Tag Archives: Herod

A Big Myth-take

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The nativity story is evidently a myth. The evidence?

The virgin conception and birth (similar to other myths);

Angels everywhere;

Warnings in dreams;

The wand’rin’ star;

Events created from out-of-context scraps of Jewish scripture (the virgin birth again; the shoe-horning of Bethlehem; Herod’s massacre; the flight and return from Egypt);

The heavy-handed symbolism (shepherds and their gifts; the magi and theirs);

Historically inaccurate details (disparate dates, the Roman census, Herod’s massacre);

Discrepancies between the two accounts;

The absence of the nativity and its events in the other two canonical gospels,

Disparity with later events in the gospels (Mary treasures the nativity events in Luke 2:19 only to seemingly having no knowledge of them later (Mark 3:12); John and Jesus are second cousins… or not).

And on and on.

Yet the story is analysed endlessly – two thousand years (almost) and counting – as is all that follows in the gospels. There’s a whole lot of jargon to intellectualise this , of what is, in the end, just myth: exegesis, hermeneutics, soteriology, apologia, discourse analysis, close reading. All exist to expose the truth embedded in the text and to defend it. Even those who acknowledge that the nativity story is myth (quite an attractive, cosy myth admittedly) want to confine this admission to the nativity alone. The rest – the symbolic miracles, unfulfilled prophecies, literary sermons, the metaphorical pericopes (more jargon!), the trial, crucifixion and resurrection – they want honoured as historical, factual and mystically embodying Truth. Unfortunately, all of these stories bear the same hallmarks of myth as the nativity tales. Why should these other stories be regarded as anything different?

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Christmas is upon us. I’m happy to call it Christmas; the name has a long pedigree and ‘Holidays’ has, in any case, its own religious connotations. Dennis and I will be spending it with my daughter and her family. I hope you too are able to enjoy it in whichever way suits you best.

A happy Christmas to you, both my readers.

Whatever Happened to Mary Magdalene?

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(The risen Jesus) appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve (1 Corinthians 15:12)

When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. (Mark 16:9)

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb… Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshipped him. (Matthew 28: 1 & 9)

Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance… she turned around and saw Jesus standing there. (John 20: 1 & 14)

Whatever happened to Mary Magdalene? I mean, where did she go? She’s everywhere in the gospels: following Jesus and his entourage around the place, funding his layabout lifestyle (Luke 8:1-3) and being first to see him after he returned from the dead. After that, nothing. Luke doesn’t even bring her back for his sequel and no one else in the New Testament so much as mentions her. When, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul lists those who, like him, have had a vision of the risen Christ, she’s conspicuously absent. Mary is the first person to see Jesus resurrected according to three of the four gospels, yet in the far earlier tradition mentioned by Paul, she doesn’t get a look in. Her place is taken by Cephas.

The neglect of Mary Magdalene in early tradition could of course be because she was a woman, and a woman’s testimony, back in those less than enlightened times, was worth far less than a man’s. However, it’s far more likely that whoever created the creed had never heard of her. Why not? Because the gospels didn’t exist when they came up with it. They had no idea that a woman was supposedly the first to see Jesus alive again. As far as they were aware, it was ‘Cephas’ who’d had the first vision of the risen Lord. Yet Peter – assuming he and Cephas are the same person – isn’t the first to see the risen Jesus in any of the gospels.

Mary Magdalene is side-lined like this because when the creed was created, and later still when Paul quotes it in 1 Corinthians 15, the stories about her hadn’t yet been invented. It’s safe to say, she hadn’t been invented.

In fact, Mary Magdalene and most of the rest of the support cast from the (future) gospels aren’t referred to anywhere else in the New Testament. This includes at least eight of the disciples from the slightly differing lists in the gospels, the Virgin Mary, Joseph, the angel Gabriel, the Magi, Nicodemus, Lazarus, Martha & Mary, Judas (apart from Luke’s side-splitting story about him in Acts), Barabbas, Joseph of Arimathea and Doubting Thomas. Likewise, fictionalised versions of historical figures with key roles in the gospel stories aren’t referred to either: Herod, Pilate, Caiaphas and John the Baptist(?) are all absent, even from epistles written and forged after the appearance of the gospels’ ‘cunningly devised fables’ (2 Peter 1:16).

Decades after the early creed of 1 Corinthians 15 and Paul’s letters, Mark invented Mary Magdalene, as well as many other characters who appear in his gospel. His allegory then became the basis for the other three canonical gospels, whose authors added their own imaginary characters.

And just as they invented the earthly Jesus’ companions and adversaries, they created too his miracles, teaching, cryptic parables, bodily resurrection and ascension. Mary Magdalene was but one small aspect of their ingenuity.

 

Announcement

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The story so far…

While he used to argue vociferously that the gospels are history – remember they must be history because Pilate and Herod are in them? – our resident apologist has backed away from this position. He says now they’re not history as such but are only ‘like’ history, which means they’re ‘historical but not written as histories’, whatever this means. He derides the likes of Ehrman and Tabor for their inability to recognise this (newly invented) fact. These no-nothings make a category error when they confuse the gospels with history.

I suspect Don wants to reclassify the gospels because he recognises they make rather poor history. It’s safer to pretend they’re designed to be something else, something that doesn’t require external evidence to verify it: ‘announcement’, for example.

This, however, merely sidesteps the question of where the gospel writers got their information from. Don has previously argued that the gospels are based on eye-witness reports, Peter’s dictation to Mark and a reliable oral tradition. But conjecture like this is only necessary if the gospels are history. If they’re not, but are ‘announcement’ instead, then their sources need  be neither historically reliable nor demonstrable.

If the accounts are ‘announcement’ rather than history then where does their ahistorical, announced information come from? Fortunately, Mark gives us a clue:

To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that “‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven’” (Mark 4:11-12, referencing and misquoting Isaiah 6:9)

In fact, the gospels’ ‘announcement’ is conveyed by a story constructed from supposed prophecies from Jewish scripture and the immediate concerns of the early cult communities, expressed in metaphors of the gospel writers’ making. All of the internal evidence supports this conclusion. In fact, the source of the gospels’ material is the same as Paul’s and that of other writers in the New Testament. Here’s how the great, self-appointed apostle puts it: 

My gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ [is] according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages, but now is made visible through the prophetic scriptures and is made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, for the obedience of faith. (Romans 16:25-26)

Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. (1 Cor 15:3-8)

Compare this with:

Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. (Gospel Jesus in Luke 14:21)

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Gospel Jesus in Luke 24:25-27)

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Gospel Jesus in Luke 24: 25-27)

(Paul) reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. (Fictional Paul in Acts 17:2-3)

The revelation of the Messiah and the secrets and mysteries revealed to Paul and the other apostles are ‘explained and proved’ in their entirety by ancient scripture. But, these scriptures in and of themselves do not prophesy the kind of Messiah the early apostles envisaged. Rather, the scriptures are retrospectively pressed into service to match the revelations of the Messiah that Paul and the others experienced.

This is Don’s ‘announcement’: secrets and mysteries founded not on history but on revelation expressed through metaphor and the misapplication of scripture.

If the Gospels were History…

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If the gospels were written by eye-witnesses, we should see the use of the first person singular or plural: ‘I saw this happen’, ‘we heard him say that’ and so on. This would not necessarily mean that the author was present, just as he isn’t in the ‘we’ passages in Acts, but it is what we should reasonably expect if the authors were involved in at least some of the events. There are no such instances in any of the gospels.

We would see gospel authors identifying themselves, at the start of their accounts, for example. We don’t.

We would not see an eye-witness lifting significant amounts of material from someone who wasn’t an eye-witness. Yet Matthew plagiarises Mark, ‘improves’ it and passes it off as his own. This isn’t eye-witness behaviour and it is not how eye-witness testimony works.

We would see the gospel writers cite their sources: Mark would tell us he’s recording Peter’s recollections and that he witnessed Jesus’ trial personally (there’s no evidence he did either, speculation from centuries later notwithstanding.) Luke would tell us which accounts he’s referring to in Luke 1:1-2. While we now know he too plagiarises Mark and quite probably Matthew, he doesn’t admit it. We would know the source of events that took place behind closed doors such as Jesus’ interview with Pilate.

We could expect contemporaneous accounts independent of the gospels, recording the miraculous events they claim occurred; the wandering star, the earthquakes, the hours long eclipse, the healings and controlling of nature, the resurrected zombies, the ripping of the 35 foot temple curtain, the resurrection of an executed criminal. Instead there’s nothing, not even in later works such as those of Josephus (because all of these events are metaphorical).

We should expect Cephas (known as Simon Peter in the later gospels) to have recorded his experiences with Jesus. Yet, when he gets his chance, in the letters he supposedly wrote (1 and 2 Peter), he makes no mention of them at all.

We should expect the Christians prior to Paul to have recorded some of these episodes. Some argue that they did, in a document now called Q, but this precious document was, unbelievably, soon lost or abandoned. Alternatively, they may not have seen the need to write anything down because they believed the world was about to end very soon. Either way – no accounts from them about ‘the history of Jesus’.

We should expect Paul to mention aspects of the Jesus story in his letters. After all, he claims to have persecuted Christians for some time before his conversion and to have met and conversed with Cephas for 15 days. Yet he conveys no details at all. Instead, he claims all he knows of Jesus derives from visions and ‘revelations’ in his head. His account of the bread and wine ritual informs Mark’s story of the Last Supper, not the other way round; it is – Paul says clearly – another ‘revelation’ in his head.

We should expect there to be details about Jesus’ earthly life in other books of the NT. Instead we find only a celestial high priest in Hebrews and a warrior Christ in the supposed visions of Revelation. Nothing historical here.

We should, if the gospels are history, expect them to read like history. History, including that written at a similar time does not include angels, devils and apparitions, magic stars, virgin births, miracles and supernatural healings. Where it does, as in Constantine’s vision of the cross, such elements are seen for what they are: myth, not history.

We would not expect the central figure of the gospels to be constructed almost entirely from parts of older religious writing. This is not a technique used in genuine historical records.

We would not expect to find the level of metaphor and mythic tropes – magic, supernatural characters, returns from the dead – in what is ostensibly an informational text. History does not rely heavily on metaphor and symbolic tropes the way the gospels do. There is no ‘logic of history’ in the Jesus story.

We would expect to see geographical and political details relayed reasonably accurately. Instead, Jesus’ trial arrangements are highly improbable; they do not conform with what is known about Roman trials – and we know a lot, because of the records they kept. Jesus would not have had a personal interview with an indecisive Pilate, who would not have consulted the mob, would not have sent Jesus to the Jewish authorities or Herod and would not have offered to exchange Jesus for Barabbas (there was no ‘tradition’ of exchanging one criminal for another) and so on. From what we know of him, Pilate would have authorised the execution without a qualm, as he did for many other would-be messiahs. The rest – the gospel details – are drama, Jewish scripture brought to life with added metaphor. Fiction, in other words.

The Return of the Annual Christmas Quiz!

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Back, due to popular demand! The annual Christmas quiz, last seen in 2014. Ten questions on Biblical trivia. Answers at the bottom of the page.

Good luck. You’ll need it.

1. Where did Mary and Joseph live prior to Jesus’ birth?

a) Bethlehem

b) Nazareth

c) Galilee

2. How did Mary conceive?

a) By the power of the Holy Spirit

b) She didn’t. It’s a story.

c) How’d you think?

3. What was the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus?

a) They were second cousins

b) They didn’t know each other and didn’t meet until they were adults

c) Jesus originally belonged to John’s baptism cult

4, When was Jesus born?

a) When Herod I was alive

b) After Herod had died and Quirinius was governor of Syria

c) Perhaps he wasn’t

5. How did Mary end up giving birth in Bethlehem?

a) There’s no evidence she gave birth in Bethlehem

b) She and Joseph had to go there because of the Roman census

c) She lived there anyway

6. The Lord tells Mary to call her child

a) Jesus

b) Immanuel

c) Yeshua

7. Where did the family go following the birth?

a) They went home to their house in Bethlehem

b) Egypt

c) Nazareth

8. Who preserved the songs of Zechariah, Mary and Simeon (Luke 1 & 2)?

a) They were preserved orally word-for-word for 50 years

b) They were recorded in Q

c) They were created in their entirety by Luke, based loosely on Jewish scriptures

9. Where is the prophecy, quoted by Matthew (2:23), that Jesus would be called a Nazarene?

a) Micah

b) Isaiah

c) Nowhere: there is no such prophecy in Jewish scriptures or anywhere else

10. Which is the most unbelievable part of the nativity stories of Matthew and Luke?

a) a host of singing angels hovering in the sky

b) the wand’rin’ star

c) a virgin giving birth

d) Herod’s re-enactment of a story from Exodus

e) All the angelic visitations, dreams and visions that are needed to make the stories function

Answers:

1. Where did Mary and Joseph live prior to Jesus’ birth? All of the answers here are correct, so the Holy Bible say. According to Matthew, Mary & Joseph lived in Bethlehem. According to Luke they lived in Nazareth. According to Mark, it was known that Jesus hailed from Nazareth though he doesn’t say Jesus was born there. John refers to Jesus being from Galilee and acknowledges he comes from Nazareth (1:46).

Matthew and Luke insist Jesus was from Bethlehem to make him ‘fulfil’ the prophecy that the Messiah would come from there. Mark and John apparently don’t care.

2. How did Mary conceive? Matthew and Luke have the Holy Spirit do the deed. Matthew says merely that Mary ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit’, while Luke really goes to town with a ridiculous story involving an angel and Mary being orgasmic about the coming of the Lord. Mark hasn’t heard of either account, because neither had been invented, and fails to invent his own. John is only interested in Jesus as The Logos prior to his time on Earth. Actually, Jesus could only have been conceived by the only method we know that works: boy and girl hoochie-coochie.

3. What was the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus? All are correct. Luke says Jesus and John were second cousins (1:36) and their mothers were close (1:56). The Gospel of John (1:31) says that John the Baptist didn’t know Jesus personally. Some scholars think Jesus was originally a member of John’s baptism cult.

4, When was Jesus born? a) and b) are both correct according to the gospels. Matthew places Jesus’ birth in Herod I’s reign, which ended when he died in 4BCE. Luke meanwhile dates it to Quirinius’ governorship of Syria, which was in 6 and 7CE. No wonder there are those who think Jesus may never have existed, so encrusted with myth and make-believe is he.

5. How did Mary end up giving birth in Bethlehem? The census is a contrivance to shift the birth to Bethlehem. There wasn’t a census of the kind described when Quirinius was governor of Syria, nor in 4BCE. Quirinius’ census was of property and would not have entailed the (mass) movement of people. Matthew seems to think M&J lived in Bethlehem all along. No-one else thinks so.

As the Bethlehem connection derives only from prophecy (Micah 5:2), it is likely Matthew and Luke located the birth there to show the ‘fulfilment’ of that prophecy. In other words, they invented it, as they do other ‘fulfilments’. It looks like a) is the only viable answer.

6. The Lord tells Mary to call her child… According to Matthew. Mary is meant to call the baby Immanuel, which, as the text helpfully informs us, means ‘God with us’. This is to make the story comply with Isaiah 7:14 which claims the Messiah will be called Immanuel. But Mary doesn’t call her baby Immanuel. She calls him Yeshua, meaning ‘God Saves’, which is not the same thing. How Matthew thinks this is a fulfilment of the Immanuel prophecy is anyone’s guess. When the gospels came to be written, Yeshua was rendered in Greek as Iesus and eventually in English as Jesus. Neither he nor his mother would have recognised this rendering.

7. Where did the family go following the birth? Again, all are correct according to the gospels. The family went on living in Bethlehem according to Matthew (2:7-11) but fled to Egypt according to Luke. Mark doesn’t appear to know either the Bethlehem or Egypt stories and refers only to Jesus coming from Nazareth.

8. Who preserved the songs of Zechariah, Mary and Simeon (Luke 1 & 2)? c) is correct. No oral tradition could possibly preserve the three carefully structured poems verbatim for 50 years. The hypothetical Q is conjectured to be a collection of Jesus’ sayings so the songs don’t come from there either. Luke or his community made them up.

9. Where is the prophecy, quoted by Matthew (2:23) that Jesus would be called a Nazarene? There is no such ‘prophecy’ anywhere in Jewish scripture nor in any extant writing: c) is correct once again.

10. Which is the most unbelievable part of the nativity stories of Matthew and Luke? That’s right. All of them are completely unbelievable.

How did you do? If you’re confused, don’t be. It’s the gospel writers who were. They made up stories about Jesus so that he complied with parts of Jewish scripture that seemed to them to be speaking of the Messiah. (John’s stories are a little different; they and Jesus’ tedious monologues were created to make him seem more like a Greek demi-god.)

Perhaps though I’m taking it all too literally, ‘like a fundamentalist’ as my self-appointed chief critic likes to say. I should perhaps accept it’s all just a metaphor, as he advises. Of course, when I do, he objects to that too; ‘A metaphor for what?’ he asks, forgetting he’s the one who believes the stories are ‘intended’ to be deeply meaningfully symbolic.

The muddled accounts arose as each gospel writers attempted to make an origin story for their hero based on scraps from Jewish scripture, Paul’s teaching and the emerging beliefs of their particular brand of the cult. They’d have got away with it too if some clever-dicks hadn’t decided, many decades later, to put their efforts side by side so their differences were laid bare for all to see: all the contradictions, inconsistencies, fallacies, anomalies and incompatible flights of fancy. Thank god the church kept their writings hidden away from most folks by preserving them in a language they couldn’t read.

That same critic will no doubt tell me I’m wrong again. ‘Everything happened as Matthew and Luke relate. There are no contradictions between them and the other two, Mark and John, had different priorities anyway.’ (See comments to this post here). He’ll tie himself in knots rather than admit the nativity stories are myth, as is everything that follows.

Have a happy Christmas, ya’ll. See you on the other side.

 

The Curious Case of the False News Nativity

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Over on his Biblical Musing blog, Don Camp is eager to show us how, despite their disparities and contradictions, the two very different nativity stories in Matthew and Luke ‘mesh perfectly’.

Let’s take a closer look at some of that perfect meshing, shall we?

Herod v. Quirinius

First, the two accounts can’t even agree on when Jesus was born: Matthew’s gospel claims it was when Herod the Great was king (Matthew 2.1) while Luke says it was when Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2.2). Yet Herod died in 4BCE and Quirinius didn’t become governor of Syria until nine years later, in 6CE. So Jesus couldn’t have been born at a time when both men were in their respective positions. This anomaly, as we’ll see, is a serious problem for the two accounts.

Census v. no census

Luke contrives to get Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem to fulfil the prophecy of Micah 5.2 which said the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. He comes up with the idea that these Nazareth residents trekked all the way to Bethlehem – a journey of about 80 miles – because of a Roman census. The Romans did indeed conduct a census in 6CE (which presumably is why Luke wants the story to take place then) but it would not have entailed anyone travelling to their ancestral home. Why would it? Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue? The Romans would not, and did not, impose such a ridiculous demand on an already disgruntled populace.

Matthew, meanwhile, doesn’t mention any census – his Jesus was born about 11 years earlier – and he seems to think the family already lives in Bethlehem (Matthew 2.11 & 16). So, was Bethlehem their home as Matthew implies, or did they have to travel there from Nazareth, as Luke insists? Or had they nothing at all to do with Bethlehem? Matthew and Luke’s contradictory accounts are nothing more than clumsy attempts to show that Micah’s ‘prophecy’ is fulfilled in Jesus.

The Manger v. no manger

If they already lived in Bethlehem as Matthew suggests, there would be no reason for Mary and Joseph to search out an inn in which to stay for a census that had nothing to do with them. No inn, no ‘stable’ (though neither gospel mentions a stable as such) and therefore no manger. Yet there it is in Luke 2.7. It’s totally absent from Matthew’s account where, presumably, Mary simply had the baby at home.

Related v. Do I know you?

Luke has a long fable about the pregnancies of both Mary and Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. He says the two women are related, possibly as cousins, making Jesus and John second cousins. The fourth gospel, however, asserts that the adult Jesus and John don’t know each other (John 1.33), while Matthew – and Mark too – don’t consider any of this significant enough to mention.

Don thinks the gaps in each account are just fine because God arranged for them to be covered by the other gospels. Yet only Matthew and Luke think to include anything about Jesus’ birth, and much of that is contradictory. Don’t Mark and John know anything about it? Was it not important to them? Even Paul, writing closest to Jesus’ lifetime doesn’t see fit to refer to it. Mary, whom both Matthew and Luke say was a participant in events, seems to have forgotten all about them when she later considers her adult son to be out of his mind (Mark 3.21).

The wandrin’ star v. clear blue skies

Nobody but Matthew mentions the star. Was Luke unaware of it? How about everyone else? If it was as astronomically significant as the story suggests, shouldn’t there be a record of it somewhere? And do stars, billions of miles from the Earth, really lead the way to a single spot here on the planet’s surface? Nobody but Matthew falls for this one – but then he would; he’s the one making it up.

Shepherds v. Astrologers

Luke has shepherds, Matthew astrologers who ‘visit the house’ where Jesus lived. Which is it – shepherds or astrologers? Both? If so, why does neither gospel writer mention the other’s set of visitors? Could it be that the shepherds and astrologers have their own symbolic significance in the gospel in which they appear and are therefore literary inventions? One suspects it could be.

Massacre v. nothing to see here

Herod the Great, who died, remember, almost a decade before the Roman census, orders the murder of all baby boys up to two years of age. At least he does in Matthew (2.16-18); Luke knows nothing of this so called ‘Slaughter of the Innocents’, presumably because Herod had been dead nine years by the time his story is set and, presumably, because it never happened. There is no record of such an atrocity anywhere in the historical record. Surely the Romans would have had something to say about it, given Herod was greatly exceeding his powers as a puppet ruler. One might almost think Matthew invented the whole thing just to make it look like another ‘prophecy’ was being fulfilled (Jeremiah 13.15 this time).

Egypt v. home for tea

Matthew (2.13-18) has the family flee to Egypt after the visit of the astrologers to avoid Herod’s hissy-fit and then when he dies (two years later?) they return to make their home in Nazareth (Matthew 2.19-23). According to Luke, however, they lived in Nazareth before the birth (Luke 1.26) and simply went back there once they’d had the eight-day old baby circumcised (Luke 2.38); no mention of the Egypt trip nor of Herod (unsurprisingly when he’s long dead according to Luke’s chronology.)

So there you have it. You be the judge of how ‘perfectly’ the two stories ‘mesh together’. And while you’re doing that, be sure to have a wonderful, superstition-free Christmas.

Christmas Quiz Answers

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1. In what year was Jesus born?   a) 4 BCE (when Herod the Great was king)   b) the year 0     c) 6CE (when Quirinius was governor of Syria)

Matthew’s gospel claims Jesus was born when Herod the Great was king (Matthew 2.1) while Luke says it was when Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2.2). But Herod died in 4BCE and Quirinius didn’t become governor of Syria until ten years later, in 6CE. So JC couldn’t have been born when both men were in their respective positions. Neither was he born in the year 0, because there wasn’t one (the Gregorian calendar goes from 1BCE to 1CE). Most scholars think Jesus was born around 4BCE, just before Herod’s death (as Matthew’s gospel suggests). Award yourself a splash of myrrh if you got this right.

2. When was Jesus born?  a) December 25th?   b) April 1st   c) in the summer

Not December 25th (see my post Jesus Is The Reason For The Season below) which was the date usurped from the pagan festival of Saturnalia; April 1st, maybe, as there’s something about this that takes us all for fools, but if the story is to be believed, it’s most likely he was born in the summer when shepherds would be out on the hillside with their sheep – if the story is to be believed. In short, we don’t actually know. If you said this, reward yourself with three hail Marys.

3. Who was Jesus’ father? a) God himself   b) Joseph, so that Jesus was descended from King David   c) one of Mary’s one night-stands

a) and b) rule each other out: see my post Jesus was born of a virgin… er, no was descended from David, er… below.  There were much later rumours that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier called Pantera, and certainly Jesus’ legitimacy is called into question by early critics of Christianity. This may be reflected in the gospels themselves where Jesus is referred to as his mother’s son, not his father’s as would have been customary (Mark 6.3). Treat yourself to Susan Boyle’s rendering of ‘Silent Night’ if you knew this.

4. How often did the Romans make people return to their ancestral home to be counted?  a) never   b) it was one-off   c) only when the gospel writer needed to get them to Bethlehem

Answer is c). While the Romans did carry out a census in 6CE, i) Jesus was born ten years earlier and ii) there is no record of the Romans forcing people to return to the home of their ancestors.

5. How did Mary get to Bethlehem?  a) on foot   b) on a donkey   c) by being a character in a contrived story

The answer is c). Luke’s nativity story, the only one to have them travel to Bethlehem, doesn’t say how she got there. Leave a carrot out for Santa’s reindeer if you answered correctly.

6. Where was Jesus born?  a) in a stable   b) in a cave   c) at home in Nazareth

Again, Luke’s Bethlehem account doesn’t say. Matthew implies Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem all along (Matthew 2.11 & 16) making the whole ‘no-room-at-the-inn’ scenario superfluous. Sprinkle yourself with frankincense for saying so.

7. According to Matthew’s gospel, how many wise-men visited the new-born babe?  a) none   b) three   c) they weren’t wise-men, they were astrologers

The answer is c) and the number isn’t specified.

8. What did the angels say to the wise-men when they told them of Jesus’ birth?  a) you will find him in a manger   b) nothing   c) follow that star

b) is correct. According to the story the angels spoke to the shepherds, not the wise-men. Deck the halls with boughs of holly if you fell for this one.

9. Where did the magic star shine?  a) over the stable where Jesus lay   b) over his house   c) since when do stars shine over specific objects here on Earth?

Looks like c) again, though Matthew, who is the only gospel writer to mention it, claims in Matthew 2.9-11 that it was b), over his house.

10. When did the wise-men visit the infant Jesus?  a) when he was a toddler   b) while he was still in the manger   c) after the Christmas rush

Matthew says Jesus was a child when the so-called wise-men visited him at home (Matthew 2.9-11 again). Given their encounter with Herod (Matthew 2.16), who thinks Jesus could be anything up to two years old, it’s likely JC was a toddler at this point in the fabricated story. Don ye now your gay apparel if you knew this.

11. When did Herod massacre all the little boys, hoping to kill the baby Jesus?  a) later that same week   b) a few years after the birth   c) there is no record of him having done any such thing

Yup, c) again.

12. How many shepherds visited the baby Jesus?  a) all of them  b) two old men and a young boy   c) none

The number isn’t specified, though Luke suggests all of them went (Luke 2.15-16). In fact it was ‘none’ because none of this actually happened.

13. What gifts did the shepherds bring?  a) a lamb   b) a lamb kebab   c) a pair of hand-knitted socks

It doesn’t say. You can have a new pair of hand-knitted socks yourself if you said so. Or a kebab.

14. Which animals were present at the birth?   a) a horse (c’mon, it was supposed to be in a stable)   b) an ox and ass   c) an ox, an ass, the wise-men’s camels and the shepherds’ sheep

No animals are mentioned.

15. After the birth, where did Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus go?  a) to Egypt   b) home to Nazareth   c) nowhere

According to Matthew (2.13-18) the family went to Egypt following the visit of the wise-men and, after hiding there until Herod died, made their home in Nazareth (Matthew 2.19-23). According to Luke, however, they lived in Nazareth before the birth (Luke 1.26) and simply went back there once they’d had the baby circumcised (Luke 2.38); no mention of the holiday in Egypt nor of Herod, who’d been dead for ten years according to Luke’s chronology. It’s kinda neat the way the Bible tells such a consistent story, don’t you think?

16. Where will you find the Christmas story in the Bible?  a) in Genesis (because the answers are always in Genesis)   b) in all four gospels   c) in only two of the gospels, which have conflicting accounts

The answer is c); only in Matthew and Luke, each having a completely different take on things.

Feel entitled to sacrifice two turtle doves for making it this far.