And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised [sic] at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD. (Zechariah 11:12-13)
Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. (Matthew 26:14-15)
Then Judas, which had betrayeth him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. (Matthew 27:3-7)
Over 500 years elapsed between Zechariah's prophecy and the event recorded in Matthew. You can look at this in two ways: 1) The actual event never happened and was made up using Zechariah's prophecy, or 2) It was an actual event that fulfilled the prophecy once again proving the authenticity of the Bible.
Many think that it wouldn't be too hard of a task to pull off a hoax about the Crucifixion of Christ. The whole Christian religion is based on an elaborate hoax orchestrated by a group of Jewish men and their followers? Neglecting the extra-biblical sources proving that Christ was an actual, physical person and died an actual, physical death, it is still impossible to create a convincing theory that attacks the reality of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection.
One of the main reasons that it is impossible to produce a convincing argument supporting that the resurrection and Deity of Christ is a hoax is because of the men who spread the story. All of Christ's apostles were martyred, with the exception of John (who was boiled alive in hot oil). It is rarity to find one person willing to go to their death for a lie they created, let alone a whole group. Unlike Islam, where the leaders send young, radical men to kill themselves and others for Allah, in the case of Christianity, the leaders went to their deaths for what they believed. No one in their right mind would go through the horrid executions that they experienced for a lie. Not only did the apostles go to their graves believing this, but countless other Christians willingly died for their faith. Unlike any other religion, Christianity grows when facing persecution and death. That alone should prove the validity of the Bible and that Jesus Christ is Lord.
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