Joe Walsh - A Classic View

My History of Christmas class has been discussing history in the biblical Nativity accounts. Only Luke and Matthew really describe Jesus’ birth, and their accounts raise historical problems, at least if we view them as intended to be historical accounts as we understand historical writing today. One example. Herod the Great, the villain who tries to trick the Magi into revealing Jesus’ location and who then slaughters all the boys of Bethlehem under two (the account is in Matthew and is known as The Slaughter of the Innocents) died in 4 B.C.; the census that, according to Luke, brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, had to have taken place in 6 A.D. The ten-year gap is irreconcilable, although some fundamentalists bend over backwards trying to explain the discrepancy away. Trying to figure out how much of Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts is historically factual is very complicated. My History of Christmas students are all over the place on the issue. One of the problems is that the conventions and expectations of this sort of writing in the ancient world were very different from those today. It was expected, for example, that historians would make up speeches for historical figures, and these speeches were intended not so much to give an accurate idea of what the person had actually said but rather to give an idea of what the historian thought of the historical figure. These speeches were, in a sense, tools of interpretation, not of reporting. And they were also an opportunity for the writer – not the historical figure – to show off his rhetorical skill. The idea, then, was for the writer to convey some truths about the historical figure and the events surrounding him (in the ancient world, more likely a him), not to report on what was actually said or even happened. And savvy readers understood this perfectly well. Add to this the fact that the Gospels are not really biographies or histories, even by ancient standards, and discerning history in them gets even trickier. So in reading the Gospels, and particularly the Nativity accounts, one has to always ask if the evangelist at any given point intended to convey factual information, that is, historical data, or rather was trying to convey some greater truth about Jesus’ significance. This makes the historical examination of Gospel material much more complicated but way more fascinating and fun too. For believers, knowing a bit about ancient writers and the conventions of their time should be liberating. You don’t have to do that bending over backwards to do rigorous historical analysis of the texts and preserve your faith. (The Catholic Church’s policy, to give one example, is well summed up in this sentence from Dei Verbum (iii.1): “The Books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the Sacred Writings for the sake for our salvation.” Note that what’s infallible and true is not every single word and description, but the truths specifically intended “for the sake of our salvation.” There can non-salvation-related factual errors in the Bible.) In the next posting, our class’s test case: Jesus’ birthplace. (Yes, believe it or not, that is controversial.)