'But still today too, God is born, and lives on, in the struggles of the oppressed as they struggle to win peace and the Kingdom of Heaven.'
Born to be wild? Tim Gee finds another way to tell the oversweet story of Christmas
‘Why, when the prophets said he would be called “Prince of Peace”, was Jesus named after a military man?’
At this time of year, the Christmas story is hard to escape. In advent calendars, cards, school plays and nativity sets, the story of Jesus’ birth is everywhere. One Quaker response is to ignore all this – after all Christ is born in our hearts every day. But I take a slightly different – although not incompatible – approach: to read these stories in a way that takes the political turmoil of the time into account, to ask what it says to us today.
Whether we’ve read it or not, we probably all know the story: Joseph is in love with a young woman called Mary who becomes pregnant. They travel from Galilee to Bethlehem to register for the census. On arrival, place after place tells them there’s no room at the inn. They sleep in a barn where Mary gives birth and lays her newborn child in a cow’s trough.
The story as told by Matthew begins earlier than that though. It begins with a family tree: ‘Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, Jacob begat Judah’ and so on through David and Solomon down to Joseph. It’s not there by accident. If things had have been different, Joseph could have been king.
But things were different. The works of historians like Josephus give us a sense of how things actually were. Judea and Samaria were under military occupation and were now a backwater of the Roman Empire. The empire was ruled by Augustus, the adoptive son of Julius Caesar who was considered divine. According to imperial religion, the emperor was ‘Son of God’.
Locally, Rome appointed a man named Herod to be ‘King of the Jews’.
Herod spearheaded a significant construction programme, including rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple. As a person described in Greek as a tekton (which means both carpenter and manual labourer) Joseph may well have been a low-paid worker on those building sites. Taxes from locals paid for this work, with the leftover sent for the use of the Romans to fund the very soldiers who oppressed them. Many people fell into debt.
Unsurprisingly there was resistance, especially in Galilee, which was known as a hotbed of revolt. Part of the authoritarian infrastructure of the time was the census. In 6CE there was a rebellion against it led by Judas the Galilean (not to be confused with Judas Iscariot). He was said to be the son of the freedom fighter Hezekiah, who had led a guerrilla war some forty years before. Hezekiah was father in turn to Menahem ben Judah, who would also go on to fight to liberate the land from Roman rule.
Herod also faced an uprising, led by one of his former slaves, Simon, who succeeded in looting and burning down the royal palace in Jericho. Soon afterwards, a young shepherd named Athronges continued the insurrection, including by ambushing columns of Roman soldiers. It’s likely that these revolts sought to emulate events from more than a century before, when rebel warriors reclaimed Jerusalem from the Seleucid Empire.
In the story told in the gospel of Luke, there are some clues as to Mary’s religio-political outlook. In the song she sings when she learns she is pregnant she describes God as one who brings rulers from their thrones, but lifts up the humble, and who fills the hungry with good things while sending the rich away empty.
She was clearly not alone in this view. There was a well-known prophecy that a descendent of David would liberate the land again. This helps us imagine the hope some must have felt when they heard that Joseph’s partner Mary was with child. According to Matthew, the first people to visit the young family were agricultural labourers who arrived by cover of nightfall.
Later, a trio of very rich men arrived, bringing with them expensive gifts. We could view them as pilgrims or take the fact that they came from abroad as evidence that this movement was always internationalist. The possibility that they were Zoroastrians suggests interfaith formed a part of the movement. But there was another side to their visit too. When Herod had heard about the birth, and the rich men on their way to visit, he enrolled them as his own spies.
If I think myself into the scene, I can see why this might have raised the parents’ suspicions. Why would these very wealthy people visit them? And with gold and hugely expensive oils? After meeting the family, the rich men’s consciences got the better of them, and they returned to their home land by another route. I think they may have warned the couple themselves. Either way, Joseph and Mary sensed the danger they were in and fled from their homeland to Egypt.
Given all this, I find the names Mary and Joseph chose for their children particularly interesting. Thanks to Mark we know the names of four of Jesus’ brothers: James, Joseph, Judas and Simon. Could it have been that the youngest two were named after Judas the Galilean and Simon the slave rebel?
This leads us naturally to ask about the name of Jesus. The prophecy had been that their child would be called Immanuel. Instead they called him Yeshua as in Joshua – the man who had led the Hebrews into Jericho, translated into Greek as Jesus. Why, when the prophets said he would be called ‘Prince of Peace’, was Jesus named after a military man? It might have been unconscious, but it seems it fulfilled the other part of the prophesy: in his name swords are turned in to ploughshares.
I find all of this profoundly relevant. Today we live under rulers who propagate injustice. Today social movements are still spied on by governments. But still today too, God is born, and lives on, in the struggles of the oppressed as they struggle to win peace and the Kingdom of Heaven.
Tim’s His Open for Liberation: An activist reads the Bible, will be published next year.
Comments
This is the sort of subversion we need to challenge the religion of Constantine, when Christiaiity was turned into the state religion of the Roman Empire, and to challensge the pious Victorians who established Christmas more or less as practicsed today. The religion which bids us sing (from 1848) ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful .... The rich man in his castle/The poor man at his gate/God made them, high and lowly/And ordered their estate.’ Really?
George Fox also challenged the established church religion of his day.
But where are we Quakers now - polite and respectable middle class people, often pillars of the establishmen, who would not dream of ‘quaking’?
By GordonF on 29th December 2020 - 10:28
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