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A Big Leap Of Faith

Category: Religion
Sun, 03 Apr 2005, 15:11

Yesterdays Toronto Star had an interesting juxtaposition of articles. On page M7 was Tom Harpur's usual weekly column. On the opposite page was an article by Dave Haskell, professor of journalism at Conestoga College, which contained (among other things) a criticism of Tom Harpur's book, The Pagan Christ. Haskell argues that a historical Jesus and resurrection are the most believable of the various views put forward. But as Carl Sagan remarked "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", it's appropriate to quickly review the evidence for a historic Jesus.

First, lets look at the archeological evidence. A couple of years ago when the so-called "James Ossuary" was revealed, front page stories made the point that if authentic, the ossuary would be the first piece of archeological evidence referring specifically to Jesus. When the news broke that the ossuary was a forgery, that story was buried deep in the bowels of most newspapers, if at all. The obvious conclusion is that there is indeed no archeological evidence in favor of a historic Jesus. Going beyond the lack of positive evidence, there is the negative evidence, such as the fact that Nazareth was not a settled community around the time of Jesus.

Secondly, let's look at the written evidence. The historical writings of about 30 writers have survived to the present from the 1st Century CE. Some of these by are used by Christian apologists to justify a historical Jesus, including the writings of Josephus and Tacitus. However, only a small few directly mention Jesus. Some of those references are a stretch, and assume an unlikely misspelling of Jesus' name. Others, such as Josephus' Testimonium Flavianum are considered forgeries by historians. On the whole, none of the references to Jesus can be considered valid evidence of his historicity.

On the other hand, the historical record does refer to the presence of Christians in the 1st Century, and few doubt the reliability of those accounts. However, and this is a subtle point, you cannot discount the possibility that these accounts refer to Christians who did not believe in a historic Jesus. It is known that up until the time of Emperor Constantine, there were numerous groups of Christians, and that they believed in a variety of things. Some, such as the Gnostics, believed in a spiritual, not corporeal, Jesus. It wasn't until the 4th Century that the literalist Christians came to power and suppressed all dissenting views.

Finally, there's the Biblical evidence. The earliest writings in the New Testament are those of Paul. Unfortunately, if you're looking for details of Jesus' corporeal life, you won't find it in Paul's writings. You could look at the Gospels. But there's nothing in the Gospels that didn't exist first in pre-Christian pagan mythology. As Biblical scholar Northrop Frye used to tell his students, where the Bible is historically accurate, it is so only by accident.

With a significant lack of evidence of any kind (not just extraordinary), the only valid conclusion is that a historic Jesus requires the biggest leap of faith.

Unfortunately, faith is what makes it difficult to find people who can properly review books like Harpur's The Pagan Christ. Conservative Christians are unqualified since they have a vested interest in seeing such heresy dismissed. The very fate of their own personal eternal soul depends on their strict faith being correct. Invariably, when reading reviews by people like Haskell, you have to wonder if they've even read the book at all, let alone tried to understand the message.

Hans

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