Christian missionary propaganda in general and the theologies of Fulfillment, Indigenisation (or Acculturation), and Liberation in particular leave the impression as if Jesus Christ was a mighty figure who took the world by storm as soon as he appeared on the scene. Evidential Theology which tells us of miracles which are supposed to have accompanied his birth and death as well as of those reported to have been performed by him in the course of his ministry, has been one of the main weapons in the armoury of Christian missions. I remember very vividly the words of my friend, the Jesuit missionary, who tried to convert me in 1956. "Let me tell you at the very outset," he had said, "that Jesus is no mythological mumbo-jumbo like your Rama and Krishna, and even Buddha. On the contrary, he is a solid historical figure whose miracles were witnessed and vouchsafed by many contemporary people."
The historicity of Jesus Christ as described in the gospels has been for a long time one of the principal dogmas of all Christian denominations. In India where the history of the search for the Jesus of history remains unknown even to the so-called educated elite, the missionaries continue to hawk this dogma without fear of contradiction. The scene in the modern West, however, has undergone a great change. What we witness over there is that this "solid historical figure" has evaporated into thin air as a result of painstaking Biblical and Christological research undertaken over the last more than two hundred years, mostly by theologians belonging to the Protestant churches.
We need not bother about the miracles which are supposed to have accompanied the birth and death of Jesus or to have been performed by him. The subject was dealt with very aptly by Edward Gibbon who wrote towards the end of the eighteenth century. "But how shall we excuse," he had asked, "the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence not to their reason but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by many prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alteration in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least one celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness for three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca, and the elder Pliny who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Caesar, when during the greatest part of a year the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with the preternatural darkness of the passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age."1 What concerns us here is the question whether a man named Jesus in the gospels ever lived on this earth and, if so, what was he like.
1 Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Modern Library Edition, n.d., pp. 443-44.