Since it's Christmas, it seemed out of place to keep talking about Isaiah. At the rate we're going, who knows if I'll live long enough to get to the New Testament? So let me just say a bit about the nativity story, for what it's worth. I don't suppose Christians will care, but just so you know . . .
There is no nativity story at all in the Gospels of Mark and John. Jesus first appears in them as an adult, before John the Baptist, and we have no idea where he came from. The stories in Matthew and Luke are almost entirely different from each other. The story we are usually told is a mashup of the two, but in fact they contain irreconcilable contradictions, which are generally ignored. Luke spends most of his first chapter on the origin of John the Baptist, who is the child of an elderly priest Zacahariah and his wife Elizabeth, who have so far been unable to conceive, until the angel Gabriel comes along and tells Zach that Elizabeth will get pregnant by a miracle. Mary gets involved when the angel tells her she will get pregnant from the Holy Spirit, and to go visit her cousin Elizabeth, which she does, and stays for three months.
Luke then has the story of Caesar Augustus ordering that "all the world should be taxed," and everybody had to go to their home town to register. This never happened -- if it did there would be historical records of it and there just aren't. Anyway that's supposedly why Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem from Nazarus, and the baby ends up sleeping in a manger because there is no room at the inn. Luke also has the shepherds coming to visit them. Once Jesus is circumcised after 8 days (remember they're Jewish!) the family goes to Jerusalem to present the baby at the Temple, as was required.
Matthew tells an entirely different story. There's no census or tax, no travel to Bethlehem, no inn and no manger. Also no shepherds. There are instead Magi, however their number is unspecified. It's traditionally been given as three, because there were three gifts, but who knows? Anyway somehow they have gotten wind of the concept that Jesus is about to be born and he's going to be king of the Jews, but they make the mistake of asking around where the baby may be found, and the Roman Viceroy Herod gets wind of it. Obviously he doesn't want the Jews having any king but himself so he tries to find the baby. The magi find the baby in a house -- not an inn -- deliver their gifts, and then take off by another route so Herod won't find them. The family then flees to Egypt to escape Herod, and they stay there until Herod dies. Meanwhile Herod has all the boy babies under two years old murdered. When Herod dies, the family goes back to Judea but they're afraid to go to Bethlehem, where Herod's son might find them, so they go to Nazareth instead.
Both of these stories can't be true. Pick the one you like.
No comments:
Post a Comment