Don't Myth the Point

On the eve of Christmas week it is fitting to declare, in the words of Dorothy Sayers, that “the greatest drama that has staggered the imagination of man is the orthodox creed of the Christian Church.”  By that term she meant both the Apostles and Nicene Creeds.  She was describing the Christian narrative that God [the eternal Son] became a human being for the salvation of the world, that he was born, lived, engaged with the world, died on the cross, and was raised from the dead on the third day.  Sayers was certainly correct about her assessment.  And she was also astonishingly clarifying in her setting forth our choices about the matter.  For she concludes, “Now, we may call that doctrine [story] exhilarating, or we may call it devastating; we may call it revelation, or we may call it rubbish; but if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all.” (Dorothy Sayers.  The Whimsical Christian: Eighteen Essays.  (Macmillan, 1969), p.11f.).

 Christianity doesn’t, however, stop at making comparisons as though the point is that the greatest idea wins!  The Christian claim is that this narrative is literally true in terms of normal historical understanding.  It is popularly suggested that the story of Jesus had its roots in the mythologies of the surrounding ancient cultures.  But such attempts at comparison are truly impossible to successfully construct.  Whatever one might think about the foibles of Israel at the time of Christ, these people were rigorously anti-myth (2 Peter 1:16) and anti-polytheistic (Acts 17:16f).  From the very beginning the beliefs of the first Christians (who happened to all be Jewish) were utterly at odds with the prevailing Jewish beliefs at that time concerning the nature and work of the Messiah whom Israel hoped would soon be coming.  That the God of Christianity should be understood in terms of three persons (Matthew 28:19, 20, John 16:12-15), that the Son (“the Word”) should come in the flesh (John 1:1-3, 14), and that God’s Messiah should die for the sake of sinners (Matthew 20:28) --- these three notions alone were so offensive to Jewish belief, they cannot be accounted for in terms of a supposed connection with mythology.  Michael Grant, an atheist who was also a renowned historian of ancient Rome, demolished such mythological reconstructions as are popularly proposed: “Modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory.  It has been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars.” (Michael Grant. Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels. (Scribners, 1977), p.200.

 The foundations of the argument that the New Testament, including the Gospels in particular, are historically sound and reliable do not rest merely on the repudiation of mythological roots.  The historicity of the New Testament also rests on the fruits of archaeological research and insight that I will lay out in up-coming blogs.  In anticipation of what lies ahead I invite you to write for either/or both of my essays.

 1.       “Hoax? Myth? Or Literally True? The Evidence for Jesus’ Bodily Resurrection.”  This paper is not limited to Jesus’ resurrection, but considers the larger matter of His life within history.

2.      “The Prints are Everywhere: The Convergence of Science, History, and Experience with Biblical Revelation.”  This article doesn’t attempt to address its points in depth.  Its purpose rather is to whet your appetite for further study of the broad array of evidence implied by the title.