Saturnalia symbols7/20/2023 Jesus was more likely born in late spring or early fall when the weather was warmer.Īnd as to the year Jesus was born, guesses range from 6 B.C. Luke tells us there were shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night it was too cold in Palestine in December to pasture sheep overnight. ![]() Two of the Gospels don’t even bother to tell us about Jesus’ birth, and the two that do tell us the story don’t bother to mention when he was born, not just the day on the calendar, but even the year.Īs to the day in the calendar, we’re almost certain it wasn’t December 25. Perhaps that was partly because of the Gospel’s relative indifference to Jesus’ earthly origins. There is no record of any nativity celebrations before the fourth century. For a long time, the Christian Church virtually ignored the birth of our Lord. I was going to ask why you can’t find the Jesus books at the celebration of his birth, but I guess I kind of knew the answer.Īctually, however, the connection between Jesus of Nazareth and Christmas has always been a little tenuous and fragile. I hunt down a clerk and ask her, “Where are the Jesus books?” She says, “We moved them to a bottom shelf in the corner in the back.” And I say, “Why?” And she says, very reasonably, and very patiently, and without a trace of irony, “Because it’s Christmas.” Not a book in sight, much less one about Jesus. So I go into my favorite bookstore with the killer religion section looking for the latest must-have Jesus book, and I go right to the Religion section because I come here all the time and I know right where the Jesus books will be but when I get there all I find in what I have always known as the religion section are Christmas ornaments and Christmas cards and toys. There are no bookstores anymore, only Amazon warehouses, but I can assure you that once such things existed. You can tell this is an old, old story, can’t you? For those of you who are under 20 years of age, a “bookstore” is a building, made out of bricks and mortar, or maybe wood and nails, or maybe steel and bolts, and if you were to go inside this building called a “bookstore” in the last century, you would find row upon row of horizontal pieces of wood called “shelves” stacked atop one another about 18 inches apart, and on these pieces of wood called ‘shelves’ you would find many, many books. Crossan-but whoever it was I had to have it right now, so I get in the car and drive to my favorite Grand Rapids bookstore, which had a killer religion section for a mainstream bookstore. I forget who it was-Marcus Borg maybe or N. ![]() One December afternoon a long time ago when I was serving a church in Michigan I read a nice review in The Christian Century about the latest Jesus book by a prominent New Testament scholar. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. ![]() What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
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