The First Christmas

by Marcus J. Borg

  The second difference between Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew’s citation of it is that, in Isaiah, the young woman is already with child, already pregnant. This points us back once again to the meaning of these words in their own time in the eighth century BCE. The sign in Isaiah concerns not how the child would be conceived, but the naming of the child. Isaiah 7:14 is not a prediction of a miraculous birth centuries later, not a prediction of Jesus.

  Birth in Bethlehem Predicted? Matthew’s second use of the formula is spoken by scribes in the court of King Herod. When Herod inquires of them where the Messiah will be born, they reply:

  In Bethlehem of Judea. For so it has been written by the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

  This is the only one of Matthew’s formula citations that, in its Old Testament context, refers to an indefinite future.

  The words are mostly from Micah, with a small portion of 2 Samuel added. Micah 5:2 expresses the hope for an ideal king who will come from Bethlehem:

  But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

  The image of the ideal king as “a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel” comes from 2 Samuel 5:2, a promise given to David:

  It is you who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you who shall be ruler over Israel.

  And, as you will recall from Chapter 6, David was the literal shepherd of his father’s sheep before he became the metaphorical shepherd of his God’s people.

  The shepherd image is also found in Micah. As the Micah passage continues, it speaks of what the ideal king will be like:

  He shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace. (5:4–5)

  Is Matthew’s use of this combined text from Micah and 2 Samuel a prediction of the place of Jesus’s birth, namely, Bethlehem? No. Rather, it is ancient Israel’s yearning for a king like David, the great king, the shepherd king. Under the kingship of one like David, “they shall live secure,” for “he shall be the one of peace.” It is hope and promise, not prediction.

  Indeed, rather than being a prediction of the place of Jesus’s birth, the passage from Micah is seen by most mainstream scholars as the reason for the Christmas stories narration that he was born in Bethlehem. He was probably born in Nazareth, as the common appellation “Jesus of Nazareth” suggests. Birth in Bethlehem is a claim in symbolic language that he is the “son of David,” the ideal king.

  Flight to Egypt and Return? Matthew’s third use of the formula occurs in the context of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus’s fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod’s plot to kill Jesus. After Herod dies, the family returns to their homeland. “This,” Matthew says, “was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’”

  The citation is from Hosea, who spoke in the eighth century BCE. It was not a prediction. In Hosea 11:1, as its fuller context makes clear, the reference is to a past event (the exodus from Egypt), not a prediction of the future. The fuller context is, with the words that Matthew cites in italics:

  When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim[another name for Israel] to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. (Hos. 11:1–4)

  Looking back to the time of the exodus and wilderness experience, Hosea speaks of God’s love for Israel in its infancy, Israel as God’s “child,” as God’s “son.” God led the Israelites with “cords of kindness” and “bands of love,” taught them how to walk, healed them, fed them, like parents “who lift infants to their cheeks.” God’s tender care in the past is contrasted to their faithlessness in the present. This is reminiscence about the past and indictment of the present, not prediction of the future.

  Lamentation of the Mothers of Bethlehem? The fourth citation, from Jeremiah 31:15, follows Herod’s killing of all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under. This, Matthew writes, “fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’”

  Once again, this is not prediction. Rachel was one of the mothers of Israel and the favorite wife of Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes. By the time of Jeremiah in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE, she was a figure of the distant past, having lived, according to Genesis, before the time of the exodus. Rachel “weeping for her children” with “wailing and loud lamentation” is a personification of the mother of Israel grieving the death and deportation of her children, the Israelites, at the hands of either the Assyrian Empire in the eighth century BCE or the Babylonian Empire in the early sixth century BCE.

  Home in Nazareth Predicted? Matthew’s fifth use of the formula occurs at the very end of his Christmas story. The holy family has now returned to the Jewish homeland from Egypt, but instead of going back to Bethlehem (their home in Matthew), they move to Nazareth. This, Matthew says, took place “so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.’” This citation can he treated very concisely, for there is no such passage in the Old Testament, though there have been many scholarly speculations about what Matthew may have had in mind. Perhaps, as we suggested in Chapter 2, Matthew created this fifth prophetic fulfillment in order to satisfy his fondness for patterns of five, even though he had to invent a “prediction” to do so.

  More Reflections on Matthew’s Use of the Old Testament

  Broadly speaking, there are three very different ways of seeing what Matthew is doing with his use of the prediction-fulfillment formula. The first, affirmed by fundamentalist and many conservative-evangelical Christians, defends what Matthew has done. It argues that these passages from the Old Testament are messianic prophecies and thus predictions of Jesus’s birth and life, in spite of the fact that they were not understood as such in their ancient Jewish context. This view is grounded in the notion of biblical infallibility and inerrancy: if the Bible (in this case, Matthew) says these were predictions, then they are predictions.

  The apparent discrepancy between their meaning in the Old Testament and their meaning in Matthew is explained by affirming that some prophetic passages have a double meaning—a meaning for their own time (the time of Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah, and so forth) and a second and fuller meaning as disclosed by their use in the New Testament. Thus the prophets were saying more than they knew. But this also means that nobody thought of these as predictions until after they were “fulfilled.”

  The second way of seeing Matthew’s use of the fulfillment formula is the polar opposite of the above. It does not defend what Matthew has done, but discredits him. It sees Matthew as taking these passages out of their ancient contexts and making them mean something they didn’t intend to mean in order to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. He twisted the Old Testament to make his point. It sees the whole process as illegitimate and its results unworthy of being taken seriously. Occasionally, the discrediting of what Matthew has done becomes part of a larger “debunking” of the gospels and the Bible as a whole. If Matthew has done this, how can we trust anything else the gospels and the Bible say?

  Note that both those who defend what Matthew has done and those who discredit it share in common the view that Matthew intended the passages he cites to be understood as predictions of the Messiah f
ulfilled in Jesus, thereby proving that he is the promised one of Israel, Messiah, and Son of God. They differ about whether Matthew has done this convincingly; the first say yes, the second no.

  There is a third way of seeing Matthew’s use of the fulfillment formula, and this is how we see it. We agree with the second view that the Old Testament passages cited by Matthew were not predictions. But we do not assume that Matthew thought they were. Moreover, we do not assume that Matthew was trying to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. We (and scholars in general) believe that Matthew was writing for “insiders,” for his own Christian Jewish community, for Jews who already believed that Jesus was the Messiah. His exposition was not meant to convince “outsiders,” but to express the convictions of “insiders.”

  Within this third way of seeing, Matthew’s use of the Old Testament is testimony, witness, and conviction. For Matthew and his community, Jesus was the Messiah. As such, he was the fulfillment of God’s promise and Israel’s yearning. To express this, Matthew “mined” the Old Testament, the sacred scripture of his community, for passages that he could integrate into his narrative, seeing the story of Jesus “prefigured” there.

  In this, he was like other authors in the ancient Mediterranean world. Roman and Greek writers, for example, regularly “mined” Homer, finding events in their time “prefigured” in the ancient texts. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey prefigured Virgil’s Aeneid, and Aeneas himself prefigured Augustus. Virgil’s Augustus as the Trojan Caesar and Matthew’s Jesus as the Davidic Messiah prove nothing, but explain everything. This is the use of ancient language to express present conviction.

  Thus we do not understand Matthew’s use of the Old Testament as an attempt to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. Rather, it is testimony to his and his community’s way of seeing Jesus, and seeing him in relationship to the ancient scriptures of their Jewish tradition. It expresses their conviction that he not only stood in continuity with them, but was the culmination of them.

  Moreover, in most of Matthew’s citations of the Old Testament, it is not “the miracle of prediction” that is emphasized, but an affirmation about who Jesus had become in the experience and thought of his community. “Out of Egypt I have called my son” affirms that Jesus is God’s Son and that he relived the exodus, the great formative event of Israel’s history. Jesus is the true “King of the Jews,” the one promised in the book of Micah, the ruler born in Bethlehem “who is to shepherd my people Israel” and be a king of peace.

  Even his use of Isaiah 7:14 in his story of Mary’s virginal conception seems more focused on Jesus as Emmanuel, “God is with us,” than on the miracle of conception. Matthew not only uses the Emmanuel theme in his Christmas story, but returns to it at the very end of his gospel. The last words of his gospel, which are also the last words of the risen Christ to his followers, are, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (28.20). The one born Emmanuel is now the one who says, “I am with you always.” For Matthew, Jesus is Emmanuel, both as a figure of history and as the risen Christ. This is New Testament testimony, not Old Testament prediction. In this sense, Jesus fulfills God’s promise and Israel’s yearning for Emmanuel, for the abiding presence of God with us.

  LUKE AND THE OLD TESTAMENT

  Luke uses the Old Testament very differently in his Christmas story. He does not use a prediction-fulfillment formula. Indeed, he does not even quote a verse from the Old Testament. He does, however, proclaim the continuity of Jesus with Israel and his fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel in more than one way.

  We see the theme of fulfillment with great clarity in the songs of Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon, the canticles known by millions of Christians as the Magnificat, the Benedictus, and the Nunc Dimittis. Although most scholars think of these as ancient Christian hymns, perhaps we should think of them as “chants”—hymns sung repetitively.

  As early Christian hymns, they are neither reports about what Mary and Zechariah and Simeon said nor Luke’s free creations. Rather, they are pre-Lukan Christian canticles. Though our focus is on how Luke uses them, it is intriguing to think that we are hearing “pregospel” Christian communities at worship in these texts. This is what the gospel, “the good news,” of Jesus meant to them. And by including these in his Christmas story Luke affirms that this is what the gospel of Jesus meant to him.

  Both the tone and the specific language of these hymns express the theme of fulfillment. The tone is jubilant, ringing with the conviction that God’s promises are being fulfilled. Consider the opening words of each:

  Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.”

  Benedictus: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us.”

  Nunc Dimittis: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation.”

  So also the language of these hymns sounds the theme of fulfillment. Rather than quoting verses from the Old Testament as Matthew does, Luke echoes phrases from ancient Israel’s scriptures. He does so again and again.

  Because it might be tedious as well as unnecessary to treat the echoes of Old Testament language in all three hymns, we focus on the Magnificat, sung by Mary. The Magnificat as a whole echoes the form of an Old Testament hymn of praise, a psalm of thanksgiving. Scholars agree that it is modeled on a hymn attributed to Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel some thousand years earlier. Hannah was one of the barren women in the Old Testament to whom God granted a child through a divinely bestowed conception.

  The opening line of the Magnificat, given above, echoes the opening line of Hannah’s hymn in 1 Samuel 2:1: “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God.” And, though Hannah’s song is the model, it also echoes phrases from other Old Testament passages:

  Then my soul shall rejoice in the Lord, exulting in his deliverance. (Ps. 35:9)

  Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. (Hab. 3:18)

  If only you will look on the misery of your servant. (1 Sam. 1:11)

  The next few lines of the Magnificat echo language from the Psalms. “His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation” is similar to Psalm 103:17: “The steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him.” Then, “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts” resembles Psalm 89:10: “You scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.”

  The closing lines of the Magnificat, “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever,” use language from Micah and 2 Samuel: “You will show faithfulness to Jacob and unswerving loyalty to Abraham, as you have sworn to our ancestors from the days of old” (Mic. 7:20); and God “shows steadfast love to his anointed, to David and his descendants forever” (2 Sam. 22:51).

  So also the words of the Benedictus and Nunc Dimittis resonate with the language of ancient Israel’s scriptures. As anticipated, we will not quote the passages to make the point. Readers wishing to see the echoes for themselves may look up the following verses. For the Benedictus, see Psalms 41:3; 72:18; 106:48; 111:4; 132:17; Ezekiel 29:21; 1 Samuel 2:10; Psalm 106;10; Micah 7:20; Psalm 106:45; Exodus 2:24; Psalm 105:8–9; Jeremiah 11:5; Isaiah 40:3; Malachi 3:1; Isaiah 9:2; and Psalm 107:10. And for the Nunc Dimittis, see Genesis 46:30 and Isaiah 52:10; 49:6.

  We do not imagine that composing these three hymns involved a process of looking up passages in the Old Testament and then, using a cut-and-paste method, creating a pastiche. Rather, for Luke and many early Christians, the language of the Old Testament was very familiar because it was their Bible. Its phrases were their natural language of thanksgiving and praise, and the use of these phrases in these hymns
underlines Luke’s conviction that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.

  We note one more way in which Luke uses the Old Testament. Scholars have long observed that the first two chapters of Luke were written in a style that imitates the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Luke is a gifted writer, able to change literary styles at will. Deliberately imitating the style of the Septuagint said, in effect: what has happened in Jesus is the continuation and climax of the story of Israel.

  Thus, in their different ways, Matthew and Luke proclaim that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel and of Israel’s deepest yearning—for a king like the great king David, for a different kind of life and different kind of world, for light in the darkness, for the presence of God with us. A line from the late nineteenth-century hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem” expresses this conviction with remarkable economy: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

  FULFILLMENT: THE LARGER FRAMEWORK

  We now set the theme of fulfillment within the larger framework of the Old Testament as a whole. Seeing this framework, rather than emphasizing individual verses as predictions, enables us to see the larger meaning of fulfillment that runs through Matthew and Luke.

  Central to the Old Testament is the theme of God’s promise and fulfillment. It is a major dynamic, perhaps even the major dynamic of the Law and the Prophets, the two parts of the Bible that had become sacred by the first century. The Law and the Prophets were the Bible for Jesus and earliest Christianity.