Despite the lack of evidence for the historical existence of 'Jesus of Nazareth', the majority of academics who earn their daily bread from the study of this fictional/mythical character still cling tenaciously to their childhood beliefs in the the 'man from Galilee', even if they no longer hold to alleged miracles attributed to him. Why is this? Why do they maintain that the 'Jesus' of history is a 'proven fact' when there is not an iota of evidence to support this 'fact'? Not a single piece of historical evidence that is CONTEMPORANEOUS to the alleged lifetime of 'Jesus' can be uncovered.
Scholars are fond of telling us that there is ample evidence for the life of 'Jesus' from secular and Roman sources but the fact of the matter is, no such evidence exists: all references were made by authors who were not even alive during 'his' lifetime. How then can the writings of authors such as Josephus, Tacitus et al be considered 'evidence' when they are at most mere hearsay and thus in a court of law, INADMISSABLE!
Some of my readers (I trust only some) would argue that Jesus, being an insignificant first century Jew would not have been newsworthy enough to be mentioned by Roman sources, and yet this man is supposed to have caused a stir in Galilee and Jerusalem: healing the sick, the lame, the blind, the deaf, raising the dead to life, casting out thousands of demons, feeding 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fishes (housewives please take note!), walking on water, turning water into wine, creating enemies among the Jewish priestly cast and finally coming to the attention of the Roman authorities and dying by crucifixion, causing a solar eclipse, an earthquake, with many tombs opening up and the dead raising again to life, then Jesus resurrecting after three days and ascending into the clouds. How could this man, if he existed, be not newsworthy enough for the Romans, who avidly reported on and recorded the least little thing? You would have thought that a dead man walking around for forty days would have come to the attention of somebody significant!
Or did none of these things ever happen? And if they never happened, why should we also believe that the man who allegedly caused these things to happen (but didn't) ever exist? I am sure that Jesus (Yeshua) was a very popular name at that time in Judaea and Galilee so I am positive that someone with that name did exist but that is not the same thing as arguing that THE Jesus of Nazareth was an historical figure, and if you divest his life from all the alleged supernatural activity then what are we left with other than a first century Jewish proto-hippy? Is that enough to build a religion on? Is that enough to torture and kill those who do not accept this religion?
If the Jesus of 'history' did not exist then everything else about Christianity is false. We must bear in mind that the majority of Bible scholars are Christians, often evangelical and American. Those that are not tend to start off in life as students of theology, not history and not a few would have attended some kind of seminary for Christian ministry. Rejecting the Jesus of the miracles is one thing but rejecting the very existence of the man would be a step too far for many of them, especially when we have passages like this in the New Testament:
'For many deceivers are entered into the world,
who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in
the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.'
(2 John 1:7, KJV)
So, even in the days when John's second epistle was written towards the end of the first century there were already people who doubted or denied his historical existence! Yet, those scholars who cling to the theory of an historical Jesus would have us believe that this is a comparatively recent theory, id est, the 'mythical Christ' theory. If doubt about an historical Jesus has risen only in 'recent' times (18th century onwards) then perhaps this has more to do with the weakening of the Church's grip upon the populations whom they serve, not simply a 'new' and 'anti-authoritarian' stance? The Church can no longer keep us in ignorance and they can no longer enforce their theology and practices on the rest of us!
If Christianity were any other religion it would be rightly referred to as a cult or a mythology but in certain parts of the world, most notably in North America, it still wields enormous influence and can help to determine the outcomes of elections. Christianity is especially politicised in the United States, where childhood indoctrination and Christian fairytales don't fade away so easily. Scholars in any discipline are extremely cautious and conservative by nature and tend to fear straying too far from the 'received view', and in the case of Bible scholars, to doubt the historicity of Jesus, in the United States in particular, would be akin to falling upon one's own sword. It takes an extremely courageous man to go against mainstream and 'received' opinion in religion or in anything else for that matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment