In English:
1. And it came to pass that in those days there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. 2. This enrolling was first made by Cyrinus, the governor of Syria. 3. And all went to be enrolled, every one into his own city. 4. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem: because he was of the house and family of David. 5. To be enrolled with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child. 6. And it came to pass that when they were there, her days were accomplished that she should be delivered. 7. And she brought forth her first born son and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger: because there was no room for them in the inn. 8. And there were in the same country shepherds watching and keeping the night watches over their flock. 9. And behold an angel of the Lord stood by them and the brightness of God shone round about them: and they feared with a great fear. 10. And the angel said to them: Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people: 11. For, this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. 12. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. 13. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying: 14. Glory to God in the highest: and on earth peace to men of good will. 15. And it came to pass, after the angels departed from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another: Let us go over to Bethlehem and let us see this word that is come to pass, which the Lord hath shewed to us. 16. And they came with haste: and they found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. 17. And seeing, they understood of the word that had been spoken to them concerning this child. 18. And all that heard wondered: and at those things that were told them by the shepherds. 19. But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. 20. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.
In Latin:
1. Factum est autem in diebus illis exiit edictum a Caesare Augusto ut describeretur universus orbis. 2. Haec descriptio prima facta est praeside Syriae Cyrino. 3 Et ibant omnes ut profiterentur singuli in suam civitatem. 4. Ascendit autem et Ioseph a Galilaea de civitate Nazareth in Iudaeam civitatem David quae vocatur Bethleem eo quod esset de domo et familia David. 5. Ut profiteretur cum Maria desponsata sibi uxore praegnate. 6. Factum est autem cum essent ibi impleti sunt dies ut pareret. 7. Et peperit filium suum primogenitum et pannis eum involvit et reclinavit eum in praesepio quia non erat eis locus in diversorio. 8. Et pastores erant in regione eadem vigilantes et custodientes vigilias noctis supra gregem suum. 9. Et ecce angelus Domini stetit iuxta illos et claritas Dei circumfulsit illos et timuerunt timore magno. 10. Et dixit illis angelus nolite timere ecce enim evangelizo vobis gaudium magnum quod erit omni populo. 11. Quia natus est vobis hodie salvator qui est Christus Dominus in civitate David. 12. Et hoc vobis signum invenietis infantem pannis involutum et positum in praesepio . 13. Et subito facta est cum angelo multitudo militiae caelestis laudantium Deum et dicentium. 14. Gloria in altissimis Deo et in terra pax in hominibus bonae voluntatis. 15. Et factum est ut discesserunt ab eis angeli in caelum pastores loquebantur ad invicem transeamus usque Bethleem et videamus hoc verbum quod factum est quod fecit Dominus et ostendit nobis. 16. Et venerunt festinantes et invenerunt Mariam et Ioseph et infantem positum in praesepio. 17. Videntes autem cognoverunt de verbo quod dictum erat illis de puero hoc. 18. Et omnes qui audierunt mirati sunt et de his quae dicta erant a pastoribus ad ipsos. 19. Maria autem conservabat omnia verba haec conferens in corde suo. 20. Et reversi sunt pastores glorificantes et laudantes Deum in omnibus quae audierant et viderant sicut dictum est ad illos.
The faith becomes, in more ways than one, a religion of little things. But its traditions in art and' literature and popular fable have quite sufficiently attested, as has been said, this particular paradox of the divine being in the cradle. Perhaps they have not so clearly emphasized the significance of the divine being in the cave. Curiously enough, indeed, tradition has not very clearly emphasized the cave. It is a familiar fact that the Bethlehem scene has been represented in every possible setting of time and country, of landscape and architecture; and it is a wholly happy and admirable fact that men have conceived it as quite different according to their different individual traditions and tastes. But while all have realized that it was a stable, not so many have realized that it was a cave. Some critics have even been so silly as to suppose that there was some contradiction between the stable and the cave; in which case they cannot know much about caves or stables in Palestine. As they see differences that are not there, it is needless to add that they do not see differences that are there. When a well-known critic says, for instance, that Christ being born in a rocky cavern is like Mithras having sprung alive out of a rock, it sounds like a parody upon comparative religion. There is such a thing as the point of a story, even if it is a story in the sense of a lie. And the notion of a hero appearing, like Pallas from the brain of Zeus, mature and without a mother, is obviously the very opposite of the idea of a god being born like an ordinary baby and entirely dependent on a mother. Whichever ideal we might prefer, we should surely see that they are contrary ideals. It is as stupid to connect them because they both contain a substance called stone as to identify the punishment of the Deluge with the baptism in the Jordan because they both contain a substance called water. Whether as a myth or a mystery, Christ was obviously conceived as born in a hole in the rocks primarily because it marked the position of one outcast and homeless. Nevertheless it is true, as I have said, that the cave has not been so commonly or so clearly used as a symbol as the other realities that surrounded the first Christmas.And the reason for this also refers to the very nature of that new world. It was in a sense the difficulty of a new dimension. Christ was not only born on the level of the world, but even lower than the world. The first act of the divine drama was enacted, not only on no stage set up above the sightseer, but on a dark and curtained stage sunken out of sight; and that is an idea very difficult to express in most modes of artistic expression. It is the idea of simultaneous happenings on different levels of life. Something like it might have been attempted in the more archaic and decorative medieval art. But the more the artists learned of realism and perspective, the less they could depict at once the angels in the heavens and the shepherds on the hills, and the glory in the darkness that was under the hills. Perhaps it could have been best conveyed by the characteristic expedient of some of the medieval guilds, when they wheeled about the streets a theater with three stages one above the other, with heaven above the earth and hell under the earth. But in the riddle of Bethlehem it was heaven that was under the earth.
There is in that alone the touch of a revolution, as of the world turned upside down. It would be vain to attempt to say anything adequate, or anything new, about the change which this conception of a deity born like an outcast or even an outlaw bad upon the whole conception of law and its duties to the poor and outcast. It is profoundly true to say that after that moment there could be no slaves. There could be and were people bearing that legal title, until the Church was strong enough to weed them out, but there could be no more of the pagan repose in the mere advantage to the state of keeping it a servile state. Individuals became important, in a sense in which no instruments can be important. A man could not be a means to an end, at any rate to any other man's end. All this popular and fraternal element in the story has been rightly attached by tradition to the episode of the Shepherds; the hinds who found themselves talking face to face with the princes of heaven. But there is another aspect of the popular element as represented by the shepherds which has not perhaps been so fully developed; and which is more directly relevant here.
Men of the people, like the shepherds, men of the popular tradition, had everywhere been the makers of the mythologies. It was they who had felt most directly, with least check or chill from philosophy or the corrupt cults of civilization, the need we have already considered; the images that were adventures of the imagination; the mythology that was a sort of search the tempting and tantalizing hints of something half human in nature; the dumb significance of seasons and special places. They bad best understood that the soul of a landscape is a story and the soul of a story is a personality. But rationalism had already begun to rot away these really irrational though imaginative treasures of the peasant; even as systematic slavery had eaten the peasant out of house and home. Upon all such peasantries everywhere there was descending a dusk and twilight of disappointment, in the hour when these few men discovered what they sought. Everywhere else Arcadia was fading from the forest. Pan was dead and the shepherds were scattered like sheep. And though no man knew it, the hour was near which was to end and to fulfill all things; and though no man heard it, there was one far-off cry in an unknown tongue upon the heaving wilderness of the mountains. The shepherds had found their Shepherd.
And the thing they found was of a kind with the things they sought. The populace had been wrong in many things; but they had not been wrong in believing that holy things could have a habitation and that divinity need not disdain the limits of time and space. And the barbarian who conceived the crudest fancy about the sun being stolen and hidden in a box, or the wildest myth about the god being rescued and his enemy deceived with a stone, was nearer to the secret of the cave and knew more about the crisis of the world, than all those in the circle of cities round the Mediterranean who had become content with cold abstractions or cosmopolitan generalizations; than all those who were spinning thinner and thinner threads of thought out of the transcendentalism of Plato or the orientalism of Pythagoras. The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic; it was not a place of myths allegorized or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true. Since that hour no mythologies have been made in the world. Mythology is a search.