Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, December 22, 2023
With a couple of comments on the Christmas story in Luke chapter 2
Christmas is not of course a biblically mandated holiday, and we do not even know the day of Christ’s birth - but it is fitting to set aside a day to remember that event. So, “Happy holidays and season’s greetings” and may we have a great 2024, God willing.
It is nice to have a holiday, so I will cut back on some activities including Substack, and look forward to posting on some aspect of Christ’s teachings on January 8th.
Before closing, I would like to comment on what some have thought is a historical problem with the biblical narrative of Christ’s birth in Luke. We read at the beginning of chapter 2 that
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.
(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
This has been objected to as both an historical inaccuracy and an impossibility. For example, one sceptic wrote recently,
How crazy is a census which makes everyone return to their home towns? It would cause chaos across the Roman Empire for a year as they do that then go back to where they were before. There is no possible reason for it.
This seemed like something of a problem to me as well when I was first beginning to read the Bible years ago, but I passed over it, thinking that there must be some explanation. There were many more significant things I found in the Bible that impressed me deeply, and I was not concerned about minor obscurities.
Long afterward, while reading about the organization of the Roman Empire in a secular history, I found a very simple explanation.
The Romans had a very efficient way of taxing their vast territories. They would present each region (be it a subject state, occupied territory, geographical district, whatever) with the amount they expected to receive. As long as that amount was delivered, they were not too concerned about how it was raised.
One thing that did concern them was tax collectors who were so rapacious that they inspired popular outbursts, in which steps would be taken, but otherwise there was a great deal of local autonomy.
This meant that Herod could have used that occasion as a means of determining the sizes of the various tribes for his own personal reasons, but that would have applied to territories under his control only, and not to the empire as a whole. After all, other countries did not have Israel’s tribal history and traditions.
So, what seems like a ridiculous impossibility is really only a minor detail after all.
Also, it is widely believed that material reality is the only reality, and that scientific knowledge is the only real knowledge - but we read differently in this same chapter of Luke. It says that an angel appeared to the shepherds with a message from the unseen spiritual world,
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, good will toward men.
The materialists are wrong. There is a higher reality beyond the material, and it has been revealed to us in the person, life and teachings of Jesus Christ. No matter how poorly we have failed to live up to it, or how far removed from it some or even many churches might be, how far removed some or even many Christians might be, the truths of God in Christ are everlasting and eternal.
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