A fundamentalist Christian group has been posting flyers in letter boxes. One caught my attention. Calling for repenting now because “the time is near”, they wrote:
120 years God warned people through Noah, however, they chose to ignore the warnings.
The biblical text says nothing of the sort! [Check it yourself] Ask your average Christian: did Noah warn of the impending flood? They will say, yes. We filter our reading of the scriptures through preconceptions, Sunday-school-level children’s versions, paintings and images, and conflations of stories. Not to mention picking little bits out of their context…
Many of us are just packing away the Christmas crib – it regularly is the filter for many of us (alongside Christmas carols and nativity plays) as we (mis)read and conflate the biblical Christmas stories.
- In the Biblical Christmas stories, there’s no mention of a donkey.
- There’s no mention of an innkeeper.
- There’s no mention of an inn (it’s an upper or guest room in Luke – καταλύματι).
- There’s no mention of a stable.
- There’s no mention of animals at the birth.
- There’s no mention that Mary gave birth to Jesus on the night they arrived in Bethlehem.
- There’s no mention of three wise men.
- There’s no mention of December 25.
- There’s no mention of angels being present at Jesus’ birth.
- In the Magi story (Matthew), Jesus is a child (παιδίον), not a baby (Luke; βρέφος) – hence, Matthew has Herod killing two-year-olds and under. In Matthew’s story, they are in a house (οἰκίαν). So Matthew’s star is not there at the birth. And, no, the Magi weren’t kings.
- In Matthew’s story (even if biblical headings, added by editors, may call it “The Return to Nazareth”) they don’t “return” to Nazareth; they move there because Judea is deemed unsafe.
- Matthew says that: There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazarene.” (2:23) but there isn’t a single prophecy that “He will be called a Nazarene.”
- And, obviously, Jesus (and the rest of his family) is not white/European.
There’s nothing wrong with using our imagination in the manner of carols, plays, paintings, etc. There is also great value in allowing the biblical texts to actually address us without such filters, conflations, etc – taking the texts seriously.
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