Last week, we began our deep dive into the nature of God as it is expressed in the Christian faith.  Since our faith centers around the person of Jesus, this seems like the logical place to start.  We began by looking at the “Jewishness” of our Christian forebears.  In one of the great ironies, we saw that Jesus was not a Christian – he was Jewish.  (In a snarky aside, I wish all the Christian anti-Semites understood this!  Christianity was not ‘invented’ until long after the crucifixion.)

We ended last week by touching on the strange anomaly of the birth narratives: only two of the canonical gospels include them!  If you count the Gospel of Thomas as valid, then only 2 of the 5 include them.  You have to ask, what is going on here!

To understand this odd situation, we need to remember the Jewish roots of the followers of Jesus.  For them, Jesus absolutely has to come from the house of David to fulfill their understanding of the Messianic prophecies.  This means that he has to be born in Bethlehem, even though Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth.  In my mind, it looks like these early Jewish Christians had to find a way to get Jesus born in the ‘right’ place, that is, Bethlehem.  

To make this point explicit: the earliest followers of Jesus had to twist the circumstances of his birth to fit their preconceived beliefs about the coming Messiah.

There are multiple instances of this kind of twisting.  Let me list some of them for you:

1. The virgin birth.  This prophecy is based on Isaiah 7.14 which states, “Behold, the young woman shall conceive and bear a son.”  The Hebrew word almah means “young woman,” not “virgin.”  Thus, the notion of the virgin birth is based on a misunderstanding of the Hebrew word.  Very strange that the followers of Jesus would have such a misunderstanding when you realize that Hebrew was their holy language!

2. The birthplace in Bethlehem.  This is based on Micah 5.2 which says, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah… From you shall come forth… One who is to rule Israel.”  In its original context, this refers to a Davidic ruler restoring Israel and is a political statement.  Early Christians took it to mean that the Messiah must be born in Bethlehem.

3. The eternal/Divine Child, based on Isaiah 9.6-7.  “For to us a child is born… And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God…” The Christian reading of this passage refers to the divine nature of the Messiah, but the historical context refers to a royal birth, possibly of King Hezekiah.  This is enthronement language rather than predictive prophecy.

4. Shoot from Jesse, Isaiah11.1, which reads “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse…” The Christian reading states that the Messiah descends from King David’s father, Jesse.  Read in context, however, it is a symbol of the restored kingship after a political collapse.

5. The Star Motif, taken from Numbers 24.17, which reads, “A star shall come out of Jacob…” The early Jewish Christians took this out of context and linked it to the star of Bethlehem.  In context, it appears to be an oracle about a future ruler defeating Israel’s enemies.

6. “Out of Egypt I called my son” taken from Hosea 11.1.  The early Christians understood this as a prophecy of Jesus’s return from Egypt, after his parents’ flight to avoid Herod’s persecution.  In reality, this passage refers to Israel’s exodus, not a future messianic birth.

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By our standards today, these distortions are appalling!  They are deliberate and gross misrepresentations of ancient texts to fit a contemporary situation.  What is more, these distortions follow a consistent pattern of taking brief passages of Scripture out of their original context.

To be fair, let’s consider the situation from the perspective of these early Christians.  They are all Jews and they believe they have a special relationship with God.  Their leader, Jesus, who had supernatural powers, has been seized by the authorities, tortured, and executed.  They have no leader, they have no creed, they have no authoritative scriptures, and they are under threat.  What do you do in this situation?

In response to this, there are two likely scenarios.  In the first, you run and hide and deny any association with those terrible Jesus people.  In the second, you exaggerate your importance and declare your superiority to your persecutors.

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Examining the historical evidence we have, along with our understanding of human nature, it seems like the birth narratives of Jesus are fabricated.  They were created by his followers to prove to other Jews that Jesus was in fact the Messiah – promised by God to restore the covenant he had made with Israel.  

Most Jews of that time expected the Messiah to be either a political or a military liberator.  Remember, the Jews are a conquered people, suffering uneasily under the Roman yoke.  They expected their Messiah to come from the house of David, the previous military liberator, the slayer of Goliath, and the one who united the 12 tribes and became their king.  In addition, many, like the Essenes, expected the Messiah to purify the Temple and restore proper worship.  Jesus did not fulfill these expectations.

He did not overthrow Rome.  He did not restore the monarchy of the house of David.  He did not purify the Temple in a sustained, institutional way.  Instead, Jesus framed the kingdom of God as something that was present right now.  As he did so often, Jesus disrupted expectations.

Instead of ignoring the poor, he called them blessed, for “theirs is the kingdom of God.”  Instead of exalting the strong, he said, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”  Instead of telling his followers that they should hate their enemies (read Rome), he taught them to love their enemies.  Time and time again, Jesus disrupts the expectations of his listeners.

If nothing else, his listeners should have understood by these actions that his kingdom was not of this world.  For the most part, the surrounding world ignored him – at least initially.  It appears that even the central core of his following – the Jewish followers of Jesus – misunderstood much of his teaching, and perhaps even ignored it.  At any rate, we can be certain that they felt the need to fluff up his story in a vain attempt to make him more palatable to the larger Jewish population.

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I hope you understand that I am not trying to destroy your faith by critically examining these matters.  I am trying, instead, to sift through the historical record to see what is true and what is likely a fabrication.  I am a follower of Jesus, a follower of one who proclaimed himself to be the Truth.  We know for sure that he was a human being, just like us.  We also know that he was so transformed by the power of God that he has become a universal spiritual Presence.  A Presence who has the power to change lives.  A Presence whose love is so strong that it can heal the sick and raise the dead.  A Presence with the power to transform our hearts.

I’m going to leave you here this week.  I would encourage you to review this essay over the coming week.  There is a lot of information here and much of it contradicts what we have been taught.  It is difficult to absorb all this in a single reading.

I want you to know that I cherish our Christmas traditions, built around these fabricated birth narratives.  I have no intention of abandoning them.  They touch something deep inside of me, just as they touch all of us.  Not only that, they also worked for my grandparents.  They worked for my parents.  And they still work for me.

In addition to cherishing our Christian traditions, I also believe in the truth.  I believe it is worthwhile to sort through the specifics of our faith because this process has the power to free us from our delusions and our self-centeredness.  These challenges do not shake my faith in the person of Jesus or my faith in his teachings to transform our lives.  It does however separate the wheat from the chaff; the nuggets of truth from the fear-driven neuroses of our forebearers.

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Please take time this week to sit with yourself in stillness.  Sit and let go of the constant stream of self-talk which afflicts us all.  Our self-talk is a constant stream of noise that distracts us from the immediate Presence of Christ in our hearts.  Let yourself be still and look at what comes before the self-talk.  Ask yourself, “What is the matrix from which all of my blathering arises?”  What lies just underneath these conversations I have with myself?  

I hope you have a splendid week, and I look forward to continuing our discussion about our Lord in the next newsletter.

May God make his face to shine upon you, this day, and always!

P.S.  These newsletters were written in a particular order, but due to the limitations of our email delivery system, we cannot send them in the order in which they were written.  We can send out the first five in order, but then the system sends out the next one, whatever that happens to be.

So, if you are suddenly moving from issue #5 to issue #whatever, it might be a little jarring.  If this sounds like you, I would encourage you to go back into our archives and do your best to read them in order. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

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Please Note: These newsletters are meant to be read in order.