Sermon Tone Analysis

When we think about the Birth of Jesus.

Most of the time we have a picture in our mind that is based on years of tradition.

And this often shapes how we see much of the rest of the Bible.

But what if the birth of Jesus is somehow conceptually and theologically linked to Genesis 6:1–4 and the sin of the Watchers in 1Enoch[1].

This would initially sound odd.

But instead of focusing on what’s familiar to us, the issue must be what was familiar to the Jews of the first century.

Their intellectual and theological frame of reference can be quite foreign to our own.

The right context for understanding the New Testament isn’t our Christian tradition (of any variety or period).

Rather, the context that produced the New Testament must guide us.

The birth of Jesus would have alerted literate first-century Jews that the Messiah’s arrival would reverse the sin of the Watchers.

Surprisingly, we will not discover how this was so in the birth narratives of the Gospels.

This is perhaps why the connection between these two items seems so unlikely—we don’t read anything in the Gospels that makes any relationship transparent.

The answers are to be found elsewhere, in other New Testament passages.[2]

Paul, Psalm 19, and the Knowledge of the Messiah’s Coming

Our starting place is Romans 10, a passage familiar to most Bible students.

Many have memorized the verse, which declares that “whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

But few read what follows that famous declaration.

Paul is clearly describing the necessity of believing in Jesus Christ for salvation (10:9–10).

But in order to believe in Jesus, people must hear about Jesus.

Paul then raises the expected objection: Not everyone has heard about Jesus.

Paul gives an unexpected, fascinating answer to this objection.

He asserts that they have heard about Jesus (Romans 10:18).

Naturally, his readers would wonder, Where?

How? Here’s where things get interesting.

Paul’s proof-text from the Old Testament for suggesting that people everywhere had heard about Jesus is Psalm 19:4.

His quotation of the verse in Romans 10:18 comes from the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.

For Paul, everyone had heard (or should have heard) about the coming of Jesus because “their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”

Whose voice is Paul talking about?

The heavens! Let’s look at the source of Paul’s quotation, Psalm 19:1–4:

There are a number of terms used in this passage to convey the idea that the heavens communicate information: The heavens “declare”; the sky “proclaims”; the cycle of days and nights “pours out speech” and “reveals knowledge”; the heavens have a “voice” and “speech” and “words” that can be heard since their message “goes out through all the earth.”

A full treatment of this passage (and others) with respect to these ideas and how they fit into the context of biblical theology must be reserved for a different time.

For our purposes here, this passage is one of several in the New Testament that take us into the ancient concept of astral theology, a subset of which is astral prophecy.

In briefest terms, and with respect to a biblical perspective (as opposed to pagan polythe-ism’s conception), astral theology was the idea that the One who made the celestial objects in the heavens (sun, moon, stars) to be for “signs and seasons” and to mark time (Genesis 1:14) could use those objects to communicate.

There is a good deal of evidence (e.g., zodiac mosaics in ancient Jewish synagogues) that faithful, theologically conservative Jews believed that divine activity that would have an impact on earthly events could be discerned in the skies—activity they were careful to attribute to the true God and no other gods.

The key questions for the present chapter are, “How did Paul think the heavens communicated the coming of Jesus?” and “Is there evidence elsewhere in the New Testament that the heavens did anything like this?”[3]

Revelation 12 as Astral Prophecy

Nearly all scholars who have tried to correlate the birth of the Messiah with astronomy share a crucial oversight: They start with the description of the star of Bethlehem in Matthew 2. This is a fatal flaw, one that not only overlooks Paul’s astral-theological use of Psalm 19, but one that cuts off any chance of understanding how first-century Jews would have connected the birth of Jesus with the sin of the Watchers.

I believe that the celestial messaging Paul had in mind in Romans 10:18 can be found in Revelation 12:1–7.

This passage has several items that, if taken at face value, are astronomical signs associated with the birth of the Messiah.

Considering the language of Revelation 12:1–7 in this way produces a real-time date for the birth of Jesus—a date that is laden with symbolism that first-century Jews would have understood as connecting the messianic birth to the sin of the Watchers.

Revelation 12:1–7 reads as follows:

1And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

2She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

3And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems.

4His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.

5She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.

It is quite clear that the signs in the heavens—where John is specifically looking (Revelation 12:1)—are indisputably astronomical: sun, moon, and stars.

The specific signs require attention.

1.

The Woman

The key figure, and logical starting point, for interpreting Revelation 12 astronomically is the woman.

Since the woman gives birth to the messianic figure (Jesus) and then is persecuted and has to flee into the desert, scholars agree that verses 2–6 “reveal that this woman is a picture of the faithful community (Israel), which existed both before and after the coming of Christ.”

Israel of course is described as the virgin of Zion in the Old Testament and produces the Messiah in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.

More specifically, of course, Mary comes to mind as the Jewish girl who gives birth to Jesus, but “Virgin Israel” best fits both parts of the description of the woman.

Additionally, the connection to Virgin Israel is important given that the signage would have to be decipherable to Jews at the time of Jesus’ birth.

At that time, Mary’s circumstances would have been entirely unknown.

The meaning of the virgin and the twelve stars around her head is evident in Second Temple Period Jewish literature, as well as later rabbinic thought.

What is John signifying when describing this woman?

This much is certain: the woman in the first three verses is featured as being in heaven and both the sun and the moon are in association with her.

Revelation 12:1 gives us clear details: the woman is “clothed” with the sun, there are twelve stars around her head, and the moon is at her feet.

She is an astronomical (heavenly) sign.

The idea that the woman is a constellation is made plausible when one looks closely at the text.

The description that the woman was “clothed” with the sun is stock astronomical language for the sun being in the midst of a constellation.

While the sun is in the woman, the moon is at her feet.

For this situation to occur, the constellation of the woman must be, in astronomical language, on the ecliptic, the imaginary line in the sky that the sun and moon follow in their journey through the zodiac constellations.

Martin in his book “The Star that Astonished the World, ”writes:

The apostle John saw the scene when the Sun was “clothing” or “adorning” the woman.

This surely indicates that the position of the Sun in the vision was located somewhere mid-bodied to the woman, between the neck and the knees.

The Sun could hardly be said to clothe her if it were situated in her face or near her feet.

The only time in the year that the Sun could be in a position to “clothe” the celestial woman called Virgo (that is, to be mid-bodied to her, in the region where a pregnant woman carries a child) is when the Sun is located between about 150 and 170 degrees along the ecliptic.

This “clothing” of the woman by the Sun occurs for a 20-day period each year.

This 20 degree spread could indicate the general time when Jesus was born.

The constellation of the Virgin giving birth to the Messiah would of course been viewed as quite coherent by the Magi, especially if they knew about Isaiah 7:14.

But even if they were ignorant of this prophecy, this astro-theological linkage would still make sense to them since the sign we know as Virgo has strong associations with other ancient “mother goddess” figures who would produce divine kings.

The detail that the moon was located under the feet of the woman (Virgo) must not be forgotten in all this.

The sun must be in the Virgin constellation while the moon is simultaneously at her feet for John’s vision to be accurately interpreted astronomically.

Because of the moon’s “behavior” relative to the ecliptic and Virgo in any given year, the twenty-day window narrows to a roughly ninety-minute period in which to astronomically pinpoint the birth of the child.

2. The Child

Revelation 12:5 is very explicit that the child is Jesus, the promised Messiah: “She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne.”

This description is an allusion to Psalm 2:7–9, which prophesied that the Messiah would defeat God’s enemies and be installed as ruler over all the nations.

The Psalms allusion is coupled with a description of an ascent of the child up to God and His throne—a reference to the resurrection of the child.

In short, John’s wording here and the immediate context is designed to create the impression that it appeared as if the devil had won the day—that the child would be killed (devoured)—but the resurrection resulted in victory (enthronement) for the Messiah.

The dragon was defeated.

3. The Dragon

Scholars of the book of Revelation have long noted the connection of the dragon to Old Testament terminology for the sea monster that symbolized chaos.

As Osborne notes:

Throughout the ancient Near East, the sea monster symbolized the war between good and evil, between the gods and chaos.…

Obviously, in similar fashion to the meaning of “abyss” in 9:1–2, this builds on the fact that for the nations surrounding the Mediterranean basin, the sea meant unfathomable depths and the chaos of death.

Thus, Leviathan or the “dragon” came to represent all the terrors of the sea and thus the presence of evil and death.…

It also signified nations that stood against God and his people.

The dragon or Leviathan is defeated both at the beginning of creation (Ps[alm] 74:13; 89:10 = Isa[iah] 51:9 [“Rahab”]; 2 Esdr.

[4 Ezra] 6:49–52) and at the day of Yahweh (Isa[iah] 27:1; 2 Bar[uch] 29.4).

First Enoch 60.7–10, 24 speak of the female sea monster Leviathan and the male Behemoth destroyed at the “great day of the Lord.”

There are two major candidates for the dragon with respect to constellations.

Malina explains:

The second sign is the fire-colored Dragon.

The color red locates it in the southern sky.…

The fact that the Dragon’s tail sweeps (present tense) away a third of the stars of the sky further points to a location generally lacking in stars compared to other sky locations.

This, again, is the south, in the region of the Abyss.…

The question we might pose now is, which constellation does John label as the red Dragon, the Dragon in the south?