Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men:
We honour these age-old noble values in every holiday season- and some people actually work to advance them further, all year long. Other folks, by contrast, mock at these values. They spend their days chasing after ever grander stashes of personal treasure, be it gold or expensive cars. These greedy souls- politicians, social parasites, clergy and bishops, included- love the shadow-bringing tales of plutocrats young and old.
Many folks have heard that December 25 was the birthday of Roman gods long before it was chosen to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Some people also know that our delightful mélange of Christmas festivities originated in ancient Norse, Roman and Druid traditions- or, in the case of Rudolph, on Madison Avenue. But where does the Christmas story itself come from: Jesus in the manger, the angels and wise men?
The answer is that the familiar Christmas story, including the virgin conception and birth of Jesus, is found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Scholars have pointed out that these stories are somewhat disconnected from other parts of these Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. In fact, by the time he is a young boy in the temple, Jesus’s parents seem to have forgotten the virgin birth. They are surprised by his odd behavior. There is never again any mention in the New Testament about these incredible events! These stories seem to be an afterthought, written later than the rest of the gospels that carry them. To make matters more interesting, the stories themselves have inconsistencies and ambiguities- contradictory genealogy, for example. Our Christmas story (singular) is actually a composite. Or consider the idea that Mary is a virgin. The Greek writer of Matthew quotes Isaiah as saying: “a parthenos shall conceive and bear a child.” The Hebrew word in Isaiah is “almah,” which means simply “young woman.” But the Greek word parthenos can mean either a virgin or a young woman, and it got translated as “virgin.” Modern Bible translations have corrected this, but it is a central part of the Christmas story.
That adds to the complications. If the rest of the New Testament does not refer to these stories, how did we end up with them? Where do they come from?
One part of the answer comes from Hellenistic culture. (It is no accident all New Testament books are written in Greek.) In this tradition, when a man did something extraordinary there was the assumption that he did it because he was different, either divine or at least semi-divine. They would make up a story about how he came to be divine. Almost all Greek heroes were said to be born of a human woman to a god, viz., Alexander the Great, Augustus and Pythagoras. The father typically was Zeus or Apollo. The god would come and sleep with the woman, pretending to be the husband or as a bolt of lightning, or some such. Greek mythology also shows up in the book of Genesis: the gods lusting after the women and coming down and mating with them.
But why were they added to the Christian story?
Jewish Christians, the first Christians, didn't believe in the virgin birth. They believed that Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. Part of their Christology was “adoptionism”- they thought Jesus was adopted as the unique son of God at some time later in life. There were disagreements about when: Mark suggests baptism, Paul suggests resurrection. But Matthew and Luke think that the sonship of Jesus began at birth. And they want to tell a story that reinforces this point. Matthew and Luke are the source of the Christmas story as most of us have learnt it.
Why didn’t the writers do a better job of cleaning the contradictions?
They did, to some extent. This is called the "orthodox corruption of scripture". But it appears that these birth stories were added toward the end, so scripture got frozen before they could get integrated.
I was raised with the belief that the bible was literally perfect, the “inerrant” word of God, essentially dictated by God to its writers. What you are saying about the Christmas story sure calls into question my conviction and that of many.
Which Bible? There are thousands of manuscript variations. Most biblical stories are probably fiction, not non-fiction. They are mythology in the deepest sense of the word. But we need to get beyond the issue of whether biblical reports happened in the historical, physical sense to understand what they mean spiritually and mythically.
Alright, back to Christmas. Of all the images from the Christmas story, the one that people fall in love is the angels. The Christmas story is full of angels, beings of light. Is this because of the solstice tradition?
Actually it comes from the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish scriptures that were eventually adopted into the Christian Bible as the Old Testament. It also comes from the Jewish literature written between the Old and New Testaments that didn’t get into the biblical canon. Some of these are even quoted in the New Testament, for example Enoch, from the 2nd Century BC. It’s all about angels.
The Luke story focuses on one angel specifically, Gabriel: Is he the archangel?
Gabriel is the Angel of the Lord. He is one of two angels who are named in the Jewish canon and the Christian canon outside the apocrypha: Gabriel and Michael. They are the angels of mercy and judgment. Gabriel means “Strong One of El.” He is first named in Daniel.
How about the favorite Christmas story: The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi.
The Magi are astrologers. They are Zoroastrian priests. Just to the east of the Roman Empire was the Persian Empire, which was Zoroastrian. They see this star at its rising (better translations never say it happened in the East). The astrologers paid a lot of attention to this. It is likely that what this refers to was a heliacal rising, which is the first time that a star appears over the horizon during the course of a year. They thought this was a sign of the Jewish messiah. Scholars speculate that they would have been living in Babylon, where there were lots of Jewish merchants. The Jews had been there from the time of the Jewish exile from Babylonia. We have cuneiform records from them.
Are you assuming that this story is historical?
Think of it as a frog and pond. The pond is real, the frog is not. They are fictional stories in a real setting. They don’t always get the details of the setting right, but they are fictional characters in real places. The Magi follow their star from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The author has in mind a real star that would be in front of you in this situation. It would have to be a star in the far southern sky. The star in Matthew and the angel in Luke are two variants of the same mythology.
My fundamentalist head is spinning. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
We need to be able to appreciate these stories as myths, rather than literal histories. When you understand where they come from, then you can understand their spiritual significance for the writers and for us.
Thanking you and wishing you a very happy Christmas, Alex Odikandathil.
