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By Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum Th.M., Ph.D.
President, Ariel Ministries Tustin, California.
www.ariel.org
[ Apologia Vol. 7(1) 2000, pages 11-14 ]
 If one wishes to have an example of a very theological liberal perspective on Jesus and the Gospels and an example of how to rewrite history based upon presuppositionalism rather than hard core evidence, this article would be a good example to use. While the author certainly has many footnotes in his articles, a survey of what he quotes shows a lack of quotation from actual original historical documents and a heavy reliance on writings by other liberal theologians accepting their conclusions as pretty well verbally inspired. At the same time, there is a simple dismissal of the testimony of the Gospels without feeling any need to substantiate such dismissal.
Up front, we should note that the author writes his article with certain presuppositions that he accepts as fact. He does not believe that the Gospels were written by eyewitness accounts. It should be noted that this is merely an assumption on his part since he does not produce clear evidence that they were not written by the ones they claimed to have been written by. No such proof is put forward unless one simply accepts his quotations of other liberal theologians as having substantiated that fact but this will not do. Another presupposition the author makes is that the Gospels were written quite late, at least sixty years or more after the events. Again, no facts or documentation are presented to substantiate this presupposition. Here again, the author merely quotes conclusions of other liberal theologians without questioning their validity. What the author totally ignores is the substantial apologetics written by more conservative theologians and he totally ignores the evidences they have presented for the authenticity of the Gospel accounts. So it must be noted up front that the author writes his articles presupposing that the Gospel accounts cannot be accepted at face value and are nothing more but propaganda tractates by those with vested interest in rewriting the life story of Jesus. But on this basic faulty presupposition, the author of the article writes his own revision of the life of Jesus and we are asked to believe him because he says so and a true "scholar" certainly would not question those presuppositions.
One more thing should be stated up front. He defines "history" as "an account of something that actually happened as it is reported and interpreted by participants and/or observers." On the other hand, he defines "myth" as any "story, oral in origin, which does not appear to have a basis which can be checked, and where central figures are 'superhuman' or 'divine' beings" (p. 27). Now these are his own definitions and it should be stated that the author assumes that the Gospel accounts are not "history" as he defines it, i.e. they are not eyewitness accounts. Therefore, the Gospel stories are only "myths," in that these are merely oral stories that were embellished and elevated in which the figure becomes "supernatural" or "divine," but these stories have no basis in fact. To this author, the four Gospels are myths and not histories.
On the "history" aspect, although the Gospel writers claim to be eyewitnesses (except for Luke who states that he used eyewitness accounts), they were simply lying and were not really eyewitnesses. What is the evidence and documentation for such a conclusion? It should be noted that looking up every reference in his footnotes will not show that he has produced any such evidence. He is merely going along with the liberal flow and what is popular to believe today in his particular circle.
Concerning the myth facet, the writer has clearly used this term to slant the mindset against the authenticity of the Gospels. If a myth is merely oral tradition that focuses on a divine being, any account of a divine being has to end up being a myth. One should not miss his circular reasoning here. A myth elevates a normal person to a divine being. If a story contains a supernatural divine being it is, therefore, a myth. The Gospels present Jesus as a supernatural and divine being. Therefore, the Gospels must be myths. But this is pure circular reasoning. What if it is true that God became a man in the Person of the Messiah Jesus of Nazareth? If this is true, how should it be reported? It should be reported exactly as it was and that will render it history. In other words, the story of a supernatural being by itself would not render the account mythological. If something like that really did happen, it would therefore qualify as historical. To say that we cannot have a story of a supernatural being as being pure history is also pure presuppositionalism.
As to the story being "oral in origin," one can readily concede that the original Gospel stories were oral in origin and certainly the preaching recounted in the Book of Acts preceded the actual writing of some of these accounts. But is that not true of all histories? Do not all histories begin oral and then are written down? Certainly the great Battles of Gettysburg or Gallipoli were first recounted orally by eyewitness accounts and then written down by historians. Yet no one I know of claims that the Battles of Gettysburg or Gallipoli were pure mythology and not history. To say the same thing could not be true of the Gospel accounts is to use a double standard in evaluating history.
So much for some general observations about the article. I would like now to address some specific points raised in the article. Certainly it is impossible for me to deal with every point he raises that needs to be challenged since that would make this article much too long. But I think certain points should be addressed, if for no other reason than to show the measure of presuppositionalism and revisionism being used by the author, not based on primary sources, but rather based upon the assumptions and presuppositions of liberal theology being true and, therefore, no one should question it.
On page five, the author presents what is now a cherished article of faith in such theological circles: That Jesus was basically a good Jew who did His best to try to present God to His contemporaries, but then Paul came along and created a religion out of Jesus and Jesus who "had spoken about God" now "became identified with God." The point is that Jesus was upgraded to divinity by His followers, especially by the Apostle Paul, although He Himself never claimed to be God. Using the author's own terminology, is this "history" or "myth"? If history is the relating of accounts by witnesses, where are his eyewitness accounts that Jesus did not claim to be God and that only His followers claimed that title for Him? On the contrary, the Gospels quote Jesus as claiming divine authority so that whatever His disciples said of Him was only repeating what He Himself claimed for Himself. In other words, the teaching that Jesus did not claim to be God, but His followers turned Him into God, is itself the myth because such a deduction has no basis in actual historical documentation.
As the Gospel accounts relate the story, Jesus many times claimed to be God and was so understood by His Jewish contemporaries. In John 5:18 His Jewish contemporaries sought to kill Him because He claimed to be "equal with God." In John 10:33, His Jewish contemporaries tried to stone Him because He actually claimed to be God Himself. In other words, the author's claim that Jesus was merely a "Galilean Jew who gave the religion its birth with his storytelling about God..." and "who was trying to live out his faith to the point of his own death..." simply does not square with the actual eyewitness accounts. So who is being mythological here? Certainly the storytelling of Jesus to give God "a human face" would not have brought about His execution. Storytelling was not unique to Jesus but was the common modus operandi of rabbinical teaching in the first century Israel. It was not storytelling about God that brought about His execution. The animosity that arose from the Jewish leaders had to be based on more than just that. Certainly His claim to be the Messianic God-Man would have created that kind of a stir, and that is exactly what the Gospel accounts tell us happened. Although the author tries to make the Gospels very late documents, even the latest date he ascribes to them is much older than the conclusions of his more liberal theologians whom he seems to quote rather heavily. But this is another example where his conclusions are based upon presuppositions and not based upon primary sources and the reader should be aware of that as one reads the article.
The author spends a lot of time discussing how the December 25th date for the birth of Jesus came about. I fail to see any connection between that issue and the authenticity of the Gospels as eyewitness accounts. I for one have no idea whether Jesus was really born on December 25th. I have no strong feelings one way or the other. But even accepting all of his conclusions that the December 25th date was basically an innovation by Constantine, this is a totally separate issue from His divinity for one simple reason: The Gospels nowhere state the date of the birth of Jesus. The historical narratives simply give us who was ruling where at the time, allowing us to draw a basic conclusion that He was probably born between 7-6 B.C. But there is not enough information for us to determine when during that year He was born. Furthermore, the author has not proved that Jesus was not born on December 25th. Developing the analogy of how the date of the birth of Jesus came into being and then using that as a criteria to judge the other issues concerning Him is a non sequitor. We are not trying to defend what the Gospels do not say. The logic of the author, therefore, runs something like this: The date of the birth of Jesus as December 25th was something that was invented by the church. As the author concludes, "Constantine gave birth to the church as we know it." Maybe the Roman Catholic church, but not the church as we know it. Again, the real issue is: What do the Gospels affirm to be true? The Gospels do not claim that Jesus was born on December 25th (or January 6th). They do claim that Jesus was the God-Man. Furthermore, these are not merely in the narrative sections of the Gospels. They quote Jesus as making the very same claims as in examples noted above. So now who is being historical and who is being mythological?
The author says, "so a new mythology was created: that there was a year 1 in the Christian calendar, and this began on January 1, 754, in the Roman calendar." Such a statement should not confuse the reader with the real issues involved which is not the exact date of Jesus' birth but rather who He Himself claimed to be as quoted by eyewitness accounts and their writings that we have with us to this day. The exact date of the birth of Jesus may fall in the realm of mythology. It is a non sequitor to automatically claim that the same has to be true of the Messiah's divinity. Those two issues must be separated since the Gospels do not affirm the first but do affirm the second.
In addition to Constantine, the author gives a lot of credit to two other persons with creating Christianity as we know it: Dionysius Exiguus and Francis of Assisi. The former is credited for the December 25th date and the latter for a nativity scene which the author claims was created by Jerome, but Francis of Assisi "created a live outdoor performance with real animals and real people" (p. 9). The author accuses Francis of Assisi that "by presenting a living picture of the nativity in this way, he uncritically historicized or literalized the birth story..." (p. 10). I am not here to defend Francis of Assisi. My question is to the critic: What does he mean by "uncritically historicized and literalized..."? What would make this scene unhistorical? The Gospel accounts do emphasize that when Jesus was born He was laid in a manger. What does a manger imply? And what evidence does the author present that Jesus did not lay in a manger shortly after he was born? According to the Gospel by Luke, he got his information from eyewitness accounts. Mary would still have been living at the time of Luke's writing. This fits within the author's own view of "history." Nevertheless, to the author, all of this is a myth but the author does not prove its mythological origins. Such assumptions themselves are hardly historical.
The author concludes that, "Constantine, Dionysius, Francis - each in turn created an image of Jesus which others were to develop, embellish and expand in the arts. It is through such eyes that we read the New Testament lives of Jesus" (p. 10). Is all of this really a true statement? By the time of Constantine, Dionysius and Francis, the New Testament was intact pretty much the way we have it now. Is what we know about the life of Jesus determined by what these three created? So let us try a little exercise. Let us remove these three men and all of their innovations from our thinking. Let us not read the Gospels through their contributions, but let us read the Gospels as they are written. Taking the Gospels as they are written, what do they basically claim? The following are the basic facts: Jesus was born in Bethlehem sometime during the last years of the life of Herod the Great; He grew up in Nazareth; He was baptized by John the Baptist and proclaimed to be the Messianic Son of God; at the first Passover following that baptism He went public with His messianic claims and performed miracles to authenticate those messianic claims; during a three-year public ministry He taught in synagogues and to outdoor audiences the true character of the righteousness of God and the type of righteousness necessary for entering into the Kingdom; he claimed to be the God-man Messiah with authority to forgive sins in a salvation sense; He rejected the authority of the Pharisaic oral law as binding in the religious sphere; His rejection of their authority eventually led to the rejection of His Messiahship by the religious authorities of that day; He was arrested and tried in a Jewish court of law and condemned on the basis of blasphemy; since the Sanhedrin had no authority of capital punishment, He was turned over to the Gentile authorities and there tried on the accusation of sedition or treason against Rome; He was crucified; He rose again on the third day; He spent forty days teaching his disciples and preparing them for the mission in the Book of Acts; and when He ascended to Heaven He left the promise that He will someday return.
These are the facts as presented by the four Gospels themselves and Constantine, Dionysius and Francis have nothing to do with this. These facts were in place before these men arrived on the scene. In actual fact, take away all of the contributions made by these three men and it does not change the basic Gospel story. It certainly does not remove the claim of deity from the Messianic Person.
The circumstances of the birth of Jesus were not created by Constantine or Dionysius or Francis, nor did the claims that Jesus made for Himself originate with these men. The myth may have created a December 25th date, but the account of the miraculous virgin birth precedes all of that.
After asking, "What is to be made of the birth stories in Matthew and Luke and the prologue to John?", the author engages in presuppositionalism that can only be labeled as "myth." The claim that the Gospel of Matthew "began to circulate around sixty years after the death of Jesus" is purely suppositionalism. The author fails to interject with scholarly writings showing that Matthew was written much earlier. What should be obvious to a critical reader of this article is that he attempts to prove one presupposition by another. And starting with the assumption that what the Gospels say could not possibly be true, he creates his own scenario two thousand years after these Gospel accounts (even with his own dating) came into being. Is it really more possible to know what the real story was than people living two thousand years earlier? That could be a possibility if there was documentation to support it, but the fact is that there is none. So when the author states, "The story of the visit of the wise men probably owes its origin to an incident in the mid-60's when a king of an area in a part of Persia, with his entourage of officials and supporters, journeyed across the Roman Empire to surrender sovereignty to the emperor Nero," one should not miss the word "probably." What documentation is there that Matthew's Gospel took the wise men account for that incident? There is almost no similarity. One king coming from a part of Persia to surrender his kingdom to Rome hardly fits the description of the wise men (who were never said to be kings by Matthew) who came to worship the child, but they did not surrender their kingdoms to this child. The presentation sounds scholarly and the reader might be influenced by the way it is presented. But one must not be fooled by such camouflage. There simply is no sure evidence that one incident influenced the Matthew account and the relationship does not even qualify for the word "probably." Again, the author merely assumes that the Matthew account could not really have happened. But that is a presupposition, not the historically validated fact. Again, the author is more guilty than the Gospel writers of engaging in myth.
Many other examples could be noted to show how he uses unrelated historical incidents with virtually no point of similarity but tries to make them the origin for what happens in the Gospel accounts. The reader should never be afraid to ask: What is the documentation for such conclusions? And are these documents truly primary sources or merely the quoting of others who believe the same thing?
So when he accuses the Gospel of John as being "a radical reworking of early Christianity" (p. 12), one should note this to be a good example of the pot calling the kettle black. Who is it that is engaging in a "radical reworking of early Christianity"? To me, John's account is far more probable than the article by the author. In going back to the author's definition of "history," even if we assume that John was not written by the Apostle John (an assumption I do not make), the author is still much closer to the events of the time than our revisionist trying to rework the history of Jesus.
After his survey of the four Gospels, the author asks, "So what can be gleaned from 'Matthew' and 'Luke' about the actual historical circumstances of Jesus' birth? Very little." "Very little" only because the author chooses to ignore the historical sources that we do have and engages in his own "radical revision of early Christianity." He has not proven that the accounts given by Matthew and Luke are "myths." He has only assumed them to be such since his own theology needs it so desperately. On the contrary, we have more details concerning the birth of Jesus than we have of many other accounts of famous persons such as Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.
There are many other points I could respond to, but it is time to draw this article to an end. These examples should be sufficient to note that other issues he raises are again based upon presuppositions or a misleading of what the Gospels actually claim. But contrary to the author's own conclusion, we know that we can draw a lot more from the birth stories than the fact that "Mary was Jesus' mother" (p. 14).
One more point should be made. When the author concludes his article, he asks the question, "Why, then, celebrate Christmas?" Obviously, if all of his revisions are true, it is a useless exercise. Even for many of us who are believers, especially Jewish believers, we do not necessarily observe Christmas anyway since there is no evidence that Jesus was born on that date. But again, the author tries to project the mythology of Christmas to make the messianic divinity itself a mythology. The best answer the author can give for celebrating Christmas is, "So forget the history and enjoy the myth. Christmas enshrines the myth that we all need to hear at the end of a busy year, before we plunge into the uncharted waters of a new year" (p. 17). If this is the Messianic Hope, there is no hope there. I, for one, cannot enjoy the myth because myths do not change my life. But divine history does change my life. If the whole birth account is a myth then there is no meaning to it and it has no value. And there is no hope. And I cannot enjoy the myth and forget the history. But if the account is true: That in the last years of Herod the Great the Messianic Child was born of a virgin, destined to die for the sins of the world, and that this God-Man Messiah did die for my sins, and arose again, this fact can change my life. Because when He died, He died as a penal substitutionary death for the sins of us all. Because this is history and not myth, we can enjoy forgiveness of our sins and come to know God in a personal way by trusting His death on the cross for our sins. His death has meaning because this was the death of the Messianic God-Man. God became the Messianic God-Man by virtue of the virgin conception and birth. That is why the virgin birth is so crucial to the whole theology of the Person of the Messianic God-Man. Take that away, and the rest will have little meaning and becomes only a story.
I conclude with a different admonition: Forget the myth and enjoy the history. The history is that Jesus, born of a virgin in Bethlehem, died for your sins. If you are willing to trust His death on the cross you can receive the forgiveness of your sins. He is the Messianic God-Man. This means that as a man He could die for our sins. As God, He can forgive us our sins.
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