In this interview Marcus and Dom Crossan talk about their book The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach Us About Jesus’s Birth.
Parables and Peace
All of the Gospels begin with an overture. Mathew and Luke’s overtures are very different because they are mini versions of the gospels to come which are very different themselves. To truly understand these stories we need to understand them as parables not as factual accounts because they were modeled after the parables of Jesus. People do not generally believe that there was really a good Samaritan or a prodigal son. Parables are about meaning, being factual or lack there of does not detract from the meaning of a parable. Looking at these stories in the historical context is vital to understanding them. These stories were anti-imperial in the first century so they still are today. Herod was appointed by Rome as king of the Jews and of course it is Herod that tries to kill all the first newborn sons in order to try to kill Jesus. The question then becomes, what does it mean for an American Christian in the time of the American empire to celebrate Christmas and the birth of someone who stood against the empire, was crucified by the empire and then vindicated by god on Easter. Does this mean that Christmas is a time to call Christians to move against current American imperial foreign policy? This isn’t about being anti-American but anti-imperial. Empires seek peace through conquest. Peace through victory is really just a lull before the next more vicious round of fighting. Instead, peace is to be sought through justice, that is the good news of Christmas. We haven’t managed to learn this in the last 6,000 years because of the primordial sin of empirical hubris. The struggle of history is the struggle against the hubris of domination systems and empires.
Why the early gospels fail to mention an extraordinary birth of Jesus
The stories of the birth of Jesus were developed later. After the life of a very important person in the ancient world it was common to explain such an extraordinary person’s previously unnoticed birth and coming of age with fictional accounts. In the first century Cesar had many of these stories made up about his youth so the stories of Jesus’s birth were making caricatures of the accounts about Cesar.
Why Jesus used parables
The function of parable is to lure the audience into participation. First century audiences were more active than today and would often argue with the story teller. Giving the audience something to argue with ‘no Samaritan would ever do that…’ would lure them into listening to the story. This would encourage the audience to make up their own mind about things.
Mathew draws parallels between Jesus and Moses
In Mathew’s gospel Jesus goes up on the Mount ‘a new Mount Sinai’ to proclaim his new radicalized Torah. Herod becomes the new Pharaoh who tried to kill a new born Jesus just as the Pharaoh had tried to kill the newborn Moses. This is an extraordinary claim because it is effectively saying that the Jewish homeland once created to flee persecution is no longer safe.
Conclusion
Dom and Marcus hope that we can move past the debate of, ‘was there really a star and did it really happen.’ This is not history this is parable. We need to be talking about what actions the story is calling us to make. Instead of taking the ornaments and the message of peace on earth out of the box at Christmas and then putting it all away after Christmas, Dom hopes that we can really take the message of peace on earth to heart and start really applying it.