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Birth Of Christ Has Ring Of Truth by Alex McFarland
Posted by Ed and Lois
THE Christmas season is accompanied by many things: mistletoe, evergreen trees and Santa Claus. And while most Americans accept the store-bought image of Christmas, there remains an ongoing debate on one of the season’s most sacred symbols—the nativity.
It is hypothesized that Christian doctrines developed through a repackaging of existing legends. The recent Newsweek feature article asserts that the New Testament writers were “confronted with a literary problem that had to be solved,’ and thus created the story of Christ’s birth. The apostle Paul is also frequently cited as a likely reviser and partial “founder’ of Christianity, allegedly having meshed prevalent paganism with teachings about Jesus. The implication is that the core beliefs of classical orthodoxy are inventions of men rather than revelation from God.
But consider the facts revealed upon closer examination: The New Testament deals with actual persons and historical events open to investigation. The mystery religions dealt with mythical figures, having no historical ties whatsoever. In contrast, Jesus’ birth is tied to such things as real people (Herod of Judea), real places (Bethlehem, Egypt, Nazareth), actual events (“a census by Caesar Augustus’), and is corroborated by verifiable details (“when Quirinius was governor of Syria’).
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