[Vision2020] The Christ Child, Illegitimacy, and the Gospel Message

Tue Dec 23 15:09:46 PST 2008

Season's Greetings:

This is my radio commentary/column for this week.  The full version with scholarly article cited is attached.  Visionaries may be interested in my previous Christmas columns: "The Christmas Story and Other Redeeming Myths" at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/Christmas.htm; and "Pontius the Pilot and the Flight to Egypt" at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/FlightEgypt.htm.

THE CHRIST CHILD, ILLEGITIMACY, AND THE MEANING OF THE GOSPEL

Some friends and I attended a Christmas concert at our local Presbyterian Church, and our favorite piece was a new version of the Cherry Tree Carol. 

A dramatic point in the song occurs when Mary asks Joseph to pick some cherries for her, and he lashes out in anger: "Let the father of the baby gather cherries for thee." Jesus, while still in womb, causes the tree to bow down and give its cherries to his mother. Joseph is amazed and he repents of his mean spirited words.

Although the New Testament does not record Joseph’s anger, Matthew reports that he did intend to divorce Mary when he discovered that she was mysteriously pregnant (1:19).  An angel came to Joseph in a dream and explained that Mary’s conception was divinely sanctioned and that his son would “save his people from their sins” (1:21).

The earliest books of the New Testament do not mention Jesus’ miraculous conception.  In fact, Mark, Paul, and John tell no birth stories, which appear only later when Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels in AD 80-90. 

Matthew uses a Greek mistranslation of Isaiah 7:14, which in Hebrew has “young woman,” not a virgin, and this verse does not refer to the Messiah. Thanks to Matthew Jesus joins Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, and Mithra as born of virgins. Luke's Roman census and Matthew's account of Herod's slaughter of the infants have no historical basis, so the birth stories may not be reliable sources for an accurate view of Jesus' parentage.

If Jesus was a "mamzerim," Hebrew for bastard, then he could “not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord” (Deut. 23:2).  It has been suggested, however, that the sole sanction against a "mamzerim" in Jesus' time was that he was not permitted to marry, and this may explain why Jesus did not take a wife. 

Matthew and Luke drew most of their information about the adult Jesus from Mark, and these stories say nothing about Jesus’ illicit conception.  This status would have prevented him from learning the Torah, but Mark has Jesus teaching in the synagogue in "his own country" (6:1-3) where he impressed the people with his religious knowledge. 

The fact that Mark refers to Jesus as the "son of Mary" in this passage has led some to infer that he had no legitimate father and this was the reason the crowd "took offense at him." Scholarly consensus now tends to discount this interpretation, especially since Jesus was also called "son of Joseph" elsewhere.  

Matthew borrows Mark's story and adds "the carpenter's son" (13:55), and the fact that Mark also calls Jesus a carpenter is significant because Jewish law would not have allowed Joseph to train a bastard in his trade. 

The Pharisees could have discredited Jesus completely if it were true that Joseph was not his real father. All the direct accusations that Jesus was “born of fornication” and that his father was a Roman soldier named Panthera are from much later and questionable sources. It is quite reasonable to assume that Joseph was Jesus' biological father, and that he would have no good reason to refuse to pick cherries for his pregnant wife.

Orthodox Christian theology does not take the Bible piecemeal as scholars do, so affirming Jesus' illegitimacy, while not historically accurate, may give the gospel message a powerful theological boost.  

In a short sermon entitled "Embracing the Bastard Jesus," the Rev. Irene Moore tells of the single black mothers in her parish who have been stigmatized as "promiscuous and wild."  Moore proposes that the acceptance of Mary "as an unwed mother upholds the ethos that no child, no matter what his or her station in life might be, should be left behind. And it also symbolizes that those relegated to the fringes of society – the bastards – are the very ones that Jesus' birth symbolizes and stands for."

According to Jewish law, Matthew's Joseph had ever right to divorce Mary and leave her and her baby to fend for themselves in an unkind world.  He may even have had moments of anger, as the Cherry Tree Carol surmises, but he stood by this remarkable woman and even more amazing child. Regardless of our religious persuasions, we can at least agree that Jesus was one of the greatest moral teachers in human history.

Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. 

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