Author unearths some details of the first christmas

Probably no writings in history are more familiar than the biblical accounts of Jesus' birth in Matthew and Luke. It might seem there's nothing more to be learned.

But Paul L. Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, unearths some morsels you may not know in his timely book "The First Christmas: The True and Unfamiliar Story."

Maier seeks to tell a good story -- actually, to retell the beginning of the greatest story ever told. But he also wants to prove that the story is not only inspiring but fully factual, presumably aided by Mary's own recollections (see hint in Luke 2:19).

Maier admits that this sets him against more liberal Bible scholars at many universities and seminaries.

In other world religions, "one looks in vain for true correlations with secular history," Maier writes, so Christianity has "been held to much more stringent standards of critical evaluation." He argues that the Gospel writers had to get things right because garbled facts would have opened first-century Christianity to ridicule.

Several disputed details involve the Roman census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem (Luke 2:1-5).

Disputing details

Skeptical scholars think the couple wouldn't have journeyed from Nazareth to Bethlehem because Rome didn't require taxpayers to return home for registration. But Maier reports modern discovery of a Roman census edict from A.D. 104 in neighboring Egypt that mandated precisely this.

A related question is why the pregnant Mary would have made the difficult trek, since Joseph could have registered alone. Maier reasons that Mary's "six-month baby," conceived before marriage, would have been an embarrassment due to "prying neighbors" in Nazareth. The trip solved that difficulty.

Another issue, Maier says, is Luke's specification of a census "when Quirinius was governor of Syria." Ancient records say Quirinius' term started years too late.

Maier's explanation: Rome's provincial census in Gaul took 40 years, so maybe Luke referred to a preliminary registration of data that Quirinius applied later. Also, Luke's Greek could be translated as enrollment "before" Quirinius was governor.

Maier concludes that Luke referred to Rome's famous "citizens' census" of 8 B.C., and that the machinery to apply it in far-off Palestine wasn't in place until Jesus was born in 5 B.C. or so. (Yes, scholars agree that, due to a calendar mistake, Jesus was born B.C., "Before Christ.")

Perfect plan

Whatever year Jesus was born, "God had a good sense of timing," Maier observes. The Greeks had given the Mediterranean region a universal language through which Jesus' message could spread easily. And the Roman Empire had organized a "vast communications network, almost perfectly geared to foster the spread of Christianity" and made missionaries' travel far safer.

Liberals doubt Herod would have slaughtered innocent infant boys around Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16). But Maier says murder of perhaps a dozen youngsters fits a king who killed numerous other subjects, not to mention his favorite wife and her mother, his brother-in-law, three of his sons and the Jewish high priest.

The Bible doesn't specify what time of year Jesus was born. Since shepherds were "out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night," some say it wasn't winter, when sheep live in corrals.

But Maier cites evidence that flocks weren't always penned up in cold weather.

Tradition says Jesus was born in a cave under Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, viewed by multitudes of pilgrims. It's the oldest church in continuous use. Maier notes that long before it was built in 326, back within a century of Jesus' time, the recognized Nativity site was desecrated by the pagan Emperor Hadrian, who placed a grove honoring Adonis there.

Thus, pagan persecution may have preserved through history the exact spot where Jesus was born.