THE WORLD JESUS CAME TO
Jesus wasn’t born into a historical or geographical vacuum. He was born at a particular time at a particular place and we might imagine that the New Testament would provide us with this information in a clear and unequivocal way. But it doesn’t. In fact only two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke, say anything about the events leading up to the birth of Jesus or about his Nativity and these don’t agree on the details. Neither Mark’s gospel – the earliest – nor John’s – the latest – say anything at all about the birth of Jesus. And nor does Paul mention it, even though his letters are the earliest documents in the New Testament. For the earliest Christians the real starting point of the story of Jesus is his baptism in the river Jordan by John the Baptist, which effectively is where Mark’s and John’s gospels begin. The Nativity was irrelevant for them because it was at his baptism that Jesus became – or was adopted as – God’s “beloved Son” (Mark 1:11) or “God’s Chosen One” (John 1:34). For Matthew and Luke the reason for writing their Nativity accounts was to link the birth of Jesus the ‘promised Messiah’, as they believed him to be, with Messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Bible and to surround it with suitably marvellous and symbolic events, although they cite different ones. There are no shepherds or angel hosts in Matthew, there is no star, no Wise Men with mysterious gifts in Luke. And those are not the only differences. The point was to establish the status of Jesus from the start by means of the supposed fulfilment of prophecies, of signs and wonders.
Our familiar story of the Nativity and the events leading up to it is a merger of two distinct traditions which were current by the late 1st century, but we happily ignore the contradictions and embrace it all because of its charm and because it reflects what we feel to be a spiritual truth: that in the birth of Jesus a man entered the world with a unique perception of the Divine, a new message about how to be human, a revelation of God’s saving activity in the world. And it was the sense that the coming of Jesus was such a special, indeed world-changing, event that led to the increasing elaboration of the Nativity stories. In a pagan world where humanity and divinity were often confused and heroes, kings and emperors were turned into gods, it must have seemed only natural to attach wonderful stories to Jesus, stories which became an elaborate mythology in themselves And this was especially true of the Nativity.
If, for example, you should wonder where we get the idea that the Wise Men were kings – with names and kingdoms – or that there were an ox and an ass by the manger, you will not find it in the New Testament. These and a bewildering variety of traditions and stories about the events preceding the birth of Jesus, about the birth of Jesus itself, about the Holy Family’s ‘flight into Egypt’, and about the infancy of Jesus, were told and created in the early Christian centuries, presumably because people yearned for something more than the brief biblical accounts. Some have found their way into Christmas carols and stories and quite a few appeared in works of art at least as late as the Renaissance, but most have been largely forgotten. It is doubtful whether they really tell us anything about what actually happened.
One survival, though, gives us an alternative Nativity story that is believed by a very great number of people today. That is the story found in the Qur’an (Sura 19, ‘Mary’). Dating from the 7th century it reflects Christian beliefs and traditions current in Arabia and with which the Prophet Muhammad would have been familiar. Islam, of course, recognises Jesus as the most important Prophet other than Muhammad himself. In its account of the Annunciation, the Qur’an has Allah’s heavenly messenger declare of Jesus, “‘He shall be a sign to mankind,’ says the Lord, ‘and a blessing from Ourself’.” And how does a very distinctive Nativity story turn up in the Qur’an? Well, one likely explanation lies in all those early Christian documents, which included an Arabic account of the birth and infancy of Jesus. But Christianity’s divisive doctrinal disputes, particularly about the person and work of Christ, were, in the 7th century, to be its downfall in the face of Islam’s simple message and unitarian theology. As the Qur’an puts it, “Yet the Sects are divided concerning Jesus” (Sura 19:37).
But what has all this to do with the world that Jesus was born into? Do the Nativity accounts say anything about that, anything to locate it in a recognisably historical context? And does it matter? It matters because Jesus was a real human being, not some quasi-divine fantasy superhero. He lived a real human life and taught how our human life might better reflect the divine ideal of love. If all we had about him were stories of ‘miracles’ then he would be irrelevant to us. Reputed ‘wonderworkers’ were two- a- penny in the ancient world, and are not unknown today! But when it comes to the Nativity stories, canonical and non-canonical, it is certainly possible to find very real echoes of human life. The story of a teenage girl who finds herself pregnant with no very credible excuse but whose fiancé finally responds with love and generosity of spirit in the face of family and societal disapproval is one we can relate to. So too are the incidents relating to homelessness, to flight from murderous persecution, to exile in a foreign land: they reflect real human experiences of suffering all too well. And this was something that greatly concerned Jesus.
But what about the historical context? What was the world that Jesus was born into? Matthew and Luke both attempt to give their Nativity story some sort of grounding in the contemporary world. For Matthew this means locating the events “during the reign of Herod” (2:1), and Herod is someone who is known from sources outside the New Testament. He really was a cunning and ruthless man very much in keeping with his portrayal in Matthew’s gospel. He had been king of Judaea since 37 BC, a client ruler appointed by the Romans. Once in power, Herod set about eliminating any surviving competition. He had his predecessor, Aristobulus II – last of the Hasmonean dynasty - beheaded, along with his son. Herod was a friend and close collaborator with Rome. Even before becoming king of Judaea, Herod had been appointed tetrarch of Galilee (in 41BC) by Mark Antony. Herod was a Roman citizen and he once presided at the Olympic Games. He was to leave his mark on the land, building fortresses, ports and palaces but his great project was building a new Temple in Jerusalem – although this didn’t win him many friends among the Jewish population, who regarded him as a foreigner and resented his autocratic rule. He died unlamented in 4BC.
He left his kingdom to his three sons, Archelaus, Antipas and Philip, although it took a Roman army and two thousand crucifixions to enforce their rule on a rebellious populace. Archelaus was allotted Judaea itself, the heart of the kingdom, which included Jerusalem and Bethlehem. He is named in Matthew as the king ruling there when Joseph, Mary and Jesus returned from Egypt, although they went to Galilee to avoid him. Galilee was ruled by his brother Antipas. Archelaus was removed from office by the Romans in AD6, although Antipas lasted rather longer. He was to play a further part in the stories of both John the Baptist and of Jesus before the Romans removed him from office too in AD39.
Luke, both in his gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, is at greater pains than Matthew to locate the story of Jesus and the early Christian community in an historical context. He was writing for a Greek-speaking audience in the Roman Empire, although in writing about the Nativity he was dealing with events that had happened seventy or eighty years earlier. Nevertheless he does try to put the birth of Jesus in a Roman context, that is to say during the reign of the Emperor Augustus and “when Quirinius was governor of Syria” (2:2). Quirinius was appointed in AD6, when Judaea lost what was left of its independence and became a Roman province. Herod, incidentally, is mentioned by Luke but only in connection with Zechariah and Elizabeth and the birth of John the Baptist. He had in fact been dead ten years when Quirinius became governor of Syria.
The tightening grip of Rome provides the backdrop to the birth of Jesus, to his life and, of course, his death. And, paradoxically perhaps, it was Rome’s Empire, with its transport links, its communications system and its order – the Pax Romana - that was to facilitate the spread of Christianity. But in the world of Caesar Augustus the arrival of this baby boy probably had little impact at the time, beyond his own family. We may have those stories in Matthew and Luke to enjoy at this time of year, but it is what Jesus grew up to do and to say that really matters. And the vision he set before people, of a new and universal human community that transcends the divisions of gender, nation, race, class and status, with the message of love at its heart, was revolutionary. It was revolutionary when he taught it in Galilee. It was revolutionary when Paul taught it in the cities of Asia Minor and Greece and in the great city of Rome itself. It was revolutionary as those early Christian communities taught it across an Empire of slavery, brutality and rigid social hierarchy. And it remains revolutionary today.
We live in a world that, on the face of it, is very different to that which Jesus was born into, but in so many ways it is just the same. There is still cruelty and unkindness, there is still violence, brutality and war, not least in the troubled land where he was born. And these, wherever they exist, have their origin in human hearts imprisoned by hatred, selfishness and greed – as they always did. But there is a way out, a better way, the way that Jesus walked. We are called to walk it and to help others walk it too. It was for the hope of a better world that Jesus was born, and it is for the hope of a better world that we prepare to celebrate his coming.