Being on the right side of Christmas
This might be a surprising twist to you. Celebrating Christmas because of Jesus is not celebrating myths, rumours and half-forgotten folklore. Rather, it is a celebration of events that unfolded in history. It seems again, that people worshipping Jesus are on the right side of history.
Greg Sheridan's article in the Australian (link below. Published on 18/12/2021) touches on a couple more recent historical discoveries that confirm the Gospels were written as eyewitness accounts of real life in a real place at a real time and not later fabrications.
For many years - no one had found synagogues in Galilee. 'Ah... ', modern scholarship said. 'Early Christians just made up what Jesus said and did in Galilee'. But in 2008, routine excavations discovered a synagogue in the region of Galilee in Migdal. Since then, four more have been found.
Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. 2 Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. 3 Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.”
4 Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. 6 Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.
7. Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed.
Mark’s Gospel, chapter 3.
Or, take the research by Richard Bauckham.
'It turns out that the spread of the Jewish names across the whole New Testament - not in any one book but across the whole - matches more or less exactly with the preponderance of Jewish names of New Testament times.
This would have been impossible to fake.' This is all from a database Jewish scholars have assembled of the distribution and popularity of Jewish names.
Are these proof of the words of Jesus? No. But they are another example, of many, where the New Testament documents and the Gospels correspond with wider historical and archaeology knowledge.
So we've got a choice to make. Either, the writers of the New Testament documents actually lived during these times and wrote what they saw, experienced and discovered.
Or the later fabricators were some of the best and most sophisticated liars the world has ever seen. They cunningly integrated their lies with each others’ lies and with historical events and people decades and even hundreds of years earlier.
This Christmas why not explore the right side of history and read a Gospel.