Birth and Infancy of Jesus

122:8.1All that night Mary was rest­less so that nei­ther of them slept much. By the break of day the pangs of child­birth were well in ev­i­dence, and at noon, Au­gust 21, 7 B.C., with the help and kind min­is­tra­tions of women fel­low trav­el­ers, Mary was de­liv­ered of a male child. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was born into the world, was wrapped in the clothes which Mary had brought along for such a pos­si­ble con­tin­gency, and laid in a near-by manger.

122:8.2In just the same man­ner as all ba­bies be­fore that day and since have come into the world, the prom­ised child was born; and on the eighth day, ac­cord­ing to the Jew­ish prac­tice, he was cir­cum­cised and for­mally named Joshua (Je­sus).

122:8.3The next day af­ter the birth of Je­sus, Joseph made his en­roll­ment. Meet­ing a man they had talked with two nights pre­vi­ously at Jeri­cho, Joseph was taken by him to a well-to-do friend who had a room at the inn, and who said he would gladly ex­change quar­ters with the Naz­a­reth cou­ple. That af­ter­noon they moved up to the inn, where they lived for al­most three weeks un­til they found lodg­ings in the home of a dis­tant rel­a­tive of Joseph.

122:8.4The sec­ond day af­ter the birth of Je­sus, Mary sent word to Eliz­a­beth that her child had come and re­ceived word in re­turn invit­ing Joseph up to Je­ru­sa­lem to talk over all their af­fairs with Zach­a­rias. The fol­low­ing week Joseph went to Je­ru­sa­lem to con­fer with Zach­a­rias. Both Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth had be­come pos­sessed with the sin­cere con­vic­tion that Je­sus was in­deed to be­come the Jew­ish de­liv­erer, the Mes­siah, and that their son John was to be his chief of aides, his right-hand man of des­tiny. And since Mary held these same ideas, it was not dif­fi­cult to pre­vail upon Joseph to re­main in Beth­le­hem, the City of David, so that Je­sus might grow up to be­come the suc­ces­sor of David on the throne of all Is­rael. Ac­cord­ingly, they re­mained in Beth­le­hem more than a year, Joseph mean­time work­ing some at his car­pen­ter’s trade.

122:8.5At the noon­tide birth of Je­sus the ser­a­phim of Uran­tia, as­sem­bled un­der their di­rec­tors, did sing an­thems of glory over the Beth­le­hem manger, but these ut­ter­ances of praise were not heard by hu­man ears. No shep­herds nor any other mor­tal crea­tures came to pay homage to the babe of Beth­le­hem un­til the day of the ar­rival of cer­tain priests from Ur, who were sent down from Je­ru­sa­lem by Zach­a­rias.

122:8.6These priests from Mes­o­po­ta­mia had been told some­time be­fore by a strange re­li­gious teacher of their coun­try that he had had a dream in which he was in­formed that “the light of life” was about to ap­pear on earth as a babe and among the Jews. And thither went these three teach­ers look­ing for this “light of life.” Af­ter many weeks of fu­tile search in Je­ru­sa­lem, they were about to re­turn to Ur when Zach­a­rias met them and dis­closed his be­lief that Je­sus was the ob­ject of their quest and sent them on to Beth­le­hem, where they found the babe and left their gifts with Mary, his earth mother. The babe was al­most three weeks old at the time of their visit.

122:8.7These wise men saw no star to guide them to Beth­le­hem. The beau­ti­ful leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem orig­i­nated in this way: Je­sus was born Au­gust 21 at noon, 7 B.C. On May 29, 7 B.C., there oc­curred an ex­traor­di­nary con­junc­tion of Jupiter and Sat­urn in the con­stel­la­tion of Pisces. And it is a re­mark­able as­tro­nomic fact that sim­i­lar con­junc­tions oc­curred on Septem­ber 29 and De­cem­ber 5 of the same year. Upon the ba­sis of these ex­traor­di­nary but wholly nat­u­ral events the well-mean­ing zealots of the suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion con­structed the ap­peal­ing leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem and the ador­ing Magi led thereby to the manger, where they be­held and wor­shiped the new­born babe. Ori­en­tal and near-Ori­en­tal minds de­light in fairy sto­ries, and they are con­tin­u­ally spin­ning such beau­ti­ful myths about the lives of their re­li­gious lead­ers and po­lit­i­cal heroes. In the ab­sence of print­ing, when most hu­man knowl­edge was passed by word of mouth from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other, it was very easy for myths to be­come tra­di­tions and for tra­di­tions even­tu­ally to be­come ac­cepted as facts.