Category: Apologetics

June 1, 1993 was my report-to-work date at Catholic Answers. By divine providence, it’s also the memorial of St. Justin Martyr, patron of apologists.

Today–June 1, 2023–is thus my 30th anniversary as a professional apologist, and so I thought I’d put up a post discussing one of the things I’ve developed a clearer awareness of in the last 30 years.

Some Christians appear to believe that the Bible contains nothing but exact quotations of the people it describes. In other words, everything you see between quotation marks in the Bible is exactly what the person said. There’s not one word of difference.

It’s easy for modern Christians to think this since we live in a world of audio and video recorders and stenographers and transcriptionists. Exact quotations come easy to us.

However, the attitude of ancient audiences was different. They lived before any recording devices had been invented, few people were literate, and of those who were literate, only a very few were trained in stenography and capable of taking down exactly what someone said in real time.

As a result, they did not expect exact quotations the way that we do. Instead, they expected texts to convey the gist or basic meaning of what someone said, but not the exact words.

They also recognized that authors would, at times, need to reconstruct the dialogue or conversations that people had.

No Recording Devices

Think about it: Without recorders and transcribers of such conversations, how would anybody remember exactly what had been said on a particular occasion? They might remember the gist of what was said, but likely not the exact words—especially after a long space of time.

Of course, in divinely inspired texts like the books of the Bible, God could reveal the exact words that had been used on a particular occasion. That’s possible. But it’s not what the ancient audience was expecting. They were used to reading books of history that used the convention of reconstructed dialogue, and so that’s what they would have assumed books of Scripture also contained—unless the text said otherwise.

A key principle of good biblical exegesis is reading the text the way the ancient audience would have, and so we also should understand the Bible as using reconstructed dialogue. We should not introduce the added assumption—not shared by the original audience—that God miraculously revealed what was said by minor players in the narrative, like the exact words used by every person who approached Jesus for a miracle.

Nobody would have written down the exact words of a healing request at the time, but the gist would have been remembered (e.g., a blind man asked Jesus for his sight back), and so we would expect the exact words to be reconstructed.

This much we can establish based on a knowledge of how ancient literature worked, but can we find evidence supporting this view in the text itself?

We can! And one way we can do this is by comparing different accounts of the same incident.

Synoptic Parallels

Let’s compare Mark’s and Matthew’s account of what the demons said to Jesus in the case of the Gerasene/Gadarene demoniacs.

Mark 5 presents us with Jesus exorcizing a single demoniac, and we read of the following exchange taking place between Jesus and the demons (statements by the demons are in blue):

“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.”

For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”

And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.”

And he begged him eagerly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside; and they begged him, “Send us to the swine, let us enter them” (Mark 5:7-12).

Now here’s the account of the same event from Matthew 8, where Matthew records that there were two demoniacs that Jesus exorcized:

“What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”

Now a herd of many swine was feeding at some distance from them.

And the demons begged him, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of swine” (Matt. 8:29-31).

As you can see, Matthew omits the reference to “Legion,” but the gist is the same in both accounts—the demons ask what Jesus has to do with them, they’re concerned about being tormented, and they ask to go into the herd of pigs.

But the exact words used are different. In Mark the demons say, “What have you to do with me” (singular), because Mark is only mentioning one demoniac, while Matthew has “What have you to do with us” (plural), because Matthew mentions the second demoniac.

In Mark the demons identify Jesus as “Jesus, Son of the Most High God,” while in Matthew they just identify him as “Son of God.”

In Mark the demons make a request about torment—“I adjure you by God, do not torment me”—while in Matthew they ask a question—“Have you come here to torment us before the time?”

Finally, concerning the pigs, Mark’s demons make a simple request—“Send us to the swine, let us enter them”—while in Matthew they make a conditional request—“If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of swine.”

We thus see how the biblical authors Mark and Matthew both wanted to convey the gist of what happened on this occasion, but they don’t feel bound to use the same exact words of dialogue. There is dialogue reconstruction—in the form of paraphrase—happening in these texts.

A More Striking Example

An even more striking example of reconstructed dialogue occurs in Luke’s account of the day of Pentecost in Acts.

After the Holy Spirit descends on the disciples and they begin speaking in tongues, we read:

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.

And they were amazed and wondered, saying,

“Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

“And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?

“Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (Acts 2:5-11).

Note carefully what Luke says: “they were amazed and wondered, saying.” This tells us that the words that follow represent what the crowd—a group of people—said.

Now—unless they’re chanting in unison—when a group of people speak, each person says something different. In real life, they would hold a conversation about the amazing event unfolding before them.

But instead of recording a conversation between individual speakers, Luke represents the crowd as if it is speaking in unison: “How is it that we hear, each of us in his native language? . . . We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

Interposed between these is a long list of places that the Jews came from, and there is no way in real life that a group of people speaking in unison—without a script—would name the same places in the same order.

What’s more, the list isn’t random. This may not be obvious to modern readers, who aren’t that familiar with ancient place names, but the list mentions places of Jewish settlement moving from east to west. It starts in the far east with Parthia (in modern Iran) and works its way westward through the Holy Land and North Africa before moving up to the capital of the empire—Rome—with Cretans (an island people) and Arabs (a nomadic people) thrown in at the end.

There is no way a crowd would spontaneously come up with this list. If they wanted to speak in unison, they’d need to first decide on the places to name and then figure out the sequence in which to name them.

A Greek Chorus

The way that Luke presents the crowd bursting into common speech will be familiar to readers of ancient literature. What Luke depicts the crowd doing is functioning as a Greek chorus.

Greek choruses were made up of performers in ancient Greek plays. Choruses consisted of 12 to 50 actors, and they sang, danced, and spoke lines in unison. Their purpose was to represent the common people who were witnessing the events of the play, and they provided commentary on them.

They would say things that the main characters couldn’t (e.g., the chorus might comment on the main character’s faults or hidden fears and motives), they would comment in ways that would bring out the significance of events in the story, and they would underscore elements of the plot to make it easier for the audience to follow.

Here’s an example of a chorus speaking in Sophocles’s play Antigone—about the daughter of Oedipus the king. At this point in the play, Antigone has been sentenced to be buried alive in a tomb by the tyrant King Creon, and she has just compared her fate to a somewhat similar fate experienced by Niobe, the daughter of King Tantalus.

The chorus then speaks up and says:

Yet she [Niobe] was a goddess, thou knowest, and born of gods;

we are mortals, and of mortal race.

But ’tis great renown for a woman [you, Antigone] who hath perished that she should have shared the doom of the godlike, in her life, and afterward in death.

You see how the chorus speaks in unison—“We are mortals, and of mortal race.” This kind of speaking in unison would not happen in real life unless people were reading from a script, which is exactly what happened in ancient Greek plays. The actors had a script to direct their speech.

The crowd on Pentecost had no script to read from, but Luke knows that his readers will have seen plays and be familiar with the literary device of a chorus, so he reconstructs dialogue-in-unison to reflect the thoughts and nature of the crowd and has them provide commentary on the miracle they have just witnessed.

No doubt, individual people in the Pentecost crowd did say things like, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?”, “How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?”, and “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” They probably didn’t use those exact words, but they convey the gist of what people in the crowd said.

Luke then fuses these remarks with a list of the places that the people came from to provide an overall commentary that conveyed to his readers a sense of the multiple languages represented in the miracle and the crowd’s reaction to it.

We thus find a real event being presented with a particularly clear case of reconstructed dialogue.

The Words of Jesus

A question that modern readers will want to ask is what all this says about the words of Jesus.

We can say basically two things: First, that the authors of the Gospels were concerned with accurately presenting the gist of Jesus’ teachings and interactions, and second, that they were at liberty to paraphrase and reconstruct dialogue.

This means that we would expect more exact representations of Jesus’ words in certain types of passages. Teachings were the most important things Jesus said (as opposed, for example, to where the group would be having dinner or spending the night), so they should most closely reflect his actual words.

Also, shorter statements are easier to remember than longer ones, so teachings given in shorter form should convey more of the actual words.

Indeed, we have evidence that Jesus himself took these effects into account, and many of his teachings are framed in short, vivid, easy-to-remember forms. An example is this statement:

The last will be first, and the first last (Matt. 20:16).

This saying uses a literary device known as a chiasm or chiasmus (in Greek chiasma means “crossing”). Chiasms involve a sequence of elements that reverse in order. If we label the word “last” as A and the word “first” as B, this chiasmus has an A B | B A structure.

Such structures make sayings easier to remember, and it appears Jesus used them to make his teachings more memorable.

Another literary device he used to do this was the parable. Jesus’ parables are short, memorable stories that teach spiritual lessons, and humans are wired for stories, so we remember the gist of them easily.

Some of Jesus’ longer discourses—like the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7)—are essentially collections of short, easily memorable sayings, and if you study the Sermon on the Mount, you can see that it’s organized around different collections of sayings that begin the same way (e.g., “Blessed are the X”, “You have heard X, but I say Y”, “When you do X, do not do Y”).

There is also the fact that—as a teacher—Jesus would have given the same teachings multiple times, to many different audiences, so his disciples would have heard his teachings many times and—as his disciples (i.e., students)—they would have made efforts to memorize them so they could preach them to others.

On the other hand, not everything Jesus said would have been remembered in this way. Things he said only once would not be expected to be as close to the original wording, so we would expect more reconstruction in one-off statements.

The same would be true of minor characters—people other than Jesus. Numerous people approached him for miracles of healing or exorcism during his ministry, and their exact words in making the request would not have been memorized. Consequently, we would expect the Evangelists to reconstruct what such people said, basing it on the kind of thing someone with a particular problem would say to Jesus in making a respectful request for relief.

Similarly, things that Jesus said that went on for a long time—very lengthy statements, especially those made only once—would be harder to memorize, and we would expect more paraphrase and reconstruction.

For example, Jesus gives some long speeches in the Gospel of John. One of them runs for five chapters (John 13-17)! And it was apparently given only once, on Holy Thursday. Even though John was an eyewitness (John 21:24), and even though he had supernatural assistance in remembering what Jesus said (John 14:26), the ancient audience would not have expected John to reproduce a word-for-word transcript of a lengthy speech he heard Jesus give only once.

Instead, they would expect the Holy Spirit to help John remember the gist of what was said, and then John would employ the normal reconstruction and paraphrase that was expected in ancient literature.

What we see is thus that the four Evangelists felt the need to accurately preserve the substance of what Jesus said, but not always the exact wording—as can be seen by comparing the Gospel accounts of the same sayings and noting the variation in the exact words used.

No Quotation Marks

Part of the problem modern readers have with the idea that quotations in the Bible may not be exact is because they are encased in quotation marks. When Jesus says something, modern Bibles put quotation marks around it.

However, the original Greek manuscripts of the New Testament (and the Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament) do not contain quotation marks. They are a later invention.

The ancestors of quotation marks were invented in the 2nd century B.C., but they had a different function. At the Library of Alexandria, they were used to signal erroneous or disputed portions of text.

Once the Christian age began, authors began using them to signal quotations, but they were a particular type of quotation—one that came from the Bible. Biblical passages would get quotation marks, regardless of whether someone was speaking or not. Thus when the author of Genesis writes “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” it would get quotation marks, and so would Jesus’ statement “The last will be first, and the first last.”

Later, quotation marks came to be used for quotations of the words another person used in saying something, which is their modern function. And they usually indicated exact quotations—the exact words someone said, with no paraphrase or reconstruction.

This is the connotation that they have today, and their use in modern editions of the Bible leads the reader to suppose that they are being given an exact quotation.

But the quotation marks aren’t in the originals. They are added by modern translation committees. There are even disputes—in some cases—about where a particular quotation begins and ends, because there aren’t any marks in the Greek telling you where it ends and where the author’s voice picks up again. (For example, it’s clear that in Galatians 2:14 Paul begins quoting something he once said to St. Peter, but it isn’t precisely clear where the historic quotation ends and where Paul shifts back to giving his current thoughts rather than what he said to Peter in the past.)

The difference in how ancient writers quoted people and how modern, English-speaking ones do is illustrated by the difference between what are known as direct and indirect discourse.

In direct discourse, a modern English-language writer will be giving you what he believes were the exact words a person used—no paraphrasing allowed—as in this statement:

• • John said, “I am hungry”

By contrast, indirect discourse doesn’t present you with a quotation, and so quotation marks are not used, as in the statement:

• • John said that he is hungry.

The way English writing works, you know that in the first statement the author is giving you what he thinks is an exact quotation of what John said, while in the second statement he is giving you a summary of what John said, but not necessarily his exact words (e.g., John might have literally said, “I’m famished!” or “I’m peckish” or “I haven’t eaten today,” but you could summarize all of those with “John said that he is hungry”).

Greek has equivalents of direct and indirect discourse, but they don’t work exactly the same way the English versions do. In particular, since ancient authors generally weren’t expected to give you exact quotations, this wasn’t normally part of what Greek direct discourse implied.

But when you add quotation marks to signal direct discourse in English, it tells the reader that what they have before them is supposed to be an exact quotation. This can mask the greater flexibility ancient authors had in presenting quotations. So when you read the statement:

• • And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go, as you have believed it will be done for you.”

It may actually mean something more like:

• • And Jesus said to the centurion that he should go and that, as he had believed, it would be done for him.

This is not to say that a quotation doesn’t preserve the exact words of Jesus. It may or may not, but it will accurately preserve the gist of what he said.

Dei Verbum

So what can we say in light of all this? One of the things that the Second Vatican Council taught was the following:

Since, therefore, all that the inspired authors, or sacred writers, affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures (Dei Verbum 11).

In other words, everything that the authors of the Bible intended to assert, properly speaking, is also asserted by the Holy Spirit and is thus true.

The authors of the Bible intended to assert the substance of Jesus’ actions and teachings. They didn’t intend to assert the exact words that he and others always used, because that kind of assertion wasn’t a standard part of ancient literature. However, they did intend to assert the gist—the substance—of what he said and did.

Therefore, that substance is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit to be transmitted by the Gospels “firmly, faithfully, and without error.”

‘When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem” (Matt. 2:1).

“Wise men” is a common translation in English Bibles, but it doesn’t give us a good idea who they were. The Greek word used here is magoi, the plural of magos. These terms may be more familiar from their Latin equivalents: in St. Jerome’s Vulgate, we read that magi came from the east; an individual member of the group would be a magus.

Who were the magi?

Originally, the term magi referred to a group of people in Persia (modern Iran). Around 440 B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus listed the magi as one of the six tribes of the Medes (Histories 1:101:1).

Apparently, they were like the Jewish tribe of Levi in that they exercised priestly functions. Herodotus says that whenever a Persian wanted to sacrifice an animal to the gods, he would cut it up and then “a magus comes near and chants over it the song of the birth of the gods, as the Persian tradition relates it; for no sacrifice can be offered without a magus” (Histories 1:132:3).

In the book of Daniel, magi are called upon to interpret dreams (1:20; 2:2, 10, 27).

The Persians also looked to magi to interpret heavenly omens. Consider the case of the Persian king Xerxes I (also known as Ahasuerus, who married the biblical Esther). In 480 B.C., he asked the magi to tell him the meaning of a solar eclipse that occurred as he was about to do battle with the Greeks.

They told him that the sun was special to Greeks, so when it abandoned its place in the daytime, the god was showing the Greeks that they would have to abandon their cities. This emboldened Xerxes (Histories 7:37:4), but things didn’t work out well. His expedition against Greece failed.

Even so, this shows the original magi were interpreters of astronomical portents, as later magi would be for the star of Bethlehem.

Over time, the term magi ceased to refer exclusively to members of the Persian priestly caste. The skills they practiced became known as mageia, from which we get the word magic in English, and by the first century, anyone who practiced magic could be called a magos.

Thus, in Acts 8, we meet a man named Simon, who was a Samaritan, meaning he had mixed Jewish ancestry. Simon practiced mageia (8:9, 11), and so he became known as Simon Magus.

Full Jews also could be magi, and in Acts 13 we meet a Jewish man named Bar-Jesus, who is described both as a magus and a false prophet (13:6). This means that in Jesus’ day, the term magus was flexible, so we need to ask another question.

Who were these magi?

Matthew’s magi were clearly dignitaries of some kind, as shown by the facts that:

1. They saw themselves as worthy to congratulate a distant royal house on a new birth.
2. They had the resources and leisure to undertake such a lengthy journey.
3. They could offer costly gifts.
4. They received a royal audience with King Herod the Great.

Matthew says that they came “from the East,” which from the perspective of Jerusalem would point to locations such as Arabia, Babylonia, and Persia.

Jews lived in all of these regions. Consequently, some interpreters have proposed that the magi who visited Jesus were Jews, who would naturally be interested in the newborn king of their race.

However, most scholars have concluded this is unlikely. If they were visiting Jewish dignitaries, Matthew would have identified them as co-religionists. The fact he merely describes them as being “from the East” suggests that they were Gentiles who came from a distant eastern land. Matthew also tells us that they went back “to their own country” (2:12), suggesting they were among its native inhabitants rather than Jews living in exile.

In fact, there is a theme in Matthew’s Gospel of Gentiles who respond to the true God. Matthew uses it to show his Jewish readers that Gentiles can be Christians. The pattern culminates in the Great Commission, when Jesus tells the apostles to “make disciples of all nations” (alternate translation: “make disciples of all the Gentiles”; 28:19).

The Magi are part of this pattern: they are Gentile dignitaries who represent an early response to God’s Messiah, in contrast to the Jewish king, Herod, who seeks to kill him. This prefigures how the Jewish authorities kill Jesus, but Gentiles embrace his gospel.

Scholars have concluded that Matthew’s Magi were Gentile astrologers from an eastern land, though we can’t be sure which one (see Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 168-170).

The earliest discussion we have is found in St. Justin Martyr, who around A.D. 160 said that they came from Arabia (Dialogue with Trypho 78:1). Around A.D. 210, Tertullian deduced that this is where they came from based on the gifts they offered (Against Marcion 3:13). Although in the ancient world gold and frankincense were associated with Arabia, this isn’t conclusive since they were widely traded in the region.

Many scholars have seen Babylon as a possibility, and the Jewish readers of Matthew would have been familiar with the book of Daniel, which associates magi with Babylonia. It has also been argued that the major Jewish colony there could have given the Magi a special interest in the Jewish Messiah, though this was also a common expectation of Jews in other lands.

Most Church Fathers concluded that the Magi were from Persia. Just after A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria identified them as coming from there (Stromata 1:15), and they were commonly depicted in early Christian art wearing Persian clothing. They may have been members of the original class of magi.

How did they know?

In popular accounts, the Magi are depicted as following the star that brought them to Bethlehem. That has led many to see the star as a supernatural manifestation that moved around in the sky in a way stars don’t.

But this isn’t what Matthew says. He never claims they were following the star, only that it was ahead of them as they went to Bethlehem and that it stood over the house (2:9). This was a providential coincidence.

They weren’t being led by the star for, as Pope Benedict XVI points out, they initially went to Herod’s palace in Jerusalem—the natural place to find a newborn prince (Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, ch. 4). They assumed that Herod the Great or one of his sons had had a baby boy who would grow up to be king. When the magi learned there was no new prince at the palace, they had to consult with the chief priests and scribes to learn where they needed to go: Bethlehem (2:4).

The fact that the chief priests and scribes looked to a well-known prophecy of the birth of the Messiah (Micah 5:2; cf. Matt. 2:6) suggests the Magi could have seen the appearance of the star as signaling not just the birth of an ordinary king but of a particularly great one: the predicted messiah.

Although Magi weren’t following the star, it did tell them when he was born, for they said, “We have seen his star in the East” (2:2).

Recently, scholars have argued that this is a mistranslation and that the Greek phrase rendered “in the East” (en tê anatolê) should instead be “at its rising”—that is, when it rose over the eastern horizon as the Earth turned. Some have argued that this is a technical term for what is known as a star’s heliacal rising, which occurs when it briefly rises above the horizon just before sunrise.

The real question is what told the Magi that the star was significant and why they linked it to a king of the Jews. Here we can only speculate.

The system of constellations in use at the time, which includes our own zodiac, was developed in northern Mesopotamia around 1130 B.C, and Babylonian and Persian astrologers used it.

It’s not surprising that they would associate a particular star with the birth of a king, because at that time astrology was used to forecast national affairs. Horoscopes weren’t normally worked up for the hoi polloi. Heavenly signs were interpreted as having to do with things of importance, such as relations between nations, wars and rebellions, whether the crops would be good or bad, epidemics—and the birth of kings.

What the star they saw might have been is difficult to determine, but one possibility is Jupiter. At that time, Jupiter and the other planets were considered “wandering” stars, since they moved against the backdrop of “fixed” stars.

Unlike some later Greeks, Mesopotamian astrologers didn’t see the stars as controlling events on Earth. Instead, they thought the gods made their wills known through celestial phenomena, so it was a form of divine revelation. Jupiter was associated with Marduk, the king of the Babylonian pantheon, and it was often involved in signs associated with kings. For example, one Babylonian text says that if Jupiter remains in the sky in the morning, enemy kings will be reconciled.

An Assyrian text indicates that if a lunar eclipse takes place and Jupiter is not in the sky, the king will die. To protect the king, the Assyrians came up with an ingenious solution: they took a condemned criminal and made him a temporary, substitute “king” who could then be executed to save the life of the real king!

Whether Jupiter was the star the Magi saw depends on when Jesus was born, and that’s also something scholars debate.

When was Jesus born?

According to the most common account you hear today, Herod the Great died in 4 B.C., so Jesus would have to have been born before this.

In Matthew 2:7, Herod secretly learns from the Magi when the star appeared, and in 2:16, he kills “all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men.” This indicates the star was understood as appearing at Jesus’ birth, which is to be expected, since such portents were associated with births (as opposed to conceptions).

It also indicates that Jesus was born as much as two years before the magi arrived—though it may not have been a full two years, since Herod may have added a “safety” margin to his execution order.

Many scholars have thus proposed that Jesus was born around 7 to 6 B.C., and this is the date we commonly hear.

However, other scholars have argued that a better case can be made that Herod died in 1 B.C. (see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed., and Andrew Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul). This likely would put Jesus’ birth in 3 to 2 B.C., which is the year Church Fathers identify as the correct one.

It also fits with Luke’s statement that Jesus was “about thirty years old” when he began his ministry (3:23), shortly after John the Baptist began his in “the fifteenth year of the reign Tiberius Caesar” (3:1)—i.e., A.D. 29. Subtracting 30 from A.D. 29, we land in the year 2 B.C. (bearing in mind that there is no “Year 0” between 1 B.C. and A.D. 1).

What was in the sky?

Regardless of which date of Jesus’ birth is correct, it occurred in the first decade B.C. So what notable astronomical events took place then that could have served as the star of Bethlehem?

A large number have been proposed. The sidebar below contains only some.

One of the most interesting of these events was the rising of Jupiter and Venus on August 12, 3 B.C. Since Babylonian times, Jupiter was seen as a heavenly king, and Venus was seen as a heavenly queen, suggesting a birth. Furthermore, the Babylonians named Regulus (the brightest star in Leo) “the king,” and the lion was a traditional symbol of the tribe of Judah (cf. Gen. 49:9).

Also interesting is what happened on September 11, 3 B.C. In Revelation, John says, “A great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (12:1). This woman gives birth to Jesus (12:5). Some have proposed that this encodes information about when he was born: when the sun was in the middle of Virgo (“the virgin”) and thus “clothing” it, with the moon at her feet.

Obviously, we can’t say which if any of these events corresponds to the star of Bethlehem without knowing precisely when Jesus was born. That’s something the Bible doesn’t tell us, and the Church Fathers had different opinions, with only some proposing December 25.

The role of Jewish thought

Thus far, we’ve looked at how the Magi would have interpreted celestial events in terms of established Mesopotamian astrology. This association with paganism gives rise to the question, “Would God really use pagan astrology to signal the birth of his Son?”

That’s a matter for God to decide. Scripture indicates God cares for all people and makes himself known to them in various ways (cf. Rom. 1:19-20). It wouldn’t be so much God using pagan astrology to mark the birth of his Son as choosing to preserve certain true ideas among Gentiles to point to this event.

Also, if the Magi were Persians, they wouldn’t have been polytheists. By this period, the Persians did not believe in the old gods, and their dominant religion was Zoroastrianism. This faith taught the existence of a single, great, all-good creator god to whom they referred as “the Wise Lord” and whom they believed would vanquish evil in the end. They believed in the renovation of the world, the final judgment, and the resurrection of the dead.

If the Magi were Persians, they could have seen themselves as spiritual kin to the Jews and as worshiping the same God—the only true God—using their own terms for him. Additionally, they may well have had contact with Jews living in their own land and thus may have come into contact with biblical revelation that influenced their perception of the star. They could have learned, for example, of the lion as a symbol of Judah, and they could have associated the coming Jewish Messiah with a star.

One of the most famous messianic prophecies is that “a star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel” (Num. 24:17). At that time, this prophecy had long been associated with the Messiah, which is why in the A.D. 130s the messianic pretender Simon bar Kosiba was hailed as “Simon bar Kokhba” (Aramaic, “Simon, son of the Star”).

What about astrology?

What about the role of astrology itself in this account? Although astrology was popular among Gentiles, it wasn’t so among Jews, many of whom looked down on it. This in itself argues that Matthew’s tradition about the magi is historically accurate. It’s not the kind of thing that Jewish Christians would make up.

However, while astrology wasn’t as popular among Jews as among Gentiles, it did exist. Genesis says that God made the sun, moon, and stars “to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years” (1:14). This could mean that they are simply to be timekeeping markers. But some Jews thought that their function as “signs” included information about future events. Thus, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain astrological texts.

In the ancient world, there was no rigid distinction between astronomy and astrology. It’s only in the last few centuries that the two have been disentangled. This happened as scientists discovered what the effects the sun, moon, and stars do and don’t have on life here on Earth.

Even Thomas Aquinas, based on the science of his day, thought that the heavenly bodies had an influence on the passions and could, for example, make a man prone to anger—but not in such a way that it would overwhelm his free will (Commentary on Matthew 2:1-2, ST I:115:4, II-II:95:5).

Subsequent scientific research showed they don’t have this kind of effect, and consulting the stars for these purposes is superstition. Thus, the Catechism of the Catholic Church warns against consulting horoscopes (CCC 2116).

While the stars don’t have the kind of influence many once thought they did, that doesn’t mean God can’t use them to signal major events in his plan of the ages. The fact he signaled the birth of his Son with a star shows he can. This isn’t what people think of as astrology, but it’s part of divine providence.

In fact, this doesn’t appear to be the only time God did something like that. On the day of Pentecost, Peter cited the prophet Joel’s prediction that the moon would be turned to blood as fulfilled in their own day (Joel 2:31-32; Acts 2:20-21). It so happens that on the night of the crucifixion (April 3, A.D. 33) a lunar eclipse was visible from Jerusalem. The moon did turn to blood.

Sidebar: What Could Account for the Star of Bethlehem?

7 B.C.

• December 1: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction

6 B.C.

• April 17: Jupiter has its heliacal rising in Ares (a constellation associated with Judaea), with several other significant features in the sky
• May 27: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction
• October 6: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction

5 B.C.

• March: A comet in Capricorn

4 B.C.

• April: A comet or nova (which one is unclear) in Aquilea

3 B.C.

• August 12: Jupiter and Venus rise in the east, in conjunction with each other, in Leo, near Regulus
• September 11: The sun in mid-Virgo, with the moon at the feet of Virgo
• September 14: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus

2 B.C.

• February 17: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus
• May 8: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus
• June 17: Jupiter in conjunction with Venus

A perplexing story about Jesus in the Gospels is the account in which he curses a fig tree. It is found in Mark 11 and in Matthew 21.

The incident occurs when Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem for his final Passover. However, it is related differently in the two Gospels.

Mark 11 presents Jesus first as cursing the fig tree (11:12–14), then clearing the temple (11:15–19), and the next morning the fig tree is seen to have withered (11:20–25).

But in Matthew 21, Jesus first clears the temple (Matt. 21:12–13) and later curses the fig tree (Matt. 21:18–20), after which it immediately withers (Matt. 21:21–22).

What explains this difference in order? Matthew may have presented the material about the fig tree together because it deals with the same subject—the fig tree. This is in keeping with the way Matthew groups material topically.

Mark’s ordering of the events may be chronological. However, Mark also has a special way of ordering material, which scholars call the “Markan sandwich.” A sandwich occurs when Mark interrupts one story with another before returning to the first. This allows Mark to contrast the two stories so that they shed light on each other.

Scholars have proposed that this is what is happening in Mark’s accounts of the cursing and withering of the fig tree with the clearing of the temple interposed. In fact, this is one of the most famous Markan sandwiches. So Mark also may be ordering these events in a non-chronological way.

In the story, Jesus sees a fig tree in the distance. Mark notes that it is “in leaf” and that it is “not the season for figs.” This is consistent with the timing of Passover (late March or April).

Jesus then “went to see if he could find anything on it.” Why does he do that if it is not the season for figs? This seems strange.

“If, however, as Pliny the Elder noted in his Naturalis Historia (16.49), the fig tree stands out as a tree that produces fruit before leaves (cf. Mark 13:28 …), the presence of leaves makes intelligible to Mark’s readers why Jesus went to the tree in search of something to eat” (Craig Evans, Word Biblical Commentary on Mark 11:13).

There are several possibilities for what Jesus may have hoped to find on the tree, including unripe but edible figs; however, he finds nothing.

Jesus says to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” Why does Jesus say this to the tree? At first glance, it seems like an act of gratuitous malice.

Why should Jesus curse a tree—especially when it isn’t even the season for it to be bearing fruit? The Law of Moses even condemned the needless destruction of fruit trees (Deut. 20:19–20).

The fact that Jesus perfectly observed the Law (Matt. 5:17–18, Heb. 4:15) suggests that this does not constitute the needless destruction of a fruit tree. It has a purpose, and what happens next clarifies that purpose.

The party enters Jerusalem and goes to the temple. There, Jesus “began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.”

Note that in this passage and the previous one, we witness a similar phenomenon: apparently unprovoked anger on Jesus’ part. Just as Jesus lashed out at the fig tree, he lashes out at the people doing commerce and changing money in the temple. This connects the two events and provides a clue as to why Jesus cursed the fig tree.

The people Jesus drives out are those who bought and sold items relating to the functioning of the temple itself—specifically, to the animals that were offered there in sacrifice. Mark alludes to this when he speaks of “those who sold pigeons” (pigeons being one of the sacrificial animals).

The “money-changers” served the temple-goers in ancient Jerusalem, who needed to change the Roman currency that had pagan images—including emperors, some of whom were worshipped as gods—for money that could be used at the temple.

Jesus explains his actions by saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

The statement Jesus quotes is from Isaiah 56:7. Today we think of the Jerusalem temple as an exclusively Jewish institution, and the idea of it being used for prayer by Gentiles (“all the nations”) seems strange. However, Gentiles did pray there. They even had sacrifices offered for them by the Jewish priests. In fact, the stopping of the sacrifices for foreigners, including Caesar, was one of the precipitating events of the Jewish war of the A.D. 60s (Josephus, Jewish War 2:17:2[409–410]).

The outer court, the so-called “court of the Gentiles,” was very large, and it was apparently here that the sellers and money-changers set up shop. This space was meant for the use of the Gentiles to worship God, but instead unscrupulous merchants were using it. Thus Jesus quotes Jeremiah 7:11, asserting that they have made it “a den of robbers.” And “when evening came they went out of the city” and return to Bethany.

In the morning, as they return to the city, they see the fig tree has withered. Peter remembers the curse Jesus put on the tree and says, “Master, look! The fig tree which you cursed has withered.” This was evidently a surprising and impressive event for Peter.

Jesus tells them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.”

By pointing to the power of faith in God, he indicates the means by which the fig tree withered so quickly: Jesus had faith in God that it would happen, and it did.

Many earlier commentators have failed to appreciate the fact that the clearing of the temple occurs between Mark’s two halves of the fig tree narrative, suggesting that they did not see its relevance. However, given Markan sandwiches, we should be alert to elements connecting the two. There are a number to be found.

“The interrelation of the clearing of the temple (vv 15–19), and the cursing (vv 12–14) and withering (vv 20–21) of the fig tree, is established at several points. For one, all the material between Mark 11:1 and 13:37 is oriented around the temple; this is itself a cue that there is a relationship between the fig tree and temple. There is also a clear parallel between ‘his disciples were hearing’ (v 14) and ‘the chief priests and the scribes heard’ (v 18). Above all, the fig tree is often in the Old Testament a symbol for Israel, and more than once Israel is judged under this symbol, ‘There will be no figs on the tree, and their leaves will wither,’ said Jeremiah (8:13). In connection with this is the intriguing statement that ‘it was not the season for figs’ (v 13). This statement surely has less to do with horticulture than theology. The word for ‘season’ (kairos) is used at the opening of the Gospel, ‘ “The time (kairos) has come,” said Jesus, “the kingdom of God is near” ’ (1:14). Kairos means a special, critical moment. There is no fruit on the tree because its time has passed. The leafy fig tree, with all its promise of fruit, is as deceptive as the temple, which, with all its bustling activity, is really an outlaw’s hideout (v 17)” (James R. Edwards, “Markan Sandwiches: The Significance of Interpolations in Markan Narratives,” Novum Testamentum XXXI, 3 (1989), 207).

There is also the fact that, in both narratives, Jesus lashes out, first at the fig tree and then at those in the temple complex. This is perhaps the most direct parallel between the two narratives, and it provides the key to understanding them.

By cursing the fig tree, Jesus is enacting a physical parable of what will happen to the temple. The time when the fig tree produced fruit is passed. In the same way, whatever fruit the temple may have borne in the past, at the time of Jesus it is corrupt and has become a “den of robbers.”

Thus, just as no one will eat fruit from the fig tree in the future, the time of the temple itself is passing. Jesus makes this explicit later by prophesying its physical destruction (13:1–2).

The fact that Jesus uses the fig tree as a parable of the temple sheds light on why he cursed the tree even though it was not the season for figs. Only a tree without fruit is suitable for this physical parable. Thus he seeks to see if it offers anything edible. It does not, and so instead he uses the occasion to enact the parable.

Interested in hearing more about the Gospel of Mark? Check out Jimmy Akin’s full-length commentary on Logos/Verbum Bible software!