Category: Bible History

Mysteries of the Magi

‘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

The Woman Caught in Adultery

The two longest passages in the New Testament that have questionable origins are the longer ending of Mark (16:9-20) and the section on the adulteress in John’s Gospel (7:53-8:11). Interestingly, both passages are twelve verses long.

We’ve already discussed the longer ending of Mark, and here we take up the story of the adulteress.

In scholarly circles, it is known as the Pericope Adulterae (from Greek and Latin roots, meaning “the section on the adulteress”; note that pericope is pronounced per-IH-kuh-PEE).

In the story, a woman caught in the act of adultery is brought before Jesus, and his opponents test him by asking what should be done with her. The Mosaic Law prescribed death for such offenses (Lev. 20:10, Deut. 22:22), but Jesus says, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” The opponents then disperse, and afterward Jesus tells the woman to go and sin no more.

It’s a vivid, memorable story, and many people know it today.

So why would anyone question it? The first reason is that it is not in many of the early manuscripts. The New Testament was written in Greek, but the pericope is not found in any surviving manuscripts before Codex Bezae, which dates to the A.D. 400s. This is significant, because John was one of the most popular Gospels in the early centuries—as evidenced by the surviving number of copies of it—and we would expect the pericope to be in other early copies if it was part of the original. The pericope also is missing from some early Latin, Syriac, and Coptic manuscripts.

The second reason the pericope is questioned is that it floats. That is, when it does appear, it’s found in different places. Sometimes it follows John 7:52, sometimes 7:36, sometimes  7:44, sometimes it’s tacked on at the end of John’s Gospel (after 21:25), and sometimes it’s at the end of Luke 21 (following 21:38). This reflects the behavior of scribes trying to fit it into the Gospels and being unsure where to place it.

The third reason is that none of the Greek commentators mention the passage before Euthymius Zigabenus, around A.D. 1118. Although this is an argument from silence, a silence of more than 1,000 years is striking and could suggest that most of these commentators were unfamiliar with the passage.

The fourth reason is that the style of the pericope differs from John’s Greek style. Experts indicate that it doesn’t sound like him. Instead, it sounds more like Luke’s Greek style. However, arguments from style are not particularly strong, and it’s always possible that an author is closely following an earlier source that had a different style.

For the above reasons, most contemporary scholars hold that the pericope was not originally part of John’s Gospel but was added to it at a later date. Consequently, many contemporary Bible translations put the pericope in brackets and have a footnote discussing the issue of its origin.

However, scholars also acknowledge that there is evidence that the story is ancient. The fact that the style is said to sound like Luke and that it is sometimes placed in Luke’s Gospel has led some to suggest that it may have actually been penned by Luke rather than John.

Further, the early second century writer Papias of Hierapolis—who was gathering his data at the end of the first century—may have mentioned the story. In the 300s, the historian Eusebius stated that Papias “has set forth another story about a woman who was accused before the Lord of many sins, which is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews” (Church History 3:39).

Some have thought that this may be a reference to the Pericope Adulterae, but this is not certain. While it could have appeared both in John (or Luke) and the Gospel of the Hebrews, if it was the same story, we’d expect Eusebius to refer to it as being found in one of the canonical Gospels. Further, the pericope involves a woman accused of one sin—an act of adultery that she was caught during—not a multitude of sins.

Still, it is possible that this is early evidence for the existence of the story, if not its placement in a canonical Gospel.

Of the arguments against the pericope’s originality to one of the canonical Gospels, the strongest is its absence in early Greek manuscripts. What could explain this?

One possibility is that—after John (or Luke) wrote the passage—an early, influential scribe left it out of his copy, and this affected the copies that followed. That would explain why later scribes weren’t sure where to reinsert it, and it would explain why Greek commentators didn’t mention the passage for so long. The only remaining argument is stylistic in nature, and we’ve mentioned that stylistic arguments tend to be inconclusive.

The major question would be why an early, influential scribe would omit the passage. While scribes do occasionally omit part of a sentence or a verse by accident, the omission of 12 full verses looks deliberate. So what would the reason be?

A key proposal is that it has to do with the subject that the pericope involves: the forgiveness of adultery.

Adultery was regarded as a particularly heinous sin, and some early Christians believed that a person could be sacramentally forgiven of it only once after baptism. Others believed that it required a very lengthy period of penance before reconciliation. And some thought that it could not be forgiven at all.

Around A.D. 220, Tertullian of Carthage was of this view. “Such [sins] are incapable of pardon—murder, idolatry, fraud, apostasy, blasphemy; of course, too, adultery and fornication” (On Modesty 19).

Around 251, St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote that “among our predecessors, some of the bishops here in our province thought that peace was not to be granted to adulterers, and wholly closed the gate of repentance against adultery” (Letter 51:21).

Given the early stage of doctrinal development, the Pericope Adulterae—in which Jesus simply says to the adulteress, “Has no one condemned you? . . . Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again”—could seem shocking and in conflict with what they otherwise believed about forgiving adultery.

Consequently, there could be a motive for early, influential scribes to remove the passage—presumably thinking it had been added by an earlier scribe who was lax on the issue of adultery.

The nature of the passage may also have made some commentators reluctant to discuss it for the same reason.

If the Pericope Adulterae was not originally in one of the Gospels, what is its status as part of the Bible?

A footnote in the New American Bible: Revised Edition states, “The Catholic Church accepts this passage as canonical scripture.”

The basis for this statement is that the Council of Trent infallibly defined that the books of the Catholic canon are “sacred and canonical, these same books entire with all their parts” (Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures).

This affirmation is most clearly directed against the views of Protestants who wanted to consider the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel and Esther to be non-inspired.

There was some discussion at the council of the Pericope Adulterae, but the fact that the final decree does not make it clear which “parts” of biblical books it has in mind—beyond those of Daniel and Esther—could be seen as leaving the matter not fully settled.

However, even if the passage was not original to the Gospels, it still may have been written in the apostolic age and could count as inspired scripture.

And even if this were not the case, the passage teaches nothing contrary to the Christian faith. Early authors who were skeptical of forgiveness for adultery were mistaken, and this passage provides a dramatic, memorable illustration of a truth of the faith:

There is no offense, however serious, that the Church cannot forgive. There is no one, however wicked and guilty, who may not confidently hope for forgiveness, provided his repentance is honest. Christ who died for all men desires that in his Church the gates of forgiveness should always be open to anyone who turns away from sin (CCC 982).

Death Dynasty: Who were the Herods, and what do we know about them?

Jesus Christ was the king of the Jews, but he wasn’t the only person of his day to have that title.

In fact, according to the Romans, the legitimate king of the Jews was Herod the Great. This Herod was on the throne when Jesus was born, and he tried to kill Jesus as an infant, but he is not the only Herod in the Bible. We continue to read about Herod’s descendants in the Gospels and in Acts.

Who were these people, and what do we know about them?

This is the story of the Herods—Judaea’s outrageous ruling family.

Family origins

Herod the Great’s ancestors were not Jews. They were from Idumea, or Edom, as it is called in the Old Testament. This is a land south of the Dead Sea, whose inhabitants were reckoned as descendants of Jacob’s brother, Esau (cf. Gen. 25:19-34).

A little before 100 B.C., the Maccabean leader John Hyrcanus conquered Idumea and forced the inhabitants to be circumcised and convert to Judaism if they wanted to stay in their land (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 13:9:1).That included a family that rose to prominence in Jewish society and eventually became the Herodian dynasty.

The Herods were thus Jewish by religion but Edomite by ancestry, a point that bred resentment among their Jewish subjects.

Birth of a dynasty

The man responsible for Herod’s rise was his father, Antipas the Idumean.

Antipas had become a key advisor to the Hasmonean rulers of Israel, whom he played against each other in order to gain influence for himself. He also courted favor with neighboring peoples, and—more significantly—he courted the favor of the Romans.

When Julius Caesar was fighting in nearby Alexandria, Egypt, Antipas took troops there and defended Caesar, who made him a governor. Antipas then used this position to usurp the place of the Hasmonean dynasty, which had ruled Israel since the time of the Maccabees.

Needless to say, Antipas made lots of enemies, and eventually one of them poisoned him.

The rise of Herod the Great

When Herod was a young man, his father appointed him governor of Galilee and his brother, Phasael, governor of Jerusalem.

Herod quickly endeared himself to the Romans by capturing and executing a band of brigands who were preying on his territory. This did not endear him to the Jewish authorities, in part because only the Sanhedrin was allowed to issue death sentences at that time.

The Sanhedrin summoned young Herod before it, but instead of appearing in the customary black clothing, he strode into its chamber wearing purple, with a group of bodyguards ready to defend him, and carrying a letter of protection from the governor of Syria.

Overawed, the council was afraid to do anything against Herod. The president of the tribunal, Shemaiah, warned the others that they would regret their failure to take action against Herod.

And they did.

Herod the king

Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of Roman senators in 44 B.C., leading to a period of civil war. Full stability was not restored until Augustus Caesar became emperor in 27 B.C.

Herod exploited the period of instability to his own advantage, switching allegiance as needed to promote his own interests. At one point, Herod was forced to flee Judaea by the last of the Hasmonean kings, Antigonus, who had been proclaimed king and high priest by the Parthians.

Herod ended up in Rome, where the future Augustus and his rival Mark Antony pleaded Herod’s case before the Senate. The body then proclaimed him king of the Jews.

He returned to Judaea and took possession of his kingdom by conquering it with the help of the Romans. Antigonus, the last king of the Maccabean line, was executed, and the Herodian dynasty began.

Herod the builder

In some respects, Herod proved an able ruler. During his reign, his kingdom prospered economically, which allowed him to raise the money needed to conduct an extensive series of building projects.

Constructing large and important public works was one of the ways ancient rulers made a name and—literally—built a legacy for themselves. Herod outdid many others in this respect, which is one reason he is styled “the great.”

He even conducted building projects in foreign lands, to build his reputation abroad, but of course most of his building was done in Palestine. This included as series of lavish palaces for himself, but he also had built many facilities for public use, including Hellenistic innovations like public baths, gymnasia, and racetracks.

To show his loyalty to his Roman patrons, Herod named many of the things he built after them. This included the Antonia Fortress in Jerusalem (named for Mark Antony), the Samaritan city Sebaste (for Augustus’s Greek name), and the coastal city of Caesarea Maritima (again for Caesar Augustus). The name of Augustus’s long-time colleague, Agrippa, was even inscribed on one of the gates of the Jerusalem temple.

The temple

Herod initiated a massive campaign to expand and beautify the Jerusalem temple, which was to be the most important of all Herod’s building projects.  This project, carried out on Judaism’s holiest site and expected to last for centuries, was meant to ensure Herod’s immortality.

The results were impressive. According to the Babylonian Talmud, there was a popular saying: “He who has not seen the temple of Herod has never seen a beautiful building” (Baba Batra 4a). One of Jesus’ own disciples exclaimed: “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” (Mark 13:1).

But Jesus himself stated: “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (v. 2). Far from becoming an immortal monument to the memory of Herod, the Jerusalem temple was swiftly destroyed.

Herod the paranoid tyrant

As Herod’s reign progressed, he became increasingly paranoid and unstable. There were indeed plots against him, and those around him manipulated his fears to their own advantage, leading him to lash out violently, including against members of his own family.

Herod had a large number of people executed or assassinated, including members of his broader family and even some of his own wives and sons.

One of Herod’s main wives was named Mariamne, and she was of Hasmonean origin. Herod married her, at least in part, to cement ties with the nation’s former ruling family, even as his own family was displacing it.

Herod professed to love Mariamne so much that, on more than one occasion, he gave orders for her to be killed when he himself died, so that he might not be separated from her in death. She, however, became convinced that he did not really love her, and relations between them turned frosty. Eventually, Herod’s sister convinced him that Mariamne was planning to poison him, and she was executed.

Herod’s own sons fared little better. Two of Mariamne’s sons—Alexander and Aristobulus—had fractious relations with their father, who suspected them of plotting against him. Eventually, he brought them up on charges of treason before Augustus Caesar, who allowed Herod to convene a court to try them.

The court found them guilty, and they were put to death by strangulation.

They weren’t the last of Herod’s sons to be killed. Herod’s firstborn son—Antipater, born of Herod’s first wife, Doris—for many years was favored by Herod and heir to his throne. But he, too, was eventually brought up on charges of plotting against his father.

He was executed just five days before Herod’s own death.

In view of such executions, the emperor Augustus reportedly quipped, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than son” (Macrobius, Saturnalia, 2:4:11)—the joke being that, since Herod was a Jew, he didn’t eat pork and his pig would be safe.

Slaughter of the innocents

Against this background, it is easy to understand the account of Herod the Great in the Gospels.

The magi came from the east, seeking the newly born king of the Jews. It was natural to seek such an infant in the court of the current king—Herod—and so they appeared, asking, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” (Matt. 2:2).

Since Herod killed three of his own sons for plotting against him, you can imagine how this would have set off alarm bells for him. The people of Jerusalem, knowing Herod’s fears about usurpers, would have been alarmed as well, and so they were: “When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matt. 2:3).

Herod manipulated the magi into finding the child for him, but when they failed to report back, he flew into a rage: “Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed 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” (Matt. 2:16).

Sometimes it is objected that we do not have an independent record of this event, but even absent that, the event is entirely in keeping with what we know of Herod’s character and how he responded to perceived threats to his throne.

Herod’s death

Herod survived all the perceived plots against him and died, apparently, of natural causes. What those causes were, however, is not entirely clear. He was felled by a mysterious disease that has proved difficult for modern medical experts to diagnose.

According to Josephus, “There was a gentle fever upon him, and an intolerable itching over all the surface of his body, and continual pains in his colon, and dropsical tumors about his feet and an inflammation of the abdomen—and a putrefaction of his privy member, that produced worms. Besides which he had a difficulty of breathing upon him, and could not breathe but when he sat upright, and had a convulsion of all his members” (War, 1:33:5).

Modern specialists have proposed a wide range of diagnoses for these maladies. One recent suggestion is kidney failure coupled with gangrene in the genitals.

Herod sought various forms of treatment before he died. Needless to say, many of his subjects viewed his death as a judgment from God and rejoiced at Herod’s fall.

The tyrant knew there would be rejoicing at his death, and to prevent that from happening, near his death he had many of the most eminent men in the land locked up in a hippodrome (a stadium for horse races) with orders that they be killed as soon as he died, so that every family would mourn upon his passing.

Fortunately, his orders were not carried out.

The next generation

Although Herod had killed several of his sons, he did not have all of them executed, and the survivors became the next generation of leaders in Judaea. It was not a smooth transition.

Three of Herod’s sons—Archelaus, Antipas, and Philip—ended up inheriting significant portions of his kingdom. Until shortly before his death, Herod’s will named Antipas as his principal successor, but in the end he changed his will in favor of Archelaus.

This set up a dispute among family members, with some favoring Archelaus, others favoring Antipas, and still others favoring the idea of direct Roman rule over Palestine.

The matter was ultimately settled by the Emperor Augustus, when the three brothers traveled to him for his decision. This trip forms part of the background to Jesus’ parable of the talents, in which “a nobleman went into a far country to receive kingly power and then return” (Luke 19:11-27).

Ultimately, Augustus confirmed Archelaus as Herod’s principal successor. The territories of Judaea, Samaria, and the family homeland of Idumea thus went to Archelaus, the territories of Galilee and Perea went to Antipas, and the northeasterly part of Herod’s kingdom (Iturea and Trachonitis) went to Philip.

Collectively, these brothers—like other members of the family—are known as Herodians. Each of the three is also called by the name Herod (Herod Archelaus, Herod Antipas, Herod Philip), and each is mentioned in the New Testament.

Herod Archelaus

We meet Archelaus only briefly, when the Holy Family is returning from their flight to Egypt.

Matthew notes that St. Joseph “took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus reigned over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth” (2:21-23).

Had it not been for Archelaus obtaining Judea, Joseph might have taken the Holy Family back to Bethlehem, at least for a time. He went instead to Galilee, which was ruled by Antipas, perhaps indicating that he thought Antipas was a less dangerous ruler than Archelaus.

Archelaus had a poor reputation as a ruler. Even before Augustus had confirmed his position, Archelaus had 3,000 of his subjects massacred in the temple at Passover (which he then canceled). He made many enemies among his subjects, and eventually the Romans banished him to what is now France and assumed direct rule of his territory.

This is why, when Jesus is crucified, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate is in charge in Judea rather than one of the Herodians.

Herod Antipas

St. Joseph’s judgment that it would be better to live under Herod Antipas than Archelaus may be reflected in the fact that, when Jesus was an adult, Herod Antipas was still ruling Galilee. By comparison to his brother Archelaus, Antipas was a more stable and long-lasting ruler.

Because he ruled Galilee during Jesus’ ministry, Herod Antipas is the family member about whom we hear the most in the Gospels. Often he is referred to simply as “Herod.”

The Gospels portray him as a complex man. For a start, he had an unlawful marriage. At some point, he apparently stole Herodias, the wife of his brother Herod Philip. That put him in opposition to John the Baptist, who opposed the union (Mark 6:18), leading Herod to arrest John (Matt. 14:3).

Although he had John in custody, and although his wife hated John and wanted him dead, Herod Antipas served as John’s protector and had an unusual fascination with the fiery preacher: “Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and kept him safe. When he heard him, he was much perplexed; and yet he heard him gladly” (Mark 6:20).

Eventually, after her daughter, Salome, delighted Antipas with a special dance at his birthday party, Herodias was able to manipulate him into giving the order for John’s death (Mark 6:21-28).

This did not end Antipas’s fascination with John. When he began to hear reports about Jesus, he thought Jesus might be John risen from the dead (Mark 6:14), and he sought to see Jesus for himself (Luke 9:9).

There are also indications he sought to kill Jesus. At one point, some Pharisees seek to help Jesus by telling him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you” (Luke 13:31). In the end, Herod does get to see Jesus: During the Passion narrative, Pontius Pilate sends him to see Herod (Luke 23:6-12), and Herod mocks Jesus and sends him back (Luke 23:11).

Although Antipas lasted longer than his brother, Archelaus, he too ended up being exiled to France by the Romans after being accused of plotting against the Emperor Caligula.

Herod Philip

We know less about Herod Philip than we do his brothers. In fact, there is some confusion in the historical sources about him.

As the ruler of the most northeasterly part of Herod the Great’s territories, Philip does not enter very much into the Gospel accounts, as Jesus’ ministry was not based there.

He was the first husband of Herodias, before she married Herod Antipas (Mark 6:17). It appears that he was the father of her daughter, Salome, who performed the dance that led to John the Baptist’s death (Josephus, Antiquities 18:5:4).

Herod Agrippa I

Eventually, the generation of Herod the Great’s sons began to pass, and a new generation began to take their place.

The key figure in this generation was Herod Agrippa, one of the original Herod’s grandsons. He was named after the Roman statesman and general Marcus Agrippa, who was a friend of Herod the Great and a colleague of Augustus.

Herod Agrippa’s father was Aristobulus, one of the sons his grandfather had executed. Agrippa was educated in Rome and spent much time there. He was friends with the emperors Caligula and Claudius and played a pivotal role in helping stabilize Claudius in office after the dramatic assassination of Caligula by his own guards.

A roguish and flamboyant figure, Herod Agrippa was sometimes down on his luck, but ultimately he rose to prominence, being given the title “king” and also territories that ultimately became larger than those of Herod the Great. He was a popular ruler and, in his own day, was referred to as “Agrippa the Great” (Josephus, Antiquities 17:2:2).

We meet him in Acts 12, where he has James the son of Zebedee put to death (12:1-2) and attempts to have Peter killed as well (12:3-19).

Agrippa met his end when, at a public meeting with a delegation from Tyre and Sidon, he was acclaimed as a god and did not rebuke the flattery. He was immediately struck with a violent illness and died five days later (Acts 12:20-23; Antiquities 19:8:2).

Agrippa II—Last of the Herods

The Herodian dynasty lasted one more generation in Judaea. Its principal figure was the son of Herod Agrippa, who also bore his father’s name.

He is referred to in Acts simply as “Agrippa,” and we meet him when he and his sister, Berenice, pay a welcome visit to the Roman governor Festus, who had St. Paul in custody (25:13 through 26:32).

Agrippa takes an interest in Paul’s case, and when a hearing is held in which Paul speaks to Festus, Agrippa, and Berenice, he takes the opportunity to evangelize, and Agrippa responds: “In a short time you think to make me a Christian!” Paul replies with the comedic line that he wishes all men would become as he is—“except for these chains” (26:28-29).

After Paul was sent to Rome, Agrippa and Berenice went on to play a major role in trying to prevent the Jewish War that broke out in A.D. 66 and led to the destruction of the Herod the Great’s temple in A.D. 70.

Part of Agrippa’s own territories revolted, and he fought alongside the Roman forces to put down the rebellion. Ultimately, they succeeded, and Agrippa was rewarded for his loyalty to Rome.

Little is heard of him after that and he, together with the Herodian dynasty, vanishes into history.

The Resurrection in Mark

You sometimes hear skeptics casting doubt on the Christian message by saying that Mark—the earliest of the Gospels—doesn’t even have the resurrection of Jesus in it.

What are they talking about? Mark 16:9 reads, “Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.” That’s certainly a mention of the Resurrection, isn’t it?

The issue is that most scholars have concluded that the final twelve verses of Mark (16:9-20) were not part of the original Gospel.

The reasons for thinking this include: (a) the evidence for the Longer Ending weakens the farther back you go in the history of manuscripts; (b) the manuscripts actually contain at least five different endings for Mark; (c) the style of the Longer Ending seems different than the rest of Mark; (d) the content of the Longer Ending is made up primarily of references to things we know about from elsewhere in the New Testament, making it seem to be reconstructed from other sources; and (e) since the risen Jesus has not appeared to anyone by v. 8, it is easy to see how later Christians would want this deficit to be supplied and a new, supplemental ending composed that contained post-Resurrection appearances.

I agree that the evidence suggests that the Longer Ending was not in the original, but this doesn’t really do anything to cast doubt on the Resurrection. The earlier, undisputed text of Mark shows Jesus repeatedly predicting his rising from the dead (8:31, 9:30-31, 10:33-34, 14:28).

Further, immediately before the undisputed text breaks off, an angel has told the women, “Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. He has been raised, he is not here! See the place where they laid him! But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you” (16:6-7).

It is thus clear that Mark firmly believed in the Resurrection of Jesus, so the absence of an explicit resurrection appearance in the undisputed text of Mark does not provide evidence that the Resurrection wasn’t part of the early Christian message.

You don’t have to narrate a resurrection appearance to believe and proclaim the event. Paul’s letter 1 Thessalonians is even earlier than Mark, and in it, Paul clearly preaches Jesus raised from the dead (1:10, 4:14), but he doesn’t narrate a resurrection appearance.

The claim that the Resurrection “isn’t in” Mark thus doesn’t do the work a skeptic would want. The absence of a resurrection appearance in the undisputed text of Mark is more of a historical curiosity than anything else.

But why would this be? There are two basic possibilities: (1) Mark stopped writing at verse 8 (“And [the women] went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid”) and (2) the original ending was lost at a very early stage.

On the first proposal, there is further scholarly division. Some think that Mark deliberately stopped writing there to end his Gospel on an unexpected, challenging note.

Jesus has already predicted his Resurrection many times, and the women have discovered the empty tomb and been told of the Resurrection, but they haven’t seen it. They are therefore faced with the choice of whether or not to believe. Will they overcome their fear and amazement at the idea of the Resurrection and go on to proclaim Jesus to others?

In the same way, Mark knows that his audience has been told of the Resurrection of Jesus, but they haven’t seen it. Will they overcome their trepidation and amazement at the idea and go on to proclaim Jesus to others? We can infer that the women did, and Mark implies that his audience should as well.

On the other hand, some who think that the original version of Mark stopped at v. 8 hold that he did not intend anything so dramatic or avant-garde. He was simply prevented from finishing his planned ending for some reason, and copies of the manuscript got made in its unfinished condition. Advocates of this view may appeal to the fact that Mark’s Gospel seems unpolished (particularly in Greek), as if it were a first draft.

Another possibility is that Mark stopped writing because he never intended his work to be a finished, polished Gospel. Instead, he meant it to be a collection of notes.

The ancients sometimes drew a distinction between two kinds of works. The first was an unpolished collection of material that didn’t have literary pretentions and was meant to serve basic informational needs. In Greek, these works were called collections of hypomnêmata, and in Latin they were called comentarii. Both of these terms meant, roughly, “notes,” “memoranda,” “things to be remembered.”

Sometimes authors would publish books of this nature as reference works or textbooks, as the physician Galen did with some of his medical texts. Other times they would be published in this form for reasons of expediency and timeliness. Thus, Julius Caesar published his Gallic Wars in the form of commentarii.

Authors might prepare works like this as a prelude to more polished literary productions on the same subject. Sometimes one author would prepare hympomnêmata for use by another author. He might even sell it to the second author as the basis for the latter’s literary work. This is similar to how major authors today may use research assistants to prepare the material on which they will base their novels or nonfiction works.

When the time came to produce the literary work, an author would take the initial, unpolished one, put the material in proper literary order, supplement or trim it, and polish its style before publishing it as a new work. This is exactly what Luke and Matthew did, working with Mark as a base text.

On the other hand, scholars who hold the view that the original ending was lost need to explain how this happened. There are two questions here: (1) How, physically, did it happen? (2) When did it happen?

Regarding the first question, if Mark was originally written on a scroll, then the loss of the ending would be unlikely, since the end of a one-sided scroll tended to be the centermost portion of the roll, around which the rest of the roll was wound. It would thus be the part of the scroll most protected from accidental damage.

On the other hand, if it was a double-sided scroll (what was known as an opisthograph) then, if the ending was lost, the beginning should be lost as well, for they likely would have been on opposite sides of the same page. We see this phenomenon with many ancient manuscripts: If the end is lost, the beginning is, too.

If Mark was originally bound as a codex (a book with a spine), it would be easier to see how the last page of the book could be lost, but in Mark’s time codices were not yet common.

Regarding the second question, the destruction of the original ending must have happened very early. There would seem to be three possibilities: It was destroyed (1) at the time between when Mark finished writing and when the first copy was made, (2) after the first copy was made but before others, or (3) when only a few copies were in existence.

Here we encounter a paradox. If the ending was destroyed late—after multiple copies were in existence (i.e., option 3)—then the original one should have survived in the manuscript tradition, but it does not appear to have done so. On the other hand, if the ending was destroyed early—when only a draft or the first new copy existed (i.e., options 1 or 2)—then why didn’t Mark just replicate the original ending?

What is one to say about all this from a Catholic perspective? Is the current, longer ending divinely inspired?

The fact that it appears to have been written by someone other than Mark does not matter. Several books of Scripture have more than one author (e.g., some of Paul’s letters cite additional authors as having input, like Sylvanus and Timothy; see Phil. 1:1, 1 Thess. 1:1, 2 Thess. 1:1)

More of an issue is that the Longer Ending seems to have been composed in the second century, possibly placing it after the end of the apostolic age, when the writing of inspired Scripture ceased.

The Council of Trent infallibly defined that the books of the Catholic canon are “sacred and canonical, these same books entire with all their parts” (Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures). This affirmation is most clearly directed against the views of Protestants who wanted to consider the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel and Esther to be non-inspired.

However, there was apparently some discussion of the Longer Ending of Mark during the council, though it is not mentioned in the final decree.

A footnote on Mark 16:9–20 in the New American Bible: Revised Edition states the Longer Ending “has traditionally been accepted as a canonical part of the gospel and was defined as such by the Council of Trent.”

However, Benedict XVI seems to have had a different perspective, writing that, “The authentic text of the Gospel as it has come down to us ends with the fear and trembling of the women” (Jesus of Nazareth, 2:261).

Regardless of how one answers the question of whether Trent intended to define the Longer Ending as canonical, it is still very early, and it witnesses traditions about Jesus circulating in the early Church. Indeed, it is almost entirely composed of material paralleling traditions found in Matthew, Luke, John, and Acts.

Further, the undisputed text of the Gospel of Mark witnesses belief in the Resurrection multiple times, meaning that the Longer Ending does not give us any reason to doubt the early proclamation of the Resurrection.

Did Early Christians Believe in Dragons?

Today people are fascinated by cryptids—hidden creatures—like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. In the ancient world, the most famous cryptid was the dragon, so did early Christians believe in them?

The term dragon (Greek, drakôn) appears in the Greek Bible, but normally it is in a symbolic context—like when the devil appears in the form of a dragon in the book of Revelation (e.g., Rev. 12). So this doesn’t provide good evidence for belief in literal dragons.

However, the term also appears in other contexts. For example, in Daniel 14, the prophet Daniel kills a large drakôn that the Babylonians worshipped. However, in secular Greek, the term drakôn originally referred to a snake or serpent, and it did not always have monstrous connotations. This is clear in Wisdom 16:10, where the author refers back to the snakes that bit the Israelites in Numbers 21 and describes them as “venomous drakontôn.” The author of Daniel 14 may thus have expected readers to imagine a big snake, and some modern Bible translations like the Common English Bible use “snake” in the passage.

The Bible thus doesn’t provide a good basis for documenting belief in literal dragons. However, we do find some in the early Church who were open to the idea. St. Augustine writes:

As for dragons, which lack feet, they are said to take their rest in caves, and to soar up into the air. While these are not too easy to come across, this kind of animated creature is for all that definitely mentioned not only in our literature but also in that of the Gentiles (Literal Meaning of Genesis 3:9:13).

This passage may not mean what it suggests, however. You’ll note that Augustine says dragons have no feet—which would point to snakes—but that they fly. There were—indeed—references to flying snakes in ancient literature. Isaiah mentions them (14:29, 30:6), and so does the Greek historian Herodotus (Histories 2:75-76, 3:109). So Augustine is likely not referring to what we would think of as a dragon but to flying snakes. (Note: flying—or, technically, gliding—snakes do exist in some parts of Asia.)

The flying snakes that Herodotus referred to were small, but in another passage, Augustine envisions dragons that are very large:

Now dragons favor watery habitats. They emerge from caves and take to the air. They create major atmospheric disturbance, for dragons are very large creatures, the largest of all on earth. This is probably why the psalm began its consideration of earthly creatures with them (Expositions of the Psalms 148:9).

Augustine wasn’t alone in thinking about real, enormous dragons. Other Church Fathers did so also, and so did non-Christian thinkers.

The reason is obvious when you think about it. Although the term paleontology was only coined in 1822, humans have been running across fossils for as long as there have been humans. When they came across the bones of giant, monstrous animals, they correctly concluded that there used to be giant animals in the area.

In her book The First Fossil Hunters, historian Adrienne Mayor insightfully argues that it was the ancient discovery of fossils that formed the basis of the legends of dragons and similar creatures the world over.

St. Augustine himself reports finding a giant tooth on a beach, where the action of the waves presumably uncovered it:

Once, on the beach at Utica, I saw with my own eyes—and there were others to bear me witness—a human molar tooth so big that it could have been cut up, I think, into a hundred pieces each as big as one of our modern teeth. That tooth, however, I can well believe, was the tooth of a giant (City of God 15:9).

I’m not a Young Earth Creationist, but I have to agree with musician Buddy Davis’s fun children’s song D Is For Dinosaur:

When dinosaurs first roamed the earth, many years ago
People called them dragons (and just thought you’d like to know)
So dinosaurs and dragons are both the same thing
The only thing that’s different is we changed the dragon’s name

 

Judas Iscariot: Man of Mystery

Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus is perplexing in several ways, and Christian thinkers have sought to make sense of it.

The largest question is: Why did Judas perform the betrayal? What was his motive?

The Gospels give us some clues. One is that Satan was working on Judas (Luke 22:3, John 13:2, 27). However, this explains the action from a superhuman point of view and does not address why—on a human level—Judas would choose to betray Jesus.

A possible human motive may have been greed. John indicates that Judas was greedy and had previously committed theft to obtain money (John 12:5-6), and Matthew portrays Judas as telling the chief priests, “‘What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?’ And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him” (Matt. 26:15-16). Mark and Luke also mention a commitment to pay Judas (Mark 14:11, Luke 22:5).

This suggests at least that Judas wanted to be compensated for the deed, but that doesn’t mean it was his primary motive. Why would someone who had followed Jesus for three years suddenly decide to betray his master? Is the opportunity for some quick cash really a sufficient motive?

Many have thought that it is not, and they have proposed additional reasons. One is the idea that Judas was actually trying to help Jesus fulfill his messianic destiny by bringing him into contact with the Jewish authorities. This view would tend to rehabilitate Judas, as he thought he was doing a good thing.

In favor of such a view, Judas could be seen as not aware of the fact he’s betraying Jesus, for when Jesus predicts at the Last Supper that one of the Twelve will betray him, Judas—along with the others—asks, “Is it I, Master?” (Matt. 26:25; cf. 26:22). Also, “when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood’” (Matt. 27:3-4). So maybe Judas just meant to put Jesus in contact with the chief priests and didn’t realize they would condemn him.

Against this view is the fact that Judas “had given them a sign, saying, ‘The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him and lead him away safely’” (Mark 14:44). The use of a covert sign—as opposed to making a simple introduction—and the instruction to seize Jesus indicates consciousness of betrayal.

However, another messianic motive is possible. No doubt, Judas—like the other disciples—expected Jesus to be a political Messiah who would kick out the Romans and restore national sovereignty to Israel (cf. John 6:15, 11:48-50; Acts 1:6). However, Jesus did not intend to be this type of Messiah. Perhaps Judas disagreed, and by forcing him into a confrontation with the chief priests, Judas was hoping to force him back onto what he regarded as the proper path for the Messiah—only to see Jesus condemned instead.

Another possible motive is anger and resentment. It is clear from various passages in the New Testament that some disciples (Peter, James, John, and Andrew) were closer to Jesus than others, and Judas is always listed last among the Twelve (Matt. 10:1-4, Mark 3:13-19, Luke 6:12-16). Perhaps Judas’s lower status had come to grate on him after three years, and—under the influence of Satanically inspired envy and resentment—he decided to prove that he was a person of importance after all.

What we can say with confidence is that on the superhuman level Satan was involved and on the human level greed was involved, but beyond that, all we can do is speculate.

Whatever Judas’s exact motive, a careful reading of the Gospels reveals that the betrayal involved an intricate, time-sensitive plan.

“It was now two days before the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth, and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult of the people’” (Mark 14:1-2).

Given the Jewish way of reckoning time, and the fact Passover began at sundown on Thursday, “two days before the Passover” points to sometime during the daytime on Wednesday.

The Jewish authorities thus had a window of opportunity to arrest Jesus between Wednesday and Thursday. Beginning Friday morning, the feast of Unleavened Bread would be in full swing, and Jesus could be expected to be with the crowds during the daytime in the week-long festival.

It apparently was on this Wednesday that Judas went to the chief priests and agreed to betray him, so he “sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of the multitude” (Luke 22:6). Since Judas was now serving as their spy, the Wednesday of Holy Week is often called Spy Wednesday.

Jesus being away from the crowds was important. Jesus noted that they could have arrested him any day they wanted as he taught in the temple (Matt. 26:55, Mark 14:49, Luke 22:53). By waiting until he was in a private setting, they could avoid the people rioting.

Judas did not find an opportunity to betray Jesus Wednesday night or Thursday during the daytime when Jesus was with the crowds. The next opportunity would be when he was alone with the disciples on Thursday night at the Passover meal, which would be in private.

However, there was a new complication. Jesus kept the location of the Passover meal secret until the last moment, forcing the disciples to ask, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” (Mark 14:16).

Instead of simply telling them the location, Jesus sent two of the disciples (Luke reveals it was Peter and John; Luke 22:8) to look for a man unusually carrying a water jar, which was normally women’s work. They were then to follow this man back to a house, and there the householder would have a room prepared for them to eat the Passover meal (Mark 14:13-15).

The apparent purpose of this subterfuge was to keep the Twelve—including Judas—from knowing the location of the meal until the last moment. That way, Judas could not bring the authorities there to arrest Jesus, for he greatly desired to eat this Passover with his disciples (Luke 22:15).

At the Last Supper, Jesus announced that one of the Twelve would betray him, prompting the disciples to ask who it would be.

Jesus indicated it would be someone who dipped food in the same dish as him, which would make it obvious to anyone who was in-the-know that Judas would be the betrayer. But John’s Gospel indicates that this was a rather restricted audience. It may have only been Peter and the beloved disciple who knew.

“One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus’ side, so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, ‘Lord, who is it?’ Jesus answered, ‘It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.’ So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’ Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, ‘Buy what we need for the feast,’ or that he should give something to the poor” (John 13:23-29) since giving to the poor was a custom on the first night of Passover.

By this point, Judas had learned what he needed to know to betray Jesus, for he had learned their plans for the remainder of the evening.

Jesus “went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples” (John 18:1-2).

Judas thus brought a band of soldiers and officers from the Jewish authorities to arrest him.

It was at this point that Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Even though Jesus was a public figure, the guards might not know him by sight.

Also, it was dark, and they would be viewing the scene in the garden by torchlight. Even Judas himself might not recognize Jesus until getting up close to him.

By arranging the kiss, Judas apparently wanted a degree of protection. If he suddenly yelled, “This is Jesus! Grab him!” that would make it obvious to everyone that Judas had betrayed him. A melee might ensue, and Judas might be injured or killed by one of the other disciples.

But by coming up and giving the ordinary greeting gesture of a kiss, it would make the act of betrayal non-obvious. From Judas’s perspective, he might get away scot-free, with nobody realizing what he had done.

However, Jesus knew what Judas was up to. “Jesus said to him, “Judas, would you betray the Son of man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48).

From Jesus’ perspective—as tragic as it was—everything was proceeding according to plan.

Why Did Jesus Curse the Fig Tree?

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!

Christmas Myths

Every year at Christmastime, you hear people trying to debunk aspects of the holiday and the biblical accounts behind it.

One of the most common allegations is that Christmas is based on a pagan holiday, and so it is really “pagan” in origin.

Not only is this particular claim made by secularists who don’t like Christianity in general, it’s also made by some in the Protestant community. Before I was Catholic, some members of my Protestant congregation didn’t celebrate Christmas because of its “unbiblical,” pagan origins.

Other allegations charge the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth with contradictions, and almost every aspect of the Christmas story and the Christmas celebration has been challenged.

So let’s take an objective look and see what the historical evidence has to say.

 

Not a Matter of Faith

First, we should point out that Jesus being born on December 25th is not a matter of faith.

Those who delight in saying that he wasn’t sometimes seem to take pleasure in the idea that they’re somehow undermining Christianity, but they’re not.

The Church may celebrate Jesus’ birth on this day, but it’s not a matter of Catholic doctrine. It’s not a teaching of the Faith but a matter of custom.

In fact, as we’ll see, there were a number of dates for Jesus’ birth proposed in the early Church, and it is still celebrated on other days in some parts of the Christian world.

For example, some Eastern Christians celebrate Christmas on January 6th.

 

December 25th?

One of the most commonly repeated claims is that Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th, and that this date was chosen to subvert a pagan holiday.

Further, it’s claimed that Jesus couldn’t have been born on this date because the Gospel of Luke reports that shepherds were out tending their flocks on the night Jesus was born (2:8). It would have been too cold for that in December, so Jesus must have been born in a warmer time of year.

This latter claim is absolute nonsense. First, winters are quite mild in Israel. Bethlehem is just six miles from Jerusalem, and the temperature in Jerusalem on December 25th ranges from an average of 55 degrees in the day to 43 degrees at night. It’s still well above freezing, even in the coldest part of the night.

Second, sheep do just fine in the cold. That’s why they’re covered in wool! As a species, sheep grew up outdoors, and they haven’t lost their cold resistance due to domestication. (If anything, humans have bred them to have even thicker wool.)

If you google “winter sheep care,” you’ll find websites advising you not to keep your sheep indoors all day (they will go crazy if they’re locked up all the time) and not to be afraid of having them outside (they’re covered in warm, water-resistant wool). You’ll also find lots of pictures of domesticated sheep casually strolling around in the snow.

Another charge I’ve seen is that Jesus couldn’t have been born in December because the shepherds had lambs in their flocks, but lambing season is in the springtime.

There are multiple problems with this. First, while some breeds of sheep lamb in the spring, other sheep breed all year round and do not have a consistent lambing season.

Second, at least in English, a sheep is still considered a lamb until it is one year old, meaning lambs could be present any time of the year, even for breeds that have a lambing season.

Thirdly, and most importantly, Luke nowhere mentions lambs. They’re just not in the text. This idea is simply a product of people’s imaginations.

Finally, the shepherds around Bethlehem do keep sheep outdoors, even on December 25th. “William Hendricksen quotes a letter dated Jan. 16, 1967, received from New Testament scholar Harry Mulder, then teaching in Beirut, in which the latter tells of being in Shepherd Field at Bethlehem on the just-passed Christmas Eve, and says: ‘Right near us a few flocks of sheep were nestled. Even the lambs were not lacking. . . . It is therefore definitely not impossible that the Lord Jesus was born in December’” (Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed., §569).

 

A Pagan Holiday?

What about the claim that the celebration of Christmas on December 25th is based on a pagan holiday?

My first reaction to this charge would be, “Well, supposing that’s true, so what?”

In the face of a popular holiday that people find objectionable, it is common to create an alternative, wholesome celebration.

For example, some Protestant churches hold “Reformation Day” or “harvest festival” celebrations as alternatives to Halloween, and some Catholics have their children dress up as saints rather than ghosts and monsters.

If early Christians decided to place the celebration of Christ’s birth in opposition to a popular pagan holiday as a way of subverting it and giving Christians an alternative, wholesome thing to celebrate, then that would be a good thing.

Subverting paganism is good, and so is providing wholesome alternatives.

Further, if Christmas was timed to oppose a pagan holiday, that would not mean that Christmas is “really” pagan. It would mean that Christmas is really anti-pagan.

When a Protestant church celebrates Reformation Day to commemorate the publication of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses on October 31, 1517, they are not “really” celebrating ghosts and monsters. They’re really celebrating the Reformation; they’re just doing it in opposition to a pop culture ghosts-and-monsters festival.

The same thing goes for those who celebrate harvest festivals. What they’re “really” celebrating is the harvest season—as an alternative to celebrating the pop culture version of Halloween.

In the same way, if Christians timed Christmas to compete with a pagan holiday, they weren’t celebrating a pagan deity. They were celebrating Christ’s birth! And by competing with a pagan holiday, they would be doing something anti-pagan.

So Christmas is just not pagan, no matter what pagans were doing on December 25th.

 

Which Pagan Holiday?

If Christmas was timed to compete with a pagan holiday, which would it have been?

Some sources try to link it with the Roman holiday Saturnalia, which was a festival in honor of the god Saturn.

For Saturnalia people would shut their businesses, wear festive clothing, have a banquet, get drunk, gamble, reverse roles (such as having masters serve slaves), give each other gifts (often inexpensive gag gifts), and elect a mock “king of Saturnalia” to preside over the festivities.

But there is a major problem claiming that Christmas is an alternative to Saturnalia. This Roman festival was originally celebrated on December 17, though by the time of the Republic it extended through December 23.

Christmas wasn’t held until after Saturnalia was over, making it a poor alternative. To be a true alternative, it would need to be taking place at the same time.

 

Sol Invictus?

Many sources link Christmas with a different holiday—the birth of Sol Invictus—that is, the sun god Sol, who was nicknamed Invictus or “the Unconquerable.” This was celebrated on December 25th.

The first thing to say is that we have no early Christian sources saying, “We decided to celebrate Christmas on December 25th in order to compete with Sol Invictus.” That means that the idea is sheer speculation, not something that we have evidence for.

It’s not even particularly good speculation, because the only thing the two celebrations have in common is the date December 25th, but just because two things happen at the same time doesn’t mean one is based on the other.

For Christians to want to compete with Sol Invictus, the latter holiday would have to be something worth competing with.

That might be the case if Sol Invictus was a major Roman god, if the December 25th celebration was a popular one, and if it was longstanding and deeply entrenched in Roman culture—thus creating social pressure for Christians to find an alternative to it.

But none of those things are true. In the first place, Sol Invictus was not a major Roman deity. The Sol wasn’t even the most popular solar deity (that would be Apollo), and scholars today don’t know a great deal about the worship of Sol because the Romans didn’t talk about him that much. He simply wasn’t that important.

Furthermore, December 25th wasn’t a major festival of the god Sol. It was a single-day celebration, but Sol had multi-day celebrations in August and October.

Neither was December 25th a longstanding festival of Sol. His oldest celebration was in August, and we have no evidence of December 25th being celebrated as the birth of Sol Invictus before A.D. 274. In fact, some scholars have argued that the celebration was instituted by the Emperor Aurelian when he dedicated a temple to Sol in that year.

Sol Invictus thus appears to be a recent holiday. It was one of Sol’s lesser holidays. And Sol was not a major deity. Christians would not have felt the need to compete with it by placing Jesus’ birth on it.

 

Christmas First?

If it is correct that Sol Invictus was not instituted until A.D. 274, then we have evidence that the timing of Christmas could not have been based on it.

The reason is that we know Christians were already celebrating on December 25th at this time.

Around A.D. 204, St. Hippolytus of Rome wrote a commentary on the book of Daniel, and in it he states: “For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th” (Commentary on Daniel 4:23:3).

We also have an ancient statue of Hippolytus—rediscovered in 1551—that has inscriptions of calendrical calculations, and this also mentions Christ’s birth as being on December 25th.

These pieces of evidence indicate that some Christians were already commemorating Christ’s birth decades before the institution of Sol Invictus.

Could the causal arrow be pointing the other way, then? Could Romans have based Sol Invictus on the date of Christmas?

 

Why December 25th?

Probably not. There was another, every obvious reason why Romans would dedicate a temple to Sol or celebrate his birth on December 25th—it was the day of the winter solstice.

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, after which the days begin growing longer, and that makes it an important day for worshippers of the sun all over the world. The same would have been true for the Romans.

Technically, because the Julian calendar is slightly off in reckoning the length of the year, the astronomical winter solstice had drifted slightly from December 25th, but the latter date was the conventionally recognized date by tradition, so it was the ritually important one in Rome.

What about Christians? Could the fact that December 25th was the winter solstice have played a role in their celebrating it as Jesus’ birth?

Malachi 4:2 says that for those who fear God, “the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings,” and early Christian authors saw this as a symbol of Jesus Christ.

One might thus speculate that, understanding Jesus as “the sun of righteousness,” they chose to place his birthday on the winter solstice for the same reason Romans did.

However, another view has been proposed in scholarly circles.

 

The Calculation Theory

The easiest date in Jesus’ life to calculate is actually the date of his death, because the Crucifixion occurred on a Friday in conjunction with Passover.

Scholars have calculated that the most likely date for it is April 3, A.D. 33, though some have argued for April 7, A.D. 30.

However, in the ancient world, many early Christian sources reckoned that it was March 25th.

One reason for this is clear: Just as December 25th was the winter solstice, March 25th—3 months later—was the spring equinox, and the timing of Passover was determined by the spring equinox.

Even if you didn’t have other knowledge to calculate with besides Jesus being crucified at Passover, it would be easy for ancients to conclude he died around March 25th, and that became the standard date.

Easter was a much more important holiday for early Christians than Christmas, and so many scholars have proposed that it was actually the date of Jesus’ death that was used to calculate the date of his birth.

How would they have done that?

 

Integral Age Theory?

We have evidence that—at least in certain periods of history—various Jewish and Christian sources held to what is sometimes called the “integral age” theory.

This is the belief that important figures like prophets and saints lived “perfect” lives—perfect in the sense of being made of complete years.

If you were such a figure, you would die on the same date that you were born on, so you lived to be exactly so many years old, with no overage or underage.

For integral age advocates, Jesus would have been born—or perhaps conceived—on the same day that he died.

This may well be why we celebrate March 25th as the Annunciation, which is commonly taken to be not only when Gabriel appeared to Mary but also the date of Jesus’ conception.

Add 9 months to March 25th, and what do you get? December 25th.

Some scholars have thus proposed that the date of Christmas was calculated from what was regarded as the day of Jesus’ death.

 

The Tradition Theory

It should be pointed out that the calculation theory is speculative, and it depends on a number of unprovable assumptions.

Just like we don’t have Christian records saying, “We set Christmas on December 25th to compete with a pagan holiday,” we also don’t have ones that say, “We calculated the date of Christmas using the date of Christ’s death.”

Further, we don’t have evidence of Christians holding to the integral age theory before the celebration of December 25th started—only afterwards. And one would have to reckon Christ’s integral age not from birth but from conception.

The calculation theory is possible, but so is another view—that early Christians simply had a tradition that this was the day on which Jesus was born.

If so, it was not the only tradition. From the late second century, we have other dates that were proposed as well, including January 6 and 10, April 19 and 20, May 20, and November 18.

The two dates that attracted the most support, though, were December 25th and January 6th, which was another date sometimes reckoned as the winter solstice, and both went on to be celebrated as Christmas in different parts of the world. (Note that January 6th is still celebrated as the feast of the Epiphany, or visit of the Magi, on the Roman calendar.)

We thus do not have a definitive way of establishing the day on which Christ was born.

However, what we can say is that it certainly could have been December 25th (the sheep do not rule that out), that we have early Christian sources supporting this date, and that it was definitely not based on a pagan holiday.

The early Christians who support December 25th do so because that is when they sincerely believed Christ was born.

 

Looking at the Gospels

While the calendar date of Jesus’ birth is something that we cannot know definitively, the Gospels present us with solid information about Jesus’ birth.

Matthew and Luke inform us that it took place in Bethlehem, and Luke states that, when the time came, Mary “gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (2:7).

This statement has given rise to popular images of the birth, such as Christmas cards depicting Jesus being born in a barn (because of the manger) and Joseph and Mary being turned away from the ancient equivalent of motels (because of the mention of the inn)—often in a cold, snowy environment.

However, all of these images are probably wrong.

As we mentioned earlier, the average temperature in the Jerusalem area on December 25th is well above freezing, and so although snow is possible, it is unlikely.

Further, the Greek term that is translated “inn” is kataluma, and it refers to a place where people live. It’s a general term that can refer to any such place and does not mean an inn, specifically.

There is a more definite term for inn—pandocheion—and Luke uses that term in the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:34).

What most people don’t know is that a kataluma could refer to a place where people stayed within a home—a living room or guest room. Thus the “upper room” where Jesus eats the Last Supper is referred to as a kataluma (Mark 17:14, Luke 22:11).

Since Joseph’s family was from Bethlehem (Luke 2:3-4), he and Mary were likely staying with family. But there were so many family members there for Caesar’s enrollment (2:1) that the living area was full, and so Mary chose to give birth in another part of the house.

Family rooms tended to be on the upper floor of a house, so Mary would have gone to the lower part of the house, which is where animals were kept, as indicated by the presence of the manger.

What kind of animals were they? We cannot say, though cows, sheep, and goats were commonly kept.

In any event, the image of Jesus being born in a barn is probably wrong. It was likely the lower part of a house, and—specially—it was likely in a cave.

In regions with caves, Israelites often would take advantage of them by building their homes over them, and we have sources from the second century indicating that Jesus was born in a cave. Thus, the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem is celebrated as Jesus’ birthplace to this day.

 

The Visit of the Magi

Our Christmas cards often depict the magi as showing up on the night of Jesus’ birth—just like the shepherds did (Luke 2:8-10). However, they did not.

We also should mention that—despite them being referred to as “three kings”—the magi were not kings. “Wise men” comes closer, but Matthew uses the specific term magoi for them (2:1).

The magi were originally a Persian tribe with priestly duties (like the Jewish tribe of Levi), but over time the term had broadened and was used for anyone who performed ritual activities that were thought to be in some way similar to those of the magi. Thus we read about Jewish magi like Elymas bar-Jesus (Acts 13:6-8).

The magi who visited Jesus came from a country in “the East” (2:2, 9)—perhaps Babylonia or Persia—and they arrived as much as two years after Jesus’ birth.

We know this because, when they failed to report back to Herod the Great, he killed “all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi” (2:16).

The magi had told Herod when they had first seen Jesus’ star (2:7), and this would have been between one and two years earlier. (Herod likely rounded the figure up to two years in an attempt to ensure that his effort would result in the death of the correct child.)

In any event, the magi did not arrive on the night of Jesus’ birth but considerably afterward, and the Holy Family was either still in Bethlehem or had returned for another visit. Likely they were staying with the same family members, and Matthew does indicate that the magi found the baby Jesus with his mother in a “house” (2:11).

 

Conclusion

There are a large number of myths about Christmas. Some come from skeptics, such as those who say Jesus couldn’t possibly have been born on December 25th and that this date was chosen to compete with a pagan holiday.

Other myths come from Christians themselves, such as in artistic representations that tend to compress everything about Jesus’ birth into one scene, with the shepherds and the magi present together, in a barn, on a snowy evening.

Of course, it’s natural for Christians to represent the birth of our Savior in art, but we should be aware of the difference between what the Gospels actually say and when artistic license is being taken.

Myths aside, it remains true that our Savior really was born into the world, and on Christmas we honor the truth of this event.

Did God Have a Wife?

Various social media sites have claimed that—in the Old Testament—God originally had a wife that the Israelites worshipped.

This goddess was named Asherah, and she is mentioned at various places in the Hebrew scriptures.

The claim is made that we have no biblical texts that can be confidently dated prior to the reign of King Josiah (640-609 B.C.) that condemn the worship of this goddess.

Before that time, it was allegedly normative for Israelites to worship Asherah alongside God.

How accurate are these claims?

Not very.

It’s true that there was a goddess named Asherah that was worshipped in the Ancient Near East, and it’s true that some Israelites worshipped her.

But it is false to claim that this was a normative practice among Israelites—and that we have no texts from before the time of Josiah condemning the practice.

To understand the situation, we need to understand how the Israelite religion developed.

As a nation, Israel was descended from the patriarch Abraham, who came from “Ur of the Chaldees” (Gen. 12:28)—meaning he was from Mesopotamia, or modern Iraq.

As a native of Mesopotamia, Abraham was raised in the religion of the area, which centered on various eastern deities.

But the Bible records that eventually the true God—the Creator of the universe—called Abraham to leave Mesopotamia and come to the Promised Land of Canaan.

This is discussed in the book of Joshua, which states:

Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Your fathers lived of old beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.

“Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many” (Josh. 24:2-3).

The Bible thus acknowledges that—before God appeared to him—Abraham worshipped other gods, which was the normal practice of people in the Ancient Near East.

When Abraham came to Canaan it was filled with its own people, who also worshipped a variety of gods.

Later, when Abraham’s descendants spent time in Egypt, they also lived among a polytheistic people.

Being surrounded by polytheistic people meant that the Israelites were tempted to join their neighbors in worshipping other gods, and they sometimes did so.

They even did so during the Exodus, as Moses was leading them out of Egypt and back to the Promised Land.

This is illustrated by the golden calf incident (Exod. 32) and by Moses’ instruction to offer their sacrifices to God, saying, “they may no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-idols after which they were prostituting” (Lev. 17:7, LEB).

While people did engage in these practices, they were not acceptable. Thus, after the golden calf incident:

Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tables out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.

And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it upon the water, and made the sons of Israel drink it.

And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought a great sin upon them?” (Exod. 32:19-21).

It was similarly recognized that, upon returning to Canaan, the polytheistic inhabitants could tempt the Israelites into being unfaithful to God. Concerning the Canaanites, God says:

You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods.

They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you” (Exod. 23:32-33).

Also, God made a covenant with the Israelites that they would worship only him. This requirement is explicit in the Ten Commandments:

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

“You shall have no other gods before me.

“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exod. 20:2-4).

The Bible thus depicts orthodox Israelite religion as involving the worship of God alone. However, it frankly acknowledges that unorthodox Israelites could and did worship other deities.

The struggle against this is a major theme in the Bible, and the prophets regularly condemn Israelites for worshipping other gods. You cannot read the Old Testament without repeatedly encountering this theme.

So what about Asherah? She was a goddess that was worshipped by the Canaanites—as well as other people in the Ancient Near East—and she was often regarded as the wife of the high god.

In the Canaanite pantheon, the high god—the head of the pantheon of gods—was named El, which is the Hebrew word for “God.”

El was also named Yahweh, and some Canaanites regarded Asherah as the wife of Yahweh.

Under the influence of their Canaanite neighbors, some Israelites did worship her—just as they worshipped other gods, like Ba’al and Milcom.

But according to the Old Testament, by doing this, they departed from the normative, orthodox Israelite religion and did things they were not supposed to.

What about the claim that this was normative before the time of King Josiah? Two points need to be made.

First, the theory depends on a very late dating of the biblical texts. There is good evidence that the books of Exodus and Leviticus were written around the time of David and Solomon (c. 1000 B.C.)—long before Josiah.

Furthermore, we have other texts before Josiah condemning the worship of Asherah.

For example, Isaiah 17:8 prophesies that a time is coming when the Israelites “will not have regard for the altars, the work of their hands, and they will not look to what their own fingers have made, either the Asherim or the altars of incense” to pagan gods.

The Asherim were pole-like religious objects used to worship Asherah, and even liberal scholars acknowledge that Isaiah 17 was written during the time of the prophet Isaiah (8th century B.C.), well before Josiah (7th century B.C.).

Even earlier was the event recorded in 1 Kings 15:13 that King Asa “removed Maacah his mother from being queen mother because she had an abominable image made for Asherah; and Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron.”

Asa reigned between 912 and 870 B.C., and while 1 Kings wasn’t written until later, it records events repudiating Asherah that took place long before Josiah.

Second, the “Asherah worship was normative” view is just cherry-picking Old Testament texts.

If—at one time—it was orthodox for Israelites to worship Asherah, where are the texts praising her?

There aren’t any.

Advocates of this view must argue that any texts that were positive toward her were removed, and new, negative passages were introduced after Josiah.

That’s simply cherry-picking. You can prove anything you want—on any subject you want—if you get to pick evidence you think favors your position and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

For example, you could “prove” that the original thirteen U.S. colonies were founded by Russian immigrants by saying that—later on—all the references to Russian immigrants were mysteriously removed from our historical documents and replaced by references saying they were founded by English colonists.

The fact is, the texts we have in the Old Testament indicate that orthodox Israelites worshipped the true God, that unorthodox Israelites also worshipped other gods like Asherah, and that this practice was condemned from very early times.

Jesus Without the Gospels

The four Gospels are our primary sources of information about Jesus Christ, and thus they are prime targets for skeptics. Those who want to discredit the Christian faith must in some way cast doubt on the Gospels and what they tell us about Jesus.

They use various strategies. Some point out that the Gospels record Jesus performing miracles, which don’t fit with a materialist worldview. However, many don’t employ such naked anti-supernaturalism—which stems from a philosophical position rather than from arguments based on historical evidence.

Many try to undermine the Gospels by trying to distance them from the events they record. Common strategies involve claims that they were written (a) late, (b) not by eyewitnesses, or (c) by people we don’t know.

There are problems with each of these claims (see “Appreciating the Gospels”), but for the sake of argument—as a thought experiment—let’s take the Gospels completely off the table. Suppose that they had never been written. What would we still know about Jesus?

The primary sources of evidence we would be left with would be the rest of the New Testament: Acts and the letters of Paul and other authors, including the book of Revelation (which is also a letter). Just to be generous, though, let’s remove Acts as well, since it’s the sequel to one of the Gospels and is a historical work that repeats a lot of information from Luke.

 

Appreciating the Gospels

The arguments that the Gospels are unreliable based on when and who they were written by are unpersuasive.

In the first place, when a book was written does not tell you much about its accuracy. A competent historian can write quality work about any period in time that he has studied. It’s more about how he handles his sources than how distant in time he is.

Historians today write about events decades, centuries, and even millennia ago, but we don’t simply dismiss them.

Roman historians like Suetonius, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio wrote about events as far before their day as Jesus was before the Gospels, but their works are taken seriously as sources.

And the Gospels weren’t written that late. On the late dating of the Gospels, they were written between thirty and eighty years after Jesus and within a generation.

In actuality, the gospels were likely written in the 50s and 60s—between twenty and thirty years after Jesus and easily within living memory.

We also know who was behind them. As German scholar Martin Hengel pointed out, the Gospels needed names as soon as more than one was in circulation. The names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were thus attached to them as soon as they started appearing.

Finally, whether someone is an eyewitness has little to do with whether one can write a competent biography. Many biographies are written today about historical figures—from Alexander the Great to Abraham Lincoln—whose authors could not possibly have been eyewitnesses. Again, it’s about how a biographer handles his sources.

In the case of the Gospels, two (Matthew and John) are attributed to eyewitnesses and two (Mark and Luke) are written by men who knew eyewitnesses.

 

History Without Historical Works

By removing the Gospels and Acts from the discussion, we’re depriving ourselves of the historical books that the New Testament contains—that is, the books written to chronicle early Christian history.

But it’s entirely possible to learn about history from other sorts of documents. For example, scholars can learn about what happened during the Civil War by reading the letters people wrote to each other at the time.

Some time ago, I started a project of reading the letters of the New Testament to see what could be learned about Christ and early Christian history just from them.

That project is large and ongoing, but even a brief look at the New Testament letters reveals that we’d still know quite a bit about Jesus and the early Church even if the Gospels had not been penned.

 

Paul and the Historical Jesus

Sometimes skeptics who dismiss the Gospels state that Paul’s letters are actually the earliest Christian documents we have, implying that they should be more historically reliable.

This is misleading, as the evidence indicates the Gospels and Paul’s letters were written during the same period—the A.D. 50s and 60s—but it is true that at least some of Paul’s letters were likely written before the Gospels.

In particular, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians were, and even the most skeptical acknowledge that these were written by Paul. (Also, none of these might be the earliest document in the New Testament. The letter of James could be.)

The historical value of Paul’s letters is sometimes dismissed by saying that he isn’t very interested in the historical Jesus, meaning that he doesn’t tell extended stories about Jesus or regularly quote his sayings.

This is sometimes coupled with a distinction between “the Jesus of history” and “the Christ of faith.” The former refers to the historical observable facts about Jesus (e.g., he lived in first century Palestine—something anyone alive at the time could have seen), while the latter deals with his significance for religious belief (e.g., he is the Son of God and Savior of mankind—things that are matters of faith).

While Paul is obviously concerned about Jesus’ religious significance, what would he make of the claim that he isn’t interested in the historical Jesus? Given his fiery temper, he’d blow his stack. Paul is emphatic about the importance of the historical figure of Jesus and the events connected with his life, death, and resurrection.

He tells the Corinthians: “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 1:22-23; 2:1-2).

Paul thus considers knowledge of the historical Jesus absolutely crucial, and he made it the central theme of his in-person preaching. It was the first thing he wanted his converts to know about and the foundation of everything else.

His letters take a different approach because they are written to people who already know about Jesus. He’s not writing to people who have never heard the gospel but to those who have already been converted.

Still, there is a lot of information about Jesus in his letters. In the passage we just quoted from 1 Corinthians, we learn (1) that there was a man named Jesus, (2) who is regarded as the Christ, or Jewish Messiah, and who (3) was crucified.

 

Jesus’ Family

Since Jesus was regarded as the Jewish Messiah, it’s unsurprising that Paul indicates (4) he was an Israelite (Rom. 9:4-5) and (5) was “descended from David according to the flesh” (Rom. 1:3).

The fact Paul adds “according to the flesh” suggests that there was something more than simply human about Jesus, and when Paul oddly notes the Jesus was “born of woman” (Gal. 4:4)—with no mention of a human father—it suggests (6) that there may have been something unusual about his birth.

Jesus also had other family members, (7) who are referred to as “the brethren of the Lord” (1 Cor. 9:5), and (8) one of them was named James (Gal. 1:19).

 

Jesus’ Ministry

As an adult, (9) Jesus began a ministry. “Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs” (Rom. 15:8)

As part of this ministry, (10) Jesus taught on various subjects. One teaching was (11) a prohibition on divorce. “To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband . . . and that the husband should not divorce his wife” (1 Cor. 7:10-11)

Jesus also taught (12) that “The Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:14). Paul later gives a direct quotation of Jesus on this point: “The laborer deserves his wages.” (1 Tim. 5:18), which is a quotation of Luke 10:7.

Without using direct quotations, Paul also cites other teachings of Jesus that we know from the Gospels, including love being the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:8), blessing those who persecute you (Rom. 13:14), and not judging others (Rom. 14:4).

To spread his teachings, (13) Jesus was associated with a group of men known as apostles (1 Cor. 15:7), and in particular (14) with a group known as “the Twelve” (1 Cor. 15:5b). One member was a notable man (15) known as Cephas—or, to use this name’s Greek equivalent, Peter (1 Cor. 15:5a, Gal. 1:18-19, 2:9).

 

Conflict over Jesus

Jesus’ ministry did not please everyone, and (16) some opposed him (Rom. 15:3). Apparently, these included some of Jesus’ own countrymen, who Paul says “killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets” (1 Thess. 2:15). So, (17) Jewish individuals somehow caused the Romans to crucify Jesus.

Crucifixion was a punishment that Romans inflicted on certain criminals, provided that they were not Roman citizens. We can thus infer (18) that Jesus was regarded by the Romans as a criminal—which would not be at all surprising if he was publicly regarded as the Messiah, who was expected by Jews to throw off Roman rule, and who thus would be regarded by the Roman authorities as a rebel king.

We also can infer (19) that Jesus—unlike Paul—was a Jew who was not a Roman citizen.

How did Jesus get into trouble with the Roman authorities? Does Paul give us any information about how that happened?

He says, “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the chalice, after supper, saying, ‘This chalice is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’” (1 Cor. 10:23-25).

So, (20) there was a night on which Jesus was betrayed to the authorities (presumably by someone close to him), and (21) on that night he participated in an important supper where a group of his disciples were present.

He then (22) took bread and wine and declared them to be his body and blood (notice that we have direct quotations from Jesus here). He also (23) claimed to institute the new covenant prophesied by Jeremiah (Jer. 31:31-33) and (24) instructed his followers to perform this ceremony in remembrance of him.

 

Jesus’ Death, Resurrection, and Ascension

After being turned over to the authorities, (25) Jesus was taken before the Roman governor, for Paul refers to “Christ Jesus who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession” (1 Tim. 6:15). This tells us that Jesus’ crucifixion happened between A.D. 26 and 36, which was the period during which Pilate was the governor of Judaea.

Paul indicates that, after his encounter with Pilate, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day” (1 Cor. 15:3-4).

Jesus was not only crucified but also (26) died, (27) was buried, and (28) raised back to life (cf. Rom. 6:4).

He was then (29) seen alive by his disciples. “He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles” (1 Cor. 15:5-7).

Following this, (30) Jesus ascended into heaven (Eph. 4:8-10), and (31) he is currently in heaven (Rom. 10:6).

 

The Christ of Faith

At this point we pass from the realm of what could be observed by a person present at these historical events, but Paul is not done telling us about Jesus.

He indicates that (32) Jesus is the Son of God (Rom. 1:3). While this term can be applied to righteous men, Paul indicates that (33) it was true of Jesus in a unique sense (Rom. 8:29).

Paul indicates that (34) Jesus was present at and active in the creation of the world, “for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16).

Christ died on the cross (35) so that we could be saved from our sins. “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (Rom. 5:8-9).

While Jesus is currently in heaven, (36) he will return from there (1 Thess. 4:16), and (37) the dead will be raised back to life (1 Thess. 4:17). At this point, (38) Christ will judge the living and the dead. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body” (2 Cor. 5:10).

 

Conclusion

All of the points that we’ve covered are found in the four Gospels. From what we’ve seen, it is possible to reconstruct basically the entire Gospel message just from the letters of Paul.

And this is when Paul isn’t even trying to give us a lesson in the life of Christ! Imagine how much more of the Gospel story we would hear if we were listening to Paul’s introductory preaching to his converts!

Nor are we limited to Paul’s letters. We haven’t even considered the rest of the New Testament letters (including Revelation).

These also contain multiple facts about both the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. To cite just one example, Peter reports what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration (2 Pet. 1:16-18)

It’s also worth noting that Paul is not unique in his presentation of the Gospel facts. They were widely agreed upon, including by those who knew Jesus personally, such as Peter and James.

Paul is emphatic that his presentation of the gospel must be accepted (Gal. 1:8-9), and he indicates that the leaders of the Jerusalem church agreed with him.

“When they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised” (Gal. 2:9; cf. 2:1).

While the Gospels are precious and irreplaceable sources about Jesus and his life and teachings, the substance of the Christian faith itself—including the key facts about Jesus—would remain known to us today even if the Gospels had never been written.

Rather than dismissing the Gospels because they are not (quite) as early as some of the letters, we should see the letters as providing powerful confirmation of the message of the Gospels.

Taken together, the twenty-seven documents of the New Testament provide a dramatic and consistent picture of what the first Christians proclaimed about their Lord as both the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.

 

Dates of the New Testament Documents

Below are dates proposed for the New Testament documents. The “late dating” figures are adapted from liberal scholar Raymond Brown’s An Introduction to the New Testament. The “reevaluated dating” figures are taken from my own work, The Bible Is a Catholic Book.

  Late Dating Reevaluated Dating
Matthew 80-90 c. 63
Mark 68-73 c. 55
Luke c. 85 59
John 80-110 c. 65
Acts c. 85 60
Romans 57-58 54-55
1 Corinthians 56-57 c. 53
2 Corinthians 57 54-55
Galatians 54-55 c. 50
Ephesians c. 65 or c. 95 58-60
Colossians 61-63 or c. 85 58-60
Philippians c. 56 58-60
1 Thessalonians 50-51 c. 50
2 Thessalonians c. 51-52 or c. 85 c. 50
1 Timothy c. 65 or c. 95 c. 65
2 Timothy 64-67 or 68-95 c. 66
Titus c. 65 or c. 95 c. 65
Philemon c. 55 58-60
Hebrews c. 65 or c. 85 c. 68
James c. 85-95 c. 48
1 Peter 60-63 or c. 80 c. 62-63
2 Peter c. 130 c. 64-65
1 John c. 100 c. 65
2 John c. 100 c. 65
3 John c. 101 c. 65
Jude c. 55 or c. 95 c. 64-65
Revelation 92-96 c. 68