Wadi Cherith
At Wadi Cherith the exiled prophet Elijah, journeying outside of Israel, was fed each day by ravens, an ambiguous and sometimes maligned bird. Join Fr. Alex Roche and Fr. Anthony Dill every month to discuss a whole range of unconventional topics from a Catholic perspective, finding spiritual nourishment in unexpected places. www.wadicherith.com
Wadi Cherith
A Gospel Christmas- How Matthew and Luke Tell the Story of the Birth of Christ
We unpack why only Matthew and Luke tell the Nativity, how their details differ, and what those differences mean. We trace genealogies, geography, and symbolism to show how theology and history meet in the manger.
• Matthew and Luke as distinct Nativity witnesses
• Gospels as theological narratives, not biographies
• Genealogy patterns and the five women
• Joseph’s justice, mercy, and legal fatherhood
• Luke’s canticles, angels, and the Anawim
• Bethlehem’s meaning and manger Eucharistic hints
• Magi, universality, and Matthew’s Moses echoes
• Census questions and timeline tensions
• Herod, the flight to Egypt, and fulfillment motifs
• Presentation in the temple with Simeon and Anna
• How differing details deepen the same truth
Have a Merry Christmas
Intro music provided by Holly Serio
We're all undoubtedly familiar with the story of Christmas, but have we ever actually read the story of Christmas? Turns out only two of the Gospels contain the story of Jesus' birth, and there's virtually no repetition of details between them. Join us today as we dive in to the story of the birth of Christ as told by the Gospels.
SPEAKER_05:Doing great. Was that a play on the very famous Knights of Columbus, keep a Christ in Christmas?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just talking about keeping Christ in the infancy narratives, specifically of Matthew and Luke's Gospels.
SPEAKER_05:Fair enough.
SPEAKER_03:I do I was just talking to it. Go ahead. I I don't the the whole keep Christ in Christmas thing, I think, is like a reaction against Xmas, but X is a Kai. I mean, that's Jesus. That's the first letter of Jesus' name. That's very traditional to describe and portray Jesus Christ. Shortcut his name. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Which is also like a cross. With war against Christmas stuff. I guess like a couple years ago, Starbucks stopped writing Merry Christmas on that thing and just made a red and green cup. And Father Lise, a priest nearby, he goes, Everybody's complaining about this war on Christmas. And you know what? I am writing to Starbucks because they used to have a purple cup, and all the Catholics seem to have a war on Advent, and nobody cares about liturgical seasons. Like what a great response.
SPEAKER_03:That is, it's a war on Advent. I feel like we talked about Starbucks cups on an episode in the past. I could be wrong.
SPEAKER_05:It could be. I don't remember, but it definitely could be. Hot topic.
SPEAKER_03:It's a hot topic nowadays. Uh well, somebody was asking me. They were talking, I don't really drink Starbucks, but I know their sizing system. And they were we're talking about Italian. And they said, well, they no, they're yeah, well, there's a venti, but then they were like, well, then why is that cup a grande? And I was like, there's no reason. This is not a large, like the small is like a grande.
SPEAKER_01:No reason. Don't know what to tell you. Sound word sounds nice.
SPEAKER_05:You think I'm gonna get into the minds of those marketers at Starbucks? I don't think so.
SPEAKER_03:Certainly not. All I know is that it'll be on another level. Yeah, that's the only thing I do know. So you ready? You ready for Christmas?
SPEAKER_05:I guess. Yeah, like nobody, I never know how to respond to that question. What does that mean? Have you decorated and have you decorated and purchased presents? I have no, I started purchasing presents. I don't know who to get presents for either. I don't have a family, Alex.
SPEAKER_03:Um you do have you have you have brothers and nieces and nephews. You're right. And your staff, you don't get anything for your staff?
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_03:The grin trip.
SPEAKER_05:No, I yeah. We're hearing lots of confessions. That's like that's my advent season.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, really?
SPEAKER_05:Well, that's good. Yeah, we do like like we do all the prentant services. Like today, I was at two different elementary schools here in the all the elementary school kids' confession. So that's like most of the time an advent. Do you guys have those?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I was doing that today too. Nice. Yep.
SPEAKER_05:So uh confessions, man. Let's get all the deep dark dirt.
SPEAKER_03:There's a oh, by the way, there's a movie out that has two pre it's like largely about the priesthood. It's the sequel to the knives out. I don't know if you've seen the knives out movie movies. It's called like uh awake the dead man or something. No, so maybe that's the podcast. I I did see it. Yeah, today's my day off. I watched it.
SPEAKER_05:Cool. It's worth it's worth I don't know. Watching worth talking about.
SPEAKER_03:All right. I don't the beginning's a little rough, but then it gets it gets better. Um yeah, so we so we we decided today to talk about the the way the gospels begin, essentially. The infancy narratives, the place where we get all of our understanding of the Christmas story and a lot of our Christmas traditions in the church, the passages that we read at Mass on Christmas Day at the Vigil at the Midnight Mass. Just real briefly at the beginning, two of the gospels don't really have any of the things, not really, they don't have an infancy narrative. They don't have a story of the birth of Christ. Do you want to say anything about how the other two gospels and what they are say in the beginning?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, sure. And like just because we're introducing the gospels now, this is going to be an exercise to talk about what happened with Jesus as a baby, but also it's an exercise for us just to talk about like what do you do when you're reading the gospel and you realize the timelines don't match up, the facts don't match up. If somebody asks you why there's four gospels or what what does it mean that they seem to be conflicting? Like that's a that's a hard question or something to reconcile with, or especially if you come in with this notion of the Bible is just like, I don't know, maybe you don't even know there's four gospels or or that the gospels are the only four short biographies of Jesus in the New Testament. But yeah, so that'll be a fun part of the discussion too. But yeah, so there part of the answer is a slip-up you just had.
SPEAKER_03:They are not biographies, they are gospels, they are evangelical texts, and and so like it's it's good not to not to look at them, they're not written as historical texts, there's different conventions in their writing than a traditional biography biography would have. So I just I do think that's important to note because I think that's part of the explanation, because these authors, yes, they're telling the story of Jesus, but they're also making theological points. Right. Sorry.
SPEAKER_05:No, that's good. I I I use the word biography only for someone that like doesn't know anything about the Bible because you might think the whole thing is just a biography of Jesus, but in the actual Bible, which is pretty massive, only there are no biographies of Jesus, yeah, and only a hundred chapters are about the life of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03:What out of thousands of they're not written to be history texts in the way maybe even some other books of the Bible are.
SPEAKER_05:Like Ben Franklin's autobiography, which is total bull. No, I'm just kidding.
SPEAKER_02:Sorry, gosh.
SPEAKER_05:The hagiography on Ben Franklin. Don't think it has that much to do with the reality of his life. Yeah, so we the four Gospels in order, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And like I said, Mark and John do not talk about Jesus as a baby at all or how he's born, and then Matthew and Luke do. Matthew, do you want me to say like who these people are a little bit, or do you want to just go into the chronology of well, I just thought it was chronology.
SPEAKER_03:So so Mark starts off with John the Baptist as an adult crying out in the wilderness. So Mark begins with the ministry of John the Baptist, and we dive right into Jesus as an adult. John begins quite beautifully with a sort of poetic theological set of verses that is moving and relates to the birth of Christ. So you might remember, and this is one of our Christmas readings. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. So that's how John begins, which is worthy of a podcast in itself. But that's not going to be our focus today. Today we're focusing specifically on Matthew and Luke because they tell the traditional Christmas story of the birth of Christ.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. So John's is kind of like talking about the birth of Christ, it's just using very big concept theological language to explain how the infinite God becomes finite. Whereas the other ones are just like an angel came and Jesus was born. The story came and everything was fine.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's what they're like.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So so we thought before we dive into them, we would just briefly talk about what happens in each very quickly, because our Christmas tradition, the things we do, our decorations, the our plays, all this stuff just kind of like crams them all together into one story. Uh, but they're not, there's two distinct stories that have different details and different events.
SPEAKER_05:So Matthew, first we know a lot while we're talking about two distinct stories with different events, like we talked about this before. The creation story in Genesis is two direct tellings of how the world was created that are not the same facts or the same order. And we cram those into one as well. But each story is trying to point out theological points. And so just like the beginning of the world is explained like this in the Bible. So the beginning of the new creation of the world or God becoming man has something similar. Right. You want to you want to start with Matthew? Yeah. Or you got Luke ready.
SPEAKER_03:No, we'll start with Matthew, just real quickly, and again, we'll go into more detail. So Matthew starts with a genealogy, it talks about the 14 generations from Abraham to David, the 14 generations from David to the Babylonian exile, and the 14 generations from the Babylonian exile to Jesus. It then goes into an angel appearing to Joseph, telling him that his wife will bear a child, and that he is to name him Jesus. Then we get the Magi, the wise men, the kings from the east, who see a star rising. You can go check out our episode on that star if you want more on that story. Herod wants to kill this child. The baby is born. The magi visit, they flee to Egypt to escape from Herod, and then they return from Egypt, this time back to Nazareth, not to Bethlehem. Luke begins a little bit differently, tells a little bit of a different story. So Luke starts with the announcement. No, genealogy is later in Luke. Oh, yeah, you're right. Luke begins with an angel appearing to Zechariah, telling him of the birth of his son, John the Baptist. We then move into the story of the angel appearing to Mary, telling her that she will have a son. Mary then leaves Nazareth, goes to Bethlehem, visits Elizabeth. We see John is born. We see that Jesus is born. Mary and Joseph have to go to Bethlehem to give birth to Jesus because Caesar Augustus calls a census. The shepherds come, then Jesus is circumcised, presented in the temple, and they return to Nazareth. That's the story.
SPEAKER_05:So there's a and Elizabeth isn't in Bethlehem, she's in the Judean countryside. In the hill country, right? Yeah. Yeah, just slightly different. Right. So there's a lot of traveling in this one.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:And Luke both use, yeah, good. They both use concrete space and time. Luke is like specifically labeling things that existed back then allegedly, and so is so is Matthew, trying to establish some sort of biographical credentials.
SPEAKER_03:And maybe that's maybe that's the first place we can look at where they're different, which would be location. So both Gospels have different places. Now Jesus is born in Bethlehem in both, but in Matthew's gospel, they begin in Bethlehem. Jesus is born in Bethlehem. When Herod threatens to kill all the firstborn children in Bethlehem, they flee to Egypt and then decide not to go back to Bethlehem, but to go to Nazareth. They don't go to Jerusalem. In Luke's gospel, on the other hand, Mary and Joseph start in Nazareth, presumably live there. There's a census, they have to go to Bethlehem to give birth to Jesus. On their way back, they go to Jerusalem and then return to Nazareth. So you have Nazareth and Bethlehem in both, but where we start and and what journey we're telling differs in each.
SPEAKER_05:Seems odd. Seems odd.
SPEAKER_03:Well, he knew, I mean, he had them. Jesus is raised in Nazareth, obviously, but Bethlehem makes some sense. I mean, both Mary and Joseph are of the tribe of Judah.
SPEAKER_05:So we don't know Mary's tribe, right? Because that's a debate.
SPEAKER_03:No, Mary. I mean, I think widely she's considered to be uh of the tribe of Judah, right? I mean, I've heard probably he wouldn't have married someone.
SPEAKER_05:Right. Go ahead. But people say also she could be tribe of Levi because she's cousins with Elizabeth, and Elizabeth and Zechariah are both Levites, because he was a priest. So yeah, and I think it's supposed to be mysterious that you don't know. We could talk about this with the genealogies, because we'll get into the genealogies. But like both genealogies have it coming down to show that Joseph is a descendant of David, and the genealogy goes through Joseph, and then it says Joseph is betrothed, they're married to Mary, who gives birth to Jesus, making her another female, one of the few females in the genealogies, but it's showing that the heritage comes from Joseph. And that frustrates people sometimes because like Jesus is in the line of David through his foster father, not necessarily through his blood relationship. But it's like the point isn't just that he's claiming this birthright from his blood. The point is he's claiming this birthright from his heavenly father. So there's this comparison of Joseph to God his father.
SPEAKER_03:I think there's a lot of things to go off of there.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I agree. You want to go through the genealogy?
SPEAKER_03:Or do you think that's well I still had some I still had some other geographical points to make, but so we can go which way with whatever direction.
SPEAKER_05:But then also, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Right. So obviously, Jesus comes out of Nazareth. So like that's the role Nazareth plays in the story. Jerusalem, we all know, has a tremendous significance and importance in the story of Israel and the story of Jesus. Jerusalem looms much larger in Luke's infancy narratives, both because we start in Jerusalem with Zechariah, but then also Mary and Joseph take Jesus to Jerusalem. And then we have Bethlehem, the house of bread, which is a foreshadowing of the Eucharist, but also is strengthening this connection that Jesus has with David. What Matthew gives us that I think is interesting is also that connection with David through Bethlehem. Matthew's very, as we're going to hear about in the genealogy, Matthew's very interested in Jewish heritage and like where Jesus fits into the history of Israel. But we also have in Matthew, I think the significance of Jesus going to Egypt is pretty important because Matthew also wants to connect Jesus to Moses. And if if you recall the birth of Moses, he's also in Egypt, right? And has is born being hunted by the king, in that case, the pharaoh, who wants to kill firstborn sons, just as Jesus is with Herod. So I think like Matthew gives us this connection to the story of Israel in a different way than Luke does. He's he wants to really draw out that connection with Moses. And so we have Egypt in the story, which Luke doesn't mention.
SPEAKER_05:And it's hard to a little bit count for chronologically what's going on there. Because it seems in Luke's they go to Jerusalem for the purification, which happens what after four years circumcised, circumcised after eight days, and then yeah, and then I think 40 days after the presentation in the temple according to Jewish law, because he opened the womb.
SPEAKER_03:Right. So so you want to jump into the genealogy a little bit?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, well, let's just I just want to play off of what you said a little bit first. So with Luke emphasizing Jerusalem, we don't know if Mary and Joseph, I guess, would have fulfilled the law with with Jesus as well. Well, regarding the 40 days to go to the temple before they fled to Egypt. But it seems like the Magi might not have gotten there until a year or two after Jesus was born. Like they could have gone to Jerusalem and gone back to Bethlehem, because Bethlehem's close to Jerusalem, and because Herod wants to kill all the male children who are two years and younger. So it seems like he could have been in they could have lived in Bethlehem for two years before they went to Egypt, then stayed in Egypt for maybe up to two years until Herod died.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I think Matthew is throughout his gospel very, very intent on highlighting that Jesus observes the law, but that he observes it with mercy. And even, and and I guess we can talk about it a little bit later, even the way Joseph interacts with Mary, right? Jesus does not come. Matthew's very clear, Jesus does not come to abolish the law. I I I think more the absence of Jerusalem is to highlight how much we're avoiding Herod here.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, right. Personally, yeah, that the persecution's there, and it's so parallel to the flight of Israel from Egypt.
SPEAKER_03:Which is why I think the like don't get bogged down in contradictions, don't get bogged down, and I don't even know if they're contradictions, don't get bogged down in different details. Recognize that there are distinct details in each of these gospels because they are trying to make a succinct point that's unique to that gospel. So I I just think that's an important way to look at these as theological texts, not just them trying to give you the historical data. Because that's not just what they're trying to do. They're trying to convince you that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God.
SPEAKER_05:Right. And they're writing it. Do you want to get into that just like who they're writing for and like some of the background of why the gospel is being written? Because like that's exactly what you're saying right now.
SPEAKER_03:I think that'll cut I think that'll come out as we go through. I think I think we draw that out through the story. I I want to get to the genealogy because we're already at 20 minutes.
SPEAKER_05:I agree, but I want to do the but just because Luke starts it before he even gives any information, says why he's writing the gospel and he explicitly says it, which I think is important. Luke, Luke never knew Jesus Christ while he was alive. So both Luke, Mark probably did, but Luke is the only one that didn't know any of them. And Luke is a doctor in Turkey, and Paul probably finds him and he starts talking to everybody because he gets really curious about the gospel, curious enough that he eventually follows Paul on his missionary journeys, and he starts gathering data, and that's how he starts his gospel, saying, like, I wanted to find an account, reconcile all the accounts with all the people, and he starts talking to everybody, figuring out. And we think probably he talked to Mary Jesus' mother, and which is why he's able to give us these infancy narratives. And the people he's trying to convince is he's trying to say, like, I'm an outsider and I'm just gathering all this data, and this is how I understood the story.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Good. Oh, sorry, I thought I lost your sound because I didn't hear anything at the end there. Yeah, so Matthew, on the other hand, begins with this, as we mentioned, this big long genealogy. And I know you were anxious to jump into it. I have I think there's some really cool stuff in the genealogy, which is a part of the of the gospels that if you're like, I assume I'm like most people, that it was always just this boring section at the beginning of Matthew's gospel. Yeah, right. And I didn't want to do the reading at Christmas, but then you really dive into it, and there's a lot of beauty and power in it.
SPEAKER_05:And it's just fun, like as you're learning the gospel or like learning about the Bible, like you slowly learn the stories of the characters, and then some of the names just start to jump out at you, which is which is fun. Like, then all of a sudden it's like you know these people and it's it's relevant. So you want to start with Matthews? Do you want to do you have like some names you want to talk about, or just say where it starts and why?
SPEAKER_03:Well, well, I I we mentioned it, you know, it's the different sets of 14 generations. So obviously, this is just connecting Jesus as this culmination, this fulfillment of Israel's story. But I think I I'd like if we're gonna focus on some people, we focus on the five women.
SPEAKER_05:Yep. And Abraham, I mean, just that it starts with Abraham is significant.
SPEAKER_03:All right, go ahead. Do you want to talk about Abraham?
SPEAKER_05:I just want to, I mean, like Matthew is his purpose, kind of is writing to Jews, quotes Isaiah a ton, and he's trying to explain where he fits in the history of Judaism, whereas Luke is writing where he fits in the history of humanity. Luke's a Gentile writing to Gentiles. And Matthew's like, really, only Judaism matters. I'm gonna start from Abraham because that's the only starting point that matters, I think. And Abraham's the father of faith, so first 11 chapters of Genesis, like we're we're got distant after the fall, and then we're restarting this relationship with God. So Abraham is the starting point. We do Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then we can get into the women now.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I I just I I I like I like the women. So there's five women mentioned: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary. But what's interesting about the women is at least two of them, maybe three of them, aren't Jewish, they're gentiles.
SPEAKER_05:And I think they're all gentiles except for Mary.
SPEAKER_03:Well, we don't know that Tamar's a Gentile, do we?
SPEAKER_05:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_03:No, or that Bathsheba is Bathsheba's a Gentile. Yeah. But Rahab and Ruth definitely.
SPEAKER_05:I mean, Tamar probably is because she's married to only the fourth generation of the Jews.
SPEAKER_03:She was the third, I was thinking. I don't know. Is Bath Bathsheba a Gentile? I I didn't think is she?
SPEAKER_05:Oh, because she lives in Jerusalem. So probably not.
SPEAKER_03:So we uh and they all have kind of these.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, Uriah yeah, Uriah the Hittite. Probably she's not Jewish, because Uriah, her husband, is a Hittite.
SPEAKER_03:All right. So maybe she isn't. So at any event, they all have these kind of unconventional stories. And I think the women in particular, all the figures, but the women, and I think it's it's notable that there are women included in this genealogy, the women demonstrate that even though God has been working throughout history, he's working through human weakness and crooked lines and all sorts of wacky stories, you know. I I just think it's it's Matthew reminding us that even though we're not perfect in our fulfilling of God's will, God is still working through us in history.
SPEAKER_05:Do you want to get into some of the brokenness of the characters? The the four women?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know that we need to get too much into it. I just kind of wanted to bring it, unless you have if you wanted to talk about any of them.
SPEAKER_05:Just like we could do like just like one sentence on each. I mean, Tamar. Tamar uh was the daughter-in-law of Judah, which is the tribe that Jesus is, and she dressed up as a prostitute because her husbands who were Jewish were not conceiving, were not trying to conceive with her.
SPEAKER_03:And then she has multiple husbands because her husband kept that's a lot, that's a lot of independent clauses for one sentence.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, sorry. So just basically Tamar, due to circumstances, dressed up as a prostitute and had a son with her father-in-law, who is one of the tribes of Judah. It's one of the tribes of Israel.
SPEAKER_03:Rahab is a prostitute in uh Jericho, who allows Joshua's people to take Jericho. Ruth is a Gentile whose husband dies, and she accompanies her mother-in-law back to Bethlehem. Bathsheba is David's one of David's wife or David's one of David's wives, who's treated very unfairly by David, but is the mother of King Solomon. So she's in the line. And then, of course, we have Mary. So yeah, we've got a lot of kind of wacky stuff going on.
SPEAKER_05:All right. So that's the genealogy. And for just with 14, 14, 14, David's name with Grammatria, when you figure out the the number by for David's name is 14. And it's like all that is really trying to hammer home that it's 14 generations, 14 generations, 14 generations, that the timing for Jesus is right as well. Like now is the time for the Messiah to be born, it makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_03:So do you want to start out? Whose dream do you want to start with first?
SPEAKER_05:I like I think Joseph's dream is the more important dream. What other dream are you doing with? Yeah. Wait, what other dream is it?
SPEAKER_03:Well, Mary. Well, Zechariah and Mary. I'm thinking I'm not the announcement, I guess, not dream. Okay, okay. Okay. Yeah. So start, we want to start with Matthew. Yeah. Yeah. So in in Matthew, in Matthew, the angel appears to Joseph in a dream. And this is what I I wanted to say earlier, and I said we'd kind of get to about the fatherhood, that like legally, it's very important that Joseph is the one that names Jesus, because that is legally giving him the status of father, of Jesus' father. So I think this is Matthew affirming that like Joseph's genealogy is relevant for Jesus, even if it's not a biological connection. And I and I I would say likely that's part of the reason maybe some people want to say Mary is of the tribe of Judah, because then we're still connecting her to that line with blood, even though we have Joseph there. Yeah, right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, but I think that he's trying he's trying to break us free from that. He's like, it makes sense that it is, but at the same time, like it's totally different. Like it doesn't need to be blood.
SPEAKER_03:We also have which sorry, go ahead.
SPEAKER_05:In the dream with Joseph as well, like it before his dream, he knows Mary's conceived, and it says he's gonna divorce her quietly because he was a just man. And in Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth series, he like really harps on Joseph being a just man that there were just men, and I think it's important to show he's a just man because he's following the law. He has the opportunity to take Mary to court or trial and possibly get her stoned for committing adultery. And he decides to divorce her quietly because they were betrothed so legally linked, and he's showing mercy, but even though he's justified and has good theology, his heart is still open to have his theology improved through the revelation of the angel. And like there's just such a difference because I think a lot of the characters in the New Testament, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, etc., they have like reasonable theology that's rational and they do have true like real devotions, but they don't have the same ability as Joseph to be open to a further revelation beyond something they understood before. So it just really sets Joseph up as this character who's like not only like kind of just by nature, but also is mystical and open to God proving him wrong or showing him something he couldn't have possibly foreseen.
SPEAKER_03:And I and I think this is important and it's relevant for Matthew and Matthew's story because there's speculation that Matthew continued to follow observances of the law and was was almost a little skeptical at times of Jewish Christians who did not. And so, like, this gospel is like in a lot of ways Matthew's case for for Jewish Christians, right? And and this is like, okay, Jesus is not abolishing the law, but he's fulfilling it in a new way that's exemplified here by Joseph, exactly like you just said.
SPEAKER_05:Ah, cool. So so he was like a almost like a Judaizer, Matthew.
SPEAKER_03:Like he wanted to follow I I've I I've read that before. Yeah, that he's a little critical of Mark for not thinking that way.
SPEAKER_05:Who knows? That's interesting. Yeah, it could be. It makes sense.
SPEAKER_03:Neither of us are academic scripture scholars, so I'm sure there's people you could ask that would have a better take on that. So, do you want to draw it, jump over to Luke? So every everything else up until the birth of Jesus comes from Luke. So that's the last we hear before the wise men show up in the Matthew story.
SPEAKER_05:So, really, a lot of people I want to say one thing before we flip. She said the scripture says he's gonna have the power to forgive sins, like in this vision for uh with Joseph. Uh, which so he's coming so that he can save people from their sins, which is like an audacious comment, and is interesting that like he's setting up right away that he's he's essentially God, because we know later on in the gospels it says only God has the power to forgive sins. So there's like a pretty strong revelation of what's happening to Joseph. Right. And then the other thing that's like content kind of controversial is it said, and and they had no relations until Mary gave birth to her firstborn son. And just like that's like with uh Catholic Protestant relations, sometimes like sticky words that that means, oh, so they did have marital relations after the birth of Jesus, or what does it mean to say until, and what does it mean to say firstborn son? I just just want to point out that like the word until is used a lot in the Bible where it's just saying it doesn't mean after it changed, it just right is something we use.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and and I think it also important to note there, and it'll come up a bunch of times. So for Matthew, he has what's called these throughout his gospel, but in the infancy narrative as well, they're called like fulfillment passages. So there when he when he quotes Isaiah, that the virgin will bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, God is with us. He's quoting Isaiah and and connecting Jesus to uh as the fulfillment of God's promises by quoting quoting scripture. Luke, Luke is different. Luke makes scriptural allusions, but Matthew's really quoting scriptural a lot.
SPEAKER_05:Just team it up for himself and then hit hitting a home run with it.
SPEAKER_03:Hitting hitting home runs. So we just team myself up. In in Luke's gospel, we don't get they get they don't get necessarily dreams, they get actual angels appearing once in an expected place and once in an unexpected place. Again, these like these stories of these angels appearing in Luke are very rich. We could spend a lot of time on it. Uh, this isn't necessarily an episode on like the canicles of Luke, though, which again could be multiple or angels, yeah. Or angels, yeah. But as we mentioned, uh so I don't know, did you have anything about right at the beginning there of Luke's gospel or near the beginning of the angel appearing to Zechariah?
SPEAKER_05:So it contextualized that in the days of Herod, which I just want to like point out again when we're doing our chronologies, that there are four Herods in the Bible: Herod the Great, then Herod Antipos, then Herod Agrippa I, Herod Agrippa II. And this is the first Herod, Herod the Great, who lives until 4 BC. And so it's like a little confusing for us because as Catholics, we invented the current calendar and we revolved it around the year zero, saying Jesus is born then, but it doesn't fit up with secular chronology. So we say, like, maybe Jesus was born 6 BC, 4 BC, 8 BC, but he he had to be born if we're following this passage while Herod the Great was alive. Herod the Great is someone who helped construct the temple. He was married into the Maccabees family, and he's the one that did the that killed all the holy innocents. Then the next Herod, Herod Antipas, is the one that tries Jesus, who kills John the Baptist, and Joseph and Mary return from Egypt after Herod the Great is dead. So just like a little bit of chronology to to match it up with the secular timeline. And then yeah, so the first vision happens in the temple. And this is because Zachariah is a Jewish priest, and he they draw lots to see what job you get. And he like hit the lottery this time. He gets to do incense in the temple. Not every priest does that, and they only do it by lot sometimes, if maybe once in their life. And he's in the temple, there's only one temple in Jerusalem, offering, and while that happens, the angel comes to him and starts speaking.
SPEAKER_03:Right. And as often happens in scripture, uh Zechariah's wife Elizabeth has been unable to bear a child, and she's old because she's old, and they uh were even when she was young. He's even when she was young, but now she's old, and he was skeptical.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Sorry, your your video is not synced with your speech, so I look like you were saying something and I couldn't hear anything. So he questions, and as a result of his questioning, he is made mute until his son is born. Which I I I bring that up, especially to connect it next with the story of Mary. And again, we don't need to make this all about the enunciation, but Mary also questions, but is praised kind of for her faith and her trust. Now, I I understand they use different words, but a lot of people point out that it doesn't seem entirely fair that these two people get different treatment by the angel.
SPEAKER_01:Do you have any thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_05:What happened? Yeah. Well, I just like contextually too, because God does judge us by our like the actual context and the actual realities in our life. Like Zachariah is a mature priest who's like beyond his wife's beyond childbearing age. So he's like a leader of the community and a priest and has been alive for a long time. Mary's probably a teenager and is asking like a question out of wonderment because she says, How is this possible? I haven't known a man. And Zechariah is basically saying, This isn't possible. I'm I'm beyond childbearing age. Sure.
SPEAKER_03:I think that's probably the answer, right? So John the Baptist's birth is announced to Zechariah by the angel in the temple, and then Mary also gets a visit from the angel Gabriel, who announces what her role will be that she is to bear a son. She responds with her beautiful magnificat, this canticle that is a very beautiful type of passage, not just in Luke's gospel, but throughout scripture. And these canticles, these hymns, these psalms you'll find in the Bible, we've talked about them before, are very often considered some of the oldest parts of Scripture, and where she heavily quotes Hannah, who we've spoken about before. After she visits Elizabeth, yeah. Yeah. Should we keep hammering through so we get to his birth?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, we'll try to get there in this episode on his birth.
SPEAKER_03:All right. So John the Baptist is born. Zechariah throws out his own beautiful, magnificent canticle that we pray in morning prayer as priests. We pray Mary's canticle at evening prayer. And then we get to the birth of Christ, the part of Luke's gospel that we very often hear at Christmas, where because of a decree from Caesar Augustus, when Corinius was governor of Syria, everyone has to enroll in a census. And so Joseph and Mary go to the place that is at least the ancestral home of Joseph's tribe, which is Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_05:Now, just with the census, are you going to bring this up like I want to talk about the census?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Has there I've heard arguments that like the census may have taken years and years, which is why it might not fit up with timeline-wise, but there's also no archaeological or other secular evidence that a census was taken around this time. Is that where you're born? Or no?
SPEAKER_03:A census, no. What there may be evidence of through archaeological findings in Turkey is that around this time that Jesus would have been born, Caesar Augustus required all of his subjects to come and like. Basically, submit to him. Submit to him as a god, essentially. Now, there was probably a different arrangement with the Jewish people because they did get some special treatment there. So there was, I don't remember the exact details of it, but there is some evidence that Caesar Augustus did require some level of reporting, not for a census, but that may have required Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, it's all speculation, obviously.
SPEAKER_05:Right. Yeah, trying because it's not a ton of evidence, but we're trying to see how some way to verify this or yeah, verify it through another.
SPEAKER_03:Luke calls it a census. It may have just been this like act of submission and recognition of Caesar Augustus as divine in other parts of the empire, perhaps not in Israel, but or in Judah, Palestine. But and and who knows? It makes a certain level of sense that that would be done by tribe and you would have to return to the place of the tribe.
SPEAKER_05:And it would make sense that the giant Roman Empire would be constantly like doing some way to enroll to figure out how taxes worked.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Well, I don't think it was for tax purposes, though. You think it was for submission to the gods either. There doesn't appear to be a census for tax purposes. But who knows? Could have lost it. But the the what's that?
SPEAKER_05:Could have lost it. Could have lost the census. Could have been lost to time.
SPEAKER_03:It could have been, right? Of course. Yeah, right. The theologi- the theological reason, of course, is because the Messiah needs to be born in the city of David, which is Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right again, which is very important, but it also could have happened that way. How about the angel Gabriel just like making getting tons of FaceTime in this these two chapters, and then we really don't hear from him at any other time?
SPEAKER_02:We don't hear from him again. Uh he disappears.
SPEAKER_05:He's super busy for like his whole life revolved around these few interactions.
SPEAKER_03:Right? So in Luke, we get this passage of Jesus being born in a manger because there's no room at the inn. This was a big, a big point in our synoptic gospel class. I remember just in Italian. So you you're probably familiar with the you know Italian word mangia, mangiare to eat. So that's manger is the same word, mangiatoia. It's it's a feeding trough. So it's very intentional that the bread of life is born and laid in uh a place where you eat, a feeding trough. He's he's bread for the world. So we get that right in the very beginning of the story in Luke's gospel, this foreshadowing of the Eucharist.
SPEAKER_05:And like you said already in Bethlehem, which is the house of bread.
SPEAKER_03:Bethlehem, the house of bread, right.
SPEAKER_05:I thought when you're gonna say you're all probably familiar, I didn't know you're gonna say manjar. I thought you were gonna say with the scripture scholar Roland Monet, of which probably nobody's familiar, but that was our synoptics teacher.
SPEAKER_03:It was. And of course, you're all familiar with Roland Monet, Jesuit, French Jesuit scripture scholar, who is good. I have gone back to him a lot. I think I've referenced him more than anybody on this podcast, probably. Which I wouldn't have guessed that when I was studying. I would not have guessed that I'd become a huge Monet disciple, but I have very debonant. Great man. Luke also gives us the shepherds, the angel again here, appearing to the shepherds in the fields and announcing this magnificent, glorious occurrence, the birth of the Messiah, and they're they're called to not be afraid and to go visit him. I don't know. Any anything about the the story of the angels there?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I I think it draws attention to the rejoicing of the loyal angels of God's plan coming in, and that it's always good for us to remember in the spiritual realm, like heaven and earth are overlapping and they're participating in similar mission. And so, like you see that when the skies open up in front of the shepherds, that like heaven and earth are both experiencing joy at the same time as as God moves forward in his plan. And so I guess compared to Matthew's Matthew, you get the joy kind of of the magi, but in this, you get like in the place where he is, like people can just feel the energy from this event that's happening because there seems to be an opening and a and a communion between heaven and earth with the rejoicing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think I think for me, not just the rejoicing, but like both Gospels we're gonna see here in a minute with Matthew are emphasizing the universality of this Messiah and that this call is going out to all the world. And Matthew has his emphasis, but for Luke, it's it's first announced to the poorest of the poor, to the Anawim, to the shepherds out alone in the fields, these like kind of cast-off members of society who are you know dirty and cold uh with animals all day. Yeah, those are the first people that come to get to come see. Like, I'm like, imagine that if like that's like a like a presidential inauguration happening at a homeless shelter, you know, like seriously or a soup kitchen. Like that's the symbolism here. This is the king, uh, even it's even more extreme than that. This is the the king of kings, and the first people that come to pay their respects to the king of kings are the poor.
SPEAKER_05:Or not not necessarily a homeless shelter, but like you're you're like a new president of the company, and the first person he's gonna talk to are the people doing like minimum wage on the computers. Like it's like the lowest level of the kingdom. Right. Because they're yeah, they're Jewish people who are employed, and so like they're they're making it by, but they're just seen as so unimportant.
SPEAKER_03:Right. We flip back to Matthew, to the Magi.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and we did we talked about the Magi a good bit in our Star Bethlehem episode. And they're depicted, they've become like kind of like there's like mid-rash on them and like tons of ascribed meaning to them post Bible, just like we're saying, like we assign this meaning of like the lowliness of the shepherds. The magi are like the everyman of everyone outside of Israel. So, like the people that only people really that are seen celebrating the birth of the Messiah that is a Jewish king, or is labeled king of the Jews on the cross, are people who are coming from afar, they represent different age groups. They eventually become the three kings, like it's an evolution of them, that they're representing like the three kings of the three continents that are closest to them, or like old, young, and middle-aged, or like kind of like the universality. That really is the universality of the of the world, right?
SPEAKER_03:Or those seeking seeking goodwill or seeking like yeah, philosophically and scientifically, and it and it's coming from I think it's especially powerful because this the story of the Magi is coming from the gospel writer Matthew, who is most concerned among all the gospel writers, to like emphasize Jesus' Jewish roots and his connection to the history of Israel. And so even if you emphasize Hebrew scripture the maximum possible, you still believe that God is announcing this and giving a means for the non-Jewish world, the Gentiles to recognize and encounter the Messiah and the Christ. So I think it's it's doubly powerful coming from Matthew.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that's a great point. And it's wild, it's wild that we only have two accounts of this from the four gospels. There's only four gospels, only two accounts of it. And then in the two accounts, like Luke is the only one that really gives like a lot of information of what happened. Right. Matthew's just giving like context.
SPEAKER_03:And and I I do want to talk about the flight to Egypt and the the massacre of the innocents, but I do I I don't I don't know if you have any thoughts on this. I I believe it's still the the scholarship would indicate that likely the infancy narratives were the last part of the gospels written. That the gospels are really like essentially the gospels want to tell the story of the resurrection and then they work backward from there. Like that's the message they want to get out. I've never heard that, but that makes sense. So, like that the infancy narratives have become like Christmas has become a huge deal, and it is. I mean, this is the story of the incarnation, but it's it's not really the heart of the story that they want to get across. They want to tell you about the resurrection. So I mean, I think that might be, you know, Mark and John either don't have the information or didn't think that was the part of the story that they needed to tell you. Who knows?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Yeah, which is also why there's nothing about Jesus from age whatever, 12 to 30. It's just not, it's just not important. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know.
SPEAKER_05:There's no staples back then. We had limited paper.
SPEAKER_03:That's why when I'm preaching, I don't tell a lot of stories about the ages between 12 and 30. No, I do. Of anyone. I do. I don't of myself. I don't tell a lot of stories about the ages between like we'll say 16 and 22. I steer clearance.
SPEAKER_04:We're still trying to figure out why you fell asleep during Matrix 2.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, and we we mentioned then after the visit of the Magi, again, you can go listen to our star Bethlehem episode if you want to hear a whole episode on us talking about them. We're fleeing from Herod. So here's another historical nitpick some people will have. Uh, we mentioned there's no evidence of a census, there's not really evidence of Herod massacring tons of kids, uh, and this is a point that's been brought up. Uh I I have a thought. I don't know if you have any initial thoughts. Do you want me to just tell you my answer?
SPEAKER_05:No, you go, because I don't. So uh I've never been involved in that conversation on this.
SPEAKER_03:Bethlehem's not a huge city. So how many firstborn children in this time window are there? Male.
SPEAKER_05:Like it's uh yeah, it's male children under the ages of two.
SPEAKER_03:It's a it's uh Herod probably massacred way more people than he would have massacred here, uh, and any ancient king probably did. So like I don't know if it necessarily would have been a big enough event that it would have lasted 2,000 years throughout the historical record.
SPEAKER_05:So you're saying it's not strange that we don't yeah, it's like a village of like what 300 people, you're thinking, or something like that. So like realistically, we're talking like 10 kids.
SPEAKER_03:It could be like 10 kids, which is awful.
SPEAKER_05:Which is awful. Horrible. Somebody just systematically kills every child under two years old is freaking cold-blooded and crazy.
SPEAKER_03:But but in 4 BC, it would probably happen in a couple places, and nobody necessarily would have written that down, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_05:Indiscriminate killing was pretty common back then, right?
SPEAKER_03:So we have the flight into Egypt then, as we mentioned before, echoing the story of Moses, and then you get to have Jesus, the fulfillment of all of Israel's promises, emerging out of Egypt as the new Moses, the new lawgiver, the new Israel, this powerful imagery on the way back to Nazareth. Or not back to Nazareth, the way to Nazareth.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. So you're gonna you're gonna say something about are you is there more you have to say about Egypt?
SPEAKER_01:Or that was covered that already. Okay. Did you have more about that?
SPEAKER_05:No, there's like because I got to live in Egypt the one summer, it's like so many churches have like Jesus visited here during the flight into Egypt. So really claim to fame. Yeah, like like kind of like whatever six churches in Rome have the heads of John the Baptist or whatever. It's kind of like right, right.
SPEAKER_03:Probably some of it's true. So flip back to Luke for the end of Luke. Sure. So we we don't have a flight into Egypt named in Luke, in Luke. We go to Jerusalem and then back to Nazareth. But in Jerusalem, at Jesus' presentation in the temple, we meet two figures, the prophetess Anna and the priest Simeon, who in their waning years are able to see and recognize that the Messiah has been born, which is a real beautiful little event in Luke's gospel. Simeon gives this great prayer, the nuncdomitis, where he essentially thanks God for allowing him to see his savior be born and he can die now. And as priests, we pray that at night, every night before we go to bed with night prayer.
SPEAKER_05:And like just this concept of how important the savior is. We have Zechariah and Anna, and then we also have like even John the Baptist. John the Baptist asks from jail to Jesus is just the gospel the other day. Are you the one who is to come or should we await another? And like he wants to know this question. He's like, if the messiah is actually here, he's like, I don't care if I die in jail. Like everything's been completed and it's fine. Like this, the real hope has arrived. And you see this with with Zachariah and Anna too. Like, there's just like an unbelievable joy that first of all, he was it was prophesied that he would get to meet the messiah before he died, and then to actually meet the messiah, like his heart must have been exploding. Just like just such a sense of fulfilling the one purpose you had in life, and like the one hope is it ends up that it's true. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. It's really it's it's heartwarming, I think. And and and and he captures so we've been talking a lot about Matthew is focusing on Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament. I mean, Luke is saying that too. The all the gospels say that, and I think that's sort of personified in Simeon and Anna that they kind of stand in for all of Israel who, for all these years, have been waiting, you know, these two elderly people.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. For the Israelites who actually have been waiting.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Any any uh big points on everything we just talked about or overarching things you wanted to say?
SPEAKER_05:I like how we just kind of work through a timeline and we're trying to point out that the timeline doesn't necessarily match up exactly. You can't draw an actual timeline that existed. So it's kind of like shrouded a little bit in fog. We we like factually believe Jesus Christ came at a real time and a real place. It's not something nebulous, he came in the flesh, and we have a general idea of when that was. But it's also something that's like so far beyond the reality of history because it's something eternal in time, that it's like God permitted a little bit of mystery to exist around it, and for us to like be able to get close to it, but not necessarily like firmly grasp it in our hand. And I think like, yeah, hopefully when you're listening, you you felt that too, that you have a general better idea of what the gospels are trying to do, not biographies, but at the same time you understand they are teaching us about the life of Jesus. Sure.
SPEAKER_03:No, I think that's a great, a great wrap-up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:All right, we'll see you next time. We'll see.
SPEAKER_03:Have a Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER_00:Merry Christmas.
