The Horrifying Details of Jesus' Birthday - Bart Ehrman

This is a million subscribers to your what Your YouTube YouTube that's right that's amazing wow okay yeah not many people who make a a living out of talking about the Bible most of the time manage to get a million subscribers unless of course they're Christian evangelists yeah well as you are so I so I keep getting told um Dr man merry Christmas happy holidays Happy Time of work whatever it is that that You like to say Merry Christmas is fine by me yeah well we're going to be talking today about the very first people to

ever put the Christ back in Christmas and that was whoever of course forged the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke uh you've got a course coming out or it's it's out now I think by the time this video comes out the dark side of Christmas we did a Christmas episode last year talking about the birth Narratives their contradictions in the gospels you know what it is that they're really doing uh you've taken a little bit of a different approach this year in your uh your biblical scholarship with the with the birth narratives what is the

Dark Side of Christmas well you know on what once somebody realizes that these Christmas stories are not descriptive events of what actually happened but they're actually narratives they're stories that of course you know There are some historical elements to it there was a Jesus he was born his mother would probably was the named Mary and there some historical things but the stories themselves that we get in Matthew and Luke as we discussed last time have uh a number of differences among them some of which are contradictory and uh they're they're they're almost certainly not historical

accounts and so if they're narratives then it's important to look into to see What the narratives are and what the narratives are trying to say and you know like like everybody else on the planet I've always kind of assumed that these are just purely happy stories about the coming of the Savior into the world and it's only been within the last year or so I started thinking more seriously about the downside of these stories um that there's actually um there there's a dark side that that it's not that I'm imposing a dark side into The

story but that if we ignore the dark dark elements of the story then we're actually not paying attention to what the authors are trying to say and so I thought it'd be uh interesting to look at at what that is and to not not in order to discredit the stories although I think for some people you know it would but for other people it just it shows that there's actually more depth and profundity to these stories than uh would would strike somebody who's used Only to seeing a Christmas Pageant at the church once a year

yes and this course uh was filmed as a sort of live seminar on the 7th of December it's not been filmed yet but by the time this goes out it will have done but anybody who wants to see that can still uh there'll be a link down in the description an affiliate link if you want to support the channel uh to go and to go and get that course and you've got a bunch of other courses like countless Courses and all kinds of things biblical that have been incredibly useful to me in the content that

I produce so that will all be linked down in the description I suppose the first question I want to ask is I don't think we really touched on this last time but what are the birth narratives in terms of genre like somebody reading the gospels will probably know that broadly speaking the gospels are supposed to be like biographies of Jesus they're often Portrayed as being at least attempt at history the historical case for the resurrection of Jesus when you read the birth narratives the language seems sort of the same but do you think that that's

what the authors were intending to do you just said a moment ago that they probably weren't intending to give sort of a an accurate uh depiction of of what actually happened but was that the author's intention you know you know the as you Know I mean the problem with intention is we never know what somebody's intentions are right somebody might guess what my intention is you know intentions are doing this interview but they you know actually I may have some other intentions they've got no idea about it's all in my head and sometimes I don't

even know what I'm intending to do so so with these authors uh you know we really don't know what they're intending To do but my my guess is I mean it's just you have to guess my guess is they probably thought these things happened and so when I say that they're not historical I I'm not saying that they thought they weren't historical I don't know what they thought but but you know I think we can show they're they're not historical uh and so what are they what are they what are they trying to accomplish if

in fact they're trying to write a biography I mean I I think You're right I think the gospels are best understood as a kind of Christian bio form of a biography of Jesus the thing that that gets confusing is that we are used to a certain kind of thing when we read a biography I mean if I read a biography of Winston Churchill or of Abraham Lincoln you know or of whoever we have certain expectations because of how biographies are written in the modern world and our modern expectations are driven by the fact that Today

people can do research on these things and they have databases that they can go to and they have all sorts of all sorts of source material and uh someone like Luke for example would not have had a library to go to or Source material and that's true of all the ancient biographers uh the the Greek and Roman biographers suetonius and plutar and so forth they wrote biographies they wrote accounts of important people that are roughly like ours there the life the Life and you what happened in a person's life but there are lots of essential

differences uh one of the things that they often do in their biographies ancient biographies is they begin with uh some account of the person's birth um and uh not always but uh often and the the point of the birth narratives usually is what the point actually what the entire biography is which is somewhat to give information of course but also to show what this person's Character is like and so if somebody has a uh a really rough beginning it probably means this person's going to have a really rough life because it's foreshadowing what's going to

happen if you have somebody who's very famous who is astounding uh then they'll have some kind of spectacular birth and so we have birth narratives of Alexander the Great for example or Plato or you know pick your famous person and these are often often betrayed even these birth Narratives are often portrayed in Supernatural terms to show that this person wasn't just a mere uh human like the rest of us peons down here that that in fact they were they were something really special and so I think the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke are both

trying to function that way trying to show that Jesus came into the world as something really different from the rest of us yeah it's interesting to think just How limited the The Source material would have been for an ancient biographer of Jesus what do we think about the the dating of these birth narratives uh most people will probably know that Mark was the first gospel John was the latest and Matthew and Luke are somewhere in the middle do we have an idea of which was written first and whether or not they were aware of each

other's writings oh well there are difference of differences of opinion on You know all these things but you're right I mean almost everybody agrees Mark was first and it does not have a birth narrative John is the last one it also does not have a birth narrative um usually marks dated around 70 or so early 7s and John is usually dated into the 90s or so and it's it's long been thought that Matthew and Luke are sort of in between and so like in the 80s 80 or 85 of the Common Era um conservative Evangelical

Scholars or conservative Catholic Scholars might argue that they're you know 10 years after the birth of je after the death of Jesus or something but most critical Scholars don't think that the big issue uh right now uh among Scholars is whether Luke might be a later account uh Luke also wrote the book of Acts and some Scholars are arguing that acts could not have been written before the uh before the beginning of the second century and so if so then Luke possibly would be later As well uh the other big question is the one you

mentioned uh did did they know each other I think everybody agrees just about just about everybody agrees that Matthew did was not using the Gospel of Luke one question is whether the Gospel of Luke was using the the gospel of Matthew Luke is probably later uh did did he have access to Matthew and there's a small but loud minority of Scholars who are saying yes uh but the majority of us still think no these are Independent accounts and when you compare just the birth narratives themselves they have they have basically some things in common right

but they you know there was a birth in Bethlehem to somebody named Mary who was a virgin you know they're basic things but the stories themselves are completely different and they have different points and they're different things and so so I I think they're probably independent of one one Another yes uh am I right in thinking that there are some Scholars who even think that Luke is later than John yeah so the deal is is that the the book of Acts with that this person also wrote um some Scholars have been arguing that the book

of Acts shows knowledge of the writings of Josephus Josephus is writing in the in the 90s his Antiquities of the Jews appeared in the year 93 um and if L if the author of Acts did Know that then he had to be writing later and so there's a move to push him back to like the year 120 or so um John is usually dated to the 90s um these are you know these are Highly Educated guesses so they're both guesses but they're Highly Educated guesses um and so if if acts was written by the same

person who wrote Luke uh as it as it almost certainly was and acts was written in round 120 then possibly Luke the Gospel of Luke was possibly Written later but again I'd say that's a minority view wow what what what is it that gives us an indication that Luke the author of luk might have known The Works of Josephus okay that's that's a long other story but it's it it's a little bit complicated and I'll tell you one of one of my criticisms of modern biblical scholarship as it's as it's been happening over the last

10 or 20 years is that Scholars have started in my Opinion started lowering the uh the burden of proof so that um you know scant evidence is taken as hard evidence and so in this particular case there's it is not like we have for evidence for example that Matthew used Mark to show that Matthew used Mark there's compelling evidence they have all Matthew has almost all the same stories as Mark and and other ones too but then tells the same stories in the same sequence and sometimes word for word the Same you can't get that

unless somebody's copying somebody and with Josephus and acts it's not like that at all it's that there are some um some strange uh connections that you wouldn't expect um for I'll just give you one example in Josephus Josephus talks about a couple of uh Jewish prophetic uh figures who led who tried to lead rebellions against Rome or were suspected of leading rebellions against Rome and uh one of Them is is named Judas the Galilean and one is named thus the book of Acts mentions both of those uh theudas uh Judas of Galilee was was like

you know in in the year um six BCE or something and he's like he goes way back there and thus was like decades later okay but acts mentions them in the opposite order mentions thas is coming first and then Judas of G of Galilee Josephus also talks about thas and Judas of Galilee and he knows that that Judas of Galilee Was earlier but he talks about him first before he talks about futas see so this is kind of confusing but the point is is that they say well so AXS must have gotten that from Josephus

and I I don't know it just seems I see so a little a little less uh a little less stringent than for me than Matthew for me it's way less stringent last last question on dating I promise but okay so you you flip over Matthew and you flip over Mark and they sort of Verbatim same passages how then do we know that Mark came afterwards uh that Matthew came afterwards and that Mark wasn't like a redacted version of Matthew well that you know in the early church that was the opinion uh St Augustine thought that

Mark was kind of like a Reader's Digest version of Matthew they got got rid of a lot of the sayings and things there the the arguments are kind of complicated and we maybe could do an episode on some Complicated stuff we should do that yeah but it is um but it the arguments are really quite compelling uh for Matthew not not being that Mark not copying Matthew but Matthew copying mark and it has it has to do with the agreements between Matthew Mark and Luke in tandem the three of them in Tandem and it has

to do with with um with sequencing of the argument ments and and it's they are long arguments we can talk about that if you Want to but it's it's the kind of thing they worked this out in the 19th century in Germany where they they really dug down deep then England picked up on it then America and now there's almost uh there's there's I don't personally know anybody who thinks Matthew is first because these arguments are just so compelling if you want an argument I can give it to you but we'll get back to Bart

Man in just a moment but first do you trust the news I don't and a lot of that has got to do with the bias that inevitably seeps into media reporting one thing that we as consumers of news can do to navigate this media landscape is to compare headlines objectively analyzing how different sources are reporting on the same story at least we can now thanks to today's sponsor ground news ground news Aggregates thousands of local and international news outlets all in one place so you can compare reporting Across the political Spectrum try it out at

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doing news aggregation like ground news try it out for yourself by going to ground. news/ Alex OC or by scanning the QR code that's on your screen use my link to get 50% off that unlimited access Vantage plan just now for the holiday season with that said back to Bart Man no right I think I think let's let's best move on to talk About this the Dark Side of Christmas most people know about the story of uh the Nativity and in fact people acted out in schools and yeah the look of horror on my teacher's

face when I said I want to play one of the slaughtered innocent children that get killed in all of Bethlehem by by by Herod the interesting question is why these horrible things are in the in the gospels now we can talk about what these are I mean people will have Heard of these things Herod hears that there's a new king of the Jews who's been born Herod is the king of the Jews and so out of insecurity he decides to slaughter every child under the age of two in in Bethlehem and the vicinity in order

to prevent this king of the Jews from trying to overthrow him that's a pretty horrible story now if that actually happened then of course the the gospel writers would would put it into the story but if the Gospel writers were kind of putting together semi mythical events uh and basing their stories on on things that they'd heard or maybe even making up stories to to make a theological point the question is on a theological level why would these really horrible elements be included in the story of Jesus's birth yeah well that I think that's by

far the the worst one and it's it is horrible and people you know when you read the stories or you see it enacted In uh in church or or whatever I I I probably not most uh people participating those uh volunteer to be one of the slaughtered children so so you did okay so but you know when you read the story what people people just are um enthralled by the fact that Jesus manages to Escape um and that God warns Joseph in a dream that this is going to happen and they have to get out

of town and so they pack up and they they travel to Egypt to Escape herod's wrath and so they think oh Jesus Got Away great but you don't think about all of these children who are slaughtered people normally don't and it's kind of like you know when you have one of these incidents like there's an airline uh airline crash and you know 360 people die and three escape and you manage to survive and you know soon afterwards one of them's interviewed on TV and he says oh God was with me I'm just so glad that

God was protecting me And wasn't the world are you talking about that 360 people have died here you mean God protected you what and so like and so we have that kind of reaction then many of us do I do um but not with this story what about all those babies I mean why why did they why would they have to be killed and what's I think what makes it dark is that this is only in Matthew it's it's Matthew's version and Matthew says that it was in order to fulfill prophecy right because there's a

Prophecy in the book of Jeremiah uh that Rachel will weep for her children because they were no more and so the slaughter of the Innocents has these the women uh mourning mourning completely torn apart by the fact their children have been have been murdered uh and it's to fulfill prophecy wh what why is there a prophecy in the first place that this had to happen I mean in other words you know it looks like it's a nice thing That oh yeah that does that shows that Jesus is the Messiah that's great but what why do

you have to have a messiah that comes into the world that leads to the slaughter of innocent babies and ruining the lives of these families what why not do it some other way so that's yeah I mean having having an angel appear to Joseph and warn him that this is happening so you better run you might have thought that God could have sent the angel to maybe have a word with Herod instead perhaps you know might have had simar effect well that's right but it wouldn't have fulfilled prophecy then yeah well Matthew is is pretty

concerned with the Fulfillment of Prophecy um at one point in the birth narrative is even the fulfilling of a prophecy that doesn't seem to exist when he says that he shall be called a Nazarene and I think we talked about that last time as well uh but of course the family flee to Egypt and when they Come back from Egypt Matthew says that this is so that the prophecy is fulfilled uh in Hosea that out of Egypt I shall call my son now in Hosea it seems to be talking about Israel here out of Egypt

I shall call my son and the son there is the nation of Israel being called out of Egypt where they were once enslaved uh Matthew seems to be if if these stories didn't happen I mean do you think it's plausible to suggest that Matthew simply Invented these stories in order to to fulfill prophecy I mean do we think that the slaughter of the Innocence actually happened historically do we think that Jesus and his family did travel to Egypt or do we think they inventions either of uh Matthew the Evangelist or of somebody else that he'd

listening to well I think they have to be inventions I don't I don't think that they can be historical um you know we have a we have an account of Herod and his atrocities and and the Good things he did for example in the writings of Josephus the Roman historian and um Josephus was well informed uh about the events in herod's reign and uh and he has no trouble mentioning some of the awful things he did but uh there's no word about this one and this is this would be one of the worst things he'd

ever done and so so there's no record not just in Josephus but anywhere of this happening and this is the kind of thing that you'd certainly have a record Of so I don't think it happened the idea that going down to Egypt um you know you just think about the logistics about this for a second uh if Jesus was born in Beth if he was born in Bethlehem I I think you know a lot of historians think actually that that story too is made up because everybody knows he came from Nazareth but in these two

accounts only in these two accounts he comes from Bethlehem the the home of his ancestor King David so But suppose he was born in Bethlehem and suppose Joseph and Mary decided to take him down to Egypt well uh okay so from Bethlehem to Cairo it's about 450 miles and they you know they can't catch a train and so how you know and so they go down and what do they they walk down there how do they how do they do this they're not rich they money and where do they get their food and how do

they how do they do this and then come back for and then they take another 100 miles to Go up to to Nazareth afterward so you're talking about you know a Thousand Mile track um and it's found only in Matthew and it's only given to show that he fulfilled prophecy well Matthew as you said repeatedly uh throughout his gospel but especially in the birth narrative emphasizes Jesus fulfilled prophecy and the whole point is to these of these stories is to show him fulfilling prophecy even when they're improbable or Completely implausible um and so it it's

it's fulfilling a theological function rather than showing what historically uh really happened and that's not to mention of course the fact that in Luke's uh birth narrative the family go to Jerusalem to present Jesus at the temple when the gospel of Matthew has them going down to Egypt now some people have tried to rectify that supposed contradiction by saying that they did both which is often the case with Biblical contradictions again we talked about that in more detail in our last episode but lots of reasons here to be thinking that thank God Almighty this is

not a historical account of right thank God it didn't happen yeah good point and you know it just the reconciliations are problematic because it Luke says they went right back to um Nazareth 40 days later and Matthew says they went down to Egypt which is as I said 450 miles so um but the the point of that contradiction Is not just so you can say oh yeah there's a contradiction you know you can't trust these things it's in order to show that these are stories and that as narratives they need to be interpreted as narratives

and you're somewhat missing the point if you're trying to reconcile everything because the point is not what historically happened uh in this case the point is what is m Matthew trying to show and what is Luke trying to show and what What are they trying to say about Jesus in these accounts now we know why Jesus had to go to Nazareth to be a Nazarene as the uh Missing prophecy says um we know why he went to Jerusalem because Jerusalem is the side of the temple why did he have to be born in Bethlehem well

that fulfills another prophecy and so uh in this case um uh Matthew quotes the uh prophet Micah Micah chapter 5: two that the there'll be a savior who comes out of Bethlehem um Bethlehem was the birthplace of King David and the Messiah was supposed to be a descendant of David and to show then that Jesus is the son of David uh Matthew wants him to be born in Bethlehem where David was born to fulfill the prophet Micah and so once again it's kind of this interweaving of biblical prophecy to show who Jesus really is now

another question I have about the birth narratives broadly here is is There any speculation about whether these were later interpolations into the gospels the reason I ask that is because I read the birth Narrative of of Matthew and I open the text and I see a genealogy of Jesus and then I see a birth narrative and then I see Jesus's Ministry if I open the Gospel of Luke I have a birth narrative with a bunch of other stories as well that aren't in Matthew uh and we get like babies doing back flips and stomachs and

stuff and Then we get the birth narrative and then we get a baptism of Jesus and then we get the genealogies of Jesus and the beginning of the ministry and I I don't know it seems to me like maybe we started off with two go Els that began with a genealogy and that somebody decided to sort of stick on this birth narrative to Luke at some point later I'm not sure if the same thing might have happened with Matthew but the other thing that sort of Rings alarm Bells here is that I might be wrong

about this but it seems like the gospel the gospels outside of the birth narratives don't know anything about Jesus's birth of a virgin now being born of a virgin would be a pretty good card to play when people are sort of doubting your Authority or when they're sort of asking about Mary or or anything like that but nobody even tries to bring that up as a point towards Jesus's Authority so it seems like the Disciples and the writers of the gospels outside of the birth narratives don't know what happened there it also seems like the

placements a little bit weird do you think these were part of the original manuscripts um so it's a complicated question I'm actually I'm doing a um I'm doing a webinar with members of my blog on this point uh in a couple days and on because I I I think that there's very good evidence that Luke did not Originally have that have his birth narrative there's not the same evidence with Matthew I think Matthew probably did start that way but but Luke in particular um the points you're you're making are really are some of the key

points um why would you have a genealogy of somebody after their baptized as a 30y old Luke says he's 30 it's like not normally the place you'd put a genealogy but there's a complication to it too that that would not be widely known um That is that at the baptism in Luke's gospel um you know in all the go in Matthew Mark and Luke that Jesus is baptized and he comes out of the water and a voice comes from Heaven uh and in Mark's gospel the voice says uh you are my beloved Son in whom

I'm well pleased in Luke's gospel a lot of the later manuscripts have that as well you are my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased but some of our early manuscripts have something different Some of our earliest manuscripts some of our earliest manuscripts the voice comes from heaven and says you are my son today I have begotten you a quotation of Psalm 27 and um there are excellent reasons for thinking that that was originally what Luke wrote and later scribes found it problematic today I've begotten you when you're being baptized and and uh but if

that's the case if that was what the voice said which I think it is in in Luke then it makes sense that the genealogy comes right after it because the genealogy in Luke uh doesn't just go back to King David or just back to Abraham the father of the Jews it goes back to Adam the first human being and from Adam it goes to God it's starts with God and so Jesus is descended from God and then the voice says today I have begotten you so it's the Son of God imagery so the the genealogy

makes sense In Luke given that voice but it doesn't make sense if you have a birth narrative because in the birth narrative in Luke the reason Jesus is the son of God is because uh the angel tells Mary that she's she's going to conceive uh the Virgin will uh the the uh the Holy Spirit Will Will impregnate her so that the one born of her will be called The Son of God and so the yeah so the Virgin birth in lukee is to function that show Jesus Really is the Son of God but it doesn't

make sense then once you get to chapter 3 with the baptism and the genealogy yeah and and of course you sort of as people will will realize reading the gospels you have all this info about Jesus's birth precise details about who showed up and what happened and then radio silence right up until the baptism in his 30s well and it's also it's also um it's it's striking in Luke that lukee as I mentioned also Wrote the book of Acts together Luke and acts make up 1/4th of the New Testament in just in ter bulk and

it's and a lot of and things about jesus' life are mentioned in the book of Acts again not his virgin birth even the apostles trying to preach that he's the son of God say nothing about a virgin birth in the book of Acts and so I think that what happened is that um a l either Luke himself either the author whatever his name was whoever was either did a second Addition with adding the birth narrative which is totally possible or uh somebody else added it on the thing to note though is the other one other

one other point to note is that those two chapters the birth narrative are told in a very different writing style from the rest of the Gospel of Luke Luke is actually a pretty good Greek author compared to most of the authors of the New Testament those two chapters are written in what Scholars call septu gental style it it's It's an the language the style writing style is IM in Imitation of the septu aent the the Greek translation of the Old Testament that septu gental style is all beginning with the birth narrative all the way through

chapter two and then it ends at 31 and so it looks like it's maybe a different author uh using a different style wow um that's I mean that's pretty extraordinary and I the question that always comes to mind for me is that when We have instances in which the stories about Jesus were adapted after they were written down what's to say that they weren't also adapted before they were written down as well I mean people say when you say well how do you know you've got an accurate reporting of what happened if nobody wrote it

down for decades and people say well there was a very strong oral tradition of people passing on stories and making sure every Word was perfect and it's like okay even the written manuscripts can adapt and change over time there's a whole added extra ending to the to the entire Gospel of Mark uh there's the story of the adulterous woman in John which seems to be added in at a later date perhaps even the last chapter of John John 21 which which for numerous reasons might also be thought to be an interpolation if that can happen

in the textual tradition then of course it can also happen in the oral Tradition too well not only that the people who say that really don't understand how oral cultur work you know I spent a couple years doing nothing but studying memory and oral traditions and oral cultures like I didn't read anything about the New Testament or anything for about two years this is about 10 years ago I just reading memory books and what we know about oral cultures and this this line that in oral cultures they never change anything it's Just completely bogus it's

not true and we can show it's not true in the ancient world and we know it's not true in oral cultures since then uh and so one of my books actually deals with this and so it's completely wrong but the point you're making is a really good one because you would think that in written cultures especially people would keep things intact no they're changing them all over the place which book is it that deals with that well it's it's uh it's My best book that nobody's read it's because I actually I I should have given

it a different title it's called Jesus before the gospels but it's it's dealing with the oral traditions of Jesus and what I did is I I read all the psych iCal studies of memory how we remember things I studied anthropologists who have studied modern oral cultures I looked at the pH sociologist talking about social memory and I applied all of that to what we Know about the gospel traditions of Jesus before they were written down uh and uh for me it was a really really interesting book a lot of fun wow now the the topic

of the hour is the Dark Side of Christmas we've talked about the slaughter of the Innocents what other kind of darkness is there lurking behind the the nice Christmas lights well you know one thing kind of a basic thing is just the the Mary becoming pregnant um is again something That seems like a joyful event I mean Jesus Jesus is born of a virgin and she's you know she she's honored by God and um and you know in Luke you know she's she uh the angel comes to her in Luke so this only in Luke

do you have the the anunciation scene where she uh she has a visitation from the angel Gabriel who uh tells her that she's going to conceive and she says well you know I've never known a man other I've never had sex and and he said Well the holy spirit will come upon you the power of the most high will overshadow you so that the one born of you will be called holy the Son of God and and she says uh well I'm the slave of God do with me what you will uh when you start

thinking about that for a second it's troubling so in in ancient cultures broadly and we in broadly but also in Israel girls who reached puberty uh were were married that's that's when they got Married the men tended to be older because they had to be able to establish lives and so the men might be in their 30 early 30s but the girls were 13 or 14 whenever they hit puberty and so this is this 13 or 14 year old girl who gets pregnant uh without being married um that can be uh very bad in many

cultures today uh just in terms of uh reputation and social stigmas and um in the gospels it's seen as problematic Joseph is going to privately put her Away uh and not have anything to do with her and divorce her and here's this innocent girl who you know she has no say in the matter you know the angel doesn't say is this okay with you you know God say you you all right with this Mary it's that this is going to happen and she says well I'm your slave well yes I'm that Masters could have sex

with slaves as much as they wanted to and impregnate them if they impregnate them if they wanted to and so she's this is What's going on then God is getting her pregnant without you know and the assumption is well of course she's going to be happy about this the text doesn't say anything about her being happy about it um Joseph isn't happy about it but they they submit to the will of God you know you just think the 1 your 13-year-old daughter getting pregnant and you know uh you know it's it can be it can

be heart-wrenching really and so some some say I mean this is a point of Contention uh the the pregnancy of Mary because some say that when she says you know look I'm a servant of the Lord there are two ways to read this there's a kind of well being your slave what shall I do but tend upon the hours and Times of your desire and there's a reading that's sort of like this is an issuance of consent that this like I am your yes I will I will I will do what you want but in

a kind of in a kind of happy way as as if you say you Know can you do you want to cook me some dinner and I'm like hey I'm I'm your servant I'll do whatever you want because I love you you know and so it's unclear exactly how to read this but even if we're talking about uh Mary sort of saying okay this is fine giving her consent to this I mean firstly she would have been quite young right I I don't think we actually know know how old she would have been but some

people say she would have been quite young I'm not sure About that well I think I mean as I was saying normally 13 or 14 would be the age and even if you think that she's saying yeah sure go ahead and do this I mean if your 13-year-old daughter said yeah I'm I I consent to this I want to have a pregnancy I think you'd think maybe you need to be a little bit older before you can even you know meaningfully consent in that way um it's an interesting thing I mean when when you talk

about the Dark Side of Christmas this isn't something that came to mind but I have heard this discussed a lot now that I think about it and and not only this but someone I know uh recently pointed out I mean there's this Christmas song Mary Did You Know uh I don't know exactly how it goes but like Mary did you know that you know your your kid would go on to do all of these things yeah yeah yeah yeah and and and she was like this is this I wasn't I didn't think this was supposed

to be Like a happy Christmas song because like Mary had no idea that she was not only about to conceive a child at an incredibly young age and possibly you know ruin her reput with people who didn't believe her but also she'd then have to watch her son one day be brutally crucified and this is sort of all pre-ordained and just sort of thrust upon Mary even if she did consent to the idea of having a child who' be the Son of God she'd have no idea of the Suffering that she would have to go

through watching him be crucified in front of her yeah well I you know I the way you first put this I I always consider this kind of a happy story and that she's consenting and that she's you know and that it is striking that she doesn't say you know I'm your servant and she's I'm your slave and and even if even if she does consent and even if it's like she's pleased about it the social stigma in the ancient world for Being pregnant out of wedlock was really quite severe uh just as it is is

today I mean you know adultery was punishable by death in uh in ancient Israel uh I'm not saying that that always I'm not saying every pregnant woman got stoned to death but but it is in the Torah that there she's supposed to be uh executed and the so even if she's willing it had to lead in on any by any measure it had to lead to real personal suffering and social rejection um and The thing about her you know then knowing that the son is going to die that's actually indicated in the in the birth

narratives themselves in the Gospel of Luke where the Prophet who sees Jesus as a newborn uh Simeon says that that this child will grow up and will it'll drive a a sword through your heart he says to Mary I said wow man it's uh from beginning to end you know she we she's always portrayed as being very um Pleased and happy and joyful about it but if you just put it in human terms it does also have this dark side and one of my one of my points in this course that I'm doing is that

the dark I'm not I'm not s talking about the dark side in order to show what a horrible story it is in some ways I'm I'm I want to talk about it as having a deeper profundity Than People realize when you put this at the level of human emotion what what this really entails is not this kind of Happy go-lucky Christmas Pageant it is pain and suffering when the Son of God comes into the world it isn't for l so for these birth narratives one of the points these birth narratives um one of the points

it's m they're making is that the coming of the Son of God is not simply to relieve the suffering and bring Salvation into the world it's Jesus is coming in the midst of suffering and the and the suffering is right there before your eyes even Though people look the other way and it's not only that but the S but the coming of the Son of God creates suffering th I mean it does it creates huge suffering these babies who get killed these Journeys that have to be taken uh in poverty this woman who's made pregnant

these are very very um powerful images that we we neglect I think and that we Overlook and it's saying something I think Matthew's trying to say something about God's Relationship to suffering in the world that he doesn't take it lik lightly you know he doesn't kind of just write it off he's deeply deeply entrenched it in some way now you said a second ago that the word here is not servant but slave now I I've looking at the NIV um the NIV has Luke's gospel put into the words of of Mary you know I am

your servant or I am the Lord's servant do you think that that's A m transation i mean I I don't know the Greek but I I I don't I know a lot of the time words can kind of mean different things depending on the context but do we do we know that she really meant something more like a slave here uh yeah we do it's th this word is um notoriously difficult for translators uh not because they don't know what it means but because they there are reasons not to translate it the way what it

meant the word is Doule the the Greek word the the masculine terms what you look it up in the dictionary doos and it means a person who's owned by someone else and is uh required to do what they what they ask and so there are separate words for servants which would be somebody who who serves somebody willingly or but they're not owned by the other person um the reason especially in American trans trans ations which the NIV is largely uh for not using the word slave is because Translators are afraid that people will um uh

think of think of the term uh in in light of the antibellum South here where the uh where and conjure image of African American slavery and putting that wholesale onto that the ancient world because slavery was different in the ancient world but there is also a a lot of like too you were owned by somebody and you had to do what they told you to do and you could be punished and there were like very little to stop Somebody from punishing you so the the word is slave it's absolutely slave but many translators not just

the NIV but the more recent uh updated edition of the nrsv translates it as servant and it's be and in that case by the way the nrsv committee voted for slave but the uh the National Council of churches that published the nrsv decided to change it even though they weren't the translators really yeah yeah yeah oh because the nrsv is known for being if I'm not mistaken a more kind of to the text translation it's supposed to give you a good idea of what the original Greek words meant whereas the NIV probably takes a bit

more Liberty in trying to get the meaning across right well it's it's a complicated matter this translation thing when I was a I was actually the I was a research assistant for the nrsv committee when it came out the NRC came out in 1988 I was the research grunt for the committee and um They the their policy was to make it as um um as um literal as necessary but they wanted it both be literal and idiomatic uh and some translations are more idiomatic and others more somewhat more paraphrastic others are way more literal like

word for word wooden like the new American Standard Bible um and so both the NIV And the nrsv tried to kind of do a bit of both to make it very rable but accurate um but the NIV tends To the NIV committee was all uh committed Evangelical Scholars who uh in places implemented their Evangelical biases I think I I know a number of those translators um and uh the nrsv was a committee with a wide range of different kinds of people the ni the NIV of course a nearly infallible version uh I I wonder we've

done the the flight to Egypt as a result Of the death of the killing of the newborns we've talked about Mary um how much more darkness is there for us to uncover in this in this story well you know that uh those are the main points of Darkness uh they're also the main points of the story so I mean in in Matthew's Matthew's version the birth of Jesus Takes very very quickly Matthew begins with the genealogy as you pointed out and then it says the birth of Jesus happened like this and boom bo it's like

A few verses then you get the birth but the the most of the story is the wise men who the Magi who are following the star to Bethlehem so they can worship this child and so they're following the star and the entire this whole thing with the wise men story is is trying to explain why Herod slaughtered these babies because he finds out from the wise men about the king of the Jews being born and so the whole episode really is about the slaughter of the Innocents and then the flight down to Egypt in Luke's

version the whole the account of the birth itself is all about this trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem Joseph so this is I guess this is another part I hadn't talked about but in in Luke's version the reason Jesus is born in Bethlehem is because there's a census that the entire world has to register for uh that was put out by Caesar Augustus and so there you know there was no worldwide census under Caesar Augustus but in this narrative there is a worldwide census and everybody had to register for it and Joseph uh is from the

family of David so he has to register where David was born and so he has to go to Nazareth well this is a 100 mile Journey if he's up in Nazareth he's got to go down to Bethlehem his wife is is not his wife his betroth is N9 months pregnant and so this is a bit of suffering she's got to travel down nine months pregnant to Bethlehem to register for the census why so Jesus can be born there they register for the census 40 month and a half later they go back and you know they

and what I mean you know again they're not they're not catching a flight they're uh you know presumably they're walking there nine months pregnant so that he can be born there why why is that necessary and why why doesn't Luke just have him live in na live in Bethlehem Then later go to Nazareth the way the way Matthew does well it's because you know he knows that they came from Nazareth he thinks Jesus has to be born in Bethlehem and so he comes up with this story that has this dark side of this woman having

to fully pregnant having to travel down there yeah that's also pretty dark I mean I I imagine even if they did get a get a plane or a train when you're heavily pregnant that's a pretty uncomfortable experience Anyway yeah no it's not you know there's no place for them to stay and you know and so it's it's and well that's the other thing is that they they sort of end up having to to give birth either in a in a house in Matthew I think but Luke has it in the in the famous stable right

well he doesn't actually say a stable but what he says is that there was no room in the inn and so we don't know where they were in the older tradition in the early church it was a cave um That Joseph found a cave and she was but the the reason people say a stable is because they they um you know there's a manger and so there must be animals there so there's no mention of sheep or anything like you get in the Christmas pageants but there's a there's a Manger there a food trough my

students my students for some reason have the idea that Mary gave birth in the manger I guess she's lying down in this food trough and get I don't think it doesn't Say that but they don't have a cradle available so they put him in a Manger this is part of so this is again this is part of Luke's story Luke is trying to emphasize unlike Matthew uh Luke is trying to emphasize that Jesus came to to the poor and he ministered to the poor during his life and he was concerned about the poor and the

outcast he and he's born a poor Outcast and in Luke's gospel it's not these these wealthy uh High highly placed wise men From the East who worship him with gold frankincense and myrror in Luke's version uh it's these these lowly Shepherds so the these illiterate Farm hands who are out freezing with their flocks every night who come to worship Him and this is all both stories are trying to emphasize something different about the coming of Jesus into the world Matthew more that this is the king who has come and Luke more like this is the

savior of the poor and the oppressed so Luke is sort of writing for the poor or sort of trying to indicate that Jesus came for the poor Matthew as we've already said is is seemingly obsessed with the Fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy we know that the different authors of the gospels the different evangelists as they're called uh have different intentions when when writing their gospels is there a reason why the gospels of Mark and the gospels of John Especially with John being the most sort of theological and the latest of the gospels don't include anything

about Jesus's birth uh yeah well um you know they they they don't they don't say there's no birth narrative there's no uh references per se to Jesus birth in these gospels um I uh so we don't know we don't know whether Mark and John actually had heard a birth narrative uh before we just can't tell you would think that um they Would have surely be be talking about it but Mark is writing before the Matthew and Luke maybe in his community they didn't have a story yet of the birth John is writing later but we

U we tend to think of these authors like all knowing each other or something or all having access to each other's works but John might be just in a completely different Community he hasn't heard but there there are things about Mark and John that make us think that make me Think that maybe they they didn't think Jesus had been born of a virgin I mean in Mark in some ways is the more interesting because in Mark's gospel early in Jesus Jesus ministry his mother and his brother Brothers uh come to uh they think they they

come to take him out of the public view because Jesus is getting very popular he's had a following and we're told in uh Mark chapter 3:2 that is that his family think that he's gone out of his Mind he's he's he's gone crazy and they try and to and and he rejects them he turns them away that's his mother and his brother why would his mother think he's gone crazy didn't she know that she was a virgin when he was born and know who he was not in Mark she doesn't know who he is uh

like everyone else she doesn't realize who he is so I think Mark doesn't know anything about a virgin birth um and has a different view of Jesus family from uh Matthew and Luke John is interesting as well because John certainly has Jesus Come into the world but not through a virgin in John's account Jesus is a pre-existent Divine being who uh was with God in the beginning who created the world and uh Christ himself created the world and then became a human being and so uh in order to bring Salvation And so in John's gospel

we have an Incarnation uh Incarnation literally means coming in the flesh where a Divine Being becomes a human being um and that's who Christ is he is God's word who is with God in the beginning who has now become a human being that's only in John Matthew Mark and Luke say nothing like that and nothing about it but what people have done for time immemorial is they've taken John's account of Jesus coming into the world as an Incarnation and Matthew and Luke's account of Jesus being born of a virgin and combine the two into one

thing that None of them says and so in the nyine Creed it's Jesus um becomes incarnate through the Virgin Mary that's taking John's Incarnation where there's no birth narrative and Matthew and Luke's virgin birth narrative where there's no Incarnation when you read Matthew and Luke there Jesus does not pre-exist he he come the reason he's the son of God is because God impregnates Mary that's why he's the son of God so He didn't exist before that uh in John he did pre-exist but he's not born of a virgin and so this is one of those

things where since all four gospels are put in the same book between the same two covers people read them in relationship ship to one another and end up creating a story in their heads that is not in any of the gospels yeah it's so interesting I mean the the the the Gnostic Christian in me was was holding his tongue and and Having to be sort of held back with chains when you talked about Luke's gospel saying you know uh today I have begotten you I mean this this is so in keeping with with a more

Gnostic tradition I guess there's also sort of the adoptionist view of of Jesus's Divinity but it's so interesting how you can see you can almost like watch the development of traditional Christian doctrine through the gospels and the stories it starts with with sort of like As I say like that in this particular case we've got Luke where you have a sort of a birth story and the impregnation of Mary by a god which is kind of in keeping with a lot of ancient Divine human stories right you write about this in uh how Jesus became

God you begin with a sort of analysis that's that's it's a wonderful book begins with this analysis of the treatment of humans as Divine or Gods as human in the ancient world and in Judaism and the Idea that a God will come down and have sex with a mortal woman and give birth to a god or a sort of demig God or something is is a pretty common story so it would make sense for that to be what you would put into a birth narrative and you have Jesus potentially today I have begotten you at

the baptis M as if God is sort of putting Divinity into him at some later point so you've got this like mortally born not pre-existing person who gets Infused with divinity at the baptism fast forward to John and you've got in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the word is made flesh and dwelt Among Us so the word is is Jesus and I'm looking at this and thinking is there any other way to read this than that an early Christian Community the very earliest Christian

communities didn't see Jesus as God in the same way That 100 years later they did well yeah I you know I think that's absolutely right because you line them up chronologically and that's that's how it goes it becomes a increasingly more exalted view of Jesus the the monkey wrench to throw into that is that our earliest gospel our earliest writer not gospel writer earliest Christian Author is Paul who also seems to think of Jesus as a pre-existent being in Philippians 2 and so what I would say is that there Absolutely was a progression of thought

so that Christ becomes more and more exalted up and it goes on for centuries until he become you know until you get the doctrine of the Trinity which is about that's as high as you can get really um and so so there is a progression but it's not a straight linear progression that everybody was thinking the same thing at the same time in other words you later later Christians had early adoptionist Christologies some early Christians had more of an Incarnation theology not as high as in the Gospel of John and so so it's an uneven

development but it does develop does go in that direction and that answers the other question you had earlier why would somebody add these two chapters to Luke well if it's if you living in a later Christian Community and he sees this adoption as christology where today I have begotten you then he thinks well okay we need to kind of Improve this a little bit and he he adds a virgin birth to it because it's more advanced understanding wow um one final question here about something we mentioned a second ago which was Mark chapter 3:21 when

Jesus's family see him they they think he's lost his mind which would be a weird thing for his family particularly his mother to think if she remembered giving birth to him and God Telling her that he was going to be the Son of God um the word for family there I'm seeing some footnotes that it can also mean Associates yeah it's a it's a comp it's complicated Greek um it it is not a word it's a phrase and um it is uh how do I how do I put this it's it's a it's a Greek

phrase that literally means something like those around him but when you read the passage in its Context there are two things that that show that it means his family one is that it can't mean his associates that are with him because they were with him they're they're with him throughout the whole thing these are people who are coming to him to take him out of the public view who have not been with him when this incident is happening and so the phrase does it does mean family in other contexts but the other thing is that

a few verses later his mother and His brothers are are mentioned as being these people who uh want to see him and so uh in verse in 3:31 and so those things together have led um most translat I don't know what the NIV does but sometimes people try and get around the problem but it's almost NIV has has family the NIV has family it just has a footnote which says all his associates and then finally Jesus had Brothers I mean what about the Perpetual V the Perpetual Virginity of Mary well you know I started out

teaching uh not in the South where I teach now in North Carolina but in the Northeast at ruter University in New Jersey where a lot of my students were Roman cathol Catholic and I would teach a new testament class they would never be upset about my talking about contradictions in the Bible or historical mistakes or things like that but if I mention jesus' Brothers they'd go ballistic it's like what because in The Catholic tradition of course Jesus can't have brothers because of the Perpetual virginity of Mary that's a later Doctrine it's not in the New

Testament the word what most Roman Catholics today say is that they are his cousins the older view was that they were sons of Joseph from a previous marriage so you get ways get ways around him having brothers and sisters in Mark as well um but in fact the word used is brother aloy it's not the word for Cousin anep and so uh there's actually little doubt this these are his brothers and and his sisters but for theological reasons um some people get upset about that as as for theological reasons people tend to do but man

thanks so much for joining us Merry Christmas it's always a thrill to have you on I think this is something like your fourth time on my show now you you must be the most frequent guest it's always a blast it's an it's an honor every time so Merry Christmas to you too Merry Christmas one and all thanks for watching everybody to get early ad free access to episodes as well as supporting the channel at the same time subscribe to my substack at Alex o con.com watch more episodes by clicking the link on your screen thanks

for watching and I'll see you in the next one