The Birth of Jesus

Four women appear in a list that should have had none, and every one of the choices is pointed. Then Joseph decides what justice means and a woman lives.

Isaiah promised Jerusalem gifts from the east, shepherds, and a great light. The Gospel writers report all three arriving at a child in Bethlehem instead.

There is no innkeeper in the text and no stable in it either. What the word means, what a peasant house looked like, and why the shepherds left them there.

The massacre is never read out at Christmas. Who Herod actually was, why Matthew chose to include it, and what an old man tells a young mother in the temple.