The Puzzle of Christianity. Peter Vardy

once more worship and praise of the one true God.

      Elijah issued a challenge to the priests of Jezebel’s god: Elijah and they would each take a bull and make an altar. Then the priests of Jezebel’s god were to call down fire from heaven by calling on their god. This they did, dancing round the sacrifice all day and cutting themselves whilst praying – but nothing happened. Elijah mocked them, saying, ‘Shout louder! … Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or travelling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened’ (1 Kings 18:27), but still there was no response. Finally, Elijah came forward to the altar he had built. He had water poured over his sacrifice and then called to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Fire descended from heaven and the sacrifice was consumed. Elijah had all the priests of the foreign god put to death. Jezebel was furious and vowed to kill Elijah. However, it was Jezebel who died and her body was fed to the dogs. The worship of one God was reintroduced across Israel.

      After the death of Solomon there were a series of ineffective kings and Israel, now divided into two kingdoms, gradually became weaker and weaker. Warfare with neighbouring tribes or countries, as well as warfare between different leaders, was almost constant and the people of Israel saw themselves depending on their God for their protection. The weakness of Israel compared to the increasingly powerful neighbours that surrounded them was to culminate in possibly the most catastrophic event in Israel’s history – the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. Jeremiah was another one of the greatest prophets in Israel’s history. He called the people of Israel back to loyalty to God and to placing God at the centre of their lives, but the people did not listen. Like many of the prophets, he was ignored and scorned and felt his own life under threat. God’s Word, however, was commanding. He had to prophesy in front of the king, and the prophecy was uncomfortable, speaking truth to power is always likely to lead to opposition! He foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, the enslavement of the people of Israel and the death of the king. Not surprisingly, hardly anyone believed him. Jeremiah had no doubt that the prophecy would come true but he also had hope for the future. He bought a field to show his confidence that, one day, the people of Israel would be able to return after the destruction that he had foretold as imminent.

      The Hebrew Scriptures see the Babylonians as agents of God punishing the people of Israel for their wickedness. The Israelites lost everything. Their identity was founded on three things: Temple, King and Land. All these were destroyed: the King was killed, the Temple was pulled down and the leading figures among the people of Israel were taken off into captivity. It should have been the end of the Israelites: one more little nation vanquished by a regional power and disappearing from the pages of history. That they did not do so was due to their faith in God and also the memory of their previous exile in Egypt. They maintained their identity in Babylon by seeing themselves as being in exile from their homeland. They showed loyalty and service to the Babylonian state but insisted on maintaining their religious identity, not intermarrying and above all maintaining their faith that God would deliver them and bring them back to their homeland. What was even more important was that they came to a startling new understanding of their relationship with God; being faithful to God did not depend on having a temple, or a king, or occupying a particular piece of land. It depended, rather, on inner loyalty to the covenant established between God and the people of Israel. They would not eat pork or work on the Sabbath (the seventh day of the week in the Jewish calendar, which God had commanded as a rest day); they would circumcise their male children; and they would obey the Torah (the first five books of what Christians regard as the Hebrew Scriptures). Above all they would not worship other gods, and the Hebrew Scriptures tell stories of the incredible bravery of people going to hideous deaths rather than break God’s commands. The startling and new idea that it was loyalty to the covenant with God, and to God’s commands, that was of central importance rather than worship in a particular building eventually made it possible for Jewish communities to flourish in any society, maintaining their identity and religious practices and yet otherwise being loyal to the state.

      Eventually, after many years in Babylon, the Israelites were allowed to return and immediately started building the walls around Jerusalem and also rebuilding the Temple. In spite of their realisation whilst in Babylon that land and Temple were not essential, these ideas were, and are, deeply rooted in the Jewish psyche and returning to their homeland was a powerful symbol. In the centuries that followed, the armies of a number of empires swept over the small land of Palestine, and Israel did not regain full independence although still the dream remained. The conquering armies tried many ways to stamp out and destroy Jewish practices, identity and worship but none of them succeeded. Jewish armies were raised and destroyed and the inexorable forces of the mightiest armies of the world crushed whatever military power Israel managed to assemble. In the process tens of thousands of young men from Israel died convinced that they were fighting for their God and that God would deliver them. All these empires had conquered, destroyed and absorbed many local peoples but the identity of the people of Israel remained intact. The latest empire to control Palestine was that of Rome and it was, therefore, under the control of the Roman imperial power when Jesus was growing up.

      In the time of Jesus there were Zealots who dreamed of freedom from Rome and establishing a new, independent kingdom of Israel. They looked back to the great glory days of King David and believed that God would be on their side in an attempt to drive out the Roman occupying power. It was a foolish dream but similar foolish dreams had come to fruition before and many Jews, either secretly or not, thought back to the old days. They resented the presence of the Romans as a heathen occupying power and thought that a great leader might emerge, a new Messiah, a ‘son of David’ (their greatest king and military leader) or saviour of the people who would be a mighty warrior and would lead the people of Israel to independence in their own country.

      Jesus, then, grew up with all these folk memories, with knowledge of the history of Israel, within a society confident in its superiority as a people chosen by God but also oppressed and powerless on the periphery of a great empire. It may seem strange to start a book on understanding Christianity with so much attention to the history of the Jewish people, but Jesus was a Jew and all Jesus’ initial followers were Jews. The Hebrew Scriptures and the story of ‘salvation history’ – God working God’s purposes out throughout the history of the Jewish people, culminating in the incarnation of Jesus – are central to any real understanding of the nature of Christianity. Jesus is held to be the hinge of history, the fulcrum point on which world history turns, since Christians believe that it is in Jesus that God fully reveals God’s self to human beings, it is in Jesus that all people are opened to the love and forgiveness of God, and it is in Jesus that God becomes incarnate and comes to earth in human form.

       THREE

       The Life of Jesus

      Recounting the ‘Life of Jesus’ is far from straightforward and takes us to the heart of the difficulty in trying to give an account of ‘What is Christianity?’ today. There are four Gospels in the Christian New Testament (the word ‘gospel’ means good news). They are named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and for more than 1,500 years Christians believed that these were the names of the authors of the different Gospels. Today, as we shall discover, this is seen to be highly problematic.

      The Gospels include various accounts; there are accounts of Jesus’ birth; a few stories of events immediately following His birth; records of His ministry and death; and one description of an event when He would have been about twelve years old. However, Christians are divided as to the status to give to these narratives. Some would insist that they are literally true (even though there are differences between them) and others would see them as conveying central truths about Jesus but also making significant theological points, whilst still others maintain that there is very little that we can know for certain about Jesus’ life. There is a wide diversity of views.

      Whilst there may be disagreement among Christians about the details of Jesus’ life, there is almost no doubt at all among historians that He existed. The evidence in favour of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is actually much