It’s that special time of the year again, when the snow falls and the holiday music plays endlessly. Parents tell their children that annual myth about a certain special man, and despite its fantastic nature, the kids believe every word of it. No, I’m not talking about Santa Claus, I’m talking about the birth of Jesus.
A Newsweek poll released last week revealed that 67 percent of Americans accept the story of the nativity as historical fact. I’m astounded at the way people perpetuate an event they know so little about. Such ignorance in the past has led to some horrible events. The Crusades were initiated recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims. The knights rushed to secure sites like Jesus’ manger and killed thousands along the way. It’s too bad so many people died for something that not only is historically innacurate, but doesn’t matter that much theologically either. For the basic Christian faith, the way he was born should have nothing to do with what he accomplished later in life.
The nativity accounts are an attempt by the authors of the gospels of Matthew and Luke to retroactively link Jesus with the Messiah who the Jews were waiting for by connecting him with ancient scripture in incorrect ways. For first century Jews, this Messiah was expected to take control of their people, fight off the Romans, and restoring their temple in Jerusalem. By establishing him as the Messiah it makes his message supercede Moses’ original law, by offering updates and clarifications. The only person Jews could accept as closer to God than Moses would be someone of the line of King David, an explicit requirement for Messiah.
The writing closest to Jesus’ time are the letters of Paul to various Christian communities, written about twenty years after his death. Not a single one of them mentions Jesus’ miraculous birth. The Gospel of Mark, which almost all biblical scholars maintain to be the earliest written account of Jesus’ life (though at least 30-40 years after his death), completely foregoes any stories before Jesus’ baptism as an adult. In fact, of the four canonical gospels, only Matthew and Luke even have accounts of Jesus’ birth. In them, there are clear discrepancies which cannot be reconciled.
The first hint that what was written is merely a construct and not actual history occurs in the opening lines of Matthew. He offers a genealogy which claims to trace Jesus back to David through his father, Joseph. His list is separated by major events in Jewish history. He goes from the patriarch Abraham to David, then from David to the time of the Babylonian exile, then from the exile to Jesus’ birth. Matthew distorts the order of genealogy found in the book of Chronicles specifically to separate each major age into 14 generations. This shows that Matthew is saying that Jesus’ birth is just as significant as David’s. Luke tries his hand at his own genealogy, this time tracing Joseph’s line all the way back to Adam, the first man. Despite trying to tie Jesus to the same family, it differs from Matthew’s version. The Church has been trying to explain away this inconsistency for thousands of years and has yet to produce anything satisfying.
Matthew says numerous times that Jesus is fulfilling ancient prophecy. However, he simply makes mistakes along the way which show he altered Jesus’ history in order to make him fit the mold of these prophecies. His first attempt in the first chapter of his gospel proves his ignorance. He makes a reference to words spoken “by the Lord, through the prophet: Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.” (1:23) Let’s first ignore the simple fact that Jesus was not named Emmanuel. Matthew is basing his quote off of a Greek translation of an ancient Jewish writing, the Book of Isaiah. And the Greek translator got it wrong. Where the Greek version uses the word “virgin” the Jewish simply uses the word for “young woman.” Also, looking at the context of the quote, it is not meant as a future prophecy, it is talking about a child being born to a king of Judah, it has nothing to do with the Messianic expectancy.
The story of Jesus’ birth was critical for first-century Jews who expected him to be the one who would free them from foreign rule. Seeing how the gospel writers used the story, scholars can get a good idea of what they believed about Jesus and thought of his teaching, but most people know nothing of the details. The idea of the nativity has launched countless plays and Christmas tunes every year. But just as everyone eventually reveals the truth in the story of Santa Claus, we should learn not to accept the nativity as fact forever.
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