Once in Royal David's City

[SallyF]

Not a soul ever demonstrates that the Jesus character was sired by Jehovah (or the Holy Ghost) on a human virgin.

It looks like make-believe to me.

But human politics are real.

Is this "Nativity" business, with the scurrying star and the angels we have heard on high and such, just the fantastical propaganda surrounding the perfectly natural conception and birth of a perfectly normal kid who was hopefully going to restore the throne of his ancestor the perfectly human King David …?

[marco]

The Nativity narratives were a mythic way of saying that "Jesus is Lord" and Caesar is not. That God's favor rests with the lowly and not with the powerful.

The generalisation is flawed: there are kind Caesars and wicked beggars. I believe good King Wenceslas is a case in point. God's favour, whatever that might be, presumably rests with the just and good regardless of what clothes they wear.

As a result of Joseph's thoughtlessness in travelling 100 miles to Bethlehem with a pregnant woman and forgetting to book in advance baby Jesus was born in a barn. The tale is presented so as to fit in with Scripture, somehow, and to win some Christmas sympathy for the waif. And it works wonderfully. Down the road there's a church with baby Jesus, complete with halo, lying asleep. It is the 21st century.

[SallyF]

We appear to be agreed in this thread that the "Nativity" details are fabrications …

fabrications that are part of the Jesus propaganda …

… which will have us asking ourselves, in all honesty, which parts of Christianity are NOT fabrications …?

I stand by my hypothesis that Christianity has been a fraud from the start.

Nonetheless, I find it intriguing to try and read between the lines of the fabrications of the propaganda and catch glimpses of the very human power politics of the men who wrote the propaganda.

"And the Lord God (the local god called Jehovah) will give to him the throne of his ancestor David" the angel said to the human virgin.

The Jesus character and his donkey parades through Jerusalem failed to oust the Herods and the Romans.

No political throne for Jesus.

Then began the spin-doctoring of propaganda to explain away the failure.

Simple human politics.

No gods.

No angels.

No virgins.

No magical, miracle resurrections and such.

Just fantastical propaganda.

[Elijah John]

The Nativity narratives were a mythic way of saying that "Jesus is Lord" and Caesar is not. That God's favor rests with the lowly and not with the powerful.

The generalisation is flawed: there are kind Caesars and wicked beggars. I believe good King Wenceslas is a case in point. God's favour, whatever that might be, presumably rests with the just and good regardless of what clothes they wear.

As a result of Joseph's thoughtlessness in travelling 100 miles to Bethlehem with a pregnant woman and forgetting to book in advance baby Jesus was born in a barn. The tale is presented so as to fit in with Scripture, somehow, and to win some Christmas sympathy for the waif. And it works wonderfully. Down the road there's a church with baby Jesus, complete with halo, lying asleep. It is the 21st century.

I don't think Jesus would disagree with the exceptions you mention, but Jesus (or rather Matthew and Luke) was making a generalization. And that generalization is religiously, politically and culturally subversive. Jesus was indeed a revolutionary.

[SallyF]

Quite simply …

The whole purpose of the Jesus business was him ruling the world …

… with the help of armies of angels.

That is what is going to happen NEXT time.

The sacrifice for the sins of the world notion is just political spin on his failure the FIRST time.

IMO

[Smythe]

Interesting, Elijah... you mentioned Crossan before, maybe you are familiar with this quote of his:

"I do not accept the divine conception of either Jesus or Augustus as factual history, but I believe that God is incarnate in the Jewish peasant poverty of Jesus and not in the Roman imperial power of Augustus."

Crossan is an interesting individual. I suppose people make Jesus into something born of their own way of thinking. Crossan deserts the orthodox faith and invents an unorthodox Jesus. It isn't too clear how God can be "incarnate in peasant poverty" but I suppose he's saying that we see God more in a poor waif than a rich prince.

Elsewhere Crossan describes what he calls "mode" and "meaning", the former being the form of the story (myth or history), and the latter being the implications of the story for us. The "mode" can be profitably debated between theists and atheists using the common tools of historical analysis- but not so with meaning, if such is bound up with one's belief (or disbelief) in a deity.

Since the notion of gods interbreeding with humans was common in the first century (at least in the Romano-Hellenic world in which the Gospels were written) any discussion on these stories would not have been "how could such a thing possibly happen?" or "how exactly did God become incarnate in Jesus?" It would have been "Why did God become incarnate in Jesus?" Or, perhaps, to a skeptic, "Did God become incarnate in Jesus?"

There are many 21st century Christians who will thus admit that the Nativity stories did not happen as described. But we cannot bring our 21st century perspective back to the first century. Given the context the motive of the Gospel writers was likely not "these things never happened, let me make something up to hoodwink people"; more likely it was "Since Jesus is God incarnate, miraculous signs must have accompanied his birth, so I will supply a suitable story."

We live in a scientific, materialistic age; from our perspective, taking the virgin birth story literally today seems to require that God has DNA, which is hardly a supportable position; Christians must find their concept of incarnation elsewhere. Fortunately, there are possibilities outside the genetic. "God is spirit" the Gospels say, so one can certainly follow that line of belief.

[SallyF]

Given the complete and utter absence of evidence for the influence of "God" in the birth of the Jesus character.

Given the complete and utter absence of evidence for the influence of "God" on the propaganda of the Jesus character …

It is more than reasonable to offer that the ambitions of the divisive, donkey-parading Jesus character were nothing more than self-interested human political advancement.