Any sincere open-minded person who investigates Christmas would conclude that almost everything about the celebration is either non-Christian in origin or a distortion of what is written in The Bible.
Hence, Christmas is an accretion of myths and legends that allows Christians to celebrate the purported saviour of humankind. Sometime in the past, church leaders tried very hard to fight against “heathen” customs in Christianity. But as time went on, they changed their attitude and gradually condoned, and eventually embraced, those practices. That change came about because church authorities were much more interested in filling the churches with worshippers than with spreading spiritual truth and enlightenment, an aspiration that has even worsened today. Pentecostal pastors especially have perfected the art of obtaining through false pretences and lies by teaching prosperity and instant miracles.
Some of the big Pentecostal churches are regularly filled to the brim with gullible “customers” who are eager to swallow completely all that they are told by their pastors. Thus, it is not surprising that a celebration allegedly celebrating the birth of Jesus, a spiritual leader, has become an excuse for drunkenness and debauchery of all kinds. Supermarkets have become more popular than places of worship, which are now looking more and more like corporate headquarters of multinational companies. After Yuletide, many families sink further into debt buying mostly what they do not really need, and many Christians confuse fantasy with reality and Santa Claus with Jesus of Nazareth.
In a word, the spiritual core of Christmas has almost been swallowed up by crass materialism. But it is not just the spiritual essence of the occasion that is endangered – more significant is that the whole concept of virgin birth of “saviour of the world” is open to question too. For centuries, serious investigators and scholars of the New Testament have attempted to answer the deceptively simple question: was there, in fact, a human being called Jesus, as described in the gospels? It is obvious that this question is of fundamental importance to Christianity, since if the gospel accounts of Jesus are largely fabrication and myth, then the impressive edifice of Christianity would come crashing down. Put differently, any good evidence that the stories about Jesus are myths with very little basis in reality is a big blow to the Christian religion, and seriously undermines its claim as the only God-approved route to salvation.
Of course, no “genuine” Christian would cast aspersions on the gospel narratives concerning Jesus, knowing that unquestioned acceptance of the Nazarene as the saviour of humankind is non-negotiable. Therefore, let us briefly examine the views of researchers on the subject-matter to help us arrive at a reasoned conclusion concerning it. Alfred Reynolds, in his highly informative work, Jesus versus Christianity, stated clearly that, going by historical sources, we know virtually nothing about Jesus. He asserts further that the New Testament cannot be regarded as a historical document since the extant copies were written by believers, in foreign countries and in Greek language, over several decades after the events they describe occurred. Without question, the so-called synoptic gospels contradict one another to the extent that it would be a grave mistake to accept them all as valid historical source materials.
It is remarkable that the great Roman historians of the first and second centuries A.D. did not even mention Jesus in their works, which suggests that probably they did not know him. Christian apologists usually cite as historical evidence of Jesus’ actual existence the statement attributed to Josephus, a Jewish priest and historian who, in A.D. 93, was supposed to have written, inter alia: “Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure.” But some scholars, for instance Edward Gibbon, the English historian (1737-1794), have questioned the authenticity of this passage, alleging that it was a later fabrication and interpolation into the text of Josephus. George Brandeis, in his Jesus Myth, puts forward the idea that Jesus never lived, and that all the legends concerning him are mere accretions of mythical qualities on a composite figure.
Similarly, an outstanding scholar of Christological research, Prof. G. A. Wells, in two remarkable books, Jesus of the early Christians and Did Jesus Exist? argued persuasively that the character Jesus, as presented in the gospels, is a myth. There is a tendency among modern theologians to reject the dogmatic components about Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection; demythologising him without having the courage to acknowledge or accept that the churches will collapse if the myths and mystical elements in Christianity are so hastily abandoned. Another serious scholar that expressed doubts about the actual existence of Jesus is the missionary, philosopher and historian, Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), whose magnum opus, Quest of the Historical Jesus, is a groundbreaking work in Christological investigation.
Despite the fact that he was a missionary, he was bold enough to aver that: “The Jesus who came forward publicly as the messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven on earth, and died to give his work final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in a historical garb.” Schweitzer, along with one of the most eminent researchers into New Testament history, Johannes Weiss, believe that the critical importance of Jesus does not lie in his historicity but in the eschatological and messianic teachings attributed to him.
The renowned English playwright, George Bernard Shaw, proclaimed that although there was probably a man called Jesus, his relevance lay in the political, economic, and moral ideas which he espoused. In Androcles and the Lion, Shaw argued that: “there is a man here who was sane until Peter hailed him as Christ, and who then became a monomaniac…his is a common delusion among the insane…and such insanity is quite consistent with argumentative cunning and penetration which Jesus displayed in Jerusalem after his delusion has taken complete hold of him. He was a communist…he regarded much of what we call law and order as a machinery for robbing the poor under legal forms.”
Josiah Royce, the American philosopher, suggested that the significance of Jesus of Nazareth is attributable to “the vital impetus” his teachings and activities had given to a powerful event, the emergence of Christianity. According to Royce: “in answer to the challenge, either you must believe that the founder of Christianity was only a man, or else you must accept Jesus as the Christ, the divine man; we must fairly reply…Whatever may be the truth about the person of Christ, and about the supposed supernatural origin of Christianity, the human origin of the christian doctrine of life, and also the human source of all the latter Christologies, must be found in the early Christian community itself.
To be concluded
VANGUARD
END
Be the first to comment