Photo by Bill Fairs on Unsplash

A favorite pastime for some popular teachers today is to find new and exciting biblical “insights” to share with others. These “new discoveries” can quickly take on a life of their own and grow unchecked and unchallenged. We think if something has been unknown or especially “secret” down through the ages, that would be a very good reason to be skeptical about it, but instead, it appears to draw people in. The “Old Stuff” is OLD, after all. People want to learn new spiritual stuff – things not generally identified with the fairly narrow-minded “faith of our fathers.” Unfortunately, however new and exciting, these new “discoveries” are not “biblical” at all. The late Dr. Michael Heiser gathered quite a popular following by drawing on non-biblical source material to share fascinating “biblical” accounts from the Book of Enoch. For the record, the Book of Enoch was not considered inspired and, therefore, not included in the canon of the Old Testament by the Nation of Israel. It may be a somewhat interesting extra-biblical book, but the Scriptures are the final rule of authority for faith and practice, and other works must be subject to it. This search to “improve” the Word of God has led many astray with “myths and endless genealogies.” (1 Timothy 1:4)

We are all pretty familiar with the book of Luke, and perhaps it is not “doing much” for us anymore. We could definitely use a more exciting new birth narrative for the Messiah than Luke provided in his gospel account. Perhaps the “swaddling” cloth could be some super special garment that prophetically identified the messiah! We would like to say this is merely a hypothetical question, but belief in this tale is actually another growing trend. In his paper, Modern Midrash: The Myth of Migdal Eder, Dr. Wave Nunnally takes up a growing New Birth Narrative (NBN). The NBN shows up in The Chosen in 2021 and 2023 seasons. Truthfully, we don’t expect The Chosen to be a biblically accurate show. Dallas Jenkins has been clear that 95% of what is in the script is made up,¹We cover this in The Chosen Dilemma so it isn’t a surprise that he would add a mythical tale of the NBN to the story to make it a more exciting and compelling mythical episode of The Chosen,  and leave the viewer saying, “I didn’t know that.” The viewer should not feel bad, as Luke did not know it either! Nunnally cites from the 2023 movie, “Christmas with The Chosen: Holy Night”:

Near the beginning of the movie, as Joseph and Mary arrive in Bethlehem, he says to her, “They [the inn-keeper and his wife] promised us…even lambs’ cloths for the baby” [emphasis added].  The meaning of this addition to the story becomes clear only toward the end of the video.

The importance of the “lambs’ cloths” the innkeeper and his wife supposedly promised isn’t revealed until near the end of the film. In The Chosen, these “lamb cloths” aren’t just the normal wrappings for the newborn infant; they are quite special. Nunnally shares the reveal in the narrative from the end of the film:

Mary the Mother of Jesus: People must know.  I want to honor the help we received from the inn-keeper, but I also think it’s lovely that we used the same cloths they use to wrap newborn lambs.  I wonder if God gave us that as a sign? [emphasis added].

You can look high and low in Scripture and background history to support this “lambs’ cloths” claim, but won’t find it until Alfred Edersheim created the story in his 1883 book, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. The idea Edersheim crafted is that shepherds supposedly wrapped sacrificial lambs in used priestly garments as soon as they were born to protect them from breaking a leg. This is false on at least two counts. As Dr. Nunnally points out, a shepherd would never do that, it would cause the lamb’s death within two hours:

To be clear, there is never a place ANYWHERE in ancient Jewish literature of ANY kind, whether in the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the intertestamental Apocrypha, the intertestamental Pseudepigrapha, Philo of Alexandria, Josephus Flavius, or ANYWHERE in the voluminous Rabbinic Literature that suggests that any lambs anywhere were ever swaddled.  Again, this is why no source is ever cited by promoters of the NBN when making this point.  Further, both Palestinian and Jewish shepherds in Israel will tell you that this is madness—within hours, a newborn lamb that was swaddled and laid in a manger would be dead.  While teaching in Israel, I spoke to shepherds in the area of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.  When asked if they were aware of an instance in which it would be beneficial to swaddle newborn lambs, without exception, their response was, “What?  They’d starve in two hours!”  The story as being told today is not only never documented by reference to ancient literature; it is also patently absurd on the practical level, life experience, and common sense.

Perhaps more importantly, priestly garments are holy and would never be used in this manner as Nunnally points out:

Priestly garments by their very nature were considered kadosh—“holy”, used only for a specific, sacred purpose.  Consequently, they were used only in association with service in the temple.  There is only one use mentioned of these garments in Rabbinic Literature that is outside their normal use as clothing. When they were completely worn out, what was left of them would be twisted together and used to make wicks for olive oil lamps in the temple (Mishnah Sukkot 5:3; Shekalim 5:1; BT Sukkah 51a).  To suggest that these sacred garments could be used not only outside the temple, but also for common purposes like swaddling lambs, newborn babies, and even as burial cloths (thus contracting corpse-uncleanness, the highest level of ritual impurity) is not merely an instance of creativity run wild.  It is a demonstration of ignorance of Judaism and its literatures surrounding the biblical periods.  This, in turn, should disqualify those who engage in such antics from being taken seriously when discussing the Jewish backgrounds of biblical texts.

This wholly unbiblical idea is making the rounds on YouTube by pastors and others who are incorporating it into their sermons and passing the embellished story on to their churches. How long might it be until tiny swatches of allegedly “holy swaddling” will show up as talismans in “Christian Bookstores?” And where did this idea that has been dormant for nearly one hundred and fifty years recently reemerge from?

It seems the idea has been picked up and popularized in recent times by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola in their 2012 Thomas Nelson book, Jesus: a Theography. From there, like Michael Heiser’s work, it has taken on a life of its own on YouTube. It is a grand New Birth Narrative story, with the only problem being that it is false.

Is the swaddle even special? Actually, no. In Swaddling God: The Normal Child None Expected, after explaining the ordinariness of the manger, David Mathis points out:

Why, then, mention the swaddling cloths? Unlike the manger, it was not unique or distinctive at all. So far as we know, every newborn would have been swaddled.

First-century Jewish care for newborns was in step with the typical practice across the ages and around the world. Swaddling was “the normal practice of Jewish mothers,” according to late Luke commentator Grant Osborne. “These are lengthy strips of cloth bound around the child to keep the limbs straight and still. The purpose was to keep them secure and provide stability” (67). “The wrapping of his fragile limbs in cloths,” writes Darrell Bock “was common in the ancient world to keep them protected and in place” (83), a practice, according to James Edwards, “that continues even today in villages in Syria and Palestine.” And America.

But if it wasn’t a special practice, why did Luke mention the swaddling of Jesus? Mathis wrote:

The purpose of swaddling, as we’ve seen, was to provide protection and security and stability to a frail newborn. But the main significance of Luke’s reporting the detail is the commonness of swaddling. Jesus was like any other baby. Swaddling was standard infant care. And Jesus was, in this way, a standard, very typical newborn in the care of loving parents.

If we think about it, we find the conception was miraculous, but everything about the pregnancy after that was common. The delivery was common. The birth was common. He was laid in a common manger. The uncommon God Who created all that is created entered the world in the most common way.

We have watched similar searches for exciting “ancient” spiritual practices, stories, and traditions. Progressives who may want to appear to be within the “Christian circle” are imbibing on Contemplative Prayer, Enneagram, and now, Tarot. In Jessica Mesman’s article The Woman Behind Tarot’s Strange Beauty, she writes:

My social circle of lapsed Catholics, exvangelicals, and other “deconstructing” Christians may have lost the narrative threads we followed for much of our lives, but we can rattle off our rising signs, Enneagram numbers, and Myers-Briggs types, like our Social Security numbers. In the absence of the ready-made life story I had in Catholicism, it sometimes feels like I’m begging whatever magic mirror I can find to please tell me who I am!

Notice, the “exvangelicals, and other ‘deconstructing’ Christians” had left the faith already believing these false Christian narratives. The same Thomas Nelson publishers that ramped up the New Birth Narrative in Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola’s 2012 Thomas Nelson book, Jesus: a Theography, assured their readers in their 2023 Thomas Nelson Enneagram book, The Journey Home: A Biblical Guide to Using the Enneagram to Deepen Your Faith and Relationships by Meredith Boggs:

In my fifteen-plus years of learning, teaching, and writing about the Enneagram, I have yet to encounter one person who has converted to New Ageism, who started engaging in occult practices, or who walked away from the Christian faith for the mystical, metaphysical spiritual realm due to the Enneagram.²Boggs, Meredith. The Journey Home: A Biblical Guide to Using the Enneagram to Deepen Your Faith and Relationships (pp. 9-10). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition)

Jessica Mesman seems to demonstrate this “harmless” claim for the Enneagram is false, and she documents the introduction of more and more “mystical, metaphysical, spiritual” beliefs and practices. We tend to echo a question Wave Nunnally asked:

Isn’t the biblical account “good” enough?  Isn’t the Word of God as written sufficient?  Aren’t a virgin birth, angelic revelations, etc., exciting and “Jewish” enough as is?  Why do we have to add to, sensationalize, and mysticize it?  Why aren’t the explanations and connections that the Bible itself makes sufficient to explain the significance of various aspects of the story?  Where is the ancient evidence to support such fantastic claims?

In our day, for too many people, the biblical account cannot hold our interest because it doesn’t present us with ever more exciting secret knowledge. But the biblical account is indeed “good” enough. It offers a rich, profound, and more than sufficient basis for faith and practice. The pursuit of novel and sensational knowledge can be appealing but ultimately distracts and detracts from the core message of the Bible. By remaining grounded in Scripture and being very cautious of unverified “new discoveries,” believers can maintain a faith that is both deep and authentically rooted in the teachings of the Bible.Ω

© 2024, Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc. All rights reserved. Excerpts and links may be used if full and clear credit is given with specific direction to the original content.