My article for this week's newspapers answers a question about the details of the stories of Jesus' birth:
Q: How accurate is the Christmas
story that we hear read and see performed in churches around this time of
year? Does the Bible say anything else
about the events of Jesus’ birth?
The Bible offers a surprisingly small
amount of information regarding Jesus’ birth, preferring to devote more
attention to the crucifixion and resurrection than to the birth stories. Mark simply quotes three Old Testament
prophesies, then moves directly to talking about Jesus as an adult. Rather than telling a birth story, John
provides a chapter-long theological discourse about the fact that Jesus is True
God in human flesh.
Matthew provides some information on
the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ conception, along with telling the story
of the Three Wise Men (which, contrary to popular art, probably occurred well
after Jesus’ birth) and the family’s escape to Egypt to flee from murderous
King Herod, but he only casually mentions Jesus actual birth in less than a
half-sentence.
Luke’s Gospel stands out in its
detailed description regarding the events of Jesus’ birth, and thus, is the
source for our well-known version of the Christmas story. It also stands out for its reliability,
because, while we honor all of the Bible as accurate and true, we can have a
particularly high degree of confidence in Luke’s historical account, because he
would have obtained it by interviewing Mary herself – as he mentions when he
lays out his method of collecting the historical facts in the first verses of
His Gospel.
However, much like when a book is
made into a movie, things often become distorted; our perception of the birth story
often tends to differ from the version actually authored by St. Luke.
An excellent example of this is the
way we often think of the “inn” in Luke’s story, as we imagine an inn-keeper (a
common Christmas pageant character who isn’t actually mentioned in the story)
stoically turning away Jesus’ mother and Joseph because there was no place to stay. Instead, though, the “inn” mentioned in
English translations of the story is not what we would think of. Instead of an establishment that commercially
rents rooms to several travelers, the word Luke records indicates the
second-story guestroom of a private home – the same sort of room Jesus would
use later in life when He gathered with His disciples for the Passover the
night before He was crucified.
Similarly, the place where Jesus was
born was not a barn, stable, or cave as popular imagination would suggest. Instead, homes in that part of the world at
that point in history were typically composed of 3 rooms – the main room where
the family would cook, eat, and spend the night, the guest room mentioned previously,
and a third room, often a half-story lower than the rest that would be used for
living space during the day and a shelter for the family’s animals during the
night. Because the guestroom was already
taken, this unnamed family would have tied up the animals outdoors and allowed
Mary and Joseph to lodge in this room, where Jesus would be born, and the
manger that is mentioned would be a ledge dug out between the home’s main room
and the lower room where Mary and Joseph would have been staying.
It is highly unlikely that the real
events included an overwhelmed Joseph alone with his wife in inadequate shelter
as she goes into labor promptly upon arriving in town. Instead, from what we know of the customs of
the time and Luke’s text, Joseph and Mary probably arrived as much as two weeks
prior to Jesus birth, found lodging with a relative of Joseph or another
citizen who was willing to treat Joseph well because of his royal heritage as a
direct descendant of David, and the women of the household and their neighbors –
common people like the Luke’s shepherds and their wives - likely assisted Mary
with Jesus’ birth.
Those shepherds would come back from
the fields to worship Jesus at the angels’ invitation, Jesus would have been
circumcised on his 8th day of life, and they would then travel to the
temple for His presentation and Mary’s purification from childbirth when He was
40 days old before returning home to Nazareth.
Information in this article was summarized from the interview with Ken Bailey found at:
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