Birth of the Savior

Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Rachel Voytek. I was told when I logged onto this call that we did not get through the birth of Jesus last time, despite our fun with Christmas carols, so we are going to roll things back a little bit and go back to the annunciation, Elizabeth greeting Mary, and let’s just start there because I don’t want to make any promises about how far we’ll get.

Oh, and by the way, I have had a request for clarification on engaged/betrothed/married and what the differences are.

Yes, that’s quite different from our culture today. It worked really differently, right?

Yes, and from Jewish culture today, too.

The gospel of Luke is very sensitive at times to chronology – not always, and we’re going to be talking next time a little bit more about who’s emphasizing chronological order and who’s emphasizing topical order, and how they blend together. We’re not going to have final answers for you because this is a history podcast and we want to go with the flow of history and the effects of Christ’s coming on history, rather than the theology of harmonization, which as Rachel’s husband David pointed out, has been a problem for 2,000 years.

Gabriel announced John the Baptist’s birth to Zachariah in the temple. Six months later he came to Mary in Nazareth and told her. She apparently almost immediately gets up and goes to see Elizabeth, because wouldn’t you? “Let’s see, I’m having a supernatural birth. Is there anybody else I know…? Oh wait, the angel mentioned Elizabeth.”

Who’s been through this experience?

Yeah, who can relate to this? So she goes to her cousin Elizabeth and was there about three months. We talked about the song that Mary sings, the Magnificat. Elizabeth welcomes her, and about the time that John is going to be born, Mary withdraws and goes back to Nazareth, and Luke leaves us with the story of John’s birth, Zachariah confirming his name indeed is John, and his speech being restored. We’ve done that and we’re kind of flipping now at this point to Matthew’s gospel.

Matthew is written for the Hebrew wing of the church, as it were. Its emphasis is on Old Testament prophecy, genealogy, and fulfillment. So whereas Luke traces Jesus’ true humanity through Mary, Matthew traces Jesus’ kingly descent through his adoptive father Joseph, a legal descent, because Jesus is going to be the lawful king of Israel, as well as the eternal seed of God and the true seed of David through Mary, so we’ve got all that going.

Matthew doesn’t tell us exactly when these things happen but – and I warned the ladies about his – I’m going to turn to you ladies and say, “You had children. For all the males in the audience, who probably went through this with their wives but conveniently forgot, as I have, how does the timing work for the so-called hypothetical ordinary pregnancy? When does the woman know? When does morning sickness begin? When might it end? When does she begin to show? When is it going to be really obvious she’s pregnant? Because these things are going to bear on how Joseph is going to relate to Mary and how Mary’s community is going to relate to her, so go ahead.

Generally she would find out typically around what we would call the 5th week or maybe the 6th week. It would be around that time or a little bit thereafter that her morning sickness would start. Morning sickness is very different for every woman, though. I had the not-so-encouraging stories from ladies at church who said, “I never got sick,” and others who were sick the whole time, so obviously we’re speaking typically, not necessarily knowing.

That would potentially continue until the 14th to 16th week, and then maybe a few weeks after that would be when you start to see a little bit more of actual showing, although it really depends on the kind of clothing. As we were mentioning, loose clothing makes it very difficult to tell until maybe the third trimester, so it depends on how the lady presents herself.

Around the same time as morning sickness starting, she might be very sensitive to smells. She might start craving weird foods, or ordinary foods like Costco pizza in my case.

Or disdaining ordinary foods in certain cases.

For Kate it was no scrambled eggs, but McDonald’s fries whenever she could sneak them. She never even told me. I don’t care what she eats, but she felt she had to sneak them somehow, so that happens.

How this plays in is that at some point Joseph becomes aware that Mary’s pregnant. And at some point, doubtless, they have the conversation. It’s possible that Mary waited until she was showing or about to start showing. It’s possible that the village was beginning to notice that Mary was putting on a little weight. We’re not told exactly, but somewhere in there Mary must have come to Joseph, or Joseph to Mary – you can imagine it either way, and God deliberately didn’t tell us.

Does Mary want to share this wonderful news? Does she realize how this is going to look and hesitate? Joseph doesn’t believe. It would be strange if she didn’t say, “Look, this is the Messiah.”

“Who’s the father?”

“God.”

“Okay Mary, no, don’t blaspheme. Who really? I can deal with this but you have to be honest with me.”

“No, really, it was God. There was this angel.”

“Mary! Come on, those things don’t happen anymore.”

Until it happens to you.

Yes. They both are students of scripture, but Mary we know and have seen is a very competent Bible scholar. They probably had figured out before that Joseph is descended from the kings of Judah, just as they would also figure out that because of the curse on Jeconiah that he can’t be king, but they could joke about that. “Ha ha ha, if Rome knew about this they’d probably try to kill me,” and all of those things. “Wouldn’t it be funny if you were king? Ha ha.”

Mary is also the true seed of David, not through Solomon but through another of David’s sons, Nathan, and there might have been a lot of joking and playfulness about that. But now as it begins to come together and the angel has said, “God will give to him the throne of his father David,” Mary can begin to put 2 and 2 together.

“Ok, throne, that would be Joseph. Father David, that would be. Oh, God is so sneaky here. Now will Joseph believe?” However the conversation went, Joseph doesn’t believe.

He is commended. Although he is not believing he is described as a just man, not willing to make her a public example.

Yes.

When his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

Notice the passive “was found.”

Then Joseph her husband, being a just man and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.

He thinks that she’s committed fornication. Actually, it would be adultery.

It’s at this point that we can begin to discuss the engaged/betrothed/married thing. Matthew just said “Joseph her husband,” but down a little bit later the angel will say –

Don’t be afraid to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived of her is of the Holy Ghost.

She’s espoused to Joseph. Joseph is her husband. Mary is his wife. And yet he has not taken her as his wife. Those are most of the pieces we need. When we get to Luke’s gospel in Bethlehem we’re told that he did not know her sexually until she had brought forth her firstborn son. So the elements of marriage at this point begin with a betrothal.

A betrothal is all of the legal paperwork that we so disdain and poo-poo and consider crass and materialistic. I don’t know how many people I know who forgot to sign the contract. “Really? You’re best man, you had one job and you…”

The Jewish mind would never have accepted that. This is a covenant between the families, as well as between the bride and bridegroom, and covenants are written documents. They’re signed, sealed, delivered. They are witnessed. They are detailed. They are specific and they involve money.

In Jewish culture and tradition, the bridegroom or his father is to supply what we would call I suppose a dowry. It goes to the girl’s father, who then normally would add to it his own gifts and then give it to the girl, so she comes into the marriage with whatever her fiancé has saved and with whatever her father has saved, and they’re her personal property. It’s not community property. She can share it if she wants, but it’s not automatically his. This is her protection, her insurance policy in case anything goes wrong like he dies or there’s a divorce or something like that.

At this point, when this document is worked through and everyone has signed it, you’re signing a covenant document, you’re signing the contract, as far as that dimension of it is concerned the two are married, and thus Mary his wife. And yet it’s called an espousal because there’s one particular thing missing. Marriage is not simply a contract. It’s a covenant, and man being both spiritual and physical/biological, there’s this thing called consummation.

At this point, moms and dads, you turn to your 9-year-old who’s also listening and explain that. We’ll assume now that you’ve done that. You probably turned the podcast off for a few minutes. You shouldn’t wait until they’re 16 or 17 to explain how that works. I have heard things like that before.

Remember, Israel was an agricultural community by and large. The kids saw farm animals doing things. “Hey, the rams are leaping on the sheep. Let’s go watch!” It wasn’t dirty, it’s just the way life was. But our Gnostic neo-Victorian prudishness has got us to the point where some Christians feel it is dirty to even talk about sexuality.

I knew one godly family, well-intentioned nice people, but their daughter was getting very near when her period would start and they had not even told her that there was such a thing because they were afraid that somehow it would mess her up. I’ll tell you what will mess her up is to start bleeding in the shower and not know why. See the movie Carrie and go from there.

Isn’t that a Stephen King novel?

Yes, it is. That’s how the movie version opens, though.

There are two different ceremonies here in the Jewish custom, right? There are two marriage ceremonies, as well as the two senses of marriage?

There is the creating of the covenant document, the signing with witnesses, settling all the financial matters, and that constitutes real marriage, real to the point that it takes a divorce to break it, which is why Joseph her husband is thinking about putting her away – divorcing her, because it’s that strong a bond. The only way out of this espousal or betrothal is a divorce.

Betrothal in Jewish culture varied deeply from our concept of engagement, where if you don’t want to marry the guy you pick up the ring, throw it in his face and walk out and you’re done. But here, no, you couldn’t do that. But there’s still the consummation.

I read a number of accounts and it seemed like I was reading the same account over and over like cut/paste, cut/paste, cut/paste. What I saw was basically this. The bridegroom now has some time to get his act together and prepare a place for them to live together, which could be his father’s house but biblically speaking should be someplace else, and to get the money ready and in order. They’ve agreed on a certain amount of money for the dowry or bride price. He's checking in with his father-in-law and at some point there will be an agreement.

His father-in-law will say, “Okay, this is the time when everything is going to be in order,” and the groom will send back and say, “Got it. Ready. I’m coming as soon as I can.” Now if they live around the block this is not difficult, but if he lives in another town – and we don’t have email or texting or even reliable postal service necessarily – you might not know that he’s coming until he shows up. Thus the parables of the Jesus where the bridegroom appears suddenly at midnight. He’s told you more or less when he’s coming, but it’s not exactly clear. He comes with his friends, and the bride with her maidens goes out and meets him and there’s much rejoicing, and they come back.

And I’m sure this varies, but this is at least one version that I saw. At this point the bride and the groom do the consummation thing. That is they go into a private chamber that has been prepared for them and they make love. At that point they are married in all senses. Meanwhile the friends are outside partying and having a good old time while things are happening just beyond the door. They were not prudish. This is something that had to happen.

When they were done, and there’s no rush here, it was the groom’s job to take the sheet from that first time and bring it out and present it to whoever has been chosen to be the witness. It’s ultimately to the father and mother of the girl. That’s what Deuteronomy required. People would sign it or date it or whatever to make sure that the blood on the sheet is the proof that the girl was a virgin. If that’s not going to be the case, if we know she’s not a virgin, then that would have to be addressed in the contract up front.

When that’s done, there’s much rejoicing and the groom takes his bride, and the maidens and the best men and all that, and they go in happy procession to wherever the groom has prepared a home for them. Then the feast happens and there is much wine and much feasting and much celebrating and much singing, until probably the bride and groom retire to their quarters, and eventually some day people go home, because these things can last more than a day. At this point see the wedding at Cana for that phase.

What we do today – we being the standard stereotypical American wedding – is not what they did. What Jewish people do today is not what they did. It’s a mistake, and Christians do this sometimes. They say, “I want to know how things were done in Jesus’ time. I’ll ask my Jewish neighbor how they did it.” It’s not the same anymore. It hasn’t been for a very long time, so don’t do that. Don’t go to a Jewish family and experience Passover so you can find out what Jesus did. They don’t do the same thing anymore. It’s not that. I’m not saying you can’t go, I’m just saying that’s not the way to learn what was going on 2,000 years ago when scripture was still being written.

Before we move on, I know this is not the biblical theology section of this podcast, this is the world history section of this podcast, but we cannot let this go without pointing out that the church is the bride of Christ. He has paid the bride price. He has gone to prepare a place for us, and we will have the wedding supper of the Lamb.

I was kind of thinking people would get that, but you’re right. We should actually say it because there are children being born every year who don’t know this.

It also helps you remember, at least it helps me remember what the custom was back then, because it’s like, “Oh, the marriage has happened.” It does take a breach of covenant to leave the church today. It helps to have all the parallels lined up.

To pursue that, the major part – the first 39 books of the covenant document – were in place, and Jesus ratified it the night before his crucifixion by handing them bread and wine and saying, “This is the new covenant in my blood,” so covenant comes first. The covenant is in place before the bridegroom pays the price, and the terms are set by the father. Wait, it’s the same person, so there’s that.

It would be fun to write a play or a dialogue for Mary and Joseph, and I’ve done that before, and of course the danger is to give the wrong idea that we actually know what the conversation was. We can imagine. From his reaction he’s convinced she’s committed adultery or he wouldn’t be pursuing this line. She almost certainly, being a truthful girl and having had words from God, would tell him what she could, and he apparently is not believing her.

Whether or not by now the whole village is in on this and can see, or they both simply realize the village is going to know real soon and there are going to be those people who are going to heckle Mary, make fun of her, slander her, “Oh, you know that sweet little goody two-shoes Mary, you know what? She’s pregnant and Joseph is not the father, oooo” – that’s coming, if it hasn’t already begun.

Joseph wants to do the divorce quickly and privately because he is a righteous man. In passing it does say something about divorce. He wants to divorce her because he is righteous, because he is just. He has no thought of the Jewish death penalty. It probably couldn’t have been enforced under Roman law anyhow, but the divorce is a righteous thing for him to, given what he thinks, but not just the divorce – the quiet divorce, not making a laughingstock of her, not holding her up to ridicule, not treating her publicly like she’s a whore. He is kind and gracious. He just doesn’t believe her because…

It’s kind of extraordinary.

Yes, and it has never happened in the history of the world. It’s one thing to say, “I’m the mother of Messiah.” It’s another thing to say, “He’s the son of the Highest. He’s the son of God.” No one has ever claimed that before, not like that, and he cannot process it. So while he’s tossing and turning one night, the Angel of the Lord comes to him and says –

Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

Don’t be afraid to take Mary, your wife – that is to acknowledge her publicly as your wife and to continue on.

And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins.

This may be the time to point out that his name is Hebrew or Aramaic would have been Yeshua. In Greek or Latin it’s Yesus. J had not been invented. I’m frustrated or annoyed sometimes with people who look at the name Jehovah, which really came into its own in the Middle Ages, it really had not been used as such, and say, “We can’t use that name, we can’t sing that name, because that’s not a biblical name for God. It should be Yahweh or something like that.”

“Do you call Jesus, Jesus?”

“Well, yes.”

“Why? Because no one when he was on earth ever called him Jesus.”

For that matter, no one called God, God. They called him Elohim or Theos, because God is an Anglo-Saxon word and the gospel is not going to reach the Anglo-Saxons – in fact, there aren’t going to be Anglo-Saxons for about another 600 years.

There’s a reference in the prophets about making a man an offender for a word. We call him Jesus. That’s not how Mary would have pronounced it. It’s not how his disciples pronounced it, but that’s okay. If you want to call him Yeshua, that’s great. The church has called him Jesus for a long time. I’m sure he’s not offended. Jehovah, salvation, Yahweh saves. That’s what they called him.

We go from there back to Luke. While they’re thinking about this, things are happening in far-off Rome. We tracked Octavian as far as the Battle of Actium and his pursuit of Antony and Cleopatra down into Egypt, where Antony and Cleopatra commit suicide, and Egypt falls into Octavian hands. He now controls both east and west of the empire. He returns to Rome and orders the temple of Janus closed, signifying world peace, and declares himself Augustus – the god-like one – and first citizen and high priest, but not emperor. He learned something from Julius Caesar. “Don’t go there. Pretend we have a republic. As long as we pretend, everything’s fine.”

He had his own epiphany ceremony. There was some kind of star in the sky or a comet, and the people celebrated. “Oh, this is the moment of divine revelation and the moment the world savior is born.” Virgil the poet is going to write the Aeneid with that in mind and connect Rome to the fall of Troy, and through Aeneas to Romulus and Remus, and just chart out Rome’s destiny as the savior of the world, meant to crush the arrogant and the proud and bring peace.

Augustus meanwhile decides he’d like to know how many people he has so he can tax them all.

And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. This taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

Why Caesar picked this particular way I don’t know. I don’t know that anybody else does, but the idea was the easiest way to track you – this was not exactly a taxation, it was an enrollment for taxation. “We want you all to go back to your hometown and enroll so we know who you are, where you are, where you’re from, and where you’re living now.” Today we would just email them our home address and phone number or something, but this required actual moving.

Again we can imagine, but the scripture does not tell us, how Joseph and Mary might have reacted to this. Joseph really was the only one who had to go because he’s the head of their household now and it’s his responsibility, but at this point Mary is great with child. There are several things going on here. She probably does not want to stay in Nazareth without Joseph, because by now the tongues were wagging. By now the hostilities had begun.

And she might have trouble bending over to tie her shoes as well – just saying.

That too. The fact that she could probably walk all the way from Nazareth to Bethlehem – even if they got a ride in a cart, there were no shock absorbers. Those of us who grew up watching TV westerns – the man is occasionally walking, but usually he’s in the front with his wife beside him on the seat and the children are in the back. No, they really didn’t because riding in those wagons was horrible. There are no shock absorbers. You’re thrown this way and that and you’re not going to sleep. Generally people walked.

Unless of course somebody loaned them a donkey, and all the pictures show that, and maybe God graciously provided a donkey, but for those reasons she doesn’t want to stay but there’s something else, because again Mary is a great student of scripture. When Joseph comes to her, having torn the announcement off the wall where the Roman authorities have tacked them and said, “Look where we have to go,” Mary can look at him and smile and say, “I saw it coming. Remember Micah?”

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.

“So God’s right on schedule, and so are we, it would seem. Let’s go to Bethlehem.”

And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth into Judaea, unto the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

Notice the geographical references. This is not mythology. Occasionally in the Greek myths we learn that such-and-such a hero was from Corinth or Thebes or some such thing – the gods hardly ever, but the heroes occasionally. But to track the geographical movements of any hero – “He went here, then he went there, then he went there” – when they even begin to do that, that’s when scholars of myths say, “Well, there must be some historical basis for this because we’re tracking things that really…”

Luke just says, “They were in this area. It’s Galilee, and in Galilee there’s a city called Nazareth. They went from there to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, in the land of Judea.” He knows the geography and he describes it and he thinks it’s worth our while for a couple reasons. First, so we know what in the world is going on, and then Galilee shows up in the prophecies of Isaiah and is foreshadowed in the book of Judges as where Messiah will appear, so that that should be his home town and his area is significant, that he should be born in Bethlehem, as Micah has said.

We have so much foreshadowing, like this woman Naomi coming to Bethlehem who says, “No, call me Mary” as she comes to Bethlehem.

The House of Bread.

Yes. God has been laying down hints all over the place. So Luke, without stopping and turning searchlights on the whole thing, just drops in things to remind us that we should have seen this coming, but it’s true history as well.

And so it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

The child doesn’t just pop out suddenly or, like Athena, spring full-blown from Zeus’ head. There is an ordinary count of days which, as you tell me, varies. Is it really nine months, or nine months and change?

Forty weeks.

This is all reckoned in that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

It’s interesting that the church has emphasized the virgin birth, not the virgin conception, because the one implies the other. If he was born of a virgin then he was conceived by a virgin. It’s conceivable that he could have been conceived by a virgin and then that Joseph and Mary could have come together before Jesus was actually born.

But we’re told that doesn’t happen.

We’re told here explicitly that it doesn’t happen, and in case we wonder why we can go back and look at Isaiah’s prophecy – “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Emmanuel.” It’s not just that a virgin will conceive, and then at some point that woman will bear a child, but the virgin conceives and the virgin bears. The virgin is a virgin through the birth of the child, probably just to make it really really clear that Joseph is not biologically involved here.

We talked a little before about the virgin birth and how liberals hate it so much because it’s one point where you can’t explain things away with figurative language. You can try, and that’s what they’ve tried to do, but when you start saying, “No, we actually mean she was a virgin and that there was no male involved here,” they have a real problem because at that point they either accept the miraculous or they don’t.

They can push away the resurrection. “He’s alive in my heart. We’ve experienced the power of his resurrection,” and all that kind of nonsense and get away from the three-day-ness of it, but back in the beginning of the 20th century this was a hot button. When our fundamentalist brethren drew a line in the sand, this was one of the doctrines that they really emphasized. J. Gresham Machen wrote one of the definitive books on the virgin birth, defending it against liberalism.

“Wrapped him in swaddling clothes…” – tell me, ladies, do you wrap up your babies nice and snug?

I do. Rachel, do you?

I did, but now my son has reached the point that he is beyond the swaddle. He’s just in the sleep sacks now, so he’s much more restless when he goes to bed.

Oh man. We’ve been struggling with that because Ransom has gotten so wiggly that he punches out, so I have to reswaddle him every time he wakes up in the night and it is not a good time.

We just gave up the first day and gave Titus his arms because he would break out anyway, so he would always get at least his hands by his face. He had to have his hands, because then he could suck his thumb and comfort himself.

Ransom startles. If he has his arms free he’ll startle, and moving his arms will wake him up. So if you wrap him up tight then you have a better chance of getting a few hours’ sleep.

That’s actually a thing that they say, that you swaddle them for just the first few months because they grow out of that startle reflex and that’s when you can stop swaddling them. But I think Titus does still startle himself sometimes.

I think I swaddled Gretchen quite a bit longer. I think it was six months or something, but it also makes them feel like they’re being held. It’s a little deceptive, like a pacifier, but we all must rely on a little deception now and then with our babies.

And so at the beginning of Jesus’ birth we have a Mary and a Joseph wrapping him in linen cloth. There is foreshadowing here because at the end of his life there will be a Joseph who will wrap him in cloth while Mary looks on, and the story will be complete.

Furthermore, as we move toward the story of the magi, we can also think of another Joseph who brought God’s firstborn into Egypt. Again, in biblical theology imagery abounds, foreshadowing abounds, and versions of the story cycle through until the real story comes out, and yet this is true history.

A friend of mine who is now teaching apologetics at Moody Bible Institute, made a big deal that manger does not imply a separate barn or cave – Mikel Del Rosario, look him up and find what he has to say. I don’t remember.

So having put that out there, yes, I’m aware that this is a legitimate historical interpretation. I’m nonetheless going to fall back on the interpretation of the church and say there seems to have been someplace that had a barn. It’s called an inn here in our translation. That may not be the best translation of it, but that’s how we’ve looked at it for 2,000 years, so for now we’ll let that stand.

I think when David was preaching through this he said that it means upper room. It’s that idea of a spare place.

There was no spare place. I believe that’s what Mikel was saying, and then he specified exactly how that would have worked out. Bethlehem was a small town. Whether or not there even would have been an inn as we think of such things, we don’t know.

They typically would be staying with family members, or people in general would have these extra spaces that they would put people up in.

But they got there late, and all their other family members – because they’re all the house of David – had taken everything, and nobody was courteous enough to say, “Oh, the pregnant lady, maybe I can give up my bed so that she has a nice warm spot with the baby so nigh at hand.” No one was willing to do that, whether it was an extended family member or what we think of as an innkeeper or just the head of a household that traditionally opened its doors to people. Nobody was going to take them in.

It's been popular lately to paint Joseph, Mary, and Joseph as homeless people.

Or refugees.

None of this is true, at least not as it applies.

Not yet.

Yes, that’s coming but not at this point.

My friend David Farschman and I kind of faced this on our first trip to London. We didn’t book anything ahead of time because – London, it’s one of the hugest cities. All the guidebooks say there are tons of bed and breakfast places, so we go there expecting, “We’ll walk around and we’ll find someplace.” No one told us it was Wimbledon week. So here we are walking the streets, and we go to regions where there are lots of bed and breakfasts, and sign after sign said “no rooms available.”

The same exact thing happened to me, but not in London. It was in Elko, Nevada, and there were no hotel rooms because the National Cowboy Poetry convention was happening. It’s somewhat less cool. I don’t know, maybe it’s more cool. It depends on who you are.

They have a convention for that?

It’s certainly unusual. At least Wimbledon is a thing you would expect.

Somebody allowed them apparently a barn or stable. The traditional explanation is it was a cave, which may or may not be the case, and there or may not have been an ox and an ass there, and they may or may not have hummed the words, whatever. There are so many traditions that have been overlaid here that the text is actually silent about. We can make some reasonable guesses, but they are guesses.

The only accurate historical reference at this point probably was Mary. It’s possible that Dr. Luke in his research found some young shepherd boy who had been in the mix, because he does know a little bit about what happened there after they left Mary and Joseph, but most of this is Mary. Joseph would have been dead by now.

By the time of Luke’s writing, is that what you’re talking about?

Yes. Just in passing, and we’ve already talked about this in terms of Christmas songs and such, it was a real birth. Joseph may have acted as midwife. People who aren’t even going to give her a place to stay would be even less disposed to come down and get their hands bloody, but maybe some kind old woman came out and helped. Again we don’t know.

That there was blood, that there was placenta, that there was screaming and crying – first from Mary and then from the baby, who did cry because being a real baby he did that, his lungs have to work – so forget all those things about it being a silent night. It was probably very noisy as people are visiting and going hither and yon, and drinking more than they should because it’s kind of a party. And here’s this woman out in this barn someplace screaming as she brings her firstborn child into the world, which is what women generally do, particularly when there are no anesthetics involved.

So God kind of pulls the cover over that by just saying she laid him in a manger, not the place you want to lay your little baby. The modern equivalent would be she brought him forth in a garage and found an old toolchest and found some rags that weren’t all that filthy, and put him there. Then these migrant shepherds came in and said, “Hey, lady, you got a baby?”

Let’s strip away the idealism, the Victorian sentimentalism, and say that Jesus did not have the greatest entry into our history that one could wish. This is not how Hollywood would have scripted it. This is not how Broadway would have scripted it. This is not how the president’s press service would have scripted it, or the royal family in England. It was not nice and sanitary, but Jesus showed up on God’s schedule.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

People have wondered about this. If this is winter, why are there shepherds? Well, people need sheep year-round.

Do we know that it was winter?

No. You can pick up any commentary you want, or an attempted biography of Jesus or just a historical study, and you will go from Alfred Edersheim, the Jewish convert to Christianity who’s the guy on Jewish custom, who was absolutely convinced it was December 25. He has no doubts. And there are others who say it’s completely the wrong time and the wrong season.

One of the more clever and interesting speculations I’ve seen – I don’t think I can say more than speculation – is that it was the first day of Tishrei, the first day of Rosh Hashhanah. There’s a number of reasons for picking that, and again this is speculation as the Bible does not say in so many words, but John’s vision of the radiant woman with her feet on the moon, the stars in her hand and the sun in her midst, if this is the constellation Virgo, and John very clearly is borrowing astrological images along the way, from Aries the Ram towards the bull with the seven planets and so on, that time can be calculated.

It's about Tishrei, and that whole passage follows the sounding of the seventh trumpet, which was sounded on Rosh Hashanah, Tishrei 1. If that were so then it would give us about 3-1/2 years. Jesus would turn 30 on the first of Tishrei, and 3-1/2 years later it would be Passover season and time for him to die. It’s a possibility and I will not make it any stronger than that. If you have David Chilton’s commentary on Revelation you can pursue that, and he’s following somebody else.

Could it have been December? The temple needs sheep all the time and these flocks are outside Bethlehem, and Jerusalem is not very far away, so these very well could have been the temple flocks. Again we’re not exactly told.

I heard somebody suggest at one point that it was lambing season, and that Jesus was born at the same time as the lambs being bred for Passover.

And that would work. Lots of overlapping. Some things God expects us to find out, and some things he just flat out has made inaccessible to us.

Anyway, they’re out there by night watching their flocks, and the Angel of the Lord comes upon them. Christian tradition at this point has pictured the angel in the sky. I do not know why. There is no record up to this point of any angel appearing in the sky. Angels tend to walk up to you and say “Hi,” and you say, “Aaaagh!” and they say, “Don’t be afraid,” which is the pattern this has. He could have appeared in the sky.

By the way, there’s no mention that he has wings. There is no mention that any angel ever has wings, unless you want to count the cherubim and seraphim, who are never exactly called angels.

And are not usually mistaken for human beings.

Yes, there’s no problem with that one. Anyway, this angel does something that angels rarely get to do, which is preach the gospel, because God has saved that for his church. But here the angel gets to get into the act and says,

Fear not, for, behold, I bring you good tidings [euangelion or good news] of great joy, which shall be to all people [not just Israel]. For unto you is born this day [and he’s paraphrasing Isaiah] in the city of David [lots of prophecies there] a Saviour, which is Christ [the Messiah] the Lord.

The amount of information that’s packed into that is extreme, and I’m going to resist the temptation to unpack all of it. He’s the Savior. Jehovah himself has called himself the Savior and there is no other – a Savior from sin and from anything you need to be saved from.

Jesus is Savior of all men, especially those who believe, Paul tells us in Timothy. So if anybody is ever saved it’s God who saves, because left to ourselves we would destroy ourselves. But particularly he’s the Savior of his covenant people. And he’s Messiah, prophet, priest, and king of our redemption. He is the Lord, not just Adonai, but he’s Jehovah, which is what Zachariah was saying. “Your child will go before the face of the Lord,” not simply Messiah but God himself.

Now whether or not the shepherds processed all that of course is something else again. Whether or not Mary and Joseph processed all that is something else again, but God is not hesitant to proclaim his son, to honor his son.

I was noting that, as you mentioned, this is an affirmation of Christ’s deity, Christ the Lord. Some people ask, “Why doesn’t the New Testament ever just come out and say Jesus is God.” Because those words don’t mean what you think they mean in Greek. You wouldn’t say Jesus is theos, because theos is the word for any of the Greek gods. They’re a dime a dozen. You don’t need to say Jesus is one of those. He’s better than those. What he is is the Lord, the God of the Old Testament. That’s the identification that’s being made here.

Exactly.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

Lying in a manger is probably the big tip, since most babies would be swaddled, but there may be something more there I’m missing.

I read this in third semester Greek in college. The words ‘swaddling clothes’ is inferred from the verb, which is that he was wrapped up tight.

Okay.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

“They’re heavenly so they’re in the sky.” No, heaven is where they come from. Again they could be in the sky. We’re not told. But more to the point perhaps is the word “host” and “multitude.” On Christmas cards that usually means five or six. In real life a multitude is more like 10,000 or 100,000 or more. The sky was full of angels, if they were in fact in the sky; otherwise, the whole camp was surrounded by angels.

We’re not told that they sung. They spoke, but that probably simply means they didn’t have harps. They chanted, as was the way of the time. They chanted, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill to men.” We’ve talked about that so we will not tarry there.

Then the angels were gone away from them into heaven, so finally we get the angels in the sky. At that point apparently they went up, because heaven in scripture is up. It’s true, they could have simply opened dimensional doors right where they were standing and stepped through and the doors shut.

Hold on, though. We have seen angels ascending before. They had a ladder.

Oh, you’re thinking of that one. I was thinking of Samson’s parents, who offered a sacrifice.

And then the angel goes up.

That’s true, but he went up in the smoke of the sacrifice, right?

And the angels that ascended and descended on a ladder – that’s not quite the same as flying up, but yes, they went up. So that’s what happens. Whatever the details, it was scary and it was wonderful and it was glorious and the shepherds are excited and they say to one another –

Let us now go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste and found Mar, and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.

That’s one piece of information that Mary at least didn’t have firsthand experience of, because she was probably dead tired and collapsed and trying to sleep when these guys poked their head in, and she probably didn’t follow them out to see what was happening.

Maybe Joseph did, or maybe somebody told them the next day. “It’s funny, those shepherds? They were just telling everybody,” which again says that the town wasn’t exactly silent because the shepherds were able to find all kinds of people they could talk to. You know how a convention city is. People are up to all hours talking and partying, and here come these rough shepherds.

Shepherds were considered unclean because their job kept them away from temple and synagogue so much that it was just assumed that they hadn’t been properly purified, so the people kind of avoided them. But here they come and said, “Hey, you know what we saw? There was this baby that’s just been born and he’s the son of God. He’s the Lord himself!” and they were like, “What was that all about?” “I don’t know, some kid was born, I guess.”

Unlike some of the modern versions, we don’t have people flocking to the manger as far as we can tell. We’re not told that anybody they spoke to actually came there. The wisemen weren’t there, by the way. They’re still off packing. They’re a year out or so.

But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.

There’s Dr. Luke’s personal investigation again. “So Mary, how did you feel about this?”

“Well, Dr. Luke, I thought about it long and hard. I meditated and I pondered it in my heart.”

“Oo, that’s a good line. I’m going to use that one.”

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

Again, somebody was there and saw that, and Dr. Luke got hold of it somehow through somebody.

I have some bad news. We’re out of time.

I figured that, but you know I don’t care. It was worth it. You want to say, “Let’s just rush through the Christmas narrative.” No, it’s not happening.

Next time we’ll try to get through the visit of the Magi, the flight to Egypt, the return from Egypt, the episode in the temple, and maybe but probably not because we don’t go that fast, or I don’t go that fast, John appearing in the wilderness. But it probably won’t be more than, “And there was this guy who showed up in the wilderness saying, ‘Repent.’” And then we’ll say, “And more of that next time,” so there you go.

Awesome. Shall we close up with some recommendations?

Emily, you’re supposed to go first.

More to the point, I’m not supposed to go last.

Rachel, do you have anything ready?

Yes. My husband David is about to start preaching through the book of Genesis, which he’s very excited about, and he has a much greater appreciation of science than I do, so he’s trying to lead me along the way.

We first had watched the movie Is Genesis History? But there are also all these extra interviews that he also has, and they go through all of this scientific detail of finding the proof for particularly the flood and the things that came after that, and understanding our world in terms of the flood. They’re interviews with those who actually believe the Bible and are also very knowledgeable scientists. So I’ve learned a lot about science, but I’ve also learned a lot about what’s actually out there in the world that I had never heard of. So for those of you who love science, I recommend the videos to you.

And for those of you who that’s not your favorite subject, I also recommend it because it’s amazing to understand a lot more of what was going on during the flood that I had no idea, just everything that would have been going on under the water. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around a lot of it, but I have learned a lot of what the intensity of those kind of flood waters would have done to the entire world, and how in some ways we’re actually still in a recovery period in the world from some of it.

It’s fascinating and it’s encouraging to see scientists who clearly know their discipline very well and are also convinced of the scriptures and are bringing the two of them together, so I recommend all of that series to you.

Mine is inspired largely by what Rachel just said. I’m going to recommend a book by Charles Hapgood. I believe he held the rank of Admiral in the Navy. I forget. The book is The Map of the Ancient Sea Kings.

Whatever Professor Hapgood’s exact rank may have been, he was a mathematician and he found – and this was not exactly brand new knowledge, not like he was the first one who had seen this – but he was looking over some old maps that looked suspicious. They almost looked like maps of, well, the Americas and Antarctica, or at least they bled under the map. The problem was that they weren’t quite where they ought to be. It would be strange to be able to know those things were out there and then not have them in the right place.

Using a team of young scientists, college students I think, he began to investigate these maps and began to transfer them from the kind of trigonometry that we use now for mapping, back through spherical trigonometry, which in the ancient world supposedly they didn’t know.

As he did, and recreated the maps with the assumption that whoever produced them didn’t know the mathematics or projection behind them, he found out that these maps were incredibly accurate. The most famous, the Piri Reis Map, actually does show America, at least the east coast and Florida, and it shows Cuba, and it does show Antarctica and does show South America, and it shows them exactly where they ought to be if we assume that they were produced by spherical trigonometry and then got messed up by people who looked and said, “We don’t know what that math is. We’ll just do the math we know.” Anyway, what it shows is, through a series of maps, that the ancient world shortly after the flood was mapped and charted by somebody who knew more mathematics than anybody up into the 1800s.

That’s just kind of weird, unless you actually believe that Noah and his descendants were not stupid oaths who lived locked into ‘Bible times’ and didn’t know anything. But when you realize that they just built a seagoing vessel that survived the flood, maybe they’re top-notch engineers who knew a lot of math and had as their first step toward dominion over the new world mapping it, because that’s what you do. Unless you’re stupid, you find out what your environment is like and you write it out and you do so mathematically.

We don’t generally think of the ancients – unless they’re Greeks, for some reason, or maybe Babylonians – as being experts in math, and even then we poo-poo it as being very low-grade. Josephus said that it was Abraham who taught astronomy and mathematics to the Egyptians about the time the Great Pyramid was being built, so there’s more going on here.

You don’t have to understand a lot of math to skim and to read the relevant sections, but if you do know mapping, cartography, and mathematics I think you’ll find a feast. But even if you don’t you’ll have some interesting maps to look at and say, “How could this have been done so far back? That doesn’t make sense.” Not in terms of what we’ve always been told, but in terms of what the Bible has been trying to tell us all along it does make a lot of sense.

My turn, I’m going last. This is something I haven’t read in a long time, but I was glancing over at my bookshelf to try and figure out what I was going to recommend and I see the book The Man Who Never Was. Are you familiar with this one?

I know the title but I can’t remember. Who’s the author?

Ewen Montagu. This was made into a film, I believe. It’s a true account of some subterfuge that the Allies used in WW II to convince Hitler that the D-day invasion was not happening at Normandy but was happening I think in Sicily at a completely different time. What they did was invent a person who would wash up on the beach with all this sensitive information, so they had to create this fake persona for this person to have. It's a fascinating bit of – I don’t know if you call it espionage when it’s planting fake information.

That’s one of the things they do.

I think it’s a very cool story. I like WWII stories, so there’s that. It’s not very related to what you guys talked about, but it’s a good book.

Have you ever noticed that two of us will talk about one thing, and the third one will go completely in another direction?

Yes. It’s like a wildcard thing. It’s like rock/paper/scissors.

Thank you both for this conversation. As always, it’s been a delight. Thank you also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband. Thank you to our financial supporters for getting us nice editing software that makes David’s life way easier, like possible/easier is what I mean by that.

If you would like to get in touch with us at any point you can send us an email at [email protected]. And you can leave us a review on whatever podcast catcher you use. We would appreciate that if it’s a 5-star review. That’s the kind we appreciate.

Not that we’re trying to juice the record or anything.

Oh no. Who would do that?

Tell a friend. That’s more to the point.

Yes, tell a friend about us. If you enjoy this podcast, probably somebody else you know would as well.

Unless you have no friends who think like you.

Anyway, thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time.