It doesn't bother me to regard the Nativity story as mythical, but then I think one should ask

[struggle4progress]

Why have people retold this story so often? What has it meant to them?

It's a strange story involving an unexplained pregnancy, an empire, an awkward birth, visions to shepherds, astrologers, a cruel and dishonest king, and a massacre. The story was just as incredible to many of the ancients as it is to us today: most people two thousand years ago did not converse with angels, and most of them knew how women became pregnant. The story comes to us jumbled, in several inconsistent voices, from an uppity province in the Roman empire two thousand years ago: the various written versions of the tale appear around the time the Romans finally tired of the whole troublesome lot, smashed the remnants of their state, and dispersed the inhabitants.

Joseph discovers his fiancé will have a child that is not his, but he decides to assume responsibility and marries her anyway. Mary does not give birth comfortably at home but rather under filthy conditions. Nobody important notices this, but some local shepherds regard this birth as a great miracle. A few strangers come from far away, looking for the newborn, and go straight to the king, hoping for directions: the king knows nothing and asks them to report back after they find the child. But the strangers realize the king's intentions are not good, so after locating the baby, they sneak off in a completely different direction. The king worries that the child threatens his royal power, flies into a rage, and orders the murder of all the infants in that area. The little family flees to another country, refugees from a massacre. And there is a weird punchline: this child, born among barnyard animals, without any claim to a good family pedigree, is actually G-d, though very few realize it: a few learned strangers know, because they can read the signs of the times from great distance; a few ignorant shepherds know, because they have visions of angels

[MNBrewer]

1. G Hyphen d

Is so pretentious. As though you're not actually writing the word "god", by omitting the o, and somehow showing respect.

[struggle4progress]

23. I'm sorry you didn't like the question I asked

[EC]

2. Couldn't you ask that about any folk tale that has been

told through the ages? Why do they endure? Usually they are ways of teaching right from wrong, emphathy and compassion...maybe that's all it is...

[struggle4progress]

12. The Wisdom of the Ancients (Francis Bacon 1619)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=155263

[Zoeisright]

3. This story, in many variations, has been told since the beginning of time.

Christianity doesn't have the patent on the virgin birth, a god born into lowly circumstances, and being unrecognized in his time. Every single religion has some variant on this story.

[JuniperLea]

4. Yep...

Floods, virgin births, resurections... all the major cults have them.

[cleanhippie]

17. +1

[Dorian Gray]

28. Therefore

it's an archetype, and it resonates with a myriad of cultures.

[Democracyinkind]

5. Maybe people have retold this story so often....

... because it has been the main plank of the PR campaign of one of the mightiest institutions that ever existed?

Give me the propaganda resources of the catholic church of the last 1900 years and I'll make any story - even one more moronic and devoid of depth than the one we are talking about right now (if that is even possible) - the greatest story ever told.

[struggle4progress]

18. Of course, that's sloppy history, since the religion in question was simply illegal

during its first few centuries: there were no great "propaganda resources of the catholic church" in 100 AD or 200 AD

[LAGC]

24. What's your point exactly?

I imagine the nativity story wasn't widely known except by believers in similar pagan virgin birth stories, until the Church settled on the Bible and began preaching such throughout all its ministries.

Point is, after 1000 years of Church domination over Western civilization's storehouse of knowledge, how could it not become ubiquitous? What makes you think it was so wide-spread back then?

[Democracyinkind]

26. I think your mistaken about that. Obviously, they already had enough resources in 100 and 200 AD

...and from that point on they just kept expanding.

I'm sure no one is naive enough today to claim that Christianity's success is due to the originality of its liturgy.

[zipplewrath]

6. You'd have to understand the myths and legends of the time

The details of the story were there because they had significance with respect to other myths and legends. So this person has to be borne under miraculous conditions so as to possess characteristics that were well understood from other legends. Virgin births, the location of the birth, the people involved, etc. The story has significance NOW because it has constantly been morphed and modified in its imagery to have contemporary meaning. It has become, and remained a contemporary legend, whose elements are then introduced into other legends.

Which is why Luke Skywalker ends up with a simple farmer, instead of some distant royal, and rich, uncle who teaches him the ways of royalty.

[Cleita]

7. It's Greek mythology rewritten for Christians.

The hero is born because a god impregnated his mortal mother. He has super human powers, but is not immortal. In order to prove himself he has to fight the cruel and dishonest kings not to mention a variety of other villains and monsters. After he dies he is taken to the heavens and becomes a constellation or he goes to Olympus to join the other gods. Pick a hero, Heracles, Perseus or any other number of them.

[Burma Jones]

8. It's Greek mythology rewritten for Jews

All we Christians are just members of a Jewish Cult.......

[Cleita]

9. Hmm, Jews never accepted Jesus, remember?

Those Jews who did, the Nazarenes, broke off from Judaism and became Christians.

[Rabrrrrrr]

11. The first followers of Jesus were almost all Jews. Paul's preaching was in synagogues.

The first generation of what became called 'Christian' were Jewish (except a few non-Jews), and then in the 50s Paul started preaching to gentiles as well as Jews. By the end of the century, there was a distinct split between Jews and the Jesus followers, and Christianity moved out of the synagogue and they went their own ways. Though the Christians grabbed the scriptures on the way out and kept them as well.

Definitely Jesus was a Jew, and all his disciples were Jews.

And so, to your question, yes, many Jews never accepted Jesus and Judaism remained a religion of its own - but some did, and they were the very first Jesus followers.

[Cleita]

14. I thought I said that when I referred to the Nazarenes, but

they stopped being Jews after Paul allowed uncircumcised gentiles to join. That was pretty much in the beginning so the Jewish establishment never accepted him or the Christians. If you want to split hairs Jesus himself never left Judaism. He just wanted it to be better, to reform it.

[Democracyinkind]

10. That's kind of controversial...

...kind of an egg and hen question.

There's those who say it's Greek mythology, there's those that say that the greeks themselves sneaked it out from somewhere, and then there's the whole narrative-archetype crowd that has been very vocal in the last years as far as I've heard.

The issue of whom-copied-whom in those times are a bit too complex to simply say "X derived Y from Z" in most cases... But then again - the similarities are stunning, as are others. Then there's the whole pre doric blackout and all ... Well .. No easy question... my 2 cents

[Cleita]

16. See my answer #15.

[struggle4progress]

13. Well, let's look at Heracles, then: his mother Alcmena is the daughter of King Electrion; servants

are in attendance at his birth, and it is clear that either he or his twinborn will be king. So in the Heracles narrative, the child is born into a powerful family; the issue of struggles over royal succession obviously hangs over his head from birth; his adversaries include greek gods. There are similarities to the nativity narrative, but it is not quite the same story

The ancient greeks, of course, investigated such questions in detail, even before the full flowering of rationality there. Here is Herodotus, a half millennium before the written nativity narrative:

... The Egyptians, they went on to affirm, first brought into use the names of the twelve gods, which the Greeks adopted from them; and first erected altars, images, and temples to the gods; and also first engraved upon stone the figures of animals ... The account which I received of this Hercules makes him one of the twelve gods. Of the other Hercules, with whom the Greeks are familiar, I could hear nothing in any part of Egypt. That the Greeks, however (those I mean who gave the son of Amphitryon that name), took the name from the Egyptians, and not the Egyptians from the Greeks, is I think clearly proved, among other arguments, by the fact that both the parents of Hercules, Amphitryon as well as Alcmena, were of Egyptian origin ... But the Egyptian Hercules is one of their ancient gods. Seventeen thousand years before the reign of Amasis, the twelve gods were, they affirm, produced from the eight: and of these twelve, Hercules is one ... Almost all the names of the gods came into Greece from Egypt. My inquiries prove that they were all derived from a foreign source, and my opinion is that Egypt furnished the greater number ... Whence the gods severally sprang, whether or no they had all existed from eternity, what forms they bore -- these are questions of which the Greeks knew nothing until the other day, so to speak. For Homer and Hesiod were the first to compose Theogonies, and give the gods their epithets, to allot them their several offices and occupations, and describe their forms; and they lived but four hundred years before my time, as I believe ...
Herodotus' History, Book II
http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.2.ii.html

Socrates was later infamously executed in a political trial, for "crimes" such as impiously alleging that the moon was simply a large rock and not a deity, but by 300 BC there was an explosion of rationalism in Greece that included the Aristotelian and Euclidean opera, and Herodotus was a classical writer by that time. Thus, "deconstructing mythology" must have been a well-known exercise in greek circles long before the Roman sack of Jerusalem. Let me then resume the query from my OP, which is why did people, who obviously had the cultural and intellectual resources to doubt the nativity narrative, nevertheless continue to retell it?

[Cleita]

15. I kind of accept Joseph Campbell's idea of this and he

puts Jesus in the category of mythological heroes both Greek and non-Greek. I just mentioned the Greeks because Jesus was born into a Hellenistic world so their culture would have been predominant among the more educated classes, those who could write and would eventually write the New Testament. The nativity story is pretty much myth about the supernatural events that took place. Jesus was probably an illegitimate child of Mary, whom Joseph accepted as his own, however, divinity and an immaculate conception was needed so that Mary wouldn't look like a whore and Jesus a bastard. I do believe he was a real person and a very good and charismatic person, who was ahead of his times.

[trotsky]

19. I find it incredible you don't realize just how ridiculous your question is.

why did people, who obviously had the cultural and intellectual resources to doubt the nativity narrative, nevertheless continue to retell it?

1. How many people of the era were literate? What percentage of the population do you estimate was?

2. How many people back then had any kind of understanding of what was or wasn't possible given even the rudimentary scientific principles understood at the time?

3. How did news spread among people of that time?

4. Have you ever played the telephone game?

My goodness, it's like you sincerely believe that everyone back then was thoroughly educated, well-read, and had access to reliable means of communication with no loss or corruption of data.

[Crunchy Frog]

20. I think that it's a very appealing story. I'm not a Christian

but I enjoy Christmas, and I enjoy the Nativity narrative element as part of the holiday.

I also think that the story has major differences from the Greek myths that are being touted as similar. In any event, I don't find those stories appealing to me in the same way.

I expect that most of the Nativity narrative is fictional; grafted onto the life story of Jesus after his death in order to try to help make the case for his being the fulfillment of OT prophecy and of divine origin. I still find it an appealing story.

[onager]

21. What "filthy conditions?"

As often stated, I don't believe any of this silly story is true...except for the part about a young woman finding herself unexpectedly knocked up.

But I'll play along, strictly as a Non-Existent Evil Deity's Advocate, so to speak:

Mary does not give birth comfortably at home but rather under filthy conditions.

Only if you follow Wal-Mart Chinese Suburban Creche Theology. Like so many things Xians believe, the story of Jesus being born in a stable apparently does not appear anywhere in the New Testament:

Matthew 2:11: And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother...

No stable, no lurking farm animals, no little drummer boy (see Revelation, where the Little Drummer Boy appears as one of the beasts of the Apocalypse). Just a house.

Luke 2: 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

2:12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

The most likely point the Two Befuddled Evangelists were trying to make:

1. Mary gave birth in a normal room in a normal house. To which she was probably invited by some nice person, after seeing the NO VACANCY sign at the Bethlehem Motel 6.
2. The room wasn't prepared for a birth, any more than my bedroom is right now. So someone was also kind enough to go fetch a small manger as a makeshift cradle for the baby.

OTOH, it might have been one HUGE manger, at least big enough for 3 people at once:

Luke 2:16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

[struggle4progress]

25. Old murals show the intrepretation is ancient

http://www.sacred-destinations.com.nyud.net:8090/greece/images/dafni/resized/mosaic-nativity-pd-yorck.jpg

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. The nativity stories mean different things to different people, and to different tellers

That the 2 versions in the official gospels are different (and that 2 gospels ignore it completely) shows it's a subjective take on the start of the life of Jesus.

The Matthew version is all about fulfilling prophecies, for those who like that sort of thing. There's no 'born in a manger' in that; it fits quite comfortably with the Jewish experience of the time, with some repression and violence by the local state power. I'd suggest it's mainly referenced these days because we like giving presents, and it ties presents to Jesus's birth (as opposed to the Feast of St. Nicholas), though we don't actually hear how long after his birth the Magi turned up. The Massacre of the Innocents is ignored by most people these days, and the flight to and return from Egypt (which are resonant for Jews, but not others).

The Luke version concentrates on the humble beginnings. It's aimed at gentiles, so doesn't bother with the genealogy, because gentiles don't care about tying the royal family of Israel into it, and it's unlikely to impress when Rome had just conquered the whole Mediterranean - the House of David were losers to losers to losers to losers to the Romans, by that time. But the 'he was born into a simple, modest family' message is attractive to similar people, and fits an all-inclusive religion well. A society really could do with at least one major myth involving birth, because a story to tell children about birth is useful, and I suspect the nativity has survived because its the obvious one for Christianity - the message is often "this is the one life that really counts".

[dimbear]

27. Let's reconsider from whence it comes, shall we?

The OP says "The story comes to us jumbled, in several inconsistent voices, from an uppity province in the Roman empire two thousand years ago."

I believe the consensus opinion is that the story was spliced on centuries later in the West. One finds no trace of it in Paul, for instance, nor in Mark, so we may safely set the earliest Christian writings aside. Similary nothing in the Didache, and so forth. There are the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke to deal with, but scholars have noted for many decades that both seem to be added on late--both have different styles and vocabularies from the remainders of those texts.

It's quite widely believed that Matthew has an original version which was written either in Hebrew or Aramaic which likely enough contained no birth narrative. For a surety it is recorded as being just about that much shorter than the Greek version.

That said, it's easy enough to see why a miraculous birth had to be spliced on. The competition among religions was keen, and the competition sported miracle birth stories, so voila.

A careful reader of the NT might easily be persuaded to this view by noting that the gospels show the family of Jesus being astounded at Him showing magical powers etc. Really? Would you be astounded that someone who had that sort of birth had magical powers? In the gospels people wonder if Jesus might even be mad. Would rational people be surprised that a miraculously born infant was special? No, to make the rest of the gospels make any sense you need to pare off roughly speaking the first two chapters of Luke and Matthew.

People have been doing that for years.