Faith and Fairy Stories

Christmas is a time for fairy tales.

There's that one about the jolly old fat man in a red suit, who travels around the world at the dead of night in a flying reindeer-pulled sleigh and climbs down chimneys undetected to leave us with free stuff.

Then there's that other one ... the one about a very unusual baby, born 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, to a couple who had never slept together and yet - so the story goes - had not been unfaithful either. This birth was accompanied by strange signs in the heavens and the baby had strange visitors who would otherwise not even have known he was there. The God of the Universe had decided to visit His creation, and this was how He chose to make His entrance...

Nowadays, both stories are generally treated with considerable scepticism. Most people over the age of about 3 or 4 know the fat man story is just a fantasy - told by parents, purely for the purpose of injecting some extra magic into the festive season. As far as Jesus is concerned though, no serious historian would doubt that he existed, but whether some of the stories we have about the details of his life should be trusted or taken at all seriously, seems a lot more debatable.

The Bible contains 4 different accounts, by 4 different authors, which tell the story of a man who was more than just a man. This man performed incredible miracles - he healed lepers and blind people, he walked on water, he even raised people from the dead. And then - the greatest miracle of all - after being tortured and killed by the Roman oppressors, he rose from the grave on the third day and appeared to more than 500 of his disciples, before ascending bodily into heaven!

For a good chunk of the last 2,000 years, the truth of this story has been more-or-less taken for granted by the majority of people in the western world, but nowadays we are more sceptical. Miracles like that don't really happen. People don't walk on water and they certainly don't come back from the dead, so how can any account like that be taken seriously? The alternative? - his followers must have fabricated, or at least significantly exaggerated these stories after his death.

But if this is the case, his followers must have known that the stories they were spreading were a lie. They saw Jesus crucified (this event is recorded elsewhere, not just in the Bible), and knew that he was dead and buried. At the time at least, their hopes and dreams must have died with him on that cross. They really had believed - as had many other people - that Jesus was the Messiah - the prophesied deliverer that most Jews had been pinning their hopes on for hundreds of years. To see him naked and dead on a Roman cross must have shattered everything they had lived for. Where did they get the energy and resolve to carry on? And not just to carry on, but to found a worldwide movement that spread and flourished in the face of intense persecution, including severe torture and loss of life for those who had started the story in the first place.

Did the disciples really make it all up? The driving force which enabled the new movement to survive in the face of such incredible opposition was its adherents' belief that one day they too would rise from the dead, just as Jesus had done. Either that happened or it didn't - either the disciples' hopes died with Jesus, or something incredible happened to turn everything around - you can't just "exaggerate" a story like that!

I wonder which "fairy story" you believe...?

Debunking the Nativity

The Christmas Nativity story is well-known the world over and at this time of year it is told and re-told, in school plays, in films, on advent calendars and on Christmas cards.

Some people might be surprised to discover though, how many of the traditional elements are actually quite different from the 2 Biblical accounts (which are the only historical evidence we have of these events): one in the Gospel of Matthew and one in the gospel of Luke.

These are the main examples that come to mind:

No Room at the Inn?
This part of the story comes from Luke, who records that after Jesus was born, Mary "wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room in the kataluma".  "kataluma" is a Greek word which can be translated as "inn" or "guest room" depending on context.  In a small house, a "kataluma" might not even be a room - it could just be a small space set aside for guests.  Elsewhere in Luke, and also in Mark, it is translated as "guest room", but on this occasion many (although not all) English translations have favoured "inn".  It is actually much more likely though, that Mary and Joseph were staying with relatives, since Joseph's family were from that area, and the "kataluma" was full because other family members were also staying due to the census.

Luke's account doesn't even say that Jesus was born in a stable - only that Mary placed him in a manger because it was the only space available.  Small houses at that time were often built on 2 levels, with animals housed on the lower level - so a suitable manger might have been quite close to hand!

Finally, the sense of urgency in the traditional Nativity stories - i.e., "quick, find an inn, I'm about to have a baby!" - doesn't quite equate to Luke's more laid back version: "While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born".

We Three Kings?
Matthew records that the visitors were "Magi from the east" (Luke doesn't mention them).  We don't really know anything about them except that they were probably astrologers and had presumably travelled a long way.  This and the nature of their gifts suggests they were likely to have been men of wealth and influence but almost certainly not kings.

We don't know how many there were as Matthew doesn't record this information.  Neither does he record any of their names - "Melchior", "Caspar" and "Balthazar" all come from later church tradition.

Finally, the Magi almost certainly did not visit (as is commonly portrayed in Nativity plays, cards and calendars) on the same night as the shepherds.  The shepherds' visit is recorded by Luke and the Magi by Matthew.  According to Luke, the shepherds visited while Jesus was still pretty much a new born.  Matthew doesn't say how old Jesus' was by the time the Magi found him, only that they came to "the house" and "saw the child with his mother".  After realising the Magi have double-crossed him and are not going to tell him where Jesus is, Herod then issues a decree to kill all boys in the vicinity who are "two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi".