What is the real Christmas story?

It’s part of every Nativity play—after Jesus is born, three kings bearing gifts follow a star to Bethlehem to find the infant, the new Messiah.

But that’s not exactly what it says in the Gospel of Matthew. And Luke doesn’t tell the story at all.

WebMuseum-ibiblio.org 'The Adoration of the Magi,' Pieter Aertsen, 1560

Matthew’s Greek word is usually translated “wise men,” or “maji,” and he never says how many. But he certainly didn’t imply they were kings.

Hahn: There was a rabbinical saying that “If anybody learns anything from the maji, let him be accursed.”  You know, so we’re talking about outcasts in the extreme.

Or.. some kind of comic magician, or court jester?

Levine: Maji, magicians, at least in the Jewish tradition, would have been people like “Balamm the magician” whose talking donkey is more clued in than he is. They’re what we might consider to be, say, "Fools for Christ."

Whether wise men or jesters, many scholars say their inclusion in Matthew’s story, the fact that he has them visiting a child of such humble origins and not Herod or the emperor, is direct challenge to the leadership of the Roman empire  — a charged political statement by the Gospel writer Matthew.

Evans: He is saying, “No no no, Caesar isn’t the son of god, and the good news doesn’t begin with him, it begins with Jesus Christ.  He’s the real son of God.”

A message perhaps reinforced by that star the wise men were following.

Evans: The star really has to do with the descendant of David who is the Messiah.  So I’m not surprised at all that Matthew works that into his narrative.

Morrison: So a star is a way of God announcing the birth of the Messiah?

Evans: That’s right, but you see, in the pagan world it is, too.  You know, when Julius Caesar was murdered someone came forward afterwards and said “I saw his spirit ascending as a comet into heaven.”

And that provided impetus and rational for the senate to divinize, deify, Julius Cesar.

Morrison: It's a common way of looking at the world by everybody who lived there.

Evans: Some kind of omen, some kind of a sign in the heavens that this individual was no mere mortal, whether history, or parable.

This is where Matthew’s story takes a dark turn, as the wise men followed the star to Bethlehem, King Herod calls them in for a meeting. This part of the story isn’t usually seen in Nativity plays, it portrays the depth of Herod’s brutality, and the fact that— like many tyrants— he knew how unpopular he was.

Crossan: I’m quite certain that Herod  didn’t say to the wise men, ‘Now about this star, was that literal or metaphorical? Of course, he didn’t ask that. He got the message. They’re coming from the east to find a newborn king of the Jews. Which makes him the ex-king of the Jews. He’s going to say ‘Got the point. Let’s kill this child.’

But first, Herod would have to find the newborn Jesus. So the story has Herod turning the wise men into spies to find the baby and report back.

Matthew tells about the strange guiding star, how it stopped over the house— not stable—where Jesus lay with his mother.

The maji offered exotic gifts to the newborn, gold and aromatic frankincense and myrrh.

And what was the meaning of those first birthday presents, the first ever Christmas presents?

Levine: The gifts have been symbolized and re-symbolized as we go through history.  I mean my favorite one suggests that gold is there because anybody who’s just had a child needs additional money.  The myrrh is there for medicinal purposes.  And the frankincense is there for the diapers.

But then Matthew’s classic story builds to its climax: Joseph gets a warning from, in a dream, to flee with his family to Egypt. The wise men are warned by God too— to avoid Herod.

And  Herod, furious that he’s been duped, responds with the so called slaughter of the innocents, killing all male children two years and under in the Bethlehem area.

Did it happen?

Witherington: We know about Herod’s character.  Here’s the issue: Is Herod capable of this?  Yes.  He offed some of his own children.  He offed various of his wives.  We know that he was absolutely paranoid about maintaining control of his throne and anything and anybody that walked that got in the way of that, he was prepared to deal with.   Even harshly, if necessary.

But there is a larger significance to the story that laced its way through the Matthew’s Gospel, a story the ancients would have picked up right away.

Crossan: He’s got his message. And his main message is that Jesus is the new sort of improved Moses.

The story of Jesus birth is a re-telling of another birth story: the story of Moses, the Old Testament figure who led the Israelites out of their captivity in Egypt.

Hahn: Matthew is deliberately showing the parallels between Jesus birth and deliverance and Moses birth and deliverance.

Moses, whose birth, the story has it, prompted a murderous campaign by pharaoh, a slaughter of innocent children.

Crossnan: So imagine Matthew thinking, ‘Hmmm, Jesus is the new Moses.  How will I write his story? Ah. The old Moses was almost killed because pharaoh had tried to kill all the young people when he was born. I will have a story in which Herod, the new pharaoh, tries to kill all the children of Bethlehem in order to kill Jesus. In plain language, it's a parable. Matthew knew what he was doing.”

Is that why he had Jesus spend time in Egypt, just as Moses had?

Hahn: They both end up in Egypt, being raised there, you know. And then they come out of Egypt at the appointed time, led by an angel, and so on. They pass through the water, onto the desert, for 40 days and 40 nights.

A story of portents, angels, wandering stars, a virgin birth. Most Americans, a vast majority, according to polls, believe to a much higher percentage than biblical scholars do that the whole story— its simple, humble details, its majesty, its supernatural characters— are pure and simple history.

It's proof that our 2,000-year-old mystery has lost none of its presence or power.

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