The Untold Story – Part Two
In Galatians 4, Paul makes his famous comment that the Nativity happened “in the fullness of time.” God’s sense of timing is unlike anything the world has ever known. But as we are no doubt aware, all time is relative. We count the years of this world by the birth of Christ but other civilizations and cultures used other dates to mark the significant moment when recorded history began.
We are all no doubt aware that the decision to mark the years from the time of Christ’s birth meant that we were changing many of the accepted dates in history to that point. Herod the Great died in the spring of 4 B.C. The king was alive during the visit of the Magi in the Christmas story. Therefore Jesus would have to have been born before this time, and his birth is usually set during the winter of 5-4 B.C. So why is our calendar off by 4-5 years?
It was a 6th century Roman monk-mathematician-astronomer named Dionysius Exiguus (Dionysius the Little) who unknowingly committed what became history’s greatest numerical error in terms of cumulative effect. For in reforming the calendar to pivot around the birth of Christ, he dated the Nativity in the year 753 from the founding of Rome, when in fact Herod died only 749 years after its founding. The mistake was never caught for such a long time that we have continued to use it as the benchmark even today. I suppose we could really say that all time is truly relative and open to interpretation. Except for God, there is no real definitive time for any of us. We live in this reality; they lived in their reality; and the people who lived in that time lived between the end of something old and the beginning of something new.
But why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25th? We know that the church in the East still observes the birth of Christ on January 6th – a day we know as Little Christmas or Epiphany. In the West, the church chose December 25th. But the use of either of these dates didn’t start until the 4th century. As has been mentioned, the conversion of Constantine to the Christian faith combined with the desire to draw the people to Christ no doubt was the motivation for aligning the celebration of the birth of Christ with the festival of Saturnalia. The Romans believed the winter solstice to be on December 25th when they celebrated the feast of the Unconquerable Sun. This believed was the moment in the year when the sun turned to head north again – and so the unconquerable Sun becomes the Christian Son of God.
But as fascinating as it is to puzzle over how we have come to settle on certain dates and times for the birth of Christ and the subsequent celebration of that event, we need to remember that time had a wholly different meaning for that couple who had just finished an uncomfortable journey to Bethlehem. I am sure that they were just wondering if they had time to reach Bethlehem before the baby was born.
It is almost certain that Joseph and Mary reached Bethlehem in the late afternoon or early evening. I am sure that many of us have experienced at least once coming into a busy town too late to find accommodation. It is believed that this was what happened and that the nameless innkeeper thankfully remembered the cave behind the inn where animals were sheltered. Hopefully he didn’t charge them for the room!
We don’t often think about it but Mary was truly alone in giving birth to Jesus. Men didn’t take the role of midwives and there is no mention of one being present. And so – in a practice not uncommon for the women of Palestine in that day – Mary gave birth to Jesus and wrapped him in swaddling bands and laid him in a feeding trough filled with the sweetish, grainy smell of hay, barley and oats. And so the incredible paradox happened at Bethlehem: history’s greatest figure was born, not in a palace or mansion, but in a cavern-stable.
And while we traditionally view the wise men as coming to the stable, it is more likely that they found the family in a house or perhaps even a real room in an inn. After all, once the census was taken, most people would have returned to their homes. Joseph and Mary would have stayed to allow her to recover and to prepare for her purification at the temple in Jerusalem.
As I mentioned before, Bethlehem was the place spoken of in Scripture as the birthplace of the Messiah. The name itself means “House of Bread”. It was the setting for the story of Ruth and it was the birthplace of David as well as the place where the prophet Samuel anointed him King of Israel.
“And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night.” It is said that even the rabbis of that day had trouble imagining God announcing the birth of the Messiah to shepherds. Shepherds – while valuable and necessary to the economy of the country – were nomadic. They were not the most regular to worship and they often had to disregard the law in order to perform their duties. But they represented the people for whom God came – the ordinary people, the working people. It is said that it is a good thing that the shepherds were not scholars or theologians. The latter group would probably have held a debate on the hillside instead of rushing into Bethlehem. And as much as critics of the event try to dismiss it as fanciful hallucination or irresponsible behaviour, there is no doubt that if we were faced with such an event, we would no doubt forget everything else and rush ourselves to see what had happened.
When it comes to the visit of the Wise Men, it is believed that they came at least 40 days after the birth because Jesus had already been presented at the Temple before their arrival. And while tradition tells us there were three and that they came from the Orient or Far East, it is most likely that they were Persian priest-sages. But whoever they were, the significance of their visit lies in the fact that they were not of Hebrew descent and yet they were led to come and mark the birth of this child – a sign that even those outside of Palestine knew that something of great significance had occurred.
But what of the star that led them to Bethlehem? Here is one possible explanation. There was a conjunction of the planets of Jupiter and Saturn in 7-6 B.C. This was connected to the predictions of a Messiah to be born to the Jewish people. The comet of 5 B.C. would have confirmed their belief and started them on their journey with the nova of 4 B.C. completing their journey. Of course, even the brightest of stars would not have pinpointed the exact location of the baby and so the Magi stopped in Jerusalem and sought information about where the child was. They were directed to Bethlehem where they came, bowed, worshipped and offered their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
But Herod saw the birth in another way. He did not see the child as the Messiah or Saviour. He saw in the birth trouble. If truly a descendant of David had been born who was to be king, then Herod would find him and his sons cast aside. And so he determined to kill all male children in Bethlehem born from the time of the first appearance of the star to the Magi. But that’s another part of the untold story!