Hebraic Thought in Christmas, Part 1: Endangered Babies

Dr. Dru Johnson, Celina Durgin

Episode Summary

When we read the Bible, we have a tendency to disconnect the New Testament from the Old Testament—perhaps it’s because there’s a blank page in the middle, perhaps it’s because we think that the New has superseded the Old. The the narrative of Jesus’ birth is one such example. Often, we fixate on the Christmas story without recognizing the very necessary undertones that derive from the Hebrew Bible: endangered babies, murderous kings, shepherds, and moms singing songs.

In this episode, the CHT team shows how the Christmas motif of babies changing the flow of cosmic events goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. The nativity isn’t an isolated story, but it pulls together all of God’s political ambitions for the world, to run it with righteousness, justice, and peace. We see this from Genesis 3, to the story of Moses, to themes present in the Gospel of Luke. Along the way, we discuss the archetype of a child hidden away in the wilderness, kings who murder babies, and how that even shows up in Star Wars and Harry Potter.

Chapters

- 0:00 The roots of Christmas in the Garden of Eden

- 1:58 The “feared, obscure child” archetype

- 5:14 Hebrew Bible motifs in the Gospel of Luke

- 8:06 The good news

- 11:00 Mary’s Magnificat

Transcripts are AI generated and are not guaranteed to correctly reflect the content of the podcast.

Transcript

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Dr. Dru Johnson
Founder and Director of the Center for Hebraic Thought
Dru Johnson (PhD, University of St. Andrews) is Templeton Senior Research Fellow and director of the Abrahamic Theistic Origins Project at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford. He is also a visiting professor at Hope College, director of the Center for Hebraic Thought, editor of the Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biblical Criticism series, host of The Biblical Mind podcast, and cohost of the OnScript podcast. His recent books include Biblical Philosophy, What Hath Darwin to Do with Scripture, and Human Rites: The Power of Rituals, Habits, and Sacraments. Johnson spends his time between Holland, Michigan, and Oxford, England.
Celina Durgin
Former Director of Operations of the Center for Hebraic Thought
Founding Editor of The Biblical Mind
Celina earned a B.A. in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from The King’s College in 2015 and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 2018. She was previously an editorial fellow at a political magazine in New York, and then, after graduate school, worked in the editorial department of a marketing company in downtown Boston. Some of her written work can be found in Christianity Today.