Another Voice

If Jesus did not exist, the Church would not invent him

Matthew Parris

Saturday, 22nd April 2006

Three cheers, then, for both Dawkins and Paul. For, given how difficult it is for most people today to believe that though all other humans die, there is one, Jesus, who rose from the dead, you would expect modern Christians to duck or fudge this extraordinary claim. You would expect them to seek ways of maintaining their faith in the absence of certainty about the literal truth of the Resurrection. But with a rigour which I found admirable, The Spectator’s believers were not ducking or fudging.

One by one, Christian respondents followed the Dawkinian/Pauline line. ‘If it’s not true, what’s the point?’ remarked Edward Stourton. ‘There is no other way I can make sense of what has been written in the New Testament,’ was the response of Father Michael Holman, SJ. ‘Remove the Resurrection and you remove the heart of Christianity,’ said the Reverend Nicky Gumbel. Christopher Howse thinks that ‘otherwise, we are all sunk’. Cliff Richard is sure that ‘the validity of the Christian faith stands or falls by the Resurrection’. Stuart Reid believes that without it ‘Christianity is nonsense’; and Fraser Nelson agrees: ‘If the verifiable bones of Christ were discovered, you’d have to admit that the Muslims were right, Jesus was a prophet and Christianity was a 2,006-year hoax.’

It does not in fact follow from a denial of the Resurrection that one must believe Christianity has been a hoax. It never struck me as remotely likely that Jesus was physically resurrected from the dead, but I have certainly not concluded that Christians were hoaxers or the disciples were making anything up. More likely they were under a misapprehension.

In my experience misapprehensions do occur, sometimes on a major scale. I also think Muslims are under a misapprehension. Muslims presumably think Christians are under a misapprehension; Christians must think Muslims are under a misapprehension. Both must think Jews are under a misapprehension. I think that they are all under a misapprehension.

So what Christians, Jews, Muslims and I have in common is in finding no difficulty with the belief that a major world religion attracting billions of adherents over many centuries can be founded on a tremendous misapprehension. We differ only on a secondary question: which of them is thus founded?

My Easter thoughts moved to a different alleged literal truth: did Jesus of Nazareth ever really exist?