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Canon James Shoucair, |
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5910 Babcock Blvd |
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Is Christianity Myth or History? Yes! The need for God finds expression in every human heart. People in all places throughout history have developed local mythologies to explain the physical world and to give their lives meaning and purpose. Many of these mythological traditions share common themes, such as fear, awe, sacrifice, suffering and dependence. All are attempts to express certain deep truths about the human condition and experience. All arise out of man�s feelings of estrangement from God and a deep need to connect with God. In other words, these myths arise from the �God-shaped hole� that exists in all of us. So, yes, the Christian story is �myth� in the sense that it is one such expression. However, we must be careful to remember one thing: When used in this sense, myth does not mean that it is necessarily untrue. Rather, myth is the expression, (through stories, ideas and imagination) of a bedrock truth that cannot be expressed in categories of ordinary experience. However, Christianity is also history. It is here that our faith finds its uniqueness. Our faith represents the meeting place between the human mythical picture of God and God himself. In the Christian story, myth and history meet. God comes as one of us in time and space. The story of Jesus is �myth� in the sense that in it (and in Him) we discover the deepest truths about God as well as ourselves. It is also actual history in that He was a real person who was born, who walked the earth, died on a Cross and was raised from the dead. The truth, the myth, that He reveals actually happened! As someone both fully human and fully God, Jesus, in his very person, meets our deepest desire for reunion with God. The story of Jesus is not myth that we as human beings have concocted. It is God�s myth, or truth, communicated to us in a real flesh and blood way.
Are The New Testament Documents Reliable? If we are to make the claim, as we do, that Christianity is a religion of history, then it is not unreasonable to ask for some assurance that the New Testament accounts of that history are trustworthy. The New Testament writings were penned between the years 48 AD and 90 AD. The earliest writing was St. Paul�s 1st Letter to the Thessalonians (c.48 AD). The latest, John�s Gospel and Letters, were put together toward the close of the 1st century. This is remarkable indeed. It means that the documentary evidence on which we base our knowledge, was written not hundreds of years after the events they describe, but, in the case of Paul�s letters, between fifteen and thirty years of the death of Jesus. That�s less of a gap than between the death of Winston Churchill and the date of his major biographies! When assessing the authenticity of the New Testament record, one historian was prompted to make the claim that they were the most reliable ancient texts that had come down to us, more reliable even than the accounts of the life of Julius Caesar or some other ancient figure whose existence we take for granted. Add to that the sheer number of manuscripts (5000) we have of the New Testament. When compared with each another, we find that they are consistent in all but 5 percent of the wording. The variations that appear are minor in nature and raise no question with respect to any major doctrine or teaching of the Bible. Space does not allow for a full treatment of this subject matter here, but as the foregoing suggests, there is every reason to have full confidence in the historical reliability of the Bible. Our faith is based on something real. |
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