[Dialogue] Spong on Baby Jesus

[KroegerD@aol.com]

January 11, 2006 
A Post Christmas Look  Back at the Stories of Jesus’ Birth 
The Christian Church has just completed the celebration of the Twelve Days of 
 Christmas. It may come as a big surprise for most people to be told that  
Christmas is a twelve-day celebration for the holiday seems quickly to wear out  
after its long anticipated welcome. Following the celebration of the day 
itself,  Christmas carols disappear from both radio and television and Santa Claus 
will  not be seen in newspaper ads until late next September. Even the 
Christmas  trees, sometimes still laden with silver tinsel, begin to appear on the 
curb by  the day after Christmas. Most homes are completely clear of dropping 
needles  before New Year’s Day. Yet a memory of a twelve-day observance 
remains, hidden  in the tradition of the yule log that burns for twelve days and in 
the familiar  carol that tells what it was that “my true love brought to me” 
on each of the  twelve days of Christmas.  
Actually the twelve-day observance was something of a compromise between  
Western Christianity where the 25th day of December, which marked the pagan  
saturnalia, was picked as the date on which to observe the birth of Jesus, and  
the traditions of Eastern Christianity in which January 6, sometimes called “old 
 Christmas,” was their date of observance. The days between December 25 and  
January 6 constitute the twelve days of Christmas. Liturgically, the Christian 
 Church smoothed over this conflict by combining Christmas with Epiphany. 
Since  we have two Christmas stories in the Bible, the older one found in Matthew 
1 and  2 was assigned to Epiphany and the younger one found in Luke 1 and 2 
was  assigned to Christmas. However, in the popular culture the two stories 
have been  merged in our hymns and pageants that depict Jesus in a manger 
surrounded by  Mary and Joseph, the stable animals, the shepherds with their crooks 
and wise  men on camels bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 
Most people  learn the content of the Christmas stories, not from reading the 
Bible, but from  these cultural expressions. Therefore, it should not be 
surprising to discover  that there is a profound ignorance abroad about the actual 
content of the  biblical accounts of Jesus’ birth. It is appalling, after 
centuries of critical  biblical scholarship, to see how many people still think of 
these stories as  literal events of history recorded by the biblical writers, 
rather than as  interpretive myths that seek to describe the adult power of 
Jesus of Nazareth.  Perhaps, after the romance of the holidays has begun to 
fade, readers might be  interested in looking at these stories from a more 
scholarly perspective.  
When I was still an active bishop, I loved to lecture on the Christmas  
narratives because they contain many surprises. One of my techniques was to have  
four separate pieces of newsprint available or to divide a convenient 
blackboard  into four distinct columns that I would mark with the letters M, L, B, and 
N.  Then I would introduce my topic by saying that probably the most familiar 
parts  of the Bible were the Christmas stories and that if the members of this 
 congregation were typical, they would know the details of these stories 
quite  well. To demonstrate their proficiency, I would invite them to share with 
me  anything they knew about the accounts of Jesus’ birth. The hands would go 
up and  I would write these comments down in one of my four columns, without 
ever  disclosing what each column meant. That exercise would last about ten 
minutes as  they told me of shepherds and angels, stars and wise men, stables and 
animals,  sheep and donkeys, camels and mangers, innkeepers and swaddling 
cloths, Mary and  Joseph, taxation, Herod, Bethlehem and even the prophet Micah. 
As this process  wound down, local experts would dredge up the lesser-known 
details of the  Annunciation, Mary’s visit to her kinsperson Elizabeth, the birth 
of John the  Baptist, the muteness of Zechariah and the shame that caused 
Elizabeth to hide  herself. Generally the group would feel quite pleased with 
their competence.  That task over, I would return to my charts and begin the 
revelatory commentary.   
My four letters M, L, B and N stood for those parts of the Christmas story  
that are found only in Matthew, only in Luke, in Both or in Neither or Nowhere. 
 I would always begin with this last category, listing the parts of the 
Christmas  story that are simply not present in the Bible but are rather elements 
of our  cultural tradition that our imaginations have placed into the biblical 
story.  Some people were always incredulous, even argumentative until I asked 
them to  open their Bibles and look for themselves. The facts are:
1. There are no  camels in the story of the Wise Men. 
2. There is no stable in which Jesus is  born. 
3. There is no donkey on which Mary rode sidesaddle from Nazareth to  
Bethlehem. 
4. There are no sheep, cows, donkeys, or camels at the stable  because there 
is no stable. 
5. There is no innkeeper.  
Next I would go on to the column marked “Both.” The only things the two  
stories have in common are:
1. The birth of Jesus took place in Bethlehem  
2. The mother of Jesus was named Mary 
3. She was called a Virgin 
4.  Her husband was Joseph 
In the ‘Matthew only’ column would be placed such  things as: the star in 
the East; the journey of the Magi; the gifts of gold,  frankincense and myrrh; 
the Wise Men’s visit first to the palace of Herod, then  led by the star to the 
house in Bethlehem where they find the child; Herod’s  request that these 
magi bring him word so that he too may come and pay him  homage, but the magi 
being warned in a dream not returning to Herod but  departing by another route; 
Herod, angry at being tricked, dispatching a  detachment of soldiers to 
Bethlehem to put all the Jewish male babies under two  to death; Joseph being warned 
of this peril, fleeing to Egypt with Mary and the  baby and residing there 
until the death of Herod; his later return to their home  in Bethlehem but, 
fearing Archelaus, Herod’s brother, who is now on the throne,  deciding to go to 
Galilee instead, finally settling in the town of Nazareth. All  of these 
activities, Matthew asserts, occur in fulfillment of the prophets.  
In the ‘Luke only’ column would go these parts of the tradition: the story 
of  the birth of John the Baptist to his post-menopausal parents, Elizabeth and 
 Zechariah; the suggested kinship between Mary and Elizabeth that led John  
Wycliffe in the 14th century to call Jesus and John first cousins; the story of 
 the census; the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem; the account of the 
manger  and swaddling cloths (usually read incorrectly as clothes); the song of the 
 angels to the shepherds and their subsequent visit to the manger. Finally, 
Luke  alone gives us the account of Jesus’ circumcision, his presentation at 
the  temple and the return of this family to Nazareth.  
Next I would point out the other inconsistencies that mark these two stories. 
 Not only does Matthew seem to know nothing of angels or shepherds while Luke 
 knows nothing of stars or Wise Men, but Matthew also assumes that Jesus is 
born  in a house in Bethlehem where his mother and father lived but that he 
grows up  in Nazareth because of the threat to his life from Herod and Herod’s 
brother.  Luke assumes that Mary and Joseph reside in Nazareth and that the baby 
is born  in Bethlehem only because of the imperial order for people to return 
to their  ancestral home to be enrolled. Matthew says that after Jesus’ 
birth, his family  fled to Egypt with him to save his life. Luke says that after 
his birth, he was  circumcised on the 8th day, presented in the Temple on the 
40th day and then  leisurely returned to his home in Nazareth.  
There are other interesting conflicts. Both gospels assert that Jesus was  
born when Herod was king. Secular records indicate that Herod died in 4 B.C.E.  
Luke says that the enrollment that required them to go to Bethlehem occurred  
while Quirinius was governor of Syria. Secular records indicate that Quirinius 
 did not become governor of Syria until the winter of 6-7 C.E. by which time 
a  baby born in the lifetime of Herod would have been at least 10-11 years 
old.  Luke says that Joseph took his wife, who was “great with child (KJV),” 
either on  foot or on donkey, the 94 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem in a time 
when there  were no motels or restaurants, to perform a particular civic duty 
from which  women were actually excluded. That was a story, said one woman 
theologian that  only a man who has never had a baby could have written!  
That should be sufficient data to suggest that we are not dealing in these  
stories with history but with mythology. There was no literal virgin birth.  
There were no literal stars, angels, shepherds or wise men. To literalize these  
stories is to misunderstand them profoundly. Yet masses of people still do 
just  that.  
Matthew and Luke, the authors of these biblical birth stories used them to  
introduce their account of the adult Jesus, who opened eyes to see things never 
 before seen and who moved lives in profound and wondrous ways. His life, 
they  said, broke down the barriers of separation and called people to a new  
consciousness of what a humanity that was destined to transform the world could  
be. Surely when such a life was born, they said, the heavens must have been  
illumined, and angels must have sung drawing people from near and far to behold 
 the beginning of this unique life. That is what these stories mean and that 
is  why we still treasure them. They are profoundly true. However, they are 
not  literally true. There is a difference.  
— John Shelby Spong  
Editor's notes: For those who might like to pursue this understanding of the  
birth stories of Jesus from the Bible, Bishop Spong's book, "Born of a Woman: 
A  Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus and the Place of Woman in a 
Male-Dominated  Church" deals with this subject much more deeply. It was published by 
Harper  Collins in San Francisco and is available at all major bookstores or in 
most  public libraries.  
_Note from  the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores everywhere  and by clicking here!_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060762055/agoramedia-20)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Harvey from Whangarei, on the North Island of New Zealand, asks:  
I am a lay preacher in the Methodist Church. I find the hymns and prayers  
used in my church to be based on images that are no longer meaningful to me. I  
perceive you are also trying to update them. Are there any books available 
that  represent these new liturgical understandings?  
Dear Harvey,  
The hymns and liturgies of all of our churches are filled with images that  
most of us would reject if we lifted them into the objectivity of rational  
thought. Both include sacrificial language, blood language and psychologically  
abusive language all of which seeks to glorify God by denigrating human life.  
There are times in worship when I shudder at what I am forced to say. I recall 
a  Maundy Thursday service in my parish church, St. Peter’s in Morristown, 
New  Jersey where the hymn said, “God has bled on me” and the prayers had as 
their  congregational refrain, “We have been washed in the blood of the Lamb.” 
I almost  gagged and could not wait for that service to be over. It was not 
that I haven’t  used that kind of language many times before, but in recent 
years consciousness  has been raised and the ones who planned this liturgy were 
abysmally unaware of  that.  
There is enormous work being done in this area. Hymn writers like Shirley  
Murray in New Zealand, Fred Kaan in England (by way of the Netherlands), Gordon  
Light in Canada and Jean Holloway in Scotland are creating masterful new 
hymns  and transforming old tunes with new words.  
Every church I know is experimenting with liturgy to a degree that the next  
revision of our various worship books will have to be in loose-leaf binders to 
 accommodate the rapidity of change. Some of the best liturgy that I have 
ever  attended was in the United Reformed Church of England, a combination of 
English  Presbyterian and Congregationalists.  
There are also churches in every denomination that have broken the liturgical 
 boundary and are swimming in uncharted waters. I think of the Church of the  
Redeemer in Morristown, New Jersey, St. Gregory of Nyassa Church and Glide  
Memorial Church in San Francisco and the Unity Church in the Chelsea section of 
 New York City, just to name a few. The level of experimentation present is a 
 pointer to the fact that the need for radical change is being felt in wide  
circles of the Christian Church today. I suspect leaders in your church might  
point you in the right direction. Just to have you ask would help those 
leaders  to know that business as usual is not making it in the Christian Church 
today.  
— John Shelby Spong 
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