The Christmas Story – Part II

Continuing the Christmas story from last week’s posting, Matthew skips over the details of the birth of Jesus, but Luke gives this account of what happened:

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

We have to think about what is going on here in order to grasp the magnitude of it. Here is a 14 year old girl, maybe younger, who has never had sexual relations with a man and has just delivered a baby who, according to an angel, is the son of God. There’s no mother present to tell her what to expect during the delivery of her first child – Luke says Mary did it alone. No midwife delivered or swaddled her baby – Mary did it. Mary cut the umbilical cord – probably with her teeth. Mary cleaned her baby and disposed of the placenta. Mary wrapped the limbs of her newborn with the traditional strips of cloth and, if there was one, wrapped him in a blanket. No mention of Joseph being there. It was a lonely birth.

Then Mary placed the baby in a feed trough because there was no guest room available for them. That’s right, guest room. Translations that suggest that Mary and the baby – and probably Joseph – spent that night where they did because there was no room in an inn are translated wrong. It’s improbable that a small village like Bethlehem had an inn. More likely, the house associated with the place of the birth was that of a relative and quite possibly Mary and Joseph arrived too late to get the guest room, which other relatives who came for the census had taken. The manger or feed trough infers that the birth took place in a stable. It may have. But archeology has discovered houses in the area with caves behind them to protect and safeguard the family’s animals, so Jesus may have been born in a cave. Or it could have been a lean-to against the house that gave some protection for animals. Whatever it was, it was not clean and was intended for animals, not people, not a birth, not a newborn.

As she looked at this baby, swaddled and lying in a feed trough, we can only guess what a teenage mother would think knowing he was divine. Will he act normal? Do I nurse him? How do I raise him?

Despite his humble entry into the world, the announcement of Jesus’ birth was regal. A celestial choir of angels joined to praise God for the event. And it was fitting that the birth announcement was made to men at the absolute bottom of the Jewish social hierarchy – smelly shepherds. Shepherds were the lowest, most common unskilled peasants in first century society. Those at the top of society, the religious leaders, were not included in the divine mailing list.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Why were shepherds social outcasts? When the Hebrews first journeyed to Egypt, they were nomads. Nomads aren’t farmers. They depend on livestock herds that travel with them. But the Egyptians were farmers and detested livestock herds because they ate their crops. When the brothers of Joseph came to Egypt during a famine to buy grain, he told them “Every shepherd is detestable to the Egyptians” (Gen 46:34).

During the 400 years that the Hebrews were in Egypt, much of the time as slaves, they lost their dependency on animals and became dependent on crops. Moreover, they absorbed the prejudices of the Egyptians toward shepherds. When they left Egypt to occupy the region of Canaan, they settled the new land as farmers.

Further, shepherds were not landowners; they were hirelings who lived in the fields. Some were disreputable and stole from the flock, so that people were warned not to buy wool, milk, or a kid from a shepherd on the assumption that it was stolen. But all shepherds were tarred with the same brush.

The Mishnah, Judaism’s written record of the oral law, reveals the prejudice against shepherds, referring to them as incompetent. One Mishnah excuses a Jew from rescuing a shepherd who has fallen into a pit. A shepherd was not permitted to serve as a legal witness, assuming he would lie, but if not, he was too ignorant. They could not hold a judicial office and were deprived of basic civil rights.

To such the good news of the newborn child was first revealed.

These allegedly “ignorant” herdsmen weren’t told by the angel to go look for the one announced to them, yet they did. Leaving their flocks in the field, they said to each other that they should go to Bethlehem to see the thing the Lord – not the angels – had announced. They assumed the message had come from God, which shows they were devout and they were expectant for the Messiah.

The shepherds therefore hurried into Bethlehem and found the baby swaddled and in a manger as the angel had said. No questions asked, they left and spread the word that they had been told this child was the Messiah. The people were amazed at what the shepherds told them. What amazed them? Perhaps they were amazed at the message or perhaps they were amazed that it had been revealed first to shepherds. We don’t know. But the shepherds returned – presumably to their fields, not the manger – praising God that what they were told is what they saw. They were the first eye witnesses in a society that said they weren’t qualified to be witnesses.

On the eighth day, as Jewish law required, a newborn boy was circumcised and named and then a sacrifice was offered. Because she had given birth, Mary was ritually unclean for 40 days in the post partum period. (Seeing that she was pregnant and near delivery, the owner of the house may have invited Joseph and Mary to “take the place out back” when they first arrived instead of the guest room, which would have been defiled by a birth. The unavailability of the guest room can be explained several ways. )

Jewish law dictated what must happen following birth as found in Leviticus 12:

A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over … When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering … But if she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean.

Throughout the Old Testament, a pair of turtle-doves or of young pigeons was the substitute for people too poor to provide a lamb or kid for sacrifice. The birds would have been readily available to even the poorest because they were abundant in the wild and their substitution for a lamb was evidence of extreme poverty – the state in which Joseph and Mary no doubt lived. Because turtle doves mated for life, their fidelity was considered a symbol of purity in a sacrifice intended to restore purity.

At this juncture, the story of the Nativity stops for at least a year and maybe two. Wait! What happened to the “wise men”?

The Magi did not visit the baby in the manger as commonly portrayed on Christmas cards. There were not three of them. We don’t know the names of any of them; Balthasar, Melchior, and Caspar were inventions of the 7th century. And, no, they did not ride camels.

Luke has nothing to say about these visitors from the East but Matthew does.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

The Magi lived in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern day Iraq. They were Chaldeans so their ancient origin was near where Abraham lived before he was called by God – that is, their roots are from an area about halfway between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. Magi are referred to during the captivity of the Jews in Babylon – which became Persian captivity after the Persians overthrew the Babylonians – as reported in the Old Testament books of the prophets. Daniel the prophet was appointed the chief of the Magi (Dan 2:48.) They were physicians, philosophers, scholars, and astronomers. There is evidence that they were also astrologers, soothsayers, and magicians. In fact the word “magic” come from magi.

During the Babylonian and Persian periods of captivity, these Magi came into close contact with the Jews and their religion. They would have known the Jewish prophecies like the prophecy that "there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel" (Num 24:17), the herald of a king.

In addition to their scientific and scholarly skills they also possessed political power. Their duties included the choice and election of the king, which is one reason Herod was so disturbed when they entered his kingdom. Persia and Babylon were part of the Parthian Empire at this time, the second most powerful empire in the world – second only to Rome. The Pathians and Romans had fought many battles, and Palestine conveniently served as a buffer state between them.

If the Magi who came to honor the young child Jesus began their journey from Babylon, which is to the east in Iraq, they would have to cover a distance of 550 miles as the crow flies. It would have been impossible to take a direct route due to topography and the need to provision the number of people in their group. If they came from Persia – farther east in modern day Iran – their journey would have had to cover an even greater distance. In other words, it would have taken many months if not a year or so to get to Bethlehem once they started – whenever that happened.

Therefore, the Magi didn’t show up while Jesus was in a manger. In fact, Matthew says “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.” Note that when the Magi’s visited, Joseph and Mary were temporarily living in a house and Jesus was no longer referred to as a baby but as a child.

Their gifts of honor were three in number. That doesn’t mean there were three visitors. The fact that these Parthians were crossing into enemy territory – the Roman province of Palestine – surely suggests that there would have been enough men to defend themselves from the hazards of the journey and the potential conflict with the Romans. Perhaps hundreds if not thousands were in their company. The Parthians were noted for their cavalry, so it’s most probable than their company arrived on horseback.

The sudden appearance of the Magi in Jerusalem, traveling as an armed force heralded by oriental pomp and flanked by enough cavalry troops to assure safe passage through Roman territory, certainly alarmed Herod and the populace of Jerusalem. As Matthew reports it, the Magi began asking around about a new king in a country ruled by a paranoid king with a history of killing any threat to his throne.

“Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.

The Magi were astronomers who knew the sky, and they were astrologists who interpreted signs in the heavens as indicators of events on earth. Astrology, however, was abhorrent to the Jews and no Jew was allowed to practice it. So when these star gazers showed up asking about a new king who has a star, Herod, a half-Jew, had to call the chief priests and teachers among the Jews in order to know what they were talking about.

“In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler  who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

The Magi were only five miles from their destination.

Herod was ill and near the end of his life when these events occurred, but even so, he had to have decided that there was only room for one king is this town. Therefore,

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.  He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

We don’t know when the Magi first saw the star. Nothing compels that it appeared as soon as Jesus was born or that they came in haste upon seeing it. But we do know that when the Magi failed to return and tell Herod where they found Jesus, he ordered the killing of all baby boys who were two years old and younger. That implies that between the time of the Magi’s first star sighting and the slaughter of these children as much as two years could have passed so Jesus could have been one or two years old at the time of their visit.

The star that the Magi followed is inexplicable. In an effort to give it a natural explanation, commentators have looked at celestial history and theorized that it was a super nova, a conjunction of planets, a comet, or some other explanation. However, those who believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, announced by angels, and saved from assassination by God speaking through dreams will have no problem in accepting a miraculous star which behaved like no other star. And if it was a miracle, no record of it would be found in the astronomical record of historic celestial events.

And the Magi … why did they cross hundreds of miles of desert and mountainous terrain to bow down and worship a child in an obscure village in Palestine?

Why did Joseph and Mary, instead of returning home to Nazareth following the birth, tarry for one or two years in Bethlehem before being forced to flee to Egypt after the Magi’s visit?

Everything has a purpose with God including the visit of the Magi. We can logically assume this much. The Magi knew Jewish prophecy from their contact with the Jews and their prophets and therefore knew that a Messiah would come. The star was intended for them – no one else saw it – and it was given to the Magi as a sign from God. (There is no mention that the shepherds, who surely knew the stars, saw this one.) The Magi were Gentiles. These were also devout. When they saw the child Jesus, these powerful king-makers bowed down in worship and gave him costly gifts – a sign of submission and honor in the East.

Moreover, Luke’s account of the Nativity tells that a righteous man, Simeon, had been assured he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. When Joseph and Mary brought Jesus to the Temple to be dedicated as Jewish law required, Simeon took the baby in his arms and said,

Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.

Just as the Messiah’s coming was announced by the angels to the shepherds as the first representatives of the Jewish nation, it was announced by the star to the Magi as the first representatives of the Gentile nations so that both might be eye witnesses that salvation had come.

That is the reason for the Magi’s visit.

The Christmas Story – Part I

Have you ever wondered why Jesus was born when he was? Why not 50 years earlier? Or 100 years later?

The apostle Paul gives the answer in the New Testament Letter to the Galatians. There he wrote “when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son.” (Gal. 4:4). In today’s vernacular we would say, “At the right time, God sent forth his son.” In other words, God was acting in accordance with a plan.

So, what made that particular night over 2,000 years ago the “right” time?

Our search for an answer would begin in the prophecies of Daniel who lived 600 years before Christ when the Hebrews were captive in the Babylonian Empire. The Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, had a dream about the future which troubled him. He called for Daniel to tell him what it meant and Daniel’s interpretation placed “the right time” in the Roman era – a period that lasted 700 years. That’s too large a time span to be more than generally helpful.

However, several significant historic variables help narrow the focus. One historic variable was the preparation of the Jews for the Messiah. Their preparation began during the Babylonian captivity. Before it they were promiscuously idolatrous; after it they were monotheistic and returned as a nation to God and his prophetic promises. A second variable was the consolidation of the Old Testament canon for the first time into one volume. This was done by Ezra, a Jewish priest, and made it easier for the Jews to trace the thread of prophecies about the coming Messiah. A third variable was the development of the Jewish synagogue system. Since the captive Jews were separated from their Temple in Jerusalem, the synagogue network gave them community-based places to worship while in captivity and this synagogue system would later facilitate the spread of the gospel throughout the world where Jews had settled.

All of these developments made it possible for the gospel of Jesus to be proclaimed to the Jews.

A forth historic variable made it possible for the gospel to be proclaimed to the Gentiles. This important development was the rise of the Greek hegemony and the collapse of the Persian Empire as Daniel had foretold. Beginning in 350 BC, and ultimately continued under Alexander the Great, the civilized world was conquered by the Macedonian Greeks. The Greek language became the lingua franca, and continued so even under the later Roman Empire. Therefore converts to the gospel of Jesus would one day travel the Roman Empire from end to end and find people speaking a common language, making it easier to spread the teachings of Jesus. Today thirteen languages have replaced the universal Greek once spoken in the geographic area of the old Roman Empire. Beginning in the third century BC, the community of scholars living around the great library of Alexandria in Egypt produced the Septuagint – a Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrew scripture – making it possible for the Greek-speaking world to read Ezra’s canon and its prophecies.

The Roman Republic began hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus. Its power grew, and with the death of Alexander and the division of his land conquests among his generals, Rome eventually replaced the Greeks as the leading world power. Internal civil wars, however, eroded the Republic and the leadership of the Roman Senate. The solution was to appoint Julius Caesar as a perpetual dictator. He was assassinated in 44 BC and replaced in 27 BC by his nephew and heir, Octavius, who took the title Caesar Augustus – the Roman ruler at the time of Jesus’ birth. Octavius Caesar Augustus is credited with the creation of “pax romana” or Roman peace – a period of 150 years during which there was no war in the Empire. Pax romana was the fifth historic variable. It would enable the message of Jesus to spread and flourish in a world suspended of strife.

Roman world conquest, as harsh as it was, suppressed chaos and produced world peace, commerce, and prosperity for the period between 28 BC and 180 AD.  A postal system was instituted, allowing the Empire to communicate throughout its extent, and a road system allowed widespread travel on foot. Roman legions suppressed brigands and rogues who would threaten the safety of travelers. The dissemination of a new ideology over Roman roads was thus made unprecedentedly easy. Over these roads traveled a pregnant teenager and her husband to return to their hometown to be counted in a census ordered by Caesar Augustus. When Mary’s birth pains began, that journey would place them in the town where prophecy said Jesus would be born.

Could all of these historic variables have lined up favorably over six centuries by extraordinary coincidence? To believe so takes more faith than to believe that they occurred as part of a plan. In retrospect, we can now see a line from Eden to Bethlehem when the “fullness of time” was complete and the Messiah came. All of the pieces were finally in place.

Under Hebrew law a girl in ancient Jewish society 2,000 years ago could be married as early as 12 years of age plus one day, and the rabbis taught that a father should betroth his daughter to his slave rather than keep her unbetrothed beyond puberty.  Thus a girl would be married around 14 or earlier, although she would begin the relationship with her future husband in the state of betrothal. Betrothal was a one-year pre-marriage period in which the bride continued to live at home, although the period could be shorter than a year. Its objective seems to have been to provide time before marriage to prove she wasn’t pregnant, which several months would sufficiently demonstrate.

In Mary’s case, she was pregnant. Her conception was not the consequence of intercourse with a man, but as the Bible reports in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the consequence of the intervention of the Holy Spirit. That this divine pregnancy would happen had been told to her by an angel, but because she was a virgin and still living in her father’s house, the angelic announcement was incomprehensible to her.

Mary was greatly troubled at [the angel’s] words … “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The divine impregnation of a virgin was clearly miraculous and had been prophesied more than 700 years earlier by Isaiah:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)

In fact, the first clue that Jesus would come by virgin birth was hinted at the beginning of time in the Garden of Eden when God placed this curse on Satan:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15)

The reference to “her seed” is extraordinary, since a child is the seed of the father. The implication of “her seed” is that no man would be involved. The coming conqueror foretold here would receive a bruised heel – not a mortal wound – but he would inflict a mortal wound – a bruised head – ending Satan’s reign. The bruised heel signifies the future death on the cross – an apparent defeat which was not a defeat because of the resurrection.

Yet before Joseph and Mary had begun to live as husband and wife, he discovered her pregnancy. This presented a serious problem to the young husband who couldn’t have been more than a teenager himself. Mary was apparently guilty of adultery and the punishment was death by stoning. But Joseph, the Bible tells us, was a fair man and decided that he would not put her on trial for her life but would instead “put her away quietly” – i.e. give her an unpublicized divorce.

Still, Mary’s untimely pregnancy apparently hadn’t escaped notice in the neighborhood. Rumors have circulated to the present time that the real father of Jesus was one of the ubiquitous Roman soldiers stationed throughout Palestine. These assertions are easily discredited, but even the New Testament reports an incident which could be interpreted as a slander on the legitimacy of Jesus’ birth. It involved one of his many collisions with the Jewish establishment during his ministry. The Jewish leaders took offense with him and their accusation suggests knowledge of the rumor that he was a bastard.

Then they said to Jesus, “We were not born as a result of immorality! We have only one Father, God himself.” (John 8:37-41)

Joseph’s concerns about the fidelity of his wife are assuaged when an angel appears in a dream and tells him that Mary is carrying the child of the Holy Spirit and he should take her as his wife, which, awakening from the dream, he does immediately. Remarkably, not one word of Joseph’s is recorded in scripture, but when he is told to do something, he does it promptly.

Matthew tells us that Joseph “did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son.” But there is no biblical evidence that they did not live as husband and wife thereafter and in fact Matthew and Mark give the names of younger brothers: James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3.) James was the brother who never believed Jesus was the son of God until after the resurrection when Jesus appeared to him.

A Roman edict interrupts the life of the young couple while Mary is pregnant.

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.

Since Joseph and Mary were descendents of David, they were required to travel 85 miles from their home in Nazareth by foot or donkey to journey to the home of their ancestor David and be counted. There Mary’s baby would be born, fulfilling another ancient prophecy:

Bethlehem, you are one of the smallest towns in the nation of Judah. But the Lord will choose one of your people to rule the nation – someone whose family goes back to ancient times. (Micah 5:2)

When the wise men come from the East, Micah’s prophecy will help them locate Jesus.

Caesar Augustus didn't know anything about Micah. Or the Old Testament or God. One of his accomplishments was the reform of the tax system and maybe the census was part of that. The census and Luke’s clue that Quirinius was governor of Syria helps pinpoint a time span when all of this took place.

Matthew’s account of the nativity tells us that Jesus was born when Herod was King. If reckoned by today’s calendar, Herod died in Jericho in the spring of 4 BC so the birth of Jesus would have had to occur before that. Yet Josephus, a first century Jewish historian, puts the census in the period of 7 BC to 6 BC. Reconciling Luke’s dating with Matthew’s has created a cottage industry of disputants, but suffice it to say that Jesus was likely not born on the first day of the first century – the date on which subsequent calendars are anchored.

Moreover, it’s unlikely that Jesus was born on December 25. The date of Jesus’ birth was not celebrated as a tradition for centuries and no tradition linking Christmas to December 25 can be traced back before the time of Constantine. The date was likely an invention of the fourth century – possibly to compete with the pagan holiday of Saturnalia, the worship of the sun god, which was celebrated on December 25.

Luke’s account of the nativity says that angels appeared to shepherds keeping watch over their sheep nearby. Bethlehem is about five miles southwest of Jerusalem at an elevation of about 2,300 above sea level – about 100 feet higher in elevation than Jerusalem. It’s unlikely that sheep would have been in the fields after about October due to night temperatures, although some say these could have been Temple sheep which remained in the fields year around. It’s unlikely that they were since the Temple was five miles away. The most likely time for shepherds to be in the fields with sheep after October would be springtime.

It’s unlikely that Jesus’ birth would occur on a random date. Since his coming happened in “the fullness of time,” God would have chosen a significant day in the Jewish year, and the most likely prospect would be a feast day, if not Passover, which comes in April. When we consider that he died on Passover, rose on the Feast of the First Fruits, created his church on the Festival of Weeks, also called Pentacost, the celebration of the giving of the law to Moses at Mount Sinai, it’s hard to argue that Jesus would be born on a day that had no significance in the Jewish calendar. While no scholar has given compelling evidence for a date, there is compelling evidence that it wasn’t December 25.

The Christmas Story is a long blog so I’m going to break it here and continue it next week. I hope you’ll read the rest of the story and have a very merry Christmas celebration!