Is Jesus myth and his story of birth and resurrection pure fiction?

The story is told in the Gospel of St John of a man called Nicodemus. They say he once came to Christ by night to confess that Jesus was a teacher sent from God. “Rabbi,” he said, “We know that you are a teacher sent from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God is not with him.” (John 3: 2)

The Evangelist records that Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He was also a member of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. Prof Joad’s Bible Commentary on the Gospel of John reminds us that the Pharisee was an exceptionally educated individual. He understood the Law of Moses through and through. He defended it to the hilt. Perhaps the only two other persons who ranked higher than Nicodemus were the High Priest and a man called Gamaliel, a doctor of the Jewish law. Nicodemus would today be a respected professor of law and theology, two disciplines that went hand in glove in his day.

Such is the man reported to have visited Christ at night, to try and understand some of the confounding things that Christ was saying and doing. Biblical exegetes have said many things about this rare meeting. One thing stands out though. A man of the standing of Nicodemus acknowledges Jesus as a great teacher – a rabbi – and one sent from God. Christ’s status, converse to that of Nicodemus, was a most humble one. He was perceptibly born in a poor home, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” some asked when he claimed fulfillment of the arrival of the prophesy of Isaiah about the Messianic age (Luke 4: 22).

Skepticism about the divinity of Christ is not anything new. Throughout the past two millennia doubters have questioned the two central pillars of the Christian faith. First is the immaculate conception of Christ.

Second is his death and resurrection. If you take away these two tenets, the very foundation of the faith is destroyed. For the Christian, faith is everything.

The logic that doubters often look for is neither here nor there. Paul of Tarsus wrote of this, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” He went on to invoke Prophet Isaiah, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will destroy.” (Isaiah 29:14). Then comes the clincher, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” (1 Corinthians 20).

It is within this prism that believers understand the divine conception of Christ. In the conversation with Nicodemus, Christ himself said, “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?” (John 3: 11). Ultimately, to the believer, earthly logic and finer historical details about the birth and ministry of Christ is secondary to belief. The Apostles’ Creed is an early statement of Christian belief.

Obvious discrepancies

 

While a variety of versions exist across an array of Christian denominations, some basic things remain. Among them is that Christ was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Indeed, even Islam accepts this article of faith – that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. Islam, however, rejects the death and resurrection of Christ, averring instead that he ascended straight to heaven without first being put to death.

Disputants and doubters of a later age would lead to the coming into being of the Nicene Creed. This creed came into existence at a time of huge doctrinal crisis in the early Church, centering on the birth and nature of Christ.

Libyan preacher Arius declared that although Christ was divine, he had been created by God. He was not, therefore, co-equal with God the Father. He was not co-essential, co-substantial with God. The early Church held a crisis meeting in the city of Nice in 325 AD, where the creed – named for the city of Nice – put the matter to rest.

Later disputations would lead to slight modifications here and there.

The fundamentals of the articles of faith remained the same, nonetheless. Of the essence at this time of nativity is that Christ is true God from true God; begotten and not made; is co-substantial with God the Father; he came down from heaven; he was made incarnate by the holy spirit and born of the virgin Mary, thus being made man.

This leads to the question of Christ’s historicity. Some of the more extreme European historians, such as the German Bruno Bauer, denied that Jesus Christ ever existed. They suggested that Christ was a myth. They said the whole story of his birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension was pure fiction. They used some of the more obvious discrepancies in the canonical gospels as the basis of their disbelief.

In the Age of Enlightenment, Thomas Paine would dismiss not just Christianity, but religion as a whole. In the seminal essay titled “Age of Reason” Paine observed that various world religions doubt one another.

In the Christian faith, different denominations fault and reject each other. Paine then went on to say, “As for me, I disbelieve all of them.” This was rather curious, seeing that Paine began this essay by saying he believed in

the existence of God. However, he was emphatic that he believed in nothing more beyond that. As for the Church, he said, his Church was in his own head. Reason? The inconsistencies in religious holy writ.

Michael Grant, a later day exegete, goes to great pains to lend credence to the same arguments. In the volume simply titled Jesus, Grant has, for example, written of the birth of Christ, “The familiar story that Jesus was born at Bethlehem which –was in Judea and not in Galilee – is very doubtful.

More probably the birthplace was Nazareth in Galilee, or possibly some other small town in the same place.” Paine looks at the genealogy of the historical Christ in the Gospels of Matthew (1: 1 – 16) and Luke (3: 23 – 38) to reject the historicity of Christ. His basis in the disharmony between the two family lines.

In more recent times, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell gave a controversial lecture titled “Why I am not a Christian.” Prof Russell said of the historicity of Christ, “ Historically, it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him, so that I am not concerned with the historical question, which is a very difficult one. I am concerned with Christ as he appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise.” Russell looks at a variety of moral, design and other practical questions to argue that Christ “was not the wisest or most humane” individual.

He sites the Lord’s impatience with Pharisees (whom he calls a “brood of vipers”) and the fact that he warns them of “the furnace to come” to show that Christ was “unkind.”

About God, Russell says, “I do not believe in God and immortality.” If the basis of faith must be logic of the kind Russell looks for in “Why I am not a Christian”, it is doubtful that there would be any Christians left – from the very start to the end of the story of Christ. Believers must in the end resonate with Paul of Tarsus who says, “We speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.” And the Prophet Isaiah would add:

Who has understood the mind of the Lord, Or instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him, And who has taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge Or showed him the path of understanding? (Isaiah 40: 13 – 14).