The Mythology of Christmas

Transcript

JRS 56
12/08/2024
The Majesty of Christmas, Part 1: The Mythology of Christmas
Selected Verses
Jesse Randolph


In the approximately 2000 years of its existence, the
church of Jesus Christ has repeatedly heard the statement, typically from those outside the church but sadly also from those within the church, that the Word of God is not enough, that the Scripture is not enough, that what the Bible reveals about God, the Holy Spirit, man, sin, salvation, how we are to live is not enough. Not only that, in the approximately 2000 years of its existence the church, whose Head is Christ and whose charter is the word of Christ, has had to contend with man's repeated attempts to inject his own thought, opinions, wisdom, experience as a substitute for, and at a minimum a companion, to the Word of God. Think about it.

Why has the Roman Catholic Church held up its manmade tradition and dogma and decrees as being on par with Scripture? Why have confessional churches, whether they be Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran, Reformed, given their manmade creeds and confessions such a place of prominence in their worship and practice? Why have Pentecostals and charismatics run wild with claims that they are receiving fresh revelation from God which is coming through their nonsensical speaking and so-called tongues? Why have books with titles like “Jesus Calling” and “Heaven Is for Real” flown off the shelves in the past few decades when the Bible already tells us that Jesus has, in fact, spoken and that heaven is indeed for real? Why have psychologists progressively, along with shrinks and life coaches, replaced pastors as the place many Christians go and the person that many Christians talk to when facing various difficulties and trials that are dealt them in life? Why has liberalism infected the church? Why has feminism convinced countless Christian women that their home is not this divine enclave to embrace and enjoy but rather is this patriarchal dungeon from which to escape? Why have Christians given any foothold to the argument that there are ever any circumstances where it is okay to terminate the life of an unborn child in the womb? Why has it suddenly become hard to tell someone that their disordered sexual desires are no less sinful than disordered sexual acts? Why have church attendance and involvement suddenly become optional for so many families with youth sports and packed out family calendars and our obsession with leisure and our perceived need for “me time” and the notion of online church (church in your pajamas) crowded out the command for believers to assemble and to not forsake the duty to do so? Answer: the common root of each of those plagues in the modern day church is man's refusal to believe God's written revelation to us, the Bible, is sufficient. The problem is man's boredom with what the text of Scripture actually reveals in its black and white letters. The problem is man's prideful insistence that his own thoughts, opinions, wisdom, experience, theories, speculations, perceptions about what he needs or what he deserves have been perceived as needing to augment or supplement what God's truth, His Word, has timelessly revealed.

Merry Christmas, by the way.

Those words are probably atypical of a typical way to start a Christmas series, especially one like this called “The Majesty of Christmas,” but I trust it will start to click for you as we work our way through the material I'll be in this morning. In fact, I better give you a road map for where we are going. Christmas is 17 days away so tick tock, tick tock. We have four messages that we'll have from this pulpit between now and Christmas. Today we're going to launch with “The Mythology of Christmas,” I'll explain what I mean by that in just a moment. Next Sunday we'll get into “The Misunderstanding of Christmas,” where we are going to explore what the Bible teaches about traditionalism and how traditionalism for many has elbowed out the true meaning of Christmas in many Christian homes. The Sunday after that we'll get into “The Mystery of Christmas,” where we do a bit of a deep dive into what the Scriptures reveal about the wonder and the mystery of the incarnation of our Lord. And then two days later on, Christmas Eve we'll get into a message called “The Meaning of Christmas,” where we will explore the path that our Lord took from the manger, that feeding trough in Bethlehem, to the Roman torture device known as the cross. On Christmas Eve then we'll look at all the events of Bethlehem and how they pointed to Calvary and what they mean for us.

But today as we kick off this new Christmas series we're going to start with a study on “The Mythology of Christmas.” That's the title of the message. And while we could go a number of different directions here and take this topic from a number of different angles, what I'd like us to focus in on, and hence my introductory remarks, is how the departure from the plain text of Scripture has led over the centuries to the development of all sorts of extra-biblical theories and myths concerning the birth of Christ. Now I do have to warn you, what we're going to get into this morning is heavily detailed historically. This is going to be like a church history class. But I was reminded by that last lyric we were singing that Christ is Lord of history, so I assume He'll be okay with this. We will open God's Word, of course, to measure all these historical details by God's Word, but make no mistake that this morning's message will be a crash course in church history. I think you can handle it, I think it's important as we all sharpen our thoughts to align with what the Bible teaches about the Christmas holiday.

Now as we launch into this study it's important to note that many of the extra-biblical theories which have developed over the centuries concerning the birth of Jesus and the Christmas account, they actually developed within the church. You know the secular atheism that we're so accustomed to today, the rampant unbelief that we're so used to today was largely unheard of in the earliest centuries of the Christian church. Rather, in the periods of church history that we'll be getting into this morning, most people still held to some form of theism, meaning most people still believed in the existence of some sort of personal deity. However, the fact that there were generally back then more people geared toward believing in God, ultimately didn't protect against all sorts of wild theories and ideas about the birth of Jesus eventually making their way into the church and developing within the church. And many of these homegrown heresies we're going to see are those of incredible importance like those that relate to the humanity of Christ and the incarnation of Christ and the virgin birth of Christ.

And what's amazing is that the Scriptures themselves long ago predicted that this very thing would happen, that there would be those who from within the church would mishandle the Scriptures and twist the Scriptures and get the Scriptures wrong, which would, of course, include the truth concerning the birth of our Lord. Paul for instance to the Ephesian elders before he departed from them in Acts 20:28 said, “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.” Or Peter had something to say about this in 2 Peter 2:1, he said, “There will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies.” And then there is Jude whose entire little letter is shot through with warnings about false teachers infiltrating the church. Jude 4, he says, “Certain persons have crept in unnoticed.” In other words, there has always been this risk of false teaching and false teachers entering the church. And without fail it always traces back to disbelieving what God has declared in His Word, to being dissatisfied with what God has actually revealed in His Word and sensing this need to either add to or take away from what God has revealed in His Word.

Now are all incorrect understandings of Scripture equal, equally problematic? Certainly not. A mistaken view of who the magi were is not on the same level of seriousness as denying the deity of Christ or denying the humanity of Christ. But ultimately falsehood is falsehood and as Christians, as those who worship a God of truth, we want to think accurate thoughts, true thoughts about everything. That includes the details given to us in God's Word about the mystery of the incarnation, the arrival of Jesus Christ to this earth. Hence the need for this morning's message to sort through what the Bible actually teaches and use that to sit in judgment over what history has sort of gotten wrong over the centuries.

So if you are ready, class, I'm going to ask you to buckle up and put your thinking caps on with me as we go through this extensive study of some of the history surrounding some of the details and the beliefs and teachings and myths surrounding the Christmas account. By the way, my Bible is open here but it's kind of for show right now because I'm not going to be quoting from the Bible, at least for a while here, as I'm going to be getting into a lot of extra-biblical literature. And trust me, we'll get our Bibles open, that's what we're here to learn from. But we're going to go through some extra-biblical material first and we're going to see some of these myths that surrounded the Christmas holiday that developed actually through those who said they were Christians but at the same time saw this need to go beyond Scripture.

So the first of the writings that I want to get into -- this should sound familiar to you if this is your church home because we went through it a few weeks ago in passing in our study of the Gospel of Luke which is what we are studying normally on Sunday mornings -- and that extra-biblical work is called the Gospel of James. The Gospel of James was written in the early second century, meaning the early 100s A.D., some 30-40 years after the canon of Scripture closed. And as we saw last time, you may recall, the Gospel of James adds all sorts of details to the birth account of Jesus. What we really emphasized when we looked at it was how it recounts how Jesus was born to Mary the very night the young couple arrived in Bethlehem. We hear that story in the Gospel of James about Mary and Joseph. They are in a rush to get to Bethlehem, she's very much ready to give birth, Joseph finds this cave for Mary just outside of Bethlehem, he rushes off to find this Hebrew midwife, he grabs the midwife and brings her back to the cave, Mary is already laboring and the child is born that very night in Bethlehem. That's what we covered before.

Now one thing I touched upon but didn't get into as much detail last time is how much this work, the Gospel of James, focuses heavily on Mary, the mother of Jesus, as being really the centerpiece of the Christmas story. The Gospel of James basically replicates what the Gospel of Luke teaches about the event leading up to the birth of Jesus but only applies them now to the birth of Mary herself. For instance, we are told in the Gospel of James that Mary's father was a man named Joachim who was married to a woman named Anna and this couple was unable to have children, and according to the Gospel of James an angel of the Lord appears to Anna and tells her that she would conceive. And then Anna hears this news and she promises to give the child back to the Lord. And in this way the Gospel of James traces not only the birth account of Jesus but has some shades of the Samuel account back in I Samuel where you had Samuel's mother Hannah being unable to conceive and the Lord intervenes and grants Hannah and her husband, Elkanah, a son, Samuel, and then Elkanah and Hannah then give Samuel, their child, to serve the Lord in the temple.

In the Gospel of James that's what happens. Joachim and Anna give Mary to the temple when she is 3. So Anna conceives, she has Mary, she grows for a couple of years, they give her to the temple to serve. And then when Mary is 12, according to this book, and when she is old enough to menstruate, the temple elders decide it's time to marry her off before she pollutes the purity of the sacred space of the temple. And what they do, according to this book, is they invite a bunch of local widowers in the community to bid for Mary's hand in marriage and one of those widowers is Joseph. So Joseph, according to this book, was not only not a young man, he was an older man, a widowed man and also it will tell us that he was a man who had children of his own that he brought into the marriage. So according to this part of the Gospel of James this is what the Roman Catholic Church has hung on to dearly in the development of its doctrine that Mary was a perpetual virgin and that Jesus didn't have brothers and sisters.

The biblical account tells us that Jesus did have brothers and sisters, which sort of debunks the whole notion of Mary being perpetually a virgin. Matthew 12:46 says, “While He was still speaking to the crowds, behold his mother and brothers were standing outside seeking to speak to Him,” speaking of Jesus' brothers. Mark 3:31 says, “Then His,” Jesus, “mother and His brothers arrived. And standing outside they sent word to Him calling Him.” So the actually inspired Scripture tells us that Jesus had brothers and sisters, meaning brothers and sisters who were born to Joseph and Mary. That's a real problem for the Roman Catholic Church and its unbiblical teachings on the perpetual virginity of Mary. And one of the ways the early Roman Catholic Church sought to circumvent what the Bible plainly teaches is by relying on this book I am mentioning now, the Gospel of James. The claim was made that Jesus' other brothers and sisters, those mentioned in the Gospel accounts, came not from any sort of sexual union between Joseph and Mary, but instead from Joseph's first marriage. Interesting theory, zero biblical support.

The Gospel of James, though, has more information which the Roman Catholic Church has clung to in support of its teachings that Mary was supposedly this perpetual virgin. I'm going to try to keep this appropriate for our church context, but let's just say that in the Gospel of James there is this doubting Thomas type moment. Here's what I mean by that. In this work the Gospel of James, what's recorded is that after Mary gives birth to Jesus with the help of that midwife in that cave, Mary's friend Salome appears on the scene. And after hearing through this midwife that Mary, though she had just given birth, was still a virgin, Salome has her doubts. And Salome is recorded as saying this, “Unless I test her condition I will not believe that a virgin brought forth.” Salome then goes on to inspect Mary and when she did so, and apparently as punishment for her unbelief, the story goes, her hand withered up. Salome is then recorded as crying out, “Woe for my wickedness and my unbelief.” That's taken to be repentance for her unbelief and then her withered hand is restored.

Well, let's just say that that story from the Gospel of James about Salome's doubt and her inspection of Mary and her withered hand and Mary's virginity, even at the time of Jesus' birth, it caught like wildfire in the early church. That story became extremely popular and it propelled the narrative, though it was biblically unsupportable and entirely mythological, that Mary was a virgin not only at the time she conceived Jesus in her womb but she was a virgin at the time of His birth and a virgin for the rest of her life. That teaching about Mary's perpetual virginity is first found in the Gospel of James and then many centuries later the Roman Catholic Church adopts it as its official position.

So anyway it becomes this profoundly influential book. It conflicts with Scripture in all these different ways. It adds details to the Scripture that aren't there. It gains traction in the early church and it contributes to several mythological teachings about the Christmas story. So that's the Gospel of James.

Now I want to mention a work called the Latin Infancy Gospels. These were written in the 300s to 400s A.D. when the Latin language was the common language in the Roman Empire, commonly spoken. And during this era there were pockets of individuals who were still clinging to an old heresy that's known as gnosticism. Gnosticism traces all the way back to the first century A.D. but it was hanging around still in the 300s and 400s A.D. And what is gnosticism, what was gnosticism? Well, gnosticism has a lot of different forms but at its core it was rooted in this dualistic world view, one which believed in the existence of two realms in this world. You have the spirit realm which was perceived as being reality and which was good, and you have the physical realm which was viewed as being shadowy, not real and evil. And the idea was, according to the gnostics, that the spiritual part of our being as humans was good, what was inside was good, but the physical part of our being—our flesh, our fingers, our toes, our hair, you name it—was evil. And because Jesus who claimed to be God had to have been good because God is good, then He couldn't have appeared in an actual physical body, say the gnostics. He couldn't have been actually physically born, He couldn't have actually taken on flesh. At most, instead, all that could have happened is that He appeared to be in flesh.

That brings us to this second work called the Latin Infancy Gospels, which though they were written after the heyday of gnosticism, they still reveal these gnostic beliefs that Jesus hadn't really come in the flesh but instead that He only appeared to do so. There are a number of different Latin Infancy Gospels, hence the plural Gospels, but we're going to focus on one which is found in what is known as the Arundel Manuscript. In this specific Latin Infancy Gospel we're introduced to the same midwife that we just saw in the Gospel of James, and this midwife dominates a lot of the dialogue. She speaks in the first person and here is what she reports. She says, “The maiden,” meaning Mary, “stood up looking into heaven. When the light had come forth Mary worshiped him to whom she saw she had given birth. The child himself, like the sun, shone brightly, beautiful and most delightful to see.” Now we might read that at first and think, great. What's the big deal? I mean, Mary is worshiping Jesus, that's good, that's orthodox. The Gospel of John does say that the light came into the world, that's John 3:19, so what's wrong with how that is written? Well, it's the expression the author uses that is concerning and revealing. John 3:19 does say that the light has come into the world, but you won't find a statement in any of the four actual inspired Gospels where we are told that the light has been born. We'll see the child is born, we'll see the Son is born but you'll never see an expression like the light is born. That's what we have here in this Infancy Gospel, “he light had come forth.” That's an expression to say the light has been born.

What is happening here is this author is intentionally de-emphasizing Jesus' humanity, intentionally downplaying that Jesus has actually come in the flesh. It goes on. The midwife says, “I however, stood stupefied and amazed. Fear seized me. I was gazing at the intense bright light which had been born. The light, however, gradually shrank, imitated the shape of an infant, then immediately became outwardly an infant like a child born normally.” So if you heard that, Jesus imitated an infant. He wasn't really an infant, He wasn't really a child, rather He was like a child. It gets worse. The midwife says next, “I became bold and leaned over and touched him. I lifted him in my hands with great awe and I was terrified because he had no weight like other babies.” So what she is saying is that Jesus in His infancy was merely outwardly imitating the appearance of a baby. He wasn't actually physically an infant, rather He was this spirit being, this shadowy, weightless phantom child who had actually not come in the flesh. This Latin Infancy Gospel account, then, is clearly this gnostic treatment of the nativity.

And why is that such a big deal? Bible scholars in the room, you know where I'm going to go—I John. Turn with me, if you would, to the book of I John and we're going to shift for a moment here in our historical study, our church history study, to survey now some of the pertinent Scriptures. Let's let the Scriptures sit over what we've learned so far historically. Look at I John 4:1, John there says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.”

So what is John doing there? Well, he is calling out in his context many hundreds of years earlier a similar form of gnostic thinking to what we just read about in the Latin Infancy Gospel from the 300s-400s A.D. Note the language John uses here in verse 2, “Every spirit,” he says, “that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,” meaning to teach that Jesus entered into His creation in a body of flesh as the fully human, fully divine God/Man is sound orthodox teaching. But then look at the next part, verse 3, “And every spirit that does not confess Jesus,” in context there John is saying confess Jesus as having come in a body of flesh, such a person is what? “Not from God.”

Recall how I mentioned a bit earlier that within the many different wrong understandings of Scripture that have been promoted and offered over now nearly 2000 years of church history, there is a range out there. Getting some details wrong—who were the Nephilim, who are the two witnesses, who are the magi—those aren't matters of biblical orthodoxy, those aren't matters of salvation or damnation, those aren't matters of heaven and hell. But other wrong interpretations and other wrong understandings of Scripture and Christology, the person, the meaning, the work of Christ, including the teachings of the Bible that Jesus is both fully God and fully Man, that He entered into His creation in His humanity in a body of flesh as the true and full God/Man, those are matters of biblical orthodoxy, those are matters of salvation and damnation, those are matters of heaven and hell.

So important are those truths, in fact, that the Apostle John, recall the Scripture reading from earlier this morning, he opens the letter of I John with these words. Look at 1 John 1:1. He starts his letter with this topic. He says, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life - and the life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us - what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also so that you may also have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” Note that eyewitness language—what we have seen, what we have heard. We have even touched Him, he says, with our own hands, meaning Jesus wasn't a phantom and He wasn't a ghost. He wasn't a hologram and He wasn't a spirit. No, He was really with us, John is saying. And only those who affirm that Jesus actually came in the flesh can have fellowship with us, he says, and fellowship with God the Father, meaning only those who affirm the genuine, true humanity of Christ, the incarnation of Christ, the enfleshment of Christ can say that they truly know God through Christ. The central importance of those truths contra to what we see in these Latin Infancy Gospels.

We see it not only in 1 John but over in 2 John. Why don't you look at the letter of 2 John with me. We have time probably to read the whole letter but I'll pick it up in verse 6. Look at 2 John 6. Same author. He says, “And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist. See to yourselves that you do not lose what we accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward. Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. The one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting, for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.” Did you catch the strength of those statements? The one who does not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh is what? “The deceiver and the antichrist and does not know God.” And not only that, he shouldn't even be welcomed, allowed into one's house. So stained and so polluted is such a person's theology, so lost is his cause that in this very hospitality-driven culture into which John wrote, such a person wasn't even to be given a greeting, a warm bed or a warm meal.

So we've dabbled in the Gospel of James and its contributions to the mythology of Mary in connection with the birth of Jesus. We've just looked at these Latin Infancy Gospels and its contributions to the mythology of the infant Jesus being something other than fully human at His birth. That brings us to another work, this is our third one, this is the Gospel of Pseudo Matthew. When you hear that word “pseudo,” alarm bells should be going off in your head and rightly so. The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew is full of all sorts of little interesting diversions and errors and myths surrounding the birth of Jesus.

Now it is called Pseudo-Matthew because of all of the four inspired Gospel accounts—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—this one most closely seeks to copycat and follow Matthew's Gospel. It very clearly wasn't written by Matthew for a number of reasons, but one of them is that it was written sometime around the year 800 A.D., a full 700 years or so after the canon closed. And what the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew does is it patches together a group of ancient traditions which supposedly surrounded the birth of Jesus. And one of those involves the existence of an ox on one side and a donkey on the other side of the manger. That comes from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. There is nothing in any of the actual Gospel accounts to indicate that there was either an ox or a donkey on either side of that manger. Isaiah 1:3 does say that “an ox knows its owner and a donkey its master's manger,” and a lot of old interpretations take that to mean there must have been an ox and a donkey on either side of the manger. But that passage has a context. Isaiah 1:3 then finished by saying, “But Israel does not know, My people do not perceive.” So full statement, “an ox knows its owner and a donkey its master's manger but Israel does not know, My people do not perceive.” That passage has nothing to do with Jesus' birth. What God is doing there is calling out Israel's stubbornness, its obstinacy, saying they are even more foolhardy than an ox or a donkey that knows where it is supposed to lay its head and Israel doesn't even know that they are supposed to worship Me, their God. That's the context.

So outside of the Isaiah 1:3 option, how does the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew get to the place where there is suddenly an ox and a donkey in the manger, or flanking the manger? Well, it goes back to the book of Habakkuk. Go back with me to the book of Habakkuk. Here's how the author of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew finds an ox and a donkey near the manger. And Pseudo-Matthew, remember, is written around the year 800, this is the Middle Ages, this period of extremely low biblical literacy or literacy of any sort, for that matter. In Habakkuk 3:2 you'll see this language, here's how mine reads in the LSB. “Oh Yahweh, I have heard the report about you and I fear. Oh Yahweh, revive your work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known, in rage remember compassion.” If you have an NASB it's going to read this way, “Lord, I have heard the report about You and I fear. Oh Lord, revive Your work in the midst of the years, in the midst of years make it known, in wrath remember mercy.”

Well, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew takes that language and incorrectly translates it into Latin, saying (this is the Pseudo-Matthew translation), “Between the two beasts you are known.” I see nothing about beasts in my text, that's because they don't exist, they are not there, they are not there in the original Hebrew of Habakkuk. It was a mistranslation is what I am trying to tell you. When Pseudo-Matthew saw Habakkuk 3:2, they thought there was something about beasts or being between beasts, but all you have here is something about the midst of years. It's a mistranslation. So, it didn't matter, because back then in the medieval era, this largely illiterate, impressionable society, the story takes off and the assumption is made that what Habakkuk was prophesying is that the Christ Child would be lying between this donkey and ox near His birth. Sorry to ruin your nativity scenes, but there was no donkey or ox reported in the Scripture. Could there have been? Sure, but you are not going to find it in the Bible.

Now I just have to mention this, and I think there will be time to get into this, to give you a sense of how far these non-canonical writings go. Also in this Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew there is this story of how when Jesus and Mary and Joseph go down to Egypt after Jesus' birth, Mary, weakened by the Egyptian sun and its intense heat, tells Joseph she needs some rest and she is hungry. And she sees a nearby tree and the tree is full of fruit and she says, her words, “I wish someone could get me some of these fruits.” That's her way of saying, “Hint, hint, Joseph, that is you. Go get me those fruits.” And then Joseph says, “The tree is too tall, the fruit is too high up there and I can't reach it. There are no ladders around.” That's when the infant Jesus, according to this Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, orders the tree to bend over so that His mother can get some fruit. The tree obliges, it bends over, Mary's hunger is satisfied. Problem solved. I bring that up because later an English Christmas hymn developed called “The Cherry Tree Carol.” And one of the lyrics of that hymn is this:
“Oh then, bespoke the baby within his mother's womb,
‘Bow down then, the tallest tree, for my mother to have
some.’”
So cherry trees in Egypt bending over to feed Mary. It's all fanciful, it's all mythological and, of course, it is totally missing from the pages of Scripture.

That leads us to two more myths surrounding Christmas and the birth account of Jesus. One has to do with these men from the East, known as the magi, and the other has to do with this question that gets asked all the time, that question being, is Christmas some sort of knock-off holiday? Is it a copycat of these pagan holidays that were already being celebrated in the month of December and it just got copied by the Christians?

Let's start with the question of the magi. Turn with me, if you would, to Matthew 2, this is the actual biblical record, this is what God has actually revealed about these men known as the magi. I'm going to go ahead and read the whole section here in Matthew 2 and then we'll sort of pick it apart and address some myths. Matthew 2, picking it up in verse 1. It says, “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the days of Herod the king, behold magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is He who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw His star in the East and have come to worship Him.’ And when Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he was inquiring of them where the Christ was to be born. And they said to him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what has been written by the prophet: “And you Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah for out of you shall come forth a leader who will shepherd My people Israel.”’ Then Herod,” verse 7, “secretly called the magi and carefully determined from them the time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, ‘Go and search carefully for the Child and when you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him.’ And after hearing the king, they went their way; and behold the star, which they had seen in the east, was going on before them until it came and stood over the place where the Child was. And when they saw the star,” verse 10, “they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And after coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Then opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the magi departed for their own country by another way.”

That is really the extent of the biblical revelation concerning the magi. Note how there is no mention of how many of these men there were, where they traveled from, what mode of transportation they used. Matthew doesn't refer to them as kings or give them names or otherwise describe them. No, as we are about to see, these details all developed later as various myths and traditions surrounding the magi began to take shape and form through a bunch of non-inspired late-to-the-game writings. I can't get into all of them this morning but entire books have been written on this topic. But we will get into a few of these myths surrounding the magi.

Let's start first with the timing of their arrival. I was watching with interest our lyrics behind the songs we were singing to make sure those lyrics didn't conflict with what I am about to say. Nativity scenes abound in which the magi, the wise men, are depicted as being right there following Jesus' birth. You have Joseph and Mary, you have the manger perhaps flanked by an ox and a donkey, you have the shepherds and maybe they brought along a few sheep for the ride. You have these magi now in this scene sitting atop their camels. It's all very crowded, it's all very confusing and it's biblically inaccurate. It's not biblically supportable, is maybe the better way of saying it.

See, Matthew 2:1 tells us that these magi came from the east and the reference to the east there is probably to Babylonia or Persia. And it's very possible, if not likely, that these magi arrived in Bethlehem as much as two years after Jesus' birth. Why do I say that? Well, recall that first the magi appear, Matthew 2:2, before King Herod in Jerusalem and they say, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” Now look at verse 7. Herod then calls the magi in and it says, he “carefully determined from them the time that the star appeared.” In other words, Herod is doing the math, he is doing this math based on the timing of when the magi appeared before him initially in Jerusalem and he is calculating how long ago they must have seen this star.

And then we get a clear clue as to how long ago they had seen this star down in verse 16, we haven't read this part yet. It says, “Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi,” we left out that part of the story, “he became very enraged and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had carefully determined from the magi.” Note, he didn't order the murder of children who had been born in the last few days, he didn't order the murder of children who had been born in the last few weeks or order the murder of children who had been born in the last few months. No, the order was to kill all male children who were two years old and under. And then we have this clue at the end of verse 16, “according to the time which he had carefully determined from the magi.” The idea here is that Herod has done the math, he has figured out how long ago these guys saw the star and how long it took them to get to him and therefore how old Jesus is as he seeks to slay all the male children in the area and make sure He is eliminated. So, all that to say the magi appeared it seems much later in the story than what modern day nativity scenes depict. I might get an email or two on that one as you have all set up your decorations for Christmas. If there are some movable pieces, maybe you can put the magi further out in the country. They get there later.

Well, when the magi arrived first to Jerusalem, how did they arrive? How did they get there? What means of transportation did they use? Well, depending on the era in which it was commissioned, you'll often see in ancient artwork magi artistically being depicted on either camels or horses. But scour Matthew 2 high and low and you're not going to find references to horses or camels or the magi riding any other animal. All we're told, verse 1, is that they initially arrived in Jerusalem, and then we're told down in verse 9 that they went their way to Bethlehem. Nothing is said about how they made their way to either destination. Could they have arrived on camels? Of course. Could they have arrived on horses? Absolutely, but they just as conceivably could have been making their way to either destination on foot. We simply don't know. But the idea that they definitely were traveling on a camel or on a horse is a myth.

Next is the matter of the identity of these magi. It's a common part of Christmas folklore to assume that the magi were kings, kings from the East. After all, there is a hymn about it:
We three kings from orient are;
Bearing gifts we travel afar.
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.
If there is a hymn, it must be true. Right? No. Were the magi kings? Where does this idea come from? How deep do its roots run? We do know that some of the earliest Christians, earlier in church history, they got this idea of the magi being kings most likely from Isaiah 60:3. Isaiah 60:3 says, “Nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising.” Now that passage is a passage pertaining to the millennial kingdom and the nations flooding to the Messiah, to Jesus in that state of His reign. Nothing is given in the Gospel accounts about these men being kings. It has just been sort of pieced together. They brought expensive gifts like gold, that must mean that they were royalty. It doesn't mean that at all, It's just been pieced together through different passages of the Old Testament which many of the early or old church fathers, they flattened the Bible and they sort of just migrated Old Testament texts into the New Testament as though they were just equally all talking about Jesus. Tertullian in the year 200 regarded the magi as kings. There was a Syrian poet named Ephraem who in the 300s took that position. A bishop called Caesarius of Arles in the year 500 or so said that the magi were kings. And by the time that you get to the Middle Ages the idea that the magi were kings is just taken for granted and assumed and its been that way ever since. But again there is nothing in the Scripture, the text, to tell us that these men were kings. All that we're told, you see it there, is that they were magi. The translation there is wise men, not wise in some generic sense like they are wise about life in general. They were actually trained wise in the field of astrology, astronomy is what we believe, the study of the stars.

How many were there? How many magi were there? The answer has to be three. Again back to the hymn, “We Three Kings,” or if you prefer, we three astrologers. That's fine, too. But here we have another Christmas myth because that number three appears nowhere in the text. How did we get to number three? You might be thinking one thing, I'm going to give you another. We get to number three from this ancient church father named Origen, and if you do any studies on Origen you realize Origen had many interesting allegorical mythological interpretations of the Bible that he contributed to the history of Bible interpretation. Origen was well known for ripping texts from their Old Testament context, ripping them out and then creatively repackaging them so that everything that the Old Testament ever testified to was about Jesus in the New. One instance of this is actually back in Genesis 26. Feel free to go back there with me. The account here is of Isaac and we're going to look at the latter part of this chapter, really just one verse. Genesis 26:26. And here what we have is Isaac encountering three pagan men, you see them listed there. It says, “Now Abimelech came to him from Gerar with his adviser Ahuzzath and Phicol the commander of his army.” And verse 27, “Isaac said to them, ‘Why have you come to me, since you hate me and have sent me away from you?’” Verse 28, “Then they said, ‘We see plainly that Yahweh has been with you; so we said, ‘Let there now be an oath between us - between you and us - and let us cut a covenant with you.’” So what Origen did with that text is he says there are these pagan guys who previously were opposed to Isaac but now they recognize that the Lord is with Isaac. And what he does is, he says these men are really just prefiguring the magi who would arrive to Jesus, these three pagan men who would come visit Him in Matthew 2. Just as there were three men who visited Isaac in Genesis 26, there must have been three men who visited Jesus in Matthew 2. That is the genesis of the three wise men story. Well, suffice it to say Origen's idea caught on because ever since this time Christians have largely accepted and assumed that there were three wise men, three magi, three kings who visited Jesus. Now that theory, of course, is helped by the fact that how many gifts are mentioned that they bring to Jesus? Three—gold, frankincense, myrrh. But who is to say that two men couldn't have brought three gifts or 22 men couldn't have brought three gifts. The fact that there are three gifts is not conclusive of there being three wise men.

All that to say that it is a Christmas myth to say that these men were kings, it's a Christmas myth to say there were three of these men who visited Jesus. All the text tells us is that there were multiple magi, multiple wise men who took a natural interest in one specific star that they saw in the sky on one specific night and that interest drew them from wherever they were in the East and that led them to follow this star's trajectory. That's what we have.

Speaking of the star, we're not told how bright the star was, we're not told how large it was, we're not given the shape of the star. But that didn't stop early church fathers from elaborating. Here is Ignatius of Antioch in the early 100s giving his take on the star in the sky. He says, “A star blazed forth in the sky, outshining all the other stars, and its light was indescribable, and its novelty provoked wonderment, and all the starry orbs, with the sun and the moon, formed a choir around that star, but its light exceeded all the rest, and there was perplexity as to the cause of its unparalleled novelty.” I mean, I really appreciate Ignatius' zeal and creativity, but all the inspired account gives us in the Gospel of Matthew is that this was a star. It doesn't say anything about this star outshining all other stars or this star possessing indescribable light or this star's novelty provoking wonderment or any such thing. All that we are told is that this was a star, a star which obviously piqued the interest of these stargazing wise men who followed it.

One more topic about the mythology surrounding Christmas and then we'll be done. I told you this would be like history class, you're almost there. Last one we're going to cover is this myth surrounding the idea that Christmas is a copycat holiday, patterned after pagan feasts which already existed at the time the first Christmas was celebrated. I'm sure you've all heard the story at some point, it shows up on the history channel or national geographic or on your check stand news rack this time of year and the story goes something like this. During the days of the Roman Empire, which of course span not only the birth of Jesus but several hundred years after His birth, the pagan Romans celebrated this multi-day winter festival called Saturnalia and it was this totally pagan worship experience and it was all centered around the worship of one of the many Roman sun gods, Saturn. And in this festival of Saturnalia, as it is going on, businesses would shut down and people would wear festive clothing and people would be eating and drinking, people would be gambling and play acting and even exchanging gifts. And Saturnalia, of course, started on December 17th and then after all the debauchery and the revelry, it was capped off by a feast commemorating the birth of Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun, which, you guessed it, took place on December 25th. So the idea that's been latched onto, and you can understand why, is that Christmas must have ridden the coattails of these earlier established pagan holidays—Saturnalia, Sol Invictus. The reason we have Christmas, it said, is because of Saturnalia and Sol Invictus. Christmas is basically just a spin-off of these old festivals.

A couple of responses. No. One is the historical time line doesn't support that view. There is a record of at least one early church father that I found named Hippolytus of Rome and he wrote a commentary on Daniel in the year 204 A.D. in which he says, “For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when He was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th.” The first record we have of Sol Invictus, that pagan holiday being celebrated on December 25th is in 274 A.D. In other words, the historical record shows that you have Christians linking December 25th with being the date of the Lord's birth some 70 years before Sol Invictus latches on to December 25th. And even if that weren't the case, let's say I got that wrong and more evidence comes out and others say, no, actually we have evidence of Sol Invictus coming before the Christmas celebration for Christians. What would the loss be there? So basically if Christians did in fact take December 25th after it had been celebrated by pagans for Sol Invictus, what would the harm there be? That sounds to me like Christians, early Christians, effectively seeking to cancel out and redeem what once was a pagan holiday. I mean, don't we do that all the time? Aren't there sects of Christianity where Halloween is now Reformation Day? I mean, we do that all the time. In this case what this would look like would be taking a festival which was dedicated to the worship of this sun, the orb in the sky, and redeeming it and reclaiming it for the purpose of worshiping the Son of God, the Light of the World. Objectively speaking, I don't think there would be anything wrong with that. But again, I think we have a historical argument either way.

So if the date December 25th didn't come from the Sol Invictus holiday, where did it come from? Where did this idea of Christ being born on December 25th originate? There are a number of different ideas and theories that have been offered out there. The one that is most compelling to me, and I can say to me because this is not Scripture but history we are talking about, the theory that makes the most sense to me ties in with the date of the death of Jesus Christ. According to a couple of different sources, early church sources, Jesus died, they would say, on March 25th. Tertullian made this claim around the year 200. He said that Jesus died on the 14th day of Nisan, that's on the Jewish calendar, which would be the equivalent of March 25th on the Roman calendar. There is also another anonymous Christian treatise from North Africa in the 4th century which says that March 25th was the day of the passion of the Lord.

Now why that's important, the date of the death of Christ, is that it was taught in many circles in the early church, not just of Jesus but of many other major figures in history, that the date of His conception was the same calendar date as the date of His death. So if He died on March 25th that means He was conceived on March 25th some 30 years or so earlier. Augustine picks up on this idea in his work “On the Trinity.” He says, “For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also He suffered.” And then he gets very allegorical, Augustine did that, he says, “so the womb of the virgin in which He was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which He was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before Him nor since.” So assuming a death date of March 25th and assuming a conception date of March 25th and assuming a normal 9-month pregnancy for May, that would place Jesus' birth where? December 25th, which is exactly what Augustine says also in his work “On the Trinity.” He says, “But He was born according to tradition upon December 25th.” Now those qualifying words from Augustine, “according to tradition,” are so, so key and so, so important because ultimately we all have to admit that December 25th is not a matter of biblical revelation, rather it is a matter of tradition. I am not dying on the hill that Jesus was born on December 25th, I would not take a bullet for the teaching that Jesus was born on December 25th, my hope is not built on Jesus being born on December 25th and I pray yours isn't either. I will die on the hill, though, and I will stand and I won't shy away from what the Bible actually teaches concerning the truths of the incarnation, the birth of our Lord.

And I think that's a fitting way for us to close, remembering that the true story of Christmas is not about Mary perpetually being a virgin and it's not about Jesus being some shapeless, weightless phantom baby. It's not about three kings that were riding horses or camels. Or cattle or oxen being near the manger. It's not about December 25th. No, the true story of Christmas is what is found in what God has revealed to us in the pages of Scripture, about God and His holiness and His righteous standards, sending His Son into the world to take care of our sin problem, being born to a virgin, laid in a manger. That is at the heart of the Christian celebration of Christmas. So my charge to you, my reminder to you, is to align your celebrations of Christmas -- not with all the mythology that has developed surrounding Christmas over the centuries, not with the traditions that we're going to get into next week -- but instead align your Christmas celebrations with what has actually been revealed to us in the pages of Scripture. Scripture is our textbook, not only at Christmas time but all year long. So submit to your textbook, read your textbook, trust your textbook.

Class is dismissed.

Let's pray. Father, thank You so much for this time together this morning. Thank You for sort of an unconventional study of more of church history today and measuring these historical teachings and their flaws against the authoritative Word that You have given us. I pray that the lesson that is taking root this morning is that we really can trust what we have in the Word of God for all that pertains to life and godliness, including this season that we find ourselves in right now, celebrating the birth of our Lord. God, I pray that we would take all of our ideas, all of our thoughts, all of our hobbies, our practices, all of our traditions, everything we do surrounding the Christmas season -- may we do it in submission to what You have given us in the Word. Thank You for this time this morning. Thank You for Your Son, thank You for sending Him on our behalf so that we might have fellowship with You and enjoy glory with You forever. We love You and we thank You. In Jesus' name, amen.