Only faith can call a halt to wild goose chase for the historical Jesus
What is supposed to be a religious festival celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ has become merely a time to relax with the family and friends, not to mention an excuse for indulging our consumerist habits, overeating and drunkenness.
But what exactly is Christmas supposed to be all about?
We all know that some of the rituals are very far from biblical: trees, men in red and white suits, mistletoe, holly and all the rest. Most of these traditions date back to the Middle Ages; others are as recent as the Victorian era.
At the same time we can be fairly sure about the rough time of Jesus’s birth. And for all we know, it really was on December 25, even if it wasn’t celebrated on that day until the middle of the fourth century when the western church wanted to replace the Roman (pagan) festival of the Unvanquished Sun.
What about the basic story of Jesus’s birth itself, though? Surely that is quite clear-cut? Certainly, those of us brought up in the Christian tradition think we know the story of the nativity almost from our mothers’ milk: angels, dreams, a virgin birth, a manger, stars, shepherds, wise men, gifts and a flight into exile.
But if you have five minutes, grab a copy of the bible off the shelf. Suddenly it all becomes a bit confusing.
For one thing, only two of the gospel writers refer to the circumstances of Jesus’s birth at all.
St Mark’s account begins with his baptism in the Sea of Galilee while John’s version of Jesus’s life opens with the word becoming flesh and moves swiftly to the wedding at Cana. Their omission of any mention of the nativity story is at least curious.
So that leads us to Matthew and Luke. You might be surprised and disappointed by how scant the story turns out to be. What’s more, Matthew and Luke don’t agree with each other on any but the most basic points — that Jesus was directly descended from King David and that his birth was in some way miraculous.
The differences between the accounts are fascinating.
The sweet and simple Christmassy side to the nativity narrative is given by Luke, while Matthew has a spoiling effect with the fear, panic and tears caused by Herod’s edict threatening with untimely extinction the life of the son of God.
It is not just a matter of tone either. In Matthew’s gospel, the holy spirit announces the impending conception to Joseph in a dream; in Luke, the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary. In Matthew, Jesus is found by the wise men from the east — two, three, four, 56, it doesn’t say — in a house, not a stable; in Luke there are no wise men.
That there were three wise men at all — not kings — has simply been inferred somewhere in the last 2,000 years from their threefold gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Luke does have some things Matthew lacks, however, such as a manger and shepherds.
Regarding the location of the actual birth, Matthew and Luke agree it was Bethlehem, but Matthew gives no reason for Joseph and Mary being there. Only Luke tells us the couple left Nazareth for Bethlehem to be taxed on the orders of Caesar Augustus.
And so it goes on. If you tell people there was no ox or ass in the stable where Jesus was born, they sometimes become quite irate, especially if they are convinced Christians. They believe in the marvellous Christmas story, and to deny the ox and ass seems tantamount to denying the whole thing.
As you have probably guessed by now, the ox and ass are not in fact mentioned in any of the gospels.
The artists painted them in, not just because Jesus lay in a manger in a stable, but on account of the words of the prophet Isaiah: “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib.”
With all these extra-evangelical elements, it is tempting to conclude that the two different nativity narratives were nailed on to the prototype Matthew and Luke, which do not refer back to them.
Furthermore, modern scholars believe, given the difficulty in reconciling the two accounts, that much of the detail is included because it was the sort of thing that seemed suitable to such an elevated subject.
Which leads to a troubling thought: what with angels, dreams, miraculous stars — not to mention a virginal conception — how do we separate out the myth from the fact, the bunk from the history?
Can we do so at all? It is not the miraculous details, however, that are the most troublesome to fit in.
There is the flight to Egypt to avoid the massacre ordered by Herod, a man much given, according to a few other sources, to murderous violence.
It is mentioned by Matthew, but Luke gives no hint that after the presentation in the temple in Jerusalem (40 days after birth) the baby Jesus faced anything more arduous than a return to Nazareth. For Jesus to come out of Egypt fitted in Matthew’s idea of him as a new Moses. It fulfilled the prophet Hosea’s words: “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.”
But doesn’t that cause its own problems? Didn’t the other children of Israel plainly define themselves and their God in opposition to Egypt?
Anyway, it is not that the child Jesus has to race into Egypt and back in time for the presentation in the temple. Herod had all children killed below the age of two, so exile could fit in later, after the wise men had come and gone.
INTRIGUINGLY, those wise men — or ‘magi’ — if they were indeed written into Matthew, it cannot have been an attempt to make the narrative more acceptable.
Early Christians, according to Geza Hermes, in his thought-provoking book, The Nativity: History and Legend, were deeply suspicious of magicians, and the magi were not helped by their connection with the ambivalent figure of Balaam, a false prophet with one eye who briefly pops up in the Old Testament with a talking donkey, then disappears.
In the increasingly difficult search for the historical Jesus the danger, Christians would argue, is that any miraculous element is automatically discounted. The ox and ass, the existence of which is likely enough but not stated by the gospels, are emblematic of the efforts of speculative biblical history. Perhaps ‘truth’, in the sense of the quest for the historical Jesus, is nothing but a wild goose chase and what is required is faith.
The devout would say it is not for us to reason why the gospels are at odds with each other.
Based on a comparative analysis alone, though, it is hard not to conclude that the nativity story is an invention that came after the rest of the New Testament had been written.
Whether that changes the true meaning of Christmas depends, of course, on what Christmas meant to you to start with.
Enjoy it anyway.
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