Historical Jesus project

by Susan Polege

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Is religion based on literal historical fact or on metaphors?

Our culture makes us ask this question. If we were not so concerned after the Enlightenment with deconstructionism, with dissecting everything, we would not ask why religion has fact and myth, history and metaphor. I think we could just accept the beauty of both and holistically deal with what the religion is about. But we are concerned about the literal truth of Bible stories, especially with the Gospels, stories of Jesus’ life. Something in our cynical nature makes us ask if we believe in the right thing, if our beliefs are based on truth and reality.

Well, this whole debate goes into the eternal question “What is truth?” I’m not a philosophy major, and I hold the opinion that there are different kinds of truth, and religious myth can be one type of truth.

The origin of religions are based on literal historical fact, but the early followers of the religion have a lot of important work to do to lay ground rules and interpret the literal historical fact. Rarely does fact have as much poetic beauty as more developed religions have. That poetic nature comes from the metaphors that people create. This adds to the religious myth and creates a narrative that has a life of its own, though it can be integrally related to the original historical facts.

Borg depends heavily on metaphors to make sense of Christianity in our contemporary times. Shorto also talks about how ancient religious metaphors were stretched when the Jesus' followers needed to interpret the death of Jesus had to with religious significance.