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

25:53Yeah. 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. 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 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.

26:23John Nelson:Yeah, I think so. 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 Celsus. And he writes this text called True Word, or true doctrine. And it clearly hit a nerve because in the third century, Origen writes a response to it, the kind of the Dawkins delusion response. And what Celsus was saying is that Mary was impregnated by a Roman soldier named Pantera. And there are lots of debates about that name. Some 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.

27:08John Nelson:But I think it was a common Roman soldier's name. You think about Roman soldiers are like panthers. So maybe there was something going on there. 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 emphatically 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. 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.

27:46Right. Which is a which like I don't know. I mean, like you 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, OK, 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 just roll with it. Yeah. You know, and that's what causes Joseph to Joseph to stick around.

28:15John Nelson: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 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.

29:03John Nelson: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. But 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 7, verse 14, that says, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.

29:51And in the New Testament, this is sort of presented as Jesus and Mary is the virgin 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, the Septuagint, which would have had the word Parthenos, which does mean virgin. So the New Testament authors read Isaiah. They see that it says a version shall conceive. So they make this version conceive in their narrative.

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31:35John Nelson:I think this was popularised 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 Mary was a virgin. I'm very hesitant to begin with to say that the translators of the Septuagint or the Jewish scriptures, sometimes the Septuagint just refers to the Torah, to 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.

32:16John Nelson:So it's a loose rendering, perhaps. To lay my cards on the table, I don't think that Isaiah 7.14 is, at least in the intention of Isaiah, about a future Messiah figure who shall be born of a virgin. I think that this is a sign to King Ahaz. And I think the nature of the sign is not about the mode of conception. I think most Hebrew Bible scholars would say that 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.

33:08John Nelson: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 a virgin, a Parthenos, that this is going to be about a supernatural conception. I just assume that early readers would think that there was male involvement 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 original understanding of Jesus as a person.

34:07But it seems quite important, particularly to Catholics, for example. So I don't know. Do you think that this really matters in our understanding of who Jesus is?

34:16John Nelson: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 and the egg with Bethlehem. And I think it's quite striking that all of Matthew's citations of scripture feel like really loose pegs on which to hang his narrative. Especially the one that doesn't actually exist in the Old Testament. The one that doesn't exist, you know, as the scripture says, you know, he will be called a Nazarene. What scripture? It doesn't exist. So 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.

35:05John Nelson: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 Crossan 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 texts which kind of confirm his other ideas.

35:51John Nelson: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 is 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.

36:28And 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, 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, he was 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. It was just 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.

37:01So 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.

37:11John Nelson:We often talk about Christian fundamentalism, don't we? Which comes out of this movement, I think, in sort of 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.

37:46John Nelson: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 messiahs, 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 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 asked Paul and said, can you confess the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed? I think he might scratch his head.

38:25John Nelson:He might say, oh, I think Jesus was born of the Davidic line. So his father was of the Davidic line. And it's striking that Paul believed in something like the incarnation. We think of something like the Philippian hymn, 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.

39:06Well, that's Dr. Nelson to you.

39:09John Nelson:And maybe that is true. It's interesting that it's not there in Mark. um yeah in mark jesus is called the son of mary which is and it by by his fellow townspeople in nazareth and it 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 well perhaps a mistranslation you know isn't this the builder the stone mason um 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 uh 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 annoying every time i ever say like uh i think i said this in 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 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 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 why was jesus so popular um in covid um 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 yeah 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 uh 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 the bastard um i think it's i think it's a possible reading i think we just need to be very tentative about you know reading too much uh into the narrative but yeah mark doesn't mention joseph it says you know the son uh it says the carpenter and or the tectone.

41:32John Nelson: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 born of natural means out of wedlock because of the fact that when I watch, particularly in older times, like bastards, that is children of unmarried parents, they get a bit of shtick you know i started watching game of thrones the other day and there's you know one of the characters is is a bastard and everyone like makes fun of him for it and as a sort of modern like viewer or reader i i sort of i'm 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 if anything i know that son is like having a really hard life now but then i think about the fact that that jesus's whole shtick yeah is that he comes to identify so firstly he 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.

42:32And 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 were looked 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 like that as a story.

42:59John Nelson:Yeah, it could have theological significance. It's interesting that in John, Jesus is 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 the first to say the word became flesh the logos became flesh and he doesn't 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.

43:45John Nelson: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?

44:23John Nelson:Because we know that that's actually not how conception works. 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 too 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 jesus is like half human yes which is like which the the sort of the demigod option was on the table for the early church but they avoid 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 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 you know 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 like a less natural fit, let's say.

45:28Yeah.

45:28John Nelson: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 questions, I think, around this. Yeah. Okay. So Jesus is born, maybe of a virgin, maybe of a roman soldier whatever the case uh but we know that he was born uh in a manger in a stable because we talked about where it was was it in 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 uh it was in a cave um which is kind of interesting um i was actually asking a professor about this recently and i said oh i've i've read that there were caves in Bethlehem.

46:21John Nelson:And he said, no, no, they 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. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19 ,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs. So you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride.

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47:36John Nelson:Yes. So, interestingly, that translation has the term the guest room. But many translations will have the word in. In the in, 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 pandacheon. But that's not the word that he uses in his infancy narrative. There he uses the word kataluma, 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?

48:20John Nelson: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, 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.

48:59John Nelson: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 maybe surrounded by his family. It's the more sort of traditional Christmas scene. And he's placed in a manger in the main part of the house. I don't know if like a way in a foyer really has the same sort of ring to it. But OK, what about Matthew's narrative? Surely he has him born in a stable. We can just corroborate the stories, right? Alas, no manger, no stable in Matthew's narrative.

49:40Yeah, that is interesting. It does sound, 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 you 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 yeah that's an interesting secondary reading um which i hadn't heard at least and i thought when we were talking about this like was he 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 yeah on luke's on luke's own terms but then there's

50:35John Nelson:another aspect of this story in luke with the 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 um and this this is derived from isaiah it says the ox knows its master the 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 really yeah because like the the sort of manger scene that we construct and put on the mantelpiece 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 I do think that a lot of the time on this show, I should be more careful when I'm excitedly exploring these almost borderline conspiratorial theories.

51:35I'm not trying to say this is what people should believe, and I know you're not trying to say that, but it's interesting, right? And it allows us to frame this video as misconceptions about Christmas, which is way more interesting than just going through the gospel narratives.

51:50John Nelson:Yeah. And it's about exploring these texts on their own terms and in the context in which they are 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 two different versions of the story that seem to sort of, some would say, contradict.

52:26I 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 go off to the temple and whatnot. We're not going to get into that now. I've covered that with Bart Ehrman in previous Christmas specials, which we'll link in the description at the end of this episode. so if you are interested in those like 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

53:17John Nelson:We three kings in Orient are. So it's really interesting. These characters take a life of their own in the extra biblical tradition. They become three. They become 12, I think, in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Really? I think they might still be 12. There's certainly more than three of them. Because just to be clear, the narrative never says there are three wise men. No, it says that there were magioi, 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.

54:10John Nelson:And there was a way for it not to be a dirty word, 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 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.

54:53John Nelson: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. Three gifts. And so that's probably why, at least iconographically, the three magi work, because you can have each one bringing a different gift. And that's your gold, frankincense and myrrh.

55:30John Nelson:The gold, frankincense and myrrh. What do they mean? I mean, the gold may be a symbol of kingship. The frankincense is that incense that you burn in the temple, so signifying divinity. And Matthew's told us that Jesus is God with us. And then the myrrh is often taken to mean something about Jesus's 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. 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.

56:13John Nelson:But in Mark's crucifixion narrative, which Matthew is using, we're told he's given wine mixed with myrrh. 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. And he has a reason for doing that, which is that I think there's a psalm in the Septuagint which has the gull rather than the myrrh. 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. Though really interestingly, that was in a commentary by Dale Allison and W.

56:53John Nelson: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, but Matthew is absolutely obsessed with showing that Jesus is the son of David. I mean, it's there in 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 gematria, or a system of assigning numerical value to Hebrew letters. And the numerical value of the name David would be 14.

57:47John Nelson:so Matthew is going 14 14 14 David David David he's sort of screaming at his readers that day that Jesus is the son of David and David I think appears as the 14th name in the list really it's really it's really beautifully done um because there are other generations that could be could be accounted for in that in that list as well but Matthew's really trying to drive home this point that Jesus is the son of David. So maybe the gold in frankincense and myrrh is also this other sort of slightly son of David style illusion. That is fascinating. Okay. But whatever they brought, they got there by following...

58:29By following what? I'll just throw that into your court. How did they get there?

58:34John Nelson:I think the Greek is aster, 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 tried to follow a star before? How far have you got? It's a bit difficult. So the weird thing about this star, so it keeps appearing. 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.

59:15John Nelson: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 J. Humphreys. And he wrote a book, I think it was called The Christ Comet, where in ancient Chinese sources, 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.

1:00:00John Nelson: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. um 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 they play the star um but they're also an angel yeah so maybe that's one of the ways we get correct i think there is an um an arabic gospel of the infancy i think it might be a sixth century text but it actually says that they were got the magi were guided by an angel so it looks like maybe some people were reading it in this way so it is 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 well if you think about angels and stars they they do look quite similar insofar as angels are often associated with light yeah in ancient texts yeah yeah sure so this would explain how this bright light can and you you might phenomenologically call this a star but it actually is an angel a living being yeah because It's also the fact that like, I mean, I'm looking at the text here, right?

1:01:52So 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 just to know like 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 yeah 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 all of the relevant like instances of somebody being told 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

1:03:04John Nelson:And 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 this life of their own. They become kings in the tradition. 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. which seems to derive from Tertullian in the second or maybe early third century. He reads Psalm 72, and Psalm 72 is about Gentiles bringing gifts to a Jewish king.

1:03:50John Nelson:And it looks so much like the Magyion, with the gift-giving, the Gentile gift-giving. yep um so he he construes these as kings and that's where we get you know we three kings of oriental yeah yeah that's 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 so major i came from the east because they saw a star you're like is that it is that all that's in the text um but of course the major are really important for another reason.

1:04:25They'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. 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 at ollie we've got wellness down to a science from pms to pregnancy to menopause our women's wellness line offers science-backed support for every stage no judgment no shame none of the stigma Just supplements designed to meet you wherever you're at.

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1:06:05John Nelson:So this is really difficult, I think. Um, so those arguing against the historicity of this account will point out that, uh, we have no extra biblical attestation to this event. It is found in Matthew and that's, that's only where it's found. Um, 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 Suetanus's life of Augustus uh the senate find out this this prodigy that um 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 they so they don't want any they don't want any new newborn boys um I think I think Suetonius explains that what people did is they just didn't register their births.

1:07:11John Nelson:So the women in this time were just having their children anyway. 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. So there is a sense in all of these stories that there is some kind of destiny to the child. That this is a child who God is or providence or fate is preserving. And so some people would look at that and they would go, this is just a trope, isn't it? and um 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 one of the clearest is that uh in luke jesus gives his sermon on the plain in matthew of course it is a sermon on the mount why is he going up a mountain to deliver this this teaching well that's exactly what moses did yeah um and so but of course ancient biographers could realize historical connections with real historical events yeah um so it's it's a very difficult one to say if i was if i was really trying to argue for the historicity of the massacre of the innocents i would point out that he tries to wipe out the children um in bethlehem and how big is bethlehem oh you bethlehem little clan of judah it's um But it's potentially tiny.

1:08:54John Nelson: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 scared. 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 have killed his sisters. This is someone who is almost like the archetypal ruler who is just really, really worried.

1:09:40John Nelson:and you know josephus talks a lot about you know all the people he killed during his lifetime he does he does kill he does kill one of his own sons so this is this is a very paranoid man it's 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 85 ce 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.

1:10:17John Nelson: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. 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 uh messaging with the birth narrative right you've been reading new testament studies haven't you um yeah i think i think there are anti-imperial counter-imperial sort of valences to these texts i mean even having jesus with this adoptive father who's joseph and and this and this divine father um i think i think a lot of that is reminiscent of augustus and it's not like i'm making some sort of huge or you know augustan leap i you know luke himself situates his narrative within the reign of augustus so this is something luke is drawing our attention to um and augustus famously as we've already alluded to had his own supernatural conception i think Augustus was born of Apollo.

1:11:36John Nelson:And so there is this story about his own supernatural birth. And he is, I think he ends up Dewey Filius. 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?

1:12:24John Nelson:And did everyone believe that they were actually descended from those people. 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 Luke are saying, especially in their genealogies, 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 in the sort of Jewish monotheistic context, if we can call it that, that is also a kind of anti-imperial claim as well. But there's one more thing about this anti-imperial language in Luke related to Augustus, which is that what was Augustus known for?

1:13:12John Nelson:He was known for the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. And I think it was Tacitus who said that they made a desert and called it Peace. 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.

1:14:03And this is the real peace. This is the real Pax, not the Pax Romana, but the Pax.

1:14:08John Nelson:Jesus did not come to bring imperial power, but eventually to be subjected to it. Yes. And to usurp worldly peace with the Pax Christus or whatever you might call it. 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's 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.

1:14:52Or rabbi, they call him rabbi, which means teacher. So it's not true across the entire gospels, but certainly for Matthew, trying to connect 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.

1:15:22John Nelson: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 gematria 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? So this is, yeah. But again, for like a Jewish reader, it's so important. What I maybe want to take 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 stories of Jesus' birth and the stories of other figures.

1:16:04John Nelson:maybe Suetonius's life of Augustus maybe Alexander's life of of um 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 there 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.

1:16:56John Nelson: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 pneuma 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.

1:17:52John Nelson: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 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 weren't familiar with the Jewish scriptures. There's one more thing that someone familiar with the Old Testament might notice.

1:18:35And that's that in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 10.

1:18:41John Nelson: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 presence of idols there seems to be a sort of ancient pagan symbol behind you john like are we are we are we sort of theologically out of step should i should i should i have alex rotoscope that out frame by frame for the whole conversation i 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 uh the the trees of ancient mesopotamia it would be nice to have a good fir tree like that but i think i I mean, that passage is so clearly about idolatry and maybe not so much a tree, but, you know, making an idol out of a tree, as we know that sort of many cultures in that time and place did.

1:20:04John Nelson:And then ornamenting it. I think some translations of that passage have debt, you know, decking it with silver and gold. We're decking the fools. 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 um sadly i think a lot of us are descendants of oliver cromwell and the puritans uh who banned christmas and we we tend to think of christmas as something pagan um or at least inspired by sort of pagan festivals and so yes we don't like which again i 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 saturnalia for the sake of christian like domination and let's say the picture saturnalia that great feast that ended on the 23rd of december um 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 barterman we we cover that in depth it's a classic protestant critique it's amazing how protestant tiktok can be yeah yeah yeah well it's like the modern equivalent of the printing press isn't it and you know i think in in both cases these are revolutionary technologies for the promulgation of heresy um but what well speaking of the printing press um yeah i usually i usually try to promote my guests books although i don't know because this is who is this being there the whole show who's this book actually aimed at like who 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 seemed to understand i think you have an obvious knack for for making academic subjects accessible but then you never know 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 tried to do when I was writing it was just include tidbits all over the place.

1:22:15John Nelson: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 give you a unique cover for it eventually. Or maybe I'll have to write another book. Maybe. Maybe you will as well. You know, Merry Christmas, everybody, in like two or three years time. There'll be something under the tree for us all. But if you are looking for a Christmas present that doesn't cost£80 for a considerably lower amount of pounds of the realm, you can come and see us on tour.

1:22:55We'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. Yes. So hopefully by the time this goes out, we'll have some picture of like which shows you're going to be at.

1:23:21But 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 the 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.

1:23:50John Nelson:And to www.behindthegospels.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'll likely have covered it. So, yeah, behindthegospels.com is where to find you. And, yeah, watch this space because more is to come. Merry Christmas. The right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels.

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1:25:19one and all