A Newsweek Christmas

Every year at Christmas and Easter, it seems Time and Newsweek always have a Jesus cover story. This year is no exception. What they know is Jesus sells. What they don’t know, it usually appears, is Jesus. There is a standard formula that goes like this.

1. Have a non-theologically educated, non-historically educated journalist cast doubt on many aspects of the life of Jesus.
   
2. Find obscure out-of- the mainstream biblical scholars or historians to support some of your hypotheses.
   
3. Rehash the same questions that have been asked for the last 250 years since the Age of “Enlightenment”
   
4. Conclude with nothing startling and no new evidence to refute the basic truths of scripture
   
5. Try again next year

Here is this year's Newsweek article. Here is one of many respected scholarly responses. So, what does this all mean? For Christmas, it always comes down to a couple of basics.

1. The Christmas story is told differently by gospel writers Matthew and Luke
   This is no surprise. All basic Bible students are taught this. What is so astounding are the similarities of the stories between two independent authors.
   
2. The wise men weren’t there when Jesus was born.
   Christians just combined the later visit of the Magi with Christmas Eve for poetic reasons. The Bible never says they were there.
   
3. Christmas was not in December.
   The Bible never said it was. Christians just started celebrating it then because the surrounding culture already had celebrations at this time and they borrowed the culture’s emphasis and “Christianized” it. Like Jesus did when he connected Holy Communion out of Passover or like Christian rock music of today.
   
4. The Virgin birth.
   This is a strange and unusual claim. Miracles always are. Examine the evidence and the response by the earliest Christians. And remember this: After resurrection, all the other miracles are a piece of cake. Our faith rises and falls on the resurrection of Jesus, and nothing more or less than that event.

Well, enough on this topic. I imagine I'll have more to say around Easter time.