Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
JDC 0:00
Now I want to be very clear about this though, we are very good at missing the point. I'll just that Oh, wow, I'm so silly and the “I missed that”, the point that we're missing is the point we want to miss. So the debate, by all means that we usually don't do it about the Good Samaritan, but let's debate anything we want to debate, but not will you help your enemy if you find him in the ditch. Let's not get into that. Let's not even get into, in a Jewish context, could there be good Samaritans? Let's talk about something else. Let's talk about the two denarius for a couple of days rent. So it's not for me, with Luke and Matthew that I wish people would take it as a parable rather than history. I would be willing to say to somebody, “okay, take them both as history. Now you're happy, it happened exactly the way it said there however you put Matthew and Luke together, that's the way it happened”. Now, how do we get peace in there? Do we get if from Caesar the Augustus from whom Luke has just mentioned or do we get it from Jesus?
Seth Price 1:25
Hello, planet Earth. I'm Seth, your host. This is the Can I Say This At Church podcast; happy Christmas, everyone. Very, very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays happy, whatever you want to use. I don't think the words matter because we're celebrating life and we're celebrating Christ intentionally. I’m so glad that we get to do this and that we make it a purposeful thing. Today I talked with John Dominic Crossan, who is brilliant. We talked about kind of the Christmas story and we talked about it as a parable like what the early church was trying to get at when they used it, why they maybe wrote it they did; maybe why Paul doesn't talk about the Christmas story all that much. And so John Dominic comes from the Christmas story in a way that a lot of us are not really engaging in and for months now, since recording this really not known how it sits with it, it's stuck with me and I think about it daily. And so I really hope that you'll get as much out of this conversation as I have and I've been challenged to grow and learn and pursue this more and it's leading me as of recording this now (the) first day of December. It's leading me to two places that I didn't know that I could go and it's stretching my faith in healthy ways. And so I really hope that you enjoy this conversation with John Dominic Crossan , here we go.
Seth Price 3:14
John Dominic Crossan, thank you so much for coming on to the Can I Say This At Church podcast!
JDC 3:18
Very glad to be with you, Seth.
Seth Price 3:20
For those in my circle of listenership there's a lot of Protestant-ish in my listenership and so I'm afraid that maybe a few people listening won't know a whole lot about you. So can you In brief, just kind of give me your theological upbringing and then kind of how that leads you into what you do now?
JDC 3:37
Well, I spent five years at a classical boarding school in Ireland, which meant that I learned Greek and Latin five years of peace before I ever read a New Testament or heard of a New Testament particularly. So I read the Roman classics, which is maybe a very good idea. I think that nobody should be allowed to read the New Testament before they read the Virgil’s Aeneid.
Seth Price 3:59
Really?
JDC 4:02
I'm serious because what you get then is a good dose, even though I didn't appreciate it, certainly Roman Imperial theology and then when you find out that people are saying that Jesus is Lord and Son of God and God incarnate and Savior ofthe world don't do well, he's weird names somebody invented, they say what he's taking on the Roman Emperor. He's just taken out his team, his big titles from the Roman emperor and given them to a Jewish peasant. Well, we're in a revolutionary state here. So you're not surprised when you find that Jesus gets himself executed. So when I got into the New Testament, I didn't have the scandal that so many of my colleagues seem to have with fundamentalism, taking it all literally. I was ready to take it seriously. And not literally at all. But I figured that Caesar was some of God. You didn't explain to Caesar that, you know, you're just a metaphor Caesar. So cool it. Yes, Your Imperial Highness Of course your son of God So, by the time I read the New Testament, I said, Okay, so now the challenge is, if you had a son or God around, what would he look like? Would he look like a Jesus or like a Caesar? And I would say Oh, yeah, they ain't the same type of guy. So it's as if you're having a Presidential debate between Caesar and Christ and what are the platforms be in each case? How would it be different? Is it just the one guy is a nicer, you know, personality? No, I think it has to do with programs and policies and things like that. So I was sort of ready for the New Testament when I got there to be honest with you.
Seth Price 5:37
Do you feel like and you said it earlier, many, myself included? Why do you think that we fell off the ledge of reading things so literal and so fundamental, fundamental, fundamental, fundamentalist, that's the word. Yeah, my vocabulary isn't up to par on the weekends, my brain checks out. Everybody needs a break.
Why do you think or when do you think we kind of just jumped off that ledge of, here's the way that we read it and if you don't read it this way, then you're not Christian.?
JDC 6:05
Exactly. It's the dark underbelly of the enlightenment. I mean, the Enlightenment was a magnificent achievement in terms of science, it took the dead hand of the church away from science and from history and opened it up; and that was right necessary good and there is no way I can to criticize that but for example, the word for knowledge in Latin was scientia. Knowledge, all knowledge, but all of a sudden in the Enlightenment, the only type of knowledge was “science” coming from scientia it so we narrowed, narrowed, narrowed it. And it was an understandable reaction science have been so denigrated and controlled by the church and, you know, Galileo and everything else. So yeah, you had to emancipate it. As in so many amounts of patience and liberation's, some weird stuff got liberated. I think we lost our sense of metaphor of the profundity of metaphor. I hear people say to me, oh, that's just a metaphor. And that metaphor creates reality. And then we also lost our sense of parable.
Well, even though Jesus himself when he wanted to say something really important about God or the kingdom of God, made up a story. And then we kind of scandalize some of the New Testament writers that might make up stories about Jesus, since he picked up very the bad habit from him of making up stories about God. So we lost our sense of metaphor, parable, symbol, oh, it was fine as decoration of course, nobody has problem with decorating stuff with metaphors.
But the idea that metaphor may create reality. And that if you have a bad metaphor, you might do them yourself. I mean, 1000 year old reich, is a metaphor. wasn't a good one. But like a good one in the beginning, yeah, it wasn't a livable metaphor. So metaphor is create reality. And if you live that metaphor, then it becomes real for you. So be very careful about your metaphors.
Seth Price 8:17
Well, and to be more clear about it, just be very careful with your words in general.
JDC 8:23
As well, at the moment, being very careful about what you say because retargeted violence leads very easily to physical violence.
Seth Price 8:30
Yeah, no, definitely. Well, this at recording this is the day after the shooting at the synagogue in Pennsylvania. And so yeah, it's easy enough to give lip service to violence, and then play coy, or insincere and surprised, when actual violence happens because of the way that we speak and treat others. But that is not why I brought you on, matter of fact, I would happy to bring you back on to talk about that.
That is one of my passions is talking about that but I also think find that in today's economy of words and in the economy of thought, and church, that people get really angry when you start talking about you know, if your words that you say or “this” and your actions or “this”, those two don't jive well together those two you're not. You're not being genuine to either yourself or to others. I don't think but. So what do you do now? So you said Ireland, and now you're in Florida? What's going on there?
JDC 9:28
Of course, I entered the Roman Catholic religious order a monastic order in Ireland. It was kind of a recruiting station for the American province. So I knew coming out of Ireland and in fact, that's what excited me excited me at 16 when I entered the order in 1950 as well, I thought this was the most thrilling life you could lead. It was nothing like giving up my life for Jesus or anything like that. I thought wow, Jesus has the best game in town! This sounds marvelous, a monk traveling the world.
So I came to this country then and my superiors like in the army decided, wait a minute, you've had five years of reconfigures, right oops, we want you to be a professor. I didn't come in to be a professor, I came in to be a monk and do what I was told. So of course, fine professor, whatever! So they sent me off to get my doctorate back to Ireland, and then send me for two years to Rome to specialize in exegesis and then two more years to Jerusalem to specialize in archaeology. And then was heavenly. I was all over the Middle East in the 60s all over Europe in the early 60s.
I saw the whole world as a monk as it were. So I had a marvelous education at a time when you could travel all over the Middle East by the way, in the early 60s. I was there from 1965 to 1967, I was in Jerusalem to the day before the war, and then I could say I left. The technical term is ran because we were told by our consulates, you're on your own if you stay beyond tomorrow, and that was Sunday morning.
So, basically, then after 19 years as a monk, I guess I finally decided that celibacy was vastly overrated. And I decided to leave the monastery but I loved being a scholar, they had made me a scholar. And that's what I wanted to spend my life (doing). So the excitement that was there, the very beginning remained as the excitement of scholarship, and especially focusing on the historical Jesus and early Christianity.
Seth Price 11:35
Well, getting getting to that. So you, you wrote a book with Marcus Borg years ago, and I can't remember the exact publication date about Christmas and the Advent story. And that's kind of what I like to center on, the early story of Jesus, and maybe how we should interpret it kind of how it stands in contrast, and the Scripture, and specifically and you alluded to it earlier, but I want to say this question. For the last but I'll go and give it to you now so you can collect your thoughts is, I genuinely wonder how we as Americans sit well with celebrating the birth of a man, that was God that literally up ended the system against imperialism as we sit, you and I both talking in one of the biggest Imperial nations in the history of the planet? But I will save that one towards the end. I'll restate it at the end.
JDC 12:26
Before you get off of it just remember that as a country we were founded on an act of superb hypocrisy, saying with our independence, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone but we still had slavery.
I mean, I understand that the politics involved in getting it from England. But let's be very clear we started off with a very good experience in hypocrisy and that has become something we have to face as our national character now—now go back to where you want.
Seth Price 13:00
(laughter) We will. As a middle aged American, in the West, engage in the Christmas story because there's two different ones every year. I feel like it's a trite spectacle that we roll out for the Advent season. And so what am I missing when I begin to even engage in the text of the birth of Jesus?
JDC 13:22
Yeah, you're right. We trot it out, like the Christmas decorations. It's nice. And at the end of it, we either dumped them or put them back in the attic. Now, the way I approach that question is this.
First of all, what is Luke and Matthew up to? And why does Mark and John not have a good Christmas story too? I’m starting with the first century I'm trying to get into the minds of the four people who give us versions of the gospel. There's only one gospel that preaches Jesus, but it's according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So we don’t have four Gospels, by the way, we have one Gospel in four versions.
All right, every gospel starts with what we’d call an overture that's like a preamble that to get you in there. Mark for example tells the story of John the Baptist and that's gonna get you ready for “wow John the Baptist was killed, was executed”. So you'll see already point this is not going to go well. Where John, obviously, he doesn't have a Christmas story in that sense but he has a Prologue. John has that magnificent hymn where he talks about in the beginning was the logos and the dream of God for the world became incarnate. Here is a problem now.
Two of them Matthew and Luke have prologues which are actually stories, their prologues though. The reason they are completely different, and anyone who reads them carefully, can see immediately the story in Luke is told completely from Mary's point of view. She has an annunciation and the angel comes to her; in Matthew’s point of view it's about the father it comes to the Father, everything is about Joseph.
So what’s going on why can't we get these two stories together Can't they get their acts together? No, because each one is a deliberate now my term is very careful, parabolic overture to their own gospel. It's like Luke knows what he's going to say, in fact, he's going to say it in a two volume gospel Luke and Acts. And when he's got it written that he says to himself, okay, why do I write as a prologue to this gospel? Because some poor guy is going to have to take this in a manuscript is written in wall to wall characters without any verses or chapters or anything. And upfront I'm going to tell him in two verses, here's what's going on.
It's like your life we write a book, the last thing we write in the book is prologue, which by the way is a marvelous feat is exactly what's going to happen in the book. We can tell them flawlessly what'll happen because it's written last of course, if you write your prologue first It's not going to work. So what you have in Luke 1 and 2 and what you have in Matthew 1 and 2, those chapters are specifically written parables and emphasizing parables. Of course, they're dealing with historical characters, Mary Joseph, Herod, these are really characters, but Matthew is thinking, and the reason I know what he’s thinking is because I'm reading very carefully. Then I read his first two chapters, and I see, okay, what you're doing here Matthew is giving me like, an overture as if we're looking at an opera. And the first little part is a medley of all the music we're going to hear. So we recognize that later.
So when you tell me, Matthew, that Jesus is King of the Jews, that the Magi come to Herod and say, we're looking for King of the Jews. When by the way, of course Herod's title, official title from Rome is King of the Jews. So what they've just done, whether they know it or not, is committed rhetorical treason, as it were. We're looking for somebody else. So the only next time I'm going to find in Matthew's Gospel, that term King of the Jews is on the cross above Jesus' head.
So when I read Matthew 1 and 2, I find it to be a superb, magnificent, couldn't do better if you thought about it, encapsulation of what's coming in Matthew. Now, turn it over to Luke, of course Luke has a different version of the gospel. Could he use Matthew’s upfront? No, no way. Now, where do they both agree, though?
And now we're getting close to your your final request, even though we're not there. Where do they both agree? Well, let me go back to what I just said about Matthew. It opens with an act of treason.
King of the Jews is a title that can only be conferred by Rome, it was given to Herod the Great was then given to Herod Arippa I. It was given to nobody else, and to assume it would have been treason. And that's probably what gets Jesus killed because he's talking about the kingdom of God. And any Roman would think, well, you must kind of think you're a king, though I think you're a joke as a king, but just to be safe. You have a public ritual of execution.
So then I look over at Luke, and I find he mentions Augustus, Caesar the Augustus. And right after that the angels come down and announce peace on earth, the birth of Jesus. Rome had announced peace on earth, as the program of Caesar, in fact, came with this birth, Pax Romana. So now if I look at these two and don't get hung up for the moment on their differences, or why they are there or any other reason; if I were reading this as a Roman sensor, I would get immediately. This is subversive stuff.
I don't know whether I have to take it very seriously or not but it's subversive. Maybe it's funny, maybe it's not funny. But I haven't even got into the third chapter of Matthew, or the third chapter of Luke and I've seen something in both of them, that they're announcing somebody called Jesus, whose birth is an alternative King of the Jews to bring peace on earth. But we appointed Herod to be king of the Jews to keep peace, at least in Israel. So while we get hung up on the differences, which many people can't explain though any scholars should be able to explain it to you that the differences are almost mandatory for their function. We ignore the similarity that each of them and therefore the Gospels that come after them, of course, are going to explain to us why it's not a great surprise that this person whose birth we are celebrating is going to end up, not just dead because most people do, but on a Roman cross. And immediately that tells me two very important things by the way, looking ahead now from the story, but it's already hinted there but there are armed rebellions against them. The Romans killed the leader and everyone could get their hands on, like the story of Barabbas. He's in jail as an armed rebel and so are his followers. Of course, that’s the way Rome acted! We are going to crucify you all in a nice row. When we're dealing with on unarmed rebellion, what we might call an activist, their civil law said, what do we do for somebody I'm quoting now, we'll create a tumult that stirss up the people. We crucify them. We burn them out where we send them to the beasts, the arena, or if they're high ranking, we just exil them to an island.
Seth Price 21:02
So we silence them, or we make an example of them, but we don't just flat out, shoot them in the head. We don't just kill them quickly and peacefully.
JDC 21:09
No we don’t kill them peacefully and don't round up their followers. So if I know I'm jumping ahead to the end of the story. But already the hints are there. It's like that classic thing they say, if you find a gun in the first act, somebody's going to use it. If I get this tension in these opening stories between the Roman authority and this Jewish peasant. And it's not some kind of a joke it's some kind of a claim of whose vision of the world should rule the world, then I know he's going to be dead by the end of the story.
And crucifixion was a public ritual of state terrorism whose function was to warn you don't do what this guy did or you end up like this guy has. That's why they bother with the expense and the time of sending a squad of soldiers and staying there to the man was dead and iron nails and a whole thing. They wouldn't just corral him in the barracks and toss his body over over the wall. This is a public ritual. If you read carefully in those opening stories, you already see a tension and it's not just the tension between you know, Jesus and Pilate or even Jesus and Caesar it’s what each one represents. It's their programs, their platforms, their visions.
Seth Price 23:25
If I'm thinking of the birth narratives in the two gospels as parabolic does that imply that there's no history involved there at all? Is there no historical leanings or adeptness in that as a first century Christian or Jew or Roman that I would have been able to go yeah that I remember people talking about that happening is it all parable?
JDC 23:46
Let me back off that very carefully because most people when they read what Marcus and I wrote in that book, come up with a long list of what didn't happen. Okay No, sir. No, this! No that! No the other.
Let me take as an example, the well known parable of the Good Samaritan. Now, of course, there were Samaritans, of course there were priests, of course were Levites, of course, there's a road from Jerusalem to Jericho and those are two cities that were there in the first century. And yes, it does go down a thousand feet. There were donkeys, by the way, and Denarius you could argue that every single thing in there, you might even said in the first century “Yeah and I stayed in that Inn down there”. You could make your argument and that this is all historic. But this story is not historic.
But any parable, to be a parable and not a fantasy must be realistic. It must be realistic. It may stretch the boundaries that push you a bit you might say, Well, I don't think a Samaritan will do that. But anyway. So what you have in Luke and Matthew, the author is not the least bit interested in giving you historical data. But of course, Bethlehem is a real place, but here's an example. Jesus of Nazareth is the name. We have to start this story in Bethlehem. Why? Is it because he was born there. I don't think so; it’s because the great and most famous person who came out of that claim was, of course, David.
So that's like you and I saying, suppose we said of a President “he thinks he was born in a log cabin!”. Now immediately, I would not take that as a piece of autobiographical or biographical data. He thinks he's Lincoln, born in the log cabin has been called iconic for him. And in the same born in Bethlehem sends the message from Matthew and for Luke is another thing they agree on, by the way, new improved David. David’s back. So whatever David did, this Jesus is going to do even better. Now. Big question. How do we get into Bethlehem? I mean he’s Jesus of Nazareth. Nobody says Jesus of Bethlehem. Each of them does it differently. Matthew simply takes it for granted. That's where they were living they're living in Bethlehem. And only afterwards when they came back from Egypt, they moved to Nazareth. Okay? That makes sense. Luke doesn't know that. Luke knows the beginning nursery. So he says they went there to be enrolled in the census that everyone knows about.
And of course, for 2000 years people have known wait a minute, there was no census around 4 BC the census was in 6 CE the wrong with it and take over the record. And you know, we go on this nosy ating debate, all of which is like, like arguing whether to denarii in the Good Samaritan parable that were enough for a couple of days rent. You want to scream. It's like if somebody said to Jesus, at the end of the parable, excuse me, Jesus, did that really happen? Jesus is going “oi vey here we go again another literalist.”
You know, like Jesus with the Good Samaritan parable, these two people have worked awfully hard to make a plausible story that makes the point they want. And there's a hard, hard, core to that point. When Luke says, peace on earth in the middle of the Pax Romana, he is saying you didn't do it. You didn't bring it. That is serious! So if somebody said to me, “the census didn’t take place.” I want to say get over it, would you? Would you get over it? You are reading a fiction, or a parable, but like any parable at the end of say, the Good Samaritan, Jesus says, Go and do likewise. Now suppose me I'm a literalist. Okay, go and do likewise. So I have the crews up and down the high road between Jerusalem and Jericho….
Seth Price 27:58
…and only that road…
JDC 27:59
and only that road; and only going down, I can't do it coming up, and I'm looking for somebody in the ditch. Now, that's absurd! You know, and I say everyone would laugh at it. But you're doing exactly the same thing when you look at Luke and Matthew and say, I really don't think that there was a census at the time of the birth of Jesus. So this whole stuff is rubbish.
Seth Price 28:21
And if you can view it as parable, then whether or not there was a sense, this isn't really the point. It doesn't, it's not a contention. It's just part of the story settlee down, you're missing. You're seeing all to use a bad metaphor you're using, you're seeing all the trees and you're missing the forest. So you're only seeing the forest and you're missing the tree that matters either way you're missing it.
JDC 28:45
Now I want to be very clear about this though. We are very good at missing the point. I'll just oh wow, I'm so silly in the I missed that. The point that we're missing is a point we want to miss So debate, by all means though we usually don't do it about the Good Samaritan. But let's debate anything we want to debate. But not with you help your enemy if you find him in the ditch, let's not get into that. It's not even get into in a Jewish context could there be good Samaritans? Let's talk about something else and talk about whether two denarius are enough for a couple of days rent. So it's not for me, with Luke and Matthew that I wish people would take it as a parable rather than history.
I would be willing to say to somebody, okay, take them both is history. Now you're happy it happened exactly the way it said there and however you put Matthew and Luke together, that's the way it happened. Now, what about whether Caesar is lord of the world and whether he's brought peace on earth by victory and violence, because the program of course of any Empire as you know, is we established a victory. After victory, we get peace.
Look at our word pacify we pacify our country. We know how to do it, you can get very quiet after you're dead. So empires ruled by victory. And this equates to peaceful, I think Jesus would have said, No, it's not peaceful. It's just a law and on to the next round. So what we do when we avoid or even get into the bait, like we're talking about power history, I would say to a fundamentalist, okay, I don't want to argue about this. You take it literally. I will take it metaphorically. Could we not debate that for the moment? Could we talk about meaning? How do we get peace in there? Do we have from Caesar the Augustus whom Luke has just mentioned or do we get from Jesus? And what's the difference in their programs? Don't just talk what Jesus was Lord and Caesar. Wasn't it that's both of the same title. So they're both making claims to a vision for the whole world. Now to respect Caesar and respect Jesus and Gracie, okay, I'm listening to two mega visions for how to run the world.
I see the differences. And now I have to decide which vision I'm going to accept and try to live by it. That's really the challenge, of course, of those two stories. And maybe in one sense, I would almost want to say, could we bracket the questions of historicity which are perfectly valid by the way, I'm quite ready to tell somebody…did the Magi come as it's told there? My own crack about that is no, because there are three men and they asked for directions in Jerusalem and men never do that. I mean they are following their star as you know, and then the seven Jerusalem to ask directions. What happens to the star? The reason of course they have the stuff in Jerusalem is because otherwise they can't ask the key verse. Where is he born? Who is king of the Jews, if they just keep finding the star and turn left the Jerusalem and go south to Bethlehem. But everything is lovely, but we’ve lost the point of the story.
Seth Price 32:22
So something I struggle with, and it's Kyle Roberts fault, a previous guest of the show, he he wrote a book about the virgin conception or the virgin birth or whatever, whatever verbs you want to use. And so I feel like as I was reading through your book that you wrote with Marcus and just thinking more about it, I feel like if it's parable that the authors are just conscripting in what they need to from the Old Testament to fulfill prophecy. Am I wrong in reading that or hearing that or how do I sit with that? If this parable, how am I fulfilling any form of prophecy of the coming Messiah?
JDC 33:01
Okay, let me look at both of them together for a moment and then look at Matthew, specifically, because this is another thing both of them agree on. Oh, by the way, the virginal conception, I'm using the term now, precisely virginal conceptions what we're talking about, people will say, virgin birth; but that's something else then virginal conception.
If I were in a court of law, and the judge said to me, now, I'm tired of all this bickering, I'm Scottish. I want to know yes or no Crossan, do you or do you not believe in the virginal conception of Jesus? I would say, Yes, Your Honor. And I'd be thinking, because I know what it means, your Honor, I bet you don't.
Here's what's going on. We are again, we are dealing with parable. But again, it's subversive parable. Because in the in the ancient world, if a person had achieved a great rank or status, and they were trying to tell this whole story doesn't seem to prosaic to say, “Well, he's his mother and his father had a little bit too much wine for dinner one evening and so sort of etc etc”, We want something magnificent. So, in the Jewish tradition, a revered person, Samuel, for example, would be born of aged and infertile parents, aged and infertile, which, by the way, would be quite a miracle because that's, that's checkable. You know, if you're both 99 and able to reproduced, yeah, maybe there hospital records as it were. That's a Jewish tradition, the Greco Roman tradition, of course, I think Greco Roman tradition is that if the great person like Augustus, or even wonder, then a god human woman had produced them by intercourse.
When the first Christians and there were Jewish Christians, of course, wanted to say our Jesus is better than anything in his own tradition before him or the Greco Roman tradition before him. They came up with something new. They came up with a virginal conception, not aged parents. They never say Joseph and Mary are 99 as it were. They don't say, a God had intercourse with Mary. And by the way, in Luke, the God at least has the courtesy to ask her permission. Most Greco Roman stories, the God just doesn't that's it. It's divine rape and is a bit strange.
So what they're trying to say by virginal conception is this person is extraordinary within both the Jewish, his own Jewish, and the Greco Roman tradition. Now I, as a Christian, accept that. That's why I'm Christian. If I thought Jesus was just a nice guy, I’d think he's a nice guy. So if you believe in the virginal conception, of course, I'm not talking for you, of course now, and talking metaphorically, or parabolically whichever term you want, but that is what they were saying. And by the way, I also leave these anciet people a fair amount of ignorance about the exact mechanics. Of course, you would involve the man, of course they knew it involved the woman. And of course, you would involve the emissions in both cases. But before we knew about the semen, the egg, and everything else, I think an ancient person would have no problem saying, actually, that Joseph and Mary are in the other couple, at intercourse, but the child born was the Son of God, because somehow God intervenes.
I wouldn't be as crude as intercourse or anything else like that because it was all very vague. How exactly the internal mechanics took place should I say? So I don't know if a person in the first century would have probably been saying Joseph was the father and he was Son of God.
Seth Price 36:58
Am I wrong, I feel like I'm I might not be and I remember at one time doing research on this. But if you trace Joseph's lineage back, that's how you get back to David. Mary, not so much. And so how do I call him Son of David, or descendant of David, without Joseph, but so little is said about Joseph in the story. But to me, that's the pivot to David, but I didn't write it so…
JDC 37:30
MMatthew, of course, is the one who gives the genealogy emphasizing back to David, and he gives it up front, you begin the story with David. In Luke, he only tells it much later and he takes him back to Adam. For Luke, and it's chapter three, I think it is, it's not the opening of his story as it were. So Matthew is the one of course who takes him back to David and you know, you can't quite have it both ways. If he's Son of David, biologically, like I said, though he could be I think, son of Joseph, that is son of David, biologically, but Son of God theologically. Because we're really not dealing with the biology of Mary. We're not really dealing with the biology of Mary, but the theology of Jesus.
Seth Price 38:22
Why does Paul, or anyone else for that matter, really, never really talk about the miraculousness of Jesus' birth? He mostly seems to focus on here's what Jesus and the Christ did. And so now, here's what we do. Was there less importance at that time than what we put on it now or why would he not? Because obviously, the guy was relatively smart. I mean, he argued for his life everywhere he went.
JDC 38:54
Well, let me put it this way. Paul is writing in the 50s. Matthew is Writing in the 80s. And you could be writing anytime from the 80s into the First century. Let me put it bluntly, nobody had invented the story. Because nobody, I mean, obviously, of course, the virginal conception was there, I think and the story about birth quotation marks “birth” at Bethlehem, but you simply could say, as Paul does say that in terms of David. So the story that we have in Luke 1 and 2, and Matthew 1 and 2 was only written when those gospels were, I would be ready to say were already written, and these were their preambles or overtures there. So in the same way that most books I've ever written, they put a prologue it’s the last thing written.
Seth Price 39:48
Yeah. Well, and for and for those listening, the prologue to each episode is usually two weeks after the episode so that I can marinate on it and figure out what exactly I need to say to buffer the conversation before people have it; so it’s really no different.
JDC 40:03
Yeah, if you if you were to say, supposed to say what I'm going to say now, it would be quite miraculous if you came up with an exact description of what I said, beforehand.
Seth Price 40:16
I'm very good like that. I feel like I might could do it. (laughter)
JDC 40:20
(laughter) You could claim prophetic powers and say, of course I can do it!
Seth Price 40:22
I have the prophetic power of editing, but I could I'm sure I could figure it out.
JDC 40:27
Exactly it’s prophetic power of editing. And then afterwards, if you wanted to came I wrote this before, and I was inspired to know what was coming. How can I disprove it?
Seth Price 40:39
Not to get off topic from that then so if I think about the two huge events and pivotal world changing events of Christmas and Easter, and if Paul really never gives much emphasis to Christmas, but he seems to really talk about the death, burial, resurrection, the implications of Easter-s Easter more important than Christmas?
JDC 41:04
Absolutely. Absolutely! Any Christian in the long history, who has a good theologian would have said absolutely.
And again, the fact that we have found no way, how should I put this, of trivializing, not of trivializing, because Easter bunnies and eggs and all of that is an incredible trivialization? We really haven't done that, because Christmas is still associated at least and the best sense would gift giving. So in the best sense of the word, yes, this in a way is the gift of Jesus gift to the world. So if you're going to associate gift giving even presents and all the rest of it, even the opposite of commercialization that happens a Christmas. There's a tenuous connection but I can't get much into easter eggs, round Easter bunnies, except we've given up. We just can't handle it.
Seth Price 42:10
Well, I'm glad that it hasn't been trivialized at all. So, getting back to that question that I started with that I've on purpose tried not to circle back around to. If I'm in America, and if and I asked Brian's Zhand this question, you know, I feel like most Americans feel like when we read Scripture, that we're Israel, that somehow we're the ones being oppressed, and we always miss the fact that no, we're probably Rome in this story, or we're Babylon in this story, or we're Pharaoh in this story. We are the ones beating down people and usurping privilege, we are the ones that through victory of aggression, we pacify the Native Americans in America; and we did it because we felt like it, because God called us to do this. And and getting back to what you said earlier, peace through victory. So, how do we, this year? I mean, by the time people are listening to this, it should come out around Christmas. So how do we change the way that we do Christmas now, to realize that we're celebrating the birth and arrival of the Christ of the universe that came to literally justify things not through aggression, and conquering, but through justice and through mercy? How do we reconnect it to where it should be, as opposed to some trite parade of happy feelings and really pretty songs and get back really to the theology of the purpose of the birth?
JDC 43:40
We have to do two things.
One we’ve been talking about here. We have to learn how to read what these people were saying. And then, and I'm quite willing to read a Biblical author and say I disagree. But I'm not willing to do is sit there saying something else. I think it's an honest answer. is here to say, I know what Jesus is saying. I don't think I can live up to it. Rather than just say, Oh, no, he just said, you know, pieces a nice idea. Give it a chance where it doesn't work what the heck, we can always have war. No, we have to take seriously. Why do you say the other thing I think? Let me back off for a second. I came to this country as a student in 1951. I didn't become a citizen of this country, until the year 2000. So yes, I've chosen to live in this country to be in this country and to be a citizen of this country. I could have stayed on a green card, I suppose.
I think we have to take an awful look at ourselves. I knew the British Empire, of course coming out of Ireland and all empires are a bit hypocritical. We always come to civilize you. We always come in your best interest. You are barbarians before and we're bringing you peace and order and law and civilization. I know that every empire that has ever been said that. We did something extraordinary as I mentioned earlier, In our Declaration of Independence, we made a theological statement about everyone, not just about us, we didn't simply say like the Irish Declaration of Independence, we have a right to be free, you know, England go home.
We didn't say that. If you compare the Irish declaration independence with the American start anything the American is that declaration that EVERYONE has a right to this all are created equal, all are endowed with their Creator. And we have it of course, in the Pledge of Allegiance, liberty and justice for all. So it's quintessentially American but we've never quite faced what I said before, that there's a profound, maybe a necessary maybe a politically expedient in that document, “please, let's not talk about slavery”. I am sitting here now all these years later, we just say let's realize it Maybe that was the cost of independence, which was a huge cost. And we have to face it, because otherwise that impregnates our national DNA with hypocrisy. And so it keeps coming up again and again and again, we're doing all of this just for the good of the world that we are the nicest people around. And very often we are, by the way, facing a disaster, we're good, really good.
We're not good though at facing that imperialism, the attempt to control others is never ever for their own back. It's never worked for their own benefit. So I think two things to face Christmas. We have to face honesty, the challenge that comes from those stories, and at least know that they are not saying something else. They're not saying have a good time at Christmas. They're saying peace on earth. That's what they're saying.
And they're saying it comes from heaven. I'm not taking that literally if it comes from heaven then it doesn’t come from armies and empires, so we have to look at that head on. And then we have to look at ourselves and maybe, you know, maybe by Christmas this year, please God, we may be ready to do it really seriously.
Seth Price 47:15
If I, we, were ready to do that, I don't even know what the planet would look like; our church we used some of the episodes of this show. And we talked about a little bit about gratitude and an economy of gratitude as freely given, you know, everyone's invited to the table and bring what you have. And that what you have is more than enough, and there will even be more than you need, if everybody just brings what they have. Talking about, you know, where Jesus feeds the multitudes. And you just brought what you had and how about this we didn't run out! This may be a bigger miracle that not specifically the number of people but just that there's an economy there and in God's economy, there's abundance. And we talked about how if we would just revert to giving away things that we could literally with overnight, if we a minute we could, everybody would have clean drinking water. If we actually managed to do it; if I could get people in Yemen to stop bickering about this or the other. We could overnight, help all of those people that are starving, and one of the worst famine that exists, but we can't because we continue to be Imperial. And we continue to want to fight over whatever we want to fight about. And we are so inherently good at that. I really do hope that by Christmas, we figured out a way to genuinely want to engage in active peace on earth, as opposed to just peace in Virginia, or peace in Florida, or peace in my county.
I really do hope that you're right. I hope that we're right.
Thank you so much for coming on. I hope to do it again sometime, possibly on on a different topic.
But thank you so much for your Sunday afternoon, I appreciate it.
JDC 48:52
It is more than a pleasure, thank you very much.
Seth Price 49:09
You know, I'm not really sure how to end, December and this show for the year. So I'll leave you with this. I really hope that you all have been challenged and as grown in your faith as much as I have this year, and it doesn't really matter what direction you grown in. I hope that you all have and will continue to have a blessed year as we close this one out and I cannot wait to see what's in store for next year. Be well, be blessed for the remainder of 2018.