This is in response to an Israpundit posting by Ted Belman regarding questions about the Nativity.
The biggest problem with Christianity has always been the existance of traditions that don't necessarily spring from a straightforward reading of the texts: A black Evangelical preacher by the name of Dr. K.C. Price always runs a series of sermons every Christmas Season debunking or clarifying some of the traditions surrounding Christmas. He points out that the terms used with reference to Jesus Christ are very age specific.
For instance, Luke uses a term specific to a newborn infant. Indeed, all the action that's Christmas related in his gospel happen from the appearing of the Angel to Zecharias in the temple, to about 40 days after Jesus' birth, including the manger, the annunciation of the birth to the shepherds, the circumcision of Jesus, and the visit to the Temple to purify Mary (Lev. 12). During the visit, Simon and Anna testify that the child is the promised Messiah, and start spreading the news. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus then return to Nazareth.
Matthew, on the other hand, uses a term analogous to "toddler". When the Magi visit, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus are in Bethlehem, in a house, and Jesus is a toddler. After the Magi leave, Joseph is told in a dream to flee to Egypt and stay there until Herod dies. When Herod gives orders to slay all the children of Bethlehem, he specifies all the children "two years old and under". Makes sense if Jesus is a toddler, and neither Herod nor the Magi know if the star pre-heralded the coming of Jesus, meaning that he was recently born, or the star appeared WHEN Jesus was born, and it took all of two years for the Magi to see the star, figure out what was portended, get their act together, and make the trip. Thus, the command to slay the children two years old and under.
So, where does the supposed confusion lie? Mr. Balmer quotes from James Carroll thusly (emphasis added):
But the Gospel of Luke says that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem from their home in Nazareth to comply with the empire-wide census order of the Caesar Augustus, and some such decree is thought to have been issued after Herod died, perhaps as late as AD 6.
Umm, read that bolded section again:
and some such decree is thought to have been issued after Herod died, perhaps as late as AD 6.
Heh, I've been in academia enough to know the ropes AND the lingo: "some such decree", "thought to have been", and "perhaps as late as" is code for "we haven't got a document or reference or anything substantial to nail down what or when, so we'll substitute our learned opinion." Not surprisingly, that "learned opinion", creates a "contradiction" within a document that makes extraordinary claims that said "learned" individuals want debunked. As it is, they haven't a thing to REALLY hang their hats on.
The problem, of course, is tradition: Everyone thinks that the scene at the Manger was similar to Grand Central Station, with the Shepherds coming in first and beating out the Learned Wise Men, as if to show that the Common Man still sometimes has the edge on the Educated Elite. Nice, but neither the language nor the text bears this out. Nevertheless, we still do nativities, live and still, which perpetuate the error that the Shepherds and the Magi may have passed each other in the night, if not arriving on the scene at the same time.
So, how to reconcile the two accounts? While raking the leaves and pondering my response to Ted's post, I came up with the following:
Luke's account is the earlier account, and thus takes precedence. The accounts about Zecharias, Simon, and Anna are true, implying that the Jewish people have been given notice by trustworthy and pious individuals of the actual coming of the Messiah, one of whom is both a Priest and relative of the Promised One. John the Baptist, by being born in a way that reminds people of the miracle of Issac's birth to people stricken in years, gets and continues to hold the world record for being the youngest person to start on his job as Herald of the Messiah.
What does Joseph think of all this? He just sticks around long enough to get Mary purified and both strong enough to make the trip back to Nazareth: The man's a carpenter and a practical man: He doesn't really believe all this stuff about angels and annunciations and visions and proclamations about messiahs from old folks pining for a return to the good old days.
Luke's gap starts here. Matthew doesn't note the gap, just the fact that Jesus was born in Bethlehem when the Magi come on the scene. The implication that they STAYED in Bethlehem is just that, an implication. Both accounts agree: Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Just because Matthew doesn't note Luke's account doesn't mean it didn't happen. It just means Matthew didn't think it needed to be mentioned. After all, neither Mark nor John mention any of these incidents, so we're supposed to believe that they never happened? No. It just meant that they decided not to mention them.
Editorial perogative. You see, silence is not contradiction. Just because someone says "A", the fact that another does not say ANYTHING about "A" does not mean that that other person DID say "Not A". A biography of Lincoln would be remiss if it did not mention his birth or youth, but a history of the Civil War could safely leave it out and confidently start with the 1860 election without being accused of being a total fabrication because the author decided that that wasn't relevant to what he wanted to write. Critics usually are courteous enough to take into account the intended scope of the author, and critics who don't are universally recognized as having an axe to grind, and thus automatically disqualified. Bible critics get away with this sort of thing all the time.
Now, not mentioning stuff like this, nor getting the accounts in order, would be unforgivable if done by modern Biographers, but Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are not moderns. Its even questionable if they were trying very hard to be biographers. They had a story to tell, specific lessons to teach to a specific audience, so they told the story and taught the lessons to the people in front of them. One wonders whether modern theologians and biblical critics are just pissed off because the first century gospels weren't specifically tailored to suit their 19th and 20th century standards and customs. Then again, the works written by Copernicus and Galileo wouldn't get past the style editors of modern scientific journals, much less get sent out for peer review. And Joshua, Saul, and David wouldn't pass muster with Amnesty International applying the Geneva Conventions. Of course, all these considerations should be seen as the foolishness they are, being later standards back-applied to people who acted in accordance with, and who expected to be judged, by the standards they knew in their day.
So, what happened in that gap between Luke and Matthew? Admittedly, this is guesswork, but here's my speculation.
Let's suppose that the issue didn't die just there, but that Zecharias, Elizabeth, Simon, Anna, and the shepherds started agitating and proclaming the actual coming of the Messiah. Everyone's got what the preacher calls "Fire in their bones" Hard to ignore things like angel choirs and a baby boy indisputably born to a couple well beyond their child-bearing years. So hard to ignore, in fact, that the circumstances come back to haunt John the Baptist's later ministry. We may believe that it was John's preaching that made people think that he was the Messiah, but we forget the miraculous circumstances surrounding his birth that would frame his entire life. "Okay John, lemmie get this straight. An angel shuts your dad's mouth up for months, you get born to a woman old enough to be your great grand mother a-la Sarah and Issac, your old man talks again the moment he gives you the name given by the angel, you preach like nobody else has in years, BUT YOU'RE NOT THE MESSIAH?"
Things start to roll and support starts to build. No need to wonder where the Messiah is: He's up north, and Elizabeth knows his address.
If there was enough support and agitation for the Child Messiah, then you can bet that Elizabeth and Zecharias would eventually get in contact with Joseph and lay out the situation: "You can't stay up there in NAZARETH, Joseph! Both you and Mary are of the Line of David, and we're positive Jesus is the Messiah. Come on down to Bethlehem, claim the ancestral home and property, and start establishing Jesus' credentials." Remember, the Pharisees later rebuked Nicodemus for supporting Jesus because no prophet was scheduled to come from Nazareth. Why? Because the next one was scheduled to come from Bethlehem. Zecharias was a PRIEST: he'd KNOW what the religious hierarchy would be looking at when it came to credentials.
It takes a while to get the ball rolling, but within 12 to 18 months, enough steam has gathered to encourage Josepth to move back to Bethlehem and into a house. Not Jerusalem: Can't let on to Herod that there's a divine rival in town. You know what THAT madman is capable of doing!
Just in time for the Magi to arrive and blow everything when Matthew starts his account. The Jehovah's Witnesses claim the Star was the Devil, because it didn't lead the Wise Men to Bethlehem directly, but to Jerusalem instead.
Didn't it?
Actually, the text doesn't say that. The star, apparently, wasn't there all the time. The Star appeared first IN THE EAST, but no words to the effect that it stood over Jerusalem. This being a King, and they being foreigners, why shouldn't they check in at the Capital first? Logical, right? But once Herod was notified, the star REAPPEARED and moved toward Bethlehem. (Matt. 2:9). If the Star had still been around, why all the rejoicing when they saw it when they came out of Herod's palace? (Matt. 2:10) (Surprisingly, there's a christmas cartoon I saw while I was young that actually got the sequence right: The Angel choir sings to the Shepherds, and they go to the manger. But the Angel choir departs by rising up, up, up, shrinking to a Star that's at the center of the screen. Then, the camera pulls back sharply, and you see a wise man on a roof in a far country. He sees the star, turns, runs down into his house, notifies his friends, and they prepare for the journey. Artistic license, certainly, but closer to the truth than the majority of the stuff on TV regarding the Nativity.)
Of course, the account states that the Priests tell Herod and the Wise Men that the messiah would be born in Bethlehem. However, I don't think we should read into this some subtle plot about the Chief Priests being secretly jealous of the Child Messiah and divulging the location in order to be rid of the challenger to their power: the account reads, more or less, as if they were answering a standard religious question asked by the King and some foreign visitors about their religion. A matter of the Right hand not knowing what the Left was doing. I'd speculate that, being less than 2 years old, the Movement of the Christ Messiah was as viable as its Object of adoration. A quiet conspiracy of sorts, passed between serious seekers and believers like Simon and Anna, growing from the roots up, and as practical as the Shepherds and the Messiah's carpenter father: Messiah or not, a child of two years is not anywhere near ready to challenge Herod and Rome.
Well, not until he's been potty trained, right?
Whatever the case, the Arrival of the Magi blows their cover. The gifts are welcome, in that they finance the flight to Egypt. Warned by an angel in a dream to get the hell out of Dodge, er Bethlehem, the record implies that Joseph got up and got out. Fast. So fast that he very likely didn't notify anyone of his departure, leading everyone in the Movement to believe that the Child Messiah was caught in the slaughter of the Innocents and is no more. Thus, the Movement of the Child Messiah dies, even while the Messiah is being carried south, to Egypt.
When Herod dies and Joseph is told to return in a dream, he nevertheless doesn't return to Bethlehem, but to Nazareth, fearful of Herod's son, who would not tolerate a pretender to the throne any less than did his father. Besides, Joseph probably yearns for a simpler life, uncomplicated by the ritual of raising a Child Messiah.
Which is, in the end, all for the best anyhow: The Child Messiah is raised in a small town home, humble and unassuming, supported by a man doing honest labor with his hands. He's undoutedly made to do chores around the house like any other kid and eventually must help out in the shop and out in the field and on the work site. Not in a hothouse environment, surrounded by servants and treated like the Pharaoh's son and Heir: born of the Gods. He's, well, like US. NORMAL, Y'know?
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The Gospels were written for specific audiences. Heck, for all we know, with the exception of Luke, they are transcripts of actual storytelling sessions by the supposed authors, who tuned their message and content to the audience, as a good storyteller should. I once attended a performance of an actor who recited the entire Gospel of Mark in about two hours. I walked out rather amazed at how well the material lent itself to that format. Now, two decades later, it makes sense why that was so.
Matthew wrote to the Jews, and so mentioned the slaughter of the Innocents at Bethlehem, to give context and background to what was a man-made national disaster. Luke was writing to a Greek, and by implication a Roman audience eventually, and so doesn't mention the incident since it was an atrocity for which they were indirectly responsible, having put Herod the Great in his position. (Imagine Afghanistan President Karzai ordering the slaughter of an entire town, and see who catches hell.) Treating them, and the other two gospels, like legal dispositions that would be picked over by pseudo-lawyer-critics, or a pretend testimony in a trial where words would be shoved into their mouths is obviously unfair: If they knew that their words were going to be treated that way, they definitely would have phrased things differently, chose different points to emphasize, and tried to have been more complete. Of course, the results would have been similar to the deposition I had to give when I was in a car accident and under oath: A lot drier and more tedious, and a lot less entertaining than the account I gave to my friends. Not that my account to my friends or to the justice system was false in any way: I chose to emphasize some points, ignored other points to keep the story flowing, and added in desultory commentary that was certainly opinion to get a good laugh, but which would not have contributed in a material way to my side of the case. (If you're curious, the accident happened several years ago, and I've never heard from the would-be fraudsters or my insurance company about them since.)
Were the Gospels subject to political editing and manipulation? Actually, yes. It's well known that the account of the Woman taken in Adultery is not in earlier copies of the Gospel of John, and the last chapter of Mark is missing also in some earlier manuscripts. Why?
Well, the explanation given to me about the account of the Woman taken in Adultery was that it was, well, scandalous and might lead to the wrong belief that aduletry was okay. Sound familiar? Sounds like someone deciding what was good for us, and to hell with the divinely inspired text?
The missing chapter at the end of Mark is similarly wrapped in controversy: The fact that its not in the earlier manuscripts is regularly thrown in the face of Penticostals and Charismatics by Baptists eager to deny that Jesus promised that believers would speak in tounges, lay hands on people and heal them, cast out devils, and not be harmed by poisons administered by man or beast.
But what happened? Why did they get added? We don't have the minutes to any meetings of the committee charged with forming the Canon of the New Testament, but my opinion was that there was a battle between two groups of people: I'll call them the Editors and the Originalists. The Editors had cut out these two passages, and probably were ready to "reconcile" the gospels and probably edit out other passages that didn't "seem relevant or current". For the good of the people, of course. Given enough time and attention, they could eventually make the New Testament as good as the New York Times!
The Originalists, I believe, stood for the raw, unaltered texts, seeming contradictions and all. That there were pedigrees for some of the documents is obvious, even though they were available to them, if not to us, thanks to small incidents like Imperial persecutions and barbarian invasions that have occurred in the meantime. Some "gospels", such as the Gospel of Thomas, never made the cut.
It appears that the Originalists won. I think they restored the edited out passages we know of, and made sure that all the original Gospels were incorporated in the Canon, seeming contradictions and all. They were not fools, being quite aware of the accusations of contradictions that they were courting by holding as canonical four different documents that spoke with four voices about One Messiah. I think they trusted the reader, and they trusted the Holy Spirit who would guide those readers and speak to them through those four voices, and to hell with those who would read them with a critical, but darkened, eye, unenlightened by God.
My thanks to Ted Balmer at Israpundit for the article he posted. I may not agree with his thesis of Jesus the Revolutionary Zealot, but the article got the creative juices flowing. Thanks Ted.
(For the record. I believe Jesus was not killed by Jews. I believe he was killed by THREATENED POLITICIANS, who only incidentally happened to be Jews, and who got a Roman soldier playing POLITICIAN to do their dirty work by THREATENING his standing with his superior. Do I believe the implied claim (doesn't matter who makes it) that the Jewish leaders and the few Jews able to fit into the Roman Praetorum when Pilate asked for a vote on Jesus' fate actually spoke for all Jews throughout time and space? Not any more than the vote in 1996 forever settled who runs the United States through all time. Jesus was not the first Jew killed by POLITICIANS who felt threatened or needed a scapegoat, and he won't be the last. Most of the oppressions and big massacres, past and present, can be traced to damned POLITICIANS hanging on to power. Thus, I'll be damned if I'm going to let some POLITICIAN get away with killing or allowing the killing of ANYBODY, Jew or Gentile, just to keep his precious position and career going. Do you HEAR ME, President Bush?)
Footnote: Dr. Price commented on other Christmas traditions. For instance, he thought a Christmas tree was okay and not a pagan symbol: makes the place smell and look nice. But he drew the line at Santa Claus! "Ain't no fat white cat in a red suit breaking and entering my house through the chimney claiming to give gifts *I* paid for!" He thundered, "MY children KNEW who Santa Claus was!" he said, tapping himself visibly on the chest, just before the camera cut to his daughters laughing and nodding their heads. Umm, did I mention he's a fine black preacher who's probably converted more people in a month than Jesse Jackson has in his entire lifetime? I have?
Posted by ptah at December 27, 2003 07:58 PM