Editor’s note: This panel from a 4th century sarcophagus is one of the earliest Nativity images.
Christmas as a holiday and, as a Christian feast day, is a time of giving, of gift exchanges, and parties. It is also a time when fund raisers badger everyone they think they can possibly get a nickel from. Stores try every merchandising trick invented to increase sales. Thankfully, the poor and the homeless are not forgotten. Many Christians will make a twice-a-year trip to church for what they hope will be a beautiful and inspiring service. Others will sit in the pews and be bored.
Everyone will be confusedly familiar with two Christmas stories: one in the writer of Matthew’s gospel and the other in the writer of Luke’s gospel. What follows is a comparison of both stories, with the explanation of why they are “stories.”
A writer whom we call Matthew wrote his gospel around the year 85 C.E. He begins with a genealogy that begins with Abraham, through King David, to Joseph and his son, Jesus. This writer mentions four women in his genealogy of Jesus: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and, indirectly, Bathsheba. The latter is referred to only as “the wife of Uriah.” Finally Mary, the mother of Jesus is mentioned.
- Tamar takes us back to the book of Genesis, Chapter 38. It is a story the Jews of of Matthew’s time knew well. She was a Canaanite married to a Jewish man called Er, the first-born of Judah. Before she could conceive a child by him, he died. According to the Jewish law of the time, his brother would be required to impregnate her. The brother, Onan, refused to do so. Tamar wished to preserve her late husband’s blood line as required. Her father-in-law, Judah, was widowed and had no wife to bear future children. So, he availed himself of Tamar’s services, impregnating her and thus fulfilling the requirements of the law. The story is about a non-Jew (Tamar) being more faithful to what she believed to be God’s law than a Jew (Onan.)
- The next woman mentioned is Rahab (Joshua 2:1-21), a prostitute and non-Jew. In this story Joshua sends two spies into Jericho. They go to Rahab’s home and place of business. Word gets out that spies are in Jericho. Rahab hides them and assists their escape. They are saved by a gentile. The point being, not all gentiles are enemies of God.
- After Rahab comes Ruth, a Moabite woman married to a Jew and caring for his widowed mother. He dies. Instead of returning to her family, she stays and cares for her mother-in-law, Naomi. Her loyalty and self-sacrifice inspires Boaz of Bethlehem to marry her. Again, this is a great example of a gentile sacrificing herself in loyalty and love to save a Jew.
- Then the writer Matthew alludes to Bathsheba, who is a victim of King David’s machinations. Excited by her beauty, he sends her husband, Uriah, into a battle rigged so that he will be killed. Then David takes her for his second or third wife. The prophet Nathan confronts David with his sin. God forgives David but also decrees a punishment for him. I doubt that there has ever been a Jew that did not know the story about King David.
- Finally, this writer we call Matthew mentions Mary, the mother of Jesus, as being the wife of Joseph. It is Joseph and the male line that is important. However, to understand this, you must know the biological knowledge/thinking of this time. It would be many centuries before the microscope would be invented, thus there was no thought that the female of the species contributed anything to the new offspring. Nor did people have any idea that the ejaculate coming from the male penis contained thousands of sperm. They thought the sperm was a little homunculus, i.e. baby, a small seed that would develop if planted into the fertile soil of a woman’s womb. Therefore, because only men reproduced the species, only the male line was of any importance. (Ergo, women were of lesser importance than men). Of course, today we know this to be completely wrong, but it did, and still does, dominate much religious thinking, unfortunately so.
Still, it is remarkable the writer mentions women at all. This was an age when only some men learned to read and write. Given this fact, it explains the “bad press” and little mention of women in the Bible. The huge exception to this is found in the authentic writings of the apostle Paul.
When one compares the genealogy in the Gospel According to Matthew and that found in the Gospel According to Luke, some obvious differences become apparent. Matthew mentions four women and Mary, whereas Luke mentions no women, not even Mary. A second major difference is that Matthew starts with Abraham and goes down the list to Jesus. Luke starts with Jesus and goes up the list to Adam. There is another discrepancy. Matthew lists Joseph’s father as being called Jacob, while Luke names him Heli.
This ought to suggest that neither of these “genealogies” is even intended to be an actual genealogy of one, Jesus of Nazareth. If indeed Jesus’s genealogy was actually important, then one would assume the writers of Mark’s and John’s gospels would include it. The writers of Mark’s and John’s gospels didn’t even mention Jesus’s birth. Mark’s gospel is the earliest, written before 66 C.E. Paul’s writings are even earlier, yet Paul does not include a birth story, either. Indeed, Jesus’s birthday was not celebrated until the late fourth century.
Factually, Jesus was not necessarily a descendent of King David, nor of Abraham, nor of Adam. In both Matthew’s and Luke’s birth stories, we are dealing with fiction, with stories about Jesus’s birth–but stories none the less. These are stories that do not jibe at all.
That does not mean there is no truth to these Christmas stories. Quite the contrary, often there is more truth in fiction, in stories, than one would find in a history written by the victors or some other self-serving perspective.
The writer of what we refer to as the Gospel According to Matthew is addressing a Jewish audience, at a time when a council of rabbis is debating the question of what to do about these Jews who insisted that a Jesus of Nazareth is the long-awaited Messiah! Should they be thrown out of the synagogue? The writer Matthew is trying to explain who Jesus is, in a way that will convince a Jew to stay with Jesus. That is what makes the “genealogy” important.
Matthew’s genealogy makes Jesus a Jew, since he is a descendent of Abraham. As a descendent of King David it makes him of royal blood. Jesus is also a king. For Matthew, Jesus is the in-the-flesh presence of Yahweh among His people or Emmanuel (which translates, “god with us.”)
Luke, on the other hand, includes King David, a hero of the Jewish people; Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation; Adam, the first human according to the Genesis creation story. Why? Because Luke wants the reader to understand that Jesus’s mission goes beyond just saving the Jews. It extends to all humanity. Matthew only hints of this in his genealogy, by mentioning three gentile women who are important to the story of Israel, which is a part of Jewish lore.
If you examine more of the two birth stories, you will find other important differences. In Matthew’s story we have a king, Herod, a magi, and a star; gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh; a flight of the Holy family into Egypt; the slaughter of innocent male babies. None of this is in Luke’s story.
To a Jew in Matthew’s time, the parallel is obvious. Jesus is the new Moses; the new lawgiver; the leader freeing his people from slavery and leading them to the promised land. Factual details they are not; true in essence? I say, yes.
Luke tells a different story in order to bring out a different truth. In his story there is barely a mention of Herod, there are no magi, no star, no gifts, no trip to Egypt. He tells a tale of barren Elizabeth, married to a priest husband named Zachariah. Thanks to God, Elizabeth gave birth to a son whom they named John and later referred to as “The Baptizer.” To a Jew, this recalls the story of Abraham and Sarah.
Only in Luke’s gospel is there mention of a census demanded by Caesar Augustus. Nowhere in recorded history is there evidence of such a census. It is, however, a convenient device to get Joseph and Mary to the town of Bethlehem, which references King David.
While neither story is factual, both are a prelude, a kind of lens with which to view the rest of their gospels. Matthew’s emphasis is on Jesus’s role as the new Moses, the lawgiver. He emphasizes Jesus’s Jewishness, being one of us, and his mission to the people of Israel. Luke’s emphasis is on Jesus’s fulfillment of God’s promise. He sees Jesus as being the new Elijah, a great prophet. He also emphasizes the universality of Jesus’s mission, as savior of all of God’s children.
One might ask why the writers of the gospels we refer to as Mark and John have no birth story. There is a simple explanation. First, Jesus’s birth was not important to his followers at that time, nor was it important to the development of their gospels. Mark’s gospel is the earliest, written before 66 C.E. Mark starts his gospel with a quote from Isaiah, the preaching of John the Baptizer, and the baptism of Jesus. It is in the baptism of Jesus that the writer Mark makes clear who Jesus is.
The writer of John’s gospel, written perhaps as late as 90 C.E. after the Jesus Jews have been expelled from the synagogue, begins his gospel thus, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In John’s view, Jesus and God are one and the same. No birth details are needed.
- Regarding the two Christmas stories, there has long existed two disastrous extremes. The first extreme is to take every word in each story as literal fact, regardless of how they do not jibe. This requires a “suspension of reason.” This literalism exists in Islam and Judaism as well as Christianity. It is destructive to the extreme. It has inspired the execution of heretics and “non-believers,” as if God were not capable of defending God’s self. Such a mentality is an insult to God.
- The other extreme is to simply ignore the truth behind the stories. This leads to a selfish existence that likewise kills others. In its own way, it is just as destructive as literalism. It justifies an extremity of wealth and indulgence that injures others and our planet.
The Christmas stories are a message of hope, forgiveness, and salvation. They tell us about a God of love, mercy, and compassion; about a God who has been with us from the beginning of time and is always at our side in our brokenness. The Christmas stories need to be understood in terms of how the stories end–the crucifixion of Jesus and His resurrection.
Turn on the news today and what do you hear? Someone in pain over a break-up, a rejection, kills the ex-lover and possibly takes their life. Palestinians fire a rocket from Gaza into Israel, and the Israeli Defense Force kills 20 Palestinians, women and children. The mantra seems to be, “Cause me pain, and I will cause you even more pain.”
The Christmas story is about a Jesus who absorbed the pain, instead of spreading the pain. It is about the birth of a new way of living: living by forgiving, by not spreading pain. It is about a joyful way to live a life of meaning, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness–a life of love.
To really celebrate this gift–Jesus–we need to live as he lived and still lives today.