The Ark

It is the most widely depicted of the stories of Jesus, and around Christmas time, nativity plays are staged throughout the world. But how much of the story is history and how much is legend?

Transcript

Rachael Kohn: You know the story - a baby born in a manger, a north star guiding three wise men to a stable, bearing gifts for the infant Jesus.

Hello, this is The Ark on ABC Radio National, and I'm Rachael Kohn.

The nativity story, which forms the basis of Christmas, may not be heard much today in the frenzied lead-up to the holiday season, but it does appear in two of the four gospels of the New Testament. Why only two, and why do their accounts differ? And if Joseph wasn't Jesus' father why was it important to establish his ancestry?

Geza Vermes of Oxford is considered the leading Jesus scholar today.

Geza Vermes: The Christmas story as one is used to, is a combination of the two stories, which in fact contradict the logic of the individual narrative. In the Gospel of Luke, you have this story of the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, because of the decree of the Emperor Augustus, the birth of Jesus in the manger because all the hostels are very full of people arriving in the city for registering, according to the imperial decree, and then you have the shepherds and angels, and the jolly story continued with the circumcision of Jesus and a few weeks later, his presentation in the Temple, and then they happily go home from Bethlehem to Nazareth.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, there is no reference to any journey. It was seen that Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem. Matthew's story is a dramatic one. It starts out with Joseph discovering that his fiancée was pregnant, and was thinking of divorcing her. Then he had a dream, and an angel told him in the dream that he didn't need to worry, the pregnancy was due to the intervention of the Holy Spirit, and then Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

There's no reference to stable or manger, and the men, the oriental wise men arrive, led by a start, they find mother, father and baby in a house. But then the drama continues. Herod, who was very jealous, inquired from the experts, who told him 'Well according to the Bible, the Messiah is expected to be born in nearby Bethlehem', and Herod decided to get rid of the competitor, and decided to execute all the little children in Bethlehem.

Rachael Kohn: And so that's when Mary and Joseph go to Egypt?

Geza Vermes: Yes, then Herod dies, another dream, and once more they are told, 'Come back to Judea', another dream tells them to go to Nazareth. That's the story in Matthew.

Rachael Kohn: Well another difference in the two versions is the lineage, the ancestral lineage of Jesus. Now why do you Luke and Matthew trace different lineages?

Geza Vermes: Let's ask first why they trace lineage at all. This is in order to demonstrate that Jesus was the legitimate successor of King David, and therefore entitled to become the final saviour and messiah of the Jews. But the two genealogies coincide as long as they run along the Biblical line, but when we leave the Biblical descendents of David, then the two become totally different, and then along comes Joseph, because the genealogies they traced through Joseph, and Joseph was the husband of Mary and Jesus was the son of Mary. We have this funny, illogical thing that we have an implication that in face Joseph was not the father of Jesus.

Rachael Kohn: Indeed, that is the strange contradiction. The virgin birth of Jesus is of course central to Christian doctrine, and yet that idea probably resulted from an inaccurate translation. How did that happen?

Geza Vermes: That is totally correct as you put it. But in fact I ought to add that if instead of looking at your printed Bible, and you examine some of the ancient manuscripts, and some of the ancient translations of Matthew, you discover three things which vary, and it is said that it was Joseph who was the father of Jesus. In other words, the legitimate succession from David through Joseph happened through genuine fatherhood.

But then along comes the other story that Jesus was not the son of Joseph, Jesus was miraculously conceived of the Holy Spirit and that the birth was virginal. But this is at least partly dependent on the Greek text of the Gospel, which quotes the prophecy of Isaiah, 'Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.' However, Isaiah didn't write in Greek, Isaiah wrote in Hebrew, and when you look at the Hebrew text, of the prophet, there is no question of virgin, but of a young woman who will become pregnant and bear a son.

You know there are words that the concept of virginal birth is not in Isaiah at all. But what happened was that when Isaiah was translated into Greek by Jews, they used a rather loose translation word for the term 'young woman', which can mean either a young woman or a virgin. And this was taken over by Christians, and they serve as the cornerstone of their belief in the virgin birth of Jesus.

Rachael Kohn: Well let's get to the birth of Jesus. Can we be sure that it was in a danger, in Bethlehem?

Geza Vermes: We can't be sure of anything really because the only true sources that refer to the birth of Jesus contradict one another. In both of them it is implied that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. If Jesus is described as the future Messiah, and if the Jews in those days were sure according to the prophets, that the Messiah would be a son of David, who would be born in the city of David, that is to say Bethlehem, than you can take it for granted that it will be said that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, whether he was, or he was not.

On the other hand, the Gospel, almost never refers to Jesus being born in Bethlehem. It is said continuously that Jesus was Jesus of Nazareth, that he was a Galilean. It is even said in the Gospel of John that Jews in his time refused to believe that he was the Messiah, because he was not born in Bethlehem. So in other words, the gospels themselves are contradictory, although both Matthew and Luke refer to Bethlehem as the birthplace.

Rachael Kohn: But in your book, The Nativity - The History and Legend, you seem to be showing how much the gospel writers are actually linking the infancy narrative to the Hebrew Bible, to the extent that even his flight to Egypt has some parallels with Moses.

Geza Vermes: It is very clear that Matthew was inspired by the Jewish story of the persecution of the infant, the Jews during the reign of Pharaoh in Egypt, but Moses was miraculously saved from the Nile, and was brought up by the daughter of Pharaoh. It is very similar to the story of Herod wanting to get rid of his rival, the baby Jesus. So he tried to massacre all the youngsters, all the toddlers in Bethlehem, but again, as in the Old Testament, God miraculously saved Jesus by informing Jews about the danger. But in other words, even the massacre of the innocents is really an imitation story of the danger which Moses escaped when he was found in a basket floating in the Nile.

Rachael Kohn: But I guess a lot of Christians would simply see Herod's action as being informed by previous history, and that it was very possible for a man as evil as Herod to actually enact such a terrible decree.

Geza Vermes: It is perfectly true that it is not only conceivable but a perfectly reasonable story, because Herod was notorious for his cruelty. The story itself seems to be much more directly dependent on the expectation that the future messiah would be in danger as a baby, and this happened to Moses, and is attributed to Jesus.

Rachael Kohn: Do you actually think then that the infancy narratives that are found in Matthew and Luke were appended later? That were not part of the original story of Jesus?

Geza Vermes: I'm absolutely certain that this is the case for two main reasons. The first is that the earliest of the gospels, the Gospel of Mark, has no infancy gospel. It starts directly with John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus. The latest of the gospels, the Gospel of John, has no infancy gospel either. It has a kind of mystical description of the eternal existence of the word of God from the time before the creation.

Only Matthew and Luke provided that main account of the activity of Jesus with a prologue concerning his extraordinary birth. When you look at the main story of Jesus, it has no allusion whatever on any point to the story of the birth of Jesus to virginal conceptions, star, Magi etc. it's just not there. And that is the other reason to assume that the infancy gospels were attached on second thoughts to the main story and provide the prologue to the actual history of Jesus.

Rachael Kohn: Well we started out this conversation about Christmas today and if the religious element is no longer there, or at least popularly no longer there, December 25th is still the most important date in the calendar for most people if at the very least to exchange gifts and come together with one's family. But how likely is December 25th as the actual birth date of Jesus?

Geza Vermes: Statistically really the chances that Jesus was born in 25th December is one to 365, or 366 in a Leap Year. In other words, we haven't got the faintest idea.

It could have happened on any day of the year. In fact even Christian tradition originally celebrated the birth of Jesus not on what we call Christmas, but on the Feast of Epiphany, and there are other Christian traditions which celebrated the birth of Jesus I April or in May. It was the first time in the 4th century that the Roman church selected 25th December as the birthday of Jesus. It was a Pagan feast, the Feast of the Unvanquished Sun, and Jesus was considered as the new light of the world and his birthday was to be substituted for that of the Unvanquished Sun. In other words, the 25th December is just additional, but it has absolutely no historical basis.

Rachael Kohn: Well that's never stood in the way of a good story! The book, by Geza Vermes is called The Nativity: History and Legend.

Next week, a fascinating look at the Legend of the Holy Grail and its relationship to the virgin Mary. That's on The Ark, with me Rachael Kohn.

THEME

Guests

Geza Vermes
has been described as the world's most respected Biblical historian. He is now Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at Oxford University and his many books include The Dead Sea Scrolls in English and The Passion.

Publications

Title: The Nativity: History and Legend
Author: Geza Vermes
Publisher: Penguin, 2006

Presenter

Rachael Kohn

Producer

Geoff Wood and Rachael Kohn