A Post-Christian Version of a Christian Classic

August 12, 2021 By Gene Veith

In my opinion, informed by decades of literary study, one of the greatest stories in literature is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It has inspired a contemporary film, The Green Knight, which–though well-done in many respects–completely reverses the medieval tale’s original meaning, perhaps suggesting where our post-Christian mentality is heading.

The anonymous narrative poem of the 14th century, written in an obscure English dialect, is full of twists and surprises, with a brilliant structure, both comedy and thrills, and profound themes of both culture and faith.

I urge you to read it in J. R. R. Tolkien’s translation, collected in his book Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. This is one of Tolkien’s greatest works, bringing together his vocations as a medieval scholar, a linguist, a literary artist, and a master of imaginative fantasy. Tolkien was, like C. S. Lewis, an academic in his day job; and both Tolkien and Lewis are still highly respected in their fields of literary history to this very day, and by fellow-scholars who would never read The Lord of the Rings or Christian apologetics. Tolkien not only understands this chivalric romance and emulates its power as a fantasy, he also brings into modern English the poem’s rhythm, alliteration, and rhyme scheme–something almost never even attempted, let alone brought off successfully, in translations.

Let me briefly tell you the main elements of the tale. And then I’ll tell you what the movie does with it.

Spoiler alert!

The Original

The story begins on New Year’s Eve in the early days of Camelot. Still celebrating the 12 days of Christmas with a feast, the young, energetic King Arthur, the beautiful Guinevere by his side, proclaims that he will not eat until he has witnessed some adventure.

Whereupon a giant green knight rides into the hall on his green horse, carrying an axe. Despite this breach of etiquette (horses are to be left outside), King Arthur welcomes him. The Green Knight proposes a game of trading blows. A knight may give him his best shot with the axe. And then, in a year and a day, it will be the Green Knight’s turn to strike the knight.

Young King Arthur wants to do it, but his court restrains him, so the young but already accomplished Sir Gawain takes up the challenge. (In the Arthurian tales of Celtic Britain, Sir Gawain becomes the greatest of the knights. Later, in the French versions, bringing in the theme of courtly love, the greatest knight is a Frenchman, Sir Lancelot. In Sir Thomas Malory’s synthesis of the traditions, this will later lead to the civil war that destroys the civilization King Arthur has built.)

Sir Gawain, agreeing with the terms, goes up to the intruder, who bares his neck, and with one blow of the axe cuts off his head. That would seem to be that. But then the decapitated body of the Green Knight stands up and picks up his bloody head, which speaks: I will see you in a year and a day at the Green Chapel.

The Green Knight is a vegetation deity, representing the old nature-based paganism that Christianity was supplanting in Britain. Of course, if you cut off the head of a plant, it just grows back, something we are well aware of every time we mow the lawn. Not so with human beings. The story depicts a test for the new religion and for the new cultural values that Camelot represents: Will this new order of knights, supposedly so superior to the old pagan warriors, keep their promises?

The year passes, with vivid and suspense-building descriptions, as Gawain gets closer and closer to the date of his certain doom. When the time comes, he does as he promises, setting off on a quest to find the Green Knight and this mysterious Green Chapel, not having a clue where they might be. But he sets forth anyway. Unlike conventional quests to find a glorious treasure, this one, as far as Gawain is concerned, is a quest for his death.

After many hard adventures, Gawain, starving and in ice-encased armor, comes to a castle. Here he is warmly received. A friendly, hearty knight named Bertilak is delighted to entertain a knight from Camelot who has come all this way into the hinterlands. And he says that he knows where the Green Chapel is, which is quite nearby. He invites Gawain to rest up and to sleep in, while he himself goes hunting. He proposes a friendly exchange: He will give Gawain whatever he gets on his hunt, and Gawain will give him whatever he receives while back at the castle. (Again: Will a knight keep his promises?)

The next morning, while Gawain is luxuriating in bed, Bertilak’s beautiful wife comes into his bedchamber. Gawain is aghast at this impropriety, but because of his courtesy and his chivalrous concern for women, both hallmarks of Camelot, he does not want to berate her or embarrass her. As she asks about the fashions at court, though, she becomes more and more flirtatious. Gawain pretends not to notice, and at the end of the morning, she leaves, but gives him a chaste kiss on the cheek. When her husband gets back, he gives Gawain the deer he has slain, and Gawain honors their agreement by kissing him on the cheek. (Note the moral test: Will this Christian follow the sexual morality he says he believes in, and resist committing adultery?)

The next day goes much the same, with Bertilak’s hunt being much more difficult, going after a wild bore that attacks him, and his wife’s “hunt” also intensifying, as she becomes more and more aggressive. Again, Sir Gawain fends off her and his own passions, and settles for another chaste kiss, which he returns to her husband.

On the third day, though, the wife just comes out with her desire to have sex with Gawaine, and he forthrightly–but with chivalrous consideration for her–refuses. She says that she understands and, to show that there are no hard feelings, she gives him the gift of a magic green belt. Wear it, she says, and no harm can come to you.

Suddenly, we readers, along with Gawain, are reminded of the main plot: The rendezvous with the Green Knight! This can protect him! Gawain gladly takes the belt. But when Bertilak comes back, giving him the only fruit of a bad hunt, a mangy fox, Gawain gives him a kiss, but keeps the belt for himself, thus violating their agreement.

He goes to the Green Chapel and meets the Green Knight. “Now bare your neck like I did!” Gawain does, but as the axe is raised to strike and starts to come down, he flinches. “I didn’t flinch when you did that to me!” “Well, I won’t be able to pick up my head and ride off like you did!” Again, he prepares himself for the blow, but he flinches again. The third time, the axe misses, merely scratching his neck! Gawain jumps up, draws his sword, says you’ve had your blow, and is ready to fight. Whereupon the Green Knight starts to laugh.

“You have passed the test, or at least done well enough.” The Green Knight turns out to be Bertilak. The real test was not in the Green Chapel but in the bedroom. Chivalry and Christian morality were proven. “You only failed once, in desiring to protect your own life, but that is understandable.”

Gawain is abashed, though, at how he depended on a pagan talisman to protect him, instead of Jesus and His Mother, who were painted on the inside of his shield. He goes back to Camelot, which rejoices to see him, and confesses to all his failure and dishonor. Whereupon the King and the court laugh. They all resolve to wear a green belt in his honor, to remind them all of that crucial chivalrous and Christian virtue of humility.

The Movie

The movie is well-made, with strong acting and gorgeous cinematography. It even picked up on some of the original story’s themes, giving me high hopes. Even material it added seemed to be in line with the original (such as the bit it added with Gawain’s mother Morgause, the sister of both Arthur and Morgan le Fay, whom the book credits for orchestrating the test.) But then the movie switched the themes around.

Whereas the original tale was set at the beginning of King Arthur’s reign, the movie presents it at the end. Arthur is old, weak, and decrepit, still noble, but approaching his end. The book, as it were, dramatized the beginning of Christendom to a recently and probably not completely converted Celtic audience. The movie depicts Christianity and the Western Civilization it created as being essentially over.

Instead of the way the book shows paganism giving way to Christianity, the movie shows Christianity giving way to paganism. For example, Bertilak’s castle is full of books, which Gawain marvels at to the wife, who says she has read or written them all. Christianity is presented as backwards, while paganism is presented as a well-spring of learning and education. Which violates history completely! In reality, Christianity in the middle and the previous dark ages was responsible for books and learning, while paganism, as depicted in the book, is about instincts, passion, and irrationalism.

The movie includes the original’s riff on the number 5 as symbolizing the five fingers, the five senses, the five knightly virtues, the five wounds of Christ, the five joys of Mary, etc., but presents it as a magical incantation rather than a confession of how his faith must impact his life. It shows the inside of Gawain’s shield, with its icon of Mary and Jesus, only to have robbers throw it on the ground and cut it in two.

In the movie, Gawain is not even a knight, even though the title of the source book specifies “Sir Gawain. . . ” Rather, he is presented as a clueless youth–though portrayed by a mature man–who wants to be a knight, something he associates with “honor,” with little reference to what that entailed back then.

And the movie doesn’t even consider the virtue of chastity. Gawain is shown at the beginning frequenting brothels. He has a sexual relationship with a lower-class Essel, but he is oblivious to her love for him and treats her despicably, unlike the way actual chivalry would demand.

And Gawain immediately gives in sexually to Bertilak’s wife so that she will give him the magic belt. Here the movie comes off the tracks completely, in leaving out the best and most important part of the original story. The three days of temptation and resistance, paralleling Bertilak’s three hunts, is eliminated completely, crunched into one day with a sex scene, ending with a shot of semen on the green belt.

The old paganism was at least a fertility religion. This newly emergent paganism wants sex, but not fertility, which entails having children and generating new life. Reflecting our new pornographic view of sex, this one is more of a masturbatory religion.

As for the ending, Gawain does flinch from the Green Knight blow and seems to run away, whereas, in a long and confusing sequence, we see his unhappy life unfold. But that turns out be only a vision, from which he wakes up and says he is ready for the blow. The Green Knight speaks kindly to him, but then says, “Now, off with your head!” Fade to credits.

That abrupt, non-conclusive ending prevents any kind of happy ending, which is a necessity in every fairy tale. Nature brings death, the film seems to say, but that is better than the pointless life you would have lived.

The problems of the film are not just the thematic inversions from the original. They are also artistic, as elements are thrown in without being accounted for (such as the naked female giants that parade through) and loose ends are never tied together (such as Bertilak not being revealed as the Green Knight).

There was another more subtle problem that grated on me. The movie is full of “thee’s” and “thou’s,” which I appreciate as being an attempt to evoke medieval language (though it is actually Early Modern). But if you are going to use those pronouns, use them correctly! In the movie, King Arthur gives a wimpy speech to his knights, in which he gives credit for all of his accomplishments “to thee.”

“Thee” is a singular! “Thou” is the subject form, “thee” is the object form, and “thy/thine” are the possessives. “Ye” is the plural subject form (as in “go ye into all the world and preach the gospel), and “you” is the plural object form, with “your/yours” being the possessive.

These distinctions acquired a social distinction, with the singular forms (“thou, thee, thy”) becoming an intimate address reserved for family and close friends. (It was also used to address God, our most intimate friend of all.) The plural forms (ye, you, your) were used to address social superiors. But it was also still used as a plural, when addressing more than one person.

Eventually, we lost all distinctions and use “you” for everyone. But no one in the Middle Ages or the early modern period would address a group as “thee”!

Read this for the grammar and this for the difference it makes in reading Shakespeare.

What this tells me is that the filmmakers of The Green Knight do not understand medieval history, language, or religion. Unlike J. R. R. Tolkien.

Illustration: From the original manuscript of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (14th century) by Unknown author – http://gawain.ucalgary.ca, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=621711

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The St. Patrick of the Germans

March 17, 2021 By Gene Veith

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We often think of missionaries as emissaries from the West to non-Western lands such as Africa or Asia. But the Western lands also came to faith through the work of missionaries. All nations did, with the exception of the Jews.

The most famous of the missionaries to European countries is St. Patrick, who brought the Gospel to Ireland and whose day it is today.

But there were many others who are also worth remembering, but who don’t currently rate being honored with by parades, corn-beef and cabbage, green beer, and wearing green-colored clothing.

Another Englishman who went to evangelize European pagans was St. Boniface, who brought the gospel to Germany. Here is an account of his most famous exploit, from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

To show the heathens how utterly powerless were the gods in whom they placed their confidence, Boniface felled the oak sacred to the thunder-god Thor, at Geismar, near Fritzlar. He had a chapel built out of the wood and dedicated it to the prince of the Apostles. The heathens were astonished that no thunderbolt from the hand of Thor destroyed the offender, and many were converted. The fall of this oak marked the fall of heathenism.

Here is a fuller account of the tree-cutting, which some relate to the German-originated custom of the Christmas tree, from Willibald’s Life of St. Boniface, written shortly after it happened (and Latinizing the name of the thunder god to “Jupiter”):

Now at that time many of the Hessians, brought under the Catholic faith and confirmed by the grace of the sevenfold spirit, received the laying on of hands; others indeed, not yet strengthened in soul, refused to accept in their entirety the lessons of the inviolate faith. Moreover some were wont secretly, some openly to sacrifice to trees and springs; some in secret, others openly practiced inspections of victims and divinations, legerdemain and incantations; some turned their attention to auguries and auspices and various sacrificial rites; while others, with sounder minds, abandoned all the profanations of heathenism, and committed none of these things.

With the advice and counsel of these last, the saint attempted, in the place called Gaesmere, while the servants of God stood by his side, to fell a certain oak of extraordinary size, which is called, by an old name of the pagans, the Oak of Jupiter. And when in the strength of his steadfast heart he had cut the lower notch, there was present a great multitude of pagans, who in their souls were earnestly cursing the enemy of their gods. But when the fore side of the tree was notched only a little, suddenly the oak’s vast bulk, driven by a blast from above, crashed to the ground, shivering its crown of branches as it fell; and, as if by the gracious compensation of the Most High, it was also burst into four parts, and four trunks of huge size, equal in length, were seen, unwrought by the brethren who stood by.

At this sight the pagans who before had cursed now, on the contrary, believed, and blessed the Lord, and put away their former reviling. Then moreover the most holy bishop, after taking counsel with the brethren, built from the timber of the tree wooden oratory, and dedicated it in honor of Saint Peter the apostle.

St. Boniface, like many of those other missionaries to the Europeans, was martyred, killed, along with 52 of his travelling companions, by a band of Frisian bandits. Boniface was said to have held a book of the Gospels over his head, using it as a shield against the axes and swords of his murderers.

The bandits broke into the chests that were in the wagons and were flabbergasted to find not gold or silver, but just manuscripts and more books. The bandits destroyed most of them, but some survived, including the Ragyndrudis Codex, a collection of religious writings that can still be seen in Fulda, Germany, whose pages have deep cuts, as if by an axe.

St. Boniface’s day of commemoration is June 5, but St. Patrick’s Day is a good time to think of him. We Lutherans, some of whom are descendants of those tree-worshiping Hessians, should honor him this summer, not with the trappings of German nationalism, but maybe by drinking regular-colored beer made according to the German purity law. Or maybe cutting down some trees.

Illustration: “Saint Boniface Felling Donar’s Oak,” photographed by Bernhard Rode – Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5780989

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Books of the Year

December 28, 2020 By Gene Veith

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Here is a good idea for spending the Amazon gift cards that you got for Christmas: Pick out some of the winners of this year’s Christianity Today Book Awards.

The quarantines, shut-downs, and lockdowns of 2020 were miserable, but at least they made time for reading. I’m told that book publishing was one of the industries that more or less held its own during the year’s economic woes.

Every year, Christianity Today comes out with its awards for what its panel–I used to be a member–considers to be the top Christian books in multiple categories: Apologetics/Evangelism, Biblical Studies, Children & Youth, Christian Living/Discipleship, the Church/Pastoral Leadership, Women, Culture & the Arts, Fiction, History/Biography, Missions/Global Church, Politics and Public Life, Spiritual Formation, Theology/Ethics, and “Beautiful Orthodoxy.” A “Book of the Year” and an “Award of Merit” are given in each category.

Browse the list, but I want to highlight two titles. (Note: If you buy any of these books from the links to Amazon, I’ll get a small commission.)

Bezalel’s Body: The Death of God and the Birth of Art, by Seattle Pacific art historian Katie Kresser, took the Award of Merit for the Culture & the Arts category. My first book, The Gift of Art (expanded into State of the Arts) focused on Bezalel, the artist called and equipped by God to craft the art of the Tabernacle. I’m glad to see that this long-neglected Biblical figure has since then been getting his due. This book approaches Bezalel and the Bible’s legacy for the arts with great sophistication.

She argues that the art of Bezalel is different from the graven images of the pagans. Whereas the latter made it possible for worshippers to identify with and manipulate their gods, the sacred art of the Tabernacle–which could not even be touched– required and created distance. Similarly, Christianity emphasizes a personal relationship with God, which requires that He be “other” than ourselves. This is manifested in Christ’s crucifixion–what she means by the “death of God” in her subtitle–and His ascension. Conceptually, these mindsets made what we consider art today to be possible. She says that the value of art is that it makes us encounter and treasure “otherness,” as opposed to fixating on ourselves. This is contrary to the views of art that focus on “self-expression” and the inwardness of the self, and strikes me as a very salutary and exciting approach, which Prof. Kresser develops with theoretical and scholarly expertise. I haven’t read it yet, but the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon is tantalizing, and it’s first on my list. (It is illustrated with pictures of works of art, which I have found are hard to page back and forth to on Kindle, so I’ll be getting a hard copy.)

I was also thrilled to see that my long-time friend Harold Senkbeil has a book on this honors list for the second year in a row. Last year his The Care of Souls took the top prize for The Church/Pastoral Leadership. This year the Award of Merit for “Beautiful Orthodoxy” went to his Christ and Calamity: Grace and Gratitude in the Darkest Valley.

I was sort of in on the beginnings of that book. Lexham Press wanted him to toss off a quick book in response to the Coronavirus Rev. Senkbeil agreed to give it a try, but, in doing so, put together the makings of a spiritual classic. He sent me the manuscript and asked for a rushed endorsement. Here is what I wrote:

As we face sickness, death, economic disaster, uncertainty, fear, and every other kind of suffering, we need consolation. In this little book, in just a few pages, Pastor Senkbeil gives us the consolation of Christ.

This is not just good advice or positive thinking or abstract theology that tries to explain why God allows suffering. Rather, this is the cure of souls. Pastor Senkbeil takes us into the depths of spiritual reality. Here, in the midst of our actual tribulations, we encounter God, not as a being far above us looking down, but with us, in His cross.

This is a book to read and to read again whenever we need it, a book to give away to people who are hurting. This book will be a classic.

Rev. Senkbeil–former seminary professor, founder of the ministry to pastors Doxology, and, above all, a pastor–has written a masterpiece.

This is a small book, only 168 pages. Pastors should buy it in bulk to give away to people they are ministering to.

Check out too the Gospel Coalition Book Awards. I’m especially interested in Carl Trueman’s analysis of the huge worldview shift entailed in the phenomenon of transgenderism and the notion of sexual identity: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution Hardcover.

Other suggestions for spending your gift cards: the eye-opening Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

by British historian Tom Holland, a 2019 title that completely upends the criticisms of the New Atheists.

And I had a book that came out in 2020: Post-Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture.

What other books from last year would you recommend?

Illustration: award book by Flatart from the Noun Project

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The Christ Child in Revelation

December 23, 2020 By Gene Veith

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What we know about the nativity of Jesus comes from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Mark starts his account of Christ with His baptism, and John goes back as far as possible for His origin: “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Then, like Mark, John jumps to John the Baptist.

But John does write about the Christ Child, not in his Gospel but in the Book of Revelation.

Like everything in that description of a vision, the account is enigmatic and mysterious. But it’s John’s Christmas story. And it’s also about us today:

And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. ²She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. ³And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. ⁴His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. ⁵She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, ⁶and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days. (Rev. 12:1-6)

Most of the attention given to this passage has to do with the identity of the woman. We’ll discuss that controversy later. But most commentators agree that the child “who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” is Jesus.

This passage describes the great hatred that the dragon, explicitly identified as Satan, has for Christ. How he sought to kill the child, recalling his servant Herod and the slaughter of the innocents. All through the child’s life, Satan tried to “devour him,” until Christ’s Ascension. Whereupon this “dragon” is defeated and “thrown down.”

Even though Satan is defeated and thwarted, he continues to persecute the woman and “the rest of her offspring”; namely, us Christians:

⁷Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, ⁸but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. ⁹And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. . . .

¹³And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. ¹⁴But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. ¹⁵The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. ¹⁶But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. ¹⁷Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (Rev. 7-9; 13-17)

So who is the woman who gives birth to the child? The Virgin Mary? Catholics certainly think so. They see in the “woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” the Queen of Heaven, whom they portray in their iconography as standing on the crescent moon with stars in her hair. (I had heard that the medieval depictions of Mary with the moon under her feet derive from depictions of the pagan moon-goddess Diana, which is evidence that the veneration of the Virgin Mary is simply a displacement of early European goddess-worship. But the imagery clearly derives instead from this passage.)

And yet, this passage does not completely accord with Catholic Mariology. This woman “was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.” Catholics believe that Mary had an “immaculate conception,” so that she was born without original sin. That means that she was not under the curse of Eve, which included “pain in childbearing” (Gen 3:16). Thus, Catholic piety insists that she experienced no pain in giving birth to Jesus.

A Protestant reading could also allow for the woman to be the Virgin Mary. We know that Jesus on the Cross entrusted His mother to John’s care (John 19:17). Revelation is said to have been written by John when he was at an advanced age. By then, Mary would have died–or, as Catholics believe, ascended into Heaven, since her lack of original sin meant that she was not under the sentence of death–and John would have surely thought of her as being in Heaven.

Yet the passage goes on to describe the dragon’s persecution of the woman in extended and elaborate conflicts. We don’t know how Satan might have tormented Mary after her Son’s Ascension, but what Revelation describes here sounds more universal. The dragon is also making war “on the rest of her offspring,” clearly identified as “those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus”; that is on Christians. I’m not sure that even Catholics would consider Christians to be “offspring” of Mary.

This leads to other interpretations of the woman’s identity. Some say she represents the Church. But the Book of Revelation depicts the Church as Christ’s bride, not His mother. And surely the Church doesn’t bring forth Christ; rather, He brings forth the Church. Others interpret the woman as Israel. Certainly, Satan has persecuted the Jews since Christ’s ascension, but, as a group, they have not been in league with Jesus.

The Lutheran Study Bible probably gives the best answer in saying that she represents “God’s People,” both in the Old Testament and in the age of the Church. The Jews did give birth to Christ, and the Church was being severely persecuted at the time of John’s vision and thereafter, including today. Then again, as Al Collver of the LCMS points out, the Virgin Mary is a type of the Church, the New Israel, so perhaps the symbols all come together.

At any rate, the message of Christmas is unambiguously given in John’s account:

¹⁰And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers^[b] has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. ¹¹And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. ¹²Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! (Rev 12:10-12)

(This post revisits a topic from 10 years ago.)

Image: “The Virgin of the Apocalypse,” by Miguel Cabrera (1790), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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A New Argument for the Date of Jesus’ Birth

December 14, 2020 By Gene Veith

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There have been many attempts throughout the centuries to ascertain exactly when Jesus was born. Researchers in Italy have offered a new approach to the question. Looking at the timing of Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist, Jewish religious festivals, and some new astronomical data, they conclude that Jesus was born in December, 1 B.C.

First of all, despite what we keep hearing, Christmas was NOT a Christianization of the pagan feast of Sol Invictus. Nor the pagan feast of Juvenalia. Historians now agree on that. Follow this link for a historian’s explanation of why we celebrate Christmas on December 25. (It has to do with the ancient belief that prophets die on the anniversary of their conception. We know Jesus died around the Passover, which would be in our March. Nine months later brings us to December.)

As for the year of Christ’s birth, the calculations that gave us the numbering of the years as B.C. [Before Christ] and A.D. [Anno Domini, the Year of Our Lord] have long been thought to be off a few years. One factor is the necessity of going back and forth between the Jewish lunar calendar, the Julian solar calendar, and the Gregorian solar calendar, which we follow today. The consensus, I believe, is that Jesus was born sometime between 3 and 6 B.C.

But Liberato De Caro of the National Research Council in Bari, Italy, working with Prof. Fernando La Greca, of the University of Salerno have re-examined the issue. In an interview with the National Catholic Register, Dr. De Caro works from the time of the annunciation of the angel to Elizabeth, Mary’s visit to her in “the sixth month” (at which time she was already pregnant with Jesus, since the unborn John the Baptist responds to Jesus in utero), and the timing of the various Jewish feasts of pilgrimage that would account for everyone’s movements. He concludes that the Annunciation to Mary must have been just before Passover.

That would put it in our March, which means Jesus would have been born in our December. I would add that these calculations would accord with the liturgical calendar, which celebrates the Annunciation on March 25, and nine-months later, we have Christmas on December 25.

As for the year of Christ’s birth, Dr. De Caro says that since Herod figures into the Christmas story, the birth of Christ must have been before the king’s death. The ancient historian Josephus says that Herod died after a lunar eclipse. Scholars had found such an eclipse that would have been visible from Jerusalem in 4 B.C., leading them to conclude that Jesus must have been born before then, perhaps 5 B.C. at the latest. But Dr. De Caro says that astronomers now believe the 4 B.C. eclipse of the moon would not have been visible in Jerusalem after all, but other possible eclipses would suggest that Herod died in either 2 or 3 A.D., meaning that Jesus could have been born in the year One B.C., with his first year being the first Year of Our Lord. Thus giving credibility again to our calendar numbering.

Read De Caro’s explanations, which are more detailed than my account of them. (You can access the published scholarly articles in Italian here and here.)

The Visitation [of Mary and Elizabeth] by Sebastiano del Piombo (1519-1521) , CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Amid the Cold of Winter

December 25, 2019 By Gene Veith

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No, Christmas did not have its origins in a pagan holiday. Scholars now know (see this and this) that the Feast of Sol Invictus, Juvenalia, and similar celebrations were, if anything, influenced by Christmas, rather than the other way around. But lots of religions and cultures do have winter festivals of one kind or another. What is striking, though, is how different Christmas is from what we might expect.

Winter is cold. Winter is lifeless, as the birds have migrated, many of the animals are hibernating, and the plant life to all appearances is dead. Winter is a time of starvation. Livestock would be slaughtered at the beginning of winter and the fermentation of alcohol would be completed, so there would be feasting for a while, but only as a prelude to the so-called famine time. Winter is dark, with the nights being longer than the days. This is especially true in northern latitudes, some of which have nights that last close to the entire 24 hours. The Winter Solstice, which is just a few days before Christmas and which has its own religious observances, is the longest night of the year.

You had to keep the Yule log burning, or you would freeze in the dark. The religious observances in winter and the Winter Solstice were desperate pleas for the light to come back, with sacrifices to fend off the spirits of darkness and to implore the sun to return.

Winter was a grim time for most of the world throughout human history. And yet, for Christians, their winter festival, in the words of the song, is “the most wonderful time of the year.” It’s all joy, good cheer, and merry-making. To be sure, Christians also suffered–and many still suffer–in the cold of winter. The old Christmas observances included–and still include– beneficence to the suffering, as seen in the carol “Good King Wenceslas,” Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” and today’s Salvation Army kettles. Somehow, Christmas makes us able to sentimentalize winter weather, so that snow, ice, and the cold are no longer mortal threats but constitute a “winter wonderland”!

Conversely, in the Spring, which one would think would be a season for happiness and abundance, is the saddest and most somber observance in the Christian calendar. “Lent,” a word that just means “Spring,” is a time to contemplate one’s own sins and the suffering and death of Christ, who paid their penalty. But in other religions and cultures, Spring is a time of fertility and revelry. Once again, Christianity seems out of step with “natural” religion.

But Lent culminates in Easter, and Christ’s resurrection from the dead is symbolized by the new life that is springing back to life out of the dead ground. And immediately after the Winter Solstice (December 21) is when Christmas is celebrated, the days start to get longer, whereupon the light begins to conquer the darkness. So the Christian holy-days are in line with the symbolism of the seasons after all, sort of.

Still, the Christian holidays are surprising. At the point of our greatest darkness, coldness, and death, that is when Jesus comes. This is the message of Christmas, the theology of the cross, and the proclamation of the Gospel to those stricken by the Law.

Whereas the Gospel of Matthew tells about the Wise Men and the Gospel of Luke tells about the shepherds, the Christmas account in the Gospel of John starts even further back and unpacks what it all means:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. ⁴In him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. . . .⁹The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. . . . ¹⁴And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1)

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). Of course we are going to celebrate Christmas in the teeth of winter. Of course we will do so with lights–candles, Yule logs, brightly-colored electric lights–gifts, emblems of God’s grace, and plants that are alive in winter.

The old Christmas carol “Lo, how a Rose E’er Blooming” gives us a rose from the stem of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1)–that is, the Son of David, Jesus–that blooms not in the Spring, as other flowers do, but in the depths of winter:

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming
As men of old have sung.
It came, a flower bright,
Amid the cold of winter
When half-gone was the night.

The rose in the snow, like the fir tree in “O, Tannenbaum“–and thus our Christmas trees–depicts life in a season of death. This is Jesus and the gift that He brings.

Illustration: “Winter Landscape: Christmas Eve,” (1890) by Fritz von Uhde* [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

*For more works by the 19th century Lutheran artist Fritz von Uhde and discussions of how he expresses his theology in his art, see this, this, and this.

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