Yves here. This post gives a brief look at the political turmoil at the time of Jesus’ birth and how his family was presumably not on great terms with the Romans.
A wag pointed out how Christians gloss over some other operative difficulties:
A betrothal means celibacy. It’s hard to hide a pregnancy. How did Mary explain it? Saying, “It’s God’s doing” would not have been very convincing.
We very rarely attended church, save the Unitarian Church during the two years we lived in Boston (my father was an atheist but never indicated anything even remotely like that to his children since word getting out would have been very bad for his career). But one of the few times we did after that, at a Presbyterian congregation, I recall the pastor discussing major mistranslations in the Bible. One was Mary being a virgin. The pastor said the word was more accurately rendered as “maid” which simply meant young woman. Not that that solved Mary’s betrothal problem.
And some trivia. Of the Magi’s gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, myrrh at that time was the most valuable. It is an antibiotic. And the Magi as Persian priests were very likely to have been astrologers.
Having said that, the final part of this article discusses a new Nicholas Cage movie about the young Jesus, The Carpenter’s Son. It comes off as a very much 21st Century “Might makes right” projection onto a historically blank period of Jesus’ life.
But I am again reminded of that sermon about mistranslations. The pastor discussed at considerable length that “The meek shall inherit the earth” was almost 180 degrees wrong, that what we were told was “meek” was much more like “the powerful” or even “the superhuman” He tried to square that with Christ’s advocacy for the poor, downtrodden, and as Michael Hudson has described long form, debtors. My recollection is not crisp after all these years, but I think he used the “Render onto Caesar what is Caesar’s” frame, that the world operated on dog-eat-dog rules and it was important to distinguish the material realm from the spiritual.
By Joan Taylor, Professor Emerita of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism, King’s College London. Originally published at The Conversation
Every year, millions of people sing the beautiful carol Silent Night, with its line “all is calm, all is bright”.
We all know the Christmas story is one in which peace and joy are proclaimed, and this permeates our festivities, family gatherings and present-giving. Countless Christmas cards depict the Holy Family – starlit, in a quaint stable, nestled comfortably in a sleepy little village.
However, when I began to research my book on the childhood of Jesus, Boy Jesus: Growing up Judaean in Turbulent Times, that carol started to sound jarringly wrong in terms of his family’s actual circumstances at the time he was born.
The Gospel stories themselves tell of dislocation and danger. For example, a “manger” was, in fact, a foul-smelling feeding trough for donkeys. A newborn baby laid in one is a profound sign given to the shepherds, who were guarding their flocks at night from dangerous wild animals (Luke 2:12).
When these stories are unpacked for their core elements and placed in a wider historical context, the dangers become even more glaring.
Take King Herod, for example. He enters the scene in the nativity stories without any introduction at all, and readers are supposed to know he was bad news. But Herod was appointed by the Romans as their trusted client ruler of the province of Judaea. He stayed long in his post because he was – in Roman terms – doing a reasonable job.
Jesus’ family claimed to be of the lineage of Judaean kings, descended from David and expected to bring forth a future ruler. The Gospel of Matthew begins with Jesus’ entire genealogy, it was that important to his identity.
But a few years before Jesus’ birth, Herod had violated the tomb of David and looted it. How did that affect the family and the stories they would tell Jesus? How did they feel about the Romans?
A Time of Fear and Revolt
As for Herod’s attitude to Bethlehem, remembered as David’s home, things get yet more dangerous and complex.
When Herod was first appointed, he was evicted by a rival ruler supported by the Parthians (Rome’s enemy) who was loved by many local people. Herod was attacked by those people just near Bethlehem.
He and his forces fought back and massacred the attackers. When Rome vanquished the rival and brought Herod back, he built a memorial to his victorious massacre on a nearby site he called Herodium, overlooking Bethlehem. How did that make the local people feel?
And far from being a sleepy village, Bethlehem was so significant as a town that a major aqueduct construction brought water to its centre. Fearing Herod, Jesus’ family fled from their home there, but they were on the wrong side of Rome from the start.
They were not alone in their fears or their attitude to the colonisers. The events that unfolded, as told by the first-century historian Josephus, show a nation in open revolt against Rome shortly after Jesus was born.
When Herod died, thousands of people took over the Jerusalem temple and demanded liberation. Herod’s son Archelaus massacred them. A number of Judaean revolutionary would-be kings and rulers seized control of parts of the country, including Galilee.
It was at this time, in the Gospel of Matthew, that Joseph brought his family back from refuge in Egypt – to this independent Galilee and a village there, Nazareth.
But independence in Galilee didn’t last long. Roman forces, under the general Varus, marched down from Syria with allied forces, destroyed the nearby city of Sepphoris, torched countless villages and crucified huge numbers of Judaean rebels, eventually putting down the revolts.
Archelaus – once he was installed officially as ruler – followed this up with a continuing reign of terror.
A Nativity Story for Today
As a historian, I’d like to see a film that shows Jesus and his family embedded in this chaotic, unstable and traumatic social world, in a nation under Roman rule.
Instead, viewers have now been offered The Carpenter’s Son, a film starring Nicholas Cage. It’s partly inspired by an apocryphal (not biblical) text named the Paidika Iesou – the Childhood of Jesus – later called The Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
You might think the Paidika would be something like an ancient version of the hit TV show Smallville from the 2000s, which followed the boy Clark Kent before he became Superman.
But no, rather than being about Jesus grappling with his amazing powers and destiny, it is a short and quite disturbing piece of literature made up of bits and pieces, assembled more than 100 years after the life of Jesus.
The Paidika presents the young Jesus as a kind of demigod no one should mess with, including his playmates and teachers. It was very popular with non-Jewish, pagan-turned-Christian audiences who sat in an uneasy place within wider society.
The miracle-working Jesus zaps all his enemies – and even innocents. At one point, a child runs into Jesus and hurts his shoulder, so Jesus strikes him dead. Joseph says to Mary, “Do not let him out of the house so that those who make him angry may not die.”
Such stories rest on a problematic idea that one must never kindle a god’s wrath. And this young Jesus shows instant, deadly wrath. He also lacks much of a moral compass.
But this text also rests on the idea that Jesus’ boyhood actions against his playmates and teachers were justified because they were “the Jews”. “A Jew” turns up as an accuser just a few lines in. There should be a content warning.
The nativity scene from The Carpenter’s Son is certainly not peaceful. There is a lot of screaming and horrific images of Roman soldiers throwing babies into a fire. But, like so many films, the violence is somehow just evil and arbitrary, not really about Judaea and Rome.
It is surely the contextual, bigger story of the nativity and Jesus’ childhood that is so relevant today, in our times of fracturing and “othering”, where so many feel under the thumb of the unyielding powers of this world.
In fact, some churches in the United States are now reflecting this contemporary relevance as they adapt nativity scenesto depict ICE detentions and deportations of immigrants and refugees.
In many ways, the real nativity is indeed not a simple one of peace and joy, but rather one of struggle – and yet mystifying hope.
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There is a unused scene from the Monty Python’s Life of Brian script which has Mary explaining to Solly (sic) how she got pregnant by the Holy Spirit. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the “Old Man/Dennis” scene from “MP & the Holy Grail”, with repeated statements using different amusing locutions for clarification. However, at the time in the UK it would certainly have got the film banned. it ends with:
Mary: Do you want me to show you what he did?
Solly: What?
Mary: Do you want me to show you what he taught me?
Solly: What, all the way? Bareback?
Mary: Well, I can’t get any more pregnant, can I?
Solly: No.
Mary: Somebody’s got to go second.
Solly: Yeah.
Mary: It’s ever so nice.
Solly: All right.
Mary: Between you and me I never fancied him that much.
Solly: No?
Mary: No, it wasn’t very big.
Solly: That’s not supposed to count.
Mary: No. But it helps.
It’s reproduced (fnarr, fnarr!) in the MONTYPYTHONSCRAPBOOK along with other material
I think if Netanyahu’s political career is any guide, the Judeans would have believed pretty much any old bollocks because they are a very exceptional people.
Interesting piece. Your pastor’s views about almah are the prevailing ones among scholars. There is a more technical word, betulah, which is not used in Isaiah 7:14, the famous Immanuel prophecy. My old Lutheran study Bible has my old OT prof’s attempt to make almah what’s it not, but it’s not convincing enough to repeat.
There just isn’t much to go on when it comes to Jesus’s childhood. Matthew wants to make sure he traces Jesus back to the House of Judah because he’s making the case that Jesus is the royal Messiah. Luke, by legend a Gentile, includes pre-birth and birth narratives to place Jesus in the context of the wider Roman Empire. What the anonymous Childhood Gospels of Thomas is about, and why someone would choose to make a movie about this obscure antilegomena is less easy to understand.
But it’s one more movie for Nick Cage to add to his resume.
Sigh. The sources for the Virgin Birth are Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 1:26-38 which have only come down to us in Greek making the meaning of the Hebrew less important. (Matthew does refer to Isaiah, it is true)
I would add that I am a bit skeptical of modern scholars asserting “mistranslation” centuries later, especially when they skip over the closest contemporaneous commentaries from the time time when the church was still decentralized, oppressed, and geographically dispersed, and who support the traditional position (e.g. Irenaeus of Lyons).
IM Doc independent of our post, disagrees. By happenstance, he sent this as part of his Christmas wishes without having seen this piece:
When I replied and said that agape sounded like “respect” save respect has connotations of subordination, or perhaps “honor, IM Doc explained further:
And then there’s “Thou shall not commit manslaughter.” Christians have “kill”, Jews “murder”. Deuteronomy 19 suggests my translation is more accurate.
Yes, but for IM Doc’s examples, there are centuries of commentary, which can be traced century-by-century, to back up and elucidate the meaning of those words — and which give a richer and deeper undertstanding. Those examples highlight is that modern Greek lacks the same rich vocabulary as ancient Greek. There are too few words to choose from, and shades of meaning, and often nuance is lost to the modern reader. The problem is compounded by English translation – for the reasons IM Doc explains lucidly.
That’s quite different from the modern charlatans who purport to come up with an entirely different spin, yet who find no support for their interpretations in any of the pre-Nicene commentary.
You insinuate that IM Doc does not read koine Greek and classical Greek. That is false. Do not depict him as less expert than he is. For instance, from an older e-mail:
Not at all. To be clear, I am fully on board with IM Doc’s views as expressed in the excerpts you posted, and I agree that IM Doc would not have written what he did if he did not understand the difference between ancient Greek and modern Greek.
IM Doc is absolutely correct that our understanding of “love” and “meek” need to be informed by the contemporaneous understanding of the Greek words that were used. There is plenty of support for his view in all the patristic commentary from the pre-Nicene sources. My bone to pick was the (contrived) notion that the “virgin” birth was all based on a misinterpretation, and the suggestion that the original texts never implied a virgin birth. This is a different issue, beyond the scope of what IM Doc addressed in the excerts you shared, and without support in the early patristic commentaries.
Thanks for clearing that up. I read your mention of modern Greek as a reference to IM Doc’s skills.
Agape is not a foreign concept to the Greeks and Romans. The cosmology of Plato’s Timaeus (a heavy influence on future Christian cosmology) is based on it. No way I am translating it as “respect” or “civility.” It is selfless generosity, which is how Plato envisions the relation between God (the Good, the Beautiful) and the world.
I sympathize with IMDOC’s efforts to convey the differences among the three types of “love” found in the Greek bible: eros, philos (love for friends and family) and agape, but “civility” is pretty weak as a translation for such a powerful word.
John 15:13
The context here is the Last Supper when Jesus explains to the disciples what is about to happen. The laying down of life for others is quite literal. This is not mere civility.
Agape is also the kind of “love” commanded in Jesus’s summary of the commandments:
Mark 12:30-31
Agape, as it’s used in the Greek bible, is a radical call to put God and neighbor above one’s self, even to the point of sacrificing one’s own life.
I used I Corinthians 13 (Paul’s “love” discourse) at weddings because it pointed to a kind of selfless love necessary to marriage, a love that:
That’s a pretty good prescription for a marriage that still endures even when the passion of youth (eros) has faded.
I bet IMDOC would enjoy a copy of the BAGD Greek lexicon. Maybe NC-ers could gift him one.
Part of my job for my career has been to translate Ancient Greek texts into modern English. English that is readily understood by the modern reader. Colleagues and students do not have the time or ability to go hunting through lexicons and dictionaries and treatises about single words. By far and away for my career, this has been medical texts and texts about human nature. Many of these have never been translated that I can tell for MODERN readers. Lots of stuff out there with flowery Victorian translation that a modern reader would just melt trying to understand. It is a really significant challenge. There are all kinds of medical words that have had a similar provenance to words like agape. All kinds of hairball translations over the eons. I have the utmost in respect for those who over the years have done their best to translate.
One of the big big problems is finding a single word in modern English that fits. This is not as easy as it sounds. Our modern conception of translation is warped even further by allowing our soulless computers to do it. A human translator must find these words and fit them in as best they can. Doing all they can to find words that most adequately convey the meaning. I am afraid that above you illustrate my point exactly. I have wrestled with agape for decades. The modern reader will see the word LOVE and think Cupid. It is that plain and that simple. And it is not really accurate. Our modern conception of “love” is not what was meant in any way shape or form. You can tell from the preceding chapters in the Corinthians that St Paul was discussing fractious issues that were tearing apart the social fabric of the Church there and the City. These issues had nothing to do with marriage or erotic love. ( This is another big problem with the way our texts have been chaptered and versed——-the agape section in chapter 13 – the proposed solution – is removed from the list of problems and issues in Chapter 12. This naturally sets apart entire sections of the text and gives permission for them to be taken from context. The chapter and verse designations were not there in the original – that is a convention of a much later time).
I agree that agape is a “call to put God and neighbor above one’s self, even to the point of sacrificing one’s own life.” I think everyone would agree that is a very adequate description – although I would add God(s). Now just put your text in this paragraph between the “scare quotes” as a substitution for agape every single time it is used in this passage. Things get really cumbersome really quickly. Modern readers will instantly turn this off. I have learned this hard lesson over time when I am preparing medical texts. You must find simple words. Simple words that may not be perfect in every way but do the best job of adequately conveying the original meaning. My answer after decades of study and trying my best to convey words for agape is civility. It is weak sauce – I agree – but I know of no other that can depict in one word what is meant. “Love” is not the answer. I will argue again, in the context of all that is discussed in the preceding chapters, St Paul has absolutely zero intention of discussing erotic love here.
And I have read so many treatises about this word agape in my life. I have read all kinds of treatises and pieces and asides about so many Greek words. I have read commentaries about not just agape but many other words in Ancient Greek, in koine, Latin, middle English, Victorian English and Modern English. It is not my job as a translator to have footnotes with 15000 word texts – it is my job to find one or two words that convey the meaning in the most adequate manner and to have the modern reader have the best possible understanding of what was written. If you have a single word that fits better than “civility” I am all ears. I have been thinking about this for decades.
And we have not even talked about parts of the New Testament where the words from the King James Bible have achieved magical status in our modern world. They must be kept no matter what basically for sentimental reasons. Words like “love”, “meek”, etc. Where even in English, it is possible they meant something entirely different 400 years ago. Just as in the ancient and Koine Greek texts, there are words that meant two different things in different parts of Greece or the world. Think about the word “fag” between the USA and Britain in the past 100 years. There are endless commentaries over the centuries about words in the Bible…….so many of them are in languages that only scholars can read.
In the past year, a scholar took on the absolutely Herculean task of publishing yet another modern translation of Homer. Poetry adds yet another level of heinosity because you have to add timbre and cadence. I cannot even tell you how much I would tremble at doing 10 lines of dactylic hexameter, much less the thousands of lines of Homer. But she did the whole thing. And was absolutely pilloried. That is the lot in life of those who translate. If is far more difficult to do adequately than you can possibly imagine – especially trying to translate things into English – a language that is a true stinker.
My goal is with my students and colleagues – to do the level best I can to give them the best possible understanding. As I have told them all repeatedly, there is no “perfect” in this endeavor.
It is a challenge. I approached the agape problem not as an issue of translation but as a call to teach what love really is, and that had application to marriage more than anywhere. It’s so sadly true that in our culture when one hears “love,” the first thought is some kind of RomCom passion, finding a “soulmate,” sex. Pretty shallow, teenager stuff.
What the Gospels and Paul are talking about is much deeper and far more radical in our individualistic, self-obsessed culture. So my approach from catechism class for junior high kids to a couple preparing for marriage, was to stick with that powerful word “love,” but to explain the different Koine words for love, distinctions which we still understand even though they’re obscured by “love’ covering them all. The hope was that the instruction would leave the student with a broader and deeper concept of love that came closer to the biblical ideal.
If you don’t have a BAGD, I strongly recommend it for work in Koine. It includes a lot of classical Greek background as well. You’ll note I don’t the publisher’s order for those names because I’m stubborn about the history of that important tome. Bauer was a German biblical scholar who taught at Breslau and Gottingen in the first half of the 20th century, and as one part of his academic work, he produced a Koine Greek-German lexicon.
Along comes William Arndt, a Missouri Synod pastor who was trained and later taught at Concordia, St. Louis, and he translates Bauer’s lexicon with the help of non-Lutheran, Wilbur Gingrich, who was trained at the University of Chicago, producing the BAG lexicon in 1957.
Fred Danker joined the process in the mid-50s while teaching at Concordia, St. Louis after completing his seminary studies at St. Louis and a Ph.D. at University of Chicago. The first edition he worked on was commonly called the BAGD, but in later editions, it has become the BGAD, reflecting Danker’s considerable contribution to the project after the deaths of Arndt and Gingrich.
Danker was one of the Concordia, St. Louis professors who was tossed out after theological conservative Jacob Preus was elected president of the Missouri Synod. Danker helped form what was popularly called Seminex, seminary in exile, that was housed in the ELCA’s Lutheran seminary in Hyde Park near the U. of Chicago campus. Eventually, like Martin Marty, he joined the ELCA and became a prof at LST after Seminex was disbanded. (Marty taught at the U. of C. Div School.)
Agape is a very powerful word in the Greek bible. It’s what motivates God to send and sacrifice his Son (the famous John 3:16). It’s what drives Jesus to Calvary. It’s more than what makes the world go ’round. It’s the power to transform the world for the better not through power or cleverness but through humility and self-sacrifice.
Asking out of curiosity; have you read St. John Chrysostom’s homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians? I think he was on a similar quest regarding the nature of the marital love.
I have not. I will check them out.
I did take a course on Ephesians from this fellow, who is still listed as an active prof even though he’s in his 90s. When I took him back in the 90s, he disputed Paul’s authorship of Ephesians. It was my first real journey into biblical criticism of the Greek bible after being trained in a seminary that confessed inerrancy.
I’ve learned a lot about marital love at a personal level as my spouse and I share the joy of grandchildren while weathering the health effects of aging. It’s made clearer to me that “soulmates” are made through the operation of time and shared experience rather than some mysterious, pre-existing link. And it has taken a lot of agape on both our parts to bind us together through more than 50 years.
I like “decency” as a modern translation for agape. Civility seems too formal to me; “decency” scoops up emotional stuff too.
When reading and when teaching about agape, my shorthand translation and explanation is ‘self-sacrifice.’ I think ‘civility’ conveys something worthwhile… and I think there’s more that can be expected from someone who is properly expressing ‘agape.’
And thank you to all who are contributing to this discussion; I have much yet to learn from all of you.
It is selfless generosity, as Plato describes the relation between the One/Good/Beautiful and the world of copies, later expanded upon in much detail in the neo-Platonists’ doctrine of “emanation” (proodos is the Greek, if I remember correcty)..
volo ut sis
I admittedly have no idea how to translate this in one word in English, though.
Benedict XVI, in this first encyclical Deus Caritas Est, draws distinction between eros and agape:
“More significantly, though, we questioned whether the message of love proclaimed to us by the Bible and the Church’s Tradition has some points of contact with the common human experience of love, or whether it is opposed to that experience. This in turn led us to consider two fundamental words: eros, as a term to indicate “worldly” love and agape, referring to love grounded in and shaped by faith.”
Benedict seeks a synthesis as he later continues:
“And we have also seen, synthetically, that biblical faith does not set up a parallel universe, or one opposed to that primordial human phenomenon which is love, but rather accepts the whole man; it intervenes in his search for love in order to purify it and to reveal new dimensions of it. This newness of biblical faith is shown chiefly in two elements which deserve to be highlighted: the image of God and the image of man.”
I find it of interest that the Vulgate will typically translate it as “caritas” which today is often inter-changeably translated as “love” and “charity” as we read in the famous First Corinthians 13 (since Corinth seems of interest here):
“Nunc autem manent fides, spes, caritas, tria haec: major autem horum est caritas.”
“Blessed are those who know how to use the sword, and know when to put it down, for they will inherit the whole world”
This seems to be a description of the highly effective tit for tat strategy for conducting oneself in dealings with others. And humans didn’t even event it. Other species employ it and it appears to have deep evolutionary roots.
I you allow this apatheist to bring up a few points for the discussion: at the time of the alleged pregnancy of Mary it was almost customary in all the “higher” civilizations around Levant (Egypt, Greece, Rome) to have the bride pregnant during the wedding, as child-bearing was one the most important part of the wedlock and being pregnant was the only way to know the bride and the groom were capable of having children.
That said, I do find it curious that where the Western Christians are pondering of possible tarnish of Mary’s morals (or chastity), the Eastern Christians are more about her body being the Temple that provided the human nature of the Christ (and that’s what defines her completely).
Of course, this led, I assume, to the concept of Mary’s eternal virginity (one can’t tarnish a Divine Temple afterwards), which may also be the cause for there not being much to go on when it comes to Jesus’s childhood. Given that Jesus’s actual brothers and sisters would have brought the eternal virginity under serious questioning.
Three more data points relevant to this discussion:
1) The LXX (Septuagint) translation of Isaiah 7:14, produced before the writing of the Gospels, uses the Greek parthenos (virgin) to translate almah. This is the “Bible” used by Paul, Matthew and most other Greek bible writers because they didn’t speak or read Hebrew. When these writers quote the “Old Testament,” they’re directly quoting the Septuagint, not relying on the Masoretic text. Perhaps influenced by battles with Christians over Mary’s status, later Jewish revisions to the LXX used neanis, a non-technical term like almah, that means “young woman.”
2) Jerome, translating from the Hebrew, uses the Latin virgo. While the idea of the virgin birth was contested in early Christianity, by the time of Jerome in the late 4th and early 5th centuries CE, the virgin birth had won out, probably influencing Jerome’s translation.
3) For agape in the Greek bible, Jerome uses caritas, the Latin word that gives us “charity.” In translating the Hebrew verb אהב (to love) in Micah 6:8, which the LXX translates as agapaw (verb form of agape), Jerome uses diligere, not amare.
Fun stuff on a Christmas morning. You see, theology is not really about a god. It’s a journey through human history recounting humans’ conception of themselves and the universe around them, constantly flowing from one culture, one language to the next, each time picking up additional meaning and complexity.
Yes, indeed, Henry. It’s complicated and not in the Facebook sense.
I remember going to see my professor of Islam in his office when I was a senior in college. He was an ordained Lutheran pastor nearing retirement. He confessed to me (I have that kind of face) that his many years of scholarly study in religion had turned him into an atheist who had no answers. I told him it took me four years as an undergraduate to arrive at the same place. We bonded.
I always appreciate your comments. Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy New Year to you.
Thanks, Lena, and it’s wonderful to “see” you here. I hope your holidays are safe and warm and include time with family and/or friends.
I’m not regretful about the religious journey I’ve been on. It’s not so much the loss of something as the deepening of something. It was not long after I became a Christian as an adult that I read James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, so I expected to experience changes. I would not have predicted then, however, that the Tao te Ching would mean more to me than the Gospel of John. I guess it’s curve balls like that make a screwball like me (apology to the Commentariat for the baseball reference). Weirdos unite!
From a review of Elaine Pagels’ “Miracles and Wonder–The Historical Mystery of Jesus”
Pagels also points out that the gospels can’t be read as “gospel.” In other words, they are “less a biography than a passionate manifesto, showing how a young man from a rural background suddenly became a lightning rod for divine power.” Each version of the gospels has a slightly — or occasionally, vastly — different take on Jesus’ genealogy, the virgin birth, whether or not he was actually the son of God, and even whether he literally rose from the dead or his “resurrection” came in the form of a vision to some of his followers after his crucifixion. The gospel writers, Pagels concludes, were less interested in accuracy and more focused on expanding awareness of Jesus as son of God and savior: She observes that the gospels “report historical events while interweaving them with parables, interpretations, and miraculous moments told in symbolic language.”
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2025-03-28/miracles-wonder-jesus-elaine-pagels-book-review
If I recall correctly, weren’t the Romans holding an empire wide census at the time of J.C.’s birth forcing the parents to go to their home town to be registered?
But gawd, that film “The Carpenter’s Son” sounds like complete crap. Yeah, “Might Makes Right” seems to be the operative principal of this film. Now where have I heard that before? And Roman soldiers throwing babies into a fire? I guess that pitchforks had not been invented yet.
Tell it to the Carthaginians … Rome came spreading freedom and democracy thingy …
Don’t forget the aqueducts.
That is the story according to Luke, but it doesn’t hold up. The census Luke refers to was held in 6 AD, was only in Judea, was after (and only needed because of) Herod’s death, and would not have forced parents to travel to a different client kingdom to register.
For an overview of the debate, see Wikipedia on the topic.
I am partial to the interpretation that Luke used the revolt-causing census of 6 AD to merge accounts of Jesus being from Nazareth and Jesus being born in Bethlehem. Very human storytelling thing to do.
This , I think, is a good opportunity to say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all here. I very rarely comment, but have been a faithful reader for 15 years. I used to read so many different websites, but in 2016 was very disappointed that so many of them embraced TDS so completely. In fact, I stopped reading many of the sites I enjoyed and frequented. Thank goodness that NEVER happened to NC!!! So I kept on being a faithful reader. And, of course, the comments are beyond excellent.
So I hope everyone has a wonderful day tomorrow!!
Thank you Heather! I will that everyone has a meaningful sustainable material life and that their imagination finds grounds.
Like the religious text, the Book of Mormon, I believe there are no contemporaneous accounts by other, non-Christian historians of a man creating loaves and fishes and walking on water.
You would think that somebody else would have noticed these things happening and the word would have spread amongst the non-converted.
The Bible was created generations after the purported events, so mythology and reality intertwined.
The holy Roman Catholic Church is named after the Romans, because they started it more or less.
Politics and history were intertwined for the purposes of the inhabitants who lived then. And the midwinter festival where ordinary people celebrated the beginning of the return to summer, to food, to good temperatures, was taken over.
The holy Roman Catholic Church is named after the city of Rome, because that is where the Pope is.
Where Peter was crucified upside down because he was unfit to be killed the same way that Jesus was. Propaganda by the deed. And new beliefs spread like a virus in cities whereas countyfolk, paganus, were slow to change their beliefs, hence pagans as a descriptor for non-Christians.
“The Bible was created generations after the purported events, so mythology and reality intertwined.
The holy Roman Catholic Church is named after the Romans, because they started it more or less.”
This is a commonly misheld belief. The “Bible” is actually a compilation of books. Some of those books were written within the same generation, and were circulated widely long before there were any centralized structures in place to dictate any doctrine from on high. The books of the New Testament were written long before “Rome” had any centralized control — which could not have happened before the Edict of Milan in 313 — and which were already accepted as part of the canon, even though the church had been operating on a decentralized basis from non-Roman centers like Alexandria and Antioch for centuries. We moderns live in a centralized system that has always been centralized as along as we have been born. It is hard to imagine a doctine that emerged in a geographically dispersed decentralized system before Constantine I.
The “Roman” Catholic Church is but one of 24 Catholic Churches that accept papal primacy, although it does happen to contain vast majority of Catholics. There are quite a lot of Catholics in the Middle East and (unfortunately) Eastern Europe who are not “Roman.”. The difference is that they follow different traditions and liturgy–eg married priests etc (although there are more legally married priests in the Roman church than people think–it’s only a rule, not theology, and exceptions are granted more than you’d expect.)
In a Lutheran seminary, I was taught to call that denomination “Roman Catholic” because Lutherans consider themselves part of the “catholic” (i.e. universal) church as in:
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Apostles’ Creed
Same deal in the Anglican liturgy -“One holy, catholic and apostolic church “. Substitute universal for catholic, and it’s much easier to understand.
On the contrary (pardon the lack of citations, it’s been many years), the world of Jesus’ time was full of tales of miraculous transformations and resurrections. Simon the Magician (Simon Magus) was one figure often credited with these. There are many tales of supposed competitions between Simon and Jesus. Once Christianity became established, the other wonder workers were classified as evil magicians and belief in them condemned.
“many wonder workers” was intended as a reply to Arvid Martensen.
Indeed. It has been years since I studied New Testament history but I do remember that there were a variety of sects within Judaism during that era as well as many would-be messiahs performing miracles. That the “Jesus sect” emerged out of what the article’s author calls a “chaotic, unstable and traumatic social world” to become what we now know as Christianity is the result of centuries of political, religious and social history. (Pardon the lack of citations but it would take forever and, Hello, I must be going.)
“I believe there are no contemporaneous accounts by other, non-Christian historians of a man creating loaves and fishes and walking on water.”
Well….
There is a passage in Jewish historian Josephus’s 1st century CE Antiquities of the Jews, but there has been much debate over the complicated issue of whether all or part of one passage, which refers to Jesus as “Messiah and wise teacher who was crucified by Pontius Pilate,” is truly from Josephus.
Very interesting article and discussion. I studied the Hebrew Bible (known to Christians as the Old Testament) and the New Testament in college. The NT was taught to me as part of Jewish scripture, which it originally was – the writings of a sect within Judaism. That is how I have continued to view the NT and its central figure, Jesus Christ. I’m fairly sure I would be in a minority there.
I was fortunate to have excellent professors. The one who taught me Classical Hebrew and Talmud was an elderly German born rabbi who had once been a student of Martin Buber. What a brilliant man that professor was! He lived to be 100 years old and died sitting at his desk, still working on his latest research. May his memory be for a blessing.
Merry Christmas to those at NC who celebrate the holiday. Peace be with you.
Btw, my professor of New Testament who taught the texts as a part of Jewish scripture was a former Roman Catholic priest who had left the priesthood but remained a practicing Catholic. My Hebrew Bible professor was an ordained United Presbyterian minister. It was an ecumenical educational experience.
The word caritas is not mentioned in the comments. I understand it as meaning something like agape although it may be a synonym for charity as in alms giving. although
See above. That’s how Jerome translates agape from the Greek bible to the Vulgate.
“A betrothal means celibacy. It’s hard to hide a pregnancy. How did Mary explain it? Saying, “It’s God’s doing” would not have been very convincing.”
Well… I give you Mary Toft – google her
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” – L P Hartley, The Go-Between
Perhaps it is time for translators to consider a Scrabble Rule: If a foreign word is in the Scrabble Dictionary then just use it as an English word. “Agape” is in the Scrabble Dictionary!
As for “the meek,” I have always wondered a bit about that one. However, from the discussion it seems “prudent” might be a better translation. As Ecclesiastes 3:8 says, “a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.” Of course, that author also lamented about “vanity and a great evil,” (2:21) Perhaps a better translation for the modern world was popularized by the Byrds.