Loading...I want to continue my discussion of the virgin birth in the NT, with a set of reflections that is pretty unusual: the views of the Virgin Birth in Mark and John (who do not narrate it!). I’ve talked about this on the blog before, but it’s been a few years, and is worth thinking of again.
It is interesting that Mark, our first Gospel to be written, does not have the story of the Virgin birth and in fact shows no clue that it is familiar with the stories of the Virgin birth. On the contrary, there are passages in Mark that appear to work *against* the idea that Jesus’ mother knew anything about his having had an extraordinary birth.
There is a complicated little passage in Mark 3:20-21 about Jesus’ family coming to take him out of the public eye because they thought he was crazy. It is a difficult passage to translate from the Greek, and a number of translations go out of their way to make it say something that it probably doesn’t say. The context is that Jesus has been doing extraordinary miracles, attracting enormous crowds, and raising controversy among the Jewish leaders. Jesus then chooses his disciples and they go with him into a house. And then come our verses.
In the Greek the passage literally says that “those who were beside him came forth” in order to seize him, because they were saying, EXESTH. The two problems are: who is this group that has come, and what does it meant that he EXESTH? It is widely thought among translators and interpreters – and I think this has to be right – that “those who were beside him” means “his family.” It cannot mean the disciples, because they are already with him in the house. It must be people who were personally attached to Jesus (that’s what the phrase “were beside him” means). And so that appears to leave his family members. No one else is “on his side,” as it were.
Why then did his family members come? Because they thought he was EXESTH. Whatever the word means, it can’t be good. The whole point of this section of Mark is that…
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So how do irrentantists (if that’s a word) harmonize Mark 3:20-21 with the Virgin Birth and all the other miraculous things that happened at his birth (like choirs of angels)?
Usually that Mary thought (the adult) Jesus was going to far too fast at the beginning of his ministry, I suppose.
In Mark, we the readers learn in the first sentence that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.
But when does Jesus learn this? Has he always known it? Does he learn it when he is baptized?
AS it turns out “Son of God” is missing from some manuscripts. In my book Orthodox Corruption of Scripture I argue it was msising from the original. IN that case the reader learns Jesus is the Son of God at the same time Jesus does: at his baptism.
I just checked, and Spanish translations appear to stick closely to the Greek as you describe it:
From the Reina-Valera 1960 bible,
21 Cuando lo oyeron los suyos, vinieron para prenderle; porque decían: Está fuera de sí.
And “Está fuera de sí”, literally “[He] is outside of himself” is a colloquial way of saying “He’s out of his mind.”
And just a footnote to Hormiga, who may have just assumed that we all know that Spanish pretty much treats pronouns and names like Bart’s description of Greek. Thus his fascinating comment.
It seems questionable that he was actually working miracles, since miraculous healings, for instance, would have made it evident that Jesus was something extraordinary. But, if was laying hands on people and ranting and raving, well, his family would have reason to be concerned. Clearly, from this material, his own mother didn’t think Jesus was anything special, and had no reason to believe that there was anything different about him, except that he acted crazy. Maybe they wanted him out of the public eye because Jesus embarrassed them? The stories about the annunciation are on very shaky ground. More pious fiction/rationalization generated long after the fact?
Could pará be interpreted as friends rather than as disciples or family? I recognize that his family is trying to see him later in the chapter, but are they necessarily the ones trying to lay hold on him, trying to get him out of the public eye?
It could in theory, but in the context it seems pretty clearly that it does not: thee disciples are with him already, so they would not have “heard” about what he was doing.
With this in mind, do you think that the portrayal of Mary as a later disciple in Acts 1:14 is historically accurate? “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”
Acts 1:14 NIV
She is certainly among the believers at that point, yes.
Very, very interesting. Thanks
Those of us who are not scholars, or scholars in a certain topic, have to rely on those who are, yet here is another example of scholars letting their faith dictate their academic work making the Bible, or at least some parts of it, say what they want it to say, making it harder for we non scholars to find the truth.
Interesting! So maybe you could interpret this as a modern “orthodox corruption of scripture “ by the RSV “scribes” (translators)?
Ha! It happens!
Doesn’t Mark 3:31-34 appear to contain a secondary addition of “your sisters” to the original?
“Then his mother and brothers arrived …
the crowd said your mother and your brothers (and your sisters) are looking for you …
Jesus said who are my mother and my brothers? …
behold my mother and my brothers”
The original version should look more like Matthew 12:46-49, where the plural “your sisters” is absent.
That is, when Jesus is told his mother, brothers and sisters are outside, why doesn’t he ask who are my mother and brothers and sisters?
The singular “sister” only shows up in the concluding line of Matthew 12:50 “whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Where again Matthew’s “Father” is more appropriate in the context of “brother, sister, mother” than Mark 3:35 “whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother”.
Yup, possibly. The “and your sisters” is missing from most of our best manuscripts; but it is hard to explain why a scribe would add it and easy to explain why scribes would take it out (since it doesn’t mesh well with v. 31. So this is one of those places that textual scholars disagree whether it was there or not. I tend to think it was, but I don’t know of an overwhelming argument either way.
Hello Dr. Ehrman,
I greatly enjoy your posts and spend much time in your archives as well as anticipating future posts. I have a question posed as a comment:
What do you know for certain of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ? I ask this in the most respectful way. Of the many scholarly opinions available, there are often widely confusing differences on sources, interpretations, meaning and so on. Of your own accrued extensive research, authorship and teaching, what do you personally feel confident in stating is factual? I realize this is a broad question encompassing many categories, but at the end of the day, what do you actually know?
Many thanks,
Elizabeth Smith
It’s a difficult question, but I’ve written a lot about it. My fullest statement is in my first book for a popular audience, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. You can see a number of posts on related things if you look under “Historical Jesus” on the blog.
Professor, properly translated the periscope would see to score high on the criteria of embarrassment; and, Mark is the oldest gospel. Do you see the passage as likely historical; and, if so would that speak to Jesus state of mind later in the Passion narratives?
I think it does show that Jesus’ family did not accept him as the Son of God, yes.
Yet the Jesus family, the benYosef’s? Not sure what they would call themselves, become big, maybe THE, leaders in the early nascent Jerusalem church, maybe even being martyred for it, and maybe worse relocating to Jerusalem …All trying to be witty aside – does that make sense with this thesis (which I know isn’t that controversial). What changed their mind?
Apparently one of them, James, believed he saw Jesus alive after the crucifixion.
Dr. Ehrman, are you familiar with the writings of Alan Saxby? In his thesis he argues that James was probably already situated in Jerusalem prior to Jesus’ death. That he led an independent community from Jesus prior to Jesus’ ministry and only became involved with it after his brother’s death. It was an interesting read and he seemed to have made some good arguments to situate James in Jerusalem for many years prior to Jesus’ death.
No, I haven’t read his work. I will say that I think I know quite well every ancient source that mentions James and none of them indicates this…
Yea it wasn’t based on any direct evidence. He basically links James to the wider religious restoration movement linked with or inspired by John the Baptist. He suggests that James might have come to Jerusalem after the death of Joseph seeking work at the construction of The Temple and started a religious community there in the process. He used comparative analysis using anthropological and sociological studies to reconstruct life in rural Galilee to show how/why someone like James would be drawn to that project and what life would have been like for the workers there.
It’s an interesting proposal which explains (right or wrong) how we find James being the leader of an established community in Jerusalem so soon after Jesus’ death and how he had enough influence/popularity as to have had Pharisees and other Jews convince the Romans to depose the high priest after responsible for his death.
Anyways, I was just curious if you were familiar with it. Thank you.
Yeah, so a. nothing connects James with john the Baptist; b. nothing suggests he was a teknon; c. nothing puts him in Jerusalem before Jesus’ death; d. nothing suggests that rural tekna could find work building the temple; e. nothing indicates that James had a religious community there before Xty emerged; etc. etc. So… I don’t know. What does he imagine James’s building skills were? I wonder what his grounds for thinking so are. We don’t know if he was a tekton, of course, but if he was, it almost certainly would have been to make plows and yokes for the locals — not exaactly the kind of thing of much use for the temple. And it’s probably implausible that all of Joseph’s sons in the small hamlet of Nazareth were tekna; they would have been doing other things, since it was such a small place
It’s very speculative. I found interesting his use of sociological studies to reconstruct a scenario for his thesis.
He connects James to John through Jesus’ connection to John. Also John was earlier and independent of Jesus and that Jesus’ movement grew out of John’s. With James we might have something similar. An independent movement inspired by John’s movement which later merges with the Jesus movement.
He hypothesizes that the dire situation in Nazareth might’ve impelled James to became a day laborer. The temple project being the biggest, he could’ve ended up there. There he perhaps established a religious group/synagogue.
“Was Jesus for a period attracted/impelled into building work in nearby Sepphoris (his parables also show acquaintance with building—houses built on rock and sand—Matt 7:24−27//Luke 6:47−49)? And James? And the other brothers?”
“Would the boys from a Torah-observant family in Nazareth have taken the educational opportunities offered by the range of activities centered on the Temple (e.g., teaching/preaching within the Temple precincts seems to have been an accepted activity—Mark 14:49; Acts 3:11—4:42)? Could such migrants become recognized (among their peers at least) as interpreters of Torah, proficient in Hebrew/Aramaic (even Greek?), and thereby move into the retainer class? Could James…?“
yeah, lots to talk about there. I don’t think parables about some rather basic issues connected with building (I think even I could figure out it would be a bad idea to build a house on sand!) suggest he worked on buildings in Sepphoris any more than parables about kings suggest that he was a prince in Jerusalem or parables about furnaces suggest that he was a heating and plubming guy. And no, there’s no way a kid from Nazareth would typically travel a hundred miles to study in the Temple. At least we have no record of such a thing ever happening.
Fascinating. Thank you for reading all of that and for taking the time to respond!
Well, I guess if his family thought he might be crazy, then they had reasons to think so. Which leads to my asking if there is evidence outside of the NT that Jesus was ever described as crazy?
Unfortunately we don’t have any descriptions of the historical Jesus from non-Christian sources until much later.
Very interesting. This explains why the modern churches find it convenient to have a sort of latter day diatesseron approach to the gospels, i.e. a conflation of the generally accepted parts and an editing out of the less easy to explain episodes. Sometimes when these sort of passages occasionally creep into gospel readings in church, I have heard ministers/pastors perform verbal gymnastics in a valiant attempt to reconcile them with what most people understand about the Jesus story, such as: Mary was caught up with the moment and temporarily forgot that she had had that visit from an angel back in the day.
It seems rather unlikely that a woman would forget a visit from an angel who told her that she was going to have a child despite being a virgin!
Is there Biblical basis for Mary remaining a virgin after giving birth to Jesus? Having brothers and sisters wouldn’t pose a problem for the virgin birth if Jesus was first born. Mary thinking that Jesus was nuts still might of course.
No, not really. And pretty good evidence she was not a virgin — the brothers and sisters themselves, of course; and the fact that Luke says that Jesus was her “first born” son.
Pandering to those who use the smear of “crazy” to enforce conformity. It’s revealing that Bart uses the modern phrase “out of your mind” as comparable to “EXESTH”. “Out of your mind” doesn’t mean literally insane. It means foolish or outrageous.
I suppose it cold mean all three things? In colloquial speak, if you say “he’s out of his mind!” doesn’t that mean “that guy’s crazy!”?
Luke and Matthew came 10 to 15 years after Mark. Did the idea of a divine birth develop during that time, or did Mark reject the idea, or perhaps the idea was around in some areas but not where Mark was living and writing?
BTW, you’ll be happy to know that with this comment you have no longer made 666 of them….
I suppose there’s no way to know for sure, but since no one else seems to know about a virgin birth either, the default position would probably be that Mark didn’t reject the idea, but had simply never heard of it. That wouldn’t mean that it had to develop *after* him, of course, since it could have been floating around in other places and he just never heard of it.
I notice the NRSV uses your translation (“he has gone out of his mind”) though it continues to use “people” which you pointed out is a stretch. So your complaint against the RSV half applies to the NRSV.
Right. (Although technically I guess I’m using *their* translation!)
Although it does not seem to apply here, to be “outside of oneself” could, in modern psychiatric parlance, refer to an “out-of-body experience”, which is a symptom of psychosis. (“crazy” btw, is not a psychiatric term …nor is “insane”) One could speculate whether Jesus had, prior to his ministry, a history of suspected mental illness. If so, that may explain the possible attempt of his family to “rescue” him.
Do you think that Mark 3:31-35 might have been a reaction to his family treating him as if he were out of his mind? I can’t imagine that this would not hurt Jesus so possibly he reacted angrily to what they did and rejected the family that in his mind rejected him? Sometimes it can be difficult to be sure what proceed what in the timeline of Jesus’ activities so I am hesitant to be too certain of this conclusion.
Yes, the passages do seem to tie together.
Could it simply be that his brothers and sisters were simply trying to protect Jesus? How can we make this assumption of no virgin birth based on the assumption it was not mentioned? This would be a fundamental reaction by a family whose loved one was placing himself in grave danger. How can we assume that Mary didn’t know of Jesus?
What I’m saying is that Mark does not say anything about the virgin birth, so we cannot assume he knew about it (it’s only in the later Gospels). And since Mary appears to think Jesus is out of his mind, in Mark (but not in these later Gospels that record the virgin birth), it appears she does not know (in Mark) that he was literally the son of God.
Mark didn’t ‘deny’ the virgin birth, he just didn’t mention it.
That’s all.
Saying the virgin birth is nonsense because only one Gospel mentioned it, and then dismiss the resurrection as nonsense as well, even though all Gospels mention it, is intellectually vacuous.
Two gospels mention it. But who is saying these things are nonsense? My view is that it is better to take other peoples’ perspectives seriously and thoughtfully rather than caricaturize them so they can be quickly dismissed.
Prof Ehrman,
This post re-echoed to me your words – ‘how can we say the words were inspired if we do not have/ know what the original words are’. Hope I got that right.
My reaction to Mark 3 caused me to wonder why the family expressed such thoughts if we are told (as heralded in the Catholic tradition) that the first miracle performed by Jesus (turning water into wine) was at the instance of his mother. Why then the dismay expressed by his family in Mark 3 if the family knew he ought to be doing such things?
To my dismay, I checked out that story ( the first miracle) and realized that it is found in a John’s Gospel and only in John. For me, it further drummed home your words that ‘each gospel should be read for what they themselves say instead of conflating them with other Gospels, thereby making them say what isn’t portrayed in any of the individual gospels’.
Briefly, and thematically, please how does the various Gospels portray Jesus individually?
Ah, that’s not easy. But, as briefly as I can: Matthew portrays him as the JEwish messiah who fulfilled prophecy; Mark portrays him as the suffering messiah no one understood; Luke portrays him as the final prophet rejected by the Jewish people; and John portrays him as a divine being who became human to provide eternal life.
Thank you, Dr Ehrman. What enlightenment this post alone provides! As I read your other posts (I very recently joined), I realize becoming a member of your community is my 2020 Christmas gift to myself. 2021 looks a little brighter. Happy New Year!!!
My RSV interlinear Greek-English N.T. (A. Marshall) does *not* have “them” (they, i.e. other people) thinking that Jesus had gone out of his mind: “The ones with him (=his relations) went out to seize him. For they said – He is beside himself”.
The pericope does seem to tick some boxes for historicity. I think you will agree.
Yes, I think it does show that historically Jesus’ family was known not to have accepted his mission during his lifetime.
I’m sorry this is off topic… but kind of a similar question… I understand that the Ascension of Jesus to heaven was added to the gospel of Mark. I also notice it is not in Matthew at all at least in my Bible. I also don’t see much about the Ascension in Paul’s letters but I’m not saying he didn’t mention this at all maybe I have missed something there so correct me if I’m wrong. Is it possible the Ascension was a later invention? Could it be possible that for a short time many people believe Jesus was still on Earth until they realized he was gone?
I don’t believe we have any manuscripts that add the ascension to Mark. But yes, I think it was almost certainly a later invention. But it is not that originally people thoguht Jesus was *still* on earth. The original idea was that at the resurrection he was taken directly up to heaven; later there developed the idea that he stayed on earth for a while to give some last minute instruction to his followers.
I’m confused I thought the last 12 verses were added to Mark later? I read that in your book misquoting Jesus
19 After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven(S) and he sat at the right hand of God.
Am I misunderstanding what Ascension is I am new to this
Ah, sorry, I thought you meant something else! (I thought possibly you were referring to the very end of Luke, where a similar thing happens, but only the ascension — not the entire additional narrative) Yes, indeed, it is in the final 12 vv of Mark!
Who cares! Bart Ehrman is replying to my meathead questions! Your the Micheal Jordan of Bible land!!!!?
Bart, are you saying in your last comment that the ending of Mark means that the women don’t see him — and no one else does either — because his body is not there. And they assume that he is in heaven but no one sees him after he is dead?
In the original ending? Yes, no one sees him. He has been raised and has gone to Galilee, but they don’t tell anyone.
Thanks, Bart. But I meant does it mean that Mark’s religion is based on the idea that they just guess that he has become divine but that no one evers see him in real life. (I assume I’m wrong about that but your posting suggested it to me).
Sorry, I”m having trouble understanding what you’re asking. Are you asking if they assunmed he became divine without seeing him after his resurrection? My view is that some of the disciples claimed they did see him, and others believed as a result. (just as today everyone believes because they’re heard *others* say that he was raised)
Thanks, Bart. (Long time fan tho I don’t usually comment).
I just re-read the article and I can’t see anything in it that prompted my comment.
I guess I just wondered, since you point out that Mark is different from the other gospels, if the abrupt ending without any visions of a dead man might mean that his version of Christianity was not based on visions but just an assumption that Jesus had been raised to heaven like Elijah.
Because, elsewhere, you say that, over time, people felt quite free to make all sorts of extrapolations about where and when Jesus got his divine status.
No reply required. Thanks.
It’s an interesting question. But notice that the man at the tomb tells the women to tell the disciples that Jesus will meet them in Galilee; so it appears to assume that his body has come back to life and is still here on earth.
Yes, of course, the young guy tells them that they would be seeing him but the book doesn’t follows through and tell us that they did. I guess I can say that’s my excuse for asking the question. Thanks again. Nice talking to you.