Loads of people love Christmas but think that the Christmas story found in the Bible is just some sort of holy fairy tale. But is it? Was it written as a historical fact or was it written as a just a story. For the purposes of this conversation I'll focus on the book of Luke because it's Luke's gospel that many people use as the basis for the Christmas story.

Luke was from Antioch, which was on a little jut of land in what is now south-central Turkey. He was highly educated and worked as a doctor. The book in the bible that he wrote and that carrys his name serves as a record of the life of Jesus.

So why would a doctor take it upon himself to write a record of the life of Jesus? At the beginning of Luke's gospel, he answers this question. He writes:

So we know that Luke was writing to a man named Theophilus who was some kind of Roman official. Like others, Theophilus had heard loads about Jesus but wanted the whole story, so Luke is commissioned to put together an account of what happened.

At this point, it's really important that we pay attention to the word Luke uses to identify his source for the information found in the book. He calls them 'eyewitnesses'. The literal Greek translation would be the 'original same-viewers'. Luke is leaving no doubt that his version of the events are not handed down from generations. He was writing about 30 years after Jesus was on the earth, well within the lifetime of people who would have been around Jesus. These people are Luke's source; the 'original same-viewers.'

From here Luke goes on to talk about the events that lead up to the birth of Jesus, including how the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, the mother of Jesus who was a virgin, and tells her that she would give birth to Jesus. And of course, forms the basis of the Christmas story many know today.

But how do we know it's true? How do we know we can trust Luke as a historian? In the late 19th Century, an athiest archaeologist named Sir William Mitchell Ramsay was determined to disprove the historical accuracy of the New Testament. Sir Ramsay was the first Professor of Classical Archaeology at Oxford University, so when it came to rating historians, this guy knew his stuff. He set off to modern day Turkey and Palestine to disprove the accuracy of the New Testament. He spent years preparing for this and was sure he was going to find some gaping holes in Luke's work. But instead, he ended up being amazed by what he saw as the historical accuracy of Luke's work. He was so struck that he later dropped his atheistic views and converted to Christianity because he was so convinced that Luke's writings, along with the other gospels and the rest of the Bible was true. Speaking about Luke, he is quoted as saying:

Anyone would admit that this is a ringing endorsement for Luke's credibility as a historian. Sir Ramsay isn't alone, there are many other archeologist and historians who hold the same view. Historians work in the field of evidence. They don't make a name for themselves going on just feelings or emotions. They search for facts. Sir Ramsay believed the evidence supporting the historical credibility of Luke's writings was overwhelming. If Sir Ramsay was right, and I believe he was, then any claim that Luke's gospel is just a story, a giant moral story, isn't being true to the evidence and it isn't being true to the author's intent.

Luke never intended for us to see Christmas as just a story. He wrote about the birth of Jesus as he heard it from the eye-witnesses. He wrote it as a historian dedicated to the accuracy of his work, not as some sort of author trying to conjur up some grand story to sell some books.

So this Christmas, when you hear the Christmas story, what position are you going to take? Are you going to dismiss what the Bible says about Jesus as just a story, a holy fairy tale. Or are you going to agree with Sir William Ramsay, the world renouned Oxford archeologist and historian who devoted his life to, at first, trying to poke holes in the historal accuracy of Luke's writing but then ended up devoting his life to supporting them and ended up following Jesus, the one who Christmas is all about?

- Rich Crosby

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