Random
Thoughts on Luke’s Nativity Story
December
14, 2021
The Scripture
quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible,
copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council
of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights
reserved.
I recently went
through Luke’s[1]
story of Jesus’ birth to see if there was anything I wanted to say about. It
turns out that I have a lot to say about it, some of it important, some of it
not. I hope you’ll find these random thought at least interesting. You’ll find
the story at Luke 2:1-20.
Let me make one
point clear as we begin. I am talking here about Luke’s story, and I treat it
not as history, not as biography, and not as divinely revealed factual truth.
It is a story. It is much more faith confession than it is historical fact. It
contains much symbolic truth. Whether it has any factual truth (which it probably
doesn’t) doesn’t matter to me.
Right at the
start the story includes two things that make no factual sense. First, there is
no Roman record of the registration Luke mentions. One online source says Augustus
took censuses in 28 BCE, 8 BCE, and 14 CE. Scholars think Jesus was born around
4 BCE, so none of these could be the one Luke had in mind. Quirinius, who the
story says ordered the relevant registration, took a census in 6 CE. That’s too
late. Jesus was already something like ten years old by that time. It seems,
however, that Luke knew of this census and incorporated it into his story.
Second, the story
having Joseph and Mary travel from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea to
be registered makes no factual sense. If the Romans were going to take a census,
they would want to know where people lived so they could be taxed or
conscripted into the Roman army. Luke says Joseph and Mary went to “their own
town” to be registered, but their own town in Luke’s nativity story (though not
in Matthew’s) was Nazareth not Bethlehem. Also, at what point in a person’s
lineage is the identity of “their town” established? Luke says they went to
Bethlehem because Joseph was descended from King David. But of course David
descended from his father Jesse and untold generations of people before Jesse. Did
all of those people always live in Bethlehem? Almost certainly not. Why cut off
Joseph’s descent at David? Rather clearly for symbolic reasons not factual
ones. As a factual matter this part of the story makes no sense at all.
So why did Luke,
who is the New Testament’s best storyteller, tell his story this way? You’ll
find the answer to that question at Micah 5:2. There we read:
But you, of Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
who are one of
the little clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is rule in
Israel,
whose origin if from of old,
from ancient days.
The early Christians read this
verse as a prediction of a Messiah though the passage does not use that term. They
believed Jesus to be the Messiah. To be the Messiah, they thought, he had to
have come from Bethlehem. So Luke tells a story that has him born in Bethlehem.
(So does Matthew, although Matthew’s nativity story is very different from
Luke’s.) Luke here is not giving us historical facts. His having Jesus born in
Bethlehem though Jesus was from Nazareth was part of Luke’s confession of faith
in Jesus as the Messiah. As is true of nearly everything in the New Testament
we have here not history but faith confession.
Luke calls Jesus
Mary’s “firstborn son.” Luke 2:7. The Roman Catholic Church insists that Jesus
did not have siblings because it insists on Mary being “ever virgin.” Luke
calling Jesus Mary’s firstborn son tells us that Luke did not consider Mary to
be ever virgin. She could be ever virgin if Jesus were her only child; but if
that’s what Luke thought, wouldn’t he have said “her only child” rather than “her
firstborn son?” Also see Mark 6:3, Matthew 13:55, John 7:3, and 1 Corinthians
9:5 for references to Jesus’ siblings, some of whom these texts name. Luke
calling Jesus Mary’s firstborn son is a problem only if you insist that Jesus
had no siblings because Mary was ever virgin. Because there is no biblical
basis for that assertion, Protestants do not accept it.
Luke says Joseph
and Mary went to Bethlehem to be registered, but he never tells of them
actually ever being registered. That omission suggests to me that Luke knew he
was using the registration only as a plot device to get Joseph and Mary to
Bethlehem. Once they were there Luke seems to have forgotten or no longer cared
about the registration.
Luke then gives
us shepherds, who he says were keeping watch over their flock by night. David
was of course a shepherd from Bethlehem, though I think the main point Luke is
making with his shepherds comes from the fact that shepherds were the lowest of
the low in Jewish society, yet they were the ones to whom the announcement of
the birth of the Messiah was first made. Recall that in the Magnificat Luke has
Mary say that God has lifted up the lowly. Luke 1:52. That’s what God is doing
here, lifting up those most lowly.
Then, apparently
suddenly, an angel of the Lord stands before the shepherds, and the glory of
the Lord shines around them. In some Old Testament texts an angel of the Lord and the glory of the Lord mean that the Lord was actually present in person.[2]
Luke was however Greek not Jewish, so he probably didn’t mean to say that
somehow God appeared in person to the shepherds.
The first thing
the angel says to the shepherds is what biblical angels typically first say to
people to whom they have appeared: “Do not be afraid.” The text tells us that
the shepherds were indeed afraid, and it’s not hard to understand why. We know
because we’ve heard the story before that the angel meant the shepherds no
harm. The shepherds didn’t know that at first, and what was happening before
them was powerful and startingly different from anything they had ever seen
before. I suspect all of us would be afraid or at least skeptical if we saw
anything like what Luke says appeared to the shepherds.
The angel gives a
reason why the shepherds should not be afraid. The angel says “for see—I am
bringing you good news of great joy for all people; to you is born this day in
the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” This part of Luke’s
story raises many questions for me. What did these words mean to the shepherds?
What did they understand the word Messiah to mean? Why was the birth of the
Messiah good news of great joy for all people? We are talking here not about
some mighty ruler buy about an impoverished, newborn baby. Jesus at this point
has done nothing except probably poop, pee, and cry. He wouldn’t do anything of
import for many years yet. As God’s Messiah he might do things of
world-changing importance at some time in the future, but he certainly hadn’t
done any of them yet. What did the shepherds understand the angel to mean by
good news of great joy for all people? I suppose there’s no way to know. They
didn’t get interviewed on CNN after all.
What could the
shepherds possibly have thought about the Messiah lying in a manger? They
probably thought that the Messiah would be a very earthly king like David had
been. Kings are born in palaces not in stables. I get the symbolic importance
of Jesus being born in a stable; but within the parameters of Luke’s story,
what would the shepherds have thought of it? I can imagine some of them saying,
well, what the angel said can’t be true because there’s no way the Messiah is
going to be born in a stable. I wonder if some of them refused to go. And who
stayed behind to tend the sheep?
Then all of a
sudden there appears to the shepherds a heavenly army. Most English
translations use the word “host” rather than army, but the word means army. The
NRSV has a translators note that tells us that the Greek word being translated
is the word for army. Luke says it was a heavenly army. I didn’t know that
heaven had an army, and I can’t figure out why heaven would need one. Indeed, I
believe that heaven wouldn’t have an army even if for some reason it needed
one. Jesus taught us nonviolence as God’s way after all. If the shepherds were
stunned by the appearance of one angel and the glory of God, they must have
been completely overwhelmed by the appearance of a heavenly army. Maybe they
got over it quickly enough. We’re told this army was praising God, which is hardly
a belligerent or threatening thing to do.
Then there’s an
issue about what the heavenly army said. Most of us know the King James Version
translation here. That version has the army say, “Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace, good will toward men.” That’s how I remember hearing the
line when I was young, and this wording has made it into some of our Christmas
carols. Newer translations however translate the Greek here differently. The
NRSV has “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those
whom he favors.” It does have a translators note that says other ancient authorities
read “peace, goodwill among people.” The New International Version, which is
the most widely purchased English translation of the Bible, has “on earth peace
to those on whom his favor rests.” It lacks the NRSV’s translators note about
other ancient authorities. I personally prefer the KJV and the NRSV’s other
ancient authorities translation, but it seems the scholarly opinion is that the
original Greek limits the call for peace to those whom God favors. But who are
they? Aren’t they everyone? If they are, then the change in the translation
doesn’t make much of a change in the passage’s meaning.
The angels exit
stage left, and the shepherds decide to go to Bethlehem, the city of David, “to
see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” OK,
but what was there to see? A newborn infant, his mother (presumably not looking
her best after having just given birth), and a man the shepherds surely would
have taken to be the baby’s father. Surely baby Jesus looked no different from
any other newborn baby. I doubt that there was anything special to see. When
the shepherds get there they report what they’d been told, and all who heard it
were amazed. Who heard it? We haven’t been told there was anyone else there but
the baby, Mary, Joseph and the shepherds.
Luke then says, “But
Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” OK, but what
does “ponder” mean? Google.com says it means “think about (something) carefully,
especially before making a decision or reaching a conclusion.” Other online
dictionaries have similar definitions. I don’t know that Mary had any decisions
to make at this point other than those all first-time parents make about caring
for their child. Her big decision came when she said yes to Gabriel in Chapter
1 of Luke. Maybe she was reaching the decision that what Gabriel had told her
was true, but surely she never doubted that it was. I like the mood of this
phrase, but it doesn’t hold up under much scrutiny.
So there you have
a few random thoughts on Luke’s nativity story. Despite how easy it is to deny
its factuality and how many questions it raises, it is magnificent storytelling
and confession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah. It is one of the most
beautiful and powerful passages in all of scripture. I love it, and I love
hearing it every year at Christmas time. I hope you do too.
[1] We
do not know who wrote the Gospel we call Luke. The name Luke was tacked onto
this Gospel a significant amount of time after this Gospel was written. I
should perhaps therefore say “the author of the Gospel of Luke” rather than
just Luke, but to avoid using that clumsy phrase I’ll just call the author
Luke. My doing so does not mean that I think someone named Luke wrote this
Gospel. I don’t.
[2] The
references to the Lord there are
references to the Hebrew God Yahweh. The reference to the Lord in Luke
apparently refers to God not to Yahweh.
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