by David Frost, Telegraph
Much of the story of Jesus is historical fact. As for the Resurrection, that’s for each of us to decide on
Is the Easter story becoming a myth? You might well think so, if we judge by the recent English Heritage booklet for children, which asserts that “Easter started as a celebration of spring” for “honouring the goddess Eostre”.
It’s not difficult to find similar material. Walking through the Canary Wharf shopping centre last weekend, I found the “Easter Tree of Life”, a “place for reflection and gratitude” where you can “add a leaf to the branches sharing your future wishes [or] cherished memories”.
I don’t want to be too critical of the Canary Wharf authorities. The signage does at least go on to claim “trees have a deep symbolic meaning in Christian scripture … associated with the Easter story of Jesus dying on a wooden cross and rising to new life”.
But, even if they are indeed familiar with the Dream of the Rood, the Anglo-Saxon poem in the voice of a tree which would be cut down and used to crucify Jesus, in truth trees on which messages are hung are more commonly associated with folklore or paganism. The “Tree of Life” comes from Norse mythology. And the fact is that the symbol of Christianity is a cross not a tree.
Yes, these are just anecdotes, but they testify to an underlying reality: a society which is increasingly unfamiliar with Christianity and so doesn’t find such curious messaging as jarring as once it might have.
A 2020 YouGov poll shows that only two thirds of the country are confident Jesus was even an actual historical figure. A 2017 poll says that only just over half of Britons associate Jesus with Easter.
In this environment it’s easy to see how the account of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection becomes just another “story”, more myth than history, helpful if it helps you, but no better founded than any other belief.
Yet Christianity is above all a religion which is based on a defined historical reality. You don’t have to accept Christianity’s metaphysical claims, but you do, I think, have to accept that it originates in the execution of a specific person, Jesus, a Jewish teacher, who “suffered death under Pontius Pilate” in around AD 30.