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By Jeff Jacoby

Boston Globe MetroWest Jewish Reporter

Of all the ways in which the United States marches to the beat of its own drummer, few are more striking than the American people’s consistent and deep-rooted support for the Jewish state. In a recent nationwide survey, the Gallup organization asked Americans: “In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” For the fourth year in a row, 59 percent—nearly 6 in 10—said their sympathies were with Israel, while just 18 percent sided with the Palestinians. When respondents were asked for their opinion of various countries, 63 percent said they had a favorable view of Israel (21 percent said very favorable), compared with just 15 percent who thought highly of the Palestinian Authority.

Conversely, only 29 percent of Americans told Gallup that their opinion of Israel was negative, even as a whopping 73 percent expressed a negative attitude toward the Palestinians.

This overwhelmingly positive feeling for Israel is normal for the United States, but it puts Americans sharply at odds with the rest of the world. At the United Nations, for example, nothing is more routine than the castigation of Israel. Similarly, any time Israel is forced to use its military power in self-defense, it comes under the harsh glare of the international media, which subject it to a scrutiny far more unforgiving than any other country receives. It was only a few years ago that a poll commissioned by the European Union found that a plurality of Europeans regarded Israel as the greatest threat to world peace—more menacing than even North Korea or Iran.

So what makes Americans different?

Foreign policy “realists” could certainly suggest reasons why close friendship with Israel is not in America’s interest, beginning with the fact that most of the world doesn’t share it. There are 300 million or more Arabs in the world, and they sit atop a vast share of the world’s oil supply. Why endanger American access to that oil by maintaining such close ties to a nation with only 6 million people and no petroleum to export? Why risk incurring the wrath of Islamic terrorists by supporting Israel, a nation most of them detest? Surely it would make more sense—so a “realist” might argue—for Americans to distance themselves from the world’s lone Jewish state, and tilt instead toward the much greater number of nations and governments that are hostile to Israel.

Yet most Americans instinctively reject such advice. The national consensus in support of Israel is longstanding and durable, and it isn’t grounded in economics, energy policy, or a quest for diplomatic popularity. Nor, as some conspiracy-minded critics have claimed, is it because a “Zionist lobby” in Washington routinely hijacks US foreign policy, manipulating America into serving Israel’s ends.

The roots of America’s bond with Israel lie elsewhere.

First, Americans stand with Israel because in it they recognize a liberal democracy much like their own: a nation in which elections are lively, fair, and democratic; in which freedom of speech and the press are core values; in which the political rights of minorities are respected; and in which a commitment to civil liberties and justice is woven into the very fabric of society.

Second, Americans know that Israel is a stable ally in one of the world’s most critical and volatile regions. Its intelligence service is perhaps the world’s finest, its military is the best in the Middle East, and its painfully acquired expertise in counterterrorism is invaluable—all the more so as we wage our own war against jihadi terrorists.

Third, Americans sympathize with Israel because they understand that the enemies of Israel hate the United States as well. The suicide bombers who revel in the death of innocent Jews, the fanatics who chant “Death to Israel,” the Iranian- and Syrian-backed forces that launch rockets from Gaza or Lebanon with the aim of shedding Israeli blood—they are steeped in the same murderous ideology as Osama bin Laden and the Islamists who slaughtered so many Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.

And fourth, there is a deep religious bond between American Christians and the Jewish people, a bond that stretches back to the earliest era of American history. More than a century before the Revolutionary War, the Puritan leader Increase Mather taught his followers to anticipate the day when the Jews would return to their homeland and establish “the most glorious nation in the whole world.” In 1819, former President John Adams wrote of his wish to see “the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.” Today, tens of millions of American evangelicals passionately support—even love—the Jewish state, and consider it nothing less than their duty as Christians to stand with Israel and her people.

Why are Americans so pro-Israel? For reasons practical and idealistic, religious and strategic. They are linked by the kinship of common values—an affinity of strength and decency that reflects the best of both nations, and sets them apart from the other nations of the world.

By Dr. Jonathan Halevy

In the days following the Haiti earthquake, the international press was awash in astonishing reports commending Israel’s tremendous work in medical disaster response and setting up a field hospital operation that had other nations looking on in awe. Even as these reports left us feeling intense pride, our reaction back in Israel has been one of far less surprise.

Dr. Jonathan Halevy

From CBS to CNN to MSNBC and numerous other outlets across the media landscape, wide-eyed medical reporters witnessed the Israeli operation with an underlying tone of combined admiration and jealousy.

Why is it that of the dozens of countries contributing to the relief effort, with delegations of all shapes and sizes, it’s the Israelis who travel halfway around the world and within hours have a fully operational hospital in place? Journalists pointed with amazement at our mobile imaging machinery and sedated patients on ventilators and asked outright why anyone else couldn’t be doing this.

The reason we in Israel are not surprised is because we know that we’ve been training for years for just these types of scenarios. We can also appreciate that Israel sees part of its mandate as a military and medical leader to make sure that expertise and know-how will benefit the international community should the opportunity present itself.

And so, as much as our enemies desire to paint the IDF solely as a hawkish, war-seeking powerhouse, the mission in Haiti shows just the opposite to be true.

Admittedly, Israel’s adeptness in launching these types of operations stems from a history of confronting hostilities and being prepared to address every possible threat. I personally recall from my days as commander of a field hospital in the First Lebanon War that we set up such a field medical facility within hours and that “real-life” training was just one of many invaluable tests that would benefit the IDF Medical Corps in the future.

Over the years, the brave men and women of our army have recalled those lessons on all too many occasions, both here and, just as often, in ports of call in other parts of the world.

So when the news came across the wires that Haiti had been rocked by a devastating earthquake, the question was never if Israel would be there to respond, but only how soon.

Those of us involved in emergency management and disaster response know all too well that Israel has a unique advantage over most, if not all, nations in this discipline. Every week, a major drill is held at a hospital somewhere in Israel. Our protocols and emergency departments have become models for hospitals all around the world.

Despite our relatively small size and urban landscapes that pale in comparison to most of the West, our Home Front Command has made it a principal training objective to remain ever-ready for all types of disasters.

Even with the very limited traditional communication tools that exist between Israel and our rescue teams in Haiti, I had the chance to be in touch with my colleagues from the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem on several occasions after they landed in the earthquake zone. The underlying tone that came across was one of overwhelming shock at the scope of the disaster they faced, yet they admitted that they felt as prepared as humanly possible for the medical realities they were confronting.

What has been most challenging, without a doubt, has been the emotional experiences. Many of those in the field hospital were seasoned veterans of the military and have treated hundreds if not thousands of victims of warfare and terrorism. However, they reported that perhaps more than ever before, in Haiti desperate questions of medical ethics had to be asked even before the ones over the best course of treatment. Each patient had to be judged based on the chances for his or her survival. The medical process only then commenced if the doctors and nurses believed that this case had better chances for a positive outcome than the victim that lay immediately next in line.

These were devastating questions for even the most hardened medical professional and ones that challenge Israel’s medical teams countless times each day.

Beyond these stories of disaster and loss, the Israeli experience in Haiti still has been one of hope and promise. The world quickly learned that the “successes” we achieved there came because we appreciated the continuous need for this type of training. Even more so, it is recognized that we have a role in contributing to the greater welfare of the international community.

Perhaps it’s unfortunate that it took the devastating tragedy in Haiti for the world to understand this valuable lesson that Israel has an enormous amount of good to contribute, both in good times and bad. Yet we can also be hopeful and confident that it’s one not soon forgotten.

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Dr. Jonathan Halevy is director-general of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. This piece first appeared in The Jerusalem Post.

Who Was Jesus’ Grandfather?

What the two genealogies of Christ, found in Matthew and Luke, are really trying to say.

By Grant Osborne, www.ChristianityToday.com

Few aspects of the Bible seem less relevant to daily life than genealogies. Yet for Gospel writers Matthew and Luke, they were absolutely essential for understanding Jesus.

Genealogies fulfilled multiple purposes in the ancient world. Society was organized around kinship patterns, so every family needed lists that described their ancestral pedigree. Such family trees determined a person’s social relationships. For instance, two families planning the marriage of their children would compare family lines to check kinship ties to ensure the two were “compatible.” And rulers used genealogies to justify their power, rank, and status.

So why are the genealogical trees in Matthew and Luke so different? Matthew begins his Gospel with Jesus’ genealogy, while Luke places it, strangely, between Jesus’ baptism and temptation. Matthew has an ascending list, moving from Abraham up to Jesus, while Luke has a descending list, moving from Jesus down to Adam. Matthew’s list is partial; Luke’s is complete. And most significantly, while the two lists are virtually identical from Abraham to David, they diverge greatly from David to Jesus.

Several solutions have been proposed to explain the differences. Martin Luther said that Matthew gives Joseph’s line and Luke Mary’s line. Others, such as Tertullian, reversed this. Yet the explanation fails in both directions, because the Gospels clearly state that they are listing Joseph’s line (Matt. 1:16; Luke 3:23). Julius Africanus proposed that Matthew follows Jesus’ natural descent and Luke his legal descent. Neither Gospel indicates such an approach, though, and it is best to allow the authors to speak for themselves.

Examining each genealogy closely reveals the authors’ different purposes. Matthew’s list resembles those used by rulers to justify their rank and status, and by families to determine connections to a common ancestor. Matthew arranges his genealogy into three groups of 14 names each. In Jewish gematria—a kind of numerology stemming from the fact that letters of the Hebrew alphabet were also numbers—names have numerical value. The three consonants for David add up to 14. So Matthew underscores Jesus’ kingly ancestry by working in groups of David, or 14.

Matthew portrays Jesus as the long-awaited Savior whose pedigree demonstrates His claim to be the Son of David and royal Messiah. Another unique feature of his genealogy is the presence of four women—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Each had a scandalous aspect of her life, thus paving the way for Mary as an unwed mother. And all were (or were married to) gentiles, foreshadowing the gentile mission so important in Matthew’s Gospel.

Luke, on the other hand, begins his genealogy with “the son, so it was thought, of Joseph” (3:23), and concludes with “the son of God” (3:38). At Jesus’ baptism, God declares Jesus “my Son” (3:22), and Jesus’ temptation begins with Satan recognizing Him as “the Son of God” (4:3). Placed between Jesus’ baptism and temptation, Luke’s genealogy is meant to proclaim that Jesus is, indeed, God’s only Son.

Luke does not group the names like Matthew does but provides a simple succession of ancestors. The list contains many more common names (some of which we know nothing about) and seems to underscore Jesus’ humanity as well as his divine Sonship. Moreover, by going all the way back to Adam (the ancestor of all humanity), Luke maintains a universal thrust, emphasizing that Jesus came for all mankind. The list ends with Adam, and then Luke moves into the story of Jesus’ encounter with Satan in the wilderness, in which Jesus rises above temptation as Adam did not. The message is clear: In Jesus, all human beings find their sins overcome.

Are there difficulties in reconciling the genealogies? Can they be harmonized? The answer in both cases is yes. Matthew’s and Luke’s lists stem largely from Old Testament genealogies (see Gen. 10-11 and 1 Chron. 1-3) and Jewish sources, and the differences between the names occur largely because each evangelist was selective in whom he included.

After Nathan in Luke’s account and after Zerubbabel in Matthew’s, no names adhere to other biblical passages, but few doubt that both lists are following traditional sources. We may never know whether Jesus’ paternal grandfather through Joseph was Jacob (Matt. 1:15) or Heli (Luke 3:23b), and it could well be that they were brothers, with Heli the uncle and legal line of Jesus, and Jacob the physical line. Either way, each genealogy reveals something about Jesus.

Grant Osborne is professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.

This excerpt complements information contained in the February 2010 Personal Letter archived on this website. To receive our pamphlet “28 Ways You Can Help Israel,” please send your name and address to staff@levitt.com.

By George Berkin, blog.

America—and the West—should think long and hard before possibly making a regrettable mistake – abandoning Israel. Neighboring Iran seems bent on obtaining nuclear weapons, and threatens to use them against Israel. Israel announced a few months ago that it might take unilateral action if Iranian plans to build nuclear weapons are not derailed. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently said that he won’t come clean about Iran’s nuclear program until the U.S. gets rid of its atomic arsenal.

Western support for Israel is jeopardized by the following:

Support for Israel may fade as the Holocaust begins to fade from memory. That tragic history is now six decades old, and there are fewer and fewer survivors of the Nazi wickedness. For decades, the testimony of those survivors has served as a living reminder of our failure to respond promptly to anti-Semitism, and our need to support Israel in the face of anti-Jewish hostility. The loss of the living witness does not bode well.

An economic downturn may also weaken support for Israel, especially if the downturn includes a spike in the price of Arab-produced oil. Unfortunately, economic fears often cause general good will to disappear. Many people who support Israel if it doesn’t cost them anything extra at the gas pump may turn sour if gasoline and heating oil prices go up.

Then, if a terrorist strike destroys an American (or other Western) city, there may well be a huge outcry for the affected country to retreat from the international stage. This will be crucial if it is America. The pressure will be to abandon any overseas commitments, including Israel. The mood may turn very ugly, especially if support for Israel is seen as one so-called “reason” for the strike.

Why, in light of all this, is support for Israel so crucial for America’s and the West’s future? There are lots of reasons, both for Believers and for secular policymakers. From a biblical perspective, the Jewish people are God’s chosen people and Israel is the piece of real estate that God has set his special favor upon. The biblical text promises that God will bless those who bless Israel. (Genesis 12:1-3)

From that perspective, it is a good thing to get in line with the divine purpose. It’s no coincidence that Evangelicals worldwide are among the strongest supporters of Israel.

From a secular perspective, it is important to support Israel because we are in the habit of supporting legitimate governments. By any decent reckoning, Israel is a legitimate government, much as is America or Germany or Australia. (Israel has always considered its neighbors, despite their undemocratic traditions, to be legitimate governments, and has thus sought to live and let live. Meanwhile, many Arab leaders, captured by radical religious ideas, have continued to poison relations by publicly calling for Israel’s destruction.)

Were America and the West not to support Israel, a legitimate government, it would give tacit approval to those who would undermine other legitimate governments, including our own.

With or without help from America and the West, Israel is worth supporting because it is the only functioning democracy in the Middle East. In a sea of anti-Western nations, Israel holds “American/Western” values (which are biblical, Judeo-Christian values). A diminished Israel would only embolden Islamic radicals in their war against the West. Plainly speaking, our survival is tied to Israel’s survival.

Those radicals, be it understood, mean business. After Ahmadinejad came to power in 2004, the Iranian leader declared himself committed to destroying Israel and bringing in the “Mahdi”—the 12th Imam, the Islamic “messiah.”

But Israel is unlikely to stand by, contemplating its own destruction.

As leaked in The Times of London last year, the Saudis have given Israel permission to fly over Saudi Arabia in an airstrike against Iran. That “flyover” is not outside the realm of possibility. The Saudis dislike Iran because the Saudis are Sunni Muslims, while Iran is Shiite Muslim. Theirs is a rivalry over which group is the “true” Islam, and those two factions have been fighting since the founding of Islam more than a dozen centuries ago. If the Israelis use the Saudi route to take out the nuclear facilities in Iran, the Saudis will be rid of their enemies (while blaming “the Jews” as a cover).

With Israel determined to defend itself in a preemptive manner, and events moving rapidly, it would be wise for American and other Western policymakers to think proactively – so as to not be merely in “reactive” mode.

George Berkin, a graduate of Columbia University (degree in history and Russian studies) was a Star-Ledger (NJ) reporter for nearly 15 years.

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By Mark H. Plumpton, www.SeacoastOnline.com

In this time in which we live, is there still room for Christmas? Oh, I don’t mean all the usual festivities that accompany the “holiday” season. Most people dutifully make their way to the stores to buy gifts for their loved ones. They may hang pretty lights up and make their homes come alive with bright colors. And they tell everyone they encounter to “have a nice holiday.”

Is there still room for Christmas, however? Do we even remember what happened 2,000 years ago in the “little town of Bethlehem?” No, no, I mean what really happened, and why that is of paramount importance even today? We know that Christmas is the day that the birth of Jesus is celebrated. It’s a sweet story, of a baby born in a stable of an inn, and laid in a feeding trough, but what practical relevance does it have to our lives in the 21st century?

Who was this Jesus? What does his name mean? It was a common name in the land of Israel at the time; it is the Greek form of the name Joshua, which means “Jehovah saves,” and it was given to this newborn baby because “it is he who will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). The record of history tells that this baby grew up to be a teacher and miracle worker. He taught about the Kingdom of God which He was bringing to Earth, and how possessors of that kingdom should live. He revealed that He Himself was to be the fulfillment of the promises of the Hebrew Scriptures of one who would be the Savior of Israel and the Light to the nations. To a skeptical world, not unlike ours today, He foretold that He would die for the sins of His people, and more astoundingly, that He would rise from death in three days. His death by Roman crucifixion is recorded in the New Testament and in secular history, and three days later, His tomb was empty and hundreds of people were talking excitedly about having seen Him risen, alive and well.

Returning to our question, how is this relevant to us today? We have the same need as those in the first century, whether we are aware of it or not. Like them, we try to find purpose in life, but it is an unavoidable fact that in a short time those purposes will die with us, much as we hate to think about it. If we do wonder about God and life after death, we must know that God is holy and demands that we, as His image bearers, be holy as well. Deep down we know that we are broken, that we are not the people we should be. The bad news is that our best efforts are simply not sufficient to satisfy the righteous standard of a holy God. The good news of Christmas is that God has not left us without hope, but has sent Jesus, the baby in the manager, His Son, to be what is called the “propitiation” for our sin. This means that, in His death on the cross, Jesus paid the sin debt for all would come to Him in faith. Therefore, “he who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36). This life is there for the believing and the asking. This is the message of Christmas.

Mark H. Plumpton is a resident of Exeter and member of the Exeter Presbyterian Church.

By Albert Mohler, www.CrossWalk.com

As the celebration of Christmas fast approaches, our attention quickly goes to the familiar words of the infancy narratives found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  This is a healthy reflex.  After all, the Gospel of Jesus Christ rests upon the historicity of the events that took place in Bethlehem as Christ was born. Our understanding of the identity of Jesus Christ is directly rooted in these narratives and our confidence is in the fact that Matthew and Luke give us historically credible and completely truthful accounts of the events surrounding the birth of Christ.

A closer look at the narratives in both Matthew and Luke reveals a richness that familiarity may hide from us. Matthew begins with the genealogy of Christ, demonstrating the sequence of generations as Israel anticipated the birth of David’s Son — the Messiah. Luke, intending to set forth “an orderly account” of the events concerning Jesus, begins with the anticipation of the birth of John the Baptist and then moves to tell of the virgin conception of Jesus.

A careful reading of Matthew and Luke reveals both the elegance of detail and the grand expanse of the story of Christ’s birth. Matthew gives particular attention to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. The virgin birth, the birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea, the Herodian massacre of the innocents, the flight to Egypt, and the role of John the Baptist as forerunner are all presented as the fulfillment of specific Old Testament prophecies.

Every word of the Old Testament points to Christ. He is not only the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies concerning Him, He is the perfect fulfillment of the law and the prophets — the entirety of the Old Testament Scriptures. The Christmas story does not begin in Bethlehem, for Israel had been promised the Messiah. As Luke reveals, Simeon beheld the baby Jesus in the Temple and understood this infant to be “the Lord’s Christ” — the Davidic Messiah.  Simeon understood this clearly — the Christmas story did not begin in Bethlehem, or even in Jerusalem.

So, where does the Christmas story begin? In the Gospel of John we read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” [John 1:1-3]

The prologue to John’s Gospel points to Creation and to Christ, the divine Logos, as the agent of Creation. Yet, with language drawn directly from Genesis, John begins his Gospel “in the beginning.”

In other words, the Christmas story begins before the creation of the world. As we celebrate Christmas and contemplate the Christmas story, we must be very careful not to begin the story in Bethlehem, or even in Nazareth, where Mary was confronted by Gabriel with the message that she would be the mother of the Messiah.

We must not even begin with Moses and the prophets, and with the expectation of the coming Son of Man, the promised Suffering Servant, and the heralded Davidic Messiah. We must begin before the world was created and before humanity was formed, much less fallen.

Why is this so important? Put simply, if we get the Christmas story wrong, we get the Gospel wrong. Told carelessly, the Christmas story sounds like God’s “Plan B.” In other words, we can make the Christmas story sound like God turning to a new plan, rather than fulfilling all that He had promised.  We must be very careful to tell the Christmas story in such a way that we make the Gospel clear.

Christmas is not God’s second plan. Before he created the world, God determined to save sinners through the blood of His own Son. The grand narrative of the Bible points to this essential truth — God determined to bring glory to Himself through the salvation of a people redeemed and purchased by His own Son, the Christ. Bethlehem and Calvary were essential parts of God’s plan from the beginning, before the cosmos was brought into being as the Son obeyed the will of the Father in Creation.

The Christmas story does not begin in Bethlehem, but we appropriately look to Bethlehem as the scene of the most decisive event in human history — the incarnation of God. Even as we turn our attention to Bethlehem, we must remember that the story of our salvation does not begin there. That story begins in the eternal purpose of God.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” That is where the Christmas story begins, and John takes us right to the essence of what happened in Bethlehem: “And 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 1:14]

Let’s be sure to get the Christmas story right, start to finish.

Albert Mohler is president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

By Adon Taft, www.MiamiHerald.com

Many Americans see the present politically correct view of the holidays as a jihad against the Christian celebration of Christmas.

Retail chains now mandate that clerks greet customers with “Happy Holidays” rather than the traditional “Merry Christmas.” Scattered school districts have banned the singing of Christmas carols, and many have relabeled the holiday from classes the “winter break.” Nativity scenes or even decorated trees (if they are called Christmas trees) in public places prompt legal challenges because the observance of the Western world’s most popular and widely celebrated — whether by believers or not — religious holiday may be offensive to some.

But the knotty subject of Christmas has been controversial from the beginning. Scholars still debate when and where the birth of Jesus Christ, the event the holiday ostensibly marks, actually occurred. One thing is certain: it was not Dec. 25. It probably was in March or April in Bethlehem (because of where shepherds would have had their sheep at the time), though some scholars say October. The exact year is uncertain because of the change in calendars since that time.

It was three centuries later that Constantine, the first Christian emperor backed by a Catholic bishop, picked the December date. He wanted to give a Christian spin to the popular Roman festival supposedly marking “the birthday of the invincible sun.” The newly designated holiday would celebrate “the birth of the Son of God” in keeping with the Church’s view of Jesus.

At the time of His birth, the appearance of the baby acknowledged by Christians to be the Messiah, or Savior, had been seen by King Herod and his religious advisors to be a threat to the authority of the monarch and the state religion. So, according to the biblical account in the book of Matthew, the king ordered that all the infants aged 2 or younger in the Bethlehem area be put to death in hopes of including Jesus among those slaughtered.

Tipped off by an angel, Joseph and Mary had taken Jesus to Egypt where they waited until the death of Herod before returning to Israel to raise Mary’s son, whose life and death was and remains controversial.

It was what many take to be the deeper meaning behind the sweetness and light most of us associate with the birth of the baby Jesus and today’s celebration of Christmas that brought conflict of religious ideas and eventually the violent physical death of Christ on the cross. For believers, that was the ultimate meaning — that the sacrificial offering for man’s sin had been made by God Himself after spending a short life on Earth as a godly man teaching and showing the way to a forgiven and everlasting life.

Consequently, the death of Christ meant more to the early Church than the anniversary of Jesus’ birth which had no particular significance in the Church calendar before Constantine. Since then, the observance of the holy day has been sporadic, in part because of its association with the pagan holiday and subsequent pagan traditions such as the Christmas tree.

Any celebration of the Dec. 25th date was banned in 17th century England under the Protestant rule of Oliver Cromwell and in the early days of colonial America. It was a crime to celebrate that day in Massachusetts from 1659 through 1681.

But by the 19th century in this country, the celebration of Christmas — spurred by such events as the publication of literary works such as Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Washington Irving’s The Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall, and R. H. Hervey’s The Book of Christmas — was growing in popularity.

Alabama became the first state to make Christmas a legal holiday, in 1836. By 1907 every contiguous state had followed when Oklahoma proclaimed the holy day an official holiday. Similar growth in the recognition of the event occurred in Europe and other parts of the world.

Secular and commercial observances of the season blossomed along the way. Macy’s department store first stayed open till midnight on Christmas Eve of 1867 and in 1874 was decorating its windows for the occasion. Today, the store-sponsored, nationally televised Christmas parade is a staple of the season.

Now not only do some Christians feel threatened by what they consider a jihad against the observance of their holy day, there are complaints that the holiday is too commercialized and has lost its “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”—Luke 2:10-11,13-14

Adon Taft is the retired religion editor of The Miami Herald.

By Gary Bauer, www.HumanEvents.com

At a time of year when faith is celebrated by most Americans, it may surprise some to learn that many students of faith and history believe we are living in a post-Christian age. It is not apparent at the local malls now so festively decorated, but it can be seen in some telltale cultural indicators. One of those is the number of attacks on people of faith, particularly Jews.

Throughout much of the world today, where decreasing Christianity means rising attacks on Jews. In post-Christian Europe, Jews are often victims of a deeply entrenched anti-Semitism. Synagogues and other Jewish institutions are regularly vandalized. Jews are sometimes beaten in the streets. Combative anti-Israel rallies are commonplace.

There were hundreds of incidents of anti-Semitic behavior in France and England during the three weeks of the Gaza war a year ago. The world collectively yawned during months of Hamas’s attacks against Israel. But when Israel did what any sovereign state would do under the same circumstances — strike back at those responsible for the aggression — it was met with a chorus of condemnation led by the United Nations and the European Union.

It is true that the citizens of the U.S. are more religious than those of many European countries, where the decline of faith has been much reported. Still, in the U.S., legal attacks on Christmas have become as much of the tradition as the holiday itself, and church attendance among American youths has reached all time lows. Those are only a few of the signs of declining faith.

Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life survey earlier this year found that “the number of Americans who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today is 16.1 percent, more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children.” Research by authors Robert Putnam and David Campbell finds that young Americans are dropping out of religion at 5-6 times the historic rate (30 – 40 percent have no religion today versus 5-10 percent a generation ago).

America’s secular momentum coincides with an increase in persecution of American Jews. The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently released 2008 hate crimes statistics showing that 65.7 percent of religion-motivated hate crimes were anti-Jewish. There were 1,013 cases of hate crimes motivated by anti-Semitism last year, the most since 2001.

Although you might not know it by following the reactions of our political and journalistic elites, aggressive anti-Semitism is a much greater problem in America than attacks on Islam. According to the FBI statistics, there were only 105 reported cases of anti-Islamic hate crimes in 2008.

This is part of a trend. Sixty-eight percent of the nearly 7,000 religion-based hate crimes reported between 2002 and 2006 were committed against Jews, while just 11 percent were committed against Muslims. Similar numbers were reported for 2007.

It’s not all bad news for American Jews. An October survey commissioned by the Anti Defamation League found that 12 percent of Americans polled hold views defined as “anti-Semitic.” That’s down from 29 percent in 1964.

But the 12 percent is still unacceptable, representing more than 30 million Americans with anti-Semitic views.

The relationship between America’s Christians and Jews has often been defined by distrust and skepticism. But many Christians and Jews have found solidarity in their mutual support for the beleaguered Jewish State, as well as for each other’s right to freely and openly practice the traditions of faith. In today’s America, there is no greater alliance against a culture that seeks to expunge religion from public life, not to mention the mounting domestic Islamic threat.

Theologically, Christians believe God came into this world through the Jewish people and that the Jewish faith is the foundation of all that was to come. That God has directed Christians to love His people is a great counterweight to increasing anti-Semitism in the U.S.

There are a lot of what Jews call “righteous gentiles,” Christians and others who feel a moral obligation to speak out against anti-Semitism and assaults on Jews to prevent the kind of violent anti-Semitism evident in Europe from becoming widespread in the U.S. It is vital for such defenders of their fellow man to speak and act boldly. The courage of our convictions has never been so needed.

These are anxious times for Jews across the world. Iran announced this week that it had successfully test-fired an upgraded version of its longest-range solid fuel missile, making its leader’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map” even more credible. The new missile has a range of approximately 1,200 miles, which puts not only the Jewish State, but also U.S. military bases in southern Europe well within range.

We are in the midst of an important time of the year for both Christians and Jews. Jews just celebrated Hanukkah, a time to commemorate the rededication of the holy Temple in Jerusalem and their victory over the anti-Semitic Hellenic empire. Christians meanwhile are observing Advent, a time of penance and of anticipation and preparation of the birth of Jesus Christ, a Jew.

Christians and Jews have also reached an important time in their relationships with one another. In an increasingly hostile world, Christians and Jews must stand together to defend against attacks on Judeo-Christian values. It is a friendship as old as Abraham, as new as a baby in a manger.

By Greg Laurie. www.WND.com

How often do you look at your watch in a given day? Or check the time? Or ask someone else what time it is? Why do we do that? We do it because we govern our lives by time. There is a time that we get up in the morning. There is a time when we go to work or school. There is a time when we go home. There is a time when we go to bed and when we get up the next morning and repeat the process. We live our lives by the clock, and we have a constant awareness of time.

According to the Bible, we even live our lives for a certain period of time – not a moment longer and not a moment shorter. You can eat free-range chicken and organic vegetables and use all of the lotions and potions and special vitamins available, but you will not live one day longer than God wants you to live. Nor will you live one day shorter. The Bible says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under Heaven: a time to be born and a time to die” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 NIV).

As one person said, “Men talk of killing time while time quietly kills them.” The problem is that we spend a lot of our lives doing things we would rather not be doing. We have control over some of these things, but not all of them. For example, the average Americans will spend six months of their lives sitting at traffic lights, one year searching desk clutter for misplaced objects, five years waiting in lines, three years in meetings and eight months opening junk mail.

As C. S. Lewis said, “The future is something that everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”

We live by time, while God exists outside of time. I am not implying that God is unaware of time, because He is completely aware of every minute and second of our lives and everything that is happening in them. But God lives in the eternal realm. Therefore, we might say that God’s interpretation of time is quite different from ours.

God has His own timing, and there are times in life when it appears to us as though God is late, as though God is somehow disengaged and not paying attention. And sometimes as we look at the way the world is going, we wonder whether God is aware of what it is like right now.

That is how it was at the time of Jesus’ birth. Israel was tired of waiting. They felt it was time for the Messiah to arrive. Those were difficult and dark days in the history of Israel. In fact, the time in which they were living when Christ finally came was almost as bad as it was under Pharaoh’s rule in Egypt, because they were under the control of Rome and the tyrannical rule of the puppet King Herod.

While Herod was known for the great buildings he erected, he was also known for his paranoia. He would have anyone he saw as a potential threat to his throne killed. He had two of his sons put to death because he thought they would try to lead a coup against him. It was said of Herod that it was better to be one of his pigs than one of his sons.

The fact is that 6 B.C. was a lousy time to be living in Judea. People were wondering when God was going to intervene. They had not heard from Him for 400 years. Not a single prophet had delivered a message from Heaven. There had been no miracles and no angelic appearances – only a stony silence from Heaven. The people were probing. They were searching. They were wondering when things were going to change.

But there was a sense that something was in the air, that something was about to break. And indeed it was – because the moment was coming for the Messiah to arrive. It all started with the aged priest, Zacharias. As he was in the Temple bringing sacrifices on behalf of the people, the angel Gabriel came to him with the announcement that he would be the father of the forerunner of Jesus, John the Baptizer. The wonderful story was about to unfold.

But we need to understand that the Christmas story did not start in Luke or in Matthew. The Christmas story began much farther back. Although Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem, being God and being a part of the Trinity, He is pre-existent. He is eternal. When we celebrate His birth in the manger in Bethlehem, we are celebrating when He came to this world as a man. But He has always been and always will be. Jesus said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 21:6 NIV).

Isaiah summed it up well when he said, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:6). That gives us the story of the arrival of Jesus from both Heaven and Earth’s perspective. “To us a child is born” is the story of a birth. “To us a son is given” is the story of a departure from Heaven.

From Heaven’s perspective, the Son left glory and came to walk among us and breathe our air and live our life and then die our death. From Earth’s perspective, God came to us as a man who was deity in diapers – God almighty as a little, helpless baby.

When the angel appeared to a group of shepherds and announced, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11 NIV), essentially he was saying, “Don’t look to the palace for the savior of the world. Look to the manger in Bethlehem. Don’t look at that self-proclaimed god in Rome wrapped in satin, but look at the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. There is the savior of the world.” He came and gave up everything to serve us. It was the ultimate gift to humanity. His pain was our gain.

Someone wisely said that history swings on the hinge of the door of a stable in Bethlehem. This was the moment in human history that God chose to bring us a Savior. And our world has never been the same.

By Andrew McGowan, www.Bib-Arch.org

A blanket of snow covers the little town of Bethlehem, in Pieter Bruegel’s oil painting from 1566.

On December 25, Christians around the world will gather to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Joyful carols, special liturgies, brightly wrapped gifts, festive foods—these all characterize the feast today, at least in the northern hemisphere. But just how did the Christmas festival originate? How did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus’ birthday?

The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season; in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled. Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical.

The extrabiblical evidence from the first and second century is equally spare: There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c. 160–225). Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as “pagan” practices—a strong indication that Jesus’ birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time.¹ As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point.

This stands in sharp contrast to the very early traditions surrounding Jesus’ last days. Each of the Four Gospels provides detailed information about the time of Jesus’ death. According to John, Jesus is crucified just as the Passover lambs are being sacrificed. This would have occurred on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Nisan, just before the Jewish holiday began at sundown (considered the beginning of the 15th day because in the Hebrew calendar, days begin at sundown). In Matthew, Mark and Luke, however, the Last Supper is held after sundown, on the beginning of the 15th. Jesus is crucified the next morning—still, the 15th.^a

Easter, a much earlier development than Christmas, was simply the gradual Christian reinterpretation of Passover in terms of Jesus’ Passion. Its observance could even be implied in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 5:7–8: “Our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival…”); it was certainly a distinctively Christian feast by the mid-second century A.D., when the apocryphal text known as the Epistle to the Apostles has Jesus instruct his disciples to “make commemoration of [his] death, that is, the Passover.”

Jesus’ ministry, miracles, Passion and Resurrection were often of most interest to first- and early-second-century A.D. Christian writers. But over time, Jesus’ origins would become of increasing concern. We can begin to see this shift already in the New Testament. The earliest writings—Paul and Mark—make no mention of Jesus’ birth. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke provide well-known but quite different accounts of the event—although neither specifies a date. In the second century A.D., further details of Jesus’ birth and childhood are related in apocryphal writings such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-Gospel of James.^b These texts provide everything from the names of Jesus’ grandparents to the details of his education—but not the date of his birth.

Finally, in about 200 A.D., a Christian teacher in Egypt makes reference to the date Jesus was born. According to Clement of Alexandria, several different days had been proposed by various Christian groups. Surprising as it may seem, Clement doesn’t mention December 25 at all. Clement writes: “There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the 28th year of Augustus, and in the 25th day of [the Egyptian month] Pachon [May 20 in our calendar]…And treating of His Passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the 16th year of Tiberius, on the 25th of Phamenoth [March 21]; and others on the 25th of Pharmuthi [April 21] and others say that on the 19th of Pharmuthi [April 15] the Savior suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi [April 20 or 21].”²

Clearly there was great uncertainty, but also a considerable amount of interest, in dating Jesus’ birth in the late second century. By the fourth century, however, we find references to two dates that were widely recognized—and now also celebrated—as Jesus’ birthday: December 25 in the western Roman Empire and January 6 in the East (especially in Egypt and Asia Minor). The modern Armenian church continues to celebrate Christmas on January 6; for most Christians, however, December 25 would prevail, while January 6 eventually came to be known as the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem. The period between became the holiday season later known as the 12 days of Christmas.

The earliest mention of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is marked: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae: “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”³ In about 400 A.D., Augustine of Hippo mentions a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25, but refused to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, regarding it as an innovation. Since the Donatist group only emerged during the persecution under Diocletian in 312 A.D. and then remained stubbornly attached to the practices of that moment in time, they seem to represent an older North African Christian tradition.

In the East, January 6 was at first not associated with the magi alone, but with the Christmas story as a whole.

So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in midwinter. But how had they settled on the dates December 25 and January 6?

There are two theories today: one extremely popular, the other less often heard outside scholarly circles (though far more ancient).⁴

The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 A.D., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated.

Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth: The church father Ambrose (c. 339–397), for example, described Christ as the true sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. But early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods.

It’s not until the 12th century that we find the first suggestion that Jesus’ birth celebration was deliberately set at the time of pagan feasts. A marginal note on a manuscript of the writings of the Syriac biblical commentator Dionysius bar-Salibi states that in ancient times the Christmas holiday was actually shifted from January 6 to December 25 so that it fell on the same date as the pagan Sol Invictus holiday.⁵ In the 18th and 19th centuries, Bible scholars spurred on by the new study of comparative religions latched on to this idea.⁶ They claimed that because the early Christians didn’t know when Jesus was born, they simply assimilated the pagan solstice festival for their own purposes, claiming it as the time of the Messiah’s birth and celebrating it accordingly.

More recent studies have shown that many of the holiday’s modern trappings do reflect pagan customs borrowed much later, as Christianity expanded into northern and western Europe. The Christmas tree, for example, has been linked with late medieval druidic practices. This has only encouraged modern audiences to assume that the date, too, must be pagan.

There are problems with this popular theory, however, as many scholars recognize. Most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christmas (c. 200) and the earliest celebrations that we know about (c. 250–300) come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character.

Granted, Christian belief and practice were not formed in isolation. Many early elements of Christian worship—including Eucharistic meals, meals honoring martyrs and much early Christian funerary art—would have been quite comprehensible to pagan observers. Yet, in the first few centuries A.D., the persecuted Christian minority was greatly concerned with distancing itself from the larger, public pagan religious observances, such as sacrifices, games and holidays. This was still true as late as the violent persecutions of the Christians conducted by the Roman emperor Diocletian between 303 and 312 A.D.

This would change only after Constantine converted to Christianity. From the mid-fourth century on, we do find Christians deliberately adapting and Christianizing pagan festivals. A famous proponent of this practice was Pope Gregory the Great, who, in a letter written in 601 A.D. to a Christian missionary in Britain, recommended that local pagan temples not be destroyed but be converted into churches, and that pagan festivals be celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. At this late point, Christmas may well have acquired some pagan trappings. But we don’t have evidence of Christians adopting pagan festivals in the third century, at which point dates for Christmas were established. Thus, it seems unlikely that the date was simply selected to correspond with pagan solar festivals.

The December 25 feast seems to have existed before 312—before Constantine and his conversion, at least. As we have seen, the Donatist Christians in North Africa seem to have know it from before that time. Furthermore, in the mid- to late fourth century, church leaders in the eastern Empire concerned themselves not with introducing a celebration of Jesus’ birthday, but with the addition of the December date to their traditional celebration on January 6.⁷

There is another way to account for the origins of Christmas on December 25: Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus’ birth may lie in the dating of Jesus’ death at Passover. This view was first suggested to the modern world by French scholar Louis Duchesne in the early 20th century and fully developed by American Thomas Talley in more recent years.⁸ But they were certainly not the first to note a connection between the traditional date of Jesus’ death and his birth.

Around 200 A.D. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died^c was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar.⁹ March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception.¹⁰ Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.^d

This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa. The treatise states: “Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.”¹¹ Based on this, the treatise dates Jesus’ birth to the winter solstice.

Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he writes: “For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.”¹²

In the East, too, the dates of Jesus’ conception and death were linked. But instead of working from the 14th of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, the easterners used the 14th of the first spring month (Artemisios) in their local Greek calendar—April 6 to us. April 6 is, of course, exactly nine months before January 6—the eastern date for Christmas. In the East too, we have evidence that April was associated with Jesus’ conception and crucifixion. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis writes that on April 6, “The lamb was shut up in the spotless womb of the holy virgin, he who took away and takes away in perpetual sacrifice the sins of the world.”¹³ Even today, the Armenian Church celebrates the Annunciation in early April (on the 7th, not the 6th) and Christmas on January 6.^e

Thus, we have Christians in two parts of the world calculating Jesus’ birth on the basis that his death and conception took place on the same day (March 25 or April 6) and coming up with two close but different results (December 25 and January 6).

The baby Jesus flies down from heaven on the back of a cross, in this detail from Master Bertram’s 14th-century Annunciation scene.

Connecting Jesus’ conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together. One of the most poignant expressions of this belief is found in Christian art. In numerous paintings of the angel’s Annunciation to Mary—the moment of Jesus’ conception—the baby Jesus is shown gliding down from heaven on or with a small cross (see photo of detail from Master Bertram’s Annunciation scene); a visual reminder that the conception brings the promise of salvation through Jesus’ death.

The notion that creation and redemption should occur at the same time of year is also reflected in ancient Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud preserves a dispute between two early-second-century A.D. rabbis who share this view, but disagree on the date: Rabbi Eliezer states: “In Nisan the world was created; in Nisan the Patriarchs were born; on Passover Isaac was born…and in Nisan they [our ancestors] will be redeemed in time to come.” (The other rabbi, Joshua, dates these same events to the following month, Tishri.)¹⁴ Thus, the dates of Christmas and Epiphany may well have resulted from Christian theological reflection on such chronologies: Jesus would have been conceived on the same date he died, and born nine months later.¹⁵

In the end we are left with a question: How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus’ death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year—than from paganism. Then again, in this notion of cycles and the return of God’s redemption, we may perhaps also be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood and claimed for their own too.¹⁶

Notes

1. Origen, Homily on Leviticus 8.

2. Clement, Stromateis 1.21.145. In addition, Christians in Clement’s native Egypt seem to have known a commemoration of Jesus’ baptism—sometimes understood as the moment of his divine choice, and hence as an alternate “incarnation” story—on the same date (Stromateis 1.21.146). See further on this point Thomas J. Talley, Origins of the Liturgical Year, 2nd ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), pp. 118–120, drawing on Roland H. Bainton, “Basilidian Chronology and New Testament Interpretation,” Journal of Biblical Literature 42 (1923), pp. 81–134; and now especially Gabriele Winkler, “The Appearance of the Light at the Baptism of Jesus and the Origins of the Feast of the Epiphany,” in Maxwell Johnson, ed., Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 291–347.

3. The Philocalian Calendar.

4. Scholars of liturgical history in the English-speaking world are particularly skeptical of the “solstice” connection; see Susan K. Roll, “The Origins of Christmas: The State of the Question,” in Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 273–290, especially pp. 289–290.

5. A gloss on a manuscript of Dionysius Bar Salibi, d. 1171; see Talley, Origins, pp. 101–102.

6. Prominent among these was Paul Ernst Jablonski; on the history of scholarship see especially Roll, “The Origins of Christmas,” pp. 277–283.

7. For example, Gregory of Nazianzen, Oratio 38; John Chrysostom, In Diem Natalem.

8. Louis Duchesne, Origines du culte Chrétien, 5th ed. (Paris: Thorin et Fontemoing, 1925), pp. 275–279; and Talley, Origins.

9. Tertullian, Adversus Iudaeos 8.

10. There are other relevant texts for this element of argument, including Hippolytus and the (pseudo-Cyprianic) De pascha computus; see Talley, Origins, pp. 86, 90–91.

11. De solstitia et aequinoctia conceptionis et nativitatis domini nostri iesu christi et iohannis baptistae.

12. Augustine, Sermon 202.

13. Epiphanius is quoted in Talley, Origins, p. 98.

14. b. Rosh Hashanah 10b–11a.

15. Talley, Origins, pp. 81–82.

16. On the two theories as false alternatives, see Roll, “Origins of Christmas.”

^a. See Jonathan Klawans, “Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?” BR 17:05.

^b. See the following BR articles: David R. Cartlidge, “The Christian Apocrypha: Preserved in Art,” BR 13:03; Ronald F. Hock, “The Favored One,” BR 17:03; and Charles W. Hedrick, “The 34 Gospels,” BR 18:03.

^c. For more on dating the year of Jesus’ birth, see Leonara Neville, “Fixing the Millennium,&rd; AO 03:01.

^d. The ancients were familiar with the 9-month gestation period based on the observance of women’s menstrual cycles, pregnancies and miscarriages.

^e. In the West (and eventually everywhere), the Easter celebration was later shifted from the actual day to the following Sunday. The insistence of the eastern Christians in keeping Easter on the actual 14th day caused a major debate within the church, with the easterners sometimes referred to as the Quartodecimans, or “Fourteenthers.”

Andrew McGowan

Warden and President of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, Australia, Andrew McGowan’s work on early Christianity includes God in Early Christian Thought (Brill, 2009) and Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford, 1999).