Monday: this & that, here & there, now & then

 

This Monday morning December 18th before Monday morning Christmas Day, seems like it should be the beginning of Christmas Vacation in the schools, but it is not. In my generation school might have let out last Friday so we could have this week to anticipate Christmas, put up the tree, finish our shopping, make the pies and candy, buy the turkey, make our travel plans; have Christmas Week off, and return to school on January 2. No matter, it's not that way, it just seems to me like it should be.

Usual early rise, 3:22 a.m. and a mug of hot & black. Stuck my head outside but did not go out on 7H porch because it's proper December chilly. Joe arrived safely last evening, the sleeping arrangements are bollixed up from usual because the new adjustable bed (dual king, which is two twins) is supposed to be delivered later this morning. So our bedroom is empty waiting for it, our old bed is in my study-office den, and the sofa-bed we bought for Joe is out in the living room; but tonight, assuming all goes by schedule, we'll be back in the bedroom and Joe will have his usual place in my s-o-d with a more comfortable bed.

A busy week is on calendar for his visit before he returns home to Louisville next Saturday. 

My early morning start, check the war news online, it's pathetic beyond words. Scroll down and read some fun stuff, including an essay on how to be happy by a college professor who offers a course on happiness. A college course on how to be happy? Oooookay. He says don't regard happiness as a destination to be reached, approach happiness as your life's journey, with satisfaction in personal, family, community and work relationships being key. Very important: updated myself on the British royals. Read another essay about becoming aware of my feelings. All my feelings this morning are positive, including peace and tranquillity. Of course, the day is young!

Now looking forward to breakfast of a liverwurst sandwich and another mug of hot & black. When mama introduced me to liverwurst, we didn't have mayonnaise, my first liverwurst (it was liver-cheese in those days), the bread was buttered. Likely with oleo. Nowadays, mayo. 

Or, whoa! Actually, yesterday brought the delight of sausage from Bradley's in Tallahassee, I'll have sausage in a hot dog bun. Mustard. Maybe a touch of mayo. 

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The cartoon above is after browsing Calvin and Hobbes taking one from The Far Side. It's got nothing to do with anything about this blogpost, or with anything about me except my enjoyment of The Far Side's imagination. The closest I/we ever lived to a Far Side situation was our next door neighbors when we lived in Neptune Beach. A married couple with a huge 1959 Oldsmobile coupe 

and two kids, the older a five year old boy, and a little girl. The boy used to drive his mother to distraction, and (this was the age before air-conditioning, so everybody's windows were always open and there were no secrets around the neighborhood) his mom would finally yell at him, "I'll teach you, young man!" and, knowing what was coming, he would start screaming, "No no, don't teach me, don't teach me, I'll be good, don't teach me, no no, please, don't teach me" and we would hear the swats as the belt hit his bare bottom and he screamed louder and louder. It was a Far Side situation. I always wondered how the idea of being taught might affect his attitude toward teachers and school.

What's on my mind though is about Advent, the annunciation story when the angel came to Joseph or Mary (don't say first one then the other, that sort of gospel combining only denotes a naive literalist sort of ignorance and in fact creates a third annunciation story) to tell God's intention about the birth of Jesus. The two quite different stories are below.

These two quite different Nativity stories came along "late" in the game. Paul's writings know nothing about it, nor does Mark, the first gospel. Each writer, Matthew and Luke, write with an agenda in mind. 

Matthew seems to be writing for an audience of disaffected Jewish Christians, to convince them that Jesus was/is the long awaited and expected messiah, and he uses verses of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Greek language Septuagint Bible) as prooftext. Matthew wasn't necessarily alone in doing this, others, including Jewish scholars, may have used the same prooftext verses to frame their messianic expectation. The messiah would be born in Bethlehem. The messiah would be taken to Egypt. Here, the messiah would be born of a virgin, based on the Greek text of Isaiah 7:14, "διὰ τοῦτο δώσει Κύριος αὐτὸς ὑμῖν σημεῖον· ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ λήμψεται καὶ τέξεται υἱόν, καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἐμμανουήλ" which is a slight mistranslation of the Hebrew original, 

"14 לָ֠כֵן יִתֵּ֨ן אֲדֹנָ֥י ה֛וּא לָכֶ֖ם א֑וֹת הִנֵּ֣ה הָעַלְמָ֗ה הָרָה֙ וְיֹלֶ֣דֶת בֵּ֔ן וְקָרָ֥את שְׁמ֖וֹ עִמָּ֥נוּ אֵֽל" 

hinneh ha‘almah harah veyoledet ben; veqara’t shemo ‘immanu ’el

"14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel" - -

where the translators of the Greek Septuagint rendered the Hebrew word ha-almah, the young woman, or the maiden, as ἡ παρθένος, he parthenos, the virgin. And centuries later those looking for signs of the expected messiah, here specifically Matthew, sifting through the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, lifted the verse entirely out of context to make it say that a virgin would have a son, and Matthew, proving Jesus' messiahship, had a story to prove that Jesus fulfilled prophecy. In Isaiah's context it meant nothing of the sort where Isaiah - - frustrated by the dull stupidity of king Ahaz, who will not ask a sign of the Lord about a military political issue - -  Isaiah says, "the Lord himself will give you a sign," and Isaiah whirls around and points to a pregnant young woman (obviously not a virgin!) and says, "this pregnant young woman will have a son, and before the boy is old enough to know good from evil, the two kings you are so worried about will have been destroyed!" It had nothing to do with a future virgin birth and a future messiah. But Matthew's agenda is to use Jewish bible prooftexts to convince his Jewish Christian audience that bible prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus. That's the basis of Matthew's virgin birth narrative, where Mary is already pregnant, and evidently is "showing."

Luke's agenda is somewhat different. Luke is not concerned with proving Mary's virginity to fulfill scripture as Matthew is, but is concerned to show that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and is therefore the Son of God. In Luke, the angel speaks directly to Mary, who is not pregnant yet, and who consents to be impregnated.

Here are the two somewhat different stories about how God conveys the divine will to Jesus' family to be.

With the result that our Doctrine of the Virgin Birth became somewhat foundational to the Christian message.

Matthew 1:18-25

18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

Luke 1:26-38

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

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Apologizing to some extent for my irrelevant introduction, these two different Advent stories from two different gospel writers are what I meant to write about this morning. 

RSF&PTL

T88&c