De-Mythologizing Christmas

By Dwight Longenecker

Anyone who pursues a study of the New Testament will very soon come upon the tribe of scholars who follow the chief demythologizer, Rudolf Bultmann (d. 1976)

Bultmann did not believe the historical details of the gospels were vital for an experience of the Christian religion. Taking an existentialist approach to the faith, he argued that all that matters is the “thatness,” not the “whatness” of Jesus. In other words, it was only the fact of Jesus’ existence, his preaching and his crucifixion that mattered, not what happened throughout his life.

Consequently, Bultmann and his followers embarked on the task of “demythologization” — a project to disentangle the supernatural “mythical” elements from the gospel. The pretext was not an intrinsic antipathy to the supernatural, but the assumption that the supernatural elements of the gospel narrative were the parts most likely to have been added by later editors in order to boost the prophet of Nazareth’s divine status.

This concept must have been rooted in a distrust of any supernatural elements, as nineteenth and early twentieth century European scholarship was inevitably influenced by the rationalistic conclusions of the Enlightenment.

Bultmann’s theory could only work if another aspect of his project were true: the late dating…