Levitt Letter Extra News

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.

www.JTA.org

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel has sent a delegation of experts to Haiti and U.S. Jewish groups are collecting donations in the aftermath of a massive earthquake.

The Israel group sent to the Caribbean nation includes engineering, medical, logistics, and rescue experts from the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command.

The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Tuesday afternoon was the strongest in Haiti in 200 years. The National Palace and United Nations peacekeeper headquarters were among the many buildings that suffered damage.

Israel’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic, who also serves Haiti, said Wednesday morning that the embassy had not been able to reach Jewish families in Haiti due to downed telephone lines.

The Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid, a coordinating body of Israeli and Jewish organizations and other interested parties based in Israel, also was set to dispatch a 12-man search-and-rescue team, which includes emergency medical staff. IsraAID also was considering sending a field hospital, including doctors and medical equipment, as well as humanitarian aid.

By Michael Valpy, www.GlobeandMail.com

The six-month exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls closed January 3 in Toronto, with scholars baffled by the Jordanian government’s last-minute request to Canada to stop the ancient manuscripts from going back to Israel.

The request, delivered to the Canadian chargé d’affaires in the Jordanian capital of Amman, underscores the tortuous history of the region, where custody of the 2,000-year-old fragments of Jewish spiritual writings has become entangled in the politics and warfare of perhaps the world’s most fought over piece of geography.

Since the opening of the exhibit last June – at the Royal Ontario Museum in partnership with the Israeli Antiquities Authority – the huge lineups and laudatory reviews of the display have received extensive coverage in news media both inside and outside Canada.

However, Jordan waited until two weeks ago to ask Canada to take custody of the scrolls in keeping with requirements of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, an international protocol to which Canada is a signatory.

Jordan claims Israel seized the scrolls from a Jerusalem museum under Jordanian control in the Six-Day War of 1967.

The Canadian government has replied by saying Jordan, Israel, and the Palestine Authority should sort out who owns the scrolls and Ottawa will not intervene – a response which, legally, the Canadian government likely had no choice but to make, said Prof. Lawrence Schiffman, chair of New York University’s department of Hebrew and Judaic studies and a Dead Sea Scrolls specialist.

Ottawa, he said, was likely party to an indemnification agreement signed before the scrolls left Israel to come to Canada. The agreement – a conventional document protecting cultural property – would guarantee that Israel would get the scrolls back.

What has puzzled scrolls experts is not just Jordan’s timing but Jordan’s intervention. Why did it wait until just before the exhibit closed? And why did it make the request when 20 years ago it declared that its previous interests in the area, such as the museum in east Jerusalem that once housed some of the scrolls that came to Canada, were now in the hands of the Palestinian Authority.

Eibert Tigchelaar, professor of religion at both Florida State University and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and a world-renowned scholar on the scrolls, said: “All I can say is that I am amazed that now not the Palestinian Authority but Jordan has entered the scene.”

In fact, Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in April, saying that the Israelis had no authority to let the scrolls come to Canada, although it doesn’t appear that the Palestinians asked Ottawa to keep the scrolls now that they’re here.

In any event, the application to the scrolls of the 1954 Hague Convention is not clear-cut.

In 1947 – the year the scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd boy around the Qumran wadi (desert) northwest of the Dead Sea – the United Nations voted in favor of the partition of the former British Palestine Mandate into separate Jewish and Arab states with Jerusalem to be placed under international supervision.

The Palestinian Jewish leadership accepted the plan, but Palestinian Arabs didn’t, and the British refused to implement it because there wasn’t agreement on both sides. Jewish inhabitants of Palestine then unilaterally proclaimed the state of Israel in 1948. Troops from Jordan invaded and occupied Jerusalem, and Jordan annexed the West Bank where the scrolls had been found.

Thus the legal custodianship of the scrolls appears murky.

Moreover, Prof. Schiffman said the scrolls have been exhibited in several cities in Britain and the United States without any action taken by Jordan.

Hindy Najman, director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at University of Toronto, said, “The main principle here should be the proper conservation and exhibition of artifacts that were a part of Jewish history and that, as a result of the survival of Judaism and its influence on both Christianity and Islam, have become part of universal history.”

By Anav Silverman, www.FrontPageMag.com

Sderot New Year gathering

Sderot, Israel:  Hours before the new year, as hundreds of pro-Palestinian and -Arab demonstrators gathered at the Erez Crossing chanting “Katyushas on Ma’alot, Qassams on Sderot,” Israeli demonstrators at another Gaza viewpoint a few meters away gathered together to communicate a very different message.

“A New Decade for Hope and Peace,” was the theme behind the Sderot Rally for Hope, initiated by Sderot Media Center, a social media organization dedicated to bringing the voices of Sderot residents to the attention of the international community. Over 300 supporters, including Israeli youth and international students from France, Australia, South Africa, United States and Canada, were led by the Sderot mayor, David Buskila, and the Israeli Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, Yuli Edelstein.

The marchers, carrying Israeli and international flags, along with signs that read “Children for Hope, Not for War,” trekked up a muddy hill to release white balloons with peace messages that children from a local Sderot Elementary School had written to Gaza children a day before.

Edelstein noted that the there has been a year of relative quiet following Operation Cast Lead, “with only 286 rockets fired at Israel.”

Sderot mayor, David Buskila, stated on the hilltop that “we want the leaders of Hamas to know, who  are unfortunately are still continuing to prepare for war, that Sderot residents come today in peace. And we will never leave this part of Israel.”

Earlier in the day, Hamas leader, Ismail Al-Haniyeh spoke to Gaza supporters gathered on both sides of the Erez Crossing via Israeli Arab MK Tal A-Sana’s mobile phone. Haniyeh stated that Palestinians would never stop fighting for a state and that Hamas had become even stronger thanks to international support. On the Gaza side, 100 participants in the Gaza Freedom March, mobilized by Jewish activist, Medea Benjamin, gathered together to show solidarity exclusively with Gazans.

Other anti-Israel rhetoric that came out of the Gaza solidarity demonstrations were directed from Israeli-Arab MK Jamal Zahalka, who stated in front of international press that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak “enjoys classical music and killing children in Gaza.”

Back in Sderot, marchers convened together in the only rocket-proof theater in the western Negev, to hear 22-year old Sderot resident, Moshe Amar perform John Lennon’s song, Imagine. Amar also shared his family’s harrowing experience following a direct Qassam explosion on their home two years on December 13, 2007, which destroyed their home. Both US President Barack Obama and US Senator John McCain visited the site of the Amars’ home during their US presidential campaign in 2008.

“Try to imagine that everything you love, the things that are supposed to be the most secure in your life– your home and your family—are directly terrorized,” said Amar to the audience. “For almost a year, we were left homeless. To this day, that Qassam attack still traumatizes my family—we will never be the same.”

The Sderot Rally for Hope also featured a former member of the Zambian Parliament, the Hon. Dr. Saviour Chishimba, who is also the 2011 Presidential candidate for Zambia’s United Progressive People’s Party.

Mr. Chishimba told the Sderot rally supporters that ” There is no single nation in the world that would allow a single rocket to be fired onto her soils and just watch without retaliation. Israel has a right to defend her territorial integrity and the right to exist. Hamas is a terrorist group, which should not be given power to govern anywhere in the world.”

“It is time that Africa stand up with Israel,” Mr. Chishimba concluded.

Range of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel

By Arieh O’Sullivan, www.JPost.com

Prayers between the Western Wall stones. Photo: AP

If you send a letter to Santa Claus, it may or may not reach the North Pole. But if you address one to God, Jesus, the Queen of Sheba, or King David, chances are it will wind up in a warehouse in Jerusalem.

The world’s mailmen, it seems, ascribe divine power to this city. So it’s not surprising that God has his own mailbox here.

Every day, trucks deliver hundreds of sacks of letters to the Israel Postal Authority’s Dead Letter Department. Manager Aviv Yaniv admits that while he doesn’t have a special connection to God, he can make sure the letters get pretty close.

“People believe that Israel and Jerusalem is the holiest spot on earth,” Yaniv said. “The Western Wall is the remnant of the Jewish Temple so people believe that this place is the closest place to God.”

Yaniv, 66, and his assistants can read more than a dozen languages which makes it quite handy when trying to decipher the million and a half letters they receive from around the world every year. Some are addressed to Dios, Spanish for God, while others are written in Russian and Arabic. Some have even misspelled it, writing DOG instead of GOD.

The Dead Letter Department is located in a non-descript, Bolshevik-style cement-block building in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul behind a bakery. Yaniv’s staff also deal with letters whose addresses are insufficient, unreadable or in languages unfamiliar to mail sorters in the originating country.

“We are able to return something between 75% to 80% of the letters we receive to their senders,” Yaniv said.

Workers do their deciphering at a large table. They are the only department allowed to actually open letters and read private mail. That is for the sole purpose of finding the sender so it can be returned to them. During the period of the British Mandate, women were not allowed to work in the dead letter department since it was believed women did not know how to keep a secret.

“I know the feelings of people writing these letters,” Yaniv said. “Some are anxious or depressed, or some just want something so they send what I call a checklist letter and ask for a beautiful wife, a good job, a nice car, a lot of money and a pretty house.”

Some of the letters are registered, which makes it a little challenging to get someone to sign off on them. Some are sent from prisons. Sometimes large envelopes filled with letters to God are received. These are usually mailed by a teacher somewhere across the globe, perhaps in Africa, or South America, who perhaps have turned it into a writing assignment for their pupils. These are placed in special boxes labeled “Letters to God.”

Among the hundreds of letters waiting to be delivered were some addressed to: “The Son of the Nun, Joshua Cult,” and “Rabi Jesus, Tel Aviv,” and “King Saddam Hussein, Jerusalem Palace.” Some were from Israelis addressed to “My Mother,” and “Mr. Bashir Assad, Damascus,” and “President Ahmadinejad, Iran.” These were stamped “no postal service.” One Egyptian repeatedly sends letters to Moshe Dayan, the iconic former general and minister who died 28 years ago.

Yaniv said that since the fall of the Soviet Union, they have noticed a dramatic increase in letters to God from Russia and other former Soviet countries, a sign of the new religious freedom in their societies.

So what happens to these letters of various faiths addressed to God, Jesus, and mystical characters like King David or The Mother Mary? Twice a year they are brought to Jerusalem’s Old City where the chief rabbi of the Western Wall receives them. They are removed from their envelopes, folded and workers add them to the thousands of messages that are stuffed into the divine cracks between the wall’s massive stones.

“This is a service we do as a gesture to people out of a sense that we want to help folks,” Yaniv said.

Quite a few of the letters contain money or items the Postal Authority says it tries to return.

“We get a lot of cash,” Yaniv said. “And I want to tell you we are experts at finding the person who sent it, even if they’re under the earth, and return the money to them.”

Yaniv says he’s just an ordinary postman – with an extraordinary route.

“First of all it’s my job,” Yaniv said. “But secondly, there are folks who write out of deep sorrow and pour out their heart in the letters so if I can help the letter wind up in a place they think it was meant to reach, then that makes me feel good.”

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 Ethan Bronner, www.NYTimes.com

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A photograph taken from video released in October by Israeli authorities shows captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit at an undisclosed location in the Gaza Strip.

JERUSALEM — When Prof. Gadi Wolfsfeld asks his political science students at Hebrew University if Israel really should free 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including organizers of terrorist attacks, for one seized soldier, as the Israeli government is currently contemplating, he faces a stony silence.

“People feel extremely uncomfortable raising it,” he said. “It’s so politically incorrect that you run the risk of being labeled a monster. We all feel like we know this boy and we know his family.”

The negotiations for the release of Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, seized more than three years ago in a raid into southern Israel by Hamas and other militant groups, are entering a crucial stage through German and Egyptian mediation. While the details of the talks are hidden here behind military censorship, the outlines are widely known.

Last week, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, told reporters there was still no deal on a prisoner exchange, saying that the two sides had “stopped at the details concerning the numbers and nature of people to be released,” according to Reuters.

The negotiations have raised surprisingly little controversy given the risks of future seizures of Israelis and attacks at the hands of those freed and the equally serious risk of raising the fortunes of Hamas. Although Israel has spent decades trying to build a reputation as a tough self-sacrificing society that spurns negotiations with terrorists, polls show a strong majority in favor of the trade.

“To us it seems reasonable although it is totally not,” said Tal Goren, who produced and directed a documentary on the Shalit family called “Family in Captivity.” “It is emotional, not logical.”

But sociologists, politicians and religious scholars say that rescuing captives has deep Jewish and Israeli roots, and that the mix of familial intimacy here, a relentless and well conceived campaign by the family and a media culture in overdrive has placed Sergeant Shalit, a shy, bookish 23-year-old, at the heart of nearly every Israeli Jew.

“When I walk the street, people come up to me and say, ‘Bring back Shalit,’ ” Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog said in an interview. “In this country, it is very difficult to differentiate between the personal and the political.”

Levi Weiman-Kelman, an American-born rabbi who has been here for 30 years and presides over Congregation Kol Haneshama in Jerusalem, said the focus could be traced back to Genesis 14, when Abraham’s nephew Lot was captured in war and the biblical patriarch gathered up a huge posse to rescue him.

“The whole Jewish obsession of ‘pidyon shvuyim,’ rescuing captives, is based on that,” he said. “In the Middle Ages, some Jewish communities went bankrupt when faced with piracy and the need to rescue people.”

Alon Liel, who spent 30 years as an Israeli diplomat, including as director-general of the Foreign Ministry and now lectures in international relations, said he knew of no other country whose foreign ministry included a division for rescuing its citizens facing difficulties abroad.

“We have a division for it and a budget for it,” he said. “It is not unusual for a senior diplomat to go 300 or 400 miles to a village where an Israeli has gotten lost or kidnapped or injured. A lot of other nations refer you to your insurance company.”

Lopsided prisoner exchanges have occurred from the early days of the state he said, including hundreds for half a dozen after the 1956 Sinai War and, most famously, in 1985 when Israel handed over 1,150 security prisoners to a Palestinian guerrilla group in exchange for three Israelis captured in the Lebanon war three years earlier.

That latter deal was criticized when it became clear that those released had formed much of the command structure of the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s. Today, while dissent over the impending deal remains muted, those who have expressed their concern have generally focused on such future risks.

“There will be a massive release of all the greatest murderers in the last and present century,” lamented Rami Igra, former director of the Prisoner of War department of the Mossad intelligence agency, in an opinion article in the conservative newspaper Israel Hayom. “This is shameless and bottomless surrender to Hamas’s demands. It’s true that all of us, as citizens of the State of Israel, have an obligation to each other and particularly to the soldiers we sent into battle, but this obligation must have a rational basis and should not lead to suicide.”

But others say that the risk from those expected to be released is exaggerated for two reasons. First, the combination of Israeli and Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is keeping a lid on violence. And second, the prisoners are part of a political organization with which Israel is trying to make peace.

“These people, although they are murderers, do it for a political cause and even if they don’t represent a country they are being sent by a military organization that is our rival and one day will make peace with us,” Mr. Liel, the former diplomat, said. “They are not regular criminals. We know that sooner or later when we have a peace deal they will be released.”

The focus on Sergeant Shalit also reveals the way in which the army is an intimate part of the vast majority of households here. Yair Lapid, a columnist for Yediot Aharonot and a television news host, said that during the 2006 Hezbollah war, he had a conversation with the then military chief of staff, Dan Halutz.

“When a Hezbollah missile killed a grandmother, no one said anything, saying it was the cost of war,” Mr. Lapid remembered saying to Mr. Halutz. “But when the first soldiers started to die, people said this has to end. I said this is weird. He said, a citizen is somebody we don’t know but a soldier is somebody we all have at home.”

Still, Mr. Lapid said, the planned deal over Sergeant Shalit was a dangerous and bad idea. A government committee led by a retired Supreme Court justice is expected to recommend that a law be passed after this trade barring such lopsided arrangements in the future.

Rabbi Weiman-Kelman of Jerusalem said that the controversy over Sergeant Shalit was precisely what made life so different in Israel from his native United States and to him so appealing.

“There is zero distance between the Shalit family and the rest of the country,” he said. “It is very, very personal. That is part of the thrill of living here, although it is also suffocating and overwhelming. For those of us who are junkies for meaning, living here is pure heroin.”

By David Wainer and Tal Barak Harif, www.Bloomberg.com

Israel’s benchmark bonds are poised to fall, pushing yields up as much as 0.4 percentage point, as the central bank persists in raising interest rates to curb inflation, according to Excellence Investments Ltd.

The yield on the shekel-denominated bond due February 2017 may climb to 4.8 percent over the next 12 months from 4.38 percent yesterday, said Shlomo Maoz, the Ramat Gan, Israel-based brokerage’s chief economist. The benchmark Mimshal Shiklit security fell was unchanged at 110.87 at the close in Tel Aviv and the yield one basis point to 4.39 percent.

“The bank still has to rein in inflation,” said Maoz, one of two economists to predict the August rate increase, the first by a central bank since the global economy began to recover. “It’s very cheap to borrow in Israel and the real interest rate, taking inflation into account, is still very low.”

Inflation accelerated in October to 2.9 percent from 2.8 percent the previous month, the Central Bureau of Statistics said on Nov. 15. The inflation rate will rise to as high as 3.7 percent two months from now, above the 3 percent upper end of the government’s target range, according to Arie Tal, the chief strategist at Alumot- Sprint Investment House, who forecast yesterday’s increase.

Bank of America Corp. expects Israeli central bank Governor Stanley Fischer to increase the benchmark interest rate to 1.25 percent by year-end, according to an Oct. 30 report.

Fischer, 66, raised the lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point yesterday to 1 percent following a similar move in August. Twelve of 17 economists surveyed by Bloomberg, including Maoz had forecast no change yesterday. Five had predicted the increase.

The shekel was little changed, dropping 0.3 percent to 3.7822 per dollar at 5:21 p.m. in Tel Aviv. The currency jumped yesterday following the rate increase, climbing to as high as 3.7685 per dollar, a 1 percent increase.

“This is a momentary reaction by the market to a surprise move,” said Yaron Chechik, a currency trader at Financial Immunities Ltd. in Rehovot, Israel. “The higher rates make Israeli yields more appealing. In the long-term, the shekel will follow the global trend of risk appetite.”

The benchmark Mimshal Shiklit bond last yielded about 4.8 percent on Aug. 31, up from a record low of 4.1 percent on Feb. 17.

The economy grew an annualized 2.2 percent in the third quarter, its fastest pace in more than a year, after expanding 1 percent in the second quarter. The bank expects economic growth to accelerate to 2.5 percent next year from zero expansion in 2009.

The Washington-based International Monetary Fund is forecasting growth of 0.5 percent and average annual inflation of 1.1 percent next year in the European Union. U.S. gross domestic product should expand 1.5 percent and inflation average 1.7 percent in 2010, according to the IMF.

Israel’s decision to increase rates “will help to establish inflation one year ahead firmly within the target range,” the bank said in its statement. “National accounts data for the third quarter indicate recovery in economic activity, reflecting a significant increase in private consumption, exports and investments.”

The government’s annual target is for 1 percent to 3 percent inflation.

“The Bank of Israel still has a loose monetary policy, while at the same time signaling that they are serious about fighting inflation,” said Tevfik Aksoy, a London-based economist for Morgan Stanley, who forecast the increase. “The decision won’t hinder growth at all.”