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| A modern interpretation of a true event From David Lindsley's Birth of Jesus Christ |
A Christmas wager is renewed! We'll learn more about that later. But first...
Christmas is a time to go back to the basics about why we celebrate. The key Christian understanding of Christmas is this, that God so loved humanity that he sent his one and only son, who is part of the godhead - the one God - so that we might not perish entrapped in evil but by knowing God and believing in him share abundant life with him for eternity.
This coming of God to earth was done by taking on the human nature of the man called Jesus, raised in the town of Nazareth, in Israel, so that there was one man with two natures, the human and the divine. Jesus showed in many ways, but mainly by his curing the sick and raising some who had died, that he was God's "anointed one" - in Greek Christos - promised to the Hebrews as their redeemer and saviour. In history, Jesus is unique in that he claimed to be God and demonstrated by his actions that he is God.
Despite the amazing event that is the first Christmas, and the subsequent demonstration of the love of God, in what seems a remarkably short time, the young members of the Christ-inspired Western civilisation, have forgotten or wish not to acknowledge, that the existence of Jesus is a historical fact, a real person of history, not of legend, a person who every self-respecting person needs to make a judgment as to whether he was a lunatic, a fraud or truly God. When we accept the third of the "trilemma" we are led to freely surrender our will - "not my will but your's be done" - knowing that in return we are offered life in to the full.
Certainty about the historicity of Jesus led John Dickson, an author, historian, and an academic at Oxford University, to make an unusual wager. He explains:
In 2014, in a rush of blood to the head, I offered a cheeky bet, first on Twitter and then in an article for [Australia's] ABC: I will eat a page out of my Bible if someone can find a full professor of Ancient History, Classics, or New Testament in any real university in the world who argues that Jesus never lived. My Bible has been safe these last seven years. Professors of philosophy, sure. professors of English literature or German language, yes. But no professor in the relevant fields has yet been named.
Maybe such a scholar exists somewhere. There are thousands to choose from. So I have the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (which recounts Jesus’s birth) primed. I’m willing to rip it out, cut it up, and eat it with my Christmas pudding. But in the meantime, I will be lamenting not just the growing scepticism in Australia toward Christianity but also our declining historical literacy.
He is referring to the results just out of a study on the beliefs of Australians, the findings of which obviously depress him given the knowledge available. Dickson holds a PhD in Ancient History from Australia's Macquarie University and is a Visiting Academic (2016-2022) in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford. He is also the presenter of the podcast Undeceptions.
The study by the Church-linked NCLS Research team found:
In late 2021, only half of Australians (49%) view Jesus as a real person who actually lived. Nearly a quarter (23%) of Australians see Jesus as a mythical or fictional character. Around one in three (29%) don't know.
The age gap in historical literacy was clear:
Six in 10 Australians aged 65 years and over understand Jesus to be a real person who actually lived. With decreasing age, this figure declines to only four in 10 Australians aged between 18 and 35 years. Nearly the same proportion of this younger age group (36%) said they did not know about Jesus. Similar proportions across age groups (19% to 25%) claimed that Jesus was a mythical or fictional character.
Women are willing to acknowledge some depth of understanding about Jesus:
Women were more likely than men to say that Jesus was a real person who actually lived (52% vs 46%). Men (27%) were much more likely than women (17%) to assert that Jesus was mythical or fictional. Similar proportions said they did not know (31% women; 27% men).
Dickson responds to the depressing statistics:
This is, obviously, terrible news for Christianity in Australia. One of the unique selling points of the Christian faith — in the minds of believers — is that it centres on real events that occurred in time and space. Christianity is not based on someone’s solitary dream or private vision. It isn’t merely a divine dictation in a holy book that has to be believed with blind faith. Jesus was a real person, “crucified under Pontius Pilate”, the fifth governor of Judea, as the Apostles’ Creed puts it. It seems many Australians really don’t agree.
But, frankly, this new survey is also bad news for historical literacy. This reported majority view is not shared by the overwhelming consensus of university historians specialising in the Roman and Jewish worlds of the first century. If Jesus is a “mythical or fictional character”, that news has not yet reached the standard compendiums of secular historical scholarship.
Take the famous single-volume Oxford Classical Dictionary. Every classicist has it on their bookshelf. It summarises scholarship on all things Greek and Roman in just over 1,700 pages. There is a multiple page entry on the origins of Christianity that begins with an assessment of what may be reliably known about Jesus of Nazareth. Readers will discover that no doubts at all are raised about the basic facts of Jesus’s life and death.
Or take the much larger Cambridge Ancient History in 14 volumes. Volume 10 covers the “Augustan Period”, right about the time that Tiberius, Livia, Pliny the Elder, and — yes — Jesus all lived. It has a sizeable chapter on the birth of Christianity. The entry begins with a couple of pages outlining what is known of Jesus’ life and death, including his preaching of the kingdom of God, his fraternising with sinners, and so on. No doubts are raised about the authenticity of these core elements.
Not wanting to labour the point, but we could also turn to the compendium of Jewish history, the Cambridge History of Judaism in four volumes. Volume 3 covers the “Early Roman Period”. Several different chapters refer to Jesus in passing as an interesting figure of Jewish history. One chapter — 60 pages in length — focuses entirely on Jesus and is written by two leading scholars, neither of whom has qualms dismissing bits of the New Testament when they think the evidence is against it.
The chapter offers a first-rate account of what experts currently think about the historical Jesus. His teaching, fame as a healer, openness to sinners, selection of “the twelve” (apostles), prophetic actions (like cleansing the temple), clashes with elites, and, of course, and his death on a cross are all treated as beyond reasonable doubt. The authors do not tackle the resurrection (unsurprisingly), but they do acknowledge, as a matter of historical fact, that the first disciples of Jesus “were absolutely convinced that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised and was Lord and that numerous of them were certain that he had appeared to them”.
There is a reason for this consensus. When you apply the normal rules of history to Jesus of Nazareth, this figure is plainly a historical one not a mythical one. The early and diverse sources we have put his existence (and much more) beyond reasonable doubt. Perhaps only 49 per cent of Australians reckon “Jesus was a real person”, but I wager [again] that 99 per cent of professional ancient historians — atheist, Christian, Jewish, or whatever — would agree with this minority view.
Given the scepticism about Christian beliefs that erupts every Christmas with articles querying this or that element of the description of Jesus' birth, making little distinction between the essentials such as the miracle of Mary's birth of Jesus without losing her virginity, and the peripheral, such as the account of a star guiding wise foreigners to the place of the nativity, and the general lack of a Christian education to counter that media spin, it is no wonder that the post-Christian young people repeat what they have read or heard.
A linked finding from NCLS Research was that: "Some 22% of Australians reported attending religious services in 2019; falling to 16% in 2020, and returning to 21% in 2021." Though latest figures show an increase in regular attendance from 18 per cent in 2016, they could be affected by the religious activity of non-Christians.
So Dickson's "cheeky bet" still stands as a challenge to all and sundry to find a reputable scholar in the relevant fields who does not acknowledge the historical reality of Jesus Christ, who was active, according to Luke's account of the life and works of Christ, under the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas. Secular historians Josephus (Jewish) and Tacitus (Roman) add their weight in detailing Jesus' life and crucifixion.
Enjoy Christmas with the knowledge that the baby we remember at this time was a real person and remains a real person who is both man and God, someone we can talk to, knowing he understands us and has the divine power as our creator to raise us in our weakness and to fill us with his spirit of love.
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