The birth and nativity of Jesus are among the best known stories in the Bible. However they don’t appear in the oldest gospel Mark, only in the later synoptic gospels Matthew and Luke. The root of the virgin birth story probably lies in the fact that the writers of both of those gospels were Greek speakers.
They made a story of Jesus’ birth that tied in to a line of Isaiah, ‘The Lord himself will send you a sign: A young woman will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel’ (Isaiah 7.14). That might not sound like a prophecy related to Jesus, but in the Greek version of the Old Testament that the gospel writers used, the word for ‘young woman’ had been translated as ‘virgin’, hence the virgin birth.
That line of Isaiah originally referred to the Judaean king Hezekiah’s birth. The Christian apologist Justin Martyr (100 – 165 CE) claimed that this ‘prophecy’ referred to Jesus, but noted that Jews of his time stated it actually referred to Hezekiah,
‘And Isaiah said…Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and his name shall be called Immanuel…Now it is evident to all, that in the race of Abraham according to the flesh no one has been born of a virgin…save this our Christ. But since you and your teachers venture to affirm that in the prophecy of Isaiah it is not said “Behold, the virgin can conceive,” but, “Behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son,” and you explain the prophecy as if [it referred] to Hezekiah, who was your king.’ (Dialogue with Trypho 63)
Both Matthew and Luke also concoct a genealogy for Jesus that traces him back to David and Abraham. Bizarrely they do it through Joseph’s family line (Matthew 1.1-16), while also making it clear in their stories that Joseph isn’t really Jesus’ father. This also made the story of Jesus’ birth accord with a passage from Jeremiah,
‘The days are now coming, says Yahweh, when I will make a righteous branch rise from David’s line, a king who will rule wisely, maintaining law and justice in the land.’ (Jeremiah 23.5)
Elsewhere in the Old Testament, Yahweh makes a promise to David that originally related to a king of Judah, but which was reinterpreted by the early Christians to refer to Jesus,
‘When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up one of your descendants to succeed you. One of your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He will build a house for my name, and I will establish his royal throne forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son.’ (2 Samuel 7.12-14)
Jesus’ birth was also placed in Bethlehem as that was the ancient royal city of king David. This was also done to accord with a passage in the Old Testament book of Micah that claimed that a future king of Israel would be born there. These lines originally referred to the kings of Judah from the prophet’s time. The passage reads,
‘But you, Bethlehem in Ephrathah,
although you are small among Judah’s clans,
out of you shall come forth a ruler over Israel,
one whose roots are far back in the past, in ancient times.’ (Micah 5.2)
The fake genealogy the author of Matthew creates for Jesus revolves around the figure of David. There are fourteen generations listed between Abraham and David, fourteen between David and the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen between the captivity and Jesus. The numeric value of the name ‘David’ in Hebrew is fourteen (D + W + D = 4 + 6 + 4). David is also placed as the fourteenth name in the genealogy.
Luke 2.1 has Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem because of a census ordered by Augustus. We don’t know of any such census, and any Roman census would have been unlikely to have included a client kingdom like Judea. Luke 2.2 states that the census occurred while Quirinius was governor of Syria, but this doesn’t tally with the claim elsewhere in the gospels that Jesus’ birth occurred during Herod’s reign. Herod dies in 4 BCE and Quirinius became governor of Syria in 6-7 CE.
The virgin birth also has parallels in Greek religion. Zeus had a healthy appetite for virgins, and his sons were often conceived to virgin mothers. Dionysus was born to the virgin Semele, and Hercules was born to the virgin Alcmene. Perseus was also immaculately conceived, Zeus impregnated his mother Danae through a shower of gold.
The early Christian apologist Justin Martyr noted the similarity in the virgin births of Jesus and Perseus. His ridiculous explanation was that the devil had created the similarities in Greek religion in anticipation of Jesus, ‘When I hear…that Perseus was begotten of a virgin, I understand that a deceiving serpent counterfeited also this.’ (Dialogue with Trypho 69 – 70)
Virgin births weren’t only reserved for sons of gods, some gods also laid claim to such a beginning. Adonis was born of the virgin Myrrha, and Aion was born of the virgin Kore. Some great mortals were also said to have been born to virgin mothers, Plato was supposedly born of the union between the god Apollo and the virgin Perictione. In India, the Buddha’s mother also had an immaculate conception, she dreamt that the Buddha came to her as a snow white elephant.
The gospels make no mention of the time of year when Jesus was born. Jesus’ birth was probably eventually placed at midwinter because his conception was placed at the vernal equinox. Jews and Christians believed that the world had been created in the spring, so felt it was fitting that Jesus had also been conceived then. Nine months in the womb would place his birth at the winter solstice, which was celebrated on December 25th in Roman times.
The third century Christian Sextus Julius Africanus wrote that Jesus had been conceived on 25th March. The first century Jew Philo wrote that ‘the vernal festival is a commemoration of the creation of the world’ (The Special Laws II. XXVIII).
In Roman times, December 25th was also known as the birthday of the sun, because of its proximity to the winter solstice. The sun was seen as being reborn on the shortest day of the year. The Roman chronographer’s record for the year 354 contains a double entry on the date December 25th;
Kalendas Ianuarias Natis Invicti
Kalendas Ianuarias natus Christus in Bethlehem Iudeae.
In the fourth century, the date was known both as the birthday of the Invincible Sun and as the birthday of Jesus. In the mid fifth century, Pope Leo said there were those ‘who think that these solemnities of ours should be held in honour not so much because of the birth of Christ as because of the rising sun.’
We are brought up from childhood with the stable as the setting for Jesus’ birth. At Christmas, nativity scenes and school plays all use the stable as their backdrop. The idea of Jesus being born in a stable probably derives from a seventh century text we call Pseudo-Matthew, which mentions an ox and an ass being present at Jesus’ birth.
Its addition to the story probably derives from trying to accord Jesus’ birth to a line in Isaiah. The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew states that Mary ‘put her child in a manger, and an ox and ass worshipped him. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through the prophet Isaiah, “The ox knows his owner and the ass his master’s crib.”’
Much speculation has taken place over the star that the three magi followed to the cave of the nativity. Matthew is the only gospel to mention this event, the relevant passage reads,
‘After his birth astrologers from the east came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is this child who is born to be king of the Jews? We observed the rising of his star and have come to worship him”.’ (Matthew 2.2)
Many have tried to pinpoint this star as a historical comet or astral conjunction from the early first century. All of this is unnecessary as only one gospel mentions the star of the magi, and it’s only a minor detail in the story. Like many of the other details in the gospels, it was probably added to the story to correlate to a line in the Old Testament. An oracle of Balaam reads, ‘A star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a sceptre will rise out of Israel’ (Numbers 24.17).
By Roman times, this verse had taken on a messianic dimension. The second century messianic Jewish figure who led an uprising against the Romans was given the name Simon bar Kokhba to fit in with this verse, meaning ‘Simon, son of a star’.
King Herod has acquired a terrible reputation as a result of his ‘Massacre of the Innocents’. The gospels tell how Herod gave orders to murder all newborn baby boys in Bethlehem and its neighbourhood, in an attempt to try and kill the baby Jesus. The ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ is fiction and there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that it actually happened. It isn’t mentioned by any historical source from the time. It was written into the gospels to link the story of Jesus’ nativity to that of Moses, by mirroring Pharaoh’s order to kill every male Hebrew child in the Old Testament.
The baby Jesus and his family escape Herod by fleeing to Egypt (Matthew 1.13). The gospel of Matthew openly states this happened to ‘fulfil’ a line of Hosea that reads, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’ (Hosea 11.1). It also linked Jesus to the main myth of the Jewish Bible – the Exodus, which was what this ‘prophecy’ originally referred to. Matthew 2.20 even reuses the language of Exodus, when Joseph is told to return home by an angel in a dream, ‘Go to the land of Israel, for those who were threatening the child’s life are dead.’ This mirrors what Moses is told in the Old Testament, ‘Go back to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you are dead’(Exodus 4.19).
The Bible and Mythology 