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Bible gives 2 accounts in birth of Christ

Carlis White
SRU professor discusses Jesus' birth

When it comes to the Christmas story, the Bible is not as clear as one might assume.

Carlis White, a professor of history at Slippery Rock University who has done extensive graduate work involving the Bible, said two of the Gospels give accounts of Jesus’ birth.

Matthew talks about the birth in a Jewish context while Luke tells the story in a Roman context. John only features a philosophical passage detailing an incarnation, and Mark does not even deal with the birth.

White of Center Township said it is difficult to reconcile some of the differences between the two stories, particularly the time period of when the birth took place.

Matthew mentions it taking place during the reign of Herod the Great, the king of Judea who died in 4 B.C. In Luke, Quirinius is mentioned as the governor of Syria, and he did not become governor until A.D. 6.

The only way to reconcile this, White said, would be if Quirinius was governor at an earlier time in addition to being governor again starting in A.D. 6.

Another issue is that Judea was not part of the Roman Empire under Herod, only becoming a part of it in A.D. 6. So, White said it would not make sense for citizens of Judea to be compelled to participate in a Roman census as mentioned in Luke.

White said a possible answer is that Rome may have taken a census and asked that nearby kingdoms take part as well. He said that Herod likely would have voluntarily taken part in that.

“He owed his position to the Romans in the first place,” White said.

Additionally, White said Romans would not have required people to travel to a birthplace or place of family lineage for a census, but Herod may have. This may reconcile Mary and Joseph traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census.

White also said there is no historical record of Herod calling for all firstborn boys aged up to 2 years old in Bethlehem to be killed because he feared a threat to his power.

“There is no place outside of Matthew’s Gospel where we hear about this atrocity,” White said. “We don’t have anything otherwise.”

However, he said everything historically known about Herod suggests it would not be a huge stretch for him to do that, saying that Herod was paranoid about his position. White said Herod is known to have killed people who grew to be more popular than he was, including his wife’s brother. Herod even killed his wife when she continued to be angry about that.

Additionally, White noted Bethlehem was a small town with a lower class population. So if something like killing young boys did occur, there is a chance it may not have become widely known.

Because Herod allegedly asked for boys aged up to 2 to be killed, White said this also leaves a two-year window for when the “wise men” would have showed up with gifts for Jesus.

He said they probably would not have been there the night of his birth because they would have needed to travel. He said the Bible mentions the wise men visited Jesus in a house. That suggests Mary and Joseph found better accommodations than a manger when they arrived.

Popular depiction says there were three wise men, but White noted the Bible only says the wise men brought three gifts with them.

“We don’t know how many wise men there were,” White said.

And, despite what the Christmas carol says, they were not kings. He said they were Magi, who were a class of scholars who were interested in astronomical events, and they likely were Babylonian.

White said it is likely Jesus was born in the spring, not Dec. 25.

The reason Christmas takes place when it does is because of the Roman festival Saturnalia, which was held in December. Traditionally, during this event, masters had to serve slaves, which made it popular for the slaves and tolerated by the masters.

White said early church leaders would have been looking for a way to make the Christmas holiday popular among both upper and lower classes so they connected the holiday with that time.

There is ongoing controversy and discussion about the racial characteristics of Jesus.

White said the Middle East at that time was extremely racially diverse. In many ways, he said people in that area at the time were not concerned with race, saying where a person was a citizen was of more concern.

So, he said any historical or Biblical record at the time almost certainly would not have taken note of Jesus’ or his family’s skin color.

“It was not much of a consideration at all,” White said.

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