In the previous post we left the Magi at Jesus’ house. Eventually Herod realizes the Magi aren’t coming back. God warns Joseph, once more in a dream, which seems to be God’s main form of communication in Matthew’s story, to flee to Egypt because Herod is coming after Jesus, and so they do. This little tidbit appears to be added so that Matthew can inject yet another prophecy: “Out of Egypt did I call my son” (Hosea 11:1). Yet again, read the passage in context. The full verse says it refers to Israel, and goes on to say that this “son” sacrificed to Baal and burned incense to idols. I don’t think that meant Jesus. But Matthew pulled out that one phrase to make this appear as another fulfilled prophecy of Jesus the Messiah.
Herod sends soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the male toddlers up to two years old. This is an obvious clue that the magi are visiting about two years after the birth, not at the manger as usually portrayed. Why they waited two years to look for Jesus is not explained. Again Matthew uses this as a fulfilled prophecy, quoting from Jeremiah 31 about “Rachel weeping for her children.” And again Matthew has misrepresented what the passage actually says and means. Read the very next verse in Jeremiah (31:16): Stop weeping, because your children will return from the land of the enemy! It is a message of hope, that the children of Israel taken off in exile will return. It is not a message about a bunch of children being massacred. Matthew has again mangled a passage in his attempt to prove that Jesus is the fulfillment of ancient prophecies. The good news about this distressing episode is that there is no record anywhere outside of the Gospel of Matthew that such a massacre took place. It appears to be an invention by Matthew to accommodate another prophecy passage. If this was a true story, I would have a major problem with it. Why would God tell the magi NOT to return to Herod, knowing that would set Herod off, resulting in the Slaughter of the Innocents, as it is called? Why not warn the other families, too? How would you feel if you later found out that God had warned Joseph but not you, so that your son was killed? Thanks, God! And thanks, Joseph! Why not tell the magi to return to Herod and report to him, honestly, that Joseph had taken the family off to parts unknown? It is a part of the story that does not make sense and makes God look like a heartless heel.
When Herod dies an angel tells Joseph – you guessed it – in a dream – to return to Israel. Joseph is afraid of Herod’s son, so God – in yet another dream – advises him to move to Nazareth. This allows Matthew to throw in one more prophesy: “He shall be called a Nazarene.” I can’t pick on this prophecy for one simple reason: no one has been able to definitively figure out where he got such a prophecy. Perhaps he just made it up to suit his purposes.
I did not go into the genealogies: Matthew and Luke each have one, but they are different. I will leave you to explore that, if interested. The thing I find most curious is that they both end with Joseph, even though he supposedly was not the real father of Jesus. Luke says Mary was related to Elizabeth of the “sons of Aaron,” that is, of the tribe of Levi. So, Jesus was not really descended from the tribe of Judah, as was expected of the Messiah. But I suppose in their minds Joseph was the adoptive father, so that counts. Hey, it’s religion and theology: make it up as you go along!
If you attend a Christmas pageant or watch a movie the Matthew and Luke stories are mingled (mangled?) together as one. But they really are not compatible on a number of details. You can argue away some minor points. For example, the angel Gabriel telling Mary about her divine conception and another angel telling Joseph are not mutually exclusive. But there are some points that I think are clearly at odds with each other. In Matthew the family has a house in Bethlehem; that is their home. The only reason they leave and end up in Nazareth (after a sojourn in Egypt) is because Herod comes after them. In Luke their hometown is Nazareth and the only reason Jesus ends up being born in Bethlehem is because the census takes them there. Consider what happens after the birth. In Luke they go into Jerusalem, right under Herod’s nose. Simeon and Anna are telling people about this special baby, and Herod either doesn’t hear about it or doesn’t care. Then they return home to Nazareth. There is no sojourn in Egypt. That is quite unlike the Matthew version. I know some people have come up with creative solutions for these conflicts. Maybe Jesus was born as in Luke and they returned to their home in Nazareth, but later moved to Bethlehem and that’s when the Matthew incidents happened. But that is a new story not found in either Matthew or Luke. To me the simplest solution is to understand that neither Matthew or Luke have definitive information about the birth of Jesus, but they both want to achieve the same objective: explain how Jesus was born in Bethlehem as prophesied of the Messiah, but ended up living in Nazareth. They both accomplish this but with different scenarios.
I want to pick on one particular aspect common to both stories. Matthew does not explain how Mary found out about her surprise pregnancy or how she reacted to it. Luke goes into detail, though. She even recites a hymn, which came to be called the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). I doubt someone was there taking down her words. It appears to be fashioned after the song of Hannah, Samuel’s mother, found in 1st Samuel 2. In this song Mary appears to praise God for this wonderful event. It leads many to think that God only did this with Mary’s cooperation and consent, but the text does not actually say that. Again, Mathew is non-specific about it, but go back and read what the angel Gabriel told Mary in Luke 1:26-38. Gabriel tells her what is going to happen but never asks for her consent. But at the end Mary says, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word.” Isn’t that consent? Not really. Consider the scene. Mary is a young woman, engaged to be married. Most scholars place her as a teenager in this situation, maybe even early teens. God is on record as terrorizing and destroying those who oppose him. He tells Mary that she is going to have His baby. Is it reasonable to think that this young woman is going to stand up to Almighty God and tell Him she doesn’t want to do this? Even if she was willing to have God’s baby, this is a textbook case of sexual harassment. I would argue this is the worst, most excessive case of sexual harassment in history, given the power differential between God and Mary. Note that her initial response is to call herself His “bondslave.” Slaves do not have a choice. The hymn of praise put on Mary’s lips does not change the situation. If anything it may be evidence of Stockholm Syndrome.[1] That is a coping mechanism in which people being abused develop positive feelings toward their abusers. It seems to lessen the pain if you think positively about the relationship, but it only enables the abuser and deepens the predicament. Is God the ultimate sexual harasser? I know that sounds offensive to some (most?) people, but I think it needs to be considered in this story. Of course, maybe the virgin birth is a religious invention and not based on reality, but even then it is interesting to see how Christians so easily accept this story of sexual harassment and even frame it as a good thing, because – it’s God, after all! God gets away with an awful lot in most religions.
Okay, after that depressing idea let’s change gears.
In what sense was Jesus the son of God? Matthew and Luke say that in some way God, through the Holy Spirit, caused Mary to become pregnant. Most people assume this means God was the father and Mary the mother, but some scholars suggest this could simply mean that God intervened to open Mary’s womb to become pregnant, as He did with Sarah and Abraham begetting Isaac, Hannah and Elkanah begetting Samuel, and Elizabeth and Zechariah begetting John the Baptist. (Have you noticed that in the Bible whenever a couple is childless it is because the woman is infertile, not the man? And when they miraculously have a child it turns out to be a boy? Gee, it’s almost as if all these stories were written by men.) But this would suggest that Joseph had relations with Mary before they were officially married, and we can’t have that! Especially in Catholicism where Mary is supposed to be a perpetual virgin.
If Jesus was truly human then he must have had a full set of chromosomes. Does God have chromosomes like a human, or did He create them in order to impregnate Mary? I discuss this more fully back in post #7: Does God Have Chromosomes? If God created a set of chromosomes, in what sense is He really Jesus’ father? It would be more accurate to call Jesus the Creation of God rather than the Son of God, but that was a major controversy in the early church and would be considered heresy now.
Early theologians wrestled with this concept of Jesus being the Son of God. But, wasn’t Jesus God? Some promoted the idea of what became the Trinity: three gods yet one god. Jesus was of the substance of God and equal with God yet had His own identity apart from God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Some argued, like Tertullian[2], that it did not make sense to say that someone fathered himself; you can’t be your own father! There was an early presbyter (bishop) named Arius who held that Jesus was begotten by the Father and therefore was not equal to the Father. This controversy is what prompted the Emperor Constantine to call for the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. That council (not Constantine) decided that the correct doctrine was that Jesus was indeed of the same substance as God and therefore had equal standing with God and was co-eternal with God (rather than having a beginning). The small minority who sided with Arius were put down. Ironically, Constantine’s son and successor Constantius II sided more with the Arians, so the pendulum swung that way again temporarily, before settling back with the Council of Nicaea’s decision. Hence the Nicaean Creed continues as a doctrinal statement in many churches.
Today we have other options to consider. Some scholars, like Dr. Bart Ehrman of UNC-Chapel Hill, hold that Paul thought of Jesus as a divine being like an angel who became human by being born of a woman (Galatians 4:4). A few verses later in Galatians 4:14 Paul tells the Galatians that they “received me as an angel of God, as Jesus Christ.” Scholars tell us that in the original Greek it reads more like, “as an angel of God, such as Jesus Christ,” thus describing Jesus as an angel. In Philippians 2:7 Paul says that Jesus, rather than seeking to elevate himself to equality with God, took “the form of a bond-servant” and was “born in the likeness of men.” Therefore, Jesus was “hyper-exalted” and given a name above all names (Philippians 2:9). If Jesus was already God, how could he be exalted any higher? But this statement makes sense if Paul thought Jesus was a divine being beneath God who through his utter obedience was elevated to the right hand of God and made lord of heaven and earth.
Regardless of the difficulties of understanding the Trinity and the term “Son of God” and the obvious problems with the birth stories, most of the faithful will hold to the traditional Christmas story: Jesus was God who became a baby born into a humble family, worshipped by both lowly shepherds and foreign dignitaries, persecuted by evil King Herod, but went on to teach the word of God and eventually die on the cross for the sins of humankind, only to be raised again on the third day, in triumph over sin and death. Despite the difficulties with and conflicts between the Biblical stories, I must admit I still have a fondness for the traditional version, especially when presented by the kids. Merry Christmas!
Thinking Exercises:
1. How do you think a supernatural being would impregnate a human woman? Where did God’s set of chromosomes come from?
2. If your fiancée told you she got pregnant by a divine miracle, how would you react? Would a dream change your mind?
3. Do you think God Almighty should have discussed with Mary the lowly teenager the idea of having His baby, rather than just springing it on her?
4. Do you think the so-called Slaughter of the Innocents is plausible? If so, why do you think God considered the children of Bethlehem expendable? How would you feel if your child had been killed and you later learned that Joseph had been warned by God, but not you?
5. Do the details and difficulties and doctrines of such stories even matter to you, or do you just care about the big picture? Is it OK for us to enjoy the Christmas story without fretting the details?
[1] The name arises from a hostage situation during a bank robbery in Stockholm in 1973 in which some of the captives became sympathetic toward the bank robbers, refusing to testify against them and even aiding their defense.
[2] Tertullian, 155 – 220 CE. He also disagreed that Jesus was equivalent to God, because it was not possible for God to suffer and die.