Both Matthew and Luke assign Jesus’ birth to “the days when Herod was king of Judea”27—consequently before 3 B.C.. Luke, however, describes Jesus as “about thirty years old” when John baptized him “in the fifteenth year of Tiberius”27a—i.e., A.D. 28-29; this would place Christ’s birth in the year 2-1 B.C. Luke adds that “in those days there went out a decree of Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed . . . when Quirinius was governor of Syria.” Quirinius is known to have been legate in Syria between A.D. 6 and 12; Josephus notes a census by him in Judea, but ascribes it to A.D. 6-7;28 we have no further mention of this census. Tertullian29 records a census of Judea by Saturninus, governor of Syria 8-7 B.C.; if this is the census that Luke had in mind, the birth of Christ would have to be placed before 6 B.C.. We have no knowledge of the specific day of his birth. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 200) reports diverse opinions on the subject in his day, some chronologists dating the birth April 19, some May 20; he himself assigned it to November 17, 3 B.C. As far back as the second century the Eastern Christians celebrated the Nativity on January 6. In 354 some Western churches, including those of Rome, commemorated the birth of Christ on December 25; this was then erroneously calculated as the winter solstice, on which the days begin to lengthen; it was already the central festival of Mithraism, the natalis invicti solis, or birthday of the unconquered sun. The Eastern churches clung for a time to January 6, and charged their Western brethren with sun worship and idolatry, but by the end of the fourth century December 25 had been adopted also in the East.30
Matthew and Luke place the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, five miles south of Jerusalem; thence, they tell us, the family moved to Nazareth in Galilee. Mark makes no mention of Bethlehem, but merely names Christ “Jesus of Nazareth.”IV His parents gave him the quite common name Yeshu’a (our Joshua), meaning “the help of Yahveh”; the Greeks made this into lesous, the Romans into lesus.
He was apparently one of a large family, for his neighbors, marveling at his authoritative teaching, asked, “Where did he get this wisdom, and the power to do these wonders? Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary, and are not his brothers named James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? And do not his sisters live here among us?”31 Luke tells the story of the Annunciation with some literary art, and puts into the mouth of Miriam—Mary—that Magnificat which is one of the great poems embedded in the New Testament.
Next to her son, Mary is the most touching figure in the narrative: rearing him through all the painful joys of motherhood, proud of his youthful learning, wondering later at his doctrine and his claims, wishing to withdraw him from the exciting throng of his followers and bring him back to the healing quiet of his home (“thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing”), helplessly witnessing his crucifixion, and receiving his body into her arms; if this is not history it is supreme literature, for the relations of parents and children hold deeper dramas than those of sexual love. The tales later circulated, by Celsus and others, about Mary and a Roman soldier are by critical consent “clumsy fabrications.”32 Not so awkward are the stories, chiefly contained in the apocryphal or uncanonical gospels, about the birth of Christ in a cave or stable, the adoration of the shepherds and the Magi, the massacre of the innocents, and the flight into Egypt; the mature mind will not resent this popular poetry. The virgin birth is not mentioned by Paul or John; and Matthew and Luke, who tell of it, trace Jesus back to David through Joseph, by conflicting genealogies; apparently the belief in the virgin birth rose later than that in the Davidic descent.
The evangelists tell us little of Christ’s youth. When he was eight days old he was circumcized. Joseph was a carpenter, and the occupational heredity usual in that age suggests that Jesus followed that pleasant trade for a time. He knew the craftsmen of his village, and the landlords, stewards, tenants, and slaves of his rural surroundings; his speech is studded with them. He was sensitive to the natural beauties of the countryside, to the grace and color of flowers, and the silent fruitfulness of trees. The story of his questioning the scholars in the temple is not incredible; he had an alert and curious mind, and in the Near East a boy of twelve already touches maturity. But he had no formal education. “How is it,” his neighbors asked, “that this man can read when he has never gone to school?”33 He attended the synagogue, and heard the Scriptures with evident delight; the Prophets and the Psalms above all sank deep into his memory, and helped to mold him. Perhaps he read also the books of Daniel and Enoch, for his later teaching was shot through with their visions of the Messiah, the Last Judgment, and the coming Kingdom of God.
The air he breathed was tense with religious excitement. Thousands of Jews awaited anxiously the Redeemer of Israel. Magic and witchcraft, demons and angels, “possession” and exorcism, miracles and prophecies, divination and astrology were taken for granted everywhere; probably the story of the Magi was a necessary concession to the astrological convictions of the age.34 Thaumaturgists—wonder-workers—toured the towns. On the annual journeys that all good Palestinian Jews made to Jerusalem for the Passover festival, Jesus must have learned something of the Essenes, and their half-monastic, almost Buddhistic, life;V possibly he heard also of a sect called “Nazarenes,” who dwelt beyond the Jordan in Peraea, rejected Temple worship, and denied the binding character of the Law.36 But the experience that aroused him to religious fervor was the preaching of John, the son of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth.
Josephus tells John’s story in some detail.37 We tend to picture the Baptist as an old man; on the contrary, he was apparently of the same age as Jesus. Mark and Matthew describe him as garbed in haircloth, living on dried locusts and honey, standing beside the Jordan, and calling people to repentance. He shared the asceticism of the Essenes, but differed from them in holding one baptism to be enough; his name “the Baptist” may be a Greek equivalent of “Essene” (bather) .38 To his rite of symbolic purification John added a menacing condemnation of hypocrisy and loose living, warned sinners to prepare themselves for the Last Judgment, and proclaimed the early coming of the Kingdom of God.39 If all Judea should repent and be cleansed of sin, said John, the Messiah and the Kingdom would come at once.
In or shortly after “the fifteenth year of Tiberius,” says Luke, Jesus came down to the Jordan to be baptized by John. This decision, by a man now “about thirty years old,”40 attested Christ’s acceptance of John’s teaching; his own would be essentially the same. His methods and character, however, were different: he would himself never baptize anyone,41 and he would live not in the wilderness but in the world. Soon after this meeting Herod Antipas, tetrarch (“ruler of four cities”) of Galilee, ordered the imprisonment of John. The Gospels ascribe the arrest to John’s criticism of Herod’s acts in divorcing his wife and marrying Herodias while she was still the wife of his half brother Philip. Josephus attributes the arrest to Herod’s fear that John was fomenting a political rebellion in the guise of a religious reformation.42 Mark43 and Matthew44 tell here the story of Salome, Herodias’ daughter, who danced so alluringly before Herod that he offered her any reward she might name. At her mother’s urging, we are told, she asked for the head of John, and the tetrarch reluctantly accommodated her. There is nothing in the Gospels about Salome loving John, nor anything in Josephus about her share in John’s death.