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In the final volume of his trilogy on the life and teachings of Jesus, Pope Benedict XVI strongly affirms the authenticity of the Gospel accounts of his birth and childhood by Matthew and Luke.
He says the two evangelists set out to “write history, real history that had actually happened, admittedly interpreted and understood in the context of the word of God”.
“The accounts of Matthew and Luke are not myths taken a stage further. They are firmly rooted, in terms of their basic conception, in the biblical tradition of God the Creator and Redeemer,” he writes.
Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives was published in English and eight other languages on November 21.
The book reaffirms the importance of the Christian belief in the virgin birth, that Jesus was not conceived through sexual intercourse but through the Holy Spirit. Belief in the virgin birth and the Resurrection are described as “cornerstones of faith” because they demonstrate God’s creative power over matter.
“These two moments are a scandal to the modern spirit,” which expects and allows God to act only in ideas, thoughts and the spiritual world, not the material, the Pope writes. Yet it is not illogical or irrational to suppose that God possesses creative powers and power over matter, otherwise “then he is simply not God”.
Pope Benedict also argues that the star of Bethlehem was a true celestial event. It “seems to be an established fact,” he writes, that a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn happened in 7-6 BC, which “as we have seen is now thought likely to have been when Jesus was born”.
While he expresses belief in the story of the adoration of the Magi, he says no foundation of faith would be shaken if turned out to be an invention based on a theological idea.
But the Pope is sceptical about the presence of animals at Jesus’ birth. There is no Gospel evidence for that, he argues, but acknowledges that images of oxen and donkeys have become such a staple part of the Nativity that they are now accepted.
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Image: Grafida.net
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