What can be shown

The order, and why it is this one

Join anywhere. Each stop carries the route with it, so the foot of every question here offers the next one and the way back to this page.

1. 01What did the ancient world write about Jesus?Jesus is mentioned by Roman and Jewish writers within a century of his death, and by Christians within about twenty-five years. What those texts establish, and what they cannot, are two different questions.Deepdepth, meaning: Major unanswered questions.Uncertain. Meaningful scientific, historical or philosophical disagreement remains.Read
2. 02What did Jesus actually teach?The first three Gospels are consistent about the subject: a kingdom, mostly in stories, with an ethic sharpened as far as a demand to be perfect. What is argued is which sayings are his, and what he meant by the phrase that holds all of them together.Deepdepth, meaning: Major unanswered questions.Uncertain. Meaningful scientific, historical or philosophical disagreement remains.Read
3. 03Did Jesus say he was God?Christians were singing to Christ as to a god by about 112, and Paul, decades earlier, seems to quote an existing hymn about him. What the man himself said, in Aramaic, before others wrote it down in Greek decades later, is a harder question.Deepdepth, meaning: Major unanswered questions.Uncertain. Meaningful scientific, historical or philosophical disagreement remains.Read
4. 04How close is today’s Bible to its earliest copies?No original manuscript of any biblical book survives. What survives is copies, in very large numbers, and comparing them is a mature discipline whose results are printed in the margins of ordinary Bibles.Shallowsdepth, meaning: Interesting questions with substantial evidence and real uncertainty remaining.Known. Strongly supported by evidence and broadly established.Read
5. 05What did the earliest Christians actually do?A church manual, a defence addressed to an emperor, and a Roman governor’s report to his superior describe, between them, a small set of practices: a meal, a washing, a fixed day, and money for the poor.Shallowsdepth, meaning: Interesting questions with substantial evidence and real uncertainty remaining.Known. Strongly supported by evidence and broadly established.Read
6. 06What did women do in the early church?The tension is inside the New Testament, not between it and the modern world, and one of the sharpest pieces of evidence is a name the printed editions changed.Deepdepth, meaning: Major unanswered questions.Uncertain. Meaningful scientific, historical or philosophical disagreement remains.Read
7. 07What did Christianity do about slavery?The New Testament regulates slavery and does not condemn it. What Christians then did with that, over nineteen centuries, runs in both directions, and the texts did not settle it.Deepdepth, meaning: Major unanswered questions.Known. Strongly supported by evidence and broadly established.Read
8. 08Why do churches disagree about marriage?What the texts say is short and checkable. What they mean is argued, the arguments are old, and the formal positions of the largest churches are published documents anybody can read. This question sets those three apart and leaves them apart.Deepdepth, meaning: Major unanswered questions.Uncertain. Meaningful scientific, historical or philosophical disagreement remains.Read
9. 09Did the Exodus happen?The story has a whole nation leaving Egypt and entering Canaan from outside. The archaeology of the highland settlements it would have produced reads the population as indigenous to the Levant, which leaves a genuine argument about what the story is and where it came from.Deepdepth, meaning: Major unanswered questions.Uncertain. Meaningful scientific, historical or philosophical disagreement remains.Read
10. 10What happened after the crucifixion?By the time Paul joined the movement, people who had known Jesus were saying he had been raised, and Paul later met two of them in Jerusalem. That the claim was made early is documented. Whether the claim is true is not the kind of thing a document settles.Abyssdepth, meaning: Fundamental questions where our understanding is extremely limited.Unknown. Humanity does not currently have a satisfactory answer.Read