What does Newsweek Know About Jesus?

American Thinker ^ | 12/23/2012 | R.B. Parrish

[SeekAndFind]

For its Dec. 10, 2012 edition, Newsweek featured a story, "What Do We Really Know About Jesus?" A better title might have been, "What does Newsweek know about Jesus?" The gist of the article is that the gospels are full of historical errors; yet nevertheless, "for those with a broader vision, a more generous appreciation of literature, and a fuller sense of theological meaning, the story of the Christ-child and his appearance in the world can be founded not on what really did happen, but on what really does happen, in the lives of those who believe that stories such as these can convey a greater truth."

In other words, it's a lie, but one whose story can affect the readers in a positive fashion. (The same might be said to apply to Gone With the Wind, The Hobbit, or any other piece of fiction.)

Let's take a brief look at what the article considers some of the "historical inaccuracies" of the Christmas story:

NEWSWEEK: ...they [the gospel writers] both want to relate Jesus to the ancestral line of Jewish patriarchs, but neither of them has access to the kind of reliable data they need for the task."

Yet genealogical records were maintained. The Jewish historian Josephus notes that precise records were kept of those who were descended from priests; and that even from Egypt and Babylonia "they send to Jerusalem lists in writing of all their ancestors, even the most ancient of them, along with the names of those who can testify to the facts." ("Against Apion" 1.7)

But in the archives there were still kept written lists of those who were descended from [pure] Hebrew families and those who were descended from converts... as well as all those of mixed blood who had departed with them from Egypt.

[PJammers]

Nothing.

[a fool in paradise]

For its Dec. 10, 2012 edition, Newsweek featured a story, "What Do We Really Know About Jesus?"

What do we really know about Baraq Hussein Ubama?

[NoRedTape]

So those liberal idiots at Newsweek just printed their last ragazine, correct? Bye Newsweek. What a waste of paper.

[Redmen4ever]

Newsweek is promoting the new me-centered Christianity, better named Me-anity. It’s all about me. How I feel about it. How it makes me feel about myself. How sanctimonious I can feel once I realize that my feelings are what defines right from wrong. Hence, anybody who disagrees with me must be stupid and/or evil.

[Fiji Hill]

Newsweek was once a great magazine that featured great conservative writers such as Ralph de Toledano, Henry Hazlitt, and Raymond Moley.

[kcvl]

Bart D. Ehrman

He remained a liberal Christian for fifteen years but later became an agnostic after struggling with the philosophical problems of evil and suffering.

Ehrman became an Evangelical Christian as a teen. In his books, he recounts his youthful enthusiasm as a born-again, fundamentalist Christian, certain that God had inspired the wording of the Bible and protected its texts from all error.

Bart D. Ehrman
Author, ‘Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are’
March 20, 2012

Did Jesus Exist?

[kcvl]

Bart D. Ehrman

[Dogbert41]

Sounds like another lost soul struggling with God refusing to condone his homosexuality.

[Slings and Arrows]

We know that Jesus doesn’t think he’s Barack Obama.

[PJammers]

Roots in the rocks syndrome.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

There is more contemporaneous historical evidence for the existence of Jesus as a man than there is for such historical figures as Charlemagne.

[CondorFlight]

A text from about 100 AD, but showing the same general practice:

“Gaius Vibius Maximus, Prefect of Egypt, says: since the enrollment by household is at hand, it is necessary for all who for any reason are outside their nomes [districts] to return to their domestic hearths, that they may also accomplish the customary dispensation of enrollment and continue steadfastly in the husbandry that belongs to them.” (cited in Deissman, Light from the Ancient East, pp. 270-271)

[CondorFlight]

Do we hear divine laughter?

About 3 BC Augustus orders everyone to be taxed/enrolled
while he is hailed as the first man of the empire (and “father of his country”). Statues of himself are placed in all the temples. Everybody hails Augustus, the earthly ruler of them all.

And it is that same act of supreme PR which is what brings Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, for the birth of the world’s humblest child.