“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” Colossians 2:8
Today, most of the world celebrates Christmas as the birth of Christ on the twenty-fifth of December. However, the actual date of Christ’s birth cannot be determined with absolute certainty. There is, however, biblical evidence that suggests Jesus was born in the fall. Moreover, if we were to celebrate Christ’s birth, the Holy Bible would command us to do so. Yet nowhere in the Bible are we told to do that. As for the celebration of December 25, it traces its roots directly to the pagan world.
Long before Christianity appeared, people in the Northern Hemisphere used evergreen plants to decorate their homes, particularly the doors, to celebrate the Winter Solstice. On December 21 or December 22, the day is the shortest and the night the longest. Traditionally, this time of the year is seen as the return in strength of the sun god who had been weakened during winter — and the evergreen plants served as a reminder that the god would glow again and summer was to be expected.
The solstice was celebrated by the Egyptians who filled their homes with green palm rushes in honor of the god Ra, who had the head of a hawk and wore the sun as a crown. In Northern Europe, the pagan Celts decorated their druid temples with evergreen boughs which signified everlasting life. The decorating of a Yule tree also originated with the Celts. Brightly colored decorations were hung on a tree, usually a pine tree to symbolize life, which were of significance to the Celts such as the sun, the moon and the stars. The tree also represented the souls of those who had died the previous year. Further up north, the Vikings thought evergreens were the plants of Balder, the god of light and peace. The ancient Romans marked the Winter Solstice with a feast called Saturnalia thrown in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture, and, like the Celts, decorated their homes and temples with evergreen boughs.
“But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed.” 2 Peter 2:1-2
“On this episode of Rightly Dividing, we are looking at Christmas celebrated in the 21st century, with the attendant Santa Clause, Christmas trees, the ‘elf on the shelf’, and everything else that goes with it. The fundamental Baptists tell us to throw the whole thing in the garbage, while the more liberal churches celebrate it with great gusto, putting the baby Jesus on an equal footing with Santa. But what saith the scripture? As it turns out, the Bible has plenty to say about it.
Since God’s word warns us to BEWARE of tradition, we shouldn’t be surprised to find the Devil right in the middle of the world’s most celebrated holiday, Christmas!” https://www.nowtheendbegins.com/nteb-radio-bible-study-should-a-christian-celebrate-christmas-trees-santa-claus-baby-jesus-feast-of-tabernacles/
“he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” James 1:8
“Hardly any of the symbols of Freemasonry are more important in their signification or more extensive in their application than the sun.” https://masonicshop.com/encyclopedia/topics/entry/?i=142
“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.” 2 Timothy 4:3-4
On December 24, 2022, Geoffrey Grider, invited his listening audience to: “Please Join Us For Our 2nd Annual Migdal Eder Christmas Eve Service Showing You The Exact Day And Exact Location Of The Birth Of Jesus Christ.
You are invited to join our NTEB Christmas Eve service where we will open our King James Bibles to see some amazing things about the actual birth of the baby Jesus. Tonight you will see, some of you for the very first time, the actual location where Mary gave birth to Jesus as the Bible records it. Not only that, you will see the exact day on which this took place, the Bible records that as well. We will also celebrate the Lord’s Supper and remember His great love wherewith He loved us so much He paid for our sins.
The angel of the Lord is directing the shepherds to the very place where they sacrificed baby lambs to see the baby Jesus wrapped in the lamb’s swaddling clothes and being presented for inspection in the stone manger. This is Migdal Eder.
When Jesus is called a lamb in scripture, it is not poetic at all, it is literal. Jesus was born at Migdal Eder, wrapped in the very same swaddling clothes used for lambs, and placed in the stone manger to be presented for inspection by the Levitical shepherds. That’s why the angel of the Lord called shepherds, to inspect the baby Jesus according to the Law of Moses. How do I know that Jesus was born at Migdal Eder? Because Micah tells us so. Come celebrate the real Christmas with us at Now The End Begins, and we trust it will be a blessing to you. Our service starts at 7:00 PM EST tonight.” https://www.nowtheendbegins.com/nteb-christmas-eve-service-birth-of-jesus-migdal-eder/
Debunking the Myth of Temple Shepherds, Migdal Eder and Swaddling Lambs
“It’s that time of year again for a wide array of questionable, if not outright false, legends to be circulated about details related to the birth of Jesus. Let me address a popular example, one that is frequently shared on social media.
There are several overlapping elements to this story/legend. We will tackle them one by one.
Temple Shepherds?
The first element goes like this: the shepherds around Bethlehem were not overseeing ordinary flocks but were responsible for raising sheep for sacrifice at the temple.
This opinion, popularized long ago by Alfred Edersheim in The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, is based on scanty evidence drawn from the Mishnah, the basic compendium of Jewish law. This is the document behind the vague references on social media posts to “Jewish practice” or “ancient tradition” at the time of Jesus. But when was the Mishnah dated? Maybe 50 BC? Or AD 75? No, around AD 200. That is, needless to say, two centuries after the events that transpired on the night Jesus was born.
While a graduate student at Hebrew Union College, I read and studied the Mishnah in Hebrew. I am very familiar with its background and contents. That being said, the Mishnah cannot be used as reliable evidence.
So, were these individuals serving as shepherds for the temple, or (as some go on to boldly claim) even priests who were doing the shepherding? Maybe. Maybe not, but I doubt it. We do not have any verifiable way of knowing. We certainly do not, by any stretch of the scholarly imagination, have sufficient, irrefutable evidence to teach or preach that these were temple shepherds taking care of future sacrificial lambs.
The evangelist Luke offers no such clue, not even a hint, that these people were anything but ordinary shepherds taking care of ordinary sheep. Within the broader biblical narrative, their significance is likely to be sought in David himself being a shepherd around Bethlehem. As David was called from taking care of the sheep to be anointed as king, so these shepherds were sent by the angels to Bethlehem to see the newborn King and Shepherd of Israel.
Bethlehem Lambs?
Second, some posts on social media and various blogs will go on to claim that Bethlehem was famous for producing unblemished lambs that were used for sacrifice, including Passover lambs. Of course, this claim is based on the earlier, questionable legend that these were temple flocks. Unlike the earlier opinion, however, this one is not even built on scanty evidence; it is built on thin air.
I have found no evidence in older Jewish literature—and certainly not in the Bible—that if you were to stop someone on Jerusalem’s streets to ask, “Where do the best sacrificial lambs come from?” they would respond, “Bethlehem, of course!” This claim, therefore, is wholly unsupported by evidence.
So file this one under, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Migdal Eder
When this claim is made, it is commonly joined to a description of the Migdal Eder, which is the third element under discussion. I will explain why momentarily, but let’s first identify what and where Migdal Eder is.
In Hebrew, a migdal (מִגְדָּל) is a “tower” and an “eder” (עֵדֶר) is a “herd or flock.” This “Tower of the Flock” or Migdal Eder is first mentioned in Genesis 35:21, as a place near where Jacob pitched his tent. In this context, Bethlehem is mentioned but we are not told how close Migdal Eder was to Bethlehem.
The other mention of this tower is in Micah 4:8, “And you, O tower of the flock [Migdal Eder], hill of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come, the former dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.” As is well known, Hebrew poetry uses parallelism, where the second line of a couplet will often be somewhat synonymous to, or expansive of, the first line. In this verse, the “tower of the flock” parallels “the daughter of Zion.” So, in Micah, if Midgal Eder is identified with any place, it is Zion/Jerusalem, not Bethlehem.
Why does this matter? Another wildly popular claim is that Migdal Eder is where the Jews expected the Messiah to be born and where Jesus was actually born! But does this claim hold up under scrutiny? No, absolutely not.
Despite this fact, I have read countless fanciful claims online that this tower was central to the shepherding around Bethlehem; that it was used for sheltering ewes about to bear their sacrificial, temple lambs; that there were mangers inside it where newborn lambs were kept; and, as if all these made-up, historically unverifiable legends were not enough, some go on to claim that this was the exact spot where Mary gave birth to Jesus. All of this is baseless. There is not a shred of verifiable evidence to back it up.
Swaddled Lambs
We come finally, to the fourth and most audacious of the claims: that these supposedly “temple shepherds,” who wanted unblemished lambs, would wrap them in strips of cloth and place them in a manger to keep them safe (some add, in Midgal Eder). They didn’t want them thrashing around and blemishing themselves. In this way, the swaddled lambs would be kept fit for sacrifice.
What is the evidence for this claim? There is none. Zero. I don’t know where it originated, but it has spread like wildfire on recent FB posts. I suspect it was the icing on the cake of the other legends which I have surveyed above. What we have is the fictional creation of someone’s mind.
So, when the shepherds were told by the angels to go to Bethlehem where they will “find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12), they did just that. They went to town not the Migdal Eder. They found baby Jesus wrapped in cloths, as was common at the time, lying in a feed trough, because that made for an excellent baby bed. These shepherds certainly did not say to themselves, “Ah, just like we wrap our lambs in cloths to keep them safe for sacrifice in Migdal Eder!” No, that supposition would have to wait for fertile minds to concoct twenty centuries later.
Stick to the Facts
The account of our Lord’s nativity, in its biblical context, is rich enough without seeking to supplement it with the counterfeit currency of legend. Stick to the facts. The biblical background of Bethlehem, David, the virgin, the angels, shepherds, and all the various details from the Evangelists have deep roots in the Old Testament. Trace those. Preach on them.” (Chad Bird, December, 2021)
In a world full of treachery, lies and deceit it is comforting to meditate on Jesus Christ’s answer to Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” Jesus gave the solution to Pilate’s question in fact before the words even came out of the Roman leader’s mouth. Pilate just refused to hear what Jesus told him. Quoting from John 18:37, “For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” All who hearken to Christ’s Words will be led to the truth of Life and will receive His promise of salvation and deliverance from the wrath which is soon to come. If you have not turned to the Living Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins (for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23), repent (godly sorrow) and put your complete faith in ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life,” who paid for the sins of the world by His atoning blood sacrifice when He was pierced upon the cross – the Risen Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:6).”
Please note, I have no control of the sponsored content on this site and do not make any financial gain.
My Blog 