The First Christmas

Tomorrow we will somewhat prematurely take down our Christmas Decorations - a task usually undertaken on the Feast of Epiphany.

Since just before Christmas I have been reading the book "The First Christmas" by Marcus J Borg and John Dominic Crossman. This reading was undertaken as part of my Advent disciplines and I have really enjoyed immersing myself in this close examination of the nature of the Birth Narratives in Matthew and Luke. I was further blessed with more Borg books as Christmas gifts, so I will be reading a bit over the next few weeks.

I have always been aware of the way in which the traditional Nativity story is the result of a harmonizing or blending of two very different narratives into a single story. However, I never paid enough attention to the details of each separate story to recognise the logical and historical inconsistencies such an approach created.

For example in Matthew Mary & Joseph already lived in Bethlehem while Luke has them living in Nazareth. Similarly, Luke makes no mention of the prospect of Joseph divorcing Mary when he discovers she is pregnant as we find in Matthew's account. The two stories are so different from each other that if each was purporting to be an historical account of the events surrounding Jesus' birth, one would have to be declared a fabrication - but which one.

Fact, Fable or Parable
In trying to understand how this came about, and how we should approach these stories today, Borg proposes that our obsession with the idea that the only things that are "true" are "facts" is a product of relatively recent times (from the period of The Enlightenment in the 17th century). Since the development of the scientific method in that time as well as new approaches to historiography Western people have thought about life and the world in completely different ways than their ancestors did.

The questions we instinctively ask of life are "How do we know?" and "What is true?" as well as "What is real?" and "What is possible?" This way of thinking has led to what Huston Smith called "fact fundamentalism" and according to it, if something isn't factual then it isn't true.

In addition to these changes in our world view, The Enlightenment asserted that "what is indubitably real is the time-space universe of matter and energy, operating accord with natural laws of cause and effect."

It only takes a brief consideration of these matters to realise that they pose an immense dilemma for the interpreter - If the authors of the text were not bound to facts as we are and could cope with supernatural events alongside natural events as euqally real, how do we make modern sense of what they wrote?

Borg introduces two very interesting interpretive devises that help deal legitimately with the different approaches Matthew and Luke have taken to the same story. Firstly he proposes that we look at the narratives as "neither fact nor fable, but as parables". Parable is a form of speech by which truth and meaning is conveyed without being reliant on factuality of historicity - the story of The Good Samaritan is cited as an example to help us understand how this works.

Along the way he makes the observation tha almost all of Jesus' parables had a subversive element, challenging social, religious and political assumptions and norms.

Secondly. he suggests that the birth naratives are like an overture to an orchestral piece. The term is derived from the French ouverture which was simply the opening part of a work that served as a summary, synthesis, metaphor or symbol of the whole. He cites some literary examples of overture but by bringing the two ideas together he lays the groundwork for a completely new interpretive approach to the birth narratives.

Matthew 1-2, considered as a Parabolic Overture, sets the scene and tone, as well as providing a summary of the Gospel that follows. Similarly, Luke 1-2 can be regarded as a potted version of all that will follow in both Luke and Acts.

What I found most satisfying about this was that rather than explaining everything away as the liberal-sceptical approach can sometimes do with Biblical material, Borg has provided an interpretive approach that enables the truth of the narrative to come to its fullness in a way that a merely factual approach to the interpretive task could not.

Gospel as Subversion
The consistent thread that arises from this interpretive approach is that the story is utterly subversive. Everything that is said about Jesus' birth is connected with Roman theology (not Roman Catholic, but Roman Empire and the emperors/Caesars) and it would have been plain to first century Christians and observers of Christianity that to call Jesus "Son of God" and "Saviour of the world" was to challenge the Emperor's claim to these titles. The purpose of the Birth Narratives was to assert a superior claim to these titles - each in different ways.

When this approach is taken it doesn't matter that Matthew has Mary and Joseph living in Bethlehem already and that those who visited Jesus were Gentiles, while Luke has them needing to travel to Bethlehem and the birth is acknowledged by a bunch of lowley shepherd folk, presumably Jewish.

It has brought new life to the Birth Narratives for me, helped me understand that it is okay for Mark and John not to even mention it, and given me new ways of understanding a few other tricky theological ideas that we all think are important.