Episode #214: Hidden Insights From The Nativity Story W/Drew Briney

0:41 How's it going, Drew? Mostly. Fabulous. That's good. You know, it's funny, there's been times I've been tempted to, like, record the stuff that I don't record and just kind of like, put it behind, you know, something so that when I die, people can actually hear what it's like at the beginning of those podcasts. Because we'll talk like when you're talking behind doors type thing. Yeah, 10 or 15 minutes and stuff. But then I was like, well, if I do that, there's no guarantee that they all the people I talk to will be dead by the time I'm dead too. So probably better not do that wait for a generation or 4. So, but man, I am excited for this conversation. It's on the nativity and Drew sometimes I think because because of the over commercialization of the of the holiday, we have such a skewed version of what the nativity scene probably looked like, right? What the nativity was.

1:37 It's not what we're we're used to seeing. And you know, and honestly, I'm not sure this is one of those things that anybody ever started out with it being nefarious, right? I just think they were looking at trying to condense a whole story into one scene and it kind of caught fire. Yeah, yeah. And I think in in the in the process, people really like tradition and we don't really care too much about truth in comparison. We just like we, we like to do things the way we grew up and and have the comfort of, of of the familiar. The problem with that.

2:20 And there's a great quote. Oh, here I found it. It's a quote by Kenneth Bailey, who's a biblical scholar who grew up as a as an Arab in Palestine, I believe, and got kind of annoyed about nativity traditions, especially the Western tradition. And he, he made this observation. He said, the more familiar we are with the biblical story, the more difficult it is to view it outside the way it has always been understood. The birth of Jesus is such a story.

3:02 So I, I think you're exactly right. We, we, we were so caught up in, in buying the presents. We're so caught up in, in putting up a tree and lights and whatever else people do that we, we completely start ignoring what really happened. We, we pull out last minute, you know, Luke 2, dress up our kids as sheep and donkeys, put a put a doll in a a little crash and call that the nativity. And, you know, if you're really exuberant, then you go to Temple Square or you go to some place that's got nativity and you go smell the donkey and the sheep and the oxen. You know, watch the watch the portrayal of what never happened and consider that the Christmas story that you know is is truly the most important one and figure you've done a a good job in in instilling good tradition. But even still, almost none of that is accurate. I mean, the stuff we see portrayed, I don't, I don't know, being somewhat critical of it, I've not seen a decent nativity portrayal in the last 1520 years at least. Yeah, it, it, it's always a fine line with these things, right, 'cause on one hand, I, I'm a guy who thinks that, that good traditions are something that can absolutely preserve faith, right?

4:27 Yes. On the other hand, if if you're not careful with those traditions, they somehow creep in and become doctrine to some to people. And they get twisted. And they get twisted exactly. They never seen it last till they were started. No, no. And, and, you know, I look, I could beat up a lot over my stance on the holidays, right? I think they're a good thing. And people say, well, they have Pagan roots. And I'm like, well, yes. But so did the gold that was tossed at the Israelites as they left in Egypt. And they used it to adorn the Tabernacle. And they also used it to build a golden calf. So it really is one of those things where I feel like it's up to you how you want to use these things, but I think first it becomes super important that you have a really good idea of what, of what those things really are.

5:20 And I, I hope that's what we can bring out here today with the nativity is, is sort out what's been tradition because it's been in the Macy's, Macy's storefront for, you know, 100 plus years. And and what actually is is the text telling us. Yeah, yeah. I've, I've been really surprised. And, and also I, I might say add that I've been really disappointed. Even really, really good translations have had so much pressure from people because of our traditions that they still don't translate some of the stuff properly. And they know it, but they just like our funds dry up and we get nothing. So we'll just, you know, put those two words back there and everybody's happy.

6:07 Right. So it's, it's, it's amazing how emotional we really get over these stories. But for me, you know, I, I think I got, I get started on this road with from Kenneth Bailey, who says, you know, if you have a correct understanding of the nativity, it's actually more beautiful than, than what we imagined before. And, and further, it's nice just knowing we've got good information, right, instead of bad information. And so I've, I've kind of delved into it. I, I looked this morning and last night to kind of review. I've, I've been planning on writing a book on the nativity for, gosh, probably 20 years. And every year I'm like, Oh yeah, I got to get it done. And I get a little bit done.

6:56 I don't want to beat the deadlines too, too stressful. So I wait for the next year instead of just finishing like after Christmas or something and then just not marketing it till the next Christmas. But in any rate, as I was doing, I've got over 70 pages typed pages with almost none of my commentary, just commentary from ancient Near Eastern biblical commentaries and so forth. And there's just a massive amount of information that we have about the nativity that a lot of it's more or less inconsequential, but interesting at least to to give us a better perspective and a better understanding of what we're really. Looking at Sure, absolutely. Let's dig.

7:40 Let's dig in. OK, so excuse me, sorry, I think I probably have way too much information. So we might want to kind of skip around a little bit or do stuff from a maybe a shortened abridged version. If I'm abridging too much just kind of jump in and and squeeze me. I have done 4 podcasts of this on my own channel and and delved in some of the more detail, but even there, after four hours of podcasting on it, there's still probably another three hours that I haven't covered. Perfect. I'll tell you what, I trust you.

8:22 You know not, you know, you know what you're doing here, You know what the highlights are. We'll run with that. And if I got questions, as always, we'll just run. I'll ask them and we'll we'll go down those tangents. OK, so let me, let me just kind of establish a bit of a background then I'll, I'll start with Matthew's genealogy because everybody's super interested in the genealogies, but I'm going to hit that is a background of is it, is it it's I believe the genealogy is establishing A context for the scandal, as it were, of what happens with, with Mary and Joseph. And I call it that because that was the that's going to be the cultural perspective. And, and I think one of the most interesting neglected pieces of the nativity is Joseph's part in it. He really does some amazing things that we as Westerners don't see, don't understand and really probably can't quite fathom.

9:25 Maybe some of some converts who have lost all their friends and their job and all that sort of stuff and had to start from scratch in a middle-aged man type thing. Maybe we've got some comprehension of what he went through, but I still don't think we fully comprehend what happened to him. So I'd like to hit the, the the genealogy for that reason, even though it's the most controversial stuff that we'll probably talk about tonight. So if you're listening and you've never heard us talk before and, and, and you're kind of stressed about the topic, don't worry, it won't last too long and try not to get too deep. Send all the hate mail to me.

10:09 Leave Drew alone. He's got work to do. Don't address and leave it to me, Just give it to Dave. Just give it to me. Let me let me eat that. He'll Drew's got work to do. I'll take the slings and arrows. OK, so first of all, excuse me, We, we, we know that Matthew is writing to the Jews. That's a standard biblical perspective that every home should have. And sadly, a lot of people really don't know. If you don't know Matthew's writing to the Hebrew audience, Luke's writing to the Gentile audience, and and you don't understand that, you're really missing out because Matthew does a lot of things that we wouldn't expect as Western listeners.

10:55 For instance, he'll repeat stuff in passages of three or five or seven or sometimes even 9, and he's expecting you to count. If you see a word repeated multiple times, he's expecting you get out your pencil and go tick, tick, tick, tick. OK, that showed up 7 times. That's symbolic of a complete cycle of time. And now I'm supposed to interpret that passage from that perspective and read it again. That's what he's expecting you to do. But, you know, nobody taught us that at church. I don't, I don't care if you're part of the LDS church or the Baptist Church or fundamentalist Church. Nobody teaches us to read that way. But that's how they read. And if we don't do that, we miss stuff. So, you know, in the at the end of the genealogy, he says, so all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 and from David to the deportation of Babylon was 14 and for deportation of Babylon to Messiah was 14.

11:51 He's trying to cue us in. I'm doing something significant here. There are three parts to the story of this genealogy and it's divided into 14, which is, you know, has some symbolic significance perhaps. But he's trying to say, I've deliberately looked at this genealogy. I've done stuff with it and it wasn't so you can say, Oh my gosh, not again. So, so boring. So and so begot so and so begot so and so, So what? Right. I really don't care about your genealogy, but he's trying to say I've taken really special care of this genealogy. And, and it's not really three sets of 14. He repeats David and he repeats the the first king of the, the from the deportation of Babylon. So really instead of 3 * 414 being 42, it's there's 40 people that are are listed.

12:46 So anyway, I'm just saying he stretches, he'll stretch a little bit to explain what he's doing too, because that's symbolic to him. The number 3 is symbolic of the Godhead. He's talking about the Messiah. He's establishing it by saying this is a member of the Godhead. So get that in your head. This is important, but he does a bunch of other things too. The number shoot, is it 14? I always forget this. Dang. And I probably don't have good in my notes. The shoot. I should know this. I've just reviewed it and now it's it's lost in my head. But the gematria of David, The the name David in Hebrew terms, they. Yeah, that's what I thought.

13:32 OK. They break down the letters, assign the numbers, and then with those numbers they add them up. And that's a significant thing. David, when added up, is 14. So he's also trying to focus and say this is all about King David and it's all about that lineage. So the purpose, of course, is to say this is Joseph's royal genealogy. It's his legal genealogy and it shows the kingship or the the royal stature of this family. And he emphasizes that later. And immediately when the Angel comes to visit Joseph, he doesn't say, hey, Joe, how's it going? He says Joseph, son of David.

14:18 That is the only time that Matthew ever uses that term not to refer to the Messiah. That was a messianic title. And the Angel gives it to Joseph right away. So he's he's establishing that background and why he's going to Bethlehem with this genealogy. But there's something more scandalous going on here. And that's what I want to kind of focus on for a few minutes and hopefully only offend 13% of your audience. Perfect. So. That's a good day. Yeah, I think, and, and this is me speculating, I, I think Matthew did this on purpose and that's why I'm drawing attention to it. And, and lots of scholars have pointed out certain observations about the women he includes in the genealogy, but I've never heard anybody commentate on what we're going to talk about. So here's the quick background.

15:11 First of all, genealogies were a dime a dozen. You could go to different synagogues and get different genealogies because they didn't consider it important. Like if if we go to gosh, what's the church's their database, family treat database, whatever it is. FamilySearch. Yeah, FamilySearch, you're going to get every single person, father, mother, children, father, mother, children, father, mother, children. Everything they could possibly fill in is filled in from top to bottom. The Jews genealogies weren't like that. You know, we get some some argument about endless genealogies.

15:52 That's not why. It's because they skipped people and they had different types of things that they were emphasizing. And you know, they have different lines too, but they would develop their genealogies to prove a point or to emphasize something. So, But one of the things was definitely certain is that a genealogy pretty much never included women, ever. So Matthew includes 4. He expects us to count that. Why 4? Why are there 4 women in the Gospel of Matthew? Well, first of all, all of them are believed to be Gentiles. And so Matthew is very careful all throughout his gospel to hint that the Gospel will eventually be given to all of the Gentiles.

16:44 So it's the four corners of the earth represents the entire world. So having four women who are all Gentiles is foreshadowing the gospel is going to go to all the world. So that's an interesting detail that a lot of older commentators make, but isn't emphasized as much today because we kind of take it for granted. That was a big deal back then. But but then there's a second layer of these four women that a lot of commentators mention, but kind of wrap it up in in bail. And that is each one of these women has at least this shadow implication accusation or some sort of story behind her that includes sexual scandal.

17:35 And that I think is super interesting. And I think he did that on purpose. So let's go 1 by 1. And I'm not going to do a long version of this because people can go read their own scriptures and find commentary and so forth. And I don't want to belabor the point and focus on, on this too much, but it really sets up and establishes a fabulous context for what's going to get happened with Joseph, which I do want to focus on. So first of all, we have tomorrow. So tomorrow's kind of an easy person to see. And, and by the way, all of these women were considered by most Jews is to be righteous women, despite their sexual scandal, which is an important detail. Tamara.

18:18 Gentiles, right? Yeah, Tamara gets married to 1 of Judah's sons and God smites him and kills him. So not the best situation for tomorrow. So she goes to Judah and says hey, God smote him, killed him, I need another husband. I'm supposed to under Jewish law called Leverett marriage, which there's a lot of debate over what that means and what the parameters are and so forth. But under Jewish law, if your husband died, you were entitled to marry the next in line of the sons, usually the the young next younger, because you know, otherwise you'd be constantly, you'd be running into the problem that the the sons are all dead. So they usually would go to the next younger son, but not always.

19:04 It could be anybody in the family. So she goes to Judah and says, Hey, I need another husband. He says, all right, So he gives her another husband and that's the husband that famously is smitten by God as well for spilling his seed. The what's happening here is if she gets pregnant, has a son, that son inherits all of that new husband's land and title and all that sort of stuff because he doesn't have older sons. The first born gets the land and all the all the ownership of everything and is supposed to become basically the new father of the family and takes care of everybody. But this husband doesn't have that and he doesn't want her to have that so she doesn't get pregnant. God smites in dead for it.

19:49 So strike two. Both of these are Judah's son. So she goes to Judah and says I need another husband and I'm entitled under law to have 1/3 a new husband. I still don't have children and he says I agreed absolutely. But you have to wait till he's of age because he's a child. He's, you know, he's not old enough. So she says, all right, but Judah never does it. So Judah ends up becoming a widower. His wife dies. And so she goes. She knows where he's headed to mourn. So she goes, dresses as a prostitute, puts a veil over her face and entices him. And he hires her and he agrees to pay her a goat for her services and she but he doesn't have it. So he gives her his King's seal, a staff and something else I don't remember to say.

20:40 I'll make good on it and pay you. So she's like, great. So a couple months later, Tamar is found out to be pregnant. And King Judah says she is going to be killed because she's not, you know, she's not supposed to be having any relations because her husband's dead. So he was going to have her, I believe, burned at stake for it. But she says she sends the Insignia and the staff and whatever the other the third thing was and says, this is the father. These these things belong to the father and he recognizes the situation. So he's like, oh, just kidding. We're not going to kill her and leave her alone. And that's it. Well, that is pretty scandalous at the end of the day, because they're not married. She's entitled to have a husband and to be married, and he's got the duty to do it, but he doesn't do it. And she's not ever listed in the Scriptures as being a bad girl for that.

21:40 Everybody looks at it, says that's kind of, you know, we would call that adultery or we would call it something bad today, and we would say you've lost your exaltation and you know, you're bad or whatever. But she is, you know, the first of the four women who is an ancestor of Jesus. So then we go to #2 who is Rahab? So Tamara pretends to be a prostitute, but Rahab is a prostitute. She is the one that's in Jericho. And let's, let's in the spies and says, don't you know, if you'll spare me, I'll let you do your spy stuff and just let me be part of your people. And that's what happens. And she's just considered to be a righteous proselyte. But nonetheless, she's got a sordid background. So then we come to #3 which is normally ignored by a lot of people and a lot of commentators. However, she's got some, some scandal behind her name as well. And that's Ruth.

22:39 So there is. And I'm not, I'm not saying this is every scholar by any means. This is a very controversial take on things, but it's been something that's been really heavily written about in recent years. In fact, they're they even made a movie about it. But Ruth when she's talking with Naomi at one point kisses Naomi and everybody says, oh, well, you know, the the mid easterners do that all the time, kiss on the cheek and and came back on my mission. They did what's called a quakish kind of touched cheeks and make a kiss sound, but you don't really kiss. You know, that's kind of normal for Arab countries. Nobody really thinks much about it. But the the following sentences one of them says and Ruth clave to Naomi and that word, if I recall right is Bedok or Bedok. And the word is the same one used in Genesis where it says therefore shall man leave his mother and father and cleave unto his wife.

23:40 And then else the word is also used in other places in the Old Testament to refer to a sexual union. So the word however, is also used to to use to refer to the word tongue tied right and some things that are completely non sexual. So there's this question mark. Is this a sexual word or not? Well, in Jerusalem rabbinic tradition, being bisexual or being a lesbian woman was a bad sin. It was a wicked thing and it was a sordid problem, and that made you an evil person. Galilean rabbis at the time of Christ, however, didn't think it was a big deal. They didn't care.

24:23 So this doesn't affect inheritance laws. It doesn't affect other things. She can't get pregnant. No harm, no foul. We don't care. So even among the Jews, it was really controversial whether this was OK or not. But then there's also the controversy is, is that what the text meant or not? But nevertheless, the shadow of controversy is there. The question is there, and the uncertainty is there. And it's of sexual nature like the other three, the other the other three women. So that's Ruth. So we've got pretend prostitute, prostitute, possibly bisexual.

25:03 And then of course, she lays at the feet of Boaz. And when they're not in the marriage ceremony, basically that was a a tradition lying at the feet of a man was saying, let's consummate. And and you know, in some circles that was understood to be the marriage ceremony for those who didn't want the pomp and circumstance. That's also controversial and I'm not trying to say any of these things are right or any of these things are wrong, only that there's a shadow of controversy and of scandal with each of these women. Now we go to Bathsheba. She's last and Matthew doesn't even name her and most people just kind of glance gloss over that just says, you know, the the wife of King David who David to take it from Uriah, right, Mother Solomon. And they just kind of ignore that her name isn't listed. But a lot of commentators look and say Matthew seems to look upon her with disdain.

26:01 He won't even name her And most people look at Bathsheba and say, well, it's not her fault. You know, she's not the one sent her husband to the forefront and all this sort of stuff. However, there is a school of thought, a number of people, Jews and Christians included, who believe that she was deliberately seducing David. Otherwise she wouldn't have been on the rooftop. And had she been on the rooftop, she would have at least had a divider, one of those paper dividers or something that you see to put up to be more modest so that she wouldn't be, you know, in the sight of the king, which obviously she could tell by her where she was sitting, who can see. And and so therefore she must have been seducing him and apparently by speculation and assumption, Matthews simple certainly thought something like that. He didn't even want to say her name, which so that's that's a that's a really interesting thing. So now we have 4 women all associated with as as ancestors of Jesus who are associated with sexual scandal. Now most Christian commentators just kind of stop right there and instead of saying it like I just did, they say, well, they've all got sorted past or tawdry past sort. You know, they've they've they've each been encased in sin and somehow or other.

27:27 And the point of Jesus being brought in this bloodline is to purify and sanctify the bloodline and, and forgive them. And you know, something like that. That's kind of Matthew's point. I don't think so that that that's part of it. I think to be more accurate. I don't think that's it, though, because the first thing that we read about when we go further into the the genealogy was that Mary is caught up in the middle of a sexual scandal. That's how it's going to be perceived by the Jews. So I think he's preparing the reader to look at her with a more empathetic, sympathetic perspective because he's saying, look, we've got these four women in our heritage that we all agree are righteous women and founding matrix of our society.

28:15 They were all engaged in some sort of sexual scandal to give her the benefit of the doubt. And, you know, if you don't believe her story, look at her charitably and at least don't badmouth her for it or something. Yeah. He's basically saying there's a whole bunch of people in this line that have clouds of dispersion over them. So before you go judging Jesus's mother, understand what else has been done here. Kind of softening the ground a little. Bit yeah, open your minds, think twice before you start judging her. And that's assuming you don't believe her, you know, but Joseph didn't believe her and that's the first part of his story.

28:55 So he's he's not going to be the only one. So before we jump into that, I, I want to back step a little bit and, and talk about something that I'm going to refer to again later. But it shows up in this genealogy and it shows up in verse 16. And it's so exciting. You'll, you'll immediately see what it is and say, oh, that's what you're thinking. I'm being facetious. Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus and Joseph as, as the prophets have written, who is called Messiah. So that's it. So what's there? Matthew uses the divine passive a lot, and the divine passive is a term used by scholars mostly and, and by Jews and rabbis and so forth to refer to the fact that we're referring to God without saying his name. We're all familiar with they don't want to say Elohim, and so they start saying Jehovah, and then they want to say Jehovah. So they come Adenai, you know, there's this constant recycling of we've got to come something else. And Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew frequently says he who is in the heavens, he who hears all things, you know, he of whom we we don't speak his name or something, you know, pre Voldemort.

30:10 So he's constantly speaking in this divine passive. So he doesn't say the name of God. Now I don't think that's because Jesus thinks it's wrong. I think it's he's just catering to his audience. But here it says the husband and Mary of whom was born Jesus. Now that looks like a divine passive in from a Mormon perspective, it certainly makes sense for that to be a divine passive. You know, Mary, of whom was born Jesus is saying God the Father is the Father here, but we're not going to say his name. Now there's a counterpoint to that. There's also argument against it, which I think could be an argument for it as well.

30:54 And that's this of whom is ginger feminine in Hebrew or or in Yeah, I believe it's in Hebrew. Aramaic could be referring to the Greek, but I'm I'm forgetting in my notes aren't clear so but any rate, so it's saying it's feminine there. And I believe that's referring to the Aramaic or the Hebrew. And that's really interesting too, because a number of people have pointed out the Elohim is plural, but they often don't mention that heme is a feminine plural ending. So some fundamentalists will look at that and say, well, that's because in order to have a Godhead, it has to be Father, Mother in heaven has to be husband, wife, and in order to be Elohim, you have to be a couple. So saying that it's a feminine plural of whom doesn't cast aspersion to the possibility that this is a divine passive. In fact, it could emphasize that he's thinking back to the term Elohim as the Father as opposed to using the term Jehovah. I see.

31:59 I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but it's interesting and it's something that we tend to miss and it's certainly a possibility. You know, those sorts of things are always fascinating because look, obviously as as being guys who believe this through and through. It's always cool when we can see something, or maybe see something there that lends credence to some very defined Mormon doctrines. In this case it would be the the Divine Feminine Heavenly Mother. Yeah, super interesting too in terms of the long standing tradition of, of Mary being, you know the the Holy Mother. And one more very small issue about the, the Matthew's particular Gospel as he mentions Ahaz and Hezekiah, but then he quotes in the next section the, the, the, the, the quote about look at virgin Chuck and Stephen Bear son, right? And that was given in front of Hezekiah, as I recall, King Hezekiah.

33:08 And so he's also mentioned in the lineage, which again, you know, Matthew is just he, he's, he's pretty, he's foreshadowing so many different things that are happening. He's really paying attention to these lines and who's in them. That's, that's not something you see in a lot of authors and in the other other, other authors. But you know, Matthew's doing it because he does this a lot. And if if you're not familiar with that or you don't have much experience with that, you can go get a Greek New Testament commentary or, you know, something of that nature that really delves deep into the original language and look for somebody who's very familiar with a Jewish perspective of Matthew.

33:49 And they will all mention, OK, in this pericope, you will find that, you know, this number is mentioned five times and the subject is the law. So he's clearly referring to the Pentateuch is a more broad topic. And we can see this in the following details. Matthew's really careful about these type of things. So it's it's worth noting that, you know, the the quote that he's going to share that a lot of scholars say has nothing to do with the Messiah. It wasn't foretelling the Messiah, but nonetheless shows up. That person also shows up in the genealogy, which doesn't have to be there because they skipped a lot of people. You couldn't have easily skipped those, those persons. So let me. Ask this question real quick here before we move on here because I am curious about this this literary device that Matthew uses.

34:37 Is this something that is simply for ease in communicating with a a Jewish audience or is this does this have other applications like maybe keeping prying eyes away or something like that? Yeah, I think it's, it's, well, broadly speaking, I, I would say there's a vast majority consensus, if not unanimous, that Matthew's doing this to appeal to Jews, to show them that he is writing the story of the Messiah and proving that Jesus is the Messiah. Being using all of these Hebrew techniques, referring to interpretational techniques and referring to Old Testament scriptures to prove it. And for you and I, if we're going to quote something, it it has to match.

35:30 But that's not how the Jews did it. And if if anybody bothers to read the Talmud night, I don't necessarily encourage it. It's so bad. They have a lot of commentaries that are interesting, but some of their commentaries, it's like logical non sequitur 400 in a row in massive conclusion. It's really, really bad. It's hard to follow. It doesn't make a lot of logical sense. But they didn't care. That's not how they were thinking. It wasn't intended to be, you know, cite your sources and prove everything logically. They were just making their argument based upon, I like this interpretation.

36:11 It kind of makes sense. And if you add up the numbers of this word and the numbers of this word, they're related. And so therefore these two stories are related. And, you know, they, they were just making up all these reasons to argue their point, but none of them really make much sense. And and so the Talmud is full of arguments that are completely illogical. So when we see Matthew referring to things like, for instance, this, this famous prophecy, look, the virgin Chuck can see even bear sudden she called Emmanuel. We don't have any context in the story to to suggest this is Messianic at all. It wasn't considered messianic. None of the Jews read it and said, oh, this is referring to the Messiah.

36:55 It wasn't a thing. And so Matthew puts it in here, and then, you know, the Jews are looking at it saying, you know, that's not a messianic prophecy, but it does describe what happened. So, you know, possibly we missed it. So Matthew in some ways is going to redefine what the term. Now I want to, I want to sorry. So at some point, yeah, some of his scriptures clearly are not were not previously accepted as messianic, but he's making them messianic. He's proposing that's how it should have been interpreted, or at least that this is a dual fulfillment and should be seen this way because he does say as it is written, he uses that like 50 times or something.

37:43 I don't I don't know a lot in the in his gospel because he's trying to say all these things foretold Jesus. That's what they were doing. Totally. And then real quick, can you, can you tell the audience what the Talmud is exactly? OK, so there were two major Talmuds. I think there's a, a third one that didn't get completed or something. I'm, I'm not a super big expert on that, but there was a Jerusalem Talmud and a Babylonian Talmud. And the idea was they took all of the oral traditions of their teachers and then they put them in writing during the diaspora. And a lot of the ones around Jerusalem area weren't far, sit far away. And so they call it the Jerusalem Talmud because it was basically founded there.

38:32 But the other ones who were dispersed more widely did the same thing. And when they did that, they, they compiled it in a book they called the Talmud. And they, they divide the Talmud into like ridiculous amounts of subcategories and they all kind of overlap and so on, so forth. But they're different because they were compiled separately. But they were both were supposed to represent their hundreds or thousands of years of teaching tradition of what the Gospels or what the sorry, what the, what the Scriptures were teaching. Now, this was not because they had a set cannon.

39:14 They didn't have a set cannon until after the Christians did it, but they did have common overlapping teachings in different synagogues. And and so the Talmud is compilation of their teachings. Now, I want to point out a lot of people look at that and say what's just oral tradition that's obviously garbage and wasted. And you know, I mean, why, Why even look at it? And a lot of times that may be true, but back then they memorized everything the, the little Jewish boys and girls were expected to. I don't remember what all, all it was, it's a long list, but it's like by the time you're loving, you're expected to memorize Psalms or something.

39:56 And you know, they, they memorized hundreds and hundreds of Old Testament texts. That was their basic education and their retention and ability to memorize was far superior from what we have now. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll just give an example of a from my personal life. I had a little boy, he was like 4-5 or six Max, very, very small, still speaking with, you know, a very strong lisp and that sort of stuff because he just wasn't, had developed his oral skills very well yet. And my wife brought him into the family and said he's got a poem he wants to recite.

40:40 We're like, all right, you know, we do that sort of stuff. So we're all listening to him and he goes on for like an hour reciting the poem of the Statue of Liberty and that thing, if you look it up, it's honkin long. It's like 32 stanzas. Some fool, I don't know exactly, but it was it's super, super long and he barely like only once or twice the entire time. Did he need a prompt? But that's and and I'm not saying I'm not I'm like that. I don't memorize that like that, but that when they start them young like that, they can really memorize very, very well, long, long things like the entire book of Psalms and the, you know, the, the, the, the 55 main books of the Pentateuch and so forth.

41:20 So when, when you see the chosen and they're all reciting these scriptures and there's like, Oh yeah. And they referred to the scripture. Those were expected that everybody knew them. It wasn't like the educated new you got to remember Jesus disciples in the his twelve were considered uneducated, but they still knew all of these things. It was just normal and and we see, we can see that in the four Gospels, not just in the Chosen. I'll just mention that because it's more easier context for a lot of people. But at any rate, so when we say that the Talmud represents their oral traditions, that doesn't mean it's completely untrustworthy. I think a lot of it's garbage personally.

42:01 But that said, I also respect the fact that their brains were a lot more adjusted to mass memorization that we are today. Man, I have. A hard enough time just remembering my schedule. I can't imagine trying to memorize the entire Torah. Yeah, you know, that's, it's so funny because even for me, I remember being his kid, nobody had nobody had phones. We had landlines and yeah, and every time you moved, you memorized all your friends phone numbers and you didn't think twice about it. You memorized their addresses, memorized their phone numbers, memorized their mom and dad's names, you know, So if you ever needed it, it was there and available and you tell your parents and stuff and you know, you meant we memorized tons of stuff that way all the time and our calendars.

42:49 I still. Remember my home phone number from when I was a kid? Right, me too, 966-2951. Yeah, 286424924. I mean, just I could, I could just go for it, right? Right. But like, ask me my wife's phone number today. I'm like Amber, right? It's on speed dial. I mean, why would I want a number? Tanya, I don't know. Yeah, No, I don't know the numbers, right. But you're right though that that's a good point, Drew. That's a good point. I never thought about that. All right, Sorry to take us down that side tangent there. I just. No, not at all. The the, there's some really interesting things here that kind of skipping over of, of Joseph Smith making some corrections and and so forth that are kind of small, but they're probably not worth the the diversion. So let's kind of move on.

43:42 So as we, as we get to Matthew starts his story of the nativity, we've got a couple things that Joseph changes. First of all, he says as it is written, which is significant. And he, he mentions the dream was a vision. He changes it. So he, he sees this as a visitation or something rather than just a, a, a, a normal dream, which, you know, the early Christians didn't seem to distinguish much between the two, but Joseph did and, and, and makes that distinction. And he says as it is written now Luke says, he mentions, you know, there are other nativity stories have been written. And, and so some people say, well, that's Matthew, but he says it in the plural.

44:31 So he's clearly referring to something else. So Joseph's saying as it is written, adding that to Matthew, is suggesting there were other nativity stories that we don't have any more, which to some lends some credence to the the apocryphal stories of Jesus's childhood, which most scholars believe are entirely fanciful. I would categorize them from my perspective is at least 85% fanciful. But they do have certain traditions that that hold more water and and are more interesting than others. So at any rate, it's interesting to know that Joseph's, you know, he's aware of it. He's he's thinking about it, he's interested and at least adds that little footnote.

45:18 OK, so notice verse 18. I'm just going to read for a second. Now, as it is written, the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way after his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together. She was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. OK, notice divine passive there, divine passive before it says of the Holy Spirit, which again is something is, is a is an LDS person that we would look at and say that's kind of like you were saying, hinting at something deeper that's not outwardly expressing. That is something that could be what's happening with Matthew right there.

46:03 But I want to point something out because it's it's the angels going to mention this to Joseph in just a second. So during the betrothal period, and and I know this is uncomfortable for a lot of people, but it usually happened at 12 to 13 for the girls and some are 16 to 18 for the boys for their first marriages. So Brigham was actually a liberal thinker to say, you know, you've got to be 25 before you minister society as a man, it'd be single. And I mean, it's the society. So he's given him an extra 7 years compared to the Jews. Somewhere Perkins on the other side going turn around, you just call me progressive.

46:45 Score for me. Hate that Denver snuffer. That's awesome. That one's definitely getting clipped into a short, I'm just saying. Yeah, I get it. OK, so, so anyway, they they were, they were betrothed and you know, there was the contracts and stuff. I don't want to get too far too deep and all that. But after that period, they were considered by law married. But she didn't move in with her new husband until a later time, usually after her first menstruation, but not always. And so there was, there was a designated time and word, and I don't remember the word, there's a designated ritual where she went from her father's house to her husband's house. And that's why we get the parable of the 10 virgins and the lambs and all that sort of stuff. But with these, you know, with these younger girls, sometimes they would move in with the new husband but haven't had their first administration yet.

47:53 So then there's a second word for for consummating the marriage. There's also a ritual that they had and that's those are all phases of the marriage. So the actual betrothal is legally marriage, but there's a following expected 2 stages to that. That one, she's going to move in with him and then she's going to consummate and hopefully those happen at same time. But sometimes the girls were too young and you know, the the husband was ready to take her in. And so they there was just this understanding that they're not going to do anything to them until they've had their first administration. So I mentioned that because.

48:36 This is important too. I, I just, it's a sad state of affairs. I feel like I got to do this with these kind of conversations, but nonetheless, and that's you can't judge things through through things through presentism because right now, I promise you somewhere there's a blue haired crazy feminazi who's going to come and say you're for child brides. No, that's not what we're saying. What we're saying is this is what was acceptable in that time period, during those days and. That's what was normal. During those days, that's that's what was normal and most people were only living into their 40s or 50s, right I. Mean, yeah, maybe not even 50s, but certainly 40s getting old back then.

49:24 But, you know, and one of the things that that modern society has forgotten is it's not it, it you're talking about the blue hair so that it's not just Jews and Christians who were like this. And, and that tends to be the new modern way of looking at it's the, it's the white privilege, mean bad guys who have this patriarchal background who believe this. No, this was Asian society, this was European Society, this was Eastern European Russia, this was Indian societies, this was African societies, Indonesian societies. This was, you know, South America, all over the world, this was the norm.

50:05 Had way more to do about lifespans than it did anything else. Lifespans and and frankly, you know, kids grew up fast because they were actually taught to think. Now we teach them to memorize, regurgitate and not to think. And that makes them less ready for the world. But back then, you know, you have young kids who are very mature and ready to take care of a household. I watched a thing this week. This is a slight aside, but it's it's pertinent on how Asian, specifically Japanese parents teach their children to be so disciplined at a young age. And they do it primarily through routines. They have a morning routine.

50:48 They have a school routine. They have to after school routine. They have a bed routine. And so the parents aren't like, have you done your chores yet? The parents say, where are you in this routine? And the kid would be like, oh, this is where I'm at. And they, they're so used to kids love routines. They feel comfortable with the routine. So they'll just immediately be like, oh, I'm supposed to be in the middle of this routine And they will just go do it and, and take care of things. And, you know, they also teach the like, they don't say, Hey, you forgot your jacket. They don't do that. They say, if you're going to school and it's cold, what do you suppose would be good to have? And then they'll be like, Oh yeah. So they, they grow up and teach in a way that they have to make up their own decisions and they're taking care of themselves.

51:39 Mom's not taking care of me. She's reminding me I'm supposed to take care of myself. And that attitude is huge. And so, you know, you've got, I mean, watch some YouTube videos, man. You got 8 year old kids who can do these amazing gymnastic feats who are doing, you know, quadruple flippity flips and landing in karate position and jumping up and kicking a toothpick off of the top of it. You know, teeny tiny balancing thing with kicking it with her toe. They can do these amazing things at young ages because of how they were raised. And you know, some people think that's abusive and so forth. So we can ignore that. But my point is, ancient societies were more like that and had people that were much more mature, responsible and capable than they are today because we. Yeah, the the times necessitated that, right. I mean, yeah, if you, if you're only living till you're to your mid 40s, I mean, you got to kind of get out there, get a family going and really take off from there. Right.

52:48 OK, so let's jump back into the text. Her husband Joseph, by the way, when you look at corruptions in Scripture, there are more corruptions in the nativity than just about any section of the Bible. There was so many changes to try and say husband Joseph means, you know, or you know her, her friend Joseph, you know, did this or whatever. Just constantly getting rid of language that says he's the father or that they're married or that they had sex or anything like that. It's all corrupted somewhere and changed and you can go back and find the earlier text and we can just figure out that through a puzzle making process. Which of the earlier text?

53:28 And they're constantly trying to get rid of the divinity of Christ because Gnostics didn't believe he was divine, didn't believe he was pre existence, and so they would change the text that he was just a good prophet to match their message. There were other sects that did the same thing, SCTS sects that did the same thing for different reasons, but there are tons of changes in the nativity and I'm I'm largely ignoring those, but we'll probably bring a couple to attention. Her husband, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, plans to dismiss her quietly. Now I'm not using King James, anybody who knows me knows I hate King James version. It's full of way more corruptions than other versions and hard to understand so I don't bother with it. But this is an interesting detail. In certain Jewish sex at that time, it was not optional to divorce Mary.

54:28 If your wife was found to have cheated or committed adultery, which was perceived at this time because she was betrothed, then she was to be strangled, burned or stoned, and so was the guy who did it with her. And that wasn't optional. It wasn't something you could just say, I forgive her. She's 12 years old. That wasn't an issue. That wasn't a thing. And and not every sect thought it was mandatory, but you know, a big chunk did. And so you can imagine that big chunk for people who didn't think it was mandatory still felt like that's probably the right thing to do you. Doesn't the scripture, doesn't it say somewhere in the scriptures that he had the option of putting her away privately?

55:15 Yeah, that's what he's, that's what he's going to talk about. About. Yeah. Plan to dismiss her quietly is the same thing that you're remembering. So for him, he is, if he were to marry her, he would be taking upon himself, her shame, her disgrace, her sordid background and her sin, Basically saying I'm OK with all this. Not a big deal, right? All that sort of thing. That was a huge, gargantuan humiliation. This was not kind of how we see it today where there's, you know, so many people cheat that it's just kind of almost normal. And we just look the other way. We forgive each other and move on.

55:57 That's not how it was seen at all. It was like you were shunned for the rest of your life for this. If he did not marry Mary, she would have not had a good social life. She would have been naturally very poor. Many people would not have contracted business with her on the street, including selling food. They would not hire her. They would not talk to her, Right. You know, the woman in Samaritan as well, She's there in the heat of the day because she's got a bad reputation. You know, she can't go with the other women. And so she's there by herself. That would have been Mary, except for in Jerusalem or Bethlehem or whatever she ended up the if she, if she had stayed in Nazareth, with such a small city like that, she would have had a bad reputation the whole rest of her life. Now if Joseph marries her, he gets that bad reputation the rest of his life.

56:55 They're not going to look at her and say, oh, the 12 year old, she was naughty. She she, she had sex with her husband before she moved in with him. They're going to say she's 12, he's older, he's got the authority, he's her boss, he can do what he wants, and she's just complying. He's the one who's a bad guy, why can't he wait? He's older, he's more mature, he should have more control of himself. Shame on him. So then they're going to look at him as a bad guy if he doesn't expose that she's committed adultery. Add to this the apocryphal count suggests he was about 50 years old when he was married to her. Objected and said I'm too old of a man to marry this young girl, choose somebody besides me. But the temple high priest says no, we're going to do a trial and ask God.

57:45 And he chose Joseph and you know, he dies pretty young, which is why we don't see him. The rest of the the the four Gospels he's mentioned but never seen again other than when Jesus is 12. So this is one of those suggestions. Again, if he's older, this is going to look really bad for him. And it it's not a sin to be with your betrothed before you get married, but it's heavily frowned upon. And if you're 50 and she's 12, everybody's just going to think you're a slimy old geezer and and dishonorable. And so his whole life of having a reputation as being a righteous man is lost. So this is a really, really big deal for Joseph. And not only that, we have apocryphal suggestions that he had other wives.

58:39 So imagine we we know from later accounts in the in the in the Gospels that his family did not know about his miraculous conception or as it's called, they did not know the story that Joseph was not the natural father. They'd never heard that. Everybody that meets Jesus says Joseph was your father. We knew him. Nobody says, well, God's your father and Joseph just raised you. Nobody says that because the story was not told until after Jesus died. And so in this situation, if he's plurally married, you can only imagine how the other wives are going to feel. Joseph, you're 51 and you went and you slept with your 12 year old and you couldn't wait for her to, you know, blah, blah, blah, or 13 year old, whatever it is doesn't matter.

59:24 You can imagine the feelings that would have been there and the, the, the disgust and the disapproval of the impropriety of him being in that situation. So now I hope we've kind of established for the listener here what Joseph's looking at. He's he's, he's saying, he's saying I can't, I can't take this little girl and expose her to stoning. And she's not going to get stoned because the Romans won't allow it right now. But people will treat her horribly the whole rest of her life if they find out. And maybe they will find out, but I'm not going to make a big deal and make it worse for her. So even though he's he's portrayed as being very righteous, he's exercising a great deal of empathy here to say I'll do it the quietest, easiest, most forgiving way I could possibly do because maybe she wronged me badly. But she's just a young kid.

1:00:27 You know, he's, he's taking into account her age and she she grew up in a temple. She doesn't have the same kind of background a lot of people have same temptations other people have. And he's just exercising a lot of compassion. And I, I think a lot of us ignore that and don't see that in Joseph's story. But moreover, we don't see what are the consequences of him not following through with a divorce. And we're going to, we're going to see that in just a minute by how the Angel addresses him. It's such an amazing, beautiful story, I think, to watch and see Joseph's costly love being unveiled. I had some.

1:01:13 Serious Christ like love, right? Like this whole time I I've been like thinking about up to this point, everything Jesus is going to be born into is kind of pointing toward his towards his salvatic mission mission, right. If we look at what what Joseph does for Mary in this moment, knowing full well this doesn't end well for me necessarily right for. The rest of his life. For the rest of his life, he's going to bear this right? And look, we can only speculate. I haven't dug into the apocrypha to see, but I got to think the guy probably lost a wife over this, right?

1:01:58 Probably lost part of his family, right? That or at. Least lost her respect. On on on the table right? Probably hard for him to get work after this. His good name is just gone. He he very much is, is taking on now. There's actually no sin there, but the appearance is is that he is absolutely taking on on a perceived sin on Mary's part. Yep. The, the other thing with the women that you mentioned beforehand, I do find it super interesting that many of the things that Christ does seems to upset the apple cart in terms of how men and women interact, right? And so seeing seeing what Matthew chose to put in the genealogy, I think further points to that. Yeah, so I mentioned briefly earlier, but now in context, I hope it it kind of resonates a little harder. The the Angel appears and says Joseph, son of David. Oh, I missed, I, I, I missed verse 20. There's something really important here. It says just when he had resolved to do this, the Angel came.

1:03:14 I, I skipped over that part of the verse. Sorry. That's a significant thing because the Greek word there, which I won't bother to pronounce because it's super long, it's a $25 word. But that Greek word there says it implies that he's taken some time to seriously think about all the possibilities and ruminate them through his head before making a decision. Now, you could just say you could see this from Joseph's perspective. He's like, oh, she committed adultery, I have to divorce her. I have no choice. That's what the law requires. And so I'm going to do it easy. 3 second decision and he's maybe pissed at her, right?

1:03:55 But that's not what this word says. This suggests he thought about it maybe for days or, you know, a full day or something. He's given it a lot of thought, agony, prayer, thinking about it. How am I going to handle this? But it's obvious how he should handle it from a Jew's perspective at that time. And, and, and he apparently doesn't believe Mary or he wouldn't have chosen decided what he was going to do. But he thought about it carefully. So that's a really important detail. This wasn't just a spur of the moment. Oh, that's what I'm supposed to do, so I'm going to do it. He really agonizes over this. And then when the Angel shows up, he says, Joseph, son of David. Now the the angel's purpose is to correct him.

1:04:37 And he could say, come on, Joseph, don't you haven't, you're old. Haven't you discerned the Spirit? How would you learn to tell when God is speaking through somebody? Can't you discern these things? What's your problem? He could have come and rebuked him, but he doesn't. He gives him this honorific title to say immediately, look, I recognize and honor you for who you are and your lineage and your background and is a righteous person, but you're making a mistake here. He says do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. Now, the, the, the original words here are as I was describing earlier, there's a ceremony where you take her home to your house and there's a separate ceremony for consummation.

1:05:26 The word is very specific in the original here to refer to take her to your home. So that's a it's a good translation, but we don't get really get the significance of it unless, you know, we have the context I gave earlier. So he's saying you're going to take her into your home. You're going to continue with this marriage. You're not going to divorce. That's what he's immediately telling him for the child conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. So you're wrong. And I'm announcing that to you right now, keeping you from making a mistake. She will bear a son, and you are to name him. This is significant. The only person in Jewish law is allowed to name a child is the legal father. So the angel's saying to him, I am commanding you to take the part of the legal father of this child. You're not to say that it was an adulterous child and you're marrying her anyway.

1:06:24 That's the possibility. Really. Weird one, maybe for a Jew, but he's emphasizing you were going to marry her. You're not going to call it off and you're going to pretend this is your child. So you are going to look like this perv and you're going to have to deal with it the rest of your life. So he's calling him to this costly love we were referring to earlier very specifically and making it very clear to him. But then he doesn't say you shall call his name Joseph because it was his right to call his son Joseph. They were allowed to choose the name and it usually was a family name. And your first born is often your name. And so he's going to say, I'm going to give you the you were to name him.

1:07:05 He doesn't give him a choice either. He says, and I'm going to tell you what to name him, which names back then was a really big deal. It was not just a title. It was to describe your destiny or, you know, your, your mission or whatever. And that was a father's right and privilege to pray about and get revelation on and think about it, you know, or maybe just name it after himself because none of his otherwise did or whatever. It's you know, this is a really big deal for them more than it is today, even though it's still kind of a big deal today. Nowadays, you know, the husband and wife confer on it back then husband names it, you know, as we see with the story of Zechariah and and you know, they're they're saying, you know, you're just not going to name him John Elizabeth, get out of here.

1:07:50 It's not your business. He's the one that names him. So he's saying you're taking on legal responsibility and you're going to name him Jesus popular name at the time. But then he says for he will save them in his their sins and it says his people there save his people from their sins. So that perspective alone is a really interesting detail that was not clearly understood it it Jesus's time until after he's gone through, you know, the atonement. People didn't really understand what it meant that they were his people or that he was saving them from their sins. But this is what Joseph gets right away, some kind of big doctrinal revelations. We don't appreciate when we read it. It's just that's the pretty words we read it, it, it, it at Christmas.

1:08:40 But there's, you know, some this is new doctrine for him and new doctrine for the people. And then he says this took place to fulfill all things that have been spoken by the Lord through the prophets. And then it does the quote, look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. You shall name him Emmanuel, which means God is with us. There's all sorts of background on that I don't want to get into cause honestly, I think it's a little bit boring. But I do want to point out this usage of the word virgin. And, you know, I remember being in the mainstream church, I heard so many times, oh, these other translations, they'd call her a young girl or a young maiden, but they don't want, it's not important that they call her a virgin. And you know, so they don't translate it well, blah, blah, blah. They say all these things.

1:09:23 That's just ignorance. As far as the the, the, the Jewish culture is concerned and the Hebrew language, the word here is alma and it refers to young girl. That's it. It doesn't specify if she's a virgin or not. But that said, if you were a Hebrew or if you're a 1st century Jew and you're seeing the word alma, you're going to assume she's a virgin. Unless somebody says otherwise, there's no reason to assume a 12 year old is not a virgin. And you're just not going to assume that's the case or not the case. Unless somebody says, oh, by the way, you know, she's on her second baby, sure, then you might think something.

1:10:07 So using the word in translating young woman is not denigrating and saying she's not a virgin or that's not important. It's just the word they used. But in their culture that was presumed. And I think that's an important part, not to be bashing on translations for being accurate and and suggesting they're trying to encourage a belief in something else because it's not. It's just a different culture that they're referring to. OK, what now? This is significant. This happens three times with Joseph, maybe 4, and each time is the exact same. When Joseph awoke out of his vision, he did as the Lord commanded him. He took his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son and he named him Jesus. In each case, when Joseph is warned by an Angel, he immediately obeys.

1:11:02 He quietly obeys. We don't have him say, well, I don't know, I'm kind of concerned about this or what about this, or well, if I do this, then this one might happen. He, you know, he might maybe ask questions in the vision. We don't have record of that. But as soon as he wakes up, he's like, all right, we're going to Egypt. All right. We're going to Nazareth. All right, we're going to, you know, we're moving. Angel told me to do something. It's done this immediate obedience and this translation is actually a really good one and it's from it's like the Greek New Testament commentary or something like that. I don't remember which one I got it from, but it said he had no marital relations with her until she had born a son.

1:11:45 That was taken out of a lot of early texts and it's softened in the King James Version, but the the point is clear. They Mary had other children later and more interestingly, where maybe it's an earlier one, maybe it's later. It says that that Mary brought forth a first born son. Maybe it's a maybe that's a Luke, I'm not sure.

1:12:25 And and maybe that's actually what's what's implied here in in or it comes in the King James or something. But at any rate, it uses a specific non definite article for a first born forward as opposed to a definite article. The first born son implying that Jesus is her first born. But Joseph later had his first born as well. And of course, you know, you'd see later in the Gospels his his brothers and sisters are mentioned is coming and saying, you know, they're trying to get to you. They think you've gone crazy, but it refers to them and and the, the, the Greek word that's used, as I recall, refers to at least 2 girls and one boy. So we know had at least three siblings from Joseph, but any at any rate, because the Catholic Catholic tradition that she was perpetually a virgin for her whole life. They don't talk about that.

1:13:19 They don't like to mention that, but it's, I think it's interesting from a Mormon perspective when we understand that God the Father was her first husband, the one for eternity and Joseph was the one for time that we see that she does have other children with him. And some commentators have noticed, and it kind of snubbed Catholicism's perspective by saying as a Hebrew woman, it it, it honors her to say she fulfilled what was required of her by being a mother. That's what her job was. That's the most important thing a woman can do, and to say she never had children again is to rob her of that.

1:14:02 And and so it's. Kind of disparaging from a Jewish point of view. To say that she. Was she? She never had children after that. Yeah, it's like saying Jesus was never married. It's the same kind of idea. Well, if he's not married, how could he possibly be a rabbi? How's he supposed to have the wisdom to know how to lead people if he doesn't even have a family? That's how you learn to be a leader is by having a family in the first place. So at any rate, there's some interesting things here. The word for birth is changed and and altered in in all sorts of early manuscripts to make it look like it was. So Jesus wasn't pre existent or he was depending on who's arguing it and that it was a birth and not just the origin of Jesus and things like this.

1:14:49 All sorts of interesting things there, but probably too boring to it for the podcast. So I'll just kind of skip forward. I'm not breaking any news here. We live in spiritually perilous times. It seems like danger is all around us or our family spiritually all the time. But our God hasn't left us defenseless. We read in Ephesians chapter 6 verse 17 and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. So in our spiritual battles, the scriptures are our sword. But just like real swords, not all Canon of scripture are made equal. You need to make sure that you're entering the battle with the right gear. With that thought in mind, Drew Brownie and others have been working on a project to bring you what is now being called the Restored version of the Scriptures.

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1:18:49 Now let's get back to our conversation. OK, so let's get back to in Matthew chapter 2 now. And there is so much here. I, I, I never know how much to I, I focus every year when I do the, the Christmas presents with my kids before we open, we go over the, the nativity and usually we do it the night before and the day and remind the kids that the, the practice of trading presents stemmed with the magi bringing old frankincense and myrrh and that they actually showed up about Christmas time. And that appears to be why we do it at Christmas time. And that's not really his birth. And, you know, we talked about some of these things, but there are a lot of traditions about the magi that are really, really interesting.

1:19:35 I did a podcast on a review of the book called Revelation of the Magi, which purports to be an ancient document about the magi's trip to come find Jesus and was was hidden in the Vatican for hundreds of years and that sort of stuff. Anyway, interesting book. I'll allude a little bit to what's going on there, but if I forget, Dave, don't forget to remind me about the tradition of Adam and Eve in the gold frankincense and myrrh and where these magic got it if I don't mention that. Yeah, no, I'm going to remember that real. Quick. And if you're going to mention this somewhere in in in your notes there, that's great. But.

1:20:19 Who? Who were the Magi exactly according to this this revelation of the magi that. Yeah, so talked about. So that's, that's scholars have said all they're clearly Persians. No, they're not Persians. They're they're from somewhere in the in the ancient Near East, but they're probably about 50 miles north of where the Persians would be. They have all these arguments based on star alignments and all this sort of stuff. The, the book Revelation of the Magi, I don't recall. It seems like it might have indicated they were Persian, but I don't recall. Cause frankly, I just don't care about geography. I care about doctrine, you know, not geography. So at at any rate, the, the tradition in that book basically says that there was a sect of monks.

1:21:07 And I don't, I don't think they use that term, but it's something like that that had been given to guard gold, frankincense and myrrh that had been given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Possibly might say that I think it says that, I'm not positive. But at any rate they were to guard the the gold, frankincense and myrrh, for the day would come when it would be revealed to them through the heavens that that King Messiah had been born among the Jews, and they were to go and find him and deliver those presents. Interesting. That was their whole. That was their whole reason for being in that.

1:21:48 For hundreds of years, yeah, they, they just kept, it was like kind of a, a masonry type idea brotherhood, they're keeping the secret alive type thing. And so that's, that's kind of the, the background of it. And the, the main thing that I recall that was different about their story was it acknowledges that the star was really an Angel at certain points. And you know, there are stars that line up at, at a certain point and, and people have argued 1520 different stars lining up is this is Jesus's birth and blah, blah, blah. But none of them can account for some of the words that are used in describing these, these stars. They, they don't act like stars.

1:22:32 They, they stop, they move again, they have somebody follow them And you know, they don't just do natural things. So there's been a speculation that stars often refer to angels and maybe this is one of those situations. Revelation the magi seems to seems to affirm that. So rather than mentioning the Adam and Eve earlier, since since since you asked that question, let me just address it. Might as well just address it here because that's part of the background of the magi. Sorry about. That drew so. Not at all. So Adam and Eve get kicked out of the garden and Adam's sad and Eve is sad and Adam's sick and he says go and ask the Angel at the edge of the garden if you'll give me some token out of the garden to relieve my sadness.

1:23:20 That's basically the story. I think this is in the Forgotten Books of Adam and Eve, the book of Adam and Eve or something like that. I'll be doing some podcasts on this soon anyway, because I'm I'm reviewing all that stuff. So in this story, I believe it's Seth goes and he's he's also asking for some oil from the tree of life to heal his father. I think that's part of it. So he goes and he ends up getting gifts out of the garden and the, the, they each are in different places, referred to as different things and they have different descriptions, but they end up putting the gold in their cave of treasures is what it's referred to.

1:24:03 And there's a apocryphal work called The Cave of treasures that talks about it. And the gold is luminescent. It's shines, it brings light to them and, and it represents the Kingdom of God. And then the frankincense is also found in, in the temple, temple offerings and so forth, and is considered to be a representative that the Messiah will be a priest and a healer. Sorry, just a priest and a, a teacher. And the myrrh is a, is a medicinal. It's not a herb.

1:24:44 It's ASAP from a tree, but it's, it's medicinal and it's actually an abortive. So for those of you who like taking it for upset stomach, don't do that when you're pregnant. I'd know fundamentalist do that sometimes. So key point there. It does abort babies cause. That one's myrrh. Or are we still talking about Frank and. Yeah, myrrh is really good for as an antacid for some people. It never works for me, but apparently it's really good as an antacid, but it is an abortive as well. So that was given to him to represent that the Messiah would be a healer. So I think that's really interesting because you've got prophet, priest and king, you know, you've got him in his priestly office, his kingly office and as a healer and as a teacher among the people.

1:25:32 So that's the, that's the symbolism behind gold, frankincense and myrrh of the gifts. And those were given to Adam and Eve after they left the garden as kind of a you're, you're not, you're not abandoned forever. I don't hate you. You know, here's a consolation prize for being out of the garden, having miserable life forever. At any rate, that's I think there's some beautiful symbolism in that. Absolutely. Especially if you're looking at higher Mormon ordinances. Did frankincense come from trees as well? Yeah, frankincense and myrrh are both made out of trees that used to be indigenous to the Holy Land is I don't know if you know how Maple trees work, but for it's a similar process. So for people who are familiar with that, I'm going to use that analogy.

1:26:24 If you go to a Maple tree at the right time of the year and you tap a little cylinder in it, and they've got special ones that are made now so that they drip, right. If you tap a cylinder into it, the SAP will come out of that cylinder and drip into a bucket that you put below it. And that's how you collect Maple, you know, in the, in the, in the real farms. I, I remember doing that on my mission. And we, we boil it and then, you know, you pour it over snow and then it makes a kind of a, a Carmelie type texture for a sucker. Interesting. The reason I asked about that is I remember when I was in college, I asked we we'd taken a course on on the Middle East and frankincense was on there and like it was. So it was like the, IT was more like more sought after than gold in a lot of ways and.

1:27:16 It was. It was worth more. Yep. They would, they would grow these trees on like the side of cliffs because it was so, so sought after and they would throw like poisonous serpents into the trees to like guard them. It was, it was some serious stuff. I, I, I think, I think you're 100% correct, Drew. I don't think we take into account how much those gifts were that the magi brought. Those. Were not inexpensive gifts. Yeah, and, and, and we think, you know, 3 magi showed up. That's, that's not how it came. They brought servants. They had to have a caravan of people to armed military escort of some sort to protect their treasure. This was a big deal when they, when they showed up. This wasn't three guys in wearing weird robes. This was 50 people or 25 people or something with a small caravan.

1:28:14 So this this app is done similarly with frankincense and myrrh, except for they, they're not big enough to use those big tubes. So they basically just kind of scar the tissue and it drips and they collect it. You can buy frankincense and myrrh are fairly cheap today. And a lot of people that will suggest that you just burn it like incense that produces a very sharp smell. It's not very pleasant for a lot of people. I personally don't like it at all like that, but there's a really nice way that you can get it and you can, if you order on eBay or Amazon, you can get it by Christmas. And we, we, we bought enough that we, we've been using the same batch for 20 years. You bought a huge bag of it.

1:28:58 But what you can do is you can put in a usually use a frying pan. But anyway, just take a small frying pan, you fill it with water up maybe half inch deep and then you drop one or two pellets of and they look like it's kind of a resin. So it like look, the shape can be it's very dynamic, but could look like a Raisin or something like that. But you just drop a pellet in there and you don't want it boiling. But just keep it at a hot steamy temperature and your house will smell like frankincense pretty quickly after 5-10 minutes. Personally, I think myrrh smells a lot better this way.

1:29:41 So, you know, maybe try both. But we we do that most Christmases and it's a kind of a fun way to to create a sensation for everybody to get in the holiday and to to think about things from a different perspective. And, you know. That's pretty cool. Associate Christmas with frankincense and myrrh instead of cinnamon and pine, which I also like. But I'm saying sure, sure, sure. Nobody hates cinnamon rolls. I mean, come on. Actually, the British do. The British. A lot of British people hate cinnamon. I don't get it. I I. That's why we fought a war in 1776, so we don't have to worry about what they like. Yeah, there was actually a cinnamon based tea for the Tea Party. Right.

1:30:25 OK, so that's that's kind of the background story for the the the revelation of the Magi. I don't remember call anything groundbreaking in there other than basically that they, they, they knew what to expect. And when the specific star arose in the specific constellation, it represented the Jews and another constellation that was there where it showed up represented a king. So they recognize this is a king that's been born among the Jews. And then so they packed up and got their stuff ready and made their four month trip or however long it took and showed up OK. In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem asking where the child who had been born the Messiah of the Jews, Joseph changes it, say Messiah.

1:31:15 The original says the king of the Jews. For we observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage. When does the star arise? It all of a sudden, is this a new star and they're calling that a rising or is it a move movement that they're calling it rising? That's where scholars start saying this is not a normal star. And, and again, the mash, I saw a new star, which could have been an alignment of two planets and made it shine brighter, something like that. But they perceived it as a star. But then afterwards it starts behaving differently. So the concept here is to, to make it a little simpler for, for listeners, I guess is a, a new star appears and that's probably, like I said, it's probably a planetary alignment, could have been some sort of planetary eclipse mix, something rather. But at any rate, there's a big flashy star that comes in the sky and it's in the middle of two constellations. So they know where to go.

1:32:18 They they know we need to go to Jerusalem and find the King of the Jews and find out specifically when we get there, where it is. So they follow that star. Now, did the star last in the sky? Four months? Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't matter because they knew what the constellation was and they knew how to get Jerusalem so that the star gave them the answer they needed. But as they get closer, then the star starts moving and they follow the star more specifically, that's when they actually go to Bethlehem. So some scholars and a lot of people looking at this say the the wording is really weird. It's not really a star, It's several stars. And the revelation, the Magi really kind of confirms that, says, yes, there was a constellation, there was original star, but after it disappeared, it kind of converted to an Angel.

1:33:07 And then an Angel just, you know, moves along with them and they follow the Angel to the specific spot they go to. When King Herod heard of the child, he was frightened in all Jerusalem with him. Such a funny statement. I think most people are probably familiar. The King Herod was a complete paranoid guy. He killed a lot of his own family and siblings because he was worried that they were trying to take his power. So when he's scared and upset about something the whole city is scared and upset about, same thing and calling together. It does flow downhill. Yeah, calling himself together all the chief priests and scribes to the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.

1:33:48 Now, this is an odd thing and and this is just ignored by most people. Oh, he didn't. He didn't know. But he was a Jew. He should have known this like all the Jews knew this. This was not a hard question. Where is the Messiah going to be born? Bethlehem. That's the answer. Nobody has to think about it. It's not up for debate. You have to go and find a scholar who knows obscure things. Everybody knows this. So the fact that Sharon doesn't know this kind of emphasized the fact he's not a very good Jew. He doesn't know his religion really well. He doesn't care. He thinks he's got to get all these really great scholars gathered together to get the answer for this. But he's going to ask this question. It's like saying, OK, where do you find the story of Nephi? I don't know, let's go get the scholars. We'll figure it out, right?

1:34:38 So he he asked them this question. They have to be sitting, sitting there looking at him like, are you serious? Are we supposed to pretend to not know and go consult about this so he doesn't get offended? Or what do we do here? You have to wonder what those guys are thinking. I'm sure they were better politicians than scholars, so they figured it out. But regardless, that's where it goes. So they told him Bethlehem in Judea, for it's written by the prophets, he should be born in Bethlehem in Judea. For thus have they said the word Lord came unto a saying, and you Bethlehem, which lies in Judea, and they shall be born a Prince. OK. So then he sent them to Bethlehem saying, go search diligently for the child, because I want to worship him, right?

1:35:21 Because he's lying. So this is where the Angel appears and said Bethlehem is this way. And I'll lead you precisely to where it is in over The Cave where they're they're staying or the house where they're staying. Now, I don't want to go too far into this, mostly because our, our time is probably going to get too short. But when they, when they, they, they go to Bethlehem, they enter the house and they use a different word here than they used before. And I know some fundamentalists are aware of this, but I'm always surprised how many people are not aware. But in, in, in earlier, you know, Jesus is born a baby now he's born a padion, as I recall, is the word. But the, but the word indicates a young child. And by tradition, this is, you know, he's at least gone from April to Christmas.

1:36:20 But the word padion suggests it's a year plus that. So he's not quite two years old year and a half year 2/3 whatever. He's a toddler at this page space stage. He's you know, he's toddling around. He's not probably not crawling anymore. You know, when the when the shepherds see him, he's in the Manger. Yes, and we'll get to that with Luke, but at the time the manager show it show up, he's a toddler and he's probably kind of aware what's going on. He might not understand how much wealth is being given. He might not understand what the these things are, but he's seeing these people show up and giving him things and kneeling down before him and worshiping him. The The word is proskinesis, which means literally to kneel, put your hands up and put your head and hands to the ground. That's usually what you see Arabs doing. To this day, Muslims do that.

1:37:17 Still I. Take on the word prostate. Yeah, so that's process. Process kinesis or something like that. My Greek is so rusty, I better start studying again. But anyway, that's that's the idea. And so they give him the gold Prince, frankincense and myrrh and pay him homage. And then they leave their to another leave to their country, to another Rd. Not a whole lot to to go there besides what we've already said, other than just to say that, you know, Herod was really, really bad guy and he when he got tricked, he goes to kill everybody.

1:37:58 We see that more in Luke, so I'll defer to that. There are, however, some ancient Near Eastern commentaries that I wanted to just quote a couple of them because I thought they're astute observation. King Herod, unaware of a true King's birth, unwittingly helps fulfill prophecy when despised peasants and Gentile strangers correctly interpret the signs of the Messiah's birth. So here, here it is. A Jew, King of the Jews, should be the one you know or or his people ought to be the one receiving the sign. The Messiah is born. But he's not. It's strangers, Gentiles who come from out of town, who are the ones that are open to the message.

1:38:40 Interesting again. So this is from the ancient Christian Commentary, which is a collection of the early church fathers commentary. I really like it because it's it's got a lot of garbage in it, but it's a collection specifically to verse by verse of the scriptures. And so I can go and read through 10 quotes and find 2 that are actually decent without reading volumes and volumes and volumes of their materials, because a lot of the early church fathers taught a lot of weird stuff. But when they're specifically talking about scriptures, you can go get a volume that shows when they talked about specific scriptures and quotes them there so that you can find out what they had to say.

1:39:22 This is from there. Jerusalem remained troubled precisely when God was pouring out his greatest benefits to them. What a what a beautiful observation. How many times in our lives has that happened? Although troubled, they nevertheless did not try to understand what was happening. They did not follow the wise men. So anyway, some interesting observations. I, I really like that first part. And I think it's an important detail that we often gloss over. And I want to, I want to mention I've been studying samurai a lot and they're kind of stuck in my head. And there's a story of this one great sword maker.

1:40:03 And swordsmith and he he was getting to the end of finishing this great fabulous sword and he is apprentice who was dinking around like kids do, spilt some sand on it. And the the master swordsmith is ticked off. He's really, really upset. Probably beat up his apprentice. I don't know. But anyway, he's he goes back, he's trying to beat all the sand out of it and it's Polish it and do everything. He can't get rid of it and he he it. Nevertheless, it's a great sword. It works well. It's just got this aesthetic problem and it had this strange side effect nobody expected. And that's what that it sung, meaning that whenever it swung it, it made whistling type sounds and they were pleasant to hear.

1:40:55 And so as it turned out, these these guys were really pleased with the singing sword. And this is a true story. This is not a fake story. So they're, you know, they're showing all their friends. Look, when I do a downward stroke, it makes this sound. When I do a side struck it as this sound. And if I do it incorrectly, it makes the wrong sound. You know, they're telling all these things and these other guys are this, this is amazing. We all want once they all order a singing sword from this sword Smith. But the problem is no matter how hard he tries for decades, he's never able to make another singing sword. So there's some specific about the composition of the sand, the heat of it at the time that it fell on it, and he never could replicate it.

1:41:41 But they started using the sword to train people because if you did a stroke improperly made the wrong sound so you can swing until you get the right sound. And you always knew it was perfect without feedback from your sensei. And so it became a very coveted sword. I mentioned that because it's he says Jerusalem remained troubled sword Smith is pissed because the Santa got spilled on it precisely when God was pouring out his greatest benefits upon them. You know, so this turned out to be. This I see the connection huge. You know, beneficial thing for the the sword Smith that could have been even bigger if he would have figured it out. But you know, I've seen that kind of thing happened in a lot of famous people's stories made this big mistake in the boom.

1:42:26 It turned out to be this awesome, awesome thing I. Think that is such a fabulous take away that I think there's so many times that we look at events that happen and we're quick to label them good or bad. And the longer I'm alive, the more I realize that that's maybe not a correct connotation for our experiences. They just are what what determines if they're good or bad is how we're going to use them. And I think, I think that's one of those those I think that's a beautiful thing that's pointed out there. Yeah, I, I, you know, they come up with a lot of really weird conclusions and strange sayings and, and just so off doctrinally that they're not worth looking at. But then they have these really profound insights on details that we never hear.

1:43:20 It's a, it's a beautiful thing. This is, This is why I've got, I've had this for the last 20 years. I've been very slowly writing a commentary of a survey of 2000 years of Christian commentary and about the four gospels and, and what Mormons can get from it. Because there's a lot of stuff teaching Mormonism that was later shunned and written out of the books early on that we have. And there's also just really great insights into the original language and, and insights that we just would never have because we were too far removed from the people writing. So really cool stuff. OK, Pagdon.

1:44:00 Pagdon. That's the word for small child. I want to emphasize that again, just briefly, because Joseph stayed in Bethlehem for probably a year and a half at least. We don't know how long for sure, roughly that amount of time. That's important for two reasons. One is, remember in Nazareth, everybody knows the shame of Joseph. So they're moving out of this tiny little town and going down to another tiny town outside of Jerusalem. It's not super tiny, but not very big. It's called Bethlehem. He's staying away from the the public shame, right? He's made some distance here possibly is a landowner here in jurors in Bethlehem. That's something we're not totally certain about, but he stays there for a year and a half. And I mentioned that because some of the commentators, especially Kenneth Bailey, have noted we have this idea from the nativity stories that we watch every year that Joseph's this really crappy husband.

1:45:02 He could have gone without Mary to the tax thing. He didn't need her there. He could have not waited until she was going to have a baby on the on the donkey. He could have, you know, gone two months earlier or something so that she wasn't in this desperate situation begging for a room at the end last minute and, you know, about ready to have a baby pop out. And then, you know, he, he as soon as that's over, he decides to move her again. That's kind of the perspective we get when we read the Nativity and when, when kids listen to it, that's kind of what they hear is, you know, this emergency situation. But that's not what happened at all.

1:45:44 Joseph apparently had pre planned where he was going to go for Mary. They stayed there for a year and a half so that she had time to recover and relax and have vacation, you know, visit with relatives and so forth before moving on to wherever they moved on to. We'll get a little bit more into that in a minute, but I I think that that mentioning that he's a Pydeon, a young child and not a baby anymore is really, really important. I'm going to skip the slide to Egypt stuff. Go ahead. Can can I ask a quick question real here? So we're, we're often shown that either because of we, we read the Gospels and we have a certain idea in our minds, or maybe it's something that's exhibited for us in media and that sort of thing.

1:46:35 It, it feels like the event where Herod orders the execution of all the, the male children is like a one night kind of a thing here. It doesn't necessarily seem to be the case, right? Because if if Herod's out hunting, that means that Mary and Joseph have to lay somewhat low, correct? Yes, yeah. OK. Well, and also, you know, the Magi stop. He's, he's already, you know, the Herod kills everybody under 2, which suggests that Jesus is under 2. They don't know exactly when he was born. They know when the star came and it was about a year and 2/3 before.

1:47:16 So he says, all right, baby's under 2, kill him. That's what we're going to do. Incidentally, the slaughter of the innocents was probably only 10 to 30 children. And I don't, I don't want to say only like it's not a big deal, but a lot of times people have this idea that are hundreds of kids and he's going through all these different towns. There weren't a lot of towns in that area. We know how many children they had. We know about roughly their ages, not really well. So we could kind of surmise 10 to 30 kids were executed. The boys, like you said, so, so and, and it's not recorded anywhere else in history shows up in in Matthew and that's it. We don't have any other count of this happening.

1:47:57 But you know, from Herod's perspective in his brutal take out, killing 10 to 30 kids is just not that big of a bookmark in history. He's killing people all the time. He's slaughtering people all the time. This is particularly nasty to do it to babies. But it's, it's it, you know, it wasn't a big enough event that it caught people's attention because it's a tiny little town and or tiny little towns around the tiny little town, you know, a certain environment that he went to try and kill all of them at any rate. OK, so let's jump to, to Luke's nativity. So, and, and we're skipping a little bit of, of Matthew's story, but none, none of it's super, super pertinent.

1:48:44 But there is really, really big stuff in, in Luke. Luke too, in those days of decree went out for Emperor Augustus that all his empire should be registered now interesting here a lot of commentaries, early commentaries especially have noticed that Emperor Augustus was that he brought a proud bought about brought about Pax Ramona, right. It was he's the one that made peace in the Roman Empire. And so he's establishing this era of peace that allows Christianity to thrive. It, you know, without that, it's it's not going to be able to if people, if people who are restricted from moving or migrating, going from place to place, you can't spread the word as well.

1:49:27 And it was his peaceful reign that allowed that to a great extent. That said, there's a lot of bad stuff going on in Jerusalem under Herod, but more globally speaking, there was there was good stuff. OK. And he said that all his empire should be registered. Now that's Joseph Smith's word to say his empire. You know, the, the, the world and you know, those types of words are used in the original and you know, those are the types of words that we read and we don't necessarily know what they mean because they, they've got a specialized meaning back there that the word translated here by Joseph's empire, the original means the inhabited world. You know, they, they didn't recognize that there were other places that existed.

1:50:20 And so when they say four corners of the Earth, for instance, that might have been the four corners that they were aware of. And anecdotally, there's a funny story. I want to say it was King Alexander the Great. I could be wrong, so don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure it was King Alexander the Great because he, he had this ID, he was going to conquer everything, the whole world, everything that existed. That was his goal. So he's going along and he's conquering all these different people. And then he invades a part of India. And in India they're fighting with elephants that are armored and and they just decimate Alexander's army.

1:51:04 And so he declares that that's outside of the known world and doesn't count as part of the world. He's conquered the whole world. He goes back home. Oh, how many? Confessionals. Coaching jobs could have been saved if you could have just said that didn't count as a game. Right, exactly. So I just say that to give you the this, this, this attitude, this concept in the ancient world, they didn't think of a globe. They didn't think of, you know, there are people probably on the other side of this Earth that are in the millions and have this great technology. They they're just like this as far as anybody that we have record has ever travelled. And this is what we know about it. That's the known world and you know, that didn't include China, it didn't include Russia, it didn't, it certainly didn't include Australia. So their their mentality is just a little bit different. So but so it says the known world, but Joseph translates an empire.

1:52:01 Probably other places might as well. I don't know because that's really what it meant. Now it says this was the first registration and was while Quinarius was governor of Syria. Now we're told it was the taxation in the King James Version, and that's got stuck in everybody's mind. They're they came to Jerusalem to be taxed or Bethlehem to be taxed. It we don't know that it was a tax. It's more likely that it was a census governor Querianius was actually governor twice of Syria. He started a census about 5 or 6 BC and then finished it about six years later. So could this could be referring to him finishing the first census?

1:52:45 And this is just when Joseph gets notified because he wasn't governor the whole time he's governor, lost his job, came back, did it again. So we don't know some of those details, but the word is not clear. It could have been a taxation. If it was, we have a pretty good idea it was a land tax. And that's significant for a couple reasons. So first of all, we don't have any record in other places of of a census being made where they catered the way that looks like the catering to the Jews here. When they did a census, it was just go out, get all the information, bring it back to me. The Jews locally had this kind of tradition that they would go to the place where they're supposed to be counted and then go back. Just really invasive.

1:53:37 It's a big deal. You know, imagine if you're like, OK, Drew, go back to your hometown to get tax. I'm like, Dang, I got to make a trip to Washington. Let's see how like a 1518 hour drive for me. I hate driving. It's a big deal, you know, And so, but they never did that before. But that was the kind of thing that the Jews did and it kind of catered to their culture. So it's interesting that we have this account because it suggests they're trying to really work with the Jews to so that they're not really ticked off about the census because why are you doing the census? Because you're going to tax them that, you know, it may not be a tax, but it's, you know, you call it, we're counting heads, but really, you know that if you lie your head to be counted, they're going to come back later and say you're a citizen, you owe us money. So at any rate, So again, I just want to emphasize, we don't know for sure it was a census or there was not a tax, but we're pretty confident that it was likely a census, not a taxation. If it was a taxation, this introduces a couple oddities into the story.

1:54:48 And it's very possible that it was a tax. But if it was, it was a land tax, which means Joseph was a land holder, which usually would mean that he was very wealthy and had plenty of spare cash. But he pays the poor man's price for a first born son. So, you know, sometimes you can have big land and not and not and be cash poor. Liquidity is a problem for a lot of land holders today. But back in his day it was less of an issue. And I want to emphasize less because it wasn't always the case. But usually if you had land, you had people working it, you had people making money off of it. You were they were paid from their labor and then you had extra and so you always had extra cash.

1:55:32 That doesn't appear to be what was going on with Joseph. So that's a, an indicator that it wasn't a land tax. But sorry, again, it is possible that it was a land tax and he just bought something and now he was cash poor because he overextended himself, wasn't expecting to get married. And now here he is with, you know, this, this challenge. Now, if that's the case, however, and if this is a land tax, then why is he staying with somebody besides his own family? That's a big question. And especially if we believe that he was already married and had another wife or two in the vicinity, we wouldn't expect him to be staying with friends or relatives for a year and a half for the magi to show up and visit him. Now, it doesn't say precisely that he was with friends or family at that year and a half stage doesn't really tell us at all.

1:56:27 So it's possible this is just at his home where they showed up, but they're they're little details about the story that suggests that probably wasn't the case. So anyway, I'm just throwing out there that there's some little details that are happening here that are interesting and leave us uncertain what was really going on. But, you know, for people who haven't lived plural marriage, you don't understand how cash poor you can get really fast if you're a landholder or not. And so that's an interesting detail, too. A lot of commentators are saying, well, you know, if he's a landowner, he's got all this extra cash. And I'm thinking, man, I remember making six figures and I only had two wives, and I was really struggling sometimes against meat.

1:57:16 It just was never enough to go around. Absolutely. So at any rate, there's there's a number of things to speculate and think about there, but we really don't know. So I'm just going to move on. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to the city of David had called Bethlehem because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary. OK, let's for right now, let's just stop there. Here's the challenge. There's two things going on here that are usually ignored. He's from the House of David. What does that tell you? He's royalty. He's descendant of royalty. That's a big deal in the Near Near East. If if I came to you and showed up at your house and say, hey, I'm Prince of Wales, you'd be like, oh, where's Wales? And that like part of Great Britain or something. Nobody cares.

1:58:08 You know, it's like you were born to it. No, I don't respect you didn't make your own man. You just were born to. We don't care. But in their culture, it was a really, really big deal if I showed up at your house or you're in and said, hey, I'm a descendant of David. I need a place to stay. It would bring shame upon you and your community if you said no to me. That's a big deal to realize and understand. So when when Joseph shows up in Bethlehem and says there's no room in the end, we've we've got to look at some cultural context here and say this isn't making sense. So we we need to take a step back and understand something's going here.

1:58:51 Did you get those links that I sent you in time to to drop for the podcast? Yes, let me pull those up. OK, so I'm. Going to refer to those pictures in a minute. If if for for the listener, there links that are going to be at the bottom of the podcast that are going to show you pictures of the word of what a 1st century home in Judea looked like. And there are a couple different things that that we'll see, but this is all pertinent. So let me let me go ahead and read and then we'll we'll jump back to that issue. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. Now she's only expecting here.

1:59:32 It doesn't say that she's 9 1/2 months pregnant and about ready to to drop, right? It just says she's expecting and he's going to be registered with her again. He didn't have to take her his head of household. She had no duty to show up and he had no duty to take her, only the head of household or the landowner. She didn't own the land. She wasn't in a house. He could have left her behind. He didn't. Chances are he's being thoughtful about this because he's not going to leave her to shame in Nazareth. He's taking her with him so that she can not be embarrassed as to what happened, taking her to Bethlehem with him to start a new life and further. He's probably taken time to arrange housing, which we'll talk about in a minute.

2:00:23 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver child. While they were there does not mean the next morning we a lot. There's this big assumption that she's big Roly Poly belly and it's going to fall out any moment. We don't know that and the chances are it's not the case at all as well. We'll go as we go further and she gave birth to her first born son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a major OK. I got those pictures pulled up when you're ready, Drew. Perfect. Thank you. OK, so she gave birth to her first, a first born son. This is where it says right, her first born son and wrapped him in bands of cloth. Now the basically these babies, you know, could describe them as little mummies, but the the swaddling claws that they had, and I know a lot of fundamentalists probably already know this, but probably some groups don't teach it much. So when you got married in Hebrew culture, you would embroidery your genealogy onto a strip of linen typically, and on the one side you'd embroidery the husband's genealogy. On the other side you embroidery the wife's genealogy with which a lot of people see with Matthew's genealogy is Joseph's and Luke's genealogy is Mary's.

2:01:39 That may or may not be so, but that's kind of the same idea. You embroidery put on one piece of cloth. When you go to hold hands and make the covenant, you wrap that cloth around both of your arms to bind you together, symbolizing you're uniting those two genealogies. So kind of a beautiful ceremony, but there's something more that became the swaddling cloth. So then later they wrapped the baby in those same linens with the genealogy on it. They would have other things too. Typically they would wash the baby with salt and gosh, what else was it? It wasn't just salt and water, but there's salt and something, honey or something, I don't remember. But any rate, they would wash the baby with the salt and this sort of thing, and then they would wrap their arms like a mummy and wrap their legs like a mummy so that their bones would not bend.

2:02:36 There was this ancient fear or concern that if you didn't do that, that your arms and legs would go crooked. And so it became just this tradition to wrap them in swaddling clothes so your little baby looks like a little mummy. It wasn't just a cute little blanket. They were they were mummified or. Something there was a point to that. Right and laid him in a Manger. And the word there is fatne. And if we think of a Manger, we think of, you know, what we see at the nativity, right? You've got a stall, you build it up, it's got hay on the top. It's about waist height, maybe taller, blah, blah, blah. That's not fontenay. Typically fontenay refers to a hole dug in the ground and filled with hay so that the animals could eat.

2:03:20 And so this is where if you, if you look at the picture, you can you can see where those fontenay would be. But let me Mint go one step further. First there was none to give place for them in the guest room. The word there is kaluma, alternately used as kaluma, kalumati and kaluma. But the word is referring to the guest room of a house. Now, some some people say, well, you know, Luke would know better. He's the one writing this, right? Well, Luke uses the word in in the story of the Good Samaritan. He knows very well what that word is. And the word is pendocheon.

2:04:05 It's very different than Kaluma. Any idiot can tell the difference looking at it. Even if you don't read the language, it's clear they're not the same. What we, what scholars have speculated is that when the King James translators got this word is the first time they'd ever seen the word kudaluma. They didn't know what it was because it's referring to a guest room in a Jewish Home, not just any place. And it was an obscure word. They didn't know what to do with it. They looked at the context and said they must have gone to an inn because they're out of town, and so it's an inn. But there was no inn. That's pedakion.

2:04:48 It's a word that is not used by Luke, and it doesn't make any sense. There's no archaeological evidence, and there is no written manuscript evidence of any N being anywhere near Bethlehem. It was too small to support one. It was not on a major trade route. There was no need for an N. And further, most people didn't use NS in the ancient Near East. They stopped by family or they would knock on somebody's door and say, hey, I'm a poor traveler or can you let me stay? And people generally did, unless you looked really rough. Now in any culture in the world, if a pregnant woman comes and knocks on your door and says, my baby's about to drop, can I stay the night? Is there any culture that says no, go away? Pretty much the answers, no, and certainly not among the Jews, and certainly not among the Arabs. Broadly speaking, that would be considered one of the most disgraceful, disgusting things you could do. It would dishonor the family and the community and their whole culture.

2:05:55 They could not in any decent type of good conscience tell a pregnant woman, no, I'm sorry, you need a house, go somewhere else. Nobody would do that. You wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that. People listening wouldn't do that. It's just not something that that that happens. What does make sense is that there was no room for her in the in the in the Kaluma. Few years back, I started to get the feeling that we, as fundamentalists and orthodox Mormons, we need our own stuff. Up to now, we've been able to buy and purchase all of our scriptures, books, art, and music from other restoration organizations, and that's been good. But there's no guarantee it's going to remain that way. Also, it can be a bit tricky to scour the Internet trying to find all the books from your favorite fundamentalist or orthodox Mormon authors.

2:06:45 As I thought about this, I feel like I was really given a solution now through the hard work of others, because let's face it, I'm the guy least qualified in all the world to build a website. I'm happy to present to you 1830 mercantile.org. Right now on the website you can see that we have all the books have ever been written by 4 authors, including names like Drew, Briny and Ogdenkraut. Also very soon there will be a link to buy art and music all produced by Mormons with a deep love for the restored gospel. There's also places for you to get free resources where you can find podcasts, videos, classes, and other presentations. Also coming very soon there will be a place for events where you can list the events from your organization so that you can get the most out of that attendance. Now this can be as big as you want it to be. It's all up to you guys out there if you want to buy and post things on here.

2:07:39 Now, if you're someone who produces something that you feel like others can benefit from, 1830 Mercantile is a place where you can make all of those products available for purchase. All you need to do is drop me an e-mail at mormonrenegade@gmail.com and put 1830 in in the title of that e-mail with a short message and either myself or someone else from the 1830 Mercantile team will reach out to you so we can get your product up there on the site. Now to make sure that all the products that we offer are affordable and to ensure that the vast majority of the profits go to the producer, the website percentage is only three to 4% of the total cost. And that's just so I can pay the pros that have created this website and keep the lights on the website itself. Finally, by making some of your purchases at 1830 mercantile.org, you'll be supporting folks whose principles and morals are close, if not the same as yours. At the same time not giving your money away to people who stand against everything you stand for. So no matter if you're looking to make a purchase or you're a seller that wants to get your products listed, head on over to 1830 mercantile.org today.

2:08:52 Drop me an e-mail and we'll make sure that we get back out to you. Now back to the show. So now if we go to the pictures and I, I put a couple different links on there because there are different possibilities of what's being referred to here. I think one of the links is probably wrong and one's probably right. So I'm going to talk about that. I, I wish I had, I put up a picture on my podcast that I did that was a little bit closer to accurate, but the one that you've got up on the screen right now is really good. OK, so as you walk into the house, you typically walked into the stable and the stable was a step down. It was dug into the ground and it usually slanted. So as you walk into the house, the first Fontenay, which is what those circles are the major, those are the Fontenay. Those are the, the line between the two rooms is usually a little kind of a fence.

2:09:54 And it was just, you know, some XS holding up a, a, a bar that went across. And when it's feeding time, you remove the bar so the animal could reach the fontnate, the Manger feeding through. And the big animals like an ox, if you had one, or a donkey would eat at the end of the Manger because it was deeper and the sheep would eat at the shallower end, which was closer. Now, first of all, you're saying why are they eating with a stable in the house? There were two reasons. One is people would steal animals if they were left outside. So to protect your animals, you would keep them inside. Now it's a big deal in today's stay and age. You're like, Dang, somebody stole my sheep.

2:10:35 Oh, shoot, man, that sucks. You're gonna buy a new one next year. It's not a big loss. It's not something that ruins your life in in that time period. However, if you lost a cow, that could be something that you saved up for 10 years to buy, that you relied upon for milk and that you know, you, you used to help plow your, your, you know, your, your field or something. Even if it wasn't an ox, you might use a cow. It's could, is extremely valuable. If somebody stole it, it would be devastating. It might take years to recover financially. So you kept it inside the house with you. Second reason is in the cold times of the winter, the more bodies you have in an area, the more it warms it up. Just like if you've ever been in A at a congregation, a church, or if you go to a convention, there are lots of people. Next thing, first thing, you're like shaking your shirt and you're sweating and it's really hot because it's all the body heat.

2:11:35 They helped heat up the homes, especially when they lived in caves. And a lot of the peasants lived in caves and so that's where they were. So they were separated from the main living area by steps and and they would they just put a bar across so the animals couldn't get up. And when it was feeding time, they would remove some of those bars so that they could access the font name. OK, so now when we read about Jesus being born in a Manger, we see it's actually the family area of the house, the biggest room of the house. That would allow the midwife to go up and down the steps through the main entrance of the house and have some privacy because it was shut off from the from the sleeping quarters for the rest of the family and is able to tend to the baby who's being kept in a bunch of fresh hay on the floor.

2:12:30 That would be a perfectly nice, normal way for people to have a baby in 1st century Palestine. So. Oh. Yeah, sure paints a different picture other than just tossing Mary out. Mary and Joseph out on their own. Yes, and and further, the picture you've got shows a separate door to the Cataluma. That is not always how it is. So imagine if you will take that guest room, split it horizontally and instead of having a door there, have the door go into the family area. That's mom and dad's room and it goes into the family area. Kids just sleep in the main area. And if a family was poor enough, and sometimes dad would anyway, the dad would sleep next to the door so that if anybody came in, he would be alerted.

2:13:20 And so it says, which of you going to your neighbors at midnight to ask for bread, right? And you're knocking on the door. Dad's the one by the door. That's why you're going to stumble over him first because he's guarding the area. But now he's going to fumble around in the dark to try and find the bread, which is not going to be where the, the the stable area is going to have to go somewhere in one of the other the family area to find it. And everybody else is sleeping on the floor. So he's going to stumble over everybody. So a normal family would have the a room for the parents and then a guest room would have a separate entrance going into through the family area. Not always, it depends on how wealthy you are. The poorer families had a entrance through the family room.

2:14:02 A richer family had an entrance that's separate like the picture that you have. And if you get even richer, which is not how it's described in the Nativity story, then you have a second floor where the family area where the people sleep is on the 2nd floor and there's a stable underneath it. I think kind of a main area like the family area here. I don't think that makes any sense at all with the with the story. If we look at the original words and the setup and how how things are described, it doesn't make sense. Now, let's take a step back now and say they show up and say there was no room for them in the Cataluma, the guest room, Why?

2:14:44 It's a census there in Bethlehem. Everybody who's a descendant of David is showing up at Bethlehem. It's a tiny town and there are thousands of people showing up to stay. And the locals can't say no because they're royalty. And so the guest room is already full and but they're not going to say no. You know, he could have said, you know what, I'm going to move the other people to the guest room so you can have the main family area because it will give more privacy. It'll be nicer area for the midwife to have access to come in and out without walking through everybody else. And you know, Mary's not going to have a bunch of people coming in and out of her room going, you know, walking from where they are at or something.

2:15:27 Who who knows? It depends on the specific home and how it worked, but it makes sense. Yeah. It's a normal functioning place. It makes sense that they're saying, look, you know, the cataloom is not big enough for you to have the baby. You got to have midwives are coming in and out. You've got, you know, maybe the kids are going to bring her water or maybe they're going to bring food into her. There's just, there's not. They're tiny rooms. So this is this. This just is not the best place for you. We'll give you the main family area and we'll, we'll sneak all the kids into the room and keep them quiet while the baby's being there. So you won't have people going in and out. And the, the midwives can take, take care of you as needed.

2:16:11 You can clean up and not, you know, you can have your privacy. Now, to be fair, privacy in the ancient Near East and then most societies is not like what we experienced today. So it wasn't as big of a deal, but it would have been a consideration. It would have been something to do to be kind. So, and I mentioned that just just as an example, I love the archaeology Bible. It's a, it's a Bible that that has pictures of archaeological evidences of how things were back in Jesus's time. And one of the interesting things is they show a bathroom in Jerusalem at the time. And all it was was planks every, you know, every spaced, every so often you sat on the 2 planks, 1 on each leg and that was your toilet.

2:16:58 There were no dividers. There was no male or female room. It was everybody went to the bathroom together, seeing each other like the literally be like 40 of these in a big U shape all across this big room. So the idea of privacy and you know how you looked at things and all those things are very, very different in the ancient Near East. And I'm not saying that so how the Jews preferred it, but that's how it was in Rome and in Jerusalem at at the time there was a a place they've got pictures of. That's how it was. And so that kind of suggests this is an environment they're kind of accustomed to. And so their concept of privacy is not the same as it is today. But nevertheless, it gives you a, a different perspective than we might expect.

2:17:45 So now there is no innkeeper. There is no guy saying, get out of here, I don't have room for you. Oh wait, you can stay with all the animals in the stable. Nobody would do that. That's what we teach every Christmas and every nativity. That's what we see. But if you look at this 1st century home, you see the stables where everybody walked through. When you went to home, you went up the stairs away from the stable. But the Fontenay, the Manger was right next to the wall where the animals were. So, well, the baby's being placed in the Manger. You've got the sheep and the donkey, Leone over there sniffing at it and curious about it and blowing and making, you know, the sounds that we have described in the, in the nativity scenes, which by the way, do have some scriptural support in the Old Testament and, and in some of the early church fathers. But that's what we're seeing here. And, and that's very different than what we see in the nativity scenes at Christmas time.

2:18:47 And, and also, you know, you've got a family where probably, like I said, to get guest room is probably not separate there. The mom and dad are probably in a room that's just offset from the family area. So the the wife can come in and out and help the midwives or provide food or get extra blankets or wash or whatever needs help. She's going to be able to help. She's going to be right there. Whereas if she was in a separate room with a separate thing like the Cataluma, she's not going to be quite as accessible. Again, it could be either way, but I think from what we read, the the the first scenario makes more sense. And that's what Kenneth Bailey, Kenneth Bailey in his book with his diagram doesn't show the Catalan with a separate entrance. It's as I, as I was describing earlier, draw a horizontal line there and there there's sometimes they don't have doors or just have sheet or something like the 70s. They just have beads or something. It wasn't like a formal doorway necessarily might just be an archway from room to room.

2:19:50 But regardless, you know, there's a certain amount of privacy there, but those are usually small. And that's why it makes sense to says there's there's no room for you And there let's let's give you the family room. It's bigger. We'll get you some fresh hay and then everybody can have access middle of the night if you need to, whenever it happens and wife will be readily available anytime you need her. Just call for help. She'll wake up and husband's usually are not involved at at that point. So there he goes. OK, so out of out of that, I think a lot of the rest of the stuff starts getting a little bit less interesting.

2:20:37 I think this is kind of one of the bigger messages, I think for, for people who are saying, well, what's a, a better understanding of the nativity that I have today? What's something that's different that I could learn that would help me to better understand the story of Christ's birth? You know, and I, I think that last thing is, is the big, that's, that's the big take away take away. So for me, when I look look at the nativity and I focus on it with my kids, I really look at two different things each year. And I'm, I'm not saying this is how it has to be. I'm just amusing. This really it's kind of a wrap up for you. But I, I think the story of Joseph's costly love and his sacrifice and how he was asked to handle Mary in that situation is often overlooked. And I think that's one of the beautiful sides of masculinity that is often overlooked where you have good men who will sacrifice their own honor, their own what, whatever they need, they sacrifice it for the benefit of their family or the benefit of the wife and not the whole family or whatever to protect and serve them and, and strengthen them. And we see that in Joseph.

2:21:55 And not only does he do that, but he's in a really difficult situation, something that we we can't even really fathom in our modern culture. But when the Angel tells him to do something, he immediately responds in each time. OK, go to Bethlehem, go to Egypt, go back to Nazareth, you know, boom, boom, boom immediately obeys every time. And you don't hear him being a whiny butt and saying, wait, a car. Jeez, you're asking an awful lot here. What about this? What about this? You know, I supposed to just take all those shame, all this bad stuff. He's just like, all right, done. God wants it. It's it's there. That's a a very beautiful side of the story that is, is pretty much completely overlooked.

2:22:41 And the, the Matthew genealogy we started out with, I think is a really good set up for that because he's acknowledging, yeah, this story has kind of, if you don't believe it and a lot of you reading won't believe it because Matthew realizes he's not, not everybody's going to read and be a convert. If you don't believe it at least shows a little bit of hesitancy before you judge because look at our history and our background. This could be another woman like that. So give her some space, Don't judge her harshly, you know, these types of things. I think that sets up that understanding of what's happening for Joseph really beautifully as well. And and lastly, I think very by far the most important thing is I would, I would love to participate or see a nativity that was actually done right when I learned about this first time 1520 years ago, I don't remember, but when I first learned about it, it was just so touching to me. You know, if, if Christ's birth, if Christ being the savior of the world, you'd think his birth is nativity scenario would be doctrinally important for whatever reason, there's some significance there.

2:23:59 And if we have a false understanding of it, we're, we're missing something. But having a, a correct understanding of what these words mean and what's happening in, in doing that, it has to bring the spirit to you to, to, to grasp that and, and say, oh, all those weird things that I've always wondered about and just ignored. They actually make sense now that that there's no mean in Keeper. They're not, you know, she's not giving birth while animals are bumping her and walking around her and all this sort of stuff. Joseph's not this complete schmuck who doesn't think ahead, doesn't have a place for her to stay, hasn't thought enough about it until she's 9 1/2 months pregnant and, you know, baby's falling out.

2:24:45 Then all of a sudden he's like, oh, I need a place to stay tonight. What a jerk. I mean, who does that? He's not thoughtless like that. And moreover, he stays there for a year and a half. You think he negotiated that on the eve of her having the baby? You know, he had to prepare and organize that beforehand. Before he showed up to to Bethlehem. He probably said, hey, uncle so and so. I need a place to stay. I've got a pregnant wife. You've got a pregnant wife. She's only, you know you. What's the story there? Never mind. We can we stay for a year and a half. You know, he's had to go through some of this difficult conversation and negotiations before he even shows up or else he wouldn't be able to stay there that long.

2:25:29 And if not, it's with his other family in which he's got small, so difficult conversations to arrange. But then it doesn't look like it's staying with family because there's no room in the guest room, right? It's not her house either. 100%. Possible it was a sister wife's house, but at any rate, looking at it that way, he's not a schmuck. You know, he's really had some difficult conversations. He's handled them. He's negotiated a place to stay. Good, bad, mid grade, ugly, happy, whatever. He's done what he can to take care of her, to get her out of a place where she's going to be humiliated, embarrassed and subject to ridicule and shame.

2:26:10 Brought her to a new place. They're able to stay there stably for a year and a half and he's able to take care of her and, you know, have her stay with whatever extended families probably who he stayed with because there are there everybody's technically extended family, but you know, it's likely somebody he knew in the 1st place and negotiated with is my point. So it paints a very different picture of Joseph as, as you know, some men are like that, right? I think they'll take their pregnant wife and be like, oh, I I thought you'd really like to go ice skating. You're only nine months pregnant. I forgot, you know, there's always this schmuck out there that's like that.

2:26:53 That's not Joseph, you know, that's not, that's not what happened. And I think that paints a much more beautiful setup for Christ's family. OK. I only, I only laugh. Forgive me because, you know, you'd have to live with me. And I may edit this part. I don't know. But Tanya was like, hey, are you going to have all your podcasts arranged so that when I go into labor, you don't have to worry about it? And I was like, arranged. What are you talking about? We're going to do a podcast right in the middle of that. You know how many ratings I could grab with that complete joke, but nonetheless. Good material here. Right.

2:27:34 Nonetheless, I thought, you know, you were speaking about schmuck husbands and I just couldn't. Help myself. Well, to be fair, my first mother-in-law was skiing and water skiing and nine months pregnant. That's just the type of woman she was So. And it wasn't because her husband was a schmuck. She just wanted to. Right, right, it looked. That. The sisters get what they want during that time. Period, right? It did not matter, and rightly so. Not everybody is built the same, so I guess some people can do that. Right. You know, Drew, I am so glad we did this because I don't. There has been so much made about this one particular holiday.

2:28:19 And look, it's no secret I'm kind of a fan of it, right? I enjoyed this time of year and I've had people say, oh, well, it's got Pagan roots and it's got this and it's got that. Well, that might be true. That might be true. However, I think you've done a good job first to show that this might actually be in commemoration of not just the Savior's birth, but when when those magi show up. Right? That would make sense with the time frame. That's actually early Christian tradition. That's what they believed. Right. The other thing I'm going to say is even if it does fall on those days, I think it's important to remember I alluded to this earlier that when the children of Israel were leaving Egypt, the Egyptians threw gold at them. Just take our money and leave sort of a thing. Yeah.

2:29:15 They get out to the wilderness and they do two things with that gold. They adorn the Tabernacle with it and the Ark of the Covenant, and they make a golden calf. Now is it the gold that's the problem? No, it's not. It's not the gold that's the problem, no more than it's a hammer's problem if it no more than it's a problem with the hammer. If you use it to whack your buddy upside the head, right? It's all about how you're going to use these things. So you can use it to do something to point towards the Savior, or you can use it to point something towards Babylon. Your call. But I, I don't think we should necessarily just give it up because the world has espoused it or a version of it. But in order to get to there, Drew, I think these conversations are important because you got to know what it is that you're professing to believe. And then you've got to be willing to lay aside certain traditions for the sake of truth. And that can be hard to do, but I think there's real fulfillment to be found in doing that.

2:30:24 Excuse me? Yeah, I agree. I and and I've, to the consternation of both my wives and children at times, I I have really emphasized and focused on having a nativity being the centerpiece of the holidays. And often we'll keep it open and available in the house until Easter. Not all the time the same thing. Yeah. And you know, sometimes I've, I've had complaints and say, well, that just puts a Christmas presents underneath the nativity set and that just kind of takes away from the purpose as opposed to separating it by the the Pagan tree, whether or not you believe it's a Jeremiah 10 or whatever. That is so beautifully describes the Christmas tree, you know, you know, but I, for me, it's like whatever's going on there, if, if you're understanding that the nativity is representation, those crushes, whatever you want to call them, of two events, both the birth and the magi appearing and sometimes the shepherds too.

2:31:38 So you've got three different events. But if you're understanding, it's two different events and you're understanding the, that there was symbolic value for the gifts that were given and, and, and that that whole genealogy of that story in the 1st place with Adam and Eve getting them first. I, I think that kind of gives you different perspective of the gift giving too, and what, what that's about. And maybe if you're didn't do as good a job as a parent that year and all you bought is the kids was video games, maybe that symbolism doesn't do a whole lot of good underneath the nativity set, you know, having only video only video games there.

2:32:23 And, and, and I don't like video games myself much, But I'm, I'm not trying to, to emphasize that detail so much as I'm saying, if you made something for your child or you bought them some clothes and some toys or useful gifts for them as well as fun gifts. But if you're, if you're really focusing and talking about the story of the magi coming and expressing love through gift giving as one of the five love languages, and you know, you're trying to be thoughtful about it and get people something that's unique and special to them as opposed to their sibling, then, you know, that whole tradition of gift giving can be a lot more meaningful as well.

2:33:12 At any rate, I try to instill that by by teaching the, the magi story and how they gave gifts and the symbolisms behind the gifts and the thoughtfulness of that whole process. And I've, I've been really gratified. I've got, you know, some, some older kids that, that are super thoughtful about it. And it's not just a, Oh, I'm expected to give gifts. It's that time of year. I have to go buy something. But it's a really thoughtful, what can I get this person that shows my love to them and honors their unique individuality and anyway in ways that they're better at it than I am. So that's real.

2:33:53 That's really nice. But in anyway, my point is that's that's something that can function as a nice merger of of the holiday. And I think back to what you were saying too. I'm just basically agreeing with you. I guess I can just say I agree, but I'm too verbose to do so, I guess. But the, the other thing I think that's important to remember is I, I constantly asked myself, what is the nature of God? How would he, what would he be like during this holiday season? And you could say, well, Jesus overthrew the temple, overthrew the tables of the temple and whipped people and wove had nine tails and maybe hurt some people in the process and let off sheeps escape. And you know, there's I mean, there's there's that side of him, to be fair.

2:34:43 But I think if he was in our society today and looking around and saying, you know, I've got some people trying to honor me, maybe misguidedly and some people not, I'll take the misguided worship and the misguided efforts to copy me and build on that. You know, that's what we see in every situation through all of Scriptures where he'd say there's beauty that comes out of people. Christmas that doesn't come out the rest of the year. People tend to be more loving and giving, more soft hearted, more thoughtful about the beggar on the street and these types of things. And, you know, should that happen all year round? Yeah, it doesn't know.

2:35:28 But that holiday brings that out of people. So let's magnify that. Let's build upon that and and strengthen it. And I to me, that's what I see God would be doing, not destroying it and not saying, oh, well, this just has Pagan roots. This is because the fertility goddess, you know, was, was merged from sun worship or whatever it is that people are worried about. You know, there's always something evil to be found everywhere, especially Halloween. That's a different story. Yes. Yes. But there's so much good in it that's available and it does historically coincide with the, with the visit of the Magi.

2:36:09 So, you know, I, I think, I think it's, there's, there's, there's beauty to be found there, not just completely blown off, But that's just, that's just me. Nope, I'm with you, Drew. Well, man, this was awesome. Fancy again beforehand. You have a good Christmas, man. Likewise. Yeah, I love you. I love these conversations we have. I love the work you do. Drew. You're you're a good man. And I'm I'm grateful to count you as a friend. Thanks likewise. Yeah, I'm, I'm great grateful to be able to, to to chat about all these things to, to good audience.

2:36:50 I, I think you know, you've got a lot of people who are searching for truth on this channel and, and super, super important topic that's ignored a lot, but I'm super passionate about as you can tell by my my nerdocracy. Awesome, Drew, anything else you want to say before we wrap this up, big guy? Not, not, not that I could think of. I mean, we didn't cover the, the, the visit of the shepherds. I don't think there's a whole lot of big insight there and some other little details, but I, I think we pretty much covered the, the meaty stuff. Well, that's good enough for me, man. We're going to do our 2 1/2 hours. So we definitely did our due diligence.

2:37:31 Right. Well, we can keep going if you need it. Don't. Worry. No. No, I think we're good. Not that I didn't enjoy that, but let's save some for next year. So awesome. All right. Well, Drew again, man, I appreciate hanging out. Five minutes and we'll see everyone else later. Bye all. Right. Take care. God bless.