Within Reason - #135 Christmas Isn't What You Think - John Nelson

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

John Nelson earned a PhD in New Testament and Christian Origins from the University of Edinburgh in 2023. He writes for the Substack Behind the Gospels.His thesis is the first book-length study of Jesus' physical appearance in the Gospels. He runs a weekly Substack called "Behind the Gospels" which aims to make Biblical studies accessible to all.Timestamps:0:00 - Was Jesus Really Born on Christmas Day?2:51 - Are the Birth Narratives Attempts at History?6:34 - Where Was Jesus Actually Born?16:19 - Were the Birth Narratives Added Later?20:54 - Was Mary Really a Virgin?32:57 - Why Does Nobody Else Mention the Virgin Birth?37:39 - Was Jesus a Product of Adultery? 42:22 - Was Jesus Born in a Manger?48:07 - Who Are the Magi?54:05 - Was the Star Really a Star?01:00:03 - Did Herod Really Order a Slaughter of Infants?01:06:26 - Is the Christmas Story Anti-Imperial?01:13:13 - Are Christmas Trees a Pagan Idol?01:16:12 - John’s Book and the Upcoming Tour

When you're flying Emirates business class, enjoying a good night's rest in your lie flat seat, you'll see that your vacation isn't really over until your flight is over. Fly Emirates, fly better. John Nelson, welcome back to the show. It's great to be here. Happy Christmas. Merry Christmas. Or is it? Dun, dun, and I don't just mean because we're deeply unhappy or something, or that we're secretly filming this.

episode in advance of Christmas, but that Christmas time is traditionally celebrated in the Christian tradition, at least the Western Christian tradition, on the 25th of December, which is forthcoming for our viewers. Is that the date of Jesus's birth? Certainly by the fourth century Christians thought it was. But it's actually more about the death of Jesus than the birth of Jesus. So there was this theory that Christ was conceived on the day he died. So at least in our Christian sources, we have this idea that Jesus died on the 25th of March. And so allowing nine months, we make it to the 25th of December. Interesting. As for the gospel accounts, we have shepherds watching their flocks by night. And so people say, okay, it absolutely couldn't have been Christmas.

But we've been to the Holy Land together. We know that it's quite a warm climate. And so I think probably, I mean, I'm not an expert on lambing in the ancient world. But I think maybe the lambs and the sheep could have still been out by that time of year. So it's plausible it could have been winter, in other words. And is that like the only line that people tend to give as to why? That's like the common sort of reason why, oh, Christmas wasn't really at winter because of the shepherds being outside? Yeah. But I mean, I think it's a rather loose.

peg. Yeah. I think so too. And it's one of the least certain of the so-called misconceptions that surround Christmas that we're going to talk about today. You're right, you're not an expert in Laming, but you are an expert in theology, and you have just published today on the day of recording this, you publish your new book Jesus' physical appearance, biography, Christology, philosophy. I threw that in just for you, the philosophy. Yeah, thanks, man. It's great. It's your PhD thesis that's been published and honestly I'm not joking like it's coming up for Christmas time I genuinely cannot think if you're looking for like a gift recommendation I actually cannot think of a better PhD thesis on the physical appearance of Jesus to buy as a gift for somebody

and it's only £81 as well so and that's 10% off well I'll leave a link in the description if anybody's interested but congratulations you are of course theologian you've been on the show before we've been on stage together before we're also about to embark on a tour together You're going to be hosting some of the shows that are forthcoming. We'll put the dates on screen. You'll put the dates on screen. Unless we've already sold out, in which case, you know, I mean, that would be cool. We'll still keep it in because it makes us seem really cool.

The hubris of this man. But, you know, we're here today to talk about Christmas. And Christmas is this celebration of Jesus' birth. And Jesus' birth is narrated in two of the Gospels out of four. It's Matthew and Luke. And it's a relatively sort of familiar story about no space at the inn and a star in the sky. But there's sort of all sorts of stuff going on with the story that raises all kinds of question marks. And so in getting into trying to dispel some of these misconceptions, I think one of the most important questions to ask is, like, what kind of story are we dealing with here?

When we open the Gospels and we read this story of Jesus's birth, are we reading an attempt at like history or biography or do you think we're reading something else? Yeah, I think as modern people, when we encounter ancient stories of supernatural conceptions and omens and portents, we might feel instinctively like we're in the realm of myth. I actually think that Matthew and Luke thought what they were doing was historical, and that the earliest Christians, if we can call them that, would have understood these stories to be taken historically. One of the reasons I think that is because both Matthew and Luke shape their stories on scripture. So Matthew begins, this is the book, the Biblion of the Genesis of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. And so we're taken right back to, especially in his early genealogy, to the genealogies of One Chronicles, the first a couple of chapters of One Chronicles. So Matthew sees himself as continuing that biblical narrative. And Luke's infancy narrative is very strange because it's written in quite a distinct style, a kind of scriptural style.

So he's echoing much of the language of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures. And I think most people would have thought that these were intended to be historical, given that they also understood the scriptures to be historical as well. But what about the authors themselves? It's just that, like you say, to the modern reader, it's quite fantastical, this virgin birth and following the star. And it kind of sounds like the kind of mythological story that sometimes people would make up. And regardless of how that was received, as a modern scholar, do you think that whoever authored these texts was trying to do history and believed this actually happened? Yeah, Matthew, when he gets into his narrative proper, says the birth. of Jesus took place in this way.

And ancient biographers are quite different to modern ones in that they are happy to include elements which are deemed supernatural and probably sometimes they actually believe them. I mean, there's a sort of range of credulity when it comes to ancient biography. So, I mean, Swatonius, for example, in his birth story of Augustus, he's quite happy to say something like, I've heard a story that, but maybe there's a little bit of distancing going on. We're not quite sure whether Swaiton is actually believed in his own stories or the stories he received. Someone like Plutarch, though, is distances himself even more strongly from the stories. So he finds it quite unbelievable that a god would actually literally impregnate women.

It's much more likely that this was done in some sort of mysterious supernatural way. There's not actually relations going on between God. and women. So I think there's a range of views. I think probably the average person on the street probably had a much more anthropomorphic conception of those conceptions. Okay, so maybe we're dealing with something people thought was history, maybe they're not. There are kind of two ways we can approach this. There's what I suppose I've typically done in my episodes with Bart Ehrman when we've done Christmas specials, which is like, let's look at the narrative that we're given and see, you know, does it contradict itself?

Is it historical? And that's interesting. But there's also just this like internal sort of understanding of the text. Like what's the narrative that's being painted by these two depictions? And so let's just go through some of the sort of common beliefs about Christmas, possibly even because the scripture says that that was what was the case. And let's see what holds up and what doesn't. And the first thing is where are we?

Where is this taking place? So if you ask somebody where was Jesus born, they're probably going to say Bethlehem somewhere we've also been. Is that a fair assumption? Modern scholars have been very skeptical that Jesus was born in Bethlehem for a couple of reasons. One is that Jesus is consistently identified as Jesus of Nazareth. Nazareth is his patrists, his hometown in Mark. Another reason is because it seems very theologically convenient that Jesus is born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is this little clan of Judah and it's where King David was born.

So is it that they are presenting Jesus as this kind of Davidic Messiah and that this is what some scholars would call a theoguminon, a kind of theological statement rather than a statement of history. And another point is that in Matthew, he actually quotes Micah 5 verse 2, which says that Jesus is, or it says that a ruler is going to come from Bethlehem. So it seems like this is just maybe Matthew crafting his Jesus' Bethlehem birth out of scripture. I'm a little bit skeptical of that, actually. I'm skeptical of the Bethlehem birth, but I'm also skeptical of some of the reasons

why scholars give for thinking that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem. And there's a brilliant article by a scholar I studied with at Nottingham, Dr. Jonathan Rollins, and it's called something like on chicken, on chicken, eggs and the birthplace of Jesus. So you've got this chicken in the egg scenario where is it that Matthew has read Micah 5 verse 2 and has gone, oh, ruler shall be born from Bethlehem and then has inserted that into his narrative? Or is it that he knows that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and then has gone looking for a scripture that actually supports that? And there are maybe a few reasons why it could be the latter. And one is that we have no Second Temple Jewish sources which describe a Messiah as coming from Bethlehem.

So Matthew is reading Micah 5 verse 2 in a messiahic way. But there's nothing about that text, which is actually about, you know, the Messiah. Interesting. So it would be like, it would be like quite a weird reading of Micah, like quite convoluted, which is maybe more likely Matthew sort of finding a scripture that fits the historical circumstance. Yes. Interesting. And one of another reason why we might think that is because there is no need to have a Davidic Messiah born in the birthplace of David. So on that level as well, it's slightly unusual. So we don't have any other Second Temple Jewish texts, and also it just seems unnecessary.

So why get this, you know, huge sort of detour to Bethlehem, especially in Luke, if it wasn't even required? One of the reasons, though, why some scholars are sceptical is because Luke does take that detour. It seems like he has this census that he is invoking, this empire-wide. census in order to get the Holy Family down to Bethlehem. And because people are skeptical of the census, and maybe we'll come on to that later, they might also be skeptical of his birthplace in Bethlehem as well. Well, that is what just came to mind is that in Luke's version of this, it's quite a convoluted method by which they get to Bethlehem.

Like you say, there's a census which requires that, like, Joseph take his family to his, like, homeland, essentially, which... His ancestral home. Yeah, which already is a bit weird, because what's the point in the census if all of the information gained is not where everybody's actually currently living? So it seems like a bit of a weird census, not to mention the fact that no such census is reported historically. And so, like, well, why? Oh, well, because it means that they have to go back to Bethlehem, where if there is some theological convenience in him being born in Bethlehem, that's why this story exists. But, I mean, I find that quite a sort of compelling consideration.

What do you think? Yeah. I think that maybe Luke has, Luke knows that Jesus is from Nazareth. And so he's sort of looking for an explanation for why that they could end up in Bethlehem. It could be that kind of situation. And he knows that there were censuses around the time. And so maybe that's a plausible, plausible connection. And we know that people in the north in Nazareth did have connections with Judea. At least traditionally, you know, this would have been a migration north and that there's a sort of occupation of those settlements. in the north so um there are so many ways that he could have come to that connection i've always liked the fact that we know that jesus had a northern accent just no it's just so funny because it's

when when peter is like hiding as jesus has been arrested and they go like weren't you one of the ones that was with jesus and peter's like no no not me and they're like no i can tell from your accent and so like you know the idea that jesus has got a northern accent then the sort of snobby southerners who are going oh you're you're a northerner yeah quite quite I think on this point of Luke's census, it's the same thing happening again, which is like, Luke maybe did just invent this census to get the family to Bethlehem. But again, chicken and egg, it might not be because he wanted them to be in Bethlehem. It might just be, as you say, that he knew his Jesus of Nazareth, but he also knew it was a fact that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. And when constructing a narrative, he's got to come up with an explanation.

So even if the census is completely fictional, that doesn't necessarily. mean that the birth in Bethlehem is fictional too. That might be, in fact, why the story was created. Well, we know that there was a census during the reign of Quirinius, the governor of Syria. It's just, the problem is that Quirinius was governor of Syria from 6C.E. So, and Luke also places the birth of Jesus during the reign of King Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE. So there's literally a 10-year mismatch between these accounts. And maybe there are some other ways to read the Greek and to sort of harmonize them.

So he says that this was the first census that took place during, during, Corrinius's sort of governorship. But some people would read that word first, protos, as before. So maybe this is a kind of, this is some kind of census that has taken place before. And it sort of ends up in the, it ends up, you know, these are. complex processes, and it ends up being sort of completed later on during the reign of Corurinius. Yeah.

And some people would just like to give Luke the benefit of the doubt, I think. Yeah. Because one of my academic heroes is Maurice Casey. Right. Who is also at the University of Nottingham. He wrote a fantastic book called Jesus of Nazareth. Probably the best book on Jesus written by an atheist. I know you're probably going to write one one day.

But he just goes. You're not now. But he describes Luke as an outstanding historian. And there are things that Luke, that historians have looked at Luke and they've thought that he's got them wrong. And it turns out that Luke was right all along. So maybe we give Luke the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, Luke was writing maybe up to 100 years after these events took place. And maybe the important thing is that Luke is situating Jesus within imperial history.

And that carries a kind of theological resonance. Maybe we don't, maybe he doesn't have to get all of his facts straight for him to communicate that kind of meaning. Yeah, especially if you're willing to look at the Gospels as attempts at sort of historical reports by human beings, rather than this biblical literalism that not even the church fathers would have agreed with. Yeah, I mean, the problem here specifically is that Luke says, Luke places Jesus's birth during the reigns of both. Rineas and Herod, but historically, we think that they were separated by a number of years. Although I have heard some people say that the reason we sort of know, quote unquote, historically about the correct timings is because of like Josephus and his writings, but maybe it's that

Josephus got it wrong and Luke was the one who got it right. So, you know, people debate this left, right and center, but it's a problem. And I think at the very least it shows that we have to be careful in either trying to say, yeah, this is definitely history, but also in trying to say, well, this was obviously made up because of this census or because of this contradiction. It's never quite as simple as that, I think. Some people think that the birth narratives weren't part of the original gospel manuscripts, right? Like, I've heard some interesting suggestions that I think particularly with Luke, that sort of the gospel of Luke already existed and that the birth narratives with these sort of legendary additions. And it's got to do with like the genealogy, for example, right? So am I right in thinking that, like, Matthew's gospel opens with the genealogy?

Yeah. And so it sort of stretches this story of, this lineage of Jesus. I can't remember where it starts. Does it start with like Abraham? Yeah. And then it sort of stretches down towards. towards Jesus. When you get to Luke's gospel, you have this birth narrative.

You've got like the birth of John the Baptist and the pregnancy of Elizabeth and then you've got like the virgin birth and this stuff. And then you get this genealogy, which I think in that instance takes Jesus lineage all the way back up to God, right? Or maybe it's the other way around, right? Because all the way back up to God, the son of God. The son of God, right, exactly. So just as Adam is born of the Spirit of God, so also Jesus is born of the Spirit of God. But the fact that you sort of have this big birth narrative and then you have the genealogy, rather than starting with the genealogy, which seems more natural, is maybe one reason to think that this birth narrative was sort of tacked on later. I don't know if you've got a strong sort of scholarly view on whether you think these are original to the texts.

Well, I think Matthews is certainly original. I think Luke's is a bit more complicated because if you read Luke's preface so the first four verses of his gospel and then you skip to chapter three and I think it says like something like in the 15th year of the raid of Tiberia Caesar you know it feels like that's a really good place to start

and then you read what's in between and it's very different style to the rest of the gospels it's written in this kind of septuagintal style so it almost feels like it's been, it's almost a bit like an afterthought. And, you know, when I was writing this thesis, this book, I wrote the introduction last, because I can set the book up in the way that I would like. And I think a lot of people do that. And I wonder whether Luke, it's been suggested

by my supervisor, Helen Bond, that Luke might have done the same, that he has had this idea for a gospel, then maybe, and maybe he was writing independently of Matthew, but at some point in his composition, he's come across Matthew's Gospel. And so he thinks, gosh, this is a great idea. I'm also going to have my own infancy narrative. And it's going to be an infancy narrative which reflects his own theological interests. So one of those would be that Jesus comes to the poor. That's something that is all throughout Luke's gospel.

So, I mean, famously, Luke has blessed are the poor, not Matthew's, blessed are the poor in spirit. That's during the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount. Yeah. So who is it that visits Jesus? It's not Magioy, the Maggioy. Luke doesn't like those because he's going to have a battle with a magician in his second volume acts. He does not like Magiye, these Maggioy. And so who visits Jesus?

Well, it's the shepherds, the poor shepherds who are watching their flocks by night. And so it feels to me like this is Lucan. or it's someone who knows Luke very well, but it also feels like this probably is, it's difficult to know what we mean by later addition to the gospel, because has he written the gospel and then he's inserted this in, or is it someone else who's inserted in later? I think those kind of nuances are often lost to us as kind of modern historians. I think that's true. It's like people debate about the authorship of John's Gospel, for example, that the final chapter, John chapter 21, some people think it's a later edition. And there's debate. over whether it is a late tradition, whether it's a later edition by the same person, whether the same person went off, read the synoptic gospels, came back and then added it on, whether it was a different book, whether the whole of John's Gospel was written by a Johannine community, you know, and it's sort of, it's sort of endless, endless debate. But I think the point is the feeling that this is like a, a mythological prologue to an

otherwise sort of relatively sort of like an attempt at historical information about the life of Jesus, because it does seem quite sort of theologically motivated at points, including, and we'll talk about the Magi, but including, for example, you pointed this out to me, I didn't really think about this before, but the virgin birth is, of course, a very important part of the story, you know, like Mary conceives Jesus without having Lane with a man. And yet, it seems like Luke wants us to know that more than Matthew does.

Yeah, I think Luke calls Mary a virgin, Aparthenos, a couple of times. and Mary actually says, you know, how could this be? I have not known a man. Whereas in Matthew, I feel like the virginal conception is a lot more ambiguous. There is actually a minority reading. I don't know how many scholars would hold this, but they would say that Matthew does not even narrate a virginal conception, which sounds really, really weird.

We're so used to this story being the story of the virgin birth. But what happens in Matthew? This is what happens. you have Mary is found to be pregnant, and it's from the Holy Spirit, but the Lord was believed to be involved in pregnancies. So when you have, for example, barren women in the Old Testament who then conceive, I mean, the Lord is involved in their pregnancies, even though it does not preclude or exclude male involvement. So she's found to be with child, and Joseph is reassured in a dream, but he's not, but in the dream, he's not told, oh no, Mary is a virgin. He's told that what is conceived

in her is from the Holy Spirit. Yes. And then goes on. And it's only really in the Isaiah 714 quotation, which is the virgin shall conceive and, you know, bear a son and you shall call him Emmanuel, that we get the clear statement of virginity. Although to throw a sort of a further the fly in the ointment. Even there, Matthew's primary interest seems to be in Jesus as Emmanuel. He's really fixated on that term, so much so that he actually translates it for his readers. And he says, this means God with us. And I think this is a kind of the beginning of a beautiful inclusio that Matthew is constructing, because later on in his great commission narrative, Jesus has resurrected from the dead, he appears before his disciples, and he sends them out, and he says, I will be with you until the very end of the age.

So Matthew is setting us up to see that Jesus is God's presence with the disciples, with his people, all throughout the narrative. Yeah. I mean, Matthew's account does say that she was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found. to be pregnant, which, you know, like, but then again, I mean, that's how it reads in English. I don't know what the Greek says. I don't know how to read it properly, but like, I think at the very least it could be heavily implied. And I think you were careful to say, like, this is like a minority reading, right, that the Virgin birth is not narrated in Matthew. But at the very least, it seems less emphasized, perhaps. Yeah, I think so. Like, and we know that there were

rumors of illegitimacy around Jesus, at least by the second century. So, The second century cosmic skeptic is a Roman named Kelsus. Yeah. And he writes this text called True Word or True Doctrine, and it clearly hit a nerve because in the third century, Origin writes a response to it, the kind of the Dawkins delusion response. And what Kelsus was saying is that Mary was impregnated by a Roman soldier named Pantera. And there are lots of debates about that name. people have said, oh, it sounds a little bit like Parthenos, and he's sort of playing on it and slandering Mary and that sort of thing. But I think it was a common Roman soldier's name. You know,

you think about Roman soldiers are like Panthers. So maybe there was something going on there. But so we know that there were these accusations. And so long as there was a little bit of ambiguity in Matthew's narrative, we can see why Luke would want to come along later and make it infratically clear that Mary was a virgin. Yeah, because I mean like, if all Matthew says is like, well, she was pledged to be married to Joseph. At Fandual Casino, you get even more ways to play. Dive into new and exciting games and all of your favorite casino classics, like slots, table games and arcade games. Get more on Fandual Casino. Download the app today. Please play responsibly 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. If you have questions or

concerned about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1866-531-2,600, to speak to an advisor free of charge. But before they came together, she was found to be pregnant. And then what does Joseph want to do? He wants to divorce her. Yeah, yeah. Right? Which is a, which, like, I don't know.

I mean, like, you'd think that she'd at least try to explain to him. So maybe the implication is, oh, she just didn't believe him. And it wasn't until the angel confirmed it. Yeah. But, like, I don't know, there's another reading of this where, like, there's some kind of infidelity going on, and Joseph wants to divorce her, and then the angel comes and says, look, okay, I get you, man, this doesn't look great, but I promise you that what's going on here, it's from the Holy Spirit, so just roll with it, you know, and that's

what causes Joseph to, Joseph to stick around. There is another clue for this minority reading, though, and again, this clue can be read in different ways, but it's that Matthew has this genealogy, which is absolutely fascinating, and he's got three sets of 14 generations, which we might come on to in a bit. But he has, he names four women in the genealogy, which is quite exceptional for ancient genealogies. And the one thing that all of these women have in common is that they are all involved in some kind of irregular or illicit relations.

And so it's almost though on the minority reading, Matthew is setting up his readers. to expect that maybe a good thing can come out of that kind of brokenness. Wow. But of course, on the traditional reading, he's just doing this to suggest that, yes, I know that this is weird, but weird things have also happened in the past. Yeah. So it's really, really interesting. So potentially a cover-up for a sort of adulterous, illegitimate child, or potentially a report of a miraculous event. and it's up to the reader to decide.

The reading list for today, by the way, is the Bible. Speaking of the virgin birth, and I promise we will talk about the magi and the style that they followed, but since we're on it, you mentioned already this quotation of Isaiah, chapter 7, verse 14, that says, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son. And in the New Testament, this is sort of presented as Jesus and Mary is. the version who conceives and bears a son. However, people like to say, this is a mistranslation because in Isaiah, the word for virgin is what, Alma, which just means something like young woman of marriageable age. And yet the New Testament writers were writing in Greek. And so they

were reading a Greek translation of the Old Testament, Septuagint, which would have had the word Parthanos, which does mean virgin. So the New Testament authors read Isaiah. They see that it a version shall conceive, so they make this version conceive in their narrative, but the scripture never actually predicts that, giving us an indication that they probably made it up. Thoughts? This was, I think this was popularized by Richard Dawkins in the God Delusion. I don't know if it's a footnote, but he says that this mistranslation was the cause of the preposterous legend that Barry was a virgin.

I'm very hesitant to begin with to say that the translators of the, the translators of the Septuagint or the Jewish scriptures. Sometimes the Septuagint it just refers to the Torah for the first five books of the Bible. So I'm being a little bit loose with my language there. But the Greek translators of the Jewish scriptures clearly felt that Parthenos was a perfectly good word to translate Alma. There was a more technical Hebrew word though for Virgin Betula. So it's a it's a sort of, it's a loose rendering perhaps. To lay my cards on the table, don't think that Isaiah 714 is, at least in the intention of Isaiah, about, you know, a future Messiah figure who shall be born of a virgin. I think that this is, this is a sign to King

Ahas. And we're told, and I think the, the nature of the sign is not about the mode of conception. I think most Hebrew Bible scholars would say that the, the nature of the sign is in the timing, because it says, you know, before the child knows right from wrong and so on, the land between the two kings that you dread will be laid waste. So that's the real force of the sign that, you know, this child is growing up and maybe it is a child sort of in the House of David. Maybe Matthew is sort of aware of that as well. But that seems to be the nature of the sign. I mean, I don't think that anyone was reading this and going that whether it's an Alma or always. or a virgin, a Parthenos, that this is going to be about a supernatural conception.

I just assume that the, I assume that early readers would think that there was male involvement in that, in that child's birth. And how integral do you think the virgin birth is to the story of Christianity and the birth narratives? Because what we're kind of discussing is whether the virgin birth is kind of an invention of Matthew or Luke or whoever authored these birth narratives. maybe to serve some theological purpose, maybe to match up with Isaiah 714, maybe for some other reason, implying that not only did it not really happen, but that this isn't really

even part of the sort of original understanding of Jesus as a person. But it seems quite important, particularly to like Catholics, for example. So I don't know, do you think that this like really matters in our understanding of who Jesus is? I think I should just add one more thing actually to what I was saying earlier because we already spoke about the sort of the chicken in the egg with Bethlehem and I think it's quite striking that all of Matthews citations of scripture feel like really loose pegs on which to hang his narrative especially the one that doesn't actually exist as the scripture says you know he will be called a Nazarene what scripture doesn't so so it's it's rather strange and his

other citations are also rather strange as well. So I just wonder whether Matthew is working with some traditional materials, some stories that he has been told, and then is going and finding the scriptures which support those. So this would, there are sort of two models of understanding the relationship between the Gospels and the Hebrew Bible. One is what John Dominic cross and called prophecy historicized. So this is you look at the Jewish scriptures and then what the gospel writers did was they crafted narratives outside of those. I suppose one problem with this is that the narratives are very, very weird and kind of only loosely connected to the prophecies. But there's another model which Mark Goodacre calls

tradition scripturalized. So that Matthew has some materials and then because he is a reader of the Bible, the Greek Bible at least, but probably also the Hebrew Bible, he has then gone and found those those texts which kind of confirm his other ideas. So this is my key issue with this idea that Matthew is just spinning narratives out of his reading of the Hebrew Bible. I think maybe it is the other way around or maybe it's a sort of complex interplay of the two. That's extremely interesting, I think. And I'm trying to think, well, okay, fine.

But if we're really going to try and push this idea that the virgin birth isn't real or isn't original or as an invention of the authors, maybe these options aren't our best line of thought. There's one other thing which comes to mind, which is that the virgin birth crops up in Matthew, maybe even just implicitly, and then Luke is quite emphatic about a virgin birth. And then it's just kind of never mentioned again. Like in the rest of the gospel narratives, you know, people are constantly challenging Jesus's authority. They say, yeah, who is this man? Isn't this the carpenter's son?

And nobody thought to go, yeah, but you know who's like born of a virgin, right? And in fact, in Mark's gospel, when Jesus is performing an exorcism, his own family are said to come out and say he's lost his mind, which is a weird thing for them to say if they remember him having this miraculous birth and being promised to be, you know, Emmanuel and all of this kind of stuff. So just looking at the rest of the gospels and the sort of implicit absence of the virgin birth give us reason to doubt the presence of that story in the earliest forms of Christianity. We often talk about Christian fundamentalism, don't we? which comes out of this movement, I think, in early 20th century America, where they're talking about the fundamentals. And one of those fundamentals is the virgin birth. We might say this does seem quite fundamental. I mean, it's in the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. I think what's interesting as a New Testament scholar is that there's not a lot there. And when we go to Paul,

Paul just says that Jesus is born of the seed of David, which, by the way, is probably another earlier confirmation that there was some kind of Davidic connection. By the way, the Messiah didn't need to be born of David. You know, there were lots of messianic notions sort of floating about in the first century, sometimes double messires, you know, as

we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls or a priestly Messiah and a Davidic Messiah. So there's no like checklist of what a Messiah has to be. So I think probably Jesus was born of Davidic's descent. And in the ancient world, my understanding is that that

Davidic descent would have been patrilineal. So I just, I do wonder if you ask Paul and said, can you confess the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed? I think he might, he might scratch his head. He might say, oh, I think Jesus was, you know, born of the Davidic line. So his father was of the Davidic line. And it's striking that, you know, Paul believes in something like the incarnation. You know, we think of something like the Philippian hymn, you know, where Jesus was in the form of God, but emptied himself taking the form of a servant. So he believes that Jesus is involved in creation, that he comes to earth, and yet doesn't connect that to a virginal conception. Now, it's at this point where all of our Christian friends will tell us, actually, you're making an argument from silence, John. And maybe Paul did believe in it, and he just doesn't mention it.

Well, that's Dr. Nelson to you. you. And maybe, maybe that's, maybe that is true. Right. It's interesting that it's not there in Mark. Yeah. In Mark, Jesus is called the son of Mary, which is, and by his fellow townspeople in Nazareth. And it's almost like a little bit of a slander, perhaps, you know, because Jesus is doing

these amazing things and he's teaching with authority. And so his fellow townspeople go, but isn't this the? the carpenter or perhaps a mistranslation you know is it's the builder the stone mason and and he's the son of mary so it seems like maybe this is this is a slight bit of slander and or it could just be that joseph is no longer in the picture i mean ancient mortality rates but it's it's still quite unusual to be identified by the by the matronym rather than the patronym which by the way can i just say on ancient mortality rates this is really Every time I ever say, like, I think I said this in my video response to West Huff, I was like, especially given, like, life expectancy in the ancient world.

And everybody, like, jumps out of their chairs to go, that's because of infant mortality. That's, that's skewed. Like, yes, but life expectancy still was actually lower on average, even accounting for, like, yes, but, like, infant mortality does have, if you just take life expectancy as a whole, it reduces it to some, like, crazy low number. But even if you account for infant mortality, life expectancy in the ancient world was still not as good as it is today. Just a PSA for everybody. Why was Jesus so popular? In COVID, my PhD examiner, Joan Taylor, wrote an article about this. And she describes a chronic health crisis in first century Galilee.

You know, some estimates that I've read would say that you would be dead by the time you were 21. So the fact that Joseph is out of the picture, I think is not at all surprising. But could it also be a slander, again, on our minority reading? It's a slander because Mary was known as someone who conceived an illegitimate child. And when they say, isn't this Mary's son? What they mean is, isn't this the bastard? I think it's a possible reading. I think we just need to be very tentative about, you know, reading too much into the narrative.

But yeah, Mark doesn't mention Joseph. It says, you know, the son, it says the carpenter and or the tecto. And then later in Matthew, it's Joseph. He's the son of Joseph and the son of the tectone. So Joseph is introduced, and we know who Joseph is by this point in the narrative. I mean, I quite like the idea of Jesus, like, born of natural means out of wedlock because of the fact that when I watch, you know, particularly in older times, like bastards, that is, you know, children of unmarried parents, they get a bit of shtick. I started watching Game of Thrones the other day and one of the characters is a bastard

and everyone makes fun of him for it and as a sort of modern like viewer or reader I sort of am like I just don't see why that would even be I kind of get you know people thought marriage was important but what's the how is it the son's fault I know that son is like having a really hard life now but then I think about the fact that Jesus' whole

shtick is that he comes to identify so firstly he empties himself into the form of a man in a form of a slave in a form of a poor slave who gets crucified. And the whole point is that he's trying to sort of demonstrate his unity and identification with the lowest of the low in society. And like, you know, bastards would look down upon as well. And so, you know, in saying Jesus was potentially a bastard,

that's not in the colloquial sense of like blaspheming and saying, you know, he's a bastard. I mean, literally speaking, it would be quite in keeping with the story of Jesus as like identifying with the downtrodden in society. I quite sort of like that as a story. Yeah, yeah, it could have theological significance. It's interesting that in John, Jesus is, you know, battling with his interlocutors, and they say, we were not born of fornication. John is fascinating because, I mean, when we go to nine lessons and carols, you know, we have all of these accounts sort of spliced together

and in sort of one big nativity, John is the first to say the word became flesh. The Logos became flesh. And he doesn't have a virginal conception, at least certainly not explicitly. So I think your original question was about how sort of integral this is to Christianity. And I think it has become extremely important. I wonder how important it was to the earliest followers of Jesus. I think, by the way, the reason why it becomes so important is because of the ancient conception of conception.

The full humanity is provided by the mother. And then the father almost works as like an activating principle. So Andrew Lincoln sort of plots the reception history of the virginal conception. And he says that the reason why it's so important in the early church or the ancient church is because it shows the full humanity of Jesus and the full divinity of Jesus. But then there are sort of questions for us today, aren't there? because we know that that's actually not how conception works. Yeah, yeah, right, right.

Half the chromosomes are provided by the mother and half by the father. And so some modern theologians would argue if we take the virgin birth to literally, as opposed to what it meant in its ancient context, then we end up with a Christology that we don't actually want to have. The Jesus is like half human. Yes, which is like. Which the sort of the demigod option was on the table for the early church. Jesus is half, half human, half God.

That is like, like explicitly not what you're supposed to believe. He's fully God and fully human at the same time. And modern, and like you say, realizing what the ancients thought about conception and how it worked, that kind of makes sense with this story. Whereas now, because we know about chromosomes and whatnot, I mean, it's not to say it's inconsistent. Yeah, maybe there was a virgin birth and miraculously extra chromosomes just appeared. But it just seems like a less natural fit, let's say. Yeah, and you could say, well, I mean, Adam was born of the spirit of God, maybe in some sense. But then again, many modern Christians would not believe in a literal Adam.

So it's kind of, yeah, there are lots of sort of knotty theological and biological and biological questions, I think, around this. Yeah, okay. So Jesus is born, maybe of a version, maybe of a Roman soul. soldier, whatever the case, but we know that he was born in a manger, in a stable. Because we talked about where it was, was it in Bethlehem? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but where specifically in Bethlehem was Jesus born? Yeah, I mean, according to one second century text, it was in a cave, which is kind of interesting. I was actually asking a professor about this recently, and I said, oh, I've read that there were caves in Bethlehem.

And he said, no, no, there weren't. So let's say it's not in a cave, but it is in a stable, isn't it? Doesn't Luke tell us that Jesus was born in a stable? Yeah, and she gave birth to her firstborn. This is Luke 2.7. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no guest room available for them. Yes. So interestingly, that translation has the term the guest room.

But many translations will have the word in. In the inn, yeah. But the fascinating thing is I think this translation is probably more accurate because Luke has a word for in, which he uses in his parable of the Good Samaritan, which is Panda Keon. But that's not the word that he uses in his infancy narrative. There he uses the word Cataluma, which can just mean a place to stay or a guest room. But if we have it as there was no place in the guest room, you know, you might want some privacy when you're giving birth. Um, then where are they in the house? Maybe they're in the main area of the house.

And I read an article, um, by Ian Paul about this. And he says that at night, many sort of Palestinian families would bring in their animals. So where are they? They're in the main body of a house and the manger is there to be, to be, to, for Jesus to be placed in. But that's quite interesting because, you know, if this is, you know, this is Luke's narrative. So Joseph has gone to his ancestral home. Does he already have sort of family connections there? You would think if you were taking, you know, your pregnant wife, you know,

to your ancestral home that you might have a few connections. And so they're in the main body of a house. It's almost more of a Christmas scene, you know. It's not kind of Jesus as, you know, despised and outcast and there's no room for them in the inn. Let's just go in a stable. It's Jesus may be surrounded by his first. family. It's the more sort of traditional Christmas scene and he's and he's placed in a manger in the main part of the house. Do I don't know if like a way in a foyer really has the same sort of sort of

ring to it. But okay, what about what about Matthew's narrative? Surely he hasn't born in a stable. We can we can just corroborate the stories, right? Ah, alas. No, no, no manger, no stable in Matthew's narrative. Yeah, that is interesting. It does sound, I, we're so used to the idea of Jesus born in a manger that maybe we're just trying to be interesting here like oh maybe it was actually a house but it is interesting that in matthew's narrative we're not told where jesus is born but matthew does mention a house by the time the magi the wise men all three of them right come and visit jesus it says that they visit him in the house where he was staying so yeah maybe he was i mean i'm sure they didn't stay in the manger for that long but i don't know like he might have thought that he might have might have mentioned it

I'm not sure. At the very least, it's sort of not present in Matthew. So that's an interesting secondary reading, which I hadn't heard at least. I thought when we were talking about this, like, was you really born in a manger? I thought the argument's going to be something like, oh, well, it mentions a house in math, but that's not it. It's like there's actually a reading that says that could be true in Luke. Yeah, on Luke's own terms. But then there's another aspect of this story in Luke with the stable, which we also have to probably remove, which is this idea that Jesus was born with the ox and the donkey sort of nearby

and this is derived from Isaiah it says the ox knows its master the donkey knows its master's crib and this is very very popular in Christian iconography I think the first occurrence we have of it is in the fourth century on a sarcophagus you have the infant

with the ox and the donkey but it seems to have been brought out of Isaiah. Really? Yeah because like the sort of manger scene that we construct and put on the mantel piece. It has the animals in there as well, but maybe all of this is a mistranslation. Who knows? Or maybe just an ox and a donkey were brought in. That's also possible, yeah. I mean, like, I do think that a lot of the time on this show, I should be more careful when I'm excitedly exploring like these almost borderline conspiratorial

theories that, like, I think they are interested. I'm not trying to say this is what people should believe, and I know you're not trying to say that, but it's like, you know, it's interesting, right? And it allows us to frame this video as misconceptions about Christmas, which is way more interesting than just, you know, going through the gospel narratives. Yeah. And it's about exploring these texts on their own terms and in the context in which they were written. Exactly. And that's what's so exciting about it. You know, I was that pastor's kid who would get very excited when anyone would bring up the original Greek, because you're always going to get something new and exciting.

Yeah. compared to, you know, we all think we know these stories because we've all been to Nativity plays when actually they're a lot more complicated than we think. And not least the fact that there are like two different versions of the story that seem to sort of, some would say contradict. You know, I mean, you've already mentioned the Magi versus the shepherds. Matthew has this extravagant flight to Egypt to escape persecution by Herod, which just isn't present in Luke where they just, you know, go off to the temple. and whatnot. We're not going to get into that now. I've covered that with Bart Ehrman and previous Christmas specials, which will link in the description at the end of this episode. So if you are interested in those scriptural contradictions and stuff, you know, Bart's a great guy to talk to, and

I had him on before to talk about that. But without necessarily just talking about those contradictions, yeah, the shepherds versus the magi. The magi are quite iconic. They also show up in these sort of manger scenes. And, well, there are three of them. They're from the east. they're magicians of of of some sort right like who who are these people or are they kings you know we three kings we three kings and orient art yeah so it's really interesting these these characters take a life of their own in the extra biblical tradition they become three they become 12 um i think in the eastern eastern orthodox church really i think they might still be 12 there's certainly more than three of them yeah because just to be clear like the narrative never says there are three

wise men. No, it says that there were Maggioy, plural. And that word sounds a lot like magician, and we've already talked about how maybe Luke is a little bit uncomfortable with magicians generally, and that's why he doesn't want this story. And so if Luke

has this essentially polemic against magicians in the book of acts, it seems at least like an interesting thing to consider that in Matthew's birth narrative, like magician isn't like a dirty word in the same way that it might be later on.

And there was a way for it not to be a dirty word, which was to have it describe this kind of hereditary priesthood of ancient Persia. And these guys are very interesting. They actually, in Herodotus, I think they show up at the birth, or in the birth account of Cyrus, the Persian king. And in Plutarch, they're sort of in the background for the birth of Alexander the Great. And so these are people who can interpret omens. They have esoteric knowledge.

But Matthew seems to deal with them very positively. And I think that's probably because for Matthew, they are anticipating the inclusion of the Gentiles within the church. Although it's interesting that they kind of get to this by their own devices in a way. I think that's kind of quite an interesting point of theological reflection today. That they're working sort of with astrology, I suppose, you might call it. and yet they arrive at the infant Christ and they pay homage to him and they bow down before him

and they bring them these gifts and of course there are three gifts and so that's probably why at least iconographically the three mage I work because you can have each one bringing a different gift and that's your gold frankincense and muir the gold frankincense and muir

what do they mean the gold may be a symbol of kingship The frankincense is that incense that incense that you burn in the temple. So signifying divinity. And Matthews told us that Jesus is God with us. And then the myr is often taken to mean something about Jesus' death or his burial. Because this is a sort of a spice that you might use in anointing someone, embalming someone's body for burial. I'm a little bit skeptical, actually, of that third one.

And the reason is a bit technical, it's that in Matthew's crucifixion narrative, we are told that he was given wine mixed with ghoul. But in Mark's crucifixion narrative, which Matthew is using, we told he's given wine mixed with Mur. So at the very point that Matthew has an opportunity to confirm that connection with the death and to see this almost like an omen of the future death. He changes it. He changes it. And he has a reason for doing that, which is that I think there's a psalm in the Septuagut, which has the ghoul rather than the Mur. And he's following that at this point.

And it's not to suggest that it couldn't signify Jesus' death or burial. That is interesting. I've never heard that before. They really, interestingly, that was in a commentary by Dale Allison and W. Davis. But interestingly, these gifts are all on separate occasions associated with Solomon, Who is Solomon? Solomon is the son of David. And maybe this is a slight detour.

Right. Okay. But Matthew is absolutely obsessed with showing that Jesus is the son of David. I mean, it's there in the Enkippet, the opening line of his text. He tells us that this is about David. He calls David the king. And he constructs this genealogy three sets of 14 generations. Well, there was in ancient Judaism a numbering system called Gametria or a system of assigning numerical value to Hebrew letters, and the numerical value of the name David would be 14. So Matthew is going 14, 14, 14, David, David.

He's sort of screaming at his readers that Jesus is the son of David. I think appears as the 14th name in the list. Really? It's really, it's really beautifully done because there were other generations that could be accounted for in that list as well. But Matthew is really trying to drive home this point that Jesus is the son of David. So maybe the gold in frankincense and myr is also this other sort of slightly son of David's style illusion. Yeah. That is fascinating. Okay. But whatever they brought, they got there by following By following what?

I'll just throw that into your court. How did they get there? I think the Greek is Astor, which is where we would get like asteroid. Yeah. But it doesn't mean asteroid. It means star, okay? So they followed a star. Yeah, so it is a star.

But is it a star? You ever try to follow a star before? Like, how far have you got? It's a bit difficult. So the weird thing about this star, so okay, so it keeps appearing. Okay, that's okay. Stars keep appearing. Although it's interesting that there seems to be a moment when it appears.

But then I think it stops over the place to be able to guide the magi to find Jesus. Now, I don't know any stars which can do this, although I'm not an ancient astrologer. There have been a few suggestions that this might correspond to some ancient phenomena. So possibly the most popular of these is by a professor at Cambridge, Colin. Jay Humphreys, and he wrote a book, I think it was called the Christ Comet, where in ancient Chinese sources, and 5 BCE, there is this extremely bright comet that appears a number of times. And so he thinks that maybe we can sort of use that to date the birth of Jesus. And the thing with comets is they do appear in the sky multiple times.

Yeah, in a particular place. But that's the difficulty, though, is how do we get it? I think Matthew uses the language of stopping over the place. And this is where my favorite suggestion for what the star actually is is by Dale Allison. And he reminds us that ancient Jews did not think of the stars as these inanimate balls of mass and energy. For them, the stars were living beings. You know, I think Philo of Alexandria talks about stars as sort of made out of pure mind. So that really fits your sort of panpsychist turn lately.

But so if this being is something like an angel, then this would explain why the angel can stop over. And this is one of the ways in which I think when we're doing Nativity plays, we actually sort of unwittingly get it correct. Yeah. Because often the star and the angel are kind of, you know, put together. So, you know, you'll have a sort of a little cherub and they play the star. but they're also an angel. Yeah. So maybe that's one of the ways we get correct.

I think there is an Arabic gospel of the infancy. I think it might be a 6th century text, but it actually says that the magi were guided by an angel. So it looks like maybe some people were reading it in this way. So this star might in fact be an angel, by which you would mean, would the interpretation be that this is like an angel that looks like other angels or somehow like an angel that looks like a star and is there. You think about angels and stars, they do look quite similar insofar as angels are often associated with light in ancient texts.

Yeah, yeah, sure. So this would explain how this bright light can, and you might phenomenologically call this a star, but it actually is an angel, a living being. Yeah, because also the fact that, like, I mean, I'm looking at the text here, right? So, like, it says that Magi from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, where is the one who's been born King of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. The question I have is, if this is just a star, it's like, what are these sort of like Eastern Magi just hanging out? And then they see this star and they all instantly go, oh, look, it's the star of, you know, Emmanuel, the new son of God who we must go and worship. Like, how do they get that information?

I mean, if they saw a star that was unusual that hovered over a place, they might go, let's go and check that out. But they'd show up and go, what's going on here? To know what the star is guiding them to seems more akin to something that could like tell them something. And given that throughout the rest of these like narratives, angels are all over the place. It's an angel who appears to Mary. It's an angel who appears to Joseph. It's an angel who warns Joseph in a dream to flee. Like it wouldn't surprise me if once again like all of the relevant like instances of somebody being taught.

old, this is what's happening. Jesus is being born and he's going to be Emmanuel and you should worship him and all this kind of stuff. In all those instances, it's an angel. So maybe this would be the same. Yeah, maybe, maybe even Luke has read Matthew's account and has rightly understood that the star is an angel and that sort of inspired his own angelic activity.

You know, maybe that's me thinking out loud. Yeah, who knows? What's really interesting about the Magi is that they take on, life of their own, they become kings in the tradition. Yeah. So in a lot of classical art, you sort of see them, you know, they're sort of with their retinue and they have crowns or gold and things like this. Yeah.

Which seems to be, which seems to derive from Tatalian in the, in the second or maybe early third century, he reads Psalm 72. And Psalm 72 is about Gentiles bringing gifts to a Jewish king. and it looks so much like the Maggioy. So with the gift giving, the Gentile gift giving. So he construes these as kings, and that's where we get, you know, we three kings of Oriental.

Yeah, yeah. That's cool. I mean, they're interesting figures, and it's another one of those instances of one of these, like, iconic figures that seem to have a whole backstory, such that when you read the narrative and it just says, like,

Sir Majai came from the east because they saw a star, you're like, Is that it? Is that all that's in the text? But of course, the major are really important for another reason. They're really crucial for another reason, which is that when they go back to Herod and they tell Herod that this man has been, this boy has been born, the king of the Jews. And Herod is like, oh, cool, that's awesome, man.

Like, tell me where he is so I can worship him. And yet, Herod has other things planned. So you have one of the most gruesome episodes in the entire Bible. including the Old Testament, which is when Herod decides to protect his own authority to slaughter everyone under the age of what, like two or three or something, in his whole kingdom, which is an extraordinary episode, but did it actually happen? So this is really difficult, I think. So those arguing against the historicity of this account will point out that we have no

extra-biblical attestation to this event. It is found in Matthew, and that's only where it's found. We also have the problem that this looks like other events. So, I mean, there is a bit of a trope in the ancient world that, you know, when you have this great child who is born, that there will be some attempt to kill him. So in Swaytonius's life of Augustus, the Senate find out this this prodigy that there is going to be a new king will arise, you know, which is obviously a threat to their own power. They are the Senate. And so they make this attempt to kill the, I think it's children under the age of one, if I recall correctly.

And so they don't want any, they don't want any newborn boys. I think Augustus, I think Swaytonis explains that what people did is they just didn't register their birth. So that we're in this time we're just having their children anyway. Yeah. But maybe a more immediate parallel is Pharaoh. Because Pharaoh tries to wipe out the infants in the first chapter, I think, of Exodus. And yet Moses goes by his basket and sort of finds his way, maybe into the royal court.

And miraculously survives. Yeah. So there is a sense in all of these stories that there is some kind of, of destiny to the child. Yeah. That this is a child who God is, or providence or fate, is preserving. Yes. And so some people would look at that and they would go, this is just a trope, isn't it?

And it maybe doesn't help that Matthew has strewn across his narrative, all of these Moses typologies. I mean, perhaps, you know, one of the clearest is that in Luke, Jesus gives his sermon on the plane. In Matthew, of course, it is a sermon on the mount. Why is he going up a mountain to deliver this teaching? Well, that's exactly what Moses did. Yeah.

And so, but of course, ancient biographers could realize historical connections with real historical events. Yeah. So it's a very difficult one to say. If I was really trying to argue for the historicity of the massacre of the innocence, I would point out that he tries to wipe out the children in Bethlehem. And how big is Bethlehem? Oh, you, Bethlehem, Little Clan of Judah. It's potentially tiny.

So in terms of the number of infants who are actually killed, is it one of the greatest disasters of all time, or is it maybe a dozen children who were born at that time, a dozen boys who were slaughtered? so that's one thing another thing is that we know that Herod the Great was absolutely paranoid

he was so good but I think Herod ends up killing most of his family he kills his grandfather-in-law he kills his mother-in-law which maybe is not so surprising but he kills his sons I think he might kill his sisters

this is someone who is he's almost like the archetypal ruler who is just really, really worried. And, you know, Jay Sufus talks a lot about, you know, all the people he killed during his lifetime. He does kill one of his own sons. So this is a very paranoid man.

It's the kind of thing he would do, in other words. It is. And so I think if I was reading this as an ancient reader around, you know, 85C and Matthew had just come out, I think I would, and I knew anything about Herod the Great, I would say that this probably does suit his character quite well. The problem maybe is the lack of independent attestation, yet this is ancient history. I mean, this is just what classical historians always have to deal with.

The real problem, I think, is the typology. And whether Matthew is crafting something here out to make a typological link or whether he's drawing on a source. But there's one more thing about this anti-imperial language in Luke related to Augustus, which is that what was Augustus known for? He was known for the Pax Romana, the Pax Romana, the people. Peace of Rome. And I think it was Tacitus who said that they made a desert and called it peace.

You know, this is a peace that is wrought by military conquest and devastation. And yet, Luke also brings in this theme of peace. And so when the angels sing, or maybe they don't sing, it just says that they praise God. And they say, peace on earth. So to those on whom God's favor rests. So there is this theme that he is bringing in. But of course, for Luke, the peace of Christ, it's not this devastating thing. It's a kind of wholeness and a kind of spiritual wholeness that Jesus will bring throughout his narrative.

And this is the real peace. This is the real Pax, not the Pax Ramana, but the Pact. Jesus did not come to bring imperial power, but eventually to be subjected to. it. Yes. Yeah. And to usurp worldly peace with, you know, the Pax, Christus, or whatever you might call it. Yeah. I mean, on that point of history, there can be all kinds of motivations for writing a particular narrative. One of them is truth. Others are theological. Sometimes it's even political. I mean, there is the possibility that what we're witnessing here is a kind of anti-imperial messaging with the birth narrative, right? You've been reading.

New Testament studies, I think. Yeah, I think there are anti-imperial, counter-imperial sort of valences to these texts. I mean, even having Jesus with this adoptive father, who is Joseph and this, and this divine father, I think a lot of that is reminiscent of Augustus. And it's not like I'm making some sort of huge, you know, Augustine leap. I, you know, Luke himself situates his narrative within the reign of Augustus. So this is something Luke is drawing our attention to. And Augustus famously, as we've already alluded to, had his own supernatural conception. I think Augustus was born of Apollo.

And so there is this story about his own supernatural birth. And he is, I think he ends up, Dewee Philius. So he is the deified son of God. So a lot of that sounds rather similar to what we find in the gospel accounts. And I'm not suggesting that there's necessarily a kind of genetic connection. But I do think that even with the genealogies, Luke traces his genealogy to God himself. Okay. Son of Adam, son of God.

And that's what many genealogies of Greco-Roman heroes or emperors would do. You know, Pericles is descended from Heracles or whatever it is. So I think that what are those genealogies doing? And did everyone believe that they were actually descended from those people? I think it's a, I think it is a political claim as much as anything else. I think that this is about who are you going to place your allegiance in? Who are you going to place your faith in? And what Matthew and Lucas saying, especially in their genealism,

is they're saying you should be placing your allegiance in this person who is the royal Davidic Messiah and also the son of God. And that is a, in the sort of Jewish monotheistic context, if we can call it that, that is a, that is also a kind of anti-imperial claim as well. Yeah. I mean, we sometimes forget that the principal readership of early Christian literature are Jews. I mean, there seem to be sort of something. written for a more Gentile audience, something's written for a Jewish audience, like John's gospel is, again, Morris Casey talks about the evidence compellingly that John's gospel is written by and for Gentiles. He's constantly like explaining what he's like, you know, there's this Jewish holiday called the Sabbath and stuff like that, like explaining what these terms mean. Or rabbi, they call him rabbi, which means teacher, as if like, so it's not true across the entire gospels, but certainly for Matthew trying to connect. this, this sort of Jewish scripture, how would a Jewish, like a learned Jewish reader who understands and has sort of mastered his knowledge of the Old Testament, perhaps read these narratives differently

to someone like me who knows far less? Yeah, I think there are certain things like Matthew's genealogy, which we talked about, where he's sort of tapping into that practice of Gametria to say that Jesus is the son of David. Which for most people, when they're like, I'm going to try and read the Gospels and they open up Matthew and they're like, why am I reading 500 names in a row? This is, yeah. But again, for like a Jewish reader, it's so important. What I maybe want to take a slight issue with is this slight wedge that is sometimes

driven between the Jewish world and the Greco-Roman world. You know, it's often, you know, I've made a few comparisons between the the stories of Jesus's birth and the stories of other figures, maybe Swaytonius's life of Augustus, maybe Alexander's life of, of, um, oh, sorry, Plutarch's life of Alexander the Great. And some scholars don't like that because they would say, we don't have these, we, you know, the, the Romans, the pagan world had this, these very anthropomorphic supernatural conceptions. So a God would come down, would impregnate a woman, um, and, you know, the Romans, the pagan world had this, had this, these very anthropomorphic supernatural conceptions. So a god would come down, um, and And this would be blasphemy to Jews. I think this is kind of mistaken on a couple of grounds. The first is that the Jewish world was Hellenized by the first century. Why are all of our gospels written in Greek? Really, it goes back to Alexander the Great and sort of making that Greek culture and Greek language the lingua franca.

But it's also mistaken because I don't think that that's how, at least many, elite Roman Greek writers would have conceived of those supernatural conceptions. I don't think they all took them literally. Plutarch actually uses the word Pneuma, so the word spirit and the word dunamis, to describe supernatural conceptions. Those are the very terms that Luke uses to describe how Mary conceived. The puna and the spirit and the dunamis, which is where we get the word. dynamite, the power, the power of God. So this is certainly not this sort of crass, anthropomorphic

impregnation of Mary, but it also wasn't really like that for the Roman world as well, maybe in the sort of popular understanding, but certainly elite writers might not have conceived of it in that way. So I definitely do think there are elements to the stories where we just feel like we're right at home in Jewish narrative, you know, even something like Mary with her song of praise, you know, my soul magnifies the Lord, that looks like it's cut out of, not cut out of in terms of copy and pasted, but inspired by a kind of Hannah in who gives birth to Samuel after she has been barren. So there are those kinds of connections, those typological connections that I think Jewish readers would more easily make and that we would easily miss if we, if we were

familiar with the Jewish scriptures. There's one more thing that someone familiar with the Old Testament might notice. And that's that in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 10, I know where this is going. Yahweh speaks to the people of Israel. And here is what the Lord, all caps, says, do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by the signs in the heavens, though the nations are terrified by them. For the practices of the peoples are worthless. They cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel.

They adorn it with silver and gold and fasten it with hammer and nails, so it will not totter. Now, if you just like turn around, that... Oh no. Oh, no. There seems to be a... In the presence of idols. There seems to be a sort of ancient pagan symbol behind you, John. Are we sort of Theologically out of step?

Should I have Alex Roto scope that out, frame by frame, for the whole conversation? I'm not a historian of Christmas trees, but I'm pretty sure that that was inspired by the trees of 16th century Rhineland more than it was, the trees of ancient Mesopotamia. It would be nice to have a good fir tree like that. But I think, I mean, that passage is so clearly about idolatry and maybe not so much a tree, but, you know, making, making an idol out of a tree, as we know that sort of many cultures in that time and place did, and then ornamenting it.

I think some translations of that passage have depth, you know, decking it with silver and gold. We're decking the holes. We're decking the idol. But yeah, this is just what we find throughout a lot of the Hebrew Bible. It's a polemic against idolatry. sadly I think a lot of us are descendants of Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans who banned Christmas and we we tend to think of Christmas as something pagan or at least inspired by sort of pagan festivals and so we don't like all of which again I did this with Bart Ehrman we did the whole

is Christmas pagan is it just a sort of is it just like taking over satanalia for the sake of Christian like domination and let's say the pictures sat in earlier that great feast that ended on the 23rd of December at the latest yeah there's I mean there's a lot to be said about that and it's it's one of the sort of prints it's like if you go on TikTok or something it's like the first thing you'd see in the comments it's like well Christmas is actually pagan once again um episode with Bardermen we we cover that in depth that people are interested in classic Protestant critique it's amazing how Protestant TikTok can be yeah yeah well it's like the modern equivalent of the printing press isn't it? And, you know, I think in both cases, these are revolutionary technologies for the

promulgation of heresy. But, well, speaking of the printing press, your book, yeah, I usually try to promote my guest books, although I don't know, because this is, who is this, who's this, who's this book actually aimed at? Like, who's going to read this, this book? I, say, my mother read the first chapter, and she said that she understood it and liked it. So, I think that's good because yeah she doesn't she doesn't read a lot of what I write so um yeah she seems to she seems to understand i think you you have an obvious knack for for making academic subjects accessible but then you never know when when it's an actual thesis whether you're sort of attempting to do that because it's not for a popular audience but i think with jesus

physical appearance you can't help but try to yeah i mean what i what i tried to do when i was writing it was just include tidbits all over the place yeah yeah yeah so we go on little detours through you know ancient fashion and physiognomy and it's hopefully a lot of fun and it is expensive because it's an academic text and a PhD but maybe if enough people buy it we can increase the demand and drive the cost down and maybe we can even convince them to to give you a unique cover for it eventually but maybe I'll have to write another book maybe you will as well that you know Merry Christmas everybody in like two or three years time there'll be something under the tree for a school but if you are looking for a Christmas present that doesn't cost 80 pounds

for a considerably lower amount of pounds of the realm, you can come and see us on talk. We're coming to a bunch of different UK cities. You're not going to be hosting all of the shows, but you host the one we did in London, and it was just great fun. We're going to be basically doing this, except the other way around.

I'll be doing most of the talking. But, you know, we'll have a bit of back and forth. We're going to talk about philosophy. We're going to talk about God and religion and consciousness. And we're also going to be taking audience questions, which is the best part. So hopefully by the time this goes out, we'll have some picture of which shows you're going to be out. But if it's not you, it's going to be someone, you know, it's difficult to know how to end that sentence without it being insulting to you or the other guests.

So there will be variants and we can be glad of it. We'll put the dates on screen. The links are in the description. And I'm really looking forward to that. I think it's going to be great fun. But John, hey, Merry Christmas, man. Thanks for taking time to do this. This has been wonderful.

and I'll point people to the book, to the tour, to the previous episode that we did on the physical appearance of Jesus. And to www.bhindthegospels.com. Yeah, with an extra w in there, if you're following along at home, which is your wonderful blog covering all things Bible, roughly weekly, is it, that you post on there with all kinds of stuff. I mean, any sort of specific question or area of interest of the Bible that people sort of have or are interested in, you're likely have covered it. So yeah, behind the gospels.com is where to find you. And yeah, watch this space because more is to come. Merry Christmas, one and all.