This article is a part of a series called “Spiritual Waimai Voices” where we welcome our friends to share some spiritual food with us in their own voice. This Spiritual Waimai was written and recorded by our friend Simon.
本文是《属灵外卖之声》系列文章之一,该系列里我们欢迎朋友们用自己的声音来分享灵粮。这篇属灵外卖的写作来自我们的朋友Simon。
中文和英文版本语音
Listen to the Chinese or English Audio
How do we know the story of Jesus Christ is true and not just a fairy tale?
我们怎么知道Ye Su Ji Du的故事是真的,而不是童话?
_
I cannot remember the first “conspiracy theory” I ever heard about. It might have been some of the weird theories about the murder of JFK or the idea that NASA faked the Apollo landings on the Moon. Nowadays there seems to be no end of conspiracy theories: QAnon, how Princess Diana’s death in a car crash was really murder, and strange ideas about the COVID pandemic. Well, there is one conspiracy that will not go away, namely that Jesus was just a teacher and an ordinary man. Jesus never claimed to be God. It was all a conspiracy, a hoax put about by the Christians, many years after His death.
我不记得第一次听到的“阴谋论”是怎么回事了。可能是和肯尼迪被谋杀相关的一些奇怪理论,或者是NASA伪造了阿波罗号登月的说法。如今,阴谋论似乎没完没了: QAnon,戴安娜王妃死于车祸其实是谋杀,以及有关COVID疫情的奇怪想法。好吧,还有一个不会消失的阴谋,那就是声称Ye Su不过是一位老师,一个凡夫俗子。Ye Su从未自称为Shen。在衪死后多年,这一切都是个阴谋,是Ji Du教Tu散布的骗局。
Some Christians might be confused and upset when they come across this theory, so I want to try to ask some simple questions. Did Jesus really claim that He was the Son of God? Or was this something that was invented, made up, much later? Can we trust the Bible or is it just a collection of fantasies and fairy stories?
有些Ji DuTu在遇到这种说法时可能会感到困惑不安,所以我想试着问一些简单的问题。Ye Su真的有自称为Shen的儿子吗?还是这种说法是很久以后编造出来的呢?我们还能相信Sheng Jing吗,还是说Sheng Jing不过是一系列的幻想和童话故事?
“Jesus” is His name in the English language. Many people think that “Christ” was his surname. But Mary and Joseph were not “Mr. and Mrs. Christ”. “Christ” is really a title. It comes from a Greek word “chrestos” which means “anointed one”. This Greek word is the equivalent of the Hebrew “meshsheyah”, from which we get our English word “Messiah”. Now this goes back to 1 Samuel 16, when the prophet Samuel anointed David. Samuel poured some oil onto David’s head, as a sign that David was going to be king over Israel. Ever since then, the Jews have been waiting for another “messiah”, a special king like David, anointed and chosen by God. In Psalm 2, God calls this special king His son. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke all make it very clear that at His trial before the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court, Jesus said that He was the Messiah, God’s Son. The Sanhedrin all agreed that for an ordinary human to make such a claim was a sin against God. This was blasphemy and there was only one penalty: death. Jesus’ condemnation by the Sanhedrin and His death on a cross are therefore our first proof that Jesus really did claim to be the Son of God.
在英文里“Ye Su”是衪的名字。许多人认为“Ji Du”是衪的姓。但是马利亚和约瑟并不是“Ji Du夫人和Ji Du先生”。“Ji Du”其实是个头衔。它来自一个希腊单词“chrestos”,意思是“受膏者”。这个希腊单词相当于希伯来语的“meshsheyah”,而英语单词“弥赛亚”就是从这个词演变而来的。这要追溯到《撒母耳记上》第16章,先知撒母耳膏立大卫。撒母耳把一些油倒在大卫的头上,表示大卫将成为以色列的王。从那时起,犹太人就一直在等待另一个“弥赛亚”,一个特殊的国王,像大卫一样,由Shen所膏立和拣选。在诗篇第二章中,Shen称这位特殊的王为衪的儿子。《马太福音》、《马可福音》和《路加福音》都非常清楚地表明,在犹太最高法庭公会对Ye Su的审判中,Ye Su说衪是弥赛亚,是Shen的儿子。公会一致认为,一个普通人做这样的宣称是冒犯Shen。这是亵渎Shen,只配一种惩罚:死刑。因此,Ye Su被公会定罪并死在Shi Zi Jia上,这是Ye Su确实自称为Shen之子的第一个证据。
Secondly, all four gospels agree that Jesus performed miracles. Some are healing miracles, like the healing of Jairus’s daughter in Mark 5. The thing to note here is that sometimes Jesus healed on the Sabbath, when no one was supposed to do any work. It is clear that Jesus thought that the normal rules just did not apply to Him.
其次,四部福音书都认为Ye Su行了Shen迹。有些是医治的Shen迹,如在马可福音第5章中睚鲁女儿得医治。这里需要注意的是,有时Ye Su在安息日治病,没有人会在安息日工作。显然,Ye Su认为通常的规则不适用于祂。
Some of the miracles could be called “Nature miracles”, such as walking on the water in Mark chapter 6 or calming the storm in Mark 4. What I think is most significant is the reaction of the disciples in Matthew’s account. They had been afraid of the storm, but now they were almost afraid of Jesus Himself and they said, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
有些Shen 迹可以被称为“自然Shen迹”,如马可福音第6章的水上行走或马可福音第4章的平息风暴。我认为最重要的是马太福音中Men Tu们的反应。他们一直惧怕风暴,现在他们几乎害怕Ye Su。他们说:“这到底是谁?连风和海都听从他!”
The greatest miracle of all was not one that Jesus performed Himself, but rather one that the Father performed for His Son, namely the Resurrection. The Resurrection is the heart of the Christian faith because God the Father was reversing the Sanhedrin’s verdict, showing that Jesus Christ really was His Son. Although we may find it hard to believe in miracles in the 21st century, the miracles described in the Bible are surely meant to show us that Jesus was not an ordinary man, as He could do things that only God could do.
Fu Huo是所有Shen迹中最伟大的,它并不是Ye Su行的Shen迹,而是天父为衪儿子行的Shen迹。Fu Huo是Ji Du Tu信仰的核心,因为父Shen推翻了公会的裁决,表明Ye Su Ji Du确实是衪的儿子。身处21世纪,虽然我们可能很难相信Shen迹,Sheng Jing中描述的Shen迹肯定是要告诉我们Ye Su并不是一个普通人,因为衪能做唯有Shen能做的事情。
Thirdly, Jesus claimed to have the authority to forgive sins. C. S. Lewis explains the importance of this in his classic defence of our faith, his book Mere Christianity. If you tread on my toes or if you do something that upsets or hurts me, then I could say to you, “I forgive you.” (Well, I am not sure that I would always say that!) But what Jesus did was to tell people that all of their sins were forgiven, no matter how many sins there were or how bad they were. Only God knows all of the bad things you have done in your life, but Jesus told people that their sins were forgiven. For an ordinary person to say such a thing is more than a bit silly or crazy. It suggests that this person believes that he knows things that only God could possibly know.
第三,Ye Su声称衪有赦罪的权柄。c·s·刘易斯在他经典的捍卫我们信仰的著作《返璞归真》一书中解释了这一点的重要性。如果你踩了我的脚,或者你做了让我不高兴或伤害我的事,那么我可以对你说:“我原谅你。”(好吧,我不确定我每次都会这么说!)但Ye Su所做的就是告诉人们,无论他们犯了多少罪或多邪恶的罪,祂都可以赦免。只有Shen知道你一生中做过哪些坏事,但是Ye Su却告诉人们他们的罪被赦免了。若一个普通人这么说会让人觉得他有点愚蠢或疯狂的。它表明这个人相信他知道只有Shen才可能知道的事情。
Now at this point we must ask the question, “Yes, but maybe these stories about Jesus being God were all invented later.” Yes, it is true that stories can get changed and added to over the years. For example, the legends of King Arthur may have some historical basis. Perhaps there was a king called Arthur back in in the fifth or sixth century. Maybe he even had a round table, but we will probably never know the truth. Yes, it happened a long time ago, but the important thing is that the earliest stories about King Arthur were not written down until five or six hundred years later. Writers, poets and Hollywood have added to the Arthur stories, so now it is very hard to separate the fact and the fiction.
在这里我们必须要问,“没错,但也许这些关于Ye Su是Shen的故事都是后来编造出来的。”是的,故事确实可以随着时间的推移而改变和增加。例如,有关亚瑟王的传说可能确实有一些历史基础。也许在五、六世纪有个叫亚瑟的国王。也许他真的有一个圆桌,但我们可能永远不会知道真相如何。是的,这事发生在很久以前,但重要的是,最早有关亚瑟王的故事是直到五六百年后才被写下来。作家、诗人和好莱坞都在为亚瑟王的故事添置素材,所以现在很难区分事实和虚构。
So what about the New Testament? Most scholars agree that Jesus was crucified about the year AD 30 and that Paul was writing in the 50s or early 60s, only twenty or thirty years after Jesus’ death on the cross.
那么新约呢?大多数学者都认为YeSu是在公元30年被钉死在Shi Zi Jia上的,而保罗是在公元50年或公元60年早期写的,也就是YeSu死在Shi Zi Jia上仅20或30年后写的。
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that Jesus appeared to many people after His Resurrection. “After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15, 6, NIV) It is quite clear from the way that Paul writes to the Corinthians that he is not telling them a new idea that is completely strange to them. He might be putting in a few details that they had forgotten, but really Paul is reminding the Corinthians of what they already knew. So there never was a gap of hundreds of years, in which Christians could make up or invent the idea that a carpenter from Nazareth was the Son of God and that God the Father raised Him from the dead. These are things that Christians have always believed, ever since the women found the empty tomb in the Garden of Gethsemane.
保罗在《哥林多前书》中写道,Ye Su Fu Huo后向许多人显现。“后来一时显给五百多弟兄看,其中一大半到如今还在,却也有已经睡了的”(哥林多前书15,6,NIV)。这里明显看出,保罗写信给哥林多人,并不是要告诉他们一个对他们来说完全陌生的新想法。他可能提到了一些他们忘掉的细节,但实际上保罗是在提醒哥林多人他们已经知道的事。所以其间根本没有几百年的间断,好让Ji Du Tu在这段时间可以编造或生出这样的想法,就是拿撒勒的木匠是Shen的儿子,父Shen让衪从死里Fu Huo。自从妇人们在客西马尼园看到空坟以来,这些都是Ji Du Tu一直相信的事实。