The Background of Christmas: What is the historical reliability of Christmas events?
Is the background of Christmas a story or based on real events?
Written by Cristo Rodriguez, speaker at OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics
Every December, a fascinating spectacle unfolds across the globe. From the bustling markets of London to the quiet villages of East Asia, signs of Christmas appear: trees are adorned with lights, wreaths grace doorways, and brightly-wrapped gifts are exchanged. Here in the UK, the evidence of modern Christmas is inescapable—from competing TV adverts to queues for Santa’s Grotto, stuffed turkeys to stuffed bellies. This is what Christmas has become, but it is certainly not how it began.
This widespread celebration is rooted in the account of a peasant Jewish couple, a journey to a small Judean town, and a birth so extraordinary it is said to have changed the course of human history. Yet, as surveys consistently show, a significant portion of the population—including many who call themselves Christian—harbour doubts about the literal truth of the story.
What is the Historical Credibility of Christmas?
If we are to move beyond the myths and sentimentality that cloud modern understanding, we must explore the evidence for the first Christmas, examining both the narratives in the Bible and the evidence that exists outside them. Only then can we assess how historically confident we can be that the foundational event at the heart of Christmas really happened.
The General Historical Picture of Jesus
For some, the starting point of doubt is the very existence of Jesus. They question whether he was a real person at all. Yet, what is striking is the level of consensus among scholars—across a wide variety of ideological and theological persuasions—who specialise in New Testament studies. They agree on a general portrait of Jesus’ life and death.
The late E. P. Sanders (7), a prominent and influential scholar who did not take the Bible to be God’s inspired Word, stated this clearly:
“There are no substantial doubts about the general course of Jesus’ life: when and where he lived, approximately when and where he died, and the sort of thing that he did during his public activity…” (1)
More recently, James H. Charlesworth, Professor of New Testament Studies at Princeton University, provided a much more detailed picture of scholarly consensus:
“Thanks to careful research by scholars in Germany, France, Sweden, England, Israel, and the United States, and since the end of the seventeenth century, we can report that some aspects of Jesus’ life and teaching are relatively certain… Jesus was born in Palestine, probably in or near Nazareth… Jesus joined John the Baptist, who was probably his teacher… Jesus was charismatic, an eloquent speaker, and powerfully influenced many Jews… He spoke with uncommon authority and directly, without citing authorities… Jesus most likely taught a love command that was unique… It is virtually certain that Jesus chose twelve disciples… Jesus was condemned to die from crucifixion by Pilate… He was nailed to a cross by Roman soldiers.”2
The core of the issue, then, is not Jesus’ existence, which is widely agreed upon by historians. Instead, as the respected New Testament scholar R. T. France suggested, it is often the supernatural features of the birth narratives that cause the most contention:
“Few other parts of the gospel narratives are so widely regarded as legendary. A common basis for this view is the presence of supernatural features: divine revelation in dreams, a moving, guiding star, and birth without a human father. None of these features is essential to the basic story of the birth itself, but the fact that the evangelists record them as part of their narrative accounts makes many modern readers doubt whether what they are reading is factual history.”3
If the miraculous elements are the stumbling block, we must first establish the historical reliability of the surrounding, non-miraculous details.
Historical Context of Jesus’ Birth
To understand the reliability of the Christmas events, we should consider the historical context described in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. If we can establish that the Bible is accurate when describing the natural aspects of the narrative, it encourages us to take the more miraculous claims seriously.
The time of Jesus was one of relative peace—the Pax Romana—under the Emperor Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD). Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had been under Roman occupation since 63 BC. The biblical accounts place Jesus’ birth shortly before the death of Herod the Great, who was appointed by Rome as a client king and ruled until 4 BC. The Jewish historian Josephus records Herod’s death as 4 BCiv ]. This timeline fits Matthew’s account. Furthermore, Luke notes that John the Baptist began preaching in the “fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar” and that Jesus was “about thirty years old” when he started his ministry (Luke 3:1, 23). This dating also strongly suggests Jesus was born around 4 BC, slightly earlier than the traditional accepted date.
Points of Convergence: The Minimalist Approach
By looking only at what the two independent witnesses—Matthew and Luke—have in common, we can establish a minimalist historical view. Scholars such as the late Sulpician priest and prominent biblical scholar Raymond Brown suggest that both Evangelists drew upon a pre-Gospel oral tradition circulating during their time, which would account for the similarity in their accounts.
If we examine these points of convergence, a consistent picture emerges:
- Jesus’ parents were named Mary and Joseph.
- He was a descendant of David.
- His birth took place in the Judean town of Bethlehem.
- He subsequently grew up in the Galilean town of Nazareth.
- It was believed that Jesus was conceived miraculously by the Holy Spirit.
This minimalist approach already establishes several foundational details, including reports of his miraculous conception.
The Maximalist Approach and the Problem of the Census
A maximalist approach, drawing on the work of scholars like R. T. France, takes the birth narratives as a whole to be broadly reliable, encompassing all the rich detail of each Gospel (e.g., Matthew’s Magi, flight to Egypt; Luke’s shepherds, Temple presentation).
However, as we consider this maximal reliability, we must address the significant challenge often raised against Luke’s account: the census. As historian Tom Holland and others have pointed out, Luke states:
“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.” (Luke 2:1–3)
The problem is that historical records suggest Quirinius didn’t become the formal governor of Syria until 6 AD—a full ten years too late, as Jesus was born around 4 BC.
Resolving the Issue of Census
Yet, it seems unlikely that Luke, who knew about the 6 AD census and the revolt it provoked (as he mentions Judas the Galilean in Acts 5:37), would simply confuse the two. In the original Greek, Luke refers to the event around Jesus’ birth as the “first” census under Quirinius, implying an earlier event distinct from the later one he knew about.
Luke has been proven to demonstrate striking accuracy on similar matters. In The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, Colin Hemer identifies something in the region of 200 points of detail on which Luke has been shown to be correct (4). It is reasonable, therefore, to give him the benefit of the doubt. Several plausible explanations exist: the census may have been started around 6 BC for registration purposes but only used for taxation when Quirinius became governor in 6 AD, or Quirinius may have overseen an earlier census in an administrative capacity prior to his formal governorship. In either case, the challenge is not insurmountable to the historical credibility of the account.
Four Lines of Evidence for Historical Reliability of the Christmas Birth
Beyond resolving specific challenges, there are four independent lines of evidence that strengthen the case for the birth narratives being trustworthy, reflecting characteristics of genuinely historical records rather than literary invention.
#1: Name Statistics
The names of people in the Gospels must fit the historical and geographical context of first-century Palestine. Luuk van de Weghe (8) & Jason Wilson, in the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, applied the chi-squared goodness-of-fit test to names in the Gospels and Acts. They compared them to Tal Ilan’s definitive Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, which catalogues the popularity of names in Jesus’ time and place (5).
They found that the names in the Gospels and Acts are a statistically significant match for Palestinian Male Jews, but not a strong fit for names of Diaspora Male Jews or for historical novels set in the same period. The latter often over-represented infrequent names. In the words of New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham, “All the evidence indicates the general authenticity of the personal names in the Gospels.” This high-level retention of personal, often unmemorable, names argues strongly against a later, disconnected composition.
#2: Matthew’s Fulfilment Formulae
Matthew frequently uses “fulfilment formulae” to show that events in Jesus’ life matched Old Testament prophecy. What is curious is that some of the prophecies he chooses are not the most obvious Messianic texts. Take for example Matthew 2:15: “…And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son,’” which is quoted from Hosea 11:1.
This text did not feature centrally in the Messianic picture of the time, so no one was necessarily expecting the Messiah to come from Egypt. If the prophecy carried low persuasive power, why would Matthew include it? It is far more plausible that Matthew really took the events of the birth narrative to have occurred—Jesus really did go to and return from Egypt—and then searched the Scriptures to find a text that framed these events, rather than inventing the birth narrative based on this obscure text.
#3: Undesigned Coincidences with Secular History
As analytic philosopher Lydia McGrew (6) explains, an “undesigned coincidence” is a notable connection between two independent accounts that fits together like puzzle pieces, suggesting they reflect a shared historical reality.
An excellent example is Matthew 2:22: “[Joseph]…heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.” Matthew records Joseph’s fear, but he doesn’t state why Joseph was afraid of Herod’s son, Archelaus. We find the reason in the writings of Josephus (9) (Antiquities 17.213–218), who recounts significant unrest when Archelaus took over, brutally culminating in Roman soldiers entering the Temple at Passover, killing several pilgrims. These two independent pieces of information—Joseph’s documented fear and the historical testimony of Archelaus’ brutality—fit together as incidental details reporting the same historical reality.
#4: The Well-Documented Paranoia of Herod
The biblical account of Herod the Great ordering the Massacre of the Infants in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16) aligns perfectly with the Herod attested in secular history. Josephus records Herod’s pattern of fear-driven violence: he ordered the execution of his wife Mariamne (29 BC), and three of his own sons (7 BC). He even arranged for mass executions of his enemies to occur upon his death. The sheer ruthlessness of Herod’s paranoia, as documented by Josephus, makes the Gospel’s account of him ordering the execution of infants—especially after the Magi defied him—quite credible. This consistency of the biblical events with well-documented historical behaviour strengthens the case for the historicity of Matthew’s birth narratives.
The Virgin Birth
Finally, we come to the most challenging aspect: the virgin birth. How much can historical methodology tell us about a unique miracle?
It has often been wondered whether the idea of Jesus being born of a virgin was borrowed from paganism or Judaism. This idea, popular in internet circles, is based on the now-discredited Religionsgeschichtliche Schule’s hypothesis of parallels in Greco-Roman mythology. Biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown thoroughly dismantled this idea, noting:
“These [pagan] ‘parallels’ consistently involved a type of hieros gamos [sacred union] where a divine male, in human or other form, impregnates a woman…through normal sexual intercourse… In short, there is no clear example of virginal conception in world or pagan religions that plausibly could have given first-century Jewish Christians the idea of the virginal conception of Jesus.”
(Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, p. 523)
The same holds true for Judaism. While the Hebrew Scriptures feature miraculous conceptions (Sarah, Hannah) these involve women conceiving in old age or overcoming barrenness, not defying the fundamental biological process of a man and a woman. Thus, as Brown concluded, we remain “without real proof of the existence in Judaism of the idea of a virginal conception that might have influenced Jewish Christians.”
The virgin birth seems, therefore, plausibly best explained by the actuality of the event. The Gospel writers were describing something novel and miraculous, and the narrative includes surprised reactions, not knowing agreement. Furthermore, if the claim were a fabrication by the post-resurrection church, it seems highly implausible that Jesus’ brothers (James and Jude), who were leaders in the early Jerusalem church, would have remained silent and allowed a claim that could have potentially weakened their connection to Jesus or brought shame upon their family.
Historical methods, by their nature, cannot prove the virgin birth, nor should we expect them to be able to. The plausibility of the miraculous elements is bound up with much larger, metaphysical questions about the kind of universe we’re living in. If God exists, the virgin birth is an unusual event, not an impossible one.
In Conclusion
In assessing the historical credibility of Christmas, we have seen that scholars of different ideological persuasions recognise Jesus as a true historical figure. Where they diverge is over claims of the miraculous.
In looking at the Gospel accounts, particularly in Matthew and Luke, we see remarkable consistency with historical data. The alignment of names, incidental details, and cultural contexts—such as Herod’s documented paranoia and the governance of Judea—supports their reliability. Statistical analyses affirm that the names used in these birth narratives fit the period and place, which seems to exclude fabrication.
The birth narratives are supported by multiple independent lines of evidence, which together suggest that they reflect a historically reliable foundation for the events surrounding Jesus’ birth.
So whenever or however you celebrate Christmas, there are good reasons to look back on that first Christmas and believe that the stories are true. The truth of the history and meaning of Christmas is not merely a comforting myth, but a compelling historical reality that invites deeper study and profound reflection.
References
- Brown, Raymond E. The Birth of the Messiah. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
- Charlesworth, James H. “The Historical Jesus.” In Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, edited by Tom Holmen and Stanley Porter. Boston: Brill, 2011.
- France, R. T. “The Birth of Jesus.” In Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, edited by Tom Holmen and Stanley Porter. Boston: Brill, 2011.
- Hemer, Colin. The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1989.
- Ilan, Tal. Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part 1: Palestine 330 BCE – 200CE. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001.
- McGrew, Lydia. Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts. DeWard Publishing, 2017.
- Sanders, E. P. The Historical Figure of Jesus. London: Penguin, 1995.
- Van de Weghe, Luuk, and Jason Wilson. “Why Name Popularity is a Good Test of Historicity: (A Goodness-of-fit Test Analysis on Names in the Gospels and Acts.” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus (2024).
- Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews. Translated by William Whiston.
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Cristo Rodriguez