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My Article on Christmas in Newsweek
I mentioned in my previous post that in 2012 I was asked to write an article on Newsweek about the Christmas story. Before it appeared I posted it on the blog; here it is in full (at least as I sent it in to the magazine), in two parts. Here is the first half: ****************************** This past September, Harvard University professor Karen King unveiled a newly discovered Gospel fragment that she entitled “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” This wisp of a papyrus has stirred up a hornet’s nest and raised anew questions about what we can know about the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and about whether there are other Gospels outside the New Testament that can contribute valuable information. Few questions could be more timely, here in the season that celebrates Jesus’ birth. The fragment is just a scrap – the size of a credit card – written in Coptic, the language of ancient Egypt. It contains only eight broken lines of writing, but in one of these Jesus speaks of “my wife.” Conspiracy theorists […]
December 17, 2020
My Article on Christmas in Newsweek: Part 2
Yesterday I gave Part 1 of my Newsweek article on Christmas, published in 2012. Here is Part 2! *************************************************************** Most modern readers who are not already familiar with these stories [in the apocryphal Gospels such as the Proto-Gospel of James] tend to find them far-fetched. That’s almost always the case with miraculous accounts that we have never heard before – they sound implausible and “obviously” made up, as legends and fabrications. Rarely do we have the same reaction to familiar stories known from childhood that are also spectacularly miraculous, and that probably sound just as bizarre to outsiders who hear them for the first time. Are the stories about Jesus’ birth that are in the New Testament any less far-fetched? It depends whom you ask. This past November, Pope Benedict XVI published his third book on the life of Jesus, this one focusing on the New Testament accounts of his birth, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives. Before his ascent to the head of the Catholic Church, Joseph Ratzinger was best known as a leading […]
December 19, 2020
Do Christians Have to Believe in the Virgin Birth?
The last time I went to visit my mom in Kansas during the holiday season was six years ago (she is now in a retirement home in Ohio; 93 and still walkin’ around!). I talked about it on the blog soon thereafter. I was not a church going person then (still not) but I did the sonly thing and took her to her church. This was a conservative evangelical Free Methodist Church – one that my mom has attended for many years. It was not really my style – I rather prefer centuries-honored liturgy to electric guitars and drums, myself – but I wasn’t there to satisfy my own aesthetic preferences. (She doesn’t like the guitars and drums either, but we missed the earlier service with the choir). The sermon in that kind of church is very different from what one hears in an Episcopal church and is also very different from the kind of sermon I learned to preach when I was in my Masters of Divinity program at the Presbyterian Princeton Theological Seminary. […]
December 20, 2020
Was The Messiah Supposed to Be Born of a Virgin?
Here in the lead-up to December 25, I am discussing some issues related to Jesus’ birth. As I mentioned in my previous post, in the entire New Testament, the story of the virgin birth is found only in Matthew and Luke. Luke has a pretty straightforward explanation of why Jesus had to be born of a virgin: it’s because he was (literally) the “Son of God.” That is, God is the one who got Mary pregnant, as the angel tells her at the Annunciation: read Luke 1:31-35, and notice the angels’ explanation: the Spirit of God will “come upon her … SO THAT” the child born of her will be called “The Son of God.” Matthew, though, has a different explanation. For Matthew Jesus had to be born of a virgin because that is what was predicted in the Old Testament. This view fits in very well with Matthew’s entire birth narrative of chapters 1-2. Everything happens “to fulfill Scripture.” Why was Jesus’ mother a virgin? To fulfill what the prophet said (he quotes Isaiah […]
May 1, 2022
Was Jesus Born in Bethlehem? Matthew’s Version….
It is virtually certain that Jesus’ was raised in the small hamlet of Nazareth in Galilee, the northern part of Israel. All of our sources agree that he was from there, and it is very hard to imagine why a Christian story teller would have made that up (since there was no prestige about the place: no one had ever even heard of it!). But now the question is whether that was also his place of birth. The only two accounts we have of Jesus’ birth, Matthew and Luke, independently claim that even though he was raised in Nazareth, he was actually born in Bethlehem. So isn’t that the more likely scenario? Born in Bethlehem but raised in Nazareth? You might think so, given the fact that this is what is stated in our only two sources of information, and that they independently agree about the matter (based on their own sources, the no longer existing M – Matthew’s source or sources – and the no longer existing L – Luke’s source or sources). But […]
December 23, 2020
Was Jesus Born in Bethlehem? Luke’s Version.
Yesterday I discussed Matthew’s account of how it is that Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem, if in fact he “came” from Nazareth. It may well be that Matthew has placed Jesus’ birth there to fulfill Micah’s prophecy (5:2) that a great ruler (the supposed messiah) would come from Bethlehem. Matthew explains it all by indicating that Joseph and Mary were originally from Bethlehem. That was their home town. And the place of Jesus’ birth. Two or more years after his birth, they relocated to Nazareth in Galilee, over a hundred miles to the north, to get away from the rulers of Judea who were thought to be out to kill the child. (That in itself, I hardly need to say, seems completely implausible, that a local king is eager to kill a peasant child out of fear that he will wrest the kingdom away from him….) Luke has a completely different account of how it happened. In Luke, Bethlehem is decidedly not Joseph and Mary’s home town. The whole point of the story […]
December 24, 2020
A Holiday Season Request!
As we are all keenly aware: ‘Tis the Season to be giving! For many of us, in terms of giving at least, mid December is the best of times and the worst of times. It is best because we can show our love and gratitude to those close to us by choosing things to give them during the holidays; it is the worst because the commercialism that overwhelms our world often makes it such an obligatory drudgery. It would be so nice if we could just freely give to those we love without worrying about what and how much, and just be joyfully generous. But, of course, we are humans and even giving a gift can be fraught with complications. And this time of year often is. There is also a less humane and uplifting reason for giving just now, a rather cold and hard one that any of us who pays taxes knows full well. We’re near the end of the year. Ugh. On the other hand, I think most of us would agree, […]
December 15, 2020
Does the Gospel of Mark Deny a Virgin Birth?
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 […]
December 27, 2020
Where is the Virgin Birth in John?
I have pointed out that our earliest Gospel, Mark, not only is lacking a story of the virgin birth but also tells a story that seems to run precisely counter to the idea that Jesus’ mother knew that his birth was miraculous, unlike the later Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It is striking to note that even though these two later Gospels know about a virgin birth, our latest canonical Gospel, John, does not know about it. This was not a doctrine that everyone knew about – even toward the end of the first century. Casual readers of John often assume that it presupposes the virgin birth (it never says anything about it, one way or the other) because they themselves are familiar with the idea, and think that John must be as well. So they typically read the virgin birth into an account that in fact completely lacks it. As is well known, John’s Gospel begins … THE REST OF THIS POST IS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. If you don’t belong yet, REMEMBER: THE END […]
December 28, 2020
Christmas 2020
As we are all saying, this is by far the strangest holiday season we have had in living memory. Well, at least in my living memory, which goes back six decades. Some people are throwing themselves into it, trying to find a place for joy in the midst of either relative or severe hardship. The effort to restore normal joy is evidenced in strange ways. Just now, where I am, in a county in Western North Carolina, Christmas trees are literally sold out. Not a tree to be found anywhere. I tried on December 18. Nope. I’ve never heard of such a thing. A local told me they think that it’s because of Covid. So many people are fed up with being isolated they’ve decided to go big on the Christmas celebration. Good on em! Others (well, lots of the big celebrators too, I supposed) are just depressed. Others are suffering serious financial hardship. No one I know is really much enjoying it they way they would like. Many of you, too, I suppose. I’ll […]
December 25, 2020
Responses to my Newsweek Article on Jesus
Just as happened the first time I made a couple of posts on the article I wrote about Christmas for Newsweek, this time too, in my reposts, I’ve been asked about the kinds of reactions I received. Back then I gave two follow up posts, and here is the first. It’s a pretty funny one, from my perspective. I start out being completely defensive (not that I have a thin skin or anything) and cap it all off by emphatically insisting that I was not being defensive. As I get older, I find I have a better sense of humor about myself… Here’s the first of the two posts. ******************************************************** My Newsweek article this week has generated a lot of response. I have no idea what kind of comments they typically get for their stories, but so far, as of now, there have been 559 on mine; and most of them are negative – to no one’s surprise – written by people (conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists for the most part, from what I can […]
December 30, 2020
With Respect to Others Who Did Not Like My Newsweek Article
When the editor at Newsweek asked me if I would be willing to write an article on the birth of Jesus, I was hesitant and wrote him back asking if he was sure he really wanted me to do it. I told him that I seem to be incapable of writing anything that doesn’t stir up controversy. It must be in my blood. Still, he said that they knew about my work and were not afraid of controversy, and they did indeed want an article from me. What’s interesting to me is that I’ve been getting it from all sides. I don’t know why that should surprise me. It seems to be the story of my life. For years my agnostic and atheist readers were cheering me on from the sidelines as I talked about the problems posed by a critical study of the New Testament: there are discrepancies and contradictions, the Gospels are not written by eyewitnesses, and the stories they contain were modified over time, and many of them were invented in the […]
January 2, 2021
What About All Those *Other* Virgin Births in Antiquity?
I have devoted several posts to the issue of Jesus’ virgin birth, as recounted in Matthew and Luke. As I pointed out, there is no account of Jesus’ virgin birth in the Gospel of John, and it appears that the idea is actually argued *against* (implicitly) in the Gospel of Mark. As happened last time I did a thread like this, several readers have asked me (or told me) about the similarities to the virgin birth stories in pagan texts, where a son of God, or demi-god, or, well, some other rather amazing human being, is said to have been born of a virgin. Aren’t the Christians simply borrowing a widely held view found among the pagans, that if someone is the son of God (e.g., Hercules, or Dionysus, or Asclepius, etc.), his mother is always thought to have been a virgin? As it turns out, that’s not the case at all. I don’t know of any parallel to … Want to be well informed? Keep reading. Not a member of the blog? Join! Costs […]
January 3, 2021
No Virgin Births? Then How Were Demi-gods Born In Antiquity?
In my previous post I pointed out that there do not appear to be any instances in the other religions of antiquity of a virgin birth – where a woman gives birth without having sex. In this post I’ll lay out the more typical view of how a “son of God” came into the world. It very much does involve sex. Most of the post will deal with one (very funny) story in particular which is emblematic of the rest. For this post I will quote a section from my recent book, How Jesus Became God. ****************************** Even though Apollonius of Tyana was understood to be a pre-existent god come in the flesh, that is not the normal Greek or Roman way of understanding how a divine human could be born of a mortal. By far the more common view was that a divine being comes into the world – not having existed prior to birth – because a god has had sex with a human, and the offspring then is in some sense divine. […]
January 5, 2021
Want To See My New Book Manuscript? A Blog Fundraiser
As I have done before, I would like to offer blog members an opportunity to read a draft of my forthcoming book in exchange for a major blog donation. Many of you know that I’ve been spent the last four years working on a scholarly monograph that will be related to, but completely different from, my recently published trade book, Heaven and Hell. I have just finished the draft and am sending it out to experts to read for comments, before preparing the final copy for the press. (It is to be published by Yale University Press.) I’m not sure of the title yet, but just now I’m calling it “Journeys to Heaven and Hell in the Early Christian Tradition.” It’s a scholarly book, not directed mainly to a popular audience. It focuses on several texts not well known to the general populace and, frankly, not even to most scholars (even NT scholars, the vast majority of whom have never read these texts, let alone studied them): The Apocalypse of Peter, the Apocalypse of Paul, […]
December 26, 2020
Is the Trinity in the Bible?
I recently did a webinar discussing the origins of the doctrine of the Trinity. It’s an issue that I am often asked about. Where did the idea come from? How does it work? If God the Father is God, Christ is God, and the Spirit is God – how is it that Christians don’t have three Gods? And if they have three Gods, aren’t they polytheists? On the other hand, if Christians want to insist there is only one God, and that they are monotheists, how can they say that Jesus and God are both God, let alone the Spirit? If they are both, or all three, God, then there is not just one God! So what’s going on with this Trinity business? It’s an involved question, and I’ve decided to make a series of posts on the question. Let me start by making sure we are all on the same page when it comes to what the doctrine of the Trinity involves. This is important because a lot of people assume that if they […]
January 6, 2021
The Blog Year in Review, 2020
Another year has passed. Most of us are oh so happy to say goodbye to THIS one. An awful year, in many many ways, and we are not out of the woods. Even those who have weathered the storm well have faced hardship, suffering, and loss. Whatever your own situation, please accept my best wishes as we move onward. There is a light ahead and possibly a bright future. Whether you pray, hope, or both, this would be a good time to do so with renewed vigor! There have been silver linings and good things as well, of course, for many of as individuals, our communities, our country, and our world. There certainly have been me, and I do try to look on the bright side even while I’m torn by the suffering all around us. But it would be wrong, not to mention unhealthy, not to celebrate the bright spots that have sometimes shone through. For me the blog has been a bright spot. It’s been a really good year for us. Our NINTH!! […]
December 31, 2020
How the Trinity Got Into the New Testament
In my previous post I began to discuss the doctrine of the Trinity, which states that the godhead comprises three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all of whom are completely and equally God, with no one superior to the others, all of whom have existed forever, and all of whom are of the same essence/substance. But these three are actually one. So there is only one God, but he is manifest in three persons. I maintained in the post that this doctrine is not taught in the New Testament, but I pointed out there is one apparent exception, depending on which translation you are reading. In the King James Version you will find the following passage in the letter of 1 John: There are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, the water and the blood, and these three are one (1 John 5:7-8). That first part does […]
January 7, 2021
How the Trinity Got Into the New Testament: Part 2
I continue now with the story of how the doctrine of the Trinity as stated in 1 John 5:7 (the only passage in the entire Bible that states that there are three divine figures and “these three are one”) was actually not originally part of 1 John – or the Bible at all. It was a later addition. But how did it come into the King James Bible then? Read on! This is how I explained it in my book Misquoting Jesus. (If you haven’t read the previous post, it provides some background) (it also does even if you did read it). ************************** Even though the Complutensian Polyglot was the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament, it was not the first published version. As I pointed out, even though the work was printed by 1514, it did not actually see the light of published day until 1522. Between those two dates a famous and enterprising Dutch scholar, the humanist intellectual Desiderius Erasmus, both produced and published an edition of the Greek New […]
January 9, 2021