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For Unto Us a Child is Born
an excerpt from The Story of Christianity: 2000 Years of Faith
The Roots of Christianity
IN THE OBSCURE TOWN of Bethlehem in the desolate province of Judea in the great empire of Rome, a baby was born in about 4 B.C. to a young woman named Mary and her fiancé, Joseph. Although the infant's lineage is traced to Abraham and David in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, there would have been little to suggest to the casual observer that this child was the promised Messiah, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Yet his life, death, and resurrection are the central events of Christian history.
*JESUS' CHILDHOOD*
We are told very little about the child's mother, other than that she was
a young virgin who had conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. We know
even less about Jesus' "adoptive" father, Joseph, except that he was a carpenter
and a man of great integrity. When Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant
prior to their marriage, he decided quietly to break the engagement. In a
dream he was told by an angel that the child was from God and that he should
proceed with the marriage.
When Jesus was about two, an angel again appeared to Joseph to warn him of
Herod's extermination of all male infants in Bethlehem. Joseph and his family
escaped to Egypt. Following Herod's death, the angel instructed Joseph that
it was safe to retrun, and the family settled in the Galilean town of Nazareth.
The Gospels provide very little information about Jesus' childhood and young
adulthood. Luke's Gospel tells us that a righteous man named Simeon and a
prophetess named Anna recognized him as the Messiah. We also read in the
same chapter that Jesus was "filled with wisdom beyond his years" (Luke 2:40)
and that when he was 12 years old the religious teachers in Jerusalem "were
amazed at his understanding and his answers" (Luke 2:47) when Jesus met with
them during a Passover festival.
THE WISE MEN
In Matthew we read that after the birth of Christ "some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem, asking. 'Where is the newborn king of the Jews?
We have seen his star as it arose, and we have come to worship him'" (Matthew
2:1-2). These men were probably astronomers from Mesopotamia. The "star"
they followed may have been a comet or a supernova. Regardless of the light's
source, in the Gospel story it is regarded as a divinely inspired beacon
whose significance was not lost on a perceptie band of Eastern scholars.
GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND MYRRH
The gifts the wise men, or Magi, brought to Jesus were of such value in the
ancient world that a poor family from Judea would have considered them treasures.
Gold ,of course, continues to be a consistently valuable commodity. The practical
use of myrrh and frankincense, however, is less familiar to modern consumers.
Both are processed from aromatic plants and are used to make perfumes, incense,
and other scented products. Frankincense was sometimes used for religious
ceremonies and myrrh for funerals, so some have seen symbolic meanings in
the gifts.
THE FLIGHT OF THE HOLY FAMILY INTO EGYPT
According to Matthew's Gospel, Herod the Great ordered the killing of all
Jewish boys in and around Bethlehem under the age of two in an attempt to
kill the Messiah he had heard about and feared (an event known as the "Masacre
of the Innocents"). Jesus' family was forced to flee to Egypt to escape Herod's
wrath. They stayed there until Herod's death, when they moved north to settle
in Nazareth.
by Michael Collins
Copyright © 1999 by Dorling Kindersley Limited, London.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
The Story of Christianity
Twenty centuries separate us from the time when Jesus walked the dusty roads of Galilee, preaching his message of repentance and salvation. The Story of Christianity sets out to explore these centuries — how the followers of Jesus, who believed he was God, tried to live out his teachings.
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