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.
By Douglas Anele
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