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Were Jesus and Mary real? A journalist’s quest for truth · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Christmas Eve, December twenty four, twenty twenty five. A
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  Speaker 1: Christmas treat. Today we run a journalist's critical eye over
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  Speaker 1: the story of the Nativity. Were these real people, real
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  Speaker 1: events or something else. Greg Sheridan, who you might know
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  Speaker 1: best as The Australian's Foreign editor, is here for a
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  Speaker 1: very special assignment back in time two thousand and twenty
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  Speaker 1: five years to the west bank of the Jordan River,
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  Speaker 1: the town of Bethlehem. One of my favorite Christmas carols,
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  Speaker 1: one that I remember my dad singing to me, is
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  Speaker 1: Once in Royal David City. This exquisite version is by
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  Speaker 1: the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge.
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  Speaker 2: I love the.
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  Speaker 1: Simplicity of this hymn. A pure voice reverberating to a
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  Speaker 1: vaulted ceiling, singing unadorned lyrics any kid can understand. Once
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  Speaker 1: in Royal David City stood a lowly cattle shed where
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  Speaker 1: a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed.
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  Speaker 1: But what I always wonder around this time of year is,
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  Speaker 1: regardless of what you believe, how much of this can
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  Speaker 1: we really accept as literal truth? Was there a lowly
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  Speaker 1: cattle shed in Bethlehem, the city where a thousand years
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  Speaker 1: before Christ, King David was born. Did a real baby
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  Speaker 1: named Jesus have a real mother named Mary? Did three
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  Speaker 1: wise men visit with gifts? Or is this store and
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  Speaker 1: maybe much of the Bible just an inspiring allegory.
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  Speaker 2: Greeg.
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  Speaker 1: Sheridan is the Australian's foreign editor, but he has a
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  Speaker 1: side hustle as a best selling author of books, including
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  Speaker 1: a trilogy about Christianity. In Greg's book Christians, he reads
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  Speaker 1: the New Testament as a journalist would analyze any text,
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  Speaker 1: closely analyzing dates, names, and sources.
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  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ himself is one of the best tested figures
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  Speaker 2: in human history. The oldest physical test we have of
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  Speaker 2: the New Testament is probably from the end of the
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  Speaker 2: first century or the beginning of the second century, part
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  Speaker 2: of John's Gospel discovered in Egypt. In my book Christians,
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  Speaker 2: I devote a chapter to the fact that modern scholarship
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  Speaker 2: is now validating every single thing we can test in
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  Speaker 2: the New Testament. There are all kinds of details in
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  Speaker 2: the New Testament which scholars used to think were wrong,
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  Speaker 2: and that showed that the New Testament had been written
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  Speaker 2: much later, like, for example, it talks about Jesus preaching
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  Speaker 2: in the synagogues of Galilee, and for a long time
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  Speaker 2: there was no evidence that there had been synagogues in Galilee.
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  Speaker 2: At the time of Jesus, was thought that Jewish families
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  Speaker 2: could go up to Jerusalem for the high feasts and
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  Speaker 2: so on. But then only a couple of decades ago,
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  Speaker 2: a hotel developer building a new hotel in the town
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  Speaker 2: of Magdala, where Mary Magdalen came from, discovers a synagogue,
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  Speaker 2: the ruins of a synagogue unmistakably from Jesus time, and
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  Speaker 2: since then we've discovered three to four or five more.
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  Speaker 2: So the gospel was right, the scholarship was wrong. Now,
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  Speaker 2: in my book Christians, I read the New Testament as
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  Speaker 2: a journalist, just as a professional journalist with a bias
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  Speaker 2: to believing that they're likely to be true. And you
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  Speaker 2: find in them everything you'd expect in eyewitness testimony, a
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  Speaker 2: little fuzzing us about the details, a tremendous force of
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  Speaker 2: Jesus personality which would be very very hard to make up.
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  Speaker 2: And then you have Paul's letters written for sure within
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  Speaker 2: twenty years of Jesus death, which refer to followers who
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  Speaker 2: already believe the central elements of jesus story. But then
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  Speaker 2: you have about Mary. So I think everybody underestimates Mary.
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  Speaker 2: And Mary's a very smart, audacious, agency filled woman. And
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  Speaker 2: as a journalist you trained to trust the sources nearest
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  Speaker 2: to the story. So do you trust a German biblical
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  Speaker 2: scholar in the nineteenth century or do you trust Luke,
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  Speaker 2: who was an eye witness and tells us he was
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  Speaker 2: the Bob Woodwood of the New Testament, spoke to everybody,
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  Speaker 2: interviewed everybody, read all the accounts. Now, Luke has the
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  Speaker 2: most detail about the birth of Jesus and Mary's role
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  Speaker 2: and so on. And we know that Luke was around
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  Speaker 2: in the early Christian movement in Jerusalem within a decade
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  Speaker 2: or two of jesus death. Mary would have been very
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  Speaker 2: young when she gave birth to Jesus, probably sixteen or something.
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  Speaker 2: So I make a deduction in my that the source
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  Speaker 2: for Luke's scoops was Mary. Now there's no proof of that.
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  Speaker 2: You don't have to believe that. That's just my deduction,
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  Speaker 2: But that's the conclusion a journalist comes to reading the
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  Speaker 2: New Testament. As a journalist, I mean, it's like a
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  Speaker 2: Bob Woodward book. If he knows what the CIA director
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  Speaker 2: said to his wife in bed that morning before he
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  Speaker 2: had breakfast, it's a pretty good chance that the CIA
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  Speaker 2: director is the source, you know. So it's a pretty
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  Speaker 2: good chance that Mary is Luke's source. But that gives
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  Speaker 2: you a new vision of Mary, because not only is
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  Speaker 2: she full of agency. You know, as soon as she
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  Speaker 2: hears about her divine mission, she races off on her
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  Speaker 2: own to her cousin Elizabeth. And for a young teenage
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  Speaker 2: woman at that time to undertake a journey like that
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  Speaker 2: on her own shows a lot of hootspar And then
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  Speaker 2: she shapes how history sees the story because she leaks
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  Speaker 2: it all, well, not leaks of it as nothing improper
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  Speaker 2: about it. It's like John Howard or Golf Whitlam deciding
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  Speaker 2: to confide in Paul Kelly. You know, they're going to
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  Speaker 2: choose the best person around to tell the most significant
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  Speaker 2: story because they want it preserved through all history. So
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  Speaker 2: Jesus certainly existed. The evidence for that is overwhelming. There
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  Speaker 2: are lots of non Christian sources who tell you about that.
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  Speaker 2: He certainly was a crucified, under conscious pilot well, he
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  Speaker 2: sure had a mother, and there's no reason to believe
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  Speaker 2: that the things in the New Testament about Mary are
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  Speaker 2: not true. And then I think you can deduce from
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  Speaker 2: the New Testament that Mary was a very powerful advocate
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  Speaker 2: and agent of early Christianity. And of course she was
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  Speaker 2: an incredibly courageous woman. I mean, when Jesus were being
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  Speaker 2: crucified and dying, all the men were missing in action
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  Speaker 2: except John. You know, the male apostles were nowhere to
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  Speaker 2: be seen. But there was a group of women standing
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  Speaker 2: at the foot of the cross offering solidarity, and her
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  Speaker 2: chief amongst them was Mary.
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  Speaker 1: The place names in the Bible are so evocative, particularly
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  Speaker 1: at this time of year. We of course know of
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  Speaker 1: Jesus of Nazareth, but he was born in Bethlehem, according
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  Speaker 1: to the Bible, and that's because Mary and Joseph were
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  Speaker 1: required to travel there because a census had been ordered
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  Speaker 1: by the emperor. Do we think that is true?
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  Speaker 2: Yes, I do. So. That's one of the great elements
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  Speaker 2: of historical contention, because there is a reference to another
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  Speaker 2: census at a different time nearby. And so the scholars say, well,
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  Speaker 2: clearly there couldn't have been two censuses within a few
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  Speaker 2: years of each other. So obviously the New Testament writers
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  Speaker 2: got it wrong. So what we have is the evidence
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  Speaker 2: of the Gospels, which were all written at the most
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  Speaker 2: within one lifetime of Jesus. And why would we think
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  Speaker 2: that's untrue. Now, what's the explanation if there were two censuses, Well,
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  Speaker 2: the historical records can be wrong. That happened in one
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  Speaker 2: particular case, a Roman historian got the title of Ponscious
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  Speaker 2: Pilot wrong, and so for a long time it was
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  Speaker 2: thought the New Testament was wrong because they had ponscious Pilot.
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  Speaker 2: But then we discovered a stone inscription of ponscious Pilot
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  Speaker 2: using the title from the New Testament. So the New
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  Speaker 2: Testament was right. The later Roman historian, you know, only
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  Speaker 2: a century or so later, was wrong. So that's possible
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  Speaker 2: the historical records are mistaken. Or secondly, there could have
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  Speaker 2: been a local census as opposed to a very big census,
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  Speaker 2: you know, the census that Mary and Joseph were subjected to.
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  Speaker 2: Could have been a local census, or there could have
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  Speaker 2: been some other explanation. But the idea that two thousand
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  Speaker 2: years later you can theorize an explanation without the facts
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  Speaker 2: is preposterous. So there's absolutely no reason to doubt the
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  Speaker 2: facts as given in the New Testament. And it is
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  Speaker 2: quite possible to harmonize even the small little discrepancies within
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  Speaker 2: the different accounts of the New Testament. Or you can
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  Speaker 2: just see it as the normal imprecision of an eyewitness.
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  Speaker 2: You know, I remember when I proposed to my wife.
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  Speaker 2: I can't remember what type of red wine I was
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  Speaker 2: drinking at the time. You know. The way to get
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  Speaker 2: publicity for a new book about Jesus is to say
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  Speaker 2: I've discovered that Jesus was a martian, and here here
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  Speaker 2: is the proof. And then the two common mistakes about
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  Speaker 2: Jesus are either that he was a revolutionary, a political revolutionary. Well,
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  Speaker 2: that's completely inconsistent with everything he says in the Gospel.
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  Speaker 2: You know, my kingdom is not of this world. If
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  Speaker 2: I wanted armies, I could call up armies of angels,
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  Speaker 2: but I don't want that. Or alternatively, that he was
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  Speaker 2: a social worker, very kind social worker, would have believed
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  Speaker 2: in full paid maternity even so if that had been available,
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  Speaker 2: but didn't have any particular theological aspirations, Well, that is
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  Speaker 2: also completely inconsistent with everything he says. No one comes
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  Speaker 2: to the Father except through me, and I and the
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  Speaker 2: Father are one. And then you've got all the early Christians.
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  Speaker 2: Polycarp Irenaeus ignacious, who knew the Apostles, so Clement of
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  Speaker 2: Rome knew Peter. These guys were historical characters, and they
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  Speaker 2: left their own extensive writings, and they knew the Apostles.
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  Speaker 2: So if it was all made up, then this second
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  Speaker 2: generation of Christians also had to be part of the conspiracy.
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  Speaker 2: By sixty four AD, thirty years after the death of
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  Speaker 2: Jesus or maybe thirty five years, Nero is burning Christians
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  Speaker 2: to death in Rome and blaming them for a fire.
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  Speaker 2: Loads and loads of accounts of that from Roman historians.
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  Speaker 2: So this conspiracy was You know, if the Gospels weren't
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  Speaker 2: written until two hundred years later, how did these people
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  Speaker 2: know about the conspiracy in advance and then go to
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  Speaker 2: their death to defend a false story which hadn't been
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  Speaker 2: written yet. I mean, it's a vastly more magical thinking
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  Speaker 2: required to believe it's not true than to believe that
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  Speaker 2: it's true.
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  Speaker 1: One of my my daughters questions about Christmas is always
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  Speaker 1: why did the Three Wise Men give Jesus gold? Franken
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  Speaker 1: sense and Murrha, not dummies, rattles and nappies or something
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  Speaker 1: more practical. The three Wise Men, the Majie. They appear
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  Speaker 1: in the Gospel of Matthew. Why and this is something
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  Speaker 1: I've always wondered about the Christmas story. Given that Mary
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  Speaker 1: and Joseph were so poorly connected and so humble that
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  Speaker 1: they were giving birth in a stable, would they be
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  Speaker 1: being visited by kind of eminent people with valuable gifts.
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  Speaker 2: Well, of course, Claire, the Gospel is a miraculous story.
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  Speaker 2: So this is very difficult for the modern Western mind.
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  Speaker 2: We are, by the way, in a tiny little coulder
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  Speaker 2: sac of human experience in not believing in the miraculous.
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  Speaker 2: The vast majority of human beings alive on our planet
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  Speaker 2: today believe in the miraculous, believe in God, believe in
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  Speaker 2: transcendent truth. The three Wise Men were in receipt of
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  Speaker 2: divine inspiration, that are and send an event was occurring.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, all through the Gospel, people are powerfully attracted
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  Speaker 2: to the person of Jesus. You know, there's an incident
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  Speaker 2: where Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the temple to
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  Speaker 2: the synagogue and the priest says, your son will endure
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  Speaker 2: a terrible suffering, and Mary doesn't want to hear it.
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  Speaker 2: But this is a prophecy of the crucifixion. Now, you know,
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  Speaker 2: if you just believe absolutely that there's no such thing
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  Speaker 2: as prophecy, nobody can know the future. There are no miracles.
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  Speaker 2: You know. It could only be if the magi had
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  Speaker 2: read the postcodes and knew that someone that Herod didn't
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  Speaker 2: like was around, that they would have gone there. Well,
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  Speaker 2: you can be very skeptical about it. That's absolutely fair enough,
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  Speaker 2: perfectly rational position to take. But if you admit the
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  Speaker 2: possibility of God and Jesus as the son of God,
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  Speaker 2: there's nothing a bit strange in three wise men finding
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  Speaker 2: an inspiration. If you have a particular cast of mind,
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  Speaker 2: you can say, well, I like Jesus, but I don't
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  Speaker 2: believe in the three wise men. Then you've got to
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  Speaker 2: disbelieve virtually everything else. C. S. Lewis had the famous
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  Speaker 2: trilemma Jesus was either a madman, a liar, or the
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  Speaker 2: son of God, and if there's any accuracy in anything
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  Speaker 2: in the Gospel, he has to be one of those three.
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  Speaker 2: You can't be a nice person who simply told a
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  Speaker 2: lot of lies about his Father in Heaven and so
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  Speaker 2: I mean, if he's telling us lies about that, why
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  Speaker 2: would you listen to anything that he says coming up?
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  Speaker 1: So does reading the Bible with a critical eye ruin
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  Speaker 1: the magic? And did it shake Greg's faith? I'm curious
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  Speaker 1: Greg about the experience for you of reading the Bible
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  Speaker 1: as a journalist when you set out on that. Did
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  Speaker 1: you think that it might shake your faith or strengthen
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  Speaker 1: your faith? And did it have any impact on what
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  Speaker 1: you believe or don't believe.
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  Speaker 2: This is a very strange thing for me to say, Claire,
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  Speaker 2: and it's the most unsatisfactory answer I'm going to give you.
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  Speaker 2: And it's a question I'm often asked, and I have
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  Speaker 2: this really blame and pathetic answer to It's I have
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  Speaker 2: never had any trouble believing in Christianity. I've had enormous
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  Speaker 2: trouble living a Christian life. I fail Christianity in practice,
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  Speaker 2: not in the theory. You know, I'm good at it
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  Speaker 2: in theory, I'm very bad at it in practice. So
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  Speaker 2: spending all the time that I spend in the New
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  Speaker 2: Testament and in an earlier book in the Old Testament
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  Speaker 2: was of course tremendous fun. Because the people are so vivid,
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  Speaker 2: and the stories are so great, you know. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: journalism is a search for a true story and a
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  Speaker 2: good story. And you know, I've eventually worked out that
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  Speaker 2: Christianity is the best story and also the true story.
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  Speaker 2: So it took me a long time, thirty five years
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  Speaker 2: in the profession, but you know, even a blind pig
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  Speaker 2: finds an acorn occasionally, so reading as a journalist just
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  Speaker 2: reinforced to me how utterly convincing it is. You know,
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  Speaker 2: it's impossible to read the description of the crucifixion and
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  Speaker 2: not be moved by it. It could be that a
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  Speaker 2: master novelist could create something like that. Absolutely I accept
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  Speaker 2: that that's a possibility, but it would have to be
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  Speaker 2: an extraordinary level of human creativity to create a story
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  Speaker 2: like that. Graham Green, you know, who had been a
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  Speaker 2: communist and an atheist, the famous author before he came
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  Speaker 2: to Christianity, he said, the Gospel of John it reads
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  Speaker 2: like a police witness statement. It just has the ring
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  Speaker 2: of truth about it. It is so graphic, it's so
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  Speaker 2: full of physical detail. It just couldn't have been made up.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, somebody was crucified, you know, this is the
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  Speaker 2: witness of a real crucifixion. And then if they're making
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  Speaker 2: it up, why did they do all these strange, uncounterintuitive things,
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  Speaker 2: like the first people to see the risen Jesus are women. Now,
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  Speaker 2: it's a sad fact that in the ancient world the
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  Speaker 2: testimony of women was regarded much less seriously than the
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  Speaker 2: testimony of men. So if you were making the story
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  Speaker 2: up two hundred years later or something, and it was
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  Speaker 2: all a hoax, the first person to see Jesus risen
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  Speaker 2: from the dead would have been some reputable bloke whose
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  Speaker 2: testamenty instead of which it's Mary Magdalene, who was possessed
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  Speaker 2: of demons before Jesus cured her, and who was in
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  Speaker 2: despair at the empty tomb. Where is my Lord? Where
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  Speaker 2: is my Lord gone? When she confronts the empty tomb,
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  Speaker 2: So really get in more detail. Just impressed on me
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  Speaker 2: how abundantly obvious it was as an accurate statement.
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  Speaker 1: Vices Frank Sinatra performing Silent Night. As with all the
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  Speaker 1: music in this episode, there's a link to this performance
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: in our episode description. Do you have a favorite carol?
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  Speaker 2: There is something sweet and lovely and optimistic and consoling
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  Speaker 2: about Christmas and about the carols. I mean a silent Night,
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  Speaker 2: Holy Night. I mean, I justify anyone not to have
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  Speaker 2: their spirit stir when they hear that. Carol Sleep. I
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  Speaker 2: believe in reason. I'm a journalist, but reason is not
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  Speaker 2: everything in the human apprehension. Paul McCartney's Mother Mary, that
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  Speaker 2: is just full of the language of the Gospel, of
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  Speaker 2: John's Gospel. Mother Mary speaks to me, in my hour
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  Speaker 2: of darkness, there is still a light the chances of me. Well,
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  Speaker 2: those words are directly from John's Gospel. Let it be,
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  Speaker 2: Let it be, whisper of wisdom, Let it be. McCartney
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  Speaker 2: course a genius songwriter, and he knew the most powerful
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  Speaker 2: material in the world was in the Gospel at Liverpool
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  Speaker 2: Catholic in the nineteen fifties and sixties. All of those
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  Speaker 2: words were rattling around his head and what a genius
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  Speaker 2: he was to make such good use of them. And
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  Speaker 2: then later on he said it was about his own
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  Speaker 2: mother Mary, but he's very happy for it to be
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  Speaker 2: about Mary, the Mother of God.
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  Speaker 1: It's very moving, Greg, Thank you so much, and happy Christmas.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks Claire, Happy Christmas to you. Let it be, Let
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  Speaker 2: it be, there will be answer. Let it be.
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  Speaker 1: That of course is Let it be by The Beatles
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: from their nineteen seventy album by the same name. This
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: recording session was brought back to life in an incredible
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty one documentary series directed by Peter Jackson called
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: The Beatles Get Back. If you haven't seen it, check
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: it out on Disney Class. Thanks for joining us on
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  Speaker 1: the front this week, we'll have new episodes for you
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: all through summer, the Australians journalists talking about the stories
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: they'll be thinking of as life slows down in this
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  Speaker 1: beautiful time of year. This episode was presented and produced
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  Speaker 1: by me Claire Harvey, with sound design and editing by
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Tiffany Demack. Our team also includes Kristin Amiot Leat, Sammaglu,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Joshua Burton, Stephanie Coombs and Jasper Leak, who wrote and
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: performed our theme music.