 Mike and why you got the league and all your listeners as well and a very happy Christmas and you're looking resplendid in your it seems festive iron jumper i'm not sure if it's on because it's the time of the year but i i'm getting the Christmas vibes off you good i well sure listen when we have a father of five one couldn't but have Christmas vibes with sample coming um so uh yeah it's uh it is the festive season and we're looking forward to it now and with all please god have a have a good and safe Christmas the state of challenges of the present time indeed last year when we were talking about the history of Christmas we talked about uh winter solstice the pagan festival celebrated around this time of year and the the roman empire and ancient times let's talk this year about the christian story of christmas and it's like everything we talk about really it's it's trying to uh separate fact from fiction you know uh myth from reality and all that kind of stuff so what's your reading of it well look christmas as everybody has a different maybe understanding of christmas and everybody loves christmas um and people have over the years artists poets musicians the valid bits of stories into it some of its myth some of it's simply untrue some of its ignorance and has been embellished and added to over the years so how do you separate the fact from the fiction and then to understand what actually the the christian narratives and in scripture what does it actually tell us yeah well we'll talk about the birth of jesus i just wonder you know at the moment it feels it feels to me that that's not as much what christmas is about yes it is for some but it seems we've moved to this commercial thing you know i think if you asked uh you know 25 uh 2010 year olds they might think santa was born at christmas and and not jesus just but before we get into the history of that do you think that goes in cycles or has it gone in cycles over christmas that there's a move away really from you know the the maybe the more religious traditional element of christmas or are we turning away on a on a journey that we can't go back on if that makes sense i think so i think there's a journey what you say people are moving away words becoming more secular we're being feeling like as humans you know we're god and we can make decisions and science and reason is beyond everything but you know there are still people that have their christian faith and if one thinks of the christmas story itself there was only a handful of people involved in the event the divine event of christmas these were all poor people marie joseph the shepherds you know very very small handful of people and maybe we're going back to that as well but that's not to to say that people i still think have the spirit of christmas and understand the spirit of christmas they may not understand that the christ is in the christmas it's more secular and and look at everybody to their own so to speak um and maybe for for people maybe trying to understand what it is that we do know about christmas theologically and scripturally and historically in geography is maybe the direction we are going to go and let's talk about that then so so in terms of the the recording of the birth of uh jesus in the gospels is it across the board how many gospels record this and tell us a bit about that that's very interesting question greg and people again maybe don't know these things but there are four gospels as we know only two of them talk about the birth of jesus matthew and look and stuff that is written in matthew's gospel is not to be found in looks about the birth and stuff that's vice versa so there's a a lot of anomalies um and maybe the beginning point is the genealogy matthew for example is writing a gospel he's a jew and he wants to be seen as presenting jesus as the fulfillment as a messiah as the person that will suffer die and bring bring redemption so everything he writes he writes from a jewish point of view and he gives a genealogy of of jesus going back to abraham and and david because he wants to show the royal lineage that is very very important for the jews and and he gives six four deans now numbers are very very important for the for the for the jews seven is the perfect number so then this the next one next number seven after the six four deans is the the fulfillment which he would like to present as jesus as for luke doesn't give the genealogy of jesus at his birth he gives it later on when he's baptized as a grown man and he gives 76 names and off the 76 names luke and matthew gave most of them there's only three in common so there's a lot of anomalies there that don't add up and and again for luke it's the 77th person in the genealogy from abraham is jesus so seven and by 11 11 777 again the perfect number for the jews so the genealogy is very very interesting and matthew at the very end of his genealogy says jacob that's a father of joseph who was be thrown to marie so he doesn't say that joseph was the father of jesus but that he was be thrown to marie and that was important because it put the whole biblical prophecies in the old testament that the child would be born in bethlehem the city of david so jesus both to the mother's bloodline and to joseph's bloodline was off david's genealogy the jews all jews know which tribe to belong to there's 12 tribes of israel ruben nevi the david so on so forth so it was just to make important that jesus was of the royal blood off david and it was prophesized that the messiah that they were expecting would come from the city of david which is bethlehem so what was the relationship then between marie and joseph as much as we can determine well again there's a lot of ensures here um some would believe that joseph actually was married before was he a widow at this stage did he have other children as believed that he had and that jesus had half brothers that's some theologians will say that some disagree and marie again what age was marie what age was joseph we believe that marie was about 15 when the annunciation happened when the angel appeared to her a very very young girl and joseph would often be come across as being a much older man but what we do believe is they were related possibly first cousin or second cousin and that joseph was bethrowed to her and that was for the jews equivalent really it was a serious judicial agreement um it was almost equivalent to marriage whereby when you were bethrowed you live with your parents for one more year and after that year then you went to live with your husband that was the jewish custom of the time and already being 15 it sounds very young today but in the culture that people lived in at that time people didn't live beyond 40 and so childbearing was happened at a very young age particularly for you know for young girls they got married and bethrowed at a very young age and clearly this was the custom of the time and that's what happened in marie yeah in terms of the story that we know right i mean how much of that is based on any of the writings in the gospels you know uh the donkey and the manger and you know the stuff that is represented say uh well we know all about that but how much of that is has changed over the years and and i suppose more recently or is that have we've been following that uh story for a long time well again people often think of the krim as some kind of stable but one needs to just step back a little bit when they would have gone to bethlehem the city of bethlehem uh in judia what happened was there was a census decreed and the way the jews that worked as families they didn't do it in their own villages they went to their ancestors home and joseph been off the royal blood of david david said he was bethlehem so he had to move to bethlehem to travel to bethlehem which he did a journey of somewhere being 70 and 100 miles and so when he arrived there all the people belonging to the tribe of david so could you imagine the morning all the odonals arriving into donnie gall town or all the morphes arriving into gallway or wherever the place would be mobbed so here's a woman uh pregnant always ready to give birth uh poor herself and joseph and there's no space for them and it's not that they were maybe rejected but the fact was she was about to give birth which she wanted to have gone into a crowded house to give birth so it would appear that she was offered a stable and in bethlehem even to this day the hills around it are honeycombed with caves small caves that were used for the animals and it is believed that in a place like that where where may we give birth where she would have quiet and peace okay we're going through the history of christmas with historian joe kelly uh joe talked to me then about uh the role of the wise men uh and um also the shepherds you know they're also very much associated with uh the story and the crepe and what have you what do we know about that well what we do know is that there was a census called by by caesar um some would argue that it actually wasn't the reason that joseph and mary traveled to bethlehem but they did travel to bethlehem and they were in bethlehem both gospels let us know that that that's where he was born um and then the question is how did they travel there um they would have traveled by donkey and they could have gone the direct route which would have been over hills the uh jezral valley which would have taken them about 70 miles and would have been as the crow flies would have been hard or they could have gone down by the jordan valley along the river which would have been flat and would have been maybe a hundred miles so it would have been easier for for mary and so therefore we believe that they arrived into bethlehem uh the longer route and it probably took them upwards of a week traveling uh and so when they arrived there as we said already the place would have been mobbed with with people that were there to register themselves and then they're they're taken to a stable so now the route so to speak um on the hillside and obviously shepherds are there uh shepherds are seen as the lowest class of society because they don't own land and they're tending to sheep um so shepherds have a terribly important part to play in the whole story and we'll explain that in a minute but she gives birth to her her child and then again angels turn up a terrible lot in the christmas and art it was more so than anywhere else in scripture and very very important and one of the words they they use all the time be not afraid none to mary or don't be troubled every time they appear to be a to our lady to uh zacharia or to the shepherd so they appear to the shepherds and the shepherds were confused now these were poor uh uneducated people they were told that there was a child born it was a messiah and they would find a child in the manger in Bethlehem wrapped in swaddling clothes and so they set off there was a sense of urgency anytime the angels appear the people that that meet the angel or encounter the angel there's a sense of urgency after what they did let let us go quickly to see if this is true and they rushed off to this table and found joseph mary and the child there so the shepherds were very very important and what's lovely about the whole thing is and this is maybe goes back to your question about are we moving away from the christian christmas and maybe we are but the point is that god didn't reveal himself to the intellectuals or the scientists or the smart or the royal people he revealed himself the divine event of the child being born was done in among very poor people and a very small number of people it was a very quiet thing and to think that i supposedly the king was born in a stable like the carpet was straw his cock was a straw out of which animals ate it's the grandeur of the simplicity of that as i kind of ironic to say that but it was such grandeur given to him in a very very simple way and so the shepherds understood this and they went away obviously and and spread the word then so we have that and then later on we find the three wise men supposedly arrived but there is no evidence that there were actually three wise men at all and that came at a later time we do know that they were as our strawmers that they did study the stars that they were of a priestly class and they'd come from persia from the east and they went to see her to tell him where you know ask him where is this king that's to be born and her it was obviously very very aware of his own royalty and didn't want any threat and he said look if you find the child like come back and tell me so i can pay a mortgage but obviously he wanted them killed he didn't want to have anybody usurping his power so the wise men head off and they eventually find the child they're following some star again it's there's it's very symbolic because these aren't christian or judy and sorry why would they why would they because you've talked of the the geography of it and this might sound like a really simplistic question why follow a star why not just head to why not just head to bethlehem well they didn't obviously mary and joseph were able to navigate there yeah well they didn't know where the child was to be born they're obviously kind of a magician there were magicians or astronomers or they would kind of understood that there was something divine to happen they were trying to read the stars they didn't probably have all the information and did they come bearing gifts and what's the significance of them oh god you're you're very good well first of all to make it correct we don't know how many wise men there were there's nowhere in the bible it says three wise men that came later venerable beads said that there were actually three of them and give them a name melkor casper and baltazar and you asked a very good question what did they bring well the first man melkor he was a long bearded older man and he brought a gift of gold and that's the idea of royalty that jesus was of royalty and then casper he was a bearded man but a very young man and he brought incense and again that's the idea of his nobility of divinity that's the symbol of incense and then finally then baltazar who's believed to be a colored man and an unbearded colored man he brought the gift of frankincense symbolic of death symbolic of suffering and the death of what happened jesus so that was the three gifts but we don't know if it was three men we don't know if there's three gifts obviously they did but could you imagine three men of that caliber with their camels and their caravans they've been traveling for months and they obviously had people with them they just didn't arrive on their own and arriving into a stable they probably couldn't communicate to this 16 year old girl they didn't have the language uh and who's just after giving birth um you could imagine what was going on it must have been an amazingly interesting interaction they couldn't communicate but that they were here to reverence it's held and well you could imagine what our mary was thinking of 16 what's going on here yeah you've mentioned the census a couple of times and it's a bit of a why to buy question what was what was its function like why were there so many old donals and murphy's in Bethlehem at that time well very good conflating your your metaphors but you know what i i understand i understand well they're better than the huses maybe or the and the the interesting thing about it is that you know we we do census now every five years and it's been very technical but when cedar was in command of Rome he was known as a bookkeeper of the of Rome and his empire was massive it ran from England into north you know and Germany down into northern african around into syria and modern-day israel and he just decreed a um a census fairly weak regularly for Rome where he ruled in tiber the tiber river but he decided to have an one done for his whole empire he wanted to know how big his empire was what population obviously to get taxes later on down the road to know what everybody owned and he sent out 20 commissioners 20 people to go and do this census for him into the various outposts of the roman empire and it took 25 years to do this so supposedly this was done when quenarias was governor of syria now there's debate whether that really happened or not because king herit was the king of judia at that time so why would somebody from syria further up another country be carrying out a census when he was the king there in that area so there's some contradictions and again everybody thinks jesus was born year zero you know we have bc before christ and ad ano domini jesus was probably according to the theologians and pope benedic has a great bit of research done on this somewhere between six and seven bc jesus was born so the figures are wrong see when christmas wasn't celebrated initially at the christian christmas until three two five because the christians were persecuted in rome so they weren't allowed to practice their faith and then after three two five they began to celebrate christmas when constant time allowed the questions to i know we touched on this last year but december 25th that is uh a nominal date is it i mean you know in 325 do we know when christmas was being celebrated it's not actually on the day of the birth of christ is it or perhaps it is my recollections you says it wasn't yeah it's it's you're you're very correct in that look the winter salt is the salt in bettiga is the solace's average word for light salt is some in latin so the invincible son vince vince and vince sent to conquer the invincible son was a pagan festival around the 20th december ties in with winter salt is as you say at the beginning of the program and so when christians then were allowed to celebrate christmas they had to this monk dinaus he has had to figure out when it was and he went with the 25th of december the reality is that it could have been any day in the year but it just that it tied in with that some believe it was march april even as late as june we don't actually know the date of Jesus's birth and so it was just that it was timely for the christians to say natal is solid but it is the birth of the invincible son ie that jesus was the invincible su and invincible son so it was christianized and then over time then it was then the christ christ mass the situation of the christ mass so look at you you're asking a very very good question and again when was he actually born i'm unsure and i don't think anybody can answer that question we were talking about i think this used to be done at mass the blessing of the cars did it or did we used to do it outside but a caller says we should bring back the tradition of blessing of cars traveling a week before christmas just to put these things die out we needed i think that used to i have a recollection when i was younger of cars being blessed at a sunday mass maybe i don't know does that ring a bell with you know no it actually does right maybe someone out there can help i'll wait six six five thousand huh we're still using the carts and horses we are not as advanced as well the donkey has a cross on its back which has healing properties it represents the donkey carrying mary to betley hemsa as a caller and lastly but not least morning great can you wish dr joe kelly and his family a very happy christmas from the mccarrie's in caragard oh thank you thank you very very much listen have a great one uh it's always a case that it feels like we're only scraps in the surface but we will reconvene again into the future and and unravel some more stuff well listen happy christmas to yourself to caroline and the team there and highland radio others that they could look they should have uh and maybe one of the message we were talking about today the angels known to marry not afraid despite what challenges we have and no doubt it christmas will be difficult for people in many different ways people that have a sense of loss and maybe a play an empty place at the table this christmas that we're all in this together and we all have a christmas spirit and please god um that we all have a peaceful and happy and safe christmas agreed take care of yourself thank you very much indeed doctor