The Christmas season is here again, and as usual, it is characterised by frenzy of activities in all dimensions of human existence. In better organised societies, prices of goods and services tend to go down, because everyone believes that the Yuletide is a period for merry-making and goodwill.



In Nigeria, the reverse is the case: business people and transporters, for instance, use the opportunity to exploit their customers by hiking the prices of goods and services. Aside from that, different kinds of evil, especially armed robbery, advance fee fraud, ritual killings, kidnapping, etc. increase at this time, thereby sullying the purported spiritual essence of the celebrations.

More road accidents occur during Christmas than any other period of the year, and unscrupulous police officers make things worse for thousands of people travelling to the South-East by mounting too many unnecessary, illegal, and irksome checkpoints on the highways, which sometimes cause accidents.

Mr. Hafiz Ringim, the Inspector General of Police, should order his men to dismantle 99 per cent of the checkpoints on the Lagos-Benin-Onitsha-Owerri expressway so that travellers can get to their various destinations on time.

Now, while wishing my readers happiness-filled Christmas celebrations, I want them, particularly the Christians, to meditate on the supposed spiritual core of Christmas. To provide the intellectual catalyst for the serious contemplation we are recommending, I will investigate the enigmatic question: did the character depicted in the New Testament of The Holy Bible as Jesus of Nazareth actually exist?

Perhaps to devout Christians, the question does not arise, for the reality of Jesus’ actual existence has been definitively established by the Synoptic Gospels. However, as a sceptic and unrepentant unbeliever acquainted with the debate among scholars of the New Testament and church history, I know that the issue is far from settled. Therefore, our interrogation of the historicity of the most important personage in Christianity is motivated by the desire to encourage Christians to subject the fundamental doctrines of their religion to periodic intellectual auditing, thereby helping them avoid the absurdities of blind faith, which are emotionally satisfying but systematically misleading, with dire consequences for the peace and prosperity of humankind.

Aside from its appropriateness for Yuletide, my choice of topic is based on the fact that Christianity is more tolerant of dissenting views than its cousin, Islam, which still regards open-minded critical inquiry into any of its fundamental creeds and articles of faith as blasphemy deserving fatwa — is it any surprise that no Islamic nation is among the leading countries in scientific and technological innovation, despite the impressive oil wealth of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Jordan, etc.? Perhaps in future I will compare Christianity and Islam, paying particular attention to how adherents of the two faiths respond to criticism.

Suffice it to say, however, that the inability of fanatic Muslims to tolerate and accommodate well-reasoned critique of their religious beliefs gives their religion a bad reputation among billions of people all over the world. Therefore, Islam desperately needs its own equivalents of Martin Luther, David Hume, Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Bertrand Russell to drastically prune the obscurantist brambles of insular fundamentalism and attenuate the bloodthirsty intolerance associated with it. Unless that is done, the religion will continue to conjure up images of horror in those who cherish intellectual honesty and free thought.

That said, although there are many sects and denominations within Christianity, the New Testament — especially the unique status it ascribes to Jesus, His birth, crucifixion, and resurrection — constitutes the single factor that unites all of them. The accounts of Jesus given in the Four Gospels are regarded by Christians as inerrant and unimpugnable word of God. However, most of them are unaware that the Gospels are contrary to one another.

In logic, when propositions are contrary, they may both be false, but they cannot both be true at the same time. Therefore, there is no way the Gospels’ narratives about Jesus can all be true simultaneously. Divergent stories about the family background and birth of Jesus illustrate the discrepancies we are talking about, some of which have been succinctly discussed by Michael Biagent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln in the enthralling book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail; and by J.D. Shams in Where Did Jesus Die?

Matthew, for example, portrayed Jesus as an aristocrat who could stake a legitimate claim to the Davidic throne through Solomon. Luke presented a somewhat different picture altogether: Jesus, though descended from the house of David, was of somewhat less exalted stock; and it is from Mark’s account that the legend of the "poor carpenter" originated.

Matthew says that when Jesus was born, He was visited by some wise men from the East. Jesus’ family was a little bit well-to-do and lived in Bethlehem for quite some time, where Mary was delivered of her first son. Luke, on the other hand, reports that the infant Jesus was visited by shepherds. His family resided in Nazareth: all of them then travelled to Bethlehem (where He was born in a manger) for a census which historians suggest never really happened.

In addition to discordant information on the quotidian details of Jesus’ daily existence, the Gospels also disagree on the day and specifics of the Crucifixion. The Gospel according to John avers that the event occurred before the Passover; the other three Gospels confirm that it took place a day after. The personality of Jesus presented in the Gospels are at odds with one another: in Luke, He was a meek and lamb-like saviour; however in Matthew, He was a powerful and majestic sovereign "who comes not to bring peace but sword."

The Gospels even reported different expressions as Jesus’ final words on the cross after He was allegedly crucified. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus was reported to have exclaimed, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" In Luke it was, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." Finally, in John, His last words were simply, "It is finished." Only a dishonest Christian will deny these discrepancies in the Gospels and their negative implications for the credibility of the events Mark and others purport to describe; or try to gloss them over with the facile rationalisation that "After all, the Gospels agree that Jesus was born, was crucified and resurrected afterwards."

As Biagent et al appropriately remarked, "Given these discrepancies, the Gospels can only be accepted as a highly questionable authority, and certainly not as definitive. They do not represent the perfect word of any God; or if they do, God’s words have been very liberally censored, edited, revised, glossed and rewritten by human hands."

To be continued

Culled from

http://www.punchng.com/index.php/columnists/power-of-reason