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5. The earliest recorded Christmas story.
Perhaps ironically, the accounts in Matthew and Luke are not the oldest version of the Christmas story. Christians call the miracle of Christmas the "Incarnation," since the Son of God took on human form as Jesus Christ. This teaching goes all the way back to the oldest part of the New Testament.
"We can know that the earliest Christians believed Jesus left heaven and was incarnated," Michael Licona, associate professor of theology at Houston Baptist University, told PJ Media. "The apostle Paul provides us with this information in an ancient hymn in Philippians 2:6-11. It is the earliest Christmas story in the Bible."
Philippians 2:6-11 says of Jesus:
"though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. "
This passage, known as the "carmen Christi," or "song of Christ," uses words St. Paul does not usually use in his letters. While scholars agree that St. Paul wrote the book of Philippians, they have suggested that this passage is an older hymn — and thus predates the Pauline epistles, which were written around the 60s A.D.
Some scholars have even suggested that the "carmen Christi" goes back to the 30s A.D. — within one decade of Jesus' death and resurrection. That may not sound impressive in an age with instant replay on YouTube, but for a mostly oral culture in which writing was hard to come by and reserved for the most important things, a ten-year gap between an event and its recording is impressive. Most of the ancient documents that have survived today date back to hundreds of years after the events happened.
One of the major reasons Christians believe the miracles of the first Christmas is because they believe the underlying meaning of Christmas — God took on human flesh in the Incarnation. Only by doing this could God reconcile Himself to a sinful humanity and pay the infinite price of humans' rejection of Him.
If God became man, it stands to reason that that event would be accompanied by miracles like a virgin birth, angels singing to shepherds, and a star calling magi to the scene of the birth. Indeed, these smaller miracles pale in comparison to the miracle of the infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing Creator entering a frail, limited human body.
Christians must believe this miracle of God Himself humbling Himself to become man, for it is the center of the gospel that Jesus Christ made it possible for humans to repent of their sin and restore their fellowship with the Creator. This is what Christmas is really about — and it is indeed a miracle. But that doesn't make it unbelievable.
When the best historical evidence points to a miracle, and no evidence contradicts it, history may not require accepting the miracle — but it might be unreasonable to reject it.
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