“Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel,’ which is translated ‘God is with us.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
The Advent season is probably my favorite time of the year with the possible exception of the first real onset of Fall. What makes the Advent season so special is its music. No other season has as much good and classic music associated with it as the season of Advent. The collection of songs it boasts isn’t necessarily all that numerous (unless you are comparing with any other season in which it dwarfs the competition), but the handful of songs are so good that everyone has done their own version of all of them. Indeed, of the making of Christmas albums there is no end. And while you can perhaps try to explain that from all sorts of different angles, without Jesus the songbook itself and a host of good recordings wouldn’t exist. He is inescapably the reason for the season. As has become our tradition around here, Fridays through the season of Advent are for celebrating this great music. We’ll start this week with a reasonably old recording of a music older song that I just recently discovered. Here is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel from the Punch Brothers.
If you had told me twenty-five years ago that I would come to really enjoy bluegrass music, I would have probably laughed in your face. I was very content listening to my mix of ska and punk and alternative rock and roll. Bluegrass was related to country, and I had my nose firmly turned up at the idea of listening to country music of any variety. I’m still not generally a big fan of country, and wouldn’t ever turn it on of my own volition, but I at least appreciate more than I used to. But somewhere along the way, I started to develop more and more of a taste for various independent music that trended in a more eclectic direction than before. I also find myself greatly enjoying listening to good music performed by talented musicians regardless of the genre.
Enter bluegrass.
I didn’t ever mean to like it, but one day I accidentally stumbled across the band The Gray Havens whose music I’ve referenced and reviewed on here more than once. After listening to enough of them, I was listening to one of our streaming services while driving back from South Carolina one day, and I chose their discovery mix. I think that particular mix was curated by Amazon Music and featured a random assortment of artists their algorithm calculated I would enjoy based on the characteristics of what I had been listening to lately.
I soon found myself absolutely enthralled by the song Dopamine from the bluegrass band, The Arcadian Wild. I abandoned the discovery mix and listened to just them the rest of the way home. By the time we got back, I was a committed fan of bluegrass. Since then, I get excited anytime I discovered a solid new bluegrass group with a set of virtuosic string players. The Punch Brothers fit squarely in that category. And my first introduction to them just last week was their version of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel which happens to be one of my favorite songs of the season. So, here we are.
The song is all about consciously preparing our hearts for the arrival of the Christ child into the world and into our lives. Each verse highlights a different aspect of the coming Christ’s nature and identity. The first verse calls out for God with us to bring ransom to our souls which are stuck in captivity to the power of sin and living in exile from our heavenly home until the grand and glorious appearance of the Son of God.
Verse two reaches out for the source of joy, the Dayspring, to come and “disperse the gloomy clouds of night” that hang low because of the pall of death that hangs over a world that lives in the grip of sin. There is no joy in sin. It promises and can even deliver to a limited extent a good time, but this is only and always temporary at best. And when it goes, our souls are left emptier than before. These diminishing returns lead us only down a path of futility and misery. Oh, we can convince ourselves this ever fading contentment is a good and right state of affairs that we are totally fine with, but a person with no pallet for fine wine can convince herself that box wine is the best tasting wine there is. If you’ve never experienced the real joy that only comes from the presence of Christ, you literally don’t know what you’re missing.
The third and fourth verses focus our attention more corporately and even globally. There is an abiding recognition throughout the carol that this world is not in the state it should be in. We have become what we worship, but by worshiping things which are not ultimately or inherently good, what we have become is not good either. It cries out for the Wisdom from on high to bring proper order once again to creation. For a people lost in darkness, it asks Wisdom to reveal the path of knowledge. It finally seeks out a spirit of unity and peace to settle on the world such that all envy, strife, and quarrels may cease.
As we look around a world that seems to be ever more on fire these days, this ancient cry for help and relief from the one source that can actually deliver resonates deeply with those who are still anticipating His grand return. The Punch Brothers version with its mandolin-driven track and simple approach to the melody is a delight to listen to. As we continue to lean into the joy that lies before us, let us take these ancient words to heart and let them be the prayer that keeps our hearts and minds focused on what matters most this Advent season.
The Nexus 
Hi Pastor Waits:
Dr. Blomberg admits that some of the stories in the Gospels may be fictional embellishments. The question is: Which ones?
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Hi Gary. I have honestly not been following your review process of Craig’s book at all. If this particular review is somewhat of a par for the course, my decision feels entirely justified.
You build a blog around a supposed admission from Craig that there may be fictional EMBELLISHMENTS (note the emphasis), but the quote comes in the context of a section that is arguing explicitly for the reasonableness of trusting the overall historicity of the Gospel accounts, and that the case against historicity on the basis of possible (he did not acknowledge actual or certain as you allege) embellishments (that is, added details for the sake of the narrative they were writing that were not intended nor assumed by original audiences to take away from the core historicity of the accounts).
I’d suggest you should be ashamed of doing such a deceptive and even dishonest of a review, but I don’t suspect you are, or you wouldn’t have written it in the first place. The book is literally about why taking all of the Gospels as historically sound and reliable is a perfectly reasonable position to hold, and you snip one line out of context to make an argument that none of it should be considered so.
From how you have presented yourself to me thus far, I would have expected better.
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No where in my post do I state that Blomberg believes there are fictional embellishments within the Gospels. What I state is that Blomberg believes that historical writings in Jesus’ day COULD contain fictional embellishments.
That admission does not bother the overwhelming majority of the world’s Christians who believe that the Gospels do contain fictional embellishments. Most NT scholars, representing most Christian denominations, doubt, for instance, the historicity of Matthew’s guards at the tomb and his tale of zombies shaken out of their graves on Easter morning.
My highlighting of Blomberg’s statement bothers evangelicals and other ultra-conservative Christians because you cleverly realize that if one story is fictional, they all could be fictional. That is why you steadfastly and vociferously refuse to acknowledge the obvious: the Gospel authors were writing religious propaganda “so that you might believe”. They were not writing history textbooks.
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“The book is literally about why taking all of the Gospels as historically sound and reliable is a perfectly reasonable position to hold, and you snip one line out of context to make an argument that none of it should be considered so.”
No. I never said that none of the stories in the Gospels are historical. I simply made the point that it was an accepted practice in Jesus’ day for authors of historical works to sometimes embellish a story with fictional details. The problem is: How can we today know which parts of the Jesus Story are historical and which parts the authors embellished?
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There is no evidence that any of Jesus’ disciples wrote down a word of what Jesus said or did. All our information about him comes from hearsay. Some of that hearsay may contain eyewitness testimony, some of it may contain embellishments (fiction). Since it is hearsay, there is no way to know which stories in the Gospels are 100% historical, part historical/part fiction, or 100% fiction. It is not all or none, as you seem to assert.
If Jesus did not enter Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to a cheering great crowd, hailing him as the new Jewish king, what difference would it make? None. But what about the stories of alleged post-death appearances of Jesus? What if those stories are fictional embellishments? What if the original Jesus sightings all involved talking bright lights, as described by Paul in detailing his Jesus appearance experience to King Agrippa (Acts 26)? That would be devastating for the believability of the core claim of Christianity, wouldn’t it? The historicity of the Resurrection would come down to believing in the existence of talking bright lights. That would be devastating.
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