This week, more than two billion Christians around the globe
will observe the birth of a Jewish man named Yahshua ben Nazareth.
He grew up to change the course of the world more than any other
human in history.
This week, more than two billion Christians around the globe will observe the birth of a Jewish man named Yahshua ben Nazareth. He grew up to change the course of the world more than any other human in history.
Of course, we now know this man as Jesus Christ. We know the stories in the Gospels of His birth. These give us the traditional images of Christmas: shepherds and angels, mysterious astrologers from the East following some strange celestial sign, and a virgin birth in a humble shed.
They’re imaginative stories that fill our hearts with child-like innocence. But who was the historical Jesus? Who was the real man beyond the stories, the flesh and blood Jesus who sought to bring peace to a violent world?
From a historical perspective, December 25 almost certainly could not have been Jesus’s birthday. This date was set by Church authorities at the end of the fifth century as a marketing tool to convert pagan Romans and Greeks. The date of the winter solstice was chosen because it was the same birthday as the ancient God Mithras. The similarities go even further. Like Jesus, Mithras was also sacrificed for the atonement of sins. And this popular Roman god’s devotees practiced baptism, communion and believed in heaven and hell — just like the Christians.
The name Jesus also was invented to market Christianity to the pagans.
Historians believe he was called either “Yeshua,” the Hebrew word for salvation or “Yahshua” which means Yah (the Lord) is Salvation. (Today’s common Jewish name “Joshua” is a version of this.) “Jesus” is the
English translation of the Latin “Jesu” which itself is a translation of the Greek word for salvation “lesous” (pronounced yeh-soo).
It gets a bit more complicated. The title Christ is the Greek version of “Christos,” a translation of the Hebrew word moshiach which means
Messiah or Promised One. It’s quite an irony the man whose birth we honor tomorrow never heard himself referred to as “Jesus Christ.”
He grew up much like most peasant boys in the first century. His mother Mary would barely be out of childhood herself. As undesirable as teenage pregnancy is in our modern view, it was quite socially acceptable for girls of the Roman world to give birth to a first born son at the age of 13 or 14 years.
As a small child, He certainly had many playmates. He would have been a leader in games like ball and hide-and-seek that all children have played for centuries. Growing up, He would have heard much talk about the tyranny of the Roman Empire. Taxes were a constant source of anxiety for His village of Nazareth which had a population of about two hundred peasants. The Romans took one-fourth of its produce and farm animals.
And corrupt Jewish high priests in the Temple at Jerusalem also required their share.
As expected of a Jewish lad, Jesus took on his father Joseph’s trade. We think of him as a carpenter working with wood, but according to scholars, this term in the Bible is a misconception for our modern ears.
It’s more accurate to consider Him a stonemason who worked blocks of rock for construction purposes.
Think of Him as today’s equivalent of a construction worker.
Imagine Him commuting to work every day, a three-mile walk from his humble village home to the cosmopolitan city of Sepherus which Romans were constructing along the Sea of Galilee. During Jesus’s lunch break, He might have talked to sophisticated Roman artisans working on floor mosaics. They’d chat about Plato, Aristotle, Socrates or the epics of Homer.
After work, He might spend an hour or two at a local wine tavern.
Perhaps He heard the stories told by merchants who traveled the ancient world’s trade routes — tales about faraway India or even the mysterious
Celts in Britain. On a sunny afternoon, He might take a young lady friend to see a play at the Sepherus amphitheater — a hilarious comedy by Plautus (the Neil Simon of his day) or a wrenching tragedy by Sophocles.
As for Jesus’s physical appearance, we have no accurate way to know what
He really looked like. But assume it was nothing like the striking European man commonly portrayed. That image evolved from early Church mosaics trying to create a comparison with Him and the Roman god Apollo, the Mel Gibson of the pagan deities.
If He looked like the peasant men of His time, the historic Jesus probably had a rather plain face wrinkled severely from the hot desert sun. He was probably balding. And he would have been under five foot ten inches. Having no easy access to a daily bath, he had a very repugnant odor if smelled by modern people. Not that anyone of His society would notice. Only the hoighty-toighty of the ancient world could afford to smell nice.
In the span of twenty centuries since Jesus’s birth, we’ve created a sanitized version of this amazing man. But what really matters is not what Jesus looked like or the true pronunciation of His name or other biographical details. What matters is putting into our own lives the lessons this great teacher taught us.
In this season of giving, let us strive to bring peace to our modern world and celebrate the child-like wonder in all humanity. This certainly would please Yahshua ben Nazareth more than all the gold, frankincense and myrrh in the world.
