The First Christmas

by Marcus J. Borg

  Furthermore, you can understand now why, despite God’s guiding star, the Magi stop to see Herod at Jerusalem to get directions. In order to avoid a dream for Herod, they must take its place in the Mosaic parallelism, and so they start the process toward fear and interpretation.

  The Magi are the literary descendants of “the magicians, the enchanters, the Chaldeans [Babylonians], and the diviners” who appear repeatedly as opponents in Daniel 1:20; 2:2; 4:7; 5:7. But Matthew now depicts these Gentiles as pro-Jesus, while Herod “and all Jerusalem with him” are anti-Jesus (2:3). That is a very ironic reversal. But for Matthew Jesus is savior not just of Jews, but of Gentiles. Those are “his people” whom he will “save from their sins” (1:21). So we go, once more, from overture to gospel and, indeed, from start to conclusion of that Matthean gospel. The words of the departing Jesus to his disciples in Matthew are: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (28:19).

  The Magi follow a westward-leading star from Mesopotamia to Judea. On the one hand, from within the Jewish matrix, we know that the following oracle was understood of the awaited Messiah both before and after the time of Jesus: “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near—a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the borderlands of Moab, and the territory of all the Shethites” (prophecy of Balaam, Num. 24:17). In that application, the Messiah is the Star and the Scepter who will conquer the enemies of Israel. But, of course, for Matthew the star is not Jesus himself, but what leads one to Jesus.

  On the other hand, therefore, this westward-guiding star is Matthew’s most obvious allusion to Roman imperial theology and the birth story of the Julian tribal family from Venus and Anchises through Aeneas to Julus and thereafter. As you will recall from Chapter 4, it was the star of Venus, as first to appear in evening or last to disappear in morning, that lead the Trojan refugees westward to Italy. But now it is another, a replacement westward-leading star, that brings the Magi to Jerusalem with this question for Herod: “Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage” (2:2).

  Next, it is often noted that the “slaughter of the innocents” is completely in character for the suspicious if not paranoid Herod. That, of course, simply proves that Matthew intends a realistic parable and not necessarily a factual history—like Jesus saying that “a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho” in the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10:30. Jericho is about three thousand feet below the level of Jerusalem. That motif of killing all males to get one newborn looks from Herod back to Pharaoh and not from Herod back to history. It is, in fact, the linchpin of Matthew’s parallelism for the birth stories of Moses the Great and Jesus the Greater.

  Finally, in Matthew, the major difference between the birth stories of Moses and Jesus is not in the conception or the birth, but in the escape. And this difference is hugely and deliberately ironic. Escape for Moses is from Egypt, but for Jesus it is to Egypt. The place of past doom and death for Moses has become the place of refuge and life for Jesus.

  “A DECREE WENT OUT FROM EMPEROR AUGUSTUS”

  We turn now from the birth of Jesus in Matthew to that in Luke. You will recall from Chapter 1 that, while Matthew had Jesus’s parents living in Bethlehem when their child was born, Luke had to get them there from Nazareth, where—as far as he was concerned—they had previously been living. So Luke’s problem was how to get them from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and this is his five-point solution:

  In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world [Greek oikoumene should be registered.

  This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.

  All went to their own towns to be registered.

  Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.

  He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. (2:1–5)

  That solution is as traditionally famous as it is historically incorrect on each of its five major points. And, unfortunately, arguments for and against their accuracy have completely obscured Luke’s purpose and intention in creating them.

  1. Roman imperial theology always talked of a predestined rule over the “whole world” and the “inhabited earth” (oikoumene-)—and not just over Italy or even the Mediterranean. Three examples will suffice.

  First, from texts: at the start of Virgil’s Aeneid, Jupiter decrees that, “I set no bounds in space or time but have given empire without end…[to] the Romans, lords of the world, and the nation of the toga” (1.278–83). Second, on coins: those minted by Octavian to pay down his victorious legions and pay off the defeated ones after Actium, for example, show him as a divine being with his foot on the globe of the earth. Third, with statues: one modeled on Zeus from Olympias shows Augustus with that globe in his hand surmounted by the winged goddess Victory.

  But, taken literally, Caesar Augustus never did and never could have ordered a census of the entire Roman Empire, let alone the entire inhabited world, all at one time. Taken metaphorically, of course, conquering for occupation and then counting for taxation was simply Rome’s manifest destiny and imperial program for “the whole world.” We even wonder if Luke, who knew quite a lot about the Roman Empire and its processes, could ever have intended that sentence literally?

  2. In 6CE Rome removed Herod the Great’s son Archelaus as its indirect, or client, ruler of Judea and replaced him by direct Roman control. As was usual in such a situation, there followed the “first registration,” that is, census for taxation, of that southern Jewish homeland. This was conducted by the Syrian governor Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, who was sent out in 6CE with the express purpose of performing that duty. Luke mentions that census again in his Acts of the Apostles and adds correctly that “Judas the Galilean rose up at the time of the census and got people to follow him; he also perished, and all who followed him were scattered” (5:37).

  But Luke had already dated the conceptions of John and Jesus within “the days of King Herod of Judea.” Matthew agreed that it was “in the time of King Herod” that “Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea” (2:1). Indeed, we have to imagine Jesus’s birth in Matthew as much as two years before Herod’s death in March/April of 4 BCE. Herod “sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men” (2:16). He thought, in other words, that Jesus could have been born up to two years before the Magi finally arrived in Jerusalem.

  Here, then, is the heart of the matter with regard to the historical accuracy of Luke 2:1–5. The birth of Jesus under the rule of Herod the Great, which ended in 4 BCE, cannot have taken place under the census of Quirinius, which started in 6CE.

  3. The Roman taxation census is best known from the copious records in the dry sands of Egypt. It was done by one’s own household (idia) and absence from home to avoid the census was a crime. The only relocation ever required was to be “at home,” that is, in one fixed abode, for the count. You were counted where you lived, worked, and paid your taxes. What is described by Luke in that third point would have been, then or now, a geographical impossibility, a bureaucratic nightmare, and a fiscal disaster.

  4. Joseph lived in the north under Herod Antipas of Galilee, and any taxes would have been paid there and not in the south, which alone had passed under direct Roman control. Quirinius had no direct authority over Galilee.

  5. Mary would not have been required to appear personally with Joseph even if we imagine a situation where he himself had to do so. Registration by household was the responsibility of the head of the household.

  All of that must be openly admitted and never evaded with any specious or dishonest arguments. But saying it is not enough. There is still and always this question. What was Luke attempting to say when he go
t his facts so wrong?

  First, in general, the many contacts between Jesus and world leaders or between Christianity and world history in Luke-Acts intend to emphasize that, as he has Paul say at trial before the Roman governor Festus and the Herodian king Agrippa II in Acts, “this was not done in a corner” (26:26). That is why he connects the birth of Jesus with “the Emperor Augustus” and why he begins the narrative of his public life with: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas” (3:1–2). Jesus and earliest Christianity are, in other words, historically located, imperially dated, and cosmically significant events.

  Second, in this particular case, there is a very deliberate Lukan connection between the birth of Jesus and an alleged worldwide census for taxation “decreed by the Emperor Augustus.” We return to that below, and Luke’s intention behind that juxtaposition will become clearer in the rest of this chapter when we watch how key Lukan terms like “Lord,” “Savior,” “gospel,” and “peace” are taken from references to Caesar the Augustus and applied to Jesus the Christ.

  Finally, we emphasize this point. No argument—however correct—that Caesar Augustus never did or could have ordered a single taxation census of the entire world should make us forget, for example, an image like that on the so-called Gemma Augustea. On that large and beautiful onyx cameo from the early first century CE, now in a Viennese museum, a woman who symbolizes Oikoumene is shown crowning the divine, seminude Augustus with a wreath of oak leaves for saving the whole inhabited earth. If, then, Luke was literally incorrect in 2:1, he was very much metaphorically correct.

  “LET US GO NOW TO BETHLEHEM”

  We begin by picking up the Christmas story in Luke from 2:1–5 above, where Joseph and the pregnant Mary have arrived in Bethlehem. This is how Luke describes Jesus’s birth, something Matthew did not do:

  While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. (2:6–7)

  What exactly is Luke describing with that “inn” and “manger”? Those two terms fit well with what we know from the much later Ottoman Empire, whose ruined caravansaries (literally, “camel-caravan-palaces”) still border the Silk Road in central Turkey. Imagine, therefore, a more primitive version of such a structure in Bethlehem.

  It had a gated enclosure with a central courtyard for the animals; around that were covered rooms without doors from which you could keep an eye on those animals, and toward the back were regular closed rooms. Luke mentions those details not to hint at poverty for the family, but simply because—like any good parabler—he knows how to be accurately and creatively realistic.

  Luke imagines Bethlehem crowded with Davidic descendants for the imperial taxation census. All the closed and private rooms were gone, and so were all the covered and semiprivate ones around the open courtyard. Jesus, therefore, is born among the animals in that open courtyard and laid in one of their feeding troughs.

  The story continues:

  In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”…So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. (2:8–12,16–20)

  In citing that passage, we deliberately omitted Luke 2:13–15 in order to return to it in much greater detail as the final section of this chapter and part.

  Lord. Notice the two mentions of “the Lord” in that passage. The first one, “the glory of the Lord” (2:9), refers to God as the Lord. But the second one, “the Messiah, the Lord” (2:11), refers to Jesus. That theologically motivated double usage appeared earlier in Luke’s Christmas story when Mary called herself “the servant of the Lord” (1:38), meaning of God, and Elizabeth called her “the mother of my Lord” (1:43), meaning of Jesus. For Luke “the Lord” is both God and God as revealed in Jesus.

  Shepherds. Why did Luke choose shepherds for his angelic revelation? One reason is, as we mentioned in Chapter 2, his concern for those whom society has marginalized. Luke alone, for example, has Jesus quote Isaiah 61:1–2: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (4:18–19). And, later, the Lukan Jesus repeats that “the poor have good news brought to them” (7:22).

  Another reason why Luke chose shepherds to receive God’s message about the birth of Jesus is that David was himself a shepherd. This is repeated several times in 1 Samuel 16:11–17:34. When Samuel comes to make David king, for example, he asked his father, Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” Jesse answered, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep” (16:11). And, again, “David went back and forth from Saul to feed his father’s sheep at Bethlehem” (17:15).

  Format. The structure of the angelic message to the shepherds follows what Luke had already established with those to Zechariah and Mary. That repetition is another indication of Luke’s compositional creativity in his Christmas story:

  Titles. The heart of the angelic message is that cluster of titles that accompanies the announcement of Jesus’s birth: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (2:11). You will recall that the formal titles used by Matthew for Jesus are, “Messiah” and “King of the Jews” (2:2–4). In this cluster of three titles, Luke agrees on “Messiah,” but frames it with “Savior” and “Lord.” We turn now to consider those two titles within the context of Judaism within the Roman Empire.

  WHO IS LORD AND SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE WORLD?

  Matthew and Luke agree, as seen already, that Jesus was the Davidic Messiah. Matthew, as also seen already, emphasized the anti-Roman aspect of that title by equating it with “King of the Jews,” a title that made Rome-appointed Herod seek to kill him and Rome-appointed Pilate succeed. Luke qualifies that same title of Messiah by framing it with two other titles in the angelic message to the shepherds, “Savior” and “Lord” (2:11). Those are also pointed directly against Rome—but how exactly?

  Lord. Both God and Jesus are Lord (kyrios) as just seen in Luke’s Christmas story, and throughout the New Testament. Think, for example, of Paul’s great proclamation: “Even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor. 8:5–6); or the one when he was in chains in a Roman prison: “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:11); or that most succinct formulation “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12:3; Rom. 10:9). So, if “Jesus as Lord” incarnates “God as Lord” within the context of Christian Judaism, it also rejects “Caesar as Lord” within the context of Roman imperialism.

  It is now about one hundred years since Adolf Gustav Deissmann, professor of New Testament exegesis at the University of Berlin, published his great book Light from the Ancient East. He recognized clearly t
he confrontational purpose of taking a title like “the Lord” from Caesar Augustus and giving it to Jesus the Christ.

  On the one hand, “lord” was an ordinary title used by slaves to masters or students to teachers. But used simply as “the Lord” it meant the emperor, especially from Caesar Augustus onward, just as, for example, “der Führer” simply means “the leader” in German (where all nouns are capitalized), but eventually designated Adolf Hitler as the supreme and only leader. In that context to have called Christ “der Führer” would have meant death in Dachau.

  Think of just this one example from Luke himself at the start of Paul’s defense before Roman and Herodian authorities in Acts. “I found that he had done nothing deserving death,” said Festus the governor to Agrippa the king, “and when he appealed to his Imperial Majesty [Sebaston], I decided to send him. But I have nothing definite to write to our sovereign [tōkyriō] about him” (25:25–26). They are presumably speaking of the emperor Nero, but he is identified only as “Sebastos” and “the Lord.” Sebastos is, as mentioned in Chapter 3, the Greek for “Augustus” and means “The One Who Is to Be Worshiped” (from sebomai, “to worship”).

  “Most important of all,” wrote Deissmann, “is the early establishment of a polemical parallelism between the cult of Christ and the cult of Caesar in the application of the term kyrios, ‘lord.’”3 But, unfortunately, Deissmann—writing in a Germany already heading for imperial disaster—did not discuss what was involved in that confrontation between the lordship of Caesar and the lordship of Christ. It was, as we see in the rest of this chapter, between peace through violent victory with Caesar versus peace through nonviolent justice with Christ.

  Savior. In the Old Testament, Isaiah addresses the “God of Israel, the Savior” (45:15). Then, as with “Lord,” so also with “Savior”—it is a title for both God and Jesus in certain New Testament texts. But, with the exception of John 4:42, where Jesus “is truly the Savior of the world,” Luke alone uses the title “Savior” in the gospels. He also uses it in Acts: “God exalted Jesus at his right hand as Leader and Savior” (5:31) and “God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised” (13:23). But, once again, if “Jesus as Savior” incarnates “God as Savior” within the context of Christian Judaism, it also rejects “Caesar as Savior” within the context of Roman imperialism.