I caught most of Hugh Hewitt's radio program last night regarding the Newsweek Article, “The Birth of Jesus – Faith and History: How the Story of Christmas Came to Be.” and I must admit I find this debate fascinating.
To make a long story short, the Newsweek article sets out to prove that the Jesus' birth narrative is not historically accurate, instead it was packaged by the Gospel writers to sell the religion to the Greeks and Romans. To make their point they quote people from the "Jesus Seminar", and various Roman Catholic academics. Mr. Hewitt's main problem with this article is that it lacks balance. The article does not quote any New Testament scholars whose research shows that there is historical validity in the life of Jesus, including his birth, and that the article therefore is an agenda driven piece.
I have read a couple of books by a co-chair of the Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Crossan (if you have watched any recent special on Christianity his name will be familiar). His (or their) work is very interesting but having them comment on Christianity is a bit bizzare to me. Let's start with a couple definitions:
Christ: the title, also now treated as a name, given to Jesus of Nazareth, believed by Christians to have fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of a coming Messiah (Oxford Canadian Dictionary1998)
Messiah: 1a the promised deliverer of the Jews, as prophesied in the Hebrew Bible, b (in Christian theology) Jesus Christ regarded as fulfilling this prophecy, and as saviour of humankind (ibid)
Depending on your denomination of Christianity, Jesus is the saviour of humankind because his is the Son of God or is God. However in the scholarship of the Jesus Seminar, Jesus of Nazareth was one of many Jews who claimed to be the Messiah:
...My emphasis is exclusively on messianic claimants...whose ubiquity from Galilee to Perea to Judea indicated widespread popular revolt and resulted in two thousand crucifixions. (The Historical Jesus: Ch. Bandit and Messiah, Crossan, pg. 198, 1992)
And that Jesus is not the Son of God or more to his point Son of Man. In the Chapter entitled John and Jesus, Mr. Crossan starts by quoting the Book of Daniel 7:9-14 (I pull out that later bit)
...I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed
Of which Mr. Crossan concludes:
In that vision, "one like a son of man" is emphatically not a title. It simply contrast the earlier three empires who were described as "like a lion ... like a bear ... like a leopard", that is, like wild beasts from the chaotic depths of the sea, with this superhuman figure who is "like a human being" and comes from the heights of the heavens. In other words, just as English-language male chauvinism uses man or mankind to describe humanity, so did its Hebrew equivalent use man and son of man, especially in poetic parallelism, to describe the human race.
Since Mr. Crossan and his contemporaries do not believe that Jesus was the Messiah and do not believe his was the Son of God they are not "Christians" and the term "Jesus Seminar" is indeed appropriate. To them Jesus is a philosopher-king, more akin to Confucius, definitely not Christ Jesus.
So Hugh Hewitt is right to complain about balance in this article. It is like a discussion of Islam without a representative who believes that Muhammad had a vision from Allah or a discussion of Judaism from scholars who believe that Moses made up the Ten Commandments. We would call it intellectual dishonesty then, so we are calling it dishonest now.
Mr Hewitt links to scholars infinitely more qualified on this subject than I so I would suggest checking out Dr. Mark D. Roberts and Dr. Albert Mohler.
