The account of our Lord’s nativity, in its biblical and first-century Jewish context, is rich enough without seeking to supplement it with the counterfeit currency of legend. Stick to the facts. The biblical background of Bethlehem, David, the virgin, the angels, shepherds, and all the various details from the Evangelists have deep roots in the Old Testament. Trace those. Preach on them.

The Bethlehem shepherds were raising lambs for the temple? Jesus was born in a shepherd’s tower called Migdal Eder? Shepherds swaddled lambs to keep them unblemished then placed them in a manger to keep them safe? What are we to make of these popular claims?

It’s that time of year again for a wide array of questionable, if not outright false, legends to be circulated about details related to the birth of Jesus. Let me address a popular example, one that is frequently shared on social media.

There are several overlapping elements to this story/legend. We will tackle them one by one.

Temple Shepherds?

The first element goes like this: the shepherds around Bethlehem were not overseeing ordinary flocks but were responsible for raising sheep for sacrifice at the temple.

This opinion, popularized long ago by Alfred Edersheim in The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, is based on scanty evidence drawn from the Mishnah, the basic compendium of Jewish law. This is the document behind the vague references on social media posts to “Jewish practice” or “ancient tradition” at the time of Jesus. But when was the Mishnah dated? Maybe 50 BC? Or AD 75? No, around AD 200. That is, needless to say, two centuries after the events that transpired on the night Jesus was born.

While a graduate student at Hebrew Union College, I read and studied the Mishnah in Hebrew. I am very familiar with its background, contents, and importance. It is indeed valuable as later evidence that purports to preserve older oral traditions and teachings. That being said, the Mishnah cannot be used as reliable evidence for something that predates it by two hundred years.

So, were these individuals serving as shepherds for the temple, or (as some go on to boldly claim) even priests who were doing the shepherding? Maybe. Maybe not, but I doubt it. We do not have any verifiable way of knowing. We certainly do not, by any stretch of the scholarly imagination, have sufficient, irrefutable evidence to teach or preach that these were temple shepherds taking care of future sacrificial lambs.

The evangelist Luke offers no such clue, not even a hint, that these people were anything but ordinary shepherds taking care of ordinary sheep. Within the broader biblical narrative, their significance is likely to be sought in David himself being a shepherd around Bethlehem. As David was called from taking care of the sheep to be anointed as king, so these shepherds were sent by the angels to Bethlehem to see the newborn King and Shepherd of Israel.

Bethlehem Lambs?

Second, some posts on social media and various blogs will go on to claim that Bethlehem was famous for producing unblemished lambs that were used for sacrifice, including Passover lambs. Of course, this claim is based on the earlier, questionable legend that these were temple flocks. Unlike the earlier opinion, however, this one is not even built on scanty evidence; it is built on thin air.

I have found no evidence in older Jewish literature—and certainly not in the Bible—that if you were to stop someone on Jerusalem’s streets to ask, “Where do the best sacrificial lambs come from?” they would respond, “Bethlehem, of course!” This claim, therefore, is wholly unsupported by evidence.

So file this one under, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Migdal Eder

When this claim is made, it is commonly joined to a description of the Migdal Eder, which is the third element under discussion. I will explain why momentarily, but let’s first identify what and where Migdal Eder is.

In Hebrew, a migdal (מִגְדָּל) is a “tower” and an “eder” (עֵדֶר) is a “herd or flock.” This “Tower of the Flock” or Migdal Eder is first mentioned in Genesis 35:21, as a place near where Jacob pitched his tent. In this context, Bethlehem is mentioned but we are not told how close Migdal Eder was to Bethlehem.

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