The Reality of Jesus' Divine Birth and of His Glorious Return

In the popular film Miracle on 34th Street, the central figure, Kris Kringle, is taken to court over his claim to be the real Santa Claus. At stake is the faith of a child who wants to believe in Santa but is caught in a tug-of-war with her hardheaded mother (who is convinced that she should outgrow such fantasies). In the real world, tragically, the controversy between faith and skepticism is fought upon much more serious ground: one need look no further than the latest holiday headlines to know something of the erosion of faith in Jesus Christ as the literal Son of God—even among church attenders. In His own time, Jesus was crucified because some said He blasphemed in claiming to be a God; in our time, He is vilified by those who claim Him to be only a man. It is one thing to question the Miracle on 34th Street; and wholly another to lose hope in the Miracles of Calvary, Gethsemane, and Bethlehem. The Christian writer Malcolm Muggeridge asks a poignant question, “Would something like the miracle of Bethlehem even be allowed to happen in our day?”:

In humanistic times like ours, a contemporary virgin … would regard a message from the Angel Gabriel that she might expect to give birth to a son to be called the Son of the Highest as ill-tidings of great sorrow … It is, in point of fact, extremely improbable, under existing conditions, that Jesus would have been permitted to be born at all. Mary’s pregnancy, in poor circumstances, and with the father unknown, would have been an obvious case for an abortion; and her talk of having conceived as a result of the intervention of the Holy Ghost would have pointed to the need for psychiatric treatment, and made the case for terminating her pregnancy even stronger. Thus our generation, needing a Savior more, perhaps, than any that has ever existed, would be too humane to allow one to be born; too enlightened to permit the Light of the World to shine in a darkness that grows ever more oppressive.

Against this sad backdrop of doubt, I am grateful for the light God has given us. I am glad to declare the divinity of our Lord; to affirm that it is the Christ of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, not the Jesus of Rice, Webber, Kazantzakis, and Crossan who is real; to testify that Jesus is not merely a man who died but a God who lives. In this article, I will discuss three survival skills for these skeptical times: believing in Christ, submitting to God’s will, and seeing with an eye of faith.

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Temple Symbolism and the Tent of Noah

There are rich thematic connections between the emergence of the dry land at Creation, the settling of the Ark at the top of the first mountain to emerge from the Flood, New Year’s Day, and the temple. In ancient Israel, the holiest spot on earth was believed to be the Foundation Stone in front of the Ark of the Covenant within the temple at Jerusalem: “[I]t was the first solid material to emerge from the waters of Creation, and it was upon this stone that the Deity effected Creation.” The depiction of the Ark-Temple of Noah perched upon Mount Ararat would have evoked similar temple imagery for the ancient reader of the Bible.

In Genesis 9, the “fall” and “judgment” scenes, corresponding typologically to the Fall and Judgment scenes of Adam and Eve, are straightforwardly recited...Looking at the passage more closely, however, raises several questions. To begin with, what tent did Noah enter? Although the English translation says “his tent,” the Hebrew text features a feminine possessive that normally would mean “her tent.” The Midrash Rabbah explains this as a reference to the tent of Noah’s wife, and commentators, ancient and modern, have often seized upon this detail to infer that Ham intruded upon his father and mother during a moment of intimacy.

A very intriguing alternative explanation, however, is offered by Rabbi Shim’on in the Zohar, who takes the he of the feminine possessive to mean “‘the tent of that vineyard,’ namely, the tent of Shekhinah.” Shekhinah is the Hebrew term for “the divine feminine” that was used to describe the presence of Yahweh in Israelite temples. The idea of Noah having erected a sacred “tent of meeting” is perfectly consistent with the previous report that he built an altar and established a covenant with the Lord. Indeed, in a variant of the same theme, at least one set of modern commentators take the letter he in the Hebrew text of Genesis text as referring to Yahweh, hence reading the term as the “Tent of Yahweh,” the divine sanctuary.

In view of the pervasive theme in ancient literature in which the climax of the flood story is the founding of a temple over the source of the floodwaters, Blenkinsopp finds it “safe to assume” that the biblical account of “the deluge served not just as a paradigm of judgment but also as the Israelite version of the cosmogonic victory of the deity resulting in the building of a sanctuary for him.” It is significant that in the old Mesopotamian deluge myth that, according to Blenkinsopp, “could and did function as a creation myth in its own right,” this sanctuary is not located at the top of the mountain, but at the edge of a swamp, an abzu. Similarly, Lucian reports that “the temple of Hierapolis on the Euphrates was founded over the flood waters by Deucalion, counterpart of Ziusudra, Utnapishtim, and Noah.” Consistent with this theme, Psalm 29:10 “speaks of Yahweh enthroned over the abyss.”

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Temple Symbolism in the Garden of Noah

There are rich thematic connections between the emergence of the dry land at Creation, the settling of the Ark at the top of the first mountain to emerge from the Flood, New Year’s Day, and the temple. Ancient Israelites believed the holiest spot on earth to be the Foundation Stone in front of the Ark of the Covenant within the temple at Jerusalem: “[I]t was the first solid material to emerge from the waters of Creation, and it was upon this stone that the Deity effected Creation.” The depiction of the Ark-Temple of Noah perched upon Mount Ararat would have evoked similar temple imagery for the ancient reader of the Bible.

Spotlighting the theme of a new beginning, the number “one” plays a key role in the description of re-creation after the Flood. For example, note that “on the first day of the [tenth] month … the tops of the mountains [were] seen,” and that “in the six hundred and first year [of Noah’s life] in the first month, the first day of the month … the waters were dried up.” “There can be no mistaking the emphasis on the number one,” writes Claus Westermann. Moreover, both of these verses, like their counterpart in the story of the original creation, use the rarer Hebrew term yomehad, corresponding to the English cardinal term “day one” rather than the common ordinal term “first day.” This would hint to the ancient reader that the date had special ritual significance. Consider that it was also the “first day of the first month” when the Tabernacle was dedicated, “while Solomon’s temple was dedicated at the New Year festival in the autumn (the month of Ethanim… ).” Consistent with usage in ritual texts within the Bible and other texts from the ancient Near East, Mark Smith concludes that the Hebrew cardinal term “‘day one’ does not mark… the beginning of time in any sort of absolute way” but rather is an expression “suggestive of the ritual world” that can be found within narratives that are themselves infused throughout “with temple and ritual sensibility.” More explicitly, Westermann concludes that:

The day on which the waters of the flood disappeared from the earth, the day of the end of the flood, becomes New Year’s day. The cosmos is renewed in the cultic celebration of this day. It is the conclusion of the Flood narrative that later, in muted and covert ways, provides the rationale for the annual cultic renewal of the cosmos at the New Year’s feast.

Emphasizing “the stability of this re-creation,” God’s promises to Noah articulate the reestablishment of the alternating rhythm of the times and seasons required to sustain agricultural life and the cultic calendar that goes along with it. In Genesis 8:22, we read:

While the earth remaineth,
seedtime and harvest,
and cold and heat,
and summer and winter,
and day and night
shall not cease.

Apart from these brief allusions to selected works of the subsequent days of Creation, Harper’s detailed study reveals that “the majority of the created works of the first five days are completely disregarded” in the story of the Flood, “while the elements of the sixth day: animals (with birds attached), the adam (male and female in the image of God), the blessings, commands, and provisions of food are… recalled, rearranged, and at times reinterpreted” within subsequent episodes of Noah’s life. We now leave the story of re-creation and enter the scene of a garden.

Nothing in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden can be understood without reference to the temple. Neither can the story of Noah and his family in the garden setting of a renewed earth be appreciated fully without taking the temple as its background.

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