How Mary became Jesus’s mother.

Luke 1.26-38.

The Gospel of Luke begins with John the baptist’s annunciation, which Luke found kinda important because he wanted to tie John and Jesus’s ministries together. Not that they worked together, but they did both work for God, and John himself said his purpose was to point to Messiah, Jn 3.28 whom Jesus is.

Anyway right after John’s annunciation comes Jesus’s annunciation. And for that, we leave Judea and go to the Galilee, to a little town settled by Bethlehemites called Nazareth, to a young woman—likely in her teens, ’cause they married ’em off young in those days—named Miryam, in Latin “Maria,” in English “Mary.”

Luke 1.26-38 KWL

26In Elizabeth’s sixth month,

the angel Gabriel is sent by God

to a Galilean city called Nazareth,

27to a maiden betrothed

to a man of David’s house named Joseph;

the maiden’s name is Mary.

28Coming to her, Gabriel says, “Hello, your honor!

The Lord’s with you.

{You’re blessed above all women.}”

29Mary is alarmed by this message,

and speculates about what sort of greeting this is.

30The angel tells her, “Don’t fear, Mary:

You’ve found grace with God.

31Look, you’ll conceive in your womb.

You’ll give birth to a son. You’ll name him Jesus.

32He’ll be great. He’ll be called the Most High’s son.

The Lord will give him his ancestor David’s throne.

33He’ll be king over Jacob’s house in the age to come.

His kingdom will never end.”

34Mary tells the angel, “How will this happen?—

since I’ve not been with a man.”

35In reply the angel tells her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you.

The Most High’s power will envelop you

and the holy one produced will be called God’s son.

36And look: Your relative Elizabeth

has conceived a son in her old age.

This is actually her sixth month—

and she was called sterile.

37 No word of God is impossible.”

38Mary says, “Look: I’m the Lord’s slave.

I hope it happens according to your word.”

The angel leaves her.

In Orthodox tradition, Mary was at the Nazareth well, so most Christian art depicts her there, with Gabriel either greeting her, or saying something profound as she looks downward in humility. Something pious, and posed—you know, like artist’s models will do.

Today, the well, and the cave it’s in, is underneath St. Gabriel’s Church in Nazareth. As our tour guide rightly pointed out, if it wasn’t the very place Gabriel appeared to Mary, it doesn’t entirely matter; Mary did go to this well to get water, since it’s Nazareth’s only natural water source. (As a city of 74,000 today, it’s had to tap a number of additional water sources.)

When the art doesn’t depict Mary at a well, it’s often of her at home. Sounds reasonable, ’cause Luke says Gabriel entered, and we usually figure that’d be a building. The Roman Catholics built a chapel, the Basilica of the Annunciation, over the cave where they think Mary’s family lived. Yep, another cave. Caves are all over Israel, and I remind you Jesus was both born in, and buried in, caves. Once again, western art gets it wrong: Mary’s family could hardly have afforded the Roman villas the art regularly depict her in. Nazareth wasn’t in Italy!

St. Nicholas’s Day. (Yep, it’s this early in the month.)

Whenever kids ask me whether Santa Claus is real, I’ll point out he is based on an actual guy. That’d be Nikólaos of Myra, whose feast day is today, 6 December, in honor of his death on this date in the year 343.

Here’s the problem: There are a whole lot of myths mixed up with Nicholas’s life. And I’m not just talking about the Santa Claus stories, whether they come from Clement Moore’s poem, L. Frank Baum’s children’s books, the Rankin-Bass animated specials, or the various movies which play with the Santa story. Christians have been making up stories about Nicholas forever.

That’s why it gets a little frustrating when people ask about the facts behind St. Nicholas: We’re not sure we have any facts behind St. Nicholas. There are way too many myths! We honestly have no idea which stories are true, partly true, or full-on fabrications. It could all be fiction.

But I’ll share what little we’ve got, and you can take it from there.

Round the year 270, Nikólaos was born in Patara, in the Roman province of Lykia. That’s just outside present-day Gelemis, Turkey. No, he wasn’t Turkish; the Turks didn’t move in till the middle ages. He was Anatolean Greek. Hence the Greek name, which means “people’s victory,” same as Nicodemus.

Nicholas’s parents were Christian. When they died, he was raised by his uncle, the town bishop, who had the same name as he, Nikólaos. Seems his uncle expected him to go into the family business, so Nicholas was trained to be a reader, the person who reads the bible during worship services. Later he became a presbyter—or, as they were considered in the Orthodox tradition, a priest.

Tradition has it Nicholas’s parents were wealthy, and he was very generous with his inheritance, regularly giving it to the needy. Probably the most popular St. Nicholas story tells of a man who couldn’t afford to marry off his daughters. Apparently they needed a large dowry in order to attract decent husbands. (Though you gotta wonder just how decent such husbands would be… but I digress.) Mysteriously, three bags of gold appeared just in time to pay for each daughter’s dowry. Of course their anonymous benefactor was Nicholas.

Depending on who’s telling the story, these weren’t bags of gold, but gold balls—and here’s where the three-ball symbol on pawnshops supposedly comes from. Or the gold appeared in the daughter’s stockings as they dried over the fireplace (even though stockings weren’t invented yet) and here’s where the custom of gifts in Christmas stockings supposedly comes from. Or Nicholas threw the gold down the chimney, and here’s where that story comes from.

Of course, people are gonna try their darnedest to link Nicholas myths to Santa Claus myths, so as to explain how on earth a fat white magical Dutch-American is the same person as an ancient brown devout Anatolean Greek. There’s the strong likelihood none of these stories are true. Nicholas had a reputation as a gift-giver… and maybe he was. We don’t know! Hope so. But the rest is probably rubbish.

Joseph, father of Jesus, prophet.

Matthew 1.18-21.

The idea of Jesus’s mother Mary being a virgin when she gave birth him, doesn’t work for a lot of people nowadays. “She was a virgin? Yeah right. She totally had sex with somebody. And then lied about it, and said God did it, and that sucker Joseph believed her.”

Clearly they’ve not read the gospels, because Joseph absolutely didn’t believe her.

Matthew 1.18-19 KWL

18The genesis of King Jesus is like this:

His mother Mary, betrothed to Joseph,

before coming to live together,

is found to be pregnant

through the Holy Spirit.

19 Her man Joseph, a right-minded man,

not wanting to make a show of her,

intends to privately release her.

Joseph knew you can’t just “be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.” He knew how babies are made. He lived in a farming community. Livestock everywhere… some of ’em making babies right in front of everyone. Who didn’t know how babies were made?

Greek myths abound of stories in which Zeus disguised himself so he could have sex with Greek women, and thereby produce ἡμίθεοι/imítheï, “demigods”—half-human, half-god spawn. Myths used Zeus’s out-of-control sex addiction to explain the origin of the more famous Greek heroes, like Herakles, Theseus, Achilles, Perseus, Orpheus… and in the present day, Wonder Woman. But it’s more than likely all the women who contributed to the story of a horny god assaulting various noblewomen in the Greek Empire, had simply had sex with somebody, and blamed Zeus rather than suffer the usual consequences of unchastity.

Thing is, once you read the myths, you’ll notice whenever women claimed Zeus impregnated them, typically the Greeks didn’t believe ’em either. They punished their wives and daughters as if Zeus—the mightiest being they could imagine, a terrifying person to get on the wrong side of—had nothing to do with their pregnancies. Banished ’em, imprisoned ’em, sealed ’em in a coffin and threw them into the sea. (Then, say the myths, Zeus smote them for their unbelief.) The ancients knew exactly how babies are made. The “Zeus did it!” story didn’t work. Nor should it!

And the “God did it” story didn’t work on Joseph either. To his mind, Mary clearly had sex—and not with him. And she was trying to blame the Holy Spirit, of all people. The Spirit doesn’t do that; he’s not Zeus! He’s not gonna transform himself into bulls and geese so he can rape silly teenage girls. The very idea is the most ridiculous, offensive sort of blasphemy.

Mary’s apparent infidelity and outrageous excuse aside, Joseph was what Matthew calls δίκαιος/díkeos, which the KJV translates “just” and the NIV “was faithful to the law.” It means as I translated it: Right-minded. Joseph was the type of person who always sought to do the moral thing. He didn’t wanna be vengeful, and expose Mary to public ridicule. He simply wanted their relationship to be done, so he could move on and marry someone who’d stay true to him.

Betrothals among first-century Israelis were a contractual agreement between the husband and wife’s families. (The husband would provide this, the wife that.) But all it took to end these agreements, was simply for the husband to declare, “I divorce you” three times, and bam, the contract was null. The husband would forfeit his dowry (unless there was fraud involved in the marriage), the wife would go back to her parents’ house, and that was that. So Joseph figured he’d do that. Not in the town square, to publicly embarrass her. Just in front of their parents. That’s what Matthew means by “privately.”

So yeah, let’s put aside this idea the ancients were naïve idiots who’d believe ridiculous stories. Not even the pagans did. Devout Israelis knew God isn’t at all like that, and Joseph didn’t believe the virgin-conception story any more than any of today’s skeptics would.

But something flipped Joseph 180 degrees—so much so that he legally adopted Mary’s kid and raised him as his own. This something was a prophetic dream. And from what we know about prophetic dreams, it wouldn’t have worked on Joseph unless

1. he was stupid, or
2. he had multiple experiences with prophetic dreams, and his experiences showed him they were reliable.

Me, I’m pretty sure it’s that second thing.

Jesus’s genealogy, in 𝘓𝘶𝘬𝘦.

Luke 3.23-38.

The second of Christ Jesus’s two different, contradictory-looking genealogies in the New Testament, is found in the gospel of Luke, right after Jesus’s baptism, right before Jesus’s temptation.

It’s an odd place to squeeze the genealogy in. Y’might notice 1 Chronicles begins with genealogy, and goes through it for whole chapters till it finally gets to Israeli history. Likewise Matthew begins with genealogy. But Luke likely tucked it here because Jesus had just been adopted—in the Roman sense of the Father formally declaring him his Son—so now Jesus’s ancestry comes into play.

And the Luke list goes back farther than Matthew. The other gospel only wanted to establish Jesus is King David ben Jesse’s heir, plus the spiritual heir (as well as literal descendant) of Abraham ben Terah. Those things would be important to Matthew’s readers, and because Matthew includes lots of biblical proof texts which Jesus fulfilled, most Christians assume Matthew was writing his gospel to Jews, who’d care about that stuff. Thing is, everybody cares about that stuff—if we care about the continuity between Old and New Testaments; if we care that Jesus is the legitimately prophesied Messiah. Yep, even gentiles care about the proof texts.

But Luke was likely writing to Romans like himself, and in ancient Roman culture, they didn’t care about whether you were descended from kings; Romans took pride in the fact they regularly overthrew kings. They cared about whether you were descended from gods.

And that is why Jesus’s genealogy in Luke goes all the way back. Luke is showing his readers Jesus wasn’t simply declared the Son of God by God himself; he’s a descendant of God. He has godhood in his bloodline.

Says so in his genealogy:

Luke 3.23-38 KWL

23Jesus himself is starting round his 30th year.

He’s legally the son of Joseph bar Ili—

24bar Maddát, bar Leví,

bar Malkhí, bar Yannaí, bar Joseph,

25bar Mattityáhu, bar Amos,

bar Nahum, bar Heslí, bar Naggaí,

26bar Mákhat, bar Mattityáhu,

bar Shimí, bar Yoshí, bar Yodáh,

27bar Yochanán, bar Reishá,

bar Zerubbabel, bar Shaltiél, bar Nerí,

28bar Malkhí, bar Adí,

bar Kosám, bar Elmadán, bar Er,

29bar Yeshúa, bar Eleázar,

bar Yorím, bar Mattát, bar Leví,

30bar Shimón, bar Judah,

bar Joseph, bar Jonám, bar Elyakím,

31bar Maláh, bar Manáh,

bar Mattatáh, bar Nathan, bar David,

32bar Jesse, bar Obed,

bar Boaz, bar Sheláh, bar Nakhshón,

33bar Amminadáv, bar Admín, bar Arní,

bar Hechrón, bar Pérech, bar Judah,

34bar Jacob, bar Isaac,

bar Abraham, bar Térakh, bar Nakhór,

35bar Serúg, bar Reú,

bar Péleg, bar Éver, bar Sheláh,

36bar Keïnán, bar Arfakhšád,

bar Shem, bar Noah, bar Lémekh,

37bar Metušelákh, bar Enoch,

bar Yéred, bar Mahalalél, bar Keïnán,

38bar Enósh, bar Šet,

bar Adam, bar God.

Maranatha: Come Lord Jesus!

There’s an Aramaic word in the New Testament which only appears once, in 1 Corinthians 16.22, and is probably better known as the name of a music label or a brand of peanut butter: Maranatha. Some bibles don’t bother to translate it…

1 Corinthians 16.22 NASB

If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed. Maranatha.

…and some bibles do.

1 Corinthians 16.22 ESV

If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!

Properly maranatha is two words, which in Greek are μαρὰν ἀθά, and in Aramaic/Syriac are ܡܳܪܰܢ ܐܶܬ݂ܳܐ (still transliterated marán athá). And properly it’s not a command for our Master to come; it’s in the perfect tense, so it means “our Master has come.” Or more like the Christmas carol, “The Lord is come.”

But Christians still prefer to interpret it with the same idea we see in Revelation 22.20:

Revelation 22.20 ESV

He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

In this verse, the Peshitta has ܬ݁ܳܐ ܡܳܪܝܳܐ ܝܶܫܽܘܥ/thá mará Yešúa, and that’s the imperative—the command or request—for Jesus to come. But Christian custom, since the very beginning, is to say maranatha—to mean as the ESV puts it: Our Lord, come! The ancient Christians prayed maranatha, and we see it in the Didache and the very oldest prayer books. Christians still pray it.

Most of the time when we pray maranatha, it’s for our Lord Jesus to come back. Either we want his presence to be among us during our worship services or church business… or we want him to stop delaying his second coming and just take over the world already!

But more often when we ask for Jesus to be here, we pray it in our native languages. “Come Lord Jesus!” works just fine. The word maranatha is more of a liturgical word; it’s something we might pray formally, but it doesn’t feel as personal as when we use the words of our native languages. I get that. And it’s fine: Using foreign-language words when English words will do, is frequently showing off how we happen to know foreign languages—and showing off is hypocrisy. We don’t want any hypocrisy in our prayer life.

But then again: If you use the word maranatha in your private prayers, whom are you showing off to? So don’t worry about telling God maranatha in private. Jesus did tell us to pray “Thy kingdom come” after all, so by all means pray that Jesus return. The sooner the better!

Jesus’s genealogy, in 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘸.

Matthew 1.1-17.

In the New Testament, Christ Jesus has two genealogies.

Two different genealogies. And they don’t line up. If that contradiction (or “bible difficulty,” as many Christians prefer to call it) makes you anxious, relax; I wrote about it elsewhere, so go read that piece. Today I just wanna look at the genealogy in Matthew. The author of that gospel decided to begin with it, ’cause he considered it important. And away we go.

Matthew 1.1 KWL

The book of the genesis of King Jesus,

son of David, son of Abraham.

Other translations have “Christ Jesus” or “Messiah Jesus.” Mostly because they’re going for literalness; the Greek word is Χριστοῦ/Hristú, “Christ,” which itself is a translation of מָשׁיִחַ/Mašíakh, “Messiah.” It literally meant “anointed [person],” so if you really wanna be literal, it should be “Jesus the Anointed One” every single time it says “Christ Jesus.”

But a literal translation isn’t always the best translation. Culturally, to first-century Israelis, Hristós and Mašíakh didn’t mean “anointed one”—it means king. It’s a royal title for Israeli kings. Unlike the pagan kings of countries round about, their king was anointed by the LORD, their real king, to be his vice-regent. Same as Samuel ben Elkanah anointed Saul ben Kish and David ben Jesse.

We Christians claim Jesus was anointed by the LORD, same as those guys, to rule Israel. And the world. He’s the king of Israel, but not just the king of Israel. So “Christ” means king. It’s not Jesus’s last name; he’s not the son of Joseph and Mary Christ. Nor is it a religious title; it doesn’t mean he’s a religious guru. It means he’s our king. Our only king. Human kings are usurpers and false Christs, and every last one of them has got to go. Even the nice ones. Especially the ones who claim they come in Jesus’s name.

Ancient Romans didn’t realize what Christ means, which is why ancient Christians used the title “Christ Jesus” instead of βασιλεύς Ἰησοῦς/vasileýs Yisús, “King Jesus.” Made it way less obvious they were talking about the One who’d overthrow the Roman Empire. Makes it way less obvious we are talking about the One who’ll one day overthrow the kingdoms of the world—including our own. So much less obvious, there are too many Christian nationalists who think Jesus would never overthrow the United States; that’s just treason-talk. But he will. The kingdoms of this world are gonna become the kingdoms of our God and his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. Rv 11.15

Pharisees had taught first-century Israelis that Messiah would rule the world. Unfortunately, Jewish nationalists had taken this idea and thought Messiah would conquer their hated Roman occupiers, establish Israel’s independence, then go forth to conquer a ton of territory like Alexander of Macedon, and establish a new Israeli Empire. One even better than the Roman Empire, ’cause now it wouldn’t be run by dirty gentiles. Now gentiles would be the second-class citizens in their new Empire. Semite supremacy!

Yeah, there was a lot of racism wrapped up in Pharisee ideas about Messiah. Unfortunately that’s still true in popular interpretations about Jesus’s second coming. But I digress. Distorted perspectives aside, “King” is still the best interpretation of Hristú.

And though Jesus is a literal descendant of both David, the third king of Israel, and Abraham ben Terah, the ancestor of the Israelis, Edomites, and Arabs, the more important thing is Jesus is the fulfillment of their relationships with the LORD. Without Abraham’s faith in the LORD these people-groups wouldn’t even exist, much less be monotheists who pursued a living God instead of ridiculous pagan myths. Without David’s loyalty to God, the LORD wouldn’t have responded with any promise to make one of his descendants the greatest king ever.

Yep, all of that in the very first verse of the New Testament! But wait; there’s more.

Advent Sunday.

Four Sundays before Christmas, the advent season begins with Advent Sunday. That’d be today, 1 December 2024. (Next year it’ll be 30 November. It moves.)

Our word advent comes from the Latin advenire, “come to [someplace].” Who’s coming to where? That’d be Jesus, formally coming to earth. We’re not talking about the frequent appearances he makes here and there to various Christians and pre-Christians. It refers to the two formal appearances:

1. His first coming, when he was born in the year 7BC, which is what we celebrate with Christmas.
2. His second coming, when he takes possession of his kingdom. Hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it’ll happen within our lifetimes. Maybe not.

Many American Evangelicals have lost sight of the advent tradition, figuring it’s only a Roman Catholic thing—as if American Catholics haven’t likewise lost sight of this tradition. In the United States we’ve permitted popular culture to define the Christmas season for us. And of course popular culture much prefers Mammonism. Gotta buy stuff for Christmas! Gotta boost the retail economy. How much did people spend on Black Friday weekend? How early did you put up your Christmas lights and inflatables? Gotta buy seasonal Christmas food and drinks, and go to Christmas parties and give Christmas gifts, and fly home for Christmas to be with family, or at least send them expensive gift cards so they can go shopping.

Popular culture reduces the advent season to advent calendars: Those 25-day calendars which count down from 1 December (regardless of when Advent Sunday actually starts). Every day you get a little piece of chocolate-flavored shortening, unless you bought the calendars made with the good chocolate, with the cacao beans hand-picked by slave labor. Or bought one of those advent calendars with different treats—like Lego minifigures, or a different-flavored coffee pod each day (admittedly I really like this one), or a daily bottle of wine—

It actually turns out these bottles are table markers, but this photo’s been making the rounds of the internet described as an advent calendar. Still, you can easily find wine advent calendars on almost every wine-seller’s website. Pinterest

—which, if you drink it all by yourself, means you’re an alcoholic. These 25-day calendars are pretty much the only “advent” most American Christians know about. And on the years where Advent Sunday falls in November, they’ve no idea they’ve been shortchanged.

As for the rest of the Christmas season: Nobody’s actually getting ready for Jesus. We’re getting ready for Christmas. We’re getting ready for pageants and parties and gift-giving. Wrong focus and attitude—meaning more humbug and hypocrisy, more Santa Claus and reindeer and snowmen somehow brought to life without the aid of evil spirits.

And less Jesus and good fruit and hope.

You see the problem. It’s why so many Christians dislike Christmas. Too much fake sentiment. Too much “magic.” Too many feigned happy smiles when really they don’t like what so much of the “season” is about.

So lemme recommend an alternative: Let’s skip the Christmas season, and focus on the advent season. Let’s look to Jesus. He’s coming back, y’know. Could return at any time.