I love Christmas. The mood. The decorations. The music. Even that ubiquitous song by – wait – I don’t want to plant an earworm in your head! And of course the church pageants, especially the ones featuring children. It’s an inspiring story of how Almighty God was willing to become a baby in a poor family, whose mission was to save humanity. But you know I can’t leave it at that. Let’s take a closer look at this story, one of the best known but least scrutinized in the Bible.
Our earliest Christian writer is Paul. He does not give any details about Jesus’ birth other than to say “God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law” (Galatians 4:4). Paul does not explain the alternative to being born of a woman; simply materializing in adult form, perhaps? Nor does he try to explain how a divine being can be born of a human woman (see post #7, Does God Have Chromosomes?). And of course, Jesus was born into a Jewish family (“under the Law”), at a time when the Law of Moses still held sway, although Paul was going to be instrumental in changing that, at least for the Gentiles (non-Jews).
Our earliest gospel is the one ascribed to Mark, and his story starts with Jesus as an adult; nothing about his birth. Did Mark know the story of Jesus’ miraculous birth? Did he know but dismissed it, or just didn’t care? Not only does Mark not say anything about Jesus’ birth, but he portrays Jesus as going to John the Baptist like everyone else. John preached “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4). And so Jesus was baptized along with everyone else. Did Mark think Jesus was human and needed to repent and be forgiven like everyone else? It seems possible, based on what he wrote. But upon being baptized Jesus “saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon Him; and a voice came from the heavens: ‘You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.’” So Mark seems to think it was when Jesus was baptized that he officially became God’s son, not at his birth. Well, that ain’t standard Christian doctrine.
The gospels of Matthew and Luke were written a little later, and they have a different approach. They teach that Jesus was actually, quite literally, a son of God at his birth. In Matthew 1:18 we are told a young woman named Mary is betrothed to a man named Joseph but “was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit.” An angel then explains this to Joseph in a dream (a dream being the most reliable form of communication, right?). In Luke 1 it is told a bit different: the angel Gabriel appears to Mary and tells her “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and give birth to a son, and you shall name Him Jesus.” When Mary questions this he responds, ““The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; for that reason also the holy Child will be called the Son of God.” So, right from his conception Jesus is literally a son of God.
What about the gospel of John, written even later? John does not mention Jesus’ birth although he does feature Jesus’ mother Mary. He does not even mention Jesus being baptized. How does John envision Jesus being the son of God? He was always with God, and was God: read the first 18 verses. Apparently John was not concerned with the details of Jesus’ birth, or even his baptism, because he saw Jesus as existing even before the world (v. 1-3).[1] Although he was birthed into the world in some way, Jesus transcended the world. But it’s kind of hard to turn that into a Christmas pageant for the kids.
Let’s look at some details in the two birth stories we do have of Jesus. Spoiler alert: there are issues! Consider Luke’s version of the Christmas story. It actually starts with the birth of John the Baptist by Elizabeth and Zechariah. Elizabeth is supposedly infertile, so they don’t have any children. There is an amusing part where Zechariah is struck dumb for lacking faith, until he writes down the designated name of the child for an astonished crowd. Luke says Mary and Elizabeth were cousins, and that when Mary visited her Elizabeth’s child jumped in the womb. It seems strange that in utero John could recognize Jesus but later in the gospel he seems to doubt: see Luke 7:19. But let’s get to Jesus.
Luke sets the time frame:
Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all the people were on their way to register for the census, each to his own city.
Luke 2:1-3
There are two problems here. First is that Quirinius did not take charge of Syria until about 10 years after the death of Herod the Great, so that conflicts with Luke 1:5 and the Gospel of Matthew. Second is the census. Quirinius did conduct a census, but again, about ten years after Jesus’ birth. It was not instituted by Caesar Augustus and it did not involve the whole empire. Luke seems to have borrowed the idea of Quirinius’ census as a way of getting Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem, as both Luke and Matthew see it as important that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. But that leads to another problem: the main purpose of a census was for taxation, and you don’t want people wandering off to some ancient hometown; you want them to register where they work and where they will be taxed. Imagine the chaos if people in Israel were instructed to go to their ancestral home for a census. And how far back do you go? My father’s hometown? Grandfather’s? Great-great-great-grandfather’s? It makes no sense, really.
However, let me propose a possible solution. When Luke says, “each to his own city,” he simply means where one lives and works. However, this was potentially embarrassing to Joseph and Mary: she was pregnant before the marriage had been officially consummated. This would subject her to not only scorn, but according to the Mosaic Law possible execution (Deuteronomy 22). So, Joseph took the initiative to go to Bethlehem to avoid exposing the situation in Nazareth. It kind of works, but I don’t really think that is how Luke intended it. I think Luke simply used the census as a device to get them to Bethlehem for the birth, since people of Luke’s time knew that Jesus was from Nazareth and they thought the Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem. We’ll see that point in Matthew’s version also.
It is in Luke that they end up putting baby Jesus into a manger “as there was no room for them in the inn.” It does not mention a stable, or farm animals, but people assume that because a manger is a trough used for feeding animals. (In the non-canonical Proto-gospel of James it has Jesus being born in a cave.) Next a host of angels appear to some shepherds out in the fields with their flocks, so they come and worship this special baby. Eight days later Jesus is circumcised. Boy, I’d hate to be that mohel; imagine the pressure not to botch the circumcision of the Son of God! But then I suppose Jesus could have healed himself. (That suggests what could have been a funny scene: the mohel cuts off the foreskin but it instantly grows back. He cuts again; it heals back. And so on until he quits in frustration.) The Jews required a period of “purification” of 40 days after the birth (see Leviticus 12), and then they take Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to make an offering for their firstborn son. There a priest named Simeon prophesies about Jesus and an elderly prophetess named Anna “continued to speak about Him to all those who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38). So, Jesus is in the temple, in Jerusalem, and Simeon and Anna are telling people about this remarkable baby. The family then returns home to Nazareth. Remember these details as we look at Matthew’s story.
The Gospel of Matthew also wants Jesus to be born in Bethlehem but end up in Nazareth, like Luke. But he gets there in a quite different way. He starts with a genealogy of Jesus, starting with Abraham. Luke also has one, but it starts with Adam(!) and has a number of differences. One curious thing about Matthew’s list is that he concludes by pointing out the remarkable fact that “all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.” Amazing! A sign from God, for sure! Except that Matthew omits a number of generations as compared to the Old Testament record, and the last set only has thirteen, not fourteen. Matthew is trying too hard to make it appear that Jesus’ birth had some numerological significance. This is Matthew’s modus operandi: he is forcing Jesus’ story to appear to be accompanied by various divine signs and prophecies. As we shall see.
In Matthew’s story there is nothing much about Mary, other than “she was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit” (1:18). Instead, it is Joseph who is visited by an unnamed angel, in a dream, and advised of the situation so he doesn’t send her away for being pregnant by someone else. The angel says the baby’s name will be “Jesus” (not Immanuel?). Then, in typical Matthew fashion, it is said that this is the fulfillment of a prophecy from Isaiah 7:
“Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.”
Matthew 1:23 quoting from Isaiah 7:14
The problem is that Isaiah 7 has nothing to do with a future Messiah. The situation was that Ahaz king of Judah was worried about two other kings coming to attack Jerusalem. Isaiah tells him that it will not come to pass (Isaiah 7:7). As proof he goes on to say:
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive [Heb: the maiden is pregnant] and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.”
Isaiah 7:14-16
This is one of those places where I fear the translators have done us a disservice. They have translated it in light of Matthew’s interpretation. What it literally says in the Hebrew text is “Behold, the maiden is with child and will bear a son.” The original text does not specify that the woman is a virgin, and it says she is already pregnant: it is not that some virgin will conceive in the future, as in the time of Jesus. Isaiah goes on to say that while this boy is still quite young “the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.” I don’t think Isaiah was telling Ahaz that hundreds of years later something is going to happen; he’s giving him a message of hope for his own time. Matthew has co-opted this text for use as a supposed prophecy of Jesus being born of a virgin. I have heard people argue about whether the term in Isaiah means “virgin” or just “maiden,” but read the passage in context. There is nothing to suggest he was talking about some future virgin birth.
I don’t want to get too far afield, but there is another problem with this Isaiah passage. It is a message to Ahaz that he does not have to fear these two kings coming at him, even saying their land “will be deserted.” Well, if you read the account in 2nd Kings 16 it does in fact seem that Ahaz is able to rebuff these two kings (they “could not overcome him”). But if you read the story in 2nd Chronicles 28 it is quite different. Ahaz was an evil king, even sacrificing his own sons as burnt offerings, and “Therefore the Lord his God handed him over to the king of Aram; and they defeated him and carried from him a great number of captives.” (2nd Chronicles 28:5) And the other king, Pekah slays 120,000 in Judah. So, not only is Isaiah’s prophecy NOT about a future messiah, but the book of 2nd Chronicles says he got it wrong altogether!
In Matthew’s version, it says Jesus was born in Bethlehem (note no mention of Nazareth as in Luke). Then “magi from the east” arrive in Jerusalem. Magi are thought to be “wise men,” possibly astrologers, and they are looking for the one born “King of the Jews,” having seen his star in the east, and they want to worship him. Matthew does not specify where they are from, which I find frustrating. Names, please, at least? Of course, names were later invented for them, but various sects came up with various names. (Can you state the traditional names of the magi?[2]) And why do these foreigners care about the king of the Jews? Did they come to worship Herod when he was born, or when he became king? Why would they worship a king of another nation anyway? It really doesn’t make sense.
And why did they stop off in Jerusalem? Supposedly it was to ask for directions, but we find out that the star was capable of leading them right to the very house of Jesus (Matthew 2:11), so why did they need directions? Go out tonight and pick out a star overhead and see if you can figure out which house it is over. Did the star have a beam shining down to pinpoint the house? Is that where a certain politician got the idea of Jewish space lasers?
The reason for the stop in Jerusalem is so that Matthew can set up two more “fulfilled” prophecies. First, the priests in Jerusalem tell the magi that Bethlehem was prophesied to be the birthplace of the messiah. This is based on Micah 5:2. The problem I have with this is that Micah seems to be referring to one of the clans of Judah, Bethlehem Ephrathah, although it could be referring to the town of that name. However, like in the Isaiah 7 passage, this seems to be a message for the people of that day, not of Jesus’ day: this leader will in fact “deliver us from the Assyrian” (Micah 5:6). That’s not Jesus.
But here is the other set-up. Herod hears about a new King of the Jews and is alarmed. So, he tells the magi to come back and report to him once they have found the child. Now, we know from historical records that Herod was a ruthless man. I find it hard to believe that he would let the magi go off and trust them to return with this vital information. You’re telling me that he wouldn’t send at least one soldier with them, who could have easily dispatched the child once found? No, that would mess up the next part of the story. They find Jesus, in a house, not a stable. In Matthew the family lives in a house in Bethlehem; they did not come here temporarily because of a census. The magi worship him and give him their well-known gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Then they are warned by God in a dream (a dream again!) NOT to return to Herod. This turns out to be a big problem.
In the next article we’ll continue with Matthew’s version of the story…
[1] Some scholars contend that the prologue of the gospel of John was a later addition, with the original gospel starting in v. 19, but it seems to reflect what became standard doctrine about the nature of Jesus.
[2] Gaspar (or Caspar), Melchior, and Balthasar.