Last year I posted my thoughts on Jesus' birth. This one is different and pops a few balloons. It's pretty long but I hope it's helpful.
For a number of years now I have sent out a Christmas letter highlighting some aspect of Jesus’ birth and what it means. This year I thought it best to give a historically accurate account, which is not the result of recent scholarship or some new archaeological discovery but is right there in the pages of the New Testament division of the Bible, just where it has been for years.
Hollywood writers are not the only group that prefers their own fictional version of historical events, it turns out that much of Christendom has done the same. So, let’s go back to the Bible to get the honest account.
Before I do, though let’s get the date of Jesus’ birth right. Our modern calendar that uses BC and AD, was created back in the sixth century by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus.
The calendar they used then marked time by the year since the last consul (mayor) of Rome was appointed. For Donysius it was the year “Diocletian 247,” named for Diocletian, the last Roman consul, and one that had ordered many Christians to be martyred.
Marking time by someone that had persecuted the Church did not sit well with the ruling pope, Pope Gregory, so he asked Dionysius to calculate how long it had been since the birth of Jesus so that they might mark modern time as years since Jesus’ birth.
The monk guessed that it had been 525 years. The emperor accepted it, the great historian the Venerable Bede approved it and Charlemagne popularized it across Europe almost 200 years later. Virtually the entire world uses it today.
However, the monk was off by a few years. Luke, an extremely careful historian held in the highest regard by Middle Eastern archaeologists, writes that Herod the Great ordered many infants slaughtered in order to kill what he saw as a threat to his throne. That was in keeping with his character because Herod had slaughtered many people, even members of his own family, including his wife.
The Jewish historian Josephus then tells us that Herod the Great died in what would be the end of March 4 B.C. His sons also marked their reigns from that date. Jesus must have been born before then.
Jesus was likely born somewhere around December 25th of 5 BC, the date most of the Christian world uses to celebrate his birth. The Eastern Orthodox churches use a date less than two weeks later and this time near the turn of the year has very strong early, local tradition.
Now, for the story itself. It is a shame that churches present nativity stories that do not line up with the Bible but with a tract published more than a century later.
The story of Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem nine months pregnant and in labor only to be turned away by heartless innkeepers and told to use a dirty stable actually contradicts the biblical story. Before I looked more closely I always thought Joseph was an idiot, waiting until the end of pregnancy to put his wife on a donkey for a 30-mile journey he had known for months they had to make.
First of all, while people today picture inns as nice, cozy establishments for travelers, something between a Holiday Inn and a bed and breakfast where Middle Eastern travelers routinely checked in on their journeys, that is far off the mark. In that day and time, inns were normally not found in towns but only as waystations between distant towns. They had a strong reputation as houses of prostitution.
Travelers in that day normally stayed in homes. Modern citizens of the West cannot imagine the Middle Eastern duty of hospitality as it existed in Jesus’ day. It was a shame for anyone to turn away from providing their home as temporary lodging for travelers, whether they knew them or not. A man would bring shame on his house by turning away a traveler, even by failing to provide him with a meal in addition to a place to sleep, which like the resident family, was likely to be on the floor.
Even many modest homes had guest rooms for such travelers or for visiting family. The Greek word was kataluma and that is precisely the word used in the Greek manuscripts of the Bible. It was mistranslated by early translators as “inn,” an unfortunate and inaccurate rendition that has been kept all these hundreds of years since for the sake of tradition.
Look at what the Gospel of Luke records, “Now in those days a decree from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth....Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth to Bethlehem, to Judea, to the City of David which is called Bethlehem because he was of the house and family of David, in order register along with Mary who was engaged to him and was with child. While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth.”
Joseph was not an idiot picked to raise the Son of God. Luke describes him as a righteous man and tells us that He went up early, perhaps taking weeks off work at a time when people were paid at the end of each day and needed to be in order to buy their daily bread. The couple no doubt stayed with his family until the time for Mary to give birth. When she did, she laid the baby Jesus in a manger, because there was no room in the guest room.
A manger is simply a feeding trough that most families had in their homes in order to provide food and water for the animals that were brought in at night. In that area, where nearly everything is made of stone, it almost surely was a stone block that had been hollowed to hold grain, straw or water. The guest room was apparently occupied by other guests and Mary of course needed to be separated for the process of childbirth and gave birth in another place.
The other place was by tradition the cave at the back of the house. Caves are found throughout the Bethlehem area and houses were quite often built at their entrances. Judea can get hot during much of the year and it is nice to not only have a cooler area but one for storage and into which the animals may be brought at night rather than near the door of the only room that made up all or nearly all of the average home.
It was not uncommon to even make a cave itself one’s home, as Jerome did when he translated the Scriptures. It might help to know that such caves are usually quite dry (it is the Middle East) and not like the caves Americans might picture. Life was also much more modest then, and all places to stay, whether a cave or a palace, were lit by oil lamps.
While Mary gave birth, the shepherds in the fields outside town were met by a multitude of angels (the Bible does not say they were in the sky, though they could have been). The angels glorified God, as they ever do, and announced “peace among men with whom He is pleased.”
They announced the birth of the King of Kings in a modest town to a working class Jewish family who had wrapped him in strips of cloth and laid him in a feeding trough, a scene the shepherds rushed to see and then told to all that would hear them.
So, why is all this important? Is it showing off or taking pleasure in poking holes in the nativity scenes and plays that are so widespread?
No, it is that Christianity is a religion rooted in history, the history of God’s dealing with men, particularly the Children of Israel. These became the first Christians and were eyewitnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. If the events they record are not true, historical events, there is no Christianity.
Because history is foundational to the Christian we have to get it right. It is a serious mistake to base one’s life on fantasy, falsity or romanticism. Contrary to modern notions, it is not faith itself that saves, it is faith in Jesus as our only claim to righteousness by which to stand before a frighteningly holy God that we have repeatedly offended by ignoring the moral law written on our hearts.
Jesus not only claimed to be God, but to be Truth itself and further said that God’s Word is truth, by which He meant the Scriptures. Truth is what the Christian must base his life upon. There is no other suitable or stable foundation. It is a great folly to do as many people do today and follow whatever suits them while eschewing any thoughtful examination of whether or not it is true.
The history of the birth of Jesus is wonderful without adding to it. The idea that the unbelievably mighty and glorious King of Glory, God himself, would lay aside that praise and glory and humble himself to live as a common man in order to show us God, to teach us and to ultimately give his life as a perfect and holy sacrifice in our place is wonderful beyond description.
True love always has others in mind. Love is measured by the lengths to which it will go to bring about the best for the one in whom it delights. By that measure, no one has shown greater love than God in the person of Jesus, who was willing to give up more than we can imagine to suffer “more than any man” in order to purchase our place alongside Him in heaven.
That is the story of Christmas, the true and wonderful story of Christmas.
God bless you,
Dave Hoshour
For a number of years now I have sent out a Christmas letter highlighting some aspect of Jesus’ birth and what it means. This year I thought it best to give a historically accurate account, which is not the result of recent scholarship or some new archaeological discovery but is right there in the pages of the New Testament division of the Bible, just where it has been for years.
Hollywood writers are not the only group that prefers their own fictional version of historical events, it turns out that much of Christendom has done the same. So, let’s go back to the Bible to get the honest account.
Before I do, though let’s get the date of Jesus’ birth right. Our modern calendar that uses BC and AD, was created back in the sixth century by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus.
The calendar they used then marked time by the year since the last consul (mayor) of Rome was appointed. For Donysius it was the year “Diocletian 247,” named for Diocletian, the last Roman consul, and one that had ordered many Christians to be martyred.
Marking time by someone that had persecuted the Church did not sit well with the ruling pope, Pope Gregory, so he asked Dionysius to calculate how long it had been since the birth of Jesus so that they might mark modern time as years since Jesus’ birth.
The monk guessed that it had been 525 years. The emperor accepted it, the great historian the Venerable Bede approved it and Charlemagne popularized it across Europe almost 200 years later. Virtually the entire world uses it today.
However, the monk was off by a few years. Luke, an extremely careful historian held in the highest regard by Middle Eastern archaeologists, writes that Herod the Great ordered many infants slaughtered in order to kill what he saw as a threat to his throne. That was in keeping with his character because Herod had slaughtered many people, even members of his own family, including his wife.
The Jewish historian Josephus then tells us that Herod the Great died in what would be the end of March 4 B.C. His sons also marked their reigns from that date. Jesus must have been born before then.
Jesus was likely born somewhere around December 25th of 5 BC, the date most of the Christian world uses to celebrate his birth. The Eastern Orthodox churches use a date less than two weeks later and this time near the turn of the year has very strong early, local tradition.
Now, for the story itself. It is a shame that churches present nativity stories that do not line up with the Bible but with a tract published more than a century later.
The story of Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem nine months pregnant and in labor only to be turned away by heartless innkeepers and told to use a dirty stable actually contradicts the biblical story. Before I looked more closely I always thought Joseph was an idiot, waiting until the end of pregnancy to put his wife on a donkey for a 30-mile journey he had known for months they had to make.
First of all, while people today picture inns as nice, cozy establishments for travelers, something between a Holiday Inn and a bed and breakfast where Middle Eastern travelers routinely checked in on their journeys, that is far off the mark. In that day and time, inns were normally not found in towns but only as waystations between distant towns. They had a strong reputation as houses of prostitution.
Travelers in that day normally stayed in homes. Modern citizens of the West cannot imagine the Middle Eastern duty of hospitality as it existed in Jesus’ day. It was a shame for anyone to turn away from providing their home as temporary lodging for travelers, whether they knew them or not. A man would bring shame on his house by turning away a traveler, even by failing to provide him with a meal in addition to a place to sleep, which like the resident family, was likely to be on the floor.
Even many modest homes had guest rooms for such travelers or for visiting family. The Greek word was kataluma and that is precisely the word used in the Greek manuscripts of the Bible. It was mistranslated by early translators as “inn,” an unfortunate and inaccurate rendition that has been kept all these hundreds of years since for the sake of tradition.
Look at what the Gospel of Luke records, “Now in those days a decree from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth....Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth to Bethlehem, to Judea, to the City of David which is called Bethlehem because he was of the house and family of David, in order register along with Mary who was engaged to him and was with child. While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth.”
Joseph was not an idiot picked to raise the Son of God. Luke describes him as a righteous man and tells us that He went up early, perhaps taking weeks off work at a time when people were paid at the end of each day and needed to be in order to buy their daily bread. The couple no doubt stayed with his family until the time for Mary to give birth. When she did, she laid the baby Jesus in a manger, because there was no room in the guest room.
A manger is simply a feeding trough that most families had in their homes in order to provide food and water for the animals that were brought in at night. In that area, where nearly everything is made of stone, it almost surely was a stone block that had been hollowed to hold grain, straw or water. The guest room was apparently occupied by other guests and Mary of course needed to be separated for the process of childbirth and gave birth in another place.
The other place was by tradition the cave at the back of the house. Caves are found throughout the Bethlehem area and houses were quite often built at their entrances. Judea can get hot during much of the year and it is nice to not only have a cooler area but one for storage and into which the animals may be brought at night rather than near the door of the only room that made up all or nearly all of the average home.
It was not uncommon to even make a cave itself one’s home, as Jerome did when he translated the Scriptures. It might help to know that such caves are usually quite dry (it is the Middle East) and not like the caves Americans might picture. Life was also much more modest then, and all places to stay, whether a cave or a palace, were lit by oil lamps.
While Mary gave birth, the shepherds in the fields outside town were met by a multitude of angels (the Bible does not say they were in the sky, though they could have been). The angels glorified God, as they ever do, and announced “peace among men with whom He is pleased.”
They announced the birth of the King of Kings in a modest town to a working class Jewish family who had wrapped him in strips of cloth and laid him in a feeding trough, a scene the shepherds rushed to see and then told to all that would hear them.
So, why is all this important? Is it showing off or taking pleasure in poking holes in the nativity scenes and plays that are so widespread?
No, it is that Christianity is a religion rooted in history, the history of God’s dealing with men, particularly the Children of Israel. These became the first Christians and were eyewitnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. If the events they record are not true, historical events, there is no Christianity.
Because history is foundational to the Christian we have to get it right. It is a serious mistake to base one’s life on fantasy, falsity or romanticism. Contrary to modern notions, it is not faith itself that saves, it is faith in Jesus as our only claim to righteousness by which to stand before a frighteningly holy God that we have repeatedly offended by ignoring the moral law written on our hearts.
Jesus not only claimed to be God, but to be Truth itself and further said that God’s Word is truth, by which He meant the Scriptures. Truth is what the Christian must base his life upon. There is no other suitable or stable foundation. It is a great folly to do as many people do today and follow whatever suits them while eschewing any thoughtful examination of whether or not it is true.
The history of the birth of Jesus is wonderful without adding to it. The idea that the unbelievably mighty and glorious King of Glory, God himself, would lay aside that praise and glory and humble himself to live as a common man in order to show us God, to teach us and to ultimately give his life as a perfect and holy sacrifice in our place is wonderful beyond description.
True love always has others in mind. Love is measured by the lengths to which it will go to bring about the best for the one in whom it delights. By that measure, no one has shown greater love than God in the person of Jesus, who was willing to give up more than we can imagine to suffer “more than any man” in order to purchase our place alongside Him in heaven.
That is the story of Christmas, the true and wonderful story of Christmas.
God bless you,
Dave Hoshour
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