Every Christmas persons are bombarded with images of the Nativity in Christmas cards, the lyrics of songs and Nativity plays. Yet a lot of the photographs embedded in our minds are pure tradition. In fact, there’s so much that we have no idea. This is the story …
Background
Every December, churches across Britain light candles, sing carols and songs, and retell the story of Christ’s birth. Amid the Christmas trees, lights, tinsel, nativity plays and familiar readings from Luke and Matthew, a lot of us assume we all know more in regards to the original Christmas than we actually do. In truth, each the Bible and history leave much unsaid about that first holy night, and there’s so much that we just have no idea, and perhaps never will.
How old was Mary?
Mary is featured on cards, Nativity scenes and in icons as a young woman. We don’t know what she looked like, nor how old she was, although we imagine she was quite young. Isaiah’s prophecy (Isaiah 7:14) was that a young maiden implied as a virgin would give birth. She was single and Jesus was her “firstborn” (Luke 2:7) at a time when women wed at an early age. Two further clues that she was quite young, probably a youngster, are that she was still alive on the crucifixion (John 19:25), and he or she seems to have supplied the stories to Luke when he wrote his Gospel many many years later (Luke 2:19).
How did they travel to Bethlehem?
Our carols and cards typically show Mary travelling on a donkey to Bethlehem. The donkey is just not mentioned within the Bible, it’s just assumed. It seems unlikely that a pregnant woman would want the discomfort of an unruly donkey over a ninety mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The route they took and the way they travelled is unknown. It can be not known in the event that they travelled alone or as part of a bigger group, which is kind of plausible. Luke just says that Joseph left Nazareth and took Mary to Bethlehem with him (Luke 2:4-5).
Which day was Jesus born on?
Despite our firm cultural fixation on December twenty fifth, there’s nothing within the Gospels that offers us a date for Jesus’s birth. There are theories but they’re all based on assumptions which may’t be ascertained obviously. The December date is a practice. It is a date to recollect the birth, without asserting that it was that exact date.
What was the weather like when Jesus was born?
The traditional date of December 25, puts the birth in winter and sometimes in snow, but that may be a factor of North European or North American weather. The carols we sing speak of the “bleak midwinter” when “snow lay snow on snow”. The reality is that we have no idea what the weather was like when Jesus was born. It does occasionally snow in Bethlehem, however it is comparatively rare and infrequently settles. In the Bible snow was related to Mount Hermon and Lebanon (Jeremiah 18:14). We might dream of a white Christmas but Joseph and Mary didn’t.
Which 12 months was Jesus born?
Nor will we know the 12 months when Jesus was born. It was not the 12 months zero, because there wasn’t one – dating goes from 1 BC to 1 AD. There are theories about which 12 months Jesus was born based on historical assumptions, or astronomical movements, but we have no idea obviously. Estimates of Jesus’s birth vary from 8 BC to 1 BC. One approach to estimate the 12 months of Jesus’s birth is predicated on the incontrovertible fact that it was probably about two years before King Herod died, which most scholars put at 4 BC. Most books place it around 6 BC, which is ironic in case you know that BC means “Before Christ”.
The other means is to take Jesus’s stated age of “about 30 years” (Luke 3:22) when he began preaching and add the assumed three years of his ministry, after which deduct about 33 years from the date of the crucifixion, which most scholars think was 33 AD. The problem with that’s that a birth in about 6 BC and crucifixion in 33 AD makes Jesus too old, which suggests we’ve got at the very least one in all these assumptions improper. So, we don’t know exactly.
Was Jesus born in a stable?
Christmas cards and Nativity scenes set Jesus’s birth in a picket stable, often with animals. The Greek word traditionally translated as “inn” in Luke 2 more likely means “guest room”. The Bible doesn’t mention a stable – that is inferred from the mention of a manger. Joseph can have taken Mary to a relative’s home where the one available space was among the many animals, or in a lower-level area where the family kept livestock at night. The presence of a manger (Luke 2:7) suggests animals, but none are mentioned, and the shepherds were watching sheep within the fields, not sitting with them inside. Whether there have been any animals there or not, and in that case which of them, we have no idea.
How long were they in Egypt?
The text tells us that Joseph took Mary and Jesus and so they fled to Egypt (Matthew 2:13), but we have no idea where in Egypt they lived, nor how long they lived there, although the Coptic Orthodox Church has traditions about where they lived. The text tells us that they went to Nazareth after Herod’s son Archelaus (Matthew 2:22) was on the throne of Judea, but we don’t understand how long he was on the throne before they decided to not go to his territory. Jesus was 12 when he went to the Temple (Luke 2:42) and showed his learning, and the text implies that that had been an annual event (Luke 2:41), in order that they had been living in Galilee a couple of years by then.
Did Jesus speak Egyptian?
In Season 1, Episode 6 of The Chosen it has Jesus speaking Egyptian and explaining that he had learnt it in Egypt, which is plausible, but we have no idea. Indeed, had the holy family been in Egypt for numerous years, enough for Jesus to learn the language then it is probably going a few of his brothers and sisters were born to Joseph and Mary there, but we have no idea.
Why don’t we all know?
Tradition and imagination has filled within the gaps within the Bible narrative. All 4 Gospels tell of the crucifixion and the resurrection, but only Matthew and Luke narrate the incidents of the birth, and even then, they tell of various events, which we dovetail right into a coherent narrative, which they weren’t. Even the genealogies of Jesus don’t tally. Our nativity imagination has fused each Gospel stories right into a single tableau, with all its misleading implications. Tradition fills within the gaps that are culturally encoded in songs, crib scenes, stained glass windows, Nativity plays and Christmas cards. What actually happened may be so different to what we imagine that it’d shock us. Mark doesn’t even mention Jesus’s birth and starts his Gospel with Jesus’s baptism, and John summarises the entire birth of Jesus in a couple of words – that “the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us” (John 1:14).
The humility of not knowing
In an age that prizes facts and certainty, it may well feel uncomfortable to confess how little we all know in regards to the first Christmas, and the way the dating and the setting of lots of the events stays a mystery. The problem with having an excessive amount of confidence within the text is that we read things between the lines, assume our interpretations are the fitting ones, and construct man-made doctrines (Isaiah 29:13, cited in Matthew 15:9). It is humbler to confess that we just have no idea many things obviously. In hindsight we might need liked Matthew and Luke to have asked Mary more questions and given us a bit more context and a couple of more details. There isn’t any harm in historical curiosity, and no harm in theories, but we don’t understand how, nor exactly when, the primary Christmas happened, however the necessary thing is that it did occur.
The Nicene Creed summarises it as, “For us and for our salvation he got here down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. The rest is just details.
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