How much did Ancient Man know about Christmas? A lot, actually.
By: David Blen Nance
Tags: Christmas, Jesus, Bible, Christianity

How much did Ancient Man know about Christmas? A lot, actually.

Merry Christmas, and Happy Boxing Day!

To my family and friends, and to you, Gentle Reader, I wanted to offer my own testimonial of the season.

There’s a bogus genre of thought circulating prevalently out in Mainstream Religion right now whose only purpose, as near as I can, is to throw a wet towel on the meaning and happiness of Christmastime.

That narrative goes something like this:

People suck.

People suck so bad we ruined God’s plan (like, right out of the starting gate) and He had to send Jesus to un-ruin it.

But He didn’t bother really explaining the new plan to us ‘til Jesus actually showed up to tell us about it. Just dropped a hint here and there in the Bible every once in a while. You know, like a teaser.

So, when Christmas happened, it was a Happy Surprise, and aren’t we so glad we’re not in the dark like the generations of bozos and screw-ups who came before us?

‘Cuz, y’know, only half the human race really deserves Christmas.

As far as I can ascertain (and I read a lot) this amalgam of facepalms doesn’t just fly in the face of the love and omniscience of the Christian God; it also (if I may rustle up the moxie to say so) is almost entirely Un-Biblical.

Oh, sure, there are doubtless droves of Seminarians out there who can produce a fancy-pants chain of sorta-related Bible verses which, if you twist the Good Book clockwise 15 degrees and squint hard enough, can be tortured into saying something along those lines.

And they’d probably tell me my interpretation here is oversimplified. But, guys, sorry: Whatever you thought you were explaining, this is what actually makes it out here to The Man On The Street.

And, in fact, when you ask these same folks to get out their Scriptures, dig into the nuances of the text, and do some exegesis on the “simplified version” of the story, my experience is that a preacher worth his or her salt generally comes up with something that sounds a lot more like what what I’m about to tell you.

The Old Testament world knew about Jesus Christ. They knew a lot about Him.

Take Isaiah, for instance, about 700 BCE. God tells him:

Thy dead shall live. I swear it by my dead body: They shall be resurrected. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust! For the light of heaven’s joy rests down upon thee as the dew — and the earth shall cast up the redeemed to their appointed judgment. ~Isaiah 26:19

Now, that’s my own translation after tearing into the original linguistics on BibleHub — and it’s totally consistent with both the textual context and Isaiah’s overall testimony of Jesus. For Isaiah, the Christ child would be the Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace — and also the Lamb brought to the slaughter to redeem His people from their sins.

Moses (about 1300 BCE) developed a whole legal system, complete with obligatory national holidays, designed to prepare the people for Christ; and Christ, Moses predicted, would bring them a higher law.

(Moses’ law worked, by the way, and remarkably well — so well, in fact, that after Jesus’ death, a large percentage of Israel’s priestly class recognized in Him the fulfillment of prophecy and joined Jesus’ Apostles; as did many, many lay Jews, even at the risk of excommunication by the Establishment.)

My friends, Jesus wasn’t a “surprise” to these good people who started the world phenomenon of Christianity. He was someone they had come to know and love by living a law that, all day, every day, taught nothing but Jesus.

Abraham (about 2000 BCE), we are told, foresaw the coming of Jesus Christ; and because of his confidence in the resurrection, he was willing to offer his son as a sacrifice — just as he saw God would offer His Son.

Daniel (about 600 BCE) was shown both that Christ would be “cut off” and that He would redeem His people. And Daniel and his contemporary, Ezekiel, both had visions of the resurrection.

The psalmists (about 1000 BCE) predicted many key events of Jesus’ life, and many other Biblical prophets through the ages predicted that Christ would redeem mankind from sin, and also His betrayal at the hands of his own people.

Nor was prophecy about Jesus dead when Jesus was born. Why, prophets met the Baby Jesus in the Temple! Visions and prophecies accompanied His birth! Wise Men crossed the world, just to see Him!

Christmas was a revelation, to be sure; but it wasn’t a new light in the cold, cruel world. We didn’t have to wait to ‘find out what God was up to.” No, the light of Christmas, the “Desire of all nations,” has always been there, lifting mankind from the very beginning with the promise of something better than this world. And our ancestors, many of them, knew what they were looking for.

Now, a bunch of grumpy someones out there will assay and allege that I am “reading Jesus” into Jewish texts that were, after all, stitched together, Frankenstein-style (for so, according to Wikipedia, the scholars say). They would like you to know, Gentle Reader, that supposed prophecies of the Christian Jesus are an innovation twisted, practically by accident, from an evolving, redactionist text tradition.

Humbug, I say — and I can prove it.

Stay tuned.