THE BIRTH OF JESUS, AS DESCRIBED BY MATTHEW.

Each of the four gospels gives us details of the birth and origins of Jesus its own way. Mark states in as brief a form as possible: "The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God". John says of this beginning that it was created by "the Word who became flesh". Matthew and Luke describe at length the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. The question has been raised as to where this divergence comes from. The church historian Eusebius, who wrote his main work at the beginning of the 4th century, made many independent judgements on the basis of the extensive source material available to him. On the differences of the beginnings of the gospels he says:

    "It is natural that, while John passed over in silence the genealogy, according to the flesh, of our Saviour, inasmuch as it had been previously Set down by Matthew and Luke, he should begin with the doctrine of his divinity, since the divine Spirit had reserved that for him as their superior."9
Regarding the basis of his own opinions he assures us that,
    "I will not hesitate also to set down for your benefit, along with the interpretations, all that ever I carefully learnt and carefully recalled from the elders, guaranteeing its truth."10
The nature of Matthew's report is clarified by certain very ancient observations. Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165 AD) used the word 'memoirs', apomnemoneumata, of the gospels. Each one of them communicates as faithfully as possible the images it recalls from its own particular point of view. John wrote to the Ephesians the "gospel of the secrets of God". Peter's interpreter Mark drew up the "gospel of the ministry of Jesus", and Luke the physician the "account of the healings of the sick and suffering". Matthew has been called "the evangelist of prophecy fulfilled". Eusebius mentions the words of Papias, Bishop of Nikopolis, from ca. 140 AD regarding Matthew:
    "So then, Matthew compiled the oracles in the Hebrew language; but everyone interpreted them as he was able."11
Irenaeus tells us around the year 180 that Matthew wrote his gospel for Jews in their own language at the same time that Peter and Paul were teaching in Rome.

The words of Justinius on Matthew as the expositor of the "fulfilled prophecies" are also apparent in the fact that there are 65 OT quotes in Matthew, of which 43 follow the Old Testament word for word. 12 times Matthew states that the prophecies are "fulfilled" in Jesus; Mark makes this kind of observation only once, the phrase is completely absent from Luke and John for his part uses it 7 times. Matthew worked in Capernaum as a tax official and was an experienced book-keeper. The language of bureaucracy at that time was Greek, and the accounts were submitted to Herod Antipas. Such being the case there would appear to be no reason for suspecting Matthew's ability to compose a gospel. If the first manuscript was made in the 40's or 50's AD, when Peter and Paul were teaching in Rome, it would have been easy to check the accuracy of the events described by asking an eye-witness.

Is Jesus the Son of David?

The first thing of which Matthew wishes to convince his readers concerns Jesus' pedigree. He even begins his gospel with the words:

    "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham."
Following this he outlines a genealogy which begins with Abraham and ends with Joseph, the husband of Mary, "of whom was born Jesus, who is called the Christ". In itself it is amazing that the gospels nowhere mention any dispute about whether Jesus was of the house of David or not. If his opponents had doubted that they would have without hesitation used it against him, and his claim to Messiahship would have been repudiated at a stroke. We read in the Talmud that "Jesus was near to the kingdom of God".12 Nor do the gospels say anything about any personal slights to Jesus' character. Here and there people refer to him as the son of David.13

That the Messiah was to come from the house of David was common knowledge. Eusebius tells us that Vespasian was despatched immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem to seek out all the descendants of David. When Domitian became Emperor (81-96 AD), the grandsons of Jude, the brother of the Lord, were betrayed as being of Davidic descent, and on arrest were ordered to state how much their fortune was worth. They protested that they were but manual labourers and that the kingdom of Christ was heavenly and not of this world. On showing their hands to Domitian he, far from sentencing them, merely despised them as men of no account and let them go free.14 From a historical point of view it is certain that Christ was descended from David.

We saw when we studied Jacob's blessing that the Midrash Rabbah speaks of a genealogy found in Jerusalem which showed that Rabbi Hillel "issued from David".15 Jesus' family tree could also have been studied in the Temple archives. These lists did not always mention every single link in the chain of descent. Even in the Old Testament, if we compare, for example, the lists given in Ezra 7:1-5 and 1 Chr. 6, we can see that Ezra omits six names from Amariah to Azariah. Here we have an interest more in the legal (ie. connected with the possession of land), and spiritual aspects of kinship, rather than the purely biological. The well-known formula in the tractate Pirqe Avoth gives an example of another type of genealogical generalisation, which will serve to illustrate our point yet further:

    From Adam to Noah there were ten generations, which shows how longsuffering God was to them, as they all grumbled against him -- and there were ten generations from Noah to Abraham, which shows how longsuffering God was with them, as they all grumbled against him."16
Matthew's genealogy comprises a triple 14-name series which, using gematria, spells out "three times David", the numeric value of the name 'David' being 4+6+4 = 14. Often Gematria was used as a mnemonic device but it always had a direct bearing on the actual subject matter itself, as has been noted in Matthew 1:17:
    "Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ."17
If Matthew, then, did use the cryptic gematria methods current in his day, we can easily understand his somewhat forced way of dividing Joseph's lineage into a series of three 14's. Terminating, as he did, his lineage with Abraham he only had 42 generations to accomodate, whereas Luke, continuing right back to Adam, had 56. The Messiah was to be born in the City of David, Bethlehem.18 In the Mishna we read that members of the house of David functioned as Temple woodbearers. Many of them would quite naturally become carpenters, as they could take wood for their own purposes from the trees felled by the winter storms. This would go some way towards explaining Joseph's trade.

The problem of Matthew's genealogy lies primarily in that he states that Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit, a claim which would seem to render Joseph's genealogy meaningless. The Talmud, furthermore, is at pains to make it clear that "only the father's family is called family; the mother's family is not called family".19 It is, perhaps for this reason that Matthew sketches the "formal" father's lineage. It may be that Luke is acknowledging this in giving Mary's genealogy, although he too, following the legal line, attaches it to Joseph. He begins his family tree with Joseph's father-in-law Heli and concludes with Adam and God. There are two passages in the Talmud20 which speak of  "Mary, daughter of Heli", and which, according to Jewish scholars, could refer to Jesus' mother. In 3:23 Luke uses the phrase hos enomidzeto, 'as was supposed', for a bridge. In the Greek we read that Jesus was "the son, so it was supposed, of Joseph, the son of Heli". The Greek phrase corresponds to the Hebrew expression ke-hozqâ or kemô huhzaq, which mean that the matter had been legally "confirmed". Thus, before the law, it was right to connect Jesus through Joseph to his father-in-law Heli.

For the Jewish reader this was sufficient evidence of the fact that Jesus was, both on his mother's side and on his "foster-father's" side, legally "recognised" as a descendant of David.21 Western thought often demands from a genealogy more than the experts, the Jews themselves, were in the habit of writing down, with the result that the genealogies of Matthew and Luke have been subjected to the minutest examination in search of inconsistencies. It is noteworthy that Luke also assumes Mary to be of Davidic extraction on other accounts than the genealogical.22 Paul too refers to this,23 and the church father Ignatius says ca. 100-110 AD that, "Our Lord Jesus Christ was born of Mary in the divine economy, of the seed of David and through the Holy Spirit".24 Thus Jesus was in truth, as he is called again and again by the gospels, "the Son of David".

As the "gospel of prophecy fulfilled" Matthew sets out his genealogy as the pedigree of "Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham", thus setting Abraham in a position of prominence in the divine dispensation. Even the Midrash, speaking of "the seed of Abraham", says that "in the Messianic age it will be like the sands of the sea".25 The Old Testament calls Abraham the "friend of God".26 The Arabs too use of him the name El-Khalil ar-Rahman, the 'friend of the merciful'. Nehemiah 9:8 says of Abraham,

    "You found his heart faithful to you, and you made a covenant with him."
Paul, in Galatians 3:16, refers to this "seed" of Abraham, which is spoken of "in the singular". Observing one of the rules of Midrashic exposition, al tiqrâ, 'read not so, but so' -- that is, a difficulty in the original text can be explained by reading the word in a different way -- Paul points out:
    "The Scripture does not say 'and to seeds', meaning many people, but 'and to your seed', meaning one person, who is Christ".
In his lengthy argument for the case he adds that the covenant founded on the faith of this "friend of the merciful" was made 430 years before the law of Moses, and thus expresses God's original salvation intent. Matthew in his genealogy refers cryptically to the promise already given to Abraham.

As Son of David Jesus was automatically a candidate for the kingly Messiahship expected in his day, as Son of Abraham he was entitled to the epithet 'Messiah of all peoples'. He did not, of course, base his Messiahship on such matters, but a proof of this kind would not be without significance for a Jewish audience.

The star which appeared at the time of Jesus' birth.

It has been said of Matthew's gospel that it is by nature the "most Jewish" compared with the other three, thus it seems remarkable that it is Matthew, and he alone, who has recorded for us a celestial phenomenon from the time of Jesus.
The Jews were forbidden to worship the moon and the stars. In Isaiah 47:13 we read: "Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you!" The Rabbinic literature refers to the Gentiles by the Hebrew abbreviation akum, the letters of which mean "worshippers of fortune and the stars". The much-used phrase that "Israel has no luck" means that they do not have any particular "lucky star" on which to base a horoscope. The word for 'luck', mazal, means both 'luck' and 'star'. Bearing this in mind it is strange that Matthew, so faithful to the Jewish mode of expression, should preserve for us an account of the miraculous star which was connected with Bethlehem. We might conclude from this that the phenomenon was truly historical. On the other hand it makes us ask whether it might not in some way be related to the Biblical prophecies and to Jewish Messianic expectation.

The star which makes its appearance at the beginning of the second chapter of Matthew has been explained as either a divine miracle or as an extraordinary natural phenomenon. Luke tells us of a vision in the heavens at the time of Jesus' birth and of the "glory of the Lord". Rational explanation attempts to undermine the "otherworldly" reality which is apparent throughout the Bible. The finite cannot comprehend the infinite. Nevertheless, in the gospels the dimensions of God infringe upon and cut across this level of temporal and historical events. David Flusser says very pertinently regarding the New Testament miracles that,

    "They cannot, unfortunately, be helped who do not understand these matters more deeply and who do not know that between heaven and earth there are things of which academic wisdom cannot even conceive."27
Matthew first describes how the wise men from the east came to Jerusalem and enquired: "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." The learned men which King Herod called together were aware of the prophecy in Micah 5 of the Deliverer who would be born in Bethlehem. After a public audience Herod "called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared". When the Wise men eventually found the baby Jesus to whom the star had led them, "they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh." Following this Matthew tells us of Mary and Joseph's flight to Egypt and the murder of the children in Bethlehem. There are a number of separate factors in this story, each of which deserves individual consideration.

1. The Old Testament connects the advent of the Messiah with the seeing of a star. Num. 24:13-17 speaks of the vision of Balaam concerning "days to come". Balaam says:

    "I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a sceptre will rise out of Israel."
The Jews understand this as referring to the Messiah. Rabbi Aqiba appealed to this passage in the patriotic rebellion of AD 132-135, when he proclaimed Simon Bar Kokhba (the 'son of a star') as the Messiah. When Ibn Ezra explains Balaam's prophecy he sees there evidences of long aeons of time, and that the Messiah's coming will thus tarry. We must also remember that "there are stars in the heavens unknown to history and which will never be known". The short-lived success of the false Messiah Shabbatai Tsevi was in part a result of the fact that his first name 'Shabbatai' means 'Saturn'.

2. The movements of the stars have been charted in the East for thousands of years. The zodiacal phenomena in particular caught the attention of enquiring minds. A conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn took place in the year 3102 BC on the 17th of February along with three other planets from the Zodiac, providing a brilliant celestial display which inspired the Indians to start their kaliyuga calendar. The Chinese observed a conjunction of four planets in Pisces and a simultaneous total eclipse of the sun, and began their own calendar from that date, the 29th of January 2449 BC. Observations of the stars were made with such scrupulous care that around the year 3000 BC the Egyptians made a calendar in which the duration of the year was calculated at 365 days, and it was known that this figure was approximately 6 hours short.

3. The celestial phenomenon which occurred at the time of the birth of Christ is assumed by some scholars to suggest the conjunctio magna or 'great conjunction' which took place at that time. This was initially suggested in December 1603 by the "father of western astronomy" Johannes Kepler when, observing a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces, he suddenly noticed "a new, particularly brilliant and strangely coloured star between Jupiter and Saturn, which soon faded". He was of the opinion that the Star of Bethlehem could have been just such a "rising" phenomenon: the original Greek text of Matthew 2:2 says that the star was seen "in the East", en te anatole, literally 'in its rising'. In appealing to this we are, of course, moving from the strict discussion of the gospels themselves to human conjecture, but the appearance of a star of this kind could at least explain the arrival of the Magi in Jerusalem. Mesopotamia was at that time one of the most influential Jewish cultural centres. Likewise the kings of Yemen in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula practised Judaism from 120 BC right up to the 6th century AD, and Alexandria in Egypt was a cultural centre for over one hundred thousand Jews. Today, thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we know that the Messianic expectation of that time was very potent, just as we learn from Luke chapter 2 of those who awaited the "consolation of Israel" and the "redemption of Jerusalem".

4. The Jews spoke of the Star of Moses and the Messiah. The well-known Christian-Jew Alfred Edersheim, author of a extensive two-volume study of Jesus and of an invaluable description of the Temple worship in Jesus' time,28 surely, of all the commentators of his day, had the most intimate acquaintance with the Jewish Messianic expectation of this period. In his investigations into an explanation for the Star of Bethlehem he refers to the 15th century Rabbi Yitshak Ben Yehuda Abrabanel29 who wrote that the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Pisces has a special significance for Israel, and claimed that three years before the birth of Moses there was a similar conjunction, to foretell Israel's first deliverance, and that both the birth of the Messiah and Israel's final redemption will be foreshadowed by parallel phenomena.30

Edersheim points out that R. Abrabanel made mistakes in his calculations concerning Moses, but concedes nevertheless that the assertion is based on very old Jewish tradition. He also refers to the collection of Midrashim by Jellinek, in which the "Haggada on the Messiah" says that a star will appear "from the East, and it will be the Messiah's star". Towards the end of the collection are a further three quotes of a similar nature; in "The Book of Elijah", "Chapters about the Messiah" and the "The Mysteries of R. Simon, Son of Johai". In the last-mentioned we read that a Star in the East was to appear two years before the birth of the Messiah. Edersheim writes:

    "But two years before the birth of Christ, which, as we have calculated, took place in December 749 A.U.C.,31 or 5 before our era, brings us to 747 A.U.C., or 7 before Christ, when such a star should appear in the East."
Edersheim maintains that this statement is equally significant whether it concerns tradition from before the time of Christ or after. He reckons that the Magi informed Herod of the first phase of the star of which we read in the gospel. This would also explain Herod's words that children of "two years and under" were to be slain. He continues:
    "It would, of course, be possible to argue, that the Evangelistic account arose from this Jewish tradition about the appearance of a star two years before the birth of the Messiah. But it has been already shown, that the hypothesis of a Jewish legendary origin is utterly untenable. Besides, if St. Matthew 2 had been derived from this tradition, the narrative would have been quite differently shaped, and more especially the two years'interval between the rising of the star and the Advent of the Messiah would have been emphasised, instead of being, as now, rather matter of inference."
The continuation of this illustrates well the serious critical position of the late 19th century:
    "There can be no doubt that the most remarkable conjunction of planets -- that of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces, which occurs only once in 800 years -- did take place no less than three times in the year 747 A.U.C., or two years before the birth of Christ (in May, October, and December). This conjunction is admitted by all astronomers." 
5. Recent archaeological finds confirm that this celestial event actually did take place. In Berlin there is preserved a table of planetary motions which shows that in the year 17 BC a catalogue was drawn up of the anticipated movements of the planets up to the year 10 AD. This table was copied onto papyrus in AD 42 and it mentions the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 7 BC.

A second, even larger, forecast is to be found in the clay tablets from the ancient tower of Zippar in a suburb of Babylon on the banks of the Euphrates. These cuneiform texts predict, to the month and even to the day, the movements of the heavenly bodies in 7 BC. Five times mention is made of "Mulu-Babar u kaiwanu ina Zippati", 'Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces'. When the Scythian monk Dionysius the Lesser, working ca. 525 AD, tried to establish the beginning of the Christian era, it is understandable that he made an error of perhaps seven or, at least, five years since he suffered from lack of information. It should be pointed out that there is no need to interpret the New Testament narrative historically in this way. The astral phenomenon which took place at that time was, however, with great probability, interpreted Messianically.

6. The symbolic relevance of the portent was clear to the people of that time. The constellations of the zodiac were generally identified with different nations, Pisces, for example, being considered the patron constellation of Syria and Palestine, and the revealer of the End Times. Saturn was associated with Palestine in Babylonian astrology, whereas Jupiter was the royal planet, foreshadowing a political Golden Age. Thus, when Jupiter conjoined with Saturn in Pisces it was obvious that the Ruler of the End Times had been born in Palestine. The Zippar clay tablets, it would seem, were used as portable astro-calendars, and the Magi might have taken them with them on their journey to Palestine.

This coniunctio magna lasted for nine months. In the first phase, from the 12th of April to the beginning of June, the planets drew gradually nearer to each other. A new conjunction began in the middle of July, fusing into a great brilliant star for ten days in the first weeks of October, perhaps at its brightest on the 3rd, the Great Day of Atonement. The third phase, in which the two planets receded from each other, began in the middle of November and lasted until the beginning of December. After this, in the beginning of January, Mars, the enemy of the Jews, drew near to both. The devout mind may well have seen this too as a portent of the persecution of the baby Jesus.

It is not difficult to understand how this repeating phenomenon succeeded in enticing the Wise Men on a journey to the Holy Land. Looking from Jerusalem, the star could be seen in the southern sky in the direction of Bethlehem. Once again the devout imagination is captured with the idea that the Wise Men approaching along the road through the plain would see the star settling on the ridge of a certain house in Bethlehem on a high hill. The year 7 BC was further significant astrologically in that in the Spring of that year Jupiter conjoined with Venus, which was considered the lucky star of the dynasty of the great Julius. For this reason, a certain Philaen placed a plaque in the temple of Isis, praising Caesar Augustus as the bringer of the good fortune of the Greek world to the Alexandrians.

Such human interpretation does not necessarily undermine the supernatural apparition of which Luke tells us when describing what happened to the sheperds in the fields. In Moses and the Prophets angels and visions are frequently part and parcel of an encounter with the divine. Sometimes the eye of man is opened to behold the reality of the other world. A classic example of this is found in the 6th chapter of 2 Kings. The army of the king of Aram had encircled Dothan, in which "the man of God", Elisha, was residing. At that Elisha's servant said, "Oh, my lord, what shall we do?" "Do not be afraid", the prophet answered. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them. Oh LORD", he prayed, "open his eyes so that he may see." Then the LORD opened the servant's eyes, "and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha". He who denies miracles denies the reality of the kingdom of God. In Gethsemane too Jesus said that he could pray to the Father to send immediately "more than twelve legions of angels", in other words, over 72 000 heavenly emissaries.

Our most important observation is the mention in the Jewish literature of "two years", which Edersheim found. Herod extracted from the Magi "the exact time when the star had appeared". When he then ordered the murder of all the boys in Bethlehem of two years and under, this happened "in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the Magi". Mary and Joseph would wait at least 40 days in Bethlehem to complete the required "days of purification", perhaps even longer (Luke 2:22 and Lev. 12:2).
----------
9.    Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History III, 24:13.
10.    Ibid., III, 39:3
11.    Ibid., III, 39:16
12.    Sanhedrin 43a.
13.    Matthew 9:27, 15:22, 20:30,31 etc.
14.    Eusebius, Op. cit., III 20:1-6.
15.    See The Messiah in the O.T.,p44.
16.    Aboth V;2,3.
17.    Eg A. Lukyn Williams, Christian Evidences for Jewish People, p16.
18.    1 Sam. 16:4 and Micah 5:1.
19.    Baba Bathra 109b.
20.    Talmud Jer., Hagiga II, 77d and Sanhedrin VI 23c.
21.    Baba Bathra 134a says that the mere verbal regognition of the child was considered sufficient.
22.    Luke 1:32 and Acts 2:30.
23.    Rom 1:3
24.    Ignatius, in his letter to the Ephesians, 18:20
25.    Bamidbar Rabbah, par 2, speaking of the promice in Gen. 22:18. Similarly, the word for 'seed' in Hebrew of Gen. 19:32 is interpreted by Bereshith Rabbah par. 41to mean the "Messiah-King".
26.    2 Chron. 20:7 and Is. 41:8.
27.    David Flusser, Die Konsequente Philologie und die Worte Jesu, Hamburg 1963, p.34.
28.    Edersheim, Alfred, The Life and Times of Jesus, 1st. ed. London 1886, and The Temple, Its Ministry and Services, Michigan 1975
29.    Abrabanel lived from 1437-1508. He wrote a well-known commentary on Daniel, "With the Eyes of  Salvation", Me-enei ha-Yeshuâ, in which he stressed the importance of Messiah's coming, and fixed the date of the "day of redemption" as falling in 1502.
30.    Edersheim, Op. Cit., pp211-212.
31.    ab urbe condita, that is, from the foundation of Rome in 753 BC.

The next chapter "THE GIVING OF GIFTS TO THE MESSIAH "

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