We continue our efforts to demythologize the gospel.
Upon returning from her three-month visit with Elizabeth, Mary had no doubt that she was pregnant. It would start to show soon. We can be sure she tried to explain the whole thing as best she was able, but who would believe it? Apparently Joseph didn’t, but he had no stomach for destroying her and her family’s public reputation. He was pondering how to quietly and kindly dissolve the engagement.
It was then that the Angel Gabriel visited him in a dream. You should not doubt Joseph recognized this was more than just his own imagination at work. Greeting him as if he were royalty, Gabriel told Joseph not to worry about the embarrassment of Mary’s situation; this was God’s own hand at work. Then he predicted this would be a son, someone Joseph should be proud to raise. This arrangement was not unheard of; kings often farmed out their sons to be raised by subordinate nobles. This is how Joseph would have taken it. Further, the language would have registered in Joseph’s awareness as Messianic.
Matthew was a relative of Jesus, and already knew some of the background. Luke had two years’ leisure to interview Mary and any still surviving family and associates of Jesus, while Paul was confined awaiting trial. Nobody had a chance to talk to Joseph by the time Jesus went public. Joseph apparently died sometime after his firstborn’s bar-mitzvah. But there’s no doubt both Joseph and Mary discussed together the miraculous events they experienced. Thus, Matthew knew about this part of the story.
He connected it with an old prophesy — Isaiah 7:10-17. While neither the wording of Isaiah in Hebrew, nor as translated by Matthew into Greek, plainly states “virgin,” it is implied. At the same time, it is hardly a major emphasis for either of them.* Matthew was drawing on the context of Isaiah’s prophecy of how God redeems His people, sometimes for inscrutable reasons. However, those reasons are mysterious only to people who ignore God’s clearly stated intention to reveal Himself and His ways to fallen mankind. That Mary bore the Son of God in her womb at this point does not require legalistic semantics from the text, since Hebrew language and culture offers no support at all for such a thing. It all hangs on the clear declaration of God through the angel Gabriel.
The emphasis Matthew makes is on the title, Immanuel — “God with us.” Isaiah’s prophecy was about how God shepherded His Covenant Nation. Jesus would be the ultimate living expression of the divine moral character of God, born in human form to come be with us. Thus, we could become acquainted with God as a person. He would be as real to us as any other person we could encounter in this world.
Matthew’s wording indicates that this dream caused Joseph to awaken. We should assume that he then began pondering what was required to carry out the command of his Lord. Matthew says very little, but we can imagine Joseph skipping the formal wedding and simply bringing her home with him. It wouldn’t matter what they might have told people about it, the common assumption would be that Joseph couldn’t wait, and they hastily set up housekeeping because she was already pregnant with his child. Meanwhile, he actually did wait, not having sex with her during pregnancy. True to his commitment, he named his legal heir Jesus.
However, it is Luke who puts that birth in a far clearer historical context. As part of the oppressive Roman rule, Emperor Augustus ordered a poll tax on his empire. The records are spotty, but he probably did this more than once. It was how ancient empires carried out a census, an excuse to tax individuals directly. Normal protocol forced them to work through subordinate rulers, with hefty scraping before the money made its way back to the top. With a census, the emperor could collect directly, cutting out the middlemen, with only the need to hire contractors for physically collecting it. Every man was obliged to return to his ancestral home to register and pay that tax.
Luke was no Hebrew, but a Gentile with a solid Hellenic education. He notes that this was during the time when Quirinius first exercised authority from his base in Syria. This places the date somewhere between 10 and 6 BC. I’m not going to wrangle with the other complaints unbelievers make about this passage; see this page for more details.
So Joseph was obliged to make this long trip from Nazareth back to Bethlehem. This was late in her pregnancy, nearly six months after the two began living as husband and wife. They would have left as soon as possible, given it was a long hike of roughly 80-90 miles on the roads existing at the time. Healthy hikers could have made it in about four or five days, but this probably took Joseph and Mary quite a bit longer, given her condition.
Upon arriving, Joseph’s registration would include noting he was married. That would interest tax collectors thinking about how, in some later round of poll taxing, the head count for his household would grow. After such a long and expensive trip, the couple were stuck until their impending newborn could travel.
The place was packed and they ended up spending the first few nights among livestock somewhere. It wasn’t too much of a step down from staying in what folks called inns in those days. An inn was just a collection of stalls with at least one side open, since folks with any animal mounts would have kept them in the open courtyard adjacent to their space. It’s quite possible that Joseph and Mary simply slept in that open courtyard; Luke doesn’t actually say it was a stable or barn. He also doesn’t mention any animals.
The census was not a one-day affair, but people were coming and going over a period of weeks, at the least. During their initial stay in Bethlehem, Mary gave birth in that situation. There would have been enough folks hanging around that Mary would have some basic assistance, since virtually every older woman could perform midwifery in those days. The Hebrew maternal instinct was strong enough that random strangers would gladly have helped. So the baby was wrapped in the standard stuff women collect when expecting, and he was laid in the handiest thing that could function as a cradle: a feed trough.
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*For those interested in the question, there is a Hebrew word emphasizing virginity, but Isaiah did not use it. He chose a word meaning a young lady, which would imply it in some contexts. The Hebrew mind would not have seized upon that point the way Western minds do. To the Hebrews it would not be a major doctrine, just a minor point in passing, on the way to a far more important truth about God’s divine moral character. Isaiah’s choice of words reflects the context of his prophecy, which turned on the issue of how long it would take for certain things to happen. God’s redemption of Ahaz’s kingdom would take about as long as a young woman to get married, have a child, and wean him, but before the child was morally accountable.
