By Douglas Anele

For a nonreligious columnist like me, faith-based celebrations like Easter, id el malud, Christmas and so on provide a good opportunity for interrogating the fundamentals of religious worship.

Given that Nigerians are among the most religion-intoxicated people on earth, and also that religion as practiced in Nigeria leads to anxiety, stunted spiritual growth, self-abnegation and psychosis, it is very important to do a periodic audit of the basic pillars of faith.

Now, because of my critical stance on religion, especially Christianity, I have received, and continue to receive, very insulting mails from mentally disorganised Christian fundamentalists, some even threatening to invite law enforcement agencies to arrest me for expressing my candid views on the subject.

Of course, my action is in line with Section 39 of the 1999 Constitution which explicitly provides for “freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference.”

More importantly, I consider it extremely important to challenge the increasing domination of the mind-set of our people by religious superstition at a period in world history when serious countries are harnessing the technological spin-offs of scientific knowledge for national development and wealth creation.

It is indeed disappointing that sometimes newspaper editors refuse to publish well-written essays critical of religion, either because of reprisal attacks by religious terrorists or because such essays contain sound arguments damaging to the tenets of their religion.

Inasmuch as I acknowledge the existential threats posed by religious zealots and the need not to offend the religious sensitivities of others, it is absolutely necessary to express well-reasoned opinions based on truth by highlighting the dangers of unquestioning acceptance of doctrines not backed by evidence in the name of faith.

Anyway, in spite of threats together with silly and uncouth responses to my critique of religion, I will not be intimidated or forced to recant my views. On the contrary, when fanatics write incoherent derogatory mails to me, I feel a greater motivation to continue and improve upon what I am doing, in the firm conviction that reason and tolerance will prevail over superstition and intolerance.

Religious fundamentalists must learn to be tolerant of opinions different from theirs, and cultivate the habit of scientific reasonableness in addressing issues concerning religion. That said, the following discussion focuses sharply on Easter, which commemorates the alleged trial, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, purported founder of Christianity.

The significance of Easter in Christianity derives from the fact that it sign-posts the rationale for belief in the redeeming character of Christ’s mission on earth and the uniqueness which believers attach to his life in world history.

According to the biblical point of view, God, right from the very beginning, singled out a Jew, the man Jesus, to carrythe burden of redeeming humankind from sin and eternal damnation by dying on the cross.Hence, in Christian eschatology, Jesus of Nazareth occupies an unprecedented position in humanity’s quest for reconciliation with god.

The very bold and extremely tantalising view that, out of all the peoples in the world a Jew was chosen by the almighty to die a brutal death and resurrect on the third day to save humanity as a whole is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of human conceit and self-delusion.

For it is not possible, except on the basis of blind faith, to justify the belief that a supposedly omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent deity would not only be so parochial as to have a “chosen people” but also would permit his son to die in disgrace and resurrect afterwards just to atone for sin. Why should God choose such a circuitous route when he could simply have forgiven our sins and left the issue at that?

More pointedly, is the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus a historical event or a variant of the myth prevalent in Mediterranean cultures that for the redemption of humankind a god or a son of god must die and rise up from death? To answer these and related questions, let us refer to what some scholars have written on the biblical narratives pertaining to Jesus.

At the outset, we must bear in mind that The Holy Bible is not a historical document. Thus, it is not surprising that if we rely on historical sources, there is no evidence that the man, Jesus, actually lived. This point is well known to scholars of the New Testament, but ninety-nine point nine percent of Christians do not know it.

In the Misery of  Christianity, Joachim Kahl, a former protestant pastor, frankly proclaimed that, on the question of whether Jesus actually existed “we just do not know.” Similarly Alfred Reynolds avers, in Jesus versus Christianity, that the New Testament “cannot be regarded as a historical record since the extant copies were written by believers, in foreign countries and in Greek, over almost a hundred years after the events they describe.” Bertrand Russell also argues in the same direction.

In one of his well-known books, Why I am not a Christian, he submits that “historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ existed at all, and if he did we do not know anything about him.” All this implies that if we are to make any headway in our inquiry, we must suspend scepticism about the historicity of Jesus and take the Gospels’ narratives as they stand.

But even at that, we are still faced with a formidable problem, that is, the problem of reconciling conflicting accounts of the trial, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus in the Gospels. Several commentators have documented the discrepancies I am referring to. For instance, J.D. Shams’ Where Did Jesus Die? contains a detailed account of the contradictory stories in the Gospels connected to events shortly before, during, and after the purported death and resurrection of Jesus which really questions the veracity of the narratives.

Indeed, the Gospels disagree on basic issues such as the betrayer of Jesus and his accomplices, the manner in which Jesus was arrested, the bearer of the cross and the inscription on it, the time Jesus was crucified, how Jesus died and his last comments, and on events connected with his resurrection and ascension.

Logically speaking, it is quite possible that the events around which the Gospels’ narratives were woven actually did not take place or that the stories are so garbled that it is impossible to separate fiction from fact. Some scholars believe that the story of Jesus in The Holy Bible is an accretion of legends popular in Mediterranean communities in the dying years of the Roman Empire. We shall explore that intriguing possibility in the concluding part of our discourse.