A Historic Nativity - We Can Do Better

Dating Jesus’ birth is partly tied to the dating of Jesus’ crucifixion (33 AD) and baptism (28 or 29). This is as it ought to be. Settling on the Lord's birthdate should NOT, however, be restricted by over-committment to worn out apologetic refrains aimed purely at defending a [reading of a] verse than have little or no practical concern for reconstructing an actual, historical event sequence.

Yes, dating Jesus' baptism is tied to stretchable interpretations of the word "about" and stretchable interpretations on the "fifteenth" year of Tiberius. Not too stretchable, thankfully, so we can at least settle on 28 OR 29. Following Cheney, I conclude an induced passover in Matthew 17 (tax season) gives us 4.5 years between the major events, so the baptism falls in (autumn) 28 AD. Unfortunately, and for various reasons, a lot of traditional christian scholarship has tied itself to a baptism in 29. That causes enough problems with event-sequencing on the Lord's ministry years, but what's worse is that it leaves a historical nativity completely out in the cold.

On the feeling that we shouldn't stretch "about thirty" to beyond 34 years, traditional Christian scholarship has (de facto) excluded 7 BC (and earlier years) from consideration. If there's another reason, I honestly cannot detect it. Unfortunately, the years 6 and 5 BC give us no plausible justification for reconstructing a Roman census in Herod's Kingdom - 6 BC saw a turnover of Syria from Saturninus to Varus and 5 BC gives us nothing at all to work from. (There is more to say on these points for another time.) On the other hand, a baptism in 28 AD allows a 34 year old Jesus to have been born in 7 BC. (There was no year zero.) And in case you didn't know, 7 BC has quite a lot going for it.

The case for 7 BC has been made on this blog, and will be made again. But the point just now is that traditional scholarship has settled for assigning years to something that has never been fleshed out in full historical context. Yes, at some point we all leave some questions to faith, but a whole census? Responsible faith-based historiography must at least try to reconstruct some explanation for why Augustus Caesar would have mobilized hundreds or thousands of Roman soldiers into Herod’s sovereign Kingdom, especially since it was merely to count heads (and not property also, unlike the census of 6 AD).

Failing or refusing to attempt even modest reconstruction gives tacit support to the notion that events in scripture may be unhistorical. Believing they may be historical should rightly require us to support that belief with historical evidence, if possible. Some defenders of our faith have unfortunately been straining out gnats by defending interpretations of verses, when the entire historical content of Luke 2 has been mainly ignored. To me, that camel has not been swallowed, it has been pretty much left for dead.

4 BC (a la 1066 AD)

I've got a 200 page first draft called 4 BC (online here) that needs a ton of work. Looking back, it was almost more of an exercise than an actual draft. I was trying to line up the events in a narrative format, in simple grade school english, but with somewhat exhaustive detail. That's writing for two different audiences at once. I don't think it worked. Since then, I've been trying to figure out how to write a book that would appeal to everyone but also provide intriguing arguments worthy of academic attention (maybe in the appendices). I may be getting closer to a solution. (Lord, hear my prayer.)

One model I've found for how to do this might be David Howarth's 1066. While not a professional scholar, his treatment (I am told) gained a permanent place in the larger conversation going on about his topic. If this were Roman History, and if there were a long, sliding scale between works like Ronald Syme's two volume Tacitus and Robert Graves' fictitious I, Claudius - a book like 1066 probably fits somewhere not too far from the exact middle. It's a popular history that nevertheless aspires to high academic standards and perhaps even to stand among related scholarship as a modest if not or perhaps a substantial contribution - albeit not a formal one.

Here are some excerpts from Howarth's Preface that explain what I'm thinking about doing with 4 BC:

"This book is not about the historical importance of the year, it is simply about the tremendous drama [that took place] ... [it] is not meant to be read as a work of scholarship, only as an evocation... but I hope it is accurate enough to satisfy scholars.

"Strictly speaking, every sentence in a story nine centuries old should include the word perhaps: nothing is perfectly certain. But that would be boring, and I have left out the qualification whenever things seem reasonably certain... Sometimes I have made a guess, but not without saying so.

"Better scholars might say I have gone too far in trying to draw the characters of the people of 1066; but I think this is the most enjoyable part of history. ... I think it is possible, using every scrap of information, to make a worth-while portrait of each of the leading actors in the drama. ... I have not tried to hide this blatant prejudice, but I hope my portraits are fair enough to let anyone else disagree with me.

The whole preface is something I read often. His summary critique of biases among the earliest sources is itself very interesting. Obviously, I also like the fact that he's focused on the events of a single Year. For the record, Howarth didn't include a full bibliography or cite any recent scholarship (to 1978) but listed twenty contemporary works from 1050 to 1245, his only ostensible sources.

According to the paperback blurbs, the Boston Globe called it "literate popular history", a dramatic account with a sensible conclusion. And the New Yorker called it "a model of scholarly popular history". Overall, that's extremely impressive, especially if the story is true that it still commands some attention from professional scholars. Seriously, I should hope for so much.

At any rate, my plan for this summer is to blog less and write more. If it's a very good summer, I might just finish this new version of 4 BC. Or maybe something similar, but bigger. I'm not sure just yet. We'll see how it goes.

Watch this space...

Who Was The First Christian Writer?

Common people might not think about writing things down until the eyewitnesses are nearing their death. However, as I've said before, it only takes ONE GUY to be forward thinking enough to beat those commoners by several decades. However, he had to be more than literate. He also had to be literarily minded. Personally, I think that ONE GUY was Matthew the publican-scribe. Here's why:

Imagine you're Matthew the tax collector. You carry around some simple writing tools that you use for book keeping when you have to travel, which is often. When somebody pays you, you unroll your satchel and scroll, set your tools on their table, make a record of the transaction, and put everything away again. You'd keep a small jar of ink, and you'd know in which towns to buy more ink when you were running low. As a tax-collector, you are in small part a travelling scribe.
Now Jesus calls you. And you want to serve him. And writing is not only a skill, it's a part of your practiced profession. But one more important detail is... you're Jewish! You grew up hearing people read the scriptures out loud. You've spent many hours rolling and unrolling scrolls, just like you saw done in the synagogue every Sabbath, so writing isn't a mystery to you. In fact, writing is part of your daily mindset.

But there's more. In the synagogues, among other things, you had sometimes heard that God told Moses to write, God told Isaiah to write, God told Jeremiah and other prophets to write... and apparently some of them wrote without being told to. You see Jesus go into the Synagogues, and they read the scrolls, and at least one time you think, "They should hear what Jesus said the other day!"

To birth writing, literary capability needs to meet literary mindedness. One simple thought only had to cross Matthew's mind one time. He already had the skills and the tools. He just needed the spark. "I could write something!" And writing itself was abundantly extant.

By the time of Hillel, famous Rabbis had people who wrote down their sayings. Pharisees commonly put writings on their foreheads or sleeves, so common people could see it and want to know what it said. Herod's Temple had inscriptions written on it by those who donated materials. The average person might not see writing all day long, but they might see it daily. And pages of writings - for synagogue attenders - would be seen at least weekly.

Maybe Jesus himself made a remark one day that got Matthew to thinking about the potential. Maybe Matthew offered to sell his writing tools for food money, and someone suggested he keep them for future use instead. It doesn't matter how it happened - the point is that all of these possibilities are extremely plausible or common scenarios that could have nudged Matthew into thinking about recording some speeches and current events.

But what if it wasn't Matthew?

The odds of that thought coming at least once [at least to some writer] seem as certain as anything. And my whole point - again - is that the thought only had to come once. In a purely oral culture, maybe writing would never occur until the eyewitnesses were about to die. But in a partly literate culture? If the task only had to occur to one literate person? If it only took one guy to decide to write down what he knew? More likely than not, somebody would write.

For the sake of argument, let's pretend there were two hundred literate christians out of the thousands in Palestine. With those numbers, what are the odds that just one of them compiled an account? Those odds would be the inverse of 200 to 1. Those odds would be 200 in 1. That's two hundred chances for one guy to do it. Those are pretty good odds.

By the way, written testimony doesn't merely back up an eyewitness who might leave or die - it also backs up that witness' own memory while they're still around! Again, this only increases the odds that the earliest christians would not have waited so long to make written records about Jesus' ministry years.

So, after all that... my faithful blog reader... if YOU had to pick the most likely New Testament person to put down written records more early than others, who would you choose?

So far, I'm sticking with Matthew.

Do you have a better (specific) suggestion?