Ian Boyne, Contributor
CHRISTMAS REPRESENTS the greatest cultural triumph of the Christian religion: There is no holiday which unites as many people in celebration, gaiety and family togetherness as does Christmas.
From highly secularised Europe to Hindu-dominated India and Buddhist Asia, to the once-communist Eastern Europe, Christmas has been celebrated. Even atheists love Christmas.
The adoption of what was the pagan Saturnalia festival of the Romans, with all its trappings, might prove to have been an ingenious and brilliant strategic move of the Roman church: i.e. successfully eclipsed the Saturnalia, known for its debaucheries and revelry, and imprinted on the world a festival which has proven the greatest boon for merchants all over the world. It is the most powerful marketing tool of Christians for it forces upon the consciousness of an increasingly secularised world, the claims of Christianity.
However, Christians are learning that the people of the world have been able to quite discreetly separate the religious elements from the essentially celebratory and festival elements of what has truly become a secular festival.
However much Christians talk about trying to 'put Christ back into Christmas', the effort seems a futile one. Some small sects like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Armstrongites might rant about the pagan origins of Christmas, saying that Christ was never in it in the first place, but almost no one is listening to them.
HAVING A GOOD TIME
Besides, people are just having a good time, catching up with old friends and family, building bonds of camaraderie and community and finding a special occasion to display some of the finer qualities of human nature.
But not only has Christmas become more secularised and commercialised, with fewer people even attending their twice-yearly church services, but more questions are being raised about the historicity of the birth narratives surrounding Jesus.
People might be having a merry Christianity, but the future of Christianity looks very sad and, bleak, indeed. For this season two of the leading magazines in the Western world, Time and Newsweek devoted cover stories in their December 13 issue to the birth of Jesus, and both had the same theme: the historical unreliability of the birth narratives in the Gospels. Newsweek's story is titled 'The Birth of Jesus' Faith and History: How the Story of Christmas Came to be' and Time's is 'Secrets of the Nativity: Why the Story of Jesus' birth Inspires so much Scholar Interest and Faith'. Both cover stories essentially say that events surrounding Jesus' birth were made up by early Christians to put significance to their religion and we can't really take as literal facts what Gospel writers say about the birth of Jesus.
ONE GIANT HOAX
For years our own Mutaburuka has been on the radio saying some outrageous things about Christian origins and charging that Christianity is one giant hoax made up of many embellishments, myth-making and theologising without historical foundation. Muta has not been taken seriously by Christians and has been seen as just a virulent anti-Christian Rastaman. But, in fact, some of Muta's ideas represent the cutting edge of Biblical scholarship which has cast serious doubts on many of the things in the Bible which Christians accept as inerrant truth.
Muta's view, for example, that the Gospels were written long after the events reported, and that the oral traditions of the disciples could not be relied on for historical accuracy is accepted as Gospel truth by many of the most highly rated Biblical scholars. Most of the leading Biblical scholars hold views about the Bible which are radically different from the faith of the average church-goer.
Of course, the impression must not be given and the Newsweek report was especially unbalanced in this regard that there is no reputable Biblical scholar who accepts the birth narratives and the Gospel accounts as historical facts. There are reputable scholars trained at Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and Sheffield who hold to a conservative view of the Bible.
Men like NT Wright, Don Carson, Kevin Vanhoozer, Gary Habermas, Timothy Luke Johnson, Craig Bloomberg, I. Howard Marshall, and Ben Witherington cannot be dismissed as intellectual lightweights. Yet the conservative scholars rarely get quoted when the secular media do stories on religion another example of the general liberal bias of the American media. However, the fact is that increasing numbers of scholars, including those in Evangelicalism, are expressing doubts about the view, once popular, that we can take the Bible as literal historical fact.
CONTRADICTIONS
Scholars, for example, point out that there are many contradictions between the four Gospel writers, especially on the accounts of the crucifixion and the resurrection. Richard Carrier, who holds two Masters Degrees in ancient history from Columbia University, says in a major paper, drawing attention to what he sees as irrevocable contradictions between Matthew and Luke, The Date of the Nativity in Luke:
"Matthew contradicts Luke - Luke describes Jesus being presented in the temple to repeated public pronouncements of his status which would not have escaped Herod's supposedly murderous eye (or memory)".
"Matthew, in contrast, has Herod only finding out roughly two years later from foreigners. The family of Jesus, according to Matthew, flees to Egypt and stays there until Herod's death (Matthew 2; 15, 2:21-23) In fact, they stayed away from Jerusalem not only for as many as two intervening years or more, but for the entire ten-year reign of Herod's successor Archelaus (Matthew 2:22) as well. This flatly contradicts Luke's claim that they stayed in Nazareth the whole time from the very beginning and went to Jerusalem every year without fail. The two accounts thus contradict each other in the most fundamental way."
Carrier and others also find highly improbable that Herod would have killed the male baby boys to eliminate the future Jewish king without inciting a major rebellion. Besides, this was never reported by the renowned Jewish historian of the time Josephus. That story, says Carrier, seems more like common myth-making: "The myth of the evil tyrant receiving an oracle of a coming king and then seeking to kill the newborn, but being thwarted somehow was a common legendary motif in the period, from Oedipus and Cypselos of Corinth to Krishna, Moses, Sargon, Cyrus, even Romulus and Remus, just to name the most famous examples."
Indeed, some go further and assert that Christianity itself - not just some of its customs and borrowings as the Witnesses and the Armstrongites assert was adopted wholly and completely from paganism. Books such as The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours say that the birth and resurrection stories of the Gospels were adopted completely from pagan sources. This view is getting very popular.
PAGAN FROM THE START
On that highly interesting, well-produced Fame programme 'Uncensored' on Monday night a well-spoken lady called to say that the Jesus story was adopted from ancient Mithraism, and she went on to enumerate the alleged similarities between Jesus and Mitra. The Jehovah's Witnesses and other anti-Christendom dissidents are becoming passé: Many have gone way beyond them and are now asserting that the whole Christian religion was an adaptation of paganism.
Just this year Tom Harpur published his book The Pagan Christ. In the book he says that the doctrine of God becoming a man (the doctrine of the Incarnation) "is in fact the oldest most universal mythos known to religion. It was current in the Osirian religion in Egypt at least 4,000 years BCE. Christianity began as a cult with almost wholly pagan origins and motivations in the first century." There are some who believe that Christianity began as one of the mystery religions of the first century which were based on legends, myths and allegories rather than concrete historical facts. (Not to mention the scholarly work of Elaine Pages and Karen King on the Gnostic influences on early Christianity and the alleged political attempts to suppress the early influence of women in Christianity).
MYTH-MAKING RELIGION
Indeed, there is one school of thought that there was no historical Jesus and that Christianity really began purely as a myth-making religion. The most famous proponent of this view is Earl Doherty who wrote the book The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ: Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus. In this work, Doherty marshals what he sees as convincing evidence of the absence of Jesus in credible historical sources; asking why is there so little attestation of Jesus' life and activities outside of the Gospels, written by the architects of the Jesus movement. The Gospel accounts are biased so we can't trust their accounts, he tells us. He disputes the few alleged secular references to Jesus.
Conservative Christians have, of course, responded to these arguments and one can find both in book-length publications and on websites credible responses to, and engagement with the radical new ideas being proposed. But what is clear is that the old certainties are being profoundly challenged and there is growing doubt about the truth claims of Christianity and the trustworthiness of the Bible.
There are a number of philosophical and cultural challenges to Christianity in the 21st Century which it will find difficult to overcome.
In the social sciences and humanities, the postmodernist view that there is no objective, trans-cultural and universal truth, and that it is not possible for human beings to grasp reality-in-itself is the dominant philosophical position. The Christian idea of Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life strikes many in this globalised, pluralistic world as arrogant, pompous and anti-cosmopolitan. Truth is relative and culturally and historically-conditioned, many believe. There is no one path to truth it is felt.
Besides, conservative Christianity flies in the face of the urgent demands of many for feminist and gay liberation. That the Bible has been used to oppress blacks, justify slavery colonialism and imperialism and is now being used to oppress women and homosexuals is a common refrain of many in the educated elite. These people have considerable cultural power. Look out for more persistent and more vehement attacks on the credibility of the Bible and Christianity. The crushing defeat of the liberals in the recent American elections has produced much anger, bitterness and resentment toward conservative Christianity, and the attacks against conservative Biblical authority will accelerate. Even locally, agnostics have issued some biting and scornful pieces on Christians and the Bible. The pen is mightier than the pew and the ballot box.
Christmas will continue to be popular, the greatest season of the year. The capitalists will continue to profit from it and it will continue to bring cheer to millions. It is Christianity's future which does not look so bright and merry.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send your comments to ianboyne1@yahoo.com or infocus@gleanerjm.com
