans, 1987): 474.
3. Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity Vol. 1 (HarperOne, 2010): 43.
4. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18:3. In The New Complete Works of Josephus, Trans. William Whiston and Commentary by Paul Maier (Kregel, 1999): 590.
As philosopher Peter Kreeft put it, “Jesus has in abundance precisely those three qualities that liars and lunatics most conspicuously lack: (1) his practical wisdom, his ability to read human hearts; (2) his deep and winning love, his passionate compassion, his ability to attract people and make them feel at home and forgiven, his authority, “not as the scribes”: (3) his ability to astonish, his unpredictability, his creativity. Liars and lunatics are all so dull and predictable! No one who knows both the Gospels and human beings can seriously entertain the possibility that Jesus was a liar or a lunatic, a bad man.[1]
Peter Kreeft, Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics. San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1998: 60-61.
Consider this quote by C.S. Lewis: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”[1]
[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan Press, 1952: 40-41.
Question #4
Neil Lightfoot, How We Got the Bible (Baker Books, 2003): 203. For updated information on the number of New Testament manuscripts, you can visit the website for the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts: www.csntm.org.
For example, there are barely over 600 manuscripts of the Illiad, whereas there are approximately 25,000 manuscripts that attest the existence of scripture.[1]
[1]For more information about the unique nature of scripture, check You Can Trust the Bible by Neale Pryor (QualityPublications, 2001) or How We Got the Bible by Neil Lightfoot (ACU Press, 2010).
Question #5
Frederick Willam Danker. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature,based on previous editions by Walter Bauer, W.F. Arndt, F.W. Gingrich and F.W. Danker. (University of Chicago Press, 2000): 164.
Question #6
The New Testament is written in the Greek language, and the word translated “faith” is pistis (noun form) and pisteuo (verb form).[1]
Frederick Willam Danker. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature,based on previous editions by Walter Bauer, W.F. Arndt, F.W. Gingrich and F.W. Danker. (University of Chicago Press, 2000): 816-820.