Ancient Mythic Origins of the Christmas Story

Valerie Tarico interviews Dr. Tony Nugent, scholar of world religions. Dr. Nugent is a symbologist, an expert in ancient symbols. He taught at Seattle University for fifteen years in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and is an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Most Americans know how Christmas came to be celebrated on December 25: The Emperor Constantine chose the date because it was winter solstice in the Julian Calendar, the birthday of dying and rising gods like Mithra and Sol. Some people also know that our delightful mélange of Christmas festivities originated in ancient Norse, Sumerian, Roman and Druid traditions - or, in the case of Rudolph, on Madison Avenue.

But where does the Christmas story itself come from: Jesus in the manger, the angels and wise men?

The familiar Christmas story, including the virgin conception and birth of Jesus, is found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Scholars have pointed out that these stories are somewhat disconnected from other parts of these Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. In fact, by the time he is a young boy in the temple, Jesus's parents seem to have forgotten the virgin birth. They act surprised by his odd behavior. There is never any other mention in the New Testament of these incredible events! These stories seem to be an afterthought, written later than the rest of the gospels that contain them.

To make matters more interesting, the stories themselves have inconsistencies and ambiguities - contradictory genealogies, for example. Our Christmas story (singular) is actually a composite.

Or consider the idea that Mary is a virgin. The Greek writer of Matthew quotes Isaiah as saying: "a parthenos shall conceive and bear a child." The Hebrew word in Isaiah is "almah," which means simply "young woman." But the Greek word parthenos can mean either a virgin or a young woman, and it got translated as "virgin." Modern Bible translations have corrected this, but it is a central part of the Christmas story.

That's a lot of added complications. If the rest of the New Testament doesn't refer to these stories or need them, then how did we end up with them? Where do they come from?

One part of the answer comes from Hellenistic culture. (It is no accident all New Testament books written in Greek.) In this tradition, when a man did something extraordinary there was the assumption that he did this because he was different, either divine or semi-divine. They would make up a story about how he came to be divine. Almost all Greek heroes were said to be born of a human woman and a god--even Alexander the Great, Augustus and Pythagoras.
The father typically was Zeus or Apollo. The god would come and sleep with the woman, pretending to be the husband or as a bolt of lightning, or some such. Greek mythology also shows up in the book of Genesis: the gods lusting after the women and coming down and mating with them.

Why were they added to the Christian story?

Jewish Christians - the first Christians didn't believe in the virgin birth. They believed that Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. Part of their Christology was "adoptionism"--they thought Jesus was adopted as the unique son of God at some time later in life. There were disagreements about when - Mark suggests the baptism, Paul suggests the resurrection.

Over time, gentile Christianity replaced Jewish Christianity. There were Jewish-Roman Wars. The Jewish Christians were marginalized and oppressed. The Gentile branch became dominant. Eventually we get the gospel of John which pushes the sonship of Jesus back to the beginning of time. This writer is at the other end of the spectrum from the Jewish Christians.
But Matthew and Luke think that the Sonship of Jesus began at birth. And they want to tell a story that reinforces this point. Matthew and Luke are the source of the Christmas story as most of us learned it.

Why didn't the writers do a better job of cleaning the contradictions? They did, some. This is called the "orthodox corruption of scripture." (Bart Ehrman article , book) . But it appears that these birth stories were added toward the end, so scripture got frozen before they could get integrated.

I was raised that the bible was the literally perfect, "inerrant" word of God, essentially dictated by God to the writers. What you are saying about the Christmas story sure calls into question this point of view.

Which Bible?! There are thousands of manuscript variations.
Most biblical stories are probably fiction, not non-fiction. They are mythology in the deepest sense of the word. But we need to get beyond issue of whether biblical reports happened in the historical, physical sense to understand what they mean spiritually and mythically.

Ok. Back to Christmas. Of all the images from the Christmas story, the one that people fall in love with most is angels. The Christmas story is full of angels, beings of light. Is this because of the solstice tradition?

Actually it comes from the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish scriptures that were eventually adopted into the Christian Bible as the Old Testament. It also comes from the Jewish literature written between the Old and New Testaments that didn't get into the biblical canon. Some of these are even quoted in the New Testament, for example Enoch, from the 2nd Century BC. It's all about angels.

What are angels in these stories? Who are they?

The Bible calls them the sons of God, the Divine Council. The word used for God in parts of the Hebrew Bible, Elohim, is plural implying a family of deities. Angels are the lesser gods of the deposed pantheon of ancient Israel. They are under the rulership of Yahweh. Together with Yahweh they are part of Elohim, a plural word that we translate "God" in the book of Genesis. Elohim/God says "Let us make humans in our image." Christians understand this to refer to the trinity, but that is a later interpretation. These angels came from the ancient pantheons of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Many of these gods come from stars. There is a strong astral dimension. "Heavenly Hosts" are stars.

The Luke story focuses on one angel specifically: Gabriel. Is he the archangel?
Gabriel is the Angel of the Lord. He is one of two angels who are named in the Jewish canon and the Christian canon outside of the apocrypha: Gabriel and Michael. They are the angels of mercy and judgment. Gabriel means "Strong One of El." He is first named in Daniel.

If you go into an Eastern Orthodox church you have two icons on the north and south. Michael is on the North to fight with Satan who lives there. Gabriel is on the south. He is more like what the angels originally were, which is messengers of the gods. That is what angel means. The idea that God has a special messenger is exactly what we read about in the Middle Eastern mythologies. Each of the earlier gods has his own special messenger. Enki, who becomes Yaweh, has Isimud. The goddess Inana has Ninshubur. Each high god will have an envoy or assistant, who is a lesser god. The angel of the lord is the same thing. The distinction between angels and gods came later.

Is he a star person? Or one of those semi-divine descendents of gods and women?

He is one of the gods who would come down to earth.

Why do you say that?

The offspring of the gods mating with women are called Gaborim--from the same root as Gabriel. In the second century, Gabriel appears in the Epistula Apostolorum. It talks about Jesus and these secret teachings that he gave to his apostles after the resurrection. One of the secrets is that he is actually Gabriel. After Gabriel took on flesh and united with Mary, then he becomes Jesus. The idea that Christ was an angel was extremely popular in the early church. Later we find this really strict separation between humans and angels; between gods and angels. (more)

We have time for just one more favorite Christmas story: The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi.

The Magi are astrologers. They are Zoroastrian priests. Just to the east of the Roman Empire was the Persian Empire, which was Zoroastrian. They see this star at its rising (the better translations don't say in the East). The astrologers paid a lot of attention to this. It is likely that what this refers to was a heliacal rising, which is the first time that a star appears over the horizon during the course of a year. They thought this was a sign of the Jewish messiah. Scholars speculate that they would have been living in Babylon, where there were lots of Jewish merchants. The Jews had been there from the time of the Jewish exile from Babylonia. We have cuneiform records from them.

Are you assuming that this story is historical?

Think of it as a frog and pond. The pond is real, the frog is not. They are fictional stories in a real setting. They don't always get the details of the setting right, but they are fictional characters in real places. The Magi follow their star from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The author has in mind a real star that would be in front of you in this situation. It would have to be a star in the far southern sky. Remember what I said about the Heavenly Host being stars? The star in Matthew and the angel in Luke are two variants of the same mythology.

My former fundamentalist head is spinning. Is there anything else you'd like to say in closing?

We need to be able to appreciate these stories as myths, rather than literal histories. When you understand where they come from, then you can understand their spiritual significance for the writers and for us.

That sounds like another interview. Thank you.

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Comments

[NamakeMono]

Riveting and eye-opening revelations about Christian myths. Please give us more!

[Dave24]

Placing God at the beginning of the Universe answers nothing; it only extends the question further. If God created the Universe, what created God? If God has "always existed," then maybe the conditions that spawned the Universe have "always existed."

The idea called "God" is a fallacy; it is a mere gap-filler -- and, without evidence, it is equal to all unsupported claims. Placing a father-figure in the sky is the imposition of a human relationship upon reality, thereby undermining the possibility of attaining objective truth because believers then filter all events and experience through that theistic lens.

Fortunately, we have self-correcting science to help us through such heavy and willing ignorance.

[avraamjack]

G-d created science...­......

[Dave24]

Wow, great counterargument. Well done.

[TruthAndTheory]

I don't konow anything about the bible. All I know, is that our society is whacked out for using this mythical virgin as a way to insist that every woman today should wait until marriage to have sex, and then, only for procreation.

[Bitsko]

Very interesting commentary, Ms. Tarico. Let's hear more from you.

[opines]

If we were to establish a religion based on what we know today of the immensity of our living,pulsing universe, monotheism would be a non-starter. We now can reasonably surmise that our still expanding universe must be intelligent, with a densely layered order system to have survived for over 10 billion years.

Whatever controls that system at the top delegates. When that delegation descends to a cultivated backwater such as planet Earth, the process of subdelegation produces a myriad of local 'gods' (fertility, weather, river, mountain, etc.). For tens of thousands of years mankind worshipped its local pantheon (paganism).

Just One that doesn't delegate and is everywhere, caring for everything and about everyone seems, well, far fetched.

[RumiSouth]

What you've described as "delegation" is the very essence of pantheism, which makes no logical sense to me. Competing entities with supernatural powers would cancel each other out at every turn. Anything omnipotent and omniscient enough to create the universe would have more than adequate omniscience and omnipotence to enforce its will.

Furthermore, polytheist mythology -- like the Old Testament -- makes the gods seem rather too human, with all the quirks and foibles and personality deficits thereof. That's the natural result of any narrative created by humans (which proves that ALL mythologies are human creations).

[opines]

Rumi: "Competing entities with supernatural powers would cancel each other out at every turn."

I guess by supernatural powers you mean anything that has greater powers than humans.

Rather think that in the universal reporting structure, if man were a private, those whom we call 'god' or 'the gods' are PFCs. Their mission is limited to keeping that marvel of creation, our planet, Mother Earth, Gaia, green and vibrant. And, polytheists or pagans believe that we were created to assist the PFCs in the task of keeping Gaia green and vibrant

Gaia has made 4.6 billion flawless orbits of the Sun without missing a beat. She has sustained life on her surface for 4 billion years. That exhausts my capacity for awe.

The invention of an omnipotent and omniscient Oneness only deflects us from fulfilling the noble role for which we were created.

[wondering]

Anthropomorphism may comfort you, but it is as much a fiction as an external, white-bearded, lightning-thrower called god. It is the adult equivalent of "step on a crack, break your mother's back". It's empty nonsense.

[odyssey58]

This article mentions Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar. I have read 3 of his books and they are EXCELLENT!
This article also mentions "gods" instead of "god." If you are interested in learning more about the "angels" I suggest the Earth Chronicles by Zecharia Sitchin sitchin.comm). It's absolutely fascinating reading and very scholarly and scientific. To me the god of the Old Testament always seemed more like a petty tyrant than a divine being deserving of worship. After reading Sitchin it all makes sense.

[LaurieAnn]

Only a "myth" can be eternally true. The truth of the death and resurrection of Jesus ( we die and are reborn continually throughout our lives if we are growing) only works on a mythical and therefore spiritual level. It is meaningless on a literal level. Most of Joseph Campbell's books discuss this. Fascinating reads for those willing to entertain the apparent contradictions at the heart of Christianity

[ouroborous]

Christianity is just another myth system.

We "enlightened" westerners love to look down with a smug paternal smile on the "mythologies" of ancient peoples and of people from other cultures, without usually being willing to admit that our preferred religion is just another one of those mythologies -- equally archaic, equally irrational at its core, and equally lovely if you suspend judgment for a little while and just admire its byzantine complexity (which as this article beautifully demonstrates, has evolved through the years and is the results of many sets of hands editing the canon with many different agendas).

[cyrano1]

You said it so well! It's such a compelling topic, and enriches our understanding of ourselves as we track it back, study current cultures, contrast, compare, our long history of belief. And more to come? Much of the original documentation has disappeared but there's surely more that hasn't yet been unearthed.

[trock]

So what are you saying? That every Christian who prays so they can live forever and forever and forever in paradise but then uses modern medical science to solve medical problems and not Christian faith healing is a phony and fraud? So Christians who say that the best method against poverty and want is a job and not charity as Jesus said is also phony? That to not be poor is about science, engineering, accounting, economics and education and not just some parables about some wished for spiritual times.

Christianity is much like the mafia. It bribes you with heaven and blackmails you with hell. How is it that everybody can't see through it.

[alumcreek]

One of the earliest rejections of Biblical commandments is the "no graven images" admonishment. The pagans who embraced christianity grew up and doted on graven images. The church dropped this commandment in favor of getting new recruits. At no time has the christian church seen any biblical commandments as a bar to to their faith. Nothing presumed to originate with god was of any value if it precluded murdering unwilling converts or getting new recruits.

In its haste to create a firm schism with Judaism the church discarded most of the biblical commandments thereby repudiating the deity it purported to worship.

[bellrich]

The message that Jesus and others tried to get across is the same even if he was a man and not a god or a son of god. The existences of god can not the proven or disproved that is up to each person to decide for themselves. Jesus did more than be born then died his message is in what he said in between. The Bible is full of errors both accidental and on propose, the Bible as we know it comes the 15th century with the coming of the printing press..

[knowBuddhaU]

WORD! This is what I'm always on about.

Joseph Campbell (2001, p.7):
[T]hese metaphors.­.. are misread prosaically as referring to tangible facts and historical occurrences. The denotation--that is, the reference in time and space: a particular Virgin Birth, the End of the World--is taken as the message, and the connotation, the rich aura of the metaphor in which its spiritual significance may be detected, is ignored altogether­....

[T]he popular understanding is focused on the rituals and legends of the local system, and the sense of the symbols is reduced to the concrete goals of a particular political system of socialization. When the language of metaphor is misunderstood and its surface structures become brittle, it evokes merely the current time-and-p­lace-bound order of things and its spiritual signal, if transmitted at all, becomes ever fainter.

It has puzzled me greatly that the emphasis in the professional exegesis of the entire Judeo-Chri­stian-Isla­mic mythology has been on the denotative rather than on the connotative meaning of the metaphoric imagery that is its active language. ...The same, as I have suggested, is true of the metaphor of the Promised Land, which in its denotation plots nothing but a piece of earthly geography to be taken by force. Its connotation--that is, its real meaning--however, is of a spiritual place in the heart that can only be entered by contemplation (**Thou Art That: transforming religious metpahor**. Novato, CA: New World Library.)

[cyrano1]

knowBuddhaU: Fabulous addition to the post!

Joseph Campbell: What a mind!

Wouldn't it be great if more of us out here actually had the capacity to understand it!?

Proportionately, linear concrete minds rule over global thinkers, and I'm not holding out any hope.

[rbenjamin]

This just may be the best HuffPost ever. Thanks for the insights.

[RedWhiteandBrooklyn]

Amen.

[Lt]

What a crock!

This is just further evidence that Jesus never existed, that there is no God,

and that evangelicals and conservatives are greed driven monsters.

[RockySoldier]

...and a 'Merry Christmas' right back at ya.

[hildutus]

You've fallen into the Christian trap. Just because there was no Jesus, you cannot say there is no God -- just no personal God fitting the Christian description of Yahweh, the Hebrew War God (=Lord of Hosts). The philosophers from Plato to Plotinus had some rather interesting concepts of a God that rest upon diligent observation and reason rather than upon literal acceptance of stories.

[larry278]

Chill out, this is a magical season. Be rational-after Xmas. Reasons greetings or as RockySoldier said, Merry Christmas.

[Gracehoper]

You sound like quite the saint yourself.

[ouroborous]

To take this fascinating post about the mythology of ancient Christianity and its ties to other cultures and belief systems, and to turn it into an anti-theistic rant, is just petty.

I am an atheist, and even so I can see the beauty and complexity in the various belief systems of the world. You don't have to be religious to be fascinated and awed by the complexity and history of religion.

Chill out, scrooge.

[RedondoBeach]

One of the practices that helped early Christianity spread was its willingness to embrace and absorb pagan traditions. This helped Christianity seem more "familiar" to pagans, thereby reducing their resistance to conversion­..

Many of the Hellenistic (Greek/Egyptian) birth traditions of gods (eg: Dionysus) are very similar to the Nativity stories, with the birth taking place in the most humble of circumstances (caves, mangers), the birth being attended by both lowly sheperds and the high-born, all praising the newly-born savior of the world. These births, not just of gods but of kings also, were often heralded by a new star in the sky.

Even that most sacred of Christian traditions, the Eucharist, is taken from the mythology of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. The followers of Dionysus celebrated his mysteries by the ritual ingestion of bread and wine, which represented the body and blood of Dionysus.

[ouroborous]

"Embrace and extend" -- Christianity was the Microsoft of religions!