There’s something odd about Mary’s Magnificat.

Why does it occur at this point in the narrative, at the moment of her arrival at the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth, rather than after the annunciation?

Why is it based so obviously on the story of Hannah’s barrenness and the marvellous conception of Samuel? The Magnificat echoes both Hannah’s exultation over the personal blessing and her declaration that the Lord makes the powerful weak and the weak mighty, that he makes the well-fed hungry and the hungry full, that he “raises up the needy from the ground and lifts the poor from the dunghill, to make them sit with the mighty of the peoples, even making them inherit a throne of glory” (1 Sam. 2:8 LXX).

This is how we traditionally debunk the Christmas traditions to get at what the story was really all about: there was no star the night Jesus was born; we do not know how many wise men there were; Joseph and Mary were not turned away from an inn; Jesus was not born in a stable (are we thinking that this is a safe-guarding issue?); and he was not born on Christmas Day. But, we say, what really happened that night “still stands as one of the most monumental events in human history.

Paul asked me what I thought of his essay “The Biggest Fallacies About Religion and Politics” on Daily Kos. Paul, I think it’s a great essay, well worth reading. I agree with the general thesis that “Christianity” (for want of a better word) is always “political” (for want of a better word). But allow me to pick at some of the details, as someone who is neither a political theologian nor a commentator on current affairs.

I ended my last post agreeing in principle with Ian Paul that preachers need to take the historical dynamics of the biblical narrative seriously, but disagreeing over the scope of that contention. It is not history only insofar as it sets up the conditions for the existence and mission of the church that matters—the process by which grace is extended to gentiles, for example.

Following on from the piece on Tucker Ferda’s attempt to disconnect the coming of the Son of Man from the war against Rome, I happened to come across Ian Paul’s post this week about the second coming (“or something else?”) in Luke 21. He covers a fair bit of ground, but I want to focus on his contention that the “coming” of the Son of Man “in a cloud with power and great glory” is “actually about the Ascension and the proclamation of the gospel to the nations.” Paul is often very persuasive on these matters, but that surprised me.

I made some general comments on the relation of the coming of the Son of Man motif to historical events in my previous post on Tucker Ferda’s book Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins. I really don’t think he’s right to disconnect the disorder in the heavens and the seeing of the Son of Man coming in clouds from the prediction of war and of the destruction of the temple. Here, I work through his more detailed arguments in the “Messiah and Temple” section.

In an excellent interview on the Protestant Libertarian Podcast about his book Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins (2024), Tucker Ferda uses the expression “process eschatology” to register the fact that in Jewish apocalyptic writings the “end” is generally conceived not as a single event but as a series of events.